It’s not a good year for Detroit. It turns out that the City of Detroit has topped the Morgan Quinto annual list of the 25 most dangerous cities in the United States for the second time. This is based on the city’s crime rate for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. To be considered, a city must have a population in excess of 75,000, which, of course, means that there may be smaller crime-ridden burgs out there that were not considered.

It looks like I’ll again be postponing my planned summer vacation in downtown Detroit.

Lest I even consider gloating, I should point out that two – count ‘em – two New Jersey Cities are in the top 25 of the most dangerous. Camden, New Jersey is number four (behind Detroit, St. Louis, and Atlanta), while Trenton, the capital of the Garden State, checks in at number 15. Isn’t that special?

I recall being in Camden several years ago for a hearing in the federal court. I had to fax a copy of the judge’s order back to the office, so I asked one of the employees in the Clerk’s office if I could use the fax machine. I explained that I was willing to pay for the use of the machine. She told me that lawyers were not permitted to use the fax machines. I then asked the employee whether she could direct me to a local candy store or drug store where I might be able to send a fax. She burst out laughing and said, “Obviously, you are not from here. This is Camden. There is nothing around here.” Sadly, she was right. There are parts of Camden that look like Dresden after World War II.

However, the news is not all bad for New Jersey, as three Jersey cities are among the top twenty-five of the safest cities in the U.S. Brick Township was number 2 (behind Amherst, New York, which has been the safest city for four years running),with Hamilton Township and Edison Township being numbers 22 and 24 respectively. (Note to Craig at mtpolitics: Billings is number 23).

For a small state, we seem to have it all, from horse farms to tank farms; from pine forests to sandy beaches, from backwoods roads to choked highways, and from the safest to the most dangerous cities.

We cover all the bases in Jersey.

Here is a small sample of the joys of living in the Garden State.

Former State Trooper Alleges Conspiracy to Obtain Confidential State Police Records for Political Advantage.
Vincent Bellaran, a former lieutenant in the New Jersey State Police, who in 1997 was the first black state trooper to win a lawsuit against the State Police for discrimination, alleged that in February 1999, he had been recruited by another State Trooper, “Tommy” DeFeo to take part in a scheme to obtain and use official state police records to discredit then Governor Christie Whitman and to advance the gubernatorial aspirations of then candidate Jim McGreevey. Bellaran further charged that the person orchestrating the effort was former State Senator John Lynch, a mentor of then candidate, now Governor, Jim McGreevey.

The records (which numbered in the thousands and which were obtained from locked State Police offices in the evenings and copied) were used in connection with two politically charged legislative hearings concerning allegations of racial profiling by the State Police. DeFeo has conceded that he entered State Police offices at night and copied thousands of documents, which would then turn over to Bellaran, who, in turn would funnel information and documents to State Senator Lynch for use at the hearings.

Bellaran said that, with time, it became clear to him, that the real purpose of the activity was not to end the alleged practice of racial profiling, but rather was to help win the election for Jim McGreevey and a promotion for DeFeo.

According to Bellaran, the documents were also used outside the hearings. In one instance, they were used to discredit the son of a former advisor to Governor Whitman, and in another instance, they were used to discredit Governor Whitman’s preferred candidate for the job of superintendent of the State Police.

Lynch and DeFeo deny any wrongdoing and insist that their only motive in obtaining the documents was to remedy what they saw as racial profiling by the State Police.

It is interesting to note that, prior to Governor McGreevey’s taking office on January 15, 2002, DeFeo was a lieutenant. In two years, he was promoted to the rank of major, then to lieutenant colonel, and recently has been made “deputy superintendent.”

Governor McGreevey, through his spokesperson, denies having anything to do with any of this.

Former Governor Whitman is hopping mad about it all and has called for a Federal Investigation into the matter.

In my view, this has a very bad smell. In 1999, Governor Whitman’s Republican administration was taking a lot of heat over allegations of racial profiling on the part of the State Police (I’ll save the issue of “racial profiling” for a future post), and candidate McGreevey could only benefit from the heat being turned up. I am certain that both legislative investigative bodies had subpoena power and could have directed the production of State Police personnel records.

As such, DeFeo’s entering into locked State Police offices in the night to copy files and then deliver them to the home of Bellaran (who was out of work on “stress leave” during this time, after having won a half million dollar judgment for discrimination) for ultimate delivery to a state senator (McGreevey’s mentor) to be used for questionable purposes seems highly irregular, if not downright illegal. One can also not help but notice how DeFeo’s career has skyrocketed following Jim McGreevey’s election.

