The Dark Furie

Marek Szymanski is a 30 year old man who was sentenced to three years imprisonment for a rape he committed in Wroclaw, Poland. His attack on 53 year old Zdislowa Morzycka was so savage that she was left partially paralysed and in a wheelchair. In my opinion, three years is a ridiculously short sentence for any rape, never mind one so vicious that it leaves the victim in such a condition. Unfortunately the first set of judges didn't agree with me.

Yeah, that's right, I said the first set of judges. There were two sets you see. Unfortunately the second set believed that the first set were too harsh in their sentencing. These judges released this horrific sexual predator after only ten months in prison, because he'd done "the decent thing" by pleading guilty and calling an ambulance for his victim after he'd raped her and left her stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. The judges said that Szymanski had acted with "great kindness" towards his victim after the rape, a sentiment that the victim obviously doesn't share. "What sort of justice is this? I will have to live with this until I die." Morzycka said when she heard the news.

So there you go guys. It's okay to rape a woman after beating her into submission so badly that she's paralysed, as long as you call an ambulance afterwards. Obviously you wouldn't do it beforehand because they might arrive before you've finished. What the mother-fuck is going on in the world that this counts as justice? Combined with the horrific things going on in Uganda recently it seems to me that humanity has reversed the meaning of justice. Fucking disgusting!

I've worked in hospitality. For a time I was a minor legend in the industry - born with a natural aptitude for the work and dedicated to expanding that talent. It was to be my career and during the time I worked those jobs I trained a lot of bartenders and waiters, making them the best they could be. In fact, the only job I've ever applied for and not got was one at a new bar that was entirely manned by my trainees when it opened. It made me feel old as the only thing that seperated us was age, and therefore pay scale. Anyway, as an ex bartender I'm horrified at the state that the hospitality industry is in now.

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When Leslie Pope went for a meal and a few drinks with friends at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago, they were happy to find that despite the Christmas season looming they weren't turned away from the inn. Unfortunately that's where their good luck ended. After waiting over an hour for their meal they even had to go to the bar and request cutlery and napkins themselves as their waitress went out for a smoke after being asked for them. This was the final straw for Pope and her seven friends, who had already had to visit the bar for refills when their waitress disappeared after they'd placed their food order. When the $73 bill arrived they paid for their food and drinks, ignored the suggested tip, made a complaint to the head bartender and sat down to finish their drinks before leaving. That's when the police arrived and arrested them.

Lehigh Pub, presumably having noticed that not many of their staff were getting tips due to a bad service ethic, had installed a policy that made the gratuity a mandatory part of the bill. No longer do their staff have to earn their tips by being good at their jobs, helpful or even pretending to be a part of the service industry. No longer can customers decide that service is good and leave an extra tip or decline to leave a tip if service is bad. No, the tip is now expected regardless of the service you receive there and if you refuse to pay it you'll be arrested for theft just like Leslie Pope and her boyfriend John Wagner were.

Latreasa Goodman (no relation to John, despite the content of this story) loves McDonalds. Now you may think that you love a certain food more than anything else, but you haven't reached the levels of love this woman has for McDonalds' food. Nope, don't argue, you just haven't. On the 28th February this year, Latreasa visited her local McDonalds and ordered a ten piece meal which included chicken nuggets. According to the majority of news sources and blogs at the time she flipped out when she was told they didn't have nuggets and called 911 not once, not twice, but three times to report the incident. What a psycho eh?

Now lets be fair and take a look at what actually happened there. She asked for something on the menu, she paid for that item, they had run out of it and they refused her a refund. Oh sure, she can have something else from the menu but she was refused her money back, which is against both her rights and McDonalds' policy. Did she over-react? Of course she did. You don't phone the emergency services for something like that, and you definitely don't insist that your chicken nuggets are an emergency when the cops show up and cite you for misuse of the 911 system. But I doubt she'd have done so if she hadn't been provoked like that by the assistant manager of the store.

A spokesman from McDonald's had this to say about the incident: "We want to correct our mistake. We will be sending the customer her refund, along with an invitation to return for her original order, on us. We never want to disappoint a McNuggets fan or any McDonald's customer. Customer satisfaction is our top priority." That's very big of them. Now that the woman has been treated so badly and had her rights infringed to the point that she called 911, she can have the refund she was originally due and a voucher for one meal. That'll really make things up to her. Also I think I speak for everyone who has ever had the soggy cardboard that passes for food at McDonald's served to them by a teenager with a higher weight in acne than IQ when I point out what a pile of crap that customer service statement was.

