One day a florist goes to a barber for a haircut. After the cut he asked about his bill and the barber replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The florist was pleased and left the shop.
When the barber goes to open his shop the next morning there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.
Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The cop is happy and leaves the shop.
The next morning when the barber goes to open up there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.
Later that day, a college professor comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The professor is very happy and leaves the shop.
The next morning when the barber opens his shop, there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen different books, such as 'How to Improve Your Business' and 'Becoming More Successful.'
Then, a Congressman comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The Congressman is very happy and leaves the shop.
The next morning when the barber goes to open up, there are a dozen Congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.
And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the members of our Congress.
Vote carefully this year!
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
I Don't Make 'Em Up, I Just Post 'Em
And this is the generation that supposedly is going to take care of us in our old age? Lord help us. Armageddon is truly around the corner. And you wonder why I like dogs better than kids. Italics are mine.
February 15, 2008
Attacks on the Homeless Rise, With Youths Mostly to Blame
By AMY GREEN
CROSS CITY, Fla. — Warren Messner was 15 when he and some friends attacked a homeless man and left him for dead. Mr. Messner jumped on a log laid across the man’s ribs. He does not know why. He was high, does not remember much and wants to forget the rest.
Today Mr. Messner is a baby-faced Translation: fat and ugly 18-year-old serving 22 years for second-degree murder. He used to like skipping school and listening to rap music with friends. He imagined he eventually would help his father install flooring. Now he talks to his parents nearly every night from the maximum-security Cross City Correctional Institution.
“It was just a senseless crime.” he said, his eyes down, his shoulders slumped. “I wish it would have never happened. It made no sense. It was stupidity.”
Mr. Messner’s story is not unusual. Nationwide, violence against the homeless is soaring, and overwhelmingly the attackers are teenagers and young adults. In Florida the problem is so severe that the National Coalition for the Homeless is setting up speakers bureaus to address a culture that sees attacking the homeless as a sport. It is the first time the organization has singled out a particular state.
Of more than 142 unprovoked attacks on homeless people in 2007, the most — at least 32 — were in Florida, according to a preliminary count by the coalition and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Nationwide, such attacks rose about 65 percent from 2005.
In Fort Lauderdale a group of teenagers captured national attention in 2006 when a surveillance camera caught one laughing as he beat a homeless man with a baseball bat. The teenagers attacked three homeless men that night and face a murder trial in one man’s death. A year later in Daytona Beach, a 17-year-old and two 10-year-olds attacked a homeless Army veteran. One 10-year-old dropped a cement block on the man’s face, the police said.
“What could possibly be in the mind of a 10- or 12-year-old that would possess them to pick up a rock and pick up a brick and beat another human being in the head?” said Ron Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. “It defies any rational thought process, but it’s also why we felt so strongly we had to do something.”
The trust has teamed with the local schools to develop a curriculum for elementary, middle and high schools teaching respect for the homeless.
Advocates for the homeless blame a society that they say shuns the homeless through laws that criminalize sleeping in parks, camping and begging.
“I think it reflects a lack of respect for the homeless that has reached such extreme proportions that homeless people aren’t viewed as people,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. I think it shows a lack of respect for ALL living beings.
Troubled by news photos showing those two 10-year-olds in Daytona Beach in prison suits and handcuffs, NOT ME! the National Coalition for the Homeless joined with AmeriCorps Vista to open speakers bureaus last fall in Key West, Jacksonville and Tallahassee. Nine more are planned in Florida. The idea is to educate students using speakers who are homeless or once lived on the streets, and the organization wants to open more bureaus nationwide, said Michael Stoops, executive director of the coalition.
The speakers are like George Siletti, who grew up in foster care and lived as a homeless drifter on and off for 25 years, starting at the age of 16. Now 51, Mr. Siletti said he took medication for schizophrenia and depression and lived in subsidized housing in Washington, addressing schools, churches and organizations about homelessness.
“I’ve had bottles thrown at me. I’ve had people spit on me, cursed me out for no reason,” said Mr. Siletti, who was attacked by teenagers in Fort Lauderdale as he and others slept under a bridge in the 1980s. “People seem to pick on the most vulnerable because they really think that they won’t do nothing.”
In Miami, students are learning from a weeklong curriculum and a DVD teaching that families are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. The curriculum requires younger students to make posters and older students to write essays about what they learned.
Legislation adding the homeless to hate-crime laws has been introduced in Alaska, California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio and Texas. Bills are also pending in Congress.
Mr. Messner, who is an imposing six feet, 240 pounds in his blue prison suit, talks about his crime with quiet resignation.
He and his friends were looking for a place to smoke marijuana near his home in the Daytona Beach area when they stumbled on Michael Roberts. Mr. Messner joined the attack and remembers hearing Mr. Roberts groan when he jumped on the log, but then Mr. Messner tried to pull his friends away, he said.
