Furniture

My new leather couch and chair arrived last weekend. When I told a friend I was getting leather, she said she told me not to: "That's so cliche." I explained that I wanted leather because the cat seems not to like smooth surfaced furniture.

As I hoped, the cat has not found them an inviting claw-sharpening venue. Therefore I haven't had to take the cat to a claw-removing venue to solve the problem. I gave the old couch and chair away. No, I'm not really that generous. My ads trying to sell them drew no response so I finally gave up hoping to get money for them. I wrote in the ad that they had cat scratch damage (and provided a close-up picture) but that neither piece had ever been "urinated, vomited or -- I'm sorry to say -- copulated upon."

The first person to reply said that the ad was "hilarious." She's a schoolteacher by day, a bartender by night and smoking hot all the time. She came from California with a guy "friend" and lives on swanky Harbour Island. That could be why she needs free furniture. After twice not showing up when promised to pick up either piece, she finally came for the chair and said she'd come back Saturday for the couch. Saturday came and went but the couch did not so I e-mailed another woman who inquired about them. She was going to come Saturday night but called to say that her female "roommate" had to go to the hospital so could they come tomorrow night?

I can't give this stuff away! I'm thinking. But the happy couple, all better (it was a muscle pull or something) showed up the next night and carted off the couch. Next day, the first girl writes back apologizing and asking if I still had the couch. I did not, I replied, "a very grateful lesbian couple took it last night." Perhaps it has been copulated upon by now, if whatever lesbians do to each other count as that.

Protocol?

It wasn't a fashion statement; it was laziness. That's why I started growing a beard. I don't feel like shaving so I don't shave and in a few days this dark haze appears on my face. The dislike of the look overcomes the laziness and I shave it off.

Problem? One of my co-workers told me she liked the beard. I was going to shave it off but feared she would take offense if I did it so soon after she complimented it. "Well, I can see how much my opinion means to you," I can imagine her thinking if not saying out loud.

This co-worker is not someone I want to impress or whose approval I crave. I'd just like to be courteous. So I ask: What's the protocol here? How long do I wait to shave it off?

Freudian, I'm Sure

She's not lucky that she just has anybody.

She doesn't have just anybody.

She has me.

Who "she" is and why I awoke with that thought this morning, I don't know. Maybe it relates to Sarah. I haven't written or spoken to her in two months. I've had nothing interesting to say and no interesting reason to say it.

Just Wonderin'

Dear O.J. Simpson:

How's the search for the "real killers" going?

I hadn't heard anything in a while and I was curious.

-Jack

Who Owns You?

This is not normally a political blog. There are plenty enough gasbags blowing hot air from the right or the left that you don't need me to add to the breeze. But something has come up in connection with an online gambling bill just passed by Congress that a lot of people don't seem to grasp.

The bill bans credit card companies from processing transactions from online gambling sites. Congress has looked high and low for a way to squeeze out these Internet casinos that have previously thumbed their noses at U.S. laws from safely outside U.S. borders. It finally found a way. No one could stop the gambler or the online casino but they could stop the middle man -- or, in this case, the middle card.

Opponents cry foul. Government is trying to legislate morality or, worse, trying to protect people from themselves. Freedom should include the freedom of self-destruction, they say. Or as someone on a message board I frequent put it:

Here's a question folks: Who owns you?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and declare that I own me.

If I wish to take a crisp $20 bill and burn it, so be it.

If I wish to flush it down the toilet, so be it.

And if I choose to risk it gambling, so be it.

Now if, for some strange reason, I DID NOT own me, those scenarios could be different. If the government owns me, then an argument can be made that it is in the state's best interest that I not burn a $20 dollar bill.

That's great except what happens when you burn your last $20 bill?

If what happened was that you lived in the woods eating berries, fine. But that's not what happens. What happens is that when you run out of money you borrow more. You rack up credit card debt. Who owns you now? The bank that sponsors the card does.

When the debt grows too large and you declare bankruptcy, a government granted protection from creditors, who cares? It's just the bank losing money, right? Except banks make that money back. More fees and higher interest rates for people like me who do pay their bills. Now your actions impact me. Who owns you now? I do. And so does everyone else who has to pay more to make up for what you can't.

That gives us some say in how you're allowed to behave. Forget the morality argument. I don't care if you burn your money, lose it gambling or spend it on hookers. Be my guest. And it's more than a little hypocritical for politicians to decry the evils of gambling with one side of their mouths while sucking the teat of state lottery money with the other. There is an oft-quoted saying about how freedom comes with responsibility. The corollary to that is that when we ask the government to take responsibility from us, freedom goes too.

The same goes for things like motorcycle helmet and seatbelt laws. Opponents claim that it should be their choice to risk injury without them and that it's nobody else's business. But if some helmetless rider wraps his cycle around a tree and winds up a vegetable, which is apparenly only a few IQ points lower than when he was conscious, who pays his ventilator bill when the insurance runs out? The government does, which gives the government a say in whether you have to wear a helmet.

Your freedom to act irresponsibly ends at the point at which I have to pay for it.