World of Suck

ROTTERDAM -- Two Schenectady women have been accused of brutally beating an 88-year-old woman, including throwing bleach in her eyes, after following her home from a town shopping plaza to rob her, town police said today.

Police said the women identified as Tiffany Tolliver, 21, of Albany Street, and Dominique Lucas, 21, of Maple Avenue, followed the victim to her Rotterdam apartment, leaving Tolliver's 2-week-old child in their car.

Tolliver and Lucas then allegedly went inside, beat the woman, stole her purse and threw the bleach in her eyes. A neighbor saw them leaving in a white Cadillac, which police found later at the Hannaford Plaza off Altamont Avenue in Schenectady. Tolliver and Lucas allegedly had already bought $450 in clothes from the A.J. Wright.

And it gets better . . .

Tolliver and Lucas have been charged with first-degree robbery and are being held in Schenectady County Jail without bail. Besides the 2-week-old found in the Cadillac, police later found Tolliver's 17-month-old toddler alone at her apartment. Both children were taken into the state's protective custody. Also, Lucas is eight months pregnant, according to police.

Plus, one had an outstanding warrant and the other pending charges.

So they are dirt bag criminals AND bad parents. Delightful members of society, huh?

Have you ever suddenly realized something about the way somebody speaks that instantly irks you so badly that you can never listen to that person again? I'm having one of those 'moments'.

With all the Media's attention now focused heavily on various candidates from both sides of the aisle it's inevitable that you're going to hear soundbites and interviews from all these tools even when you don't want to. With that being said I would like to point out to Rudy Guiliani that he uses 2 phrases so frequently to prefix most ANY sentence that he has pissed me off and I no longer listen to anything he says even in passing.

1.) "At the end of the day...."
2.) "The reality is.... "

Grrr!

We all have the things in games that drive us up a wall. Sometimes it's the insanely complicated maneuvers they expect us to pull off. Or the microscopic target mounted on the back of the gigantic titan. Or the stupidest AI in the world that we have to protect as it mindlessly wades through a horde of zombies.

Well, I get to add a new game to my list of games that irritate me. Medal of Honor: Airborne. It's yet another in a long line of WWII shooters. The big gimmick in this one is that you can parachute in to the level from above and pick your landing zone. Cute, but ultimately not very useful. Still, I love shooters in general, and WWII are generally worth my time.

Sadly, the game has three of my pet peeves in it.

The first is infinite respawning bad guys. I know Nazi's are evil incarnate, but even they draw the line as instant cloning of hundreds of soldiers. Well, I'm sure they would have done it if they could.. but that's not the point. When I clear a building or area, and my troops move up with me, I generally expect it to remain that way. More importantly, when I'm attacking a small 3 room building, I expect there to be an upper limit to how many times I have to shoot the machine gunner in the upper window. They don't have a company of people in there.

The second is a long standing complaint of mine and many MANY games are guilty of it. The protection offered by various forms of cover. For example, when being attacked by shoulder mounted anti-tank panzershreck, a thin wooden pallet is an unacceptable form of cover. Equally, a 55 gallon drum would not provide protection from that type of attack. This is a weapon that is designed to go through TANK armor. the thin sheet metal used there is not going to slow it down much. Even if it did stop the round, the concussive blast is going to hurt you on the other side. And finally, an M1 rifle is entirely capable of shooting through barbed wire. Hiding behind a roll of it isn't actually cover. It's not a wall. I can see your entire back and head. When I put 3 rounds on target, it shouldn't act as a wall. The bullet would got THROUGH it because it's a FUCKING coil with a large amount of air for the bullet to pass through.

The final one is the enemy. They should have to operate under the same rules as I do. If they can fire hundreds of rounds from their MG42 machine guns without reloading, I should be able to do the same when I capture it. But no, I have to reload every 30 rounds or so. If I take 25 seconds to reload my bazooka, they shouldn't be able to fire it four times in that same period of time. Rules must always be equalized for both sides.

Maybe my expectations are too high. It's just a crappy little shooter from Electronic Arts, I know. I should expect much. But damn it, I demand more. Maybe Call of Duty just spoiled me.

In the news today:

ANDERSON, Ind. -- An Anderson woman was arrested last week after her two sons -- a 6-year-old with Down syndrome and a 4-year-old -- were found playing in a street wearing only diapers, authorities said.

Concerned neighbors took the children inside and called the cops. We all know how long it takes for the police to respond to a non-life threatening call...

Officers didn't immediately find (the mother), who found out that they had the children three hours later, (the neighbor) said.

This is just days after:

INDIANAPOLIS -- A woman charged with neglect of a dependent after her toddler was found standing near a busy Indianapolis road said Monday she will do whatever it takes to get her daughter back.

(The mother) said she and a friend left the child alone as they went to get groceries. Before she left, (the mother) said she drank three beers. Police said she tested above the legal limit of .08 percent in a Breathalyzer test.

And last year we had...

Nancy Dyer slept as 3-year-old Damon Stewart slipped out the door of their apartment, barefoot and wearing only a diaper and a Superman T-shirt on Dec. 30.

Damon climbed through a hole in a chain-link fence, and motorists found him running on the freeway nearby on Indianapolis’ Northwestside. He was unharmed, but at least a half-dozen cars and a big rig swerved to miss him, witnesses told police.

Police traced the boy to Dyer and found her daughter Gabrielle eating the previous night’s spaghetti off the floor.

Is this just a trend in Indiana? Is there something magnetic about our roadways that attract wandering children in diapers? If only there were.