Pepper Spray the Hot Christmas Item

This year the hot, really, really hot Christmas season must-have is pepper spray.

It's everywhere. My eyes are watering as I type this. Between the Occupy protest movement pepper spray attacks by police, the woman in the Walmart pepper spraying fellow shoppers to get her hands on a sale item XBox, this is the Christmas of Pepper Spray.

And, like any successful marketing campaigns, pepper spray now has a host of associated heroes, memes and sub-products. You can finish your entire Christmas list with the stuff, or at least get those pesky relatives and friends out of your hair.

Little Cindy Lou Who, who is no more than two, gets
a holiday greeting from the evil Pepper Spray cop

Lt. John Pike, the cop at UC Davis that made himself famous by striking a casual pose and heavily pepper spraying peaceful demonstrators, is sort of the Ken doll to Pepper Spray Barbie.

As Salon so poetic notes, if you want to vanquish the enemy, render him absurd.  Pike has become such a hit, an Internet meme, that there's a Tumblr site devoted to pictures of Pike spraying iconic images. Action Figure John Pike!  The real John Pike must be so proud.

The Tumblr site had Pike inside iconic artwork and photographs, spraying everything from the Mona Lisa, to the Beatles, to Snoopy to Beyonce in the "Single Ladies" video.

My favorite, because I'm such a meanie, is Pike in a scene from Dr. Suess's "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," spraying the hell out of Little Cindy Lou Who, who's only two.

On Amazon, wags found thge page for Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Strean 1.3% Red Band/1.3 %Blue Band Pepper Spray and had a hilarious field day with product reviews. Go to that Web page, it's a great, fun time waster reading the 340 or so mostly mocking product reviews from both satisfied and dissatisfied customers.

Here's an example:
                           With a simple, nonchalant spraying action, you can be sure to cause great distress among unruly protesters, ensuring that their freedoms of speech, assembly, and protest are eliminated in favor of screaming in agony and writhing on the ground. ...Remember, this product does entail some risk of blowback, however. Careless use could lead to international notoriety, universal condemnation, lawsuits, loss of your job, and becoming an internet meme


And another:

Whenever I need to breezily inflict discipline on unruly citizens, I know I can trust Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray to get the job done!  ...When I feel threatened by students, no matter how unarmed, peaceful and seated they may be, I know that Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray has got my back as I casually spray away at point blank range. It really is the Cadillac of citizen repression technology. Buy a whole case!

Of course, this pepper spray can come in handy just terrifically if you're out shopping, as one California bargain hunter knows. The woman who pepper sprayed fellow shoppers at a Walmart on Black Friday is now another iconic figure in American history.

I just worry this pepper spray woman has started an arms race. Next year, will someone deploy an Uzi to mow down crowds to get his hands on the latest flat screen TV?  So he can watch himself on the news being sentenced to life in sentence without parole, I guess.

Hey, shopping is a contact sport, nowadays, apparently.

I think the pepper spraying Xbox shopper from Walmart should marry the pepper spraying cop. Then they can have kids and start a race of pepper spray resistant kids.

That would be a great comfort to Santa.

Was Outing Teacher's Gay Porno Background Ethical?

The Fox 25 reporter in Boston probably knew the subject of his story an English teacher who has made porn movies, would become the center of a nasty fire storm when his report aired.

That much is true. But now the reporter is becoming a bigger target of community wrath for airing his report.

In this image from Fox 25 Boston, reporter Mike Beaudet, right
confronts teacher Kevin Hogan about his past.

WXFT Fox 25 reporter Mike Beaudet confronted, on air, the Boston area English teacher about his, um, colorful and strenuous moonlighting gig. The English teacher has been in a couple gay porn movies, under the extremely unfortunate name Hytch Cawke.

The porn movies were done before he was hired at the school. So it's not as if he has to leave classes early to appear in his role in "Hytch does Hingham,"or some damn thing.

The English teacher, whose real name is Kevin Hogan, certainly got some criticism with Beaudet's expose.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the public lynching of Hogan. The community has largely turned its wrath onto Beaudet.

Aggressive investigative reporting is fine, the local community seems to be saying,  but if, and only if, the reporting uncovers wrongdoing, and does the public good. Comments on Fox 25's Web site are almost fully critical of Beaudet.

Many people are saying this was just a witch hunt/ambush against Hogan for no good reason. And that might reflect, at least in this case, a more sophisticated view of journalistic priorities and ethics among the public than that held by some news assignment editors.

