Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
The best act of defiance against the homophobia and possible quote, unquote Islamic radical fundamentalism that fueled last month's Pulse nightclub massacre is Keep Dancing Orlando.
The catchphrase has turned into a rallying cry, a Twitter hashtag and a touchstone of rebellion against those not only kill people, but also kill the joy out of life.
The whole area around Orlando has adopted Whitney Houston's song "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and the accompanying hashtag #KeepOrlandoDancing in joyful defiance of the hate that culminated in the murder of 49 people who were out dancing that night in June at The Pulse nightclub.
I like how the Orange County Sheriff Department, which includes Orlando, got involved in this, with their own Keep Dancing Orlando video.
The sheriff's office Keep Dancing Orlando video opens with what looks like a press conference featuring "an important announcement by Sheriff Demings."
Sheriff Deming steps up to the podium and says: "We're here for an important announcement today. I wanna keep Orlando smiling. Keep dancing Orlando!"
Then he places a boom box on the podium and suddenly we hear Houston singing "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," and then we're treated to many scenes of Orlando County Sheriff personnel dancing.
Not all the personnel in that office are great dancers, but who cares? Joy stomps terror.
(H/T JoeMyGod for this story.)
The Sheriff Department video is at the bottom of this post. Definitely worth checking out.
Here's the Orlando Sheriff's "Keep Dancing Orlando video
Big trucks "rolling coal" emitting huge clouds of black smoke. Healthy and not adding pollution to the atmosphere, right?
There's one in every crowd. Or several.
Certain people on the road want to be more obnoxious than everyone else.
It's a competition, you see.
One bit of obnoxiousness that's been popular for a few years is a phenomenon called "rolling coal."
Young men, almost alll of them losers with very small dicks who are overcompensating, trick out their big he-man pickup trucks with a smoke stack and mechanical stuff that lets these morons trick the engine to need more fuel.
The result is a burst of black smoke that has bystanders choking on the fumes, other drivers blinded by the clouds, and these losers laughing hysterically. Because they're too stupid to laugh at anything else, I guess.
Ogburn: "If you've never heard of rolling coal, Jake Rogakis can explain it in one sentence."
Rogakis: "To roll coal is to pretty much just floor it and blow as much black smoke as you possibly can."
Ogburn: "Rogakis has tuned his diesel engine so that he can blow clouds of thick black smoke from his tailpipe on purpose."
Rogakis: "It's just fun. Like, go drive my truck. You'll have a blast, guaranteed."
Ogburn goes on to explain that Rogakis is one of about 100 guys hanging around a Fort Collins strip mall, mostly to compare notes on their big trucks and their rolling coal contraptions.
I really hope Fort Collins is so boring people are reduced to doing this, but my guess is the problem is not really Fort Collins, but these young guys without imagination.
Ogburn asked Brock Anderson and Cory Wiggins, who were in another group from Rogakis at that Fort Collins parking lot, why coal rolling is so popular.
Anderson: "I'm not sure. It's - you know, why do people do a lot of things, you know what I mean? It's 'cause everybody's doing it."
Wiggins: "You also get more power, and it's just something cool. Ladies like it."
Anderson: (laughing) "No, I don't know if women like that."
Wiggins: "No, all ladies love it."
Anderson: "No"
I'm with Brock here. Notice how delusional Cory is. He thinks he's such a lady killer with his black smoke and his presumably teeny tiny, um, anatomy. By the way, Brock Anderson is fairly reasonable. Unlike some of his friends, he says he only does this out on the farm, with nobody around, so nobody gets a cloud of black smoke in their face.
My guess is most women, and most people for that matter, actually don't like rolling coal. Guys, don't date the few women in the world who like rolling coal!
Anyway, let's go on.
Let's get back to our friend Jake Rogakis, who loves his rolling coal truck.
He says he doesn't envelop people in smoke, "Unless they, like do something to make me mad, cut me off."
