TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

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  • Knife Attack in Indiana High School

    Knife Attack in Indiana High School

    Student Slashes Five Classmates in Indiana:

    I waited to do anything on this story because it happened the day before Thanksgiving and I wanted to wait until a possible motive was discussed, but something else has happened to make me comment on this.

    For those of you that have not heard 15-year-old, James Lewerke attacked 5 students at Valparaiso High School with a machete and a tree saw. Luckily, none of the injuries were that serious and all those injured have been treated and released.

    So far, the only thing the media in Indiana covering this story has talked about was security concerns at Valparaiso High School. I have yet to find one story that tries to address the problem of why James Lewerke did what he did.

    This also comes after a kid brought a gun to school that was used in a suicide. While security is a great concern in these issues, why isn’t the reasons behind these incidents being addressed?

    Apparently, it’s a question that the local school board needs to address.

  • A Special Trench Reynolds Thanksgiving

    A Special Trench Reynolds Thanksgiving

    If I could be serious for a moment.

    (Lights dim, soft piano music plays)

    We here at The Trench Reynolds Charity Foundation are always looking for ways to help better our community and our country, and this Thanksgiving should be no different. While many of us are scrambling at the last minute to try to get a turkey for our families and coming up empty-handed, I say that we should no longer terrorize the poor turkey.

    As we all know, the turkey would have been our national symbol if Ben Franklin had his way. That makes the turkey an also-ran. A runner-up. A loser. Not to mention that the turkey is a bird so stupid that it will drown if it looks up in a rainstorm. As Americans, is this how we want our holiday feasts to be looked at? Feasting on a sub-par, sub-intelligent, too stupid to live, ugly bird? No, of course not. We’re Americans, we’re all about being the best that we can be. We’re all about being #1. So why would we want to eat an also-ran bird? That’s why my friends I am imploring you as a proud American to start a new Thanksgiving tradition. A tradition where we feast on the noblest and proudest of all birds and PETA be damned…

    (more…)
  • Idaho Teen Honored in Michigan

    Idaho Teen Honored in Michigan

    Idaho teen honored for helping avert Detroit-area school attack:

    Celia McGinty is the Idaho teen who tipped off authorities to Andrew Osantowski’s school shooting plot after online chats that they had.

    The school and community where the shooting was to take place are now honoring her. She should be honored. A lot of kids don’t have the courage that she did, or would just dismiss it as idle talk.

    However, one person is not too happy about the celebration. Andrew Osantowski’s lawyer, Brian Legghio. He had this to say…

    “I’m absolutely appalled at the rashness of the Macomb County law enforcement community,” Brian Legghio told The Detroit News. “Their conduct taints the judicial process.”

    “By glamorizing this young lady and claiming that she prevented some tragedy is to convict my client in the press and to deny him a fair trial by impartial jurors,” Legghio said.

    Translation: There’s no way in hell I can win this case, so I wish people would stop talking about it.

    Mr. Legghio, I think, would best serve his client by doing his talking in court and not in the media. Then again, I didn’t go to no fancy lawyerin’ school.

    It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what Mr. Legghio’s defense strategy is going to be.

  • The Winner and NEW Champion

    The Winner and NEW Champion

    Camden, N.J., Is Most Dangerous City:

    In your face, Detroit! Go, Camden. Go, Camden.

    Beating out Atlanta, St. Louis, Gary, Indiana, and last year’s champ and everyone’s perennial favorite Detroit, Camden, NJ is the county’s most dangerous city.

    For those of us who have lived anywhere near the area can tell you this is no surprise, and we’ve been saying it for years. How many Mischief Nights (Or Devil’s Night) have we watched Camden in flames? And yet, this is the city that the state decided to put The New Jersey State Aquarium.

    We used to joke that when they built the aquarium, they built it around the fish in the Delaware River. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the State Aquarium in a beach resort town like Wildwood or Atlantic City, or even the Island Republic of Brigantine? I mean, Brigantine already has the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. Instead, the state decided to put it in a crime-infested cesspool like Camden.

    Since it’s on the river, they call it “The Waterfront” now. Like, the Delaware River off of Camden is something to be romanticized. You can probably walk across it and it may be flammable. They even put the major regional outdoor concert arena on “The Waterfront”. It’s changed corporate sponsorship at least 3 times since it’s been open. Camden’s attempted revitalization is like putting a rose on top of a trash heap. Way to make New Jersey proud.

