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Thursday, June 28, 2007

Murphy’s Law

I got a big bang out of an AP article this morning. NBC’s “Dateline” enlisted the aid of the Murphy, Texas’ City Manager and police to be part of a pedophile sting.

The plan went into operation secretly. Members of an organization known as Perverted Justice trolled internet chat rooms posing as teenagers looking for boy-bone smokers, and sure enough they got some to take the bait. 25 of them in fact.

Clandestine meetings were set up at a bait house which was to be surrounded by heavily armed police and TV crews.

It all unraveled when the DA refused to prosecute the would-be culprits on two points. The first was the involvement of non-law enforcement personnel, leaving a tainted chain of evidence. The other point was that while the bait house was in the DA’s jurisdiction, the trollers and the perps were not when the would-be tryst was set up.

Neighbors of the bait house (located in an upscale neighborhood, I understand) took exception to a heavily armed police presence in their normally serene neighborhood. As a matter of fact, they took their exceptions to the mayor and city counsel who had been kept in the dark until the sting was over.

The governing body took their own exception about being left out of the festivities and fired the city manager. All in all, it was a fiasco with one exception; The DA of a neighboring county was caught up in the sting and committed suicide as the police moved in to arrest him.

It would appear that Murphy’s Law is alive and well in Murphy. Maybe they should change the name. How does Bare Bones sound?


Thursday, June 21, 2007

The Law of Unintended Consequences

The “Law” is a philosophical observation that any given cause often has more than one effect. If the accidental effect is good, it is called serendipity; otherwise it falls into another philosophical category that goes by the name of Murphy’s Law.

I’ve been on the internet for nearly ten years and something that is a constant source of entertainment and amusement is the vast number of Russian and Ukrainian women advertising for husbands on dozens of English language websites.

I stumbled across one such site in early ’98. The CIS was at that time agonizing at the end of their first ever economic crash. They had gone over to a free market economy and were assimilating a hard lesson about the downside of capitalism.

I was astonished at the beauty and charm of the plethora of women who ranged in age from late teens to early fifties. I have always believed that beautiful women live at the top end of the food chain.

Time has passed, the economic wounds have healed as an energy boom has lifted large segments of the economy.

And things have changed with the women as well. I would have expected them to stay home and find a man there, but such is not the case. Not only are there more of them there seems to be some serious competition among them as to how much cleavage can be bared and how short skirts can go.

It seems to me that I see new fashion trends among the younger women on Russian dating websites before I see them on our local hotties. If that’s a preview of what’s coming to the States, I will go claim a girl watching spot instanter, as those fashions very much meet with my approval.

Okay. I can understand why women would want out of a dead economy, but there are many more on the web these days than back when. When I ask the women their reason to leave the land where their grandmothers sleep. I’ve gotten one opinion that seems universal, and that is that there are not enough men to go around. Then answers diverge into two major categories: Either Russian men are drunken louts, or Russian men’s priorities are career, car, mistress, and then wife and family in that order.

There is nothing new in the second answer. Enough of that happens here for the phenomenon to be well understood. The first is something of a poser, however. But why on Earth should a significant number of virile men have booze problems severe enough that their countrywomen find them anathema?

Pondering the problem I came up with a supposition. The Red Army did it. Every able bodied man is called up when he is 18 and put into the armed forces. For most this was the Army. Back in the bad old days, new inductees were beaten, robbed of money, food, and clothing. If that wasn’t enough they were raped for good measure. As time passed the victims became the victimizers as they came to the last year of their enlistments.

A Czech I worked with told me the Red Army was nothing but drunks and queers, and I tend to believe him, because a goodly number of Russian women share that same opinion.

On account of the Red Army dehumanizing a huge segment of the male population of the old USSR, I am now able to view some of the world’s most luscious women in the skimpiest clothing on the world wide web. And to top that happy state of affairs off, some of the poses are downright lascivious.

I wonder who I should say “thanks” to.


Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Right On, Nike!

Michael Vick is in hot water for raising Pit Bulls. Heat on one side, the NFL on the other. It is thought he is involved in dog fighting; a somewhat odious sport these days. The Humane Society has taken Nike to task for retaining Vick as a spokesman.

Nike demurred on the grounds that that this is America and one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Too bad the President of Duke University wasn’t up on that small point of Americana. Three of the university’s lacrosse players were accused of a violent rape during a party featuring strip dancers. Their ordeal stretched on from late March of last year until just recently. The school had taken it upon itself to fire the lacrosse coach shortly after the allegation surfaced. Never mind the fact he was never involved in the events leading to his players being accused of the crime. Having fired their coach, they cancelled the rest of the lacrosse season and suspended the students in question.

All this on evidence so shaky the prosecutor in the case has been disbarred and had his office keys and badge taken away from him by the local Sheriff.

Duke was concerned about its image, it seems.

Let me tell you something, guys. If you had kept those young men in class rather than being stampeded by a rogue prosecutor, you might come across as having integrity. If I had a kid that was looking for a school, I would be sure to point out that it doesn’t look like you have any. And if you don’t have integrity, just what do you propose to teach a kid?

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Answer to One of Life’s Major Questions

I just saw an article on the internet news quoting a study saying that women prefer men who are like their fathers.


Hmmmm. Maybe that explains why I always wind up with the babe that is two steps ahead of the guys with nets.

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