May 15-21, 2008
editorial@boulderweekly.com

Beer me, baby
One might expect more evolved behavior from mammals that live in a place called Darwin, Australia, but, apparently, the homo sapiens of that region are still waiting around for their opposable thumbs.

On May 13, while on patrol, Constable (that’s what they call police officers in Aus) Wayne Burnett pulled over an unregistered car containing several unidentified male passengers. He expected to give the driver a simple warning about proper vehicle documentation, but, instead, ended up offering the man some unsolicited parenting tips.

When the constable looked into the backseat of the car, he saw that there were two adults sitting innocently with a 30-pack of beer between them. Nothing wrong there. Dudes like beer. However, upon further inspection, the officer noticed that the alcohol had been carefully arranged and properly buckled in for safety precautions. OK, that’s a little weird, but to be fair, beer is an important natural resource Down Under, and you never know what might happen in a car. What if some crazy driver cuts you off in traffic and causes you to swerve all over the road? What happens then? That’s right: your beer gets shaken up, and it fizzes all over the place when you try to open it. That’s a waste of good alcohol.

However, protecting your beverage is one thing, criminal negligence is another. After peering through the back window, the Constable noticed that there was a fifth human being in the vehicle, a small baby, sitting on the floor, completely unprotected. The caretaker of the child attempted to justify his actions (“Um, yeah, I’m an ignorant dickhead who should have never been allowed to procreate.”), but the officer fined him $710 anyhow.

While we can certainly understand the desire protect your beer, it’s necessary to prioritize these things. Here’s a list to help you figure out where your main concerns should be when it comes to vehicle safety: 1) children, 2) members of the animal kingdom, 3) beer, 4) rocks, dirt and other inanimate objects, and 5) assholes that choose Budweiser over babies.

Solve this
Remember back in high school when your dad would get on your case to study for that big test? Yeah, neither does Brittany Gegner. She’s been failing the math portion of the G.E.D. — who can pass that anyway? — and her father is, apparently, to blame. At least, that’s what the judge who sentenced Brian Gegner to six months in jail seems to think. That’s right. Although Brittany is nearly 19 years old and the mother of an 18-month-old daughter, she’s not actually responsible for her own education. Her dad is. And now, while he’s being held accountable for her being a high school drop-out that can’t pass the G.E.D., she is responsible for his being in jail for the next six months, or at least until she can figure out how to do that damn long division. Now the pressure’s on her to pass the test to get her dad out of jail. If this were a sitcom, there’d probably be some crazy scheme to pass the test, get her dad out of jail and make everything right. But it’s not. It’s real life — even though sending someone to jail for someone else not passing a test is unreal — and she is still a teenager, so our guess is she’ll probably just leave him there. That’ll teach her — or him — or something. Someone will learn a lesson here, dammit.

Not just a toothbrush
Here’s another story that makes you wonder if there should be a law that requires people to take a test, or at least a class, before becoming parents, considering the complete idiots out there who have been allowed to procreate. A family rushing to get on a plane discovered mid-flight, and only when the flight crew on the plane informed them, that they had left their 23-month-old son wandering the Vancouver airport. The couple, who was traveling with a large group, said that they thought the boy was with other members of their party. Meanwhile, the other group members assumed he was — get this — with his parents. Even once they were all seated on the plane, the group was separated, so the child’s disappearance still went unnoticed. Meanwhile, at the airport, officials found the boy, but since he had no boarding pass and didn’t speak English — oh, and since there hadn’t been any panicked phone calls from anyone on a flight missing a child — it took some time to figure out where he was supposed to be and which numskulls were his parents. Once they located said imbeciles, the airline flew the father back to Vancouver to get his kid, and a happy reunion ensued. But before we all celebrate, we just want to say, while we understand that traveling can be stressful and you might forget certain things — say, your toothbrush — we still think you should probably know where your kid is.

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