Slade Smiley failed to financially support son with inoperable brain cancer

Slade Smiley, reality television star of both The Real Housewives of Orange County and Date My Ex: Jo and Slade was arrested for nonpayment of child support.

That wouldn’t really be a huge deal, except that the child for whom he failed to pay support is his nine-year-old son Grayson Arroyo-Smiley, who has inoperable brain cancer and has been fighting the disease since preschool.

Sometimes things do happen in life which are beyond our control – job loss, major illness – and there is no money for child support.  I understand that completely, and I’m not complaining at all about noncustodial parents who do the best they can.

In this case, however, the noncustodial parent had his own reality tv show, lived in a McMansion, and therefore isn’t exactly poor.  He also put the child’s mother through the incredible hassle of having to go through the court system, when she should be able to focus all her energies on their son and his devastating illness.  I doubt Slade is spending a lot of time with the little boy, given that he seems more interested in humping reality star after reality star (the latest being Gretchen Rossi of The Real Housewives of Orange County).

Send some love to Grayson and his mom (Michelle Arroyo) at Amazing Gray.  Feel free to send an email to Slade’s site for Grayson as well (which seems to be just another vehicle to promote his own career).

“Cop Without a Badge” Re-issued, Still Sucks

“Cop Without a Badge” Re-issued, More Excerpts | ABSURD TO SUBLIME.

There are excerpts at the above link from the book Cop Without A Badge by Charles Kipps.

Reports note that the book has been reissued, due to Danielle Staub of The Real Housewives of New Jersey being a person profiled in that book (which is actually about the exploits of her first ex-husband, Kevin Maher).

Staub was charged over 20 years ago, with crimes related to a kidnapping for ransom related to a cocaine deal gone bad.  According to the book, at that time, Staub was a stripper with an endless hunger for cocaine.  Staub was then known as “Beverly Merrill”, but has since changed her name.

However, after reading those excepts, is my opinion that the book is horribly written.  It is so badly written, in fact, that I wouldn’t waste my money on it, even though I am interested in the subject matter and collect all kinds of books.

I guess at least now we don’t have to wonder why the book went out of print in the first place.  LOL

“The Real Housewives of Atlanta” returns July 30th

The Real Housewives of Atlanta will return for its second season on July 30 (10 p.m., ET).

Returning this year are aspiring country singer Kim Zolciak, entrepreneur Lisa Wu Hartwell, the outspoken NeNe Leakes and budding fashion designer Sheree Whitfield. Meanwhile, Kandi Burruss, a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter and former member of Xscape, will join the mix, becoming the official fifth castmate, replacing DeShawn Snow. According to the network, the newest Housewife’s storyline will involve balancing wedding planning, writing and recording a new album as a solo artist and being a mom. Burruss is friends with Wu Hartwell.

As for the veterans, Bravo notes that upcoming Atlanta episodes will document the development of Whitfield’s She by Sheree fashion line and her dating life, Zolciak’s life after breaking up with beau “Big Poppa,” and Leakes’s upcoming self-help book for women.

via The Real Housewives of Atlanta Returns – PEOPLE TV Watch.

I dunno, I don’t care about She By Sheree at all (unless it fails miserably, like it did the first season when she gave a “fashion show with no fashions”, LOL) or NeNe’s book (though she may actually be able to help some women, and NeNe is a hoot).

The truth is, I only really like these shows when the “housewives” are extremely dysfunctional, which is why I don’t watch The Real Housewives of New York or The Real Housewives of Orange County (bitchy and dysfunctional are two entirely different things).  I definitely got a kick out of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, but again, only because they are extremely dysfunctional.

I’ll definitely watch, though, because I did like the first season of Real Housewives of Atlanta.  Hopefully the second season is nowhere near as boring as it sounds.

Should Zoe be prosecuted? Evidence says yes!

Bombs, Taxes, and Red Crayons.

Zoe the Dog was on the porch as well and the witness was feeding her pizza. Once he felt that they were positioned appropriately (he sat between Ed and Elaine close to Ed’s gun arm), he used the code word “party” in conversation and both of the Browns were grabbed, tasered, and handcuffed.

Ed put up a fight and warned the Marshals, “You don’t know what you’ve done.” Elaine became very animated and was yelling profanities.

The jury was then shown a brief video of the scene taken just after the arrest. Dutch’s face is blurred out, and Zoe the Dog darts into the house in fear when Ed tries to talk her while he’s standing handcuffed. A minute later, she’s seen stealing a pizza slice and running.

That sounds like a clear-cut case of petit theft to me.  Book ‘em, Dano! 

What are the chances that Zoe the Dog’s theft would be caught on tape, then the tape played as evidence in a federal trial?  LOL

Anyhoo, head on over to Bombs, Taxes, and Red Crayons at the above link, and check out JJ MacNab’s latest humorous (and not so humorous) report on the trial of Ed and Elaine Brown, who were involved in a nine-month armed standoff against US Marshals.

Michael Jackson’s final rehearsal video

This is the video of Michael Jackson’s final rehearsal for his upcoming “This Is It” tour.  The song he is performing is “They Don’t Really Care About Us”, and the footage was filmed on June 23rd.

After watching that video, I find it very hard to believe that he was in anywhere near as much pain as the drugs found in his home would suggest.  I couldn’t move like that if my life depended on it.  Most people couldn’t.  Still, his talent cannot be denied, and it does not seem to have lessened with time.

Whether Michael’s pain was real or imagined, it is now gone forever.

Sadly, however, the pain for those who loved him is only just beginning.

Anesthesia sedative found in Michael Jackson’s home

Powerful sedative found in Michael Jackson’s home – Yahoo! News.

I have no idea why Michael Jackson, or anyone else, would have a drug of that nature in their home.

Diprivan (also known as Propofol) is an intravenous drug used in operating rooms to induce unconsciousness.  In Michael Jackson’s case, if a Registered Nurse treating him is to be believed, he wanted to use the drug to treat insomnia.

I understand if the guy needed to sleep, because I get insomnia myself from time to time, but The Big Sleep is a whole other ballgame.

I suspect some doctor somewhere is in a lot of trouble right now, whether that’s what actually killed him or not.  It’s not as if you can go to your friendly neighborhood drug dealer and get medications of that nature, after all, so he had to have gotten it from a physician.

“MySpace mom” Lori Drew’s conviction thrown out by judge

“MySpace mom” Lori Drew’s conviction thrown out – Ars Technica.

Lori Drew’s conviction was thrown out today on the basis of legal interpretation.  The judge ruled that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act did not apply to the facts of the case.

Lori Drew had made a false MySpace profile, pretending to be a cute boy named Josh Evans.  She befriended Megan Meier, a neighbor girl and former friend of her daughter’s, and engaged in an ongoing plot to humiliate and embarrass the 13-year-old, who she knew had a history of serious depression.

Megan Meier committed suicide, many believe as a direct result of Drew’s actions.

Lori Drew admitted to police what she had done, when making a complaint about the Meiers destroying a foosball table she had stored in their garage, but charges were not brought locally.  A federal prosecutor in California, home of MySpace, brought the charges in an attempt to make Drew pay for what she had done.  Drew was found guilty by a jury.

Many hailed the judge’s action as proper, while others are extremely anger that Lori Drew is not being held legally responsible in the death of Megan Meier.

Personally, I think the judge made the right legal decision in this case, as I have previously stated should be the decision.  However, I also think – and have always stated – that Lori Drew should have been charged with any of a number of serious state-level crimes, including child abuse, child endangerment, and possibly even negligent manslaughter, for her actions which led to the death of Megan Meier.

Gay “exorcism” video stirs controversy

Church Creates Stir With Gay Exorcism Video – KTLA.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — The video shows the 16-year-old boy lying on the floor, his body convulsing, as elders of a small Connecticut church cast a “homosexual demon” from his body.

“Rip it from his throat!” a woman yells. “Come on, you homosexual demon! You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now! Loose your grip, Lucifer!”

The 20-minute video posted on YouTube by Manifested Glory Ministries is being called abuse by gay and youth advocates, who are demanding an investigation. But a church official this week denied that the teenager was injured or that the church is prejudiced.

“We believe a man should be with a woman and a woman should be with a man,” the Rev. Patricia McKinney told The Associated Press. “We have nothing against homosexuals. I just don’t agree with their lifestyle.”

If they really believe homosexuality is caused by demons, then they do indeed have something against homosexuals, unless of course they have nothing against demons. Otherwise, they admitted that they performed an “exorcism” on a 16-year-old, when they knew full well the boy was not “possessed”.

The church refused to provide a copy of the video to the Associated Press, and have since removed the video.  However,  others made copies of it when it was online, so it is still available.  Here is the nine-minute version, for those interested in watching.

I have to say, that’s one of the weirdest videos I have ever seen, and it also proves they are lying when they say they have “nothing against” homosexuals.  At one point in the video they have the boy by the throat for a prolonged period of time while he is prone on the ground, and at another point they put him in a wrestling hold so he can’t get away (though he does indeed seem to be trying to escape until he realizes the futility of that action).

That’s not even getting into the emotional and psychological damage inherent in performing an “exorcism” on a gay youth, as well as the humiliation and embarrassment they caused the teen by posting their ridiculous behavior on the internet.

People have the right to believe whatever they want, since we do all have freedom of religion in this country.  However, it’s a whole other ballgame altogether when they actually act on that belief, and end up abusing a child in the process.  I therefore won’t be at all surprised if the adults who were present are prosecuted.

DEA joins Michael Jackson death investigation – KTLA

DEA joins Michael Jackson Death Investigation – KTLA.

It’s reported that Jackson’s body had multiple injection marks when he died. He also allegedly used a slew of aliases, including Omar Arnold and Jack London, along with the name of a bodyguard and the office manager of one of his doctors, to obtain prescription medications.

My concern is that, if someone is getting prescriptions under multiple names, pharmacists cannot tell whether the patient is getting too much of a particular medication, or whether there may be a problem with taking medications which are incompatible.  The failure of that line of patient defense may prove to be catastrophic.

At the same time, I understand why celebrities may need to do that, thanks to the out-of-control tabloid press.  After all, if I get a prescription, nobody cares except me.  If someone like Michael Jackson gets a prescription, millions of people care, so tabloids are willing to pay top dollar for that information.

What do you think?  Do you understand why celebrities use aliases when obtaining prescriptions and think it’s okay, or do you think it is a practice which should or must be stopped?  Do you think it would be okay if a celebrity only used one pseudonym for medications, as opposed to many?

Two anti-smoking drugs to carry mental-health warnings

Two anti-smoking drugs to carry mental-health warnings – CNN.com.

The FDA said Chantix and Zyban will carry the warnings to alert consumers to the risks of depression and suicidal thoughts when using the drugs.

The drugs also have been reported to cause changes in behavior, hostility and agitation in users, whether users had a history of psychiatric illness or not. In many cases, side effects started shortly after use began and ended when the medication was stopped. The FDA does not know what is causing the changes and said people taking these products should be monitored by their doctor.

Ed and Elaine Brown on Trial | Bombs, Taxes, and Red Crayons

Ed and Elaine Brown on Trial | Bombs, Taxes, and Red Crayons.

My friend JJ MacNab has a great blog she calls Bombs, Taxes, and Red Crayons, in which she covers various tax protester trials.

If you want to know more about tax protesters, what they believe, and why they believe it, and especially if you like to point and laugh at weird people, I recommend the tax forums on Quatloos.  Here’s the description of that forum:

Have a stupid theory why you shouldn’t have to pay taxes? 861? Non-Filer? Sovereign Citizen? Believe that the federal courts are actually admiralty courts or that the only real citizens of the USA live in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the District of Columbia, then this forum is for you. Also considers Pure Trusts in all of its scam forms, including Constitutional Trusts, Patriot Trusts, Unincorporated Business Organizations, COLATOS, as well as the Corporation Sole scam, and “Make Yourself into a Church” in all variants.

JJ is currently covering the case of Ed and Elaine Brown at the main link above.  Ed and Elaine are currently charged with crimes related to a nine-month-long armed standoff against the federal government.

Here are a few quick excerpts from JJ’s blog on the Ed and Elaine trial:

Here’s a quick and dirty review for those of you who don’t know or remember the Browns. Elaine is a rich, well-educated, and successful dentist who married Ed, a high school drop-out, retired cockroach exterminator with a violent criminal history. While Elaine financially supported the family, Ed ran a militia group called the US Constitution Rangers and generally made a name for himself (granted, it was “asshole”) among the angry, gun-guy clique.

Supporters brought guns, Ed built bombs, and Ed and Elaine made dozens of explicit threats against two judges, a federal prosecutor, the US Marshal, an IRS employee, the Plainfield Chief of Police , and anyone else they thought they could blame for their predicament. It was ugly.

When the judge came in, Ed’s lawyer announced his withdrawal from the case, and Ed gave a lengthy monologue complaining about his lawyer, his and Elaine’s inability to formulate an appeal in their prior case (he doesn’t seem to understand that the deadline for that passed two years ago), the prosecutors, the judicial system, the press, and even the jury. By Ed’s estimate, 80% of the jurors have already made up their minds about his guilt.

According to Ed, the court simply can’t understand the “commercial remedy process” (and boy, is that an understatement – judges don’t speak gibberish) and that everything he’s done up to today has been for a reason.

Ed: “No one can re-present me. This all started because I made statements exposing the criminal elements of this government. Remember, I am a member of an organization called the US Constitution Rangers.”

The judge denied the attorney’s request to leave the case, told Ed to “Be quiet,” and the jury was brought in.

“Re-present” is not a typo, by the way.  That’s actually a word to Ed, since he is a self-described “sovereign citizen“, as are many tax protesters.  Sovereign citizens are not at all unusual in the militia movement, either.

Michael Jackson’s will revealed

The Smoking Gun has posted the Last Will and Testament of Michael Joseph Jackson, for anyone interested.

Last Will of Michael Joseph Jackson

JULY 1–A will signed in 2002 by Michael Jackson stipulates that his assets be placed in a family trust and that his mother be appointed the guardian of his three offspring. The will, a copy of which you’ll find below, lists three executors, including lawyer John Branca and music industry executive John McClain. The will makes no provision for bequests to Jackson’s father or any of his eight siblings, and a court filing indicates that beneficiaries of the Michael Jackson Family Trust are limited to his children and mother Katherine. Six other relatives, including his brother Tito’s three sons, are named as “contingent remainder beneficiaries” who would share the estate in the event that Jackson’s principal beneficiaries died before he did. Branca and McClain believe that the value of Jackson’s estate “exceeds $500 million” and consists of “non-cash, non-liquid assets,” including Jackson’s share of lucrative music royalty rights. In the case that Jackson’s mother were to predecease him (or was unable or unwilling to serve as guardian), Jackson stipulated that singer Diana Ross should be appointed guardian of his minor children. The “Last Will of Michael Joseph Jackson” was executed in Los Angeles on July 7, 2002. (8 pages)

Great New WordPress Blog

Unable to sleep tonight, I started searching random keywords on WordPress just for something to do, and ran across a blog which blew me away so much that I had to do a “Press This” about it.

The Opiate Fields is written by a mother who is much like me.  Her son is the same age as my son, is also in a rock band, and lost his father as a young teen.  However, that’s where the comparisons end, because her experiences with her son are very, very different from mine.

Reading about what she has gone through (and continues to go through) every single day definitely brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “there but for the grace of God go I”.

Her description in the side column is

My son’s life was never supposed to end up this way, with a needle in his arm and opiates running viciously through his veins.

My life was never supposed to end up this way, fearing that each and every moment will be the one when I am told that my only child is dead.

We are both living in a special place in hell, which I like to call “The Opiate Fields”.

It only gets better from there, and I definitely recommend it as a must-read blog.  Honestly, I’m still in awe, because I would never be able to write about something that painful, and cannot even imagine living it.

Here’s an excerpt:

I put him in rehab repeatedly even before he was out of high school, trying to stop his downward spiral. When one program didn’t work, I’d try another. I spent literally every cent I had, including the insurance money I received when my husband died, trying to get my son off drugs. I tried being tough, and I tried being understanding. I even went into therapy myself, thinking perhaps it was somehow my fault, and that I was the one who needed to change. Nothing I did, and nothing the doctors did, made a damn bit of difference. He was hell-bent on self-destruction.

By the time he was 16, a doctor proclaimed that my son was a lost cause. I refused to believe that. I still refuse to believe that.

I’m glad to see she never gave up on her son no matter what anyone said.  It’s sad that she blamed it on herself, though.  Drug addiction of that extreme type and extent is caused by a dysfunction of the brain, not by mothers.  Her son may very well be suffering from an underlying mental illness which has gone undiagnosed as well, but she hasn’t said enough about his behavior yet for me to even make a guess about what it might be.  It could be a lot of things.

Take a few tissues when you read it, though.  It’s just unbelievable to read what that poor mom has gone through, not only with her son, but one of her son’s friends.  Un-fricking-believable.  In fact, I wouldn’t believe it, except that I actually know some young musicians who use drugs and act just like them, and they have tried similar stunts with me.  Needless to say, they didn’t get away with it here, LOL, but she seems like a super nice lady who was just more than a little naive and wanted to think the best of the kids, and as a result has been victimized over and over again by these young predatory drug addicts.

I’m glad to see she finally woke up to their tricks, though.  Some people never do, sadly.

How much $$ does Simon make from American Idol?

SIMON COWELL OFFERED $144 MIL A YEAR TO STAY ON ‘AMERICAN IDOL’ – New York Post.

Wow.  That’s a LOT of money for judging a singing competition.

Dog Chapman may be charged with felonies, Tim Chapman acquitted by judge

Duane “Dog” Chapman may be in the doghouse yet again.

DENVER – A public defender is demanding that TV bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman be charged with felonies for claiming that a man fired a gun at him and his crew while they were filming in Colorado Springs last month.

Attorney William Schoewe alleges Chapman and others made up the claim to boost publicity for the A&E reality show “Dog The Bounty Hunter.” Prosecutors dropped charges against a suspect, saying the evidence was insufficient.

I no longer watch Dog (and haven’t in years) so I haven’t seen that episode, and I haven’t read the police reports, so I don’t know exactly what was said or who said it.  What I do recall from news reports, however, is that police found no evidence at the scene supporting Dog’s claim that the suspect had shot at him.

Someone must have told police that the man shot at Dog, though, since charges were brought against him.  Without a statement, and without evidence at the scene, the police had no probable cause to charge him with that crime.

