This Week in WTF, November 22, 2013

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Megan Fox back– A young man may be facing life in prison for the murder of his father. Unfortunately, that is not very WTF in and of itself. It’s the supposed reason that makes the head spin—his dad insulted him with regard to actress Megan Fox:

Father and son relationships can be really deep and complicated. The one that existed between Jason Beckman and his father Jay doesn’t seem like it was an exception. At age 17, the teen — who reportedly has Asperger’s Syndrome — approached his dad to ask what he thought of actress Megan Fox. Who knows, maybe he wanted to have one of those fabled father-son moments where both can finally bond, like men, over the objective attractiveness of a well-known starlet. But dad’s response — that Jason wouldn’t know what to do with a woman like Megan — left the teen cold. And spurred in him a desire to plot and ultimately commit the horrific murder of his father.

Now 21, Jason was convicted of first-degree murder last night and faces life in prison.

I’m not saying another word about this one.

– A French family involuntarily spent a week in Chicago because the family patriarch was too fat to fit on the airplane. British Airways reportedly refused to allow the 500-lb. man to board the plane, although they seem to have attempted to help him figure out other options. They also offered a full refund to the family. NBC News mentions in its report that that the man was in the U.S. to receive treatment at the Mayo Clinic for a “hormone disorder,” and that gained weight while here. That would perhaps explain how he got to the U.S. on an airplane, I suppose, but there’s an annoying bit of an element of “It’s not his fault he’s so goshdarn fat” to the story, too.

– Hey, is that an apple you’re eating? Well, ur doin it wrong.

Photo credit: By pinguino k from North Hollywood, USA (Megan Fox) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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This Is a Man’s Randomly-Generated Sequence of Letters and Numbers!

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It’s so hard to be a man these days, right, fellas? Everything in the world is getting so dang….well, I don’t quite want to say girly, but it’s something…. As we all know, manhood is the epitome of strength and courage, yet at the same time it is so fragile that the mere sight of the color pink, let alone an inappropriately long hug between two dudes, might send the entire edifice of manhood crashing down in a cascade of testosterony chaos.

“Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.” –Gwen Sharp (via unfocus)

There is hope, though. Consumer culture has made a heroic effort to help us hold on to our fleeting masculinity. We have specially-formulated (I assume) manly calories in our low-carb soft drinks. We have the guyet, a masculine alternative to girly diets. And whatever would we do without brogurt, which is totally a real thing.

At least one huge, glaring hole in our defensive edifices remains, though, and it yawns mockingly before us, almost as though it were laughing at our feeble efforts to kindle the dying embers of our manhood. Obviously, I’m talking about internet password generators, but you need cower in the shadows no more!

Web developer John Polacek, working with the Draftcb Open Source Project, has created Passwords for the Manly Man (h/t Jeff). Its passwords are “so strong and secure they breach the gates of hell.” I tried it, and was in fact able to log on to Hell’s servers. (It was disappointing. The porn was pretty meh.)

Screen Shot 2013-11-21 at 12.25.50 PM

So crack open a Dr. Pepper Ten, help yourself to some brogurt, and enjoy a manly internet experience with a manly password. Just don’t try to hug me, dude.

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Let Them Eat Small Pieces of Cake

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Corporate America just can’t hold back its largesse this holiday season. The other day, we learned about a Wal-Mart in Cleveland that is trying to help its underpaid employees by soliciting donations from its underpaid employees. (Call it “benthic redistribution,” if you will. Or don’t, because it’s not a very good name.) Not to be outdone, McDonald’s is offering its underpaid employees tips on how to make the money last during the holidays (h/t Adam Lee):

McDonald’s McResource Line, a dedicated website run by the world’s largest fast-food chain to provide its 1.8 million employees with financial and health-related tips, offers a full page of advice for “Digging Out From Holiday Debt.” Among their helpful holiday tips: “Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.”

Elsewhere on the site, McDonald’s encourages its employees to break apart food when they eat meals, as “breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full.” And if they are struggling to stock their shelves with food in the first place, the company offers assistance for workers applying for food stamps. [Emphasis added.]

ThinkProgress focused on the advice to sell stuff online (which makes me wonder if the person who wrote this has tried to sell anything online since the dot-com crash.) I’m more perturbed by the suggestion to “break apart food,” especially since it comes from the people who coined the term “super-size.” I’m not sure even Marie Antoinette would have been that cold.

