Seriously. Who takes a man’s Rasta cane?  In fact, who takes anything from a man named Big Charlie?  Weak.

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You like how I put that dude’s name right in the headline? That’s gonna bring in a Google snipe or two, just you wait. Yes, Google sniping - the blog phenomenon whereby people or organizations set with vanity Google alerts get pinged about something on your blog, and then leave a comment that is so contextually blind that it could only come from someone who has never actually seen your blog before.

Examples? Why of course. There’s the dude who commented on this post about Segways, who I imagine has a Google alert set for the word “Segway” and makes a minor hobby of commenting on blogs wherever that word appears. And then there was the time I mentioned the one nutjob responsible for there being a FOIA record for the FBI’s investigation of a local case of spontaneous combustion. Yes, that dude actually contacted us. He likes to write in all caps, which you know, means he’s totally not crazy. He actually runs some interesting sites that we might mention. I’m sure we’ll hear from that dude again. HEY BUDDY!

Back to the matter at hand. Times education writer Jeffrey Solochek recently conducted an email interview with new Education Commissioner Eric Smith, the contents of which he posted in the Times‘ education blog. The title, “Smith Dodges on Science Standards,” is a bit of an understatement.

Now, nature and technology provide all kinds of examples where distributed intelligence and processing are really swell things. Right this very moment hundreds of thousands of CPUs are donating spare cycles to help crunch data for the betterment of the world. Sure, some of them are being used to crack your database password and maybe send out a few emails about your penis here and there, but hey, why let a few rogue drones mess with my analogy?

I never really considered that the hive mind thing would be applicable to people like education commissioners. You know, people who get selected for those positions based on their ability to think independently, stand out from the crowd, apply their personal experience to situations, analyze them with singular intelligence and execute shit. I guess I was wrong.

The Borg are among us, and they have assimilated Eric Smith. Seriously, check the responses in the interview. It’s like Solochek is interviewing a chat bot with a special flair for having no opinion whatsoever. First question:

As a science teacher and department chair, how did you deal with the question of evolution in the classroom?

Given that it has been more than 30 years, I really couldn’t speak to the specifics of my lesson plans, but as Commissioner my goal is to prepare students as best as possible for whatever career or post secondary educational choices they may make.

Dude, what the fuck? I see, while your prior background as an educator might be considered one of those things that qualifies your to have your job, when it really comes down to it, all that experience is basically lost to the sands of time. Yeah, sorry Jeff, I really have no recollection of what I was even doing thirty years ago. Seriously, sometimes I have these really vivid dreams about sequins. I may have been a costume designer for Kenny Rogers. I’m just not sure. What’s clear is that my prior experience should in no way be expected to have a bearing on my current position.

Yeah, the rest of the interview is about as awesome as that. Solochek asks reasonable questions like, “Do you believe evolution should be taught in the science curriculum?”, and Smith consistently fails to have an opinion. Let’s not forget that the dude was a science teacher. At least be entertaining or something, dude. There are ways to be utterly spinelessly noncommittal without completely insulting the forum in which you’re being allowed to speak and the people who might give a shit what you actually think.

That is, of course, unless you’re a Borg drone, and then it’s fine. I mean, no one expects an individual Borg drone to really be able to speak at length as to the complex politics behind why it’s engaged in the process of destroying your culture. Resistance is futile, bitches.

Why even post that crap at all? I think it’s to Solochek’s credit as a sort of passive exposure of douchebaggery. It’s like, ok, if you’re going to be that way, then I want to place this in its proper context to illuminate just how ridiculous you sound, Smitty. I think it worked.

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If you’re anything like me, you totally spend hours trying to pimp your myspace and making sure that shit is as dope as can be. Because you are totally not as cool as me, however, you probably find yourself wondering where you can go locally to get your shit hooked up proper like. You may even find yourself looking at the shelf-o-cards at Evos for help, and today is your lucky damn day. If you head over there right this minute you can snag a MALFUNCTION card which contains the following:

1. MALFUNCTION
2. Want to add electricity to your myspace photos?
3. visit www.myspace.com/stevenarts

That’s right, enterprising St. Pete artist Steven will electrify your shit for you, ensuring your dominance in the realm of electrified spaces. Be warned, however, that your head will literally a splode from looking at his work - it is that flippin’ electrifying. Oh, and he may or may not be a Nazi… not sure about that part.

