The Coolest Thing Ever is what I’m here to share with you today. With super warm weather fast approaching, it’s important to stay cool and hydrated. What better way than with a Slush Puppie!? I’ve never been a fan of Icees, give me a Slush Puppie with squirt-in flavor any day of the summer.

Now, you need to go track down the nearest Slush Puppie machine. I’ll wait.

Mmm-hmm-mm-hmmm.

Got it? Great!

Now, go buy yourselves a nice, big box of Fruit Rollups. They look like this:

or this:

Any flavor will do.

Now, you have your Fruit Rollup (TM) and your favorite flavor Slush Puppie (TM), so go ahead and tear off a good size piece of the fruit rollup, and dip it in the Slush Puppie!

Hold it there for a count of 10 seconds.

I’ll wait.

….

Now, quick! Give it two shakes to remove the excess slush, and pop it in your mouth!

Chew!

If you’ve done this right, the Fruit Rollup will shatter in your mouth, then slowly melt and stick to your teeth and let you chew it until it dissolves and makes your tummy VERY happy.

It’s a perfect warm weather culinary delight! The changing texture, flavors, temperature, and behaviour of this method of consumption is a superb experience!

I discovered this while in Junior High, as they had both small Slush Puppies, as well as Fruit Rollups for sale in the a la carte lunch line. And now I’m releasing the secret of the coolest thing ever to you, dear readers, on the internet.

What spurred this magnanimity?

Why, this post on Lifehacker.com of course!

A science experiment has shown that a slushie before exercise on a hot day can boost your endurance. Taking this to its logical conclusion, you should make sure to consume a slushie before having sex on a really hot day. Boost your stamina!

Plus this will help you stay hydrated through this brutal summer, dear readers. Stay cool. ;P

I finally get the GOP & Tea Party (your grassroots movement can’t have corporate sponsorship!).

I was puzzled at first.

Could people really be protesting even though taxes were being lowered for 90% or more of the population?

Tea Party members live in an echo chamber, hearing only the fabricated Faux News they want to hear over and over, and they actually are that ignorant about tax facts

Flat Tax is a TRAP!

What about a flat tax? That sounds fair. Well, a ‘flat tax’ would shift a huge tax burden of high earners onto low earners, those who can least afford it. People quote rates as high as 14% for a flat tax, but if you earn up to $75,000, you could be paying as little as 5% of your income in taxes (depending on your deductions, see the link above about Tea Party not knowing about tax facts).

There is NO reasoning with the GOP

This guy GETS it. Look, it’s a conservative (little c) that calls out the GOP for its sins. And there are MANY. You may not like having a party in power, that while, far from perfect, has shown itself to be MUCH MORE adept at looking out for YOUR interests and trying to protect them.

Thank You SIR! May I Have Another!?

Why do people insist on being so self-damaging? I mean, I guess if they want to cut their noses off, that’s fine, but you’re inflicting your personal opinions on other people, codifying them through rule of law. Ours was founded to be a free country, not the cowardly freedom to seek to make people live the way YOU say so. If others are doing something that harms you, that’s bad. If it annoys or offends you, you have every right to complain, but don’t advocate violence against them!

Everyone Wants to be Rich.

I guess people buy into this Tea Party rhetoric as simple wish-fulfillment or delusion. They somehow think they are rich, despite evidence to the contrary, or assume they will be rich some day, so they had better start fighting so ‘the poor’ don’t steal all their money! This is the only rationalization I can see for such behaviour, supporting representatives who never had your interests at heart in the first place. Maybe the representatives lie really well, but they eventually out themselves after they get into office, and most of them have some history you can look at.

The Crazies.

You rail against this oppressive government that’s obviously keeping you down. That’s crazy talk. Period.

Insurance. Health or otherwise.

The Insurance situation is soooo hairy. If you don’t want to buy health insurance fine, pay the fine, but do you have car insurance as required by law? OMG GUMMINT CONSPIRACY, HOW DARE THEY REQUIRE YOU TO CARRY INSURANCE ON SOMETHING THAT CAN EASILY KILL/Injure/damage property. Coverage that is designed to MAKE YOU WHOLE should a disaster occur (if you carry full coverage) or cover you and/or the other party should you get into an accident with some self-important anti-government nut who doesn’t carry insurance on his two-tonne, metal death-missile. Cancel your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance. Also, refuse all Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc, benefits forever, as those are a form of insurance too. Please, start whingeing about something important, like Obama continuing the Bush Era Policy of Allowing Warrantless Wiretapping.

The Moral:

If I’ve learned one thing from the Tea Party Movement, it’s that: Yes, people are that stupid.