  • Hey kids…

    Hey kids…

    It’s The JFK Assassination video game. Remember kids, when you play “JFK Reloaded” it’s best to tilt your joysticks back and to the left.

  • 11/7/04: From The Mail Sack

    11/7/04: From The Mail Sack

    It’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s been almost a month. I guess that’s a good thing because it means mutant activity is down, but I still have mail. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

    This one was an e-mail I got with the subject “colorado shooting on 4-20-99″…

    This is from:gdsmk624@aol.com robert(198.24.30.43)

    first of all there a are some parents that know what the word RESPECT means. i personally am glad that the parents didnt search their childs room cause other wise they might be shot first and the shooting may or may not have been prevented.

    RESPECT works both ways, Robert. It’s obvious that Harris and Klebold didn’t RESPECT their parents, or else they wouldn’t have kept their weapons in one of their parents’ houses. And obviously, they didn’t RESPECT life enough not to kill 13 people. Whether or not the shooting would have been prevented we’ll never know because their parents didn’t lift a damn finger to do anything.

    As usual, from The Eric Harris journal…

    👿 I think all of those students deserved what they got.

    Every day that you say something mean you should remember

    this ” Are you willing to die for your beliefs”

    Comment by Vodka — Thursday Oct 28, 2004 @ 8:34 am

    Yeah, they deserve to be shot for having no association with those two scumbags. Whatever. Next. Also, notice that we have another mutant calling him/herself Vodka. Not an original thought by yet another of the mutant collective.

    From my entry on The Columbine Death Photos…

    All of you need to shut the fuck up, I knew dylen and erric they were both nice boys we were in the same gang together.

    And they were my heros when they shot up the school like that. Did you know that they asked me to help them but i said no because it was stupid but now i realize i should have done it and helped them. It would have been so cool.

    so all of you need to shut the fuck up, Those boys did what was right, Erric once said to me”i need to kill those kids and i’m going to, you know i need to fuckin kick start the revolution here!”

    So all of you think what you want but what they did on that day was awsome and i wish i could have done it with them.

    Comment by trenchcotemafia — Tuesday Nov 2, 2004 @ 8:53 pm

    Another mutant claiming to know those two scumbags. Like I keep saying, if even half the people who claim to have known them actually knew them, they would have been the most popular kids in Colorado. You can’t even spell their names right. Not to mention the fact that they weren’t actually in The Trenchcoat Mafia. Just another mutant trying to convince people that his or her fantasy is the reality.

    And lastly…

    This guy is an asshole we all know Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are fucking heroes!! 😈

    Comment by plAyeR76 — Sunday Nov 7, 2004 @ 9:23 am

    This could be your son or daughter leaving this comment, but you’ll never know because as a parent, you couldn’t be bothered to be involved in your kids’ lives.

    It’s like those commercials. Parental Involvement: The Anti-killing.

  • Calling all blog developers

    Calling all blog developers

    Since it’s Friday and hardly anyone reads this between Friday and Sunday, I’m doing this for my own benefit.

    This is a call to all blog software developers. You may think that your blog software is the greatest, but it’s not. What we need is some standards across all blog software platforms.

    Importing and Exporting: Stop locking people into your software. You may think that people would never stop using your software, but there’s always another software around the corner that just might be better than yours. Since most blogs will import entries from Movable Type, I think they should all export in the MT format as well. Right now, I’m stuck in WordPress. Not that there’s anything wrong with WP, but I just don’t like being tied into one software format. I’ve tried the WP to MT export scripts, but so far, I have yet to get one to import properly.

    Subscribing to comments: When I leave a comment on someone else’s blog it’s nice to receive an e-mail when someone else replies to it. A lot of blog developers think this is unnecessary and an RSS reader should be used instead. That’s all well and good, but only a small minority use RSS readers. Plus, I don’t want a line in my RSS reader for each comment I’ve subscribed to. I’ve left thousands of comments on hundreds of blogs. I don’t want a line on my RSS reader for each of those comments that I’ve left. This is a standard feature on PMachine and Serendipity. A plugin is available for WordPress. There used to be one for MT but since they went to 3.0 I don’t know.

