The Recurrence of Crappy Media Reporting

Now, look....I've been ranting for quite some time about the crap that gets passed off as news reports in the media lately. Well, I've been ranting about that an how the media in general just blows. And I've been contemplating as to why some of the sucky media reports that are out there are, in fact, sucky. I've come to a couple of conclusions.First conclusion is that the folks that are in charge of this stuff are lazy. Good reporting requires some degree of investigation. It is not simply a matter of picking a story up off of the AP wire and assuming that it's accurate and just running with it as if it is. That's not a good practice. In fact, it's a horrible practice. And you can tell the stories where that has happened when you search Google News and all of the different media outlets that come up in your search results all have the exact same text of the account of the story. If you can find one, just ONE that is different, go with that report for what might be the most factual because the others haven't done anything other than cut and paste and given blind faith that the article is accurate. Those are the ones that, and I'm paraphrasing here, suck.

My second conclusion as to why the shoddy media reports keep appearing with such frequency is I think that there are some stories that people want to believe are true. And I get that. I do. I get wanting to have a story that is so bizarre or so heartwarming that everyone will be talking about it. The thing is, those stories get talked about so much when they do happen because they're not supposed to be happening very often! That's the allure! That's their hook!

So those are my conclusions as far as the media end of this debacle known as the downfall of news reporting goes. But I'm a bit confused about why the consumer end of this continues to allow it to keep happening. Are people just not paying attention? Do they not sense when something in a story is not quite right? I don't get it. Here's my example for today. The fine folks over there across the pond at The Telegraph have a photo story titled "Bodybuilders compete in the Mr. Afghanistan competition in Kabul." OK. Well, that sounded intriguing enough to me to click on their link and look at their pictures that they presented. Here's the first one that was in their gallery. Behold!

What is that? Peanut butter? Nutella? That's an odd way to apply tanning lotion, but that's what the caption says, so I guess I'll go with it. But see, when something strikes me as odd at the very beginning, I become skeptical for the rest of the report. Then I came across this photo and I knew something was amiss. Behold! Amiss!
No! No! NO! That's A miss! Amiss! I meant AMISS!! Let's try this again. Behold! Amiss!

That's better. Now, what the hell is that? THAT, er, THOSE are the legs of some bodybuilders in Afghanistan. Allegedly. Seriously. Don't stare at the photo (the photo of the legs. You can stare all you want at the photo of Heather Locklear. Seriously, how can you not?), just look at briefly and see if something in your head goes "Wait! What the hell?!" It doesn't matter if you know what your brain is alerting you to, only that it knows that something is wrong. You should always pay attention to that signal. Now, when my BS detector went off when I saw this photo. I had to look at it more closely. First of all, the color is off between the two sets of legs. It's like they're not of the same exposure, what with the legs on the right being much, much brighter than those on the left. Now let's get a bit closer to the ones on the right, shall we! Behold! Zoom legs!


If you'll look at the arrows there, you can see that they're pointing to the lines where Part A was superimposed onto Part B. It's really rather difficult to miss. And in the red square on the left, you can see more clearly how the shiny area doesn't really seem to match that of the non-shiny area, thus indicating another poor Afghani cut and past job. Sad.

Let's look at some other photos, shall we? Here we have the newly anointed Mr. Afghanistan, a one Shukrullah Shakili, all poised and glistening for the cameras. Behold!


Wow. He's muscle-y. But there's something wrong at first glance. Again, go with that "Huh?" signal that your brain sends you when it sees some freakazoid photo like this one. Shall we zoom? I think we shall. Behold!


Over on the very large bicep, you'll notice an incredibly straight line that just seems to appear for no reason. Well, no natural reason. An unnatural reason would be a little bit of Photoshop or other form of photo manipulation through creative editing. If you'll look at the box on the left, you'll notice that is one deformed hand he's got there. Must make it really hard to do all of the weightlifting or whatever they claim to be doing in order ot have their bodies take on the ridiculously freakish nature that they do. It's like a mangled stump or some sort of a claw or something. And finally, if you'll notice the arrow pointing toward the grundle region, again, a noticeably straight and out of place line seems to divide the bikini from the thigh, almost as if one or the other were simply pasted right on there! Imagine! Then of course there are the two little guys standing in the background on the right, with heads that look like they were simply lowered down and placed on top of the neck and shoulders rather than having grown there naturally, like most heads are. Go figure.

