Gazelle? More like GazelLOL

“We’ll pay you more than you probably think.”

Remember that commercial?  The pretty brunette that looks really approachable and pleasant, explaining why Gazelle.com is so reliable and great?  Yeah, that one.

Anyway, with the acquisition of my new iPhone, I was curious to see just how much more than I probably thought Gazelle would be willing to pay for my old HTC Evo, since I really have no more need for it anymore.

As you can see above, Gazelle.com appears to have assumed that I was probably thinking I would get $0 for my HTC Evo, because they’re so willing to blow my presumed assumptions away with a whopping $6 offer.

Yeah no, I think I’ll keep my Evo.  If anything at all, it’s a good alarm clock, and I can still use it as such for the time being.

A catch-up post

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I went an entire seven-day stretch where I didn’t at least post even the fluffiest of fluff on my brog.  It had to have been somewhere back in that one month in that one year where I only made eight posts in total.  But it’s not like it’s because I’ve hit writer’s block, or had nothing to talk about, or that the City of Atlanta hasn’t given me something to write about.  It’s hard to really say if I’ve even really been busy over the last week or so; now I don’t really want to write something for the sake of writing something, but the truth is, I stop and think about the last week or so, and I can’t really say that anything has really happened for me.

One of my cousins got married over the weekend, which was pretty much the brunt of the last few days, since I spent some time buying myself a nice new suit, and then there was the wedding affair itself, which was pretty much everything I thought it was going to be.  The ceremony was pleasant, and I’m legitimately happy for my cousin, but it was still kind of a bittersweet affair to me, because of some of the turmoil surrounding my immediate family, and what could possibly going on through my mom’s head throughout the whole time.

Of course, no baseball season is complete without at least one trip to Baltimore’s Camden Yards, the home of the Orioles, and which is probably my favorite ballpark in all of baseball, which is ironic considering just how much I hate the city.  But in spite of the hellacious traffic endured to get there, it was still a pleasant evening of getting drinks at Pickles’ Pub outside of the ballpark while pounding street food, and then watching the blO’s get beaten down by the Rays.  Also on this brief excursion, I was introduced to the wonder that was Royal Farms fried chicken.  Jesus Christ that stuff was amazing, and has since triggered a craving for more fried chicken that can only be satiated by more fried chicken.  I think I want fried chicken for dinner tonight.

To conclude my uneventful last seven-day span, I got an iPhone 5.  For months, I’ve been wrestling with the fact that my HTC Evo has been gradually dying, and sure, I probably could have prolonged things even longer if I just bought a replacement battery, but frankly, I felt that it was time for a change.  I could have went the direction of sticking with Android, and going with like a Samsung Galaxy 3 or 4, but I don’t know, it just felt like I should just go with Apple this time around.  I’ve grown more acclimated to the iOS from having my iPad over the last year, so it’s not like there would that much of a learning curve going with the iPhone.  So now, I join the masses with my iDevice, and try not to look down on the rest of the Android or Windows phone users of the world.

That’s really it; like I said, I try not to write for the sake of writing too often, but today I kind of felt like writing something at all.  And when the urge comes, but no topic comes to mind, it’s the old creative writing exercise of simply just writing, and see what happens.

More Atlanta police fail

There’s no better place to get some ironic inadvertent humor than the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. If I want something to shake my head and laugh at, there aren’t any better sources to check than the good ‘ol AJC.  Sadly however, today’s source of ATLOL is going to be behind the upcoming paywall, and won’t be accessible in two more days.  However, that in itself is going to be a great source of humor, because there’s no way that people are going to subscribe for AJC content online, and it’ll only be a matter of time before myAJC.com falls flat on its face and is relegated into having to provide its content for free again.

But anyway, today’s topic of inadvertent ironic humor comes courtesy of the Fulton County Police Department and their officers’ propensity to no-show in court on dates in which they summon perpetrators to defend themselves in the court of law.

This is a problem because when the prosecuting police officers do not show in court, then the case, just about no matter what it is, is thrown out and dismissed.  This is a problem, because it’s reported that over the span of the last three-plus years, Fulton County has had over 1,800 cases thrown out and dismissed due to the subpoenaed officer failing to show up to court to confirm the prosecution. This is a problem because 1,800 cases thrown out means 1,800 instances of court fees not being paid, which in itself is roughly around $250,000 of state revenue, not including whatever penalty fees, fines and bonds that guilty parties are required to pay if actually sentenced.  This is a problem because cases as innocuous as traffic violations, as well as cases as severe as hit-and-runs, domestic abuse, molestation, and malicious violence, are dismissed without any punishment, because the appropriate officers fail to show up to court.

I find these statistics to be baffling sure, but at the same time, I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised.  Atlanta’s a crooked city to begin with, and as much as I love this place and call it home, let’s face it, the place is corrupt, compromised, and completely run by greedy, misguided parties.  The ineptitude of the police is about as surprising as Jodi Arias being found guilty of murder, and it’s just another instance of a city that continuously cries poor that really has fewer parties to blame than themselves for not capitalizing on such free-money streams such as collecting on court fees and fines.

Obviously, I’m no expert on law enforcement, but I have unfortunately been the recipient of court-ordered appearances before.  It was my understanding back when these incidents happened, that the officers deliberately set aside dates in advance for their court appearances, and anyone they happened to ticket and order to appear in court would be summoned for these particular dates.  And it’s not like they didn’t give people fair warning; it’s like when I got pulled over in North Carolina by Robocop in a November, he told me, and it was written on the ticket, that I was supposed to appear in court the following January.  And when I showed up to court in January, there was Robocop in the box with several other officers, and the judge systematically went through the list and asked what we plead, and then we paid our court fees and were off on our merry way.

