In Homage

Yes, I'm somewhat afraid of spiders.

But, in general, I think they are beautiful and amazing creatures. And the Orb-Weaver spiders are my favorites.

I love to watch them quickly and deftly weave their intricate, circular webs. The speed with which they navigate the strands to thriftily wind up the evening's prey never fails to thrill me. Their bright-colored bodies and biological drive for order resonate with my soul. They are, to me, sisters of the night.

My latest beauty was residing happily near my back patio floodlights, a perfect choice for catching flying insects in her silken trap. Every evening for about a week I have watched in wonder as she built the day's web; every morning I awoke to find her handily tearing it down.

But this morning, I found last night's web still attached, with large holes in it and the anchor waving in the breeze. Though I thought it strange, it wasn't until this evening that I began to wonder what had happened to her - Orb Weavers rarely leave their web behind, even when they relocate. So I picked up my flashlight and looked for her.

And found her. Or, more accurately, what's left of her.

Above her beautifully and carefully wrought web of symetry, in an alcove of my patio overhang, is the tell-tale tangle of smelly, sticky spider-silk created only by the female Black Widow Spider. And stuck in the edge of that tangled nightmare is the shrunken, dead husk of my beautiful Orb Weaver.

First, out of respect and a strange sense of duty (funny how I would feel such emotion for a bright-colored spider that would inevitably give me a herkin' case of the heebie-jeebies if I found her on my body), I will tear down last night's now-tattered creation as she herself would have done. And then...

revenge.

While I'm Ranting...

"That shooting was unnecessary... they should have barricaded him in with the car."



"That shooting was unnecessary... that man only had a stick."



"That shooting was unnecessary... he was only a child!"



"That shooting was unnecessary... he had a toy gun."



"That shooting was unecessary... they could have easily disarmed him."



"That shooting was unnecessary... he wasn't hurting anyone, he just had the knife because the cops were scaring him."



Here are the POST dimensions for California Peace Officers:

Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training

JOB DIMENSIONS for PEACE OFFICERS

Integrity

Interest in People

Interpersonal Sensitivity

Communication Skills

Problems Solving Ability

Judgment Under Pressure

Willingness to Confront Problems

Credibility as a Witness

Observational Skills

Learning Ability

Appearance

Dependability

Physical Ability

Desire for Self-Improvement

Operation of a Motor Vehicle

You'll notice that self- sacrifice, willingness to accept head trauma, skills as a shank-cushion, inability to preserve your own life when others are firing upon you, and desire to be run over by a vehicle are not among the desired dimensions. It doesn't outline mind-reading, a post-graduate degree in pharmacopia, an LMFT certification, or super-human healing properties as qualifying skills. Nowhere does it say that qualified applicants must be willing to sacrifice their own lives and well-being in order to avoid use of deadly force. Also conspicuously absent are: ability to differentiate a gun replica from an actual gun in the dark and in less than one second, willingness to orphan one's children, and lack of regard for human life.

'Nuff said.

To Illustrate the Point...

This is taken from today's local headlines, and is an apt illustration of what I was speaking of.

August 26, 2007
SAN DIEGO – If only Alan Kosakoff had taken his psychiatric medication, maybe he wouldn't have led police on a high-speed chase that ended tragically early yesterday in his mother's Del Mar Heights driveway, his family said.
Two San Diego officers, in fear for their lives, shot him in the head and leg after he almost ran over them, police said. Kosakoff, 35, was described as a brilliant but somewhat awkward man who his father said suffers from schizoaffective disorder. He remained in critical condition late yesterday.

Schizoaffective disorder is similar to schizophrenia, according to a Web site that the University of California Los Angeles operates for families of schizophrenia patients. Symptoms can include hallucinations and delusions, and patients can sometimes have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy.

“We're still trying to figure out why gunshots were fired,” said Kosakoff's father, Harold Kosakoff, who is the assistant executive officer of the Chula Vista courthouse. “It's kind of baffling.”

Alan Kosakoff had not been taking his psychiatric medication, his father said.
A traffic officer tried to pull Kosakoff over at 12:20 a.m. for a traffic violation at Del Mar Heights and High Bluff roads, said San Diego police homicide Lt. Manny Guaderrama.
But police said Kosakoff sped off in his Toyota Corolla, reaching speeds of 114 mph up and down Interstate 5 and Interstate 805 before taking residential streets to Half Moon Bay Drive in Del Mar Heights, where his mother lives.

