A Protest of One

protector of the people, Ms. Patti Bushee
psst...hey, Patti - KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY!

So yesterday, after finding out about the Santa Fe Smoking Ban in BARS (bars - places where they serve ALCOHOL, you know, dens of VICE) I did a little informal polling. I asked a bartender at Del Charro what he thought about the ban and he held up a lit cigarette.

"Ninety-nine percent of people who work in bars and restaurants smoke," he said, on conditions of anonymity. "Patti Bushee has her head up her ass."

Ya think? Maybe. I spoke with a friend from California whose been dealing with this problem for years. She said, "Bars cope. They build patios."

But that won't work here. No smoking in bars in Santa Fe means no smoking in outdoor patios, no smoking within 25 feet of any open window or door. Which means that this law might be a little less about protecting anyone than it is about eliminating a certain "bad element" from the city of Santa Fe.

We knew it was coming. They took away the Plaza already - it's roped off to protect the grass from the people, and no working human who lives in Santa Fe has any compelling shopping reason to go downtown. Now, in addition to eliminating smoking inside any bar or restaurant (and probably hotels too) we now have an effective means of hassling anyone smoking outdoors. Way to go, you liberal fascist.

Why stop there? I think we need laws that protect young women from making the mistake of Abortion when Adoption is a viable option. I think we need laws that protect the sanctity of marriage and make sure only bio-boys and girls can marry each other. I mean, really, Patti - you just can't have it both ways. Choice is CHOICE, no matter what the arena. If you don't like abortion, don't have one. If you don't want second-hand smoke, don't work in a bar or don't go to bars that allow smoking. How much more DUUUUUUUUH can you get?

If non-smoking bars made sense, bar-owners would make their *businesses* (get it Patti, THEIR BUSINESS) non-smoking. Some do. Second Street Brewery is non-smoking - inside. They created a compromise without your damn law. Much to my chagrin, I found out yesterday that the Santa Fe Brewing Company, despite being outside the city limits and unaffected by the ban, is voluntarily non-smoking. Inside. They have an outdoor patio that may now also be non-smoking thanks to your invasive, (dare I say BIG GOVERNMENT?) nonsense.

This morning Mary Charlotte of the KSFR morning show asked me why I didn't protest the ban. I told her I only found out about it yesterday. She said I must've been living under a rock, but of course, I don't *read* anything in local papers but the horoscopes and the classifieds. She said, (and I have a really hard time believing this) that No One, not a bar owner nor a disgruntled smoker, showed up to protest the ban.

So at the risk of looking like a nitwit, (wouldn't be the first time) allow me to mount this Protest of One. Like the equally absurdist no cell-phone while driving law (what next? No eating while driving? No drinking while driving? No listening to the radio or smoking while driving?) this is an instance where some Well-Meaning (yet Muddled-Headed) Liberal has decided to over-regulate my existence to protect me from myself. Screw you.

I just hope it's not too late for me to burn my ACLU card and join the NRA.

They Made Johnny Rotten a Moron - They're Making ME Libertarian

{Warning: It's a rant. If rants offend you, tell the Santa Fe City Council and maybe they'll SHUT ME DOWN.}

June 27, 2006
The Santa Fe City Council (in its infinite wisdom, these are the people that rope off all the green grass on the Plaza so no one gets to enjoy it, among a half a dozen other Stupid Ideas) recently decided that there will be NO SMOKING in any bar or restaurant in the city of Santa Fe, including outdoor areas. Wow. It's enough to make you want quit drinking and smoking and shut down all the goddamn bars, because I can't see why I should pay treble damages on a drink in a place where I can't fucking RELAX. Stock up the home bar - as of July the 1st, you can forget all about your pint and a smoke - unless you're at home or at my place.

Who are these people to tell a bar owner what they can and can't do inside their own damn businesses? It's a BAR, for chrissakes. Don't want the second-hand smoke? Stay the fuck home.

Check this recent study:

"WASHINGTON -- Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate. The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick."

http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71185-0.html?tw=rss.index

I'm getting sick just thinking about what a boring antiseptic world we're living in. Kill all THOSE people out there, (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan.) Make it *safe* (squeal, squeal) for all us nicey-nicey folk here in the USA. Totally crazy. I wish the Damn Liberals would crawl out of my lungs and into the goddamn streets and Change Something REAL. So much easier to oppress ME than get George out of office, huh?

I'm just now starting to understand why the working class watches Fox News and votes against their class interest. Its because all the Damn Liberals want to do is protect me from myself. HANDS OFF, wimps. Go save the Big Environment or something. I'll be over here watching Bill O'Reilly and voting against MY class interests just to keep you away from me.

Hey - wait a minute! The Santa Fe Brewing Company is in Santa Fe COUNTY, right? Guess I know where I'll be going. Hope they've got Fox News on the TV.

Burning Man & the Angry Skin will our hero choose health over the Playa?

After the car blew up and I was hit by a bicycle, I immediately broke out in an all-over angry attack of psoriasis, something I've had on my legs for years but never on my HANDS. I burst into tears when it happened, and the itch was over the top for days before I finally bit the bullet and set an appointment with a Chinese doctor. I'm signed on now for a full course in acupunture and herbs - three months or so. They don't take Medicaid, (natch) I'm still up to my eyeballs in debt from Mexico, and I'm still a WRITER, for chrissakes, which means that even when I make money it seems to take about 60 days to get paid from the time I complete the work.


