In other words, I got so many interesting news stories taking up valuable browser space that I just have to keep the headlines flowing around here.

Think of today’s blog entry as Tuesday Newsday, Part II : Overflow.

The Best Revenge Since Carrie

First off, a downright awesome story of a wrong righted and a negative act turned positive through the value of a community’s sense of justice.

The story is of a sixteen year old girl named Whitney Kropp who lives in West Branch, Michigan. She’s a high school student who was never very popular, so imagine her surprise and joy when she learned that she had been chosen to be homecoming royalty at her high school’s homecoming dance.

But her joy soon turned to sadness and pain when she found out her classmates had only voted for her as a cruel joke. There was pointing, and laughing, and cruelest of all, the boy they voted to be her opposite number stepped down after finding out who he was paired with.

What a senseless and coldhearted, brutal thing to do to this young woman. But from such darkness light came, because once her down caught wind of the terrible state she was in, they rallied around her, showering her with gifts and praise.

Check this shit out :

For the homecoming dance Saturday, businesses will buy her dinner, take her photo, fix her hair and nails, and dress her in a gown, shoes and a tiara.

For the homecoming game Friday, residents will pack the football stadium so they can cheer when she is introduced at halftime.

They will be wearing her favorite color (orange) and T-shirts with messages of support. A 68-year-old grandmother offered to be her escort.

Is that awesome, or what? The gifts alone might not have done the trick, but try to deny the power of a stadium filled with people wearing T-shirts (in your favorite color!) supporting you and cheering you on during halftime of the big game.

Take that, whatever evil pack of bitches cooked this whole abusive scheme in the first place. (And you know it was girls. Men simply cannot conceive of such cruelty. Sorry ladies, but you know it’s true. )

You Have A What Stuck Where

And speaking of things men can or cannot conceive, it is time to take a real dive down the rabbit;s hole with this not safe for work instant news classic : A New Zealand man was admitted to the emergency room with an eel lodged someplace.

And if you have been on the Internet for more than five minutes, you know where that eel went. Yup. Up the bum, or as they say in Kiwi land, “up the jacksie”. Apparently, “eel” is Kiwi for “hamster”.

Insert your tired old Richard Gere joke here.

Now it is not entirely impossible that the eel entered the Brown Lagoon involuntarily. Skinny dipping dude, eel tries to dart into a cave, dude has to make one hell of an embarrassing 911 call.

But every emergency room worker will tell you that lots of fellows end up with a lot of interesting things up there, so voluntary insertion seems more likely.

And being a gay man myself^[1], I find myself capable of following his reasoning. It’s naturally slippery, it wriggles about, it’s smooth sided and tapered… not hard to imagine what this no doubt lusr addled fellow was thinking.

I am guessing that what he did not anticipate was the eel, in this stressful situation, trying to swim as deep into this strange cavern as possible, looking for the other side.

I wonder why you never here about women who get things stuck up inside? Are women just smarter with their holes, or is it that the press just does not find that nearly as funny?

We may never know the truth.

Follies of True Libertarians

And lastly, this story of what hilarious things libertarians attempt when they get into power.

Remember that Scott Walker douchebag? You know, that scumbag who tried (and failed, as it turns out) to crush public service unions in Wisconsin?

Well check out what that pointy headed true believer tried recently :

Gov. Scott Walker has changed course on plans to remove fire-safety requirements from the state electrical code. Walker is now directing state officials to leave in place rules designed to detect fire-causing conditions and stop electric shocks, and to keep children from sticking foreign objects into electrical outlets.

Yup, that morons had plans to just plain get rid of a ton of fire safety and electrical regulations, presumably because government bad, business good, and all those pesky regulations are just that mean old Nanny State slapping your hand and making things hard for you and your money grubbing friends for no good reason at all.

It is a sign of the fundamental immaturity of the modern libertarian mindset that they simply cannot conceive of any good reason why they and those like them should ever be told “no”. They really seem to think that they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, with absolutely no rules applying to them. Plenty for other people, especially if they’re poor, of course. But not THEM.

If they were true libertarian (and I know a few, and I applaud their ethical consistency) they would be just as active and angry about the supposed war on drugs and corporate malfeasance (what could be more anti-individual that a group being given the rights of an individual?) as they were about government overspending and what they consider excessive tax rates.

But no, part of the madness of modern conservatism is that it manages to take the worst aspects of social conservatism and libertarianism and fuses it into one incredibly volatile, psychotic, self-centered mess whose central message is basically anarchism.

Only without the good parts.