To Hack, Wed, And Bark

By Author: Aaron Spetner
Total Articles: 14
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Senator Hatch may have lost his mind. Others say he never had one. Also, a new kind of inter-marriage.
As you may have heard, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has suggested that in an effort to thwart online piracy, Congress should pass a law allowing the music industry to hack into and destroy the machines of those who download music illegally. Well, Mr. Hatch, I must say, I salute you. No, I do not salute you for spewing utter drivel from your mouth; I have no respect for you after that. I do salute you, though, for giving me subject matter for this week's column. In desperation for a topic this week, I was about to write an article about the nine-year-old Indian girl who married a fourteen-year-old last week. Ok, so you don't think that's a big deal, people do strange things in other countries. But what if I told you the groom was really a two-year-old? Yes, the groom really is two, but I said fourteen because that's how old he is in dog years. That's right. And Indian man actually married his little daughter to a dog, according to an Associated Press article today. A real, live, scratching, farting, barking (did I mention ...
... stray?) dog. And that's not all. The article goes on to mention that it does not interfere with this girl's life. And she suffers no stigma. And they are not going to get a divorce. And she can still marry someone else. And I think I am going to be sick. Apparently, this girl had grown a tooth on her upper gum, which is indicative of possession by an evil spirit. A spirit that can only be warded off via marriage. Her father, however, lacked the funds to afford a human-to-human marriage, and therefore opted for a cross-species ceremony (I guess the groom had already received his shots - veterinarians can be costly). I presume that if he had the money, he would have married her to a dentist (or maybe even just make an appointment). This story raises some disturbing questions, which I feel we must discuss: What was the dog's name? Did the dog have a say in this? Did the dog pick out the ring himself? Is the dog going to try to remove the tooth? Does the dog's mother know about this? Regarding the dog's name, the article does not mention it, so I can safely assume that Indian women do not respect their husbands and do not care about their husbands' names. This is also a problem here in the United States, where some women believe that they are better than men. My answer to them is well, let's see who can drink more beer. The other questions you can answer yourself. As always, I am sure there will be some readers this week that will criticize me for making fun of other cultures. Well, in my defense, I do not understand all cultures. I find many of them hilarious. Many of them seem like they were created by monkeys banging on a keyboard (similar to how these articles come about). Marrying one's daughter to a dog makes about as much sense as cutting off one's own extremities or being Canadian (gasp). I realize there may be reasons behind these things, but if you say these reasons are logical, then your name is probably Orrin Hatch, which brings me back to the topic at hand. Remember Orrin Hatch? The guy who, way back at the beginning of this article, wanted to pass legislation allowing the music industry to hack and destroy computers containing pirated music? Well, he's still around. He also said that the industry should be exempt from liability when destroying machines with suspect pirated music files. As a trained computer professional, I can tell you that the unrespectable Mr. Hatch is seriously out of his mind. He has no idea what would be required in order to accomplish this. Additionally, many computers are not destroyable via remote hacking. It is also interesting to note that Mr. Hatch, on a recent visit to India, married a female dog in order to have a tooth extracted. Haha! Just kidding! No dog would be stupid enough to marry such a fool. He probably doesn't even own a dog. Pet stores probably won't sell him a dog for fear he might destroy it when it eats copyrighted material. Before I bash Mr. Hatch too much, though, we must consider one fact. This man is a United States Senator. He has power, and he can use it on any one of us. Additionally, if he got enough people to vote for him, maybe he isn't plain old stupid. Maybe when he made his remarks he thought he was a contestant in a contest to see who can come up with the most ridiculous solution for the online piracy issue. Well, Mr. Hatch, no such contest exists, so you were just being a fool again. However, [i]I[/i] would like to create such a contest. I invite everyone to try to come up with the most ridiculous solution for online piracy, and email it to me at aspetner@spetnik.com. And if I feel like it, I may just decide to announce the winners in a future article. About the Author Aaron currently works as a software/web developer and writes in his free time. He also runs a growing web-based discussion forum at http://www.chitchatforums.com. His personal work is on display at http://www.spetnik.com.