The 15-minute pursuit ended when he pulled into her garage and tried to close the door behind him.

Police caught the garage door in time, and an officer approached the car to arrest the driver.
As the officer opened the car door, Kosakoff put the car into reverse and tried to run over two other officers, Guaderrama said.

The officer beside the car was knocked into another car parked in the garage.

The two other officers both fired at Kosakoff. They performed CPR until paramedics arrived and Kosakoff was taken to a hospital.

Harold Kosakoff said his son was breathing on his own after undergoing surgery, but whether he will survive is unknown.

“We are very concerned about the condition he will be in if he does pull through,” he said.
Harold Kosakoff questioned the officers' tactics and wonders if the shooting could have been prevented.

“We as a family have our own theory, and we will see if our theory and the police report match up,” he said. “He was driving into the garage. Why not pull a police car up behind him to block him in?”

The officers involved in the shooting have been with the Police Department for 17 months and 22 months.

Alan Kosakoff lives in a condominium in Carmel Valley, but he spent much of his time and ate most of his meals at his mother's house.

“This couldn't be any more of a surprise, to have someone shot right in front of your house,” said a neighbor who declined to give his name.

He said his wife, who was awake at the time, was walking to the front door to check out the commotion when she heard several gunshots.

Kosakoff was often spotted smoking cigarettes in front of the home, and he sometimes played basketball with children in the street.

Neighbors used the same word to describe him: mellow.

Chris Howe, who graduated from Torrey Pines High School with Kosakoff, said he was a smart kid, but different.

“He was really good at numbers,” said Howe, who lives in La Quinta. “He got all A's. When we were in the sixth grade, he was in high school taking math classes.”

Kosakoff competed on the Torrey Pines varsity academic team. He skipped a grade in school and eventually graduated with an engineering degree from the University of California Berkeley.
But his father said the mental illness prevented him from holding a steady job in the industry.
“He should be on medications, but he wasn't taking them.”

Reader comments:

By Puff on 08/26/2007
Is there a problem with police tactics? Examine what kinds of people are employed as officers and management. You would be surprised at the IQ level. When you give power to ordinary people they will eventually abuse it however when you give power to idiots you create a highly lethal animal. Therefore when you come in contact with one of these animals fear for your life and pull out your magnum to protect yourself.

By BigBadWolf on 08/26/2007
The second he got on the freeway and went 114 MPH, he put himself and everyone else on the road in grave danger. This is a society of laws. If the police try to stop you, and you run, expect the worst to happen to you. Shame on the people that think the police should let these people get away. A society without laws and consequences is not a society I wish to be in. Yes, it is too bad this guy was mentally ill, but that ain't my problem. A car going 114 MPH next to me is. The laws on punishing people that run are too relaxed. I support tougher laws on pursuit suspects.

By de_novo on 08/26/2007
Puff....wow. I promise you, you couldn't do the job as you sit on your high horse and examine what they did with the luxury of TIME. You have no idea what you're talking about. In split second situations, IQ makes no difference...and I promise even if it did...every officer on that department is smarter than YOU. Society shouldn't be at the mercy of people who CHOOSE not to take their medication. This guy could have done ANYTHING. He could have killed the officers and other people. And then it's not HIS fault because he's sick?! Remember, he CHOOSES not to take his medication. Dead people and horrific events are no less dead nor horrific simply because a guy is schitzo. These people are TIMEBOMBS and the citizens are LUCKY the officer ran into him first before he ran into YOU. I have no sympathy.

By de_novo on 08/26/2007
BigBadWolf....ditto.

By Puff on 08/26/2007
Well, the idiots come forth, and with the narrow-mindedness expected of an idiot. It is quite apparent that the idiot officers were not threatened by the driver. Their idiot tactics led them to deliberately put themselves in a situation that they can construe to be life threatening so they can justify shooting. They did not have to stand behind the car. And as for driving 114 mph, well what is the difference between that speed being dangerous to others on the road and the typical commuter who drives 20 to 40 over the limit in everyday driving? They are all running from or to something!

