Justice Gone A-duck

Every now and again incidents take place that leave one wondering if some of our officials, local and otherwise, have been sniffing duck droppings. The display of their lack of judgment can be astounding to say the least.

On a particular talk show, a lady was telling about how she caught her next door neighbors video taping her lounging around the house in her lingerie. Her neighbors went as far as poisoning and killing their own bushes to provide these pervs with a less obstructed view of her.

The lounging lady called the police and, to make a long story short (in other words I’m not sure how it happened), the cops got hold of the neighbor’s tape and, now comes the absurd part, arrested the lounging lady for lewd conduct.

Arrested for lewd conduct?! The worse thing this lady was guilty of was not closing her blinds while strolling around her home in her underwear. I mean, how lewd could that have been?

Several times the talk show she was on played her neighbors video, and I got to tell you I’ve turned off a lot worse things on my television than what I saw on that video; yet, she was arrested for lewd and obscene conduct. Give me a break!

And what happened to the voyeuristic neighbors? As far as I know, nothing.

Oh, and for the state where this little incident happened, I have some suggestions for a new state motto. Yeah, like the sign announcing you’ve just crossed the state line could read: Welcome to Blah, Blah, Blah, The Wrong Is Right and Right Is Wrong State.

Another incident that has caused many people to question the competence of our officials took place in a high school in one of our fair Midwestern states.

It seems two students were suspended from this particular school, which is nothing unusual by itself. But from the details of the story it becomes obvious that this is another example of authority gone haywire. This is what happened as I understand it.

One of the two boys was feeling ill at school. So, the other offered the sick kid an anti-depressant. How an anti-depressant was supposed to help the sick kid feel better, I don’t know.

Anyway, the ill boy didn’t swallow the pill. Instead he took it home and showed to his mother. Mom, of course, pitched a fit and called the school. What happened next defies logic.

Both boys were suspended from school. That’s right. Even the boy who rightfully turned the evidence (the pill) over to his mother was suspended from school because he accepted the anti-depressant from the other boy.

The bright side (if there is one) to this is the kid who accepted the pill ought to be glad the other boy didn’t give him something even more serious . . . like some devious plot to harm others. Who knows what would have happened to the boy for turning that over to the authorities?

Finally, when speaking of officials not using good judgment, I offer you what happened in Branson, Missouri when I lived there.

The Army Corp. of Engineers decided that when Table Rock Damn was built some thirty years earlier by the Corp., it was built ten feet too short. According to them, if that area was to have the type of flooding the Mississippi had in the early 1990s, the water would be too much for the damn and it wouldn’t hold.

This damn, ladies and gentlemen, is not a small earthen damn. It’s big enough to have created hundreds upon hundreds of miles of shoreline that make up Table Rock Lake. Heck, tours are conducted inside the damn—those would be damn tours by the way, given by a damn tour guide.

Don’t you have to wonder how this little oversight was brought to light? Thirty years after the damn was built, did one of the engineers suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and, in a cold sweat, say in horror, “Oh, oh!”

And there are people who want this same government to run a national healthcare system. Yeah, right.

Imagine getting a call thirty years after receiving stomach surgery and being told, “uh, we’d like you to come in for some x-rays. We lost an instrument during your surgery and the presiding surgeon just remembered where it might have gone.”

Struggle as we might to understand, it’s sometimes hard to figure out the judgment, or lack thereof, shown by some of our officials. Until we do, sniff a duck dropping or two. Who knows? It might help to cope with the chaos.

Things Are Tight

I knew our economy was sluggish and people’s budget’s were tight, but I didn’t realize just how bad things have gotten until a few weeks ago. I was driving home from work when I saw a Chrysler 300 Series luxury car coming the other way with a pizza delivery sign on the roof.

As if that wasn’t enough proof of how just how bad things have gotten, the other day I saw a late model Lincoln Town Car going down the highway and guess what was on the roof; yep, a pizza delivery sign. Now I am scared.

Airlines also are feeling the pinch of a sluggish economy. Rising fuel costs have caused them to "stick it" to the consumer in many ways. Of course airfares have risen dramatically over the last year or so, and some airlines are charging extra for over-sized carry-on baggage as well as extra carry-on baggage. Some are even charging for all baggage, check-in or otherwise.

Some airlines are pulling completely out of small airports, and I saw where at least one is charging extra for any food or drink, except the peanuts. Woo hoo, free peanuts! I’m sure on a long flight when a passenger goes into a diabetic coma because he can’t afford to purchase food his family will be sure to thank the airline for its hospitality. But I divert.

Commuter airlines are taking this whole thing to the extreme. I went to the check-in counter of a littler commuter plane the other day and while checking in my luggage the girl behind the counter asked me how much I weighed.

“And just why do you need to know?” I inquired.


“So we know how much fuel to put in,” she answered.

“Fill ‘er up!” I yelled. “I’ll pay for it; just fill ‘er up! I weigh 800 pounds; fill ‘er up!

It would be just my luck to board a flight with someone who lied about his weight. Can you imagine meeting your maker earlier than planned just because some guy fibbed about how much he weighed?

Check-in person: you got more chins than a Chinese phone book. You sure you only weight 99 pounds?

Four hundred pound passenger: don’t let these big bones fool you [what being big-boned has to do with having multiple chins is something I’ve never been able to figure out], I really am 99 pounds.

Motels are also getting into the act of cutting way back on services to keep the down the cost of running their businesses. Like the one that advertised huge discount rates. I went inside and asked the desk clerk about it. He said in order to get the lowest rate for a room I’d have to make my own bed. I didn’t think that was so bad until he handed me a hammer and saw!

My room had a Jacuzzi, which made me very excited. That excitement was soon quelled when I discovered their idea of a Jacuzzi was me sitting in a bathtub of water, holding an electric mixer. Needless to say, I stayed there only one night.

The economic crunch has hit the Bagley household too. In fact, for her birthday Sweetie wants me to take her somewhere expensive and I'm going to. I’m thinking I'm going to drop her off at a gas station.