Move along, nothing to see here.

Meh.

I had a post sort of half-written about this dumb Sentinel article and how they keep trying to create controversy where none belongs and then I got rambling about religious intolerance and zero-sum game theory and blah blah blah.

Then I realized just how fucking bored I was with the whole thing, so I stopped.

But I used this picture of Zombie Jesus that I found somewhere and sort of liked it, so here's a totally useless post just so I don't lose it.

Oh, but I did like this article, because of this quote:

[R]esidents who live near Kirby's bar [Hooligans] said they have a videotape of a fight outside of Hooligans that they want the commission to view. Tony Reyes, who lives at 35 Day St., said the tape shows a fight outside of the bar with blood and people urinating in public.

I want to see that videotape, because it raises so many questions!

Was the urination part of the fight? Was it used as a weapon? If not, how could these people manage to pee with a fight going on right near them? I have trouble if someone parks himself at the urinal next to me when I'm about to go. I can't imagine being able to pee with the danger of flying fists and blood heading my way.

Report more on this, Sentinel! Important questions have been raised!

Holy Zombie Jesus things are boring lately...

Now Donnelly's Got an Op-Ed!

Man, Donnelly is all over the place these days!

In keeping with their four-part series, today the Fitchburg Pride has an opinion piece by Tom Donnelly. Find it here.

I'll confess right off, it's much harder to write stuff about Donnelly, Dionne, and Wong than it is to write stuff about DeSalvatore. They're much less crazy, and don't have his propensity for saying mindbogglingly stupid things. Those things are easy to write about, because they're interesting.

Which is one thing I'll give Ted. Everyone else is super boring compared to him. What with their sound ideas and lack of any discernible mental disorders... Dull!

Anyway, Donnelly wrote an Op-Ed. It's boring and sane, but I'll do my best to make fun of it anyway. It's what I do...

Fitchburg has been my home for over 45 years. My wife Joanne and I have raised our family and operated Donnelly Property Management, a successful business providing quality residential housing in various Fitchburg neighborhoods, for over 25 years. I graduated from St. Bernard's High School and received a bachelor's of science in secondary education from Fitchburg State College in 1972.

Honestly, this is one of my biggest concerns about Donnelly. As far as I can tell, the man's never left town. Some may see that as a strength ("He knows Fitchburg!), but I just think it's weird.

High school here, college here, adult life here. Obviously he likes Fitchburg, but what the hell? Does anybody really love their hometown that much that they don't want to ever leave it? Not even for college? To experience new things? Meet new people?

Meh, whatever.

Donnelly does the usual candidate thing. Going over his history and qualifications and whatnot. Then he gets into the issues a little bit.

Public safety and law enforcement go hand-inhand [sic] with maintaining safe neighborhoods for our citizens and our children. Like many urban communities Fitchburg is challenged by criminal elements disrupting the rule of law for their own illegal purposes. As mayor, I will support the capture and prosecution of these individuals to the fullest extent. Where federal jurisdiction exists, I support prosecuting criminals in federal court where longer sentences are available.

"Their own illegal purposes"??? That's a weird thing to say, Tom.

I've disrupted the rule of law before (as has everyone), and it wasn't for "illegal purposes". No, my purposes were entirely legal!

Truthfully, you could stab someone in the eye and still have a legal purpose. Maybe you wanted to see if eyes bleed red or if that gross almost-clear eye goo is all that comes out. That's legal to wonder about. I'm wondering about that right now, and it's perfectly legal for me to do so.

Also, I'm no legal scholar but I'm pretty sure that when there's federal jurisdiction, the Feds just do what they want. They don't really need your permission.

Donnelly continues:

Capturing and punishing criminals is not enough in any urban city, including Fitchburg. We must also act to prevent crimes before they occur. This can be achieved with comprehensive planning, including placing more officers on the street and an effective "neighborhood policing" effort emphasizing prevention as well as arrest and prosecution. Police officers working in neighborhoods can reach out to residents, building trust and gaining valuable information to prevent crimes before they occur.

Fucker. Your almost-nuanced understanding of how to deal with crime is inconvenient to me! And your redundant "urban city" phrase is not funny enough to address beyond this sentence!

Of course, Donnelly is right about the crime thing, and this is where he should be focusing. Prevention works much better than punishment. He would be better off focusing less on the police and more on community involvement, but the basic idea is a sound one.

He goes on to detail some stuff about finances. Still boring.

You know, maybe that's part of the problem. Most of the sane mayoral candidates are pretty damn boring. Because politics and reasonable ideas and stuff like that is all pretty boring.

So here are some ideas for Tom to be less boring and spice up the campaign!

