Public Masturbation, Maricopa County Style

You have got to be kidding me.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio rolled out the tanks to take down a man suspected of cockfighting.

West Valley residents in the neighborhood are crying foul after armored vehicles, including a tank, rolled into their neighborhood to make the bust.

Neighbor Debra Ross was so worried she called 911 and went outside where a nearby home had its windows blown out, was crawling with dozens of SWAT members in full gear, armored vehicles and a bomb robot.

“When the tank came in and pushed the wall over and you see what's in there, and all it is, is a bunch of chickens,” Ross said.

In a massive show of force on Monday, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant and arrested the homeowner, Jesus Llovera, on charges of suspected cockfighting.

Llovera was alone in the house at the time of the arrest, and he was unarmed.

“I think taxpayers should be shocked,” said Robert Campus, Llovera’s attorney. Campus said he believes the operation costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Deputies had no probable cause to believe Llovera was armed or dangerous, according to Campus.

Campus said he believes the entire scene was basically a stage, to help actor Steven Seagal’s TV show, “Lawman.”

Seagal was riding in the tank.

The Sheriff’s Department has entered into a contract with Seagal and part of that contract gives Seagal carte blanche to go along with the sheriff as he arrests people.

Thousands of dollars in damages were made to the property and 115 birds were euthanized on the spot.

Llovera was convicted of a misdemeanor last year of attending a cockfight and has no history of owning weapons.

Yet the sheriff’s office said they had reasons to believe Llovera might be armed.

“We're going to err on the side of caution. We're going to make sure that we have the appropriate amount of force in case we do run into anything like that,” said Sgt. Jesse Spurgin.[emphasis mine]

I don't know where to begin.

Joe Arpaio. Steven Segal. Tanks and stormtroopers descending on an American neighborhood to wrangle a man who has never even been accused of harming another human being. TV cameras glorifying it all. And Sgt. Spurgin calls it "err[ing] on the side of caution".

This isn't funny. It isn't wacky. And it isn't what life in a free society looks like.

Whole story via Channel 5 KPHO.

The Simpsons Proudly Declares Cowardice

The Simpsons has a running gag in the opening credits where Bart repeatedly writes something pithy on the blackboard at school.

Here was last night's:

If you are not familiar with the recent South Park controversy, get caught up here.

I don't know what to make of the Simpsons statement. My initial interpretation is that the writers -- and not necessarily the FOX network -- admire South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker's courage, but admit they have none of their own, which is a decidedly odd message to advertise.

So far FOX has not commented, and judging by the implied message I assume they never will. Were I Stone or Parker, my response would have to be "Thanks... for nothing."

Munich Motel Sign: "Heisenberg Might Have Slept Here"

Any closeted fan of junky extreme TV science like SpikeTV's Deadliest Warrior (Tonight: who would win in a real-life fight between a 1st-Century Gallic Warrior and a tweeked Aerosmith roadie with nunchucks?!?) or ESPN's Sport Science (As this graph shows, the centripetal force of LeBron's dunk could literally kill a vampire!) will appreciate this cartoon from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (Click to enlarge.):

At One Point in Time, in Our Very Own Universe, Kanye West Did Something that Wasn't Totally Douche-y

Alex Leo at the Huffington Post interviewed "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about their thirteen years of being the funniest, most non-partisan satirists in America.

When asked about the varying perceptions about the show being either "conservative" or "liberal" in its messages, Parker responds:

"I look at it like this," Trey added. "I have a cat, I love my cat and it's like someone coming in and saying, 'Hey, is that cat a Republican or a Democrat?' He's my f---ing cat, leave him alone."

Over the years, Parker and Stone have been particularly aggressive (and most hilarious) when it comes to their jabs at the Hollywood community, but that focus has created a false perception in come circles that the duo fancy themselves as GOP-ers. Absolutely untrue, they say:

"Ripping on Republicans is not that fun for us only because everyone else does it," Matt explained. "It's so much more fun for us to rip on liberals only because nobody else does it..."

..."There's something uniquely aggravating about the smugness of liberal Hollywood," Matt said. "You have to laugh at Alec Baldwin when he gets political. You have to. He is an amazing actor, he may even be a great guy, but that shit is funny. Sean Penn getting on TV on CNN and talking about politics, Sean Penn running around Katrina and Haiti that is funny. That's all. That's f---ing funny. And we're going to make fun of you, Sean Penn."

Leo then asked which celebrity had the "craziest reaction out of any they mocked".

"Well the craziest was probably Kanye [West] last year. We thought we would be more like 'Holy shit should I get a body guard? Should I get a gun?' and instead the next day he wrote in all caps 'YEAH YOU GUYS ARE RIGHT. I'M SORRY,'" Matt said in wonder.

"We were like 'Dude, what?' and for the first time it made us feel bad. If Sean Penn is like, 'Hey what do they think they're doing,'" Trey said in a voice halfway between Cartman and Penn, "We're just like, 'Hey dude, f--k you.' But for someone to actually say, 'Yeah it really hurt my feelings and I really should look at myself,' it's kind of like punching the kid and then he just sits there and cries."

Don't beat yourself up too much, fellas. If there's ever been a kid who desperately needs a punch to the gut, it's Kanye. A guide to the episode here.

Part-Time Athletes of the Northern Hemisphere, Unite!

[UPDATE added below]

The casual observer might have thought that everything that can be done while skiing is already an Olympic sport. Fast skiing, slow skiing, drunken skiing, weird Princess-Toadstool-from-Super-Mario-Bros-2 levitation-trick skiing, "Look-Ma!" skiing, Nordic thug life skiing -- it's all there. But somehow, somewhere between "What if we shoot rifles on skis?!" and "What if we ski on flat terrain for hours?!", no one ever thought -- until Vancouver 2010 -- "What if we race?"

