San Antonio police, who continued to apologize Thursday for storming the wrong Southwest Side duplex, said they'll meet next week to review the foul-up that sent an innocent man to a hospital with minor injuries.
Officials said SWAT team members apparently were confused in the darkness Wednesday night by the cluster of look-alike dwellings in the 5900 block of Fairshire Road, even though officers spent two days watching a duplex there in an effort to serve a warrant on a man they suspected of dealing drugs.
"Everything was done by procedure," Deputy Police Chief Rudy Gonzales said of the SWAT unit that won state honors the past two years. "It was just an honest mistake made by SWAT officers at the location."
We have a show already called America's Dumbest Criminals. Anyone think of doing a show called America's Most Imbecilic Cops?
You know, I hate to admit this because it makes me sound like a cold-hearted bastard, but I wasn't one of those who grieved in spectacular and overwrought when Kurt Cobain died. I remember hearing about it while driving in my car, and listening to a Chicago rock station, and I was appalled at the way the disc jockeys and the callers were bemoaning his loss. From what was being said on the radio, one would have thought that it was the disciples of Socrates lamenting his encounter with hemlock.
For my part, my reaction then was my reaction now: I didn't revel in the fact that Cobain was dead, and I am generally deeply sorry to hear of the death of any human being, but I also thought him to be one seriously f*cked up individual.
And now, my suspicions are confirmed by this article which gives some of the more . . . er . . . interesting details of Kurt Cobain's diary. What is also interesting is the effort the media went through to try to excise from its reporting some of those interesting details.
Stomach the following passage, if you can:
The quality press faced a bigger dilemma as they lassoed the Cobain cash cow. Kurt's status as a cult figure guarantees a certain uncritical readership, and who wants to mess with that? Thus Newsweek, which put Cobain on its Oct. 28 cover, perhaps wisely neglected to draw readers' attention to diary entries like this: "I am a male age 23, and I'm lactating." While other men have sexual fantasies about voluptuous women, "when I close my eyes I see lizards & flipper babies, the ones who were deformed because their mothers took bad birth control pills. I'm seriously afraid to touch myself."
As icky as that is, Newsweek surely found something far more disturbing, in a list it published alongside other anodyne extracts (on subjects like music and the evils of heroin addiction.) "I like punk rock. I like girls with weird eyes. I like passion. I like to feel guilty for being a white American male . . ." What the cover-boy also included in that list, but some censor snipped: "I like to make incisions into the belly of infants then ---- the incisions until the child dies."
Now, why in the hell were we not told this by Newsweek? Is it because it didn't find the passages of enough prurient interest? Surely not--what could be more sick than Cobain wanting to perform horrific acts like those described in the last paragraph? Is it because Newsweek thought the passages should not be given any publicity? Well then, why give the entire work publicity in the first place? All they did was cause people to want to go to bookstores and purchase the diary, and find the disgusting content for themselves (I saw the diary myself when I went to Barnes & Noble last week. It was displayed prominently at the front of the store). In addition, by not including the more controversial (to put it mildly) content, Newsweek seems to have been determined to whitewash Cobain's demented fantasies out of existence.
And that last part is really interesting. Is it any wonder whatsoever that so many celebrities believe themselves to be above public approbation and condemnation? They have so many enablers working for them. Some are in their personal retinue, and they get paid to foster and foment the various bizarre and incomprehensible dream worlds that celebrities live in. But others are in the media, and they act as unpaid hacks--seeking to excuse, justify, or just plain cover up the worst kind of behavior and thought imaginable.
Wasn't the thing that finally killed Kurt Cobain the fact that so many people were unaware of his serious mental and emotional problems in the first place? How many others are in that state in the celebrity world, and are having their behavior enabled by others? And even more importantly, how many non-celebrities and former/present Nirvana fans will be allowed, by this whitewashing, to believe Cobain to be someone to be idolized and looked up to--thus perhaps increasing the chances that they might embrace his demons instead of seeking to avoid them? I know I sound like an old dandy saying all of this, but Kurt Cobain was not someone to be looked up to. He was not someone to be idolized. To the extent that he had a musical gift (and I, for one, found him to be one of the the most un-gifted musicians of any genre), the celebrity that gift led him to attaining helped fuel his downward spiral.