My prediction is that the Saints will win the big game this year, only because it supposedly “makes a good story.” It’s a damn shame that we can’t see an untainted NFL game anymore. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia speaking, but I could have sworn that the penalties and decisions handed out in the past weren’t as horrific. There will always be bad calls, and people will always feel you screwed over their team, but it’s not just the bad calls, it’s the blatant IGNORING of illegal hits, and the like that seem to be heightened these days.

I remember reading two things somewhere in a certain diatribe against the NFL: 1. You can call a holding penalty against either side every play in any modern NFL game; and 2. The eye can’t track more than a certain number of moving objects (7 I think), at a time. So of course the Refs are going to miss some calls at times, because of the chaos on the field. All this aside, I still believe there is some sort of an unspoken order to call penalties against the leading team, just to supposedly make the games “better” and keep the scores closer together. Either that or penalties are disproportionately inflated on the leading team, or too soft on the underdogs.

I’m tired of seeing bad calls & questionable rulings endlessly tainting “the sport.” It’s not a “sport” unless the rules get followed, all of them. As of today, there is no way of telling who is the winner or loser in any NFL game, because of biased play-calling and penalties. The unspoken rule of every sport should be “make it as fair as possible.” Calling penalties & plays just to keep scores near parity is abominable!

What kind of credentials do these Referees have? Is it as simple as passing a written certification test? Do they even receive ANY continuing training? They can’t be making enough money each year to ensure they can’t be bribed.

So, I say we need enforceable penalties for the REFS! 3 bad calls in a season and you’re banned from refereeing for 5 years. Maybe more than that should be forgivable, but I’d really, really like to see a statistical analysis of the historic penalty rate per NFL game through the years. What kind of correlations could we draw between penalty frequency, contesting of penalties and calls, and score variance or game outcome? I understand that there are no completely impartial judges anywhere, but where is the accountability?

Do I just misremember? Or were the NFL games of the past more fair? Someone who is a complete sports geek, please get on this soonest. Thanks.

I questioned putting this on my New Media/Design Blog, but decided to post it here because what is more social than sports? Could it be more contentious, mythic, glorious, disappointing, hopeful, crazy, and fun? Maybe if we held those who hold the ultimate powers accountable.

When my brother and I were growing up, we kind of invented the best game ever, NERF WAR!

Now it wasn’t necessary to have the ultra-expensive nerf GUNS to play this game, any foam football or playground or inflatable ball would do.

Basically, the entire game was running around in the yard pummeling the hell out of each other (and all the other kids) all day.

See, my mom was kind of the neighborhood babysitter, and even the kids she didn’t watch for money were always at our house to play outside.  So we always had a stash of balls to choose from.

The rules of the game were simple:

1. You can only use your weapon (ball).  No touching, kicking, etc, balls lying on the ground.

2. You can only attack someone who is armed.

3. No ganging up on someone, nor “guarding” their weapon (ball lying on ground) and waiting for them to go to pick it up and then nailing them.

4. Stay in the yard.

With these simple rules in place, we had the most fun ever, running dodging and smacking the hell out of each other with foam/inflatable balls.  Nerf footballs were the most versatile of the bunch, but I had my favorite, a medium sized pinkish marbled playball that stung if you threw it hard enough.  The blue Nerf Football was also a good choice when I wanted more accuracy, but only one weapon per person.

Anyway, as kids will be kids, I quickly developed this ‘uncanny ability’ or if you want to call it, a destructive aim to (not on purpose, I swear!) nail my brother in the balls.  Let me just say that “center mass” was the juiciest target, and maybe I subconsciously left my release a little late.

So the ball would fly true, and smack him right in the cojones, and he’d crumple to the ground with tears forming in his eyes.  Then I’d run.  Because as soon as he recovered enough, he was after me to chase me down and get some payback, of the hitting kind.  So he’d run me down, and I’d cringe/hunch over, knowing what was coming, and he’d THUMP! me right in the back.

Decades later and my brother has three gorgeous kids, which my sister-in-law says are a miracle because of all the hits my brother took to the groin.  But could claim I was just killing all the ugly kid making swimmy cells.  Seriously, these kids are C-U-T-E.

I kind of want to introduce the kids to the joys of “NERF War” soon, but I think it can wait until I buy a cup.

I’ve been working on my Spider Jerusalem Quote Page(s), which there’s a list of over to the right.  I’m being more discerning on quotes and trying not to just copy descriptions of the action and dialogue in the TPBs.  The only thing I have to worry about is a C&D, so I’m trying to limit them a bit and hopefully it will spur interest in the Transmetropolitan comic book series.

