Happy birthday day to you! BANG! BANG!

When it comes to guns, one can never leave out Texas, yes the perennial home of the cowboy on his horse, with a bottle of the cheapest whiskey, chewing tobacco and looking for Miss Sally.  All this while carrying two six shooters and a sawed off shot gun, just in case Miss Sally has a husband.

Yes in Texas it seems the movies were right.  They love guns more than women, so why not take their love for guns to the next level.   

One eager entrepreneur trying to live the American dream has either hit the jackpot or had too much cactus juice decided to open up a gun range for kids!  And it gets better, host birthday parties.

I can just see it now, little Tommy and his friends come to celebrate his 12^th birthday party with mum and dad.  Out comes the clown with all the goodies and bang, little Tommy shoots the clown for not having enough lollies.  It seems unbelievable but I kid you not.

The man behind this brilliant idea is David Prince, a businessman from Lewisville who has found investors to back his plan to set up what he calls "one of the highest quality state-of-the-art air-conditioned gun ranges in Texas."

The age limit for the gun range is eight or tall enough for the kids to reach over the gun table.  Because its safety first at what is to be called the Eagle Gun range.  And it gets better, the so called state of the art facility will have two rooms just for birthday parties for kids.  I hope the clowns at this place get hazard pay.

When asked about his bright idea, David eagerly explains And what does the local council reps have to say on this latest business venture.  Denton County Commissioner Hugh Coleman said he was happy to have the facility in Lewisville.   "I am thrilled to add jobs and add to the tax base, and I think gun rights are for everyone," he said.

"One of the reasons we're doing this is, when I had my boys, I didn't have a place to take them and educate them about how to handle a gun safely," Prince explained. "I really want families to be able to take their kids here and teach their young shooters how to shoot safely."  "The age limit is eight years old. You have to be tall enough to get above the shooting table,” Prince said. “They're not gonna be left unattended. Parents are gonna be one-on-one, or if there's not enough parents we'll have range safety officers here to show them how to do it safely."

It seems that the recession is the reason for anything and everything these days.  However not all Lewisville residents are over the moon with the idea.  Dawn McMullan is a mom raising two sons in East Dallas, and she's done some gun control advocacy in the past.  "It makes me very nervous," she said. "I think eight-year-olds, developmentally, can't tell the difference between play and reality sometimes." 

So it seems that a birthday party with food, clowns and lots of games just isn’t enough anymore.  Now the secret ingredient to give that birthday party an extra kick is a healthy dose of lead.

Recession, what recession lets multiply!

With the current global economic recession the vast majority of us have had to make many cut backs,  no more trips overseas, expensive dinners with lots more of just sitting at home and enjoying the simpler and cheaper treats that we would usually would have not pay a second thought to.

Well for most of us anyway.  Apparently the message has not quite reached Desmond Hatchet.   This 33 year old from Knoxville, Tennessee in the US has a way with the ladies.  He has such a way with the ladies he has fathered 30 children with 11 women and now holds the Knoxville County record for his ability to reproduce.

No doubt authorities in China would be having a fit, with their countries one child policy but Desmond has just kept on breeding and has fathered the latest nine of his last 11 children in the last three years.  How he can still walk is mind boggling.

And it seems that his need to reproduce has come back to bite him where it hurts the most, his wallet. He is now back in court for his inability to make payments to the 11 mothers of his 30 children.  Unfortunate while he has been out spreading his seed like no tomorrow he has only been able to get a minimum wage, low paying job.

Well it kind of hard to go up the career ladder when your skill is reproducing.  So, Casanova is now back in court and is pleading with the judge to temporarily halt the payments as he can barely support himself.

While he may be a record holder be it for all the wrong reasons, the authorities seem to be at a loss when it comes to dealing with this type of case. Melissa Gibson, an assistant supervisor with the Knox County child support clerk's office, said with a sigh.  "Yes, we've got several cases with Mr. Hatchett,"

With so many women and children running around can this hero for reproduction remember his children’s names?  Apparently yes when interviewed in 2009 Hatchet told a reporter that he can remember their names and ages.  But that hasn’t helped his child payments, as by law the state must take 50 percent of his salary for child payments.  And this doesn’t make life for the mothers and children any easier.

