In its entirety, the text message from my aunt reads

Hey, Have you been ducked?

Of all the things I could have possibly guessed she meant, one thing that definitely did not occur to me was this:

source: npr.org

Apparently, placing a rubber duck on someone else's Jeep as a "compliment" has become a thing in 2023. Great. One more thing to dread.

The primary reason I leave my house as rarely as possible is because I don't enjoy interacting with other people. I don't mind that they exist, you understand, because I appreciate that many of those people make the amenities that make my life more comfortable. But I don't want to have to talk them. And I certainly don't want them to put anything on my vehicle.

That feels... invasive.

So if you want to trade petroleum-based products with other likeminded duckers, be my guest. But please leave me and my Jeep out of your water sports, people.

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Expert advice:

Take wildlife crossing signs seriously; moderating your speed gives you more time to react. Stay alert and don't get distracted. If it looks like you're about to hit a deer,
don't swerve.

Chad Stewart, "Deer Collisions," AARP Bulletin, June 2023, Volume 64, Number 5, Page 11 (emphasis in original)

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News quiz!

The NCAAP has now issued a formal travel advisory for the state of Florida, claiming that Florida is "openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals."

When Fox News Digital asked for official comment on this declaration, how did Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's deputy press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, respond?

A. "Governor DeSantis disagrees with any assertation that the government of Florida discriminates against anyone on the basis of race or sex."

B. "As Governor DeSantis announced last week, Florida is seeing record-breaking tourism. This is nothing more than a stunt."

C. "Fuck those n*****s."

*Thankfully, SB 1316 didn't pass the Florida Senate during the 2022-2023 session, or this might have been a very expensive joke.

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From this week's Newnan Times-Herald:

Quote:

The Coweta County Sheriff's Office has been hosting the conference since 1993, offering free training for law enforcement and first responders in areas such as long range precision rifle (above photo) K-9 handling, DUI detection, use of force, State Opioid Adapted Response and the legalities of various aspects of policing.

Personally, I had my fill of "long range precision rifle K-9 handling" the one time I watched Old Yeller.

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What's interesting to me about the New York State charges against a certain former American president is that all 34 counts stem not from having done something illegal but from having done that something in an illegal way.

To illustrate this point with a hyperbolic example, let's say I have $100 in a bank account. It's perfectly fine for me to withdraw my $100 from an ATM. It's altogether another thing for me to walk in with a gun and yell, "Give me my $100!" Just ask O.J. Simpson.

In this case, what's particularly funny is that if they had simply opened their checkbook and paid the former porn star her extortion money without the sideways "catch and kill" shenanigans, it would have been just another drop in the bucket of shitty things he's done, and he probably still would have become the "grab 'em by the pussy" president anyway. (Remember: the FBI confirmed they were still investigating his opponent 11 days before the election! America hates Hillary Clinton.)

By involving a fixer (who openly claims that the purpose of the payment was to aid a presidential campaign) and a publisher (who has reportedly testified to a grand jury that the purpose of the payment was to aid a presidential campaign) and lying about the purpose of the payment to accountants, he's gone out of his way to make things much harder on himself than they had to be. There's certainly a lesson here for other people who wish to make under-the-table hush money payouts to cover up extramarital affairs.

No matter what your definition of the word "is" is, it's never the crime; it's always the cover-up.

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A Florida state senator has proposed a bill to amend the Florida Statues to add, and I quote,

If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer [Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature] and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office... within 5 days after the first post by the blogger which mentions an elected state officer.

Transparency in government is a good thing, but this doesn't really have anything to do with better government, does it?

As SB 1316 is currently written, it doesn't matter whether that blogger is a citizen of the state of Florida, it doesn't matter whether what they've blogged is true or not, and said blogger has to continue submitting monthly reports until they stop blogging permanently, whether they are still talking about Florida government or not.

That all seems a bit much, which is no doubt the point. Make it onerous enough, and bloggers won't say anything about Florida government at all.

