September 21, 2001
In an earlier Weekly Letter I described the conflict I was having
with the people who live across the road from the park where my
wife and I
feed birds every morning. To recap briefly for all you
newcomers, the
cross-street folks wanted us to leave the park, and in pursuing
this object
they persuaded the police to 'investigate' us and give us a
ticket for
violating a city ordinance -- one which actually allows bird
feeding in
public parks, but creates certain restrictions which the police
claimed we
violated. The principal one they tried to hang on us went
belly-up after
my clever wife figured a way to torpedo it. A second one
stuck, however:
Turns out the cross-street folks had been videotaping us for
awhile, and
they taped me dropping some food for birds in the street, which
-- not
being in the park -- constituted a violation of the
ordinance. There were
other items too, which couldn't quite be made out to be
violations, but
were at least intended to prejudice my case. These included
various
whinings about bird droppings and their 'threat' to health, plus
the
allegation that I pissed in a jar and dumped it in the park.
The pissing allegation is interesting for several reasons.
One is that the
distaff side of the prosecutorial team that was set against us
made what
will perhaps go down in history as the silliest claim ever made,
viz, that
we were attracting birds by dumping urine (The notion that the
birds are
attracted to food was evidently much too incredible for her
feminine mind).
Another interesting thing about the pissing allegation is the
divide which
it shows between two important philosophies of health: The
standard, or
Pasteurian (or Howard Hughes) philosophy, which maintains that
'germs' are
the essential cause of disease; and the holistic or naturopathic
philosophy
(of which I am an adherent) which maintains that the principal
cause of
disease is a compromised immune system, usually due either to
insufficient
nutrition or insufficient exercise. These schools are now
in serious
contention, with almost half of all visits to healers being made
to the
naturopathic variety. This shift in paradigms has been
accelerated by the
fact that an aging population has discovered that MDs and their
ilk have no
viable treatment for most geriatric diseases, and by the
additional fact
that the MD fraternity kills legions of people with their
standard
procedures of 'poison, slash and burn' (medicine, surgery and
radiation) --
over 100,000 deaths per year for properly-prescribed
medicines in
hospitals, and don't ask about improperly-prescribed
ones, or the
medicines
you take at home. Needless to say, you still want an MD for
a severed
artery or a broken bone, but there really isn't much else (OK,
maybe
ingrown toenails, if your mother isn't around).
There are a couple of other reasons that the pissing allegation
is
interesting. One is the cognitive dissonance between the
situation of a
human dumping 'dirty' urine in a park (in fact, urine is
virtually sterile,
and only gets smelly when left in the hallways of
negroidal-inhabited
apartment buildings) and a dog who can piss freely in the same
place -- a
matter which also brings up the tricky legal question of whether
animals
actually have more rights than humans (after all, nobody objects
to a dog
urinating in public). A second interesting point is that
piss, like shit,
is actually a fertilizer (wasn't that OKC fertilizer bomb just
Tim
McVeigh's way of showing the government he was pissed off?), and
in fact
the best fertilizer comes not from the back of a truck, but the
back of an
animal. In this regard, pigeon droppings are superior
because they are so
high in nitrates -- a fact that once caused the droppings of
pigeoncotes to
be considered the special possession of the King because the
droppings were
especially valuable in making gunpowder (What was that,
Tim?). And of
course we can't pass up mentioning that the burgeoning business
of organic
farming depends for fertilizer on what comes out of its animals'
-- uh --
organs.
As I pointed out in my earlier newsletter, the Pasteurian
prejudice has
come about in part because we are two or three generations off
the farm,
where cow plops wiggle their way beneath your feet, and where
shoveling
shit -- and getting it under your fingernails and probably in
your food --
was just a part of everyday life. Now, however, people seem
to think that
meat comes from shrink-wrapped packages rather than dead animals,
and that
bowel movements find their way to heaven when the toilet is
flushed; so it
is little wonder that we are beset with Auntie Deahs with their
raised
pinkie fingers ranting and railing about dirt, filth and smut, as
if they
didn't have plenty around their own arseholes.
