Parents Behaving Badly

Well, duh. Of COURSE there are parents out there who oppose Halloween for religious reasons. But as much as I like to lay down the snark, I actually found this article interesting and somewhat enlightening.

I feel bad for Elizabeth Silvia, the high schooler who recounts the taunting that she endured at the hands of her classmates over her parents’ attitudes towards the holiday. And I’m actually sympathetic towards her folks – that they felt compelled to explain to the public at large why they don’t participate in Halloween-related activities and received berating phone calls for it is a bit sad. (Hey – I empathize. I come from a Catholic dad and a Jewish mom, and I get it from all sides. “Why don’t you go to Church? Why don’t you go to Temple?” Oi vey! Madon! I’m tellin’ ya – it’s enough to make me go Buddhist).

I realize that this may seem trivial given the nature of most of the articles we see on this site, but hey – it’s Halloween. So what do you think? Halloween – recruiting tool for Satan, or elaborate plot by a cabal of dentists and Hollywood marketing execs to drive up business? And does it have a place in our schools? Discuss. I’ll be out TP’ing the neighbor’s house if you need me.

Yes, you read that right, people – we have a bloody two-fer on our hands. Rashawn Mack – henceforth knowing as Mr. Murdering Bastard – shot both of his exes in the head. He shot the women in their own separate homes, in both cases while his own children were looking on. And for what? Because he was pissed that he had to pay a grand total of $125 a month in child support. To make matters even worse, Mr. Murdering Bastard deprived the world of any sense of justice by killing himself afterwards. Look, if you’re going to commit a crime this despicable, as least give society the pleasure of torturing you to death like you so rightly deserve. All that society can do now is pray that those poor, abandoned kids don’t grow up to be anything like their father.

(Thanks to Elizabeth, who sent this to us by way of the Family Law Prof Blog)

From the “You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me” Department comes this story: an Australian court has convicted a couple of…well, not quite sure if “convicted” is the right word. See, the unnamed couple had been stashing their teenaged daughter in her bedroom, under lock and key, for two years. During that time, she was allowed to take a grand total of five, count ‘em, five showers. A shower every 4.8 months. Nice. The girl finally escaped through a window and turned up at a Sydney police station, “emaciated and barely clothed”.

Here’s the punchline. The judge sentenced the wife and husband to nine and six months of WEEKEND DETENTION. In other words – he grounded them! You’ve starved, imprisoned, and tortured your kid – no more weekend jaunts to Bell’s Beach or attending Wallabies matches for you! What would the guy have done had the girl died? Taken away their cable TV?

People deal with the death of family members in different ways. Some seek solace in their surviving friends and loved ones. Some look to whatever God they believe in for comfort and guidance. Some throw loud, raucous wakes for the departed, choosing to celebrate life rather than dwell on death. And some, like Vitaly Kaloyev…well, they go apeshit..

Mr. Kaloyev lost his wife and two daughters in a plane crash back in 2002. So he did what any bereft father and husband would – spent the next two years of his life plotting and carrying out a vendetta against the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the crash. To his credit, Mr. Kaloyev did file a compliant with Skyguide, the air service presumably responsible for the crash. Guess he wasn’t happy with the form letter and Frequent Flyer miles they sent back.

Puzzling, though, is the sentence handed down to Vitaly. 12 years for premeditated homicide – the crime “fell short of murder” because “there was no malice”. Um – searching for a guy for two years and then stabbing him several dozen times seems a bit, well, malicious, no?

(ETA because I can’t spell “solace”)

I don’t know what to say about the unnamed 21-year-old mother of Portsmouth, Ohio who left her newborn child in the wild, to be mauled by dogs. What more is there to say beyond “Enjoy your nice warm seat in Hell”?

Me, I’m more concerned about the poor mother who came outside because her kids told her the dogs were chewing on something – only to find that “something” was a dead baby. I can only imagine how much that poor woman must be suffering from the gruesome discovery. Nice job, No-Named Mom – not only have you killed your own child, you’ve scarred another mother for life. Exactly how many times can we inflict the death penalty on someone?