Bellaran has been contacted to the State Attorney General concerning his story.

Stay tuned.

Another Jersey Mayor Jailed.
Former mayor of the Town of Irvington, Sara Bost, reported to a West Virginia federal prison camp, after having lost her request for bail pending the appeal of her conviction for witness tampering in a corruption investigation.

Corruption? New Jersey? No way!!

A New Problem for the New Jersey Bear Hunt.

New Jersey’s black bear hunt, the first in more than three decades, which was set to begin on December 8, has run into another roadblock. Animal rights groups, which have vigorously opposed the hunt since its approval in July, have filed an action in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to prevent the hunt from taking place on the 67,000 acres of land in the state that make up the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

The environmentalists argue that hunting would violate federal environmental laws because no environmental impact study of the hunt has been done. If the suit is successful, it will remove approximately twenty percent of the area in which the hunt was anticipated to take place.

In my view, this has little to do with a concern for environmental impact and everything to do with blocking the bear hunt by any means necessary. The hunt has been studied to death by State Fish and Game Counsel and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. I am not a hunter, and I wish there was a better way to reduce the bear population, but there really isn’t.

I think there is a fair chance that the hunt will not happen, and, even if it does, I expect that the anti-hunt groups will be out in force next Monday trying to thwart the hunt. If they decide to run around in the woods among the pissed off hunters to scare the bears away (or herd them into the Delaware Water Gap), I hope they wear very bright colors.

New Jersey…Only the strong survive.

Blogging notwithstanding, I have managed to watch all eleven episodes of the HBO Series “Carnivale,” the freakishly disturbing and yet oddly addictive show about a pathetic group of “Carnies” traveling around the Dust Bowl and the Southwestern U.S. in 1934. I have even watched several of the episodes at least twice, which is often necessary, given the darkness of the show and the quick paced and often strange dialog.

Unfortunately, at the end of each episode, I remain relatively unsure about what I had just seen and completely confused about what some of it means. We are treated to parallel stories, with mysterious and other-worldly connections between certain characters in the parallel stories (i.e. the minister and Ben), along with bizarre twists and turns within each of the parallel stories, which are all set in the dusty, dirty, and downright pathetic world of a traveling carnival in the throws of the depression.

Sunday night marked the final episode of the season, and I had hoped that some of the more puzzling aspects of the story would be brought to closure. It did not happen. The final episode of the season closed amidst of collection of loose ends.

Here are just a few of the many loose ends that come to mind at the moment. (Pictures of the characters can be found here.)

Ben
He is the main character, who we thought was fortuitously discovered by a passing carnival just at the moment that he was trying to bury his recently deceased mother in the dusty soil surrounding the shack in the middle of nowhere that he and his mother had called home. As it turns out, we learned that his meeting with the Carney was not exactly accidental, although we’re not sure why he was plucked from his dusty surrounds by this band of misfits.

What is the deal with his dream sequences? Are they past lives? If so, Ben appears to have been in the crusades, the Civil War and World War I.

Why is it that Lodz (see below) seems to be in some of the dreams?

Why do he and the minister seem to share the same dream, and yet neither knows of the other?

What, for Chrissake, is the deal with Ben’s father, “Scudder?” He apparently was a Carney (a geek) in the past, who may or may not have killed a man or many men in a town called Babylon.

What is/was the relationship between Scudder and Samson? Between Scudder and Lodz? Between Scudder and “Management?”

Why does Scudder continue to torment Ben? What does he want Ben to do?

What was the relationship between Ben’s mother and the Carnivale?

What is the murder he supposedly committed that resulted in his being chased around by a sheriff?

Samson
What does this vertically challenged troop pusher of the Carnivale know about Ben, Scudder, Ben’s mother, Lodz, and “Management” that he has not told Ben?

Lodz
What does he know about Ben? What does he know about Scudder? What is his relationship to “Management?” To Samson?

What is that stuff he drinks that looks something like an Alka-Seltzer and which puts him in some sort of trance?

What is his relationship, past and present, with Apollonia, the seriously weird catatonic woman, who is the mother of Sophie and who appears to be the brains behind Sophie’s Fortune telling gig?

Was Lodz killed in the final episode? It sure as hell looks like it, but one never knows?

