Entanglements

Finally the sun returns! This spring has sucked in my view, it's been way too cold. I find this surprising since the past few springs have really been remarkable.

It's been a while since I wrote anything down here but I ran out of ideas as usual. So here goes some griping.

Today, I managed to be jerked around by an online continuing education site, a business association that deals in my craft and the Dept of _____. It seems no one has the right information anymore. Add to this, I was t-h-i-s close to renewing my license when the computer page froze up after taking my credit card information. “If we try this again, the site may charge your card TWICE! We'll have to wait til it clears itself.” Nice, I was a millimeter away to solving all this. Now I've been advised to wait till tomorrow to do this by phone. Perhaps we should go back to parchment paper and the Pony Express. This way, there would be fewer things to fail.

You know where all this licensing crap came from? The Great Depression. When everyone was out of work, especially teachers, Roosevelt created jobs by having these out of work teachers train and confirm the next generation of them. This was the birth of the teaching certificate. Then slowly the “little piece of paper” was needed by damn near any occupation. It spread into everything.

Byzantine is the word that pops into my head. Where the simplest action has to be broken down into many parts with many people confirming, processing and stamping everything you need. Sure, you could fire all the bureaucrats, but that would result in the economy crashing once again. Hundreds of thousands of paper pushers out there competing against you for a job. Like that idea?

I'm reminded of a line from a movie... “The first rule in government spending is this. Why build one when you can get away with building two?”

*****

Like you I'm sure you were shocked and dismayed by the Marathon bombings and the gunfights that ensued on Watertown streets. The older brother now seems to have been some local nut fighting his own jihad. The younger brother, we're hearing, may have been this spineless follower who was dominated by the personality of the older. I guess the kid brother had the personality of the “beaten wife” syndrome. Caving in every time to the more powerful one. Though, this may be wrong as the media have blown the accuracy of this story a few hundred times already. We'll see.

Though, think on this, he's nineteen. At nineteen what the hell does he know? I'm not defending this kid but when I was nineteen I was a moron compared to who I am today. I've made typical mistakes as a nineteen year old but they didn't culminate in having 9,000 cops, a helicopter and SWAT teams from Quantico chasing my ass down. Then again, I didn't blow up kids either.

Even if he escapes the death penalty, this kid's life is pretty much done with. Nineteen and at best, he's headed to Colorado's ADX Florence facility where they hole you up 23 hours a day. You get one hour to walk in some yard where you can see concrete and the sky. Perhaps this kid may think twice on wanting to avoid the death penalty.

Other than dealing with our broken down system and weirdo bombers, I'm glad the sun came out again.