Here we are, still debating whether or not Darwin’s theory of evolution is a fundamental concept of biology — which likewise means we’re still debating what exactly to teach our kids about this trivial little topic. I vote for science over voodoo, but I don’t get a vote on the matter. That’s up to our State Board of Education.

Don’t get me wrong, you want to teach your kids that God made modern humans a few thousand years ago? Cool. Homeschool them. That’s your right, so use it. Go crazy!

I don’t have a problem with any of you wackos until you start demanding that “alternative theories” be taught in public schools. Even the phrase “alternative theories” pisses me off. We all know what you mean there… unless you plan on covering the sacred legend of how the Flying Spaghetti Monster rubbed its noodly appendages together and created mankind out of a pair of tasty meatballs.

Hi there Bill Foster! Your ideas are shit and so is your face!

Yes, I thought I’d heard everything on this issue. Leave it to Bill Foster, who just recently left public office as an esteemed member of the St. Petersburg City Council, to open my eyes to a new series of arguments in favor of fairy tails. Bill has a few theories on biology, and as a lawyer, he’s fully qualified to share them in a letter he sent to the Pinellas School Board.

Quoting…

Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak. This is a slippery slope. One of the Columbine shooters wrote on his website, ‘You know what I love? Natural selection! It’s the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.

Really? That’s what you’re starting with? Columbine? Fuck me.

To be fair, Bill isn’t all wrong. Kids do have an excuse to believe in natural selection, because it’s true. As for the Columbine murderers, I thought it was all Marilyn Manson’s fault. Sorry, I shouldn’t kid about this. Since I’m an evolutionist, I am likely to go on a shooting rampage, if I’m following Bill’s reasoning fully.

His next point? Darwinism is responsible for Hitler. That’s right.

Adolph Hitler duped an entire generation using Darwin’s evolution. He sought to preserve the favored race in the struggle for survival.

Well, now if I argue with the guy I’ll be labeled a fucking fascist. Nice work! You know what, fuck it. I’m not gonna get into Hitler, Jesus. Godwin’s Law is still safe and sound, though.

Eh, there’s three pages of bullshit in this letter to struggle though, but I’ll leave you with this final nugget.

The beautiful thing about this country is that we all have a right to believe in whatever we choose.

Twisting this into a First Amendment issue is disgusting. You can say what you want, and you can worship what you want, and you can protest what you want. But really, we cannot believe in whatever we want.

If I believe I am John F. Kennedy and only look nothing like him because of extreme surgery to hide my true identity, that’s not alright. That means I’m insane. Now, insane people have rights too, but they don’t get their ethos taught in our schools.

Granted, that would make school more fun!

To bring it back around to Bill’s horseshit: It’s not alright to believe that genocide is morally correct. It’s not alright to believe that killing your classmates and then yourself is a smart way to deal with teenage angst. And it’s not alright to expect Genesis to be taught to children in publicly funded schools just because you believe in it.

• 5 Comments

It takes something special to pry me out of my apparent blogging sabbatical: A news item in which a kid punched his mom after she killed his Halo 3 network connection and subsequently gets taken to juvi after the parents call the coppers.

God bless you, Indian River County, for allowing this to happen.

The official account of the story is sadly lacking specific gaming details and statistics, but we do know that the kid’s parents told him to shut off his game and Mom pulled the Wireless Adapter out of the Xbox after he refused. The dude went off like an enraged Brute, failed to find the adapter, and then charged his mom and gave her a serious melee attack directly in the face — which conveniently helped him fulfill the “Up Close and Personal” achievement.

He finally retreated to the cover of his bedroom and camped there until Sheriff deputies forced him out. Fucking campers.

Seriously though, I’ve been searching all the wire-services for any of the really important details. Was he in matchmaking? Was it a ranked match? Was he in a team-based ranked match? Was he about to improve his rank after that last killing spree, only to see it all negated after bailing on the game? These are the questions that the media and the Indian River Sheriff should be asking.

As a moderately poor yet heavily addicted Halo 3 player myself, I totally sympathize with the little dude. Granted, the little bastard has probably teabagged my corpse with too much glee, but this doesn’t change the fact that you simply don’t fuck with somebody playing Halo at certain key moments.

On the other hand, if the child was only playing the campaign single-player on Easy then he’s a fucking little brat.

• 1 Comment

This news is a tad stale, yes, but bringing it to your attention sooner would have been just too painful. I wasn’t ready to face it. I’m still not ready, come to think of it.

