In Which I Say Something Nice about Ghost Adventures

If you don’t watch it, Ghost Adventures is a show in which three giant douches (I used to think it was two giant douches and a poor put-upon sweetheart, but I was wrong) go around and, after a flurry of “Dude”s and “Bro”s, get locked into supposedly haunted sites in which they yell at ghosts and behave rather douchily towards each other.

Last week, they were investigating an abandoned home for the developmentally disabled. And, as they usually do, they interviewed various people about what it was like–the tv reporter who had discovered deplorable conditions inside the home, the people who were sent in to run it and help close it down after said deplorable conditions were discovered, and a woman who lived at the home.

It could have been a disaster–a giant douche interviewing a woman with conditions giant douches are normally uncomfortable with.

But instead, she was treated just the same as everyone else who was interviewed and she spoke about her (non-paranormal) experiences and explained why she behaved how she did when she was in the home and how it was in response to the deplorable conditions.

And then the douche was off to the next interview.

It was really nice to see her treated just like everyone else interviewed on the show–as someone who would, of course, have important information to impart.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. But it really stood out because you so rarely see it on TV.

It also made me wonder if one of the reasons I like these kinds of shows is not for the ghost stories, but for the chance to hear real people talk about their real stories (no matter what those stories are).

I don’t know.

Whew, I am in Over My Head

How it’s set up here at work, there’s a main IT department that gives advice to the people with IT duties in each department.  This is pretty hilarious because I am our office’s IT person.

What’s hilarious about this, you might ask?

Yesterday, I “solved” a co-worker’s computer problem by installing Vista.

I keep asking the main IT folks if I can’t relinquish my IT status, but the answer is always no.  Apparently, once you’re in, you’re in for life, regardless of how little you actually know.

Sam Coleman Owes Some of Us an Apology

Holy cow! I came across this story while doing the Morning Roundup over at Pith, about how Councilmember Sam Coleman wants Nashville to allow guns in our more rural parks because they might be dangerous.

And I really can’t decide which is worse–that at a time when the Parks budget is being gone over with a fine-tooth comb and when people’s jobs are on the chopping block, some Councilmember is going around naming which parks he thinks are so unsafe that you need a gun to go to them? If the Bell’s Bend Park gets closed in order to save money because it’s so “rural” and “isolated” and “dangerous,” because of Coleman’s slander, I’m going to be pissed.

Or the insinuation that the rural people in Davidson County are such a bunch of evil rednecks that we hide in our parks and just wait for naive, unarmed city folks to come into our parks and then it’s just all Deliverance all the time. I mean, who else does he think are going to sit around rural, isolated parks just hoping that someone might come by?

It’s just so fucking insulting, to insinuate that people need to arm themselves against us, because we’re so damn dangerous.

And I also don’t want to open up a  whole other can of worms, but it’s not like they frisk you at the entrance to the parks. The point of having our rural parks gun-free is not so that they are actually gun-free, but so that people who aren’t used to rural noises, including animals that get very close to you in the brush or the sound of gun-fire echoing off the hills more close to you than you might expect, don’t feel like their first reaction should be to reach for their guns and start shooting.

Yes, that’s right, you urban Barney Fifes. We are just as afraid of you as you are of us.