Les Bonnes Choses

You might have guessed there people in the park playing games in the dark. From what I could piece together, however, the scenario involved some kind of candy factory tour.

I was standing with a group looking over a railing into a huge vat containing tons of colourful jellybean-like candies. Arnold Schwarzenegger was some kind of health czar and either touring with the group, or else was just a disembodied voice. His comment on the candies below:

You think those candies are awesome because there are thousands of flavours. But they're not! They're thousands of LIES!

Then I awoke, and thought that was the best Arnold quote ever, and that it was most unfortunate that it wasn't in the public domain. So I'm rectifying that. You're welcome. Now go back and re-read the quote in Arnold's voice and enjoy. I recommend Kindergarten Cop Arnold or Total Recall Arnold.

Weird things happen in public washrooms. Though I have never witnessed any of the really weird things that might go on, I have nonetheless recently been party to some odd McDonald's washroom events along Michigan's highways.

First off, I feel sufficiently self-conscious about this to want to note upfront that I am not a particular fan of the McDonalds franchise. I do, however, appreciate that these restaurants are both ubiquitous (frequently located near gas stations near highway exits) and, importantly, well-maintained. I don't think anyone wants to face the dilemma of either entering a washroom where it looks like someone exploded or risk exploding oneself.

So that explains how I found myself in McDonald's washrooms twice in recent weeks. As for what transpired:

The first story to relate will require me to set the scene. My modesty will require that you not imagine the scene too vividly. Suffice it to say, the scenario begins with me alone in the men's room using the facilities en plein air. The door opened, and a boy of about ten years entered the washroom. He saw me, and walked up beside me and said, "you're probably wondering how my shirt got ripped..."

His guess about what I was wondering at that moment couldn't possibly have been farther off the mark.

The second event occurred yesterday in Capac, MI., which is one of the last gas stations along the highway before you get to the Bluewater Bridge. The McDonald's washroom there is properly part of the gas station, and thus doesn't have that swanky McDonald's decor, nor is it particularly large. But it is at least decently well-maintained, so it has that going for it at least. Because of it's small size (Max. Occupancy: 2), one is likely to be alone in the washroom. It is thus surprising to hear another voice in the washroom.

Normally, when I hear talking in the washroom coming from a stall, it's a dad with a child.

Now you see where this is going.

There was no child. Instead, I was hearing a telemarketer who canvasses to raise money to "support the troops". How do I know? Because he was carrying out a conversation on his cell phone from a stall in a gas station bathroom. He was quite proud of his debating skills.

"...so I asked, do you support our troops? ... uh huh. Yeah, so then I said, 'Well, do you pay taxes? Did you know that your taxes go to pay for our troops?'"

It was like peeing into the twilight zone.

The part of me that can't abide stupidity wanted to yell over the door that meeting one's legal tax obligation has nothing to do with whether or not one supports a standing military because citizens have no direct say over how their individual tax dollars are allocated. But that part of me was overruled by the part of me that observed nothing can be gained by arguing with a guy placing phone calls from the crapper.

In the end, I felt the best way to voice my objection and perhaps alert the other end of the conversation to the true nature of the phone call was to wash my hands and use the air dryer. Speaking of which, I hope nobody asks that idiot to borrow his phone. That's just gross.

A friend of mine shared a link on facebook, presumably having endorsed a criminal justice petition named Tori's Law, named after Tori Stafford, a young girl who lived in a town about 30 minutes from where I grew up. The details of her murder are horrible, and I understand the outrage that people feel. One of her abductors is in prison, having plead guilty to the crime. The other is currently on trial. Anyways, the first comment on the petition reads,

We are all humans, if you decide to take another humans life, then you don't deserve to live yours.

That's a rather ironic phrasing to use on a petition to bring back the death penalty, wouldn't you say? My first reading of the comment lead me to think that it was a comment against the petition -- that is, until I saw the name of the author and that it was associated with an endorsement of the petition. Now, I'm not saying that I'd shed a tear if Tori's murderer(s) were/was, say, knifed to death while in prison.  I don't even know that I'd be bothered if it turned out that such a death was facilitated by prison officials ("make a shiv day", for example). But as the above comment ironically highlights, you can't have the moral high ground and endorse the death penalty.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to draw attention to the use of the word irrefutable in the petition, which, as a former student of the theory of knowledge, is a crap word. Everything is refutable -- it's just that some refutations are more plausible than others. And don't get me started on the word reasonable. Words like reasonable (e.g., reasonable doubt) are why criminals go free and innocent people are convicted. Frankly, I think every law containing the word reasonable should be stricken and rewritten by someone familiar with the concept of operational definition.