Physical violence is the only way some people will ever learn the lessons they so clearly need to learn.  I really wanted to be a more mellow person who wants us all to get along, but too many of you have proven I was an idiot for believing that would work. Now I am proposing a series of laws to allow us swift and immediate physical violence for people who cannot seem to understand societal norms.  I’m not talking about understanding complex or subtle societal norms, like what does your spouse really mean when they say, “Everything is fine.”  I’m talking basic stuff – don’t wipe boogers on the table, don’t saunter across the street when a vehicle is letting you cross.  That kind of thing.

For example, when the cashier opens up a new check-out line and the person from the end of the existing line hustles over to be first in the new line, you get to throw an elbow into the back of that guy’s head. As hard as you can.  Really step into it.  And as a bonus, you get one open handed slap on the cashier who didn’t bother to come over and get the person who was next in the existing line, opting instead to just open the floor up to anarchy.

If you try to get on a bus, a subway or an elevator before the people who are already on that mode of transportation get off they are legally obligated to perform a crane kick to your face.  Ideally, we would install some sort of intelligent music system in the speakers that would play “You’re The Best Around” from the Karate Kid whenever someone kicks an idiot.

Leaving a jar or bottle top sitting on the jar or bottle but not screwed on is worthy a blow to the jejunum using at only 50% power.

Being kind to others and appealing to the better angels of our nature has proven to fail in a spectacular manner. It’s allowed a uniquely unqualified idiot to be elected to the presidency.  It’s allowing Southern bigots to take over states using agendas that focus more on which bathroom people can use than what to do about the working poor.  It makes no sense to stand by while these people bully their way through the world.

If you post a fake new story on Facebook because you still don’t know how to conduct a basic Google search for verification you are in for an ass whooping. And while I might not be right there with you while you post it, the next time I see you I get to break one finger for every 10 likes the fake story receives.  When you run out of fingers, we’ll move on to toes.

There are a number of traffic violations that will be worthy of an attack of gunfire.  All driving errors will not be grounds for violence on their own, but if you are on your cell phone while you make that error the aggrieved party can and should shoot at you.  Beyond that, most of the violations worthy of violence will involve not letting people in during heavy traffic.

Tolerance is great.  We should be tolerant of others and their beliefs and cultures and way of life.  But everything has its limit.  I don’t need to “tolerate” you pretending there is no line somewhere when there is clearly a line.  At that point, you’re just an asshole and someone should teach you a lesson, not tolerate you.

Walking slow and three abreast down the sidewalk or hallway? When you are stuck behind these people, do a leg sweep and drive someone’s face into the hard pavement or tile.  You won’t be able to get all of them, but karma will eventually work its way to each offender.

I’m not unreasonable. I recognize that this program involves retributive and immediate violence. So there has to be some sort of system of checks and balances. Easy. Anyone who wishes to be allowed to use physical violence to correct others’ poor societal manners must wear a body camera. I’ve been advocating for police to wear these for a while now, so I don’t mind using it for this program. Hell, with this program we’ll probably be able to cut ¾ of the police officers in the country anyway.  This program saves money.

As long as you have video evidence of a person’s transgressions you are in the clear to treat them with unmerciful justice.  And, if you are elderly or weigh less than, say, 120 pounds, then you get to carry a billy club of justice.  If it can be shown that you meted out violence without cause or proof, you get the eye for an eye treatment and receive whatever punishment you handed out.

Spoiling a movie within one month of its release is a death sentence. Spoiling a movie one month to six months after release is a punch to the face. Six months to a year after a movie’s release is no consequence for spoiling. Complaining that someone else spoils a movie that is over a year from its release allows you to be punched in the face.  Seriously, people want to discuss movies/TV shows, so if a year goes by and you still don’t know Han Solo dies, I think you are the one who should get punished for trying to make the world revolve around you.

Pissing on a public toilet seat get you a sharp shot to the kidney. Hopefully you will pee blood and it will remind you over the next couple of days what an inconsiderate boob you were.

Not knowing what you want when you get to the front of the line at McDonald’s even though their menu rarely changes earns you a rabbit punch to the back of the head. In a similar vein creating some sort of complex order that takes forever in the drive-through lane allows the person behind you to rear-end your vehicle and you must pay for damages.

