Wednesday, October 20, 2010

...and I am sick of being hassled by The Man!

So a guy gets pulled over for running a stop sign. And he has expired plates.

The po-po writes him for the failure to stop, and lets him slide on the plates by offering to follow him home.

As soon as our victim gets to his crib, he lashes out against the jackbooted forces of injustice that have oppressed him, apparently by being all deviously friendly and polite and stuff.

Nice work, Skippy. Way to keep a sense of proportion, there.

Please stay off my side.

42 comments:

  1. Wookie, please.

    And, pay your taxes, you freeloader!

    Shootin' Buddy

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  2. Wookie, please.

    I was going to say something insightful about the social contract and stuff, and then I saw that and figured it had already been said.

    I'm so putting that on a t-shirt.

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  3. Christ, my eight-year-old doesn't whine that much.

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  4. First, time to call the Waaaaabamulance. Is it possible to have this guy's wookie suit privileges revoked?

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  5. Guy may be a wookie-suiter, but he's no libertarian. If he were, he'd understand that The State owns the roads and has the ownership right to dictate the terms of their use.

    Which includes requiring you keep your papers and shots up-to-date.

    M

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  6. And while we’re at it, what makes people think that privatizing roads means that you’ll get to hoon in up at triple digit speeds everywhere you go? Or that there will be no enforcement of any rules or regulations for the use of those rules?

    If you think traffic cops are bad, imagine Gecko45 in his new job as private Traffic Enforcement Officer on a privately owned street…

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  7. "If you think traffic cops are bad, imagine Gecko45 in his new job as private Traffic Enforcement Officer on a privately owned street…"

    Joe in PNG wins the internets for today. :D

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  8. Actually, reading the comments, there is a guy named Alan who posts about how there should be no traffic laws.

    Anarchists are seriously deficient in the mental faculties department. If there are no laws requiring people to stop for traffic signals, maintain a lane, or follow any other rules of the road, how are people going to drive?

    If people blow through every intersection at full speed, how long will it be before the roads are impassable?

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  9. Divemedic,

    "Anarchists are seriously deficient in the mental faculties department. If there are no laws requiring people to stop for traffic signals, maintain a lane, or follow any other rules of the road, how are people going to drive?"

    You keep using this word "anarchist". I do not think it means what you think it means.

    For instance, if it is my road, you will follow my rules when you are driving on it. Or else.

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  10. Other day, I was driving on a wide road with no traffic. I decided to play a little and hit the haul ass pedal. Zip over a hill and there's the po-po. Conversation goes like this:

    Officer: You know how fast you were going?

    Me: Probably got it down to under 90 before you hit the radar gun.

    Officer: In a hurry?

    Me: No.

    Officer: Why so fast?

    Me: I just like going fast. And no one was around, empty road to myself. You kinda put a damper on that.

    Officer: *laughs* Ok, don't do that again. Have a good night.

    Obviously, I went home and wrote a letter to the mayor over this telling him how upset I was that I got pulled over for reckless driving.

    -SayUncle

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  11. Anarchists are seriously deficient in the mental faculties department.

    There is a great short story by Niven called "The cloak of Anarchy"

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  12. Oh and once I saw him, I just went ahead and pulled over. That probably helped.

    -SayUncle

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  13. Or else what? You'll sic the cops on me?

    Let's see your cooperating cultural norms catch me!

    Anarchy works great when we are mad at mommy and daddy and want to pout in our room of dad's French Colonial in the 'burbs, color our hair and smoke clove cigarettes and paint our fingernails black, but outside the cul-de-sac it is unworkable because of the asshole factor.

    Shootin' Buddy

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  14. Damn! To think some people call sweet, little ol' lovable ME extreme! Wonder what this so-called Anarchist would do if the Police pulled you over and pointed 9mm Submachine Guns at you (LaGuardia Civilia, Spain, 1978) or if an armored car and 2 jeeps pulled in front of your bus, sent troops aboard and dragged off a guy when they checked his papers (South Korea, 1980, when the Military had taken over the country).

    Not saying all the Cops are Andy Griffith, but most aren't Imperial Storm Troopers, either.

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  15. I think he wee-wee'd in his wookie-suit, God knows what he does in the pool. Good thing he never went through Checkpoit Charlie, they would have shaved his belly and back hair.

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  16. Most of jokers who wish Anarchy in the world would not survive it.
    Bill

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  17. Bubblehead, a similar bus incident with machine guns, armored car, helicopters, etc. took place in Portsmouth, NH, this past summer. The 'suspect' was a visa-holding guy who did nothing wrong other than didn't speak English all that well. The anti-gooberment folks are all over that one on this side of the land.

    As far as privately-owned roads go, the first turnpikes in this country were privately owned and were true turnpikes. You didn't get on the road until you paid the owner to turn his pike and let you on; you had better behave or the private owner could do as he wished, including not letting you on ever again. People paid because it was the wealthy who developed some of the first well maintained straight roads.

