Video of Brent telling Judge Deborah, "You are not God."

Video and mugshot courtesy of the Lake County Leader.

Forum Software Upgrade and More Fantabulous Procrastination

I'm preparing for an upgrade to version 3.0.whatever-is-current of Invision Power Board.

Crazy Boards runs under IPB 3.0.x, so look there if you want an idea of what the new software is like. We won't look exactly like that, especially since they're fond of modifying the software, but you should get the general idea.

I can't give you an estimate yet as to when it'll start, how long it will take, etc. As always such things depend on my mental and physical health, as well as consecutive hours of relative clarity of thought.  I've downloaded the software and gave the upgrade manual a quick scan, so at least I've started.

As much as I'd rather leave the software as it is, Invision software has announced that the version of the software we now have will no longer be supported. In addition to the usual health excuses, I've been putting off the upgrade because version 3.0.lower-than-it-is-now was really fugly and, in some areas, had less functionality than what we have now. I'm still not a big fan of how it looks, but it does everything the 2.3.5-and-up version does in addition to all the new bells and whistles.

I like 3.1 a lot more, but it's still in beta. I just can't wait for that version if I need any technical support, as support for 2.3.get-with-the-program will end before 3.1 will be stable enough for general release, let alone stable enough for me to install.

As for the procrastination, I've created yet another stupid Facebook group.  Fans of Brent Arthur Wilson.  Why? Brent Arthur Wilson encapsulates the entire zeitgeist of the real estate pyramid scheme of the previous decade. He's probably a criminal. He may be crazy. But is he all that different from the predatory lenders offering, or the would-be house flippers taking out loans where one made payments only on the interest until that final, big-ass balloon payment? Is all the paperwork he filed packed with Biblical references any more bizarre than the recursive, debt-based derivatives that led to the near-collapse of our financial system?

To top it all off, he sasses and mouths off at the judge who is currently in charge of his immediate fate. While acting as his own lawyer. So not only is he charged with stealing oversized houses like the bankers themselves, he's a one man pitchfork-and-torch-carrying mob who doesn't consider himself subservient to a judge, or anyone else who considers one person as being the better of another.

News you can confuse, use, or lose.

There's a proposal before the Missoula city council to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  Naturally a bunch of closed-minded bigots will have problems with that sort of thing, but this one is really special.  NotMyBathroom.com allegedly represents 17 or so groups opposed to the proposal because it would allow men to use the ladies' room and thus frighten and confuse children.

I shit ye not.

It will also force ministers to perform gay marriages, give homosexuals 'special' rights, and the usual litany of orgiastic end-times tribulations.

But they don't hate homosexuals.  Really.

And the various groups that are part of the umbrella organization can't be identified because, you know, gay bashing isn't protected speech.  And since contributing over $100 to a political campaign goes on the public record, everyone who gave more than $100 to California's Prop. 8 suddenly felt threatened and oppressed by homosexuals.

Who is behind the frightened people in the bathrooms?  Tireless WalMart-funded anti-porn crusader Dallas Erickson.  It doesn't matter that there's hardly any porn where he lives, that most of it is in the form of Playboy, Penthouse, and video equivalent, and next to impossible for someone under 18 to look at.  He's one of those guys who stays up late all night worrying that someone is having a good time.  Scroll down to Time to stop this permissiveness to see one of his great anti-porn rants.

Here's the Missoulian's story on NotMyBathroom.com

You know how first / emergency responders have large-scale drills to work out various scenarios.  A bunch of people with nothing better to do act like they've been killed or injured by an earthquake, terrorist attack, bioweapon oopsie, whatever, and the coordinated police, fire, and appropriate other agencies figure out how well their plans would work when there's nothing else happening outside of the few blocks they've roped off.

How do you do that when you don't have much money?  Actual headline:

Playing with fire: Agencies stage disaster using Hot Wheels, Army men

 

The concept of getting paid to be a fireman who plays with army men and Hot Wheels must be giving 8-11 year-olds total hard-ons.

Where do you go if your end-times, Mormon-offshoot religion is too freaky-weird for Utah and Idaho?  Montana!

Religious sect rejected by Utah, Idaho moves to Fromberg

A religious group led by a man who claims to be the Holy Ghost has moved to the Fromberg area after a brief stay in a small Idaho town where residents protested the group's building plans.

Their Fromberg neighbors are wary of the group and law enforcement officials have been notified of the group's activities in Utah and Idaho.

