An Explosion of Crazy

Just when you thought it was safe to go back outside, the craziness has returned with a vengeance. It’s hard to top Washington for lunacy, but we’re trying hard here in Tampa. Hopefully there’s stimulus money for cultivating crazy. We seem to be going for a grant.

We start out this morning with 20 year old Joshua Basso. Now we all know it’s hard times for everyone, and Josh is apparently getting hit by the  economic downturn. He was out of minutes on his cell phone. But Josh was horny and creative (a dangerous combination), so he called the only number that would work from his phone, 9-1-1, asked some very personal questions about the dispatchers body, then asked if he could come to her house for sex (allegedly). When the police arrived at his boarding house Josh was, not surprisingly found locked in the bathroom. They called his cell number to confirm it was him, and he immediately turned it off. Unfortunately, the officer knew how to turn it back on…darn it. As bad as this is, we can only award Josh our runner-up award as creep of the day.

The First prize goes to a Marine Reservist, Jasen D. Bruce. It seems that Jasen was hanging out in the Channelside district here in Tampa when a man with a beard, robe and sandals (and speaking broken english) got out of his car and asked Jasen for directions. Jasen, being a good Marine and immediately recognizing a terrorist threat when he saw one, jumped to action, hit the guy with a tire iron, then chased him down the street and tackled to beat a little more of the fear of god into him (allegedly). Greek Orthodox Priest, Alexios Marakis, is expected to recover, and we’re all safer in Tampa now thanks to the vigilance of Mr. Bruce, and the Judge who let him out on bond.

At various times during his interview by police, Bruce gave the following stories:

• The man tried to rob him.
• The man grabbed Bruce’s crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.
• The man yelled “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.
• “That’s what they tell you right before they blow you up,” police say Bruce told them.

Now normally I’m fine with bond, but it appears Bruce has a violent history. A couple of years ago he pled guilty to beating the crap out of a two truck driver. But the good Jasen went on the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show here in Tampa this morning, where all purveyor’s of violence apparently go for repentance. While admitting to the guilty plea, Jasen says he was just defending himself after the truck driver hit him with a chain. (Witnesses at the time didn’t exactly see the same set of events as our Mr. Bruce though.) Of course Bruce had to set the stage for his defense on this charge, and what better defense is there than the good old self-defense/ gay panic defense. The troubling part of that is, Bruce’s initial story was that he mistook the Priest for a middle eastern terrorist (because they’re all terrorists you know), but after two days and a little time to clear his head…he now realizes that Father Marakis propositioned him and felt him up. And why wouldn’t that be true, we all know about how all the Priests are gay molesters (Oh, yeah…I forgot, that’s the Catholics…oops.)

But as crazy as those two are, the Grand Prize for Pubah of Crazy goes, this week, to the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. This is the group which oh so valiantly carries on the crusade for those oh so persecuted Christians (which have about an 80% majority in this country). They are compelled to challenge to the recently enacted “revisions” to the Hate Crimes Prevention law. Note I said, “revision.” That would be because there has been a hate crimes bill on the books for nearly 20 years…and who did it protect…let’s see, that would be Christians.

So what’s their oh so Christian plan? Well, they are going to get on the steps of U.S. Justice Department and try to incite people to beat the shit out of Gay people, so they’ll get arrested under the “thought crimes provision” of the act (never mind the little problem of there not being one of those in the law). Given that they never wanted to just revoke the whole law. They want the right to kick the shit out of gay people, but don’t want gay people to have the equal right to kick the shit out of them. WWJW (Who Would Jesus Whoop)