This just in: At this hour, "the temporary" John McIntire is devoting his entire KDKA (1020) talk show to last night's incident at the Downtown GetGo.
McIntire says Our Fair City has the potential to become "the fake severed penis capital of the United States."
I'm trying to envision that painted on the side of the police cars and the fire trucks, and I'm just not seeing it.
McIntire is speculating that this couple was actually using the patented "Whizzinator," a device designed to simulate the human male member which can be filled with urine and used to beat drug tests.
I have just reviewed the products on the Whizzinator website, and now, I have to run off and wash my eyes out with bleach.
You know, I never thought I'd hear an hour-long discussion about McKeesport and fake penii on KDKA, formerly the radio home of "Uncle Ed" Schaughency, Ed and Wendy King, Rege Cordic, Sterling Yates and Mike Levine. On WEDO, sure, but not on KDKA.
Meanwhile, and I am not making this up, Giant Eagle management is assuring the public that --- in the interest of cleanliness --- the microwave used to warm up the fake organ in question has been discarded.
We can sleep soundly; our long, national nightmare is over.
(Editor's Note: See update below.)
Some mornings I wake up and have absolutely nothing to write about (which you've no doubt noticed if you've been here more than once).
Other days, I wake up, turn on the radio, and the good Lord just drops a topic right into my ... well, my lap.
This, as reported by KDKA-TV, is what happens when we don't have a decent restaurant Downtown:
Authorities are now investigating a strange incident in McKeesport. Someone brought a severed male body part to a GetGo to heat up in the microwave, and now police are trying to find the culprit.
McKeesport police say a man walked into the store, located on Fifth Avenue, and asked the clerk to use the microwave oven.
After the clerk noticed a strange smell coming from the microwave, she opened the door and discovered human male genitalia cooking inside.
The man ran from the store after she made the discovery. She then called the police. Some people were shocked at the news of the discovery.
Chief Pero said the woman who was in the store contacted police this morning and said the object was a sex toy filled with urine. Chief Pero said she explained it needed to be heated to body temperature for use in an employment drug screen she needed to take.
I wanna tank all you wunnerful, wunnerful people out inna Internet lent for all offa your wunnerful cards anna letters. Tonight, Joe "Fingers" Carr and "Big Tiny" Little are gonna play a medley of state songs, but first, the orchestra issa gonna do dat ol' Duke Ellington standard, "Take a Train." An-a one an-a two ...
Sorry, I was channelling Lawrence Welk for a second. Let me pause to turn off the bubble machine while Stephanie Ax of Peabody, Kansas, asks:
"Do you have any info or photos of Rankin Wire Mill or Wire-Drawing Department, Braddock Wire Works in Rankin, or Braddock Axle Works. My family (grand father and great grandfather) lived in East McKeesport and worked at these places. I haven't been back to Pennsylvania for almost 30 years and probably won't get another chance to visit."
"I came across your interesting site and wonder if you had stumbled across mine? Click on special features, then on 'McKeesport and its Tube Works.' A name index of 12,000 employees at the Tube Works in McKeesport is online there along with much other stuff."
"Don't know if you're familiar with Zack Weisinger. He just won a big award for his guitar playing at the International Blues Convention. (See the link.) He's from West Mifflin, an '05 high school grad and an amazing guitarist. Something for your site?"
A good friend of mine works for a Fortune 500 publicly traded company in Western Pennsylvania. (Having made the decision to actually stay in engineering school instead of deciding to become a newspaper reporter, he also actually makes money, which he uses to buy goods and services, but that's irrelevant.)
Anyway, as we've done on an almost daily basis since high school, we constantly send stupid information and pranks back and forth. Nowadays, however, instead of passing notes, sending vulgar postcards, or leaving snotty messages on each others' answering machines, we send emails.
They usually include really useful stuff, like this webpage where the "Froggy" radio stations are asking people to guess the make, model, year and color of a car that's been crushed into a cube.
But like I said, he works for a Fortune 500 company (I shall call it "Megacorp"), and when he sends this stuff, it comes with the following disclaimer attached:
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
This message, together with any attachments, may be legally privileged and is confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. It is exempt from disclosure under applicable law including court orders. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution or copy of this message, or any attachment, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the original sender and delete this message, along with any attachments, from your computer.
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
This message, together with any bulls--t disclaimers, is completely insane, and may be confidential information intended for people who own Members Only jackets. Also, if the lawyers at Megacorp think that their stupid disclaimer exempts them from a court order, then they're dumber than a bagful of hammers, and the management should fire the entire f--king legal department. If you have received this message in error, then I feel very sorry for you, so please notify the original sender and delete this message, along with any attachments, then delete your hard drive.
This message, together with any artichokes, contains tiny electrons, neutrons and protons, and zips through the Interweb at the speed of light. It may also contain not more than five percent mouse turds by volume. It is exempt from court orders, the laws of physics, Newton's third law of thermodynamics, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. I'm really glad I'm not a f--king lawyer, because if I had to sit around and write stupid s--t like this all day, I'd get a rope, find a tree, and end it.
The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.
Bloggers?
Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.
About 90 percent of Americans have a checking or savings account, according to the Federal Reserve Bank and the FDIC. How many would be happy if they no longer received a statement, either in paper on online? And if the bank no longer gave them a receipt for their deposits?
"We're bankers," the bank would say. "Of course you can trust us."
I'm guessing a lot of people would start burying their money in mayonaisse jars under the back porch.
Or what if your company stopped itemizing your paychecks?
"We're doing your deductions accurately," your boss would say. "Don't worry. We'd never cheat you. Honest."
Bet you wouldn't work there very long.
So why would you want to vote on a voting machine that leaves no records and can never be checked?
In the wake of the 2000 Florida election debacle, the U.S. Congress rammed through legislation outlawing several kinds of voting machines, including the old lever machines popular in Western Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania officials have given blanket approvals to only three types of voting machines for use in the state --- eight others have been certified "with restrictions."
None of the approved machines leave a paper trail that can be audited. All of them use proprietary software that, for competitive reasons, the companies will not release for public inspection.
The feds have offered millions of dollars to Allegheny, Westmoreland and other counties to upgrade their voting machines --- but only if they jump and approve one of these "black box" systems right now.
This is a little like the car salesman who says that if you don't buy today, you're not going to get that super low price and the big factory rebate. And as you drive off the lot in your new chariot, you notice that the seat hurts your back and that the A/C smells like a cat with a weak bladder.
Conspiracy theorists are het up about this because two of the companies pushing these voting machines --- Diebold Inc. and ES&S --- have close ties to the Republican Party. The CEO of Diebold was one of the biggest fund-raisers for President Bush's re-election effort in Ohio in 2004, and promised to "deliver" that state to the Republicans. Meanwhile, Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hegel of Nebraska is the former chairman of ES&S's parent company, and still a major investor.
And Diebold and ES&S are the only two companies that have bid on the contract to replace Allegheny County's voting machines.
Personally, I don't see conspiracy here. I see incompetence and a rush to judgment. But I can understand why the conspiracy theorists have plenty of ammunition --- it's funny how all of the decisions are benefiting the party in power.
I'm less worried about the possibility of Diebold or ES&S trying to fix an election than I am about their machines going flooie and miscounting or not counting a bunch of votes. Most of these systems run on Windows-based computers, and it seems like every week, some new security flaw is found in Windows.
I wouldn't want a Windows-based computer doing anything critical --- imagine having a Windows-based pacemaker, for instance: "The application right_ventricle.exe has committed a fatal error and has shut down. The right atrium is in use by an unknown device. Abort, retry, bury?"
I guess the question is, do you trust Bill Gates with your democracy? (Personally, I don't trust him with my checkbook or my photos of the Dayton Hamvention, but that's me.)
The lever machines we use now are a lot of things --- 40 years old, complicated to maintain, large to store and heavy to transport. But they also work something like an old mechanical adding machine; when you pull the levers and press the button to record your vote, they print out a running tally on a long paper receipt. (That's what all the noise and clanking of gears means.) It also clicks up the totals on a mechanical counter.
So long as the machine doesn't run out of paper or ink, or jam, it will constantly record the votes. The paper record allows it to be audited later on for accuracy. And even if the power goes off, big levers allow the machines to be hand-cranked.
I'm not arguing for keeping those beasts, by the way. But I find it astonishing that in a country where you can go to Sheetz, order an MTO hoagie via the computer, and get a receipt confirming your toppings, that we can't seem to build a reliable electronic voting machine that leaves a paper trail.
It also astonishes me that more Pennsylvanians aren't upset about this. It's not too complicated to understand. It affects every single registered voter in the state, let alone the nation.
Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato is planning to announce his "preferred vendor" at tonight's county council meeting. Since both systems the county is considering are lousy, this is like deciding how you'd prefer to die --- suffocation or eaten by alligators?
Democrats and some Republicans are planning to pass a motion tonight directing the county's Board of Elections to consider other alternatives.
That's got Onorato steamed (I heard him interviewed on the radio the other day, and he sounded madder'n a wet hen) because the county could lose $12 million in federal cash if it doesn't buy the new machines this month.
But I tend to agree with Republican Councilman Vince Gastgeb, who tells the Post-Gazette, "If you make a mistake, it's going to cost a lot more than $12 million."
Yeah --- it could cost your favorite candidate (Democrat, Republican, or Whig, for that matter) an election some day.
Email or phone your county councilman or councilwoman today and urge them to support this motion.
In Our Fair City, Dravosburg, Duquesne, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Township, Forward Township, Glassport, Liberty, Lincoln, Port Vue, South Versailles Township, Versailles, West Mifflin and White Oak, it's Jay Jabbour (cljabbour@county.allegheny.pa.us or 412-350-6565).
In Braddock, Braddock Hills, Chalfant, East McKeesport, Monroeville, North Braddock, North Versailles Township, Pitcairn, Rankin, Swissvale, Trafford, Turtle Creek, Wall, Whitaker and Wilmerding, it's Dr. Chuck Martoni (cmartoni@county.allegheny.pa.us or 412-350-6560).
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