Members of the Church of the Firstborn and General Assembly of Heaven had fled to Idaho from Utah last year after their large home in a Salt Lake City suburb was raided by federal officials investigating claims of child sexual abuse and assassination threats against President Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Last September, the group started moving from Idaho into two homes on a lot at 605 Bridger-Fromberg Road. The main home had been rented by Larry Daniels, who was sentenced last week to prison for murdering his adult son in the house.

The church is led by 43-year-old Terrill Dalton, who said group members are peaceful and felt drawn to Montana.

"We all prayed about where to go next and a lot of people had the same feeling that we ought to go to Montana, somewhere nigh unto Billings, not the city, but nearby," Dalton said.

Geody Harman is the church's co-leader, Dalton's "first counselor." Asked how many people live on the property, Harman had to stop and count.

"Fourteen or 15, something like that. No, it's 16," Harman said. That number includes the 36-year-old Harman's wife and their nine children.

The article continues at the link to the Missoulian.  It's '90s nostalgia.  These folk are the Church Universal and Triumphant of this decade. 

Our good buddy Brent Wilson just can't keep his mouth shut.  The headline in the early edition of the paper I get has a much better headline: Alleged house thief continues to mouth off.  "Mouth off" isn't as good as "sasses," but is still pretty good.

Brent is obviously crazy, and medication would likely help him, especially since he insists on acting as his own lawyer, but I think he's great.  The way he attempted to steal the houses is totally batshit crazy, yet he managed to get a home equity loan for one of them.  He claims to neither have nor need constitutional rights, which is probably his justification for treating Deborah, sorry, Judge Christopher, just like any other person.  A bit dickish perhaps, but it's not like he called her a bitch or threatened her.  He's just asking to be held in contempt of court and/or in crazy lockup, but it could all be weird judicial kung fu.

There's no video of Brent mouthing off, but here's a direct link to the video when he first sassed Judge Deborah Christopher.

Sassing judges: never a good idea

One reason why I love living in Montana: reading this sort of headline in the local paper.

Man accused of stealing Polson-area foreclosed house sasses judge.

Details and video of sassing at the link.

The way he stole foreclosed houses is pretty imaginative.   He'd find a foreclosed house that was on the market, take down the "For Sale" signs, break in change the locks, and file a bunch of weird paperwork.  For example:

"The designation trustee and steward as used herein," it reads, "shall include said resurrected and non-resurrected sons of man, and their heirs as required by context.

"Witnesseth that the trustee, for a valuable consideration paid by the trustee to the creator, Yahweh, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, has and by these presents does grant and convey stewardship unto brent-arthur: in fee-farm, all that certain lot of land situated on Lake, the county, Montana, the land, commonwealth yiisra'el, and more particularly described as follows:"

What follows is a lengthy description that begins with the "third planet from the sun" and ends with plat tract book information.

The document appears to be notarized, but in her charging affidavit, deputy county attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson notes "it does not list the notary's name, expiration of their notary power, or their location." Instead, under an illegible signature, it reads, "My commission expires: upon my final breath."

"I couldn't believe the Clerk and Recorder would take something like this, but what I learned was they can't stop anybody from recording anything," [Ed] McCurdy says.

Ed McCurdy is the Realtor of the foreclosed property in the above example. Mr. Wilson was able to get at least one home equity loan on one of the properties he and Yahweh "own."  I thought lenders were being more careful these days.

Great picture of him in court.  There's something familiar about about this guy...

I couldn't help it.

Most Heartrending Consumer Medication Guide Ever

I saw an ad for Sabril (vigabatrin) in the current issue of Neurology Now, unlike any ad I've seen for a prescription drug in a consumer-oriented magazine. The ad was nothing more than a headline reading "Help for hard-to-treat seizures," the Sabril logo
and 2.75 pages of patient /consumer information. That's it.  No smiling people, no images implying one's life getting back together, no toddler with the helmet on the ground instead of on her head. Just easy-to-read text on epilepsy-awareness purple. If you fill out and send in the postage-paid card attached by the ad, Lundbeck will mail you a package of education materials that may have warm & fuzzy pictures.

Like most ads for medications these days the bulk of the ad buy is comprised of some or all of the medication guide / patient information leaflet.  Sabril's medication guide is also unlike any I've ever seen due to two words used repeatedly throughout the document: your baby.

Whenever the phrase "your baby" is used in consumer information it's always in the context of warning you that a drug could harm your baby if you take it while pregnant and/or breastfeeding.  Infants and 0-year-old children get all sorts of medications and have their own doctors, but in the world of consumer medication information babies rarely do.  Babies get vaccinations, caffeine citrate oral solution is given to premature babies, but little else.