If anyone has a link to Dog’s statement to police, or to that episode of the show, please post it.  I’d be interested to know exactly what the police were told, and who said it, as well as how the situation was presented on his show.

In other Dog news, Dog’s brother-from-another-mother Tim Chapman was found not guilty by a judge with regard to misdemeanor indecent exposure charges. The judge specifically found that the prosecutor didn’t prove that Tim intentionally exposed himself.

A felony charge of terroristic threatening, due to Tim driving out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell and almost running over a security guard when he was caught with his pants down (literally), was previously dropped.  Tim blamed that part of it on …wait for it … Beth Chapman.  He was allegedly worried about what she would say.

I have to admit, that’s actually possible, LOL.

Though Tim Chapman blasted prosecutors for what he termed “a waste of taxpayers’ money”, the prosecutor stated that she still believes he intentionally exposed himself.

Chapman states that he fought the charge because his wife recently filed for divorce, and he is trying to get custody of his two young children, but an indecent exposure conviction would get in the way of that goal.

Given the undisputed facts of the indecent exposure case though – that he was clearly seen in his vehicle, in a public parking lot in broad daylight, with no pants or underwear on – it’s still very doubtful he could get custody.  Even if one believes Tim’s version of events (that he was just changing his clothes because he spilled orange juice on himself) it still shows extremely poor judgment on his part.

Nevertheless, I don’t think there’s any doubt that he loves his kids and that they love him, so it’s a shame that he and his estranged wife can’t just work things out for the benefit of their children.

Not at all surprisingly, Dina Manzo lied

On the Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion show, Dina was asked if it was true that she spent a million dollars on her wedding to Tommy Manzo.  She said it was not true.

However, in a twist to rival only Danielle’s delusional belief that no one would ever find out that her criminal history was in a book (not to mention public records), it turns out that Dina and husband Tommy Manzo were profiled on VH1’s reality show “My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding”, which proves that she was lying.  In fact, at the link below, there is a video from that show to prove it.

Dina and Tommy Manzo on My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding

Total cost of the wedding?  $1,150,000

It’s not exactly a flattering portrait of them as a couple, either.  On that show, Dina says they dated for five years, and Tommy repeatedly cheated on her.  What a catch!

This of course also brings into question Dina’s assertion that her husband was never on the show because he didn’t want to be on reality tv.

There is a treat for fans in that video, though.  Look for a younger Lexi and a much thinner Caroline. 

Michael Jackson’s strange life, even stranger death, and his continuing legacy

CNN offers comprehensive coverage of the life and death of Michael Jackson, for those interested in the topic.

Michael Jackson Dead At 50 – Special Reports from CNN.com.

I was a big fan of The Jackson Five as a little girl, so much so that I still remember all their names.  I even remember their cartoon, though most people probably didn’t even know there was one (yeah, I know, I’m really showing my age by admitting that).  At one point I couldn’t decide if I liked Michael Jackson or Donny Osmond the best, but truth be told, I had a big crush on both of them.  I have always believed that Thriller was the greatest music video ever made.

Nowadays I am hardly a rabid Michael Jackson fan, though, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because he passed away.  I still enjoy his music, though I don’t go out of my way to listen to it anymore, but through that music he brought a dimension to the lives of many, including me, which otherwise would not have existed at all.  Michael Jackson broke through many, many boundaries; without him, I believe the world would be a very different place.

In fact, my own personal world is very different than what it otherwise might be, because of Michael Jackson.  He is the reason why, though I grew up in an impoverished area of Appalachia where whites and blacks were still quite separate (and not at all equal), I never harbored any racial prejudice despite my upbringing.  Long before he sang about it, Michael Jackson taught me that race is nothing but a skin color.  I sincerely thank him for that.

At the same time, the sordid world of tabloid journalism would be quite different as well without Michael, Bubbles The Chimp, Michael’s (alleged) hyperbaric sleeping chamber, and the many allegations and accusations leveled against “Wacko Jacko” over the years.  Supermarket tabloids like The National Enquirer managed to stay in business for decades because of Michael Jackson’s antics, and unfortunately, he never seemed to let them down.  Despite what the younger generation seems to believe, sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton only built upon that sleazy tabloid style of celebrity “journalism”, they certainly didn’t invent it.

I can’t honestly say the world is a better place due to that particular contribution to pop culture, but I think the ever-eccentric Michael just viewed things differently than the average person, and never realized until it was too late what the press would do if they ever turned against him.  And turn against him, they did.

Of course the most obvious subject for the press was Michael’s ever-changing facial appearance.  His family teased him relentlessly about his nose when he was a child, from what I have read, and that may have been the catalyst for what appears to have been body dysmorphic disorder resulting in his many (eventually bizarre) plastic surgeries.  Michael was very sick, in my opinion, but that can be explained by the fact that he led a life unlike anyone else on earth, from a very, very young age, and under threat of severe physical punishment if he failed to perform perfectly.

I therefore noted the changes in his appearance – after all, it was impossible not to notice them – and never believed it when said his skin color changed due to vitiligo, or that he hadn’t had a nose job.  I do have eyes, after all, and I remembered very clearly what he looked like as a child, so I could see that his appearance had changed dramatically, and to a degree which would be impossible without extreme surgical intervention.  However, I didn’t engage in the endless discussion and speculation on that subject.  Michael Jackson was mentally ill, in my opinion, and therefore in desperate need of help and understanding, not public ridicule.

Unfortunately, when you are a star of his caliber, and when you have that kind of money, others only say what they think you want to hear.  That extends to professionals as well, so if one doctor says no to plastic surgery, someone in Michael’s position can always find another one willing to say yes.  Perhaps that even ultimately led to his untimely demise.

The other thing which stands out from Michael Jackson’s life are the child molestation accusations.  For the record, as I stated publicly at the time of the accusations, I never believed Michael Jackson was molesting children.  This opinion has absolutely nothing to do with my enjoyment of his music, and everything to do with the extremely unusual life he had led from a very tender age.  In a nutshell, I think his maturity was severely stunted, to the point that he simply could not understand that, as an adult, he was held to a different set of rules.  Watching the Martin Bashir documentary only reaffirmed that opinion.

I could be wrong in believing the accusations were false, but I don’t think so, and a jury didn’t think so either.

I did however, as a result of those accusations, learn to harbor a deep and abiding dislike for “journalist” Diane Diamond, then with CourtTV, who clearly enjoyed the power given her to destroy the life of another human being, based solely upon the word of someone who stood to gain great wealth from the accusation.  Boundaries of responsible reporting were crossed again and again, as the accusations and eventual trial were covered.  The media changed into something more closely resembling a tabloid, and thus became far more vicious and intrusive, almost overnight.

However, I never depend upon the media to tell me what I should think about anything, so I sought to find out for myself.   The first accuser’s affidavit simply did not ring at all true to me; I got the distinct impression that they mixed truth with sick fantasy, to create an allegation of child molestation.  The second accuser’s mother was known for suing everyone in sight, and both had lied under oath before, so they simply were not credible.  The fact that he settled with the first boy does not necessarily mean he was guilty either.  He was a mega-celebrity, the biggest recording artist in the world, and many times people in his position will settle out of court, rather than have everything they have worked for destroyed by a single false allegation.  This is especially true when he had no way of proving his innocence.  If you or I had the kind of money Michael Jackson had, we might do the same thing if faced with those same circumstances.

The question in my mind is (and always has been): What kind of parent would ever allow their child to spend such an inordinate amount of private time with a grown man who was obviously, at best, highly eccentric?  As a mother, I would never have allowed that, and I don’t care who the adult may have been, or how much money he may have had.  It simply would never have happened.

Since it was grossly irresponsible parenting in the first place, there is no reason to believe those same parents would not also be irresponsible enough to lodge false accusations and even coach their child, in order to make millions off their son’s relationship with Michael.  The first accuser’s dad was a lawyer, and he walked away with an astonishing $15 million, but no criminal charges were even brought because they refused to cooperate with the police after they got the money.  What does that tell you about the truthfulness of the accusation?  The second accuser’s mother sought an attorney to file a civil suit before even going to police, which speaks volumes as well.

Would you tell a lie, if that lie would pay off to the tune of $15 million?   Would you let a child molester walk free to molest again and again, if you truly believed they had molested your child?  Think about it.

All in all, the media circus revolving around Michael Jackson’s death is much stranger than anything Michael could ever have done in life. Not only did the worldwide web almost get shut down by the news, as website after website – from Google to Twitter – became overloaded with hits, but the mainstream media has covered his death nearly to the exclusion of all other news.  Even the network national news covered Michael’s death for most of its newscast, though they had nothing of value to add to what had already been said elsewhere.

Those who demonized Michael in life are coming together to mourn him in death.  HLN has turned into the “All Michael Jackson, all the time” channel, and even their infamous Nancy Grace Show – which spent an inordinate amount of time crucifying Michael in the court of public opinion, long before the molestation case ever even got near a jury, and who continued to do so even after his acquittal – has jumped on the “Remembering Michael Jackson” bandwagon, in a shameless quest for ratings.  I just hope fans watching that coverage are aware that these are the very same people who played a crucial role in destroying their music idol’s life and reputation when he was still alive.

So, what happened to cause Michael’s sudden unexpected death?  Since the autopsy was inconclusive, I think it’s reasonable to assume his death was drug-related, especially since police impounded his doctor’s car in the belief it may contain evidence, and especially since the Jackson family attorney says that he warned about that very possibility long ago.  I personally suspected that his death was drug-related when the news first broke that he had suffered cardiac arrest, since a cardiac arrest and a heart attack are two different things, and since he was only 50 years old.  What I find extremely unusual about this situation is that a physician was actually there with him, so a lethal drug overdose should not have even been a possibility.  I therefore look forward to more news on that front.

As a mother I very much feel for Michael’s three children, who have lived an incredibly sheltered (and more than a little strange) life as a result of their father’s eccentricities and his fame, as well as his infamy.  This is going to be terribly difficult for them, as they adjust to an entirely new life without their only parent.  At the same time, they will be embraced by the world now, in a way they would never have experienced when their father was alive.  I attribute that to what I call “Sins Of The Father Syndrome”, and it is, quite sadly, a phenomenon which is not unusual even among those who are neither wealthy nor famous.  It’s just too bad that no one was willing to forgive Michael Jackson of his perceived sins when he was still here to enjoy that himself.

Rest in peace, Michael.  I sincerely hope you have finally found the peace you were never able to find in this world.

What caused Caroline Manzo to burst into tears at Housewives reunion?

The Real Housewives of New Jersey aired the second of a two-part reunion show last night.  Caroline Manzo, best described as the tough-as-nails matriarch of the group, burst into tears and became somewhat hysterical over something Danielle Staub allegedly planned to do to her younger sister Dina.  However, she refused to say what it was, because Dina had made her promise beforehand not to do so.

Danielle claimed she didn’t know what they were talking about, but I got the impression from her facial expressions (or at least, what facial expressions she has left thanks to Botox) that she was not at all surprised by the unspoken accusation, as she would be if she truly didn’t know what they were referencing.

Could it have been a threatened slander suit, over Dina allegedly talking to others about Danielle behind her back?  Possibly, but I seriously doubt Caroline would burst into tears over that.  She’d just call in the lawyers and say “bring it on”, because Dina cannot be held legally liable for showing others a book, or for stating her opinion about what is in that book.  After all, it is reasonable to believe that what is in the book is true, since there was no libel suit when the book was published, and since many of the accusations are supported by public records.

I’m not saying that everything in the book is true, mind you.  I previously posted a link to public records about her arrest and conviction, but I have no proof one way or the other regarding any statements made which are not covered by those records, except perhaps that she may be a nymphomaniac based upon her blatantly sexual behavior during the show.

Dina also pointed out that “it didn’t happen”, which means that it was a planned course of action which didn’t take place, and not just something Danielle said.  Caroline’s emotional reaction, and the fact that they refused to say what it was, also leads me to believe it was something far more serious than a lawsuit.

Personally I suspect the Manzos were told, whether true or false, that Danielle planned to physically harm, or get someone else to physically harm, Caroline’s sister Dina.  That’s a threat I would take very seriously if I were the Manzos, based upon Danielle’s criminal history as well as more than one threat of physical violence which Danielle actually made on the show.  Besides, given her previous threats against others, there is no reason to believe she wouldn’t have run her mouth and threatened someone yet again, whether she actually intended to do anything or not.

Do I know for sure that’s what she allegedly did to cause that reaction from Caroline?  No, but it must be considered that Caroline’s father-in-law was murdered many years ago, and though the case was never solved, the police believed the crime was perpetrated by the mob.  Given that Danielle has had known past ties to organized crime of a different type, I could definitely see the otherwise-tough Caroline reacting that way to that particular kind of threat, even if the threat was not serious enough to involve the police.

Did the accusation surprise me?  No, not at all, given the behavior of all of these women (with the exception of Jacqueline).  In fact, I’m surprised that it wasn’t an issue long before now, with all the threats flying back and forth.  While normally I would write off threats from females as someone just running their mouth, Danielle in particular shouldn’t be threatening anyone, even if she doesn’t actually intend to follow through with that threat.  It is entirely reasonable for others to take her threats at face value, and respond accordingly.

Does anyone reading this know what happened, or have any theories about it?

Where did the Manzo family get their money?

During the first of a two-part Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion special, it was revealed in a conversation, about whether the rumors that the Manzos have mob connections are true, that Caroline Manzo’s father-in-law, Albert “Tiny” Manzo, was murdered in 1983.  What happened, and why would it be brought up in that context?

News reports of the era clearly suggest that Albert “Tiny” Manzo was killed in a mob hit, and it definitely sounds like one.

Police who discovered Manzo’s naked, 350-pound body stuffed inside the trunk of his Lincoln Continental in Hillside immediately noticed two things out of the ordinary: Manzo’s massive arms and legs had been wrapped in plastic, and his chest was ripped open with a quartet of gunshot wounds.

Manzo disappeared in mid-August of that year while traveling from one of his two Paterson restaurants to a meeting in Wayne. Police found his body Aug. 22 inside the trunk of his car, which was parked at a Hillside supermarket.

The murder was never solved. The Union County prosecutor and police investigators speculated that Manzo was killed as a result of involvement with organized crime figures. One theory is that he angered local mob figures by attempting to open an illegal gambling club in Paterson without their permission.

Ironically, the friendly and gregarious Manzo had based his mayoral campaign on a law-and-order platform, promising to hold public hangings in the yard of the Passaic County Jail.

That is truly a tragedy and a shock to the family, and I can completely understand why Caroline Manzo is still quite emotional about it to this day, since this gentleman was her father-in-law.  If the police theory is right, I have to respect Mr. Manzo for having the guts to stand up to organized crime.  I can also understand why Caroline Manzo finds the internet rumors of a Mafia connection to be hurtful.

At the same time, if indeed this gentleman ran afoul of the Mafia because he was opening an illegal gambling parlor without their permission, he clearly wasn’t quite as law-and-order as others might believe.

Does that mean the Manzos have mob connections of any type today?  Not necessarily, so I think it is unfair to make that assumption. At the same time, in all honesty, I still did wonder where some of the housewives’ husbands got that much money.

The Manzos seem to have received $500,000 from Albert Sr.’s life insurance policy in 1989, six years after his death.  The holdup was because the insurance company, Massachusetts Mutual, refused the claim because he didn’t disclose he had diabetes, so there are court records on that dispute.  The policy was initially applied for in June, and the initial payment was made less than a month before his murder, so I’d bet the company suspected he knew he had pissed off the wrong people when he purchased the policy, but they just couldn’t prove it.

Note to self:  Never buy a life insurance policy from MassMutual, because their excuse to get out of paying the policy proceeds is ridiculous.  Who cares if the man had diabetes, when he underwent a required physical prior to policy issuance (so their own doctor should have tested for that, especially given his massive size), when he obviously died not of diabetes, but from four gunshot wounds to the chest?  It wasn’t a suicide, after all, and I’m sure if the man had a choice, he’d be alive to this day.  Furthermore, if the insurance company could prove he knew he was about to die, they’d have brought that as an argument against payout instead.  So they needed to just pay the proceeds, since they accepted the risk, and not give the grieving family of a murder victim such a hard time.  This is in fact a good example of why I hate insurance companies.  But, I digress.

It appears that Albert Sr. started The Brownstone as well as another restaurant many years ago, so that alone was a successful preexisting asset which could easily support the Manzo family, but probably not at that level of wealth.  However, if properly invested over the years – especially if used to invest in other profitable businesses as I would assume the Manzos have done, since they seem to be hardworking and have very good business sense – they could all indeed live very well even today from the proceeds of that insurance policy.  When the policy proceeds were combined with The Brownstone asset as well as the second restaurant (and there may have been other significant business assets as well), the family was surely worth well over $1 million even then.  In 1989, that was a LOT of money.

Teresa Giudice’s husband, however, strikes me as nothing but a common thug.  I also find it very hard to believe he makes that much money in the construction business, especially after the scene at his office, which suggests his company’s office is smaller and less well-equipped than the home office from which I am typing this.  Of course, their McMansion could be built far less expensively by a contractor than by anyone else, but that still doesn’t explain Teresa spending over $100,000 on furniture – in cash, no less – to furnish a single room of that home.  Even if her husband inherited money like the Manzos, she spends it like she has a money tree in the back yard, so it wouldn’t last for any sustained period of time even if wisely invested, since very successful investments must be nurtured, and since the current economy appears to have had no negative effect on their lifestyle at all.  Quite the contrary, because Teresa said on the show that she pays cash even for shockingly expensive purchases because she “heard” the economy has taken a downturn.  I therefore think it is normal for others to have at least some suspicions about the source of their income given all that combined with his persona, his wife’s violent public behavior (not to mention his laughing reaction to it), and the amount of organized crime in New Jersey.

I understand that the “housewives” think that kind of suspicion is unfair.  However, surely they realized how others would view the situation, before they decided to star on a popular reality show and spend money like it’s water.  This is even more so given some of their clearly threatening behavior on that show, which in Teresa’s case became physical.  Besides, people are always going to question where the “housewives” got their money, because those very same questions have arisen with every version of the Housewives franchise.  For those reasons, they should have seen the suspicions coming from a mile away.

