Be Happy They Aren't Ambitious

Last week as I was taking the train in town for the international pub-crawl, I couldn't help but notice all the graffiti on the back of buildings along the train tracks. It seemed like every surface that faced the tracks had some level of tagging on them. I'm not talking simple designs like a kid putting his girlfriend's initials in a heart, but 10-15 foot tall designs that were multi-colored and intricate. Now, I wasn't always sure what I was looking at, but I am sure that these designs were not something that you would be able to put up in 20 minutes. It got me to thinking about how much planning must go into these things. You would have to first think up a design, get some paint, find a wall with nothing else on it and then stake out the area long enough to know how often the cops come around (therefore how much time you would have to work on your project without getting caught), before finally doing the actual graffiti under the cover of darkness. After all, putting graffiti on something you don't own is a crime, so it's not like you could do this on a Saturday morning.

Still, I think we should be happy these people have decided that this is as far as they want to delve into the criminal world. As far as I know, spray painting isn't a gateway crime leading to bigger things and we're lucky for that. Clearly these people know how to plan and execute a crime, because rarely do you see unfinished work on the back of buildings. It may take a trip or two, but that work is getting done. The last thing we want is these people to escalate to major crimes, because they obviously have some planning skills. If they put their minds to it, who knows what kind of intricate bank robbery schemes would hatch. Instead they feel like the best use of their time is making sure that their initials are there for everyone on the Franklin/Forge Park train to see every ride home. Let's not tell them anything different.

-Yesterday, the word "Boobquake" was a trending topic on Twitter. I had never heard of it before, but apparently it was a movement by a Purdue University student to encourage women across the globe to wear something slightly more revealing than they normally would to counteract an Iranian Cleric's claim that scantily clad women cause earthquakes. First off, why wasn't this a bigger story leading up to yesterday? I could have found out about rallies that may have been taking place and gone to, you know, lend my support. Instead, Google News was trying to push stories about financial reform into my head. This was a great idea, and because of that we'll ignore the fact that yesterday a 6.5 earthquake hit near Taiwan. I'm sure it was unrelated anyway.