Yes, I regret the fact that Kurt Cobain died. And I certainly regret the manner in which he died.
Even more than that, however, I regret the manner in which he lived, and the life that was denied him. If Kurt Cobain's writings are now to be popularized, it would do well for all of us to focus on the sickness that surrounded his psyche for much, if not all of his life. Ignoring it won't make it go away.
Scientists in Rockville are to announce this morning that they plan to create a new form of life in a laboratory dish, a project that raises ethical and safety issues but also promises to illuminate the fundamental mechanics of living organisms.
J. Craig Venter, the gene scientist with a history of pulling off unlikely successes, and Hamilton O. Smith, a Nobel laureate, are behind the plan. Their intent is to create a single-celled, partially man-made organism with the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life. If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist.
My question is why in the hell am I not in on this matter? I always wanted to be a deity, to create life, watch it grow and mature, and then to compel it to bow down and worship me. Instead, here I am, a normal person, just standing on the sidelines whilst others play Jehovah? Pourquoi?
I promise no floods. No destruction of tiny little Sodoms and Gomorrahs. I'll even let the new organisms eat apples, if that is what they truly desire. Just prostrate yourselves before me, and all of this I shall give to you.
Now you tell me: What is so terrible about this deal?
I know that the reason I was asked to contribute stuff here while Emily is away is so that I can give you lovely and delightful stories like this one to peruse, and then leave you to wonder what in hell has happened to society.
I mean, come on! Exhibitionism can't get much worse than this, can it?
Matthew Engel. What the crap are you still doing here, you limey sleazeball? I thought we'd deported you.
The elite American press prides itself on its old-fashioned inaccessibility: grey type, don't-read-me layout, and, on a bad day, totally impenetrable prose.
Impenetrable? IMPENETRABLE? I'd like to penetrate you and your tiny Wanker ass with a rocket launcher, you Euroweenie dirtbag. Now here's some penetrable prose for you:
Because I continue to fear the threat of The Rusty Knife let me take the opportunity to link to this excellent article on the influx of technology in the classroom--a positive development which would be that much more powerful if only it were accompanied by a decline in political correctness, and an increase in school choice.
Or so says that hairy-assed feminist and kangaroo-fucker, Germaine Greer.
"Men are much more trouble than they're worth"..
No, they ain't. I like 'em hot and horny. And lots of them.
"Sisters are doing it for themselves".
Not all of us, sister. Vibrators are no substitute for a nice, fat prick.
"Discarded males of all ages loiter in the streets, looking for trouble to get into and finding no lack of it".
Yeah? and discarded females are loitering in the opinion pages of the Wanker. Who gives a shit, fucktard?
"Male security guards shoot male football fans in Bratislava, male fans howl racist abuse and hurl chairs at each other, males train as suicide bombers, male heads of state stroll about discussing whether they could get away with another shooting war on the women and children of Iraq, and their male flunkies zoom around the world trying to talk other males into joining in".
And this is a bad thing?
"The Beltway Sniper turned out to be a man"..
And a towelhead. But don't bother to mention that, you cretin.
"And those "children" ejected from school for threatening to kill their teachers are actually boys. It doesn't do to say so. A kind of mad squeamishness prevents us from quantifying the nuisance value of maleness, possibly because if you actually tell men that they are damned nuisances, they are likely to behave even worse".
Look here, Germaine. Why don't you go and have a lie down? You've been pumping out this sicko feminist bullshit for thirty years, you're like a stuck record. So why don't you go away with your nice big Mr. Softie, stick it up your vag, and give us all a break, y'know? We don't want need that feminist groove thing anymore. Go away, and drink plenty of beer. Or fuck off and die, you cunt.