However, after reading up on the murder of Albert Sr and the insurance dispute which followed, I am going to assume the Manzos got their money through hard work and the inheritance of a long-established successful business, combined with the well-invested proceeds of a long-ago life insurance policy.  Perhaps something will come to my attention which may explain how the Guidices can afford their lifestyle as well.  Until then, however, I’m certainly not ready to assume they have any current connections to organized crime, unless I see something which clearly points in that direction.

Comments

For some reason, a number of legitimate comments got caught up in the spam queue over the last week, and I just now realized it. I’m not sure why that happened, since it usually doesn’t, but if you made a comment and it didn’t appear, it should be there now. I apologize for any problems this may have caused.

Inbox Insanity: Dove of Oneness

I’ve posted emails from Dove of Oneness before, but this one is even wackier than usual.

[doveofo] NESARA Ends HAARP Mind and Weather Control
June 24, 2009  3:45 p.m. PDT

Hello Dear Friends and White Knights,

One of the most damaging technologies ever developed by the US
military is the HAARP technology.  Not only is it used to cause major
weather problems around the US and the world, it also is one of the
causes of fibromyalgia and migraine-like headaches in some people.

HAARP is why there have been major weather anomalies such as hail
storms in June this last week in New Jersey and Washington state.
HAARP was also used to cause the earthquake in Alaska this week

The HAARP system is also being developed to do mind control.  The
story of the HAARP system attack on an area in Tennessee gives us
insight into HAARP.  The closed nuclear power site in Tennessee has
been fitted to be a HAARP remote site to boost the power of the major
HAARP site in Alaska.

“http://www.haarp.net/

The Military’s Pandora’s Box

by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning

This article was prepared to provide a summary of the contents of
a book written in 1995 which describes an entirely new class of
weapons. The weapons and their effects are described in the following
pages. The United States Navy and Air Force have joined with the
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to build a prototype for a ground
based “Star Wars” weapon system located in the remote bush country of
Alaska.

…Two Alaskans put it bluntly. A founder of the NO HAARP movement,
Clare Zickuhr, says “The military is going to give the ionosphere a
big kick and see what happens.”

The military failed to tell the public that they do not know what
exactly will happen, but a Penn State science article brags about that
uncertainty. Macho science? The HAARP project uses the largest energy
levels yet played with by what Begich and Manning call “the big boys
with their new toys.” HAARP is an experiment in the sky, and
experiments are done to find out something not already known.
Independent scientists told Begich and Manning that a HAARP-type
“skybuster” with its unforeseen effects could be an act of global
vandalism. ….

As early as 1970, Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted a “more controlled
and directed society” would gradually appear, linked to technology.
This society would be dominated by an elite group which impresses
voters by allegedly superior scientific know-how. Angels Don’t Play
This HAARP further quotes Brzezinski:

“Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this
elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the
latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping
society under close surveillance and control. Technical and scientific
momentum would then feed on the situation it exploits,” Brzezinski
predicted.

His forecasts proved accurate. Today, a number of new tools for
the “elite” are emerging, and the temptation to use them increases
steadily. The policies to permit the tools to be used are already in
place. How could the United States be changed, bit by bit, into the
predicted highly-controlled technosociety? Among the “steppingstones”
Brzezinski expected were persisting social crises and use of the mass
media to gain the public’s confidence.”
*******
“http://www.haarp.net/tennessee.htm

U.S. Air Force Linked To Electronic Warfare Attack In Tennessee
by Alfred Webre

HARTSVILLE, TENN – Newly released documentary and eyewitness
evidence now links an apparent July 6, 2001 electronic warfare attack
on a radio station and weekly newspaper in Hartsville, Tennessee to a
nearby unacknowledged secret access project. This secret project,
eyewitnesses say, includes the U.S. Air Force as paymaster, U.S.
government aircraft as transportation and security craft; military
troops in black uniforms; and black unmarked triangular aircraft. The
project may also include a secret electronic warfare unit capable of
disabling nearby media outlets with destructive electromagnetic
energy.

It has now known that an official U.S. Air Force cheque was used
to pay for the clandestine installation of massive telephone switching
equipment at a defunct Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power plant
about five miles from the target media outlets. The private contractor
who installed the unusually large switching system at a former nuclear
power plant that is still officially defunct reported this to the WJKM
investigators on condition of anonymity.

Historically, the U.S Air Force has pioneered in the development
and use of electronic warfare against civilian targets and
populations, notably in the NATO war in Yugoslavia.

Speaking to a live radio audience on July 21, WJKM general manager
Ted Randall for the first time publicly released the results on his
station’s official on-going investigation of the attack. Dan Fluehe
and Matt Aaron of WJKM, host Clyde Lewis along with this reporter,
Alfred Webre, participated in the radio program.

WJKM’s investigation has eliminated other possible causes of the
electromagnetic blast, such as power transformer malfunction caused by
birds or internal mechanical problems. Centrexnews reporter Joel
Skousen, who initially reported that birds caused the electronic
attack, declined to participate in the radio program.

Although the nuclear facility has been officially closed for some
time, eyewitnesses now testify to clandestine activities going on at
the site. These include sightings of tractor-trailer trucks entering
and leaving the former nuclear power plant at 2 or 3 AM; sightings of
C-130 military aircraft flying over the facility as if to land;
sightings of unmarked black helicopters monitoring the area; sightings
of military troops in unmarked black uniforms; and – yes – multiple
witness reports of black triangular craft hovering over the former
power plant. Civilians venturing near the site have also reported
being aggressively ejected by a private police force of about 30
plain-clothes men.

Randall presented live and audiotaped eyewitness testimony of the
destructive effects of the electronic attack, including a tell-tale
flashing blue pulse that accompanied the destruction, and usually
accompanies the discharge of electromagnetic pulse weapons. He also
presented audio recordings of the audible electronic hum that
accompanied the alleged attack, a clear electronic signature of an
electromagnetic weapon attack.

The accompanying surges during the event fit the pattern of an
electronic attack. According to WJKM, ” These surges are not just
coming into the power lines. They are also entering the radio station
through phone lines and the antenna system. This is evident in blown
telephone equipment. Sometimes the equipment is not destroyed but the
program settings are scrambled or wiped out.”

On the air, Randall described photographs of dead,
electronically-fried birds that littered a mile-square area around the
radio station, now posted on the station’s Internet website at
http://www.1090wjkm.com

Randall stated that local residents are experiencing adverse
health effects. Randall said, “It is also interesting that according
listeners have called in, there has apparently been an increase in
what they are calling fibromyalgia. This is a disease name appointed
to the unexplainable severe and disabling pain throughout the entire
body over recent years, as well as, an increase in headaches mimicking
migraines that are not actual migraines.”

Randall documented the 2.4 Richter underground seismic earthquake
that struck the area on July 7, the day after the electronic attack,
from 10-10:30 PM.

Randall also posted the HAARP magnetometer readings on the WJKM
website for the two days – July 6 and July 7. Both the electronic
attack and the unusual earthquake were accompanied by massive,
anomalous bursts of electromagnetic pulse energy from HAARP, the U.S.
Navy’s electromagnetic pulse military facility and possible
environmental weapons system in Gakona, Alaska. Coincidentally (and
perhaps causally) HAARP’s magnetometer showed massive spikes of
electromagnetic energy for both days.

According to Randall, ” At about 10:45 AM Friday [July 6], radio
station WJKM and CMR (Country Music Radio), with studios in
Hartsville, Tennessee was knocked off the air by a very powerful
strange energy blast! There was a crystal clear blue sky, no clouds or
rain. It was not lightning”

According to WJKM, in the attack, “All the radio station’s lines
were knocked out. Several power transformers were blown several blocks
away from the studios (smoke seen billowing out of one). All phone
lines at the newspaper (The Hartsville Vidette), the local farm co-op
and all other phones in this small radius were knocked out! Radio
station transmitter lost all MOSFETS and the output – tuning network.
All computers at WJKM lost motherboards, network cards etc. ISDN was
knocked out. Most all the equipment Zephyr codec and EAS all knocked
out.”

These effects on radio transmission systems closely resemble the
effects on urban radio, television, power transmission and generation
facilities attacked by U.S. Air Force electronic bombing in electronic
warfare missions in recent military operations worldwide, including
Yugoslavia and Iraq.

How and why was electronic warfare carried out in rural Tennessee?

From the known profile of electronic weaponry, the electronic
attack upon WJKM appears to have been caused by a tactical
electromagnetic weapon, emitting a directed electromagnetic plasma,
beam, pulse, etc. at the target. Electronic weapons with this
capability are known, and can be land mounted in a facility like the
former power plant, mounted in portable facilities like vans, trucks,
helicopters or airplanes.

Electronic weapons may even be space-based, on satellite
platforms. This reporter has personally met with an Assistant
Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon who confirmed the existence of
such secret space-based weapons as early as 1977.

An alternative electronic warfare delivery system may involve
newly constructed relays for the HAARP installation in Alaska. The
potential tactical electronic warfare applications of HAARP are under
investigation. Serious public interest researchers maintain that
HAARP’s electromagnetic energy may cause effects such as earthquakes,
such as occurred on July 7 in Hartsville. Electromagnetic weapons have
been used in tectonic warfare, intentionally causing earthquakes.
Electromagnetic pulse energy accompanies most earthquakes. Research
shows that ultra low frequencies emitted by the HAARP installation may
affect the human limbic system, and be used for mood management and
mind control.

The close resemblance of the Hartsville attack to other U.S. Air
Force electronic warfare led to speculation that radio station WJKM
may have been chosen as a test target for a clandestine electronic
warfare unit located within the power facility, or to which the power
facility serves as electronic relay point. The likelihood that the
electronic attack was accidental, rather than an intentional military
test, is low, given that the targets were media outlets.

One purpose of such test could be to evaluate the physical impact
of electronic warfare on U.S. domestic radio installations, a well as
the impact of intimidating the local community, as well as the U.S.
media reporting of such attacks. The U.S. military has a long history
of secretly testing weapons on its unsuspecting civilian population, a
practice that is illegal.

Another clue to the motive behind the disinformation attacks may
lie in eyewitness accounts of military troops in black uniforms,
wearing light blue patches, and military vehicles bearing license
plates with the letters “UN” on them. This scenario would be
consistent with a disinformation mission, in which United States
government troops would be disguised with mock United Nations insignia
in order to spread propaganda rumours regarding the actual source of
this state terror. In fact, it would appear that U.S. paramilitary
troops are carrying out military attacks on the U.S. civilian
population. This modus operandi has been characteristic of Central
Intelligence Agency sponsored warfare in developing countries, notably
Guatemala.

Randall, Dan Fluehe, Clyde Lewis, and this reporter, Alfred Webre,
all noted that the electronic attacks targeted two media offices
directly -a radio station and a newspaper – both protected entities
under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Randall indicated that station WJKM and its parent corporation are
pursuing an official investigation of the electronic attack, including
surveillance of activities at the former TVA power plant. The U.S.
Congress has legislative oversight over the many federal agencies that
may be involved in this secret project, including the U.S. Air Force,
the Tennessee Valley Authority, and other defense “black budget”
agencies.

Asked if his company intended to contact its members of Congress
to seek a congressional investigation, Randall responded that WJKM is
taking this attack and its investigation most seriously. WJKM’s
Congressperson is Bart Gordon, Dean of the Tennessee Delegation, and
currently serving his ninth term in Congress, representing the Sixth
District, which includes 15 Middle Tennessee counties.”

NESARA will totally end HAARP technology in the USA.  NESARA Now!

Blessings and Love,
Dove of Oneness
Executive Director
International NESARA Take Action Teams

Real Housewives of New Jersey: Danielle Staub Court Records

“Jersey” Girl’s Sordid Past – June 23, 2009.

The above link contains federal court documents detailing the 1986 criminal arrest and prosecution of Danielle Staub, one of the wealthy “housewives” on The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Staub’s past came to light during the show, when the other “housewives” found a book written by her ex-husband, detailing her arrest in a kidnapping plot hatched due to a cocaine deal gone bad.  During the final episode of the season, Staub declared

There are only two things in that book that are true.  I changed my name, and I was arrested.

However, if the information in these court records is to be believed, there’s a LOT more to it than that.

I still have no idea why she thought none of this would come to light if she starred in a well-known reality television series.  Honestly, I feel kind of bad for her, and especially for her children, now that the allegations against her can no longer be plausibly denied even if some of them really are untrue.

All in all, Danielle should have just remained an anonymous “housewife” in wealthy Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.  Perhaps she did the show because she needed the money, since she has mentioned that she will lose her home if her second ex-husband doesn’t pay her the settlement she is owed, but it seems like it would have been much easier if she had instead just not continued to live beyond her means.

I know, her children are in school there, and it’s not good to uproot the kids if that can be avoided.  Well, it’s also not good for the kids to find out that their mother was a coked-out prostitute who was involved in a kidnapping scheme, either.  I don’t care if it happened over 20 years ago, her kids didn’t need to know that, at least not until they are old enough to understand.

Mom of the Year, she ain’t.

However, all that being said, I still like Danielle better than I like that wackjob “housewife” Teresa Giudice, though.  LOL

The best unintentional comedy on television …

… is still found on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of…” series.

Some of the installments (New York, Orange County) aren’t very interesting at all, in my opinion. However, get out of the major cities, and you’ll find that there are some real wackjobs among the wealthy elite.

I previously wrote about the idiocy of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Now, The Real Housewives of New Jersey is on, and it’s even funnier, but again, unintentionally so.

It’s funny enough that “housewife” Danielle had phone sex with a complete stranger named “Gucci Model” who she met on a website called wealthy men dot com (for two years, no less) and actually thought he really was wealthy, and really was a Gucci model. When he stood her up for drinks on what was supposed to be their first face-to-face meeting, the worst she could imagine is that he’s an overweight banker. It never even occurs to her that he could actually be some loser still living in his mother’s basement, though that’s far more likely the case.

She also admitted that she has been engaged … get this …. 19 times.  Wow.

Then Danielle starts dating some guy who is supposedly 26, though he looks like he’s in his 40s.  Danielle is 46.  I’m 46, and even I wouldn’t give this guy a second thought, much less a second glance, because he’s very unattractive and obviously a sleazebag.  I guess she’s a cougar at heart, but that’s completely incompatible with her stated goal of marrying an extremely wealthy man (and don’t even get me started on that…)

At some point it turns out that Danielle was arrested for kidnapping and extortion when she was in her early 20s, and her ex-husband wrote a book about it. It appears the book is actually about her then-boyfriend, and that she may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time since she was never imprisoned for those very serious crimes. However, she also changed her name, and of course people find that suspicious when paired with an arrest of that nature.

Why on earth she thought no one would find out about the book if she starred in a well-known reality series – no matter how obscure that book may be – is beyond me.

Of course the other “housewives” found the book (no doubt with the help of the producers), and catty hilarity ensued. Unfortunately, all of them are related except for Danielle, so they really ganged up on her.  As Caroline, the family matriarch, stated to Danielle, “Let me tell you something about my family. We are as thick as thieves, and we stand by each other to the end.” Apparently that includes lying to cover for each other, as thieves will do, if the final episode is any indication.

On that episode, Teresa invited Danielle to dinner at a nice restaurant, along with all the other housewives and their families.  Teresa  is a shameless stage mother (who of course says “I’m SO not a stage mother”, LOL) who talks about sex in front of everyone’s children, and thinks it’s “gross” to live in a house anyone else has ever lived in, so she built a McMansion.  By the way, are we really supposed to believe the Jersey housewives actually got that kind of money because their husbands own a banquet hall and a construction business?  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not buying that explanation. At all.

At dinner Danielle pulls out the book (which mysteriously appears out of nowhere, again assumably thanks to the producers, since she didn’t carry it in and there’s no way it would fit into her tiny purse), and starts telling the other women how they shouldn’t have shown it to people around town, without even talking to her about it first to find out if it was true (she’s right, they shouldn’t have done that, especially since it was written by her ex and is therefore automatically suspect).

Sure, Danielle could have sued for libel if it was untrue, but she apparently didn’t. Not everyone who is defamed sues over it, though, and it appears to be a very obscure book, so that in and of itself is meaningless.  She admits that she was arrested, and that she changed her name. The rest, she says, is untrue. At this juncture, even though she’s more than a little kooky, I have no reason to believe she is lying about that.

The “housewives” argue back and forth, with Danielle accusing Dina of showing it around town, when Carolyn claims she did it instead (though I don’t believe that, since sister-in-law Jacqueline – the token normal in the bunch – said it is a lie, but said nothing at all until the family pulled her into the argument).

Eventually during dinner Teresa lost what little bit of mind she started out with.  The nutcase actually flipped a table, and started screaming like a maniac and cussing like a construction worker.  At one point she so absolutely hysterical with rage that you can’t understand what she is saying at all … then makes it a point to say that she considers herself “classy”.

Again, as with the Atlanta housewives, you can’t buy this kind of self-delusional comedy.

The strangest thing is that Carolyn tells Jacqueline that, by not sticking with the family during that argument, she somehow hurt Carolyn’s parents (who are Jacqueline’s parents-in-law).  I’m still scratching my head about that one, because it makes absolutely no sense.  Maybe it’s a Jersey thing, who knows.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey – Blogs – Teresa Giudice – Buttons Get Pushed – Bravo TV Official Site.

As if the housewives aren’t unintentionally funny enough, I found the following comment on Teresa’s blog (link above) on her post regarding the table flipping incident:

Teresa! You shouldn’t feel bad about turning over the table, I think most of us would have done the same thing. Danielle accomplished exactly what she came to your dinner to do, to cause problems. If that wasn’t her reason, she would never have brought out the book, especially the way she did. How dare she illude to the fact that you are stupid!

Well, it is indeed a fact that Teresa is stupid, but I don’t think that’s at all what the viewer intended to say. 

The RHONJ Reunion Special is on for two nights, starting Tuesday on Bravo. I will definitely be watching.

Vincent Weiguang Li

Vincent Weiguang Li.

This is the newest “Press This” entry, highlighting blogs I read via RSS feed.

People You’ll See In Hell (which quite amusingly always has a poll at the end of posts, so readers can vote on whether or not the criminal discussed deserves hell) posted the above blog article written by NavyCop, who recently commented on this blog.   I’ve been reading PYSIH for quite some time, and it’s a good site for true crime buffs.

Fair warning, though, as the article linked above is not for the faint of heart.  It’s an update on the case of a schizophrenic man who beheaded and cannibalized a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus, and explains what happened during the attack.

