Local Blogger Refuses to Leave Basement "Until Country Is Less Stupid"

(Reuters) Pittsburgh, PA - A local anonymous blogger today announced that he was staging a "Basement-In" until the the Country is less stupid.

The Blogger, who writes for a well-known, if sporatically updated, electronic publication announced via email that "the current state of the country is too dumb to be a part of."

"I have my Netflix, I have several cases of wine and beer, I have a Wii... I figure I can last 12-18 months isolated away until our collective IQs break triple digits."

Sources close to the Blogger indicate that the recent kerfluffle over the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" were finally the straw that broke the camel's back.

"We were watching CNN," said his wife who refused to be named, "And then this report came on and he just started ranting. 'How can they be reporting on this,' he shouted, 'How can they... There's the First... I mean...' And then he just trailed off. I think the stupidity finally broke his brain."

No word on whether the Blogger actually intends on carrying through on his threat, although reports indicate that he has ordered 400 pounds of Cheetos, indicating a long seige.

Taunting the Corbett

By now, if you are familiar with the Internets, you've heard all about this:

An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer said Thursday his organization is helping two anonymous Twitter users fight an effort by prosecutors to unmask them after they tweeted criticism of a Pennsylvania attorney general who is running for governor...

A Corbett spokesman said the subpoena was partly related to a Friday sentencing hearing for former Democratic legislative aide Brett Cott. He is one of three people convicted in March of public corruption charges in the ongoing investigation into the alleged illegal use of legislative employees and government resources to run political campaigns.

The grand jury on May 6 subpoenaed the identities and other information about the two users from Twitter Inc. Corbett's office has been using the highly secretive grand jury process for the past several years to look into allegations that government resources and legislative employees have been illegally used to run political campaigns...

On Twitter, both CasablancaPA and bfbarbie have been critical of Corbett and the Bonusgate prosecution.

In a tweet Thursday, bfbarbie called Corbett "an evil man," and CasablancaPA wrote that Corbett "should try reading the blog he wants to shut down a little more closely."...

Poor Tom. Poor, poor Tom attacked viciously in some back alley Tweet by two guys using only their words. After the incident, Tom was barely able to get back to his office, and courageously used what little strength he had left from the savageness of the beating to issue subpoenas against, what I assume are, his two Cheeto-smelling assailants.

Of course, Tom was dressed all politicians like; he was just begging to be blogged about.

Anyway...

You know, when stories like this (including the one where Luke Ravenstahl absolutely did not go on a five day coke and goat sex binge and will sue the ever living pants off of anyone who even insinuates the mere hint that he did anything of the sort) break, one can only respond with scorn and ridicule. But in this case we also have a list of other things that Corbett has (allegedly) done:

As a reward for being an adviser to the campaign of Tom Ridge, Corbett was appointed to several Pennsylvanian commissions.

While he was a 9th grade teacher, students complained that he graded "unfairly."

He has two acknowledged children by a woman who is his wife.

He has publicly acknowledged that he is pursuing a lawsuit against the U.S. Federal Government with Pennsylvanian tax payer money, which has little chance of succeeding, but may take years.

He became Attorney General after his predecessor was mysteriously indicted for mail fraud.

He is known to be involved with a known felon linked to the "suicide" of Budd Dwyer.

He has had involvement in Waste Management, the same field as Mobster Tony Soprano.

While he claims to have served in the Army National Guard, no one has stepped forward to corroborate his attendance.

Mr. Corbett wrote several explosive papers while attending Lebanon Valley College, but both Mr. Corbett and the College have refused to release them for examination.

And finally, Tom "Hussein" Corbett has refused to release his long-form birth certificate in response to growing concerns that he was actually born in Belgium.

I think "Hussein" Corbett needs to answer these questions, don't you?

---
Or maybe I should look into getting a Twitter feed and get into that hot 140 character action.

And Now...

H/t to Bram, who played the Gremlin once or twice to the local Looney Tunes establishment.

I give him three months until he returns.

Please do not Read the Last Post

OK, a bit of a confession/apology to make here:

I was rushed on Friday and didn't have a chance to read the post in full. Now, apparently this post contained some very hateful, mean, and disturbing things (which I will not go into here). Most of the time I do, in fact, write my own material, but I will admit, that particular post was ghost written on my behalf by Allegheny County Councilman Charles McCullough, who offered it to me at the last minute as a favor. Chuck claimed that is was a minor amendment to a previously approved posting, but I just got duped into posting the most vile and awful bit of filth, it seems.

Like I said, I didn't have a chance to read it before it got posted, but it contained some very, very awful, disgusting, lewd, and amoral things. So anyone who did read it, I recommend that you clear it from your cache and forget about it. I've already deleted it so you won't find it here.

I'm truly sorry for this incident, especially the part about the puppies and the rotissomat. That was horrible.

Thank you, and again I apologize. (And shame on you Mr. McCullough for what you said about Rich Fitzgerald's hair and his sexual deviances!)

Local Blogger Struggles to Create "Value Added Content"

(Newswire) Pittsburgh, PA - Local anonymous blogger known only as "Frurster" on Wednesday issued a statement to his dozens of followers, saying that he was having "difficulty in creating value added content" for his blog.

