Cover Your Ears, Dogs Being Discussed

If you haven’t been on the Internet today, everyone is talking about this YouTube video of a Marine throwing a puppy. Good guy!

As such, every Internet messageboard discussing any animal abuse incident initially breaks into the following two camps, people (1) wishing for death and/or bodily harm toward the animal abuser, and (2) complaining about how people don’t get similarly outraged by abuses done to humans. (If the abuse takes place in a foreign country, someone will also point out about the different status of said animal in that country. Even if it’s Canada and the animal in case is a rhino.)

Members of each messageboard then choose one of several sub-argument groups, such as people (3) arguing humans are better than animals because humans do mean things, (4) seconding especially long comments in agreement, (5) linking to research that shows people who hurt dogs go on to hurt humans, (6) complaining even more because people aren’t outraged enough. If applicable, especially hardworking members of the Internet may then tell personal stories about their own beloved animals or post personal information of the animal abuser.

Anyway, now that you don’t have to read any of the coverage of something you really don’t want to read (like, say, a puppy-throwing incident), have we settled on a name for this? I’ve heard puppygate, but personally I’m kind of leaning toward 2soldiers1puppy.

Editor’s Note: All links safe for work. Don’t abuse puppies, kids!

Semper Fight

One of the ways suburban communities make sure nobody “upsets” anyone — which, really, is the best thing about living in the city, since you can upset and anger people at your convenience — is to impose restrictions on what color you can paint your house, what kind of decorations you can put up and what flags you can fly.

This, of course, usually leads to utterly ridiculous disputes between neighbors, which escalate until perfectly reasonable, normal people hate each other for the rest of their lives because they disagreed over whether Halloween decorations were allowed in the front of a suburban townhome.

The Inquirer does its duty of informing the public of this ridiculousness today with an article about a dispute over what constitutes a “defaced” flag.

Yes, a woman in Montgomery Township, whose son is a Marine recently shipped off to Iraq, has a flag up in front of her house, and the neighbors seem pissed. The flag is a normal U.S. flag with the U.S. Marine Corps emblem in the center. (I couldn’t find a photo of it online, but I did find that nifty American flag/Marine Corps mashup mailbox up in the right-hand corner. I assume the flag is something like that, only with the stars in the correct place.)

The homeowners’ association wants her to take it down, as I suppose an altered U.S. Flag — or the Marine Corps flag she had up originally, before they made her take that — could possibly lower property values or kill children or ruin everyone’s summer or something.

And now the issue has been tabled, with both sides refusing to budge. More updates as this progresses, or Developing… as they say here on the Internets.

Banned Marine flag is flying once again [Inky]