What the hell does he “see” (he was blind until the final moments of the final episode) in that dreadful bearded lady? What the hell does she see in him, particularly since he appears to be abusive to her?

Sophie
What is the deal between her and Apollonia, her catatonic mother?

What was her past relationship with Jonsey?

Will she survive the fire in the trailer that ended the final episode?

Apollonia (Sophie’s mother)

What caused the mother to be catatonic?

Is the mother catatonic because of what appears to have been a rape in her past?

Who was the rapist? Might it have been Lodz?

Why did the mother become ambulatory only to walk up to Ben and utter something I cannot now remember?

What message did she transmit to Lodz in the final episode, when he placed his hand on her head and exclaimed, “How long have you known?”

Why did she start the fire in the trailer that ended the final episode?

Will she survive the fire?

Jonesy
How did he screw up his leg? A baseball injury?

Is it really over between him and Rita Sue, the Cootch dancer and hooker?

Will he come out of the burning trailer at the beginning of the new season?

Rita Sue

Have she and Stumpy reconciled for good?

Will Sophie get even with her for hopping in the sack with Jonsey and pretending to be her friend?

“Management”
What the hell?

Is “Management” a real person or some evil spirit?

If he/she/it is real, why doeshe/she/it remain behind a curtain?

Ruthie
Will she, as it appeared in the final episode, be brought back from the dead by Ben?

Before she decided to do the nasty with Ben, why the hell didn’t she demand that he take a farookin’ shower?

Justin, The Ministe
What’s the deal with him coming here from Russia?

When he came here from Russia, why was someone trying to kill him?

Is he really a demon?

Is he now or has he ever been in an incestuous relationship with his sister? (One doesn’t put a lip lock like that on one’s sister, and one doesn’t peek at his sister in the shower.)

Iris (The Minister’s Sister).
Is she also a demon?

Will she end up in the rack with the radio guy?

General Questions
Can any of the characters possibly be more skuzzy?

Is there a bath in Ben’s future?

Why did the writer decide to put the “e” at the end of the word “Carnival?”

I’m sure there are a zillion more questions, but those are the ones that come to mind. I am amazed to think that someone sat in front of a keyboard, started out with a blank screen and ultimately dreamed up “Carnivale.” How does that happen?

Oy!! When does the next season start?

It was quite a road trip. It was a blur of Apple Knockers, vodka (lots of vodka), beer, wine, champagne, and too much to eat. We took a few drinking breaks to visit a craft fair and the “quaint” shopping area in Cape May, the kinds of places where one spends lots of money on doo-dads that always seem like a good idea at the time.

Because this was the first trip to Cape May for a couple of the Usual Suspects, we took a ride out to the Cape May Lighthouse to make sure it is still there. Of course, it was still there, as it has been since its construction in 1859. No one was up to climbing the 218 steps to get to the top of the 157-foot tall structure. Of course, this had nothing to do with all the cocktails we had consumed. I figure it must must have been bad ice.

We also went to Sunset Beach to take a look at the remains of the S.S. Atlantus, one of the 12 experimental concrete ships build during World War I, due to a steel shortage. After a few trans-Atlantic voyages, the Atlantus was taken out of service, and it foundered while it was being brought to New Jersey to serve as part of a dock for a ferryboat between Delaware and New Jersey. Oddly enough, during World War II, the government built another 24 concrete ships, again because of a steel shortage. Concrete ships. Go figure.

We took a walk on the beach by the Lighthouse. However, it was a very short walk, because on Saturday, Cape May was hit with some seriously high winds, which churned up the ocean into a boiling mass, and sandblasted everyone who ventured near the beach. After a couple minutes of sandblasting, it was clear that a warm spot and more cocktails was a much better idea.

I am now in the process of detoxifying and trying to remain perpendicular to the center of the earth.

I think I’ll have another glass of seltzer and head for the recliner.

We are taking a drinking road trip mini-vacation with some of the Usual Suspects. We are heading down to the zero mile marker on the Garden State Parkway to this place. While there, we will surely get half zippered spend a bit of time at this place, quaffing sipping Apple Knockers (hot apple cider with Laird’s Apple Jack, a cinnamon stick and spices) and pigging out on pub grup sampling the cuisine.

See you Sunday night.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

By the way, If you are not overly stuffed, and you are looking for some good after dinner reading today, check out the Carnival of the Vanities, which is up and running over at Setting the World to Rights.

