Our server has handled the extra load like a champ, but the incredible number of comments has given our WordPress software fits. Nowhere was this more apparent than in ‘Diane Schuler: An Interesting Perspective’, written by our good friend Fuzzy Wuzzy. The total number of comment reached, and then exceeded, 700 by the third day after the HBO Documentary premiered – The most comments a story has ever received on our site, outpacing it’s nearest rival by at least 200 comments.

Apparently, and this is just a guess on my part, since I haven’t been able to verify what I found with anyone else, either the number of comments or the rapidity at which they were made caused some kind of Database error, and the story crashed. I was able to get it back up for short periods of time be deleting a few dozen new posts, but that solution was neither practical nor fair to those people who had their comments removed.

I tried creating a new copy of the story, but it was a no go for reasons I have yet to understand. Finally I came up with this solution, for people who still want to read Fuzzy Wuzzy’s story and comment on it. I created a Microsoft Word clone of the story and uploaded it to my DropBox. Now anyone who wishes to can download the story from the following hyperlink, read it, and leave whatever comments they have here.

Download Diane Schuler: An Interesting Perspective

It’s a Band-Aid solution, but it’s the best I could come up with. If anyone has a better suggestion, I’m all ears.

Allow me to explain.

This afternoon I received an email from a person who calls herself Tawnya Clouston. Ms. Clouston is much different from the usual malcontent unhappy about something that was said in an article, or in the article as a whole. She is well spoken, polite, and – I swear I had to check three times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things – she never insulted the website, the author of the story or myself. That doesn’t mean she isn’t seriously misinformed about what we do here at PYSIH, among other things.

Her complaint has to do with our story on Daniel Petric, the then 16-year-old son of Pastor Mark Petric and his late wife, Sue Petric. The fact that Mrs. Petric is no longer with us should give you a hint about what kind of young man Danny Petric is, but I suggest you read admin’s tale of his crime before you continue with this article. Click Here to be redirected to the story.

Are you finished? Cool. Now read Tawnya Clouston’s email to me:

I just wanted to politely request something from your website that concerns the Petric Family. My sister-in-law, Christi Howes, formerly known as Christi Clouston, was a youth pastor at the Assemble of God church in Wellington, Ohio and mentored Danny Petric. She was, and still is, close to the Petric Family. I would like to kindly request that you remove this poll from your website. If any member of the Petric Family saw this, they would be completely devastated. Pastor Petric has found forgivness for his son. The Petric Family is still, and always will be, mourning the loss of a wife, mother, and friend. I am not asking that this be romoved on Danny’s behalf, but on the behalf of the rest of the Petric Family. They have been through enough. Out of respect for them, could you please remove this? I have personally seen the pain these people face every day, and if and when they ever catch wind of this, it will just hurt them worse, if that is even possible. I cannot imagine as a parent, seeing my child involved on a website under a page titled “People You’ll See In Hell”. I am begging you, please! Remove Danny Petric and the poll and from your website.

Thank you for your time.

Tawnya Clouston

Tawnya sure knows how to tug on those heartstrings, doesn’t she? Unfortunately, she has made the common mistake of believing that our poll is a vote on whether the person in question deserves to go to Biblical Hell. She failed to see, and this is especially true for people who are very religious, the symbolism of our poll as a measurement of the evilness of the criminal’s acts.

In other words, did we believe that Danny Petric just “made a mistake” when he shot his mother – the woman who brought him into this world and gave him life – square in the face because she and his father took away his copy of the video game Halo 3, or did we believe it was an act of pure evil?

I was ready to turn her down flat, when I had a moment of divine inspiration. Why not set up some sort of system where you, our faithful readers, could register your opinion, yes or no, in a way that could be counted and displayed for everyone to see.

Wait a minute, that sounds just like a poll! And I can create polls – I do it all the time.

