Towed Cars and Angry Swine: Another Day in Phoenix

A Phoenix police officer just left my property. Upon noticing the cruiser, I walked out and asked “Pardon me sir, but what are you doing here?” I had the cop part right but the sex part wrong. It was an honest mistake.

The thick-boned sow, a real throw-back, was visibly incensed by my error, but I didn’t take it personally. I knew it wasn’t just me. One look at her told you she had many things to be angry about; deeply angry. It was obvious, she was looking for someone to pay, and pay dearly. The writing on the wall said 'Ball-buster.' “Shit” I thought.

From the driver’s seat, she began upbraiding me like I was some insolent child, but out of habit, I only heard snippets of what she was saying. What I did notice was the tone of voice. It carried the jagged edges of contempt for her fellow citizen, the same people she once swore “to serve and protect.”

“This car is parked illegally and I’m having it towed. Don’t you know you can’t have an unregistered car parked on the street?” she barked.

I replied “Yes I know my car is on the street, but no, I didn’t know it wasn't allowed. Do you understand that this is my home, and the only reason I don’t have it registered because I can’t afford to? I wish it was registered, so my wife and I would each have a car to drive. Furthermore, you guys left a sixty-five dollar ticket and stuck one of those orange stickers on it like I had abandoned it on the I-10. I thought it was some weird rookie mistake.”

She said, “No it wasn’t. Having unregistered vehicles on the street like this is illegal; it brings down property values. We just can’t have it. The tow truck is on its way right now, move it or it’ll be towed, Buster.”

I couldn’t hide my contempt. “Property values? Ha! Talk to Wall St. about property values, not me lady. You’re kidding, right? Don’t you have something better to do than hassling homeowners? Shouldn’t you be out catching killers and rapists, or ruining the lives of pot smokers?”

“No I’m not kidding. And no, I don’t have anything better to do. I’m on this parking detail so other officers can catch the killers and rapists.”

“That’s too bad. Is that an obtuse way of saying your bosses don’t like you either?” I was chuckling, but my sense of humor was rapidly dwindling. “It seems like you guys are desperate, and they sent you out looking for any reason to grab some free cash and cars. It’s sick, really. You should be ashamed.”

At that point she started ignoring me, and taking pictures of me and my '96 Explorer, still from the front seat of her cruiser. As she clicked away, I gave her a couple of classic body-building poses and then went inside the house to get my wife and the keys.

When I came out, I asked the officer “Are you going to ticket me for driving this thing into my driveway?” She said “No. I’m not.” but I didn’t believe her. I was walking a tightrope and I couldn’t afford to screw up now. My wife got in the driver’s seat and I pushed the car into the driveway. After I pushed the car to its final resting place, she started to leave. As she did, I said to her, “You know, you’re a really bad person; a real scum of the earth type.” “Scum of the earth, I say!” over-acting and pointing my finger in the air.

She stopped just short of the corner, and I thought “Now I’ve done it. I’ve pushed it too far.” But, she only was stopping to hassle the Native American family two doors down for the same reason, again from the front seat of her cruiser.

I laughed to myself as I went inside: “Not long ago, their ancestors would be adding her scalp to their collection if she dared tell them they couldn’t tie their horse in front of their own tee pee. My, how times have changed."

Truth be told, I wouldn't have blamed them; not in the least.

Carpe Deum

Just like the first great depression, they are manufacturing this crisis to create one world bank which equals one world government. If you're like me, there's an increasingly uncomfortable pain and mounting pressure (no pun intended) fulminating near your backside, but screw it; today, I urge you to go out and get drunk in the sunshine.

Truth and reality are complete shams, because life is what you make of it. For now at least, we still have the luxury of turning our backs on whatever the truth of it all is. So I say, sweet talk your girl into giving up the "back door", or do a naked one act play on your front lawn. Do something crazy; something juvenile and silly. Whatever. These really are the halcyon days compared to what's ahead. The cyanide tablet is under the tongue and there's no need to sit around waiting for the bitter-almond end.

