I’ve posted on message boards – including a kick-ass recipe for banana daiquiries after giving up on getting anyone to help with this. Friends have tried to code it for me. I’ve tried. It’s hopeless. I keep getting emails from the site – all autoresponders by the way- including one the day after I bought the product. It said, “How are we doing?!” I said, “NOT SO GREAT.”

NO RESPONSE. NONE. NADDA. ZIP. Even a blogger who knows the developer said he was “in it for the money more than anything.”

HINT. One day you are going to annoy and frustrate the wrong people with your poor response, total lack of customer service and caring about your product and they’re going to talk…a LOT.

Bottom line? Popup Domination has ONE requirement for HTML CODE that if you don’t get it right, you’re screwed. The popup will work, but your customers are sending their emails into the ozone, into cyberspace. Not only are YOU not getting their emails, but THEY will think YOU are the loser because YOU are not giving them what THEY wanted and signed up for. They’ll not only NOT EVER gain access to you via your list, they’ll wonder why you aren’t sending anything out. I have 1,300 twitter followers, 200 subscribers, 50 clients with websites asking me about this and my blogs. Now, 2,000 people in my social network, and 9,000 on another network – and then Facebook, isn’t a lot, but if only 10% want to know if Popup works, I’m telling them “No,” it doesn’t. What’s 200 x $37? You do the math. You’d THINK the guy would FIX the app. But no. He doesn’t care. So you shouldn’t. And you also should NOT buy Popup Domination because Pippity is so much cleaner, better and easier to use. And that is NOT an affiliate link either.

By the way, PIPPITY lets you test drive it, has MORE designs, BETTER COLOR choices, more CREATIVE, INNOVATIVE and CLASSY layouts and is an all around BETTER, rockstar popup than Popup Domination. Check it out yourself and see!

Anyway – HERE are the two books I was going to GIVE AWAY with this popup…because the holidays are coming….but you can download Homeless4holidays2011and CopywritingTips_Homeless until I get my $$ back and get Pippity up.

Those people we admire most, the business leaders we believe to be most admirable and trustworthy are praising a narcissist, one of the most emotionally devastating and abusive personalities known to man. Only the sociopathic serial killer does more damage to society.

Don’t mistake being a great innovator and genius for being a great human being, otherwise you send the wrong message and we end up creating more monsters, not more technology. As a society we’re far too quick to look the other way when abusers bring money, art, talent or better economics to the societal table. It makes us whores, willing to sell our standards for the best design, the sexiest films, the most outrageous products. Do you truly value caring, compassion, authenticity and your tribe? Or are you after a buck, attention and success at any price?

Praise Jobs where he excelled, but don’t dare cast him as a caring, concerned or compassionate leader. He’s a narcissist who abused, cheated and whored his way to the top abusing others. He’s a shark. There’s a place in the world for sharks, but you might notice that people choose to swim with dolphins and away from sharks. There’s a reason. Well known for publicly humiliating subordinates, Jobs left more than great computer designs and innovations in his wake. He left broken spirits, broken hearts and ruined lives behind as well. Recovering from the abuse of a narcissist is one of the most difficult betrayals anyone can heal from. Ask anyone who has worked for him directly.

Jobs is not alone in his narcissistic approach to business, a scary development for creatives. The Harvard Business Review says narcissists are changing the face and personality of business – a dangerous precedence in a world where creativity is projected to rule the next two decades or more. Love the technology. Love the design, but take seriously the impact of how the Steve Jobs and narcissists of the world are changing business more than the Seth Godins, and ask yourself which way you really want things to go. Don’t romanticize the man. He’s not the designs he created. Admire his teeth from afar.

Am I angry this week? Hell yeah. I’ve been angry all month. And as some of the country mourns the death of Elvis today, I have to say I’m mourning the death of customer service across America. For the past week I’ve been unsubscribing and cancelling memberships I don’t use and streamlining my life, so I can focus on ONE thing–me. I’ve done, given and helped thousands of people and loved every minute of it, but now it’s time to finish MY book and spend time on me. If you have $150 an hour to spend on me for your stuff, I’m still accepting new clients. I don’t do free anymore. Sorry.

However, the road to good things is paved with cobblestones from hell, customer service hell. First there was the Hostgator nightmare, 8 MONTHS of it. Hostgator, like I said in that blog post, was spitting out canned emails like horny rabbits spit out bunnies, like rap singers spit out profanity, like conspiracy theorists spit out alien and UFO stories. like Martha Stewart spits out tacky Christmas decorations. They’re not alone in their relentless drive to annoy customers.