As of midnight tonight, I will have been at this for one year. In my first post, I tentatively thanked Cousin Jack for suggesting that I give blogging a try. I now happily un-tentatively thank him again for his inspiration, his willingness to help with things technical and otherwise, and for being a great relative and friend.

When I began this almost-daily exercise, I thought that, in addition to Jack (who graciously promised to be reader), I would have maybe a handful of others who would read my scribblings , including daughter TJ, who is hardly unbiased. As of this moment, this site has been visited just short of 37,000 times. Never, in my wildest imagination, did I expect that such a thing would happen. I would like to thank each and every person who has found this site to be worth a couple minutes of his or her valuable time. I am truly grateful and humbled – big time.

I would also like to thank all those who maintain a blog, particularly those who appear on the left side of this page. You have made me laugh. You have moved me. You have made me think. You have entertained me for countless hours, and you have always impressed me (and often made me green with envy) with your breadth of knowledge, your razor sharp sense of humor and your wonderful ability to turn a phrase. Thank you all.

A very, very special thanks to those of you with whom I have communicated one on one. You know who you are. I’ve actually made some friends around here, and what could be better than that?

It has been quite an experience.

I look forward to year number two.

Again, thanks.

It’s not bad enough that we have to deal with cell phone vulgarians, who have some sick compulsion to blab on the cell phone in public places and pollute the atmosphere with their half of an obviously inane conversation. Now, with the commercialization of camera-cell phones (some 25 million were shipped worldwide in the first half of this year), we have a brand new problem

It seems that there are some truly sick sorry asses out there who are bound to use their camera cell phones to take surreptitious photos of people while they are undressed in places such as locker rooms and bathrooms. What’s even more alarming is that images of the unsuspecting victims can easily be transferred to the internet for all the world to see.

Recently in New Jersey it became painfully apparent that the state’s current Peeping Tom law does not effectively prohibit such conduct. Last July, a New Jersey appeals court overturned the conviction of a man who had hidden a video camera in a floral arrangement in his bathroom in order to photograph his female houseguests, without their knowledge, while they undressed and showered (obviously a swell guy).

The court ruled that, under the existing law, a defendant can only be convicted if he “peers into a window or other opening.” Because the camera-in-the-bathroom-guy had not that, his conviction was overturned.

Because of this ruling and because it is difficult to know whether a person using a cell phone might actually be taking a photograph, many health clubs have banned the use of cell phones in locker rooms.

The state judiciary committee is working on legislation to replace the existing Peeping Tom law. The revised law would prohibit the surreptitious viewing or videotaping “someone in a bathroom, bedroom, dressing room, or other private place where people undress or engage in intimate activity.”

Furthermore, because camera cell phones have the potential to be used to commit industrial espionage, one firm is working on a high tech solution to the problem. The company is developing a transmitter that would block the camera function of camera cell phones until the user is off the premises.

So, one of these days, if you find yourself in a bathroom or locker room with a cell phone vulgarian who is fouling the air with his high-decibel personal prattle, that may not be all he is doing. He may be also be taking your picture with an eye towards making you “famous” on unsuspectingnekkidpeopleinlockerrooms.com. Because such conduct is not a crime (at least for now), self-help might be the best way to go. Therefore, if, while in your birthday suit, you catch someone shooting your picture with what looks like a cell phone, I suggest that you see to it that the last photo the camera takes is a glorious color picture of the inside of the asshole’s asshole.

OK, here is the deal. I am suffering from a huge case of occupationally induced brain-fry. Accordingly, I am absolutely incapable of writing anything worth reading. I’m even too beat to read other people’s stuff, a sure sign of mental fartdom.

With that said, I would not want to completely disappoint those who were kind enough to visit here. So, I urge you to spend a few minutes moving Liquid Man all over your screen. It actually works well to relieve some of the discomfort of occupational brain-fry.

Again, thanks to my friend Brian, the Air Force vet, on whom I can rely to bail me out when I cannot write anything worth a shit.

“Understanding Ghandi will have zero effect on the current war on terror. I can’t remember where I read or heard this, but someone once said that if Ghandi had been Jewish, we would have never heard of him. Ghandi’s passive resistance was a testament to British morality, not to peace as a weapon because Hitler never would have stopped to listen.”

Sarah from Trying to Grok wrote it and more in an excellent post. Go read.