Just started updating my webcomic in earnest, which is what you see when you go to SexCpotatoes.com.

I will do my best to update it whenever I get a day off, and I will soon begin work on more fun drawing and design that will be put up at SexCpotatoes Designs.

I’ve been drawing a lot of shoes lately.

Last Plane To Jakarta, the music review blog run by The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, had a very interesting post this week.  Within it he mused upon the subject of attention, saying:

I’ve been listening to, not ready yet – never! never ready for that! – to just link to the artists or songs in question without saying something, anything, about why I think they’re worth your attention. Because: your attention is more valuable than the present age would have you believe. It’s the one thing you brought to this world that it didn’t have before, and it’s the only thing of consequence that you’ll permanently remove from this world when you leave. You know? So when somebody sort of cavalierly directs your attention someplace without so much as a tossed-off phrase indicating why you should bother, then you ought, in my opinion, to regard such people/sources/tweets as emissaries of the dark Lord. To say that something “has to earn your attention” is false; one of the miracles of attention is that it sometimes yields the biggest dividends when it’s given weightlessly, unmerited, on a one-way street. But that’s not to say that attention is so light a thing that one can afford to shed it like dandruff. Our supply of attention is finite. That’s worth remembering.

He was recommending Tiny VIpers , but let’s just take some time and ponder how valuable your attention is, and what you do with it.

I can’t be bothered to make some silly quip about residents working hand in hand with the Canton Police Department being the building blocks of making a better community or whatever.

I will say that cooperation is the only way to clean up the City.  STEAL from other cities’ programs, but only their ideas, not the money.

Money, in fact, will soon be pouring into Canton as $21.5 millions in stimulus funds are on their way.

What better way to use these (after a job creation initiative) than to start a Community Involvement/Policing Program.  More neighborhood watches, with citizen patrols.  Neighbors looking out for one another.  Annual block parties throughout the wards to encourage neighbors to get to know one another, and have the police officers attend these so that the people can get to know the fine men and women that have the dangerous job of protecting their lives and property.

I also had the idea of equipping responsible and concerned citizens, temporarily, with cheap, but decent quality video cameras, to provide evidence of crimes going on right outside their homes.  From drug deals, to prostitution, you could publicize license plate numbers, and use the CONFIDENTIAL footage to help build cases against those breaking the law and actually crack down on crime in Canton.

Community support must be there for any of these type of programs to succeed.  I would hope that Canton would hold informaional meetings in all the wards to have actual dialogue with the citizens.  To target what each sector of the city needs to be a better and safer place to live.  To sign up residents to help.

I also hope they would first have police explain the laws to them, over what is and isn’t legal in the Community Policing Initiative.  Citizens’ Arrests (very rare, I believe) should not be encouraged, as it’s a good way to get hurt, or hurt someone and have them sue you.

The plain fact is that an armed and conscientious citizenry deters crime.  I’ve done a lot of reading on a lot of subjects, and gun control is one of them.  It doesn’t work.  Criminals will always be able to procure a gun, and part of the reason we have such a low crime rate in this country is because of the gun that MIGHT be in the bedside table.  If you look at Australia, which has been anti-gun for years (they even have fancy laws that say a gun and its ammunition must be XX feet away from each other and always stored under lock and key).  They’ve also been destroying guns for years over there.  So what happens?  Young hooligans break into elderly folks’ homes because they are CERTAIN these people have no way to defend themselves.  In the U.S. though, criminals usually don’t go breaking into occupied homes at night, for fear of the old ‘shotgun enema.’

Now, if you want to scream about children and how they will inevitably slaughter each other if they even see a gun in the home, I call horseshit.  The NRA has a very effective “Eddie Eagle” or whatever it’s called program, that teaches kids the first thing you do if you find a gun is to go get a responsible adult.  But kids without any safety training will usually play with it and point it at each other and pull the trigger.

The only reason the child death rate is so high (due to gun induced homicide) is that people with no common sense slant the facts and the studies to make it so.  Did you know that children includes everyone up to the age of 19, and all drug violence as well.  When you exclude these statistics, and put it down to accidental death by guns, SWIMMING and BICYCLING each kill more kids every year than “dangerous guns,” so where are the parents’ groups trying to outlaw those killer activities?

Coded trigger locks, when used properly, can prevent many of those very few accidental shootings in this country.