And don't get me wrong. I am well open to the possibility that I'm just overreacting to things and there is nothing wrong with any of these photos at all and the whole thing it totally legit. That could be. But when I see a photo like the one below, I have to stifle all laughter. Behold!


On the right, that is clearly the Afghani version of Sonny Bono, don't you think? The shot is so out of proportion that I simply cannot believe that it hasn't been altered in some form. The guy on the far left looks like he has a 22 inch waist and a 42 inch head! The middle guy? Clearly a facial expression that's some sort of combination of constipated and exertion, both of which can be the same thing in some situations.

But this is the one that did it for me. This is the one where my laughter was not contained. This is the one where I did burst out laughing. This is the one that made me know that these photos were not totally on the up and up. Behold! The blind Afghani bodybuilder with the abnormally large noggin!


Are you kidding me?! Look at that head compared to that body! Am I really supposed to believe that they go together?! Come on! It's the guy in the picture that's supposed to be blind! Not ME! I can see! I can see that's not quite right! Let's look at it with a little bit more light shed on the subject. Let there be light!


That's better. Or worse. Kind of depends on how you're looking at this. The guys to the sides of this guy are way, way, WAY differently proportioned than the dude in the middle. And what's with his arm? It's like this little withered pipe cleaner thing. And it was obviously just pasted on that part of the photo. But that head is ENORMOUS compared not only to his body, but especially compared to the other heads in the picture!

I'm all for the Mr. Afghanistan Bodybuilding Competition. I mean, I suppose I am. Put it this way, I don't have anything against it. You want to report on the Mr. Middle East Muscle Man Contest, go right ahead! It MIGHT be fascinating! I have no idea. But I do have a pretty good idea that these photos do not accurately depict whatever it is that goes on over there during this competition, provided that it does exist (which I don't think I doubt that it does). So if you DO want to report on it, could you at least do it in a way that reports something accurately? Or at least with a higher level of Photoshop expertise so that I'm not spitting my coffee all over my monitor when getting my daily intake of world wide events? I spend more time cleaning up than I do actually reading.

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What in the Hell is Wrong With Reuters?

So, I'm flipping through the news online and I end up over there at Reuter's. Reuter's. Which bills itself as "...the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals." They also claim to "...combine industry expertise with creative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers....powered by the world's most trusted news organization." Sounds pretty impressive, does it not? Not so fast.

So, the story that I had clicked on was titled "Car loses all four wheels on highway". Now, you can debate the newsworthiness of that all you'd like, but regardless of your conclusion, you'd still have to admit that it's interesting. All four wheels?! That's quite the feat! I'd say it's newsworthy. It's not worth leading off your newscast with or anything like that, but it could definitely make it's way into a news lineup, say, right before Britney Spears.

Apparently, what ended up happening was that the dumbasses who were in the car had changed the tired from the winter tires to the summer tires. They were in Switzerland, so with the drastic change in climate between those two seasons, one with a lot of snow and one with no snow, having two sets of tires and switching them out is pretty standard.

What's also pretty standard is that the correct type of nuts are used when mounting the new set of tires. And, according to a statement by the St. Gallen (that's in Switzerland) police, "When they then drove back on to the motorway, all of the wheels disconnected." Yes, I imagine that they would. Morons.

But what does any of that have to do with Reuter's? The picture that accompanied this brief tale of vehicular incompetence is where my annoyance with Reuter's began. Here's the smaller version. Behold!

Now, I realize that's a little hard to see, but that's kind of my point. Well, part of it, anyway. So when I saw that picture, I couldn't quite figure it out because it looked to me like there was a cat on top of that wheel. I read the story again and there was no mention of a cat AT ALL. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as I wanted to pound my head against a wall after I noticed that) I could click where it said "Enlarge" in order to do just that. Enlarge the photo. Hence the name. So I did. Behold!

