Stuff You Should Know

 

Vegetarian is an ancient tribal name for the village idiot, who can’t hunt, fish, or start a fire.

The crap that gullible people believe, coupled with thought processes that make a plate of spaghetti look neat and well organized, have led to some of the strangest, often dangerous, shit.  In the Middle Ages, the cognoscenti, the intelligent, educated (?) men noticed that ferns never produced seeds….and yet, ferns grew, and multiplied.  Therefore….Careful!  Don’t hurt yourself on this….fern seeds were invisible.  If you could find and gather enough of these seeds that couldn’t be seen, and ate them, you would become invisible too.  Can you say Dark Ages, or Inquisition??!  Or Westboro, or just Duh!

Once upon a time, (Wasn’t this week!) people had respect for themselves and others, and various institutions.  Perhaps society was a bit too restrictive, and change was an improvement, but the pendulum swung too far the other way.  I blame the hippie generation.  With the best of intentions, they tore society down, but failed to put up anything in its place, and society needs structure.

If it feels good, do it.  Like my young senator, they weren’t doing anything that their parents hadn’t done, but, you damned young fools, that’s what doors are for.  I believe this was the beginning of the downfall of the education system, no penalties, no failures, no need to work.  Spell it as it sounds.

Back then, only criminals committed criminal acts, and if caught, went to jail for them.  One did not break into neighbors’ houses, or steal or vandalize their cars.  One did not steal from neighbor-owned businesses….but, the wheel has turned, and society has changed.

Cities have grown larger, and more impersonal.  Companies are not owned by us, so there are more and more among us who are willing and anxious to steal from and damage them.  Then, if they get caught they blame parents who didn’t raise them well, and teachers who didn’t understand them, and claim they are the victims of some plot.  They’re not criminals!  Give them a GPS anklet and six months of house arrest.

Businesses have had to modify their buildings to reduce loss and shrinkage, two words that mean being stolen from by outsiders, and being stolen from by employees.  Many stores are now laid out so that you can’t get back out the door you came in.

On a trip to South Carolina, the wife and I shopped for groceries at a Piggly-Wiggly store, simply because we’d heard Jeff Foxworthy make fun of them on his comedy albums.  We found out that the entrance doors had no motion sensor on the inside.  As we approached them from the outside, they slid open for us, and a young man lugging a hockey bag zipped out past us, with the head cashier and store manager in hot pursuit through the exit doors.

He’d been spotted on the closed-circuit, dropping meat into the bag.  They were going to approach him, when he used us to facilitate his getaway.  They chased him into the parking lot, but he got into a car and got away.  We got the manager as a bag-boy as we checked out, and I asked what happened.  They had good video shots of him from several cameras, and they got his license number.  The manager said the state troopers would probably be waiting for him by the time he got home.

The same kind of thing happened out near Benzeknees, but the pursuers were too impetuous.  When the thief drove off, he struck and killed a clerk.

Many Canadian stores, including my cheap newspaper favorite, are installing double-bar systems.  As you enter, pushing on the outer bar allows you to open the inner bar.  They’re almost impossible to reach over the inner bar from inside the store, to get the outer bar to release it, and allow egress.

Recently, as the wife and I entered to pick up (and pay for) a few items, we were met by a pair of shoplifting Nuns.  Actually, they had used the pharmacy, which is located at the entrance end of the building.  Since they had nothing else to purchase, they wanted to exit at the nearest door.  We had to explain to them that they would have to go to the other end and show their paid-for packages to a cashier, to sidle out past shoppers checking out.  Neither of them was toting a hockey bag.

Sixteen Amish in eastern Ohio were convicted of hate crimes.  The leader of a strict, break-away sect apparently was miffed that other Amish did not follow him.  Declaring that some of the non-followers were not pious enough, he ordered his sons, and some of their friends, to break into homes in the middle of the night.  Men were pulled from bed, and their beards were cut off.  The two to three-foot long hair of women was lopped off, sometimes down to the scalp.

The suspects argued that the Amish are bound by different rules, guided by their religion, and that the government had no place getting involved in what amounted to a family or church dispute.  It’s the, “My religion is better than your laws.” all over again.  Other Amish testified that the religious teachings and methods of punishment of the firebrand ideologue deviated from standard Amish traditions.

The season of festivals/drive the daughter places, is upon me.  Last Saturday I took her to her BarterWorks meet.  This Saturday will be the Cherry Park Festival.  The wife was busy tonight, pouring beeswax candles for her.  Sunday is a 50 mile drive to visit the crazy cat lady.  Next Saturday will be an Anti-Violence Festival in the big Victoria Park, and Sunday we will visit our friends at the Free Thinkers meeting.  Since the son is doing a week of day shift at work, perhaps he might wish to join us.  I’ll keep you updated, whether you want to be or not.