I forget which book I swiped these facts from, and they are facts.  I would credit it if I knew.  Anyway, police officers actually LOVE an armed and conscientious populace.  The shooting rate for police is much higher than the shooting rate of private citizens with guns, because the police are always forced to act, whereas a citizen has a choice to get involved or not get involved in a situation.

The citizens of Canton, Ohio, do not all need to be packing heat to deter criminals, they just need to be encouraged to do so, and make sure it’s widely publicized.  I’ve heard that some of the most polite people you’ll find reside in towns that are ‘open carry,’ and I don’t really suggest we take it that far, but it’s definitely a working deterrent in some areas.

Also, to those who would try to claim that ‘increased guns on the street lead to increased violence,’ I say:  ‘only in certain cases.’  Increased guns in law-abiding citizens’ hands increase defense.  Increased illegal guns all over the city increase the chances of gun violence.

I’d like to tell you a little story that was told to me once by a college professor, paraphrased of course.

“Back in the day, in the Middle East, there were a bunch of terrorists that wanted to kill a whole bunch of people (be they Jews, or another sect of religion or whatever).  So they gave them guns and stories of martyrdom and sent them to the market square.  The terrorist pulls out his gun and *pop*pop*pop*, shoots three people of the hated ethnicity/religion, and panic ensues.   But by the time he goes to pull the trigger again, the local shopkeeper has emptied his skull with his personal weapon.  See, that’s the reason they use RPGs and automobiles for shrapnel bombs, because their gun idea failed miserably at killing and maiming as many people as possible.  Plus, with the ready availablity of weapons over there, many citizens are armed for personal defense.”

Anyway, I’ll debate anyone who wants to disagree with me on these points in the comments, as long as they are respectful, with cogent arguments, I’ll promise you the same in return.  Granted, I’ve not provided a tonne of useful links in this post, but the proof is out there for anyone who cares to look with an open mind.  Of course I don’t really expect any responses, seeing as how I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit, but hey, what can I say, life has been hectic.  More posts that would benefit Canton, Ohio are coming soon.

First order of business as Mayor would be to reduce city expenses, without detrimental impact to services.

I would immediately take a pay cut for the first term in office.  Placing the money back into the City General Fund, or using it to help pay for certain initiatives mentioned in this post, or later on.  I have not looked into how much the Mayor of the City of Canton “earns” per year, but I know that I get by on significantly less than $50,000 a year.  Whatever the pay is, I’d be more than happy to give half, or more of it back to the City.  IF I did a good enough job to be re-elected, perhaps I’d take 2/3 of the full pay in the second term, and I’d work extra hours researching all sorts of ways to improve the City, balance the budget, and bring jobs to Canton throughout my tenure as Mayor.  If the people were happy with the results of my leadership, I would then take the full salary as a reward for a job well done in a theoretical third term, and as incentive to keep improving the quality of life for all the people of the City in a .

I would get rid of all but the most essential government Vehicles, and all Cell Phones.  Every vehicle is an expense, they depreciate, they need costly maintenance, and allowing employees to take them home?  Unless they are leaving from their home to go inspect a building or something  on their side of town… no taking the cars home.  Only when there would be mileage and/or gas savings.  Logging mileage would be required, stop or deter theoretical abuse of the system.  For cell phones, I would perhaps look into a discount plan, but the workers would pay for their own plan, then perhaps the city would kick in the difference for the “unlimited minutes” or whatever.  Probably some good savings to be had there.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/government-workers-face-car-cuts-or-not/

$6200 per car per year! yikes!

I would also require that every employee in the City Government, from the upper ranks such as the Traffic Engineer down to even the Street Department Workers, Police Officers, and even Meter Maid(s) come up with at least 1(one) idea in every calendar month for saving money, or improving the quality of life in the city.  More efficient patrol patterns, reducing paper usage, increasing recycling, entering a collective supply ordering cooperative with other cities in the region, etc, to get discounts (if not already done).  Perhaps paying bonuses of 10% of the amount of money saved, we’d have to wait and see.

Then as far as I could manage, no layoffs and no firings (you know, within reason).  I would keep all current employees as long as they were good workers and willing to work hard with me regardless of differences and cared deeply for the City and its residents.  There are many, many unemployed people out there that NEED a job, ANY job, and a lot of them have college degrees, and might be able to help turn the city around.  I would not hire or give contracts to friends or colleagues (sorry guys and gals), let alone political donors.  Unless they were somehow world class geniuses and would work cut-rate for the City (and even then I’d still have plenty of oversight on myself to guard against any improper influence in either direction).