This morning I woke up to find that The Biggest Loser Club did not cancel my account with them when I called three months ago. So they charged me another $59.94. I called and got a rep who tried to convince me to stay, but I said no, so he cancelled my account again (I hope) and said it would be THREE WEEKS before they could refund my money!

I am going to tweet for three weeks about this…or longer…whatever it takes to get my money back within 72 HOURS. What part of piss me and your customers off don’t businesses understand? I hope their popularity and business will “drop faster than a gown on prom night” (Thanks Betsy for that lovely turn of phrase), but I doubt it will. So I’m being proactive. Here are ways to STOP businesses from charging your credit card. Fight back.

Use a prepaid debit or gift card to buy services. ONLY load the amount you need to make the purchase or sign up. If they don’t take debit cards they’re not a legitimate company interested in your business. If you are happy with their service you can always change the billing arrangements later and use a credit or bank card. This way when you cancel and they try to ding you for money you have their attention.

Businesses don’t, as a rule, respond to customers. They respond to money. Forget expecting minimum wage cubicle monkeys to give a damn about you. They don’t. The ones who do care don’t stay cubicle monkeys for long. They become supervisors who suddenly stop giving a damn now that they’re at the top of the very short food chain, or they wise up and start their own businesses. What you get when you call most customer service reps at any company in America is a company in India.

You have to protect yourself. NEVER EVER EVER sign up for anything where you have to provide a credit card number. Just don’t. Get your 30-day trial, and if you don’t use it, let it lapse and be done with it. If someone requires money from you to test their product or try their business they are so 1980s. Tell them there are 500 other companies with the same service willing to let you try before you buy and that you’ll be moving on.

I’m over it. So, apparently, is Bob Poole. Thanks Bob. You inspire me.

It must be the full moon, or maybe something in the water, but I counted 24 “Whoops!” emails from businesses trying to get me to open their emails today. Wait – it was someone’s $799 convert more readers webinar!!!and this was the tactic touted most. Yeah. Well…

According to the emails they either “sent the wrong link, here try this one instead,” tricking readers dumb enough to click into watching two separate sales pitches for the same product, or they “forgot to tell me something” and so they’re sending ANOTHER email with the additional info. It’s annoying. It’s spam. I unsubscribed from all but one of the offenders and I’m considering unsubscribing from her. She’s an acquaintance so I may just tell her that the next time she pulls that crap she is history.

I don’t mind if someone HONESTLY forgets an attachment or a link and resends the ENTIRE ORIGINAL email with the link and NOT a different email with different wording as a test piece. But if you’re doing that three times a week you’re either a moron who needs a virtual assistant or someone who understands your email program better than you do, or you’re not being authentic. You’re scamming, tricking and playing your readers for morons. We’re not. You and every snake oil salesman on the planet is doing the same damn thing. So when I get a mailbox full of “OOPS!!” headlines? I DELETE THEM ALL. If I see them again, I unsubscribe.

Here’s a marketing tip, how many people can you sell your product to if they DON’T subscribe to your stuff and don’t read your website? Hint:  ZERO. NADDA. ZILCH.

So keep sending me your “Whoops! Oops! and “MY BAD” marketing tricks and you’ll end up in my spam can. Oops. The TRASH!

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

At first I thought rude, aggressive, hateful people and their emails, comments, remarks etc deserved an equally offensive or scathing reply. After all, they threw the first punch right?

Then I evolved a bit and believed that all rude people and rude emails should be met with a mature and reasoned approach – after all, we all have problems and maybe their inner troll, child just needed a hug and a caring adult to respond to them. Do that enough times and surely they’ll come around (they won’t).

Now I’m finally at the stage where I believe the best response to people who are rude, aggressive, obnoxious or simply just outrageously, incredibly inappropriate or offensive is just to hit the delete button. Don’t engage. Don’t respond. Don’t react. Just trash the email, ignore the comment, walk away, don’t answer.

After giving it a lot of thought, it makes sense. Why waste even a minute of my life on something or someone so negative, useless, offensive or obnoxious? They aren’t going to change in that moment. They aren’t attacking, criticizing or asking stupid questions because they want to learn something or become a better person. They have another agenda and it’s not my job or desire to support it. Why spend 20 minutes fuming over an email, then another 30 crafting a reply? What a waste of time! So now I ask myself, “Do I want to pursue a relationship of ANY kind with this person?” If the answer is no, I hit delete. Problem solved.