For the record, most schizophrenics are truly dangerous only to themselves.

Caylee Anthony Autopsy Report

PDF Documents From WFTV Eyewitness News Orlando.

Please, don’t read that document if it’s just going to upset you.  That’s not why I posted the link here.

The Prairie Chicken: Anthony Document Dump June 12, 2009–Prairie Chicken version

As regular readers know, I’m not online a lot these days, and had just gotten the time to summarize and comment on the latest interviews released in the document dump. Luckily, I checked my RSS feeds first, and The Prairie Chicken had already done it.

http://prairiechicken.blogspot.com/2009/06/anthony-document-dump-june-12-2009.html

As always, I don’t necessarily agree with their opinions. I did however have the time to read through the transcripts myself prior to reading their blog entry, so I think their summary coverage is pretty correct.

There are just a few things I’d add.

Reread the interview with Ricardo Morales (it’s fairly short), and see if perhaps you can solve this mystery. The cops showed him something (a photo on the computer, perhaps?) and asked him what it was, and he responded that Caylee liked it and Casey used to give it to her. What was he referencing?

I thought that particular interview was amusing, because Ricardo talks all around deleting emails he sent to The Globe, after specifically being told not to delete anything. I could almost see him squirm, LOL.

When the cops make such a big deal of telling you that you’re free to leave, assume you are about to be forcefully questioned about something. Cops don’t like informing anyone of their rights unless they have to do so, because for obvious reasons they don’t want anyone exercising those rights. The cops clearly thought Ricardo may be hiding something at that point, and it’s completely Ricardo’s fault that they thought that about him.

I would expect no less than that level of idiocy from anyone who ever dated Casey Anthony. However, no one cares if he sold photographs to the media. I don’t care. Chances are that you don’t care, either. The cops certainly didn’t care, because (1) they were his property and he therefore had every right to sell them, and (2) they were busy trying to solve the murder of a two-year-old girl.

Apparently Casey used Ricardo’s computer fairly regularly, and had seemingly put the password “Rico” on some things. Ricardo said Casey was the first to call him that, but that he had never used it as a password. What I found curious is that the cops asked him for his password, and he was very reluctant to give it to them (and in fact, didn’t give it to them according to that interview transcript). Since they mostly just wanted to know if “Rico” was his password, they didn’t push the subject.

Most people wouldn’t care if the cops had their password in an investigation of that nature, though, since they have nothing to hide. At that point, no one being interviewed knew that the transcripts of those interviews would be released to the media, so I suspect he thought there may be some things hidden by his password which the cops shouldn’t see. I doubt it was anything serious, probably just conversations with friends about partying (which would be yet another thing homicide investigators wouldn’t care about, by the way).

However, the cops should have pushed that subject since he had deleted data after being specifically instructed not to do so, and was so reluctant to answer questions. I doubt he had anything to do with Caylee’s murder, but that’s suspicious behavior given that they were investigating the murder of a little girl who had slept in Ricardo’s bed with him; a photo taken in Ricardo’s apartment had been identified by Casey as having been taken in the alleged kidnapper’s apartment; the suspected murderer stayed with Ricardo for awhile during the month in which her child was murdered; she falsely claimed the alleged kidnapper had lived in a complex across the street from Ricardo; Ricardo knew where her parents lived because he had been there; and Ricardo was being less than cooperative. Plus, Casey had claimed that the alleged kidnapper had changed her password to “Timer55″, so that person had to have access to Casey’s password.

Given those circumstances, if I were the cops, I’d want to know what it was that Ricardo didn’t want me to see, especially since he deleted things via another computer. You never know what investigators might find in a situation like that, and there could even be evidence that Ricardo didn’t know was evidence.

All in all, it looks like Casey set Ricardo up, whether intentionally or not (though I’d guess it was intentional, since she set up other people as well). The cops needed to clear him early and fully, so he should have cooperated completely in order to save himself. As it is, however, expect the finger of blame to be pointed at Ricardo by Casey’s defense team.

Last but certainly not least, just in case anyone reading this doesn’t know, blogger Sean Krause of The Daily BS, whose police interview is included in this document dump, passed away earlier this year. This police interview confirms what I suspected all along, which is that he presented conjecture as fact (which is not necessarily a problem in this case, since “BS” was in his site name, so readers were warned whether they realized it or not). He was clearly very passionate about blogging, and died far too young. RIP, Sean.

Internet stuff I recommend

Here are some internet applications I recommend ….

Google Gears stores a lot of background information on your computer, so you don’t have to wait for everything to load anew each time.  You can even download RSS feeds and read them offline, which is what I use it for the most.  It is compatible with WordPress, Google Reader, MySpace, and a lot of other sites.  Just don’t use it on a public or shared computer, unless you trust the person(s) with whom you are sharing.

Press This is a WordPress application which you drag and drop to your bookmarks bar.  Just click on it when viewing a page you want to share, and it will automatically pop up a new  post page with the link already included.  Look in your WordPress blog’s “Tools” folder (accessible via your dashboard) to get it.

Freecorder allows you to record anything coming out of your speakers, regardless of source, and save it as an audio file.  It also allows you to record streaming videos.  Best of all, it’s free, and has no ads or spyware.   It’s an uber cool app.  Of course, be careful not to record anything protected by copyright.

What applications do you use and recommend, what do they do, and why do you like them?

Caylee Anthony timeline

I’m not vouching for the correctness of this information, since I don’t have time to verify it all, but it looks pretty good and it’s pretty doggone thorough, so I’m passing it along anyway…

PrairieChicken has made a Caylee Anthony case timeline, which readers of this blog may find interesting.  Enjoy!

Parents Gone Wild: Took son to fight, hit other kid in head with crowbar

The Petersons Took A Crowbar To Their Son’s Fight – The Dreamin’ Demon.

I raised a son, and this is absolutely stunningly stupid.

Don’t teach your sons to fight.  Don’t encourage them to fight.  Teach them to defend themselves, and nothing more.

If you are going to encourage your son to fight, however, teach him to fight well.  If he is defeated, then teach him to fight better.

Whatever you do, though, don’t take a crowbar to the fight you drove your son to, then hit the other young man in the head with it because your son is getting his ass kicked.  That’s not only stupid, it’s criminal.

Given the extent of the other teenager’s injuries due to getting hit in the head with a 5-7 lb crowbar by a grown man – who certainly doesn’t look like a small guy either – this father needs to spend some time in prison.  Seriously.  I have no sympathy for him, or his equally idiotic wife who drove their son and younger children to the fight.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s a gene pool which needs to be thoroughly chlorinated, and it’s just a damn shame that chlorination wasn’t done before these two Neanderthals bred.

By the way, I previously wrote an entry called Fun With Killer Names, about murderers who have the last name Peterson.  This jackass is lucky he isn’t now added to that list, because he could easily have killed that young man.

Psychosis or mind control?

This is a strange website forum, to say the very least. Apparently these folks believe that those suffering from psychosis are actually victims of a government mind control program. They even claim that someone who heard voices and later died of a heart attack didn’t have a real heart attack, but was killed by the government using some sort of electronic signal which stopped his heart. In fact, they claim that multiple people have been killed by the government using this alleged technology.

What they don’t tell us is what possible motive the government might have to target these particular individuals, much less kill them.

Very, very strange. I have no idea why anyone would believe any of this, unless they are (a) psychotic, or (b) extreme conspiracy theorists. Check it out for yourself, there are additional links at the top to that same site.

http://peacepink.ning.com/forum/topics/memorials-of-mind-control-and?page=1

Update on Benjamin Sargent case

I previously wrote about the death of little five-month-old Benjamin Sargent on this blog at http://elfninosmom.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/parents-of-the-year-again/

It turns out that poor little Benjamin didn’t starve to death. Instead, he died as a result of his incredibly filthy diaper. No, I’m not kidding; I wish I were.

According to news reports, little Benjamin’s diaper had been unchanged for so long that the waste material ate through his skin and made it into his blood.

Damn, that pisses me off even more. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for that. You know these freaks had to smell a dirty diaper. Everyone who has ever been around a baby knows that smell, and it is overwhelming and unmistakable.

The good news is that the sperm donor, James Sargent, was convicted and is now looking down the barrel at that 100-year prison sentence. The egg donor, Tracy D. Hermann, should face trial in the near future. Let’s hope she is convicted as well. I suspect she will be.

Source: http://www.pjstar.com/news/x126918528/Sargent-No-one-would-help-him-with-the-baby

Casey says Zanny is a “10″, George says Zanny is “zany”

 

During the depositions done a few days ago in the civil defamation case brought against Casey Anthony by Zenaida Gonzalez, both George and Cindy Anthony testified that Casey Anthony told them that Zanny The Nanny is a “10″.

I don’t doubt that for a second, given that Xanax 1 mg is marked “Xanax 1.0″, and referred to on the street as a “Zanny 10″.  It is also sometimes called a “football”, due to the shape of the pill.

Text messages prove that Casey Anthony knew where to acquire Xanax without a prescription.  She bought them from one of her friends who lived at Sawgrass Apartments, the same place where she claimed “Zanny The Nanny” lived.  

Coincidence?  I don’t think so.  Pathological liars tend to subconsciously intersperse the truth in their lies.  Remember, Casey told everyone where Caylee’s body was hidden, when she told her family that Caylee was “close”.

Just to be clear, I do not for one second believe that there is actually a Zanny The Nanny, or ever was a Zanny The Nanny, except insofar as Casey Anthony drugging the child so she could do what she wanted.  Zanny The Nanny is a character in a children’s book, Zanny is a street slang reference to a prescription drug which would easily cause deep unconsciousness in a child, a common street strength of the drug is referred to as a “10″, and Casey bought them from a friend at Sawgrass Apartments.  

So, of course Zanny The Nanny was a 10, and of course she lived at Sawgrass.  

Personally, I think it’s incredibly cruel that Casey told her parents these clues, especially since they now seem clearly to have deluded themselves into believing that Caylee was kidnapped and murdered by a nonexistent nanny.  One day they’re going to realize that Casey was telling them all along what she was doing to Caylee, but they just didn’t hear it.  Deep inside, they may already know that.  I can therefore understand why they are in deep denial.  At this point, it is a form of psychological self-protection against a truth too horrifying to imagine.

As for the depositions otherwise …. I understand George and Cindy are under a great deal of stress, but that was ridiculous behavior given that Zenaida Gonzalez was falsely accused by their daughter of kidnapping their grandchild.   There was only one Zenaida Gonzalez associated with Sawgrass, after all, and Casey even sent police on a wild goose chase to the empty apartment Ms. Gonzalez had viewed.  There is therefore no doubt in my mind that Casey was referring to that particular Zenaida Gonzalez, and none other, since again, pathological liars always intersperse truth in their lies.   Cindy’s behavior during the deposition was particularly atrocious, as she openly attacked Ms. Gonzalez.  At least George restricted his attacks to the attorneys, and was actually gracious toward Ms. Gonzalez, even saying he was sorry she had to go through it.

Some things which came out at the deposition were that Cindy claims she had phone numbers and addresses for Zanny all along, but now she doesn’t know where they are; that both had heard about Zanny for at least two years; and that George and Cindy didn’t even really look for the alleged kidnapper Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez, though Casey had told them repeatedly that Zenaida had Caylee.  However, George and Cindy contradicted each other on key points, like who watched Caylee.  George said he and Cindy watched Caylee 99% of the time, whereas Cindy said Casey usually watched her.  I believe George over Cindy, not only because I think George is by far the more honest of the two, but also because Cindy seems clearly to be trying to bolster Casey’s defense.

George was visibly angry, and even obnoxious at times.  He argued with the attorney over the pronunciation of Zanny (he claimed the attorney was pronouncing it Zenny) then said if the lawyer was smart he would know that it is spelled “z-a-n-y”.  I have to admit, I had to laugh about that, because I suspect it was a subconscious misspelling.  I laughed again when he claimed that the attorney was repeatedly giving him the finger, when in reality the attorney was just pushing up his glasses, mostly because it was silly that he would even think that.  George definitely psyched himself out at that deposition, which I find sad because I think he is a very nice man just struggling to deal with an unthinkably bad situation.

Though I had a few guilty chuckles during George’s deposition, there was nothing at all funny about Cindy’s.  I have defended Cindy all along against all kinds of accusations, even after I started to suspect something was seriously awry with her following the memorial, which seemed to really be all about Cindy (the clincher for me was the staged “Goodbye, Caylee Marie” at the end, which struck me as extremely odd).  However, after seeing her behavior during the videotaped deposition, I just can’t defend Cindy the same way anymore.  I honestly do not believe she had anything to do with Caylee’s death, and the last thing I want to do is to beat up on a grieving grandmother, so I will say only that I have to seriously wonder whether Cindy’s personality played a key role in creating Casey’s twisted psyche.  

You can read George’s deposition here:  http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/04/09/g.anthony.depo.pdf

You can read Cindy’s deposition here:  http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/04/09/c.anthony.depo.pdf

 

Cops Gone Wild: Dallas cop punishes man for running red light by refusing to allow him to attend mother’s deathbed

A rant about another situation making my blood boil ….

In Dallas, an NFL player (Randy Moakes) ran a red light on his way to the hospital to see his dying mother-in-law. He had on his hazard lights, really just rolled through the stop sign at about 20 mph after looking both ways first, so he didn’t really pose a danger, and proceeded to the hospital to be at her deathbed.

A cop stopped him as he pulled into a parking space at the hospital, and even held him at gunpoint.

Rather than letting Moakes go inside to see his dying mother, he held him there so he could write a ticket. The cop was belligerent and rude, and repeatedly threatened to put him in jail. He ignored Moakes when he repeatedly told the cop his mother was dying. A nurse even came out to confirm the man’s mother was on her deathbed, and the cop still refused to release him to enter the hospital.

I am impressed that Moakes managed to maintain his cool. As a professional football player, he could have easily overpowered that cop, gun or not, but he did not resort to physical violence despite emotions obviously running very high.

Sadly, his mother died, while the cop was writing the ticket.

Ugh. That brought tears to my eyes. The truth is, that could happen to any of us.  Even more disturbing, a victim of this cop’s behavior is the dying woman.  She didn’t get to see her son-in-law before she died.  She may even have been aware that he was being held at gunpoint by a cop.  What a helluva way for someone to die.

That cop should be fired, but not just fired. This behavior by this cop is so outrageous that firing alone is not enough. He should be publicly beaten – yes, I’m serious about that – then shunned for life.  Cruel and unusual punishment?  Sure, but isn’t it cruel and unusual punishment to stop a man from seeing his dying mother because he ran a stop sign?  Think about it.

This cop should be sued until he has nothing, and will never have anything again because every penny he makes goes to pay the civil damages. Hopefully a judge will decide he does not have immunity from suit because he was on duty, but I’ll have to do some research on that.

Personally, I hope Moakes uses all his resources to ensure that the city of Dallas – and every single cop in the United States – learns a lesson they will never, ever forget. It’s a no-brainer to compare giving someone a traffic ticket to them being able to see their dying mother. This cop is not even human, in my opinion.

Yes, I know, people lie to get out of tickets all the time. In this case, though, obviously he was telling the truth. The cop should have let him go inside – helped him get inside faster, in fact – and written the ticket there if he was so hell-bent on ticketing the guy.  If the cop got in there and there was no dying mother, he could have been charged with other crimes.  It shouldn’t have been such a huge deal, so this cop blew it completely out of proportion to the reality.  The guy ran a stop sign and had a legitimate reason for doing so, he didn’t pick people off with an automatic weapon.

The way the cop handled this is bizarre, and certainly not the way any cop should ever behave.  He is supposed to be a public servant – emphasis on serving the public – not a loudmouthed bully with a gun.

Argh.

Abducted woman calls 911, is lectured and ignored, found dead four hours later

This just makes my blood boil.

A woman in Orlando was reported kidnapped by her supervisor at work. Then, the kidnapped woman called 911 from where she was being held. She was speaking in a whisper, and reported that she needed help.

Rather than sending cops, 911 operator Alan Ballard gave her a long lecture on misusing the 911 system, and according to WFTV, said she was wasting his time. Ballard told the victim Loyta Stoley, “You are making us do a lot of work that we don’t need to be doing”.

She was found dead four hours later.

Yet, the 911 operator is still on the job, if you can believe that.

The problem as I see it is that too many 911 operators like to think they’re cops. It’s not their job to solve crime, nor are they in any way qualified to solve crime. as this illustrates all too well. It’s their job to get the information necessary to dispatch police, period. They are nothing but glorified secretaries. If they don’t like that description, then they should get another job because that is the reality.

I have excerpted the WFTV article below. They also have the raw 911 calls on their site at http://www.wftv.com/video/18995814/index.html . The 911 operator spent almost 40 minutes in calls, and still didn’t dispatch police for a kidnapping of a person who was very clearly endangered. There was no reason to believe it was a hoax, since her employer called as well. This is absolutely outrageous behavior by the 911 operator, and there should be severe consequences for it. He should be criminally prosecuted.

I might write more about this later, but at this point, I am too angry to say anything much more than what I have already said. There is absolutely no excuse for this level of incompetence, not to mention arrogance, on the part of a 911 operator. Thanks to him, this innocent woman – who should have been able to assume help was on its way – is dead.

Excerpt from http://www.wftv.com/news/18995756/detail.html

The following is what Ballard said to Sloley when he finally got her on her cell phone more than an hour and a half later.

911 operator: “Okay, we are under the impression that you are being held against your will.”

Sloley: “Yes.”

911 operator: “Okay, you need to talk to me straight up. Are you being held against your will?”

Sloley: “Yes.”

By this time Loyta and her captor had checked into room 548 at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel downtown. Ballard tried to keep her on the phone, but she kept telling him that she had to go.

Ballard took a tough tone with Sloley.

“We’re going to be launching a major search for you and you could be charged with all that expense if you don’t cooperate with me … You need to tell me where you are and not hang up this phone or you are going to be in some serious trouble … We need to look for you just like we looked for that little girl who was missing. If you hang up you are creating a whole lot of work for a lot of people,” the 911 operator told her.

Almost 11 minutes into the call with the victim, her alleged captor, James Clayton, got on the phone with the 911 operator and Ballard told him to stay put and say where he was so police could find them.

“We have launched a major search,” the 911 operator told Clayton.

Even though Ballard has been on the job for nine years, he waited almost an hour before he sent police to talk to Sloley’s supervisor.