There ya go, Jake. They cut you off, you blind them with smoke and have them crash into somebody else. Real considerate of you.
Rogakis, like many coal rollers, has a particular enmity against bicyclist. It seems all these guys with big trucks hate bicyclists.
"If you see a bike, you just can't help but to do it. No matter how many times you do it, every single time, you'll still get a smile on your face."
Yeah, blinding bicyclists in choking smoke and making them inhale potentially cancer causing and lung disease causing diesel particles is a real laff riot.
A bicycle tour group from Canada was recently the victim of some idiot repeatedly rolling coal with his big nasty truck in otherwise scenic north-central Vermont,says the Burlington Free Press.
One of the tour group members, Steven Fischer, said his group was blasted by the truck, then it came back.
"Ten minutes later it was my turn. The truck - at least I think it was the same one, but I can't be certain - pulled up beside me and unleashed another black cloud."
This, not surprisingly, is not the first time bicyclists in Vermont or elsewhere been tormented by those idiots rolling coal.
The Free Press quoted Phyl Newbeck of the Green Mountain Bicycle Club who said he's been blasted by these idiots.
By the way, if you were thinking this rolling coal stuff is illegal, it is. It violates the federal Clean Air Act. Plus federal and many state guidelines prohibit altering vehicle exhaust systems like the rolling coal boneheads do.
Of course, it's hard to catch all these idiots because you can't read the license plates through all that smoke.
So, we can only hope for karma for these small dicked diesel dumbasses. They deserve a good asthma attack, or a little bit of lung disease, maybe?
That's mean, but karma's tough, you know.
Here's a video of a motorist haveing to deal with some idiot "rolling coal" in Essex Junction, Vermont:
An artist is taking zillions of mugshots
from websites and blurring them,
then doing search engine
optimization so people go
to the blurred images not the
for-profit mugshot web sites.
There's always creeps who try to take advantage of people's past mistakes for fun and profit
So it is with a multitude of online mugshot web sites, which lets you find out which of your friends got arrested in the past, and what they looked like in their mug shots.
Of course, said mugshot victims can try to get these images scrubbed from the internet, but you pay an extortion fee to get the job done.
Things got really bad back around 2010 and 2011, when shysters put up web sites full of people's mugshots, and charged people exorbitant amounts of money to have them scrubbed.
According to the Kernel/Daily Dot,some states passed laws meant to hamper these extortion sites, especially after Wired magazine wrote an expose on the practices back in 2011.
Google changed its algorithm so that mugshots weren't priortized so much. Visa and Mastercard pledged not to process money if it was for these mugshot extortion outfits.
Of course, this is the internet. So there's still slimy outfits around.
There are still many extortion websites that might or might not be somehow affiliated with the actual mugshot sites to get people to pay money to get rid of the mugshots.
Never mind the fact that I don't understand the appeal of looking at arrest mug shots of random people.
Since it's definitely hard to get rid of this situation, there are some people who are conducting some guerrilla warfare on the mugshot industry.
One of them, says Wired magazine, is an artist named Paolo Cirio, who is using the mugshot website tools against them.
"Cirio scaped images from six websites (he claims to have 15 million photos) and used an algorithm to blur them. Then he created websites with slightly different URLs - Busted-Mugshots.us became BustedMugshots.com for example - and did a little search engine optimization so his images appear alongside real mugshots. "When data is technically indestructible, obfuscation might be the last resort," he says.
Not that the mugshot outfits are particularly happy with all this. BustedMugshots.com has sent Cirio a cease and desist letter, says Wired.
I know mugshots are public information, and journalists and everybody else should have access to these public records. You know, government accountability and all that.
But these websites that claim to be posting the mugshots for public service are really doing it for entertainment purposes and to make a profit.
It's sleazy.
Says Cirio about his efforts:
"I hope the viewers will demand the need for rights concerning personal information and reputation over the internet."
Browser the cat at the White Settlement, Texas public
library. That community's city council wants him
out of the library, and the town's residents
are rebelling at that idea.
