Fuck The Police

Oh Texino!  You shameful Mestizo! The police are you friends. Why would you damn them with your foul lingo?  Well, I'll tell you why.  The cops are not your friends.  In fact, they believe that the world is split into two basic types of humans. Cops and other people.  Now they have a lot of colorful names for the "other people" and if you are not cop you may not be bad enough to fall into one of those categories, however; make no mistake because you can easily move from "civilian" to "dirtbag" by crossing some line the police have arbitrarily set to judge your worth.  I'm not fooling around here.  I've taught courses at a police academy and there is a definite line drawn from day one that indoctrinates the students to this way of thought: The police are my friends and everyone else is out to prevent me from doing my job. Ergo, they are the enemy.  

If you don't have a lot of truck with the cops, you may not realize just how fucked up they are.  Want to see?  Well just turn on you local FOX TV station and catch an episode of the reality based" Cops" show, you know the one with the reggae theme "Bad Boys" (what you gonna do when they come for you?)  Not if, when.  There's a new theme each week, but mostly its the Police chasing someone around until the person wrecks the car.  Or else they just roust some poor homeless looking person for walking down the street and basically demand his "Papers" then drag the poor sucker off if he don't have any.  I'm wondering about some guy they busted in Vegas on a show tonight.  He was just walking on the side walk and the cops started hassling him until he admitted all manner of personal things.  I'd like to know the law that says you have to have a permanent address.  This guy was homeless and produced an ID.  Somehow the cops got into his pockets and found something incriminating, but why can't the guy just Identify himself and  get on his way?  Point is  they managed to put a bunch of people in jail on this show whose only crime seemed to be walking around or sitting in a car and allowing the cops to search their person and vehicles and then the cops find some reason to haul them off. 

 

It's getting time I should be walking my dog.  He's gone now, so I cant do it but I still want to take his leash and walk anyway .  Well chances are, if I do, some cop's going to stop me and ask me what I'm doing  and if he or she did not understand  my reason or thought it was funny, things could go very wrong.   See, it's the separation between us and them.  They couldn't see someone out walking because he missed his dog.  No, it would have to be a guy looking to rob or worse.

The police need to be brought to heel.  Too much seized drug money has allowed them to become pin point paramilitary militias with no wise educated leadership and they want to bust some people up.  Who?  It won't matter as long as it's not another cop.  Sneaky brown aliens fit the bill nicely  I'm sure, as would rambunctious blacks.  Sorry copper but we put our socks on the same way.  You want some law and order?  Start making the streets safe and go after the the big crooks.  They do every thing but advertise  and they don't give a damn if you pick some small potatoes off the corner. It's the price of doing business.  

Maybe you get my point to night and maybe not.  I'm just saying it's a sick situation and we are being sold a bill of goods at a huge discount.  Could be I'm loosing it.  I'd be the last to get the news.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

40 acres and a mule

Well now. Politics is afoot so someone toss some antifreeze on the Antichrist and let's get going. I may have or may not have said something akin to the following: "The Democrats can pretty much walk into the White House, so rather than picking a person who seems like a solid candidate, they field a woman whom no one seems to like and a Black guy." If I did not write that down, I was thinking it. Well that was then and although I still have a hard time believing that this, screwed up, me first, gimme some money, got no sense of what is real, country I live in can overlook skin tone, I am starting to think that Senator Obama might possibly have a shot at being president. To me, that's kind of exciting because the guy seems to have some charisma of the sort that gets the young people fired up, and the last time I saw that was with John F Kennedy which, by the way, happens to have been the last good time. That's right. Regardless of what the revisionists try to tell you. If you were there, you know that there was a national good feeling. A feeling we have been groping around for in the permanent twilight since cast by The Republicans as they moved around ripping things apart by rote. Well, they seem to have finished fucking up the country, so perhaps we can turn of the lights again. Perhaps we will see their wagons rumbling off with the ghosts of Nixon, Ford, Regan, an a couple of Bush's. Jesus Christ (or Anti) think about those years. Not that the Democrats were that great, but as soon as one tried to do something either the Republican controlled congress or their pit bulls would hit the populace with such a bunch of vitrol-Hell the entire Clinton Presidency was wasted with the Republican Party trying to pin infidelities on him. Eight fucking years! It is fairly obvious, even to the fool here that the GOP wanted something and now they either have it or have screwed it up so badly they seem content to leave the town and the candidacy in the hands of tired old war horse whose only appeal may be "The last grownup President" our generation will ever see. Personally, I believe Senator McCain is a good man but he has suffered greatly as a prisoner in a foolish war and may not be up for the strain of guiding the nation. Me, I can't help feeling a little twinge of the old excitement for Obama. A person with a vision. It might work. If the racists don't have him shot. You cant forget them. On the other hand, I don't think anyone wants to shoot Senator Clinton, BUT, if Senator McCain may be a little off from being a POW, how might Senator Clinton's head be, continuing a marriage to a guy who was president fairly recently and made her look foolish by having affairs in the White House itself. A whole lot of baggage on that one.