Many of us have socially inept friends, or people who make inappropriate comments (self included), or who aren’t always *on* and functioning. I’m not talking about ignoring or deleting them – although at some point we might. I’m talking about the folks/trolls (strangers and acquaintances) who are so negative, manipulative, back-stabbing and bitter that they are obsessed with making people’s lives miserable with their words (written or spoken). Then there are the ones who are so screwed up they can’t decide who their enemy is, but they think often enough it’s you (because you remind them of their father or brother, or mother or sister), until they decide maybe it’s not (crazy makers). You’re expected to accept their rants (NOT) and love them anyway.

I’m talking about the people you don’t know, or that you’ve interacted with often enough to realize you’re not making a dent in their reality and only wasting your time. Do you really want to respond to them and waste your precious time (which you never ever get back) engaging with idiots? I say no. From now on, I’m just hitting delete.

I love the fable about the scorpion and the frog. If you haven’t heard it, it goes like this:

A frog was relaxing on the riverbank when a scorpion crawled up and asked him for a ride across the river.
“Please Mr. Frog, I’ll rest on your back and won’t weigh you down. Please give me a ride.”
The frog looks at him and says, “You’re a scorpion. Stinging is in your nature. You’ll sting me halfway across and we’ll both drown.”
The scorpion says, “Oh no, why would I do that? I would drown too. Of course I won’t sting you.”
He continues to whine and wheedle and the frog, against his better judgment, knowing what the scorpion’s nature is, but feeling like he should be nice, says, “Well, okay, just this once.”
So off they go. Halfway across the river the scorpion begins to sting the frog viciously, again and again.
The frog is shocked and as the poison seeps through his system and they begin to sink beneath the water he says, “But you promised you wouldn’t sting me. Now we’re both going to die!”
The scorpion shrugs and says, “I suppose we will. But what else could I do, it’s my nature.”

What never ceases to surprise me is how people, when faced with scorpions, trolls and hateful, abusive people continue to volunteer to take them across the river. They are what they are. Jesus Christ recognized them for what they were and publicly chastised them, letting everyone within earshot know exactly what He thought of them. He had nothing to do with them. He didn’t try to save them, rescue them, change them or redeem them. If they wanted to change themselves, He was open to it, but He didn’t waste his time. He wasn’t polite about it either.

A bully is a bully is a bully. A pedophile is a pedophile is a pedophile. A troll is a troll is a troll. They do what they do because it is in their nature. I’m all for being kind and understanding. But I’m also not stupid.

If you want to welcome a scorpion onto your back and swim them across the river because they’ve promised to be something they’re not, then you’re welcome to take your chances. I for one will sit on the riverbank and watch.

I just bid on a job on an online copy writing site. My rate of course was well over the .10 cents per 1,000 words that most buyers want to pay. Shortly after I put my bid in I got back an email from someone who wondered why I “charged so much.” He could find THOUSANDS of other providers willing to practically pay HIM for the privilege of writing for his website. “Great!” I wrote back. “Then hire them. This is what I charge, but I don’t work for people whose primary concern is money, so I’m withdrawing my bid.” And I did. If I want to waste my time there are dozens of much more amusing ways to do it. Sorry. Engaging in conversations with narcissists is not on the list.

On another writer’s site, also one who assumes writers and providers can not actually live on $5 a month income, but party hardy on it (and seems to be catering to the adult porn industry of late) a buyer wrote with the same question on another bid for landing page copy. “I can get 300 articles for what you’re charging for one ($300),” she explained. “Yes, but will they have the value and convince your readers to buy your book as well as mine?” I asked? “Do you really think you’re getting a bargain by buying copy for $1 that doesn’t convince buyers to buy your book as opposed to paying $300 for copy that brings you even 50 buyers at $49 per sale?” She didn’t get it. She said, “Yeah, but $300 is a lot of money.” Oh. So you feel better about paying for something that brings you no value rather than paying for something that brings you 1,000 times the value? Pretty much – was her answer. I forgot to ask if her day job involves something where she wears a name badge on a uniform and smells like fries at the end of the day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – but she should really plan on being there a while longer unless she changes how she relates to money, value, and worth.