That's when I realized that it is, indeed, a cat, yes a cat, a cat on a tire! And again, fortunately or not, this time there was a caption for the photo. It read: "A pet cat finds shelter on the wheel of a car which was temporarily abandoned by it owner in Karachi August 29, 1998." ::: blink::: ::: blink :::

Um, WTF?!?!

First of all, 1998?!?! You can't find a more recent picture of the wheel of a car than one from 1998?! Oh, wait. Let me rephrase that. You can't find a more recent picture of the wheel of a car than one from 1998...with a cat?!?! There were no photos of tires/wheels sans cats?!?! In the past eleven years?!?! The point of this story was that all of the wheels fell OFF! Right there, underneath that cat? That looks like wheel to me!

Second, I thought Karachi was an interesting name for a city or town in Switzerland. It didn't sound very Swiss. So I looked it up. IT'S IN PAKISTAN!! It wasn't even a cat on a tire in the right country!!

So Reuter's "the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals" thinks that it's a good idea to include an eleven year old picture of a cat on a tire in Pakistan as the ONLY photo accompanying their story about a car that lost all four wheel on the highway in Switzerland?? They're the leading source?? Leading?! As in "others will follow"? THAT kind of leading?!

Leading us right off of a cliff from what I can tell. Maybe I'll start doing that. You know, just inserting random photos from decades earlier that have at least one thing to do with the story (as long as that thing is not the country that the story takes place in) but that also definitely include a cat. Maybe even change the name to "Random and Old Foreign Cats". Who knows? The possibilities are endless when you start delving in at this level of stupidity.

We're doomed. Doomed, I say.

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A Little Diversity, A Lot of Coordination

Somehow, in the last post, whilst doing all the mentioning of Susan Boyle and how she came in second place in "Britain's Got Talent", I neglected to mention who she came in second place to. She finished runner-up to a group called Diversity. They do some dancing. And when I say "some dancing" it's about the same as if I had said the ocean is a little damp. These guys are pretty amazing. Granted, I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, so I'm easily impressed at just the slightest hint of coordination. And these guys have plenty of it.

The video of their performance during the Finals of "Britain's Got Talent" is below. I know it says that it's like 5 minutes long, but really, the "little dance number" that they do is less than 2 minutes, just so you know. (Maybe you're pressed for time. I don't know! Just trying to be helpful. And also trying to give you at least some reason to take the time to watch it. If I'm going to be watching a YouTube video, I've come to the conclusion that I can easily commit to one minute. Two? Perhaps. Anything longer than two minutes and I'm going to need some convincing. There's a lot of crap out there and I don't need to waste my time watching it.)

Behold! Diversity!

What'd I tell ya? Not bad, eh? Holy smokes!

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Ramboyle? Hardly.

All rightee, time to weigh in on the short lived phenomenon that has been poorly nicknamed "The Hairy Angel" and, most recently but equally as stupid, "SuBo". Yes, I am talking (but only briefly, as that's all I can stand) about Susan Boyle.


If you have not been living under a rock (but it would have to be a rock without Wi-Fi because these days, anything is possible and I'm trying to create the illusion of isolation here) for the past couple of weeks, you know that Susan Boyle, aka SuBo, is the woman who went on "Britain's Got Talent" and for some reason, surprised the entire viewing audience and another 55,000,000 people who watched her performance on YouTube by singing a song from Les Miserables "I Dreamed A Dream". And it was beautiful. Sorry to be sappy, but she sounded incredible. And she was immediately branded the favorite to win "Britain's Got Talent." But then came the hubbub. First the hub. Then the bub.

Now, initially, the assessment of the amazement of the crowd at her singing ability was attributed to what Susan Boyle looked like. Apparently, there is a certain way that singers are supposed to look. I by that, I can only surmise that they are supposed to be young, perky and attractive. Susan Boyle is none of those. She's not particularly young (she's 47, which isn't over the hill or anything and I certainly wouldn't be reserving her a walker at the next shuffleboard tournament), she didn't appear to be perky (though her personality had plenty o'perk in it), and as far as attractive, well, I have seen worse. So while she wasn't drop dead gorgeous, it wasn't like anyone was running for eye bleach after seeing her.