In the second paragraph it states that Sabril is used to treat babies and you and your doctor or your baby's doctor have to decide if the infantile spasms (West Syndrome) is so bad you'll risk vision loss (which is not total blindness, but blurry tunnel vision). 

And the which sucks less for your baby equation is repeated over and over.


There are treatment options that probably suck less. There's prednisone, prescription-strength & pharmaceutical-grade vitamin B-6, ACTH (at the low, low price of $23,000, yes, 23 THOUSAND DOLLARS a vial), Topamax (topiramate), Lamictal (lamotrigine), Zonegran (zonisamide), Depakote (divalproex sodium), Keppra (levetiracetam) and Klonopin (clonazepam).  If the kid's been weaned the ketogenic diet is also an option.

If you look at these treatment guidelines and the American Academy of Neurology's official ones, the only treatments that "probably" work are ACTH (dropped by most insurance companies due to cost), Sabril, and the ketogenic diet, which can take anywhere from two to five months to start working.  Everything else is classified as "maybe it will work." B-6 is probably listed as first-line treatments due to a lower side effect profile.  I don't know why prednisone is, as it has a possible side effect of death.

Left untreated or poorly treated, infantile spasms can result in death.  Which sucks less?


Sabril was approved for use in the US in August 2009, but available to desperate parents since 1988 after the FDA updated its personal use guidelines. Lundbeck doesn't make it any easier to obtain Sabril now that it is approved in the US.  Lundbeck's SHARE program that doctors, pharmacies and patients must pass in order to prove they are qualified to respectively prescribe, dispense, and take (or give to their babies) is just as, if not more complicated than the Clozaril registry upon which it was probably based.  At least there is just one Sabril registry.  Every company that manufactures generic clozapine has its own registry.

Ironic Gun Safety Lesson or Subversive Recruiting Technique?

Superintendent accidentally discharges muzzleloader in class

Dwain Haggard’s high school history lesson on Friday backfired.

Haggard, who used to be a Civil War reenactor, was showing the five students in Reed Point High’s American history class his replica antique black powder muzzleloader when the gun fired and lodged a ball in the front wall of the classroom.

“I can’t explain how it was loaded,” Haggard said.

Haggard has been district superintendent since 2007, and each year he’s visited the high school’s American history class to show off his Civil War-era equipment. When he shows the muzzleloader, he finishes the demonstration by firing a cap, which makes a small “pop” when he pulls the trigger, he said.

But this time, “when I dropped the hammer on it, to all of our surprise, it went off,” he said.

Jake Bare, a junior at Reed Point High, was in the class when the gun fired. He said it caught everybody off guard.

When Haggard pulled the trigger, there was a loud bang,and the room filled with smoke, Bare said.

“Holy criminy, you just shot the map,” he said.

Indeed, the ball shot through the “o” in the word “North” at the top of the map and lodged in the wall, Haggard said.

[...]

He described the incident as “bitter irony.” As superintendent, Haggard has worked with the school to increase safety at the school, updating its drills and the training staff receives.

Just one of those things that makes for a funny news story, right?

The thing is, the Freemen are making a comeback here in Montana.  Talk about being on the bleeding edge of '90s nostalgia; and perfectly timed with the growing torches and pitchforks anger and outrage the teabaggers are directing at the federal government and banksters. They haven't forgotten their roots.  In addition to starting petitions to recall elected officials...

Paul Stramer now heads a small group called Lincoln County Watch, where leaders of the unsuccessful petition drive attend meetings.

The group gathers in Eureka to talk about the "banksters" at the Federal Reserve, the judges "bought and paid for," the conspiracy that took America off the gold standard, and the need to "prepare for the worst."

Stramer has set his van up as a high-tech mobile communication base, he said, and is collecting silver against the collapse of the dollar.

"There may come a time," Stramer said at a recent Eureka meeting, one of many posted by the group on YouTube, "when the precious metal of choice is lead, because at least you can make some bullets out of it and shoot something to eat, and defend your family."

Participants at Lincoln County Watch meetings have told of Black Hawk helicopters landing in the rural area, and mysterious SUV's with dark windows and no plates, men in black, and C-130 planes flying low over the remote border town, the YouTube videos show.

Stramer, in turn, recommends that citizens carry radios and cameras to track covert government activity - creating a "local patriot network."

