Artist Shepard Fairey (haaaaa!) – the numbskull responsible for creating those nifty “HOPE” posters for Obama’s campaign of doom – admits that he totally lied about which Associated Press photo he used for his nifty little art piece. Oh, that’s totally, you know, his bad.
As if that isn’t sad enough, the dude is also a vandal. Oh, now there’s some art I can believe in.
As is so often the case, Sept. 1 is the day when Texas' new laws go into effect. You can grab the press release, in PDF format, from the Department of Public Transportation's Web site. That covers the major, need-to-know stuff, not everything, but you get the idea.
Of course, if you think that I'm happy about most of the changes listed on that press release, you're probably a newcomer to this blog.
For a real piece of work, check out Joyce Carol Oates’ recent article about Ted "Stone Cold Killer" Kennedy:
'There are no second acts in American lives'– this dour pronouncement of F Scott Fitzgerald has been many times refuted, and at no time more appropriately than in reference to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, whose death was announced yesterday. Indeed, it might be argued that Senator Kennedy's career as one of the most influential of 20th-century Democratic politicians, an iconic figure as powerful, and as morally enigmatic, as President Bill Clinton, whom in many ways Kennedy resembled, was a consequence of his notorious behaviour at Chappaquiddick bridge in July 1969.
Yet, ironically, following this nadir in his life/ career, Ted Kennedy seemed to have genuinely refashioned himself as a serious, idealistic, tirelessly energetic liberal Democrat in the mold of 1960s/1970s American liberalism, arguably the greatest Democratic senator of the 20th century. His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only "second acts" in American lives, but that the Renaissance concept of the "fortunate fall" may be relevant here: one "falls" as Adam and Eve "fell"; one sins and repents and is forgiven, provided that one remakes one's life.
Kennedy was 36, a senator from Massachusetts whose political career had been managed by his father Joseph Kennedy and facilitated by family wealth, as his expulsion from Harvard as an undergraduate for cheating on a final examination was rectified by family pressure. Like George Bush, another spoiled younger brother of a well-to-do and influential family whose subsequent success in politics had little to do with his own evident talent, intelligence, or ambition, Ted Kennedy was groomed for public office despite dubious qualifications.
At Chappaquiddick, having been drinking and partying with young women aides of his brother Robert Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, at this time a married man and a father, slipped away with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped in his car after he took a wrong turn off the Chappaquiddick bridge, lost control of his car which was submerged in just eight feet of water.
Kennedy chose to flee the scene , leaving the young woman to die an agonising death not of drowning but of suffocation over a period of hours. Incredibly, it was 10 hours before Kennedy reported the accident, by which time he'd consulted a family lawyer. The senator's explanation for this unconscionable, despicable, unmanly and inexplicable behaviour was never convincing: he claimed that he'd struck his head and was "confused" and "exhausted" from diving and trying to rescue the young woman and had gone home to bed.
There followed a media circus, as all of the world rushed to Chappaquiddick to expose Kennedy's behaviour and to speculate on his future. Yet, appealing to his lawyer and not rather seeking emergency help for the trapped Mary Jo Kopechne would seem, in retrospect, to have been a felicitous move.
If Kennedy had summoned aid, he would very likely have given police officers self-incriminating evidence, which might have involved charges of vehicular manslaughter or homicide. The local prosecutor was not nearly so outraged by Kennedy's behaviour as other prosecutors might have been: the charges were "failing to report an accident" and "leaving the scene of an accident." The punishment: two months' probation.
That the Kennedys had always been a family operating outside the perimeters of the sort of legal restrictions that bind other citizens to "moral" behaviour publicly, is well known; no occasion so exemplifies this than Chappaquiddick and the subsequent cooperative silence of the Kopechne family who agreed never to speak of the tragedy.