With no tracking or accountability measures in place, as it’s revealed in the article, Atlanta-Fulton County police clearly have zero care for punishing those who break the law.  It’s like they’re content to stay on the streets and hand out tickets and court-orders, to prove that they’re doing their job on a daily basis, but they’re too lazy, negligent, or ambivalent to actually follow through in the court of law to make sure that these perpetrators are properly punished.  And without true punishment, what’s going to stop these law-breakers from committing crimes again, with knowledge that they stand a very high chance of getting away with it again?

A pretty Riverdale being Riverdale story

This is just one of those stories that really encapsulates Riverdale in a nutshell pretty succinctly.

Long story short: principal gets arrested, student finds mugshot online, posts mugshot to Instagram.  Principal gets pissed that her mugshot is discovered and posted online, confronts and then suspends student for no real good reason.  lols ensue.

• The student, named “Keandre” (thank GOD even Word thinks that’s a misspelling) says this after he is suspended:

I gots to be in schoo

Because he “has to study” for finals.  Anyone who’s ever been to Riverdale knows that the only real education that happens in Riverdale is how to correctly hold a gun, how to escape from the non-existent police force, and how escape from the scene of a crime.

• Regardless of the semantics, the principal really had zero basis for suspending Keandre in the first place.  This isn’t much more of a story than it really is if she just confessed that she did it because she was butthurt, embarrassed and probably humiliated that her mugshot was found out and posted to the internet.

Seriously, mugshots are public record, and public information.   If I were Keandre’s dad, hell, I’d post her mugshot to the internet and email all other parents I knew.  What’s she going to do, suspend me?  The principal was clearly humiliated by being easily revealed, and tries to use the justification of “distributing false information” as just reason to suspend Keandre.

• Principal takes offense to being falsely hypothesized of having been arrested for DUI, when she was actually arrested for failing to show up to court for speeding.

Who cares?  Arrest is arrest.  Both are breaking the law, and it doesn’t hold up too well that a school administrator, much less than a school’s principal has an arrest record.  Anyone who’s ever been to Riverdale knows that all black folk there, regardless of gender, speeds like Foot Locker is about to run out of Air Jordans, and unfortunately for this retard principal, she just happened to get caught.

• Bottom line, principal is in the wrong, student is in the clear.

This is only a story because it happened in Riverdale, and if there’s one thing the media really loves to hone in on, it’s America’s fascination with examining and prodding at what the poor working-class black America is up to on a daily basis.  Either way, everyone’s a loser in this scenario, but it’s still a pretty good example of what Riverdale really actually is.

An attempt to put into words how much I hate ESPN

It’s not that want anyone to keel over and die, but if Stephen A. Smith were to keel over and die, I’m pretty sure that not only would I not give a shit, there would be a part of me that would be glad.  Yes, that’s a horrible thing to put into writing, but I can’t really say that it would be an inaccurate statement.

Whenever Stephen A. Smith is on television, which is unfortunately way more than he should be, because the retards at my gym have the locker room televisions set to ESPN, and there’s no known way to change the channels without a remote, and First Take seems to be on for eleventy-billion hour blocks at a time, I want to shower and dress out and get out of the locker room as quickly as humanly possible.

Stephen A. Smith makes me want to get away from a screen faster than a snuff film, or any one of those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLaughlin music in the background.

I honestly think that Stephen A. Smith is a bigger pox on this world than like AIDS, Ebola, or any of those super-mutating diseases that the news likes to claim are capable of wiping out human kind.  Hell, if Stephen A. Smith continues to get as much screen time as he does, or god-forbid, gets more than he does now, then the extinction of the human race doesn’t sound like such a bad thing after all.

However, even still, no matter how horrible Stephen A. Smith ultimately is, he’s still a microcosm of the bigger problem, which is just how much ESPN absolutely, completely, irrevocably sucks.  Seriously, I honestly do not think that there is a single network out there that is worse than ESPN, and that’s even considering that one network that’s owned by Al-Jazeera (Current?)

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It’s not called “Challenger” without reason

I’m sitting at a stop light, and a Dodge Challenger pulls up in the lane to the right of me.  As the driver evidently lives his life a quarter mile at a time, when the light turns green, he takes off, leaving me behind.  But not before I noticed the fuel cap on the vehicle.

Clearly, the only way I knew it was the fuel cap was because it was clearly marked FUEL, and not because it was located on the rear quadrant of the vehicle LIKE 98% OF CONSUMER VEHICLES.

If the cap did not so succinctly indicate that fuel was to go inside of this depository, I’d be afraid that I might recognize it as a dock for my Confederate flag to embed into, or perhaps I might mistake it for a port where I could discreetly urinate into when I have to go to the bathroom.  But because it’s marked FUEL, I know that it is neither of those things, and only a repository for gasoline.  Good thing too, because I’d hate to have made such an embarrassing mistake.

In all seriousness though, can we recognize the Challenger’s fuel cap design as being something completely redundant and almost insulting?  Like who really needs to be told where the fuel needs to go?  I rent a lot of cars, so the only thing I really need to know is which side of the car the fuel port is on, because I’m fairly positive I’m going to be able to locate it on my own once I figure out which side it’s on.

(On a side note, I never knew that it’s possible to figure out which side of the car the fuel port is on from within the car; you only have to look at the little gas pump icon on the fuel gauge, and there’s a tiny triangle on the left or right side that indicates)

The saddest thing is that the FUEL cap appears to be standard equipment on the car nowadays.  You can’t even get rid of it if you wanted to, because there’s no alternate options to the FUEL cap.  How ironic is that; it’s so clearly labeled to make it retard-proof, but in the process of having it, you look like a retard because you need to be told that it’s for FUEL only.  Who knew that owning a Challenger would be so . . . challenging?