And so I guess that everyone was so wow-ed and amazed by her because she looked the way that she did AND she could sing the way that she did. See, I didn't take it that way. When I first saw the clip, I didn't know if she was going to be good or if she was going to be horrible. I assumed that she was going to be horrible because here in the United States, it has become a favorite pastime of these talent based reality shows to highlight those contestants who are a) mildly mentally retarded, b) mentally ill and/or c) horrible performers and then mock them incessantly. (Most of the time it would seem that the contestant does not quite understand that they are actually being mocked incessantly, making it all the more pathetic.) I didn't assume that she was going to be horrible because she looked the way that she did. I assumed that she was going to be horrible because it was one of those things that I kept hearing that I had to watch on YouTube.

Once she became an "overnight sensation", that's when the tabloids did their thing. "Their thing" being constantly barrage the woman 24/7. Everywhere she went, someone was there. And they were watching her. And they usually had a camera. And they weren't always very complimentary toward her. Yes, shocking that tabloids didn't publish flattering commentary about her. I know! And if you've ever thought that you'd like to be famous, let me tell you this: You wouldn't like it. I"m sure that it's very novel for the first part of it. Whether that part be a day, a week, a month, or just an hour, I'm sure that at first, it's very, very cool. When you enter Phase Two, however, the novelty has worn off. It gets tiring having people watch you when you drive, when you walk, when you shop, when you eat, when you breathe, when you blink and whenever you do anything else. That's why whenever I hear of some celebrity (usually Sean Penn) beating the crap out of some paparazzi, my first thoughts are, "Yay! Did he kill him? I hope he killed him! Did he at least break his G-D camera?" And while I'm not saying that the paparazzi are despicable people, their profession most certainly is about as despicable as you can get.

When you go from a completely anonymous life to one where you have no anonymity at all, anywhere, your life becomes hell. And Susan Boyle felt that hell. Her hell became a reality when she came in second on "Britain's Got Talent" instead of winning as she was predicted world wide to do. (Sportsbook William Hill was giving her 11 to 10 odds to win. Yes. Sportsbooks were taking bets on who would be the winner of a reality show. William Hill must have cleaned up.) And I think that's when she wondered if all of the hell that she had gone through in the past couple of weeks had been worth it. And I think that's when she determined that, since she had lost, it wasn't worth it at all.


The poor woman cracked. According to The Telegraph "The 48 year-old had an "emotional breakdown" following Saturday's final in which she was runner-up, and went to the London clinic to get help." Now, whether or not "help" actually means "help" as in "psychiatric help", I don't know. I'm guessing that "help" meant time to herself where she could regain some sense of normalcy and not have everyone watching her every move every second of every live long day. The Telegraph " also reported that after the show was over, Susan Boyle, "...ran down a corridor shouting "I hate this show"." I don't blame her one bit.

But rather than the media (and I use that term loosely, as I am mainly referring to the tabloids and the paparazzi) acknowledge that they are a ruthless bunch of heathens who came close to ruining this woman's life with their 'round the clock invasion of her privacy, they are instead making sure that the stories that they run include a detail that was largely left out of all prior reports about her. That detail being something similar to: "The 48-year-old, who suffers from learning disabilities as a result of being starved of oxygen at birth...blah, blah, blah." So.....what? Are they saying that learning disabilities cause people to sing pitch perfect opera songs? No. Are they saying that learning disabilities cause people to break down from an unexpected and immediate load of stress to deal with? Nooooo. Oh. Wait! I've got it. Are they implying that "learning disability" is akin to "retarded"? Seems to be that way. Have you people no shame?

You're not going to hear about "the retarded woman who can really belt out a tune" now, are you? First of all, she's NOT retarded. Second of all, I hardly see what a learning disability has to do with one's ability to cope with stress. OH, that's right. It doesn't have anything to do with it. But just wait. Look around. Read the papers. Read the reports. See how many of them NOW mention this "learning disability". And of all the ones that do, go back and read previous reports that they put out and see how many times it was mentioned in those stories. You'll see what I mean.

