Crime and Punishment 
Saturday, July 22, 2006, 09:14 AM
I had a real super-thug roll into Pretrial yesterday. He was also the youngest defendant I've had so far. He was 15 years old, had already dropped out of school, and had been using drugs since age 10.

His crime was armed robbery. He took a baseball bat and mugged some old man for $60. Then, when he had the victim's money, he beat the man's face in with the bat. In fact, he nearly beat the man to death. The child had not one scrap of remorse.

This was no child of the ghetto either. His parents were people of means. His bail was $100,000 and his parents paid it!

So, a thought occured to me: parents should be made to pay when they raise sociopathic monsters. I think that when a juvinile commits a crime like the one above, the parents should take a share of whatever sentence is meted out. If the kid gets 40 years in jail, the parents should get ten years. I personally think that parents who raise juvenile criminals should be flogged (like they do in Thailand). I think a good dose of physical punishment would put these apathetic, absentee parents back on track.

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"Wisdom" of the Dumb Cowboy" 
Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 08:51 AM - Random Thoughts
Our "president" is a rich, dumb cowboy. It never fails to crack me up that he just doesn't believe that global warming is happening. But then, he is a man of "faith", which apparently means that facts and research cannot change his opinions, no matter how wrong those opinions are. He just chooses to not believe that global CO2 levels are triple what they were in 1920. He doesn't believe that the world's coral reefs are 90% dead. He doesn't believe that the Gulf Stream is slowing down. He doesn't believe the polar ice caps are melting. Why not? Because he doesn't like science and doesn't trust anyone smarter than him (which is almost everyone).

The Dumb Cowboy thinks we're *winning* in Iraq. He just doesn't think about the fact that this war costs our country a billion dollars per day. He doesn't believe the Iraqi citizens want us gone (and they certainly do). He doesn't believe Iraq is experiencing a religious civil war (which we really need to stay out of). He just says we need to achieve "victory" but won't define what that actually is.

Bush just takes it on "faith" that more oil drilling, not greater fuel efficiency, is what America needs. He's willing to sacrifice our national parks for a few hundred thousand barrels of crude. He just cannot accept that the American indigenous oil reserves are 75% depleted, and the remaining 25% only comes forth grudgingly.

Bush really believes that tax cuts for millionaires is helping America. All its really done is help create the biggest national debt in American history. The reign of the Dumb Cowboy makes the Reagan Administration seem downright thrifty. Bush doesn't believe inflation is happening, even though inflation is a direct consequence of carrying too high a national debt. But then, Bush doesn't understand advanced mathematical disciplines, so he just takes it on "faith" that his own uneducated opinions are correct.

I will dance a jig the day Bush leaves office. He really is the Dumb Cowboy.

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sometimes the integration recedes 
Monday, July 17, 2006, 09:39 AM
I guess it's not a good thing to be too tired for too long. But it's hard not to get worn down when it's sooooo bloody hot day after day after day.

The trouble is, maintaining my integration requires a certain amount of psychic energy. When I get really fatigued, I revert into a collection of entities. I can feel the presence of the others in my mind. It's not scary or disturbing, but it is somewhat distracting.

I often wish that I could be as pure as Thistle or as self-disciplined as Ashen.

I am so tired. This heat wave is just downright terrible.

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sometimes the integration recedes 
Monday, July 17, 2006, 08:46 AM
I guess it's not a good think to be too tired for too long. But it's hard not to get worn down when it's soo bloody hot day after day after day.

The trouble is, maintaining my integration requires a certain amount of psychic energy. When I get really fatigued, I revert into a collection of entities. I can feel the presence of the others in my mind. It's not scary or disturbing, but it is somewhat distracting.

I often wish that I could be as pure as Thistle or as self-disciplined as Ashen.

I am so tired. This heat wave is just downright terrible.

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A less weighty issue 
Sunday, July 16, 2006, 03:21 PM
It looks like my weight loss is slowing down. On the other hand, I'm now VERY close to my ideal weight. When I weighed myself at the gym, I was down to 187 pounds. That's a far cry from the 215 I weighed back in November 2005, and the 211 I weighed when I joined the gym in February this year.

Basically, I can sustain 6.6 MPH for an entire 5km run. I can walk/jog for 5.25 miles as well. While the sumemr heat never bothered me too much anyway, it bothers me even less now. I can even get up at 6:00AM for work and not feel exhausted every day. Yay!

I already passed my short-term goal (190 pounds), and I'm only 2 pounds away from my medium-term goal (185 lbs.) I'm not entirely sure if my long-term goal of 175 pounds is going to be possible, however. Since I've been jogging so much, I've gained a lot of leg muscle. But I can live with 185 if that's what ends up being possible.