Maybe I'll take up Shao-lin Kung Fu, or advanced food canning for the thinking individual/criminally insane. Everything has been turned upside down and is twisting back upon itself. Reality and surreality have become one in the same.

All the vibrant colors on the palette have been mixed together to create the world's shittiest of shit browns. Go out there and become a "poop Picasso" or a "scatological Cezanne" and turn this day into a masterpiece because fierce monkeys have taken control of our hallowed halls and are flinging feces at anyone who tries to get close. They are openly fornicating and telling people not to look. It is the height of absurd madness.

I'm going to have a delightful day, and I'm going to enjoy it as though it were my last.

Carpe Deum,

Jet

A Red-Letter Day

10/03/2008

Today has been one of those rare, red-letter days, but not like Christmas, or my personal favorite; “kick an asshole in the balls” day. It's not a day that is officially scheduled per se, but is intended to be celebrated on a purely “as needed” basis. It was first declared by Pope Boniface VI in a.d. 896, and will forever be remembered, mostly by historians, scholars, and Catholics with too much time on their hands, as the sole meaningful decree of his 16 day reign as Pope.

The House of Representatives has chosen to ignore the angry demands of it’s constituency and voted to overwhelmingly pass the Senate’s version of the 700 billion dollar bailout package at the urgent, threatening behest of those they consider their real bosses; the cryptocracy of elite bankers and corporations. On top of that, I was summarily fired from my job for reasons which remain unknown.

Screw 'em all. My unbridled fury knows no bounds.

The memories of that god-awful place are already so “two hours ago.” I’ve up and quit much better jobs on a drunken whim. Misery, the forlorn bitch that she is, does love company. My former co-workers, a sullen corps of uber-nihilistic, thread-bare lumpen-proletariat, can have the shit-hole to themselves. They can continue wallowing in the ebb and flow of feces and urine, set amidst the brume of palpable fear and senseless death that defines dog pounds everywhere. Truth be told, it was seriously beginning to harsh on my positive vibes.

But today, it's not the Maricopa County Animal Shelter I’m worried about: it’s the bailout, and on multiple levels at that.

”Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

– Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri.

In a possibly related story, a seismometer at USGS headquarters in Reston, VA has detected a small area of seismic activity, the type of which has never before been recorded, in nearby Mount Vernon. Specifically, the activity appears to be emanating from below the earth near George Washington’s estate on the Potomac.

Seismologists at the Advanced National Seismic System are baffled, and the rabid debate over the origin of the waves somehow devolved into a pallid, flailing-armed donnybrook among the scientists, a bloodied USGS spokesman told a handful of reporters as he spat out a shard of broken bicuspid. The spokesman, who repeatedly refused to state his name, said that one camp asserts that seismic activity is not at all uncommon along the eastern seaboard, while the other camp has suggested that there is overwhelming evidence that the first President of the United States is "spinning in his grave like a laboratory centrifuge."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I just had a great idea. In fact, it’s a crackerjack.

Why don’t we just say to hell with it, and create a national day of celebration over the bailout. We could take a tiny portion of the 700 billion dollars, and buy up all known copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. We could then mix them in with some old currency to be shredded by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and have the shredded funds and documents dropped over the moist-eyed crowd during a ticker-tape parade down Wall St.

The parade would be to honor the President, the Vice President, the Treasury Secretary, the Fed Chairman, and every member of the bicameral Congress who voted for the passage of the bailout. It would be a powerful statement to the world; to show how powerful we remain, and to prove that we aren’t just a paper tiger or a cheap knock-off of our former selves.

We could also use the occasion to demonstrate that we remain the "bread basket of the world", and the “land of plenty”, by hurling eggs, tomatoes, chunks of rock salt, and other foodstuffs from the building tops along the parade route, in a uniquely American display of heart-felt appreciation and affection. It would be a wonderful and grand spectacle to be sure.

In the words of Willie Dixon, and immortalized by Howlin’ Wolf; it would be a real “Wang Dang Doodle.”

That would show them; that would show them all.