• Start dressing like a pirate, complete with a parrot on your shoulder. But don't talk like a pirate, or people will think you're crazy.
• Pretend you're an albino, and anytime you step out into the sun start screaming. This also works if you pretend you're a vampire.
• Wear a giant foam cowboy hat. Refuse to explain why.
• Legalize (and regulate) prostitution. It's stupid that it's illegal and taxing it would bring lots of money to town. Also, it would make a lot of people freak out.
• Ditto for marijuana.
• Tell people that you have a third nipple. If you don't actually have a third nipple, get one.
• Make campaign signs that are like those "magic eye" pictures where you have to stare all crazy-eyed at them to see the image.

That's all I got.

Boring.

Meta keywords make life easy!

Disclaimer: If you want deep political insight, skip this post. I'm just fooling around because I'm bored.

Know what I missed when I was reviewing mayoral candidate websites? Meta tags containing keywords!

Okay, there are good reasons for that. While this is no longer my area of expertise, my impression is that nobody really uses meta keywords anymore, because search engines no longer really care about them. To quote the always incredibly accurate Wikipedia:

37 leaders in search engine optimization concluded in April 2007 that the relevance of having your keywords in the meta-attribute keywords is little to none.

As usual, Wikipedia has taken all the fun out of everything. Jerks.

Never mind that! Luckily for us, one mayoral candidate did bother to populate his pages with a whole bunch of pointless meta keywords. Thanks Ted!

Perhaps in his role as "Teacher of computer related courses", Mr. DeSalvatore has picked up some secret nobody else knows concerning the relevance of meta keywords, because he has bunches of them. Take that, Wikipedia smartypants!

And perhaps by examining these sort-of-hidden keywords we can take a peek into the mind of the "thermometer of Hell Zone". Clever, no?

If you're going to go look for yourself, ignore the front page. It just has a few boring ones like "Fitchburg 01420 Mayor" and "01420 mayor Fitchburg". Because people often refer to the town as "Fitchburg 01420", just like that shitty TV show that was on in the 90's with that girl who had the one eye like an inch above her other eye.

Also, while I'll admit that the word "Massachusetts" is tricky to spell, but it seems odd that it's totally absent from the keywords. Hell, even "MA" isn't there. But if the search engines don't care (and they don't), then why should I?

There is an interesting bit though, and it's the keywords stuck on the other pages of this site. I'll just paste them here for your amusement:

"01420, mayor, fitchburg, DeSalvatore, Mayor, Fitchburg, 01420, Mylott, Donnelly, Wong, election, elect, Sentinel Enterprise, Ward 4, Crime, homeless, Putnam Place, Unitil, energy, utility costs, duel tax, change, challenge, Save Fitchburg, blight, trash, graffiti, white goods, illegal dumping, Quality of life, safety, 01420, mayor, fitchburg"

Holy crap that's a bunch of odd keywords!

From first glance, it's obvious he really likes that zip code, and I don't blame him. It is quite a fetching zip code, what with its rounded ends and powers of two. We should really promote our zip code as one of the perks of living in Fitchburg, come to think of it. So no points lost there!

I must admit, I'm a little hurt to see he stuck the Save Fitchburg blog in the keywords and not Progressive Fitchburg. I hold the number one spot on a Google search for "'ted desalvatore' mayor"! How about a little cross-promotion, Ted? I'll bring in the search engines and you just keep acting crazy so I have something to write about. I'll even keep the links to tedforchange.com and change4ted.com to a minimum.

Moving on, listing your opponents (aside from Ronald Dionne) seems like an odd move, but whatever...

One big concern. What the fuck is a "duel tax"? Is the government going to start taxing my duels? Because I only duel for honor, not to line the pockets of some big-city bureaucrat! Who even gets taxed? The loser's dead, the winner is not someone to be trifled with (he just killed the loser, after all). Neither party is an ideal target for taxation. This seems like an odd platform to support.

What's really striking to me is the way Mr. DeSalvatore promotes himself though. Now, if I were going to make a website to try to get people to vote for me I'd probably put a bunch of my positives in the keywords (which I wouldn't do anyway, but you get the point). Not Ted though! He likes to "focus on what's bad" and here's where it shows!

What's bad? Well, judging from the keywords I'd say "Crime, homeless, utility costs, duel tax, blight, trash, graffiti, white goods, and illegal dumping." Words that are apparently synonymous with DeSalvatore!

"White goods"???

Seriously, "white goods"? Did he just pick random words from the text on the page or what?

Anyway, there you have it. A meta-review of Ted DeSalvatore's meta keywords that borders on self-mockery! I'll be back with a new review of Lisa Wong's new, improved website in a day or two.