You Deserve to be Tased

This is a topic that has me exceedingly disturbed, and unfortunately, I may be on the wrong side of this argument. In fact, I am so bothered by this that I will be abandoning the standard listing of reasons and will just write. In the last few weeks several police departments have come under scrutiny for their use of tasers on civilians who are breaking the law and not obeying the orders of these officers. Sadly, I am on the side of the police officers in each of the big three news stories. Each story is completely unique, so I’m going to dissect each one, and why I am on the side of the cops. I am going to go chronologically in the order they were reported, not necessarily the order they actually happened.

The first story was about a 56 year-old grandma. . . . in a wheelchair. . . . . who happened to be schizophrenic . . . . . and was in her sisters lawn . . . with two knives . . . . yeah, she was threatening her sister to the point that she called the cops. So the police arrive with 2 cars, 4 people. They surround her, try to restrain her and can’t do it without risking getting sliced up. So they tased her. Unfortunately, she has a pre-existing heart condition that they don’t know about and the tasing, while not knocking her out, ended up killing her by causing her heart to fail.

Here is why I am on the side of the law. This is a lose-lose situation for them. Either they physically harm the threatening person, and risk getting sued by hurting them, or they don’t restrain the violent person and somebody gets hurt . . . . and then they get sued for neglect.

Seriously, if you call the cops to remove a violent person from being in your vicinity, you can’t complain when they do it effectively and keep you safe. Even more so in the case of your knife-wielding, violent, head-case of a sister who, in all fairness, was going to die sooner rather than later. Honestly, this kind of smells like a set up to me. The family probably knew what the cops would do, knew about the heart problem, and said, let’s see if we can get rich quick. They even had a lawyer filing paperwork before the autopsy was completed. This is why stupid people ruin the world for the rest of us. This is what happens when you don’t tell the cops your knife-wielding, wheelchair-ridden, crazy sister has a heart condition. I am against suing people who did their job right.

The second story was the jackass college student who verbally accosted Senator John Kerry at the end of a Q & A session on a Florida campus. You know the headline “Don’t Tase Me Bro”, yeah, this is the one. He asked him a ludicrous question, which Senator Kerry was going to answer. However, instead of calmly waiting for the answer, the kid became combative, cutting Senator Kerry off, raising his voice, and, in general, ranting at him the way you rant at the person who just cut you off during rush hour. So the police ask him to step away from the mic; the kid refuses and keeps yelling at Senator Kerry while the Senator tries to calm the crowd (which was weird, because usually his voice puts people to sleep).

In any case, after “failing to comply with a lawful order” and being warned multiple times of what they will do to him if he continues down this path, the police began to physically remove him from the premises. So what does this Birkenstock-wearing, collar-popping, hippy do (that isn’t an exaggeration, look at his picture in the link at the end of the blog)? He fights back and physically tries to keep the police from touching him, and that’s a big no-no.

Despite his pleas, and the ever-quotable “don’t tase me bro”, he gets tased several times. Still, he keeps pushing back and resisting their efforts to get him out of the room. Regardless, I’ve used the word resisting several times for this one, and that is important. When the police tell you to do something, and you don’t, you are breaking the law. Now, I don’t think the kid should’ve been tasered. He wasn’t physically threatening anybody, he was just a pain in the ass who needed a lesson. Still, if you don’t listen to the cops, you are going to get something you don’t want. Be it a ticket, some handcuffs and a squad car ride, or being tasered six or seven times for five seconds a pop.

The third and final story is probably the funniest. A drunk girl gets belligerent at a bar. The cops are called to remove her. She resists, runs away, hides in a car that isn’t hers (behind the steering wheel no less), gets caught, and runs again. On the second running, the cops tased her, because, by Ohio state law, if you are drunk and in the drivers seat, you are driving drunk, even without keys. Still, so she gets tasered and writhes in pain on the ground in full view of the cop cars video camera (it makes sense that she is in pain, you are being filled with volts of electricity, not taking a bubble bath). This is where it gets good. They put her in the back of the cop car, she is on soooo much crap that she kicks the window out between her and the cop, so he has to tase her some more. He calls to get a car with a cage, and she is still fighting, and when being moved from one car to the next, tries to escape again. More tasering ensues. In any case, she gets arrested, taken downtown, booked, etc….

This story happened over a month ago, and now that she sees the other people getting tasered and the people in New York suing the cops, she is going to sue. This is the final lesson in dealing with the police. If you are drunk in front of the cops, don’t run, fight off every tough person urge and bit of paranoia in your body to just sit still. Typically, they just take you to detox and a friend can get you, or you get out in the morning. Seriously, she went from being asked to leave a bar for being drunk and belligerent, to probably going to jail, or at least being put on probation.

