Umm... Sorry About That

You are not responsible for what happened when you were a toddler. You are not responsible for what another individual does. You are not responsible for what happened before you were born. You are not responsible for what happened without your knowledge or consent.

You are only responsible for what you do. You are responsible for what you allow to be done in your name. Since I've turned voting age I've allowed my country to fuck with (and by extension I have fucked with) the following:

Palestine
Fiji
Bolivia
Panama
Columbia
Libya
Philippines
Afghanistan
Russia
Gulf War 1
Kuwait
Iraq
Balkans
Los Angeles
Somalia
Algeria
Waco
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan & Uzbekistan
Rwanda
Croatia
Bosnia
Syria
Chiapas, Mexico
Sudan
Nicaragua
East Timor
Kosovo
Haiti
Gulf War 2
Afghanistan (again)
Venezuela
Pakistan
Iraq (again)
Somalia
Bali
Iran

I have no excuse.

Where I've been.

For a few months I haven't really felt like talking. I had a lot on my mind but nothing approaching a cogent thought. For much of the time we were simply exhausted from, well from life.

Lisa's grandfather passed away. Now I'm almost free to talk about it. It's hard to talk without sounding like I'm gloating. I'm not. Tom was my best friend these last few years. We played together. I listened to the same god damned stories every week. Each telling seemed to be taking on a more intense sense of urgency. Tom had to get them out before his end came. He knew it was coming. He fought every slip and slide toward what comes next. Kind of like that Seinfeld episode where George fakes being a marine biologist.

"The sea was angry that day my friend!" "Like an old man sending back a bowl of soup in a restaurant."

Tom refused that last bowl of soup as if he could hold off and hold on to one more rush. But he knew when he bought his last car that he was buying his last car. He knew the mess he was leaving when he burned the engine on his Porsche. He knew no one would buy his broken down Bricklin during his lifetime.

We had the Porsche fixed. I just could not stand the thought of it not rolling around. The Bricklin I can do myself.

He left Lisa the house and the objects there-in. He left the cars to her but it was understood that the cars would be for me to look after as I had when he was living. He left us land that we can't build a house on. The joke's on Wenham. I found a tax loophole that lets me tell them to go fuck off. We can't build and they can't tax us on it. They get my trees for a decade and I have my own adventure park to four wheel drive in.

We have nothing to complain about. Hopefully no one else will and the estate will pass probate quickly. In the mean time, I know what 250 km per hour feels like.

A Short List Of Things That Make Me Happy

10 The TV News Anchor fight in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
9 The gunfight in the bar after Quentin Tarentino tells a piss joke in Desperado.
8 Automatic transmissions.
7 Partial credit.
6 Freedom.
5 My first celebrity crush.
6 Trivia.
7 Safety in numbers.
8 Knowing more about math than the rest of you.
9 When cats puff up their tails.
10 Pattern recognition.

So Then We Really Don't Need So Many Cops In The First Place

Most of the crimes the cops go after and most of the "criminals" in jail are there for small time drug problems. I guess it's the cops causing the problem. Leave people alone and you don't have nearly as much crime.

Good, get rid of the cops so we don't end up with more of these.

Two years ago I witnessed 100 jackbooted armored thugs walking arms locked down Derby Street in Salem. They would have beaten me senseless if it weren't for "the pin" I was wearing on my jacket. One good cop pulled me aside and said stand here with me. He was an older gentleman. Kind of like that pilot who ditched into the Hudson a while back. He struck me as someone who was good and decent and tired of the shit his job has become but powerless to do anything about it and so now just want's to quietly run out the clock until pension time.

The two cops on two separate occasions who were really disappointed when I blew significantly below intoxicated can fuck off.

When In The Course Of Human Events...

Between TSA thugs and militarized police forces jackbooting around where's the little guy going to go for some liberty? I don't know about that. I do know that we're getting tired of being pushed around. The police haven't learned dick since they got caught doing what they do every day to Rodney King. We're tired of getting fucked with. We're getting desperate for our jobs, or families security and realizing just exactly who is responsible for fucking with us. Cops, you're tools of the man. Since you're not here to protect me stay out of my way. You will say yes sir to me, not the other way around. In fact simply not behaving like criminals or an occupying army will go along way to ensuring your safety. Some of us might be feeling desperate enough to stop taking your shit.

Papers Please

The State of Hawaii is considering a law that will, if enacted, ruin tourism. It seems that in order to stamp out uninsured drivers they're going to require identity papers and permission slips before you can purchase gasoline. Now the first thing that comes to my mind is that not every last drop of gasoline purchased goes to the automobile. If I'm riding a moped or want to mow the lawn or use the weed wacker I'm fucked. No insurance card needed for those activities so no gasoline for me. And I'm totally fucked if I want gasoline for the backup electric generator I keep for my continuous home oxygen machine.

As proposed the law does not take into consideration the rent-a-car business. I'm sure they'll be noticing this and get the law changed so that they can issue temporary cards. They will definitely make it so that only their insurance rider will count. This will kill the credit card waiver or for guys like me whose regular policy will cover a rental car. We'll be forced to tack on the $15 per day extra. Market forces will drive tourism down. Why go to Hawaii where a rent-a-car, and now an expensive rent-a-car, is a necessity when you can go elsewhere and save.

But what this will really do to kill the tourism industry is what's scary. Driving without insurance makes one an outlaw. Now it can be argued that such antisocial behavior is benign but I don't believe so. It doesn't take much for some folks to go from thinking the law doesn't apply to me to thinking they can get away with more. Tourists with rented cars are already a target for theft or worse. Now with the insurance gasoline card boondoggle they'll be even more of a target.

How this will just paint a bigger target on the tourist. Mr. Criminal wakes up one morning and thinks "Hmmm who can I rip off today?" Then he remembers there's no gas in the car. So instead of the elderly woman with a spaghetti strap purse he goes looking for a tourist with a gas card first off.

The easy fix for me the well informed traveler is to avoid Hawaii. I just hope I'm not kidnapped walking out of the Cold Stone in Santa Fe. But I digress.

The other unintended consequence of this law will be a surge in black market gasoline. From the friend asking a friend to go fill their car for them to families making sure they have at least one car insured (minimum, no collision, high deductible) and into more outright profiteering. I'll make a fortune selling gas cans full of water with just a thin layer of gasoline on top so when my customer sniffs it they'll think it's real.

Or I'll switch to a diesel car and buy a lot of #2 fuel oil "for-the-house." It's already a cheaper alternative to gasoline right now anyway.

And come on! Really? Do you want to fuck up your tourism industry even more than TSA?