Who is Caylee’s father?

Previously, I placed a moratorium on people saying on this blog that Lee Anthony was Caylee’s father. Of course, the DNA has proven that I was right to do that, because he is not the father. That theory is just as stupid now as it ever was.

However, who is the father?

That’s really less of a mystery than it seems. Casey Anthony is known to be highly promiscuous and has had multiple sexual partners – probably far more in her few years of adulthood than most women would have in a lifetime – so it’s very likely that not even Casey knows the identity of the father. It was probably a one-night stand, no more. She may not have even known his name. She may not even have a clue which man is the father at all.

Hey, it happens. In fact, it happens a lot these days.

Unless the defense chooses to claim the father is somehow involved in Caylee’s death, his identity is irrelevant to the case. Either way, paternity cannot be proven without a DNA test from the father. Unless Casey chooses to defy history and tell the truth about something for once, we will never know the identity of Caylee’s father.

For the father’s sake, perhaps that is for the best.

Haleigh’s dad married teenage girlfriend who can’t keep her story straight

I know, this isn’t new, but I just had to give my two cents …..

What parent would get married while their five-year-old is missing, then take off to New York? I know they said it wasn’t a honeymoon and that they were going there to appear on the Today show, but c’mon, we’re not stupid. The timing is a little too convenient for it to not be a honeymoon, and the truth is that Today would come to them if they really wanted the interview (they do that all the time, after all), and that the case has gotten a LOT of nationwide attention, so it’s not as if Today viewers didn’t already know about it.

This entire case is really, really strange, to say the least, and even stranger now that they’ve married. A normal reaction would be to say you can’t go to New York, because you have to search for your child; and even if you weren’t personally searching, you would need to remain in your home area in case the child was found.

Combine that strange decision, to marry and go out of town for a long weekend, with the girlfriend’s strange story and the inconsistencies in her version of events which still have not been cleared up, despite repeated police interviews, and I find this beyond bizarre. Put that together with Haleigh strangely disappearing during the night before Caylee’s memorial service, less than 100 miles away, and in many ways it’s just as bizarre as the Caylee case.

Look, either the child bride was stoned out of her mind that night and therefore doesn’t remember what happened (which is possible given the dad’s drug busts), or she is not telling the truth. There really is no other reasonable explanation after over 30 hours of police interviews. She can’t even keep it straight where Haleigh was sleeping, yet she noticed that Haleigh wasn’t there. It makes no sense that that part of the story would be in any way inconsistent, since she knows where she immediately looked for Haleigh, if indeed Haleigh disappeared as she claims. When you put a child to bed, you know exactly where you put them to sleep.

Yet she changed her story after people started saying that it makes no sense that the child was somehow abducted while in the same bed with her, and she saw and heard nothing. Suddenly, she claimed that Haleigh was in the toddler bed instead. So, which is it? Or is the entire stranger abduction story just a cover for something else?

I found this case suspicious from the beginning, but it’s even more suspicious now, due to the sudden marriage. While spousal privilege would not apply, that doesn’t mean they didn’t see something on Law and Order, and thought it would apply. Or, perhaps Ron Cummings saw a custody dispute coming from the biological mother, and thought being married would bolster his continued custody of both children (though that doesn’t make a lot of sense, given who he married, but someone may have convinced him otherwise since he is obviously not very bright).

Honestly, this marriage makes no sense in any other context. I don’t buy for a minute that they did it because it was “what Haleigh wanted” because if that were the case, they’d wait to marry until after Haleigh was found, so she could be in the wedding. Sure, given that she has been gone for a month, they may be assuming the worst. Even if so, I don’t buy that Ron Cummings was in a huge hurry to marry the woman who allowed his daughter to disappear without a trace, and now can’t seem to keep her story straight. No man would marry a woman when that had happened, unless he had an ulterior motive for doing so.

Meme: Odd Things

It’s time for another meme, my friends.

I got this from my friend Dee at TheDeeZone.  If you decide to play along, make sure to tag me so I’ll know where to read your responses.

Directions: Share ODD Things about you! If you opened this, FILL IT OUT! Learn 20 something things about your friends, and let them learn 20-something things about you

1. Do you like blue cheese? I have never eaten it, and don’t want to because it sounds gross.
2. Have you ever smoked? Yes.
3. Do you own a gun?  Absolutely.
4. What flavor Kool Aid was your favorite?  Black Cherry.
5. What do you think of hot dogs? I like them, with the right sauce, onions, mustard, and cheese.
6. Favorite Christmas movie? A Christmas Story, about the boy who wants a Red Rider BB gun
7. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?  Homemade hot cocoa
8. Can you do push ups?  Not anymore, due to spinal injury, but until then I did them every day
9. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry?  Tennis bracelet
10. Favorite hobby?  Digital photography
11. Do you have A. D. D?  Luckily, no.
12. Do you wear glasses/contacts?  Yes.
13. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment: (1) I wish they’d quit talking about the same crap over and over on the news (2) my back hurts (3) I hate the commercial which is on now
14. Name 3 drinks you regularly? Caffeine-free Pepsi, homemade hot cocoa, chocolate milkshakes
15. Favorite place to be? Anywhere but here
16. Where would you like to go? Everywhere
17. What color shirt are you wearing? Black
18. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?  No preference
19. Can you whistle?  Nope.
20. Where are you now? At home
21. Would you be a pirate?  Sure, why not, LOL
22. What songs do you sing in the shower?  Whatever song is in my head at the moment; I think I was singing “How To Save A Life” by The Fray today
23. What is in your pocket right now? My cell phone
24. Last thing that made you laugh?  Something MOH said yesterday
25. Random odd thing.   I can never think of random odd things when I’m asked, but could come up with a million when no one is asking
26. How many TVs do you have in your house?  Five

Mom’s Guilty Pleasures: Rock of Love Bus

Okay, I admit that I never watched Bret Michael’s reality show before this season (there were two seasons before this one, both held in a house rather than on a bus and called simply “Rock of Love”). I just saw no reason to watch a bunch of skanky women competing for the “love” of a celebrity. There are a lot of shows along those lines: “Flavor of Love”, “I Love New York”, “Real Chance of Love”, “For the Love of Ray J” …. the list goes on and on.

I find it very hard to believe that the celebrities with those shows have any respect whatsoever for the opposite sex. If they did, they wouldn’t pit members of the opposite sex against each other, pretending like they might fall in love with one of them, when in truth they’re just doing it for the money and attention. Then again, as I found out when I actually did watch some of those shows, the contestants are there for the same reasons. Overall, I guess I find the concept far less offensive than I would if the contestants actually were expecting to find true love.

I first discovered “Rock of Love” when “Rock of Love Charm School” was on, starring Sharon Osbourne (Ozzy’s wife). Those girls were wild, to say the very least, and I thought it was pretty funny. So I thought I’d check out the original show when the new season started. Though I have watched those other “love” reality shows on and off, and never liked any of them enough to watch it more than a few times when I was really bored, “Rock of Love Bus” is actually pretty funny.

Here’s the recipe. First, put a bunch of very trashy, incredibly catty women together in a small space, where they can’t get away from each other. Toss in a few relatively normal women who like rock music, as well as a few women who seem mentally unhinged (though some contestants can fit multiple categories). Throw in an unlimited amount of alcohol. Then, make them compete for the attention of a famous rockstar multimillionaire. Stir them up with various interpersonal dramas, both real and imagined, and all kinds of strange things happen. The end result is a veritable white trash debutante ball, LOL.

Bret Michaels, the man for whose “love” these women are competing, was the lead singer for Poison; their biggest hit was the rock ballad “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (the chorus, which might jog your memory if you don’t remember it, is “Every rose has its thorn, just like every night has its dawn, just like every cowboy sings a sad sad song, every rose has its thorn”). In the interest of full disclosure, since readers know I’m a huge fan of rock music, I have never been a Poison fan. I didn’t dislike them, mind you, but I didn’t buy their music either. In fact, unlike with most well-known rock bands, the sentence at the beginning of this paragraph is the sum total of what I know off the top of my head about Poison, LOL.

Bret Michaels seems to have a solo career now, and plays much smaller venues than back in his stadium days with Poison if his reality show is any indication, but still attracts a pretty big fan base. I’d guess he’s currently known mostly because he has a reality TV show, since Poison hasn’t had a hit in years and years, and the concert scenes show the same song over and over again. Or perhaps, they’re just pushing that song as his current single. Who knows. Like everything else from Poison/Bret, if the song came on the radio I’d listen to it, but I wouldn’t buy it for my own collection; and though I would be open to seeing a concert, I wouldn’t be willing to pay very much or travel very far.

So no, I’m not a fan, but I am not a detractor either. I just don’t really have an opinion about Poison and/or Bret Michaels one way or the other, which is unusual for me as regular readers are aware. I thought I should be clear about that up front, given that I do give my opinions about music on this blog from time to time.

It appears that most of the “contestants” on Rock of Love are either strippers, or otherwise in the porn industry. No surprise there, since you’re not going to get the typical woman to participate in a show of that nature, nor would they want the typical woman on the show, since that would be boring. Most of them don’t even seem to be fans of his music, and at least one of them openly admitted that she has no idea who Bret is, and had never even heard of him or his music before.

This year they also threw in a Penthouse Pet, and she was named “Pet of the Year” while she was on the show (and probably because she was on the show, since that means they can sell more magazines to those who wonder what she looks like naked, but missed her photo spread the first time around). For anyone who doesn’t know what “Penthouse Pet” means …. she posed nude for Penthouse Magazine, and Penthouse ain’t Playboy. It’s not art, and it’s not appreciation of the female form interspersed with mainstream articles. It is far more graphic, and definitely pornography.

They’re all physically attractive women though, I can say that for them (well, except for one who I don’t find very attractive at all, but I suspect she just isn’t very photogenic since I have noticed shadows on her face). The format of the show is that contestants engage in “challenges”, and as a result of those challenges the winner (which is completely subjective) gets a “date” with Bret Michaels; in other words, he can go on a date with whichever one he wants, since he makes that decision, and sometimes will make an excuse to bring other women on the “date” as well. In the meantime, the women drink to excess and act like idiots. At the end of each episode a contestant (sometimes two) is eliminated, until there is a winner.

This season, all kinds of hilarity ensued. On the very first episode, the girls were supposed to introduce themselves and pose so Bret could take their photos (apparently he enjoys photography as a hobby). One girl, who seemed to be stoned out of her mind on Xanax (or something similar), read him some poetry …. which she had very clearly written on the backs of flyers about sexually transmitted diseases, ROFLMAO. While taking photos of another girl during the initial episode, and saying she looked familiar, Bret suddenly realized he had indeed seen her before … in porno films he had on his tour bus.

One girl was eventually suspected by other contestants of secretly being a man. She actually did look like a transvestite from the beginning, to be honest, and she always, always wore – of all strange things to wear – tutus (which obviously could be used to cover a bulge). She had thin legs, but they were very muscular in a manlike way. She had a very deep voice for a female as well …. she could have been a transvestite, or she could have been a woman with masculine features. At one point Bret was going to ask her if she was a man, but then a bug flew into her and she reacted “like a girl”, so he used that as an excuse to chicken out about asking her. He did eliminate her that day, though, and used the reason that they had a friendship but no romantic chemistry. I still don’t know if that contestant was a man, or a woman. We may never know for sure, but I personally suspect she was a transvestite, knowingly cast on the show. I don’t recall Bret ever making out with her either, so he might have already known that.

Another girl on a later episode got angry and let it out of the bag that Bret Michael’s long blond hair is not his own. He handled it pretty well though, admitted it, and said that he gets “the finest hair Europe has to offer”, or something along those lines. I bet he was secretly pissed, though. Honestly, I had never thought about whether his hair was real, until she said that, and now it’s a piece of useless (but amusing) information I will probably always retain. So, Bret Michaels must be losing his hair. Hey, it happens, and he’s not a kid. He’s an aging rock star, desperately clinging to fame by whoring himself out to reality TV.

Of course, if not for his reality tv show, most women today wouldn’t even know who he is, and certainly his tour bus wouldn’t be surrounded by hundreds of hysterically screaming females, as I know for a fact happens because MOH rigged one of his shows and saw it for himself. So I think we all know the real reason why Bret Michaels has his “love” reality show, and it’s not because he’s dumb enough to think he’ll magically meet Ms. Right out of a group of strippers, porn stars, and general-purpose bimbos. It’s actually a smart career move for him, without which he’d have long ago faded into obscurity.

One person who really stands out to me on the show is “Big John”, who appears to be Bret Michaels’ bodyguard rather than a tour manager (or whatever it is they said is his job). Big John is indeed a very big guy, hence the nickname I guess, but he strikes me as a former bouncer hired for the show. Whenever there’s trouble, Big John is sent in to settle it; last week, an actual fight broke out between one of the girls and a former contestant Bret had brought into the show. Bret and Big John were watching a live feed when it happened. As soon as the real aggression started, Bret was telling him “You better get in there …. Go, go, go!” and Big John jumped up immediately and ran into the other room to get things under control. A main component of Big John’s job therefore seems to be to keep the contestants in line. Another component seems to be to act as a buffer between the contestants and Bret Michaels, since Bret does not just freely associate with the contestants, and none of them get to see Bret unscheduled, without going through Big John first. I therefore suspect his primary responsibility is to make sure no one harms Bret Michaels, because they are bringing some extremely questionable people onto that show, some of whom are violent, and all of whom are drinking constantly thus making them unpredictable. Again, if that’s the case, it’s a very smart move.

If you can look past the obvious, though, the show is interesting, and the challenges are amusing. Last week, Bret had a “challenge” wherein he brought in the ex-significant other of all the contestants. He said exes are like sex tapes: you never know where they’ll pop up, and you never know how much they will reveal. That’s true, I have to admit. He separated the women from their exes, and had two former contestants (Heather from Season One, and last year’s winner Ambre, who he apparently did date for about 10 months, but unlike almost all the girls on the show she is absolutely beautiful, very poised, and well spoken) talk to the exes to find out the truth about the contestants. Then, the judges talked to the contestants, one by one, with their exes. And while all this was going on, Bret was watching from via video feed.

(Spoiler Alert: Stop reading now if you watch the show and missed the episode about the exes)

The ex (Jaz) of the Penthouse Pet (Taya) acted like a total psycho. He bragged about all the women he’s dated, then said he’d like to slit the throat of every single one of them except Taya. He then got into a huge argument with the judges, when they pointed out (correctly, though he didn’t believe it) that Taya had looked down her nose at the strippers. He did say something I might say, though; when one of the judges gave him the finger with both hands, he said, “what, am I supposed to feel bad about myself now because you gave me the finger?” LOL Jaz is nowhere near as dangerous as he wants to appear, though. He might harm someone (though it’s just as likely that someone would kick his ass for running his mouth), and he probably has abused women physically (and has no doubt abused them verbally), but he’s not going to kill someone for sport despite that very strange comment about throat slitting. He’s mostly just an asshole.

Nevertheless, it turns out that Taya’s a stripper too, and has been hiding it all along. Honestly, though, I don’t know why she hid it, except that she seems to believe herself better than the other girls However, I view strippers in a much better light than a Penthouse Pet – again, it ain’t Playboy, and at least stripping is a job. In fact, in a prior episode, Taya had told Bret that her “supervisor” at work had said if she got herself eliminated sooner rather than later, they could finish a particular “project”; I specifically remember that because I wondered what kind of work she does and how they view her pornography career, since she had never said what she does beyond the Penthouse thing. At the same time, I had suspected all along that Taya was in the sex industry beyond just posing for Penthouse, because (1) women not already in the sex industry usually don’t just one day decide to pose in Penthouse due the graphic nature of the magazine; and (2) in a prior episode (”Truck Stop Games”) she proved that she can work a stripper pole like a pro, and was better at it than even most of the (known) strippers. Clearly, she was being intentionally deceptive when she led Bret to believe she worked in an office.

However, Taya still insists she’s not a stripper, instead calls herself a “featured dancer”, and points out that she is a professionally trained dancer who doesn’t perform “at the airport” (which, for those of you who live more secluded lives, is where many lowbrow strip joints are found). However a LOT of strippers are professionally trained dancers and work at classier strip clubs, so that’s irrelevant to proving anything. She also said that she has performed at “some of the top venues in the country”. Yet even the topmost venue for a “featured dancer” is still a strip club, so that doesn’t prove her point either. The bottom line is that, if you dance while taking off your clothes for a living, you are a stripper. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a stripper, if it’s what you choose to do, but still, it is what it is; and Taya can call herself anything she wants, but at the end of the day, she is still a stripper. She definitely has no reason to look down her nose at anyone else, given that she is not only a stripper, but has also posed in a pornographic magazine. Sheesh.

Another ex (James) was there for Ashley, one of the strippers who (as Bret noted) looks like the actress Juliette Lewis. In fact, she looks a lot like Juliette Lewis, if Juliette Lewis overbleached her hair, got lots of hair extensions and oversized breast implants, dressed like a stripper all the time, and wore entirely too much makeup. Her ex was muscular, dressed in a wife-beater t-shirt, had a shaved head, and was completely covered in tattoos, even on his neck (which wasn’t surprising in itself, since she also has a lot of tattoos, and in fact she has a nude tattoo of herself on her own arm – classy, eh?) That guy definitely struck me as a gang member based on his tattoos, and I’d guess he has been in prison based on the way he carries and comports himself. Frankly, though he tried to seem friendly and non-threatening, and smiled a lot, he was trying way too hard because I saw right through it. James is definitely dangerous, far more dangerous than Jaz even though Jaz openly talked about slitting women’s throats. The truth is, you wouldn’t see it coming with a guy like James. He isn’t going to run his mouth, and he isn’t going to argue with you. He would be smiling at you one minute, and the next would be a sudden, unexpected explosion of extreme violence. Be very, very careful around people like him.

At this point I have to ask, where the hell does Bret Michaels find women who would give men like Jaz and James the time of day, much less live with them, much less bear their children? Seriously, I want to know. Look, they have to be screening these women to find the trashiest ones imaginable. That is the only explanation, because most of Bret Michael’s fans – the women who would actually be most interested in dating him – are absolutely nothing like that, far from it. Most are middle-aged moms who liked Poison when they were young, and now work at the grocery store, or the local doctor’s office, or something completely uncontroversial; that doesn’t make good tv though, does it? And if they are screening the contestants to find the trashiest ones out there in order to make it interesting, that also means they are screening the contestants to put in a few girls who are acceptable for him to date (or be perceived as dating). They may even be predetermining the winner, and that wouldn’t surprise me at all. However, the truth is that I don’t care who wins, and I doubt anyone else does either. I watch it for the entertainment value, and not because I believe it is a legitimate contest of any type. It’s reality tv, after all, and the secret of reality tv is that it is far less “real” than it seems. But, I digress.