As a journalist, I feel the tingle and thrill of finding out some juicy story about someone or something, and I'm sure the folks at Fox 25 felt the same way. The instinct is to pursue the damn thing.

But you've got to take a step back and say: "How will this help people understand things, serve a useful watchdog role and make things better?

Yes, that's doughy eyed self righteousness and idealism on my part, but there you go.

There's no question that if the teacher had somehow involved the students in his porn job, or had any other sexual or other improper contact with them, then the reporter should have gone after this guy, big time.

Hogan's supporters, and there are lots of them, are wondering why Beaudet did a report that will ruin Hogan's career. Few people are  seeing how this makes kids safer, or the school better and improve the community.

Beaudet counters, accurately, that teachers' licenses in Masschusetts require that educators be in good moral standing. But people both know pornography when they see it and morality when they see it. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

And if Hogan was in porn films, that's still legal. There's no law against being in such films, as long as everybody involved were consenting adults. Even if the films were lousy. I wouldn't know. I have not seen "Cawkes'" films, "Fetish World" and "Just Gone Gay 8" They frankly don't sound very good.

Hogan's students don't seem to give a damn whether he was in gay porn or not. They want a good teacher, and say that Hogan is good.

The kids in Hogan's school are particularly unimpressed with Beaudet. One students Tweeted. "My English teacher is a gay porn star, #nbd." The hashtag stands for "No Big Deal."  A Facebook page has appeared demanding that Hogan keep his job and Beaudet lose his.  As of mid afternoon Thursday, the Facebook page had 1,450 "likes"

 The larger issue here is, in the hyperconnected world of Google, Facebook and Twitter, this story is much, much bigger than it merits. Which is the case with most things these days. Especially when an initial story causes a huge outcry, like this one.

 We were once, as children, threatened with having our misdeeds put on our Permanent Record if we didn't straighten out.

Now, misdeeds are put on our Permanent Record of Google no matter how quickly we correct our actions or minor the infraction.  And we have this Google Scarlet Letter even if we didn't do anything wrong, which many people say is the case involving Hogan.

Does Hogan deserve punishment? And if so, should that punishment take the form of permanent Internet infamy?  To the extent that an apparently talented teacher should never get another job in education?

His supporters don't think so, and are using social media to punish Beaudet the reporter.  Maybe Beaudet's report was not exactly newsworthy. Which also puts Beaudet's action on the Google Permanent Record. Maybe his reporting did more harm than good, or no good at all.   Given that, what does Beaudet deserve?

And what about the rest of us? Yes, most of us have not acted in bad gay porn movies. At least I hope not. (For the record, I haven't. Couldn't come up with a good stage name, I guess)

But we've all done stupid things. Everything we do now is writ large on the Internet.   Since there are no innocents in the world, will our world collapse under the weight of a far too big and heavy Permanet Record?

The Smoking Gun Building Is No Misfire

I don't know where this building is, but I'd love to know who painted it. I wounder what business is in there. A gun shop, I presume. Or maybe it's the headquarters for the public records Web site The Smoking Gun. 

Anyway, it's cool.

Chutzpah King: Kidnapper Sues Victims for Breach of Contract

A  man convicted of kidnapping and other crimes has filed a lawsuit against his victims.

Putting new meaning into the word chutzpah, the kidnapper, Jesse Dimmick is suing Jared and Lindsay Rowley for breach of contract.

Police said Dimmick held the Rowleys in their Kansas home against their will. He'd been fleeing a murder charge, wrecked his car on the Rowley's front lawn, then went inside their house and held them at knifepoint, according to authorities.

Jesse Dimmick is suing a couple he kidnapped for
not helping him elude police.

The Rowleys seemed to have hatched a ploy to get out of their predicament. They told Dimmick, falsely, it turned out, they would hide Dimmick from the cops, and Dimmick would pay them.

But those dastardely Rowleys didn't keep their promise. They sat down with Dimmick, played the movie "Patch Adams" until Dimmick got bored to tears and fell asleep. The couple fled while Dimmick snoozed.

I haven't seen "Patch Adams" but it must be slow if it puts an agitated home invader to sleep. But then again, you can't knock the Rowleys for trying to be good hosts and make Dimmick relax.

Dimmick, though, is unimpressed. Says he in his lawsuit:

"I, the defendant, asked the Rowleys to hide me because I feared for my life. I offered the Rowleys an unspecified amount of money which they agreed upon, therefore forging a legally binding oral contract."

Police ended up raiding the house, and Dimmick was shot in the back in the process. He says his medical bills are $160,000, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal, all because the evil Rowleys wouldn't help him hide from the cops.

