Off a bridge, that is.

Not to sound unsympathetic to the horrible disaster which unfolded Wednesday on I-35W in Minneapolis, but it’s our government who allowed it to happen.  Maybe once enough people plumet to their death in horrific accidents, somebody who is somebody might decide to put more money where it needs to be:  HERE IN THE U.S., not every-damn-where else.

Nationwide, there are more than 70,000 that could crumble like humpty dumpty and have a great fall.  A story posted on AOL today states that Tennessee’s bridges DO NOT make it into a list of bridges likely to go down anytime soon.  So, maybe its true.  Maybe it’s not. 

I decided that this whole situation scares the crap out of me.  So, I started looking into the bridges in Tennessee that are, according to our officials at DOT, structurally deficient.

These guys tell us that of all the bridges, both “on system” and “off system” that are in structurally deficient number more than 1,000.  More than 1,000!!!  Of course, the bridges are not listed here, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too terribly hard to find out if any of these 1,000 are bridges we take for granted every single day.

I found this quote from a TDOT official from NewsChannel5 in Nashville…

TDOT said about four percent of the state’s 8,000 highway and state road bridges are what they call “structurally deficient,” which means they have some structural problems. TDOT said those problems do not compromise the safety of those bridges.

They can call it what they want.  I still think federal funds should be piped into each state for bridge and road upkeep, rather than all over the world.

Think about it…Henley Street?  Gay Street?  The big one on Pellissippi Pkwy?  I-40?  Edgemore to/from Oak Ridge?  Not to mention any number of smaller bridges. 

Good luck out there people.  Watch out for them hateful northern drivers from states that start with “I” and have falling bridges.

As my wonderful blog about LUST didn’t strike anybody’s fancy at all, I kind of went into blog hiding.  I mean, although I haven’t changed my view on my human nature, maybe I shouldn’t have been so darn candid about my personal life.

Regardless of that, it was how I felt at the moment and as with any other facet of life, I pressed “publish” before I really thought about offending anybody.  I apoligize to anybody who read it and thought, “That girl’s going straight to hell.”

     I haven’t found any suitable artists to keep writing about on the 2nd of every month.  Phil Hansen, who I blogged about in May, impressed me a lot because he’s not a pretentious asshat like so many others.  I’ve seen a lot of impressive artists, but a crappy attitude can turn me off their work regardless of how much I like it.
     So … Check out Phil’s Goodbye Art, where he take X-Ray photographs made from sand and foam, and… well… watch the video.  Cool stuff.  🙂

     Fracas did a silly post the other day about Kissing, and posted a really nice photo along with it.  I looked all over trying to find who it belonged to, thinking, “Here’s a Photo Artist who really manages to strike a nerve or two…”  Alas, I couldn’t where it came from.  Some people might disagree, but to me, it’s something I’d have hanging on my wall…

     As far as Photographic Artists are concerned, I know an absolutely brilliant photographer, still a hidden talent, who promises to get his portfolio together soon… And strangely enough, he writes for this blog…

     Today’s Asshat comes to us from a magical place where there there was never slavery, no judgmentalism, and is completely devoid of religious and political extremism.

     Yes, of course I’m joking.

     He’s from north-central South Carolina.

     I can only assume this is some ridiculous retort to a recent statement I made, “I’m a lot more than just the sum of my experiences…”  But I wonder why he didn’t leave it in the comments, in that context, instead of giving me such impressive ammunition for an Asshat of the Day post?

     Via the Contact form, this so-called Doctor of Psychology writes:

From: Dr. H.T.B., Psy.D
Date: July 31st 2007, 9:34AM

It is wrong to think that you are more than the sum of your experiences.

It is even worse to combine it under religion.
Your deep faith commits you to slavery of a false ideal.
You are subservient to other masters.
You have righteous indignation.
The worse you feel the more you believe.
Your free will disappears.
It is an arrogant philopshopy of exclusion that breeds hatred.

You are the sum of your experiences and nothing more.
Your are flirting with disaster to think otherwise.

     I’m impressed with your amazing powers of observation, dude!  You must have been wearing your tinfoil hat to have such keen insight into all of the secret messages in the post.  *snicker*
     If you got all of that from a blog post, you’re more f$&*ed up than a football bat.  

     Where did you come up with the idea that I had “deep faith?”  Where did you come up with the idea that people who spiritual or religious are a bunch of exclusionary, hateful bastards?
     While I can agree with this viewpoint in certain cases (i.e. followers of former Asshat Award recipient, Fred Phelps), it’s certainly no reason to condemn every one of them.

     Doc, you apparently think anyone who mentions a Maker is a religious zealot, who’s a slave to false ideals and just out there to screw with people.  People like you, perhaps?  Did you have a bad experience with someone who was deeply religious?

     Seriously, I think you might need to try some of the advice you’re so quick to dole out.  Maybe you should take one of those pills…
     You know…
     The ones with a small risk of sexual side effects, but they are rare?
     Of course, both taking the pill and noticing any sexual side effects would require removing your head from your ass… You’re flirting with disaster to think otherwise.

     It’s a little disturbing that someone who claims to be a Doctor of Psychology doesn’t remember the basic tenets of his practice.  Perhaps some remedial study is in order…
     We are all the sum of our experiences, but it’s the way that we deal with them that defines who we are.  We can succumb to bad experiences and reflect them into our every day lives and be unhappy, or learn from them and move on in order to better ourselves and become well-adjusted.
     Me, I’ll take the latter.

I haven’t done an Asshat of the Day Award before but given the situation it seems warranted.

At 7:05AM EDT, a Denial of Service attack started from multiple open proxies from across the globe using a brute force password attack against a previously open service. This has been going on for weeks so it’s not a huge surprise that it eventually succeeded. At 7:21AM EDT, our “fan,” known only as “1 hAppY pUppY,” logged into a shell account and edited some critical files.

[ Edit by Mark : WTF?  Pulled out the IP.  See comments! ]

Our brainiac (and I use this term with utmost facetiousness) came from 67.187.xx.xx (Hostname: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.wa.comcast.net, Aliases: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tx.comcast.net, c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tn.comcast.net).

Thank you, Random, soon-to-be-ex, Comcast Employee.

To try and pass your skill off as a script (“bl0GituD3 d3fAc3R 1.0b5 bY jT”) while making numerous typos is the mark of a true Genius. And leaving the logs, backup files and history was a brilliant move in that we would expect a hacker to cover his tracks. Leaving the “i” instead of changing it to a “1” in “bl0Gitud3” was a truly brilliant, personal touch. You went far to look like a dolt that we might underestimate your “mAd sk1LLz.”

No. I can’t even say that with a straight face.

You’re an Asshat.

Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree are you? You’ve only proven yourself to be a disingenuous coward. A brute-force script shows that you have neither skill nor finesse, and far too much time and personal anger on your hands.

Mark said it best the other day.

Some people need to get lives.They should start by getting off the Internet a few hours a day… The real world can be quite … titillating.

I think it should have read:

“Some people need to get laid.”