(Thanks to Maranie Warren for the story)

Hey! My hometown made the news! We San Diegans like to refer to our little burg as “America’s Finest City”. Our citizenry? Well, sometimes, not so much. Last night, Rachel Garta led her two-year-old son on to a set of trolley tracks, then attempted to push the poor kid into the path of the oncoming trolley. Luckily, the driver managed to bring the trolley to a halt, and the kid was grabbed by a security officer before any harm could come to him. Garza was arrested and her son taken into protective custody.

Pardon my French, but what a fucking monster this woman is. If only there were a fitting punishment for her…hmmm…let me think about this for a sec…Hey! I know! Now, I’m gonna need some tracks, and a trolley…

(Thanks to Trench for the tip; I saw this on our local news this morning, right after another story about that goddamn panda cub.)

You know it’s going to be a sad day when you see the words “birthday party” and “melee” in the same sentence. Seems things got a bit rowdy at a one-year-old’s Happy B-Day celebration in East Hartford, Connecticut. Then a neighbor from an apartment below went upstairs to complain about the noise – and that’s when things got real interesting. By the time the dust had settled, six people had been stabbed. The “melee” was so fierce, police ran out of restraining devices.

What’s most fascinating about this story is that there is no indication of who the parents are, where they were at the time, and how involved they were in everything spiraling out of control. At the very least, mom and dad could stand to keep better company. (Understatement of the Year 2005 Award Recipient!)

You know what I have to remember my 1st? A picture of me in my high chair, covered in cake. What’s this poor kid going to have? A nice set of mug shots. Happy fucking birthday, baby. Let’s hope your 2nd is spent in better company than the 1st.

(Hat tip to Liz Brunson)

Call it Fate, call it Karma, call it God’s Will – sometimes things just fall into place. This morning, I came across the image to the right and thought, “Now, there’s a pic I wanna use. But what are the odds of me finding a story that will compliment it?”

Well, thank you Charlize Theron!The poster girl for Stockholm Syndrome has offered up her take on why American kids are so unruly – we’re not beatin’ ‘em enough! Insisting that she “always deserved” the ass-whoopings received from her dear mum Gerda, Ms. Theron laments that it would be hard for Gerda today, what with the laws against child abuse and all. And “that’s a sad thing”. Wonder how dear sweet Gerda took it when South Africa did away with apartheid? I’m guessing that wasn’t a happy day in the Theron household. Charlize – how about a Venti cup of STFU? It’ll be our treat.

Today, I went to pick up coffee from the Starbucks next to our neighborhood Safeway. What did I behold while there? A woman with four kids, none older than seven, ushering them across the parking lot with one hand. What was she doing with the other hand? Why, gabbing on her cell phone, of course. What else would you be doing when the safety of four precious children has been placed in your hands? Geez. As if there’s any phone call on Earth so necessary that you can’t wait until you’re out of the path of oncoming traffic to take it.

Of course, I’m sure people were thinking similar things about me when they saw me come out of Starbucks with my two-year-old son in my sling and two scalding hot lattes in my hands. But we weren’t TALKING about ME, now, were we??

I almost – ALMOST – feel bad for these two. They didn’t leave the kid in a ditch or on a park bench. They actually handed the kid off to someone – ok, two total strangers at the drugstore next to their apartment building – but still. It could’ve been worse.

Now, perhaps Daniel’s Law should be publicized a little more. If the goal is to save infants’ lives, providing parents with the option to leave their child at a safe place without fear of punishment, rather than in a dumpster, seems like a reasonable one. Then again, I’d hate to see the spike in abandoned baby drop-offs at the local hospital during Super Bowl Sundays. Perhaps it just boils down to these folks having – or in this case, lacking – a shred of common sense.

There are a lot of differences between American and English football (the English version: much more “foot”, much less steroids), but there’s one sad similarity – the behavior of a few bad fans/parents. The British news site Biggleswade Today (no, I did not pull that name from a Monty Python skit) reports that some locals are incensed over the boorish behavior exhibited by some parents at a youth football/soccer match/game.

Yeah, we in the States have our share of loser dads taking out their feelings of inadequacy on fellow spectators, players, and refs. But the British can put a classy spin on anything. Here’s how the site puts it: “Coupled with the sight of one of the fathers relieving himself publicly in the dividing hedge, this does little to encourage support of more pitches on the new field – particularly when the pavilion was open and available for such calls of nature and is a public order offence…With such examples is there any wonder some youths are behaving anti-socially.”