Pedestrians and joggers that are in the street when there is a sidewalk available? You’re not allowed to hit them on purpose, but nobody will investigate it, either.  Wink wink.

This isn’t political.  For instance, when you use the phrase “war on Christmas” I think you definitely deserve to have your leg broken, but I do recognize that is a political stance – an opinion. These laws aren’t about correcting people’s political opinions. This law is about physically punishing people who are clearly can’t understand what it takes to live in a functioning society.  And, ideally, once these laws have been in place for a while, we’ll have fewer people who would vote for Trump clogging up the arteries of America anyway.

Putting garbage in already overflowing garbage can.  Taking last cup of coffee without making more. Reheating fish in the microwave of the public break room at work.  All bets are off.

Having a vanity license plate that’s clearly a vanity license plate but it’s such a convoluted mess of numbers and letters the no one understands what it means.  DYKJH?  What the hell does that mean?  I’m trying to drive, not figure out cryptography for the NSA.  OK, this one may be a little petty and I perhaps can let it go. Like I said, I’m not unreasonable.

Dear Every Hotel In America,

As a frequent traveler, I love your services. It’s totally better than the alternative of sleeping in a random alley on a cardboard mattress using an old newspaper for a blanket.  I also love your tiny soaps and shampoos that make me feel like a giant when I hold them. And your carb heavy breakfast “buffets?”  Fantastic. I would never have thought to make guests cook their own waffles and then insist that I provided them breakfast.  Genius. 
However, I must take issue with the key cards every hotel in America now uses.  I get that it’s a cheaper system than old fashioned keys, but why is it that you can’t figure out a way to prevent the keys from deactivating under normal circumstances?  It turns out that if you put that hotel key in your pocket with other items you would expect to find in a pocket, it will deactivate faster than the XFL. 

To be clear, by items you expect to find in a pocket, I mean cell phones, car keys or credit cards.  I don’t carry around an electromagnet or a button of cobalt 60. Basically, everything I carry in my pockets on a daily basis ruins those key cards, forcing me to wander back down from the fourth floor and get a new key made after I stumble back from Applebee’s in a drunken stupor. The the desk clerk is always annoyed at giving me a new key and treats me like he hate me (bonus XFL reference!). 

I’m not a technology guru, but this seems like a fairly fixable solution, especially considering these things have been the norm for 20 years. Get it done yesterday, please. 

Sincerely, 

The Guy Who Usually Leaves A Pair Of Shoes In The Room By Mistake 

Or it certainly looks like I do. 

I don’t understand how a barber could do this and say to herself, “Sure, the back of his head is supposed to look like that.”  I mean, I’ve had jobs I don’t care for and been apathetic about them (I once failed to open the gas station I worked at on time for a month straight – since nobody noticed, I kept pushing it later and later until this station that was supposed to open at 6:00 a.m. on Saturdays was opening at 8:00 if they were lucky).  Still, how could you do this to a human being?
When I was in high school I once tried to drink an entire two liter bottle of Sun Country peach wine cooler.  Does anyone else remember wine coolers and that Sun Country came in a 2 liter bottle that just looked like you were chugging off-brand Mountain Dew?  I had nearly forgotten about that until I remembered that one of the late gas station opening days was a direct result of this boyish adventure with a crappy alcoholic beverage.  

Anyway, I didn’t really have enough to fill an entire post, so I tried to round it out with he wine cooler story. For the record, I did not finish the bottle and I puked in someone’s Ford Taurus. Good times. 

Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of the back of your head?  Here are some other attempts. 

Here’s a video effort. 

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And just because I was completely bored, a slow motion video. 

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Finally, when you go to the bookstore in Maine, this is what the gardening section looks like. 

In the fire services there is an agency that tracks “near misses.”  Essentially it doesn’t wait for a serious injury or death to occur before they investigate a situation that went wrong – instead, they investigate and publish accounts of things that went wrong but through nothing more than sheer dumb luck ended up with no deaths or serious injuries.

They would have liked to see what I did the other day.  I fell off a ladder while repairing a gutter.