The reason these stories are important is that they bring to light the fact that the taser, with all of its minor electrocution fun, is the billy club of the 21^st century. In the days of old, each of these people would’ve taken a lump or two to the head, chest, or legs, been restrained, and it would’ve been over-with. Now, the nightstick is too blunt, too violent, and possibly too easy to permanently hurt somebody. So we’ve moved beyond it into transportable electrocution. And you know what, I couldn’t be happier. Anything that punishes people in a temporary way for being idiots and wasting the time of the police is great by me.
So enjoy your tax dollars at work people, watch somebody get tased the next night you are out on the town at closing time. And don’t forget to applaud your officer for his efficient use of a new technology. Read the articles, see if you agree with me.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/26/tasered.woman/index.html

http://www.gainesvillesun.com/article/20070918/NEWS/709180325/1007/NEWS

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/louisville-ky/TQQJPOC013NVKSPG4

18 Reasons Poker Is Not A Sport

Look, I know poker has become increasingly popular to play and to watch over the last few years. It is trendy to the point that it takes over ESPN for one month each year under the premise that because it is competition, it is sport. B.S. I say. This should not be on ESPN, and while I'm at it, I want bowling, darts, and pool removed from ESPNs programming. These are a different form of competition that are not sport, and as such, need a different channel. Even if ESPN created another channel dedicated to competitive things you can do drunk, that would be acceptable. Regardless, here is part of the case against poker being a sport.

- Athletic ability is irrelevant. The majority of players in any sport should be athletic enough to participate in another sport. Even those mammoth offensive/defensive linemen in the NFL could at least do boxing or UFC type stuff, not to mention their ability to do World’s Strongest Man competitions (which do count as a sport). If you can find me more than a dozen seasoned “professional” poker players that could participate on the professional level in any other sport, I may consider relenting this argument. Until then, this is the biggest argument against poker being a sport. It should be noted that golf is the grey area. Athletic ability helps, but is not required to be good (i.e. John Daly or any other golfer over the age of 40).

- Too much luck, not enough skill/preparation required. Anything that you can play better in/at and still lose to a random person in a seat, purely by chance, is not a true sport. Sport is about competing and having the better player/team becoming victorious. I’m not saying there isn’t some chance or luck involved, but they usually aren’t one of the top 3 criteria that will lead you to a win. Winning a poker tournament requires so much luck that it removes any semblance to a true competition. That’s my bottom line.

- I can play poker while hammered, and win. That was a pretty explanatory sentence. If you can be successful at something while drinking/smoking, it is not a sport. Unfortunately this is another reason golf is a grey area, along with slow pitch softball and volleyball.

- It can be played in somebody’s garage at 3 in the morning. This reason draws a lot of parallels between poker and video games. Seriously, they are competition, they test the skills of another “competitor”, etc…. Still, they both involve you sitting in a chair and playing a game. If poker is a sport, then so are video games, and I cannot live with that hanging over our civilization.

- No reflexes or hand-eye-coordination are required. This is something that even video games require. Seriously, I won’t let this happen on my watch. Also, what is the difference between this and any other card game (pitch, spades, dueling solitaire) other than it is played for money. Clue me in on the disparity, please.

- No payback for lipping off. Baseball has the high-and-inside brush back pitch. Football has receivers coming across the middle and late hits. Basketball has intentional fouls eight feet in the air. Hockey, well, hockey has actual fights. Poker is full of mouth SOBs getting cocky because they hit a lucky-ass river card and took a good chunk of someone’s stack. Congratulations, you got lucky, now act like it was intentional. Unfortunately for poker, there is no way to punish these clowns other than to wait. Wait for it to happen to them, and then mock them until they cry. While it is cool to make another dude cry under the pressure of competition, to do so without violence (actual or attempted) does not carry the same weight as it does in actual sports.

- It’s one month season. . . . in Vegas no less, where so few professionals have placed in the top 10 in the last few years that it boggles the mind that they still make money “teaching” people their “secrets”. Could you ever imagine a major golf or tennis tournament in which only 2 of the top 25 players in the world made it into the final ten spots and still made loads of money just for showing up for the tournament? No, you can’t! What a joke. Not to mention, most of them don’t make their money by winning the tournaments, they make their money playing in back-room games and in advertising. I’m done with this crap of people calling poker a sport.

- The biggest reason is the most simple; in any other professional sport, you cannot learn to be a professional. Either you are blessed with the God-given ability and drive, or you aren’t. Poker is not like that. Don’t misunderstand, there are naturals at poker, but you can also grow into being a great poker player by learning those traits. You can’t learn to be 6’10” with a 42” vert and a smooth jumper, or 6’6” 280 pounds of muscle that can run the 40-yard dash in 4.7 seconds. Those are the types of things that differentiate a 6’3” slow white kid who can hit a jumper and Kevin Durant, or the big dude who is the wing-eating champion at your local BWs and, well, any offensive or defensive lineman in the NFL. You can’t learn to have that right combination of size, skill, and athleticism that professional sports require.

