Police Called In To Break UP Brawl At Southern Church

FLETCHER, N.C. — Authorities say a dispute over leadership at a church in western North Carolina turned from angry words to fistfights. About 30 police officers from five agencies were called to break up fights Sunday at Greater New Zion Baptist Church in Fletcher, about 94 miles west of Charlotte.

Henderson County Sheriff's Capt. Jerry Rice says the brawl is under investigation and no one appears to have been seriously hurt. Rice says there were about 75 people at the church when police arrived, but not all of them were scuffling. Church members are divided over the recent ouster of the Rev. LeVonia Ray as pastor of the church. The fighting apparently began over whether a vote should be held to reinstate him.

Two ways you can tell just how much more serious southerners are about religion than the rest of us.

1.  The clergy broke into an all out royal rumble over who their Pastor should be.  Now, its been a while since I've been to church, but for a while there my parents made sure I rode the pine for the God squad each and every Sunday, like a good Catholic, devout through Confirmation.  And in this time, we probably had 4 or 5 different Priests, and I can't remember anyone even batting an eye lash at any of the shake ups. In fact I'm not sure the old folks in the front even woke up from their naps. Never mind drawing battle lines and breaking out in fisticuffs like the West Side Story.   I think changes to the lead singer of the choir caused more of a ruckus than who was leading us in the Our Father.  Not many different ways you can lead a prayer, but the ways you can suck at singing are infinite.

2. Even World Star Hip-Hop doesn't have video of this fight. And up until now I just assumed if anyone threw down anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line World Star had to sanction and sponsor the event, but I can't find video of this fight anywhere.  If bringing a cell phone or flip cam to church is too taboo for even the biggest world-star fans/thugs than they definitely take church much more seriously than the rest of the country.

Best of the Blogs

New feature I'm going to try and incorporate more often in the same spirit as Friday's Alt-Tabs of the week. Best of the Blogs is going to be a compilation of blog posts that caught my eye over the course of a couple days.  I try not to step on the toes of blogs I read creatively but that results in a lot of content I consider blog-worthy being skipped over. Instead I'll just publish them here. For the most part I'm going to focus on smaller less known blogs, they need love too.

Top 10 Moments Caught on Google Maps Street View- Pretty self explanatory, enjoy.

Bryant Gumbel is Mystified by this "internet thing" -This clip made the rounds yesterday, Bryan Gumbel spitefully discussing the burgeoning internet in 1994, and mocking his staffs communication skills on air.  Odd that even back then mainstream media was fearful and grumpy about the internet.

10 Beers to Stop Drinking at Age 30 -Not sure I can completely reconcile their disclaimer of "Eschewing these brews and then becoming a beer snob is perhaps the most reprehensible of acts. Just order your beer and drink it."  Pretty much when you eliminate beers based on price you've hit Beer Snob status. It's just a fact. None the less it's an entertaining read and a pretty succinct list of cheap brews for all the underemployed, unemployed, college students, and under 30 people out there.  Glad I'm not over the hill yet.  Also glad PBR and Bud Light didn't make the list, I'd be prepping for war right no instead of another 20 inches of snow.

I'm All For America Shutting Down the Internet Like Egypt

CBS - For Americans addicted to Facebook and Google, a day without the Internet might seem to last forever, but the effect of going offline would be no less traumatic for the entire U.S. economy, experts say. While the economy probably could reverse the damage from being offline a few days, every day without the Internet would be a step closer to calamity for manufacturing, finance and other sectors of the economy. Such would be the consequence if the United States ever followed the example of Egypt, which shut off its Internet Jan. 27 in an attempt to silence widespread protests.

Is CBS serious? Have they ever worked in a real office?  A day without the internet would be a frigen joy and would, at least in the short term, increase productivity 10-fold.

It might come as a shock that I'd welcome a day without the internet in the office but I'm completely serious.  Do you know how much stress I have each day trying to decide between crushing a few hours of work or aimlessly browsing the corporate sanititzed depths of the internet?  Not being able to check the hit count on this blog alone would save me one hour a day, never mind the couple of hours or so spent on LongReads. 

