What Would Officer Jesus do? Shakedown Hispanics, Apparently.

Meet Jonathan M. Lutman. He's a two-year veteran of the Slidell Police Department. He made a habit of removing money from the wallets of Hispanic people he pulled over; using Dobbsian reasoning that they would be less likely to officially complain. Now he's been arrested for it, and hasn't taken the time to take down his laughable, long-neglected myspace page. Let's preserve it for posterity, won't we?Somehow I missed that Delerious? song about racial profiling. Maybe that wasn't the one on the christian rock mixtape commercial on late night cable. His favorite movies don't seem appropriate either. We were thinking he would like a combination of Charlotte's Web and The Godfather. And those insightful blog posts of his!

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Update So things are going pretty well with work. Its really fun. I get to drive fast and some calls are really exciting. Not too many of those yet. But it has been a good learning experience. So be careful when you come through Slidell, I may be watching!!!

Monday, April 24, 2006

Day one is done!! Well Day one of being a full time police officer is done. I started today and have three more days this week. It was fun today. Not too much happened. But Slidell can now that its streets are safe... Officer Jonathan Lutman is on the job!!!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

here...read this!! Hey everyone. Wel I finally heard back from the PD. I start on Monday in a temporary position. Then in about a month they will have me do the run again and when I pass it then they will move me to full time. So that will be cool!! It will be nice to get paid to have some fun. I know that it won't all be fun, but I will have my times!! Anyway!! I am still counting the time till Amy comes back to the state!! 2 months!! Acctuallly 2 months from today is when she leaves to come back. Cool huh!! Well I guess thats it!! Later! Jon Monday, April 10, 2006 we'll see what happens Well things are interesting right now. I was supposed to start with SPD tonight, but since I didn;t pass the run last Saturday I can't. I'm not sure what is going to happen yet either. There is supposed to be a meeting with the Chief to see what they want to do. I'm hoping they just let me redo the run. I'm confident that if they do I will pass it this time. We'll see I guess. I also wish that Amy was here. I know that her return to the states is only about 2 1/2 months away, but I am egarly awaiting her return.

Have fun in Angola, pig!

5 Totally Extreme Money Saving Tips That Will Never Backfire, Ever

So what, is Das Bloggy Blog just some kind of snarky know-it-all who stands in the corner and criticizes everyone else, without producing any viable, unique alternatives? Well, normally yes, but the blog is for fun, so we can make an exception here.

Here are 5 hott money saving tips that are guaranteed never to backfire.

1. Embrace Piracy: Trips to the movie theatre, cable, Netflix, and music CD's are expensive. Respectively, stop going, cancel, cancel, and stop buying. Download VLC media player, PeerGuardian, and microTorrent. Go to piratebay and steal what you need.
2. Make Michael Pollan Cry: Did you know that government-subsidized, processed, unhealthy foods not only taste awesome and are cheap, but also are the most calorie-dense? That is called value where we're from. If you are worried about getting a weird combination of scurvy and the rickets, stop whining and take a multivitamin. "But what about the increased health costs associated with that diet?", we mock you in a singsong voice. Don't worry, we'll get to that later.
3. Sterilize Yourself: You know what's expensive? Spending years trying to not have children, and then having them. A one time gettin-yrself-fixed procedure will free you from the burden of birth control. You won't have to worry about providing for another person in the future, thus saving $40 million for their likely college costs. Helping to free the earth from the scourge of more humanity is also a bold environmental statement. If you want to nurture something, start using your Tamagotchi unironically. It won't call you a bitch who doesn't understand before slamming the door and playing Avril Lavigne really loud.
4. Flask It: Drinks at bars and concerts are expensive. Next time your "friends" want to drop $40+, just order soft drinks and slip off somewhere private.
   
5. Let Yourself Go: Now that you are eating junk food all day, you should cancel your gym membership too and start packing on the pounds. Contrary to popular opinion, obese people have less health care costs than skinny people because they die sooner. By striving for every risk factor in the book, the odds of every artery in your body exploding violently at age 65 are really high. In the meantime, you will save by reclaiming your retirement savings with the confidence in knowing that you will expire the very moment your value to the American economy goes away. This may hurt your sex life, but your blood pressure will be too high to get it up anyway.
   