I'm surprised someone hasn't cracked like this before. Seriously. I'm as surprised that someone hasn't cracked before now as I am surprised that Sean Penn hasn't killed a photographer with his bare hands before now. And while she may have wanted to be left alone, she almost certainly didn't want to be left alone because she lost.

In the end, I"m sure that she'll be fine. I certainly hope she ends up making some money off of this gig because there were plenty of other folks who made a ton of money off of her. She IS her! She should see some profit in the future. I would think. After all, on shows like these, take American Idol for example, it doesn't seem to matter if you come in first or not. As long as you can get yourself out there and make a name for yourself, even if you don't win the whole thing, you're going to do just fine as far as your career goes. And contrary to what the media wanted us to believe in the first place, it doesn't matter if you are not attractive if you want to have a chance at making it in some sort of performance art capability. I think I asked earlier, since when did we start requiring singers to be attractive? Have you SEEN some of the famous singers out there? This woman is an opera singer (Susan Boyle sang an opera song). Look at her! Behold!


Egads! What the hell is that?! Now, if she were the only one, I wouldn't have much of a point, but she's not. Hoo-boy, she sure is not. Keith Richards, ladies and gentlemen! Behold!

If there were ever a nuclear war and everything on the planet was attacked and destroyed, two things would survive. Bugs and Keith Richards. The man should have been dead in the 60s. At the latest! But he's certainly not an attractive fellow and seems to be doing just fine in the music business with his little band
The Rolling Stones.

Here's Tiny Tim

So, you're seeing my point about not needing to be attractive, yes? No? I'll keep going. Rick James!!
Shane McGowan of The Pogues!

Lemmy Kilminster of Motorhead!

Dee Snider of Twisted Sister!

Eddie van Halen of Van Halen!
There you have it. Proof that you don't have to be attractive to be able to sing. Proof that you shouldn't be amazed if you see a less than attractive person singing. Proof that win or lose, attractive or not, I think Susan Boyle is going to do just fine. Hopefully she'll be able to get a little peace and quiet back in her life for a while so that she'll be physically capable of pursuing a recording career which she seems more than aptly suited for. But even with all of this, do I think that people are going to change their judgmental ways? Hell. No. You know why? The guy who won in 2007 was a cell phone salesman who could sing at the very least as good as Susan Boyle does. A photo of Paul Potts is below. You tell me if you think people are going to change.

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Please Think Twice Before Using That Knife

You know how when little kids don't get their way they'll throw a tantrum or hold their breath? All in the hopes that you'll change your mind or that they'll get their way somehow? It never works. (At least, it should never work!) But they'll keep doing it until they figure out that a) throwing a tantrum does not get you what you want, and/or b) you can only hold your breath for just so long before you either give up or pass out. But until they figure out that these tactics of theirs are not going to work, there's really no harm done. Even the holding the breath thing doesn't hurt them. Eventually, they'll breathe! It's how it works. It's a marvelous system that way, the respiratory system is.

But there are some tantrums that COULD be harmful. Such as the 'tantrum' that a 25-year old labor worker in Egypt threw after being denied permission to marry the girl of his choice (instead of having his marriage arranged for him to someone that he possibly didn't know and likely didn't love). When this guy threw a tantrum, he did it by way of lopping off his manhood with a hot knife. Ay, Cairo-umba!

Correct. According to metronews.ca up there in Edmonton in America's Hat, the man "...cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family." Now that's some spite! Holy crap! Every time I hear one of these 'missing manhood' stories, I always cringe even though I don't even have one! But doing to to yourself?! Zoiks!

This man (and I use that term loosely at this point as he was taken to a hospital but "...doctors were unable to reattach the severed member") is not going to be happy with himself when he realizes what he has done. Or undone. Whichever. Bottom line is the guy has no one thing. He has nothing.

