intl V

A few headlines really gave me heartburn recently. Literally, I just ate too much and now I’m angry and it’s hard to breathe and I can feel the food coming back up. Remind me to never blog in anger after a big meal again.

Grandma Is Abused By Injustice System

This pissed me off so bad. A 78 year-old grandmother was pulled over for, get this, driving too slowly. Wow, cops in Florida give tickets for driving slow? If they did that in Ohio, they’d be pulling people over all damn day. Anyway, so they find out her license was suspended, so they give her a ticket and she has to go to court. Maybe she forgot to take her ginko biloba pills and her Focus Factor; from what I hear, no one really tells you if and when you get too many points on your license, so maybe she didn’t even know it was suspended. Well it’s all inconsequential anyway, for a few days later the DMV sends her a letter saying “All is well! You got your license back.” Grandma sings Oh Happy Day, praises Jesus a bit, and goes on about her business. Whodathunk that the court date was still set, right? Well she missed it, of course, and the cops come barreling into her home, hooting and hollering, ready to attack as always, while Nana’s just trying to watch The Price Is Right. Almost gave her a heart attack, I presume. Good thing Fifi didn’t nip their ankles off. They probably didn’t even let her get her cornbread out of the oven first before they hauled her away in the paddywagon! Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit, but it’s plausible.

Long story short, the public defender who was supposed to be defending the public’s grandmothers was passed out on his sofa from a booze-and-crack hangover, the second public defender didn’t meet her at the jail (maybe he got held up playing Farmville on Facebook), and the pretrial services division didn’t bother to tell the judge that they thought she should be let go. Grandma Driveslow was kept in jail for FIFTEEN DAYS, INCLUDING THANKSGIVING. Can you imagine? Can you imagine how her family felt? I like how it’s okay for the system to fuck up three times, but if Miss Daisy forgets twice, it’s over! Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, etc. etc., continue this lame Monopoly joke on your own.

I don’t know why, but I ventured to read some of the comments netizens left. One somewhat reasonable douchebag made what would have been a good point, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s seventy-eight years old:

I’m not excusing this mistake, and it’s completely wrong for her to have spent 2 weeks in jail for this offense, but it sounds like she had opportunities to set things right before it happened.

*blink*

I’d like to see you keep track of all your shit when you’re pushing 80. I’m 23 and I can’t even remember to take my laundry out of the dryer. I bet it won’t be so easy then, when you’re searching for your glasses because you’re blind as a fucking bat, can’t figure out what’s junk mail, what’s a bill, and what’s Publishers Clearinghouse in the two dozen pieces of mail you get every day, and the one letter you *do* manage to read assures you that your driving troubles have been taken care of. I hope you’re one of those old men that gets laughed at by teenagers when they fall down at the mall. I’ve had the “privilege” of having to go to court over a ticket, and let me tell ya, these people are Grade A sickos (and I use the term “people” loosely) who get off on seeing regular folk suffer. I sat waiting for my turn in front of the judge and witnessed a nice, classy, articulate lady make a valid point about a speed trap in a respectful way, and the honky ass judge ripped her a new one and quantitatively dismssed her entire presence as a human being, not to mention her case. It’s all one big waste of time. But now I’m getting off point. The point is, I hate the injustice system and I love grandmothers. Even ones who drive annoyingly slow. (I actually got stuck behind a slow grandma the other day, and I did honk my horn and yell obscenities at her, but I still love her damn it!)

Google Threatens To Exit China

BUSTED, CHINA! Haha! Apparently China (who knows which governmental or political sector) tried to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and major tech companies. I don’t know much about hacking, but I’m betting that the same geniuses who make shitty knockoff software like YLMF and Vii weren’t that good at fooling Google, aka God Of The Internet.

Good for them. Yahoo may have caved in, but Google has the brains and clout to hightail it out of there when something funky goes down. Whatever did happen to that Yahoo CEO dude? Didn’t he quit? Eh who cares, that snitch made more money in a year and a half than either I or my grandma will ever see. I’m sure he’s not complaining. At least not as much as the people he ratted out are. They’ve got… how many more years labor in a shitty chinese jewelry factory? Five? Yeah. Hope his wife and kid are doing alright.