You Can’t Make This Stuff Up…OK, Maybe You Can…

This morning’s news was too ridiculous to let pass without some serious mocking.

They’ve got medication for that

The headline, before the commercial, was that a man who works for IBM was fired for cruising adult chat room sites on the web during working hours.

When that’s all I knew, I thought it was absurd. A while back, an IBM employee had sex with his secretary on a desk and wasn’t even fired. In fact, he was promoted. (for a time in IBM’s history, kicking someone upstairs was akin to kicking someone out)

Then the details were revealed. James Pacenza, 58, is suing IBM for five million dollars for wrongful termination, because, according to his lawyers, the man has post traumatic stress disorder from Vietnam, and is addicted to sex and the internet for self-medication. He is also citing protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act. He also claims that IBM “encouraged” him to use the internet at work to “self-medicate.” And his lawyer is also hinting that the firing could have been a case of age discrimination.

Now, come on. First, anyone with this many problems might benefit from Zoloft and a therapist. Then, they should either be out on full disability or working part-time, and definitely not working on any projects that might be a part of anything that might potentially fail and kill me or my loved ones because he was too busy getting off to check that, say, the measurement between the ventilation ports was in inches, not centimeters.

And why does such a large, international, web-savvy company such as IBM not have something as simple as a utility that blocks access to these sites? I worked for a company of 150 and they had one. It was even so sophisticated that it would only allow access to certain sites (such as those where you could pick up your personal e-mail) during lunch or break times.

IBM countered by saying that the ADA does not cover sexual behavior disorders.

Otherwise half of Congress would be claiming ADA protection.

They’ve got medication for that, too

Didn’t we prove with the death of Princess Diana that too much media attention can kill? (Or at the very least, drive someone mad, the public included) Yes, the jury is still out whether or not people who need this attention gravitate to the spotlight or whether it’s the spotlight that does it. So Britney Spears is having a little…shall we say, tantrum at the moment. She’s getting divorced, has a couple of kids at home. Isn’t she kind of due for an outburst like this? What woman hasn’t had the urge to shave her head and get a tattoo after a difficult breakup? And she’s doing it all with a camera in her face. The shame of this, though, is not as much with the paparazzi as with the media coverage. Let people who “care” about Britney (or like watching train wrecks) tune into MTV or the entertainment networks and tabloids to check on the latest status of what she drank while she was getting inked or how she sheared herself when the stylist refused. Let them bid for her locks on e-Bay. But to see this played out in the national networks? The “news” channels? To watch Meredith Vieira interview a psychologist to get her insights on whether Britney is having a “true” nervous breakdown? Please. Stop. Now. Isn’t there a hiker stuck on Mt. Hood or a suicide bomber blowing himself up or something more important you should be covering? It really, truly, makes me want to put my television in the driveway and run over it several times.

And don’t make me do that. I can’t afford new tires.

Hey, maybe I could sue NBC for that. Say that I was driven over the brink by their coverage of not just Spears’ potential breakdown but speculation over the paternity of Anna Nicole’s daughter. That now I have PTSD and am addicted to NPR and internet crossword puzzles (as long as none of their clues is “Britney.”)

Anyone know a good lawyer?