On top of that, I would work with City Council, to do what’s best for the people of Canton.  No political fighting, no name calling, I would not promise them anything, except to work my hardest in cooperation with them at making the City a better place.  No trading votes for each others’ proposals, or political deal making.  Find out all the facts on an issue, and then make the best decision for the citizens.  If City Council refused to cooperate in helping pass the much needed improvements, I would go directly to the voters and argue my case, explaining it in detail, and implore them to lean hard on their council members.  Many of the proposals I’d put forth would be common sense, and easy to understand, so I wouldn’t anticipate any argument or dragging of the feet from City Council at all.

All of the employees would be subject to at least one twice-yearly review, be given clear objectives, and the support, oversight, and most importantly, freedom to meet those objectives.  Whether it be reducing delinquencies on tax and other bills, or providing more efficient and necessary services to the community, continuous verifiable improvement would be the mission.  All of the workers would be held personally accountable, all the way up through the ranks.

I would investigate how to get a program(s) or Grant to get started and help guide people through the process of founding their own small businesses.   Because 10% of this country can’t just sit around and wait for something to be done.  We all have to try to do something positive to help our friends and neighbors get back on their feet.  Jobs can be grown from our most precious resource, our people and their ideas!

Everyone wants their street repaved, but that would not be happening.  Needs most gets first.  Triage for the City’s main arteries, then we work on a comprehensive plan to get everything that’s been neglected back into shape by age and deterioration, as well as traffic load figured in.  For safety and efficient traffic flow improvements, we’d definitely look into synchronizing more traffic lights, extending yellows in dangerous intersections (even a half-second can result in decreased violations and accidents, and these results do NOT revert back to dangerous conditions “once people learn the new light timing”, as well as using the motorcycle cops to chase down egregious red light runners at the worst intersections).  The best way to do this may be by using discreet cameras (concerned citizens could volunteer to record and identify the worst intersections for violations using their own equipment, after the amber signal adjustment of course) and then tally the violations, and submit the footage, and we would start enforcing the law.  Deploying mobile speed bumps in neighborhoods where people speed and cut through is one idea, as they pop up if a motorist is going too fast in a residential neighborhood.

Well, crap, I don’t wanna get carried away and shoot all my ideas out at once.  That’s a wrap for today, check back tomorrow or Monday for whichever issue I decide to recommend action on next.  Should be interesting.

It looks like the vote is not going to happen this coming Monday, or until the Mayor feels he has enough votes to ram it through city council (hopefully never).

I am still itching to start the petition to outlaw photo enforcement in Canton, Ohio.  I suppose though, I can promise not to embarrass the Mayor further by rubbing salt in the open wound.  The citizens have spoken, and the words are “no cameras.”   Let’s hope he’s got the listening hat on.

Steve McKinney has been invaluable in getting the facts about the way Redflex (and other system operators’ schemes work, and how they fail).  You should check out his in-depth coverage @ http://www.cantonredlightcameras.com if you haven’t already.

I’ve been a little busy, so I didn’t know about the March 17th meeting that the City Council Members (and Mayor apparently) had.  I’m happy the citizens turned out in such numbers and voiced their opinions against the Red Light Camera scheme.

I was all set to help join all the anti-photo enforcement groups together to stop HB 2 or get it repealed because our State Legislature was trying to put Photo Enforcement Radar Speed Cameras out in construction zones all over Ohio.  At $300 a pop, that’s an expensive reminder not to speed in construction zones, and unnecessary too!  People do slow down in construction zones, many times they are empty, but with that scheme, it wouldn’t cost them anything to sit someone in a vehicle doing paperwork and call the construction zone “occupied” so they could rack up the fines.

85% or so of injuries and accidents in construction zones are not caused by motorists!  Talk about another dubious safety scheme that ends up being nothing but a blatant cash grab!

Anyway, since that looks like it’s a dead issue (so far), I’ve decided to move on to a series of posts with ideas of what could really be done to help improve the City of Canton.  I could have gone negative and reported on all the shenanigans and political fighting and such that’s going on with the Mayor, Council, etc, but I feel that The Stark County Political Report is doing an excellent job thoroughly covering those stories, as well as reporting on the conflict of interest and The Repository’s kinda sorta softball coverage of anything to do with Mayor Healy.  I alluded to having suspicions about their coverage of the Redflex issues in my previous blog post, but I didn’t expect the truth to out so quickly!

Anyway, I’ve got a minimum of five good blog posts about how A Mayor could help to turn the City of Canton around.  Maybe more than that, so check back later to read some zany common sense ideas from yours truly, Nicholas Cincinat.

Thanks for reading, hope to see you back here soon (no I am not spying on you!  I only know how many views my blog gets in a month! That’s all).