Porn, Pedophiles & Small Town Prudes

I live near a small town. It has a quaint, gentile look about it. Many of the buildings pre-date the Civil War, we often have Victorian festivals and such to celebrate the rich history of our fair city that once served as a temporary capitol of Virginia back in 1781 while our delegates were busy running from Richmond to avoid being captured by those pesky British. Staunton isn’t a bad place. It’s a glimpse into the past sitting in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley.

It’s also located right on the middle of the major east coast drug corridors and is home to some of the nation’s warmest and most cuddly gangs. Bloods, Crips, MS-13, Latin Kings, you want ‘em, we’ve got ‘em. They even teach the kids here in our quiet little country schools how to recognize the gang signs so they know where to stay away from.

Ahh, that sweet dichotomy of the past and the present. I was thinking of that yesterday when I was glancing through our local paper. Yes, we actually had a physical copy of the paper here! Isn’t that wild!

The headline story was about a local man, a former cop and ‘resource officer’ at  an area school no less, who had been popped in a sting operation. Officer A Little Too Friendly thought he was chatting and getting ready to meet up with a 14 year old girl. You can guess what happened when he pulled up to the house.

It’s a running joke in the area here that you can open the paper and find the pedophile of the week. Lately it seems like it’s been the pedophile of the day. Yesterday I counted stories about two.

So what gives? I did a little research. The ratio of sex offenders to residents in Staunton is 257 to 1. Let that sink in. Now I wasn’t going to spend all day Googling this, but I was able to find that nationwide there are nearly 500,000 registered sex offenders. The population of Staunton is only 25,000.

What the hell? Do we just breed them here? Do they grow wild?

I know this is a repressed place to live. Some would call it morally upright but let’s be real. Again, in a town of 25,000, we have ONE club that stays open until two in the morning on weekends.

How do we manage that? Simple. The club is in the basement of a landmark local building. If the city tries to shut him down, the entire building goes dark. It’s a mutual understanding.

We even had *gasp* an adult video and novelty store here once. Can you believe such a thing? The city couldn’t stop it as there wasn’t a ‘no porn’ provision in the city ordinances. But that didn’t stop undercover detectives from performing ‘surveillance’ and surreptitiously purchasing several products. What a hard day at the office that must have been.

Less than a month after opening, the owner was indicted on eight felony and four misdemeanor counts of selling obscene materials. To be thorough, the jury watched three hours’ worth of the movies Sugar Britches and City Girls Extreme Gangbangs.

Six of the seven jurors were over 50. Six of the seven jurors were regular churchgoers.

In the end, the owner was found guilty on one charge for one of the DVDs, Sugar Britches, and fined a total of $2500.

What’s the moral to this story? Are people who live in a town with its values trapped in the 1950s more likely to go online and attempt to diddle cops pretending to be teenage girls? That one I can’t answer.

If you want your porn in Staunton you can go online, drive to a neighboring town or just hit the video store on the hill less than half a mile outside the town limits. The back room is to the left.

Some things about people I don’t understand. The desire to play with little kids is one. The need to press your morals and beliefs on others is another.

By the way if you’re interested in a blow by blow, graphic breakdown of the Staunton porn trial here’s a link that will give it to you nice and slow, maintaining eye contact the whole time: http://www.readthehook.com/82555/cover-obscene-sort-staunton-porn-trial-bizarre-start-finish

What's Irritating Me Today

Just so y’all know, this is a rant. I’m kind of pissed right now.

Let’s talk about money for a minute. I know, I know, that’s one of those iffy subjects. You  don’t break out your paycheck in front of your coworkers. It’s just in poor taste. And personally, I’ve always tried to keep politics (usually) and religion (sometimes) out of my conversations and blogs.

It doesn’t matter how polite or balanced you try to be, tempers flare, personal feelings come up and they often get hurt. Now I don’t watch TV much. I get my news from the ‘net. Every source possible. The left (CNN, what used to be MSNBC), the right (Fox), and as many outside sources as possible. Log on sometime to BBC or Al Jazeera. You’d be surprised at the different perspectives. Everything from the Brits isn’t snobbish and everything from the Middle East isn’t ‘Death to America’.

But back to money. The very first site I went to today was talking about how the US was reconsidering aid to Egypt and Syria’ in light of recent events’. Aid of course being money we send them to be our friends.

Here’s something that might interest you if you’re curious about American finances. Check out the page http://foreignassistance.gov/CountryIntro.aspx. It shows a pretty little map and gives a country by country breakdown of where the United States is sending money.

Some examples of what we’re planning to give in 2014:

-          Egypt - $1.5 Billion

-          Pakistan - $1.1 Billion

-          South Africa - $445 Million

-          Poland - $19 Million

-          Mexico - $205 Million

-          Portugal - $100,000 (Really?!)

-          Tanzania - $552 Million

According to US government estimates, China currently owns approximately 8% of American debt, worth about $1.2 Trillion dollars. Yet we’re still planning on sending them $7.6 Million in financial aid in 2014.

So what’s my point here? Maybe the $1.2 Trillion in student loan debt that people, my family included, are struggling to pay off. An education system that is still failing in many places, roads that are crumbling, bridges that are literally collapsing and a health care system that can’t be sorted out because 535 people in Washington are too busy trying to score political points and make sure that their campaign donors stay happy.

The American Congress is currently on a five week vacation after working only 87 days so far this year. Think about that the next time your senator or representative tells you how hard they're ‘fighting for you’.

There has been no jobs bill. There has been no immigration reform. Our government is still under sequester forcing automatic budget cuts. There have however been THIRTY-SEVEN ‘symbolic’ votes against the new health care law, costing taxpayers an estimated $50 Million total.

And still we keep sending money to other people.

Remember that scene in Spiderman, the movie or the comic, it’s been repeated several times, where young Peter Parker fails to stop the bad guy who later goes on to murder his uncle. I personally think we all have a duty to act, whether as individuals or as nations when someone is in need.

However there is a crucial difference. I may want you to be my friend. You may have something I want you to share with me. But if my family is hungry, my roof is leaking and my power is about to be turned off, I’m not cutting you a check.

You’re going to have to like me for me.

Guns, Abortion & Stupid People: The Blogging Begins Anew

I had no intention of my first post on here being a repost of something I shared on the Emporium. I haven't had a proper blog in several years, but after today, rant I shall: And ANOTHER idiot decides to go shoot up a school. What the freakin' hell? Maybe I'm the weird one here. Maybe I'm strange for thinking people have the right to live their own lives and go about things their own way. Am I a personal fan of abortion? Not particularly, but I have NO RIGHT to tell any woman what she can or cannot do with her own body and I will defend her right to do so at every opportunity. Do I believe in the right of the individual to own guns? Hell yes. It's a right, one of many under assault these days. I own guns. Have I ever felt the need to shoot up a school or kill innocent people? No! Actions like this speak to a sickness that pervades our society, not just a mental illness or an apathy but a desensitization to the value and sanctity of life as a whole. This is America right? The home of the free. Even here on Facebook there are plenty of places where you can see gore, violence and dead bodies aplenty. But god help you if you show a nipple. Where the hell are our priorities? There should be controls on guns, just as there should be controls on medications and cars and anything else that can be harmful in the hands of those too young or incapable of handling them. But people who want to kill will always find a way to kill. Whether they use a gun, a knife, a car or their bare hands. Thankfully no one died in that school today. But the next time someone uses a gun to kill an innocent victim, someone who can't defend themselves, or a knife, or a car, or their bare hands, let the punishment fit the crime.