By teacherman on 08/26/2007
The choices mentally ill people make are not rational. That is the basics of mental illness. While I agree that he needed to be stopped and arrested, the officers made poor decisions that led to this shooting. Apologists make the "split second decision" argument, but officers are supposed to be trained and drilled "over and over" on dealing with just these types of situations. High-speed pursuit and the aftermath is a big topic for them. They could have blocked him in and waited for back up. They were angry and let that cloud their decision-making. A review of policy and procedure is in order if they followed what exists now. The city will be sued and will settle with the family costing the taxpayers. If that money came out of the Police budget directly, they would certainly change their tactics.

By 1234567_49 on 08/26/2007
Puff - Are YOU mentally ill too? If i"m a cop attempting to arrest someone who JUST MINUTES BEFORE led me on a 114mph chase, and they put their car in reverse and try to RUN ME OVER...I'M GONNA SHOOT. It's called common sense and self-preservation. Police officers take an oath to protect the public from people like this guy...that's what they did. Do you think they ENJOYED shooting a man and then having to do CPR on him until paramedics arrived? Get real. You obviously have no common sense. By the way...this isn't coming from a cop...or a right-winder...or any of the usual suspects. It's coming from a left-leaning person who has taken part in protests AGAINST police brutality, and who usually is extremely skeptical about ANY police shooting. THIS one was justified. 100%. But I'm sure he (if he lives) or his parents will try to sue the city like greedy bastards. Maybe if he was eating most of his meals at his mom's house she should have made sure he took his meds too! Of course, that would mean people would have to actually take responsibility for their actions!! God forbid.

By 1234567_49 on 08/26/2007
teacherman - When dealing with a person who just led you on a 114mph chase, the last thing a cop would want it to give that person access to getting into a house where they could have weapons stored. Then you get a barricaded gunman situation and put the entire neighborhood's lives at risk.

By O'side on 08/26/2007
"Symptoms can include hallucinations and delusions, and patients can sometimes have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy." And he's allowed to drive because???????????? The family knew he wasn't taking his meds, what had they done about this? Sure didn't take his car keys away.

Public Outrage and "Thin-Slicing"

Recently, I read Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell. Mr. Gladwell is also the author of The Tipping Point. I highly recommend both of these books, if only for the new perspective reading them will inevitably provide.

After reading the chapter entitled "Seven Seconds in the Bronx," I was bothered by the conclusions reached, but couldn't put my finger on why for several weeks. Now, MSU is reading the book and he said something - whatever magic phrase it was - to help me finally name my discomfort: the chapter focuses on what happens when "thin-slicing" goes awry and uses law enforcement as an example. The premise of the book is that good decisions aren't generally made by analysis, but by neurological processes which take small "slices" of information and process - 90% of the time!! - the right decision... IF you don't analyze too much. This chapter outlined a shooting incident wherein 4 Street Team Officers shot an innocent man who was taking his wallet out of his waistband. The elapsed time for the entire incident, from contact to the end of gunfire, was seven seconds.

The point of this entire chapter is that under stress, our brain processes information differently. Anyone familiar with the works of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (On Killing)or familiar with highly adrenalized situations understands the magnitude of the effects of stress on critical thinking processes. Our bodies, under extreme duress, automatically limit the amount of information that can be processed. In life-threatening situations, our brains forgo sound, visual clarity, and broader social awareness in favor of heightened awareness of the immediate threat. But there is a caveat - optimal performance range in such situations is dependent on heart rate - about 145 beats per minute for optimal awareness - and adrenaline dumping into the system will quickly elevate even a seasoned performer into a range well above 200 beats per minute.

A higher heart rate than about 145 beats per minute will launch a human's brain into mid-brain hijacking (the limbic system shuts down the neocortex). Complex motor skills break down. At about 175 beats per minute, cognitive functioning breaks down completely and visual acuity is almost non-existant. Blood is withdrawn from extremities and sent to the core, to harden the core muscles into a type of armor, leaving the body clumsy and helpless.

In this state, we are what Gladwell calls "mind-blind." We are fundamentally austistic, meaning that we are unable to pick up the visual cues that our brains depend on for accurate information about another person's intentions.