City Councilman Bill Foster says the city withdrew its funding from the Santa Parade and other co-sponsored events as part of budget cuts. He describes the Santa Parade as a want, not a need.

WTF??!!!1one! Santa, a want? Is this Bill Foster a fucking nihilist? I remember Mayor Rick Baker talking about everything that would be affected by the budget cuts our state leaders recklessly imposed on us, but I don’t remember a goddamn thing about telling Santa to fuck off.

Here’s how it works, elected officials: Santa brings the presents to all the little children. If we don’t invite Santa to be in the parade (something that has a 79-year precedent) then he won’t come, and we won’t get any presents. Unacceptable! I haven’t been good this entire year for nothing, you swine!

Hopefully the Lions Club cult can raise more money than they already do for this parade and save the day. Hell, somebody call the Scientologists! They have money, they’re right down the street now… but do they reject the existence of Santa Claus?

• 3 Comments

When I first heard that President Bush was coming to PPlowtown today, I assumed it was part of a disaster-relief program — like when he visited New Orleans a few months after it was destroyed.

But no. It turns out that Dubya is coming to collect cash for the GOP — a reverse-relief visit, if you will. A paltry $25,000 per person not only gets you lunch at Brent Sembler’s house (son of the penis pumping Mel Sembler), but a chance to watch The Leader of the Free World eat his food.

(Ah, Mel Sembler. There’s a lot to say about this guy, but now is not the time. Our editor demands that we have a competent lawyer under retainer before we go too deep on the former ambassador, GOP fundraiser, and shopping center magnate.)

Some of the details included in the Times article about the President’s visit are interesting. For instance, did you know that Michael’s On East is doing the catering? Or that Redman Steele Floral Design is in charge of all floral needs? This is no ordinary lunch. It’s fuckin’ catered!

Imagine hosting the President in your home, mansion, whatever. Really think about that. I mean, besides the possibility that a major crisis occurs while he’s in the same room with you, forcing Dick Cheney to remotely initialize W’s implanted cybernetic mind control system, it’d be pretty cool. But other than that, what’s the highest honor the Commander-in-Chief could perform as a house guest?

I’ll tell you: The President making a poop in your bathroom.

Think of the plaque that you could put on the wall above the toilet the next day. “The President of the United States of America took a mean shit right here on October 12, 2007. Yeehaw!”

I’m not sure on the protocol for this, though. From a security standpoint, is that even allowed? Would Secret Service have to accompany him? As long as he doesn’t stop up the thing, I think it’s probably fine. Just need to arrange for nothing but Mexican food on the menu and it’s practically a done deal.

topherchris would like to apologize for another long absence from The Splog. Ever since Halo 3 came out he’s been busy finding new and inventive ways to die. He’d like to propose the creation of a loose-knit clan of St.Petersblog readers in Xbox Live. If you’re interested, comment or email your gamertag. His gamertag is “yay topherchris” and he is indeed sensitive about his low gamerscore, even though he just made a new account after facing technical difficulties. No teabagging, please.

• 2 Comments

A reliable source tells me that USF has a football team and that they’re ranked 6 in the nation. Wait, which nation? America?! Weird, right? (That explains the green and gold freaks.)

Actually, I’m just playing dumb for you hipsters out there. Screw it: Watching the then-number 5 West Virginia Mountaineers get kicked directly in the cooter by the Bulls was the best thing on television last Friday night. It had everything - a sold-out stadium, a national TV audience, and substandard SAT scores.

At least that’s what the head coach of the University of Alabama said yesterday about the Bulls. Which, when you think about it, is a great way for a coach to take a shot at a rising team. As in, “yeah, you’re good, unbeaten, ranked high, but… Our defensive line can prove Liouville’s Theorem much faster than yours can.” Macho man.

I hesitate to reproduce the entire actual quote, but Alabama coach Nick Saban is just the kind of guy who deserves to be heard: “There’s a significant amount of players who don’t qualify at some schools and they end up being pretty good players at some other schools. I think there are six guys starting on South Florida’s defense who probably could have gone to Florida or Florida State but Florida and Florida State couldn’t take them… I feel like if we do a good job of recruiting here, we ought to be able to get good football players who are qualified who are the kind of people, character and attitude-wise, that we want to represent an institution like this. And we know that there are going to be some occasions that we have to play against some teams that don’t have to do that.”

Saban’s weak comment probably would have slipped completely under the radar if Jim Leavitt (that’s the USF head coach, emo kid) and the USF players themselves didn’t blow an O-ring over them. Considering they just got called stupid by a guy in Alabama, I can respect that.

