Every week, the PIG staff buries the hatchet - invariably in one another - and sits down for our weekly awards selection shouting match, punchout and melee. Battered, bruised, and amazed that we survived another contentious confab, we try to muster a some semblance of professionalism while we salute those Standup Guys and Gals and administer bitch-slaps on the richly deserving. Originally named Props And Chops we decided to give this awards page a more illustrious name: Golden Oinks 2008.

PIG's Golden Oinks Selection Committee singles out the following individuals and/or groups for special PIG attention.

Cheers

Lifesaver of the Week: Keith McVey is a hero, albeit a modest one. A multitasking sort of dude, Keith a manages to fit in the occasional life saving episode, while performing his assigned duties as a mailman for the USPS. When someone is in trouble, Keith is a very handy dude to have around.

Last week, for example, he saved a man’s life, by performing CPR, when a cry for help came from the back of a pickup truck:

A panicked man was trying to revive his unconscious friend. "He said his buddy wasn't breathing," explains McVey. "I thought, well, let's see what's going on. Sometimes you just have to act."

McVey, who is trained in CPR but had never actually performed it before, began chest compressions while another bystander checked the man's wrist for a pulse. They worked on him for several minutes as a crowd began to form. McVey knew he had to keep going until the ambulance arrived.

"Pretty soon the woman said, 'I've got a pulse, I've got a pulse,"' he remembers, smiling. "And shortly after that, he started breathing on his own." (Fox)

Two years ago, Keith played lifeguard, and saved a girl from drowning, a very risky endeavor that almost ended Keith’s life:

On a hot afternoon, he was depositing mail when the screams began. This time, they were coming from a 13-year-old girl flailing in the water about 70 feet out in the lake. Then, to his horror, she disappeared beneath the surface. "I screamed at her, 'Hold on, hold on, I'm coming,"' he says.

He kicked off his heavy leather shoes, threw his mailbag to the ground and dove in while the girl's baby sitter and younger sister screamed.

McVey is not a trained lifeguard, nor is he a particularly talented swimmer. When he reached the girl, she grabbed hold of him and immediately pulled him underwater. "At that point I thought, this is a little dicey," he says. "But I pried her off me, sent her up to the top as best I could, and she grabbed onto me again."

It was like that the whole way in: McVey would be dragged down by the frightened girl, then come up for a breath of air. "It wasn't textbook lifesaving, but it was enough to get the job done," he says. (Fox)

In both instances, Keith handed his rescuee over to the emergency responders, made himself presentable, picked up his mailbag, then continued making his appointed rounds.

The FSOP salutes a no bull crap hero. We like your style, Keith.

Capitalist Countermeasure of the Week: The fun started, in Gainsville (Flori-DUH), three months ago, when the city’s Elected Tormentors fired off a ‘guess what’ missive to 115 adult beverage wrangling capitalists who were plying their trade inside the city limits. Under the city’s new rules of engagement, ‘ladies night’ promotions would be black flagged as anti-discrimination ordinance violations. Big, big fun.

Game, set, match? Not exactly:

[D]espite the Ladies Night prohibition, a number of bars in Gainesville have carried on catering to women.

At the Grog House and owner Rob Zeller's other bars around town, Wednesday night is no longer ladies night — it's shaved leg night. And at the Rue Bar downtown, Friday is high heel night, reports The Gainesville Sun. Men can drink for free if they have smooth legs or wear high heels.

And they have — the manager at the Grog House said about five guys have shown up with shaved legs so far since the twist was introduced a few months ago, reports The Gainesville Sun. (Sun-Sentinel)

Obviously, Gainsville’s Elected Tormentors need some remedial training in this pagan wisdom:

Hambo's Marketplace Theorem
For every asinine, intrusive, liberty infringing bureaucratic action, there is an equal, and opposite, liberty restoring marketplace reaction.

They’re up to speed, now, thanks to the city’s liberty-seeking capitalists.

