JonBart.com ™

‘Light bulbs are not actually “light bulbs” but dark absorbers. When
you turn them on, they suck the dark out of the room. You can prove
this by holding your hand under a “light bulb”. The dark will stack
up under your hand where its path to the absorber is blocked by your
hand. When they quit working and turn a dark color, it’s not because
they burnt out, it’s because they’re full.’

- As seen on the web by "Ceph"

It happened…. again… This makes the fourth time on the fourth different car in the past few years (I must have bad luck)…

Just a few moments ago, in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon, my car was broken into and vandalized in a school parking lot. Using a pair of nail clippers, wrapped in cloth, two black teenagers approached my car, waited for the guard to start his rounds, and broke my passenger window.

They then broke the dash using brute force, pulling the plastic off in pieces, as it broke under the strain. They then cut the wiring connecting my dash controls, cut the electronic wiring for both my radio and dash, and attempted to pull out the radio.

The radio (a high-end MP3/CD with iPod controls) was installed correctly (by me, about a year ago), and as such, was difficult to remove. They then pulled the metal frame that is normally INSIDE the dash to the outside, breaking the dash further, and twisted the entire metal framework in attempt to break it off.

They were then startled by neighbor Chris Lambeth. Chris heard the commotion, assumed it was mission kids, and walked up to see what they were doing on my car. When the hoodlums saw Chris, they pulled their hoods over their faces, and ran off on foot. The guard came immediately thereafter and saw the perpetrators leave, but no chase ensued for unexplainable reasons.

Mr. Miles and observers were “sorry” and they offered to call the cops, but since there was no description that could be given, and no traceable items actually stolen, it wouldn’t have done any good, so I chose not to. A phone call to my father also revealed that insurance would not do anything about the damage either (which I’m guessing would be almost $1000, due to the number of things that would have to be replaced and a ‘96 Geo Trakker 4-door SLI isn’t exactly a common car)

So now I have a car full of glass, a completely trashed dash that I’ll never be able to put a stereo back into, a window that is now taped with a trash bag over it, lots of damage that I can’t afford to fix, no insurance, no feeling of justice that the wrong-doers will pay, and a car that has suddenly dropped hundreds of dollars in value.

Perhaps what bums me the most is that I had planned to drive to Alabama for Christmas soon, but I won’t be able to have this fixed to be even drivable by then so I may have to stay in Cincinnati alone again this year. The timing is bad, very bad, but I guess there is no such thing as a good time to have your car broken into.

Woah woah WOAH, little bundle of cheer. Where did you come from? You say your name is Christmas? Hahaha. I’m sorry Snowbell but I’m gonna need to see some ID for a claim like…

Well, wait… You are Christmas. Born in the Year of our Lord. Well whaddya know….
How did you get here?  Surely we’re not ready for you yet. Can you just sit in the corner over there for awhile? No? Man… You know, I’m sorry, but we’re not ready for you, as you can probably tell…

Christmas comes but once a year. One of these years we’ll get it on the guest list.

In a perfect world, there would be no idealists

This is a recent edit of a school photo, with modification borrowed from this tutorial.

Seen over nine thousand times, it’s the What is Love video produced and edited by me for last year’s Winter Banquet.

Welcome to Bart 2.0. This is a new generation of blogging. Everything before this post was posted on my Blogger page and imported. I plan to have all kinds of content, but the great thing for you (the reader) is that now it’s all categorized and laid out very nicely in that Web 2.0 so-fresh-and-so-clean look, thanks to WordPress, mySQL, CSS style sheets, and a whole lotta coding goodness. None of this wimpy Blogspot stuff anymore.

So. Let’s get started. I now have a place to call home, so let’s furnish this home with some material