USF Senior Nick Capogna, for one, is ready to lay it all on the line. “I got a good SAT score, had a good GPA in high school. If he wants to look at transcripts, I’ll give him mine gladly,” he menacingly growled. That’s right, I got my fuckin’ transcripts on the side of my helmet, bitch!

This got me thinking. Why don’t we just do away with all the pushing and shoving and tackling and settle all this the civilized way: Sudoku.

topherchris considers the USF Bulls to be the exclusive collegiate football home-team of downtown St. Petersburg due to their extensive campus there, despite all other evidence to the contrary.

• 4 Comments

The Discovery Channel has a show called Dirty Jobs. Maybe you’ve seen it. The host works alongside some of the bravest individuals earning a steady paycheck today — pig farmers, garbage collectors, sewer inspectors, and something called a baby chicken sexer — performing some of the worst, dirtiest jobs you can imagine.

In a gross oversight by the show’s producers, none of the Tampa Bay (ZOMG DEVIL!11) Rays coaching staff have ever been featured on this program.

We know it’s a bad job to have (if you’re living in a cave with only access to the Splog: a quick look at the standings can probably illuminate that better than anything), but pitching coach James Hickey literally showed us that his job was driving him to drink. Heavily.

He’s going… going… gone:

Just after leaving the Trop, he smashed into a batboy’s pickup yet didn’t stop (batboys get zero respect these days), then had to get pulled out of his vehicle after a struggle with the cops a ways down I-275.

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s DUI, hit and run, and resisting arrest. It’s also the most explosive play the (ZOMG DEVIL!11) Rays have had all season.

Said the police: Hickey “had a strong odor of alcohol, his speech was slurred and he swayed and appeared disoriented.” I thought that was the completely natural state of Rays coaches and players, but apparently not.

Yes, I get down on the Rays. Not a big baseball guy. But if they can keep this up going into next season — some more DUIs, car accidents, maybe even a hostage situation — they’ll have a new fan for life. Build on this one, guys.

• 0 Comments

Being Floridians, we understand that things like voting, elections, and democracy aren’t easy. Heck, I don’t need to tell you that these concepts are much more complex than most people will ever know — we’re still trying to figure it all out and we’re still failing. Maybe citizens of Ohio understand this too, but most of the country (nay, The World) just seems to think it’s sooo easy. Like you could just pick your favorite person, count ‘em up, and declare a winner. As if.

It seems like only yesterday that electronic voting was the wave of the future — a future with no paper trails and hackable machines. But hey, details. You can play Ms. Pac Man on a Diebold machine if you get bored in the middle of the judicial section of a ballot. A plain sheet of paper can’t do that, France!

Anyways, the complaints were so strong that Tallahassee was forced to act. No more pinball voting machines for you.

Earlier this week, four companies demoed their stuff, each vying for the opportunity to make Florida the laughingstock of the world all over again. The good news: Paper ballots. We’re talking real paper here, people. No word on the special pens being filled with disappearing ink or not, but either way it’s an improvement.

After it’s all said and done, this is a band-aid on a ripped artery.

Yes, paper trails are good. Bravo, we’ve figured out paper, something invented around 3000 BC. You’ll mark the ballot manually, it gets slid into a magic machine that makes sure there are no stray marks anywhere, and does the rest. Which brings us to the problem. It’s still a closed-system proprietary electronic device that’s doing the actual counting.

Think about the distinction between “touch screen voting” and what we have here. The problems with what we called “touch screen voting” had nothing at all to do with the touch screen. A touch screen is, in fact, a superior user-interface to making marks on paper. It’s easy to pick the choice you want, it takes you through every race, and it even warns you if you accidently skipped any.

The biggest issue with the touch screen systems were their paperless nature — so the obvious question is: Why not make a touch screen that also has a paper trail? You’d use your fingers, a filled-in ballot prints out, you double-check it if you like, drop it in the box, and get your sticker.

I have to say, I’m perplexed at the touch screen being vilified. As an input device, it’s perfect. The fact that every single one of them prevented any chance of a real recount is mysterious, but nobody has ever complained about a touch screen and actually had a beef with the touch screen itself. Just fix the fact that every single damn one of them used black magik to count votes, and we’d have the best of both worlds.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this, Dear Readers. Am I too down on our attempts to get this voting stuff figured out, or are we, The Democracy People, still screwing up?

• 2 Comments

Apparently, the cops aren’t content with destroying homes of homeless people — now they’re macing ducks.

