On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey, I managed to write something. Will get you worded-up logo later today, promise.

Notes from Bushwick

It's hard to get a sense of whether one should like or dislike the local cops. On the one hand, they often act with incredible restraint relative to what you'd see back West. In one incident I had the good fortune to witness, a random douchebag was thrown out of a bar near Union Square by the bouncer; when the douchebag continued to hang around out front and make menacing comments to the bouncer, the cops were called. Two of them strolled up a few minutes later, at which point the douchebag was literally being held back by a friend lest he advance on the bouncer or at least pretend to sort of intend to do so; the cops decided that the guy was not really a threat insomuch as that he was in no condition to fight a bouncer twice as large as himself, told him to get the fuck out of there, and then continued their stroll in the other direction. On another occasion, some homeless junkie who had hit his friend with a fake sword was not arrested, but rather mocked by the cops, who told passing females that the guy had hepatitis. In Texas, both men would have been arrested.

But both of those scenes occurred in Manhattan. Here in Bushwick, I've been stopped and searched twice for no good reason; the first time, I made the mistake of accompanying two Puerto Ricans to a liquor store while wearing a suit, which apparently constitutes probable cause around these parts. The alpha cop called me a liar when I denied possessing any drugs, then felt a brief tinge of triumph when he found a bottle cap in my pocket, which he quickly deemed to be drug paraphernalia, as if people wearing suits smoke hard drugs out of bottle caps. Eventually they let me go with a warning that New York is more dangerous than my native Dallas, which is demonstrably untrue. The second time, I turned the corner onto Beaver Street just as a group of undercovers were picking up some old black guy for selling drugs or having drugs or wanting drugs or some such. This, too, constitutes probable cause in Bushwick.

In conclusion, DEA delenda est.

Notes from the Outside World

* Charles Krauthammer is the most respected of today's conservative columnists. That should tell you everything you need to know about the modern conservative movement.

* I'd vowed never to mention Twitter lest my own douchebag quotient double as a result. But now Carlos Mencia has one of the fucking things. Some representative samples:

I just saw an 80 something year old lady give this guy sitting in front of a fast food joint a dollar. There is definitely hope for us all.

I'm in a room surrounded by six women talking rite now. Don't you envy me!

Michael Jackson just died of a heart attack. When reached for comment Joe Jackson, father said "why couldn't it be Tito". Too soon?

Terminator! I'm such a nerd. I wanna be a cyborg. What would u do if u had those abilities. I'd have sex for hours and not have down time

Everyone in LA is driving around with Laker flags on their cars. They're making so much money off those. Mencia flags? Hmmmmmm....noooot!

In conclusion, Carlos Mencia is actually half-German. Tell everyone you know. Plus he steals jokes, presumably in service to the Fatherland.

* Though Sharia law is patriarchalist nonsense and silly besides, it's not fundamentally more inimical to liberty than, say, the criminalization of consensual activity inherent to the drug war and blue laws and other such fascist facets of American life. Nonetheless, there is a class of heavily-Christian conservative pundit that is intent on crying wolf each time some or another institution caters to the particular superstitions of Western Muslims. The latest incident involves a Sharia-friendly bank account offered by a U.K. financial institution; according to the usual suspects, Muslims are being favored over good ol' Englishmen by way of reduced fees on overdrafts. What the usual suspects don't mention is that anyone can get this particular account, not just Muslims, and that the reason that everyone does not get these accounts is because they suck.