Ashley had a meltdown while waiting to go in to see the judges with James; she demanded to leave, declared herself a lesbian from that moment on, and actually laid down on the floor in a fetal position. The other girls told her she had nothing to worry about as long as she is honest, but it turns out she had something to be very worried about, because she still lives with James. Strangely, James just kept telling everyone, “Nobody can pull my p***y” as if it were his mantra, referencing his belief that no man could take his girlfriend/babymama away from him. According to him, she wasn’t going to leave him for Bret, but if she did, he would be “disgusted”; and James freely admitted he was there to take Ashley back home. Under questioning she admitted that they live together, said he’s a great father to their son (aye-yi-yi) and made the mistake of calling him her “bf”, only adding the additional “f” (for “best friend forever” rather than “boyfriend”) when she caught herself. See, she and her ex not only dated and have a child together, they are still a couple and still live together. She said that they sleep in separate rooms, but he says they still have sex “all the time”, and she didn’t dispute that statement. Obviously they are not just roommates, as she tried to claim. They’re still together, and that’s what she was really trying to hide. Once that deception was revealed, she was eliminated; though up until that time, she was Bret’s favorite of all the contestants.

I don’t think I need to tell anyone that Bret Michaels has lost his mind if he’d really date someone like Ashley, who is not only incredibly trashy, but whose babydaddy views her as his property and is clearly dangerous. However, it makes for good tv, and I suspect Bret knew all along that she was still with James (but he slept with her anyway, then bragged about it by showing them going behind closed doors and saying “James, I hate to tell you, but your girl’s been pulled”). They tracked James down to get him on the show, after all, so it was hardly a secret that they live together, and couldn’t have been a real surprise to Bret. Besides, the same thing happened last season as well, so he had to see that coming. Again, “reality” tv is nowhere near as real as it seems.

Brittanya’s ex was just a “booty call”, rather than a real relationship, and he said that she is a “freak” so if Bret gets to sleep with her, he’s a lucky guy. Other than that, he just said he can sleep with her anytime he wants, and he was upset only that Bret might take away his booty call. Brittanya – who is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, by the way, very exotic-looking – got into a fight with the female judges. And by that I mean a real fight, wherein she threw a punch at Heather (which was blocked), and then spit on her. Brittanya is not a little female, and she said she already didn’t like Heather because Heather attacked a smaller contestant on Season One (which they showed, and it was a real attack, not just a blocked punch). The whole time, Brittanya’s ex sat there encouraging her to fight. She had tried to start a fist fight with another contestant earlier in the season, too. I get the impression that this girl fights a lot, and that this guy had seen it more than once before and gets a big kick out of it. Needless to say, she was eliminated as well.

The unattractive girl’s ex wasn’t actually her ex either. Instead, it was the lead singer of a band she’d chased around the country. Yep, she’s a groupie, which should be a surprise to …. absolutely no one. She even moved to New York from the Midwest to be near that band (they never said the name of the band, but it doesn’t seem to have been one we’d have heard of anyway). How clever to make sure rock fans aren’t being diverted away from Bret’s rockstar status by mentioning another band, LOL. She claimed she is not a groupie, and is instead just a fan, but he said she went to “all” their shows and also said, without coming right out and saying it, that she had slept with most of the band. She also wasn’t eliminated, and Bret said “she might be a groupie, but groupies don’t suck”. However, I hear they do. (Sorry, couldn’t resist. He also said “minor offenders” like her were lucky, because he had “bigger fish to fry” that elimination and already had to get rid of one girl for still living with her boyfriend, and another girl for physically attacking his friends.

Beverly – one of the few (at least at first) seemingly normal women on the show – had no one there to dish dirt on her. I’m not sure what she does for a living, since we’re keeping score on that count, so it must not be very controversial. Turns out they had tried to get her ex-husband on the show, but he declined. She and her ex had been married for nine years, had been together since they were kids (she first got pregnant at 17) and have children together (he has physical custody). It sounds like her ex probably has his head on at least fairly straight, because his children need him to be home with them, not appearing with their mother on some crazy reality TV show which makes her look like a slut just for being on it. Bret was fine with the ex not being there, said it’s no reflection on her, and that it just wasn’t where her ex felt he needed to be at that time.

Her reaction was strange, to say the least. While Bret was in the room with them, she seemed very upset and fighting tears, even biting her lip to control her emotions. However, once he left the room, she completely lost control. One should think she’d be happy her ex didn’t show up, given how much damage an ex can (and many times will) inflict, but instead she majorly freaked out – crying hysterically, yelling at people, the whole nine yards – and throughout the show she kept talking about him not being there, so she clearly still has strong feelings for him (which is understandable; it’s unknown how long they have been divorced, but since they were married for nine years “and were together longer”, it couldn’t have been that long because she isn’t that old). Bear in mind, though, that these women are drinking constantly, and as the season went on Beverly in particular was visibly more and more drunk, so that’s probably the root of a lot of her reaction since alcohol is a depressant. Bret said due to the teenage pregnancy she is likely going through a second childhood, explaining the drinking and other behaviors; and told her she has issues, but he can’t get to the bottom of them if she’s drunk and belligerent (as if he’s actually dumb enough to get involved with someone who has issues of that nature anyway, since he has undoubtedly dated more women than most men even know, so he definitely knows better).

Mindy, a cute woman from the Midwest, admitted that she cheated on her ex-boyfriend. She didn’t even try to hide it when asked, and her ex still had only great things to say about her even though he suspected she had cheated, because he felt the relationship was already over anyway when that happened, even though it wasn’t formally ended. She actually seems pretty normal, though obviously it doesn’t take much to seem normal in comparison to the other contestants, so that may not be saying much. I don’t know what Mindy does for a living either, so it must not make for good tv. The judges both liked her best, and both said they hope she wins. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t, because the whole thing seems like a setup to me.

Anyway, that’s an overview of the last episode, to give you an idea what the show is about; it’s now down to the final four contestants (Mindy, Beverly, Taya, and the groupie whose name I can’t remember for the life of me).

I personally find Rock of Love Bus very entertaining, in the same way that I sometimes find The Jerry Springer Show very entertaining. These girls may be a lot more physically attractive than the ones who show up on Jerry Springer, but other than that, there’s really no difference between them.

American Idol deadblog

Longtime readers of this blog will likely recall that, last year, I liveblogged American Idol each week.

This year I have a lot on my plate, but I will liveblog it when I can.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share my thoughts about last night’s competition (I posted this at 8:00 last night, about the Tuesday competition, but for some reason it didn’t publish, and I just noticed it when I logged in to update it with results.  Argh.)

As usual when I write my unfiltered thoughts and opinions about American Idol contestants, others may very well be offended.  You have thus been warned.

Last night was Grand Ole Opry night.  I really thought they would all sing songs actually from the Grand Ole Opry, which actually would have been pretty cool even though I don’t like country music.  To me, though, Grand Ole Opry means the oldies – Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, etc – because I grew up watching the Grand Ole Opry on the old black and white television with my grandparents, so I do like that kind of old-school country music.  A few did perform oldies, but most sang songs from more current country artists.  Ugh.

Country music icon Randy Travis was the mentor, and he seems like a super nice guy.  He also seems very humble, very quiet, and very, very shy, definitely a man of few words.  I liked him a lot.

Honestly, I don’t recall the exact order of the singers.  This is pretty much what I was thinking while I watched it, though, with one exception which is duly noted.

Anoop sang “Always On My Mind”.  Ah, a great Willie Nelson song, and one of the few country songs I count among my all-time favorites.  Anoop changed it around a lot from Willie’s version, and though I can’t say it was bad, it’s one of those songs which you really can’t change too much because the original is such a well-known classic that people are singing along in their head.  He definitely did better this week than last, so I can’t knock him too much.  If I had to sum up my opinion of Anoop in one word, it would be “likable”.  If I had to sum it up in more than one word, it would be “stands the chance of a snowball in hell of winning”.

Alexis Grace sang “Jolene”.  Ah, another great song, another of my favorites from long, long ago, this one by Dolly Parton.  Well, at least it was one of my favorites, until Alexis destroyed it.  She completely removed the big notes from the chorus – which would have been impressive, if she could hit them – and it just wasn’t good at all.  I actually had to listen to the original Dolly version on YouTube so I could erase the crappy Alexis version from my head.  Also, that pink streak in her hair looks weird, so it bothers me.   She should darken her hair a bit (and get rid of the pink streak) because it’s so blond that it washes out her facial features and makes her look plain, when she is actually quite pretty.

Danny Gokey sang “Jesus Take The Wheel”, which was a Carrie Underwood song.  Since it’s a newer tune which got a lot of play, I knew how the original sounded, but it wasn’t ingrained in my mind enough to hate it if someone else changed it.  Problem is, that’s a song that a woman should sing, since it’s about a woman who lost control over her car on black ice, with her child in the car (okay, it actually means far more than that, and I know that, but still, it’s a song for a woman to sing).  However, it wasn’t bad at all.  It started out not very good at all, but once he hit the chorus, it was really, really good.

The only real problem I have with Danny is that they seem to put way too much emphasis on him being widowed right before he auditioned.  While some may find that endearing, I find it odd.  I’m a widow myself, and there’s no way in hell I could have auditioned that soon after my husband died, even if I were the world’s greatest singer, because I could barely get out of bed for a long time afterward.  I certainly don’t use being widowed as a way to get people to feel sorry for me on a professional level, since that is grossly inappropriate.  I also read where he said that what looks like a wedding ring on his left ring finger is not a wedding ring at all, but just a ring.  He said he lost his wedding ring two years before his wife died (don’t even get me started on that, since I don’t think you should ever take off your wedding ring unless you work in heavy industry, where it’s dangerous to wear rings unless you want to lose a finger), so I think that other ring, which looks suspiciously like a wedding ring, is just used for sympathy because it reminds viewers that he is widowed.  Also, his glasses look ridiculous, and he was dressed in a ridiculous manner.  Fire his stylist, immediately, put the ring on the other hand, and never again bring up references to his dead wife.  He couldn’t have been grieving too much if he could audition for American Idol, after all.  Maybe then I could listen to him and enjoy his singing, without wondering about this extraneous stuff which really has nothing to do with whether the guy can sing.

Lil Rounds sang “Independence Day”, another newer song.  I don’t remember who originally sang it, possibly Martina McBride?  Anyway, it was pretty good, especially considering that she is an R&B singer, and I barely know the song so I wasn’t pre-prejudiced against her version of it.  That red dress just did not look good, though.  It made her look like she had a huge rear end and no chest, since that style of dress is made for women who have very small breasts, to make them look more well endowed.  However, if you do have breasts, as Lil does, that same style makes you look like you don’t have any breasts, so her body looked completely out of proportion.  Also, her legs aren’t shapely enough to wear dresses that short, and it wasn’t well fitted at all in the bodice, to the point that it made me feel uncomfortable just to look at it.  That stylist should be fired, because that outfit was just awful and didn’t even fit correctly, but Lil is a good singer.

Simon kept calling her “Little”, because he says Lil is short for Little.  Sure it is, Simon, if you’re talking about my dog Li’l Bit.  I guess Simon has never heard of a woman named – oh, I don’t know – Lillian, perhaps?  It’s a woman’s name, so it is, in fact, Lil and not Little.  Dumbass.  That reminds me of the first time I met Mark Farner, years ago.  He kept mispronouncing my first name, not due to an honest mistake, but because he thought it should be pronounced otherwise.  He’s a dumbass too.

Adam Lambert.  While he did stick with the Grand Ole Opry by singing a Johnny Cash classic, I didn’t like it (though it might grow on me if I didn’t have to watch him singing it).  I know I’m going to get blasted for this, since he seems to be extremely popular, but I don’t like him.  His entire persona screams “musical theater” (and yes, he comes from a musical theater background, though I didn’t know that when I first said that about him).  Problem is, I abhor musical theater, because everyone oversings everything.  Last night, he sang some bizarre Middle Eastern version of “Ring of Fire”.  Wow.  Just, wow.  And I don’t mean “wow” in a good way, either.  It seemed, as Simon might say, that it was utterly self-indulgent, and even the judges were stunned, but not in a good way.

Randy Travis seemed shocked that Adam wears black nail polish, and said he doesn’t see that very often.  I bet he doesn’t, LOL.  I also don’t think Randy realizes that Adam is gay, because he probably doesn’t see that very often in his circle, either.  Personally, I don’t care if he’s gay, but I will admit that I knew it the very first time I laid eyes on him since I have a lot of gay male friends.  His sexual orientation is a hot topic on the internet – is he gay or is he not gay, seems to be the question – but it’s irrelevant to whether he’s a good singer, so I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.  A lot of the greatest male singers of this era are gay – Elton John, Freddie Mercury, and George Michael, just to name a few – so it shouldn’t be an issue at all.  But yes, for those of you wondering because you don’t personally know any gay men, Adam is quite obviously gay, and he isn’t even trying to hide it as far as I can tell.  End of discussion, as far as I’m concerned.

Nevertheless, though at first I was offended that he would change a classic Johnny Cash song into something which does not in any way resemble the original, I also remembered that, shortly before his death, Johnny Cash did a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song called “Hurt”; and that at one point he also recorded a song written by Danzig, so I don’t think The Man In Black would be offended at all.  If he’d probably not be offended, when it’s his song, obviously I shouldn’t be either.  I still didn’t like it, though, because it still felt like I was watching musical theater, but I might have liked it had I not had to watch him perform it, and if he would have toned down the screeching a little bit.

Kris Allen apparently sang “To Make You Feel My Love”, but honestly, I didn’t remember that at all.  It must not have been very good, or very bad, or else I would have remembered it.  I forgot he even existed, to be honest, and only remembered him because I saw his name on a list of what everyone sang.  I even had to google the guy’s picture to remember who he is, though I have watched every single episode this season, so that’s not a good sign for whether he’ll get far in the show.  However, I did see a clip of his performance last night on the TV Guide Channel, and then I remembered it wasn’t a bad performance at all.  It just was not at all memorable, so he really, really needs to step up his game so people will remember him better.  I do remember his performance during the televised eliminations when he played his guitar, and I liked it a lot, so he is perfectly capable of standing out in a good way.

Allison Iraheta sang “Blame It On Your Heart”.  I don’t have an opinion on the song one way or the other.  I had never heard it before, but I guess it was okay, and she does have a very big voice and a lot of talent.  However – and again I’m probably going to get blasted – she wears entirely too much makeup for a 16-year-old.  That girl wears more makeup on one eye than I wear on my entire face.  As a result, she looks old.  And I don’t mean she looks older than she is, either.  I mean she looks old.  Wearing way too much heavy makeup will do that to a female no matter how young you are, because it affects your delicate facial skin in a very bad way.  She needs a good facial, including exfoliation, immediately.  Then, she needs a major cosmetic makeover, to design a makeup style which is appropriate yet accentuates her best features (wow, now I sound like the Mary Kay lady, hehehe).  Her hair …. argh, it looks absolutely horrible, but that can be fixed as well.

The first time I saw her on the show, I wanted to smack her mother for letting a daughter that young go out in public looking like a streetwalker.  And whoever told her that’s a good look for her should be shot, or at least beaten until they have some sense.  Seriously, will someone please give her a major makeover, so this talented young woman will not look like an over-the-hill hooker with bad taste?  That’s going to be the death of her in this competition, given who watches it.  I bet she’s cute under all that hooker-style makeup, and if she had a different hair color/style.  The judges have created a monster by making such a huge deal over her, though, because she is also quite obviously getting arrogant (though Simon called it “precociousness”, I’m not going to be that nice about it).  That will get her voted off the show faster than anything, because people don’t like that trait at all.

Michael Sarver sang “Aint Goin’ Down ‘Til The Sun Comes Up”.  I guess this one was by Garth Brooks, so it must be at least fairly modern.  He did a good job, I suppose, especially since there were a LOT of lyrics, but I didn’t like the song and his performance sounded like karaoke to me.  He’s the “working class hero” of the show, though, so he’s got that going for him.   That’s pretty much all I can say about him:  he’s not good, but he’s not bad, and he’d probably be a lot of fun at a karaoke bar.  Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it won’t win you American Idol (unless, of course, you’re Taylor Hicks, so maybe I’m wrong about that, LOL).

Scott MacIntyre sang “Wild Angels”, and I’m not sure who did the original (and am not even sure I’ve ever heard it) so I have no source for comparison, but I absolutely loved the song.  That could be a hit right now, no doubt, when someone like me who normally doesn’t like country music can’t get it out of their head.  The thing with Scott is that he is a good singer (but not a great one); however, he is a magnificent pianist.   I suspect he would be very, very successful on the Christian Contemporary circuit (of course, this is a live performance, so it’s much harder to get the vocals perfect than it would ever be in the studio).  Personally, I like him, and not just because he’s the blind guy either.  I think he has a lot of courage to even try this due to the nature of his disability, since contestants perform song/dance numbers together every week, which can’t be easy for a blind person, and I think he has a LOT of talent.  Hey, just anybody can open their mouth and sing – to varying levels of success, of course – but it takes true talent to play the piano like that.

It was very interesting that Paula told Scott to get out from behind the piano, then Simon told her that the comment was offensive.  Simon is absolutely right.  The dude is blind, Paula.  What do you expect him to do, dance a fucking jig?  Sheesh, he could easily be seriously injured just walking around without assistance, especially onstage since he can’t see and therefore could even fall off the stage.  Go pop another pill with a whiskey chaser, Paula, and leave the blind dude alone.  Grrrr……

Matt Giraud performed “So Small”, using the piano.  Again, I had never heard the song, or even heard of it, but I absolutely loved the performance.  To me, it was the best of the night by far, and somehow reminded me of Bruce Hornsby (though the only song I can’t get out of my mind after the fact is Scott’s “Wild Angels”, so he’s a very close second).  The only criticism I have is that it sounded like Matt was spitting into the microphone whenever he would enunciate letters like “s”, likely because he was so close to the mic, but that still shouldn’t happen; had it not been for that technical problem, I’d probably be replaying that song in my mind as well.