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Stop Trying to Make “Hail Satan” Happen, Greg Abbott (UPDATED)

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Greg Abbott never could decide exactly how to respond to the stunt planned by his former staffer, Lorenzo Garcia, who is currently the UT chapter chair of Young Conservatives of Texas. As Joe Deshotel describes at Burnt Orange Report, he first threw Garcia under the bus, but then decided this was a good opportunity for political cheap shots. Most notable, of course, was his attempt to resurrect the “Hail Satan” nontroversy from this summer. He couldn’t even do that right, of course, claiming that it was a series of chants during Wendy Davis’ filibuster. It actually occurred during the protests that started with the second special session, and by all appearances it was actually a handful (at most) of kids who clearly did not realize that many people would actually take them seriously.

I tried to find any media coverage of the incident that wasn’t overblown and sensational. U.S. News and World Report called it heckling, which seems fair. The Blaze offered a grudgingly fair assessment with a shout-out to the nutters: “Obviously, it is much more likely that the abortion supporters were chanting ‘Hail Satan!’ to mock pro-lifers rather than actually hailing Lucifer, but anything is possible.” Of course, Natural News (via Infowars, of course), let the crazy fly:

Obviously, not all abortion activists are Satan worshippers, but you’ll notice that none of them have denounced the Satanists, either. By failing to denounce it, they effectively embrace and welcome Satan worship as part of their cause. [Emphasis in original.]

Somewhat hilariously, the episode drew the ire of actual Satanists: Continue reading →

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The Young Conservatives of Texas Chicken Out

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By Lilly M (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia CommonsThe University of Texas at Austin’s chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas planned on hosting an event today called “Catch an Illegal Immigrant.” According to the group’s chairman, Lorenzo Garza, the purpose of the event was to “spark a campus-wide discussion about the issue of illegal immigration and how it affects our everyday lives.”

Well, it sparked a discussion. A big one. The discussion got so big, that the group canceled the event.

After denunciations from both major political parties and University of Texas President Bill Powers, the UT chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas has called off a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” event set for Wednesday.

In a statement, Lorenzo Garcia, the group’s chairman, said members were concerned “that the university will retaliate against them and that the protest against the event could create a safety issue for our volunteers.”

If it hasn’t happened already, let me go ahead and nip any claims conservatives may try to make that the whole event was “just a joke” in the bud. This is not satire. It’s not even a good joke. By tucking their tails and running, the organization is showing that they are bullies who wilt in the face of confrontation. They are worried that they might have to face the sort of treatment they were planning on doling out to others. Whatever sort of “discussion” they hoped to “spark,” apparently it did not involve serious and vehement disagreement.

It’s worth noting that a similar event in Michigan in 2006 cost someone their job: Continue reading →

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How Not to Get Arrested

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A former police officer and prosecutor, Dale Carson, has written a book offering his pointers on how to avoid police trouble. It’s both scary and depressing. Via Mike Riggs at Business Insider:

“Law enforcement officers now are part of the revenue-gathering system,” Carson tells me in a phone interview. “The ranks of cops are young and competitive, they’re in competition with one another and intra-departmentally. It becomes a game. Policing isn’t about keeping streets safe, it’s about statistical success. The question for them is, ‘Who can put the most people in jail?'”

His book includes tips on how to “be invisible to police,” and seemingly reasonable things one should never do when a cop is talking to you. The theme, at least as presented in Riggs’ article, is the importance of compliance over any issues of personal pride. Being questioned by police is likely to be humiliating, Carson says, but getting arrested is worse, so suck it up.

The other day, Clark at Popehat wrote about a police chief who thinks cops should be prepared to tackle nearly any suspect:

[U]nless the citizen is “bracing for submission” and maintaining eye contact, the cop should consider “tackling” him.

On light of that, being invisible seems like the better course of action, but I’m still looking around for someone with an idea of how to actually improve things.

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Let Them Donate Cake

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LE - Food DriveA Wal-Mart store in Cleveland is holding a food drive to support its own employees (h/t Myerman, Business Insider). The Cleveland Plain Dealer has good coverage of the controversy, which pits store spokespeople, who say that this is for employees who have suffered recent hardships, against employees and others, who argue that this demonstrates that the retail chain knows it doesn’t pay its workers enough to survive without government assistance, but isn’t willing to do anything except redistribute wealth between those same employees to address the issue. If the poll on the Plain Dealer’s website is any guide, a large number of people think this is a less than gracious gesture on Wal-Mart’s part.