    While I doubt that the libertarians would wish for a return to early 1800s transportation, the fact is it was tried here already and - among other reasons - is why we have publicly owned roads now.

    Whiny boy subject of the OP gives patriots a bad name.

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  18. Bubblehead Les is right about Guardia Civil there/then... they didn't pah-lay. This lesson was learned by more than one young fleet sailor who, after a few under-21 beers, thought one of those "cute little hats" was JUST the souvenir for his girlfriend back home. VERY shortly thereafter he learned just how "expensive" these hats were...

    And then there's The OJ Principle... when you get away with murder, stop doing illegal stuff.

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  19. I have a nice story about Po-po with a sense of humour.

    Buddy of mine has a friend who has good job, and to celebrate a nice promotion bought himself a nice BMW M5 (you know the nice sporty sports sedan) offer's to let my buddy "see what it can do". (This is the upper middle class version of the redneck's famous last words "Watch this!" btw.)

    So very early inthe morning they get at the bottom of the on ramp to the local hwy, and wait for the light to turn green. They proceed to accelerate to the highway with everything she's got that doesn't involve actually spinning wheels.

    At the top of the ramp, merging with the non-existent traffic they are very comfortably into the triple digits, and there is a wide spot on the break down lane.

    Where, of course, Constable Courteous is finishing his donut and coffee in blessed morning quiet of a 5 AM speed trap where the radar gun is humming quietly.

    There's a quick flash of Officer Friendly with his jaw on the pavement, and they zip by him.

    My buddy goes: Doh! and doesn't wait, he just brakes and pulls over.

    Police pulls up behind the miscreants. Gets out of car. "license & registration please"

    5min later the cop, having verified that both parties are in fact insured, have clean records, the car is days new.

    "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" "Yes sir." Pause. "You do realize that that sort of speed is unsafe, even in a nice car like this" "Yes, sir." "Do you realize the size of fine you get for going on the order of 2+ times the legal limit?" "No sir." "It's a VERY painful fine, and it'd be a shame to park such a nice car in the driveway for 6months while you walk to work." "oh."
    "But it's the end of my shift, there isn't any traffic and it's a lovely morning. Quit being dumbasses, already."


    Hands back paperwork. There's a map with a road marked in red.

    "That road is one way, and it's very curvy, has good sightlines, it's newly paved and has no houses on it. It'd be very diffcult to actually go faster than the speed limit on it, but it's fun to try. Have a nice day"

    "Thank you officer."

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  20. I thought the Redneck's famous last words were "Here, hold my beer..."

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  21. Effing twit in that link has gotta be a plant of one definition or the other. Also:

    "Wookie, please."
    "I'm so putting that on a t-shirt."

    Don't do it...plagiarism ain't always verbatim.

    AT

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  22. I love the followup: 'He shouldn't have been pulled over and issued a citation because he didn't actually hit anyone. And if he did, he would have made it right.'

    Real, real hard to take those folks seriously.

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  23. Newbius, he abbreviated - it's actually "hold my beer and watch this!"

    wv:mously

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  24. AT,

    "Don't do it...plagiarism ain't always verbatim."

    Uh, the "Hippie, please," to which you refer is hardly original by that definition. Maybe he was plagiarizing Oleg's "Ninja, please!"

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  25. The followup is precious. Dude defines "absent-mindedly blowing past a stop sign and by the grace of God not hitting anyone" as a "victimless crime."

    So in his worldview doing something stupid and potentially fatal is OK as long as no one actually dies that time.

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  26. Tam,

    "Maybe he was plagiarizing Oleg's "Ninja, please!""

    Na, but Oleg's is a closer rip on the original blackonblack phrase.

    The diff is that the Wookie comment was a direct swipe at Marko's version, and that Joanna apparently took it as something fresh and witty, which it ain't.

    AT

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  27. "Anarchists are seriously deficient in the mental faculties department. If there are no laws requiring people to stop for traffic signals, maintain a lane, or follow any other rules of the road, how are people going to drive?"

    There's a new show out called IRT: Deadliest Roads. There's your example... drving heavy trucks. In India.

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  28. AT,

    You are wrong. But thank you for attempting to stand up for my friend anyway. :)

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  29. Wow Tam, You sure have a talent for finding "teh crazy". This bit from the response:

    "TJIC says:

    Look, I hate cops, I think most of them are bullies, and they routinely lie, destroy evidence, and worse.

    In an ideal world, we’d have privately owned roads, and competing police forces. "


    Man, I'm as anti-gov as almost anyone, but this guy is just delusional. We complain (rightly) that local governments are using the police for revenue generation. What does this guy think would happen with private cops? With private cops, fines will be ALL of their revenue. Brett wouldn't have gotten away with a $50 fine and politely escorted home, the "company" would have given him that fine, a fine for driving with an expired tag, AND impounded his car. The storage costs alone would have been astrinomical. If Brett couldn't pay, they would have put a lien on his car and sold it to cover the costs. Be very careful when you wish for private cops, with private companies often the bottom line is everything.

