Welcome to REVERB – The Sound’s recap of the top stories (and some not-so-top) involving Annapolis and Anne Arundel County that we found interesting enough to send your way… with a complimentary side of… well, sarcasm.
Could We BE Any Lazier?
I believe I’ve touched on this particular subject before, but now because it’s totally out of control, I feel we really must revisit it. Because anymore, I suppose it’s just bad business to expect people to do the right thing on their own. The issue? A whole mess of organizations in the City had to actually spend resources to create a guide book for handicapped parking spaces.
Guidebook. Handicapped parking spaces. Something other than “Don’t park there able-bodied morons,” I suppose. Which is unfortunate really, because that’s all that should be necessary.
Eye on Annapolis told us last week the “guides emphasize that unlawfully using a handicapped parking space, for even a short period of time, is illegal. It can create safety issues for individuals with disabilities that depend on the safe harbor these spaces provide.”
Really? Gee, and here I thought the little wheelchair on the symbol meant that someone would come give me a ride into the store if I parked in that space.
I’m going to go ahead and take a wild guess that the ratio of genuinely uninformed people parking in the spaces to people that just suck at life parking in the spaces is so skewed, it’s not even a legitimate statistic.
I mean let’s be serious – it’s almost shameful that there even needs to be a movement to crack down on illegal parking in handicapped spaces. You know it, I know it, really everyone knows it. They just refuse to acknowledge it.
This is really a fantastic measure of the moral character of society. It’s a pop quiz on our character, and failing scores are grossly outnumbering the passing ones.
The article doesn’t mention what will happen to the people found in violation of this law, but I would hope the punishment is something that involves having their car towed to an impound lot three states away and then forcing them to walk to retrieve it.
This should make at least a few people think twice before illegally parking in a space another person genuinely needs just so they can be ten steps closer to the entrance to the grocery store where they buy their Twinkies and sodas.
The Dead Truth About Discretion
So this is…well, it’s weird. A fire department spokesperson announced that a body was found off Route 100 on Saturday. Maryland Gazette said that originally units were called for a reported “cardiac arrest” but the call was quickly amended to “dead on arrival,” and most of the units were cancelled.
The paramedic unit that did respond took six minutes at the scene to officially “confirm that the decomposing body was indeed deceased.” An identification was made from items recovered from the body.
So now what ever happened to discretion? I’m all for transparency when it’s information vital to the survival of society like the goings on of the government, but why on earth did someone think the world needed to know that a decomposed body was found off the side of a major highway?
No foul play was involved, so I don’t think we need to be on the lookout for a Bundy-wannabe dumping bodies along Route 100, and identification of the victim was not released so it’s a pretty safe guess that the body wasn’t Tupac or someone who would create national media attention.
Which brings me back to my original question which was what happened to discretion? If there is a decomposing body off of Route 100, I truly do not want to know. My day is not made any better knowing that the City is pretending to be transparent, informing the public of crucial information when I know they are just going to crawl back into their holes when something seriously significant happens.
And then there’s this: Someone called the paramedics on a decomposing body? From what I know about decomposing bodies (and let’s face it, with six seasons of Bones under my belt, it’s a buttload of information), it’s pretty hard to accidentally think one is still alive. I mean, what with all the maggots and the eyeballs popping out of the half-eaten flesh, I would think it would be a pretty easy call.
Attention Returning War Heroes: Pack light
The Baltimore Sun reported last week that Delta Airlines committed one of the greatest faux pas by an airline in history of wartime when soldiers returning from duty in Afghanistan were charged $200 each to check a fourth bag.
The airline has since apologized stated that it will no longer charge military personnel for extra bags. Oh, well good, at least we know their lawyers know what to say to appease the general public.
I realize there are regulations which people working for the airlines must follow, and fees for extra checked luggage is one of them, but did no one in the vicinity witnessing this particular event think it was strange and possibly inadvisable to insist members of the U.S. Army returning from defending our freedom pay extra fees to check luggage that likely contained equipment and supplies used in said freedom-defending mission?