"I started to write something about the audit of the water and sewer authority, and then I was going to Photoshop Luke (Raventahl)'s head on the body of a manatee, and then I was going to steal something from the Post-Gazette and add a few lines of commentary, but frankly, I just gave up. It was too hard."

"Frurster," who has written the blog "Frurster's Site" for the last five years has struggled in recent weeks to write posts that are topical, cogent, and witty. Despite recent re-printings in other media, the author has found his work pedestrian at best. His best post, an in depth analysis of potholes, received no comments. "Frurster" has become increasingly frustrated about his literary contributions.

"You know, I have all of these great ideas. For example, Yarone (Zober) would be great in a musical version of City Council... I even have the first two songs written, but I can't make it to the second act, so I've kind of given up on that. Now, I've resorted to calling the people at the County Department of Humans Services 'buttheads for a cheap laugh.'"

Writer's block is typical of long time writers. Stephen King has re-written several of his books under different titles. Washington Post sports writer Tony Kornheiser has been writing the same column since 1989. Even classic writers like Herman Melville have padded their works with chapters upon chapter of whale hunting filler.

Such examples do not console "Frurster".

"Dammit, I should be better than Melville. Perhaps I'll take the lyrics to 'I'm Yours' and re-write them to speak to the current condition of privatizing public parking garages. I don't know. Maybe I'll get around to it after the next episode of The Simpsons."

"Frurster" needs to write another post before 5PM today.

Another, Another Aside

You're really starting to piss me off Blogger.

Internet Bloggers Announce Strike

San Jose, CA (AP) - Following last night's announcement that the Writers Guild of America will go on strike last night, the International Brotherhood of Internet Bloggers (iBIB) announced that it would also call for a major work stoppage amongst it's nearly one million members.

iBIB had been negotiating along side the Writer's Guild as marathon talks entered their eleventh hour in Los Angeles and New York. The Bloggers are demanding royalties for "all the really good plots, scripts, and ideas offered for free on the Internet" are concerned about the increased number of Chinese bloggers that provide content at one-eighth the price of a union blogger.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the blog DailyKos, and Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, founder of Slashdot, called on all iBIB members to immediately stop work.

In a speech released on YouTube last night, CmdrTaco ordered union members to refrain "from writing, producing, or uploading anything of substance or entertaining value on the web. It is only through the loss of our 'value added content' will management come to understand the services we provide."

Reporters questioned Malda if any of this "value added content" had previously been released on the Internet and, if so, where it might be found.

Markos added that until the strike was resolved, the union was holding back several items including a story involving Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), a new seven question meme, and a video of a monkey and an adorably kitten.

Message boards across the Internet were immediately shut down, as virtual picketers in the popular MMORPGs "Second Life" and "World of Warcraft" assembled inside every major server. Thousands of unspayed, unneutered, and uncaptioned LOLCats were abandoned by their owners.

The National Alliance of Network Administrators (NANA), who had been negotiating across the table from iBIB, called the move "precipitous and irresponsible," however, they are secretly concerned that a prolonged strike would lead to an increase in the reading of books, magazines, and newspapers or even "going outside and interacting with real people."

No word yet on whether the United Porn Writers, Directors, Composers, and Amalgamated Skeeves will join in a sympathy strike; UPWDCAS makes up for nearly 85% of Internet content.

Reopened negotiations may begin as early Tuesday.

Error 414

For those of you that may be wondering, no, I was not the City employee that tried to rig the kdka.com poll. I have better things to do than to try and finagle some meaningless online poll to the advantage of my current boss. For example... I'm a gardener, an amateur astronomer, a rock climber, a contributor to a nationally syndicated periodical, a musician, a database administrator, a biker, a sometimes architectural student, and Prince of Denmark. This leaves me very little time to do anything other than blog and eat.

To that end, I noticed that this story has gotten some ink in the media, in Pittsburgh and beyond. I think that's kind of curious, actually, considering that (1) the employee didn't seem to do it on company time or at the direction of his superiors and (2) IT'S A FUCKING ONLINE POLL.

Does anyone actually take those online polls seriously? I mean, anyone who's had more than 20 minutes of statistics will tell you that self-selecting respondants are invariably skewed and any poll that doesn't prevent against multiple votes is functionally useless.

Moreover, it's not like the guy hacked into an election machine and overturned thousands of votes for John Kerry in... let's say... Ohio.

But, and here are two quotes from the article:

"As far as I'm concerned, it was all in good fun," the mayor said.

and

"He did it as a private citizen. He's well within his rights as a person," Ravenstahl spokeswoman Alecia Sirk said.

I think those are reasonable responses to the situation at hand. Now, let us further extrapolate as to whether similar responses would have been engendered if the employee had rigged the poll towards DeSantis?

Or let's say that it wasn't a poll that leaned towards DeSantis, but, perhaps... a blog? Would the Mayor's Office be as reasonable if their Bureaucrats happened to be bloggers, moreover, bloggers critical of Pittsburgh Politics and Policies?

But, surely, those are just all in good fun and well within their rights as a person.

Right? RIGHT?