What I have noticed from the beginning of this season is that the holes in the microphones are very large, and if a mic has holes which are too large, that kind of problem happens.  So mostly my complaint is that the equipment seem to be of questionable quality this year, compared to years past.  It’s a singing competition, and they make tons of money from it, so you’d think they’d have the very best microphones money can buy, but apparently you’d be wrong in thinking that.

Megan Joy sang “Walkin’ After Midnight” by Patsy Cline, and I love me some Patsy Cline.  I hate me some Megan Joy, though.  Ugh, it was awful.  The very strange dance movements, the overenunciation of every single word …. did it ever occur to the judges that all the teachers who refused to cast her in school musicals etc were right, and that she really doesn’t have talent?  There are lots of people who can sing one specific type of song very well, but otherwise cannot sing.  I can sing a few songs very well, but otherwise I sound like crap; and I’m aware of that limitation in my singing ability, so I don’t inflict my voice on anyone.  Those tattoos covering her entire arm are weird too, especially given her age.  The only positive thing I can say about her performance is that she looked absolutely gorgeous, but that’s no great feat since she’s a naturally beautiful girl.

Yeah, I know, she had the flu, but she didn’t do any better when she sang “Rockin’ Robin” last week; she still overenunciated and she still did that very weird dancing, so that had nothing to do with the flu.  She kept coughing for that sympathy vote this week while the judges were talking, too, to make sure everybody knew she was sick and so the judges would say as much (though mysteriously, she was able to not cough or even sound sick during her performance).  All in all, she is my least favorite contestant, and I hope they are rid of her very, very soon.  Even VoteForTheWorst.com has named her as the contestant for everyone to support, so if she gets through, it is either on the sympathy vote, or because VFTW enthusiasts voted her in.  She’s a very pretty girl, but she  just has nowhere near the level of singing talent others in the competition possess, and this is supposed to be a singing competition.

UPDATE:  It looks like I’m not the only one who abhorred Alexis Grace’s version of “Jolene”, since she and her weird hair were sent home tonight.  The judges even considered saving her from the chopping block, so she had to “sing for her life”, and messed up the song even worse – far worse, in fact – so she’s gone.

Michael and Allison were also in the bottom three.  Michael’s inclusion in the bottom didn’t surprise me, since that “working class hero” schtick can only get you so far.  In this case, it got him a spot on the Idol summer concert tour, since he got into the Top Ten, but he won’t last long.  It did surprise me that Allison was in the bottom three, since she has such a big voice and obvious talent, so I can’t help but think I’m not the only one bothered by her appearance and arrogance.

On the bright side, former American Idol winner Carrie Underwood performed a duet with Travis Tritt.  Wow, that girl can really, really sing.  It was fantastic, I loved it.

“Peoria Pelter” remains at large

On a much, much lighter note than my last post ….. I absolutely love reading The Smoking Gun. Here is their latest:

MARCH 16–The Peoria Pelter remains on the loose. A week after a McDonald’s employee was assaulted with a “hot greasy McGriddle sandwich,” Illinois cops have yet to make an arrest. According to a Peoria Police Department report, a copy of which you’ll find below, Patricia Munguia, 38, was hit in the face by a McGriddle thrown by a drive-thru customer angered that his sandwich did not include an egg. As reported by Officer Anthony Allen, though Munguia was “physically assaulted by a breakfast sandwich,” she declined “medical attention for the assault by the sausage sandwich.” Munguia provided cops with what she believed was the license plate of the sandwich tosser (who she described as a regular customer), but the tag “came back no record on file.” If the police report is any indication, it does not seem that Peoria cops are aggressively pursuing the fast food flinger, who is described as a six-foot tall black male weighing 230 pounds. Officer Allen advised Munguia to call cops “if the suspect comes back to assault her again with breakfast food.” (2 pages)

I’m still laughing about that one.

Seriously, should the police have been called at all? I don’t think so, given that he is a regular customer and she wasn’t harmed by it. All in all, it seems like a complete waste of police time, especially since she didn’t even get the license plate correct.  I could kind of understand it if the complaint came from a teenager working there, but this woman is almost as old as me.  Could she possibly have been so traumatized, by having a tasty breakfast sandwich thrown at her, that she was all shook up and couldn’t read the plate correctly?

Read between the lines on that last quote from the cop, though, because it looks like he agrees with me.  He said she should call the cops if he “comes back to assault her again with breakfast food”. I guess that means she should not call them if he comes back and assaults her with a Big Mac, LOL.

Pedophile commenting on the blog arrested today

I was holding off on sharing this information, so law enforcement could do their job and this guy wouldn’t be tipped off that he was under investigation.

Last week, someone posted an anonymous comment on this blog, on my old entry about a six-year-old boy who had been kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a family of pedophiles.

This is what he wrote (though you might want to wait to read it, if you have just eaten, because you’re liable to vomit):

i might anger a lot of people with this, but i’ll say it. pedophilia has been described as possibly being a sexual orientation. i doubt this boy consented, but the men involved were just sexually aroused by the boy. having sex with him was the best satisfaction they could have. it obviously scared the boy, but it made them happy.
i’ll let everyone bicker now over my last statement:
perhaps what they did was okay because it scared one boy, but pleased two men. it was two happy guys and one terrorized boy instead of one normal boy and two sexually starved men.

There was no bickering to be done.  The very day “Anonymous” wrote that on this blog, I investigated his internet activities and contacted the police.  He was arrested this morning.

In the words of Nickelback, “There goes the next contestant”.

Obviously, for anyone who has read my “about” page, this was a really stupid action on his part.   This particular pedophile was affiliated with the Physics Department at a large and respected university, but he still wasn’t as smart as me and never will be.  Criminals are rarely as smart as they believe themselves to be, after all, especially when dealing with someone of my background.

I’d like to think that this guy didn’t really want to hurt a child, and that’s why he posted here, in the hope that he would be stopped.  However, I seriously doubt it, based upon his comment and what I found elsewhere.  I suspect he actually thought nothing would happen, since nothing had happened thus far even though his pedophilia activity was very active on the internet.  This guy had gotten to the point that he no longer cared what anyone thinks about his activities, since he didn’t even try to hide his real email address or his IP, and that’s when pedophiles become truly dangerous.

Though lots of people had expressed disgust at his comments on that other site, and his actual email address was there for all to see, none of them had reported his activities, including the siteowner and moderators who obviously had access to his IP address which very clearly indicated his location.  In all fairness, since he was so open about it and his IP showed that he was posting from a major university, perhaps they thought he was an undercover cop trying to bust people engaged in child pornography, or someone from Perverted Justice or some other vigilante group trying to set someone up; however, they should still have reported it, since even the act of soliciting child pornography is a crime (as well it should be, since like everything else, child pornography follows the law of supply and demand).

This is an excellent example of why vigilante groups like Perverted Justice actually cause more harm than good.  When so many people assume that those making such solicitations are just trying to set someone up, dangerous pedophiles who would otherwise be easily detected will fall through the cracks.

Since no one reported him, by the time he posted the above on this site, his compulsion had escalated far beyond just looking at child pornography. It was just a matter of time before he did exactly what he said was “okay” for others to do, assuming of course that he hadn’t already done so and no one knew about it.

That’s what happens with pedophiles, folks. They start out just looking, then before you know it – and sometimes with shocking speed – they escalate in their behavior and actually rape a child.  Pedophilia is NOT a sexual orientation, as was asserted in the comment.  It is actually an extremely dangerous compulsion, and that’s why the only way to stop many pedophiles is to remove them from society altogether.   This particular pedophile is one of the most dangerous I have ever encountered, because he escalated within the space of about thirty days from soliciting explicit child pornography involving children as young as five, to asking for IM addresses of children with webcams as young as ten, to stating that it’s a good thing to kidnap, rape and murder an innocent six-year-old child.

Friends, do not wait for the inevitable to happen, and never assume someone posting pedophilia-related statements are just trying to set someone up.  Run suspected pedophiles’ IP to see where they are, run their email address and username to look for other pedophilia-related activity, and report everything you find immediately to the local police, since they are the first line of defense in such cases and will usually take it seriously since their own children are potentially at risk.  If the local police don’t take you seriously, go up the food chain to the County Sheriff, the State Police, or even the FBI if necessary.  You never know, you may actually save a child’s life.

According to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, 152,265 persons were reported “missing and endangered” in 2000 alone.  85% – 90% of them are juveniles, and of those, a shocking 24% are stranger abductions.   That’s an estimated 31,000 children abducted by strangers every year in the United States alone – that’s over three every hour, for those of you keeping count -  and many of those children are never seen alive again.  Just as chillingly, the numbers keep rising, and abductions comprise a mere 2% of all violent crimes against juveniles which are reported to police.  Those violent crimes include, of course, child rape.

According to the US Department of Justice, 67% of all sexual assaults reported to police involve juvenile victims.  34% of all sexual assaults reported to police were committed against a child under the age of 12.  Even more chillingly, 14% of all sexual assaults reported to police involved a child under the age of six.  41% of all reported violent crimes against children involved not just sexual assault or molestation, but forcible rape.  Yet, it is estimated that only 31% of forcible rapes are reported.

You do the math.  How many of those missing children do you think were abducted, raped, and murdered by pedophiles, many of whom are active on the internet, given that there are few other reasons why anyone would want to abduct a child they do not even know?

Do not ever hesitate to report a suspected pedophile, folks.  There are a lot more extremely dangerous active pedophiles in our society than most people know, or would even suspect; and they are found everywhere, including in places where one would normally assume them to not be.

Anna Nicole Smith’s companion, physicians arrested for providing her with dangerous prescription drugs

Howard K. Stern, Anna Nicole Smith’s longtime attorney/companion who once claimed to be the father of her daughter Dannielynn, has been arrested on two felonies related to providing her with prescription drugs. Also charged were her physicians, Sandeep Kapoor and Khristine Eroshevich. Eroshevich is the controversial psychiatrist who was with Anna Nicole the day before she died, and who had ordered a massive amount of prescription drugs for Anna Nicole in the days following her son Daniel’s death. Several pharmacists had even refused to fill the prescriptions, because they were in such large quantities and were such a dangerous combination.

The charges allege that the three not only illegally provided Anna Nicole with prescription drugs, but also that they conspired to provide drugs to an addict. Both charges are felonies.

Stern and Kapoor were arrested, and a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Eroshevich. Stern’s bail was set at $20,000, which has been posted.

Anna Nicole Smith died two years ago due to a drug overdose. Her 20-year-old son Daniel died just months earlier, while his mother was still in the hospital after giving birth to her daughter, due to mixing his mother’s Methadone with his own prescribed antidepressants.

I must say, I am very surprised by this given that Anna Nicole died two years ago. I really thought these people were going to get away with giving her all those drugs, but I am glad that, though the wheels of justice turned slowly in this case, they did indeed turn.

My experiences with an elderly mother, dementia, and end of life issues

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. As some of you already know, I have been busy taking care of a very sick elderly relative, my 86-year-old grandmother who raised me (so she’s really my mother, and she refers to me as her daughter rather than her granddaughter for the same reason).

I just realized that I can’t recall exactly when she first got sick, since it’s an ongoing situation and after a while the days all run together, but it was around the time I stopped posting here due to an internet outage; I think I’ve made one music post since then, not counting the one music post I made today.  She was originally rushed to the hospital because she suddenly started vomiting blood.

At that time, she was living with my younger sister, with whom she had lived for my sister’s entire life, since Pappaw died when my sister was still living at home. Sadly, although that is home to her, she can no longer live there since my sister is a single working mom with school-age children, and Mammaw now cannot be left alone for any period of time. Thank goodness Mammaw was not living alone when that happened, like many elderly people, because I cannot even imagine how scary that would be. Also thank goodness she started vomiting blood, strange though that may sound, since unbeknownst to anyone her potassium levels were so low that she could have had a cardiac arrest at any moment, and no one would be able to save her if her heart stopped for that reason.

Doctors still don’t know why any of that happened, though they think she may have cancer. There are tests that they can do to confirm the diagnosis, but at 86 she is far too frail for them to give her any cancer treatment anyway. Furthermore the tests are very invasive, and may cause serious life-threatening injury since she cannot be safely sedated. The doctors advised that we not do the tests for those reasons, and we agreed. They also later found that she had suffered a stroke, although no one could tell at the time since that stroke did not affect anything anyone could see until later. Obviously, they kept her in the hospital for quite some time. I didn’t feel the hospital staff would to be able to watch over her as I felt she needed, so from the very first day I always stayed with her in the hospital.

In all honesty, we thought she was going to die there, and I couldn’t bear the thought of her dying alone among strangers in a strange place, especially in a hospital since she is very, very afraid of hospitals and doctors. I still can’t bear the thought of that.

Though she didn’t die, thank goodness, she has developed sudden-onset dementia as a result of the stroke along with an episode of brain hypoxia secondary to vomiting blood, and she has been in and out of the hospital since that time for additional strokes, as well as her potassium continuing to drop to dangerous levels despite potassium supplements. She is now eating quite well, but continues to lose weight, which of course is normal if in fact she does have cancer. At present she is down to 83 pounds, five pounds less than she weighed when she first got sick (bear in mind, she’s under 5′ tall due to severe spinal curvature, and was only about 5′3 as a young woman). She is a tiny and very frail little old lady, needless to say.

Due to the dementia, she was doing something called “sundowning”. Very strangely – and I didn’t know this before – many dementia patients (and especially Alzheimer’s patients) do pretty well during the day, but at night they go into a trance-like state wherein they try to leave, assumably to go home although they don’t know where home is, and they don’t even know their own name when these episodes strike. They can’t even communicate while in that state, and seem completely oblivious to everyone and everything around them.

I now understand how so many elderly people just wander off, and are found starved or dead from lack of water in a place where no one even thought to look for them. Her sundowning behavior came on literally in a moment’s time, with no warning whatsoever, so it could have happened to her as well. While this may sound strange, it brings to mind how elderly elephants are compelled to wander off to a particular place, sometimes very far away, in order to die. It seems some elderly humans do the same thing, though they don’t seem to be going anyplace in particular (but perhaps we just don’t know where they are trying to go, since they go into a trance and don’t remember it, so they can’t tell us where they were going).

Honestly, I didn’t know what to do when she would do that, because in addition to trying to wander off, she was repeatedly trying to take off her clothes. At first I was embarrassed by it, since I had never seen her in any state of nudity, but I got over that pretty quickly because she obviously needed my undertanding and my help. So I tried to just stay calm and speak gently to her while repeatedly redressing her. I would put her gown back on, over and over again, and just smile and tell her “it’s not sexytime”, or that “we don’t want to make all these other women jealous”. Honestly, though, I don’t think she even knew I was there when that would happen. It was like the lights were on, but nobody was home.  I have no idea why she was taking off her clothes, though it would go on for hours with her suddenly sitting up and starting to remove them again and again; but the next day, during daylight hours, she would be back to herself. The doctors told me that no one really knows why dementia patients do that, but it’s very common.

I still literally live at the hospital with Mammaw whenever she is there, not only to keep her company and make sure she’s not afraid, but also to make sure she has everything she needs and wants, and (though I didn’t realize this until she started trying to do it) doesn’t wander off. Nurses just aren’t able to keep up with any one patient that closely, and using restraints on her is something I could never in good conscience allow (though sadly many dementia patients are restrained regularly, because they have no one who can sit with them and ensure their safety). The first time she wandered off, she was asleep and I walked to the nurses’ station to check on something, but when I came back just a few minutes later, she was gone. It was that quick, which I didn’t even think was possible given her physical condition. Luckily, she had just wandered into another patient’s room next door. We found her just standing there, staring off into space.

It is especially strange since she is extremely frail. I would call her walking “baby steps”, except that babies can walk faster, and take larger strides. She is almost blind and nearly deaf as well, so wandering off is a very dangerous thing for her to do even without the dementia, although she has absolutely no control over it, bless her heart. When she first started wandering off, it was a huge deal for her to just walk to the restroom, a few steps away, so we had brought an adult bedside potty chair into the room, to make it easier for her while still allowing her to maintain her dignity. We had also tried adult diapers when she was at her worst, since she was so weak, but she refused to make use of them. Even with the bedside potty, however, she couldn’t do it on her own though she tried. It was definitely strange how, when she went into that trance, she was suddenly able to get out of bed and walk off; but the doctors said again that it’s not at all unusual, and again they don’t have an explanation for it.

She was also having hallucinations, and thought a man was in her room, trying to hurt her. She couldn’t tell me his name, but she could tell me just about everything else about him and could even point to where he was standing. Problem is, there was no one there, and it seems this man is someone she knew early in life, who tried to rape her. I told her that I had enough information for my other half to go beat him up (my other half is a real sweetheart but a scary looking guy, by the way, kind of a weird cross between Jesus Christ and Charles Manson, LOL, and is regularly stopped by people who say he looks like the guy who played Otis on “The Devil’s Rejects”). I told her he’d take care of it, and that the next time she saw that man, he would have “two black eyes and a busted lip”, and be too scared to bother her again. She made me promise he’d beat the guy up (which wasn’t really a lie, since he really would beat up anyone who bothered Mammaw, if they were real), then calmed right down; interestingly enough, she never saw him again.

She also claimed one of the doctors had sodomized her, which also didn’t happen since I was in the room with her at all times. She couldn’t tell me which doctor it was, but said he had done it when he took her blood earlier that day; however, no man had taken her blood since she had been there, and certainly no one had touched her bottom because no one had been in the room without me being there too. She begged me to believe her, and swore she wasn’t lying. She was obviously very upset by this belief. I just went along with it, reassured her that of course I believe her (which also wasn’t a lie, since I believe that she believed it) and told her I was going to have that doctor fired.  So I walked outside for a few minutes, just standing in the hall, then came back and told her I had “told on him”, and he wasn’t allowed to work there anymore. That delusion then went away as well. She also believed a doctor had cut her knuckle with a pocketknife to cure her skin condition (she has severe psoriasis), but it wasn’t working (though obviously that didn’t happen). Another time she said the doctor had stabbed her in the arm with a butcher knife and broke off the blade of the knife under her skin. She could even show me where the blade was, though obviously there was nothing there.  I don’t think I need to tell you that the alleged stabbing didn’t happen either.