One is led to think of Tom and Daisy Buchanan of Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby, rich individuals accustomed to behaving carelessly and allowing others to clean up after them. It is often in instances of the "fortunate fall", think of Joseph Conrad's anti-hero/hero Lord Jim as a classic literary analogy, that innocent individuals figure almost as ritual sacrifices is another aspect of the phenomenon.
Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?
The poet John Berryman once wondered: "Is wickedness soluble in art?". One might rephrase, in a vocabulary more suitable for our politicized era: "Is wickedness soluble in good deeds?"
This paradox lies at the heart of so much of public life: individuals of dubious character and cruel deeds may redeem themselves in selfless actions. Fidelity to a personal code of morality would seem to fade in significance as the public sphere, like an enormous sun, blinds us to all else.
Yesterday was not a good day for Americans who play poker on the Internet. I'm unhappy, to say the very least, about this whole "Let's take their money - without a warrant, no less! Because we're the feds!" crap.
The Poker Players Alliance has released a statement explaining what in the world is going on:
[NY] PPA Statement on Southern District of NY Action Against Online Poker Players - PPA (06/09/09)
Apparently, thanks to the Department of Homeland (in)Security's recent "ZOMG! Terrorists!" documents, which were released to law-enforcement agencies all over the United States, it's now cool to pull over a guy whose truck sports a Gadsden-flag bumper sticker, tell him that his choice of vehicle decoration is an extremist kind of thing, and hold him while you look into his background.
Gee...the last time I checked, the "Don't tread on me" flag was a symbol of America, much like Old Glory in her various incarnations. The last time I checked, terrorists don't exactly embrace the symbols of the nations they're trying to destroy...I mean, come on - when was the last time you saw Muhammad McBomberson wearing an American-flag tee shirt underneath his bomb vest?
I was also under the impression that all Americans still had our First-amendment rights to freedom of speech and of expression (among the other rights outlined in that particular Amendment).
Yeah...I'll be buying these bumper stickers by the case, just to prove a point.
April Fifteenth is going to be a busy day for the family. We’re going to be at one of the Tax Day Tea Parties that are going on in our part of Texas. Which one? I don’t quite know yet, because there are several to choose from. All I know is that most of us have already made plans to be there, because we’re sick of the runaway taxing and spending that’s been going on for too long.
I realize that protesting is usually reserved for granola-munching, tofu-defecating, tree-humping hippies, but there are times when peacefully assembling to petition the government makes the most sense. All of the Tea Party locations near me are at court houses, which would of course be logical places to protest the outrageous things that our government is doing even as I type this. This, I imagine, will be slightly more productive than assembling on a college campus to blow bubbles as a protest against the Iraq War. (This is exactly what a bunch of people at my college did. Really.)
Make plans to be at a Tea Party in your area, on Tax Day, if you’re sick of the taxing and spending. If you’re tired of working hard to support welfare bums, big government, and insane social programs with your tax dollars, be there. If you’re looking around and muttering, “This isn’t the change we were promised,” go.
I’ll have a trip report, possibly with pics, for you all after Tax Day. In the meantime, keep writing to your elected officials – our hired help - and letting them know exactly what they’re doing wrong.
Would anybody care to tell me why our media is not widely, rabidly reporting the fact that Military Police were sent into Samson, Alabama following a civilian's murder spree?
You see, good citizens, the military cannot legally do this sort of thing. Oh, no. They cannot just waltz into a community and do their thing, because that violates federal law.
Even so, the personnel were there, and now people are wondering why.
Why isn't this all over the news? Shouldn't this be the lead story? Shouldn't every major newspaper and TV-news program in the nation cover this? You would think that, because the mainstream media is so awesome at tearing into our military, they'd be all over this. But...they aren't.
Weird.
So...this event is covered in a very-limited fashion, even though it's definitely newsworthy. Fortunately, we don't have to rely on the MSM to give us information. We have Teh Intarwebz, dangit!
(And, to be clear: I love our military. Don't even think that I'm blaming the personnel who were on the ground in Alabama for this. I just despise the thought of the military being used in a manner that violates our current laws, that's all.)