Police training is designed to teach officers how to keep themselves out of trouble - how to give themselves ample time to observe visual cues, how to avoid that temporary autism that is often the result of too little time, too little space, and too much adrenaline. Officers in training are subjected to "stress inoculation," training which enmires them directly in worst-case scenarios and forces them to function through the "mind-blindness" over and over again until they can function in the situations without ever reaching the critical heart rate. This is the gift of training. The gift of experience comes later. The two gifts together are a glorious combination that allows an officer to stay in the optimum performance range in life-threatening situations and take full advantage of the adrenaline in the system - the slowing of time, the visual acuity on the threat, and the blocking of outside distraction such as sounds and social assumptions. In this state of inoculated awareness under duress, officers are able to judge the visual cues of a life-threatening situation AS ACCURATELY (90% of the time) as "regular" citizens in day-to-day interactions that don't require snap decision-making to prevent harm to themselves or others. This is a truly amazing finding, and I hope that you will take a moment to really let it sink in.

Here, I'll finally get to the point: In California, we are inundated with a critical focus on police conduct. Law Enforcement agencies are held in public scrutiny every time there is a use-of-force incident that results in injury or death. Not only do these Officers have to undergo the rigorous "tests" of their agenices and of the District Attorney's Office, they are publicly "tried" in media circuses that provide little actual information and much political spin. This publicized scrutiny is at the convenience of "regular" citizens, most of whom have never suffered a critical incident and have no idea how incredibly quickly their own body will become a cognitive traitor, shifting easily and without warning into berserker rage. Invariably, there will be a witness to a shooting who goes public on the news with his or her opinion that the shooting was unnecessary, that the officers acted brutally and deadly force was not warranted regardless of the weapon or threat the deceased suspect was presenting. Invariably, there will be public outrage. Invariably, the media will dredge up officer-involved shooting statistics for the community in question, and conduct polls asking "regular' citizens if they believe that their local agency is racist/biased/trigger-happy/unsympathetic. Invariably, there will be news group forums on the Internet wherein "regular" citizens vent their frustrations with law enforcement personnel and complain that their watchdogs are too quick to pull the trigger, too quick to place someone in handcuffs, too mean to listen, too slow to respond, too quick to judge, too "by the book" to negotiate. Invariably, "regular" citizens will judge the outcomes of shooting situations that they were not involved in to have been avoidable, and will publicly decry their respective police agencies to have been hasty, lacking judgment, and assumptive.

The key descriptor in all of this is "regular citizen."

Regular citizens rarely find themselves in life-or-death situations. Regular citizens rarely find their heart rate to be over 175 beats per minute unless they are running, on the treadmill, or horribly out of shape and forced to climb several flights of stairs, none of wich are adrenaline-induced states. Regular citizens don't routinely walk into other people's houses without being invited in order to intervene with a husband who is systematically beating his wife to death with their baby's Tonka truck while said baby sits nearby in a diaper that hasn't been changed in days watching with calm wonder. Regular citizens don't place themselves smack in the middle of hostile situations - in fact, they tend to avoid such situations whenever possible. Regular citizens don't regularly find themselves on the receiving end of a gun barrel, confronting a meth-crazed person carving at himself with a Bowie knife, or chasing armed street terrorists into the fishbowl of a dark and maze-like apartment complex.

Perhaps most telling is the fact that regular citizens don't walk a dark world that is populated entirely with criminals. Law Enforcement Officers do. And we do it so you, the regular citizens, don't have to.

We make the same amount of ACCURATE decisions based on little snippets of information in our dark and sinister world that you make in your vastly nonconfrontational world. We make the same amount of ACCURATE decisions in critical, life-threatening incidents that you make in day-to-day decisions about normal conversations and everyday events. We make the same amount of ACCURATE decisions in split-second reactions to threats as you make in split-second reactions to the packaging of your coffee. The decisions we make on a moment-to-moment basis are very different that the decisions you make on a moment-to-moment basis, but we are still able to do it with 90% efficacy.

Hey, I don't expect anyone to change their mind about their particular view on police brutality... I'm just offering a different perspective. Think about the decisions you make in the course of a day and how they are made. Then think about the decisions a police officer makes in the course of a day. Perspective??

My Level of Hell is Lustier than Yours...

