Teatro del Absurdo

Bill Hicks once said that he was a misanthropic humanist, that he liked people... in theory.  Bill was a smart man and these days i'd say i lean more towards the misanthropic side than the humanist, i'd also be lying... somewhat. Seems the older i get the more i gaze in wonder at what could only be called the folly of the human race, on the macro or micro level, we are a fucking disaster most of the time. And so a few weeks back i took my slip of paper with my name and case number and headed back down to the courthouse to sit on some old wooden chair while awaiting the fate of, who my neighbors have dubbed, the Package Thief.

It was the week before Xmas 2014 when i came cruising down my street, the smell of a half plain, half sausage and pepperoni pizza wafting up from the back seat, it was then that i spied the Package Thief walking swiftly and stupidly towards his car with my neighbors shit, his wife's extended family and then some living next door, Package Thief pretended i didn't exist as he hopped in his car and drove away, a fucking nitwit, a former career criminal with a rap sheet that should have just had "Dumb Shit" written at the top so that everyone who glanced at it would know that PT was exceedingly bad at crime, particularly in the area of theft and such... Now if it were you or i we would have paid a fine, had our knuckles rapped a bit, and been on our way, our Package Thief though had apparently fucked up bad enough to score a felony rap and so because of the one expensive thing he once lifted along with all the other dumb shit he did he was now looking at a little stretch in the Pen... or more correctly, is possibly looking at that...

Why possibly you say? well the wheels of the Merkin justice system grind slow and once in it's machinations it will have you wasting endless amounts of your time waiting in rooms and hallways, shuffling to and fro between said rooms and hallways, it will eat the hours and then days and then months and in some cases years, it is a dumb and brutal machine and should you find your way into it you are already quite fucked, cuz the home team wins a lot, we're talking high 90's type a lot, but the ironic beauty of it is, is how protagonist and antagonist are forced to practically live together, sworn enemies crammed into small spaces with vaulted ceilings, a roar of voices that ebbs and flows, an industrial noise that grinds up the soul and spits out flesh, standing around and watching this Grand Guignol turns the stomach and makes the head hurt, but i was caught in it's web, a witness to the crime of stupidity...so since i'm stuck there in a room full of squares, shitty criminals, dumb asses, and the fuzz, i make the best of it, i do what i always do and study and observe...

Now a post or two back i was ruminating on my current mode of contemplation, sometimes i lay there staring at the ceiling, hell often times i do, when the weed that slows my thoughts begins to wear off the mind will start churning, rolling and rocking like that big lake gitche gumee, i shut my eyes and pretend to rest but really the mind is just racing, sometimes rolodexing all the fucking dumb shit i'd done that could have landed me in jail or the morgue, sometimes i have to catch my breath and wiggle the toes, other times i'll just get up and sit in the dark, thinking, then i may fall back asleep, or i see the horizon begin to change to pinkish red and so i make some coffee and listen for the sounds of the boyos, it was in these spaces of the day, as i thought, that i finally did write a letter, for while we are a society based and punishment and fear, i wanted nothing to fucking do with it... and so i wrote a letter on behalf of the Package Thief, a half-wit...

Now to say that this letter was written with truly altruistic intent would be a bit of a stretch, i'm an ex-hood, many times you have to play both sides and since i was still going to have to live next to the Clampett's (aka his many in-laws occupying the neighboring house) i had to hedge the bets, and what better way than to lay out why Package Thief should not go back to the hoosegow, my main points being that he had a new baby, seemed to work pretty hard for his family and was the breadwinner thus a stint in jail would most likely put his family back on the dole, a few other minor things but basically i was the guy who fucking caught him and i was gonna ask for leniency for this clown, of course i'd be remiss if i didn't add that if Package Thief went down on this shit and did get an all expense paid trip to the Radisson on the River or Greene County, that rest of his brood wouldn't be pulling up a moving van to add to the dozen people already taking up residence next door, that very thought weighed rather heavily on my mind, believe me, and so the day before court i sat and composed my letter, a well thought out and rationale argument for the irrational actions of a moron, i figured in the end my other neighbors got their stuff back, the asshats who did it were now known to us all, call no harm no foul and move on... and then something changed...

There is much bravado in the legal arts, the asst. DA had sworn up and down there would be no deal (hence my letter) but was now standing there and offering up one, a year of house arrest and another of probation, Package Thief could go to work, he could leave for emergencies, but most importantly at least in my eyes, was that he would be there at home with his kids, able to see his baby's first birthday and be around his kindergarten aged daughter... but Package Thief turned it down, said no, and it was at this point that things started to dawn on this marble head of mine, this fucking moron was guilty, based on facts it would take about 10 seconds to decide this case, here he was being offered a pretty good deal and he said no? it occurred to me that he didn't give a fuck about seeing his kids, that this was about "beating" the system, he wanted to see if he could "win", have the case thrown out or busted down to a disorderly conduct, so he could sit at the local bar and talk shit about how he'd "won", how he stole some stuff and got caught but didn't go to jail, didn't matter that this role of the dice might land him in the can for a year or three, he wasn't worried about seeing his kids he was wanted to beat the fucking Man yo! Spend time in any shady bar in a suspect neighborhood and you will hear a version of this fucking story, guaranteed...

Which brings me back to being a Misanthropic Humanist, i'd like to like people but it's difficult to deal with so many raging assholes and complete idiots, don't get me wrong now, i know i've been both of those things and often at the same time on too many occasions to count, i'm sure i still am i sometimes i just try really hard not to be... i freely admit i have no use for the chronically stupid and even less (if that's possible) for a man who would gamble away a year or years of his life, of his children's lives for all intent, to prove what? to prove that the system is broke and that justice is a word bandied about by politicians and students? numbnuts doesn't understand that shit, Package Thief just wants to get a win, whatever that may be, i'd have more respect for him if he just copped to being nabbed and dumb, instead he's going to fight because somehow he thinks he's innocent or something... so we'll line up and do it again next month, the constable pulled up the other day while Nick Disaster and i were shooting baskets in the cul de sac, he laughed when he saw me, told me this time i was on call, it's like being vaguely important to a game i could give two shits about, then Disaster and i went back to our game of two-bounce, onward and upward as they say...