Police Putdown of the Week: Nobody in Lewes (J.O.E.) knows the answer to the burning question: what’s this fool’s damage. What fool? Nobody knows his name, but they’ve seen more than they want of him, after he plastered the entire town with large posters of his naked nads wrapped in a yellow ribbon.

‘...The A3 and A4-sized posters, in colour and black-and-white versions, show a penis with a yellow bow tied around it. Investigators have interviewed staff at offices close to where the images were found and sent the posters off for fingerprinting...’

‘...One line of inquiry is that the photographs may be a bizarre protest, as some include a caption about "fees set to rise later this year".

A Sussex Police spokesman said the "budding photographer" has "failed to impress local police".

He said: "We are aware of these posters and a local PCSO has removed a few, but we have not received any formal complaints. However, we are concerned that the posters have appeared quite close to local schools and they may well cause offence or distress. However, from what we've seen, if this is a self-portrait, the artist won't be in a hurry to be identified."...’ (The Argus)

The unnamed Sussex Police spokesman got off the putdown of the week with this gem: "...if this is a self-portrait, the artist won't be in a hurry to be identified."

Political Candidate of the Week: Ieshuh Griffin is, I’m pleased to state, a woman whose command of the English language is impressive. An independent candidate for the Wisconsin state Assembly, this Melanin-Enriched politician boiled down her political platform to five show-stopping words: not the white man’s bitch. Her impressive prose did not go unnoticed:

[T]he state's Government Accountability Board voted to bar that wording, agreeing with a staff recommendation that it is pejorative and therefore not allowed.

State law allows independent candidates to have five words describing themselves placed after their names on the ballot as long as it's not pejorative, profane, discriminatory or includes an obscene word or phrase.

Griffin, who is black, argued her case to the five white, retired judges on the board that regulates elections. She said the phrase was protected free speech.

"It's a freedom of expression," she said. "It's not racial. It's not a slur."

She convinced three of the judges that the wording should be allowed, but two said it should not. One judge was absent, and Griffin needed four votes to succeed. Griffin said she intends to seek an injunction in federal court. (Yahoo News)

I no bull crap admire this woman’s command of the language. "NOT the white man’s bitch" manages to tell a chad puncher everything you need to know about Ms. Griffin, in 5 rock ‘em, sock ‘em words. Nicely done, darlin’.

Jeers

Busybody Outbreak of the Week: The Bay State busybodies who infest Waltham (Massachusetts) got their knickers in a painful knot, when an outpost of adult entertainment capitalism - the Amazing.net adult video store - started doing some major renovation. The whining reached critical mass, after the capitalists replaced their wood paneled store front with clear glass windows.

In record time, the Bay State busybodies were caterwauling because - GASP - they could see some of Amazing.net’s adult-oriented wares. Instead of dealing directly with the owners of Amazing.net, the busybodies started whining piteously to the relevant Elected Tormentors.

Initially, the store tried to cover up using two floor to ceiling posters which showed a man and a woman tastefully undressed in their underwear. Did that get ‘er done? No, because the chronically offended could still see the store’s wares.

The store shut the busybodies up, by hanging curtains behind the posters, but that’s just a temporary measure. Eventually, they might install some special glass whose decorative film will prevent the chronically offended from trying to look at things they don’t want to see.

Ironically, one motive for the renovation involves making the front of the store wheelchair accessible. File this one under ‘no good deed goes unpunished’.

Speech Muzzling Meatheads of the Week: Despite the demise, in 2008, of J.O.E.’s blasphemy laws, the proper authorities are still painting a Nanny State bull’s-eye on what they view as religiously-motivated hate speech. In the ‘bad old days’ blasphemy laws targeted anyone who spouted off against Cross Cultism. Now, the religious hate speech bull’s-eye has been expanded to include Cross Cultists who criticize Islam, and Atheists who bitch-slap supernaturalists.