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The Day from Hell 
Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 09:17 PM
Today was the "Perfect Storm" of bad days. First, Wednesdays are really busy anyway. On top of that, today had one of the pointless staff meetings, so that ate up an hour of extremely valuable time. We're also running the investigation team with just two people (instead of four) because one person quit and another person has been on extended sick leave for 40 days straight.

Well, my boss has been outsourcing a *small* percentage of the investigations over to the Case Agent staff. Well... You've never heard such whining and groaning! Forget the fact that the average case agen is reading the paper or playing solitare by 1:30pm. My personal case load has gone from 5 cases per day to 7. Six cases per day is really the upper limit for what is reasonably doable in an 8-hour shift.

One of the Case Agents had the nerve to say, "The investigators should be able to do 9 or 10 cases in a day. Seven is nothing." Geeeeeeez!

So I got out 90 minutes late today because I had too many damn cases. Three of the defendants came in after 3:00pm, which means that I had to process them instead of writing case notes. And these useless junkies had the nerve to complain that it was taking too long! Ha ha ha ha!

Oh well... What can ya do?

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Return of the Dougmeister 
Sunday, July 9, 2006, 10:47 AM
Doug comes back from his vacation to Erie, PA today (I usually think of it as Eerie, PA). Doug gets a lot more vacation than I do, so he visits his mom twice per year. I think that's nice even though I am sorta lonely for a week. But he's coming back tonight. Yay!

The T-Mobile Sidekick turns out to have been a great Valentines Day gift this year, since it's the first cell phone that he's actually enjoyed using. He sent me a bunch of pictures of his mom's dog, Daisy (who also goes by the nicknames "Big Bite" and "Meat Loaf"). The dog is a chubby dauxhund (one of those "hot dog" shaped dogs).



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Junkie Scarecrows 
Saturday, July 8, 2006, 03:57 PM - Drrruuggsss
Y'know... It's just really hard to feel sorry for junkies. I see them all the time in my job, and the big problem I have with them is that they are RARELY interested in getting off dope. It doesn't seem to matter that their drug habit has driven them to a life of crime, made them unemployable, wrecked their health, and alienated them from their families. All they care about is smoking their next rock or shooting an ampule of boiling heroin into their veins.

I had a defendant stagger in yesterday who was so high that I thought he came in on a parachute. He was 29 and looked like he was 70. He weighed 130, had AIDS and HEP-C from using dirty needles, had never held down a job, had a 200 page RAP sheet, was on disability, and could barely keep his eyes open because he was so saturated with heroin.

The hillarious thing is that he is in a drug treatment program too! He does heroin IN ADDITION TO methadone. So my tax dollars go towards making sure this useless junkie gets extra dope, free AIDS medicine, free housing, and free food. His latest offense? He stole his grandfather's credit card and used it to get cash advances so that he could buy more dope.

The guy's criminal history showed that he just doesn't care abnout anything except dope. Every time he got arrested, it would follow the same pattern: 1. Arrest for some petty offense (dope, theft, burglary, trespassing, etc). 2. Failure to for court. 3. Re-Arrest on that charge. 4. Released on bail (as opposed to recog). 5. Failure to appear. 6. Re-Arrest on that charge. 7. Held without bond until trial. 8. At trial, some liberal judge would give him a verdict of "time served". 9. Out on the street -- REPEAT!

This jerk was at Step 4 yesterday.

Personally, I wish that junkies could just be "put to sleep" like diseased animals.

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Vision of fire 
Wednesday, July 5, 2006, 09:17 PM
I get this sort of degenerate form of migraine headache once in a while. Basically, I get all of the migraine components except for the pain. My vision fills with greenish fire, I get dizzy, sweaty, and generally uncomfortable. These episodes last only 10-15 minutes, but they are a real drag.

It's really annoying when it happens during a workout. I only got to run 2.25 miles today. I usually like to run 3.0-4.5 miles in a session. Oh well.

I sometimes worry about this happen when I'm driving. Thus far it hasn't hapened that way. But man, is it a drag!

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A Boring July 4th 
Tuesday, July 4, 2006, 05:10 PM
Doug's away visiting his family for a week. I have the day off, but it's been pretty dull. I did my usual workout, then I cleaned the downstairs, did the dishes, and ran the laundry. Whooo-hooo!

My relatives in Baltimore never invite me over for holidays. My mom and brother live too far away to drive there and back in one day. Most of my friends have, over the years, moved out of state. Oh well. I'm feeling kinda lonely and bored.

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