A Non-Killer's Sex Change

Here's a new one. Remember John Mark Karr? The weirdo that was living in Thailand (where most weirdos go to live. It's like their Disneyland.) and somehow ended up being connected to the Jon Benet Ramsey murder? And then he confessed to the murder. But he DID NOT kill her. He's just a guy who wanted to be the killer. Or something. I don't know. There's plenty wrong with you if you're going around confessing to murders that you did not commit. And if you're confessing to the murder of a little girl, that's even more weird. So why am I just a little surprised to learn that Mr. Karr has had a sex change?

That's right. A sex change. According to the inside folks over there at Inside Edition, "Karr apparently started changing his sexual identity in 2006, taking female hormones. For a time, he put the sex change process on hold and got engaged to Brook Simmons. " OK, I'm going to get back to Karr in a moment here. How whacked out is this chick that she would A) even consider dating him, let alone actually date him, and B) end up getting engaged to this guy? She's clearly not in her right mind either. The guy was living in Thailand. Who goes to Thailand? Usually guys who are child touchers. Not ALL, but a lot. Child touchers love Thailand. I'm sure that's not something that the Chamber of Commerce uses to bring in tourism or anything, but child touchers love Thailand.

According to Inside Edition, they asked Brook Simmons about his pending sex change three years ago. When asked, "Do you have any comments about that?" Simmons responded, "Yes, I disagree with that. The sex change. I do. I'm not gonna lie. I disagree with it." Really? You're a chick who is engaged to a dude and you disagree with his having a sex change to become a woman? Really? In what way?

It should come as no surprise to you to learn that their relationship didn't last. Yeah, that's a hard thing to overlook. I mean, certain things, like snoring or an abnormal love for zucchini or something like that could be overlooked. But I think it's going to be a bit of a stretch to expect that a chick who was all set on marrying a dude is going to be OK if that dude changes into a chick. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Those nuptials are toast.

According to Inside Edition, "Karr apparently started changing his sexual identity in 2006, taking female hormones." Wait a minute. In 2006? 2006 was when he confessed to killing Jon Benet Ramsey. He started taking female hormones during that same year?! Who is the doctor that allowed him to continue forward with this? Aren't there psychological exams that need to take place before all of the hormonal crap starts going on? Isn't confessing to a murder that you didn't commit some sort of a sign of mental instability? I think it just might be! I mean, I don't know, but I'm thinking that if you're going to take responsibility for a murder that you didn't commit, it might not be the best time to be changing the ol' around. But that's just me.

Inside Edition managed to obtain a picture of what Karr looks like today. Of course, he doesn't call himself John Mark Karr. That would be silly. No, he has changed his name to Alexis Reich. And it wasn't just his name that he changed. He also managed to lop almost 15 years off of his age and claim that his birthday is now January 1, 1980 as opposed to his real birthdate of December 11, 1964. Is that a normal part of a sex change? You get to change your birthday as well? And you just get to make up however old you are? It's like part sex change, part witness protection program.

And that picture that they have? Where do you think that they found it? Of course. On freaking Facebook, where else? My God. Is there any aspect of life that can continue these days without having Facebook somehow play a part in it? I'm so over hearing about Facebook everywhere. Try and do something without Facebook once in a while, folks.

You People Fell For That?

Sometimes there are scams that I am just amazed that some people are able to pull off. And it's not because the person or the people pulling the scam are stupid. It's because the people getting scammed are actually going along with it and letting it happen! We're not talking about some complicated scheme that anyone would have fallen for or that no one could have done anything to stop it from happening. No, we're talking about a scam that is so perplexing to me, I can't believe that ONE person fell for it, let alone THIRTY.

Here's the scoop: According to an article by the wiry folks over there at Wired, over in Wisconsin an 18-year old male "...was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for an extortion scheme". OK, what kind of extortion scheme. Oh, you know. The kind "...that had him tricking male classmates into sending them nude photos of themselves". You may be asking yourself, "That's a scheme?" Well, it is when he was "...then blackmailing them with exposure if they didn’t have sex with him." Oh, yeah. That's a scheme all right! Wait. What?

Correct. Meet 18-year old (and old enough to know better) Anthony Stancl. Behold!

Yeah, that seems about right. Anyway, Mr. Stancl apparently "...posed as a girl on Facebook and tricked more than 30 male classmates into sending him photos of themselves." Now, you know that these photos that were sent weren't just any photos. No, they were the photos of the nude variety.

Let's just stop right here for a moment, shall we? What is it with younger people taking pictures of themselves naked? Or just taking pictures of their genitals? And then sending said pictures to other human beings. How does that work? Do you take a picture of your penis and send it out to all of your friends with the caption "Here's what my wiener looks like on Tuesday."? I don't understand the motivation behind these actions. And when you're sending said genitalia photography over the Internet are you thinking, "Oh, it'll be fine. Things only stick around on the Internet for like a week or so. It'll be gone soon." Or are you just planning to never have any sort of a job where you work with the public or what? Why are you sending pictures of your reproductive organs to other people? Why?

Since those questions, among others, cannot be answered right now, let's continue with how this scam worked. So Mr. Stancl found 30 guys who were really proud of their manhood and they snapped a couple of Glamour Shots (maybe with the penis by a lake or with the penis in the middle of a meadow) and sent them to Mr. Stancl, but who they thought was "Kayla". Huh. OK. Then what?

Well, as Mr. Stancl began receiving photos of male genitalia, he needed to keep them organized so he organized them within 40 folders on his computer and named each folder "after a victim whose photos were in the folder. In one case, police found 24 pictures of a single victim." 24?!?! Really? One for every hour of the day? (Here's my penis at noon! Here's my penis during rush hour!) Seems odd.