I’d like to point out that I have been on ladders all my life – I’ve been a painter since I was in sixth grade and I’ve been a firefighter for more than a decade.  This isn’t the first time I ever climbed a ladder.  It is, however, the first time I ever climbed one and then took the short way down.

My problem started when I was attempting to fit this gutter repair into a short window of time, so everything was hurried.  I carried a ladder around from the back of the house only to realize I had gotten a ladder that was too large to set against the house underneath the gutter.  The smart thing to do would have been either postpone the project until I had more time or simply go get the correct ladder.

You ever had one of those moments where you say to yourself, “This is really not going to work,” but you decide to do it anyway?  This was definitely one of those moments for me.  The problem was it carried the risk of serious injury.  Just as my father who broke his neck falling from some staging in 2001.

So I set this completely incorrect ladder for the job against the building at a ridiculously low angle.  I could have bailed at any time – I was just looking at it and pretty much seeing the future.  But my haste got the better of my and I climbed the ladder anyway.

Like all evil inanimate objects, the ladder was tricky and remained fairly stable while I climbed it.  Then as I reached the top it kicked out and dropped straight down.

I wasn’t watching the situation from a very good vantage-point, but I like to think I hung onto the roof and gutter just long enough to look like Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff and hanging in mid-air before plummeting.  I can tell you this – I stayed there long enough to grab the gutter, thus ripping it off and turning this simple five minute repair into an hour repair.

When I fell down, my leg landed between the rungs of the ladder which was propped up slightly – I have no idea how I didn’t break my leg at that point, but luck was with me and I merely bruised and scraped my shin.  However, the granite steps and the paving stones of the front walkway cushioned my fall and I didn’t die.

I have to start painting the back of the house today, so I’m going back up on the ladders.  If you don’t see any more blog posts, you can guess what has happened to me.

Let’s talk about the term “farmer” for a minute.  I’ve thrown it out there, so let’s kick it around.

My grandparents were farmers.  It was an indisputable fact.  They ran the Maine breeding co-op and had cows, bulls, horses, a mean and nasty goose that would terrify and chase young children whenever it got the chance.  I mean, really terrify a poor kid to the point where just having to walk through the farm yard while they were visiting would cause pee-your-pants-level anxiety but he would be too scarred and embarrassed to tell anyone he was afraid of the goose because it was just a stupid bird, never-mind the fact that it was actually a bird nearly as tall as the little boy and everyone knows birds are pretty much the same as dinosaurs, so really was he a little pansy for being afraid of being chased by a dinosaur?  No, I don’t think so.

Yes, my mother’s parents were farmers.   No argument there.

I do not want to be a cattle or dairy farmer.  I want to plant a vineyard and an orchard and I want to make wine and cider.  Now, you could choose to define this avocation as vintner or a, um, an….

Google has failed me.  Evidently there is not a proper name for a place or a person who makes cider.  Brewers make beer in a brewery.  Vintners make wine in a winery and they grow grapes in a vineyard.  But nobody has a name for a cider maker?  How is that even possible?  We have names for everything – some of these professions have even become actual surnames. For example, a person who makes barrels is called “Cooper.”  In Italian they refer to a seller of fennel “Finnocchiaro.”  In Texas, they call someone who makes interceptions “Romo.” But I can’t find anything for someone who makes cider.

The process of making cider is much closer to the process of making wine than it is beer, but at a boots on the ground, drinking it by the pint level, cider seems closer to a beer product than wine, so it’s hard to say whether to lean toward vintner or brewer.  Maybe I’ll call it a cider mill and refer to a cider maker as, let’s say, ciderer.  No, that’s not cool.  Menter.  You know, from fermenter?  I’ll work on that one and get back to you.

Anyway, so you could call what I want to do being a vintner and you could call the farm a vineyard, but that presents two problems.  First, it sounds sort of pretentious for this blog.  I mean, when we get to the point of actually selling wine, sure, we’ll probably have to call it a vineyard.  But for now, I’d like to stick with farmer.  Second, I want other more farmy type things.  Chickens.  Goats.  More dogs than we should really have.  That sort of thing.