There is a lot of controversy whether President Lincoln would have been in favor of emancipation had the South not insisted on prosecuting a war of succession. Regardless, he did emancipate the slaves, and, at wars end promised each freed African 40 acres of land an a mule to work it with. Somewhere between Senator Obama's racial makeup and the symbol of the Democratic Party there is a metaphor to be drawn. Of course Elephants are to do with Africa as well. Perhaps had the Party of Lincoln given each former slave 80 acres and an elephant, agriculture and other matters down South might have worked out a bit better than they did.

Would it be too much to believe that things are now not as they ever were and we might see a spark of change come before we go? One can only hope,

What the fool believes

You know, I am really not that dumb. As dumb as I think that is. It's just an insecurity that was laid on me when I was a dreamy little kid. Hell, I was pretty much born knowing everything or at least with a good idea of how things worked and I maintained this knowledge on my very own until I got to first grade where, since I could already read, there wasn't much for me to do. In grade school, you were not allowed to just pull out a book , you had to wait on your class mates to "get it" and rather than getting down to "getting it" there was a lot of useless drawing and pasting and blunt scissor work. I hated that stuff; Had no background or talent for it. I had a library of music and books at the house and that was what I played with. I clearly remember working away at some boring project coloring bananas yellow at Table 2 in Miss Raines' First Grade class and some punk kid telling me I was no good because my colors went outside the lines. Oddly enough I believed him and from that time until I was tossed out of high school during my senior year, for having hair that was too long and then drafted into the army before I could get to a barber, I did not learn a damn thing in any class. I either learned it outside on my own or if it did not interest me, I didn't. Later on when I grew up, I would go to college, take courses and always get high marks, because I saw it as a job of work. You showed up, did the work and got payed after a fashion.

Still after all this time, I believe that I'm not smart because I did not do the education thing in the proper order. Plus, I do not have a network of college chums to help me out by suggesting me for various plum jobs in the government. All I had to do was stand up to that little fucker in the first grade and say "That's the way I color, you worry about your own work" or better yet, just hit him in the stomach. How about grabbing him by the throat and trying to strangle him? Bashing him in the head with a lunch box? Perhaps I should have killed him. That certainly would have caused a stir, and I'm sure that my education would have been carefully monitored from that point forward, and then they would have seen me for the genius I truly am.

This is not to say I haven't had some success, because I have had bright moments I would not trade for all the common glory there is. I only regret that I was unable to assert myself and do something noticeable back in grade school before I was placed by proxy into the group who either gets chosen last when teams are picked , or worse, has to be placed by the teacher or worse than that, they make up a position like "kick ball umpire" and it's you forever. I wonder why the teachers never let the "runts of the pack" choose sides? I mean say "Texino and the kid with the leg braces" you pick the teams. Might have saved some lives later on. And check this out you bone heads like Ronald Lindsy, and John Sullivan. I went home every day and practiced catching a ball, well first my grandmother showed me how, but then I would toss it up against the wall of the brick house accross the side yard from us until it got too dark and I got so good that I was like a net for fly balls and no grounder or line drive could get by me; "The Iron Curtain" That was my nick name (my secret nickname) I used to day dream that I was the mystery short stop for the Washington Senators filling in for Eddie Yost now and again and if those fools in my grade school classes would have given me a chance- Oh well, I was pretty good, but once again I just trudged out to deep "whatever field no one could hit to".

