My Summer... Um, Reading List

Do you remember back in school the list of books your English (or Language Arts if your school tried to trick itself into thinking it was progressive) teacher would try to scare you into reading for the following fall? As for myself, I've got exceptionally vague recollections of the fear mongering Mrs. Whomever would try to engulf us with in an effort to get us to read something other than any given cereal box over the summer. I remember one summer I read J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" on the off chance that the doomsday prophecies that would hold true for those who didn't come prepared to discuss what they've read in a few months time.

So I came back the following fall and my (new) English teacher (I'm sorry, Language Arts teacher--I went to that kind of school) didn't so much as ask if anyone bothered to read anything over the summer. I want to say it was because he had his own lesson plan that any reading one of his students may have done over the summer didn't quite fit into. Or maybe he just knew that no one really gave a shit and he knew better than to inquire.

This really has nothing to do with what I planned on writing about. I've got a summer itinerary regarding my cultural enrichment/education. This came about for a few insignificant reasons. First and foremost, my shift at work changed. I was working second shift until midnight at my bread and butter job (i.e. the one that supplies the health benefits for my family and I, not to mention the bulk of my income) with weekends off. While on this shift I'd get home by 12:30 at the latest and would manage to knock off a movie before turning in at the reasonable hour of 3AM. 3:30 if I was feeling ambitious by taking on an epic movie or if I just couldn't sleep. My daughter gets me up anywhere between 9 and 10 (usually closer to 9) and I'd manage to get by on about 6 hours of sleep.

As of a month ago and due to no control of my own I would up on the 6PM to 2:30AM shift with Sundays and Mondays off. The change in climate around work isn't too bad. I come in a couple hours later and its generally more relaxed. The problem is that I'm the type of person who needs their alone time. I like my solitude. I like knocking off one movie a day and filling that unfillable hole better known as my want-to-see list. These reasons and I can't sleep for a good two hours after I get home from work. But getting home at 2:45AM on a good night and having to turn in around 4-ish to get a decent amount of sleep so I can keep up with a perpetually revved-up 21 month-old doesn't let me knock off the movie a night I used to be able to. At least not on this schedule.

So what the hell do I do? Going out and living life at that time of the night isn't really an option, so I go back to what I used to do on the summer vacations when I was supposed to be digesting the literary classics I never bothered with.

I watch TV.

It's not a bad plan. The only TV on during the summer is the reruns of the stuff I'd been watching for the last 9 months or heinous, heinous reality TV. So why not go and watch some reruns of my own? Except I've never seen them before and they're not reruns to me. Here's my summer lineup with half-assed blueprints to maximize my viewing time:

Sadly, I haven't been making as much headway as I'd have liked to since acquiring the 156 episode/5-season set at the end of January. Some nights I'll knock off 3 or 4 episodes and there will be 2-week stretches where I won't see so much as a single episode. Each episode of The Twilight Zone runs at about 25 minutes so I can theoretically kill 3 on a really ambitious night. I also tend to nod off as the gorgeous black and white photography has a way of hypnotizing me. Watching one a night might be the way to go for the summer as I likely won't get to the 4th season with the hour-long episodes. And I've almost knocked off the first season.

Impatient with waiting for the first season to come out on DVD domestically in July, I scored the Region 2 DVD set on Amazon. Only to find out all 3 seasons are coming out domestically in July. Between missing a few episodes on Adult Swim and my penchant for striking while the iron is hot I decided to go full throttle with the 20 episodes at 30 minutes apiece with The Mighty Boosh. One episode a night should have this knocked off within a month. I can only speculate on where my state of mind will be when its all finished as this mindbendingly surreal British comedy show pretty much defies description.


Seeing J.J. Abrams revamping of Star Trek last month gave me the itch I sometimes get for the original series something fierce. I've always liked the original Star Trek series and no other. The Next Generation was lame and I can't even think of what came after that. Maybe it was the wonderfully yet hideously campy and dated sets. Perhaps it was William Shatner's overacting. Or how about the ridiculous premises like a planet of 1920s mobsters or space hippies? Ridiculous, but enjoyable. Star Trek also has the ability to make me feel nostalgic for a period in time I never knew, let alone was alive or cognisant during. The costumes, the sets and the lighting all have a magical way of drawing me in and allowing me to disregard whatever nonsense is going on in my life while I'm watching.

