Come on everyone, and do the propaganda. Flipping nonchalantly through the paper today was a little shocking. There was this new bit of evidence that came foreward about the little stake-out that the Edmonton area police put on that targeted a certain journalist to catch him for drinking and driving. They basically published (this has been over the span of the last two days I gather- I never read the Saturday paper) some transcripts of the radio conversations had between cars on this stake-out. And, it was so deliberated that it was fucking creepy. But also, shocking because it was such retarded behavior to begin with, and the transcripts certainly didn't do any favor for the guilty parties in this respect. The stuff in the actual conversations is not going to do amazing things for the reputation of the Edmonton police at all. The impression I got (solely based on these- I know better then to jump to a judgement based on some bad seeds, but many people will not hesitate to do so) was that:

A) It does not take a rocket scientist to be a cop.
B) There are some parties involved that are not gay-friendly, which sort of scares me, because I wonder how many more there would be out there that are like that, and so many other scary things that could go along with it.
C) Evil cops! Oh my god! These guys were fucking bastards!
D) Understandably, the journalist in question for the stake-out may or may not have committed a huge gaff in some opinion or another, but man, let it go.
E) Was it really worth the loss of a whole shatload of careers here, to make some sort of "point"? Sure, reporter X may have killed someone behind the wheel, but probably fifty other people or more could have done the same damage that night (to say nothing of the man-power that went into this "sting").
F) There was this comment of "Wow, fuck I'm getting a chubby" said ON THE RADIO. Amongst other gross things. Now, I don't know about youse guys, but firstly- professionalism in the workplace much? It's called radio protocol (there is such thing- we get drilled with it constantly at the City of Saints)! And finally- vulgar cussing cops who use slurs and harbor these kind of grudges, completely erase any ideas I once had about the brave noble and strong people that are supposed to do the protecting and serving of the people, we the fucked up society.

However, I do realize too that the cops on the EP work incredibly hard, and that I have no grasp of how hard they work- I imagine this to be the gaff probably of the drunk journalist in question- but- police in any situation have to make a correct assesment of an appropriate reaction or response to an action, correct? This has not been one of those times. Those who orchestrated the whole thing have really fucked up, and people are going to remember this for a long time to come I think- which is worrisome. I mean, if you can't trust the police, who can you trust?

My coal stove is making me sleepy

Today has been a redletter day for reading the paper. I also chanced to read that there have been a couple more cases of group suicides discovered in Japan. I've sort of been following it a little bit for the last year or so, because it struck me as interesting (horrible too) when in the first few outbreaks, they observed that the majority of them were being performed in cars, by the same means of carbon monoxide poisoning via coal stove, and that they always occurred in isolated places.

"Few stats can beat Japanese women, however; they seem to be offing themselves with impressive efficiency." Stefan Geens.

Links of interest on the topic.
Seppuku
BBC
Don't forget to leave a note <= (be sure to read both pages)

  ¶ 6:29 PM