another candidate for mandatory sterilization.
Some moron in Indiana forced his seven-year-old daughter to kill the family cat, a kitten named “Boots”, because he wanted his kids to “learn how to kill.”
Un-fucking-believable.
I am now adding a new category, called “What the fuck is wrong with you?”, and this stellar example of humanity will be the first to get that tag.
March 14, 2008 at 7:45 am
“The children told police that their father was drunk when they arrived at his home and that he’s a different person when he’s sober, it said.”
This is part and parcel of something that’s a Serial Seethe on my part. These days, it seems like people are farming off personal culpability on their dependancies or medical conditions.
“It’s not my fault, I was drunk!” and it’s big brother,
“It’s not my fault, I’m an alcoholic!”
“It’s not my fault, I’m mentally ill!”
“It’s noy my fault, I’m addicted to prostitutes!”
It is their fault. I’m a different person when I’m drunk - I get over-emotional, soppy, excessively loquacious and my rationality goes kinda limp and squashy. Would that be an excuse for me doing something stupid and harmful to others? Being drunk? Hell, no! I like getting a good drink on maybe once a month - actual lurchy silly sozzled rather than just a couple of glasses of a Friday.
Guess what? Knowing that when I’m intoxicated I’m not entirely compos-mentis, I do it at home. I put myself in a relatively stupidity-proof container, and enjoy swigging my way to silliness when I end up making the occasional sozzled blog-post and playing with toy spaceships making “WHooosh! DAKKA DAKKA!” noises, boozily booting up Flight Sim X so I can practise landing 747s in people’s rose gardens giggling into my drink and so on without risk of harming anyone else.
One of the folk in your blogroll found themselves in a mentally unstable, terribly unhappy place. Rather than using that as an excuse for apalling behaviour, they did the sensible thing and went and got help. It’s impossible for me to say how proud I am of such a brave act - and such a smart one.
It’s a circumstance like this where someone let their wobble-juice consumption drive them to a hideous act that it becomes unforgivable. If even the damn kids know that “Daddy’s Different when he Drinks”, then the father should damn well know it. And therefore, he should not have anything to drink when he’s in charge of the kids.
Come to that, if he’s the sort of person, when he drinks, who’d kill a cat for any reason, then he ought to have self-diagnosed that as a damn good reason to stick to sodas for the rest of his blasted life. To paraphrase Heinlein, “Anyone who’d kill a cat is cruel, mean cruel. I hate you. I despise you.”
We’re all capable of generating bad shit with our brains - whether by cracks showing under stress, whether by response to recreational intakes, or whatever. We all are. Every one of us. That makes it incumbent on us to manage our darkness, and ensure it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
March 14, 2008 at 7:59 am
It sounds like the kids were trying to protect the father, SOP with kids of alcoholic parents. (Believe me, I know about this from personal experience.)
One of the big warning signs of future violent people is cruelty to animals. Who knows what demons this moronic father is harboring, or what he’s infected his kids with by this, and probably many other, actions? After an action like this, it’s probably just a hop, skip, and jump to pulling something similar on a human.
IF everything is correct in the news report, something I try to never assume any longer, this guy should lose his parenting privileges. I just hope the damage done isn’t too severe in those children.
March 14, 2008 at 8:01 am
I don’t think we have “beaten with a two-foot length of rebar” as a punishment in this state.
There are times, however, that I wish we did.
March 14, 2008 at 10:02 am
Ugh. Muncie. Sadly no, beating with rebar isn’t one of the punishments we get to mete out here in Indiana. It’s too Levitical for the lefties. He will certainly lose visitation rights to his kids though.
March 14, 2008 at 11:34 am
I was about to comment about how I’m not surprised that this happened in Muncie, but Rob beat me to it.
March 14, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I kind of wish the idiot lived in New York. Killing a pet is good for three years in the state pen.
March 14, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Add to your list of “What the fuck is wrong with you” the woman in Florida who had her electricity shut off at home, forcing her to move in with a friend 6 miles from her old home and abandoning her old home and property in it.
That “property” included a German Shepherd dog locked in a small crate with no food or water. After 2 months, neighbors noticed a smell and found the dog dead inside the crate, a bag of food only a few paces from the crate.
When questioned, the woman said she “knew the dog would starve to death”. No apologies, no nothing. Just couldn’t be bothered to take the dog to the Humane Society less than 5 miles from her home.
March 17, 2008 at 9:09 am
I too believe the (expletive deleted) should undergo mandatory sterilization.
However I favor the use of a steam autoclave.