That’s right, until Proposition 11 was passed, the people drawing up the district boundaries were the ones being elected to those very districts. Of course, this is obvious, because otherwise why would the districts look like a first-grader drew them? (No offense to my daughter.)

Which leads to the question, since the previous system was so corrupt and such a crime against democracy, then who are the 4,781,082 morons who voted against Proposition 11? They can’t all be party-line democrats because nearly ever newspaper in California came out in support of Proposition 11, including the papers that lean far-left. So again, who are you people? Did you just not “get” the concept? Do I need to have my daughter draw a map for you in crayon?

While some scientists believe that the earth is warming ever so slightly as a result of mankind’s influence on the environment, others don’t believe mankind is affecting the planet at all, or at least not enough to make a catastrophic impact.

Unfortunately, the Global Warming™ doomsayers are right. Global Warming™ is impacting the planet, in a big way. Just as animals will migrate to the north during the summer months and the elderly will migrate to Florida during the winter, so too has the polar ice been migrating as a result of Global Warming™. Look closely at this diagram provided by the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). It shows the sad fact that the thickness of ice in the Northern Hemisphere has been averaging a decline over the last 30 years.

Now the First Law of Thermodynamics states that, “Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed in form.” If this is true, and it is, then that ice must be going somewhere. So, is it being changed in form into water? No, if that were true we would see a rise in the ocean levels that would make Katrina blush. So where has the ice been going? The following diagram shows where that ice has been going, to the South Pole!

While the ice thickness has been shrinking at the North Pole over the last thirty years, it has been growning at the South Pole, all thanks to Global Warming™.

So is Global Warming™ real? You bet your igloo it is! It’s warming up the top of the globe and making all of the icebergs (which are really quite put off by warm weather) move to the bottom of the globe.

Don’t cry for you Argentina? I won’t; the tears would freeze to my cheeks.

I can’t speak about the agricultural industry, but since the World Ag Expo is held not 5 miles away, I’m sure farmers are doing great; but families aren’t. Here are just a few personal experiences that might mean Visalia is not the best place to be.

About a year ago, just after we moved here, my car started getting hit with eggs. Several times over the course of three or four months the paint on the side of my car would be damaged by some sly prankster. I knew even the most adept police force would have little ability to stop the vandal, so I just ignored it. Eventually, I found out that another neighbor was able to catch the vandal, so the egging stopped. The whole business was annoying, but not life-threatening.

Less than a month ago I received a phone call from my credit card company asking me if I had authorized almost ten charges from gas stations all over town between the hours of 11:00pm and 6:00am. Of course I had not, and soon discovered that my wife’s purse had been stolen from our van parked in the driveway. Her iPod as well as her cell phone was in the van, and the thief used about 100 minutes in cell phone calls throughout the night. T-mobile refused to tell us who the criminal had called, even though it was our phone, but they said the police department would be allowed to have access to those records.

I filed a police report, and I thought it would be an easy case, since all the police would need to do is acquire the phone numbers, call the people that the thief had called, and intimidate them into revealing the thief’s name. However, one month later, I still haven’t received a single call regarding the matter, and I’m sure I never will.

Oh, but it gets better. I started writing this article last night, but was unable to finish it, so I saved it to finish today. A few moments ago my wife informed me that someone had vandalized our car. I went out to check the damage myself, and sure enough, someone had walked by with a can of green spray paint and tagged the side of our car. When I called the police station to file a report, I chose all of the appropriate options and the voice prompt told me I was being transferred to the duty officer. However, after one ring, I was sent right back to the main menu again. I tried this several more times with no luck; each time, instead of the duty officer I ended up back at the main menu. Not only that, but there is a long, annoying message in Spanish that Americans have to sit through before they are even given the prompt choices. And yes, I had to listen to the message each time I was sent back to the main menu. Please enjoy this recording of the department’s telephone system.
visalia_pd

Of course, there are other interesting encounters I’ve had on the roadways of Visalia: I’ve had people give me the finger, get out of their vehicle at a stop light to spit on my car, and a few other delightful treats. So yeah, now you know what kind of “family-friendly environment” Visalia, California really is.