To my way of thinking, there were two important features of this
brouhaha:
First, that it was a training exercise, and second, that it was a
morality
play. As to the training, there is absolutely nothing like
actually going
thru something like this -- reading the law, becoming familiar
with the
procedures, planning your strategy (and seeing if you can
anticipate that
of your opponents), dealing with your own emotions, and attending
to all
the other myriad details that something like this entails.
The best part
of the training, however, was that it could be carried out
without any
significant risk -- I wasn't going to go to prison for throwing
bird food
in the street. This meant that I would not be weighed down
by emotions
that might cause me problems in, say, a murder trial; but I could
benefit
from learning from my mistakes, of which there were plenty, tho
none that
would have changed the outcome.
As to the morality play, one thing to be said is that this
situation
exhibited in a very clear way that being a moral person gives you
powerful
advantages. In particular, at both the trial and the
sentencing hearing I
was able to make the point -- which I did at least a couple of
times --
that every one of the principals involved in the prosecution had
behaved
unethically, while the prosecution could say absolutely
nothing against
me.
Truthfully, I don't know if this impressed the judge; but even if
not, it
serves as a defense if these guys want to try to make further
trouble. In
particular, if they try to get a law passed that will succeed in
getting
rid of me, it is likely to end up an even bigger brouhaha than
the one 5
years ago when the St Pete Beach folks passed a law against me --
that one
made all the papers, TV stations and talk radio, and I even had a
debate of
sorts with the St Pete Beach mayor (ironically named Kevan
Finch), whom I
naturally trounced. All of which means that the folks who
want my scalp
are going to have to risk having their behavior scrutinized by
the press,
and I think they may find the result not pleasant.
But there is more to the morality play than just my
accusations. For
example, one of the guys who opposed me used to walk his dogs in
the park
in the mornings, but since the brouhaha started, he has
disappeared as if
he were ashamed of himself, or at least embarrassed that I have
prevailed.
Likewise, one of the guys with a house directly across from the
park put in
a fancy security system, apparently feeling that his improper
behavior
invited some sort of retaliation. This is amusing because
it probably cost
him a couple of grand, so in effect he is paying a hefty penalty
for his
behavior. And of course there are the penalties that I
can't see but can
imagine: The fact that these guys with their half-million-dollar
houses
have lost face with their neighbors because they couldn't even
run off a
couple of pigeon-feeders; or the fact that they spent a bunch of
time and
effort getting the police to move on us (they probably spent more
on liquor
for their get-togethers than I had to pay for my fine, and who
knows how
much they spent on lawyers and palm-greasing). But the
unkindest cut of
all for them was the fact that we trashed all their major moves:
They tried
to prove that our regular feeding was occurring on a place not
legally in
the park (we presented a legal definition of the park that proved
us right,
thanks to my wife); they tried to ban us from the park by police
order (we
got it quickly rescinded); they tried to prove that pigeons were
a health
threat (I trashed the doctor -- one of the complainants -- with
documents
from the Net, again thanks largely to my diligent and far-sighted
wife);
and even tho I was adjudged guilty, my wife was not (Oy
vey! How will the
prosecutors ever make their big career move if they can't even
convict a
pigeon-feeder?) In short, what these guys did in trying to
beat up on us
is that they beat up on themselves while making us
stronger. I can only
wonder whether they will ever realize that morality is just
informed self-
interest. For their sake as well as ours, I certainly hope
so.
In conclusion, it bears remarking that, while I can't say I felt
exactly
good about paying the $150 fine, neither can I say that the judge
was
unfair, since I obviously was guilty, even if the offense would
never have
rated a prosecution except for the fact that it was motivated by
an attempt
to run us off. In fact, His Honor seemed to be as much a
politician as a
judge, since he seemed to be trying to satisfy what he thought
was
'community concern' while at the same time upholding my right to
feed).
But if I felt bad about the fine, I felt really good when, as I
was leaving
the courthouse, I passed a lawyer who had been in the courtroom
when I made
my presentation and who stopped me to compliment me on my
performance.
Hey, did I miss my calling? (Just call me Sharkie, baby.)
From Mortal Words v10:
Sex is recreation in marriage, but wreck-creation outside.
Nut: Someone with a screw loose.
Tight nuts: The reason for screwing.
Screwing: What you have to do to keep from going nuts.
AIDS: Grim fairy tale.
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