And thus Ski Cross was born.

Skicross [sic?] pits four racers through a course of banked turns and washboard jumps that lends itself to close contact.

"That gives you eight poles, 12 edges, and guys are racing down a course with huge jumps up to 100 feet through the air," said Errol Kerr, a New Yorker who competed for Jamaica.

Granted, those three numbers that Kerr emphatically tossed out mean nothing to me, but I've never been anywhere with eight poles and not enjoyed myself. (See what I did there?)

Honestly, I find almost nothing about the games compelling, but the top-notch (and never-ending) network coverage with all our favorite faces could make a darning convention seem interesting, so I've watched more of these Olympics than I could possibly explain away with a just-out-of-reach remote. It's like Tool Academy is suddenly being hosted by President Clinton, or Bruce Willis is starring in a Kevin Smith "film".

It also doesn't hurt that the US is making a surprisingly good showing, or that our National Snow Bunny reminds us that Michael Phelps looked like a homeless meth addict from the neck up. Now if only we could go back to the days when the Olympic Games provided a stage for a proxy war in place of soldiers on the ground. Unfortunately, I don't see the Afghan Olympic Team giving us a Miracle on Ice opportunity any time soon.

UPDATE: In light of the hoopla surrounding the US ice-hockey team's win over Canada yesterday, I find it necessary to quote a Facebook status update:

"Miracle on Ice 1980" is to "US v CAN 2010" as "Gandalf" is to "Judge Harry T Stone".

And that, Alanis, is Irony

I didn't watch the Super Bowl. I have a rare genetic aversion to post-season NFL games called "being a Kansas City Chiefs fan". Plus, there are precious few diversions in life to which I'm willing to commit four straight hours, and staring at a glowing box isn't one of them.

Thankfully, the unshaved girl-power dames over at Jezebel had nothing better to do. Watch with glee as they complain about commercials that portray women as complainers.

A couple choice quotes ([sic]s abound):

Amazing how there is no personal responsibility from the male characters in these commercials "being told what to do" maybe if men paid rapt attention when we were speaking or showed some leadership as the men of the house they wouldn't have to be marketed to as such passive aggressive, irresponsible babies.

And:

Yeah, asshole. You deserve a big, gas-sucking car for DOING SHIT YOU SHOULD ALREADY BE DOING. It's called being a grow up! You think women don't have endless boring work meetings or that maybe birthing that kid was super fun?

Hat tip to the tireless SugarFree.

Man Outruns 12,000-Foot Tall Elephant, Makes Movie

Al Gore's advocacy film about the potential dangers of global climate change won an Academy Award.

Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy, being called "the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted [in the struggle against climate change]" by the Nobel committee.

Al Gore recently appeared on the cover of Newsweek as a 21st-Century Isaac Newton and was called an "Eco-Prophet" and "The Thinking Man's Thinking Man".

And Al Gore thinks the temperature at the center of the Earth is "several million degrees":

Conan O'Brien: Now, what about ... you talk in the book about geothermal energy...

Al Gore: Yeah, yeah.

Conan: ...and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that's generated from the core of the earth...

Al: Yeah.

Conan: ...to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?

Al: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot...

National Review Online blogger John Derbyshire goes ahead and tidies up the science for us laymen:

The temperature at the earth's core ... is usually quoted as 5000 degrees Celsius, though these guys claim it's much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees.

To illustrate the enormity of Gore's wrongness, his claim is mathematically identical to saying the average height of an African Elephant is 12,000 feet, or that the fastest a human has ever run a mile is 0.223 seconds.

Did I know off the top of my head that the center of the Earth is actually around 5000 degrees? Of course not. But the spot on my mantle where there isn't an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize, and a framed copy of Newsweek serve as my excuse.

What's Al's?

Check out the whole Conan clip at YouTube here.

I'm Thankful for Howard Hesseman

Has there ever been a television series that didn't air the obligatory Thanksgiving episode, where everyone in the peer group is somehow (wackily!) prevented from having dinner with their actual family, and instead spends it with the rest of the (wacky!) cast?

From Cheers to Friends (a multiple-repeat offender) to Felicity, the recipe is a stalwart, and I guarantee if your DVR keeps even moderately busy this week, you'll catch at least one of your new favorite shows dusting it off again.

Fortunately, thanks to Al Gore's Internets, everyone on earth can bask in the glory of the WKRP in Cincinnati "Turkeys Away" episode. For those enslaved by IT overlords who refuse you access to Hulu.com, whet your beaks here, then check it out from home.

Learn all about the first Thanksgiving here.

Learn how to say "thanks" in two dozen languages here.

Read Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation here.

And remember the words of Johnny Carson:

Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then they discover once a year is way too often.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Not My Father's Crimefighters

The Guardian Force has protected Empire City from dangerous criminals for nearly seven decades. We are the shining legacy of Captain Freedom, the tireless bane of Red Leader, and the stalwart champions of liberty.

But in my absence, the Guardian Force has been paralyzed by the breakup of Jon and Kate.

BrainChild foiled my V-Chip settings soon after I left for the hospital. In addition to TLC -- home of Jon & Kate Plus 8 -- I strictly enforce a no-exceptions block on HGTV, E!, SpikeTV, VH1, and every last cursed incarnation of MTV inside the super-secret Guardian Fortress; now Ultragirl, Viking Warrior, and Frogman are loading up the TiVo with The Hills, Rock of Love II, and My House is Worth What? before I can get back.

Unsurprisingly, I was notified of the mutiny by The Human Mole.

Still to be explored is Jon Gosselin's potential -- or potential threat -- as as a superhero.