Jon Gower Davies, who once toiled as head of religious studies at Newcastle University, painted a PIG-worthy rhetorical bull’s-eye on this religious hate speech Jihad in J.O.E.:

‘The British people might be forgiven for thinking that their basic religious-cultural inheritance, the culture under which we have grown up, is not just out of control but under some insidious attack.’

‘The law has been invited to insert its punitive, plodding and primitive self into areas of life from which we have long been accustomed to assume not simply its absence, but the positive existence of a freely-negotiated civic culture. In this culture and civil society we accept an obligation to sort things out for ourselves—as reasonable men and reasonable women.’

Hate laws, he warned, would actually fuel more abuse and hate as assorted ‘miscreants’ would be paraded before the courts. Mr Davies said that there seemed to be a bias in applying the law.

He said: ‘The new laws do not simply remove blasphemy but extend it: and (again, in effect) extend it to provide a special de facto protection to Islam.’ (Daily Mail)

Freedom of speech is under assault in J.O.E. by the entirely mythical ‘right’ which shields hypersensitive cretins from being offended. Enough already!

Kneejerk Korrectnik Cretins of the Week: It started, when a Florida woman needed to get her Apple iPhone repaired. After she contacted Apple, a minion informed her that she needed to make an appointment for service online. Undaunted, our plucky heroine, Sandy Burdick, cyber surfed to the requisite page, logged on, then started to fill out the form. The moment she entered her name, the cyber gods frown, spitting out an error message:

"It stopped me. It said, 'You have put in an inappropriate word in this line.' I thought I must have a typo," she said.

The website told her the language was inappropriate. It would not accept her last name.

Burdick's son, Scott, called customer service to see if they could make the appointment. He said the woman helping him could not do anything.

"She paused for a second. She couldn't even put it in her system," he said.

Channel 4 spoke to an Apple representative on the phone Monday. The company said it is looking into the problem.

Burdick said, however, she thinks it's funny.

"I didn't have a problem with my name. I didn't realize it was a problem and they'd have to censor it like that," Burdick said. (News4Jax)

Here in the PIG bunker, we pride ourselves on our extensive knowledge of profane pleasantries. Trust me when I tell you that ‘Burdick’ isn’t one of them.

Injustice of the Week: When he headed downstairs, around 10 p.m. on a Saturday night, the only item on Dan Van Plew’s agenda involved moving some important business-related papers from the dining room table to his desk. Fate had other plans for him.

It started, the moment Dan spotted a shadowy figure standing close to his house. Before he could investigate, Dan’s doorbell rang, while someone pounded on his back door. Fearing for the safety of his wife and young children, Dan made his move.

His shyster, Peter Gerstenzang, explains what happened next, this way:

"It was pretty scary. He had no idea what was going on," Gerstenzang said. As he headed to the garage to investigate, he heard pounding on his back door and ringing of his front doorbell. As he disabled a home alarm system and opened a side door off the garage, he heard muffled voices saying, "Go, go!"

Van Plew then yelled: "What are you doing? Are you trying to rob me?"

When he saw four figures bolt across his yard, he gave chase, caught up to the slowest one and tackled him. It turned out to be a 14-year-old boy, who began cursing at Van Plew, Gerstenzang said.

He got the kid inside his house and told him to sit on the floor and called police.

"He was very angry at being tackled and was very profane," Gerstenzang said, adding that the teen spewed crude sexual remarks about Van Plew's wife. At one point, the boy said he had a knife in his pocket and threatened to use it on Van Plew, but it turned out to be a cellphone.

Gerstenzang said the 14-year-old suffered scrapes and bruises from being tackled, and Van Plew offered to treat the injuries with antiseptic but the boy refused. (Times-Union)

In a rational world, the cops would admonish the pank playing hormone gorillas, deem the whole incident ‘no harm, no foul’, then get on with their jobs. In Delmar (New York), the cops reacted irrationally, by kicking the punks loose, then bagging, tagging, and dragging Dan to the local graybar for ‘endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree harassment’. No wonder Lady Justice wears a blindfold. I wouldn’t want to look at that steaming load of injustice either.

