july 3-9, 2008
editorial@boulderweekly.com

A different kind of sex toy
Police arrested a Grand Junction man after his girlfriend reported that he’d threatened her with his Taser when she refused to have sex with him.

Grand Junction police say Christopher Morgen Taylor turned on his Taser three times and told his girlfriend, “I don’t normally do this to anybody,” after she refused to have sex with him. The cops arrested Taylor, finding the Taser in his bedroom. He’s facing sexual assault and weapons charges and is sitting in the clink with bond posted at $60,000.

The good news is, as Taylor admits, he normally doesn’t do this sort of thing. Apparently, coercing women into having sex with him by threatening them with painful electric shock is the kind of foreplay he resorts to only when his charm and manly good looks fail to get him laid. Well, that’s something.

Some dudes just don’t get it. So we’ll explain.

No woman — not your date, not your girlfriend, not even your wife — is obliged to have sex with you. Ever. That’s why God gave you hands.

For you, sex might be about control, but it’s supposed to be about love. If hurting and controlling women is what excites you, please do us all a favor and take yourself out of the gene pool as soon as possible.

Face it, Chris, you dumbshit, if you have to resort to turning on a Taser, then a Taser is the only thing you’re ever going to turn on.

Man vs. beast
In a constant struggle to find balance between Man and Nature, we often face difficulties. We put our trash out to be picked up, and it draws bears seeking easy food. We plant gardens only to find the deer eating our well-tended veggies. The deer in our yards attract mountain lions, putting our pets in danger.

But as much as we might struggle to keep the beasts at bay, they seem to keep popping up — sometimes in unexpected places. The most recent incident of man vs. beast in Boulder County involved a cyclist and a bear. The man, who was riding his bike at approximately 45 mph on Old Stage Road, ran into the bear, then flipped and flew over the large animal. He hit the pavement and cracked some ribs, cut his head and ended up with a wicked case of road rash. The bear ran off shortly after the collision, when a deer appeared on the scene. B-dubbers were watching from afar and caught up with the bear after he made his getaway.

“I was just standing there, trying to figure out where I could get some more berries and BOOM! Out of nowhere, some dude comes barreling down the road at an ungodly speed. Plows right into me,” said the bear. “Then, he stands up and doesn’t even bother to see if I’m hurt. ‘No, no. I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just a giant bear. I’m sure it was tough to see me — impossible to avoid a giant freaking bear.’”

The bear, while uninjured except for a few scrapes and bruises, says he’s rallying with another bear who suffered a similar fate last year when a woman in the Boulder Triathlon ran into her in the same area. The two are planning lawsuits against the Boulder area athletes.

Lift every voice — and whine
You’d think something really bad had happened. On Tuesday, July 1, jazz singer René Marie threw the City of Denver and the blogosphere into a frenzy by combining lyrics of the national anthem with lyrics of the “The Black National Anthem,” a song known as “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” While some are choosing to look at this as a subversive act of black nationalism, Marie told reporters she was trying to honor her country and took artistic liberties with the songs by combining them.

B-dub tracked down the lyrics of this controversial “Black National Anthem” to see why so many people are upset and to show our readers just how offensive the words are:

“Lift ev’ry voice and sing / Till earth and heaven ring / Ring with the harmonies of Liberty / Let our rejoicing rise / High as the list’ning skies / Let it resound loud as the rolling sea / Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us / Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us / Facing the rising sun of our new day begun / Let us march on till victory is won.”
Egads! A song about liberty? An ode to freedom? A hymn to hope?

Shocking!

Actually, what’s shocking is how hard some folks try to get upset and angry, seeking controversy wherever they can find it. No wonder our society is polarized. Perhaps an update of the national anthem is in order: “Land of the angry, home of the whiners.”

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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