Or, in American English: “Dude. Don’t piss on the field. Use the shitter. There’s kids watching, jackass.”

I hate Mondays. The weekend’s over, it’s raining, I have a ton of work to do, and now I gotta read about Michael Gravelle trying to justify keeping his kids in cages. That is the cherry on the cake of my day.

Reading this article begs the question: does Gravelle’s lawyer have any hair left? ‘Cause I’m quite sure that he pulled large swatches of it out of his scalp upon learning that Gravelle gave a guided tour of his happy home to a local news reporter, who in turn shared the story with the AP, who in turn shared it with the entire planet. When your client a) shows off his house’s urine- and feces-stained walls and baseboards and b) tells the reporter that making them sleep in the cages was “necessary” – well, you got worries. To paraphrase the late Johhny Cochran: the glove? Fits. So let’s take in comfort in the fact that someone else is having a worse Monday than us.

Beware the Gay Agenda! That’s the message that David Parker is teaching to his son, a Lexington, Mass. kindergartner. As if fingerpainting and learning the words to Wiggles songs weren’t enough for a kid to deal with. Now the kids have to worry about secret armies of Gays trying to turn them Gay with their Devious Gay Ways!

The Parkers, it seems, were a bit miffed when their son brought home a picture book that included families with same-sex parents. The school has refused their request to pull their son out of class whenever homosexuality was discussed. And, I gotta tell you, Mr. Parker does make a good point about tolerance. “Real respect, real tolerance”, he was quoted as saying, “is not pushing your beliefs on other people.” Although…this is kindergarten we’re talking about. And a teacher telling kids that some people have two mommies is a bit different than a teacher reading a Dan Savage column to the class. And I’m pretty sure that “real tolerance” doesn’t involve teaching your kids to fear and loathe people who are different from them.

Still, there are those who believe that The Gay Agenda is a real and tangible threat to Decent Society. I’m not too sure that there is a Gay Agenda, but I HAVE had plenty of nice young men in white shirts and clip-on ties knock on my door and tell me I’m going to Hell if I don’t become a Christian.

I was a bit nervous going into this post. What happens, I wondered, when you Google “Google”? I imagined some horrible Philadelphia Experiment rupture in the space-time continuum, or the Gates of Hell opening up, or me getting sucked into the computer like Jeff Bridges in Tron, which would be bad because I’m not really good at the video games and would probably end up dying a horrible death, my lightcycle splattered across the virtual landscape. Luckily, none of that happened. Whew!

Why was I Googling “Google”, you ask? Because I needed a pic to go along with this entry. You might be surprised to learn that there really aren’t a whole lot of good images of “Google”. It took me a while to find one that worked. I came across some interesting shots along the way, including one that’s definitely NSFW (it involved a woman’s breasts replacing two of the vowels in the word “Google”. I’m sure you can guess which ones). Really a lot of wasted time and wasted pop culture references, not to mention anxiety over potentially destroying the universe, just to let you all know that a couple of dipshits in Sweden named their kid after the most popular search engine in the world.

(I know – lots of buildup, disappointing ending. Kind of like most of Spielberg’s recent movies. Thanks to Blogging Baby for the story.)

Ever see the movie Monsoon Wedding? I watched it with my wife a while back, and really liked it. I won’t go into details; I’ll just say that it’s pretty much the exact opposite of this story.

A couple of questions. First, a dowry? Really? I thought those went out of style years ago. Like right around the time Napoleon checked into his digs on St. Helena. Second – the guy stood to get Rs five lakhs – in cash! – and a house valued at Rs 13 lakhs! Dude – come on! That’s Rs 18 LAKHS WE’RE TALKING ABOUT! Why so greedy? (No, I have no idea what that means either, but it sounds like a lot.)

Y’know, call me culturally insensitive, but isn’t this a bit, you know, Dark Ages? You have one set of parents attempting to sell off their daughter, and the other set killing said daughter over the deal. And the guy and his dad were cops. Guess they skipped class the day the police academy went over the stuff about dowries being illegal in India since 1961.