4 "Money-Saving" Tips That Could Very Well Backfire

In these dire economic times, in which we don't read Cormac McCarthy's The Road because we are already living in a post-apocalyptic nightmarescape of depravation, lists of so-called "money-saving" tips (MST) are thrown at us like crescents of fire from a certain Mega Man boss. (We won't make you guess which one, it is Fire Man)

Here are 4 of those tips that could very well backfire and leave you in an even deeper roadside ditch of poverty:

1. Make your own coffee: No list of MST is complete without this one. After all, if you get one of those crazy $5.19 lattes every day you go to work, that is like $1200 a year!! With that kind of money, you could buy one of those flat-screen HDTV that are becoming a default purchase nowadays. So, the obvious alternative is to make your own coffee at home and at work. But for some of us, and we're not naming names yet looking straight into the mirror, doing this just increases coffee consumption. Around NYC, stand coffee costs like $1.50. Downgrading your elitist tastes and controlling your coffee intake to when it is actually needed is the real way to save money here.
2. Do Everything Yourself: To really bump of the volume of tips, MST lists will have numerous entries of "Make/Do _______ Yourself". Besides the lower sticker price, presumptive health benefits from the exercise you will get by doing every goddamned task yourself are also inserted as fact. But, these tips often neglect capital costs and the arduous time spent perfecting a new trade. Here at Das Bloggy Blog HQ, we make our own beer(decent), laundry detergent(meh), and crystal meth(smelly, yet profitable); however much like the guy with the guitar, shaggy hair, and Converse All Stars, we aren't in it for the money. Unless you are getting some sort of innate pleasure from your Tyler Durden wet-dream, its best to leave the farming, seamstressing, and pad-thai making to the professionals.
3. Undermine Yourself: Most of us have better things to do than set traps and inconveniences to protect ourselves from a lack of willpower, such as treating your credit cards like Han Solo to make them less convenient. Seriously, if you have to resort to stuff like that, you might as well hire a trucker hatted douchebag to sit in a van and laugh at you while you fuck up your life.
4. Buy Gadgets: Let's face it, people like to buy stuff. But buying yuppie gadgets won't save you money (they actually cost money). Sure, energy efficient versions of things you already use, like CFLs, are a good idea. But you won't have many reasons to drive your fuel efficient Vespa if you are at home with your new your chromed-out espresso maker and Dance Dance Revolution machine. Most of these tips just lead to #2.
   

Discouraging Impulse Buys, One Casual Snark at a Time

We were buying a few sundry items at Marshalls, and while waiting in line noticed the array of generic iPod and Bluetooth accessories intended as Impulse Buys. We went on a mocking riff on them, just loud enough to be obnoxious. The woman in front of us sent a semi-glare back. A couple of minutes later she then discreetly discarded a car-charger from that display onto another Impulse Buy rack.

Your check-out line is pretty efficient, Marshalls, but not fast enough! We remember how you lost our credit card number a year ago, resulting in weight-loss supplements and Girls Gone Wild videos being shipped to our door. We will continue to guilt-trip your patrons in the check-out line until we get over it*!


*Das Bloggy Blog, a family company, reserves all rights, both explicit and implied, to hold a grudge until we are on our deathbed, at which point a dying request will be made to meet with the current Marshalls/TJMaxx CEO. At such meeting, a tender reconciliation will take place in which we acknowledge past mistakes and hope to move on because we really loved them all along, and -cough, cough- [eyes glaze over and body remains still. CEO shouts to heavens. End Scene.]

Republicans Call For Discontinuation of JFK Eternal Flame

WASHINGTON -- Republicans, putting pressure on the Democrat-led Congress and presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama, called for discontinuation of the John F. Kennedy eternal flame in Arlington National Cemetery.

"For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than the price of gasoline," President George Bush said. "There is a place in our country that offers untapped energy resources. A place where oil is so prevalent that fumes constantly emanate from the ground before igniting. We must extinguish those flames and remove drilling bans there to ease the unfair pressures that hurt American citizens every day."

"The earth in this place is salty and flowers placed there disappear in a matter of days. I drink your milkshake", Bush emphasized.

"Over the next five months, House Republicans will fight every single day to hold Democrats accountable for their dismal record on producing more energy in our country," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters. "So many average Americans have been completely devastated every time they fill their gas tank, and this must end."

Democrats however, claim that energy advantages gained from extinguishing the eternal flame will be small, and any effect on gasoline prices will be years away. "It is possible that a current U.S. Senator will have his own eternal flame in the near future", rebutted Hillary Clinton. "We cannot shut off our country's traditional eternal flames simply to gain fleeting political victories that offer no benefits to middle-class Americans, who are hurt so, so dearly every time they go to the pump and are forced at gunpoint to purchase more gasoline."

President Bush then described the National Ronald W. Reagan memorial, which he claimed was a clear alternative to obsolete, flame-based memorials. "The Ronald Reagan memorial offers a breeze of cool air to all Americans walking by, especially those that are being exploited by the price of gasoline." Bush said, "It is symbolic of his message of liberty the world felt while he was President. I question the logic of continuing to honor a man who is represented by the needless burning of fossil fuels."

