The privy of the universe

I’m trying to formulate a joke, except that it is hard to joke about the subject matter. How many of the brave boys and girls of the law enforcement departments of SeaTac, the Port of Seattle, the Department of Homeland Security, the Metro Sheriff and some guy in an unmarked car does it take to detain and arrest a shirtless, unarmed black guy with a Mohawk haircut? This was near a bus stop outside the airport; maybe the officers thought the sight of him was annoying these three posh-looking white women. After all, we must always be concerned about what potential consumers of air travel might see; we don’t want the thought of such sights be the cause of air sickness. 

A couple of the officers were laughing, so I don’t think the matter went much beyond the empirical aspect. Thus in this manner it is easy to get a criminal record. But frankly, I think that there are other, more legitimate reasons to be arrested for attire malfunction. Take for example the baggy-pants-hanging-halfway-down-the-fundament look sported by certain youth. I understand that there are certain places in the South where that can get you arrested, and for once I think that this regressive region of the nation has the right idea. There was a time when exposing one’s unsightly fundament was the topic of mirth and embarrassment; I recall an old Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Ackroyd as a plumber, drawing laughs when he exposed his ass-crack when bending over. 

But what is against the law or not seems to be a matter of personal taste, or how many brain cells are allowed to function. For example, how many of you ever decided to spend a pleasant afternoon in a park reading a book? Maybe not so many, but a few perhaps. How many of you have been approached by a police officer who asked you what you were doing. Fewer still, I’m certain. If you are like me, you might become offended by the attention and ask “What does it look like I’m doing?” The cop may respond “I don’t know what you are doing.” This is because according to the police training manual, people of certain “ethnicity” do not do things that “normal,” intelligent people do; it’s only a cover for some illegal activity, to throw the cops off a more nefarious purpose. It’s got to be; if police were that stupid, it would explain why one would shoot down innocent, unarmed people like the Native American woodcarver John T. Williams a few years ago in Seattle.  I dunno; I told a Kent cop that the reason why I was waiting at a bus stop was because I was going to the airport where I work; wouldn’t you know that ninny followed the bus all the way down to SeaTac to discover that it actually did stop at the airport?

Whether on the “right” side or the wrong side, human beings often seem to be the victims of their own failure to take stock of the situation and act in accordance with their best interests. Take for instance football player Aaron Hernandez, who plays tight end for the New England Patriots. Like many people whose primary path to success is the ability to advance their physical skills to the level of playing professional athletics, Hernandez could not advance from the level of immature boy to mature man. He only appears to be a man. The “boy” clings to his irresponsible “friends” who mainly took advantage of his fame and newly-acquired wealth by pretending that they had his best interests in mind. The “man” would have left these losers and spongers who had nothing to do with his success behind and associated himself with people who might actually help him from falling back into the trap of the “gangsta” lifestyle when his playing days are over. 

Unfortunately, a $40 million contract and a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood only bankrolled a dissolute lifestyle—one that Hernandez had promised to mend following a shooting incident that he was involved in earlier in the year. But rather than turning over a new leaf, he could not control his natural instinct to “hang out” with the same “friends” who enabled a lifestyle not of advancement into a higher plane, but regression into a “comfort” zone in which the influence of money only enlarged personal faults. The cost of this failure is a looming murder charge after another night out with his “friends.” Hernandez's actions in the wake of the murder—a desperate effort to destroy any trace of his involvement—only underlines the failure to fully own the consequences of not taking advantage of financial success for personal improvement.

Voltaire wrote that according to one religion, human existence on Earth is explained thus:  The first run of human beings existed on ambrosia, the food of the gods, the excess of which was expectorated harmlessly through the pores. But then one day the humans ate cake, which they liked very much, but had an unpleasant side effect. They asked an angel what they were supposed to do now, and the angel pointed the way to this insignificant little planet that meant nothing to the gods. Thus Earth became the lavatory of the universe. No further clarification required.