Wayne's World

Sen. John Kavanagh Has Introduced A Bill That Will Make It A Crime For Anyone To Record Police Within 20 Feet, But A Professor Says SB 1054 Is Likely Unconstitutional And At Best, Redundant The 2016 legislative session is in full swing in Arizona and state lawmakers have wasted no time in introducing controversial bills on topics ranging from municipal ID cards to nunchucks. One such piece of legislation is SB 1054, which would limit citizen’s ability to film law enforcement. SB 1054, if passed, would make it illegal to record law enforcement activity from within 20 feet of an officer without the officer’s permission. The bill, sponsored by Sen. John Kavanagh, R-District 23, would allow authorized occupants of private structures to make recordings of law enforcement activity from less than 20 feet away from an adjacent room unless an officer decides the person is interfering with law enforcement activity. According to Kavanagh, the bill was created in the interest of both law enforceme...

She lay in my lap, every inch of her 5-foot frame tensed. You have to keep pushing, I said. You have to get him out now, she said. After a relatively quick 7 hour labor, here we sat. Her body stuck into my lap on the bathroom floor. The midwives sitting at the other end, waiting for the baby to arrive. Our baby, still an abstract thought to me, becoming more real with every second. His head was halfway out but now stuck in the canal. We need you to push harder than before, we sang in unison. A chorus of sirens beckoning her towards the rocks. I can’t, I can’t, she said as she pushed harder than before. The quick labor was followed by an unbelievably tough delivery. It turns out the baby was asynclitic transverse with a nuchal arm. Basically that means his body was in a super fucked up position with a elbow curled up next to his face. My wife was trying to push out the Tasmanian Devil from those old Looney Toons cartoons. And then she did it. With a ferocity and strength I’d never ...

This was taken from another blog I have since deactivated... I found out I was going to be a dad on my birthday. At six in the fucking morning. Sleep-deprived and still a bit bourbon-soaked from the night before, I had planned to sleep in until the sun shining through the window (and ringing in my head) woke me up. My wife, and the little mutant growing in her uterus, had other plans. She yelled - more like yelped - at me. That's very disconcerting for a completely asleep and fairly drunk person. I shot up from the pillow in a cold sweat (that's just a turn of phrase because the Arizona summer heat and the alcohol in my system actually resulted in a very warm, sticky and altogether unpleasant sweat that's not nearly as thought provoking). My first thought was "What the fuck is happening!?" The worst ran through my head. Home invasion. Or, my knock off Macbook charger exploded and the house is burning down. Or, FX cancelled It's Always Sunny in Philadelphi...

 Originally published by Modern Times Magazine on June 29, 2016 Prolific author and current Phoenician James Sallis is best known for creating hard-boiled crime fiction like the Driver and Lew Griffin series. His latest effort, Willnot , shares many similarities with those works, but it is also a departure for the author. Less a gritty and in your face crime novel, Willnot is more of a complex amalgamation of science fiction, bildungsroman and, yes, crime fiction that challenges the reader’s preconceptions about what it means to be normal and humanity’s stomach for violence. Much like Sallis’ previous works, Willnot is a technically proficient novel in which the author wastes few words as he creates the town of Willnot, a fictional place that feels because of Sallis’ knack for establishing place. Anyone who’s read Drive or the Lew Griffin novels knows what I am talking about. Sallis has the unique ability to accurately describe his landscapes in a way that truly b...

Originally Published by Modern Times Magazine on June 5, 2013 DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy recently released Dissent or Terror an 88-page report illustrating a complicated network of law enforcement agencies and large corporations working together to stifle Occupy Phoenix and similar protests. The report — which is supplemented by over 1,000 emails, communications and other documents in the appendix — highlights the ways in which local and federal law enforcement and large corporations cooperated with one another through the use of “fusion centers” and other means, especially in the Phoenix metro, to limit the impact of activists that could adversely affect the corporate business community. The document primarily focuses on “fusion centers,” information-sharing communities made up of local and federal law-enforcement agencies. The centers were originally created in a “counter-terrorism/all-hazards” capacity. According to the document, the centers, ...

Originally published by Modern Times Magazine on Feb. 6, 2012 Which 19th century German is the latest philosopher to infiltrate mainstream cable? Perhaps not shockingly, it is not Arthur Schopenhauer. Nor is it Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer or Max Stirner. It is not even Karl Marx — everyone knows he infiltrated cable TV a long time ago. It is the ubermensch of philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, and he is coming to a television near you by way of the FX network and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia . This ‘depraved’ and hilarious comedy that recently received a three-season contract renewal to extend the series to an unprecedented tenth season — employs more than a few passing nods to the German iconoclast. The main characters in It’s Always Sunny — Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie, and Danny DeVito's Frank — make up the "Gang," a group of self-centered individuals that run a Philadelphia bar — Paddy's Pub — and work with every fiber of their being to avoid wo...