This test will help determine how cool you are:

Recently, a 14-year old Hamtramck student was forcibly removed from a basketball game for failing to remove his hood during the national anthem. And it sounds like he was roughed up a little bit by the police. Fortunately, it’s been caught on camera.

The video “shows one of Hamtramck’s reserve police officers following the student out of the stands, then grabbing him by the back of his neck, leading him outside the school, then pushing him against the building.” The officer becomes strangely silent when he notices he’s on film – and conjures a half-baked story about how the 14-year old “shoved him.” The video unfortunately is not on Youtube, and it doesn’t appear to be available for download. For the time being though, it’s on the main page of DetroitWild.tv

The officer is actually a “reserve officer” which in most departments is an unpaid, volunteer position. Real cops hate reserve officers; they can’t carry firearms, they get in the way, and they’re a liability. They want to dress up and “play” cop from time to time, and essentially, they are glorified mall-cops with mag-lites.
I’ve heard on the local radio, school policy dictates that hats must be removed during the playing of the national anthem, although the article notes that a School Board member said that the district “[doesn’t] have a written policy on the matter.” The deification of a song notwithstanding, this kid isn’t wearing a hat. He’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt. At most he’s guilty of violating some social norms, and depending on where you sit politically, bad manners.

This is hardly grounds for removal from the game, especially when there is no policy to the contrary, and throwing the kid up against the wall, harassing him once outside is entirely unjustifiable; it defies both law and reason.

Well, besides stubborn…

I am house-sitting/dog-sitting for the parents who are on a week-long riverboat tour in France.

I am looking forward to more snow, I hear the resorts in Northern Michigan are open for the season.

I am planning a trip to Heavenly or Squaw Valley, at Lake Tahoe, CA for my annual ski/snowboard trip. I hate how certain resorts don’t list their prices/fees on the website, mostly because I hate human interaction. I’m unlikely to ever stay at your resort if I have to call someone to get a quote. We will be visiting a friend from college who moved out there a few years ago, who, coincidentally, is the owner of my old snowboard. I wonder if he’s still riding that thing?

I am trying to lose weight; I would like to lose 15 pounds. I hate running because I’m out of shape, and I’m out of shape because I hate running. But I know that when I run consistently, the extra pounds literally melt away.

I am happy to be done with school for the next five weeks, should have my grades early next week. I am relieved to be done with class for the time-being, but I seem pretty busy, anyways.