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It’s no Superbowl Shuffle, but I’m sure most semi-conscious residents of the Tampa Bay area have seen those swell ads for News Channel 8’s Bucs coverage. You know the ones with the awkwardly spliced flashes of Bucs players and staff going “yeah!” and “woo!” while we all get the quick edit, hand-held treatment from the camera. That makes it edgy, by the way.

While a Google search turns up nothing, there’s no way I’m the only one who noticed that the tag for that campaign “Fanatical Bucs Fans” is hilariously redundant. Like, dudes, where do you think the word “fan” comes from?

It’s not even your garden variety redundancy, like remarking that “the ice was frozen.” No, it’s worse than that. It’s like using the adjectival form of a noun to describe the noun from which the adjective was originally derived. Wait, it’s not even like that. It actually is that. High fives all around everybody. High fives. Hey, who just smacked my ass? Not cool, broski.

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So technically Florida is south of the south, somehow managing largely to avoid some of the continued racial turmoil the true south still suffers from. Except, while that all sounds good and dandy, it isn’t always true. In fact, we’ve covered lots of instances where the state, and the tampabay.com commenting public, sits squarely along southern racist party lines.

I’m sort of shocked that a press conference yesterday announced that we’re fixin’ to replace our racist state song, Old Folks at Home (more commonly known by the first line: The Swanee River). Well how about them apples?! Aren’t we just forward thinking and progressive! Unfortunately the 3 contenders fighting to replace it sound like a bad joke. Check them out for yourself here. Is this really the best people could come up with? How’d they pick these 3? Who the hell are the people that wrote them? Tell us more, press release:

Songwriters were encouraged to submit songs reflective of Florida. On October 1, 2007, 243 entries had been collected. A panel of six judges, experts in the music field, scored the entries in a process similar to The Grammy Awards. There were two evaluation periods. The first resulted in the top 20 and the second resulted in the top three.

Riiiight, just like the Grammys. Because, you know, if you say it was like the Grammys then our 3 choices must undoubtedly kick ass, right? I mean, they’re like the Grammys! Le sigh. Oh well, at least we get to vote to choose the one that sucks the least. And for the record, I’m going with Florida, My Home.

So back to the racist nature of the current state song. First scope the lyrics, then check out these fun facts:

• Stephen Foster wrote the song in 1851 to be performed by a troupe of “blackface” entertainers known as the Christy’s Minstrels (who paid the amazing sum of $15,000 for the rights to use it).
• Stephen Foster not only wasn’t from Florida, he never visited it once.
• In 1978 the chorus was changed from “Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary” to “Oh, brothers.”
• In addition to darkies, the song extols the virtues of the ol’ plantation and comically exaggerates (as only a white man can) African-American vernacular.

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Please everyone, remain calm. I have shocking news. It appears that for the second year in a row major problems are being reported with online sales of tickets to this year’s Florida Strawberry Festival. Apparently, the online ticketing system has been up and down all day as the crack team of developers over at OmniTicket figure out precisely how to provide the service that makes up half their name. Note to self: name company first, learn skills second.

Why, whatever could be the problem? Let’s find out. To the Strawberry Festival online ticketing system at once! Let’s see, oh,what’s this? A yes, the ubiquitous domain name mismatch security error. Rad. The SSL cert is for websales2.omniticket.com, but I’m trying to buy shit from omniticket.net. Excellent first impression. Teh ecommercez are hard.

Let’s just click through that. Act like it never happened. Ahem. Alright, bring on the web form . . . wait, what in the balls:

In order for you to purchase tickets, you must have the latest version of both Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® and Adobe® Flash® installed and enabled. To better serve you, we have implemented a Flash Player and Acrobat Reader detection system that will tell you exactly what you need to install before you can purchase tickets. Please note that OmniTicket Network USA, Inc. will not install any software onto your computer under any circumstance.

Oh no you didn’t. I am sensing some fail here. Serious fail. Fail with whiskers on it. Why in the name of Jakob Nielsen would anyone need Flash and Adobe Reader to use an online order form? Why do you hate blind people, OmniTicket? Why? Blind people like strawberries, too.