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished me to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Survival of the Stammerest

If anyone is interested in listening to the interview, you can go to www.kpbs.org and look for the section titled "These Days." There is an archive and today's interview should be at or near the top.

I earned my fear, because they asked questions that they hadn't prepared me for, so there is a lot of dead silence and "Ummmmm..." where my responses should be.

The good news is that the author that was a guest-by-phone pretty much dominated the entire segment and I didn't have to answer many questions at all. He also doesn't work for a bureaucratic agency and was able to say things like "ludicrous" and "idiots" without fear of repucussion, unlike the SANDAG analyst and I. I was thankful for him in more ways than one.

We only took three callers, and none of them had questions. Another boon!!

So, listen if you must, but go easy on me. I'm just glad it's over.

Scared to Death

My Department is making me do a radio interview tomorrow on the topic of juvenile sex offenders.

The whole process started at about 9:30 this morning, when I received a call from a local public broadcasting station, asking to speak to my Sup, who is out of the office this week. I directed the person to the next up in command, and put in a call to my Sup on her cell phone to tell her about it. She loves that shit, and I figured she would welcome the diversion from caring for her sister who just had surgery.

Well, she didn't call me back. Instead, our Public Affairs guy called me and told me I was doing it. I referred him to the District Attorney who files the cases and does all the prosecuting. He indicated that it didn't matter who else I referred him to, I was going to appear and participate in the interview.

Sigh.

So, I called for the pre-interview, as directed. As expected, the radio journalists don't want to know anything about my JOB, they want to know how I can tell if someone is a "budding pedophile." They want to know how many arrests, county-wide, have been made over the past year. They want to know what the "risk" is. They want to know if the number of sexually-abusive youth is increasing. They want to know how the public is kept "informed."

Sigh.

This is going to be the most boring interview ever, and will do absolutely NOTHING to ease the minds of "concerned citizens," because my only answer is:

I don't know. Except for the last question, which nobody really wants the answer to.

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a statistician. I'm not an analyst. I'm a law enforcement officer. And that's all I do. I don't assess risk. I don't know how many arrests are made county-wide regarding sexually-abusive youth, and I don't know how many of those arrests are actually prosecuted. I can't accurately predict who is going to be a life-long sexual predator and who isn't.

And Juvenile Court records are confidential. The Juvenile Court is a rehabilitative Court, not a punishing Court. And you can approach me with all the histrionic "right to know" bullshit that you want, my answer remains the same.

I supervise sexually-abusive youth in the community, and I can tell you that the population, as a whole, is the most compliant, most remorseful, most responsive to treatment, and most misunderstood group of delinquent youth I've ever worked with. I can also tell you that the population is the least likely to do poorly in school, least likely to violate probation, least likely to use drugs, and least likely to re-offend - either sexually or otherwise - than any other youth population I've worked with. I can tell you that the ratio of juvenile sex offenders to other delinquent youth that are being supervised in my county is approximately 600 to 1. I can tell you that rehabilitative efforts directed at this population have a success rate that positively DWARFS any other supervised group of youth.

I can also tell you that the majority of this population suffers from mental health issues, low cognitive functioning, lack of parental supervision and adequate family boundaries, minimal self-efficacy, and even lower self-esteem.

Does any of this information alleviate the impact of their egregious crimes on the victims? Of course not. Nor does it mediate the inevitable seperation of family units that very often accompanies findings of truth in these cases. Likewise, this knowledge does nothing to ease the minds of citizens who fear that their children will be preyed upon by "budding pedophiles."

I am terrified. This is really going to suck.

Yet Another Blog About Sex

I learned a very scary and sad thing the other day.

Apparently, not everyone feels the same way about sex as I do. Can you believe it??

In my opinion, part of what makes sex the amazing experience that it is (or can be) is that it's raw, messy, and altogether human. We come together in sexual relations in a way that is, in my opinion and belief, honest and unpretentious. We celebrate each other and ourselves in a biologically driven - but often emotionally fueled - vaccum of sacred space, where there is nothing and no one else, where for that moment nothing else matters.

