CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and all the local channels were reporting on the Virginia Tech shooting, so I changed channels and watched Revenge of the Nerds. Things that I noticed:

1. Breaking into campus housing, a sorority, and leaving cameras behind, the protagonist Nerds committed crimes including but not limited to Breaking and Entering, Criminal Trespass, Disorderly Conduct, Intrusion of Privacy, Unauthorized Videotaping, and Vandalism. No police investigation was depicted. (Granted, the Nerds committed these crimes in retaliation for similar crimes committed upon them, but retaliatory vigilantism is not a defensible stance in the eyes of the law.) Moral: Have fun at others expense; privacy and security are rules made to be broken!
2. During the Adams University sponsored Homecoming Carnival, one sanctioned event requires tricycle riding participants to drink one12-ounce can of beer for completing each of twenty laps around a short racing track, simulating a dangerous drinking-and-driving scenario. In addition to mocking DUI statutes, this reckless encouragement of binge drinking and excessive consumption can pose a serious health risk to those participating. Moral: Go ahead and drink and drive; trying to stay on both of the roads that you see will make you a better driver in the long run!
3. After essentially being raped by a man impersonating her boyfriend who has also widely distributed pictures of her in a state of advanced undress (another criminal act altogether, even if proceeds of the crime are going to charity), the head cheerleader, Betty Childs, decides to abandon her previously aggressive anti-Nerd role. Again, no investigation is indicated for the sexual misconduct of the Nerd in question, though since Ms. Childs is an adult and unwilling to press charges, unless someone complains about the indecent pictures, little legal action is necessitated. Moral: Use sex as a weapon, but be good at it!
4. Seven black fraternity members are threatening enough to the pro-Jock establishment that they cow them into allowing a voice to the Nerd minority. In this case, the African-Americans are actually supporting the previously unenforced rule of law rather than challenging it, but this clear depiction of unequal race relations is still a jarringly clear disparity between factions of the University community. Moral: Black people in fraternity sweaters are especially violent!

Violence on campus: still hilarious.

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Gooooold!

I may have mentioned the TV show Gold Fever on my blog before. If not, shame on me. It's broadcast on the Outdoor Channel, the same channel as the sublime Ted Nugent's Spirit of the Wild, and features prospecting enthusiast Tom Massie crawling through caves and tundra in search of that most alluring of elements: goooooold! (Which is, I swear, how Tom pronounces the word every time he says it.)

The show is unintentionally one of the funniest on TV. Tom's earnest, endless pursuit of gold is just about as amusing as watching Yosemite Sam chasing Bugs Bunny. I've seen Tom get lost in a cave, slip and split his pants, and fall into a creek, all the while talking 100 words per minute about gold and pitching $80 annual memberships in the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA). In short, I've always pegged this guy as the good-natured, hyperactive fellow in high school who was a lot of fun to hang out with for a few hours, but a few ounces short of a pound, so to speak.

Turns out, Tom Massie is the Executive Vice President of the Outdoor Channel itself, a $40 million company. Tom and his comparatively surprisingly suave brother Perry - think of redneck versions of Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger from Twins - have owned and managed the company since the death of their father, Buzzard (no joke), in 1993, developing it into a minor media titan on the back of such shows as Shooting Gallery, Inside Paintball, and Turkey Country. So not only is Tom Massie a cornball, gold hunting machine, he's also a successful television executive in the dog-eat-dog world of cable television.

What is the moral to this story? Don't judge a GPAA book by it's cover? Scratch the surface of a ridiculous goofball and you may find gooooold? Do what you love and the gooooold will follow? I'll let you decide.

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On October 2, Emerson Electronics sued GE because NBC showed a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running InSinkErator brand garbage disposal on the show Heroes. Emerson manufactures the InSinkErator and claims that NBC's parent GE, also a manufacturer of garbage disposals, was trying to sully the InSinkErator brand name by showing the damage it could cause to a human. Money.CNN reports the lawsuit, including the plaintiff's argument that "according to data from the government's Consumer Products Safety Commission, you are actually ten times more likely to get injured by your dishwasher than your garbage disposal."

First of all, I should think that InSinkErator would be pleased to demonstrate what it can do to a human hand. If it can destroy bone, it damn well should be able to take care of a few apple cores and potato rinds. Secondly, why does the government track and study how likely you are to get injured by a dishwasher? Are we in imminent danger of invasion from insurgent dishwashers? (Well, I guess possibly so if you count Mexicans.)

So the lesson here, NBC, is that next time you should show a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running GE brand dishwasher. You'll save yourself money in the long run.

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I just heard that Miss Deaf Texas was struck and killed by a train in Austin yesterday. Initial reports claimed that she was crossing the tracks, ignoring the train's warning horns. There is a valuable lesson buried in this story, I just know it.

In a seemingly unrelated story, national networks recently broadcast the story that a blind teen in Chicago must take and pass Driver's Education classes before she can graduate high school. In Chicago the tracks are probably safer than the roads; blind drivers aren't so good with stoplights.

Even more bizarre is the story of an eighteen year old who became a quadriplegic in a Lubbock juvenile detention center after an employee dared him to attempt a back flip off a picnic table in December. (Yes, everything is stranger in Texas.) Of course, the teen is suing the state, because he didn't know better than to try to flip backwards off a table. Please note that he was in juvie because he assaulted a teacher, yet he's willing to blame another authority figure for his debilitating spinal injury. Go figure. At least we don't have to worry about this fellow hitting the road anytime soon. (Unless, of course, he falls out of his wheelchair.)

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