WTF

Pink Slipping of the Week: A Bay State Badge Packer, Officer Richard P. Bennett, is a dude who is a sucker for life’s small pleasures. In this instance, the small pleasure is an adult porn star named Bridget Powers.

Everything was nominal, for 28 year old Richard, until he ran into a tricky scheduling problem. On a night when he was scheduled to protect and serve the public on his late night patrol, his small pleasure, Bridge "The Midget" Powers was appearing at a local ‘gentleman’s club’. Faced with this pesky dilemma, he abandoned his patrol, so he could pay homage - in uniform - to the pint sized temptress who had him by the short and curly follicles.

He went. He saw. He enjoyed. He got caught. He lied during an internal investigation. He resigned, before they could fire him. That leaves us with the obvious question: was Bridget "The Midget" Powers worth it? It’s Enquiring minds time in the FSOP.

PIG’s Hidden Talent Award: By all reports, the smooth skinned, fabulously fetching, Filipino maid performed her assigned duties for the Saudi family which employed her, without causing a scandal. For seven months, she refrained from mixing with the men in the family, while she cleaned the home, served tea to guests, and tended the young ‘uns. She was, apparently, an exemplary employee.

The bovine squeeze hit the rotating cooling device, after the maid decided to return home. It happened, while she was going through the Sand Box’s Draconian exit procedures. That’s when someone in the Sand Box’s Passport Department discovered that this model employee is - TA DA - a MAN!

Parting shot: How, exactly, was this hidden talent exposed? Was some passport wrangler trying to stick his, uh, nose where it didn’t belong?

Human Gene Pool Improvement Volunteer of the Week: A pair of Great Northwest Nitwits did their best to improve the human gene pool, but, you know who, let them off with a stern warning, via HIS infamous ‘fools and drunks’ exemption. The key elements of this epic are a 55 gallon barrel, four gallons of methanol, an empty parking lot, and our two morons.

Eager to perpetrate a thrill ride like no other, our thrill seeking volunteers filed their HGPI applications, when they put the methanol inside the barrel, climbed aboard the barrel, then lit it off. In theory, the barrel was supposed to thrill them, by skidding across the parking lot at high speed. In practice, the barrel EXPLODED, a predictable event which sent them on a different ride than the one that they expected. An ambulance transported them to the emergency room of a local hospital. From there, the trip continued with a flight to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Mark this one ‘we’ll get you, next time’, on your HGPI scorecard.

Self-Inflicted ‘Wound’ of the Week: If you think that a prison is supposed to take meaningful measures to keep its ‘guests’ under lock and key, join the club. I harbor the same notion. In cutting edge move, the prison officials running a graybar hotel in Neuquen (Argentina) road tested the following security measures: broken security cameras, burned out television monitors and most impressive of all, guard towers that are ‘manned’ by mannequins. That’s right, mannequins.

How well does this scheme work? It works the way you’d expect it to work:

Two men convicted of armed robbery escaped from a prison in southeastern Argentina that was so understaffed it used mannequins to man its watchtowers, prison authorities admitted Wednesday.

"I admit we have a type of mannequin but in this sector there are cameras that enable us to observe all movements," said Daniel Verges, the director of prisons in Neuquen province.

The two inmates escaped on Saturday by climbing over a wall at Penal Unit No 11 in Neuquen.

The watchtower guarding the wall was manned by a makeshift doll nicknamed "Wilson," after the ball that kept a marooned Tom Hanks company in the movie Cast Away, prison officials said.

"We made a doll with a ball and a cap so that prisoners would see a shadow and think they were being guarded," the newspaper Rio Negro quoted a guard as saying. The guard said only two of the prison's 15 watchtowers have real guards. (AFP)

The breaking news here isn’t the fun fact that two prisoners escaped. The real story is that ONLY TWO prisoners took a hike. I’m just sayin’.

Have you seen our 2009 Golden Oinks of the Year?