Hot Pants

I am totally hacked off.

What really steams my trousers is that I can't tell you why they're steamed, because they're too steamed. If I were to explain why, they'd explode. No one wants to see that.

All I can say is, it has to do with Mayor Nickels, sweeps of homeless encampments, a new draft policy for the city, a definition of what constitutes potentially hazardous articles that could include blankets, bunnies, and daffodils, which definition would be allowed to justify the destruction of such articles at the whim of sweepers without due process, while meanwhile no such outrageous justifications would ever be used to destroy, say, warehouses, without due process, because the city can't get away with that, but denying civil rights to homeless people is a snap.

[Above: Officer Bonehead says, "We have a reasonable suspicion that there are hazardous materials all over this park. Let's destroy the park without due process!"]

After talking over the state of my hacked-offedness with Farmer Anitra "On Whose Kitchen Floor Compost Worms Have Died" Freeman, we agreed that I should not talk about Mayor Nickels or his administration or their new draft policy that if implemented should be grounds for the federal imprisonment of the whole lot of them. (Not that it'd ever happen -- look who's running the Justice Department now.) I should talk about things that make me less angry.

[Below Left: Sacks of trash from downtown businesses litter our public alleyways. We can't trespass the businessmen responsible from their private buildings, but we can deny them the use of our public streets to get to them. Officer Bonehead says, "Let's see how many of these filthy businessmen spring for personal helicopters! Ha, ha!"]

Something that doesn't quite fry my pantaloons: The other day a Boston psychiatrist wrote a story that appeared in the New York Times about a homeless man who went to an ER for the first time for a sore shoulder and found out that the hospital had records that he had been there before for a drug overdose. But that was impossible, the man said, because he doesn't do drugs. When the doctor looking at the records verified that the ID used in the previous visit matched that of the patient in front of him, the patient said the other guy must have stolen his ID.

Reading the story, I was a little incredulous. It was suggested that his wallet might have been stolen, the ID copied, and the wallet returned intact, so our guy didn't know anything had happened. But never mind, because the doctor bought the premise. And, having done so, she then refused to let the patient see the previous record in his name, for the sake of the confidentiality of the suspected identity thief! Identity thieves have confidentiality rights from the people they steal from? That steams my socks, but my trousers are cool, because I can convince myself that state and federal lawmakers will have no problem coming up with a cheap and easy fix. Even I won't mind if identity thieves are denied rights under the law.

A story from Morecambe in Lancashire County, England tells of a homeless man sleeping outdoors at 6:30 AM Christmas Day, following a righteous Christmas Eve drunk, when a guy delivering presents (I'll call him "Santa's Smartass Helper") in the neighborhood saw him and disturbed him by sarcastically wishing him Merry Christmas. Whereupon the homeless man pulverized Santa's Smartass Helper for five minutes. What makes me angry about this story is that the writer referred to the beating as "unprovoked" and evidently the court that convicted the homeless man of assault agreed with that assessment.

Word to the wise: Anybody -- ANYBODY -- who wakes me up out of sleep at 6:30 AM on Christmas Day, just to wish me a Merry Christmas, better be prepared to hurt. Sarcastic or sincere, it doesn't matter.

There's the judge's decision to grant an injunction allowing pharmacists to deny medication. This whole situation has been cast as a clash of rights -- the right of the pharmacists to practice their private morality versus the right of the people they serve to prescribed medicine.

There's no such things as private moralities. The pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions don't have to be pharmacists. There's no clash of rights. I am hopeful this decision will be overturned on appeal so that I won't have to soak my trousers in ice.

[Below: Officer Bonehead says, "I found a dirty needle in the bathroom of this place. Can I burn the whole place down without a court order?"]