Every night at ten o’clock, bored couch potatoes across the country are engorged in a non-stop moving slideshow of every celebrity who showed their face in public that day, and sometimes even celebrities who didn’t show their faces in public. And as exciting as it might be to see Dustin Hoffman get into an elevator, I can’t help but wonder if my time could have been better spent seeing Tara Reid bending over to pick up change for a parking meter. No-no wait, that was on after Dustin, and I still feel cheated.

The problem with TMZ isn’t really even the abysmal content of the program, rather the fault lies with the obnoxious and incredulous narrator that is enthralled with hateful comments toward each and every celebrity featured on the program, WITHOUT EXCEPTION. This relentless approach to celebrity journalism is an attempt to make the home viewer feel better about their own lives, knowing that the so-called celebrity Kevin Federline was booed at his own birthday party. See, didn’t that make you feel good?

It’s not just washed up B-list actors that TMZ unloads on; for some reason, Miley Cyrus is one of TMZ’s favorite celebrities to pick on. For practically one week straight, TMZ paparazzi followed around the star of Hanna Montana in an attempt to “catch” Miley saying or doing something wrong. But when Miss Cyrus failed to provide riveting footage, TMZ still featured her on their program and made whatever snide little comment they could to make her look bratty.

Viewers shouldn’t expect anything different than this cookie-cutter approach to the reporting of every last minor celebrity spotting that TMZ camera crews are able to record. With generally few interesting events happening in Hollywood from day to day, TMZ’s daily thirty minute program is a veritable pile of table scraps, mostly fatty gristle with the occasional fiber of meat. A weekly edition of TMZ would help to cut away some of the worthless dross that makes up most of the program. But even if this should occur, don’t expect anything other than mindless sensationalism lathered with abusive, unsophisticated commentary deplorably disguised as sarcasm.

A few students and parents are quoted as being upset by the spoiler, but the real amazement comes not from the fact that the teacher read the end of a popular book, but how Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations reacted to the event. Morrissey said of the teacher that ”it was unforgivable. It’s one of the cruelest things she could have done, even if she didn’t mean it.” Funny, because I can think of hundreds of things more cruel than reading the end of a book to some children, one of which includes trying to ruin a respected teachers career for making a minor, if unimportant mistake.

Margaret Morrissey went on to say that “this act will probably stop all those children [from] reading the book.” Unfortunately for Miss Morrissey, this viewpoint is severely out of touch with reality. Now, few people would deny that reading the end of a book is impolite, but any true fan of the Harry Potter series won’t let a few minor spoilers stop them from reading all 607 pages (759 in the US) of the final installment of their beloved book series.

In light of this being a simple error in judgement, and absolutely no harm was done to these children mentally or physically, I believe it is Miss Morrissey who has done the real harm in this situation. Hopefully Margaret will apologize to the teacher, who I will not name, and the parents and students will go on with their lives instead of feeling like victims of a crime.

Osama’s press secretary… I mean, Obama’s press secretary Tommy Vieto demonstrated his amazing observational ability when he went on to say “I’d note that the ‘s’ and ‘b’ keys aren’t all that close to each other…”

In a related story, Sen. Obama went on a killing spree and murdered everyone else on the planet with the last name of Obama. At least, I’m assuming he did, because otherwise how could he forgive CNN on behalf of all the Obamas?

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said he would “be making a call to him (Obama… or maybe Osama?) this morning to offer [his] personal apology.” Blitzer has not yet commented on when he will be making his personal apology to the hundreds of other Obamas living in the United States and abroad.

Let me first thank you for the time and effort you make in creating programs to allow people all around the world to avoid actually making real friends and communicate with others when they have laryngitis.

I do have one minor request, however. Could you please alter your programs to restrict the use of odd symbols and characters in usernames. You know, like $C@RE(R0W and /\d@m+d%m. Now I realize that people are idiots and cannot help thinking they are clever and unique when they use wacky symbols in their name, so I’m holding you programmers responsible. You should know better. So please, correct this error so our buddy lists can once again look like a list of friends and not a pile of paper snowflakes.

Sincerely,

Thew Varpness