Personally, I'm amazed by our bodies. Everything our bodies do is so incredibly engineered, so marvelously orchestrated. Tissue, blood, hair, secretions... elimination of waste, the strangely flexible hardness of bone and the ingenious map of muscles, tendons and ligaments... the regenetive nature of skin and the lightning speed of neurologic processes... the sensitivity of the scrotum and its rather unnerving constant motion... the complexity of the reproductive dance. All of it is extraordinary to me. And I love the smells and the textures, the combinations of which make us unique but still so very homogenous. A person's signature scent resides in the secret folds of genitalia, and to a lesser degree in the warmth of their armpits. Can I claim true intimacy without knowing that scent? Am I truly celebrating a joining of spirits if I refuse to accept the taste of salty and somewhat bitter semen? Would I deny the one joined in sacred space with me the heady smell and woody taste of my own vaginal fluids? Would I deny myself if it were offered to share? Not a chance. I cherish these gifts, as they are the fruits of perfect trust.

A sexual experience without smells... without textures... without body fluids and sweat... is - again in my opinion! - not a sexual experience. Hell, I can't even have that kind of sex with myself.

So, you can imagine my surprise when it was made known to me the other day that some people prefer their sex clean. Some people don't consider the smell of sexual arousal and the concurrent "mess" a rare and marvelous treasure. Some people won't let their mouths get near a vulva unless said vulva has very recently been vigorously washed - or in some extreme cases, is actually in the shower or tub at the time. Some people are so grandly uncomfortable with their own ejaculate that each expulsion necessitates an immediate shower and suspension of all contact until all traces have been eradicated. Some people refuse to kiss until they've brushed their teeth, regardless of their partner's feelings on the subject. One guy told me that he wouldn't have sex with his wife unless her legs and genitalia were freshly shaved. Even one day's growth was unacceptable. "Hair, god that's so gross," he said. I had to laugh at the double standard, but could I have convinced him otherwise? That's honestly how he thinks it's all supposed to be. Another guy disclosed that he doesn't engage in foreplay with his girlfriend anymore because "she gets all gooey down there and it's disgusting."

Are you fucking kidding me? I thought. No, he wasn't.

And sex during menstruation? Good God, you'd think I had proposed human sacrifice as foreplay if you had seen the shock and horror on the reacting party's face.

Tragic, if you ask me. And terrifying, to some extent. WTF? Am I some kind of ancestral-environment throwback, that I don't think sex is very sexy unless it's messy and smelly and sweaty? Am I stuck in the Stone Age while everyone else has evolved to the Sterile Age?

Hmmmmm.

Conspiracy Theorists and Cute Idealism

I had an interesting discussion with several young people who just happened to be hanging out at my house. Being Conspiracy Theorists, as most young people are to one extent or another, the topic turned to the legalization of marijuana.

These intelligent and curious teens argued that the only reason that the Federal Goverment hasn't legalized marijuana is "because there is no money to be made from it." Their theory is that legalization of the drug will not bring any income into our Federal coffers.

I, of course, disagreed. If marijuana were legalized to the extent that alcohol is legal (as these whippersnappers proposed), there is money to be made hand over fist: import tax, "sin" tax, sales tax, licensing tax, etc. What my young negotiators failed to realize was the financial loss that legalization of marijuana would incur. A loss that very definitely shadows any viable gain.

But that's beside the point.

What I realized during this very spirited and passionate discussion was that the debate over legalization of marijuana very aptly mirrors the social crisis that America currently faces: we legislate to accommodate people who have abdicated their claim to citizenship and call it "fair." We are now happily legislating the "blame someone else" culture.

I am not judging people who use marijuana, it is not my place to do so. I realize that my experience with the drug is limited to my wasted youth and to the effects on families that I am trying to overcome every day I drag myself out of bed and hit the streets for work. And frankly, I would happily trade legalization of marijuana for stricter interventions for methamphetamine manufacture, distribution, and use. But my argument to the young people engaged in the discussion was that promoting legalization of marijuana is tantamount to asking me to accommodate - even support! - a population which I know to be unmotivated, sluggish, unreliable, dangerously impaired, accepting and supportive of legal and social deviance, in denial of the effects that the drug has on their daily functioning, and, at this point, fundamentally criminal. Why should I, as a Citizen, accommodate a socially draining population by making their consistent and overwhelming drain on the resources of their communities LEGAL?