You know the fool now believes that you really have to make things work out for yourself. Getting good in secret isn't going to help. The infield warms up between innings and all the "Iron Curtain" had to do was stop on his way to oblivion and just snatch a ball out of the air and smoke it back to where it came from. I guess I'm not stupid per se. I'm just a slow learner in some areas. I doubt it any grade school kids read the blog, but by chance if you know a youngster who seems a little dazed by life in general be sure to let him or her understand the importance of letting people know who you are before they come up with their own ideas on the subject and put you down a psychological hole for 50 odd years.

OK? Fine.

It's not like being drunk

Hi, I'm going to write about reefer. No, I'm not in a Reefer Club with a bunch of sexy dames. Kind of wish I were but tell the truth, I don't remember smoking pot leading to a whole raft of sex when I first started out, but as I got a little older and had some girl friends we did have sex quite a lot. I don't know, but those refer club women certainly do not seen too inhibited to me, so maybe pot is a sex drug after all and the thought it was my looks and personality was just the sin of pride.
Oh well, what I want to write about has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the worthless fucking police. I was looking at the local paper today where according to The Police Report the major crime around these parts is driving without a license.
It may be revoked, suspended or invalid for just not being renewed. Whatever the reason, it seems to be a crime worthy of arrest. Please think about that while I continue. Aside from the regular police report, there was a major story where the police had arrested 91 criminals for drug related crimes and were boasting about putting their lives on the line by actually making some drug purchases. They way the story was going you would have started to think that they had really closed down drug availability in the area. You think? Well maybe not, since it turns out that every single bust was for a single hand to hand buy and out of the 91 criminals only two had never been arrested before. One fellow had and arrest record of over 100 busts-obviously not 100 convictions-but if that doesn't tell you he was a black guy then you are breathing through your butt. They did not list the arrestees so I couldn't profile the names on a racial basis but please don't try and say it's racist to do so, since black people tend toward unique spellings and other telltale issues when it comes to naming. My point here is I am betting that a goodly percentage of the 3 or 4 people who read my blog could go out into the poorer parts of the community where by some odd coincidence all the black people live and without breaking a sweat they would be able to identify some active drug dealing. From my reading I was able to infer that some if not the majority of these deals had been recorded by powerful hidden cameras with sound and that "evidence" led to the arrest. Of course, I believe regardless of what a hidden police camera says you are doing, other than running a red light, unless a police officer has "laid his or her life on the line" to buy a small amount of pot of pills, it would be mighty hard indeed to prove that you actully sold drugs. I mean even if someone says "gimmie some pot" and you say "sure $20 please" you can deny it was drugs and say "Just kidding" or "we call chewing gum pot" of course the cops will show the tape to the suspect without benifit of a lawyer and the person will cut deal. Fucking cops. They probably got all dressed up in their scary black mask ninja suits and went crashing into these peoples homes at 4 AM screaming and setting off flash grenades and chaining up a bunch of low level drug people to show on the news. To what end? You think you cant buy some pot or crack tonight? Might be a bit tough this weekend, but by Monday it will be sorted out.

Then go back and read the Police Beat and you will see people getting put in the jug for the same old stuff. Murder? no. Armed robbery? nope. Home burglers? negative. Assault? probably not. No, it's all the incidental stuff. Cop pulls someone over and somethings wrong with the DL. Why is this a ticket to the jail house? Cop pulls someone over and smells some pot. You're going to jail. There are a couple of things of note here. One is your drivers license is the national I.D. (your papers please) that Americans are not supposed to need. Try getting around without a DL or and ID given by the drivers license people if you don't drive. The pot? Criminalize some minor nostrum and keep hammering away that it is dangerous. People wont stop using it because they know it is relatively harmless yet the price stays high for the people who make big money dealing large amounts. Notice, they may bust a bunch of pot some time, but rarely bust anyone with it. Now if you are stupid enough to drive around drunk thats against the laws of common sense and it will cost you large. I worked on the street for 20 odd years and never saw anyone cause an accident because they were too high on pot to drive while I've seen drunks not only kill others but try to let their dead friends take the rap by moving them into the driver's seat and other such behavior.

