Well, yesterday brought a ka-bong letter on my latest novel. I haven't given up on it yet, but such events push me toward discussing topics distant from my own failures. Like this one.
Today, I was walking the dogs just as the sprinkling rain began. Suddenly, I spied an inchworm working its way along the sidewalk to 2nd Ave, perhaps for cocktails at donatella&davidburke? Its signature locomotion was as cheery and wonderful to see as it was incongruous in this cement Legoland. May one of the following delight you.
1) Walter Williams takes on the newest cash cow, safety belt laws. I hate the ones I'm required to wear, and resist the back seat versions even though people have recently told me gruesome, true stories about life-changing accidents. Thank goodness I'm still free to be backwards.
2) It's not my fear of heights. The "virus-laden poo" is the reason I don't climb.
3) More proof that hypersensitive PC-ness turns normal people into a bunch of histrionic, thin-skinned, tantrum-prone toddlers. A civil society of mutual respect should not require becoming as duplicitous and mealy-mouthed as... I'll say it ... a career diplomat. However, if you disagree, you'll be comforted by this Mark Steyn article from the Telegraph. As violent crime continues rising in England, miscreants like Sam Brown are pounced upon by six officers and a fleet of patrol cars, jailed overnight, and fined for speculating on the sexual orientation of an officer's horse.
4) In a topic I've ranted on before, Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post points out that the greatest increases in airport security have come from the airlines themselves. Current security screening is intrusive, time-consuming, costly, and doesn't work. Our latest father and son tag team of aspiring dirty-bombers from California were discovered through their patterns of international travel. We should re-privatize airline security. We'd get rid of the patdowns of 8 and 80-year olds, increase the technology in luggage and cargo screening, and put security personnel to work gathering intelligence not plastic buckets.
5) The celebrated American character isn't extinct yet. A grandmother gets stuck in her bathtub for five days. A friendly neighbor kid notices her absence and actually gets help. Her family isn't suing the bathtub maker, they're buying handrails. And our plucky heroine celebrates her freedom from porcelain with a Parliament 100 and a Coke. Rock on!
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I got busted for lack of seat-belt usage last year. $75 fine. Hey...was I hurting anyone, driving dangerously? No. I was actually sitting in traffic, at the time. I am a capital "L" liberal. Seat belt laws are not a liberal plot. The Illinois seat belt law was put into effect under a Republican governor, and passed by a republican senate and house. Seat belt laws were dreamed up to $$$support$$$ $$local$$ $$law$$ $$enforcement$$, which, if you wannaknow..is predominantly conservative Republican law-n-order ideology, but I digress...
I really love it when the Po-lice say they have "never unbelted a dead person" What a bunch of BS.
My friend Michael Shelton, his wife, Carrie, and their 14 year old daughter were driving back from Beatle-fest in Chicago last August, when a car crossed the median and plowed into their car. Both cars exploded in flames. My friends, and the people in the other car...burned to death. 5 dead in one accident, all the victims were wearing seat-belts. So, I can think of at least one instance where the cops had to un-buckle dead people. When I drove down to the memorial service in St. Louis...I could see where the accident happened...there was/is a scorched circle in the pavement, about 50 feet long, and the width of the 2 Southbound lanes of I-57. That is exactly where my friend died. In his seatbelt.
I've got no problem believing sometimes safety belts help and sometimes they hurt and sometimes they don't matter at all to the outcome of a bad situation.
I don't call the legislation a liberal plot, and I'd say the revenue grabbing is real, but I think its hand-in-glove with the wailing multitudes who bought "Baby on Board" signs and who won't let their kids under 17 travel in any vehicle less than a Volvo or armored tank, I mean Hummer.
Many people today, and not just liberals, demand cocooning from knowledge of the sharp corners lurking on the coffee table of life. Perhaps there are fewer scars on eyebrows and chins, but people don't grow savvy and self-sufficient very fast anymore. Welcome to the Greg Brady pad in the parents' house...Forever!!!! MWa-HA-HA-Ha!
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