All of her hallucinations and delusions had some basis in reality, though, since she was in a hospital and getting stuck constantly with needles (and she is scared to death of needles, plus due to her physical condition, getting blood taken is excruciatingly painful for her), and she had been sexually traumatized by a man when she was a young woman. I saw absolutely no reason to argue with her about any of it, because it was very, very real to her – we only know what our brains tell us, after all, and she has suffered significant brain damage - so no one could convince her otherwise. That’s why I chose to go along with it, and just make her feel like I was making those problems go away. Some people in the medical field would say I did the wrong thing by playing into her delusions rather than firmly correcting her, though her doctors said I did the right thing given the circumstances, and openly stated that they were impressed with my handling of the situation. However, whether the doctors approved or disapproved, the way I handled it both comforted her and made her fears go away, and that’s all that matters. There is absolutely no reason for her to suffer more than is absolutely necessary, and that includes psychological suffering. I am there to make sure she doesn’t suffer, after all.

I really don’t mind staying with her at the hospital, since it is interesting to say the least, though it is also very exhausting since there is a lot of work involved in caring for someone in her condition.  Plus, I get no sleep. Sometimes I am up with her for days on end, though luckily I am one of those people who can stay up for days with little negative effect (though others can look at me and tell I’m exhausted) and then just rest up to do it again. I’ve been doing it for years, when I’m writing, so it’s actually not unusual for me to do that. The ability to do that definitely came in handy now.

What I am doing for her is absolutely nothing compared to what she did for me, though, by saving my life when I was an infant and raising me as her own daughter. My brother and sisters all have regular jobs and/or children at home, so it would be unfair to ask them to do it since life does go on. Even my retired aunt (Mammaw’s only living child) has grandchildren who come to her home every day prior to and after school, since their mom is a nurse who has to go to work early and stay late. However, on a couple of days, my aunt stayed and insisted that I go home and rest, but I came back to relieve her as soon as I had gotten some sleep and a shower since she is not in great health herself. Besides, my son Elf is grown and I don’t work a regular job, so it’s no problem for me to stay with her. My other half is extremely supportive of my decision to stay with her, and helps out a lot by making sure I have everything I need there, though he does get very annoyed that my siblings don’t offer to stay overnight so I can get some rest at home, even when they are off work the next day. However, it doesn’t bother me, since one or the other of them come to see her every day, and this is about her, not about me. 

Speaking of Elf, as most of you know, he is a very talented musician. During Mammaw’s first long stay in the hospital, she was not eating and was not doing well at all, either mentally or physically, so I arranged with the doctor for permission for Elf to play a concert for her in her room, on the acoustic guitar so it wouldn’t disturb other patients. Elf played and sang to her for about an hour, everything from Alice In Chains to Elvis. He played some of his original compositions as well, and explained to her why he wrote them and what they mean. The music absolutely thrilled her, and by that night, she had become happy in an almost childlike way. That very evening she started eating like a horse. I had to feed her by hand after the first few bites because she was so weak, mind you, but she was even eating snacks – lots of them – and we’d sit and talk and giggle all night like two girls on a sleepover, because she was so excited that she couldn’t sleep. Even her sundowning and constant delusions went away after that. I will therefore always believe that Elf saved Mammaw’s life that day, through the simple act of sharing his music with her.

From that day forward, I spent a lot of time showing her videos of her favorite singers from years past – Elvis, Chet Atkins, Tammy Wynette, Glenn Campbell, etc – so she could see and hear them on my laptop several times a day, every single day, whenever she wanted.  Luckily the hospital provides WiFi for patients, so I didn’t even have to leave her room to do that, and there was no shortage of footage she had never before seen thanks to YouTube.  She especially enjoys the videos of Elvis incorporating jokes into his songs during live performances, which she didn’t know he had ever done.  She loves Elvis Presley.

I will always cherish those late-night chats with Mammaw, for as long as I live. For the first time in my life, I feel like I really know Mammaw as a friend. She seems to have been thinking I was her sister-in-law, who has been dead since long before I was born and also had very long red hair, but that’s okay too if it brings her comfort. My staying with her at the hospital is about making her happy, and if it makes her happy to think I am Essie, that doesn’t bother me at all.

She is back from the hospital again now. She seems to have the dementia symptoms far worse in the hospital than she does at home, probably because she is in a strange and frightening environment. The doctors advised us to put her in a nursing home due to her dementia, but we would never do that unless it was necessary for medical reasons; after all, she sacrificed her own life for us, so the least we can do now is care for her at home during her final days, where she is comfortable and happy. It looks like we made the right decision, because as long as she is with us at home, she confuses some names (which is completely understandable given her age and the fact that she is nearly blind and almost deaf), and occasionally she’ll go off on a tangent which doesn’t make much sense, but other than that, her mind is now pretty sharp for someone her age and in her condition.

I do realize that it won’t last forever though, and that the time may come when she needs more intensive nursing care than we can provide at home. She did definitely suffer brain damage which shows up on a CAT scan, and she keeps having strokes; in the last one, she completely lost the use of her left arm, and though it seems to be slowly returning, she will likely never regain full use of it (though I don’t put anything past her, given what she has already overcome). She is able to get around with a wheeled walker now, which gives her back some independence.  We have also found her unconscious though, and it took several minutes to get her back to consciousness, and again we were forced to call an ambulance for her. Needless to say, we keep having to return her to the hospital for majoe medical concerns, despite her small gains. However, even if we have no choice but to put her in a longterm care facility for her own good, I still will not leave her alone with strangers in a strange environment. I will stay with her there too, for as long as it takes. It’s the very least I can do for someone who selflessly sacrificed so much for me.

Her illness has brought up a lot of issues which none of us wanted to think about, however. For example, should she have a stroke or cardiac arrest, what would we want the doctors to do? I would have thought they should at least do CPR, but now I have been informed by her doctors that she would likely be horribly injured even by that, due to her bones being so brittle and frail.  The doctors told me that ”her ribs would definitely be broken”  even by simple CPR, and could easily splinter and pierce internal organs. Obviously she is not going to live forever, as much as I would like for it to be otherwise, and I see no reason for her suffering to be prolonged, much less exacerbated. 

Mammaw told me out of the blue the other day that “when the Good Lord takes” her, she doesn’t want us to do anything. She has lived a very long life, all of it spent raising siblings, children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren, and she is ready to move on. That was actually a huge burden off my mind, because obviously it is a decision she should make for herself; however, I also didn’t want to come right out and ask her that question, due to her frailty and the fact that she may give up again, or revert back into her more serious dementia symptoms due to stress.  Those of you with older parents may therefore wish to discuss end-of-life issues with them, long before the time arrives even if it is uncomfortable for you to do so, because you never know when you will need to know what they want done (or not done). It will give you the courage to carry out their wishes, without ever having to wonder whether you are doing the right thing.

Something tells me that Mammaw will simply go to sleep one day, and never wake up again. Perhaps that is just wishful thinking on my part, though, so I am prepared for the worst as much as I can be. It will still be hard, though, because through this process we have become very, very close. She told me a couple of days ago that I am her best friend, and I feel the same about her now that I know her as a person, rather than just as my mother.

I have spent many hours talking to her about her life since she was first hospitalized, and she has told me things about herself which I never knew or even suspected. That is a real treasure to me, to know Mammaw far beyond the parent/child relationship. Prior to now she wouldn’t talk about her life in any real detail even when asked, and now I know why since she had a very traumatic life. I am amazed by her, that she suffered all those traumas and still managed to live her life with complete selflessness; in fact, she is by far the most selfless person I have ever known, or likely ever will know. I have therefore been given a gift like none other, the most precious gift anyone could possibly give me, and for that I will be forever thankful. However, that also means that when she is gone, I will not only be losing my mother and grandmother, I will also be losing my best friend.

I will always know in my heart, though, that I did what I could during her final days, to make her as happy as possible in order to repay her in some small measure for what she did for me. I am a very lucky person, not only to have been raised by such a strong woman, but to be in the position to be there for her full time, when she needs me the most. I only wish I had been smart enough all along to realize what an absolutely amazing woman she really is, and though at least now I know, that knowledge was almost lost forever.

So my advice is to take the time and make the effort to really talk to your parents and grandparents. Ask them about their lives, and when they answer, take an interest and actively listen to them. Take the time to sit with them and giggle and talk about silly things, too. Even if you don’t want to do it for them, due to some old dispute or perceived slight, do it for yourself.

Most of all, don’t ever take them for granted. Elderly people don’t want flowers and cards, though they are appreciative to know you are thinking of them. What they really want is to not be lonely, or alone, and they deserve to be neither. In our society we “adopt” needy children overseas, and we “adopt” animals in a shelter, but there is no cry to “adopt” the elderly. Yet there is no certainly shortage of elderly people who are alone and afraid, with no one to care for or about them, and it won’t cost you a dime to “adopt” one of them.  We can all do something to change that, just by giving our time and attention to those who need it most.

Some more great tunes

I’m back (at least for now) and working on a couple of much longer entries, but in the meantime, here are some more songs I really like …..

I’ve been a Springsteen fan for a long time, so I thought I’d add his latest in case you haven’t heard it. He won a Golden Globe for this one, but was snubbed by the Academy Awards. Stupid Oscar voters, they wouldn’t know a great song if it body-slammed them.

“Movies” by Alien Ant Farm is an oldie-but-goodie. It used to be played on the radio all the time back in the 90s, and I still like it. I included the long version video here, just because it’s interesting in and of itself.

Here’s a much older one by U2, recorded live at Red Rocks back in the early ’80s. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” recounts the horror of January 30, 1972, wherein British troops opened fire on civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland, murdering 27 people. Though the IRA had been in existence for a couple of years when this happened, it was this unprovoked slaughter by the British which gave the IRA the popularity to continue its decades-long bloody fight for independence against Great Britain, which continues even now.

Here is one of my favorite rock ballads by one of my favorite current bands: “Far Away” by Nickelback.

By the way, I like that song better without the firefighter saga shown in the video, so you might want to also listen to it without watching. We’ve all been there in one way or another, so we don’t need that sappy video to tell us what the song means.

Nickelback did that sappy thing with another of their videos, “Someday”. I thought the video ruined the song, personally, so though I love the song, I don’t watch the video. Here it is though, for those of you who are interested.

There is no room for that level of sappiness in rock videos, in my opinion. Great songs speak for themselves, and mean something different to everyone who hears them.

I still love Nickelback, though. LOL

“Shout to God to bring my sunny day”

Mad Season is one of my favorite bands.  One of the “supergroups” of the ’90s, it had members from Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, and Screaming Trees.

The lead singer was iconic rock singer Layne Staley of Alice In Chains .  Layne died in 2002, after a decade-long struggle with heroin addiction.  His legend, however, lives on.  Layne was definitely one of the greats.

In the following video, Mad Season is joined on vocals by Mark Laneghan, lead singer for Queens of the Stone Age.  In case you aren’t familiar with him, Layne is the blonde singer (he actually looks like an addict in this video, sadly) and Mark Laneghan is the singer with long brown hair.

Other band members are Mike McCready on guitar, John Baker Saunders on bass, and Barrett Martin on drums.  Saunders also died of a heroin overdose in 1999, after getting clean in rehab, so Mad Season only released one album, “Above”.  It was however more than enough to guarantee their inclusion among the greatest rock acts of the 1990s.

Long Gone Day:

Here are some more Mad Season videos as well …….

River of Deceit (great song):

Lifeless Dead:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryu-iQDI8oU

X-Ray Mind:

Wackjobs and spam

It appears that some wackjob added me to a spam email list, and I’ve got a pretty good idea who did it given the timing and the fact that I just had an uber weird run-in with a crazy person both here, and on my political blog.  

When I say “crazy person”, I mean that literally.  They seem to think there is some weird conspiracy involving a federal judge (and became convinced I was somehow involved in the conspiracy, for reasons which I still don’t understand).  They even claimed to be in the witness protection program, and accused my son and me of trying to expose them so they will be killed by this judge.  

Obviously, they’re nuttier than squirrel crap.  Obviously, I banned them.  I don’t have an unlimited amount of time to deal with someone that delusional and possibly even psychotic.

At any rate, the spam started within a day of the last time they tried to post on my blogs.  In the last day or so alone, I’ve gotten hundreds of spam emails for everything from scams to dating services, though usually I get very little spam.  It was a complete waste of their time, though, because all that stuff went directly into my spam folder.  It was therefore merely a source of amusement for me.

Personally, I think it is absolutely hilarious that they wasted their time.  Was sending me spam actually supposed to harm me in some way?  LOL

Typealyzer: What kind of blogger are you?

I got this from Mike O’Risal over at Hyphoid Logic.  

Typealyzer.com claims that it can describe a blogger’s personality based upon their blog.  Here is the result for this blog:

__________________________________

The analysis indicates that the author of http://elfninosmom.wordpress.com is of the type:

ISFP – The Artists

The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of. 

They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.

___________________________________

What do you think, readers?  Does that describe me, in your opinion based upon what you know about me from this blog?  

Megan Meier final Myspace message: “You are the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over”

Prosecutors said it’s the nation’s first cyberbullying trial, and its results could set a legal precedent for dealing with the issue of online harassment.

Defense attorney Dean Steward told jurors Drew did not violate the Computer Use and Fraud Act — used in the past to address computer hacking — and reminded them she was not facing charges dealing with the suicide.

“This is not a homicide case,” Steward said.

While the trial is expected to center on the social networking site’s terms of service, most of the first day’s testimony dealt with Megan’s suicide.

A composed Tina Meier told jurors her daughter was taking medication for attention deficit disorder and depression and that she struggled with low self-esteem. Concerned about her daughter’s safety, Meier said she had Megan’s father reverse the lock on her bedroom.

“I was nervous she would do something,” said Meier, adding that Megan previously tried committing suicide.

Meier said Megan was bullied at the Missouri school she attended with Sarah. Megan transferred to a private school months before she killed herself.

Megan was doing well at her new school when she met “Josh Evans” on MySpace in early September 2006 and wanted to be her friend, said Meier, who put restrictions on Megan’s computer usage, including having a parent in the room when she was online.

But on a rainy October day, Meier said, she took her younger daughter to the orthodontist and when she called to see how Megan was doing, her oldest was crying. “Josh” and two other girls were saying mean things about her, Meier said.

When Meier arrived home, Megan showed her what was being said. One of the messages said the world would be better off without her, Meier testified. She said she told her daughter that she wasn’t supposed to be online without her being there.

“The last words she said to me were ‘You are supposed to be my mom, you are supposed to be on my side,’ ” Meier said, trying to hold back tears.

The teen’s mother said she later ran upstairs and found Megan hanging in the closet with a belt around her neck. Megan died the next day.

In his opening statement, U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien disclosed for the first time what Megan wrote after allegedly receiving the message that said the world would be better off without her.

“‘You are the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over,”‘ O’Brien said of Megan’s response.

You can read the entire article here.

Ten-year-old writes out list of victims for “killing spree”

This is a note most teachers won’t forget anytime soon.

A ten-year-old girl in Wisconsin had a note confiscated by a teacher, which of course happens every day, everywhere around the world.  The teacher didn’t read the note immediately, since the girl was not a discipline problem, but when she did, it scared her half to death.

This young girl had written a list of 25 people she wanted to kill, including 21 students and 4 teachers, when she went on a “killing spree”.  She told the Kenosha police that the students were on the list because they accused her of spreading rumors, and the teachers were on it because they didn’t call on her when she raised her hand in class.  However, she denied any actual intention of harming anyone, saying she made the list only because she was angry.

The case has been referred to juvenile authorities with a recommendation that she be charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.  The principal has suspended her pending the investigation, but told police she has no intention of expelling the girl.

What do you think should be done in a situation like this, involving a child that age?  

 

Lori Drew trial begins in Los Angeles

By Kim Zetter, Wired Magazine

LOS ANGELES — The woman accused of making unauthorized use of MySpace to  inflict emotional harm on a 13-year-old girl, who then committed suicide, “fully intended to hurt and prey on Megan Meier’s psyche,” a prosecutor charged Wednesday, as opening statements began in the first federal cyber-bullying trial.

After some initial problems finding unbiased jurors, a jury of six men and six women was finally impaneled in the trial Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutor Thomas O’Brien immediately launched into his opening argument, in which he previewed the case he plans to present in the days ahead.

Defendant Lori Drew, a 49-year-old Missouri woman, watched O’Brien’s opening salvo wide-eyed from the defense table, jotting notes occasionally on a notepad, until O’Brien reached the details of Meier’s suicide and its aftermath. Then Drew began scribbling intently on the pad, averting her eyes from the prosecutor and jury.

Lori Drew

O’Brien claimed that Drew actively conspired with two others in creating and maintaining a MySpace profile for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named “Josh Evans” in September 2006. The Evans account was used by multiple people to flirt with, befriend and ultimately reject 13-year-old Megan Meier, who’d had a falling-out with Drew’s daughter.

One of the users of the account, Ashley Grills, a then-18-year-old woman employed by Drew and her husband, has admitted to sending a final, cruel message to Meier while posing as Evans: “The world would be a better place without you. Have a shitty rest of your life.” Meier then hanged herself in her bedroom.

Grills has been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her cooperation with the government, and is scheduled to testify against Drew.

Though the prosecution concedes that Drew did not send that final message, O’Brien argued that the whole purpose of the hoax from the start was to inflict emotional distress on a vulnerable young girl.

O’Brien said he’d offer testimony that Drew conspired with her daughter, Sarah, and with Grills to humiliate Meier, and was heard laughing about the hoax they were perpetrating on the girl.

Drew discussed using Meier’s personal notes to “Evans” to humiliate her at school, and conspired at one point to lure the girl to a nearby mall to meet Evans, whereupon Meier would similarly be confronted with the messages she’d sent the nonexistent boy, said O’Brien.

After Meier’s death, Drew’s hairdresser allegedly asked Drew why she was going to the wake, given her role in the cyber-bullying. Drew’s response, O’Brien said, was, “It’s not like I pulled the trigger.”

At that point in the opening argument, one of the jury alternates, an elderly woman, visibly cringed.

Defense attorney H. Dean Steward, delivering his opening remarks, painted a very different picture. He claimed that Drew knew about the plan to create the hoax MySpace profile and manipulate Meier, but neither encouraged nor participated in it.

Steward told the jury that forensics evidence will prove the account was not created from Drew’s computer, and that no messages were sent by Drew.

You can view a listing of this blog’s entire discussion of the case here.