Yesterday, while I was out shopping, I saw a poster that convinced me that I am really going to snap soon. It totally won't be my fault, either, because crap like this is going to turn any rational, decent human being into a raving, drooling nutcase.
This picture isn't that great, but you might be able to make out the gist of this "art." Basically, this poster, designed to resemble a cell phone, offers a rather-extensive glossary of text-message abbreviations, misspellings, and other crimes against the English language. As if your average 12-year-old needs to hang a reference guide to English-language butchery on her door or wall, right?
What's next? A thumb exerciser so that the tweens can build up muscle strength for extended sessions with their cell phones? Maybe I shouldn't take this sort of thing so seriously, but we're talking about the deterioration of our communication skills. When high schoolers fail English exams because they use textspeak in their papers (which has really happened in my town), I tend to worry about this nation's future.
Anybody who buys this poster without fully intending to take it to the range for a little rifle practice shall incur my unholy wrath.
England's oppressive nanny, a.k.a. the government, loves to ban things, like firearms. And crossbows. And swords. My thinking is that this not-so-free nation is going to eventually outlaw pointy sticks, because their socialized health-care system can’t afford to pass out eyepatches to all the people who are too stupid to keep their sticks pointed in a safe direction at all times. Liberty? Please – not in England, where there are plenty of security cameras watching all the citizens and tourists.
But what’s hilarious, in a pathetic way, is the recent move to ban the apostrophe. No. Really. It seems that the powers that be in London are tired of arguing over the lowly apostrophe's place on road signs. So, they’ve decided to stop using this particular punctuation mark, regardless of whether that’s the grammatically-correct choice or not.
One Councilman, Martin Mullaney, offered the Stupid Quote of the Century about the decision to ignore proper grammar:
Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," he said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it.
Some Texas politicians are scum. If you don’t believe me, check out H.B. 738, related to inattentive driving. Should this piece of garbage pass, it will be illegal for Texas drivers to do the following while operating our vehicles:
Interact with pets
Interact with a passenger
Eat or drink
Interact with your stereo, CD player, MP3 player, et cetera (including changing the station or track)
Et cetera, so forth and so on, blah, blah, blah. These are just the most outrageous things that Rep. Chente Quintanilla included in this piece of crap.
Up yours, Quintanilla. You’re an embarrassment to Texans, because you’re in league with the nanny state. Instead of holding people accountable for the things that they choose to do, your introduced legislation attempts to prevent all of us from doing normal, routine things – like talking with passengers or taking a sip of soda while we’re going to work to earn the taxes that pay your useless, miserable ass.
What sort of scum-sucking, anti-freedom oxygen thief would even think of introducing legislation like this?
Here in Central Texas, we do not go to school if there is ice on the ground, or if there is a forecast for ice during the day.
My university, as well as every other school in the area, is closed for the day. Oh, yeah, baby!
In other news: Blago's whining about the impeachment process being unfair. And he's trying to claim that he wasn't going to break any criminal laws with that whole "let's discuss selling Obama's Senate seat!" deal that the feds recorded. Mm-hmm. Sure, Blago. Let's not even get into the "Let's hold the Cubs sale hostage" bit, or the "Hey, children's hospital? Do what I say or you don't get money" thing.
What a tool.
But it could be worse. I mean, Iceland's whole government just collapsed.
The other night, Youngest Bro and his girlfriend went out for dinner. They got pizza, but didn’t eat the whole thing. The leftovers stayed in the back seat of YB’s car, along with their bread sticks, while they went into Walmart to do whatever it is that you do in Walmart when you’re out on a date.
When YB and The Girlfriend went back to the car afterward, they noticed that one of the car’s doors was slightly ajar. Further investigation revealed that the door was open because a pizza thief had opened it, swiped all of their leftover food, and left – all before they returned to the car.
