school nurse strip-searching 13 year olds

Read about this at The Raw Story:

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that schools may not strip-search students for drugs based on an unverified tip, overturning two previous rulings.

Whoa. Give that a moment to sink in. A strip search, given to a 13-year old kid. How traumatic would that be?

In the school nurse's office, Redding was ordered to strip to her underwear. She was then commanded to pull her bra out and to the side, exposing her breasts, and to pull her underwear out at the crotch, exposing her pelvic area. The strip search failed to uncover any ibuprofen pills.

Under what circumstances would you think it's okay for a school to strip search a student?

"Common sense informs us that directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen, an infraction that poses an imminent danger to no one, and which could have been handled by keeping her in the principal's office until a parent arrived or simply sending her home, was excessively intrusive," Wardlaw wrote, joined by Judges Harry Pregerson, Raymond C. Fisher, Richard A. Paez, Milan D. Smith Jr. and N. Randy Smith.

It astounds me that this even had to go to trial, let alone the court of appeals. You'd think the school district would apologize, settle out of court, and fire the principal (possibly even transfer the nurse to a different school).

You know, Sarah and I have been on the fence about raising children for a long time. On the one hand, we think we'd make good parents, and our kids would certainly learn to question authority and think for themselves. On the other hand, weighing against this, has always been the fact that we really like the freedom of being childless: we can sit around in our underwear all day, and make love at a moment's notice.

There's always been minor concerns that this ain't a good world to raise a kid in, but we've had the illusion that we could shelter them from the worst of that. But now, knowing that our schools have been taken over by sick jerks, I'm thinking there may be something to the "world's too screwed up to bring a kid into it" logic.

putting all your clones in one basket

Audie should have the footage from "The Blood Orgy" next week (I mailed the pixel tapes to him this week), which means eventually Jake might get around to digitizing the footage from A View To A Clone 2: In The Mouth Of Cloneness to trade to Audie. In anticipation, I mirrored the original AVTAC over to my YouTube channel.

Of course, there's no telling how long it will take Audie to deal with that pixelvision footage. He promised to scan and post the illuminati postcards months ago, after all. I am such a hypocrite.

Forbes Crosby is James Bondage

I sure didn't think I had this on tape...



P.S.: If that made no sense to you, go here. It won't help, but I suppose it at least illustrates there's a greater context.

CameraMan update

I've got two films (about a minute each) done. A third film (ironically, the first film) is about 3 minutes in length, and it requires some still-to-be-done ADR, 'cause I just lack the tech to scrub the audio enough. The delay is probably for the best, though - I want to give Josh at least a week to check his email and find my request to use some Loingroove tracks in the background. Though super-short, the films just needed a soundtrack, and I figured those guys were less likely to sue me than most record companies. If I don't hear back from him this week, I'll probably just take a chance and upload the films on Monday or Tuesday. Obviously, the films are too short to feature entire songs, so they shouldn't impact any future sales or videos on the part of the band. In the meantime, if anyone here is in contact with any of the former members of Loin Groove, please point them in my direction so I can beg and grovel for permission. Thanks!

57% Right Brain

I'm challenging myself here, because I generally hate these sorts of pigeon-holing tests. Some of you may recall my vocal (almost violent) outcry against that four-digit INFP temperment sorter crap in high school.

EDIT: Added the spinning girl picture. If you see it spin clockwise, you're right brained, anti-clockwise means left brained (or British), ante-clockwise means you're a spanner.

Oh well. I took the test that Brad linked to.

It said 57% right brain. That didn't surprise me - I would have guessed that I lean to the right side of the brain, but am overall fairly integrated and capable of using tools and processes from either hemisphere.

It was really weird though, in that the things it said about me in regards to logical, holistic, and random processing strongly contradicted me.

It claimed I'm terrible at spelling, which I'm not. I do make the same half dozen mistakes repeatedly. However, it's very clear reading emails, forums and blogs that I type and spell better than at least 95% of the internet. I note that my spelling has improved slightly in the past 6 months, and significantly over the past 10 years.

It also said I find geometry hard, especially geometric proofs. However, I aced every geometry class I've ever had.

It claimed I get the big picture, but am scared off by the details. While I am a big-picture visionary, I also believe the devil's in the details, and am quite capable of dissecting systems to hunt for the flaws of the mechanical minutia.

It put my logic as the lowest of my left-brain categories, yet I'm way more analytical than most people I know.