    I'm not saying that the police are perfect. They are far from it, but the idea that private police would be better is naieve. Better to work within the existing system to weed out bad cops and bad laws than open that can of worms.

    s

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  30. "What does this guy think would happen with private cops? With private cops, fines will be ALL of their revenue."

    Actually, I think their revenue would come from the people who hired them to do the policing in the first place.

    As much as I hate to bring up mall security as an example, do they get their money from writing tickets to shoplifters?

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  31. AT,

    Tam is right. (Thanks, Tam.) I'm fully aware of the phrase's origin and descent. That's why I thought it was so funny. I'm actually a little offended (maybe "miffed" is a better word) that you assumed otherwise. Plus I know SB is a stand-up guy (as are Marko and Oleg) and I didn't think (t)he(y)'d mind me sporting a homemade one-off.

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  32. If this Brent was as stupid as his diatribe indicates, he couldn't have remembered to breathe long enough to become an adult. I think he's a troll.

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  33. "Competing police forces." Yeah, okay, the "Somalia" reductio ad absurdium is silly, except when somebody actually proposes one of the many fine cultural elements that make Somalia the garden spot that it is. Except there, they call them "militia." I like private enterprise and competition and the free market, but another thing I like is the restraint government should place upon potential excesses. Letting Burger King and McDonald's shoot it out over customers would porbably turn out alot less funny than it sounds.

    Seattle has been, at times, overrun by black clad wannabe anarchists. Got the tee shirts and everything. Whenever I'm over there, and see one, I am tempted to conduct an experiment: knock one down and take his wallet. I just have a hunch he'd violate his principles and call the cops.

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  34. "As much as I hate to bring up mall security as an example, do they get their money from writing tickets to shoplifters?"

    You hate to bring it up, because it's a laughable example. Mall cops are such a common stereotype of ineptitude, it's ubiquitous.

    Maybe they should be better regulated. Like, they should have to answer to some common agency for their training and licensing. Like. . .

    Dang it, I lost my train of thought.

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  35. If there were no stop-signs everyone would drive on round-abouts...

    wv: gated - name my community....

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  36. I live in a country where private security is the main law enforcement entity.

    It is not a good thing at all. Here one needs to hire their own security guards for their house- not cheap, and it kind of kills any privacy you may have at night. And then there's the matter of having to wall or fence in one's property and put bars on the windows.

    Sometimes people in the US have no freaking idea how good they have it.

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  37. Look, I've shed a lot of my knee-jerk anarcho-capitalism over the years. I no longer hope for Anarchotopia and will settle for spending my declining decades someplace where I have to break as few laws as possible. Still and all:

    1) From a purely semantic standpoint, Anarchy != Chaos.

    2) I no longer accept the logical fallacy of Reductio ad Somalium.

    ;)

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  38. "AT, You are wrong."

    Maybe...wouldn't be the first time. But the whole right/wrong thing is just so nebulous and subjective when the "what" is undefined and the "why" is unstated.

    If the "what" is that SB's comment wasn't spoofing MW's while mocking everything/everybody wookish/libertarianish/anarchish...and the "why" is that his intentions were pure and his humor was innocent and aimed solely at
    the plant in the linked story, then yeah I would be wrong. But history would indicate otherwise, and I doubt it.

    Joanna, sorry you were miffed. Guess I didn't know you took your t-shirt worthy "insights" so lightly.

    AT

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  39. AT,

    What the hell is wrong with you?

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  40. All I can say is that after a year or so of being a cop, I figured out that cutting somebody a break on a traffic stop was usually more trouble than it was worth. Easier to just write them for everything...as we used to call it "the full boat."

    Cut somebody a break on one violation, then they get pissed about the other one you didn't cut them a break on. I didn't like running traffic enforcement, but when I had to, I soon developed the personal policy that if I stopped someone for a violation that they were getting a ticket. No breaks. I didn't go digging for more violations ("piling on"), but any violation I discovered during the normal course of the stop was written. Otherwise, the citizen figures out you have discretion, and they are on you like white on rice to drop the whole thing.

    Besides, by simply writing the violation, and every violation to the letter of the law, your rationale for using discretion on violation X and not on violation Y can never be called into question in court. The defense pulls your record of citations issued over time, and they see that you write EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME. Harsh, perhaps...but consistent. Inconsistency will get you in trouble every time.

    A cynical take, maybe. But that's what happens when you get repeatedly lambasted by people who don't appreciate that you have a job to do, but are trying to cut them a bit of a break.

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  41. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

    Heh. Tam ain't got enough bandwidth for that one...

    But in this instance, it's posers, Fudds, and duds.

    AT

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  42. @David: Good on you. If a law requires discretion from use, it's (likely) a bad law. This applies both to speeding regs and felonies.

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