I love Kenneth City. Really. Like I love cheesedick local TV news reports.

• 0 Comments

On January 29, you will have the power to cut your property taxes in a historic way. Floridians will once again live the American dream of home ownership and have the freedom to follow their dreams of moving to a different home better suited to their needs.

– Governor Charlie Crist

Poor Charlie. All that fancy publicity about “Florida’s Largest Tax Cut Evar” all depended on the citizens of Florida voting to add an amendment to our constitution making the super-kick-in-the-balls homestead exemption the law — something that is certainly not a shoe-in even under the best of circumstances.

Now a judge has gone and nixed the entire amendment from the ballot because the “language was unclear.” Well, duh. Have you ever read an amendment to anything that wasn’t unclear? Seriously though, this should be a pretty big deal to people who are pissed about losing city services for the promise of this ginormous cut that will enable us all to live the American blah, blah, blah.

To be totally fair and clear, and we here at The Splog are nothing if not totally fair and clear: This isn’t the end of this thing by a long-shot. The language will get reworked, retooled, rewritten, and get helpful diagrams — whatever it takes. But still, tax-cut fanatics should be embarrassed, and the public at large may lose confidence in this entire enterprise if they can’t get their act together soon.

To be continued.

• 0 Comments

Campaign fact checking seems like the trendy sport right now for the people who give us the news. Two of the best examples of this would be the St. Petersburg Times PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post Fact Checker.

Looking at them both side-by-side can be surprising. Sure, they’re both looking to do different things for different audiences. It’s no contest, though. The Washington Post gets spanked here. Good job, Timesland!

(I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the use of Pinocchio heads as a truth scale, but… Well, cute.)

Having said that, I have a few problems with this genre of journalism.

Is it not one of the primary jobs of the media to be de facto fact checkers?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not singling out either newspaper or any media conglomerate here. But I’d find it slightly embarrassing to have a new online presence as part of my journalistic empire which is dedicated to “find[ing] the truth in the presidential campaign.” This is a new idea? You’re not doing this everywhere else?

Also, this reaffirmation of facts seems to be limited to tracking the truthfulness of presidential candidates — not the guy who already has the job, among many other important individuals. Clearly it’s one thing to call a lie what it is when a President says it, and it’s something else when somebody else says it. But it absolutely should not be any different.

The candidates need not worry, however. As soon as one of them is sworn-in, all the fact checking will stop.

• 4 Comments

Tornadoes. Cyclones of death or distributor of super strength? You decide.

Mike Winters sets a trap by holding his RV aloft while waiting for Lex Luthor to walk underneath it. Hey, he’s Superman, not Geniusman.

• 0 Comments

Florida’s bad-ass Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner (short title: Vigilante Commissioner) busted some skulls in St. Pete this week with the arrest of some punk who thinks it’s cool to run an unregistered telemarketing operation. Charles Bronson says that’s not cool at all.

Our bro may be getting too old for a retaliatory killing spree of violent criminals, but I still feel safer. You unlicensed lowlifes out there calling people to sell timeshares better watch the fuck out.

• 0 Comments

Oops, too late.

Lyrics and vocals by Andrew Meyer.

• 10 Comments

I got none. And I waited for a while, too.

• 0 Comments

A PSTA bus happens to crash through trees and a utility pole before finally smashing through the front of an Amscot on Central (You and Your Runaway Bus are OK with Us!). Driver error? Mechanical failure? Nobody knows yet, but the authorities are pretty sure that the accident didn’t involve a terrorist who rigged the bus with explosives and looked exactly like Dennis Hopper.

Details. The key point of this story isn’t the incident itself. No, it’s the stunning quote from one Gary Mohler, an Army retiree who witnessed the spectacular, must-see, event of the year.

“It looked like something out of that movie Speed, the one with the runaway bus.”

Yeah, cause there was a bus involved. Same exact thing. Oh wait, he meant Speed 3…

Is this what our society has been reduced to? Where everything that ever happens has to have a pop-culture reference? In the far future, will we only be able to communicate with one another regarding our experiences and feelings by relating them to shared entertainments?

“Dude, waiting at this bus stop is just like something out of Speed.”

“After my son committed suicide, I totally felt just like Britney must have after the VMAs.”

“Man, 9/11 looked like something straight out of that Oliver Stone movie World Trade Center, the one about 9/11.”

What’s worse to me is that Gary is an Army vet. Come on, man, you’ve seen some shit, right? Tell us some of your Army stories. Or should we just watch Full Metal Jacket?

• 0 Comments