The test told me to trust my instincts, 'cause my hunches are usually correct but that I rarely understand the logic behind my intuitive leaps. In response, my gut tells me the test is a bunch of hooey. Maybe I haven't changed since leaving high school, after all.

Movie ramble

The following is a ramble, as opposed to a rant. A rant involves anger, and I'm just not feeling high-strung today. Feigning rage on Nomiblog took it all out of me for this week. It's kind of a lengthy ramble, and if you're looking to be entertained, just skip it and go to the earlier post about Antoine Delaartiste, or skim this article and click on the links...

I was reading Brendan Riley's blog and specifically his post about Open Source, the Movie! and it triggered something. But likely that'll be another post. Here's the context of the thought process that led to it....

My buddy Jake has sworn off clone movies and Pizza Face Death. (Sorry, no PFD link available)

I used to make various improv movies. But my camera's non-functional and way out of date.

And I gave up on impromptu movies in Albuquerque after a really disappointing Pizza Face Death birthday party. Like 4 people showed up to drop off presents and leave, saying "I don't want to be on camera". That's after 25 to 30 people had been given printed invitations saying "Don't bring presents. Being in a Pizza Face Death film will be your gift to me. I'll even feed you for your efforts." So I stopped trying.

I'll agree with Jake about clones. They and bondage have been done to death, then done to undeath, staked, done again, beheaded, then on the third day back from the grave and done again. I enjoy the old films, but there was precious little design space left in that concept. (Though Jake could still make me happy by digitizing the third film and sticking it on youTube. And Audie requested the second one. Hint, hint.)

But I still love Pizza Face Death, and hope to make another one some day. I think X would be great in one. The man learned how to tell a joke somewhere, and I bet he's got lots more cool things rattling around in that head of his. Maybe make a PFD at the 20 year reunion? X? Brad? Daved? Can I get your support here?

Jake had one really good point against PFD, though. When you're searching youTube or Google and you see 2 films that match your search criteria, do you watch the 30-MINUTE film (like most of the PFDs) or do you watch the 1 minute 15 second film that's listed next to it? Seeing as how I still haven't watched Tasha's episode of that Star Trek spin-off, I have to concede his point. (I've got a weekly movie group, maybe I'll watch it with them next week)

When I'm just looking to kill a couple minutes, I grab the laptop. When I want to watch something longer, I pull out my DVD player & TV. So, assuming Jake and I aren't alone in that pattern, it seems anything I make will have to be a lot shorter. 'Cause it's just cooler if people out there are actually watching your films. Either way, I gotta get the camera fixed, or buy a new one, before I can do anything.

While I like Brendan's idea of the Open Source movie, I don't think I have the skills to coordinate such a project. I'd take a shot at scripting a scene or two, though. Maybe filming something when my camera situation improves.

And it was with all that in my mind that I hit upon the pitch for Camera Man.

Tried to post this as a comment on Dave's Blog

I so badly want to like Heroes. Everybody tells me it's great. And I'm a huge comic-book fan from way back.

Admittedly, I always thought Elfquest was superior to anything Marvel did, but that didn't stop me from subscribing to The Amazing Spiderman and The Mighty Thor for years. Maybe if they'd called it "The (insert jazzy adjective here) Heroes" it would have worked for me.

All I've seen has just fallen totally flat and failed to resonate. No impact on me. It was only one complete episode plus some random partial scenes, but nothing in that made me want to view more. I was actually mildly offended, or at least agitated, by the character that everybody loves the most. My fellow geeks and gamers try to tell me that Hiro Nakamura is one of us, but in the episode I saw he felt more like an outsiders parody of what that outsider thought we are. I'm all for laughing at myself, but I need to do that with friends, not with someone who's condescending to me just because I'm his target demographic.

It's like Dogma - thought for sure I'd love it but when it played my theatre, I said "That's crap. I made all those same jokes in high school. I did it better, and I'm past that, too. Jay and the shit elemental just dumped on his own vision." It was disappointing.

So maybe that's it. Perhaps all those games of Marvel SuperHeroes RPG in junior high just aborted Heroes for me. Does that make me elitist? Hypocritical? A jerk? Short-sighted? Or just better than the rest of you bastards? :)

Maybe one day I'll regret, recant, or rescind this post. That would be nice. In the meantime, I'd rather spend my netflix slots on back episodes of Alias, Rome or the new Dr Who and my limited live-time watching Lost.



Spoilers and In-Jokes