Against all good conscience I rounded up each of the remastered seasons (3 sets in all totaling 79 episodes at about 50 minutes each) that actually redid some of the special effects. Remember years ago when the Enterprise would just kind of float by like an incredibly bored fish? A few years back the transitional shots of the ship were redone with some beautiful special effects that make the whole thing come across more dynamically. Initially I was really weirded out by this but oddly enough these effects actually add to the show. That and the out of print older editions go for like another $100 more.

After receiving the highest possible recommendation from friends and fellow Anglophiles, I picked up the entire series of Spaced last week. It features Simon Pegg and the rest of the Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz crew in a sitcom about a guy and a girl who fake a relationship to land a really nice apartment. More full of pop culture references than Bill O'Reilly is full of shit, Spaced is funny and charming. Currently I'm 5 episodes into Spaced's 14 episode run and will be done shortly. At which point I'll start watching:

The State was a great sketch comedy show MTV aired in the early 90s. It ran for 26 half-hour episodes on MTV and flopped classically when they tried to make the jump to CBS. Like didn't get past the first episode flopped. It featured some of the players that went on to Reno 911! and the brilliant, grossly underrated and short-lived Stella. The complete series set comes out on DVD July 14th and will complete my summer broadcasting schedule. The long, long years of waiting are finally over. Awww yeaaah...!

I've written about the Ventures before and my love of the show. Once getting past what I like to call the stumbling first six episode syndrome (that's the period where any given show finds its tone and eventually its stability. Whenever I start watching a TV show I always give it the first six episodes and if I doesn't grab me I walk away) I voraciously ate it up through the end of the second season. Unfortunately, The Venture Brothers is the kind of show that too much at once is a bad thing. Don't believe me? Watch and entire season of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! in one sitting. Now that I've been able to step back from The Venture Brothers I feel I'm ready to tackle the third season.

I'll post the book report in the fall...

I'm Not a Big Fan of Gloating But That Doesn't Mean I Won't Indulge From Time to Time...

I don't like sports at all. I find them to be incredibly boring and unnecessarily time-consuming. Like paperwork. Oh, and sports fans are generally (but not always) narcoleptic closet cases turned on by tranny Nazis dancing to Air Supply. Take football for instance--it takes them like 3 minutes to set up a play that lasts usually 15 seconds at most. Its like politics with more testosterone and tighter pants. Completely stupid. And I'm digressing already.

Last night the sport of hockey wrapped up its 2008-2009 season with the final game of The Stanley Cup series. If you're a sports fan who also happens to enjoy a good pot boiler you know that this year the series went to the full and maximum seven games. Whoever wins four games first wins. Simple enough.

From what I understand the final two teams who squared off against each other in this year's series was a rehash of last year's series--the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. I'd like to make it abundantly clear that I couldn't give a rat's ass about either team, or hockey in general for that matter.

(I'm in Buffalo and I tried backing (more like paying attention to) The Sabres a few years ago, but the playoff round they made it too proved to be too stressful and suspenseful for me. If I want suspense I'll watch a Hitchcock movie, I won't watch a sporting event.)

But my neighbor is a Red Wings fan. His fandom reaches into the territories of the obnoxious and the annoying. He's got Red Wings window flags on both sides of his car. He owns numerous t-shirts, overpriced jerseys and the like. He goes to games (in Detriot), smuggles in and and throws a dead octopi on the ice whenever something... I don't know, exciting happens.

(Before I continue, what the fuck is up with the octopus? Seriously. We really can't pin it on the greed, avarice or incompetence of the automotive industry whose world capital happens to be Detroit. Is it in reference to the original title of The Beatles' Help! album (Eight Arms to Hold You) or the Veruca Salt album that eventually picked up the sloppy seconds title? The octopus isn't indigenous to Michigan, so what the hell is it? All I know is its pretty gay and I don't want to know anymore. I just don't.)

Speaking of the octopus, he's also got an octopus bubble machine and paints octopi and other gay Red Wings crap on the fact of his 3 1/2 year-old daughter who honestly couldn't care less. Oh, and he hangs a Red Wings banner off his balcony (behind one of the largest trees in the neighborhood) that looks like a tattered and faded bedsheet. It's got the team's name and lists all the years where they... I don't know, accomplished something supposedly noteworthy. And my neighbor added the years since on this banner with a since equally-faded Sharpie.