Anyway, that’s what we’re gonna do. You guys will have two weeks to vote on whether I remove the Daniel Petric story or leave it up on the site. This is a historic moment at PYSIH – the inmates will be running the asylum, so to speak. I’m looking forward to your comments.

I took this opportunity to upgrade my operating system from a 32 bit Windows XP setup to a 64 bit Windows 7 setup. I had my old system backed up on an external hard drive, and all my passwords backed up off site, so I lost very little. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very diligent about updating my backup, so I lost whatever stories that were emailed to me recently and haven’t been published yet, and the email addresses of our newer writers.

Rather than try and figure out who’s email address is missing from my address book, I’ve decided to ask everyone who’s interested in corresponding with me, whether you write for PYSIH or not, to send me a short email so I can update my address book. That includes all my old friends out there who don’t comment as much as they used to. You can use the following addresses to contact me:

editor@pysih.com

editorpysih@comcast.net

Also (stating the obvious), if you’re one of the writers who has recently sent in a story and it hasn’t been published yet, could you please resend it? I remember having 4 or possibly 5 stories waiting editing.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you all.

UPDATE: Well, The interview is online now. Could I have said “Um” any more often? Well, at least they mentioned PYSIH at the beginning, so we can say I threw myself on my sword for the good of the website.

ORIGINAL POST

The other day, as I was checking my email, I found this interesting item.

—–Original Message—–
From: Jenny Churchill [mailto:**********@*******]
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:44 PM
To: admin@pysih.com
Subject: : Television Interview

Jenny Churchill <**********@*******> wrote:
This message is for Max the Cat. I am a producer on The Alyona Show on RTTV. RT is an international television station and The Alyona Show is a political/current events commentary show. We want to have a discussion about the Jordan Brown case and whether or not he should be tried as an adult. We are located in Washington, DC and have studios in NYC and LA. If you are not able to go into any of these studios we could always do a Skype. Please let me know as soon as possible if you are interested.
Thanks,
Jenny

Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical, but after a couple of exchanges, I verified that this was for real, and for some ungodly reason these people were interested in my opinion on Jordan Brown.

Go figure, right?

The RT network is an English speaking cable news station that broadcasts mostly in Europe and Russia. I have no idea what the viewership of this network is.

The end result is at around 6:45 Eastern US time (GMT -5) this evening, I will be interviewed on the The Alyona Show. If you’re interested in seeing your fearless leader fall flat on his face, you can watch it live, as it happens, in streaming video by clicking here.

Seriously though guys, I could use all the moral support I can get. I tried to tell the producer I’m just a regular guy with no particular skills – hell, I don’t even have a college education – but they still want me, even after they talked to me this afternoon during the test of my Skype setup.

Look out Bill O’Reilly, you’re next! Then it’s Kieth Oberman…Mulch, you can come along for that one buddy.

Well, after hours on the phone with Dell Technical Service, a lot of time wasted chasing my tail, being told my hard drive was totally corrupted and all data on it was lost, and a healthy dose of PFM (Pure Fucking Magic), I managed to salvage my hard drive without losing very much data at all. All I have to say is it’s a good thing I didn’t take the the techs word that my drive was trashed as the gospel truth, but instead took a few minutes to try out some things I picked up while troubleshooting with him on the phone before reformatting the entire thing, or I really would have lost everything.

But I shouldn’t complain too much. I did end up getting a brand new hard drive out of the deal, fully loaded with all the OEM software Dell puts in their new computers. Life is beautiful after all.

I’ll start working on a new story for the site ASAP. I hear Brittany Deanne Schuetz was convicted recently – that’s very good news – and there’s never a shortage of new dirtbags to add to our All-Star team. Thanks to all of you that hung in there during my downtime. You’re the best, and you guys know I love you all.

Especially you VCBecky…I love you most of all. LOL.

-Max

You say you love PYSIH.com, but do you really?

Are we a webpage you consider as a guilty pleasure or are we something you wouldn’t mind showing off to mom?

