Parking Lot Laziness.

When you see a "Handicapped" parking space, it is typically identified by a universally recognizable symbol: a person in a wheelchair. We all know it, we recognize it instantly, and we understand its implications. So you would think.

While I was waiting for my wife to come out of the grocery store yesterday, I watched a woman in her late thirties or early forties and what I assume were her two daughters (or her daughter and a friend; it's inconsequential) walk to their massive Dodge pick-up truck which was parked in a handicapped spot, load their groceries, and leave. I also noticed a handicapped parking pass hanging from the rearview mirror. While I'm no physician, it seemed to me that they were in fine health, and any handicap they were suffering from might be mental in nature (I reference one of the younger girls wearing a "Don't Be Jealous" novelty tee-shirt and fuzzy slippers...are you fucking kidding me?).

How, I wonder, did they come across this parking pass which gives them access to a spot that, in my estimation, seems to be reserved for people who cannot walk? The universal symbol for handicapped clearly indicates that a prerequisite for parking in one of these set aside spots is that your legs simply do not function. If you can walk, I humbly suggest that you should walk. Often. Especially if you're out of shape. I have noticed in many instances people with handicapped parking passes are morbidly obese, and I don't think society is doing them any favors by letting them out close to the door. On the contrary, I think they should have to park at the opposite end of the parking lot, so as to maximize their ambulatory activity. Maybe if they did this more often, my health insurance premiums would go down.

As I mentioned previously, I am not a physician. I am sure there are certain circulatory issues, heart diseases, and other ailments that warrant offering a handicapped parking permit to someone who can walk. I simply suggest that there are people who may be abusing this charitable and humane social act, and the thought sickens me to a point I simply cannot articulate. Here in Ohio, if you are caught driving while "intoxicated," you have to drive with a special license plate that indicates this as a matter of public shaming. I propose a task force to investigate "parking while not handicapped" fraud, and sentence those people to hang a tag from their rear view mirror of a person not in a wheelchair, but a recliner, and designate "Lazy Ass" parking as far away from the door to any establishment with a parking lot.

Or maybe I've just got a "case of the Mondays."

Am I A Terrorist?

This fall, an American citizen by the name of Peter Daniel Young is going to trial for "domestic terrorism." While you may immediately wonder what his connections to Al-Qaeda are, this is not the nature of the charge. Peter Daniel Young stands accused of releasing minks from fur "farms" across the Midwest, and for this, the United States government has seen fit to pursue his prosecution as a terrorist.

The logic behind the charge works thusly. By breaking into these farms to release the animals kept there, Young caused the owners to experience "economic uncertainty," which caused them fear and distress, which the United States Government equates to terror. This made me wonder if I myself am a terrorist?

Given this logic, it seems I am. Here's how. I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart, because I find their attitudes toward labor and capitalism loathsome and repugnant. Last fiscal quarter, Wal-Mart failed to realize its earnings projection, causing the stock to tumble. Given Wal-Mart's market presence in private stock portfolios and 401K plans around the country, this surely caused "economic uncertainty" among its shareholders, which undoubtedly caused them fear and distress, and by official definition, terror.

Obviously, this is logic ad absurdum. After all, mine was an act of omission while Young's was one of commission. Yet I am not arguing that what he did was not illegal given the legal framework of property rights as they have developed over the past two hundred and twenty nine years in the United States (nor am I suggesting that I agree with the legal framework of property rights which made slavery legal until 1863 and makes animal subjugation and cruelty legal today). I am simply arguing that, given the extension of logic, Peter Daniel Young is not a terrorist, and neither am I.

However, if Young is convicted of terrorism by causing "economic uncertainty," I would hope a battery of young, hungry lawyers would bring to trial the very titans of capitalism on the same charge. If "economic uncertainty" causes fear and distress, and by proxy terror, then the oil industry, the White House, corporate energy conglomerations, and retail megastores among others are all terrorist organizations. Capitalism itself could be put on trial! While I concede that again, this logic, as is the logic that holds Peter Daniel Young accused of terrorism, is ad absurdum, it was the British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley who suggested in the late nineteenth century that "history warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions."

From Sacred to Profane.

Catching up with the spinning world after one has been "out of it" for a few days is always interesting. I've been out of town since Thursday morning, and didn't so much as read a newspaper or hear the radio in that time. When I came back, I didn't expect things to be much different, but it's always discouraging to watch them getting worse.

Take for example a story on the Yahoo! homepage this afternoon. The headline reads "Microsoft Joins Hands With Yahoo!, Google To Censor China's Web." The story goes on to detail that words like 'Democracy,' 'Human Rights' and 'Freedom' will be blocked in China "in an apparent move by the US software giant to appease Beijing." The story continues: "Bloggers who enter such words or other politically charged or pornographic content are prompted with a message that reads: 'This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity. Please enter a different word for this item'." To quote Joseph Welch, the American Hero who bitchslapped Senator Joe McCarthy in front of a national audience on June 9th, 1954, "At long last, have you no decency?" Words like 'Freedom' and 'Human Rights' are now profanity? And I thought I had a trucker's mouth before I read this article.

So it seems that America, so committed to "freedom" in certain parts of the world, is perfectly happy deleting the very term from the vocabulary in other parts if it means a slight bump in quarterly stock margins. I'm sure Bill Gates will take some of the money he earns from the Chinese market and make some grand charitable donation complete with flashing cameras down the line, but somehow it seems a bit perverse given the circumstances. Of course, Microsoft representatives were "unavailable for comment," and suddenly Google's much lofted policy of "Don't Be Evil" seems as empty as most of the company's critics have been saying all along. What, after all, could be more evil than preventing somebody from looking up the definition of the word "freedom?" Kicking puppies, or suckerpunching an elderly woman, I suppose, but not much else.