So sue me.  Oh, wait, you can’t.  That would be frivolous.  Sort of like Linda Calbi blaming the hospital for her son’s death.  Forget the fact that she had a violent history, her husband had tried and failed to keep her kids away from her, she was drunk and high and beat the kid up and kicked him in the neck, and >he< called the ambulance for himself while she was becoming more and more oblivious, it’s the hospital’s fault he died.

In other areas of frivolity, we have some funny financial decisions going on in the Senate.  Apparently, it’s more important to buy new helicopters that have a history of killing the people inside them and taking off on their own, and which won’t be ready until 2008, if then, if they work out the design kinks, than to provide troops with equipment that will protect them now.  This bill will, however, protect the jobs of several senators whose states manufacture the aircraft by funneling money into their districts, so clearly it is not frivolous at all. 

Time to get all pissy on y’all again!

Apparently there’s some gospel singer/church lady/person who is not me using my e-mail as her own. I am trying to be nice to the people who are sending me e-mail asking me to bring cookies or keep loving God or whatever, but I sure as hell would like to whack her upside da haid and tell her to get with the program. I’m not some kind of psychic e-mail host who knows all the alisons in the world and will direct mail to the proper one. You don’t put mail in the mailbox addressed to “My friend Beth from First Grade” and expect it to arrive where you want it, why do you think that e-mail addressed to alison@alison.com is going to arrive anywhere but in my mailbox? (Don’t click that damn link unless you have something to say to ME. Don’t you dare.)

In addition, some chickie out there really wants to be on Habbo Hotel, and the stupid site keeps sending me mail that allows me to delete my e-mail, but not change the password, so every time I delete the e-mail, she just signs on again, and it starts all over. Warning to all of you. . .if you use my mail, I WILL log on, and I WILL change your password. Stop it. Just stop it. I am hopping mad that this site will let someone create an account using my mail address, but won’t let me log on unless I have the birthdate of the person who hijacked my address. If it happens again, I’m creating an account and making something really offensive. It’s depriving me of the amusement I get when I’m flooded with password confirmation e-mails from the site where I changed the password. Duh. Use my address, and guess where the password confirmation e-mails get sent to.

So this stuff arrived in my mail after I’d been frustrated by an issue in PhotoShop where it looked like some color information was locked in the color channels, and I couldn’t get it to work using any of my other recoloring tricks. I’m reluctant to touch the channels because some information is included in them that’s linked to the meshes for sim clothes, and sometimes you play with the channels, and your clothes disappear – including the originals, which is seriously Not Good. Using my e-mail as your own is a heinous thing to do – and you really, really especially don’t want to do it when I’ve been having a bad PhotoShop day. Just a heads up. . .

In the Ledger today, there were three somewhat related pieces (at least I feel they can be strung together.  .  .)  First, a proposed measure to put GPS bracelets on released sex offenders, since they’re transient and often don’t register in compliance with Megan’s law.  Can everyone say. . .DUH?  And in the editorial section, a brief history of Terence Lynch, a fellow with a penchant for spanking boys’ bare buttocks, who, despite having a record of this and being easy to track, ended up working job after job where he was supplied with plenty of young boys in need of “discipline”.  Look folks, these guys are not going to stop, they’re not going to reform.  Letting them out and expecting them to do as they’re told and play by the rules is naive and short-sighted.  We don’t need any new rules or equipment or anything to keep track of them after they’re released, we need new laws that keep them in, for good.  The very fact that they can be rated as to the likelihood of re-offending indicates that someone in the penal system is well aware that these sickos are going to do what they do – and not tell the neighbors or let the police know when they move.

Now, down in this neck of the woods, there is a woman who, up until this summer, was a man.  Lilly McBeth, nee’ William McBeth, finally fulfilled his wish to change his gender.  As a man, he was a substitute teacher in Eagleswood for three years, and was, according to the published accounts, a fine teacher.  Suddenly, (s)he reapplies for the same job, just looking different, and the parents are up in arms.  At the BOE meeting, several parents were quite vocal, saying that they didn’t want their children to be exposed to this.  Geez, it’s not like she’s going to be teaching gender transition as a subject.  Probably wouldn’t even mention it unless it came up.  >And<, she’s transgendered, not a pedophile.  If they kept track of the pedophiles the way they did this woman, a lot of problems would be solved.  The kicker is the guy who took out a full-page ad in the Tuckerton local paper urging people to come to this meeting and raise holy heck.  Seems that this guy has a particular objection because gender reassignment goes against his religion.  Well, why are your kids in public school if you want them to have a religious education?  Sheesh.  Get with the program, mister.

Switching directions, but also along the lines of stupid legislation mentioned in the first paragraph, the NJ Senate just approved, 33-0, bill S1218, which is a school junk food ban.  OK, no candy or chips or soda, that makes sense, but check this out – it bans any food product that lists sugar as its first ingredient.  This can make the lawmakers look like crusaders for the good of our children without ticking off the high fructose corn syrup lobby and the lawmakers it supports!  Woohoo!  Get real.  Check the junk food labels in the supermarket – you can count on one hand the ones that even >have< sugar in the ingredients list at all.  And if they do, it often follows the high fructose corn syrup.  But I’ll bet you that the Assembly will be just as quick to pass this as the Senate was, because it’s all about how well it spins.