Don't get me wrong: my neighbor is a nice enough guy. It's his fandom I take exception with. His main interests in life are fishing, Godzilla, any sports team out of Detroit (except the baseball team I think) and The Cure. And before you ask, no, I'm not making this up.

I used to like The Cure. I actually had every album and listened to them with some frequency. Then I met my neighbor. I met him before the band released that Join the Dots B-sides and rarities box set. He was a tad on the rabid side and that should've been my first red flag. But at the time I was kind of excited about it too so the prospect of not having to hang onto that Standing on the Beach/Staring at the Sea cassette in itself was sort of exciting.

Cut to that summer. The Cure put out their self-titled release. The buildup to the was ultimately its demise. At least for me. I got updates from fansites at least 3 times a day.

They played All Cats Are Grey for an encoure at a Japanese show.

They're playing Leno this Friday night.

Korn's producer is recording the new album.

The opening track is supposed to have a very aggressive feel to it.

Robert Smith dropped a deuce that looks like Morrissey's junk.

ANYTHING that happened (or even supposedly happened) with The Cure I heard about. The album got seriously talked up to the point when it didn't deliver I took out this barrage of uselessly insignificant trivia and information on the band itself by writing them off forever. And can I really blame all this on my neighbor? Is it his fault The Cure hasn't put out an album I'd like to listen to more than once since 1992?

No, it isn't. But it is his fault that he's got to plop stupid crap on me about a band I marginally enjoyed at that point at best. And for that his precious Detroit Red Wings suffered...! Go Penguins, bitches!!! Eat a dick! Eat more than one dick! Eat a whole bunch...!!!

How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...

I think we all know what's going to happen next...

There's a line in the 1946 classic film Gilda where Rita Hayworth tells Glenn Ford that she hates him so much that she would destroy herself to take him down with her. To me, that's nasty but there's also something beautiful about the sentiment. And just a tad hot, too.

Poetry is my Johnny Farrell. (Do yourself a truly big favor and see the movie.) I hate poetry so much that I would gladly, openly and willingly destroy myself to take it down with me. Not really, but I can and have hated it for a long, long time. Anyone that knows me agrees that I'll gripe about a good many things. Most things I can't stand or (validly) claim to loathe generally don't get that much of an outward reaction from me. I might rant about something or someone on my own personal shitlist for a minute or two, but more often than not I just get a facial expression that's the equivalent of a forced, moist fart. Then I let out a delayed groan, internalize my disdain for said object and let it kill a very small part of me. And that's usually the extent of it.

In poetry's case maybe it's poets themselves. Everyone I've ever known that's written poetry has been so into it and out there about it. That air of pretention, the whole I'm a poet thing, its like they think they're a walking $20 you found in your pocket. Like you should be so fucking honored to know them. Oh, you're a poet? Lavish me with your incoherent and unintelligable prose...! Please, please please!!!

I hate the rhythm of poetry too, whether it rhymes or not. Hearing poetry is like reading a Dr. Seuss book that doesn't have the excuse of being written for kids and is kind of devised to help them to learn how to read. During President Obama's inaguration I listened to Elizabeth Alexander's poem, cringed and waited for the whole goddamned thing to be over. Great for her, but I fought to keep the gagging from giving way to puking. I get embarrassed listening to people recite poetry.

I think that part of it goes back to high school. Every once in a while I'd date a girl who'd be into poetry and really, really identified with Sylvia Plath. (Lucky me.) My write me one and every once in a while (or in some cases all the time) she'd want me to read it right there. Put me on the spot, great. Just fucking great. So I'm reading it and either not getting it or not caring. And I don't know what to say. I have no idea what the hell to say. Usually it was bad. Actually it was always bad. Or just really gay, I didn't get it or I didn't really care to get it. So to appease this gift of grammatical... um, outpouring I'd just usually start making out with her to get out of having to answer the question of what I thought about it. And worse, do I feel the same way?

One of the more recent instances of the on the spot brand of poetry (not that it makes the variety of poetry any different--I just really can't stand being bum rushed by it. I hate when someone is all excited and wants me to read some emotionally constipated poem they wrote in a spasm of inspiration) was a few years ago when one of my nameless neighbors wanted me to read a poem he (yes, he) wrote. He's a nurse and was into writing about terminal cancer patients he was working with back then. So with my inability to dodge bullets such as these at the time, I'd often find myself reading them off his computer screen because his printer was out of commission. Eventually he got the picture with my barely audible grunts and eventual and innocuous s'not bad comments then left me alone. Whenever someone wants to bear their soul to me and let me read their poetry, I always think of the one Family Guy episode where Stewie complains that everyone always comes out of the closet to him.

