A Very Immigrant Christmas

The Little Saigon market was pandemonium this morning. My mother and the other old ladies were all cutting in front of each other at the butcher's counter, everybody was elbowing each other out of the way for the best head of lettuce, etc. Mom even shoved her way past some disabled woman (who was using crutches and who was arguably a little person) as they were rushing for the 15-items-or-less line. It was a glimpse into the decades of trauma that these war-torn people have experienced. Every aisle was a jumble of carts and Vietnamese, and I guess you were supposed to just smash your way by if you wanted to get through it. It was scary. It's really no wonder they kicked America's ass.

Now my mom keeps referring to broth as "the juice." (I keep telling her that it ain't juice unless you squeezed it out of something, but she won't listen.) She also keeps insisting that broth has the same nutritional value as the meat from which it's made. Her ignorance is astounding. Still, it's nice to hang out with Mom for the holidays.

Cheeseburger Wasteland

Why isn't there an In-N-Out between Pinole and East Oakland?! What the hell? North Oakland, West Oakland, the Lake Merritt neighborhoods, Berkeley, Emeryville, Albany...this whole fucking place is crawling with burger eaters. There's so many goddamn French fries...I'm constantly having to make my way through smushed up French fries scattered all over the goddamn sidewalks; it actually slows me down. (One could easily slip and fall on that shit...totally fuckin' dangerous.) In-N-Out'd make a fortune here! We love special sauce. Are they stupid? Or is it some sort of a Christian thing (I've heard that they're owned and operated by fundies; I've even seen scriptures cited in tiny print on the bottoms of their cups), some faith-based scruple that keeps them away because the East Bay is pig Latin for the Beast? But if that were the case then the East Oakland and San Leandro In-N-Outs wouldn't make any sense. So what the hell is going on?

Juicy Lemons

I won't know how many lemons I need until I know how juicy they are. Or less ambiguously: until I know how juicy they are I won't know how many lemons I need. Or even slightly less ambiguously: until I know how juicy the lemons are I won't know how many I need. Or least ambiguously: until I know how juicy the lemons are I won't know how many lemons I need.

Diff'rent Wipes For Diff'rent Types

When shopping for items, I tend to buy whichever product brand that happens to be on sale, and so I've tried dozens of different toilet papers over the years. And, of course, I've defecated many times in bathrooms for which someone else has provided the toilet paper, and so I've experienced even more kinds of toilet paper than I've purchased.

The various brands of toilet paper vary greatly in terms of texture, ranging from the soft and pillowy and fluffy to the coarse and stiff and dense. Public restrooms are usually supplied with the coarser, stiffer, denser paper, whereas I often encounter the softer, fluffier, and more pillowy paper in the bathrooms of friends and relatives.

I prefer the coarse, stiff, dense toilet paper. This is because I've found that the fluffy toilet paper often tatters and turns powdery when subjected to friction. I want my feces to adhere to my toilet paper, and the last thing I need is for my toilet paper to be adhering to my feces.

People have told me, "Il Vermicello, the purpose of toilet paper is not merely to faciliate adhesion but also to facilitate comfort," but I've never really understood these people. I, for one, have never used any toilet paper that was so soft or so fluffy that it made wiping myself in any way pleasant or soothing. Conversely, I've had to wipe myself plenty of times with newspapers or grocery bags or the Yellow Pages, and it really isn't all that bad.

A Call For Occupational Specifics

The occupiers need a more detailed agenda. It's hard to argue with "social justice," but "economic equality" is an entirely new ball of wax. If people were economically equal then how would we determine who's better than whom? Height? The number of pounds that one can bench press? Facial symmetry? I don't know. Is this really what democracy looks like? 'Cause it kinda sounds like eugenics to me. I mean people who are tall and strong and attractive are obviously totally awesome, but let's not forget about diversity.

Industrial Prison Complex

I'm not at all comfortable with the imposition of criminal fines. I'm a big fan of restitution, and I definitely think that the state should require criminals to make restitutionary payments to injured parties whenever money reasonably could be said to help make whole the damages inflicted by the crimes at issue. However, the purity and the integrity of [the instinct toward] retribution is compromised whenever a criminal's money goes into the state's coffers. The polity should want payback so badly that it's willing to pay for it, and the collective financial burden of incarceration keeps us all honest. In my opinion, a criminal fine smacks of blackmail: "we caught you dead to rights, but cut us a check and then we can all just forget about it and move on." It's sleazy. I think we should abolish criminal fines, and criminals who require punishment should go to jail.

The abolition of criminal fines wouldn't have much effect upon the lives of natural people with criminal inclinations and deviant personalities. Imprisonment upon conviction has always been the fate of poor criminals, and those few rich criminals who can't manage to avoid charges altogether can usually beat the rap in the end, at least on appeal. The real impact of banning fines would hit our corporate citizens.

Every state (as well as the federal government) could have a massive office building, a skyscraper of corporate corrections, and corporations whose crimes were egregious enough to warrant criminal sanction could serve out sentences in these penal offices. Each offending corporation would get a fairly sized suite of offices, rent-free. The corporation being punished could staff and equip its suite however it saw fit, but for the duration of its sentence it could not conduct business within that jurisdiction unless it did so within the confines of its suite. It would be a crime for any natural person to serve as the corporation's agent outside of the suite, and anyone caught illegally acting or transacting on the corporate convict's behalf would go to regular, human jail. (And, of course, any corporation caught illegally acting as the agent of a corporate convict would get its own rent-free suite of offices in the industrial prison complex.)

Doing away with criminal fines certainly wouldn't stimulate our precarious economy...in fact, quite the opposite. But prosperity without justice produces the wickedest of dividends, and a society must be willing to suffer for righteousness if it wants to consider itself enlightened.

Glamour Is Where You Earn It

I work in an office – 9-5, water coolers, the whole bit. I put numbers in boxes and I write reports evaluating progress. I try to encourage other people to put their numbers in their boxes and to write their reports. I give all of the reports to someone else who then uses them to ask for money. Occasionally I have to be the one to ask for the money. It's not the most exciting workplace, but just because my environment's dull doesn't mean that I'm about to settle for boring outfits. To wit:

The Foreman
[blue on blue…copier]

Blockbuster!
[blue on khaki…laptop, brochures]

Safari Jack
[gray on khaki…printer, stapler]

Captain Of The Academy
[gray on blue…spreadsheet, calendar]

Inspector General
[white on blue…fax machine, minutes binder]

A Most Civil Engineer
[white on khaki…clipboard, calculator, ruler]