UPDATE:
Browser the cat can stay in the White Settlement, Texas library after all.
"White Settlement Council turns tail, lets Browser the Library cat stay after backlash."
After the council initially voted to oust the cat last month, a social media firestorm erupted.
The White Settlement Council caved in the face of the onslaught, and Browser will keep sleeping in the library, catching the occasional mouse and entertaining the children who come in
I guess sense and peace finally came back to White Settlement
PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:
The city council in White Settlement, Texas voted recently to evict Browser, the cat that's been living at the municipal library for almost six years.
There hadn't really been any complaints about the cat, and this vote to evict Browser came out of the blue, according to local media reports.
Browser was originally brought in to combat rodents that had been damaging books in the library.
Everybody ended up loving the affectionate cat, who helps children settle down and read their books.
But the city council suddenly had other ideas. Suddenly, Browser is a crisis and has to leave the library, apparently.
White Settlement City Council member sniffed, "City Hall and city businesses are no place for animals," as she voted to evict Browser,according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
Of course, the entire community of White Settlement is up in arms as a petition circulates for a new vote on the matter coming up. Or a community vote to keep the cat.
But the White Settlement City Council is determined to get rid of Browser, the Star Telegram notes.
Council member Steve Ott said people might be allergic to cat dander, which is a point but you can keep Browser away from people with allergies.
Others point out that if Browser goes, the mice come in and pest control outfits will have to use chemicals to banish the rodents.
Still, Ott is unmoved. "That cat is just that - a cat. Not a person. So go ahead and sign all the petitions you want. The cat needs to go."
The community's mayor thinks this all got started because an employee at City Hall wanted to bring his puppy to work and they wouldn't let him, so he got revenge by getting the City Council to go after Browser.
By the way, Browser isn't costing White Settlement taxpayers anything. Library personal pay for Browser's feeding and care out of pocket.
Personally, I'm not a cat person. They're OK. But I can see how a cat could have a welcoming, calming influence at a library.
Maybe the White Settlement city councilors who don't like Browser should just chill. Or read a damn book or something.
This guy rescued a man and three kids from an overturned van. He got billed $143 because of it.
You gotta like good Samaritans like Derrick Deanda.
As he was driving around in Elk Grove, California, not long ago, a van rolled over.
Inside were a man and three children. They were trapped.
So Deanda busted out a window of the overturned van and got everybody out. They're all OK.
The local paramedics showed up and made sure everybody was doing OK. They checked Deanda's pulse, noted a small cut he received while he was rescuing the family, and they gave him a bottle of water.
Deanda now has to pay for his heroics because of a $143 bill he received from the Cosumnes Community Services District, which is the local first responder outfit,says CBS Sacramento.
All patients the first responders see are billed the $143. Deanda became a patient because the first responders looked at that small cut he had.
It isn't exactly like the first responders spent hours trying to save Deanda's life. He was in pretty good shape to begin with.
"We're obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing, the same everything for every patient we encounter," Deputy Chief Mike McLaughllin said.
Deanda could appeal the bill, but why should he go through the trouble? He rescued the damn family from the overturned van.
Actually, McLaughlin would like to get rid of the bill Deanda got, but he can't because he's supposed to bill everybody. "This is a truly unique situation.... In my 28 years, this is the first time I've run into a situation similar to this."
"Our desire is to make this right," McLaughlin said. But Deanda is still going to have to appeal to make that happen.
This kind of situation does seem to discourage other would-be good Samaritans, which the world desperately needs.
"I mean, why would I want to stop to help somebody if I'm going to get a bill for $150," Deanda told CBS Sacramento.
They prank people and put the videos up on YouTube.
I know, a lot of people do that, but unlike most of these videos, the Improv Everywhere stuff is not insulting to the people who they prank.
There's no meanness. Which makes their videos fun instead of aggravating.
Plus, Improv Everywhere, whose motto is "We Cause Scenes" have more elaborate setups than most videos.