In summary, I can fully concede that poker encompasses some of the spirit of sports. It is a form of competition that requires loads of mental toughness, discipline, and concentration to be consistently good. That is why poker it isn’t a sport, luck trumps skill most of the time. It is a crapshoot between the lucky guy and the person who plays the best game in terms of focus and playing the odds. That’s it, and usually the lucky person wins. So let’s get this garbage off of ESPN so I can have one of my favorite networks back.

18 Things I've Been Wrong About (abridged version)

I'm not wrong about things often. It's the advantage of being overly smart, analytical, and nto going out on a ledge very often, but here is a short list of some of my recent mistakes:

The Killers - Seriosly, I refused to buy into the hype until after the second album came out. It wasn’t even that I didn’t like the songs that were out. I just thought they were doing a retread of 80’s songs that I didn’t like. Easily my biggest musical mistake of the last decade. Worse than being a huge Limp Bizkit fan. I assumed they were trying to be overly 80’s, and that is something I am just not cool with. In any case, after being forced to listen to the CD while playing poker one night, I decided to give it a sober shot. It was great, so I downloaded, errr, I mean bought, the second CD, which I also fell in love with. Now I look like a jackass for fighting it for a year and a half, but at least I’m enjoying the music. Even saw them live last week and they were amazing. So much energy and it sounded flawless. Loved it, my bad.

Drinking the night before an early flight – What!?!? I wanted a few drinks before an early morning flight to D.C. I used to do it all the time for our annual flight to Vegas for a guys trip. I’ve been able to do it my entire adult life, why should that change now? Apparently, when you are 3 days away from turning 28, drinking until 1 and waking up at 3:30 for a 5:00 flight is just not a good idea. Who knew? I mean seriously. Just because they probably didn’t have to let me on the plane since I was still wasted doesn’t make this the worst mistake I’ve ever made. It just puts it in the top 18. It lost points on the mistake-o-meter because I miraculously avoided the hangover.

Taking 1 year off to finish my graduate degree – Yeah for me, I have an MBA! I was two-thirds of the way there when I was given an opportunity (financially speaking) to take some time off from work and go full-time to wrap it up in 8 months. I thought this was brilliant, b/c I really would’ve been just part-time for the last 4 months and would have no problem getting a job. Unfortunately, in today’s job market, companies do not want to have to work around your schedule. No matter how talented you may be, or how willing they are to have you call back after your done (if they have another opening like the one you were interviewing for), they don’t bend the rules. Here it is, a little over two years after the first move, and I have a crap job, now because companies are worried I took 8 months off. Blah, I think I just threw up a little.

Chinese Food – Maybe my taste buds changed. Maybe it was a mental thing. I don’t know, but I used to hate this stuff. Seriously, it made me gag. Now, I don’t care if they tell me it is made of dog meat, I won’t be able to stop eating the chicken fried rice. It is now a staple of my diet and I have my fiancée to thank for peer-pressuring me into giving it another shot. Thanks for making me look stupid for 26 years of hating Chinese food.

AM Radio – I hadn’t listened to morning radio in quite a while until recently. Let me tell you something I learned: morning FM talk shows are the biggest waste of airtime radio stations could possibly come up with. Seriously, when I wake up, I want to know what is going on in the world, not to hear some jack-ball crack fart jokes and yell and rant about nothing. It’s too early for that crap. These things should be on during rush hour in the P.M. I honestly can hardly find a station that plays more than 3 songs an hour, and that station makes up the difference by going to commercial every 11 minutes. Worthless. If you want to know whats going on, you have to go AM, be it news, weather, sports, politics, or, well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing of substance is said on the FM stations during the morning. I repeat nothing. As such, I have started doing just AM for my morning drive, and am a better person for it.

Hilary Clinton – I once said I would move to Canada if she became president. Now it appears I may have to eat my words, because I won’t move to Canada. Too cold, and too many hippies. Clinton is poised to be the democratic party’s nominee, and the republicans cannot seem to muster a single person who is likely to beat her. Of course, that is in a one-on-one race, and presidential races aren’t that. It’s about parties, vice-presidential candidates, sponsors, and values. Fortunately for me, the republicans can probably throw a due together that can beat her and whomever she pairs with, but still, this is way too close to call. I was certain nobody in the democratic party would even let her consider running. That was one level of wrong. Here representing the donkey party during a presidential campaign is a special type of top-five-hangover wrong that I really don’t like being. If she wins and becomes the first female president, that takes me to a new level that I’ve never been to, kicked in the groin while having a top 5 hangover. I don’t think anybody wants that.

The New York Knicks – I thought they had put so much into their payroll and paired some stars at the end of their careers with some young hungry players and would be an instant contender. I was way off. They are easily one of the worst teams in the NBA over last few years. As usual, when I do go out on a limb, it breaks.

I know it’s nowhere near 18, that’s the point, remember. Plus, I’m not wrong about things and stuff very often. Also, I didn’t consult with people around me to tell me about other things I’ve been wrong about, so take that into consideration too. As always, I await to be proven wrong.