Friday, October 16, 2009

A Big Mess.

I have had the misfortune of seeing messes equal to or greater than this one during my 30 years in and around law enforcement. I can tell you folks. Things are in a mess. I've had two long days to think about it. Something in the air has rendered me helpless to control my cough. In my mature years, I developed allergies to certain plants and grasses and apparently they are blowing around in the air. On day one I took a prescription anti-histamine. The coughing continued, but it was a dry cough and I was reduced to drooling and dragging one foot behind me in the manner of Igor. After a day of naps, I began to feel normal again, but the scratchy feeling just at the base of my throat wouldn't go away. I continued to cough on a regular and annoying schedule. Both nights I slept in my recliner. This morning I awoke with very little coughing. The tingle is still present, but I am no longer compelled to cough every ten seconds.

A cool front (that's about all we get at this latitude) was scheduled to blow through here during the night. I walked out to get the paper this morning and thought Al Gore was in town for a speech. The air was hot and humid. Now I'm back in front of my computer screen trying to go for a record - no coughs at all in fifteen minutes. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt as though it was morning. Well it was morning, but really just an hour or two past midnight. Interesting T.V. fare at that hour. I surfed the 100 plus channels of infomercials and reality show re-runs and finally settled on the tier containing among other things the Discovery channel. The program was about a temple dedicated to the Kama Sutra in India. This temple was built in ancient times and is covered with carvings of all the sexual positions contained in the Kama Sutra. The interesting aspect of the show was listening to academics (mostly from India) try to explain the historical significance of this art. That diversion lasted about ten minutes before I turned the T.V. off and returned to my nest building. Sleeping while sitting upright is an art form. I dreamed of smoke filled bar rooms with lots of coughing and getting up to go to the bathroom. Daylight moved me to rise. Our paper has gone up to $14.25 per month delivered. This for a paper that is so light most mornings the paper boy can't throw if there is any wind at all. I buy it for the crossword puzzle and the scramble. I covered it in about three minutes.

The number of things that need to be addressed is so long I can't do it in a single post. I am however looking forward to a weekend of football games. I look for the little things to fight the boredom. I love it when the sports babe gets trampled by the coach as he rushes to the locker room to vent on his offensive linemen who can't remember the snap count. I also like to flip through the half-time fill where players who couldn't remember the snap count, and coaches who ran over sports babes all talk at the same time and pretend they know something about the game. I hate to tell them, but putting on an expensive suit doesn't increase your I. Q.

I could do my community volunteer service by going to the parking lot at Wal-Mart and picking up valley snowballs. Those are the pampers our voting populace discards at random in every open space along with their lunch trash. Moving the shopping carts to the corral is another worthwhile service, or directing traffic at the entry way so the folks learn that "Exit" and "Enter" are two distinctly different words in English even though they both start with "E". If I were the Border Patrol, I would set up a kiosk at the front door and check papers. You already get checked by the "anti-theft" patrol as you exit even though these same "agents" have just watched you check out. The people with the baggy clothing and hooded sweatshirts (rarely appropriate wear here) with bulges at every pocket don't get stopped because the "patrol" is so busy doing a strip search on you. We wouldn't want to risk being accused of racial profiling by stopping an obvious shop lifting gang banger now would we?

The problem with all this is societal. A large portion of the voting populace can't, or don't read and are therefore highly unlikely to read this or any other cogent rant. Instead of requiring people to meet basic standards of achievement prior to marking a ballot, we choose to lower the standards so they won't be embarrassed. The same is true in schools and universities. Let them in on lowered standards and make sure they pass to avoid law suits and accusations of racial bias. Grant them amnesty if they are illegal thereby nullifying the efforts of those immigrants who have labored to get their paperwork in order and obtain legal status. What about all the stupid white people in this country? You can ridicule them all you like because nobody cares. It's not that they are missing out on being arrested, harassed, and made fun of, but nobody would take a case where a white defendant is unfairly treated. We are in a mess of our own making. Living the good life has caused us to become desensitized to the moral and societal decay rotting away the foundations of our way of life. How do you suppose the room in the picture above became cluttered like that? One piece of garbage at a time was thrown down and never picked up.

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.
- Phillip Lopate