The good news is that The Girlfriend’s purse was not on the floorboard, where she normally leaves the thing when she goes into a store. That night, for whatever reason, she decided to secure the purse in YB’s trunk before going into Walmart. Good for her.
The family and I agree that, if the person who swiped the pizza and breadsticks was hungry, then it’s a sad situation indeed. If that’s the case, our prayer is that the individual is able to find a job, or whatever he or she needs to obtain food without lurking in parking lots, hoping to get lucky. We’ve been hungry before, and don’t want to see other people in the same situation.
On the other hand: if the theft was one of those random, jerky things that delinquents do when they’re bored, we all hope that the sack of crap gets diarrhea for a week straight, with a burning bunghole that doesn’t quit.
The next day, my oldest brother called home to tell us that, the night before, he had stopped at Walmart – the one in his entirely-different part of the state – because he saw a car catch on fire in the lot. He jumped out of his truck to be sure that everyone in the vehicle had gotten out okay. In the middle of doing this random, decent thing, OB heard the distinct sound of his pickup leaving the location.
He turned around to see it being driven off. Because he, not thinking about anything but the people in the vehicle that had just caught on fire, didn’t turn off the engine and take the keys with him. I wouldn’t have either, I don’t think.
The good news is that the police found the truck a few miles away, unharmed. The bad news is that they couldn’t find the keys. OB’s keychain had his truck and apartment keys on it. His insurance card, in the glove box, has his address printed right on the front. So, he’s having both his truck and apartment locks changed.
This is just weird, though, folks, because both of these things happened on the same night, in different parts of Texas, but to the same family. Weirdness. Is it a full moon? Halloween? Or just another one of those weird spells that happen to some people?
Blagojevich refuses to resign even though he's just been impeached.
Granted, impeachment does not equal conviction. But still - it's pretty bad when the vote to impeach is 114-1.
Give it up, idiot. Just slink away already. You're a drain on society, just like so many other politicians. Blackmailers and manipulative scumbags like this need to go someplace far, far away and never return.
You're either really gutsy, or really stupid, if you think that you're going to get away with everything that the feds have caught you (on tape, I might add) doing.
Sadly, I won't be surprised if he does get away with the corruption and greed. Somehow, his fellow, crooked politicians will come together to save his merry butt, and they'll all sail away on a wave of ill-gotten dollars. Business as usual in our crooked government.
MTV’s “Daria” originally aired when I was a teenager. Being just the right age, at just the right time, I really enjoyed the TV series. This was my favorite show at the time, and I’m still a bit sad that it’s no longer airing on The N, as it was a few years ago in syndication.
Being slightly nostalgic, I’ve been looking around to see if the animated series is available on DVD. Sadly, there is no such thing as a “Daria” box set. MTV/Viacom has not, despite many requests from loyal Daria Morgendorffer fans, released anything but the full-length feature films (“Is It College Yet?” being the later one) and the occasional VHS tape, which one can buy through Amazon’s Marketplace if one is so inclined.
The problem is that there are Web sites claiming to have the entire series for sale. For as little as thirty dollars, you can buy every season, with pilot episodes, in a box set that even includes artwork.
Guess what? They’re pirated copies. Somebody recorded the show from his or her TV, more likely than not, and has packaged every episode for illegal redistribution. If you buy one of these box sets, you can reasonably expect to receive a piece of crap.
Picture and audio quality might not be great, because the bootlegs are likely nothing more than TV recordings. If the pirates in question snagged the feed from The N, that network’s logo will appear on the bottom of the screen. You might also see some poorly-timed starts and stops, because “Daria” always aired with commercial breaks, whether it was on MTV or The N.
Then there are the actual DVDs. They’ll be plain old DVD-Rs, which means that they’re more sensitive to scratches than the commercially manufactured versions. If the DVDs are labeled, which is not a guarantee, then it’s likely to be a poor print job.
