Scooby Doo and the Case of Molestation Mansion

If any of you ever wanted to open a "Haunted Attraction" (you know, like a Haunted Summer Camp or a Haunted Amusement Park) and sell tickets during the entire month of October, then I've got a real estate opportunity for you! It's Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, of course, which will soon be auctioned (although you'll probably have to outbid Prince).

Sadly, the once grand property is no longer in good repair:

Buildings, amusement rides, industrial equipment, personal automobiles, and Jackson's personal zoo and Tipi village were falling apart. Gardens and lawns were overgrown.

However, this does make it a perfect setting for a scream entrepreneur who wants to appeal to both teens and ironic Scooby-Doo-watching adults. No word on whether the animals or Native American residents of the Tipi Village are included in the auction (you would probably want both to make the haunting more authentic).

Just think of the possibilities: Ghosts in bumper cars! Pale children wearing veils! Emaciated rhinoceroses! Naked audio-animatronic boys! It will be the molestiest amusement park ever!

Oh, and clearly this, um, thing should receive pride of place:

As reported in HuffPo, this weird "tombstone-looking thing" is engraved with an original poem by Michael Jackson himself. Hey, you know the best way to combat the suspicion that you're a child molester? Well, not by writing a poem with a refrain that begins: "Children of the world, we'll do it." You can read the full poem at the HuffPo link above, but allow me to excerpt first verse and the refrain:

Children of the world, we'll do it
We'll meet on endless shores
Making sandcastles and floating our boats
While people fight and defend their point of view
Forever putting on masks that are new
We'll swing the tide of time and do it.

Children of the world, we'll do it
With song and dance and innocent bliss
And the soft caress of a loving kiss
We'll do it.

I understand that poetry is not like everyday language in terms of its truth content; however, don't you think the author of a poem like this should be taken into preventative custody? All I know is that I would never let one of my children go to the beach with Uncle Michael.

Besides, to be a true expression of MJ's feelings, shouldn't the poem actually have contained an asterisk?

Children* of the world, we'll do it

* boys only

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I will be your preacher teacher (Be your daddy)

Fosco was raised Catholic. Thank goodness that's all over. But sometimes Fosco thinks back to his days as an altar boy at St Linda's and how he was lucky to evade the romantic attentions of Father Fingers.

We all know that the Catholic Church's response to sexual molestation has been completely shameful. But you know what else is shameful? That millions of Catholics continue to give money to the Church every week at Mass. The Church took advantage of its members (and their young sons) for decades; now it continues to take advantage of the financial resources of its members to pay for the sins of its priests.

This is all old news, of course, but Fosco got angry again today as he was reminded of the scale of it all:

• Archdiocese of Los Angeles, 2007, agrees to pay $660 million to about 500 people.
  
• Diocese of San Diego, 2007, agrees to pay $198 million to 144 people.
  
• Diocese of Orange, Calif., 2004, $100 million for 90 abuse claims.
  
• Diocese of Covington, Ky., 2006, up to $84 million for more than 350 people.
  
• Archdiocese of Boston, 2003, $84 million for 552 claims.
  
• Diocese of Oakland, Calif., 2005, $56 million to 56 people.
  
• Archdiocese of Portland, Ore., 2007, agrees to pay about $52 million to 175 victims to emerge from bankruptcy protection; sets aside another $20 million for any future claims.
  
• Diocese of Spokane, Wash., 2007, agrees to pay $48 million for about 150 claims to emerge from bankruptcy protection.
  
• Diocese of Sacramento, Calif., 2005, pays $35 million to 33 people.
  
• Archdiocese of Louisville, Ky., 2003, $25.7 million to 243 victims.
  
• Diocese of Tucson, Ariz., 2005, agrees to fund a settlement trust worth about $22 million for more than 50 victims to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

[Source: NYTimes 9/8/07.]

This is all money that could have been spent on education or on charity. If you are Catholic and you care about educating children or alleviating suffering, maybe you should think about withholding your money from the Church and giving it to a non-religious charity.

Is Mark Foley just being misread?

So there's this (now former) US Representative Mark Foley who seems to have conducted inappropriately sexual IM conversations with underage (male!) Congressional pages. This is a seamy story with many deliciously juicy angles, including:

• he was a high-ranking member of the Republican Congressional leadership.
  
• his legislative priorities were focused on "championing laws against sexual predators" (NYT)
  
• the House Republican Leadership may have known about his antics for almost a year (and kept it hush-hush).
  
• he is, apparently, that rarest of unicorns: A Gay Republican.

Is it possible to drown in irony? Glub, glub, glub...

But, perhaps we're jumping to conclusions here. As Fosco knows, IM can be a tricky way to communicate. Unfortunately, it is often the only way for one to communicate with anyone under 20. Before Fosco hired his full-time personal assistant Geoffrey, he often employed several teenage interns of his own. And let me tell you, there were some IM-related misunderstandings--often stemming from the fact that specific lines of text were taken out-of-context by concerned parents, FBI agents, etc. Is it possible that the Liberal Media is ignoring parts of these messages--the parts that would reveal that they were actually intended innocently?

To speak to that question, Fosco will present some of his own IMs to his teen boy interns that have been intentionally misinterpreted by his enemies, typically by refusing to notice the second half of each IM conversation:

Case 1
FOSCO: what r u wearing?
CASEY04: tshirt and shorts
FOSCO: love to slip them off of u
FOSCO: cuz its gonna snow
FOSCO: and if u get sick i cant give u time off
FOSCO: put on a coat

Case 2
FOSCO: i want u on all fours on my rug
TIMMY_S: huh?
FOSCO: i lost a contact. i cant see it.

Case 3
FOSCO: bring me ur underwr
HOTWRESTLER06: why?
FOSCO: i wanna sniff em
FOSCO: cuz i thk i may be allergic to ur laundry detergent
FOSCO: and i have to find out before i get hives agin

Case 4
FOSCO: show me ur dick
FOSCO: cheney
FOSCO: action figure
FOSCO: sorry my im is acting screwy
FOSCO: but id love to see that action figure
FOSCO: i hear its funny

Case 5
FOSCO: wanna go to fcuk?
SPICY_TEEN17: u wanna fuck?
FOSCO: no fcuk = french connection uk. its my fave store and i nd u to buy me a coat
FOSCO: cuz its gonna snow

So let's not judge Rep. Foley until we get the FULL transcripts of these "sexually explicit" IMs. Fosco would hate to see another innocent homosexual brought down by a vicious media attack (like how Joyce Carol Oates alleged that James McGreevey killed all those teen vagrants). Shame on you, Liberal Journalist/Short-Story Writer Media Complex!

He ain't heavy, Father, he's my neighbor.

Who doesn't love car-dust graffiti? Living so close to the beach (with the near-constant salty breeze) makes every car that hasn't been washed in the last week a potential tabula rasa for fingertip doodling.

Although Fosco tends to appreciate the classics of car-dust graffiti (and he never disobeys a truck-window command to show his tits), he is not opposed to innovation. Like, for example, the graffito that Fosco encountered in his apartment complex parking lot this afternoon: 100% Boys Town. What could this mean? Is one of Fosco's neighbors a graduate of the famous Omaha-based training academy for male hustlers? Is the owner of the truck, like Fosco, an aficianado of troubled (but legal!) youth? Or is this the tag of an extremely unartistic local gang with an ironic sense of humor?

Ooooh. I hope it's choice number three.

Read Fosco on Father Flanagan's Sodomy Camp.