The only thing keeping me afloat is an American Express my parents gave me (which I pay on) to go to Mexico and have been nice enough not to take back, because everyone sees i work all the time but just don't cover anything. last year i skipped out on burning man because i was tired of going - this year i know for certain that there is NOTHING more important than my health, and if Chinese medicine can help keep my wild energy cycles from creating a scenario where another fucking safe falls on my head, then i have to go into debt for that - and not BM.

But the opera ain't over yet...who knows...i might make it anyway. photo by Erik Aylen

The Waves of Tragedy Can Cease ANYTIME now.

I am sitting on my backporch in Albuquerque, and a light rain is falling - the sky is actually grey, and in the past week it has rained more here than at any other time in recent memory, perfectly matching my experience. I just turned in the first-draft of a week-late story for the Santa Fean - the phone just rang with a foreign sound - it's a foreign phone, so that makes sense, I suppose.

The Week from Hell. It's Friday now, right? The badness began on Thursday, which to a degree makes no Damn Bit of Sense since all my friends arrived from other parts of the country that day. But such is how it works sometimes...let us hope that since it is now Friday, whatever strange virus of Bad Luck is Gone Now, gone back to some other part of the gallery to bother someone else....

It started on Thursday, when I went to pick up my friend Erik Aylen from the airport. It would be hours before I noticed I couldn't find my phone. Another hour before another friend suggested I might have dropped it at the airport - I arrived to find it, crushed beneath a car tire and safely in a drawer at lost and found. A dead phone - is there really any greater tragedy?

As it turned out, I would soon find out there was one, but not for a few days. Being sans phone meant I was also sans Rolodex and I was on a tight deadline. Really tight. Like, tight enough that I knew I was going to be late. But I absolutely *hated* the idea of dealing with Sprint all by lonesome - being needy for a phone means they can take advantage of you, and I already felt slightly dismembered, like I'd lost an arm at least. So I waited until the following day, Friday, when this man arrived - Gentry Bronson, old-school bro come to New Mexico for a short solo tour.

GB is good at being in charge with people who like to start sentences with the words, "Our policy is..." Those people make ME blow a gasket, so I made him come with me and they hammered out a deal - since I didn't have phone insurance, they'd let me buy "retro-active" insurance that would enable me to get a phone for $55 providing I bought into the insurance from now on. And I'd have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to get a new phone. Seemed good to me, though given what ended up happening, I shoulda just bought the Brand New Full-Price phone then and there...

Being without a phone, for a consummate networker like me? Hell. I'd have ideas about people to call for all kinds of things - and of course, I couldn't reach them because I couldn't remember anyone's number. I wanted to relax into the experience, and I more or less had to, because I simply *had no choice* but I couldn't network to get people to Gentry's gigs, and I even had to resort to e-mailing people begging for their numbers before I could call them. My phone, I realized in very short order, was quite literally an extension of my brain, and I was jumpy about getting it back ASAP.

We made it through the weekend with little more than a few hangovers and some good times. Friday afternoon we drove to Santa Fe to pick up Erik's girlfriend Amanda, who took the bus from Buffalo to New Mexico and ended up there instead of here. We had dinner at an El Salvadorean restaurant and then headed back to Albuquerque, where we picked up two cases of beer and headed back to my house for a party. The following night, my day played a gig at the Methodist church that we somehow managed to miss because I got us lost - all was well, though, when Dad agreed to join us for an impromptu jam session that lasted until at least 3am. Gentry and my friend Dave hit it off and decided they'd record an album together, which necessitated another long-ass session of partying the next night at Aztec Studios, in order to make friends with the folks over there and pave the way for a recording session.

Monday morning didn't hurt *me* too badly, but Gentry was sorta like hammered shit by the time we reached the gig, which went really well, with GB opening for MySpace recording phenomena The Amazing Larry. Highlights of the evening include watching Gentry rock out with the Larry on hits like "Rock You Like a Hurricane" and other such retro drek. A good time had by all, I suppose.

And we were almost out of there, successfully, when tragedy #2 occurred - Gentry packed all the gear into the back of my Subaru - then slammed the hatch on top of the keyboard case, which shattered the glass into a million pieces.

Now, I'll admit it - while I don't have ANYMORE bench warrants (so far as I know) and nothing pending in the court system, my car was already a moving violation since I hadn't had insurance or registration since February of 2005. Don't ask me why - mostly I can claim poverty and completely indifference to the car I was driving as my major defenses, plus the fact that I grew up in New Mexico, which always makes me feel like registration is an optional exercise and insurance is only for people with assets. As a general rule, I'm always dodging and weaving around to keep from having a cop behind me, but a broken windshield is *really* hard to miss and an almost gauranteed way to get pulled over.

So while I laughed when it happened, I was really stressed out about the fact that there Was No Back-Glass on my car. I already Had No Cell-Phone, and that was weird enough, but now I had the potential to get pulled over everytime I drove. We were up early the next and at Speedy's Auto Glass getting quotes - Gentry offered to pay for it and I hated that I had to take him up on it - $225. Sheessh.

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I know this is a long post, but I had to take a pause and it's now Tuesday night the 13th and what I didn't know when I started writing was that "the waves of tragedy" had no end in sight. To continue:
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Gentry had played a gig the night before with The Amazing Larry at the El Paseo, and had kindly asked permission to sleep until noon. I was sorta concerned with a minor tragedy that had happened on our way into town for the gig, when the radiator on my car overheated and pushed us to the side of the road for awhile to wait it out, and I called my Dad, only to discover that our family mechanic had been picked up on a DWI over the weekend, bailed out, and now was completely MIA. It was such a New Mexico tale I could only laugh, but I wondered how it would affect us later.

I crept around town in the car with one eye on the temperature gauge and another on the rear-window, or lack thereof.