Of course, I received a roomful of blank stares in reply, for these spirited teens assumed that if marijuana were legalized, people would be responsible about using it. They assumed that drug-related crime would decrease (rather than increase) and that the impact on society would be lessened by controlling marijuana as a legal substance rather than as an illegal substance. We already know this is not the case, as alcohol use and abuse and abuse of legally-prescribed drugs are another significant drain on State and Federal resources. Bless their jailhouse-lawyering hearts, they failed to investigate the other side of the debate, the side which clearly outlines the fact that we have enough social problems with the drugs that ARE legal and adding another would be social suicide.

All in my humble opinion, of course.

A Quick Plea

It's come to my attention as I ride around town that people generally have no concept regarding their vehicle's safety equipment.

Take horns, for example. Your automobile's horn is designed to be heard by another motorist while he or she is encased in their own car, with the windows up and the air or heat on, probably listening to music and not really paying attention. After all, that's when the horn is necessary, right? It stands to reason that your car's horn is pretty loud, right?

Now, imagine that you are riding a motorcycle next to an SUV. The person driving the SUV happens to think you're hot, or perhaps likes your pink flamed helmet or pink custom leathers. The SUV's driver hits the horn in order to gain your attention so they can impart their appreciation of you, your helmet, or your leathers.

People on motorcycles are not entombed in a hermetically sealed vehicle that is designed to cut down on as much road noise as possible. In fact, motorcycle riders are not protected from all kinds of noise - wind noise, freeway noise, noise from other people's radios, noise from other people's mouths. Motorcylclists don't have the luxury of tuning the world out as they ride. And an enthusiastic fan blasting their horn 20 inches from a motorocyclist's head is going to do more than get their attention - it might get them killed.

Folks, I can not adequately describe what it's like to hear an automobile horn at close range while riding a motorcycle. It's terrifying. It's shocking. It's like the Hand of God squeezing your eardrum and ripping out your spleen all at the same time. It's paralyzing. And it guarantees that the cyclist will react - and perhaps not in a fashion that saves lives.

Please - use your horn ONLY in emergencies! Not when you're pissed, not when you're horny, not when you're overcome with the urge to let the motorcyclist know that you think he or she is cool.

I, personally, prefer the "thumbs-up" or a friendly wave. I won't look as cool with my skin shredded and my head squished. And as cool as titanium legs are, I don't want one.

Thanks.

Dog Days of Summer

I've decided that my dogs are the most practical role models I have.

My dogs have no "body consciousness" whatsoever. Their bodies are tools for working, eating, and playing. My dogs never forlornly appraoch me and ask, "Does this fur make me look fat?"

My dogs are completely at home and confident in their sexuality. My dogs don't say, "Turn off the lights!" My dogs know that they are going to get laid even if they have three legs, a scarred snout, or fleas. This knowledge sets them free to pursue happiness without a bunch of stress about whether or not other dogs are talking behind their backs and without wondering if barking that occured during chance encounters with strange dogs "means anything."

My dogs do thier jobs without complaint, pay, or medical benefits. They do their jobs when they are sick. They do their jobs when it is hot. They do their jobs when they are frightened. They will do their jobs with their last dying breath. Why? Because that's what they do.

My dogs lay down when they are tired. When my dogs want someone to comfort them, they don't wait for that someone to notice they need comfort - they ask for it and keep asking until the comfort is delivered.

My dogs eat moderate portions of food twice per day and are totally satisfied with it. In fact, they eat the same food item twice per day, every day and are always damn excited to see it being served.

My dogs play with each other, not expensive, isolating toys.

My dogs never say, "I'm bored." In a dog's world, there is ALWAYS something fascinating to do.

When my dogs see someone they love, they greet them with consistent and unflagging joy. They know that every time someone walks out of the front door, they might not walk back in, so it's important to slobber all over them while they can.

My dogs are NEVER afraid to speak their mind. Loudly and copiously.

My dogs don't need money. My dogs don't know what money is. If I ran out of money and couldn't buy thier food, they'd still be okay.

My dogs don't know the meaning of "give up." Giving up is the hallmark of "intelligence." Funny, eh?

My dogs don't fear death. At some point, they will welcome it and perhaps even hasten it by refusing to eat and/or leaving the property to die alone.

In essence, my dogs embody my motto: I fear no one. I want nothing. I am free. And here I'd been looking outside my own home for inspiration!!!