Overall, pirated copies of anything – movies, records, TV shows – are crap. They aren’t commercially dubbed or packaged, so you aren’t going to get the best that an entire team of designers and other employees can offer. Instead, you’re paying for some thief in a dank, stinking basement to run as many files through his DVD burner as he can, as quickly as he can.
So, I wrote to MTV, asking them to please consider releasing this show on DVD. I would gladly pay for it, which I don’t say about many TV shows. The studio will make money, I’ll get my “Daria” fix, and the bootleggers won’t have the market cornered anymore. Everybody wins in this case, as far as I can see at least.
A bunch of poo flingers in Dallas recently assembled downtown to protest Israel's response to repeated rocket attacks and other terrorist acts coming from Gaza.
Let's see. After reading the article, I'm still firmly convinced that anybody who protests in favor of a group of urine-swilling killers who broke a peace treaty in order to continue lunging at their sworn enemy needs to go to Gaza and make a stand there. Then, when one of Israel's bombs eradicates the moron in question, the world will be a slightly-better place.
P.S. Comparing Israel's military response to the Holocaust? Dirty pool, savages. Dirty pool. Well, I guess I can't expect anything more from a group of stinking, filthy animals who make my dog's habit of snacking from the litter box seem sophisticated, now can I?
So we have this kitten, Sonny Boy, who's bright orange and white.
Now, I've learned one or two things about cats over the last twenty-seven years, having spent the overwhelming majority of my life with at least a couple of them around.
Orange cats have The Asshole Gene. This is a scientific fact, proven by any orange cat who's ever existed. Even subdued-orange kitties, who look more like wheat than traffic cones, have this...errant gene. Their condition causes them to constantly be up to something, and it's rarely good.
Cats with The Asshole Gene tend to purr loudly, especially when caught doing something that they shouldn't be doing - like attacking your eyelashes while you're in REM sleep. They also tend to be males, for some reason. We did, once, own a female fur ball named Spidey who was, actually, orange. Fluorescent orange. With occasional white accents. She was a semi-asshole, but an asshole nonetheless. She liked to lock her front legs around your ankle when you walked through the house. And she purred while she did it - preemptive purring to stave off the inevitable scolding.
Sonny Boy is definitely in possession of The Asshole Gene. The little twit is not quite three months old, but already knows good and well what is and is not allowed around here. However, because he possesses this defective gene, he just doesn't care. He does whatever comes to his tiny, pea-sized mind, and usually with a flagrant air of superiority. "So what?" his body language seems to say. "What if I did do it? Whatcha gonna do? Take away my crappy dry food? Ooooh, I'm so scared."
The family and I aren't overly strict. We don't give a crap if the cats sit on the couch, or take a chair. They can even stretch out on the back of the recliner if they so choose. We don't care if they sleep in bed with us (we prefer that, actually), hop up in the window to catch some sunbeams, or claim an empty Dr Pepper box as their own personal hidey hole. Whatever makes them happy.
However, the counter and table are not cat-approved zones. The fur balls might THINK that they're entitled to our people food, but they aren't. We have spray bottles full of tap water for "reminding" the fur balls that they can't hang out on these surfaces. The older cats figured this out rather quickly. Sonny Boy and his friends, though? Not so much. Especially Sonny Boy, who goes out of his way to sneak onto these surfaces when he thinks we aren't watching. The twit.
Yesterday, Mom had a tray of tater tots in the oven. She let them cool off in there, then removed them. (We like ours at room temperature, for some reason.) She put the pan on the counter, then turned her back on it like the silly person that she can be sometimes.
She and I were in the living room, yakking, when we heard a horrific crash. Followed, immediately, by many little thumps of tater tots hitting the floor. Tiny little tater corpses, hitting the linoleum in darned-near-perfect synchronization with each other. It's a weird sound. Trust me.
Sonny Boy was perched on the counter's edge, his head hanging down and his tail twitching excitedly, staring at the mess he'd made. The tots were all over the floor - like a potato frag grenade went off in my kitchen.