Buyers, particularly those who think they really can get rich overnight by paying some hack in India $5 to write a 50-page ebook they can then sell for $49, continue to think like employers. They think they can swap their money for my time. They think they can wave a $5 bill in front of me and I’ll give them something in return that will make them $29,000 a day. Creatives like me can build those castles, but only buyers really think a person can actually LIVE in the damn things. Does it not occur to people that if that were possible we wouldn’t need you to sell that book for us – or that we’d write it and sell it ourselves? To get rich takes a great book, tons of marketing, and a whole lot more than these people are willing to do. I can tell. After all, they think “great books” can be written for $5.

Seriously guys. Lincoln already freed the slaves and most of us know about it. As long as you think you can get great content and graphics from someone who thinks of themselves as a product and is willing to swap time for money, then you’re going to continue to spend that big marketing budget of $30 a week and get nothing in return. Nothing that will make YOU any money anyway.

There’s a reason that rusty, 40 year old car in the want ads sells for $300 and that new Mercedes goes for $75,000. VALUE. If you want quality, you pay for it. If you don’t realize that you need to give up on the idea of becoming an overnight success and seeing your face on an Adsense landing page next to the 12-year-old who invented an app for downloading condoms through your iPhone.

Okay – you have to excuse me now. I’m off to write a 50-page ebook on how you can make $29,000 a day by finding writers willing to work for $1 an hour and then selling the book for $49 and recouping your cost and MORE in ONE day!!! I’ll be rich by the weekend.

If you think donating money to the Red Cross, dumping off your old, unwanted clothes at the Goodwill, or spooning out turkey and mashed potatoes at the local homeless shelter at Thanksgiving and Christmas is “doing good things” and makes you a “good person,” think again. You’re one of the MILLIONS of people who are just “phoning in” their charity. You have an excess and so you give, thinking you’ve really done something. You haven’t. You’re a fake if you think you’re really a “charitable” person.

The thing is, in a civil, compassionate society you SHOULD be donating blood, giving clothes, volunteering at the homeless shelter, sending money to victims of crime and natural disasters. That’s a given. It is the basic behavior of people who care in an advanced society. I suppose if you’re raised in a society that cheers and puts gold stars by your name on a chart somewhere every time you clean your plate, flush the toilet, get up and go to school or take out the trash, then yeah – you probably do expect the media to gather in your front yard every time you dump your old clothes at the Goodwill or Salvation Army so you don’t have to take them to the landfill or pay to dispose of them, or so you can get a hefty tax deduction for your “charity.”

Compassion, caring, truly making a difference – all that comes from getting involved with PEOPLE and giving when it’s not convenient, when it costs you something, when it’s difficult emotionally, financially, or physically.

I got a tweet from @carselau72 today. Members of the Mentor, Ohio community and Mentor High School are upset at media coverage about four student suicides in four years at Mentor High School. They’re upset the media doesn’t cover “good stuff” they do – like donating money to earthquake victims in Haiti or giving blood. They wonder why the media is calling their high school a “bunch of terrorists.”  They tell me the suicides aren’t the bully’s fault – that some of the victims had bad home lives. Yeah. That’s what I’d expect from those who contributed to the bullying by not getting involved.

On Oct. 8 a news story ran that said:

MENTOR OHIO (Oct. 8, 2010) – Sladjana Vidovic’s body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.

It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died by his or her own hand – three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.

Citizens and students from Mentor are upset – not at the suicides, or the bullies, but at the media coverage that is exposing their school and community to the ugly truth that Mentor is phoning in their charity. They’re upset that the media doesn’t write about the “good” stuff they do. This post is in response to that attitude.  I’m a journalist – have been for more than 23 years. Here’s a brief lesson in media coverage Mentor, Ohio:

The media writes about things that are OUT OF THE ORDINARY. They write about the remarkable, the unexpected, about people who go far above and beyond what is expected in a civil society. If you literally risk your life running into a burning building to save a child, yeah, you’ll get media attention. If you bake cookies for homeless children at Christmas – not so much – unless it’s a slow news day and the editor needs a Christmas story.

Don’t fool yourself. Just because you give blood, volunteer at a homeless shelter on Thanksgiving or buy a child a toy at Christmas or donate money to any local cause – you are not a hero. You are a responsible human being. If you create a website, recruit therapists, lawyers and counselors and speak to the school board in an ongoing effort to stop bullying, to support victims, to educate peers and parents – THAT is newsworthy. THAT is positive action and a “good” story the media wants to report on. Not doing that? Then you’re not a hero. You don’t get recognition for doing what is expected. That’s life. That’s what it means to be an adult.

