A still from a video of a guy who drove a burning oil tanker truck away from people to prevent deaths and injuries
The guy is being hailed as a hero. His logic was to drive the tanker, which was going to explode, out of a populated area so there’d be fewer fatalities and less damage. He drove it more than a mile, to an area that wasn’t so built up.
There was some damage, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. And the truck driver survived with just minor injuries.
You might have seen on the news last week that the disgusting Westboro Baptist Church won a Supreme Court victory.
Westboro is that small collection of uber-morons who go to funerals and other solemn events. They hold signs that say “God Hates Fags” and things like that and yell equally demonic, stupid things.
Patriot Guard Riders at a funeral. The group, consisting largely of veterans, drowns out the hating and hated Westboro Baptist Church at funerals and other solemn events.
A lot of people disagree with that court decision. I don’t. It was the right decision.
True, I detest Westboro, and I feel terrible for the people victimized by those horrific “people” from Westboro. (I’m not sure they’re human)
But if some government agency starts telling us what we can and cannot say , where does it end? I would be thrilled if Westboro would shut up and go away to their own special hell, now if not sooner.
My larger point is all of our Constitutional rights have two side. Yes, we have these rights. The right to free speech. To worship as we choose. To own a gun.
Too many people forget the second half of these rights is responsibility. Responsibility is at least as important as rights.
Yeah, I know I sound like I’m telling you to eat your vegetables and wear your earmuffs. But sometimes you just gotta. If I sound like your mother, sue me.
We have the responsibility to drown out outfits like the Westboro jerks with our own voices. We have the responsibility to worship without knocking down some other religion that is not causing problems, but not our own theology. We have the responsibility to use our guns safely, and make sure nutcases who are going to open fire on crowd don’t have access to them.
In that spirit, I was happy to see a video of a group taking responsibility to counteract the Westboro Moron Club.
With permission from the families, the group called the Patriot Guard Riders show up at funerals where Westboro is picketing. They drown out the pinheads with motorcycles, music and prayer.
The Patriot Guard Riders is largely composed of veterans. They’ve been doing this good work for years. The Riders do this voluntarily. Members say they figure they have the responsibility to help in these situations.
Watch the video (tip of the hat to Melinda Moulton via Facebook for reminding me of this group) to see the Patriot Guard Riders show how it ought to be done:
Save this blog post for whenever you’re feeling blue.
This video, going viral big time, is pretty simple. Just a baby laughing as his father rips up a job rejection letter. The kid has to be dad’s best ally.
A still from the baby laughing video
Stupid sounding, sure, but it’s addictive, and a perfect antidote to anger, sadness or other negativity.
Enjoy. And watch repeatedly until you feel better.
Found this fun video of a couple in California who got married last fall. Congratulations to the happy couple!
Sometimes, wedding ceremonies devolve into disasters, as one California couple learned.
Every wedding has at least one little disaster. But this one really had its troubles. The best thing about it is the happy pair kept a good sense of humor about the whole thing, which bodes well for their marriage.
Watch the video for some wedding ideas. Or bad wedding ideas. And for instructions on what can go wrong:
We always look for the bright spots in a tragedy, so here goes.
The death toll in that awful earthquake in New Zealand is over 100, but one couple got married after the bride had a close brush with death.
Bride-to-be Emma Howard was in this building in Christchurch, New Zealand when it collapsed around her during Tuesday's quake. She was rescued and her wedding went on as scheduled Friday.
The groom, Chris Greenslade, waited outside the collapsed building on Tuesday for more than six agonizing hours while rescuers tried to retrieve Howard. The couple had managed to text each other, so Greenslade knew she was alive. But of course nobody knew if the frequent aftershocks would further shift the building and crush Howard.
But rescuers finally got to Howard and six coworkers
The earthquake was on Tuesday. They were scheduled to get married Friday, but assumed the wedding would be postponed because of the quake. Their family and friends had none of that. Love would defeat the quake, and the wedding went on, as the video shows:
Heart attack snow, for the uninitiated, is a heavy wet snow that is perfect for making snowballs and snow sculptures, but will kill you when you try to shovel it, it’s so heavy.
But, on the bright side, I just found a very timely, great idea from South Lake Tahoe. Somebody took a huge amount of snow – I’m not sure if it’s heart attack snow – and made this super, complex and really fun looking snow sliding park.
It includes a giant snowman that you can sled in and out of. Reports are a dad spent 80 hours (!!!!) shoveling to make the slide for his kids. I hereby nominated him, ah hell, I annoint him, dad of the year.
I really don’t want more snow to fall at my St. Albans, Vermont house because I need it to melt so I can get some grandiose landscape projects going. But since I have no choice in the matter, I will take notes so maybe I could build a snowman slide as we all watch the video, below.
My latest belated musical find is Adele. I know she’s been creating buzz for awhile, but I finally heard her huge new song today, weeks behind the times.
The British singing sensation Adele
I still get excited when I hear a new voice and a new song that just rocks me, and that’s the case with Adele’s song “Rolling in the Deep.”
The song has this great early ’70s pop vibe, with a satisfying, thudding base line and percussion. Her voice is a bit raspy and deeply souful and strong. “Rolling in the Deep” is sexy as hell.
Adele won two Grammys in 2009, for best new artist and best female vocal performance. Her second album, “21” which “Rolling in the Deep” is on, was released Jan. 24 and has been selling like gangbusters.
I’m sure many of you have heard the song already, but I’ll post a link to the video anyway, so you can hear it again, or hear it for the first time. I’ll be humming this tune to myself all day.
You’ll have to click on the link to YouTube on the screen to see the video.
I saw two posts in the excellent JoeMyGod blog today that really were a study in contrasts.
JoeMyGod is a gay advocacy and news blog. He’s pretty thorough.
Anyway, one ridiculous post had a moron named Pastor Donald Spitz saying all gay parents should be put in jail for life. He says that if two parents of the same sex, or just one gay parent, is somehow the worst kind of child abuse.
"Pastor" David Spitz has some, um, interesting views on gay parents
I guess he uses the word “pastor” loosely.
As opposed to instilling children with hate filled, completely bogus ideas. That, apparently is OK.
In the video, the words “Jesus Forgives and Heels” Spitz had better hope Jesus forgives him. His “logic” might be putting him in hot water in the moral department.
The last half of his video also shows photos of “abused” kids, but they look well adjusted and healthy at various and sundry gay pride events.
I saw the horrid video earlier, but YouTube has since taken it down. It violated their policy on hate speech. No surprise there.
The contrast comes from a nice 80-year old woman in Iowa. They’re debating the issue of gay marriage there. Though many gay marriage opponents are fairly respectful and base their opposition on their religion, other opponents are pretty hateful.
The lady from Iowa has had enough of that, thank you very much. Her son came out as gay maybe 30 years ago and she shared her life lessons for a video:
Joe Jervis, the JoeMyGod said it best: “You just want to hug her and sit down for warm cookies.”
The following video popped up on Buzzfeed the other day. It was taken in New York City in the beginning of September. Watch it. The dancers get better and better. They are amazing and funny and incredibly flexible.
Wish I could do what they do, but if I tried, it would be a very comical Fail video.
Matt-of-all-trades Blog 