While we stood there, just staring at this unholy, salted mess, Sonny Boy sloooooowly lifted his head and stared at Mom. His tail stopped flicking as soon as he realized that she was, really, yes, looking at him.
They stood there, nearly eye to eye, just watching each other for a very long moment.
I stood nearby, staring at the staring contest and wondering who would blink first. I fully expected Sonny to give Mom his, "What? I didn't do it. This is obviously the dog's doing" look and amble away.
Instead, Mom started snickering. The kitten blinked a couple of times, tilted his head to one side in confusion, then realized that he was Getting Away With This. You could see the exclamation point light up over his head as he realized that he just might even get to consume his treasured tots. Obviously, as far as this kitten is concerned, this turn of events proves that Santa Claws really does exist, and really does love him.
That's when the dogs bounded into the kitchen and began scarfing down the food. Sonny Boy hopped down and nosed his way into the pack. He managed to fish out one tot with his paw and drag it out of the circle. He dragged his prize underneath the table and wolfed it down, occasionally growling to make sure we humans understood that he was not willing to share.
"What an asshole," Mom snickered.
This occurred the day after Sonny Boy bravely hopped onto the counter right behind Mom, who was frying bacon at the time, and snagged an entire piece from the plate. She didn't even notice until she went to retrieve the plate and saw that there were not, in fact, three pieces of bacon on it any more.
Eventually, the cat will learn to either a) not get caught, or b) make sure that we're in good moods when he is caught, so that we're too busy snickering to get the spray bottle.
Little twit.
Sooo...the governor of Illinois is caught attempting to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. And if that won't work? He's on tape pondering the possibility of just giving it to himself.
The puddle of diarrhea is in charge of appointing the next Senator to replace Obama, so he obviously could have, would have, delivered that seat to the highest bidder - not to the person most deserving (or, more accurately in U.S. politics: the person least likely to completely foul it up).
This festering sore isn't the first politician to do something reprehensible (Ted Kennedy, anyone?), but this is definitely one of the most rotten things that's actually been released for public consumption. Somehow, in this idiot's syphilitic mind, this all seemed...okay. Apparently. Politics as usual in Illinois, you know.
Rope. Tree. Governor. Some assembly required.
Well, if that doesn't make you lose faith in the infectious waste in overpriced suits that run our government, nothing will, right?
My sinuses have officially gone insane. I've had the same sinus headache, right in the middle of my head, for three days now. The over-the-counter medicine isn't touching this sucker.
What, you ask, do tweakers have to do with this? Pseudoephedrine. That's what.
Meth includes pseudoephedrine, an ingredient that you used to find in over-the-counter sinus/cold medication. When you took the pseudoephedrine-laced pills or syrups, you actually felt better. This ingredient, combined with the others in these medications, dried out my sinuses, stopped the pounding headache, and made me a happier person overall.
Oh. And I didn't get drowsy, either.
A few years ago, the Great State of Texas decided that we should restrict pseudoephedrine sales in an effort to discourage tweakers. If the pseudoephedrine is not easy to buy, then perhaps the meth cooks will stop making drugs. Right?
Wrong. There are still dozens of meth labs within just a few miles of my house in rural Texas. I still see meth addicts hanging around in my community, high on their illicit drugs and doing those bizarre, often-illegal things that tweakers do. (Theft...violent crime...the usual meth head crap.)
I can still buy pseudoephedrine-laced medications. They're just locked up now, that's all. I have to wait in the pharmacy's line for them. The pharmacy here is not open 24 hours. When they are open for business, the line is freaking huge. Whenever I go to that place, I have to stand around for at least twenty minutes, just to get one stupid box of sinus pills.
