Guilty of Being Hyped

If anyone ever wants to know if I want to be rich or famous; I'll fucking be the first to say RICH NOT FAMOUS. People say if you're famous you can get away with anything, fuck that, if you're rich you can get away with anything. Look at Enron, they steal millions and the law's hands are tied. If I went out and suck up a convenience store for $200 I'd be getting felt-up by my 300-pound cellmate before I even got to spend it all. But, look at Ken Lay, he stole millions and died of old age before he was even arraigned! That's the power of wealth. But if you're famous, you might get the other shoe, you might get an example made out of you.

It happened to Michael Vick, he got 2 years for dog fighting and Donte Stallworth killed a guy with a .126 B.A.C. and was sentenced to 30 days but only had to serve 24 days. It's all about the hype, that makes your sentence. Now I'm sure you've all heard about the balloon boy, if you haven't here is what happened, a science loving family wanted made a weather balloon or something and it became unmoored and one of the children went missing. One of the brothers said that the kid was inside of the balloon and military, police and the media tracked the balloon for the millions watching from their homes. People's hearts sank when it finally landed and the boy was not on board. At this point I decided to go out and start my day and I heard about it everywhere, and with good reason, it's a very strange and unsettling story. Though I can't actually prove this, you just have to take my word for it but I said, "it's probably just a case of him letting the balloon go being scared and hiding." And according to a report about two hours later I was totally right. I'm glad I was right, that is an awful thing to happen to anyone, and it would be terrible to think if the boy had fallen out. But was I staring into the future on some weird psychic premonition? I wish I could say I was, but the truth is, when I read that it was a child saying that the boy was in the balloon and nobody else could corroborate the story I started to get suspicious.

Kids say the darnedest things, they even had a show about it. I remember they had this one where a boy tells Bill Cosby he has over 30 girlfriends... Did anyone boo him or was anyone jealous of him? NO! He's a fucking kid, he wasn't expected to have a crystal clear grasp of the implications of his statement or even an accurate picture of the world and his place in it. A kid says he saw his brother climb in to the mini zeppelin; does that mean he's a lying? He doesn't even have to be, he could be mistaken, he could be joking or playing and didn't realize the gravity of the situation (pun obviously not intended). Look at Up or James and the Giant Peach and tell me that to a kid that doesn't seem like fun? The idea of floating away in a balloon probably is completely different to a kid than an adult. But then I saw these things:

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-heene-announcement-101709,0,1230222.story
(This is the Fox story which is written in fucking Sanskrit or something)

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=125161&catid=339
(Here is another version which is legible but lacks the accusatory tone of the first one)


They want to charge this family with a crime now. This sends an awesome message, if your kids are missing don't waste the police's time EVEN IF YOU THINK THEY ARE FLOATING IN A BALLOON 1,000 FEET IN THE AIR! I don't know what the fuck people are thinking sometimes with this. People wonder why there are families that don't immediately report their missing children, but it's obvious now the media will crucify them either way. We can't even go an entire week just focusing on the good things, the police responded quickly, air traffic cleared the way, the military did their job. But if you INSIST on pointing the finger, point it at the police officers, they had nothing better to do but sit around and wait. You want to tell me in 5 fucking hours nobody bothered to sweep the house again, especially after they realized the kid wasn't in the balloon? There is this thing called Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is the best, one with the least amount of assumptions; every dumbass who has taken a freshman level critical thinking class in college has a different idea of what exactly it means, but if you have two theories the one that is the simplest is probably the right one. Think about it, a 6-year-old boy was lifted by a weather balloon that couldn't lift 19 pounds or the eye witness testimony of a preschooler isn't exactly iron-clad. There really is no excuse if you can investigate both at the same time anyway.

But as for all the people claiming this was a publicity stunt; that shit is just funny to me, we fucking gave it publicity. Think of how stupid the story is, a kid says another kid is in a balloon and it turns out he isn't. If they planned it, they would have had to know the outcome and realize there is no foundation to that story and people would forget it in a few weeks. No person smart enough to build a weather balloon would be stupid enough to think they could ride that accomplishment their whole life. The outcome of such a strange and unusual story would be impossible to predict, unless you were to know the outcome (lest we forget who did, ha ha). But people were saying that in a CNN interview the boy said he thought it was for a show or something to that effect. That could mean anything, as far as I'm concerned you can't always believe what kids say, I can even remember this one time a while back where a kid said HIS BROTHER WAS IN A WEATHER BALLOON WHEN HE WASN'T! Besides he was on a show once, a reality show called WifeSwap, and since he was a very young boy and it was a reality show and there was a media circus on his front lawn reporting on 'reality'; there is a million conclusions he could have reached, and at his age how does he even parse out reality from fiction? And the Fox article (which reads like bathroom graffiti and frankly makes me seem like I'm writing Shakespeare) kind of eluded to the fact that the boy has to play sick so he doesn't have to do any interviews, Ha, I wonder why that is? Think of this disgusting metaphor for the sensationalist media, seasoned journalists bugging the shit out of a six year-old for an interview to the point he has to throw up... twice... You go Wolf Blitzer, nail that fucking kid, Americans need a confession, I mean look at how much time we invested into caring for him and his family. Nobody deserves to be cared for, unless they actually are the victims of a tragedy!

Oh by the way, I just want to thank all of the people who were outside PROTESTING when the Heene father was inside the police station, you guys really made me feel like a better person for not being you. It's one thing to be upset you were possibly sort of deceived, but I was just thinking how fucking petty it was to go out and buy signs, think of a clever slogan, paint them, staple them to a piece of wood, find a parking place, stand outside in the cold and wait for him to come out so he can see how upset you are... That is just so funny to me that you would say, "Yes this is what I'm going to do with my with my day today! I'm going to wait outside here until he comes out, all day if I have to, so I can give him a piece of my mind for wasting my time. There he is, the man who may or may not have lied to us to just get attention, everyone stop what you are doing and Boo that man!" I'd love to just know what right people think they have anyway, how many of those people actually volunteered to help find that boy? How many of those people even helped them because it was their job and they were getting paid? How many of their lives were even slightly affected by this? Probably none, people just loved to be pissed off at something. "Lying six year-olds and weather balloons, BOOOOOO!"