    Permalinks: The URL’s to blog entries should be uniform so when someone moves from one platform to another, their URL’s will stay the same. Personally, I think WordPress’ URLs are the best. It goes domain/archives/date/entry-title. Seems simple enough to implement.

    Toggle options: While the developers may think something is a great option or feature, the user may not. Since I’m not a PHP or Perl guru, I would rather just click a button to turn a function on or off and not have to alter any code. For example, in WordPress, if you want a pop-up comment window you have to remove part of the code. Granted, it’s labeled real easily within the code, but I’d rather not mess with the code. In Serendipity, trackbacks are automatically pinged whether you want them to be or not. To turn it off, you have to alter the code. While I may be comfortable doing that, someone else may not be.

    Not that any of these platforms are bad, with the possible exception of MT 3.0, but I just think there should be some kind of blog industry standards. Trust me, if I had the time to learn how to write scripts I would at least try to develop my own. (Hmmmm. TrenchBlog? Trenchpress? Movable Trench?)

  • Hoping against Hope

    Hoping against Hope

    Things I hope for in tomorrow’s election:

    1. A clear winner. Hopefully, there will be enough of a difference in the results, so the election won’t be in dispute.
    2. If someone concedes, be a man of your word and stick to it. Al Gore could have saved this country a lot of frustrations and leftist cries of a stolen election if he had just stuck to his word.
    3. If President Bush wins by a considerable majority, that the left will finally shut up about “stolen elections”.
    4. If Senator Kerry wins that conservatives regret the loss, congratulate Senator Kerry and focus on 2008.
    5. That the news media shows a modicum of partiality and not declare winners in states that are still too close to call. If the media didn’t declare Gore the winner in Florida too early, we wouldn’t have had the problems we did in 2000.
    6. That the people who say they’ll leave the country if Bush gets re-elected actually leave if he gets re-elected.
    7. This bears repeating. That when we all wake up on November 3rd we have one clear winner, a gracious loser, and citizens who can get on with their lives.

    I know I’m hoping for too much.

  • Osantowski Case Delayed

    Osantowski Case Delayed

    Case delayed for teen accused of making threats against Detroit-area school:

    Judge Linda Davis denied a motion by defense lawyer Brian Legghio to remove herself from the Andrew Osantowski case, following a claim by Legghio that Judge Davis is being swayed by a community outcry. Legghio is going to appeal the decision, which could take 6 to 10 weeks.

    Assistant prosecutor Steven Kaplan claims…

    “It’s a desperate ploy by a guilty defendant to seek to delay the proceedings in an attempt to motivate the witnesses not to return,”

    Legghio defends his decision to appeal…

    “The motion was filed to ensure fairness and judicial integrity,” Legghio said. “It was not a stalling tactic.”

    This has got all the earmarks of a long-drawn-out court case.

  • Kerns charged as an adult

    Kerns charged as an adult

    2 teenagers indicted in Marshfield school plot:

    Both Tobin Kerns and Joseph Nee have been indicted by a grand jury. What’s surprising here is that the 16-year-old Kerns is being charged as an adult. Usually in these cases, if no one was hurt and no weapons were found, the kids are tried as juveniles.

    Locally, we had a situation about a year ago where a kid was drawing up plans to shoot up his school and even had homemade napalm. He only got 12 months probation.

    While I’m all for trying juveniles as adults when the situation warrants it, there are too many unanswered questions swirling around this case to make such a decisive stand as trying Kerns as an adult.

    Either there are facts that I am missing or there is something shady going on. Nee was the one who allegedly brought a gun to school, but Kerns has more charges against him. Again, I’m not saying Tobin Kerns is completely innocent, but the prosecution seems to be going harder on him than on Nee.

    Nee’s lawyer is becoming my favorite comedian…

    Nee’s lawyer, Thomas Drechsler of Boston, said after the indictment was announced that his client is being used as a scapegoat by the Marshfield police.

    ”Joe was promised confidentiality, that he was a witness and not subject of the investigation,” Drechsler said in a telephone interview. ”They used him and got the information, which they were too incompetent to get on their own. They seek to use his own information against him and hold him without bail.”

    Like I said yesterday, if you come forward to the police about a murder plot, that doesn’t make you automatically innocent, especially when it’s your plot. It sounds like Nee was trying to cover his own ass before the shit hit the fan. Unfortunately, for Nee shit splatters.