Their latest prank, video of which is at the bottom of this post, involves a college graduation ceremony in Bryant Park, New York. The graduates of some college are there, ready to get their diplomas. College administrators are there.
But where's the commencement speaker? He missed his flight, so the "college dean," one of the Improv Everywhere actors, wades into the people enjoying the park on a nice day and asks them to step in and be the substitute commencement speaker.
Some people seem to know this is a joke but cooperate anyway, so why not? Others have no idea this is fake, but give really good speeches.
Improv Everywhere created a fake college graduation ceremony that was desperate for a speaker. The results were tons of fun.
One New Yawker with a thick Brooklyn accent tells the "college graduates," "You're are all going to kick ass in real life, just go for whatever you want."
Loved her.
And this delightful non sequitor from a young woman who addressed the crowd thusly. "Just last year I was standing in your seats."
One guy breaks into song. Another person gives the speech in Spanish but in reality speaks fluent English ("You tricked me, so I tricked you," she later told the Impro Everywhere people.
Here's Improv Everywhere's delightful college graduation video:
This Mississippi politician apparently thinks if you're not rich enough to buy lifesaving medication on your own maybe you should just die and get out of the way.
When you're in Congress, or a state legislature, or a governor or whatever, you do have to make tough financial choices.
What gets funded, what doesn't based on limited tax revenue. The reality is some worthy, needed programs - or people in a tough spot - just don't get the money they need.
Such is the case in Mississippi.
According to the Clarion-Ledger newspaper, a mom named Nicole Nichols was getting Medicaid to help pay fo ran expensive insulin pump for her eight year old daughter, who has insulin.
She is a stay at home mom, but her husband works two jobs, so the family does have an income.
But this pump is extremely expensive, the Nichols' can't afford it on their own, and they reluctantly had to turn to Medicaid to help pay for the life saving device.
Then, the company that supplied the pump outsourced products and shipping to another company.
That other company was not covered by Medicaid, and Nichols can't find another outfit that is covered by Medicaid. So she could no longer get the insulin pumps with help from Medicaid. She tried something like 23 of them.
So, that's not Nichols' fault. It's bureaucracy.
In frustration, she reached out to Mississippi state lawmakers. Two were sympathetic but not committal. They'll see what they can do. Which is fine, that's all you can really ask.
But a third state rep, Jeffrey Guice, R-Ocean Springs wrote back and told Nichols: "I am sorry for your problem. Have you thought abouty buying the supplies with money that you earn?"
I'll remind you again here that Nichols and her husband are employed. I'll also note that right now, the out of pocket expenses for their kid's insulin pump is $2,000 a month.
So what Guice is really saying is if your job doesn't pay enough to pay for the medicines you need to stay alive, you just have to earn more money. Just like that.
In other words, only rich people deserve life-saving medicine.
I won't paint Republicans with the same brush, since many of them at least have some compassion and have their act together.
But there is a strain of awfulness in some corners of the GOP in which I think they believe only the 1 percent deserve to live. Everybody else is expendable.
At least Guice was blunt about this belief, unlike a lot of 'em who say they want to help but not really.
Guice right now isn't talking about this, refusing to answer questions from the Clarion Ledger, telling the paper, "I don't do interviews."
Oh, OK, you're an elected official who also thinks he's not accountable to the public. We got a real winner here.
Although, after the outcry over his remarks, Guice still wasn't taking calls, but released this emailed statement to the Associated Press:
"I realize my remarks to Mrs. Nichols were completely insensitive and out of line. I am sorry and deeply regret my reply. I know nothing about her and her family and replied in knee-jerk fashion. I'd like to think the people of Mississippi and my constituents know that I'm willing to help where I am able."
I'm still not satisfied. Guise said he replied to Nichols in "knee-jerk fashion." In other words, he assumed Nichols was just another freeloader, just like every person on Medicaid or other government assistance allegedly is.
Time to get those stupid, simplistic assumptions out of your head, Mr. Guise