Over the years we’ve had a number of requests for PYSIH.com merchandise. Stuff like t-shirts and mugs and so on.

The problem we faced here, however, was that we can’t draw to save our lives. We have absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever. As proof, we’d like to show you this picture of a cat that we just drew:

This is a cat that we drew

So basically we’re complete and abject failures when it comes to anything artistic at all. Cats, after all, rarely have flippers. And we’re not sure that our cat wasn’t crossed with a bunny at some point.

The solution was to scour the internet until we found some of the best designers out there. Once we realized that we didn’t have the money to hire those people, we went around the block and asked the guy with the art degree who was begging for change on the corner to whip up some cool artwork in exchange for a sandwich. As art majors will usually tell you, a sandwich is a fair price for a day’s work.

This is a sample of what our artist has come up with so far:

PYSIH Mug

Another view of the first PYSIH Mug

What the PYSIH mug looks like when it is coming right for you

It’s a nice mug, suitable for all sorts of things mugs are suitable for. Drinking, even.

Overall, we’re quite pleased with what our little sandwich slave has come up with, and ultimately we hope to sell enough mugs to finance the next PYSIH.com site redesign and maybe pay a writer or two.

In the meantime, we’ll be putting quite a few more designs out on many different types of merchandise. If you have something in mind that you really want, make your comments below – otherwise you’re entirely at the mercy of our creative whim.

Buy the mug.

So I was laying by the fire, warming the family jewels and thinking of everything that’s happened in the year since my last Christmas greeting to the readers of People You’ll See In Hell. I recalled with a smile the many flame wars we had this year, with some of the most pathetic trolls, friends and family members I’ve seen on PYSIH.

Who can ever forget James, the man who had the answers to how we should deal with drunk drivers who kill innocent people. His solutions, which basically added up to getting a note signed by your parents and promising that you will never, ever do that again – pinky finger to God, left a lot to be desired, but they were an endless source of amusement.

And then there was wheresmystapler, better known by his Native American name, He Who Argues For Argument’s Sake. I have to admit that I kind of miss him, in a sick, self-flagellation sort of way. I must be punished!

How about EdgarLongenecker, from the Jody Arias thread? Now there was a guy who needed serious psychological help. Here’s a little sample of one of his comments, for those of you who may have let him slip your mind:

Toto; no wonder,,, Dorothy had to remind you that “we’re not in Kansas, anymore,,, Toto…” And,,, neither,,, brainwarp 12, is California…. Edgrrr…. Stalag Skew, at Y-RICO, Ahnolds’ Kali Fornia….Too cute,,,, but,,,, yawn,,,, just another transparent,,,, evasion… Don’t waste my commas,,,, y’all heah…??? Edgrrr,,,, not to be confuddled with,,,, Edgrrr…

Yeah, I know man! Can you believe it? I had to laugh when an actual psychiatrist made a comment confirming my layman’s diagnosis that Edgar here was a genuine, voice hearing, zip-a-dee-doo-dah paranoid schizophrenic.

Yeah, those were good times, and the best part of those good times was sharing them with all of you.

I’ll be honest – running this site had become a bit of a drag at times this past year. I had lost all of the writers who had been helping me to crisis’ in their person lives or to school. After a couple of months of writing a story a day by myself and doing all the other day to day chores that come with the editor’s job, I began to feel the first twinges of burnout. All of a sudden, the idea of quiting seemed like a good idea.

But you guys were always there for me, my readers, expressing your outrage at the scumbags we wrote about. Thanking me for doing a good job for no reason at all except to be nice. Defending our writers and their stories, and when necessary, the site itself, from all comers.

There are many of you out there who I feel like I can call my friend. Perhaps this is naive, but I can’t help but care about people who seem to care about me. In a way, this place has become an informal, loose knit sort of family for me.

So what could be more appropriate than, on the most important family holiday of the year, to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. May God bless you all.