fracas

Have you heard about the newest “Rate My” site out there? It’s called Rate My Cop, and it has police forces from (United States) coast to coast upset.

Reports cbs5.com:

“Officer Hector Basurto, the vice president of the Latino Police Officers Association, recently learned about the site. “I’d like to see it gone,” he said.

“Having a website like this out there puts a lot of law enforcement in danger,” he said. “It exposes us out there.”

Kevin Martin, the vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, agrees.

“Will they be able to access our home addresses, home phone numbers, marital status, whether or not we have children? That’s always a big concern for us,” said Martin.”

Fracas has asked you in the past, to leave your opinions about sites like these. The post I wrote about rottenneighbor.com was one. This new trend should concern us all. While on the surface, many of these types of sites, like ratemyprofessors.com and ratemyteacher.com to hold themselves up to be altruistic, they fail to acknowledge that they have no way of assuring us the data at their sites is legitimate and objective as opposed to being the vindictive and immature tantrums of students who, like the morons who have taken to goading classroom teachers with horrendous behaviour and then taping them for youtube, simply have no idea what it means to take responsibility for their own behaviour and instead choose to run to sites like ratemyprofessor and ratemyteacher and post bad reviews of someone who simply expected them to be responsible for their own behaviour and education?

Were I a teacher, a professor, a doctor or a cop, I’d be worried about the safety of my family once my name was added to one of these lists, however… then there’s the side of those who believe anything in the public record should be provided freely online.

I wonder though. When good people start becoming too scared to become doctors, teachers and police officers because of these new risks, will it become like politics… where we all just laugh and joke about how everyone knows that “good” people don’t go into it anymore because of the media risks?

I wonder also, how would everyone feel if the teachers and professors came up with a “Rate My Student” site and the doctors came up with a “Rate My Patient” site. Would we all be up in arms to suddenly, just as the potential is there with rottenneighbor.com, find ourselves listed somewhere with nary a good word to be said because someone who had their own agenda decided to humiliate us online?

What do you think?

You can have your say by posting a comment here, or heading over to the other fracas blog and voting in the poll (located in the sidebar) there. You see… if all these “Rate My” sites are so into the whole rating thing, then they shouldn’t mind us rating them! Vote for the best “Rate My” site listed, and in the end, the results will show which you think is the best… and the worst.

In order to make your choice, here are some other “Rate My” sites for you to ponder. The descriptions are their own, not mine. Each will open in a new window. When done, just close the window and you’ll still be here and able to click your way over to the poll to vote.

1. RateMyProfessors.com
   Students can browse and rate professors by state. Also contains a forum to discuss general topics.
2. Rate My Picture.com
   Rate the attractiveness of people on a scale from 1 to 10. Pictures are sorted by score. Includes personal profiles and personal message boards.
3. Rate My Teacher
   RateMyTeachers.com is changing the way the world looks at education by providing students with the unique opportunity to critique their teachers.
4. Rate My Life - How Are You Doing? Find Out If You Suck at Life.
   At Rate My Life, we rate your life using factors derived from what people want to accomplish in life after aggregating data from the entire Internet!
5. Rate My Boobs
   Please feel free to take a look around, rate some of the ladies, or fill out the registration.
6. Rate My Ink - Tattoo Pictures & Designs
   Rate 1000s of pictures of tattoos, submit your own tattoo picture or just rate others.
7. Rate My Puppy
   Rate cute little puppies or upload pictures of yours to be rated.
8. Rate My Puppy
   Rate My Kitten. … Rate My Kitten 117179 pictures on-line.
9. RateMDs
   Give your doctor a checkup.
10. Doctor Sicko
    Find, add and rate your doctor.
11. Rate Your Doctor - Canadian Doctor Ratings
    Anonymous and free. You can rate your doctor here.

Finally… do the following even need a description? If you choose to click, you will see exactly what you’d think. I’ve included them to make a point. Just because one can place something on the internet, doesn’t mean they should.

12. Rate My Vomit - Vomit Pictures
    Rate My Vomit - vomit pictures. Submit your favourite vomit and puke pictures.
13. Rate My Poo
    Rate My Poo - pictures of poo. Submit your favourite poo pictures.

To find out how you too, can participate in The Monday Melee, please read the main Monday Melee page, grab The Monday Melee logo (and view the participant list too).

Fracas’ The Monday Melee for March 10, 2008

1. The Magnificent: Name someone you absolutely adore, and tell us why.
I’m going to skip the “usual” answers this week, like family, etc. and talk about some people who have no idea I’m naming them… and probably never will. 

I adore my grade school teachers. In many ways, they encouraged me to believe I could do anything I set my mind to. Believing that about myself has helped me through many a situation in my life and I am forever grateful.

If any a fraccer out there is a teacher… I implore you to do this for the children in your charge and change their lives. It may help one of them become an astronaut, or it may help one of them make a life that doesn’t involve abuse. I guarantee you though, it will change a life.

2. The Muddy: Tell us something about life you just don’t “get”.
I just don’t understand how people can want to live in messy, dirty homes. It drives me nuts. I have three kids and they tend to be quite normal in the “I can’t find it unless it’s right there in that heap of stuff on the floor of my room” kind of way, but it drives me nuts… especially when it spills over into the rest of the house. I don’t get it. If someone else does, I’d be happy to have that explained to me.