Now Dimmick is asserting his rights! How dare the Rowleys lie to him! They promised him they'd help him get away from the cops.  He wants $235,000 for this terrible injustice, according to the Capital-Journal.

This all could be retailiation. The Rowleys had already sued Dimmick for $75,000, citing the emotional distress of Dimmick's attack, the Capital-Journal reported.

If you're wondering what kind of lawyer would take on the case for Dimmick, there's no lawyer. He's representing himself.  Well, he's showing the self sufficiency that made this country great, isn't he?

The problem for Dimmick is, it appears the Rowleys have a pretty strong defense. The legal reasoning of their lawyer seem pretty reasonable, to be honest:
1. Nothing's in writing. So how is Dimmick going to prove there was a contract?
2. Nobody agreed on a price. So if nobody made an agreement on specifics, how is there a contract?
3. Had the Rowleys agreed to a deal with Dimmick, they would have consented to doing something illegal. A contract to do something against the law voids the contract.
4. Even if the Rowleys agreed to a deal with Dimmick they did so under duress, voiding the contract.

Dimmick, that old optimist that he is, nevertheless is continuing with his lawsuit. The Rowleys' lawyer filed a motion to dismiss on November 4, so we'll see where that goes.

The Monthly Fail Report: November

Many months, I treat you to the latest compilation of filmed dumb mistakes for the past month. Here, I present you with one of many videos showing November's mishaps.

A typical scene in a Fail compilation video. Bicyclist
and skateboarders are particularly clumsy

The purpose of this, of course, is if you're having a moment when you're feeling pretty stupid, you can watch the video and feel better about yourself, at least by comparison.

I've noticed most of these fail compilations, including this one, have a disproportionate number of bicycle and skateboard mishaps. I'd like a study on why this is so

Are bicycle and skateboard tricksters more likely to be stupid? Or just more likely to be filmed? Or do other people who do dumb things manage to avoid being the target of a video, while bicycle and skateboard people embrace the glory of having their failings out there for the world to see? And just who pays their medical bills.

While you're pondering all those questions, go ahead and watch the eight minutes of stupidity on this month's video:

Dancing Queen of the Treadmill

I love the woman in this viral video. In an effort to heal an injured knee and be creative, the woman featured in the video below has found a way to make a supremely tedious treadmill workout fun.

I hate treadmills. The scenery doesn't change and time seems to stand still. I'd rather run outside. But I might want to learn Nicole Harris' moves. The video continues to spread like wildfire. Nicole told El Paso, Texas television station KDBC that she's gotten interest from such shows as Inside Edition and Ellen Degeneres.

Maybe it's time Harris markets an exercise video. Hell, it would be a lot better than most of what's out there.

Watch and see for yourself:

Dogs Top Notch at Running Free, Greeting Friends

It's been four months since Jackson the cocker spaniel moved into our St. Albans, Vermont house, and of course now I'm the worlds most hopeless dog lover. Always liked 'em, but now I'm obnoxious about it.

Jeff bought me this "Woof" sticker to match the one on
his Jeep, confirming us as dedicated dog lovers.

I'm given to heart-tugging stories about dogs, and every once in awhile, I post my favorites.

Jackson is happiest when he can run full tilt around the yard, chasing frisbees, sticks, bugs and assorted real  and imagined playmates. Almost all dogs are like that.

So now that a video about beagles rescued from a research lab has gone viral, I paid attention. The video shows the beagles, who have never been in the sun or walked or run around on grass, react as their cages are opened for the first time.

These beagles have since been adopted into good homes.

In the video, the beagles are awfully tentative at first, but they soon figure out playing on grassy lawns is The Way It Ought To Be.


One of my favorite moments with Jackson is his greetings. Whether I've been gone three days or 30 seconds his greeting when he sees me is always the same. His tail wags so wildly that his little butt swings back and forth like that of a runway fashion model on wayyyyyy to much speed.

He is bursting so desperately to greet me that you a high pitched whine, and then, the embrace. He jumps up to lick my face, then runs circles around me, stopping every second or so for another jump and kiss. These reunions are exhausting, let me tell you. But they're worth it.

It's just the way dogs are, but Jackson's greeting does feel like I'm being treated like a returning war hero, when in fact I'm just returning from the store with a gallon of milk.

If Jackson gets this excited to see me, imagine the excitement of dogs whose human companions come home from a military overseas deployment.  These really are war heroes returning home. To get an idea of that, check out this video VERY sweet: