AP Wrap Up pt 2

The AP Wire was an embarrassment yesterday, so we are making up for it today.


WASHINGTON (AP) - An undercover video shot at an Iowa pig farm
shows workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a
concrete floor and other abuse.
In one incident on the video, a supervisor tells an undercover
investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that
when he gets angry, or a sow won't move, he shoves a rod into the
animal's anus.
The farm, located outside of Bayard, Iowa, is about 60 miles
west of Des Moines. It is a supplier to Hormel Foods of Austin,
Minnesota.

This isn't the full story, the rest is blobbidy blah stuff about what PETA wants done. This story is notable for this line:

"when he gets angry, or a sow won't move, he shoves a rod into the animal's anus."

I bring this up simply because I have enjoyed some success employing a similar tactic when stuck behind slow moving old or fat (or old AND fat) people at the Mall of America.

Moving on...


OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - The 40-year-old victim of a shooting says he
was shot by a man in a wheelchair.
Police say the shooting happened at 1:34 a.m. Wednesday in a
mid-town neighborhood. Police say officers found Patrick Amburn
injured in the street. He told officers he was walking down the
street when he was shot by a man in a wheelchair.
Amburn was take to the hospital with a gunshot wound to his
back. His injuries are not considered life-threatening.
Police have not reported an arrest in the case.

My thoughts on this story are two fold. First, how many gun toting people in wheelchairs can there be in Omaha? Make an arrest, OPD. Second, this reminds me of a quadrapalegic I knew in my home town. He had limited use of his upper extremities and was outfitted with an enormous van so he could get around. That's fine, great, whatever. The problem was he would get drunk and then drive like an absolute maniac on a consistent basis. Not that his behavior was any more aggregious than an able bodied serial drunk driver. It just prompted me to think, "Just because HE doesn't have anything to lose doesn't mean than no one else does either." I considered that perhaps it was a form of paralytic vampirism, a desire to, through his actions, make others like him.

THAT story reminds me of a wretched disney movie in which Frankie Muniz portrayed a kid in a wheel chair who was determined to win some manner of derby race. You know, those unpowered little home made cars that people push down hills and viaducts and the point is to keep your head down and not steer your car into the sidewalk. It was called 'Miracle in Lane 2' (thank you imdb.com).

The term miracle seems excessive to me. All the kid did was not wreck his little car and beat some other little kids to the bottom of the hill. Now, had he gotten out up out of his conveyance and hopped on a unicycle, THAT would have been a miracle. I digress.

The reason I mention it is because at some point Justin Yoder's (Muniz) mother or father or someone says 'If God had wanted everyone to be the same we would have been in wheelchairs.' That's laughable, yet not nearly as strange as one of the movie's closing scenes. I thought the implication was that Justin had died, as he seems to be dreaming of entering heaven, and upon his arrival, everyone has wings and, lo and behold, wheelchairs. This begs an obvious question and has some terrifying implications.

The question is 'If everyone has wings, why do they then also require the wheelchairs. The horrible impications are that:

A. There is a seperate, presumably shittier heaven reserved for the disabled. What, God, you can't give these poor sad fuckers the use of their legs in the afterlife?

OR

B. Immediately upon entry into heaven St. Peter breaks everyone's backs and confines them to an eternity in a wheelchair.

Both are terrible prospects, indeed, until you remember that God is a silly fairy tale.