It would seem that the man (again, used loosely) had been trying to marry this girl that he loved for the past two years, but his father wouldn't have it. I guess you can only be denied permission to marry the person that you love for just so long before you start mutilating your reproductive organs, eh? (I am SO praying that this sort of behavior doesn't catch on here in California after the courts upheld the ban on gay marriage. This state has enough problems without a bunch of guys hacking off their units. I mean, holy cow, could you imagine? Say, in San Francisco? If that were to occur, they'd be assemble to assemble a choral unit that could rival the Vienna Boys Choir!) Personally, before I took a knife to my nether regions, it would be a hell of a lot longer than two years, that much I do know!

The article says that he "heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ." Well, that's something you're not going to be able to reproduce, that's for sure! Interesting that he heated it up first. I don't know what their living quarters situation is there in Egypt, so I don't know what options the lad had. I don't know if it was possible for him to keep a blow torch in his room where he could heat up the improvisational scalpel in private or if he had to venture into the family living areas and heat his knife over a fire pit in the commons area or what. That could have been awkward though. ("Whatcha doin' with that big knife in the fire pit there, son?" "He won't talk to you, Dad. He's holding his breath again." "Does this have something to do with my not letting you marry Jeannie?" "Dad, it's not Jeannie. Jeannie isn't even Egyptian." "But she has the little hat!" "I know. But she's white and it's called a fez, Dad. It doesn't mean she's Egyptian.")

This is where all of the trouble came from: The guy was "...from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt's poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor." Again, why we need to know which Egyptian ruins are in his neighborhood is beyond me. But now we know. And the reason it was a problem for him, a prominent fellow, to be carnally mixing with a commoner is that "Traditionally, marriages in these conservative part of southern Egypt are between similar social classes and often within the same extended families - and are rarely for love." Aww.

While I can understand his frustration, I still think he was being a bit drastic in the schlong severing. Perhaps he was seeing it as a noble deed, but I don't know that many others are going to see it quite that way. And really, even if the object of his affection did see it as noble, would she even want to marry him after an incident like that? Pretty much, he's proven himself to be a tad bit on the unstable side, not to mention a large bit on the don't-have-a-penis-anymore side. Crazy is not a character trait that many women look for in a potential mate. I'm just saying.

Maybe he hoped it would cure his lustful desires for the girl. I don't think it works that way, though. Oh, sure, I would have thought it worked that way earlier in my life. But somehow, I've come to realize that it's not just about all of the fornicating, enjoyable as it is! His loins might not be burning with love anymore (they'll be burning with antiseptic for a while, though), but his head will still be in love with her. And unless he wants to cut that off as well, he's still going to feel the same way. Only this time, he'll feel that way without a penis.

Huh. Yeah, there really was no way to spin this so that it had a jovial ending. He's screwed. Not literally, of course. That's impossible at this point.

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Step Away From the Panda, You Pervert

If you hire people to work for you, I think you need to have some sort of a screening process in place to weed out those that could potentially be, say, damaging to your reputation. Embarrassing even. Now imagine if you were a Pennsylvania State Senator. And you found out that you had a staffer who was arrested and charged "...with attempted sexual exploitation of children, unlawful contact with a minor and criminal solicitation to commit sexual abuse of children." While dressed like a panda. Wait. A pannn....WTF?!

Correct. A panda. Those cute and charming black and white creatures predominantly found in China but shipped here to the US to spend time in zoos to the delight of gazillions of tourists who think it's perfectly natural to be standing 5 feet away from a panda in downtown Washington, DC. And speaking of Washington, DC, did I mention that this pervert worked for a Senator?!

I'm getting ahead of myself here. A one Alan David Berlin, age old-enough-to-know-better-at-40, is a former staffer of Pennsylvania State Senator Jane Orie-R. No, I do not know why her political party that she represents would be important here, but the article over there at the metronews.ca.edmonton felt the need to include it, so I did as well. Plus, why not just bait the waters a little bit more with yet another reason for people to attack the character of the Republicans. (Though you have to admit, saying that they want to fornicate with omnivorous Asian mammals could really be hard to top. So really, by putting out there that she's a Republican, this story could end all of the back biting once and for all! Who'd a thunk it?) I say that he's a 'former' staffer of Senator Orie because he was fired on Friday. He was arrested on Thursday. I don't think that those two are completely independent of one another. Just a hunch, but I'm guessing that once your employer gets wind of the fact that you've been trying to solicit panda sex from, wait for it, a 15-year old boy, you're going to get fired. Soon. As soon as possible.

