:D

Ricky Gervais for the WSJ: Why I'm an Atheist →

“My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith”. If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”

Festivus for the rest of us, O.C. Jail style →

The Sheriff’s Department interviewed King about his religious leanings in May. When asked what his religion was, he answered “Healthism.”

“He’s healthy so he said health and added an ‘ism,’” said Thiagarajah, who acknowledged to the county and a judge and to The Watchdog that it was a farce.

This made my November and December.

…how refreshing

I’m so terrible at updating this that I should just delete it

Detroit native Charlie LeDuff for Mother Jones on the killing of 7 year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones and the decline of Detroit.

But the SWAT team didn’t wait. Maybe because the cameras were rolling, maybe because a Detroit police officer had been murdered two weeks earlier while trying to apprehend a suspect. This was the first raid on a house since his death.

Police first floated [9] the story that Aiyana’s grandmother had grabbed Weekley’s gun. Then, realizing that sounded implausible, they said she’d brushed the gun as she ran past the door. But the grandmother says she was lying on the far side of the couch, away from the door. 

Compounding the tragedy is the fact that the police threw the grenade into the wrong apartment. The suspect fingered for Blake’s murder, Chauncey Owens, lived in the upstairs flat, with Charles Jones’ sister.

Plus, grenades are rarely used when rounding up suspects, even murder suspects. But it was dark. And TV may have needed some pyrotechnics.

“I’m worried they went Hollywood,” said a high-ranking Detroit police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigation and simmering resentment in the streets. “It is not protocol. And I’ve got to say in all my years in the department, I’ve never used a flash-bang in a case like this.”

The official went on to say that the SWAT team was not briefed about the presence of children in the house, although the neighborhood informant who led homicide detectives to the Lillibridge address told them that children lived there. There were even toys [10] on the lawn.

A dollhouse sits in an empty lot not far from where Aiyana was shot by the police officers storming her home.

“It was a total fuck-up,” the official said. “A total, unfortunate fuck-up.”

Owens, a habitual criminal [11], was arrested upstairs minutes after Aiyana’s shooting and charged for the slaying of Je’Rean. His motive, authorities say, was that the teen failed to pay him the proper respect. Jones, too, later became a person of interest [12] in Je’Rean’s murder—he allegedly went along for the ride—but Jones denies it, and he’s lawyered up and moved to the suburbs.

As Officer Weekley wept on the sidewalk, Aiyana was rushed to the trauma table, where she was pronounced dead. Her body was transferred to the Wayne County morgue.

Dr. Carl Schmidt is the chief medical examiner there. There are at least 50 corpses on hold in his morgue cooler, some unidentified, others whose next of kin are too poor to bury them. So Dr. Schmidt keeps them on layaway, zipped up in body bags as family members wait [13] for a ship to come in that never seems to arrive.

The day I visited, a Hollywood starlet [14] (PDF) was tailing the doctor, studying for her role as the medical examiner in ABC’s new Detroit-based murder drama Detroit 1-8-7. The title is derived from the California penal code for murder: 187 [15]. In Michigan, the designation for homicide is actually 750.316 [16] (PDF), but that’s just a mouthful of detail.

“You might say that the homicide of Aiyana is the natural conclusion to the disease from which she suffered,” Schmidt told me.

“What disease was that?” I asked.

“The psychopathology of growing up in Detroit,” he said. “Some people are doomed from birth because their environment is so toxic.”

I realize that this might be the darkest, shittiest iPhone photo ever taken… BUT

THIS HAPPENED. 

Not only did we kick it with Mr. Romatelli at Renee’s, but we rode in the legendary Sundance. TWICE. 

And for anyone who isn’t a total nerd, Seth Romatelli is half of the podcast duo that is Uhh Yeah Dude, perhaps the funniest hour of entertainment that I get each week. They performed live in back to back sets at the Broad in Santa Monica last weekend, and it was totally worth the time/money spent.

UYD: Living, loving, learning, laughing, Los Angeles.

View high resolution

Just realized my to do lists are a combination of paranoia and negative reinforcement.

Just might be a result of the 6 daily cups of coffee that I ingest. 

It’s impossible to listen to this song and not smile. 

Give and take.

Reciprocation is key.

Best note ever. Thanks Gortonator.

If you don’t know: Marcel