Laws & Demons
On my way to work this morning I was listening to 101.5 again. Just as I was exiting off 287, Jim Gearheart said there is a guy in Bayonne proposing that a law be made against people smoking in a car if there someone in the car who is 16 years of age or younger. Furthermore, Gearheart said there have been people in southern Jersey who want to make it illegal to smoke in one's own house if there is someone living there who is 16 years old or younger, which as Gearheart aptly pointed out is pretty much the same as the above since both one's car and one's house are personal property.
I don’t smoke anymore (except an occasional cigarette, like when I go to a family wedding reception and drink too many Long Island iced teas and cheap beers from the keg and need some grounding), though most of my friends smoke, and I’m not going to try to stop them, unless they ask me to. While I make it a point not to guilt-trip smokers, as I see others do--what good is that?--I sure like not smelling like smoke when I leave a New York bar, and I think it’s a good idea not to smoke around youngsters. Ideally, I would like to think that other people can figure out why it isn’t a good idea, though I know we can’t count on the bulk of people to, first, think and understand outside their base desires and habits, and, second, act on such.
When I smoked, without giving it much thought I stepped away from kids if there happened to be any around, and I did my best not to blow smoke in anyone's face, whether that person be a smoker or not. Just being courteous. It's legal to smoke. That said, people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want to do in their car or in their own home (though I don’t see why it’s now not ok to talk on a cell phone in a car without a headset, when it’s not a problem to smoke a cigarette while driving). It's a choice to smoke, and it's a choice to decide to be courteous or not. I am reminded of when my mom used to tell me to clean my room. Usually I’d already decided to clean my room, because it seemed like a thing needed to be done, but when she threw down the law that I had to clean my room, I said "Fuck that, I’m not cleaning any room." It's just a part of life that some people give a shit and some people don't; laws aren't going to change that, at least not deep down where it would worthwhile be changed.
Spastic, sporadic human life does not fit tidily into a rigid set of laws. It would be nice if people on the whole just knew what to do to keep in line with common consideration toward others. Then we could live in a beautiful utopic anarchic society. But I guess we all live on different grids, and I guess that's what laws are for, guiding people against what is commonly "wrong". Most of those laws, like that forbidding murder, just seem obvious to me. Am I elitist? However, I'll go ahead and speed where I think the speed limit should be higher, or ingest illegal goodies because I know the only person I might be harming is myself. For that reason, I also think that if an overweight person is uncomfortable wearing a seatbelt, he shouldn't be forced to by law.
I am leaving to live on an island.
P.S. Oh my fucking god. A scene from the exorcist, the one where the girl is in bed, vomiting green, head spinning, and growling ‘fuck me’ or something like it—that one, is going on down the hall here in the hospital. Holy shit, I’m shutting my door.
I don’t smoke anymore (except an occasional cigarette, like when I go to a family wedding reception and drink too many Long Island iced teas and cheap beers from the keg and need some grounding), though most of my friends smoke, and I’m not going to try to stop them, unless they ask me to. While I make it a point not to guilt-trip smokers, as I see others do--what good is that?--I sure like not smelling like smoke when I leave a New York bar, and I think it’s a good idea not to smoke around youngsters. Ideally, I would like to think that other people can figure out why it isn’t a good idea, though I know we can’t count on the bulk of people to, first, think and understand outside their base desires and habits, and, second, act on such.
When I smoked, without giving it much thought I stepped away from kids if there happened to be any around, and I did my best not to blow smoke in anyone's face, whether that person be a smoker or not. Just being courteous. It's legal to smoke. That said, people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want to do in their car or in their own home (though I don’t see why it’s now not ok to talk on a cell phone in a car without a headset, when it’s not a problem to smoke a cigarette while driving). It's a choice to smoke, and it's a choice to decide to be courteous or not. I am reminded of when my mom used to tell me to clean my room. Usually I’d already decided to clean my room, because it seemed like a thing needed to be done, but when she threw down the law that I had to clean my room, I said "Fuck that, I’m not cleaning any room." It's just a part of life that some people give a shit and some people don't; laws aren't going to change that, at least not deep down where it would worthwhile be changed.
Spastic, sporadic human life does not fit tidily into a rigid set of laws. It would be nice if people on the whole just knew what to do to keep in line with common consideration toward others. Then we could live in a beautiful utopic anarchic society. But I guess we all live on different grids, and I guess that's what laws are for, guiding people against what is commonly "wrong". Most of those laws, like that forbidding murder, just seem obvious to me. Am I elitist? However, I'll go ahead and speed where I think the speed limit should be higher, or ingest illegal goodies because I know the only person I might be harming is myself. For that reason, I also think that if an overweight person is uncomfortable wearing a seatbelt, he shouldn't be forced to by law.
I am leaving to live on an island.
P.S. Oh my fucking god. A scene from the exorcist, the one where the girl is in bed, vomiting green, head spinning, and growling ‘fuck me’ or something like it—that one, is going on down the hall here in the hospital. Holy shit, I’m shutting my door.
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