You are not a hero if you’re doing what decent human beings do as a matter of course. We should be feeding the poor, clothing the homeless, caring for the sick, praying for our soldiers. We should be standing up to bullies. We should be defending the defenseless. We should be speaking up. We should be objecting to people who abuse others. If you can’t be a decent human being you have no foundation to build being a hero on.

If you want media coverage then do something remarkable. Stop bullying. Institute a zero tolerance policy for bullying. Start collecting money to pay therapists – real ones who have experience counseling bullies, not interns from your local community college who are still playing at being therapists. We’re talking kid’s lives here. Get experts in.

Prosecute the bullies. Pass some laws with real teeth in them. Start a buddy system to HELP students, not ignore them.  Whoever called Jana “Slutty Jana” and threw food at her is a sick, demented, sorry, human being with mental health issues. Jana obviously was intelligent, talented and popular. Bullies like to attack those better than they are because they don’t have the brains, talent or heart to be half the person their victim is.

Mentor High School? Mentor Ohio? This is a wake-up call. Are you going to continue to “See no evil”? Or,  are you going to respond and take action, apologize for your lack of actions and compassion? Or are you going to be in the news again for your annual suicide?

I have some good advice for dealing with all of them. Respond ONE time with the phrase above:

“Your Application to Rent Space in My Head? Denied.” Then ignore them. If they’re not paying for your time and you don’t value their input, then don’t give them free rent.

People in general are cruel when it comes to the homeless. On the one hand they want to help them, but ONLY if the person is TOTALLY without resources and destitute. And THEN they blame them for being that way! Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard extreme anger, even rage at the idea that a homeless person has a cell phone! Wake up and get a life. Pre-paid cell phones are as cheap as $19 for the phone and $10 a month for service. That means the homeless person has access to a way of calling the police, a friend, or applying for a job. Yet the media would have us all believe that a homeless person with any technology, including a $10 Walmart watch, is a liar, scammer or cheating the system, or using the phone to deal drugs. Get over it.

The fact is, 85% of homeless people had real lives before the economy and lay-offs forced them out of their jobs and homes. They were middle-class, working people with boats and camping gear and ipods and cell phones and laptops and cars. And now they’re homeless, unemployed and have sold, pawned or put everything they have into storage with friends or family members or at a public facility while they search desperately for jobs. They may get stuff out of of storage to sell, or they may get rid of everything they own for the money. Giving up their cellphones and laptops and tools is like throwing away a life jacket. Possessing a few high-tech pieces of equipment is not an indication a person is not homeless. Be glad if a homeless person does have those items – it means they’re doing everything they can to hang onto them and to find a job.

When you’re poor and you lose everything then the slippery slope becomes a deadly cliff. You can no longer afford to keep your car repaired so it breaks down. If you can’t get it inspected or insured you’ll probably lose it – and the only chance you have to get to a job – particularly if you live in a rural area. If you get a ticket on top of everything else and can’t afford to pay it – you lose your driver’s license – making it even more difficult to get a job.

The same holds true with clothes, health and everything in your life. Without the means to keep things repaired, licensed, turned on or operating in order to make a living – you’re out of luck. So then the bleeding hearts come along and insist that you be totally bereft of even a $20 prepaid cell phone? Give me a freaking break. Then put YOUR cell phone aside for a month and see how well YOU function without it. Get the picture? Then stop condemning the homeless for acquiring the tools they need to find or create work and get off the streets. Better yet, buy them a phone and a year’s worth of service. Quit judging and start helping. If you’re not helping solve the problem you probably are the problem.

Now she’s starting to get momentum. Other people who are having Gulfstream Trailer issues are forming to consider filing a class action suit against Gulfstream. I’ve read a lot of the correspondence between Gulfstream and the Gagnes and as a journalist I’d say there’s a story there. And I’d say that Gulfstream needs to get its act together and quit acting like the stereotypical used car salesman and do the right thing. There’s not an executive there who allow their own family to be treated as the Gagnes have been (or maybe all the executives there WOULD treat their own families like crap!!). But it’s time for Gulfstream to step up and do the right thing.