But in the spirit of farming, here is a selfie of me getting photobombed by a cow.

 

I’ve been a little intentionally vague about my new job for a variety of reasons.  First, that’s a good policy for everyone on social media – if your boss isn’t the one paying you to write that blog post, you’ll probably want to tread very lightly when discussing any portion of the company or organization.

Second, I actually work full time for the military.  I’m not going to get into what capacity, what my job is or anything else for, again, a variety of reasons ranging from security to regulations about speaking against the military and country, worries about appearing to give a military endorsement to other organizations – the list goes on.  I work in the defense sector, and we’ll call that enough.  It’s not super undercover secret squirrel stuff – it’s just not something I’m going to write about.

Except I am going to write about some of it – tangentially, anyway.  Sometimes they just make it too easy and there is no way I am going to pass up some of this low hanging fruit.  For instance, I recently have traveled to Missouri for two months of training.  I know what you’re thinking:  Who does this guy know that he got to spend two months in Missouri?  Jealous?  You should be.

While I was there, I noticed a disturbing trend.  Apparently anyone is allowed to make and post a sign.  Whether they are ordering signs from a shop or just banging one out on their own printers, these random sign makers were on a rampage.

For example:

Setting aside the orientation of this picture, this is a perfect example of someone having one bad experience and making a sign.  There just could not have been that many people wandering into this building to take showers in this locker room, given that it was set apart from any other buildings by half a mile in all directions.  I like to imagine a more thrilling scenario where an ISIS member was using the shower and somebody was all, “Hey, ISIS can’t use our showers!  I’m making a sign!”  But I suspect what actually happened was someone went to use the showers one day and had to wait an extra 30 seconds.

But in that same bathroom is a classic:

This is a pee chart where you compare to color of your urine going into the urinal with the chart.  Note that the top, nearly water-like color says “optimal.”  The only thing that is optimal for is spending your entire afternoon standing in front of that urinal and comparing the color of your pee to the chart.  Sure, you’re going to miss class because you’re doing nothing but peeing all day, but you’re well hydrated, so congratulations?

Here’s a trio from inside the chowhall, including two in the bathroom.

 

I can only imagine the sort of shenanigans that were occurring in this bathroom to make these signs necessary.  But the sign calling the toilet a stool?  Comedy gold.  I’m pretty sure that making a joke incorporating stool, brown towels, toilets, flushing, etc would just write itself if I were to go that lowbrow route.  But I won’t – I’m going to rise above that sort of humor.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:  Quotation marks are not used for emphasis.  When you use them as this sign used them, it is actually denoting sarcasm or irony.  Which makes your sign funny.

I’ve also seen some things related to signs that I feel I should share.

Here’s a print of a painting hanging in a military facility celebrating a Confederate General who had so recently become a treasonous traitor that he was still wearing his blue Union coat when he led an attack against the United States.   I was going to say that it seems oddly inappropriate to hang such a print in a building belonging to the very organization he betrayed, but oddly inappropriate doesn’t seem to do it justice.  Wildly inappropriate?  Horrifically inappropriate?

[Note:  After a little digging, I realized this wasn’t in a building in Missouri, but Maine.  I think that makes it worse somehow.]

And finally, there is this little gem from a textbook I had during my training:

The general consensus among people I’ve showed this to seems to be there was obviously a rule stating there had to be three bullets if you used any bullets.

“Ok, we need a third bullet.  We’ve already got that it’s lightweight and easy to use.  What else?”

“It’s light?”

“I think that’s the same thing as lightweight.”

“The filter don’t add much weight?”

“Whatever.  Sure.  Check the box off on particulate respirator.  It’s done.”

I have more wonderful things from my trip to Missouri to share with you later.  They won’t all make you dumber, I promise.

We bought a farmhouse.  Which is what city people say when they move to the country and buy a farm but don’t quite have the guts to say they bought a farm.  Perhaps it’s because moving from the city and saying you bought a farm seems about as logical as saying you moved to the jungle to become a witchdoctor.  Or it might just be that nobody wants to buy the farm.  Whatever.  Everyone from the city says they bought a farmhouse.