Either the proposing senator (who has spent over a decade in Florida's state congress) is very, very bad at writing bills, or he's being disingenuous when he says this one is "JUST LIKE how we treat lobbyists." For one thing, Florida Statute 11.045 only requires lobbyists to report quarterly, and only during quarters they "were registered to represent a principal." For another, when was the last time a blogger took a senator out for an all-expense-paid Ruth's Chris steak dinner to discuss how backs could be best scratched?

Yeah, blogging is the problem.

Personally, as a blogger who has never been and never plans to be compensated for blogging about anything, let me just say that I think that senator is a poo-poo head.

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"Newton County man gored by buck in his backyard," reads the headline at cbs46.com (WGCL).

A man appears to be wielding a broomstick at the deer to ward it off. Seconds later, the deer charges at the man and pins him down. The video pans out for a split second before showing the man laying on the ground.

It sounds like a scene from a Stephen King movie, but that's their description of a Facebook video shared by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division. Warns the GDNRWRD:

"[I]f you observe tame or pet deer, please contact the Law Enforcement Division.... While you may hesitate to call due to the potential for the animal to be euthanized, please know that you are doing the right thing."

Longtime readers of Wriphe.com don't need that warning. We know that if we see what looks like a "tame" deer, what we're really looking at is a domestic-ated terrorist.

You're going to get what's coming to you, Bambi!

Bury him under the jail, fellas.

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America so enjoyed its two-decade war in Afghanistan that it has now installed the Taliban as our Supreme Court.

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UGA football legend (and gameshow-host Donald Trump's best "see-I'm-not-racist-I-have-a-black-friend" friend) Herschel Walker won the Georgia Republican party primary for U.S. Senate with over 801,000 votes (68%). He literally won every single county in the state. He trounced his closest opponent, Gary Black (13%), who has been the state Agriculture Commissioner for the past 11 years! If I was writing headlines, this would read: Football Culture Trumps Agriculture.*

Now Walker will head into the general election to face sitting senator Raphael Warnock. So far Walker — who it should be noted has a net worth upwards of $29 million yet has sent me, a UGA football season ticket holder, at least 7 letters asking for campaign contributions — has refused to describe any specifics of his platform (other than "Teamwork good" and "Democrats evil") or debate any of his Republican rivals, instead relying purely on the goodwill garnered in college in the 1980s. And it's easy to see why he's so reluctant to speak up. When asked on friendly Fox News what he would do to prevent future mass murder of elementary school students like the 19 who died this week in Texas — Walker's home state for the past decade, right up until he decided to run for Senator of Georgia — he said this:

You know, Cain killed Abel and that's a problem that we have. And I said what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation. What about getting a department that can look at young men/women that's looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that? And we can stop that that way.

Yes, poor Abel would still be alive today if Adam had only kept his eyes on TikTok instead of Eve's fig leaf.

Besides, Cain killed Abel with a rock, the Daniel Defense DDM4® V7® AR15 with Improved Flash Suppressor rifle of its day. No one would ever try to ban rocks, so why would you want to ban 30-round magazine automatic rifles? (According to Christian dogma, the rock was given to Cain by The Devil, which I'm sure Walker would insist in no way reflects on for-profit gun manufacturers selling military-designed long guns to 18-year-old civilians.)

Sadly, I think there's every chance that bible-thumping, gun lobby-supporting, social media-spying Walker will win a seat in the U.S. Senate on nostalgic name recognition alone. And if that is the case, Georgians will be getting exactly the representation in government they deserve. That's democracy in action, folks!

* While Trump did indeed endorse Walker, it's not like Black wasn't trying his damnedest to earn his evil overlord's favor too, including refusing to admit that Biden is the lawfully elected president of the United States. Trump's endorsement in this race means far less than Walker's 82 touchdowns as a Georgia Bulldog.

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Nineteen children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting by a single 18-year-old in an elementary school in Texas today.

It would be nice if someone did something to make this sort of thing stop happening, but in American that could only mean closing elementary schools.

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