So just be thinking that things are never as they seem and in fact most everything made out to be a major move for your protection is a great big lie placed to make someone look good while they are taking something away from you.

Someone comes around asking me to join a Reefer club? I'm in. Never can tell who might be a member.

As long as the name is spoken

Guess who has been at it again? Old Death; riding his horse or striding the earth in his 7 league boots, reaping the worn, surprising the ripe and even taking the occasional tender shoot just showing the first green of life. He doesn't mean anything really, he is just the inevitable result of a contract we agree to when we come alive. A contract quite similar to the sort we click right past each time we make a minor software adjustment to the computer. Really for all you know you may be assigning a couple of pints of the red stuff per month to Mr. Bill Gates of Microsoft Inc. of Redmond, WA. and his phlebotomy squads just haven't made it out your way yet. That being a possibility, agreeing to a death at the end of your life is not so bad.
So who did Mr. Bones interlock with this time? Well yesterday at 5:30 AM, Gail Reigal , a woman whom I truly loved and enjoyed , took a final taste of the air we use. Then, for all legal purposes, she died, while, otherwise, seemed to be sleeping in deep comfort. In this case, Death was the ultimate analgesic.

Gail had cancer and then cancer had Gail. I got the word that she was sick just over five years ago. I remember being scared. I thought about Gail, one of the most vibrant, alive and kindest people I had known . I imagined her dead right there and then and it hit me like cold fist. Well, she didn't die. In fact, she never even spoke of her disease; would not dignify it by name. You would have thought she was in denial, but no. She was beginning to fight for what she loved. I guess you could break that down into many areas, but life would cover it. Gail was simply alive. Her garden, fishing, walking the beach for sharks teeth, Kayaking the flats for Red Fish and Trout, surf fishing for pompano all these things and more she shared with her husband Craig. 20 years and then some back. I was working with Gail in a bar. I watched Craig fall in love and patiently push his case ever so slowly until one day they were just together for ever after. And Gail kept fighting. Name your poison. If there was a treatment, she took it, an operation? Cut on the dotted line. Lose your sight? Get a friend to drive. Need a friend? Choose the one out of many who could handle it. She did and She did. Five years is a very long time for a person with metastatic cancer to live.
It pops up everywhere. It seemed that Gail could win every battle. Then, not too long ago the cancer co-op in her body seemed to get together and decide to bring a little bit a each type back. It was enough to put Gail into the hospital for what everyone was certain would be the end. Well no, she got better and went home. Then Monday there was an early call. Something was amiss.
A confusion of sorts. An ambulance was needed. At the hospital, some doctors had different ideas, but it was obvious with a low blood pressure and a high heart rate as well, as other signs, that the body was shutting down and without heroic measures involving respirators and dialysis ,death was being summoned. Well Gail had spoken about the machines and not wanting them simply because the onus would fall on a loved one to have them turned off at some point and to that end, she had signed papers saying so. And that brings us to yesterday morning quite early.

The reaper does not hack bodies or mow them down in long rows with his scythe. Not at all, he quietly appears and severs a small bit of energy, like a data cord between the body and the soul,
allowing one to be free and the other to hang around and take part in any pre planed or spontaneous ritual. Gail's friends are many and go way back to "The Day" The day ends, however and choices and changes are made in the line up of regular days that follow. As one of the first of the Bar Tenders on the scene when this old town got hip and those original customers now making up the latest crop of old timers and big shots around here. I wonder who will remember to remember and if so how? Me? I don't need no stinking funeral. That's the end and my life of remembering Gail is just beginning. As long as the name is spoken the person cannot die.