Here we have a massive corporation whose size rivals the GDP of some small countries (just behind Taiwan’s 2010 GDP, and just ahead of Norway),  whose owners came into their substantial wealth largely through inheritance, and whose employees often barely scrape by on their wages. One of this corporation’s many stores decides to act on the dire financial straits of its employees by asking similarly destitute employees to chip in. The people at the top, as far as I know remain silent on this particular matter and, in general, largely indifferent to the plight of those on the bottom. I can’t think of a single historical analogy here in which those at the top ever had to reckon with the manner in which their wealth was built on the backs of others.

Nope, no historical analogies at all.

Anyway, this is depressing to talk about so close to the holidays. Let’s just listen to some music instead. Here’s a song from Rush that I totally picked at random:

Photo credit: “LE – Food Drive” by vastateparksstaff [CC BY 2.0], on Flickr.

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Monday Morning Cute: Your Pal, the Frog

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This little frog has huge adorable eyes, and is a beautiful shade of blue.

And he will poison the sh!t out of anyone who messes with you.

Because he’s got your back. Just don’t let him actually get on your back. Seriously.

(Via Reddit user Jerry520.)

NOTE: It is possible that this is actually a ruby-eyed tree frog, Leptopelis uluguruensis, Photoshopped to look blue (h/t LLLReptile). It might also be a red-eyed tree frog, Agalychnis callidryas. It is probably not a blue poison frog, Dendrobates azureus (h/t Solmen). It’s still adorable, but I’d advise against giving it a hug unless you speak directly to a herpetologist first.

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Living under Human Rules in the Wild

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A photogenic elk was reportedly euthanized by park rangers last week for, as far as I can tell, being too interested in people (h/t Ryan Clinton), as Knoxville’s WBIR reported:

An elk who went viral after a close-up encounter with a photographer was euthanized Friday, Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials confirmed Friday evening.

Park officials said the elk could not be re-trained to be fearful of humans. They said the elk had been coming back to that area in search of food, and had begun associating humans with food.

Spokesperson Molly Schroer said placing the animal elsewhere would be passing along a potentially dangerous problem.

If you haven’t seen the YouTube video, I have to imagine that the experience was terrifying for the photographer (those antlers look pointy), but at the same time, this seems like an elk being an elk.

WBIR reports biologists said elk normally mate during the September to October time-frame, and may have thought [photographer James] York was competition for a lady-elk.

The phrase from WBIR’s article that keeps bothering me is “the elk could not be re-trained to be fearful of humans.” We require dogs, cats, horses, and other domesticated animals to live by our rules, even if they don’t understand them. This makes a certain amount of sense, because we bring these animals into our homes. Plus, we have bred them over millenia to be dependent on us. The burden is on humans to train domestic animals how to behave. In a cruel twist of fate, however, the animals pay the ultimate price if the humans’ lessons don’t take. I don’t have a better way to do it, necessarily, but I think we can all at least acknowledge the cruelty.

But what about non-domesticated animals like elk? They live in the wild, while we mostly only visit there. Whatever that elk was doing, it was doing it on its home turf. Maybe it’s still on us humans to watch what we do in that world.

As I said, I don’t have a ready-made solution here, but I hope the wild gets to stay wild a bit longer.

In other news, some people are far more interested in pretending to dominate the wild, but at least they can’t do it without well-deserved public backlash:

Outdoor television show host and avid hunter Melissa Bachman caused a huge controversy after she shared a photo of herself with a dead lion yesterday with the accompanying tweet:

“An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60 yards on the this beautiful male lion… what a hunt!”

My favorite comment on the story (aside from Ricky Gervais’ uncouth tweet) came from Ona Lynn Nass, who offers a local perspective:

Melissa….He was beautiful before you so savagely killed him…..She should be ashamed of herself. This is a total disgrace….what we called “canned hunting”. Wipe the smile off your face,. any idiot can take a high-powered rifle and a hunt lions that cannot escape and have got ‘human imprinting”. I wish there was a way to get rid of these places that offer these facilities to tourists. It’s all about the money. Btw Melissa, did you need to eat the lion to survive? Wasn’t he so beautiful and majestic while alive, before you took his life? Why didn’t you rather shoot him with a camera. I hope you, never, ever put a foot in our country again….and that goes for ALL you trigger happy tourists. Keep your blasted dollars, yen, euros or whatever. The average South African doesn’t want your kind or your money here. Just ……. off. We don’t want you here and if we could close those shooting ranches down somehow we would. I hope you have nightmares about that lion for the rest of your life……..

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