The Ronald W. Reagan memorial, enacted upon his death in 2004, consists of a 1974 Cadillac Eldorado with the AC blasting and the windows down, and has been idling on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. for its entire existence. In summer months the convertible roof is often rolled down while Sports, by Huey Lewis and the News, is played on the tape deck at a reasonable volume.

Obama, while supporting the eternal flame, offered sympathy to Americans feeling the double-pronged pinch of an economic downturn and rising gas prices, "Too many Americans that I meet every day have been bludgeoned and left for dead by the current administration, their bodies wedged behind a Taco Bell dumpster, because of rising gas prices and the poor state of the economy."

This provoked a harsh reaction from presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain. "I think I speak for all decent, hardworking Americans when I say that I am offended by Barack Obama's statement against easing the suicide-inducing pain we experience every time we hit bingo fuel", he bellowed. "At 4 dollars a gallon, it is like combining the worst things I saw in American History X and making every citizen suffer them."

We've wanted to use this photo for awhile

Besides kinda looking like Ray Romano, Bobby Jindal (R-Gov. LA) just very well might be your next Vice President. But in the complex VP vetting process, in which the VP vetters are vetted by the VP vetter vetters (namely, the press), being batshit-crazy might be a problem. Even if he does very well on the daunting "drink beer and talk" event of McCain's new hit reality show, The Running Mate on ABC.

Lets flash back to the summer of 1991, when punk had broke and Jindal had just graduated with a degree in biology from Brown. He became a Rhodes Scholar and got accepted into Yale Law and Harvard Med. While others were wearing flannel and smoking dope, Jindal was presumably getting straight A's and performing vigilante exorcisms with friends:

It appeared as if we were observing a tremendous battle between the Susan we knew and loved and some strange evil force. But the momentum had shifted and we now sensed that victory was at hand.

While Alice and Louise held Susan, her sister continued holding the Bible to her face. Almost taunting the evil spirit that had almost beaten us minutes before, the students dared Susan to read biblical passages. She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence "Jesus is Lord." Over and over, she repeated "Jesus is L..L..LL," often ending in profanities. In between her futile attempts, Susan pleaded with us to continue trying and often smiled between the grimaces that accompanied her readings of Scripture. Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed "Jesus is Lord."

With an almost comical smile, Susan then looked up as if awakening from a deep sleep and asked, "Has something happened?" She did not remember any of the past few hours and was startled to find her friends breaking out in cheers and laughter, overwhelmed by sudden joy and relief.

It seems 360 degree head spins and projectile vomiting are just typical Hollywood exaggerations of REAL exorcisms. Plus, this treatment got rid of her skin cancer! So, the next time you are rejected from Ivy League med/law schools, don't feel too bad. When's the last time you got the devil out of someone?

Blogging till the Breaka Breaka Dawn

As we awoke in a pool of our own heat wave induced sweat at 4AM, we were left to ponder the conclusion of the Democratic nomination 'battle royale'. Then we rose up and punched the wall Raging Bull style in anger that we were not asked to write one of the gazillion Op-Eds on the subject. With bloodied knuckles, we promise to keep it short.

We were pretty neutral on the candidates when they began the race a'yonder. Really, any warm body in a blue Hazmat suit that wanted to clean up this mess would have been fine with us. Hillanevitability aside, Barack Obama was against the war in Iraq before it was cool.(+1) He spent his first night in NYC in an alley we walk by every day, when the neighborhood, it was not so safe. He plays pickup basketball, and comes off as a real human being. For awhile there, he even held out against the lapel pin mafia. So, we were sold.

The more states Hillary lost the worse her behavior became. A couple with a reputation of doing/saying whatever it takes to win, the Clintons started doing/saying whatever it took to win (Maureen Dowd called, and she wants her shtick back --Ed.) By the end of the race, she was touting a tardtastic gas tax abatement and watching the first two seasons of 24 on loop.

Hillary's campaign picked up in a string of Appalachian states. She changed her slogan from the unsuccessful "More experienced than Obama, yet less than McCain" to the focus-group approved "Hey, I'm white!". She did really good in those states, where 20% of white voters routinely claimed race as a factor. She did even better with those voters.

But what about the many voters for whom race was a factor, but would not admit to a pollster/themselves of that fact? Well, we called our grandparents(s) today and brought up the presidential race. Our grandmother(s) likes Hillary and said "Now it's not because he's black, but..." before launching into a David Dukish endgame scenario. Eesh. You have your work cut out for you Barack, güten glück!