Confession: I, too, smoked weed as a youth. Never once did I feel like killing someone. There's more going on here, something pathological. Pot doesn't make you into a violent killer.
“He was making noises,” Mr. Messner said. “He asked one time why we was doing it to him. Why we was messing with him.”
A few days later, Mr. Roberts’s body was found. Mr. Messner agreed to a plea bargain and drew the lightest sentence of the four convicted in the attack.
He does not like prison much. No, shit, Sherlock. It's not a country club. He keeps busy doing yard work, exercising and reading.And I am stuck at work. Nice. He likes James Patterson novels and murder mysteries.No surprise here. He has dropped at least 40 pounds and developed a penchant for prison tattoos. One arm reads “thug” while the other reads “life.” His mother’s name, Lori, is on one hand. Mother of the Year, oh yeah.. On one arm is the same cross he wears around his neck, surrounded by the words “hope,” “faith” and “love.” Giving Christians everywhere a bad name.
“I’m not a killer. I know that,” Mr. Messner said. “A lot of people, they see this story and call us killers. I’m not a killer. I regret what I did. I wish I could take it back.” Uh. Yes, you are, Dumbshit. By anyone's definition.
February 15, 2008
Attacks on the Homeless Rise, With Youths Mostly to Blame
By AMY GREEN
CROSS CITY, Fla. — Warren Messner was 15 when he and some friends attacked a homeless man and left him for dead. Mr. Messner jumped on a log laid across the man’s ribs. He does not know why. He was high, does not remember much and wants to forget the rest.
Today Mr. Messner is a baby-faced Translation: fat and ugly 18-year-old serving 22 years for second-degree murder. He used to like skipping school and listening to rap music with friends. He imagined he eventually would help his father install flooring. Now he talks to his parents nearly every night from the maximum-security Cross City Correctional Institution.
“It was just a senseless crime.” he said, his eyes down, his shoulders slumped. “I wish it would have never happened. It made no sense. It was stupidity.”
Mr. Messner’s story is not unusual. Nationwide, violence against the homeless is soaring, and overwhelmingly the attackers are teenagers and young adults. In Florida the problem is so severe that the National Coalition for the Homeless is setting up speakers bureaus to address a culture that sees attacking the homeless as a sport. It is the first time the organization has singled out a particular state.
Of more than 142 unprovoked attacks on homeless people in 2007, the most — at least 32 — were in Florida, according to a preliminary count by the coalition and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Nationwide, such attacks rose about 65 percent from 2005.
In Fort Lauderdale a group of teenagers captured national attention in 2006 when a surveillance camera caught one laughing as he beat a homeless man with a baseball bat. The teenagers attacked three homeless men that night and face a murder trial in one man’s death. A year later in Daytona Beach, a 17-year-old and two 10-year-olds attacked a homeless Army veteran. One 10-year-old dropped a cement block on the man’s face, the police said.
“What could possibly be in the mind of a 10- or 12-year-old that would possess them to pick up a rock and pick up a brick and beat another human being in the head?” said Ron Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. “It defies any rational thought process, but it’s also why we felt so strongly we had to do something.”
The trust has teamed with the local schools to develop a curriculum for elementary, middle and high schools teaching respect for the homeless.
Advocates for the homeless blame a society that they say shuns the homeless through laws that criminalize sleeping in parks, camping and begging.
“I think it reflects a lack of respect for the homeless that has reached such extreme proportions that homeless people aren’t viewed as people,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. I think it shows a lack of respect for ALL living beings.
Troubled by news photos showing those two 10-year-olds in Daytona Beach in prison suits and handcuffs, NOT ME! the National Coalition for the Homeless joined with AmeriCorps Vista to open speakers bureaus last fall in Key West, Jacksonville and Tallahassee. Nine more are planned in Florida. The idea is to educate students using speakers who are homeless or once lived on the streets, and the organization wants to open more bureaus nationwide, said Michael Stoops, executive director of the coalition.
The speakers are like George Siletti, who grew up in foster care and lived as a homeless drifter on and off for 25 years, starting at the age of 16. Now 51, Mr. Siletti said he took medication for schizophrenia and depression and lived in subsidized housing in Washington, addressing schools, churches and organizations about homelessness.
“I’ve had bottles thrown at me. I’ve had people spit on me, cursed me out for no reason,” said Mr. Siletti, who was attacked by teenagers in Fort Lauderdale as he and others slept under a bridge in the 1980s. “People seem to pick on the most vulnerable because they really think that they won’t do nothing.”
In Miami, students are learning from a weeklong curriculum and a DVD teaching that families are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. The curriculum requires younger students to make posters and older students to write essays about what they learned.
Legislation adding the homeless to hate-crime laws has been introduced in Alaska, California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio and Texas. Bills are also pending in Congress.
Mr. Messner, who is an imposing six feet, 240 pounds in his blue prison suit, talks about his crime with quiet resignation.
He and his friends were looking for a place to smoke marijuana near his home in the Daytona Beach area when they stumbled on Michael Roberts. Mr. Messner joined the attack and remembers hearing Mr. Roberts groan when he jumped on the log, but then Mr. Messner tried to pull his friends away, he said.
Confession: I, too, smoked weed as a youth. Never once did I feel like killing someone. There's more going on here, something pathological. Pot doesn't make you into a violent killer.
“He was making noises,” Mr. Messner said. “He asked one time why we was doing it to him. Why we was messing with him.”
A few days later, Mr. Roberts’s body was found. Mr. Messner agreed to a plea bargain and drew the lightest sentence of the four convicted in the attack.
He does not like prison much. No, shit, Sherlock. It's not a country club. He keeps busy doing yard work, exercising and reading.And I am stuck at work. Nice. He likes James Patterson novels and murder mysteries.No surprise here. He has dropped at least 40 pounds and developed a penchant for prison tattoos. One arm reads “thug” while the other reads “life.” His mother’s name, Lori, is on one hand. Mother of the Year, oh yeah.. On one arm is the same cross he wears around his neck, surrounded by the words “hope,” “faith” and “love.” Giving Christians everywhere a bad name.
“I’m not a killer. I know that,” Mr. Messner said. “A lot of people, they see this story and call us killers. I’m not a killer. I regret what I did. I wish I could take it back.” Uh. Yes, you are, Dumbshit. By anyone's definition.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
A New Generation of Dating
I can't resist sharing this bon mot from one of the more militant childfree web sites I frequent. It was written by a youngish guy, around 23, who just started dating a woman he met through Facebook. What would be YOUR first clue that this relationship is doomed? Hint: I've highlighted it for you to make it easier.--M
"I seem to have stumbled across something of a mixed blessing in recent weeks. A random girl started sending me messages on Facebook, having somehow stumbled across my profile. We chatted back and forth there for awhile, and we really seemed to be hitting it off, so we decided to go out.
Now, it's been about a week since we started dating, and there's a problem that I'd hoped would have started clearing up by now. Namely: whenever we're out together, we never seem to have much to talk about. Usually, it boils down to a routine of "how's your day/classes/family?" And neither of us seems able to spark more beyond that. Case in point, we're here in Starbucks waiting until 9:00 for a movie we're going to see, and we're both just sitting across from each other, typing at our laptops. It's been like this for the past two hours or so, only broken up by a phone call, and a handful of failed attempts at conversation, which ended up with each of us just looking around with nothing to say. I don't think we've exchanged ten words since I started typing this.
When we are doing something passive, like watching movies together, this isn't too bad, since we've got something to focus on. But when there isn't anything like that, there's just silence more often than not. We seemed to talk so fluidly online, but in person, all that just disappears, and I don't know why. Or what to do about it.
I mean, we both seem to like each other well enough, but at the same time, I don't want a girlfriend who I can't even hold a conversation with in person. What should I do? Just give it another week or two, to see if anything changes? I know it's early in the relationship yet, but Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and if the silence issue doesn't improve in the near future, I'd feel like an ass for breaking things off so close to that day. Regardless of the fact that it's early on.
Who the f**k brings a laptop on a date? But let's be fair here: It's not only the guy. Apparently, she brought hers as well! How these people will ever be able to connect, emotionally, physically or otherwise, is beyond me.
"I seem to have stumbled across something of a mixed blessing in recent weeks. A random girl started sending me messages on Facebook, having somehow stumbled across my profile. We chatted back and forth there for awhile, and we really seemed to be hitting it off, so we decided to go out.
Now, it's been about a week since we started dating, and there's a problem that I'd hoped would have started clearing up by now. Namely: whenever we're out together, we never seem to have much to talk about. Usually, it boils down to a routine of "how's your day/classes/family?" And neither of us seems able to spark more beyond that. Case in point, we're here in Starbucks waiting until 9:00 for a movie we're going to see, and we're both just sitting across from each other, typing at our laptops. It's been like this for the past two hours or so, only broken up by a phone call, and a handful of failed attempts at conversation, which ended up with each of us just looking around with nothing to say. I don't think we've exchanged ten words since I started typing this.
When we are doing something passive, like watching movies together, this isn't too bad, since we've got something to focus on. But when there isn't anything like that, there's just silence more often than not. We seemed to talk so fluidly online, but in person, all that just disappears, and I don't know why. Or what to do about it.
I mean, we both seem to like each other well enough, but at the same time, I don't want a girlfriend who I can't even hold a conversation with in person. What should I do? Just give it another week or two, to see if anything changes? I know it's early in the relationship yet, but Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and if the silence issue doesn't improve in the near future, I'd feel like an ass for breaking things off so close to that day. Regardless of the fact that it's early on.
Who the f**k brings a laptop on a date? But let's be fair here: It's not only the guy. Apparently, she brought hers as well! How these people will ever be able to connect, emotionally, physically or otherwise, is beyond me.
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