I don't even like song lyrics. That's how much I can't stand poetry. When I'm listening to music I pay very little attention to the vocals and lyrics. Pick any one of my favorite albums ever and I can't recite any of the lyrics. Because I don't care. If someone's a decent to great singer that's fine. They can be singing the recipe for a pineapple upside-down cake for all I care but I couldn't give a damn what they're singing about. With one notable exception.

Bob Dylan. I love Dylan's lyrics from the '61-'66 era. I really like the imagery he scares up ("Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one," she smiles, And puts her hands in her back pockets, Bette Davis style") and the occasional zingers ("The sun's not yellow it's chicken.") I used to relish in the lyrics of Morrissey but once I shed my self-importance in my late-20s I realized he's just a really repressed homosexual. It's hard to be that supposedly witty and be straight. And if your audience has grown up but you haven't, well, you've got bigger problems than wearing gold lame shirts.

And as for hip hop? I'm good with hip hop. I won't listen to it for the sake of listening to it. If the beats aren't there then neither am I. I'm down with clever or even fun rhymes like MF Doom's. Wu-Tang's first album, Tribe Called Quest, stuff like that. That Top 40 shit can eat a dick.

But ironically it was poetry itself that inspired me to write this blog. I did a decent job of avoiding it up until a couple days ago. My wife recorded some classical poetry show off HBO Family. All the show basically came down to was a bunch of actors reading well-known poems with moving paintings acting them out. And the supposed zest with which Gwyneth Paltrow read a Shakespeare poem made me want to shit myself to death. I will give the Hoagy Carmichael part respect though. I actually had to leave the room this thing was driving me nuts. All I can hope from here on in is that my wife doesn't encourage my daughter with this crap and that this was a one-shot special.

A World Class Listening Problem

Submitted for your approval. A quick story from my record store job earlier today.

I was listening to Don Caballero's World Class Listening Problem album at work today. Perhaps a little out there for our usual crowd but I'm part-time and it was a Saturday. Add those particulars together and my heart's not going to break too much or do anything about it if someone doesn't like it.

About halfway through the album a withered, leathery, frankly creepy, but nice enough older lady brought her selections to the front desk. She asked what we were listening to. I wasn't expecting her to declare her undying love for Don Caballero or anything like that, but maybe a this is fun or an I've never heard anything like this before. I like to be pleasantly surprised by people from time to time. Hope was swapped out for slight disappointment when she said its just the same thing over and over again. Whatever, I thought. Once you get to a certain point in your life new things are either scary to or just can't be appreciated.

Then she hands me her selections. She handed me 4 Bon Jovi CDs. And not the stuff like Slippery When Wet or 7800° Fahrenheit. I'm talking Bounce, Have a Nice Day and Lost Highway. The albums the band put out after they got into that adult contemporary easy-listening rock rut. Former hair metal became that watered-down nonsense that middle-aged people can justify being cool if they listen to. The stuff the band put out once they discovered where their bread was buttered and decided to never ever move from that spot if they never wanted to play a state fair in this or any other life.

And by doing this, Bon Jovi decided to do the same thing over and over again.

Yeaaaaaaaaah...

The Jelly Donut List

"jelly-donut - 1 definition - When a guy jizzes on a woman's face and punches her in the nose. Then she smears the blood and cum with her hand...yummy."

-urbandictionary.com

I'd like to start off by stating, before any nasty and defensive comments roll in, that I in no way advocate violence against women. Unless said woman is trying to kill you or has a very good chance of kicking your ass, at which point it becomes a matter of survival. Even in those situations I believe its okay to to finish the fight as long as you weren't the one who started it.

As far as The Jelly Donut List goes, this is a list of those (generally) celebrities to whom I'd like to give a jelly donut. But said act would have to happen in a perfect world. Namely one where I'd have to deal with no consequences whatsoever (jail time, angry significant others, retribution in any way shape, lawsuits, etc.) and wouldn't be viewed as some kind of jerk. So yeah, this would be in some kind of a paradox world or said jelly donuts would have to be done behind the scenes. Namely in expensive hotel rooms with a staff of cleaners (like The Wolf in Pulp Fiction, not Jennifer Lopez in Maid in Manhattan) to sweep the incident(s) under the proverbial rug.

I think its also fair to mention that I have a nasty cold right now so I'm not at my optimal (and what I've been told from time to time as lovable) rage level. If I were to take on my entire Jelly Donut list at this point in time, many of the objects of my disdain would escape unharmed and go unnoticed. This list is a work-in-progress and may or may not be updated regularly. I also believe its worth noting that my contempt for those on this list my prevent me from carrying out the first part required to give a jelly donut. But the promise of the second requirement just might pull me through...

In no specific order:

Kate Gosselin -- Watch an episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8 and you'll see what I mean. Or watch an episode of The Soup. This professional baby machine plays the reality TV show game like a pro while simultaneously killing her poor bastard husband's soul. Just the mere rumor of him cheating on her gives me hope for this world. Over the several seasons of their incredibly boring show we've watched her widdle her husband down to a nub, reinvent herself as the tacky personification of everything that's wrong with this country and inspire millions of vasectomies worldwide. We get it. Having 8 kids is stressful. That's why the network that puts your show out take great strides to foot the bill for everything (including an army of child care professionals so you don't have to be near your kids when you're not filming) you do and keep the level of madness if your life to a minimum, yet you choose to be a bitch. As your show is about to hit the ground at record speeds and go up in smoke I can't say I'll miss you. But if I ever do I can take comfort in knowing you'll be hosting an infomercial that's just a channel change away...

Cameron Diaz -- She looks like the female version of The Joker, has a mouth that covers 3 country zip codes and she looks like a fish. She was cute for about 20 minutes in the mid-90s but now she just makes crappy movies and believes her own press when they tell her she's awesome. If given the choice to have the shit kicked out of me by Michael Clarke Duncan or watch Diaz eat, I'd have to go with the MCD treatment.

Tila Tequila -- She's had a couple seasons of a reality show in which she milks the whole cute bi-sexual girl thing to the point where cute girls who are actually and legitimately bi-sexual without a measure of novelty are or should be ashamed. On said show she had blank-eyed, fame-hungry contestants eat animal genitals to supposedly prove their love to her. Tequila is also an alleged singer and at one point had the most friends on Myspace. It would almost be worth enduring all this nonsense if she was hot, but she isn't. She looks like an aborted alien that wound up getting adopted by drag queens. Or a former sex slave. Take your pick. I heard she was bum-rushed the other day at a gas station by a group of guys with malicious intent. I'm not saying I was happy to hear about it, but I'm not saying I was unhappy to hear it either.

Paris Hilton -- Duh. She put out painfully boring and dreary raccoon-eyed night-vision porn, the kind where girls who think they're so hot just have to be there and do little else. Hilton also had a reality show to find a best friend. Personally I feel that I could've stopped at duh. She went to jail but got out early because she cried a lot and was on the verge of a supposed physical collapse or some shit. There are so many things wrong with Hilton. And when I say Hilton, I mean the concept of her as well as the actual... person. Probably the worst part about Hilton isn't her shitball reality shows, the fact that she gets paid obscene amounts of money just to show up at parties or even her incredibly anti-climactic porn. The worst part about her is that the rest of the world thinks she's the typical American and that we're like her. No wonder we're so hated...

Sandra Bullock -- She's never made a good movie. Ever. The closest thing to entertaining she's ever done was at the end of the overrated 2005 film Crash when she realized that her Hispanic maid was her best friend and told her this as she burst into tears. The Powers That Be keep letting her make movies, each one worse then the one before. For the June (or maybe July) issue of The BEAST I wrote that I'm pretty sure she won a mass bet with the heads of all the major film studios where she is allowed to make a never-ending series of heinous movies. I'm sticking with that theory.

Tyra Banks -- Possibly the most self-absorbed creature to walk the face of the planet, Banks has prominent roles in some of the worst TV shows currently on the air. If I were to dedicate more than a few random and passing moments thinking about her I'd have to question what I loathe more about her-- the said self-absorption (she gave Miley Cyrus a picture of herself for her birthday) or the way she'll periodically and oh so bravely let the world see her without make-up. Wow, Tyra. You really are a regular person. We all had you figured so wrong.

Rachael Ray -- With a voice that implies she goes through a carton of Chesterfields a day, her general obnoxiousness, paramount corniness, abysmal catchphrases and a frog face I don't know if there's anything Rachael Ray can do to nauseate me or make me hate her guts even more. And she once looked at a camera and asked her audience with a completely straight face if they'd love to have Celine Dion around everywhere they went. I would give Ray a jelly donut even if I was told it would kill me.

Nadya Suleman aka The Octomom -- Let's see, where do I begin? How about the fact that you had 6 kids before you decided to and ultimately made a deliberate effort to have 8 MORE KIDS? You've milked government disability programs for $167,000 before you even shit out your first child. You are human fucking cancer. I can't decide if I truly hate (and by hate I mean to dislike intensely or passionately, feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward and detest--just so we're clear, you fucking piece of shit) you (optimum... hatred... coming... back...) more because you're sure to be a draining leech on the taxpayers in your local community who will have to pay for your 14-part science experiment someday or because your parents in their rat trap 3-bedroom house in a California small town that not even the US Post Office recognizes declared bankruptcy with over a million dollars in liabilities for the reason which I'm pretty sure is your stank ass and your brood of ankle-biting beasts. Oh, and I'm sure your 67-year old father is going to have a blast going to work, dodging bullets in Iraq to support your fucking ass. Get it? Blast? And as for your 69-year old mother? I'm sure she won't mind taking care of your 14 kids while you shop them out for that reality show that's certainly coming down the pipeline. And of course 14 kids aren't going to drive a woman that age to the grave. The only thing better than my personally give you a jelly donut with the butt of an AK-47 would be to see you not get the reality show and see this whole fucking thing backfire in your Alanis Morrisette-looking face. I would rather see Jon and Kate be on the air until the day I die than see commercials for your freeloading ass on a weekly basis. You make every other woman on this list look like Audrey Hepburn and I hope they take your kids away. And I've never wished that on anyone.

Who the Hell is This Chick?

"There is a man that live next door

In my neighborhood

In my neighborhood

And he gets me down..."

-Massive Attack

Admittedly this isn't the best picture. Downright awful, truth be told. Taken through a dirty porch window (or through a dirty cameraphone lens the more I think about it) this is the kid(?) who haunts my neighborhood. Or more specifically my front step.

I first noticed her a couple months ago. She stands oftentimes halfway between my absentee neighbor's house and mine. Sometimes on my end, sometimes on his. She's usually wearing pajama pants and is always either fucking around on her iPod or texting on her cell phone. She's Native American and could be anywhere from 11 to 32 years old. Granted, she never does anything wrong (like throw her feces at my house, use the knob on my front door as a "prom date" or play shitty music loudly) but that doesn't mean I want some freak standing in front of my house. You've got to walk past it, no problem! Just keep it moving...!

It came with great relief to me that my wife knew who I was talking about as well as our upstairs tenant. Neither of them knew who the fuck this crackpot is, but they knew who I was talking about and sometimes, just sometimes, knowing you're not a delusional wingnut is all you'll get.

As far as theories as to who the fuck this is, I've got one. There's a house about 3 doors to the left of mine where a revolving cast of characters of the Native American persuasion live. I want to say there's the mother (with 3-4 kids) and X amount of brothers who are in and out of the place. I don't want to make them sound like The Yellow Dragons from The Golden Child but there's usually crappy music coming from the house and I get a general filth vibe off of them.

And not because they're Native American.

Sadly last fall one of the kids died. She was a little girl and she was 18 months old. Not much older than my daughter. The rest of the kids were the only ones home while mom was up the street getting a mattress off a neighbor. There was all kinds of speculation as to weird and rare House-like illnesses that claimed the child's life and I thought I heard the word quarantine at one point. All I know is my daughter never went over there and not to fear monger here, but was never going over there. Turns out the deceased was sick and mom gave her a Tylenol with codeine.

In my neck of the woods, Tylenol with codeine is only available by prescription. Or if you're feeling ambitious you can go across either the Peace or Rainbow Bridge into Canada and buy it over the counter. Granted, pediatrics is only a hobby of mine but even I know you don't give something containing codeine to an 18 month-old child. Whiskey on the gums is still tried and true but codeine is still a no-no. Then after the investigation the woman down the street had the rest of her kids taken away. While I do sympathize to a certain extent with anyone who has their kids taken away there's still the whole giving your 18 month-old codeine thing I still take exception with. But then again, my neighborhood has gotten more and more fucked up over the years.

So, back the to the fucked up woman-child. I don't know who she is but I want her to stop.

Now.