This here is pretty good.  A guy in Connecticut called up the cops and asked them what kind of trouble he could get in if he was caught growing marijuana.  He was told he could “get arrested” for that.  That’s not really an answer to his question, as there all sorts of things you can “get arrested” for that have wildly different punishments, but whatever.  He was apparently satisfied with that answer, as he said thanks and hung up.

A little later, the cops showed up and arrested him!  Not surprisingly, calling 911 and asking what kind of trouble you could get in for committing a specific crime is probable cause enough to send cops to your place to check you out.  And of course, the dude had some pot and some seeds so off to the hoosegow he went.

Now, personally I think it’s ridiculous that you can get thrown in jail for growing a plant, but that aside, it’s also pretty ridiculous to call up and ask the cops a “hypothetical” question about a crime you’re intending to commit.  At least say you’re calling for a friend or something!  You know, you have this friend who is wondering what kind of trouble he could get into if he were to grow some pot.  See?  I mean, it still wouldn’t work.  They’d still show up and arrest you.  But at least you wouldn’t look like a total jackass.

I didn’t know this, but apparently in Florida (and likely in many other states as well) the Attorney General can just make up laws banning shit anytime she wants.  As you may have seen mentioned in the news, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has, apparently by fiat, banned a “new drug” on the scene called MDPV.  Sold as “bath salts”, when snorted it “gives users super-human strength and has similar effects to LSD, heroin and cocaine” according to the article.

Holy FUCK!  super-human strength? We better ban that shit right now or else people will be hulking out and ripping telephone poles out of the ground and playing baseball with them or something.  Of course, this is actually bullshit.  I know this because it’s fucking impossible for a drug to instantly increase your strength.  This isn’t D&D here, you can’t just take a Potion of Giant Strength and give your strength score a boost.  It doesn’t goddamn work that way.

When people are under the influence of high powered stimulants  (which is really all MDPV is–it’s not fucking LSD or heroin, it’s more like speed or meth) they can sometimes do things “normal” people couldn’t–but not because they’ve suddenly boosted their STR score from 14 to 22.  It’s likely because they’re able to ignore pain and thus push through barriers that stop the rest of us from doing these things.  Nobody goddamn uproots trees when they take PCP though, and they sure as fuck don’t get “super-human strength” from MDPV.

No, that’s just typical scare-mongering from the government.  Like how they used to tell us that smoking a joint would make you flip out and kill your mom or something, and when they told us that crack cocaine was the most addictive substance in the universe and one hit would make you addicted for life.  I’m not saying recreational drugs don’t have bad effects or that they’re harmless, I’m just saying you might want to get your information about them from somewhere other than the people who have a vested interest in keeping them illegal (the government, the police, the courts.)

What actually scares me more than this pretty typical overblown hue and cry about MDPV is the fact that the AG of the State of Florida is apparently empowered to just make shit illegal whenever she feels like it.  Just out of the blue, she’s allowed to put a substance on the same controlled substance list as drugs like heroin and cocaine.  She can make up new felonies as she sees fit.  Does this scare anybody else?

Ok, so I don’t actually think “we” should ban Valentine’s Day like Iran apparently is doing.  I’m all about freedom after all.  But let’s face it.  Valentine’s Day is a bullshit holiday.

Believe it or not, Valentine’s Day isn’t just another made up holiday created by the greeting card industry to make you spend money on their crap.  It dates to around AD 500, and commemorates one (or, perhaps, several) early Christian martyrs.  Why we celebrate love and lovers on a day when some dude got killed is unclear to me, but whatever.  It doesn’t matter.  Point is, it’s a real holiday.  But that doesn’t make it any less bullshit.

Valentine’s Day is nothing but a gigantic “FUCK YOU!” to every person who hasn’t yet found the love of their life, or who have tragically lost their partner, or who have gone through a breakup or divorce they are still recovering from.  Now before you write me off as just another raging internet nerd who can’t get a date complaining about the beautiful people, let me point out that I’m happily married to a wonderful woman and haven’t had a depressing Valentine’s Day in more than five years.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t goddamn remember what it was like!

Even for people who have a partner, Valentine’s Day can be a pain in the ass.  There is a certain type of woman who judges her worth based on the size and/or expense of the flowers and gifts her man gets her on special days like Valentine’s Day.  This is the type of woman who drags all of her female co-workers (half of them probably still single) to her cube or office to show off the gigantic bouquet her boyfriend sent her.  Nobody likes this woman.  Seriously, nobody.  Conversely, there is a certain type of man who goes completely overboard and gets his lady a car for Valentine’s Day, or something equally insane.  Worse, he has it wrapped in a bow and driven to where she works so she can show it off to all her co-workers.  Again, nobody likes this guy.  First of all, you’re making all the rest of us look bad.  My wife got flowers and yours got a freaking Audi?  Second, stop over compensating already.  For people like this–and there seem to be a depressingly large number of them–Valentine’s Day isn’t about love or togetherness, it’s about showing off.  And that’s horrible.

Remember that scene in Major League where Jake, Ricky, and Willy are going to the locker room on the day of final cuts?  They know if they have a red tag inside their locker, they’ve been cut.  No tag, and they’re on the team.  Jake, the veteran, tells the rookies Ricky and Willy, “Listen, no matter what happens, just keep it to yourself.  You don’t want to be celebrating in front of guys who just died and went down to the minors.”  That is what Valentine’s Day feels like to a lot of people.   Meanwhile, the rest of us pay no heed to Jake’s sage advice, and we rub their faces in it mercilessly.  That’s pretty uncool in my book.

So yeah.  Generally I’m against banning things, but I could probably get behind a ban of Valentine’s Day.

This keeps smacking me in the face everywhere I look (all over my Twitter and Facebook feeds and around the proverbial water cooler at work, for example.)  Try as I might to ignore it, it just keeps fucking popping up, like a beastialty porn site advertisement that just will not be ignored–no matter how many times you close it, it keeps coming back.

An astronomy professor in Minneapolis recently suggested that the astrological signs of the zodiac need to be updated.  When astrologers say the sun is in one constellation, it’s actually in another, thanks to the fact that astrologers are using outdated charts.  The charts they use were created more than 2,000 years ago, and the Earth’s axial “wobble” has long since thrown those charts out of whack.

Here’s your first hint that astrology is fucking bullshit:  Astrologers have not bothered to update their charts even once in the last two thousand years, despite the fact that this precession in our planet’s axial tilt was discovered in 280 B.C.  If they can’t fucking be bothered to figure out if their shit even resembles reality anymore, do you think this is science, or bullshit?  My money is on bullshit.

The entire idea that whatever constellation the sun was in when you were born has some bearing on who you turn out to be as a person is insanity, but the fact that astrologers don’t even know what sign the sun is in at any given point because their fucking charts are outdated really ought to be the final nail in the coffin.  But I know it wont be, because this isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, new news.   We’ve known about this for a very long time.  The zodiacal star charts were set about 2000 years ago, and never once have astrologers updated them, despite the fact that we’ve known about the precession of the Earth’s axis for almost as long, if not longer.  They don’t even care, because astrology isn’t science.  It’s mysticism and woo, and it’s demonstrably false.

Don’t believe me?  Think you can prove astrology is correct?  Well, don’t yell at me.  I’m tired of this shit.  But I’ll tell you this–if you think you can prove that astrology works, then James Randi has a million dollars with your name on it.  So take it up with him, not me.