Synchronicity is a tricky concept to define without getting all technical and, as a concept of perception it's pretty hard to prove or disprove. At it's core is the idea that everything in the world fits together in a logical pattern if you can see the connections. Other descriptions say that coincidental events in harmony with each other define synchronicity. Yeah, tricky subject. The only real way to show synchronicity is to show the unconnected events all around us and point out the connections, but that way eventually leads to wearing tinfoil hats and communicating with the Dark Masters. As one of the Dark Masters it would be unseemly for me to follow that path of madness so instead I'll just show you the news stories that have caught my interest this week and let you draw your own conclusions.

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Gretchen Whitted was in her house in Polk County when she noticed five raccoons in her back yard. Having had trouble with animals messing the place up before she decided to chase them away, but soon wished she hadn't. The raccoons surrounded the 74 year old and attacked, causing her to fall to the ground, where they continued their attack. A neighbour, witnessing the event, called for help.

Gretchen was taken to hospital with extensive cuts from her neck to her legs and treated for rabies. Later on, local fire crews flooded nearby drains in a failed attempt to drive the animals out. Animal Control has said they're hoping to catch the raccoons by using cat food and sardines as bait.

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A disabled 52 year old man in Essex said he suffered cuts all over after a vicious gang of cats attacked him while he was walking his dog. "I've seen these cats before but I've never seen them act like this. At first all I heard was a whining and spitting sound, then they all emerged from underneath a car. I did nothing to provoke them and my dog was terrified, but they just kept jumping at us and clawing our legs."

The entire town of Pitsea has become increasingly aware of their cat problem since that incident in September. Locals say the screeching of wild cats are keeping them up at night, and some have even had to keep their children from playing outside as the cat attacks increase in frequency. The cats have begun vandalising fences and garden sheds as part of their reign of terror, and group together in gangs of five or more to jump off walls and attack passers-by.

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Mary Garcia, 70, was left in critical condition after two neighbourhood dogs attacked her on her doorstep. Animal Control says that a boxer-mix and a pit bull broke out of a neighbours yard and went straight for her. Neighbours never even heard her scream as the dogs leapt up on their hind legs and started trying to tear at her face. While covered in bites and scratches, it was the stress of the attack that hospitalised Mary as the ordeal caused a heart attack.

Witnesses heard what they thought sounded like dogs fighting and, upon investigating went straight to her defence, but it took four men armed with sticks and brooms to chase the dogs off. Even then they came back until one neighbour managed to see them off by chasing them down with a shovel to defend himself. Mary's 3 year old grandson witnessed the event and is said to be traumatised by it. He kept repeating "The dogs ate grandma." in between sobs.

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There have been many more events like this of course, but I've only got limited space here. It seems like animals are going crazy this past month eh, although the cats don't really surprise me to be honest. That's synchronicity for you.

Apple is a big company with a lot of money and really enjoys letting smaller companies know that by suing them whenever they unwittingly infringe on one of their many patents. It's been that way for years and has resulted in many companies having to stop production on products and pay a hefty sum into Apple's coffers. When they stepped into the mobile world Apple thought they'd be able to push everyone around again but, unfortunately for them, there is a company who pretty much run at the top of all sectors of the mobile world and who have just as much money as them. This company, let's call them Nokia for argument's sake, aren't only invested in making phones, they are actually one of the companies that evolve the industry with new technology on the network front and, as such, have over ten thousand patents related to technology that is considered essential to making a mobile phone (connecting to the network, and using any GSM, UMTS or WLAN technologies) and that all other phone manufacturers licence from them for a fee.

"The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for. Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree to appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation."
Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President, Legal & Intellectual Property for Nokia

The patents are usually licensed on the principle "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" and while licences have been paid by most companies in the business, Nokia has signed agreements with other technology patent holders allowing shared usage, creating a small group of the companies who create the industry as it is today and license their technology to all other companies in the business. All companies except for Apple who have decided they don't need to pay such license fees. Nokia has noted that Apple has infringed on patents that cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and that the infringements are present in all three versions of the iPhone. Having pursued their license fees behind the scenes for two years (Nokia prefers to leave legal action as the last possible choice) unsuccessfully, Nokia has been left with no further choice but to sue and legal action was announced on the 22nd of October 2009. Apple haven't contributed anything to the networks meaning they're in no position to do a patent swap like the other big companies and will lose a substantial amount of money in this case even if they settle.

So, the big bully of the technology playground has met someone equally big who doesn't normally throw their weight around, and is getting it's ass handed to them by that normally pacifist kid in the playground. As well as being an analogy of my school days that, my friends, is karma.