Our farmhouse, however, is eventually going to be a farm – a vineyard/farm (vintners are farmers, they just don’t usually call themselves farmers).  We already have two goats and, really, what’s the tipping point on number of animals before you can claim farm status?  I think I’m a farmer already, because I also have four dogs, two cats, four kittens, a bird and more mice than you can shake a cat at.  (I’m aware that I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but I just can’t bring myself to be the kind of guy who writes, “mice at which you can shake a cat.”  If this sort of grammar violation offends your sensibilities, this may not be the blog for you.)  There are also five kids and one grandchild living at the house.  None of this was supposed to be the direction my life was headed.

My wife, who is also a farmer based on the terrific garden she planted and tended this year, was the first to suggest we move out of the city.  I can’t remember what specific thing it was that gave her the idea that city life had run its course, but if pressed, I’d say it was when my daughter got stuck with a dirty needle digging in the sand at the beach.  Or it could have been my son walking into the middle of a high speed police chase and shootout.  Both of these incidents really happened within a few months of each other.

The job situation in Maine is, however, not as awesome as it is in the city.  If you know anything about geography, you might have noticed that people live in cities.  Seriously – take a look at a map and you’ll notice that cities have more people the places that aren’t cities.  Mostly because that’s where jobs are located.  Given that I am not qualified to do much of anything besides putting band-aids on stab wounds and dumping water on fires caused by some of the crappiest wiring you would believe, I wasn’t sure I would be able to find a job at all, much less a job I enjoyed.  And, as I mentioned previously, I was five years away from being able to collect a retirement paycheck the day I left the fire department.

 
Eventually sanity won out and I agreed that we should move back to Maine, place of my birth and upbringing.  My wife loves Maine and, because she is better at most things than I am, immediately found a good job.  It took me another year to find a job, during which time I commuted back and forth to Lynn, MA – four days there, four days in Maine.  And in the fall we moved out of my father’s house and bought the farm.  House.  Farmhouse.  Farm.  Whatever.

To be fair, we always knew we were going to end up here, we just thought it might be a little later.  But things have worked out, so we’re staying.

Now, if people were bewildered when I told them we were buying a farm and moving to Maine and leaving my job with five years to go, they are absolutely speechless when I tell them what we’re actually planning to do is plant a vineyard and make wine.  But in ten years when I’m sitting back on my porch, watching the sunset and sipping wine we made from our own grapes and cider made from our own apples, we’ll see who laughs last.

Topics for reading group discussion: 

1. Is making reference to moving to the jungle to become a witchdoctor somehow racist?
2. If you think it’s racist, why are you so overly sensitive?  Are you concerned that witch doctors will read this blog and have their feelings hurt?  I have it on good authority that witch doctors are notoriously thick skinned, although now that I think about it that may have been in reference to actual skin thickness as a result of scarification ceremonies, not to their emotional state.
3. When the author’s daughter was stuck with the needle, is it true that his other daughter’s boyfriend also tried to pick up the needle afterward and HE was stuck as well? Kind of turning the whole situation into a ridiculous Three Stooges episode where we’re all worried Curly and Moe have Hepatitis C for a month?  Spoiler:  That’s exactly the way it went down.

On April 26, 2016 I went to work at Engine 3, Lynn Fire Department, Lynn, Massachusetts.  After more than a decade of working as a professional firefighter EMT, I hung up my bunker gear and started my new life as a farmer.

Sort of.  It’s not quite that simple, really, but that’s the Snapchat version.

There are many reasons why I have decided to change careers at age 45, with 5 years to go until I collect a pension.  Some of these reasons will make sense to you and some of these reasons will make you cock your head to the side like a schnauzer who was just asked if he’d like to go for a ride.  In due time, I’m sure I’ll cover all the reasons but for now, I want to share a story with you that illustrates what I had known for some time:  It was time for me to go.

My papers to leave the department were already turned in and I was spending a lot of time feeling apprehensive that I was making a bad choice.  Was I committing financial suicide? Would my life have meaning once I left the job that was so much a part of my psyche?  Would houses in Lynn ever get put out without my expertise or would fire consume the entire city?  Valid questions, all.