I love how they’ve “implemented a system” to sniff for applications. That makes perfect sense if by “implemented a system” they mean copied a code snippet from Dreamweaver.

Well, gee; I’m on a Mac and don’t have Acrobat since I don’t need it to read .pdfs, why the fuck else would I want it? Ok, fine, I’ll go get it. I really want me some tickets. Ok, so one 23.8MB download later, I am ready to experience the assuredly interactive basket of fucking awesome that will be my ticket buying experience.

What the hell? It’s still telling me I don’t have Adobe Reader. Bullshit. Well, let’s look at the source. Oh, ok, we’ll just bypass the sniffer here by pasting in a link to the .swf page you’re supposed to end up at. Dear god. It’s a Macromedia Flex application. You deployed a Macromedia Flex application - poorly - for the Strawberry Festival? Seriously, there are two ticket options. Also, people in wheelchairs need to call the box office. No online tickets for you.  FAIL. Blind people still hate you. People with Macs hate you. And apparently sighted people on PCs can’t figure this shit out either.

Please note that this really shouldn’t reflect on the Strawberry Festival. The strawberries are just blameless victims in all this. *sniffle*

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You know, my never-ending quest to find the place to see and be seen in St. Petersburg has taken me all over this special little city. Do you remember when they were running that super secret club out of the bathroom at Ratchada? I do. It’s totally played now, but you should go in there and check the bathrooms anyway. It’s like some gilded, half-controlled explosion of art deco. Who knows, maybe it’s still going on. Just ask one of the servers if “the prawns are feeling belligerent” (*wink*). If she says yes, then you know it’s on like hipster Donkey Kong. Last time I was there, they were handing out hallucinogenic toads and Amy Winehouse was line dancing to early Kraftwerk.

Anyway, apparently the next thing I have to check out is The Prohibition Club that’s run out of the Gayle Hotel down on Beach. What’s that? Make with the web copy, Jeeves:

With a nod to the Roaring Twenties - we present: The Prohibition Club - St. Petersburg, Florida’s newest world class social club. Located in the historic Grayl’s Hotel on Beach Drive, you’re right in the center of all that’s happening, yet a step away from the ordinary. The Prohibition Club - Thee place to see and be seen! Whether you are enjoying Packard’s Lounge or music and dancing, you will be surrounded by friends and business associates who share your appreciation for good company, and excellent service.

Lolwut? Er, I mean, dope! It’s so cool you need to put an extra e in “the” just to talk about it. The minute I saw this, I knew I had to check this place out. The website beckoned me. F. Scott Fitzgerald appeared before me and said, “Dude, it’s the shizznizzle.” Indeed, the Twenties, apparently they roared. Rawr. I figured there would be a cover; that’s ok. Writing this blog pretty much gets me on every list you can think of. I’m not sweating a cover.

Wait, what’s this? Membership application? Holy shit! $995 per year plus a one-time initiation fee of $2,500? Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell goes on in there, kids? You better have a crapload of absinthe and a historically accurate hologram of Ella Fitzgerald for that kind of money, and that’s just the beginning. Oh, who am I kidding? Judging by the quality of the website, I’m sure there are very large buckets of unadulterated awesome happening in there. It is “a vibrant social club,” after all. Vibrancy don’t come cheap.

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Sigh. Welcome to Amateurville. I’ve been pimpin’ the holiday festivities around town to encourage you good readers to get in the spirit, but dammit, I didn’t factor in that the city has a habit of screwing things up. Let’s take Saturday night for example. From both the city and Pier website I pasted the following:

Dec. 8 - The Bruce Watters Jewelers Lighted Boat Parade at The Pier.
The Pier, 800 2nd Ave. N.E. 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Holiday spirit and music fill the air as lighted and decorated boats cruise by The Pier and around the downtown waterfront. Free.

Dec. 8 - Tuba Christmas.
The Pier, 800 2nd Ave. N.E. Starting at approximately at 8:00 p.m. A tuba-musical holiday celebration. Free.

Sounds good, let’s throw in a stop by the Snow Fest ice skating rink in North Straub Park afterward and we’ll have a fine and festive evening.

