One Stray Pea

There was a plethora of stupid news this week and it all started with last Sunday’s paper. The front page of the paper read, “Don’t Speed Here: Arlington Heights Fighting ‘Speed Trap’ Label”. Arlington Heights is a community of approximately a quarter square mile and the cops do nothing but sit in the interstate and gun speeders. The police chief is complaining about the speed trap label because he says they aren’t hiding in bushes or lowering speed limits, therefore they aren’t a speed trap. The mayor felt the need to pipe in with this nugget of wisdom, “If they wouldn’t be speeding, we wouldn’t be out there writing tickets.” However, what this story fails to mention is that Arlington Heights is a “lock your car doors” type of neighborhood. It refers to Arlington Heights as a village of 418 modest, well-kept homes. Um, hello McFly, have you driven through Arlington Heights lately? Did you have your eyes open? Well-kept homes my left foot! In October 2006 I addressed the issue of neighborhoods containing the words, “Hills” or “Heights”, and what that represents, and Arlington Heights is nestled uncomfortably close to Bond Hill. Basically, this headline should’ve read, “Arlington Heights Fighting ‘Ghetto’ Label,” or perhaps they understand that this is a label well deserved. Note to Arlington Heights PD, you might lose that label if you’d get off the highway and patrol your streets, just a suggestion. And no, to those of you wondering none of my 3 speeding tickets have been by an Arlington Heights officer, because I know of their speed trap and I slow down long enough to get through Arlington Heights then I hit the gas again.

Oh, an excellent quote from Jim Baxter, president of the National Motorists Association, “If they are out there writing many, many tickets, it’s a red flag. Perhaps the speed limits are too low for that stretch of highway and just because they didn’t set the speed limits does not absolve them from responsibility for exploiting the system.” Amen! Just a question, does this apply to the highway patrol??

After a fatal stabbing in my old stomping grounds of Westwood, a 19 year old is being charged with aggrivated rioting. I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but anyways, this kid is being charged with starting the fight that resulted in the death of a 16 year old girl, and he chose to run his mouth at the judge. The judge in turn went on a justified power trip and raised his bond from $150,000 to $250,000. Apparently others in the court room applauded at this. I think a more appropriate response would to have large woman sit in the courtroom and play the role of, “Mama”, and when people act stupid, she jumps up and smacks them on the head and yells, “Shut your mouth, fool! Didn’t anyone ever teach you any manners?”

Keep your pants on Cincinnati! STD’s are on the rise as we become the third poorest city in the nation. I believe there’s a correlation somewhere. Epidemiologists from the health department are busy hanging out in bars in order to investigate places where people with STD’s hang out. This sounds like a hasty generalization, but it’s not. Many STD’s are reported to the health department, especially that pesky syphilis, which is so 17th century, and many are found among gay men and IV drug users (look, stereotypes wouldn’t persist if there wasn’t some truth there). Epidemiologists find themselves hanging out in bars and clubs, where the infected are known to prowl, trying to educate the patrons on safe sex practices. That sounds like the worst job ever, by the way. Chlamydia and gonorrhea are also on the rise, and pediatricians from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital are shaming doctors for not addressing the issue with teen girls more appropriately. Perhaps, because we are in a poor area apparently, doctors are more concerned about patients coming in at all and don’t want to scare them off by scolding them for whoring around. Come on, you know how teenage girls are, they would totally take it that way.

Onward, to the poor city, Cincinnati fell from No. 8 to No. 3, behind only Detroit, MI and Buffalo, NY. WHAT?! We are worse than Cleveland? That’s the worst news ever. Mayor Mark Mallory believes there to be a problem with the methodology of this study, but since when is he the foremost expert on construct validity? Cleveland mayor, Frank Jackson, is also in denial, “It really doesn’t mean anything. We went from 1 to 12 to 1. Now we’re 4. That doesn’t really reflect our overall condition.” The tragedy here is not that Cincinnati is full of poverty, the tragedy is that this city has somehow managed to be worse off than both Cleveland and the entire state of Mississippi, how did that happen? I guess the south really will rise again at this rate.

So kids, the lesson of the day is watch out for syphilis and Arlington Heights PD, they’ll get ya!

Filed under: Life in Cincinnati on September 1st, 2007