One of the things that Gulfstream and other corporations have failed to realize is that with the internet their every shortcoming is subject to broadcast. Consumers have the upper hand for the first time in history!! Gulfstream filed a lawsuit to force the Gagnes to take down their website and I just laughed. Once your documentable misdeeds hit the internet its permanent!! Your best bet is NOT force, but paying attention to your customers and doing the right thing. Gulfstream obviously, has not and is not and will not do the right thing.

If you’re an RV owner, or considering becoming one, DO NOT BUY A GULFSTREAM TRAILER/RV until you read what has happened to the Gagnes. Their website is here: http://michgagne.weebly.com There are dozens if not hundreds of photos, plus the actual documents and the story of the Gagne’s trials and tribulations with Gulfstream RVs. Much luck to the Gagnes and anyone else experiencing issues with Gulfststream! If you want to join in the lawsuit, contact Michelle through her website!

Ever wanted to really stick it to an airline or company who screwed you over, broke something, or caused you undue grief? This band did – writing a VERY catchy song after United AIrlines broke their guitars, then passed the buck in admitting they were wrong. I’m sure the resulting viral song will be around a long time. Lesson? DO THE RIGHT THING.

Vandwellers face dangers living on the streets, but nothing like the children of drug addicted parents and hotels who don’t care what goes on in their chains, face.

Change.org says “The recent tragedy of Shaniya Davis’s rape and murder, part of which took place at a Comfort Inn in North Carolina, highlights this growing issue. This outrage has to be stopped, and you can stop it.”

Having drug-addicted mothers (and fathers) who prostitute their child to support their drug habit, as well as hotels who don’t care, has to be stopped too. According to CNN, Shaniya’s mother was doing just that. She is now facing murder and other charges.

Law enforcement has to go after parents, but there is a Code of Conduct for hotels that protects Children. Known as the Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism (www.thecode.org), developed by ECPAT in conjunction with the travel industry, can help a business become a more responsible member of our local and global community.”

But Change.org says Choice Hotels don’t seem to be interested in implementing the code. If you’re a petition signer, please go here to help convince Choice to adopt the Code.

There’s a reason I hate fraternities. This story is one of them. The same year and month I left my job to live in a van in Colorado, Josh Grimes, a former Oregon State University student and fraternity member (Alpha Gamma Rho for all you proud frat rats) shot a homeless man, Dennis Sanderson, for sport. The man was in the alley behind the fraternity house looking for cans in the dumpster. This wasn’t the first time a fraternity member shot a homeless man, but it was the first time one got caught.

Josh Grimes was eventually sentenced to 150 days in jail, 400 hours of community service at a homeless shelter, and three years of supervised probation for shooting Dennis. My guess is, unless Grimes’ rich daddy was able to get him his own cell, was that there was also some sort of “prison justice” that went unreported, since many of those in prison have been homeless. But still….less than four months time for a crime in a state where the MINIMUM time for committing a crime with a gun is FIVE YEARS? Disgusting. At least the fraternity was forced to pay $41,000 in damages and costs to the man. That’s pocket change and a slap on the hand for an assault on a man. But that’s Corvalis, Oregon for you.

Benton County Circuit Court Judge David Connell was the judge on the case. He had to impose some sort of sentence. Back in March, Grimes did plead guilty to unlawful use of a weapon and third-degree assault for shooting Sanderson in the leg.

According to the Associated Press, District Attorney John Haroldson asked the court to impose a sentence of five years in prison. Because Grimes had no prior criminal record (what a surprise) the court could impose a shorter sentence than the mandatory five year term. Haroldson said he asked for the mandatory gun minimum because Grimes shot Sanderson for sport.

“In Benton County, if you shoot a person for sport,” Haroldson said, “you go to prison.”

Grimes, pig that he is, continued to maintain he did not intend to hit Sanderson. Yet, after hitting him he and his friends left the frat house to go out for pizza. He did not call 911, or even make an anonymous call to police. And then he lied about his involvement in the shooting. So, he’s a liar, a convicted assailant and a general all round dirt-bag….I’m surprised the fraternity kicked him out…he has all the qualities one usually finds in frat boys, except he didn’t get the homeless man drunk before he shot him.

The really sad thing is that crimes against the homeless have reached such epidemic proportions that many states are making crimes against the homeless “hate” crimes. What could possibly drive anyone to attack, beat, shoot or even set fire to a helpless, homeless person – usually one who is sleeping or trying to find food or cans? Who knows. I only hope that the 400 hours of community service changes him more than prison.