Hate

Do I Smell Bacon?

I'm not as think as you drunk I am, Ociffer (hiccup!). Oh, did I say 'Pig?'

I hate useless laws. As I write this, a good friend of mine is sleeping in the same room as his toilet, rotting away in the Eugene jail. Why? because he wanted to have some goddamned fun. We had 12 cans of Milwaukie's Best Ice, and a designated driver had taken us out to Mount Pisgah to drink and shoot fireworks. But it was not to be.

We hadn't been there twenty minutes when a sheriff's cruiser pulled up behind our van and turned on the spotlight. Eventually two more cruisers arrived, and a sty;s worth of pigs gave us hell for half an hour before hauling Joe off to jail for the night.

Back in November, Joe was given an MIP. "M.I.P" stands for "illegal-fun-having." He refused to show up for court not once but twice, and eventually the warrant caught up with him. And now Joe is a victim of USELESS LAWS.

Useless laws. There are millions of them. They are the only reason the police had cause to bother us that night. We were in a park after dark. Parks are for recreation; do they mean to suggest that recreation ends at dusk? Are we all farmers here? Christ! An MIP! He was arrested for drinking before he was 21. Who hasn't done that?

So what are useless laws, exactly? These are basically laws against self-endangerment. Laws against "underage drinking". drugs, prostitution, suicide, BASE jumping, bungee-jumping off bridges, being in a park after dark, hell even swimming in a public pool after dark! Yes, that's right. I was once cited for swimming in a public pool in the middle of the night, and for some reason it took five, count 'em, five police cars to apprehend us. I doubt that we were such a 'disturbance of the peace" that it required the entire police force of the West Hills of Portland to herd us in, since there were only two of us. Did you know that the Eugene police will give you a $285 ticket just for jumpig off a bridge into the Willamette this spring? Why? To add insult to injury.

Basically, the authorities have appointed themselves as parents and are treating us as children. If they think something isn't good for us, they will make us suffer for doing it. If an activity is bad for you, isn't it inherently its own punishment? If smoking crack is a bad thng, surely the destruction of your life for a horrible addiction is enough. If you do a cannonball off the Knickerbocker bridge, aren't the massive lacerations you may recieve upon the jagged rocks below enough to deter you?

Why does the government have to be involved? Is it because they like to stick their noses in our business? Is the government not here to serve, but to poke and prod, to stick the probe of their interference up the ass of our common sense? Or is it that the frequency of real crimes is so low that they have to make laws against non-crimes just to justify their overswelled staff and bloated budgets?

To answer these and other questions (or at least to waste time bothering public officeals), I was going to talk to an EPD spokesperson and harass him (or her) with irritating questions as "If an officer comes across an MIP situation, why wouldn't s/he think back to the days of his/her own underage drinking and just be nice?" or "There's no law against eating ten chocolate pies in half an hour, yet that's probably far more dangerous. Comment?"

Then my roommate talked me out of it by pointing out the simple fact that cops don't make the laws. I yelled at him and threatened to slice off his fingers, but he was right. So who could I interview instead? Governor Kitzhaber would not return phone calls, and the Oregon Supreme Court cut my interview short when I asked if any of them kept anything kinky under their robes. One justice did later confide, on condition of anonymity, that he wore floral-patterned lingerie.

You know what else I hate? Vegetarians. Yes, I'm such a dick that I hate people based on what they eat. A lot of vegetarians like to call meat "dead animal," apparently to make it less appetizing. I call it dead animal," too, as slobber drips down my chin and I sink my incisors in to rip off another steaming chunk.

Yes, incisors, an excellent argument against vegetarianism. Eating meat is an instinct, nay, a duty, if we are to live up to our evolutionary heritage. Not eating meat is a choice. And the sight of a barbecuing garden burger, by the way, nauseates my soul.

Many vegetarians associate their choice in some twisted way with the "cute little otter" brand of environmentalism. They think it is morally wrong to eat another critter. Listen, bran-shitter, just watch the Discovery Channel for about twenty minutes. I woke up this morning, still drunk, and that was on the TV. For about three hours, it was nothing but footage of cheetahs running down gazelles and clamping on their throats to suffocate them. Great stuff, at least as good as the Bulls game. These idiots really think we humans are above that? We're the scum of the earth! Tell me one thing we've got over cheetahs!

Anyway, some vegetarians don't eat dead critters because of the reprehensible conditions farm animals are kept in. No matter that they are born for breed and slaughter; these creatures deserve a decent living. Although I like my veal tender as Grandma's gums, I kind of sympathize with this line of thinking. So waht these people should do, rather than giving up the taste of juicy baby-back ribs and the pungent smoke of bacon frying in the morning, is hunt for their food.

You heard me. Don't waste your life chewing on root marm and rice. If you want humane treatment for whatever lurks under the deep-fry batter then go out and hunt. For what existence is more humane for a chunk of meat than to live in complete freedom, in its natural habitat, every day of its life up until the instant when it gets a bullet in the head?

I could hate stuff all night, but I'll go blind from this computer screen. Goodnight.

Dan Atkinson, a freshman majoring in Journalism, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator