Michael Jackson never had a snowball's chance in Hell of living a normal life

And, like most of us, he didn't beat the odds.

Though he did give us Thriller

Rest in peace.

That is all.

RIP, Patrick McGoohan.

We took Nemo, the last of our cats, to the vet for the last time tonight. Then we took a long walk home.

Expressions of sympathy can be sent to this post.

Foo.

Now, you might be wondering why I would even suggest that someone can affect the manner and style of his death. Well, it's because of a mysterious and little-known stage of dying, the two-minute warning. Most people are not aware of it, but it does exist. Just as in football, two minutes before you die you receive an audible warning: "Two minutes! Get your shit together!" And the reason most people don't know about it is because the only ones who hear it are dead two minutes later. They never get a chance to tell us.

George Carlin
5/12/37 - 6/22/08
RIP
And for the record:

Rat-shit, bat-shit, dirty old twat
Sixty-nine assholes tied in a knot.
Hooray...
Lizard-shit.
Fuck!

BR Ranger Rommel passed away over Memorial Day weekend. Full obituary here.

Rest In Peace, bro. Not sure I ever met you. But we both wore the khaki.

Seems I have some flowers to plant.

Elvis.
T-Cloud.
Bounce.
Rommel.

Miss y'all.

Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage, dies:

RICHMOND, Va. - Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday....

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause," the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

As the child of a marriage you made possible, thanks.

Why should we hear about body-bags and death? I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?
-Barbara Bush, mother of George W., after 5 years of the Iraqi meatgrinder, 4,000 American dead, and nobody counts dead Iraqis anyway.



Previously in O,DIKTO:
-OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! (The old bitch opines on Katrina & those "lucky" enough to get to the Thunderdome Astrodome)

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, is dead.

The Master is gone. Long live the Masterpiece

YOU BELONG IN A CAGE FOR DRUNK DRIVING AND MANSLAUGHTER, YOU OVER-PRIVILEGED, ENTITLED BIMBO!!!

Guess who's facing 21 years in prison — the drunk , rich, white one, or the sober, poor, black one?

Two cars collided last year on Cinco de Mayo.

Considering the date, you might assume that at least one of the drivers was drunk — and you'd be right. Laura Varker was 17 years old, and she'd been tubing down the Salt River all day with her eight best girlfriends. Their T-shirts all read "Cinco de Drinko." Even an hour after the accident, Varker's blood-alcohol level was 0.09, over the legal limit for adults. And, as an underage driver, she was in violation of the law by having any amount of alcohol in her system.

One of Varker's girlfriends, 15-year-old Felicia Edwards, didn't drink a drop*. But it was Edwards who died when Varker's Yukon Denali hit another car and flipped over and over like a tumbleweed before coming to a horrifying stop on the Bush Highway north of Mesa. Edwards was thrown from the SUV and pronounced dead at the scene.

When sheriff's deputies called Felicia's mother that terrible day, her first question was, "Was she wearing a seat belt?" She wasn't. Instead, Felicia had been in the back of the SUV holding down the tubes — a decision she paid for with her life.

That's a tragedy.

But only in its aftermath did the collision become a travesty. That's because, even after blood tests showed that Varker was legally drunk, and even after sheriff's investigators learned that it was she and another girl who'd flashed a fake ID and bought Coors Light and malt liquor for the group, Varker hasn't been charged with anything.

Not underage consumption.

Not drunken driving.

And certainly not manslaughter.

Instead of charging the affluent white girl, the sheriff's officers arrested the other driver, a black man, a guy who wasn't even legally drunk.

Bryant Wilkerson was a 28-year-old postal service clerk with nothing on his record worse than a fender-bender. That day, he was merely making a U-turn, in a place where U-turns are permitted, when a 17-year-old party girl in her daddy's SUV tried to speed around him.

Wilkerson's life has been upended. He's been charged with nine felony counts, including manslaughter and aggravated assault. He spent three months in jail because he didn't have the money to post bail, and he lost his job because of that. Now under strict curfew and random alcohol and drug screenings for the past five months, he has to get permission from the court just to attend his daughter's band concerts in the evening.

He's facing 21 years in prison...

The article goes on to point out that Wilkerson should probably take the hit for freaking out and leaving the scene of an accident. Fine.

But the drunken, underage white-girl who uses her daddy's SUV TO KILL HER FRIEND is is all lawyered up and posting to her MySpace page while her friend is rotting in the ground and the sober, brown-skinned working-guy with a daughter making the legal U-Turn is facing 21 years?

Fucking worthless, sack-o-shit, terrorist-loving SUV drivers. It's bad enough that they hate America and want our troops to bleed and die half way around the globe. Chalk up one more dead, mangled innocent on their slate.

Remind me NEVER to go to Arizona for any reason. The jungle-half of my genes are a bit melanin-laced, and the amount of sun down there would only make it worse.**

Via the_urban_monk (although with a monk-like lack of vitriol).

---

* Studies show that it's the non-drinkers who suffer the worst in car accident because they tense up for the hit while the drunks remain loose and fluid.

The lesson seems to be "Don't get into a car as a passenger if you're sober".

** OTOH, the most menacing "Leave this bar, or we will beat your café-au-lait ass down" gaze I ever got was in Lynn, MA, outside Boston. But that's what one gets for going into a local corner bar in a town you're not familiar with.

Fuck it, maybe just don't leave Northern California. I know what neighborhoods and bars to avoid 'round here in the Bay Area.

When will Amy Winehouse die?:

We’ll all have a date with our maker someday, but Amy Winehouse just can’t seem to wait. She can write and sing a beautiful tune, but for some reason Amy has landed in a self-destruction derby. It is even rumoured that Amy and Pete are keeping the Colombian economy going. She simply looks like a cat’s asshole before it’s been dewormed.

Amy is on her way out and as the world is profiting from this decline we thought it only fair that you should profit from it too. Guess her final breath and be crowned Mr. Or Mrs. Death.

Winner will be rewarded with a iPod Touch.

Guess it's like they say, set yourself on fire and the world will pay to watch you burn.

But I think he kinda nails it on the head when he asks "Why did the Oakland police do so little about Your Black Muslim Bakery's thuggery?"

Is the murder of a prominent community journalist in broad daylight what it takes for the OPD to finally move on this faith-based mafia?

Metafilter on the police raid at YBMB and their shady, violent history.

More context links

I'm particularly disappointed to hear that Congresscritter Barbara Lee has been "on record supporting the bakery as a community institution." I've been proud to say "Barbara Lee Speaks for Me" on just about everything relating to the quagmire in Mesopotamia.

But is the price of politics in "The Town" supporting violent gangsters and child molesters fronting as merchants of bean pies, fish sandwiches, and community empowerment?

You want community empowerment, I got two words for you:

START SNITCHING!

I love this city. I love what this city could be. I love this city as it is, warts and all.

Still planning on leaving.

I just got off the phone with my sister.

My ex-brother-in-law was the person killed in the car crash in Orange County. That's who the Sheriff's deputies were alerting me to at 3am.

She hasn't gone by that name for a while, and I'd lost track of where he was living.

His girlfriend and her son survived the crash. He swerved to miss a deer and the car went over a very tall cliff.

Lighting a candle. Previous entry becomes interesting in many ways. Both appropriate and not really.

Rest in peace, Dan.

For everyone we've lost.

Because love never dies.

And because we never get over it, we merely get past it.

Some of you may know that lexica510 & I are Black Rock Rangers emeritus and that one of my former duties was as khaki Bard, keeper of the "Ranger oral history" (as Ranger Big Bear once put it).

Said oral histories were/are kept as songs. The melodies were ganked from pre-existing tunes and new lyrics written. Minor talent of mine. It was also my responsibility to perform said songs at Ranger gatherings.

Lexi & I haven't worn the khaki for a few years now, but it's like the dust from the Playa. It stays with you forever in the nooks and crannies no matter how many times you're hosed down. Plus, there's the tattoo.

Word has traveled the grapevine that we just lost Ranger Elvis to a heart attack and T-Cloud finally succumbed to a long illness back in October. We lost Bounce late in 2005.

They were loved for the people they were. Being Black Rock Rangers merely made them not quite right in the head. I've had a new Ranger song brewing for a while. In honor of those and all other Black Rock Rangers we've lost, I thought I'd post it now. I'm sure someone will point the Clan in Tan thisaway. Hey, Rangers. Miss y'all.

The song is from the traditional sea shanty "Where Am I To Go?" NOTE TO THE UN-KHAKIED: "Black Rock" refers to the call-sign for Ranger dispatch. "On-comm" means "I'm monitoring my radio for relevant traffic". Some artistic liberties have been taken with standard radio protocol.

[Make with the clickety-click to hear the Ranger Bard Sing]

Where Am I To Go? (BRC version)

Oh where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go Black Rock
Way, hey, hey
I'm ready to roll
Where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go
On-comm, got snack, full Camelbak
Oh where am I to go

We're sending you to North Camp side
That's where you're bound to go, ranger
Way, hey, hey
On your bike and roll
There's a drunken lout who screams and shouts
And he needs to get mellow
Monday Burning Man
It's all hit the fan
So on your bike and go

Oh where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go Black Rock
Way, hey, hey
I'm ready to roll
Where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go
On-comm, got snack, full Camelbak
Oh where am I to go

We're sending you to South Camp side
That's where you're bound to go, ranger
Way, hey, hey
On your bike and roll
There's tiki torches unsecured
And the wind, she starts to blow
We're all dying of heat
And calls choke my sheet
So on your bike and go

Oh where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go Black Rock
Way, hey, hey
I'm ready to roll
Where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go
On-comm, got snack, full Camelbak
Oh where am I to go

It's burn night circle crowd patrol
That's where you're bound to go, ranger
Way, hey, hey
Leave the bike at home
Just keep the horde beyond the lights
'Till the man he tumbles low
We're all short on sleep
Been kicking ass all week
And it's one HELL of a show

Oh where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go Black Rock
Way, hey, hey
I'm ready to roll
Where am I to go, me Black Rock
Where am I to go
On-comm, got snack, full Camelbak
Oh where am I to go

Ranger Pirate
BRR, '98-'01

Word has reached me that we lost Ranger T-Cloud back in October.

I can't even begin to tell you how many kinds of good people T-Cloud was.

Ranger Elvis has left the building for the last time. Heart attack, age 45. A.k.a. lokislittletoe.

Lost you too soon, bro. Rest easy.

Ranger Pirate,
BRR '98-01

...people with easy access to high rate-of-fire weapons and ample ammunition to cycle through them kill people.

Right now, this Oaklander's thoughts are with those affected by the latest tragic gun massacre on the Virginia Tech campus. We get our dead one or two at a time. 20 22 30+ people gunned down at once staggers the imagining.

EDIT: In a comment, I brought up the idea of banning the sale of ammunition within the city limits and I think that's a good idea. Do I think it'll solve all of our violent crime problems? No, but I do think it'll make accessing ammunition harder if people have to drive out to some unincorporated section of the county and there's a limit on how much ammo can be bought at one time. And their driver's license should be recorded if it isn't already.

Making ammo harder to come by would mean an absolute decrease in the number of gunshots I hear in my neighborhood and deaths reported in my local papers. And I think that's a burden law-abiding hunters and target shooters should willing shoulder for society's benefit.

RE-EDIT: THIRTY-ONE FUCKING PEOPLE SLAUGHTERED IN ONE GO!!!!

FUCK YOU IN THE EAR, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION!!! JIM ZUMBO GOT IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!!!

I'm going to go sit and stare at the wall for a little while now.

Deepest sympathies on your loss.