I Would Give You a Ride, But My Car is Just a Pile of Flaming Ashes

Even better than flame decals: Burning cars is looking to be a hot trend in 2010.

Yet  another indicator of our collapsing empire jumped out at me from the headlines today. Back in the roaring 90’s when there were stories about burning SUVs, the culprits were inevitably “eco-terrorists” like Jeff “Free” Luers – the young Oregonian who was initially sentenced to 22 years for burning 3 gas guzzlers on a car lot. Nowadays,  “desperate motorists behind on their car payments have turned to torching their Tahoes and burning their Blazers in hopes a payout from their insurer will reap a quick payoff.”

According to the Modesto Bee, suspected vehicle arson fraud jumped 31% from 2007 to 2008. Damn! They better slow down or there aren’t going to be any cars left for the rest of us to torch when the real shit goes down.

But seriously. I’m starting to think that there are more TV shows about criminal forensic investigation units than there are actual forensic investigation units. Doug Maner, who handles auto insurance fraud for Stanislaus County’s district attorney office, was quoted in the article as saying that the real arson numbers are probably higher, but they don’t have enough staff to look into all the fires.

In San Francisco, the Fire Department’s arson unit has been so de-funded and mismanaged that Elmer Carr, the captain from 1995 until 2005, recently called it “a joke.” (Maybe he’s just embarrassed that they haven’t been able to sniff out the infamous porta-potty arsonist, who has burned up about two dozen outhouses in the city recently.)

Either way, people burning their cars for insurance money is really nothing new. When people start burning their big screen, HD TVs because they can’t make the payments… that’s when you’ll know things are really about to get ugly.

Oh, just let it burn. I couldn’t even afford rims.

The Pull Out Method

"I never would have let this happen."

Last week, a group of crazy Texans stirred up controversy with their attempt to correct the “liberal bias” of text books by, for example, replacing lessons about Cesar Chavez with the history of the National Rifle Association.

Now this: A 9,000 student school district in Riverside yanked the dictionaries out of all classrooms after a student “stumbled across” the definition of “oral sex.”  “School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the ‘sexually graphic’ entry,” according to the Press-Enterprise.

Hopefully, most people will realize this stupid and counter-productive,  so maybe the dictionaries will be back on the bookshelves soon…  But I think this might be part of a bigger plot.

Check out this new headgear spotted by Carles at a French fashion show. It looks like the forces of censorship and repression have infiltrated the fabulous world of haute couture. Fashonistas are clearly trying to make Fisher-Price-looking, over-sized earmuffs th next hot trend. It’s all part of a giant conservative scheme concocted by overzealous parents to keep their kids from hearing any “graphic language” or words about “sex.” Just wait  and see. Next season, Miley Cyrus or the dude from Twilight is going be seen wearing these and before you can say “TwitPic,” malls across America will be flooded with hordes of tweenagers forking over their allowance money for giant ear muzzlers. I bet you Sarah Palin even gets a pair.

The future of sex-ed

...And of course they have something in mind for the girls.

Too Bad Muslims Have the Internet or This Could Have Been Our Little Secret

Duh — everybody knows that when Jesus comes back, he’s not going to join the Army. He’s going to take that shit over, kill all the bad guys, and everyone left alive is going to party at Disney Land with the singer from Creed.

U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are using high-powered rifle sights inscribed with coded Bible references, according to ABC News. For example, a sight inscribed with the code “JN8:12”, refers to the gospel of John 8:12, which reads: “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Apparently Trijicon, the Michigan-based company that has a $660 million contract to provide up to 800,000 of these holy gun scopes to the Army, interprets this passage to mean: “…And if you don’t follow me, I’ll bust a cap in your face.”

Meanwhile, spokespeople for the military have said they’re “discussing what  steps, if any,” to take. Wow. If they can’t figure that one out, no wonder they’re having so much trouble “winning” those wars against all those pissed off Muslim folks.

Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, blamed a group that is “not Christian” for stirring up this controversy, but doesn’t see any problem with the inscriptions, saying that they “have always been there.” He must mean that they’ve been there for a really long time, like those “dinosaur bones” that the devil hid underground in a fiendishly Satanic attempt to trick true believers. Or maybe he meant that Jesus miraculously inscribes the weapons himself, like how He sometimes puts his face on tortillas and potato chips and stuff.

Alright, I'm gonna pass the "collection plate" around one more time...

I Helped Legitimize a Genocidal Regime and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Sorry folks, pack up your shit, we have some cabanas to build

Back in 1980, The Dead Kennedys released “Holiday in Cambodia,” a blistering critique of entitled Western attitudes towards impoverished and war-torn nations. If the New York Times is familiar with this punk rock anthem of bitter resentment wrapped in sarcastic disgust, they clearly didn’t get the joke.

Of all the tourist destinations in the world, this year the Times selected Sri Lanka as the “number one place to go in 2010.” How edgy! How provocative! How… fucking morally bankrupt are the editors at the New York Times?

Just two days before the Times offered this extremely lucrative endorsement of this “island, with a population of just 20 million, [that] feels like one big tropical zoo,” they ran another article about Sri Lanka. This article was about Sri Lankan soldiers committing war crimes by executing blindfolded-and-bound prisoners of war and the government of Sri Lanka not really giving a fuck.

While the travel piece does allude to the decades-long civil war that finally “ended” last year after the Sri Lankan government went on a merciless killing spree against Tamil rebels and all the innocent children and other civilians who happened to get in their way, the NYT writer is ready to move on from that nasty little episode and explore “this teardrop-shaped island off India’s coast, rich in natural beauty and cultural splendors.”

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any sweeter: “Decimated by the tsunami in 2004, the surrounding coastline is now teeming with stylish guesthouses and boutique hotels.” Awesome! No more of those stinky fishing villages with their grubby little huts… but if you really want to beat the crowds, you might just want to skip Sri Lanka and head straight for Darfur. I hear the dust storms aren’t too bad this time of year and when the New York Times writes about it next year, you’ll be able to say you were there first.