His attorney in 2009 when interviewed about his financial troubles said

The mothers of the children receive as little as a $1.98 per month in child support after his meagre salary is split up amongst them.  Poetic justice considering that’s the usual price for a condom.

“The children can’t be supported all by Desmond so the state of Tennessee has had to step in”... you look at when they (the mothers) filed. How many children they have, he has several mothers that he has 2 children with and it’s tough.

The Idiot strikes again

After last week’s critique I have been searching far and wide for a theme for my blog.  I thought finance, so I went in search of finance news around the world and after an exhaustive search of about five minutes I found myself a little bewildered by such serious looking reporters all wearing suits and sounding like a priest at a funeral.  So I moved on to sports and after about fifteen minutes on you Tube looking at the hardest tackles in rugby I still hadn’t found my fix. 

So I did what anyone in my position would do, I watched an episode of my favorite TV series (illegally downloaded of course) and re-looked at my blog page, made a quick call to a friend and after lots of gossiping found a theme for my blog.  My blog will now focus on the idiots of our world.  Yes nothing like reading about some genius who used all of their brain power and ended up in the hospital or even worse on YouTube for some stunt.

Firstly in order for us to identify an idiot we must understand what an idiot is.  An idiot is defined according to dictionary.com as a person of the lowest order in a former and discarded classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25.

My blog is dedicated to exactly that.  Finding the world’s idiots!  And it seems they are not hard to find, it could possibly be the global recession which caused so many of our fine species to look for alternatives to keep themselves busy or just the recent lunar eclipse but they are out there and they are getting into their idiotic business with renewed energy.  Let’s look at today’s offering.

In an effort to raise revenue many countries around the world have resorted to spending cuts as a means of bringing down debt and saving on cost.  You may have heard that Greece spent Euros like a teenager with Dad’s credit Card and now Dad (aka the EU) has to foot the bill.  So with so much uncertainty and fear globally about the economy some counties are taking the whole saving money theme to the next level.

On Friday May 18 a Parliamentary Commission met in Italy to discuss how to tackle the need for city councils to raise much needed revenue.  Some brilliant politician came up with the proposal to tax all the dogs and cat owners for owning them as pets.  As soon as word got out that the tax proposal was on the table, Italians everywhere was in a huge uproar.

Once the news services got wind of the proposal it went from a simple proposal to an attack on Italian sovereignty.  Some of the reaction to the proposal was

“The tax, on domestic "animals of affection," was meant to help the debt-strapped country raise revenue. But everyone from animal rights groups to politicians protested it, saying it would encourage people to abandon their animals and calling it "grotesque," "surreal," "idiotic" and "shameful," among other things.”

Domenico Scilipoti an Italian parliamentarian went on to say “The only thing that's leftto tax are wives and children,"  And yes you guessed it before you can say cappuccino the proposal was dead in the water and Italy was again back to normal. 

OMG! The idiot attached it.

OMG I can't believe it.  I never thought I would see the day but it has finally arrived.  An idiot has surgically attached an IPod to his body.

I mean how stupid can one person be?  This has to be a new level of stupidity!  I have heard of people implanting chips that have credit card information so that they didn't to carry a wallet, but even that is crossing the line, how heavy are some people's wallet that they have to cut open their flesh and insert an electronic devise to help pay the bills.  I mean I hear of making financial transactions easier but this is a bit too much.

And now just in case your IPod goes missing, you can have it surgically attached. I always like listening to bit of Credence, Flo Rida and even some Bob but not that much.  Moreover I thought IPods were cheaper and easier to replace now.  But not for all of us, apparently some of us have been hit hard with Bieber fever.  