And it was odd. But to me, it wasn't as odd as the fact that seven of the victims claimed that Mr. Stancl "...threatened to post their nude pictures on the internet or send them to their friends unless they engaged in sexual activity with a male friend of “hers.” When the victims met with the male friend, who was Stancl, the perpetrator performed oral sex on the victims and took a photo of the activity with his cellphone." Wait. What now?

HE performed oral sex on THEM?! Huh. I would have thought he would have wanted it the other way around. He did all of the performing, eh? Strange. But what's stranger is that those folks thought that was a good idea.

I don't get that line of thinking at all. I guess because the victims were still in high school that they went along with this little plan. I mean, seriously. What went through their heads? "I'm not gay or anything, but this guy is going to post a picture of my penis online unless I let him get me off in an oral manner. Um, OK." NO! That's not right! That's not logical! But that's what happened.

The whole thing came unraveled when Mr. Stancl, still posing as "Kayla" ended up actually having sex with one of the male victims and then instructing the victim to send him a nude picture of his brother. That's when the victim went running to his parents and told them about this crazy, Facebook penis picture scheme.

Mr. Stancl has now been sentenced to 15 years in jail. Since he seems to enjoy performing fellatio, I'm sure that over the next 15 years, he'll be able to find plenty of willing participants to let him do his thing to them. Plenty of them. So let this be a lesson to you, kids! If someone wants a picture of your penis, just say no. Because really, no one wants to see that. No one. I promise. That's why y'all wear pants.

Facebook Police to the Rescue

Look, we all know that there are people out there who are a-holes. And the best defense against said a-holes is to keep away from them. You know them when you see them, so just stay away. And while that is perfectly logical rule of thumb to follow, that sort of logic seems to just go right out the window when it comes to Facebook.

See, on Facebook, if someone sends a "friend request" to someone that they hardly know, barely know or perhaps don't even know at all, chances are good that the other person (the one whom they don't know, that is correct) will accept their "friend request" and allow them access to their sequestered Facebook world. This is something that I do not understand. It may be that I don't get it because I don't feel the need to boost my own ego with a falsely inflated friend count. Currently I have 42 friends on my Facebook page and I have some sort of a personal relationship with every one of them. Even so, from time to time I find myself wondering what in the hell I'm doing with 42 friends and briefly perusing them to see if there's anywhere that I can cut back. (I haven't found anyone yet. Nice work, guys. Keep it up!)

Look, having people that you don't really know on your Facebook page means that you could be electronically fraternizing with psychopaths, serial killers, child molesters and the list goes on. I highly doubt that is the case in most instances, but what I will guess is the case in most instances is that you're electronically fraternizing with morons. Mouth breathing, paste eating morons.

I'll attempt to make my case by bringing you the ordeal of a one eighteen year old Rebecca Davey of Southend, Essex (that's in England) and her small child, Ollie (cute name). According to the folks across the pond at the Mail Online, Rebecca had posted a picture on Facebook of her child, the previously aforementioned Ollie, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Behold!

OK, part of me sees that picture and the first thing that part thinks is "Awww..." Then the other part of me sees that picture and wonders if that first part of me should have been thinking "Awww..." Whether I should have thought "Awww..." or not, I know what I most certainly should not have been thinking. What I shouldn't have been thinking was, "Oh, my God! I have to call the police!" Wait. What?

Correct. According to the article Rebecca "...was reported by online friends who spotted the picture of baby Ollie." What I find most disturbing about that, other than all of it, is the part where it appears to be plural. Plural. As in 'more than one'. More than one person who acted like a Deutschbank and called the cops because the kid had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Are you kidding me? What is wrong with you people?

It became apparent that something was amiss when "Some w***** reported me to the police abwt picture off ollie." Being as how this was in England, I'm guessing that the "w" word is wanker. And wanker indeed. (I did not know that you couldn't print wanker in the papers in England. What's the American equivalent of wanker? D**khead? You certainly can't print d**khead, but I don't think you could print that in England either. I'm open to any theories or knowledge on this subject.)

Here's what I am going to hope happened. I'm going to hope/assume that Rebecca 'friended' a bunch of people on Facebook that she didn't actually know. People that you don't' actually know are more likely to act like morons than people that you do know, especially when it comes to being sanctimonious and calling the cops for something as harmless as a photo of a baby with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Those people, those self-congratulatory, pious, judgmental individuals are the ones that were the problem. I'm hoping that if she had only kept people that she actually knew on her Facebook that this wouldn't have happened because when people actually know you they don't tend to go running off to the police for something as asinine as this. Granted, having a photo of your kid with a cigarette plastered on Facebook probably isn't the best idea anyone has ever come up with, but it shouldn't result in having the cops come to your house for a welfare check on the kid.

By the way, "Essex police visited Rebecca's home in Southend, Essex, but said there were 'no immediate concerns' for the child's welfare. Social services also made inquiries." See? Just because you've got a cute little picture of a child with tobacco doesn't mean that you're a bad mother. Rebecca later posted "Why Would SomeOne Do That To Me U Ollie No was taking U Yur Mine for lyfee Darlinggg Mummy Loves You :)" There you have it. If you're going to turn this chick in for anything, what say you make it to the Grammar Police or something. But if you're going to make your life available on Facebook, what say you only 'friend' people that you know and lessen the chances that you're going to have some moron go running off to the cops because they have deemed your parenting skills to be less than able. After all, there's a reason why it's called "friending". Think about it.