Just like the kid in the picture at right, I had a sore ass at the end of the evening but it had nothing to do with the 12′ X 12′ “ice” rink. You see, for whatever damn reason that I just can’t explain, each time I think the city is going to pull up its big boy pants and do what other cities have been doing for ages they totally fuck it up.

We arrive at the boat parade just after 7, figuring we’ll have missed a late start but avoid the throngs. Wrong. Looks like the whole damn thing is over, no more boats. No more people. No more nothing. Awesome. I guess we’ll go down to the Pier to make sure we don’t miss the Tuba show. Wrong. Looks like both the city and the Pier site had it wrong (and the paper) and the shit was actually at 5:30. Perfect. Well, the ice rink must be at least worth watching for a few minutes. Wrong. What the hell is this? 100 plastic cutting boards snapped together? We’ve got a 12′ square that kids are basically walking on since it doesn’t seem to be the tiniest amount slippery. Fail.

Come on Spete. Are you even trying? If you screw stuff up during the year it is annoying, but passing. You fuck with my Christmas, though, and we’re going to have to go to blows.

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Just a friendly reminder that you’ve got lots of opportunities to relive the childhood you never had with the splendors and magic of the holiday season right here in the Spurg. Of course, if you’re lazy you could just take in Honky the Christmas Goose to get in the spirit, but you have to leave your house at some point. Why, this weekend alone you can enjoy any of the following christmasfuckingspirit-inducing activities:

Look at some friggin’ lights
Walk down Central and it will totally be a scene out of It’s a Wonderful Life. “Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, Emporium! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan!”

Buy some shit
Visit Artspace (above Craftsman Gallery) from 5:30 - 9 pm Saturday and buy some $5 artist-made ornaments with proceeds benefiting The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast.

Laugh at singing schmucks
From 5:30 - 7 pm Saturday spend your night laughing and pointing at a bunch of sissies singing holiday classics at North Straub Park.

Hate on rich people
Head to the Pier from 6:30 - 8:30 pm Saturday for the lighted boat parade. Spend the rest of the evening convincing yourself those people are in no way better than you. Bunch of rich snobs.

End your night with some dope music
8 pm at the Pier, time to get drunk and listen to a bunch of tubas playing Christmas music. Come on, you know you want to.Oh, and Creative Loafing put together a super extensive list of holidaytastic stuff, so check that shit.

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I forget how that saying goes, and it looks like Marva Dennard, the owner of local charter school Bishop Academy II, did too. I’m sure it was totally just a mistake in bookkeeping, but unfortunately the flattering photo at right seems to indicate she might have been recently arrested for grand theft in excess of $100,000. Oops! Time to find a new accountant!

Wait a second, there are a few more details in the story here… oh no. No no no. Marva, you didn’t! You stole $256,897 in scholarship money intended for low income and disabled students? Marva!

It looks like she defrauded the Department of Education out of the $256,897 by inflating student numbers, submitting scholarship applications with false tuition prices and submitting inflated fee schedules. Creative, I must admit, but also pretty clearly illegal. As it seems to be the case with every story we cover here, this requires a “but wait, there’s more!” Marva was smart enough to publicly appear as a well known community activist here in the ‘burg. Hell, she ran for city council! That certainly makes it hard for people to accuse you of any wrongdoing. But dammit, people, check the facts.

Rewind back to 2004 when Marva was arrested on charges of child abuse. Take note of the line about her stepping down at the end of that year, wonder how that worked out for her. Rewind a bit more to 2002 and this story examining both Bishop Academy II and Bethel Metropolitan Christian Academy and their sort of shady practice of being church-affiliated schools paid for by taxpayer money. Hmm… odd, sounds a lot like the source of the crime in question. Rewind a tad more to 1998 and this Time Magazine story about Rev. Henry Lyons, minister of St. Petersburg’s Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church (yup, the folks that started the Christian Academy) and the 82-page arrest affidavit full of charges of racketeering and grand theft. Of particular interest is the quote from one Marva Dennard, “a Bethelite and Lyons supporter.” Gee, where in the world could she have gotten that idea of starting a charter school to swipe state money with?

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Today, as you’re drinking way past your limit and just before you start doing shit you will seriously regret tomorrow, toast this day in Florida history.

