And apparently annoyed more often than not:

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Senator Clinton has come out with a new NC Ask Me ad in North Carolina.  I like the premise - eschewing all of the punditocracy and blogospheric hype and getting down to brass tacks, as it were:

So, how do you think Clinton Rules will apply here?  Does she actually say something evil if you play the video backwards in a tornado while sucking on a pudding pop?

From Colorful Colorado, home of tourism, shiny metals and the team that used to be led by John Elway, an object lesson in zero-tolerance:

Eight-year-old Eathan Harris was originally suspended from Harris Park Elementary School for three days. Principal Chris Benisch reduced the suspension to one day after complaints from Harris' parents.

Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.

"It smelled good," Harris said. "They told me that's wrong."

I think at this point we're going to have to suspend every kid in America.  I don't know of a one, from my childhood to present day, who hasn't whiffed one of those fruity magic markers, or played with glue, or observed that some art supplies smell better than others, or cut their own bangs in class (okay; the last one might've been just me).  Really.  He's eight and it's a sharpie.  I think suspension is a tad extreme here.  But wait, there's more:

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to "become intoxicated."

A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.

Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.

The toxicologist goes on to say that maybe, if the kid had 50 bags of sharpies, maybe he could "get creative" and figure something out.  The school was completely nonplussed by the whole science-speak thing, though:

"Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, 'Wow, that's a very serious marker,'" Benisch said.

Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.

"We've purged every permanent marker there is in this building," he said.

Time well spent, I say.  Can't be too careful with those sharpies.

It's Conversations With My Logs!

1)  Blurting out curse words after drinking binge -  Searching through a number of sites, all agree that alcohol consumption results in loss of both inhibitions and judgement, which likely explains the cursing.  After a few drinks, many people forget about the polite filter we put on for our daily interactions with other human beings, and their language subsequently gets saltier.

There was one interesting article, however, considering the possibility of a link between drinking and Tourette Syndrome - though not in the way you might initially imagine.  It theorized that maternal alcohol consumption during gestation may be related to the presence of Tourette Syndrome in the child after birth.  It was not formal, peer-reviewed material, however, and thus would need some research to back it up.

All in all, I'd say it's more than likely that you or your friend simply lost your filter for a while, and that it will more than likely stay in place as long as binge drinking is avoided.

2)  Is man forced to be dehumanized with social comforting laws rules  - I'm going to argue in the negative here.  Most social animals establish a hierarchy within their colonies and/or family groups, with each animal knowing his place and the types of behavior both generally accepted, and not accepted, for his position.  Humans are not much different from any other social animal in this most basic regard.

Where humans differ, I believe, and part of what makes our social development unique, is our ability to both codify these basic rules into formal laws, and to apply those laws universally within our political boundaries without regard to hierarchical status (in theory, anyway; we know in practice that justice is not as blind as we often wish her to be).

Rules are required for any society, human or otherwise, to function and prosper.  Rules are common to us all.  Rather than dehumanizing us, it is the human aspiration to transcend socio-biological rules with logical, egalitarian laws that makes us human.