So there wasn’t one person with more working brain cells than the others who stopped to think, “Oh hey these passengers in the camouflage sure do have a lot of luggage, maybe I should take a second and think about where they’re coming from in their camouflage and quite possibly we are damn lucky that these brave people are making it home alive so I think maybe the airline can unclench for a few moments while we don’t charge them for checking a fourth freaking bag!”
Just a thought.
Playground Today, Condemned Hothouse Tomorrow
Historic Annapolis Patch shared what is surely an historic event in the goings on about town – Westfield Annapolis Mall cut the ribbon on a new children’s play area!
Sound the horns, string the banners and uncork the champagne!
Color me impressed that these playthings at malls even still exist. I’m genuinely surprised that the CDC at some point didn’t make a sweep of the country and shut them all down.
I’m also surprised that they haven’t been named the primary North American breeding grounds for tuberculosis and the Ebola virus, but I suppose that’s a topic for another time.
I was the little kid all the children playing in the germ pit looked at and felt bad for. “Oh look,” they sneezed to their acquaintances who would also come down with some sort of penicillin-resistant bacteria later that same day, “the sad little redhead isn’t allowed on the giant booger-covered slide with us.”
Sad little redhead I was not. “It’s germy,” my mom told me. I doubt she had to tell me more than once since even as a teeny toddler, my vocabulary surpassed that of anyone parking illegally in a handicapped space, and I knew all definitions and implications of the word “germy.”
Those kids may have felt bad for me but what they didn’t know was that I judged them for playing around on the mall jungle gym, and I judged them hard. I watched kids in preschool start coughing onto the crayons and wiping green stuff onto their sleeves and I knew. Oh, I knew – they had been at the mall playground.
So congratulations Westfield Annapolis for continuing the tradition of disgusting, virus-ridden children that no one but their parents want to touch. It’s a shining accomplishment.
Yet Another Reason Americans are Punchlines
This is why I hope to God my children want to play pretty much any sport but Little League baseball.
Hometown Annapolis reported yesterday that a Kent Island Little League team was banned from participating in the championship game because of an inappropriate outburst by the coach to the umpire during the previous game.
The league would not comment but for a prepared statement that said “misconduct by the manager and several spectators violated the codes of conduct and demonstrated behavior detrimental to the goals, objectives and reputation of the game”
Evidently the manager ran out on the field to express his disgust at a certain call by the umpire “in less than diplomatic terms” and “cursed in front of the players.”
They players were seven and eight year-olds.
Seriously.
These kids barely know how to add and subtract, they’re practically batting in diapers, and the coach is throwing a profanity-laced tantrum? It’s baseball! It’s a GAME. I mean I realize this isn’t Candyland, but it’s also not a meeting of UN delegates to discuss a nuclear arms treaty. It’s a freaking game. People need to chill the heck out.
And before you get your panties in a twist and accuse me of not getting the competitive nature of sports, I played soccer for sixteen years at high levels. I know competition. I know profanity-laced outbursts. I know flipping out on referees and crying for days over a loss. But key here is that I was a player. The competitiveness and intensity is for the players. Parents and coaches have no place getting sucked into the whirlpool of unprofessional behavior demonstrated by athletes. Athletes get carried away, lost in a sea of emotions, and that’s understandable. Parents and coaches are there to cheer them on, calm them down, and console them when necessary, not upstage them by snapping on an umpire.
The manager later made this mea culpa: “It wasn’t a good moment for me. My behavior was totally inappropriate.”
Well a fat lot of good that does now, sir. You’ve already let the world know you have the integrity of a crouton.
So of course the manager got suspended from coaching in the championship for his incredibly poor lack of judgment and self-control, but the icing on the cake was that the entire team was banned from participating in the game because it wasn’t just the coach who went postal.
Of course it wasn’t. This is Little League after all, and everyone is nuts. Also involved in the argument between the managers and the umpire were “several spectators,” at least one identified as a parent on the banned team. The families of the banned players are protesting this because they argue this particular spectator wasn’t a parent.
He was a grandparent.
Oh. My. Goodness.
This will qualify as this week’s sign of the apocalypse. Little League is so officially out of control that grandparents are getting involved in arguments with umpires. The moral fiber of society is crumbling down around our ears.
Hey parents, do you feel like fools now? Your ridiculous behavior just got your first graders banned from a championship game.
I hope you all lose sleep for months.
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