Bent Corner

From the Dallas City Hall Blog on the Dallas Morning News website:

County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections “has become a black hole” because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a “white hole.”

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster’s, is perhaps “the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape.”

Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling, after all.

I’d love to see the video of this.  What I find to be hysterically funny about this is that even though commissioner Mayfield wasn’t being the least bit racially degrading when he used the term black hole, commissioner Price (seen here letting his hair down) was being racially insulting when he responded to the imaginary slur with the term “white hole”.

At least he was trying to be which makes it extremely funny.

If I wasn’t such a cheapskate, I would send commissioner John Wiley Price and Judge Thomas Jones copies of Stephen Hawking’s landmark book, A Brief History in Time.  I was looking around Borders yesterday and happened to find an updated, re-written version of the book entitled A Briefer History of Time.  I was published in 2005 by Hawking and American physicist Leonard Mlodinow.

FedconUSA organizer Tim Brazeal canceled the convention almost 24 hours after it began, leaving celebrity guests and fans — some dressed as Klingons — stranded in Dallas with nowhere to go. Personally, I don’t know what I would hate more - being dressed as a Klingon or being stuck in Dallas.

Tim Brazeal posted a message on his website concerning the cancellation:

For a first time convention, getting financial support in today’s economy is next to impossible. There are so many upfront costs – flights, hotel rooms, convention space, food, guest fees, etc – that need to be paid before the convention even gets under way. From day one, FedConUSA has been operating in the red, with hopes of recouping our funds and making enough to continue on and make this an ongoing and fantastic convention experience for all of America.

Obviously, that just didn’t work out. We had expected much more walk-in attendance than we received, and hoped that we would have been able to pull things together enough that the show could go on. As you know, that didn’t happen. We are truly sorry to everyone for what has happened and disappointed that we couldn’t have put on a better show.

Expected more walk-in attendance? That’s a lot like expecting to win the lottery even though you don’t buy any lottery tickets.

If Brazeal wanted to cancel, he should have done it before the event was to take place. He shouldn’t have done it during the convention.

Over on the FedConUSA message board, there is a argument taking place between FedconUSA organizer Tim Brazeal and Aaron Douglas, “Chief Tyrol” from Battlestar Galactica. I don’t expect the message board will be around much longer.

A rattlesnake rancher in the fine state of Texas that goes by the name of Bayou Bob has been placed under arrest for selling bottles of vodka that included a baby rattlesnake floating in each bottle. Though he remembered to give himself a dumb name, he forgot to get a state liquor license.

He claimed the concoction was an “ancient Asian elixir.”

He might be right. When I was young, dumb, and in the Air Force, the first time I went to Korea I had to drink a shot of something called SnakeJu. It came from a large bottle of Soju, a very potent Korean version of vodka that had a dead snake floating in it.

To be honest, I forgot all about this chapter in my life. Don’t get me wrong. I remember going to Korea. I was somehow able to block out the memory of drinking a shot of snakeju. Until now.

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