One take-no-prisoners issue the Freeman and Tea Party have is 2nd Amendment absolutism.  If the 2nd Amendment doesn't afford enough protection, Montana has added the 10th.  The Montana Firearms Freedom Act states that any gun and any ammunition manufactured and sold in Montana is exempt from federal regulation under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.  It doesn't state which state agency, if any, would be responsible for regulating made-in-Montana guns.

You can buy a left-handed 6mm Varminter now.  But what if you can't afford it now?  And by the time you can the ATF has a problem with it?  Who is going to protect the citizens of Montana from ATF interference in our God-given right to own hand-made, small-caliber, single-shot rifles?  Or muskets?

County sheriffs.  "Constitutional" county sheriffs have always been on the front lines of protecting our civil rights, albeit hypothetically:

While many of [former Utah sheriff Richard] Mack's backers are gun owners who believe the country is taking away their Second Amendment rights, Mack said true "constitutional" sheriffs will protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans on any front.

"What would a constitutional sheriff have done in 1959?" Mack asked the crowd.

When the call came in to the Montgomery County, Ala., sheriff's office that a black woman was refusing to move to the back of the bus - as required by law - the sheriff would have arrived on the scene and talked to Rosa Parks.

"Ma'am, what's the problem," a constitutional sheriff would have asked her, Mack said. Told she had taken an empty seat and just wanted to be left alone, the constitutional sheriff would have sat down next to her, ridden with her to her stop - and, once off, for good measure taken her into a whites-only restaurant so she could buy sandwiches for her and her husband.

He'd have then escorted her home, Mack said - asked if her husband was armed and could defend his family if anyone upset by what had happened came around and threatened them - and ordered extra patrols of the house.

"Remember, segregation wasn't a tradition, it was the law of the land," Mack said. "Rosa Parks taught us what you do with stupid laws."

Which brings us back to superintendent Haggard and his one-man Civil War reenactment.  He shoots at the North, literally, as an act of rebellion against the Federal Government.  He reminds the students how far the government will go to enforce its dominion over the states and citizenry.  True patriots must be willing to stand up and defend themselves.  With muskets and varminters.

This bit of pseudo-paranoia is brought to you by:

 Batshit Crazy shirts.

Alternative History Cartography: Japanese Division

I don't expect much in the way of accuracy from a globe that's a paper balloon (kami fuusen).  For what it is the geographic features and political boundaries are pretty good; far more accurate than the wildly distorted boundaries of the Ohio Arts globes I'm so found of.  The errors that are here, accidental or intentional, are still amusing.

As the globe is from Japan I'm hardly surprised the Kuril Islands are depicted as Japanese territory, so that doesn't count.

The globe was designed in, or based on maps from early 1990.  This is easily apparent as Germany and Yemen are divided, the Baltic states are independent, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia haven't broken up, and Eritrea is still part of Ethiopia. 

While the most sloppily rendered section, the European nation states are relatively accurate for that time; allowing for Belgium and Luxembourg being too small to bother with displaying, and Switzerland and Italy being too similar in color to show up in this picture.  Someone had it in for France.  So far so good, right?

Now we get into the parallel universe.  In addition to losing the Baltic states, the USSR has split into Soviet Russia (approximate translation) and Kazakhstan (Kazafusutan), which is comprised of all of the Soviet Stans.  It's not clear from this picture that Afghanistan is an independent state as it's the same color as the super-sized Kazakhstan.

In spite of the pro-Stan stance the cartographer had, Pakistan got the short end of the stick when it comes to Kashmir.  India has full control of it.  But what the cartographer gave with one hand, the cartographer has taken away with the other.  It looks like the separatists in Northeast India got what they wanted.  Almost.  Instead of being an independent nation they're part of the unlikeliest country on the planet to have any territorial ambitions: Bhutan!  Some of the states joined with Bhutan, Burma grabbed the rest and half of Bangladesh as well.

In the early 1960s the Malay states, Sarawak, Sabah, Singapore and Brunei were trying to come to terms with their numerous conflicting, ethnic, religious and political forces and enclaves as they struggled for independence.  Eventually the first three formed what is now Malaysia, Singapore became a city-state, and Brunei decided to remain a British Protectorate until 1984.  At the time there were all sorts of possible outcomes, and an independent North Borneo Federation was one of them, albeit an unlikely one.  Especially unlikely was naming the federation Brunei and moving Bandar a few hundred miles west.

At first I thought they considered Microsoft's headquarters as the co-capital of the United States.  Nope.  That's Toronto.  Why Toronto is in Washington state and when it replaced Ottawa as the capital of Canada are the greatest mysteries of this globe.







I don't know who makes this globe, but you can get one of your own from J-List.