I was working my last night shift – a Saturday night.  Always a pleasure in Sin City.  I had already responded to a call for a gunshot victim who turned out not to be shot, but to have two severely broken ankles as a result of jumping through a second story window to avoid being shot.  For those of you unfamiliar with Lynn, MA, that’s the kind of city it can be.

A little later in the evening we received a call for an elderly man who had been a victim of assault on the commons (the commons being the beautiful park in the middle of the city where you can buy drugs or get stabbed after dark).  When we arrive on scene, we discover an aging miscreant named, let’s say John, who has been beaten up and is moaning loudly while sitting on a bench.  He is also wildly drunk.  I had dealt with John numerous times, usually after he’d been beaten up by random people.  I’m going to assume John’s personality plays some part in these interactions.

Anyway, there are also three gentlemen sitting on another nearby bench being questioned by police regarding the assault.  These three men in their early 20s are adamantly denying any involvement in the assault and claim that when the police showed up they were merely helping them man to his feet because he’d clearly been beaten.  Now, this isn’t my first time on a scene like this, so I’m not convinced by their story, per se, but they are telling it well enough that I’m not dismissing it, either.

It takes a little doing and more conversation than I’d prefer to have with John, but he finalizes his decision that he doesn’t want to go to the hospital.  Among other things he explains he is from Revere.  Or Lynn.  Or Chelsea.  Or Revere.  His father was a state police captain.  He isn’t sure who beat him up, but they weren’t Irish, if you know what he means (I did know what he meant, unfortunately). He used to be an alcoholic and he currently lives in Revere.  Spoiler alert:  I already know where he lives and it isn’t Revere – it’s a boarding house about 50 meters away.

Before we escort John back to his room at the Kensington (which is his boarding house – all the boarding houses in Lynn have fancy names like the Kensington, The Ruth, The Floridon, etc.   Anyone thinking they’re going to get a nice room at a place with a fancy name like The Mayflower is in for a rude awakening), the police ask him to ID the potential suspects in his assault.  This takes some time to explain and sink in.  Then the police lead him over and ask the suspects to stand, one at a time.

Here’s the thing about the city of Lynn.  We have a wonderfully diverse criminal element.  Roving bands of robbers, drug dealers and general riff-raff are likely to have people from multiple ethnic backgrounds and national origins.  Honestly, if you’ve ever seen a terrible 1980s movie with a gang in it, they have the same diverse make-up that you’ll find in Lynn criminals.  And Lynn, perhaps not coincidentally, is where Hollywood has started to come and film when they want a city that looks like it stopped progressing in 1982.
Which is why the first suspect to stand up is a white guy (read: Irish) whom John looks at and says, “Nah, not him.”

Suspect number two is a Hispanic guy and John says, “Maybe.”

Suspect number three is a very dark skinned black man from either Africa or Haiti (I couldn’t quite hear him well enough to determine the accent).  John takes a look at him and says, “Definitely that one.”

For those of you keeping track, that’s the white guy didn’t do it, the darker skinned guy might have and the really dark skinned guy definitely did it.  Brilliant bit of assistance provided by one super drunk, racist derelict.

Then the cops arrest all three of them.  Turns out that the gang unit officer in plain clothes actually showed up on scene and watched all three of them kicking this dude and was the first officer to intervene.

 

Now, the point of the story.  Which comes in two parts.

First, I was getting fed up with people in general.  Dealing with people who stab and shoot each other, overdose multiple times, lie to you about what drugs their friend has done rather than tell the truth so you can help him – it was starting to take a toll on me.  Some people can do it forever, but I was starting to hate people.  Like, really losing my compassion for helping anyone.  And I didn’t really want to lose that completely.

But second, this incident gave me a glimmer of hope.  Why?  Because I was still willing to give the benefit of the doubt to these three idiots who had just beaten an alcoholic old man for no reason.  Yes, I was still skeptical about their story, but I was willing to listen to what they had to say and take it into account.  There was still some hope for humanity in my eyes.

 

It was definitely time to go.  The decision had already been made and I was glad to have confirmation that it was the right one.

Coming soon to this space – my new blog where I chronicle my transformation from city fireman to farmer.