Yes it would suck to have to have information faxed or relayed over the phone as opposed to receiving it via email or websites, but honestly it would still be at least as efficient.  I average somewhere around 250-300 emails received at my work address per day.  75 or so are my friends and I having arguments via one line pot-shots at eachother, 50 are duplicate or triplicate emails because my address has been added to lists multiple times, another 75 may involve me on the periphery but ultimately I just file them without ever reading, and 50 are just pure corporate junk that I don't even think of opening or filing, and that leaves 50 more that are actually pertinent to my job.  I spend probably an hour a day just deleting emails, another hour returning shots at my friends or debating the merits of the current BCS football system in detail, despite the fact that none of us work for a BCS school or the NCAA.  

If you've been meticulously following along I've just noted roughly 5 hours of waste in my normal 8.5 hour day, and really I meant to exaggerate the time wasted but if I honestly think about it that might be fairly accurate, I'm a fast worker and get a lot done in 10 minute spurts (yes, that is what she said). I rarely work for more than 15 minutes straight(ditto). 

With all that excess slacking off time I'm farily certain that even with the crippled capabilities an internet-less workplace would have to deal with, an extra 5 hours would allow ample time to make up for and exceed my normal days production.  

This blog would suffer though, and as such so would all of you.

Massachusetts Snowpocalypse Continues

Pretty much Massachuestts in a nutshell this winter...About as hopeless as it gets.

I'd like to take the time to blame this on my cousin Andy. About two months back he was telling us how his boss is a weather fanatic and told everyone its going to be a light winter. Andy, your boss is a jackass.

Drug Dealers With A Sense of Humor

Oldest trick in the book, you're not fooling anyone.  I assume the only reason a SWAT team isn't storming this drug den is that it's outside of 1,000 feet of a school, which we all know is governed much like international waters. Anything goes.

Worlds Biggest Yo-Yo (vid inside)

I don't mean to burst your bubble any further, but I'm not sure that counts as a yo-yo. I would think rising back up is a crucial element to the definition of a yo-yo.

And don't get me wrong, it's a fine looking Yo-Yo prototype, but was building it from scratch really necessary? Couldn't you have just strung up one of those over-sized industrial spools to the same effect? There's no way that wouldn't have been the biggest Yo-Yo.  

Would have saved a lot of time too, could have gotten a job months ago, instead of collecting unemployment and spending a year and a half slapping two pieces of round wood together with rope wrapped through the middle.  Must be a former union worker, working at that pace.

High School Student's Foul Smell Ruins Teachers Lesson Plan

CLINTON TWP. — A 16-year-old Clinton Township boy faces disorderly charges for causing a disgusting smell in his classroom during mid-term exams at North Hunterdon High School, police reported last night. According to police, the teen was in class at North Hunterdon on Monday and asked to use the bathroom. The boy then took a carry-out style coffee mug with a screw-on cap with him to the nurses’ office bathroom. The boy defecated in the mug, screwed the cap on, and returned to the classroom where he unscrewed the lid, and “this caused a disruption in the classroom,” police said. Detective Thomas Hash, the Clinton Township Police Department school resource officer, will be issuing the boy a juvenile complaint for disorderly conduct.

Sometimes as a teacher you just have to sit back and admire the young creative minds of your students, and hope that your teaching in some way inspired  and fostered their development.  This is not one of those times.

As a teacher this is the absolute low point, time to get your resume together and start searching for a new career. Kids don't even pull this kinda shit (pun intended) with student teachers. 

No matter how great a teacher you are, there are always going to be class clowns, punks, smart asses, dumb asses, smug stuck up pricks, over achievers, and underachievers, all equally difficult to deal with in their own ways. It comes with the territory. 

What doesn't come with the territory is having a kid have so much resentment and built up contempt for you that he chooses to poop in a coffee mug during your class.  He has such low respect for you and your exam that instead of studying he sat at home thinking of the perfect way, and I do mean perfect, to release his own personal form of bio terrorism on your class. The kid Macgyvered the shit (again, pun completely intended) out of this little ruse.  It's not even like you can say he did this to get out of the exam, he clearly has the brains to pass a test, he simply just did not give a shit for this teacher and couldn't hold it in any longer. It was time to air out his grievances and that's exactly what he did. 

I'm Lovin' It - Fight at McDonalds

Somehow I doubt McDonalds spent all that time and money over the past 10 years focusing their advertising to African American's for this...

Has anyone else basically been scared out of stepping foot in southern eateries by World Star Hip Hop?