This in itself would not be so bad. If the state merely required pharmacies to lock up the medicine - to prevent tweakers from stealing giant armfuls of the stuff - then I'd say, "Hey, you gotta protect your business. I get it." That would be fine by me. Stores lock up all sorts of other valuable items, and you don't hear me complaining about them protecting their merchandise. One local dollar store has to lock up $3 packages of gel-ink pens because people were stealing so many of them. That's fine. It's sad that stores have to lock up inexpensive items like this to protect their interests, but I'm not complaining about that.
However: I have to show my ID, which is recorded in the system, to obtain this medicine. I tend to resent that kind of record keeping. I'm not a criminal. I'm not using this stuff to do anything illegal. Why should I, a law-abiding citizen, submit to criminal treatment?
The state is not merely asking me to prove that I'm legally old enough to make a purchase, as is done with alcohol, tobacco, Sharpie markers, et cetera. They actually keep a log of how much I buy, when and where, et cetera.
Now, you might be okay with this, but I'm not. I've done nothing wrong, but my purchases are recorded? Why? What did I do to deserve that? Nothing, unless suffering from sinus headaches counts.
Yes, I do realize that I leave paper trails all over the place. Obviously, I'm not difficult to find if the government wants to know exactly where I am. However, we do have to pick our battles, and I've chosen this one. Mostly because I despised tweakers even before this stupid legislation went into effect. They've just given me another reason to loathe them, that's all.
Plaxico Burress is a complete idiot. That giant head of his has a blinking "Vacancy" sign attached, because all but the last four brain cells died off years ago.
This football player is a moron, and a waste of perfectly-good oxygen, because he managed to shoot himself in the leg. (The New York Giants responded by suspending the idiot for the remainder of the season.) Because he's intelligent enough to remember an entire football playbook, but not intelligent enough to remember four simple rules. You can, by the way, teach Cooper's Four Rules to toddlers. I've seen parents do it before, and they'll continue doing it in the future. Burress, on the other hand, is terminally stupid, and probably can't be taught.
To shoot himself, Burress had to violate at least three of the four firearms-safety rules that most of us were faithfully taught long before we got near our first guns.
He did not treat the firearm as if it were loaded - which it was, considering the fact that he fired a bullet into his own frickin' leg. Every gun is always loaded, folks. Jeff Cooper had a very good point when he wrote this rule, and those of us who follow it do so because we recognize that failure to respect our firearms just might end badly. The other three rules, in my opinion, hinge on this one. If you treat the gun, loaded or not, as if there is a round ready to fire, you will avoid breaking the other three rules (pointing the gun at somebody/something you don't want to shoot; letting your finger wander on the trigger when you aren't ready to shoot, and not being sure of the area behind your target before you shoot).
He let the muzzle cover something - his own leg - that he didn't really want to destroy. Unless Burress really wanted to attempt suicide (sever the artery running down your leg and you bleed out quite quickly, I'm told), he broke a rule that even tiny people understand. How many young children do you know who can tell you, in their own words, that pointing any gun at anything they don't want to shoot is bad? I know quite a few of these kids. Apparently, Burress is not smarter than a 5th grader. Or a kindergartner, for that matter.
He did not keep his finger off the trigger until he was ready to fire his gun. Unless he meant to shoot himself in public, he allowed his finger to stray. I wonder if the idiot knows what a holster is? He probably thinks that they're just for cowboys and cops. I wouldn't be surprised if the dude had his handgun jammed down his pants like a crackhead/home invader/common street thug/et cetera. Because that's so much cooler looking than bleeding on the nightclub's floor because you're too stupid, or cheap, to pay forty bucks for a decent holster that covers the trigger guard and, therefore, helps you keep the booger hooker off the bang switch.
And finally: he probably didn't pay attention to the area behind his target. I'm guessing this because Burress probably didn't intend to pull the trigger. That being the case, I highly doubt that he double-checked the area beyond the muzzle (or his own body, as that was the target whether he intended for it to be or not) to be sure that his round would not hit an innocent bystander or damage somebody's property.
What a dummy.