December 7, 1918
Sidney J. Catts, Florida’s only Prohibition governor, called the Legislature into session to ratify the amendment to the U.S. Constitution that prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.

That’s right kids, not 90 years ago it was actually illegal for you and me to get our fade on. Can you imagine that shit? I most definitely would have either gone postal, or suicidal, or shat in my boss’ desk drawer if it weren’t for my beloved stash of the good stuff.

Now, that could be the end of the story, but no, our beloved Sidney J. Catts was notable for a few other things as well. You know, stuff like the fact he was sort of famous for his anti-Catholic and anti-black stance. I’m sure it was all just a misunderstanding, but he was actually quoted as referring to black residents of Florida as “an inferior race” and was Governer when two lynchings occurred in 1919, neither of which he seemed to be terribly troubled by. When the NAACP complained about these lynchings, Catts wrote denouncing the organization and blacks generally, declaring that “Your Race is always harping on the disgrace it brings to the state by a concourse of white people taking revenge for the dishonoring of a white woman, when if you would . . . [teach] your people not to kill our white officers and disgrace our white women, you would keep down a thousand times greater disgrace.” ( Colburn and Scher, Florida’s Gubernatorial Politics, 222.) .

Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for the brilliant Sidney J. Catts. Bro, this Milwaukee’s Beast is for you.

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Ladies and gentlemen, the FailGator. Dear Mr. Alligator, you fail at predation. Seriously, you can almost see the moment where he’s like, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

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Mark Maksimowicz runs an outfit called Green Armada, a public charity here in SP designed to help communities come together and efficiently and economically remove the tons of trash collecting along our coastlines and inland waterways. You know, important stuff. Stuff that’s good for the environment. And stuff that gets you named to People Magazine’s Heroes Among Us and now CNN’s Heroes.

So why should you or I care? Well, first because the dude is from St. Petersburg. Yay Spurg! And second because despite the fact that we are assholes and point out all the stuff that sucks about Florida, occasionally it is nice to stop and recognize when stuff is actually going right. And no, we’re not going all gay on you.So, let’s take a moment to soak in the numbers: $100,000 of his own savings, 70 volunteers and 25 tons of garbage yoinked from our waterways. And what the hell have you accomplished with your life?! Yeah, that’s right, Mark kicks your ass at everything. Mark wins. Mark wins at things you aren’t supposed to win at. Like yelling. Mark wins at yelling.UPDATECheck the comment on this post. Looks like these cats are up to 62 tons of trash and over 1,000 volunteers. Rad.

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What with all the arson going around these days, I thought it might be nice to remind everyone that St. Pete also happens to be the site for one of the country’s more noted cases of spontaneous human combustion. No, seriously. For those of you who haven’t read Bleak House in the past five minutes, spontaneous human combustion refers to the very X-files phenomenon in which the human body bursts into flames without any apparent ignition source. That pretty much sounds like a party to me, and would totally end up with you having Prof. Charles Xavier on speed dial were it not for the fact rendering the body fireproof does not seem to be one of the additional features of this whole deal. Bummer.

It was certainly a bummer in 1951 for Mary Reeser, who, after a long day of doing whatever the hell it was that she did, decided to put on her acetate sleeping gown, pop a couple sleeping pills, light up a smoke and pack it in for the night. Somehow, however, some utterly mysterious set of circumstances led to her slowly charring all night until she was discovered by her landlord, done burnded to a crisp. The room was relatively unharmed, which was a little weird considering that its occupant now resembled an ember wearing slippers. Who knows what could have caused this? Surely someone who watches a lot of CSI can help. Now someone hand me that bottle of ether and a cigarette, I’m going to need to be nice and relaxed if I’m going to figure out where that gas smell is coming from.

Speaking of the X-Files it’s pretty awesome that the FBI has an entire page devoted to this incident on their FOIA site. It’s doubly awesome that they erroneously say it happened in Miami. How weird is that link, by the way? It’s like totally outside the site’s regular directory structure. It’s like a one off or something, created for the one nutjob who actually busted out a FOIA request for FBI records dealing with spontaneous human combustion. The truth is out there, it’s just really difficult to navigate to.

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