It would seem that Mr. Berlin had "...used Internet chats and instant messages to proposition the Harrisburg-area boy, including talking about dressing up in animal costumes and engaging in various sex acts." That according to the state Attorney General, a one Tom Corbett. He disclosed that these untoward events occurred "...in April and May, (and he) discussed various sex acts with the boy." Mr. Berlin (who I am really tempted to repeatedly call 'The Pervert') also suggested that he "...travel to the boy's home and have sex with him in the backyard while his parents slept." Oh. I see. While his parents slept. Oh, well, good! Because it would have been a completely different story if his parents had been awake! OF COURSE WHILE HIS PARENTS SLEPT! Because other than that one details, what could possibly go wrong?! Please.

Apparently, Berlin (aka The Pervert) (Sorry! I can't help it!) had worked for the Senate since 1993. For some inexplicable reason, this story included a quote from a one Mike Sarfert, who was the chief counsel for Senator Orie, when he said that Berlin (aka The Pervert) "...did not work on major legislation but assisted with grants for things such as roadwork." Um, what?

What difference does that make?! Didn't work on major legislation! Did work on major legislation! Who the hell cares?! I don't care if he worked on the railroad all the live long day! He wanted to have sex with a boy dressed like a panda! The only thing I care about as far as his employment duties are concerned is whether or not they involved any sort of zookeeping responsibilities! I don't care what he DID for the Senator! I care about what he wanted to DO to a panda! And the boy! For hell's sake, can people not FOCUS?!?!

Well, after you run across someone doing something like Berlin (aka The Pervert) was, if you're law enforcement, you get a warrant to search their place. And they did. That's when they learned that pandas were not the only thing that Berlin (aka The Pervert) apparently had a penchant for. "Authorities also found a wolf costume and cat-type costume...but the panda costume has not been found." So, wait. It's definitely a wolf costume, but it's only a cat type costume? What does that mean? "Cat type"? Like a big house cat "cat type? Like Tony the Tiger "cat type"? Like Halle Berry as the Catwoman "cat type"? What does that mean? It won't make this any better (or worse!) but at this point, details are essential for the very fact that we have already been told about the longing for the panda. We have a picture in our heads (admit it!) of someone in a panda suit. We need to know what the "cat type" costume consists of so that we can add it to our list of images floating around in our heads (and without our consent, might I add).

A one spokesman for the attorney general, a one Nils Frederiksen, said that "Berlin (aka The Pervert) used the costumes as an entree to solicit the boy." Wait. What?!

The kid was 15 right? And this dude, The Pervert (No more aka-ing this guy. He's worth of full pervert declaration at this point!) thought that a panda suit was his in? Now, aside from the fact that I don't know if a panda suit would entice any boy, really, regardless of age. But I'm really hoping that it is not some unknown fantasy amongst throngs of teenage boys to engage in some sort of interspecies coital relations!

But here's my favorite quote from the good Mr. Frederiksen. "It's one thing to be interested in the furry culture, it's another thing to make arrangements to have sex with a teenage boy." ::: blink ::: ::: blink :::

"The furry culture"? Like mold? It's a furry culture. Oooooohh. THAT furry culture. Yikes. Well, in that case, yes. Yes, it is. Well said, sir. Well said.

Fortunately, this guy is sitting in jail with a $250,000 bail. Now, granted, knowing the salaries of some government workers, he might be able to afford that no problem. But let's hope not. Instead, let's hope that this little story makes its way around to some of the other inmates. Some of the burlier inmates. Some of the more sexually deprived and burly inmates. Let's hope they get wind of The Pervert's Follies and act accordingly. Accordingly according to prisoners, of course. I'm not suggesting any sort of leniency for this type of thing. Hell, no! That guy's interested in pandas? Hopefully Bubba will be able to give him a little tutorial on bamboo and wazoo! Should be quite enlightening for him. As it should be.

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