Reefer Madness, Part Three: Bowls and bowls of code enforcement.

Last night, I fortified myself with Elector and began answering the questions someone double-bag posted at another location. By answering here rather than there, troglodyte nation has to implicitly admit to reading New Albany's most viewed blog in order to continue their anonymous character assassinations.

I haven't had this much fun since 1966, when code enforcement in New Albany was suspended indefinitely.

3. Why do you tolerate the excuses about the lack of code enforcement?

A better question would be this: Why do any of us tolerate it?

And: Why have so any of us tolerated it for so very, very long?

The absence of code enforcement is a New Albanian civic malady that stretches so far back into the mists of time that it predates virtually all of us. Can any administration in living memory claim to have been pro-active in enforcement? Can any council during the same time span claim to have provided City Hall with the means, both monetary and politically, to pursue meaningful code enforcement?

Larry Kochert accomplished next to nothing during his sad career of grandstanding and ward-heeling, but he leaves us with an axiom that succinctly explains everything we need to know: An ordinance enforced may well become a vote lost. The implications are obvious. All local politicians over a period of decades have been complicit in sabotaging code enforcement, because they must retain the ability to make politically-based exceptions based on their own needs of the moment, rather than entrust a politically-neutral enforcement regime to pursue what is lawful.

They’ve rationalized this by saying to themselves, hmm, codes aren’t really laws in the sense of prioritization, and the slum lord down the streets provides votes, and more than a few New Albanians have tolerated it, so, what the hell. That's politics, right?

Unfortunately, yes.

Do I think the current England administration is doing the best job it could to promote code enforcement? No.

Is the current city council providing any assistance at all in making code enforcement a front burner issue? No.

It’s institutional, perhaps even genetic, and while none of this absolves City Hall, the worst culprit in all of local political “culture” (as loose a term as one might use) is your beloved Steve Price, whose obscene petulance at the rental property registration meeting last year was just as noteworthy as my own better remembered example at the recent council meeting.

Code enforcement? It’s a two-way street, and now, let’s remember the words of Neil Young: “Why don’t we roll another number for the road?”

Reefer Madness, Part Two: Financials and the need for aphrodisiacs in the gray bar hotel.

As noted previously, I have been asked by Lt. McGrowroom of the Potty Police to answer questions pertaining to toleration, numerology and certain other local bowel movements, and ever the gracious host, I’ll be posting these thoughts here on my blog, not at the location where they were first asked. That's because it's just the way I am.

2. Why do you not insist the Council be given their monthly printouts of the financials (as required by law) so they can do their job?

For those just tuning in, the “financials” are holy canonical scrolls provided to Adam and Eve before the tragic fall. What the occupants of the Garden of Eden didn’t grasp amid the bedlam (and crazed sex) produced by drinking the fermented apple juice proffered by the serpent (a copperhead snake, no doubt) is that those in possession of the financials are in a position to control the lifeblood of civil society, and since civil society is the domain of knowledge, art, culture, learning and a guaranteed monthly allotment of lottery tickets, to reduce the life of every citizen to that of a number tattooed on their arms.

The exact amount they paid in, and the exact amount they get back, and if there’s a way to send the financials to Wal-Mart instead, well, that’s even better, because then the scrolls can be transported in an ox cart down unpaved streets to the nearest helipad for transport to Beijing, and even cheaper plastic trinkets for Christmas.

If the council is not getting their financials, perhaps the members should appeal to the ordinance enforcement officials they refuse to empower and ask with all due Confucian polite detachment that the numbers be handed over. If they haven’t done so yet, then I’m uncertain as to whether a mere Publican can make the difference, but I’m willing to insist: Please, give them the numerical Viagra to make a difference in our lives, amen, thank you, and LOL.

Reefer Madness, Part One: He's out to get you.

I have been asked by a hooded, passive/aggressive denizen of the netherworld to answer questions pertaining to tolerating certain local conditions, and I fully intend to comply. In the coming days, I’ll post my thoughts here on my blog, not at the location where they were first asked, because doing so is the best way to explicate the fundamental senselessness of the process, and this futility is crucial for comprehending the mindset therein.

I’ll do this clause by clause, at least until I grow bored, or a plea agreement is copped – whichever comes first.

1. We know it is neither healthy, wealthy nor wise to criticize Mayor England. We understand that.

You understand what you choose to understand, just like me, and just like anyone else. Perception is situational. We see the world from self-chosen vantage points, and depending on the foliage and the fog, sometimes we see very little of the actual landscape.

Furthermore, there are times when the haze comes not from without, but from within, and no manner of rote repetitions corresponding to the matrix of an abacus that never really existed can change the plain fact that paranoia truly is the great destroyer.

You’re free to feel that way, and I don’t doubt how reality might sometimes seem to be configured out there amid the dark shadows of guilt, failure and substance abuse, but kindly (thank you, god bless) refrain from assuming that your own paranoid fantasies apply to me, to my cohort, or to the world as it is, as opposed to as it seems to be. In the absence of evidence – in the absence of facts – that’s pure narcissism.

Why is it that the space aliens always come for the insignificant, meaningless people whose squandered lives attest to nothing of value to these supposedly superior life forms? Shouldn’t the little green galaxians aim higher, for the human life forms that actually might be of benefit to them? Is it because they possess a cosmic sense of humor, deigning to wreak havoc in the addled brains of the damaged? Or, did the intergalactic Zagat guide somehow send them astray?

In other words, what I say or do not say has no bearing on a fear that this mayor or any other is going to step into a phone booth and emerge as Don Vito Corleone.

Next? Maybe tomorrow.