Danehy

Updates on the Limbo scholarship, buddy punching and reader feedback

Some of this, some of that...

· I'd like to start by thanking everybody for their support of the Chris Limberis Memorial Scholarship Fund. I've received some sizable donations and have pledges for several more. If you'd like to chip in, you can make out a check to the aforementioned fund and send it to me at the Weekly.

I'm also thinking of putting together a celebrity basketball game as a fundraiser. Chris loved basketball.

What he would have hated was this memorial. He's probably sitting in the Greek corner of heaven right now, arguing over what Greek achievement was more significant: Christos Papanikolaou being the first person to pole-vault 18 feet, or Archimedes discovering the law of buoyancy and displacement.

Anyway, the scholarship letters will be going out the first of the year to high school journalism departments in Southern Arizona, and we will be awarding the first scholarship at the end of this current school year.

Again, thanks for your support.

As for the argument, it's obviously Papanikolaou. I mean, anybody knows that if you get into a too-full tub, the water's going to spill over the side. But there's no way Archimedes could have pole-vaulted 5.49 meters.

· Was anybody else disappointed when the city's Civil Service Commission decided to unfire the guy who had been buddy-punching his homies' time cards so they could go home early and get paid for work not done? The commission (which voted unanimously to give this guy his job back!) used the lame-ass excuse that, heck, everybody did it.

Don't all you people out there who work real jobs wish you had a Civil Service Commission that had your back?

· I got a lot of nice e-mails after my column about deceased Wiccan veterans deserving the right to have a pentacle displayed on their headstones. Almost all were lighthearted and shared my hope that people can be religious and have a sense of humor, even about their own religion. Personally, I think that humor is one of the great gifts that humans have.

But then I got this deadly serious e-mail from a young female student at the UA who happens to be a follower of a large religion. She wrote this impressively long letter, taking me to task for the ills of the Western world and for attacking her religion. Actually, I never mentioned any religions by name. All I said was there was this one that's in the news and treats women with such respect. How she jumped to the conclusion that I was talking about her religion, I don't know.

She went on and on for a couple of paragraphs about the evils of alcohol, something of which I have never partaken. I e-mailed her back and let her know that none of us in my family (wife and kids) drinks. It probably sent her into a tailspin to learn that somebody could be this much of a jerk without the assistance of a mind-altering substance.

· Hey, how about that letter last week from Jim Ru, who wrote that he had stopped reading the articles in the Weekly, but was writing to complain about ... an ... article ... in ... the Weekly?

Ru started off by calling me a bigot. I love that. In the old days, it was easy to define and recognize a bigot. They mostly looked like Rod Steiger and talked like Strom Thurmond. In today's PC world, a bigot is anybody who doesn't kiss every ass that you kiss.

He ripped me for winning writing awards in Arizona. Dude, that's where I live and work. Plus, I like winning awards. Winning is fun. I'd like to compete for awards in New Mexico, because there's less competition, but I'd probably be disqualified for my Tucson address.

He then attacked the editor, who happens to be gay. Ru attacked him for being too gay or not gay enough; I'm not really sure which. I think we're heading toward a time (but we're certainly not there yet) where a handful of gay activists are gonna be plenty bummed out when the general response to, "I'm gay," will be, "Who cares?"

I'll admit I don't listen to KXCI FM 91.3, which Ru also attacked. I just don't get the signal up where I live. I kinda miss it. There's nothing like a good Albanian death chant to get you going in the morning.

I'd really like to know what has Mr. Ru in mega-wedgie mode. I understand that he doesn't like my writing; it's not for everybody (and sometimes not for anybody). But he doesn't like anything.

I was trying to determine the source of his universal discomfort. I thought maybe we could have a telethon and buy him some more consonants for his name. But then I hit on the perfect idea: He should start his own publication.

He could call it Ru the Day or Who R-U? He could hire an editor who has just the right gay-iosity. And his columnists would be free to write about anything as long as they didn't offend anybody, anywhere, at any time. Maybe he could get Connie Tuttle.

He could then branch into radio and play dangerous music. I smell a Spike Jones comeback.

Or he could just keep writing letters.