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Of course it had to be an American, Dave Hurban a 21 year old body piercer from New Jersey whose how to video on YouTube has had over 32,000 hits since it was uploaded.  But be warned please don't watch the video while eating.  As for Dave well he has no problems with the procedure and is quite proud of his achievement

I just invented the strapless watch and its way simpler than you think it is,  I must have talked to like 400 people individually,' he said.”Every person I showed, they were like so amazed."

So as you can see Dave has taken his love of music to the next level, as for me, I am a big fan of Elvis and Miles Davis but I will not be taking a knife to my wrist and inserting magnets just so I have a place for my IPod, that's what the pocket was invented for.

Blog 1

Hey hey.  It’s me, I can't believe it I'm blogging. I never thought I would be blogging but here I am and I must admit that I am a little bit excited about my blog.  You must understand I have a Facebook page but haven't updated nor checked for about 3 months.

But let’s focus on my first topic, and it was a bit of a challenge to think of a topic but after much deliberation I have decided to discuss if blogging is in fact a form of media that should be taken seriously?  Since a blog to my understanding is an opinion (I.e. I missed the class on blogging so I am just going by experience) I am still undecided about whether a blog can be a source of viable news.  

Yes we were taught that it’s a form of citizen media and it is very important and has become one of the most popular forms of communication, so much so that for a majority of local companies Facebook and Twitter are just as important for advertising products as using the newspapers or making a Television Ad.  Yes blogging is here to stay and now has become a major part of everyday life.

In fact you would be hard pressed to find a main stream website that doesn't have a blog option.  And yes there are many advantages to blogging.  I guess my concern is that most of the blog sites I go into are more opinion that fact and usually I just need the facts not your thoughts.  I guess that's what I don't like about blog sites.  Too much opinion and not enough fact.  

But I'm giving you my opinion right now, I guess it’s not the fact that we have opinions its more so that we want our opinion to be read and we want to be noticed.  I think that's the issue.  Even my beloved BBC news and Aljazerra sources a majority of content from blogs.  They even go as far as to say that blogs are the new source of news tips.  With such weight being thrown behind blogs you simply can't deny the influence blogging has had on mainstream media. 

I guess my hesitation for embracing all thing blog is a fear that the line between information provider and information receiver has been somewhat blurred as of late and as I get older I get more traditional.  While researching for my first blog post I came across this article from the BBC about blogging, be mindful the article was from 2005, which seemed like a million years ago and this line really struck me "With this has come a shift in the balance of power between consumer and provider, whether it be of content, products or services....." and that in my mind really struck a chord in terms how I perceive blogging.  I just find it difficult to take blogging seriously.  I quote a line from the 2011 movie Contagion starring Laurence Fishborne (AKA Morpheus).  

The movie is about some disease that sweeps through the world killing millions with Jude Law using his blog as a means of getting information out to the public after the military steps in and shuts down mainstream media.  The scene I refer to is when Jude Law is chasing after scientist trying to get a quote saying “the people in the blogger sphere have a right to know? To which the scientist replied “blogging is not media it is rubbish with punctuation...” or something like that, and I tend to agree when I read most blog sites in the sense that a lot of blogs don’t appeal to me, but that’s the beauty of the blog,  its meant to convey your thoughts and feelings.

As I finish up my first ever blog, my mind is slowly (I can hear the gears clicking) moving towards taking up blogging and not ignoring it.  I mean we all evolve and like to learn new things and I think I have.  When our Professor gave this assignment I was not too enthusiastic.  You may have met him, He is the only European that ears shorts with a tucked in shirt on campus.  Yes, it’s Professor Edge, a Canadian who has opened up my mind since arriving last year.  A message to you Professor, I understand a few of my colleagues have blogged on the grub sheet and mentioned they don’t like you, well I still haven’t read the grub sheet and most likely won’t.  Why, maybe because I don’t have a problem with “The Edge” and kind of enjoy his classes, although I do have one piece of advice for you, can we cut the black and white videos out, I always enjoyed colour.