3. The Magnetic: Name something or someone good (or bad) you’re drawn to and you just can’t help it. Tell us if you want to change this or not.
I have a thing for chocolate. Doesn’t everyone? Why would anyone want to change this?

4. The Mainstay: Who or what is something you just can’t live without? Why?
I could say air, food or love… which are the obvious answers; I could even say my children, Mr. Fracas, my family…. which are also the obvious answers, but I’m going to be, well… me.

I could not live without feminine hygiene products. Think about the alternative. Have you seen the new tampax commercials? No? Here you go:

Now I know there’s a ridiculous side to this commercial. The comments to that clip range from, “wow why would the girl be thinking about her period she when she is dieing form starvation,” to “for those of you who are confused, having your period is a very real barrier to female education in rural Africa,” and “would it really cause a girl to be inactive for a WEEK?“

Now I’m not saying anything political with this, I’m just thinking about how I myself, am certainly glad these products are available to me… and remembering to be thankful for things like this that we take for granted.

5. The Masquerade: Tell us something about yourself we wouldn’t already know.
I have never been to Disneyland, Disneyworld, or many other “typical” touristy destinations, and I have no desire to go. I guess that makes me a bad mom. Boo hoo.

6. The Mettle: Tell us about a time you showed courage in yourself, or tell us what you wish you had the courage to do.
I lived in an apartment building that had a major fire. One tennant who had lost everything was horribly distraught and I was comforting her. Seeing her tears and the potential for a story, the local news reporters in that city were harassing us. Knowing I risked ending up on camera looking like a lunatic, I confronted them and succeeded in making them go away. Media stinks sometimes. There are better ways to get a story than by traumatizing someone already traumatized.

Now it’s your turn.

You can take part in The Monday Melee, even make it a regular feature at your site by visiting The Monday Melee page and following the steps. Kick-start your brain on Mondays and meet other bloggers.

If your blog is listed below, it means you’ve at one time or another, done The Monday Melee. Head over to the main Melee page, grab a new badge for 2008 (or for the Movie Melee, etc.) and kick-start your week by throwing down a Melee again!

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I have to do it. I have to answer the call.

In a response to my dumb blonde joke post, a certain blogger asked who was going to put me on the spot and make me prove if I’m either a true blond or brunette. I decided to put myself on the spot.

And now for the boring incredibly exciting story.

(I’d advise you to stop and get popcorn or something right about now.)

Once upon a time, a fraccy girl was blonde. Very blonde, in a sea of dark-haired siblings. However… this fraccy blonde was no dumb blonde and so she tends to agree with her wise friend Jayleen, who thinks it is the dumb brunettes who bleach their hair blonde, who are responsible for giving blondes a bad reputation.

So on went time, as time is wont to do, and the fraccy blonde girl was married. Soon after, the fraccy girl became a mother and no one could call her a girl any longer… rather, a woman. To her surprise, each time she glowed with pregnancy, her hair became a little bit different and a little bit darker. She was sure it was the retching, for the dreaded “morning sickness” was really more of an all-day-every-day-you-lying-bastards kind of sickness.

You’d probably rather not know what that glow really is.

And so, the fraccy woman who was once a sunshine-y fraccy blonde girl, one day looked upon her reflection and realized that she was actually, and admittedly…

a dirty woman.

Dirty blonde that is, the color of a pan of dishwater after the toil of washing up after a hearty meal.

Being full of the fraccy vim and vigor though, she realized that her hair no longer was a reflection of her personality, and she decided to dye her hair. She went to the hair salon of her fraccy sister, who for some years had been bleaching her hair blonde, and begged the stylist for a transformation to a dark, dark shade of brown… with a witchy dose of red in it.

The hairdresser said lo, she could not do so, and proceeded instead, to dye the fraccy head a stunning shade of fire-engine red.

Now fracas was not happy, and went home to seek solace bitch and complain to the fraccy husband, expecting him to spill forth with sympathetic and understanding words all the while assisting his dear fracas with the assembling of a certain type of little doll that one could poke things into… a doll that looked oddly, just like the evil hairstylist. Upon arriving at home though, fracas found the fraccy husband to be quite delighted and enamoured of the new fraccy hair, preferring instead, to erecting a shrine of sorts, to the new fraccy hair and hairstylist.

Helloooo fracas.

And so, fracas decided to keep the red hair, only she went to the place known to other Canadians as Shopper’s Drug Mart, and purchased one box of hairdye, spending a total of about a sixth of what she had just paid the silly hair stylist.  Whence she begat the roots, she toiled and troubled until indeed, the fraccy head was the witchy shade she desired, never again to lay eyes upon the evil and dirty woman she once was (not to mention, the hairdresser).

Today, some still prefer to think there is a bit of a dirty woman underneath the witchy redheaded fracas and yea… if the fraccy potty mouth is any indication, the dirty blonde is quite permanent.

Fracas isn’t terribly concerned about whether or not she is indeed a dirty woman or if this is just a lot of rumor (mostly created by herself).

Fracas is just glad she’s not pregnant.

[Image credit: Thinkery - Redhead Project]