Thoughtless for the Day

"Why does RATYHTL look different?" "Why hasn't the site been updated lately?" "Where did all the comments go?" "Won't someone think of the children?"

OK, OK. I'll explain everything, if you'll all just try to remain calm. First; are you sitting down? Good, because I have yet to meet anyone who surfs the web while standing up. Ready? RATYHYL was attacked last week. And, as this is the most widely read site in America, I guess you could say the USA was also attacked (you could say it, it would still be retarded, but you could say it). The culprits? Spammers. Within a few hours the comments sections overflowed with the abundant fruits of a capitalist society: Did you know that Russian teenagers have a pill that will enlarge your penis while filling your back account with Nigerian cash and allowing you the spare to enjoy your free download of Microsoft Vista? Neither did I (although I had often expected as much). About a 100,000 of these little yet incredible offers came flooding in between sunup and sundown on Monday, causing the folks who host RATYHTL to, wisely, put a freeze on the site. Oddly, within hours of the actual attack, the internets were abuzz with conspiracy theories, the most popular being that 4,000 Jewish readers received an email telling them not to log into the site on Monday.

To make matters worse, I was on call all last week, so I didn't have much time to deal with the crisis. The first thing I did was to suspend readers' ability to post comments (as well as Habeas Corpus). Next I was faced with the choice of weeding through the stored comments and deciding which were genuine and which were posted by nineteen-year-old Lolita Pushkin of the St. Petersburg Academy for Nubile Nymphomaniacs, or deleting the whole lot. And thus was lost for the edification of posterity the wit and wisdom of the readership of this blog (such as "U Suck", "Why do u hate America?", "Lern too spell!!!" and the always popular "Fag"). Finally, I had to set up a system of registration similar to that now employed in the forum (It actually works, but you'll have to wait until I "authenticate" your comments before they get posted.)

So why does the site look different? Well, after I made all the changes, I had to "rebuild' all the pages. This caused one of my custom templates to be overwritten and …too dry and technical? OK. How 'bout we take the Fox Noise approach? Some Iranian dudes fucked my shit up while trying to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. No? Would you prefer the Air America version? It was Dick Cheney and his trusty rifle.

Carnie Jesus Fucking a Chicken for Loose Cigarettes! The one time in my life when I actually had a need for the Department of Homeland Security, and where were they? In Boston, protecting America from flashing images of the Mooninites. What's the matter fellas, 'fraid the message of "shoplift and smoke" might spread like wildfire through the streets of Beantown? The best part of that whole shame-fest was watching the press conference in which the two culprits refused to answer any question that wasn't about hairstyles of the 1970's.

So, won't someone think of the children? The Kearny New Jersey School District is.

On September 11th (a date which seems to do strange things to people with a fundamentalist mindset, as you'll see), young Mattew LeClair went to his eleventh grade History class and was treated to an bizarre rant about dinosaurs being passengers on Noah's Ark. Now this would almost be understandable (although still not acceptable) had the fellow doing the ranting been the failed host of a bass fishing show on the Outdoor Living Network, but the torrent of fundie-babble came from none other than Mr. Dave Paszkiewicz , Matthew LeClair's history teacher. So Matt brought the issue of Mr. Paszkiewicz's stupidity before the principal. Paszkiewicz denied ever making the statements. That's when Matt produce a tape recording of Dave Paszkiewicz imparting scientific knowledge that dinosaurs traveled aboard Noah's ark and that the theories of both evolution and the Big Bang were works of fiction. Nobody like a fibber or an asshole, Dave.

So what measures have the Kearny Board of Education taken to prevent an acts of assholery on the part of its teachers in the future? They've banned tape records from the classroom.