Unfortunate Laws Part Nine
Here is part seven of state laws that some might find peculiar. Parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight precede this feature. Today will will look at Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. These regulations are borrowed from Bored. This is the last installment in the series. Washington “It shall be unlawful for a candidate for office or for nomination thereto whose name appears upon the ballot at any election to give to or purchase for another person, not a member of his or her family, any liquor in or upon any premises licensed by the state for the sale of any such liquor by the drink during the hours that the polls are open on the day of such election.” ~ A law to reduce crime states: “It is mandatory for a motorist with criminal intentions to stop at the city limits and telephone the chief of police as he is entering the town.” ~ All lollipops are banned. ~ All motor vehicles must be preceded by a man carrying a red flag (daytime) or a red lantern (nighttime) fifty feet in front of said vehicle. ~ An old Washington law sent duelists to jail for ten years, assuming they didn’t lose the duel. ~ A proposed Washington law protects sports referees from civil suit unless their actions were “willful, wanton, reckless, malicious or grossly negligent.” ~ Auburn: Men who deflower virgins, regardless of age or marital status, may face up to five years in jail. ~ A Washington state law offers the presumption that youngsters will read comic books. ~ Bremerton: You may not shuck peanuts on the street. ~ Everett: It is illegal to display a hypnotized or allegedly hypnotized person in a store window. ~ If the honey you are eating in Seattle is a blend of honey from or more types of flowers, it’s illegal for the honey to be labeled as having come from one type of flower. ~ In Electric City, WA, it is illegal to “keep[ ] or permit[ ] to remain, in any location . . . anything whatsoever in which flies or rats may breed or multiply.” ~ In Olympia, Wash., minors are prohibited from frequenting pool halls. ~ In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length. ~ In Spokane, Wash., it used to be illegal to interrupt a religious meeting by having a horse race. ~ In the state of Washington it’s illegal to catch a fish by throwing a rock at it. ~ In Washington state it’s illegal to sleep in an outhouse without the owner’s permission. ~ In Washington state it’s illegal to sell to minors comics that might incite them to violence or depraved or immoral acts. ~ In Washington it’s illegal to pretend you’re the child of a rich person and entitled to his estate. ~ In Washington, anyone under the age of 18 must have parental permission to throw a tear gas canister. ~ In Washington state, until quite recently, you could have been fined up to $500 for removing or defacing the label on a pillow. ~ It is illegal to paint polka dots on the American flag. ~ Lynden: Dancing and drinking may not occur at the same establishment. ~ People may not buy a mattress on Sunday. ~ Spokane: TV’s may not be bought on Sundays. ~ The state of Washington doesn’t allow marathon dancing–or marathon skipping, sliding, gliding, rolling or crawling. ~ Under the law of the state of Washington, any restroom with pay toilets has to have an equal number of free toilets. This law came to pass after the speaker of the state House of Representatives raced to an all-pay facility without a dime. ~ Waldron Island: No structure shall contain more than two toilets that use potable water for flushing. ~ Washington state doesn’t allow fake wrestling. ~ When two trains come to a crossing, neither shall go until the other has passed. ~ Wilbur: You may not ride an ugly horse. ~ You are not allowed to breast feed in public. ~ You need a license to sell condoms in Washington state. West Virginia ~ According to the state constitution, it is unlawful for anyone to own a red or a black flag. ~ A person may not hold public office if they have ever taken part in a duel. A person may be jailed for up to six months for making fun of someone who does not accept a challenge. ~ Doctors and dentists may not place a woman under anesthesia unless a third person is present. ~ Huntington: Firemen may not whistle or flirt at any woman passing a firehouse. It is legal to beat your wife so long as it is done in public on Sunday, on the courthouse steps. ~ If you wear a hat inside a theater, you may be fined. ~ In Alderson, West Virginia, it is illegal to walk a lion, tiger or leopard in the city limits, even it is on a leash. ~ In Nicholas County, W. Va., no member of the clergy is allowed to tell jokes or humerous stories from the pulpit during a church service. ~ In West Virginia it is illegal to dig for ginseng on your neighbor’s lawn without their permission. ~ In West Virginia, it is legal for one to take roadkill home for dinner ~ In West Virginia you cannot fly a red flag in front of your house if you are disappointed in your sherrif. ~ It is against the law for men to have sex with any animal over 40 pounds in weight. ~ It is illegal to put an ice cream cone in your pocket on Sundays. ~ It is illegal to snooze on a train. ~ It is illegal to spit on any sidewalk which women may walk down. ~ It is unlawful for chickens to lay eggs before 8AM and after 4PM. ~ No children may attend school with their breath smelling of “wild onions.” ~ When a railroad passes within 1 mile of a community of 100 or more people in it, they must build a station and stop there regularly to pick up and drop off passengers. ~ Whistling underwater is prohibited. Wisconsin ~ As people used to smuggle it in from Illinois, all yellow butter substitute is banned. ~ At one time, margarine was illegal. ~ A Wisconsin legislator in the 1970s proposed a law providing that no woman over 21 be required to divulge her age. If age information were required by law, women could use an alphabetic code: women in their ’20s would use ~ A Wisconsin legislator recently introduced a bill making it illegal to tattoo someone under the age of 18. He was quoted as saying, “I’m going to save the buttocks of a few juveniles.” ~ Butter substitutes are not allowed to be served in state prisons. ~ Car dealerships cannot sell cars on Sunday. ~ Cheese making requires a cheese maker’s license; Limburger cheese making requires a master cheese maker’s license. ~ Citizens may not murder their enemies. ~ Condoms were considered an obscene article and had to hidden behind the pharmacist’s counter~ In Connorsville, Wisconsin no man shall shoot off a gun while his female partner is having a sexual orgasm. ~ In St. Croix, women are not allowed to wear anything red in public. ~ In Wisconsin you are allowed to marry your house. ~ In Wisconsin, after 3:00 a.m., you have to send a rocket signal in the air after every mile you drive. ~ It is illegal to cut a woman’s hair. ~ It is illegal to kiss on a train. ~ It is illegal to wake a fireman when he is asleep. ~ Kenosha: No male is allowed to be in a state of arousal in public. ~ La Crosse: It is illegal to tie up your horse along Third Street (Now a major bar strip). It is illegal to display an unclothed mannequin in a store window. It is illegal to play checkers in public. You cannot “worry a squirrel.” ~ Milwaukee: An old ordinance forbids parking for over two hours unless a horse is tied to the car. It is against the law to play a flute and drums on the streets to attract attention. If one is thought of as offensive looking, it is illegal for him to be in public during the day. It is illegal to purchase or use Sparklers in the city, yet you can buy fully disassembled automatic machine guns. ~ Next time you start a riot in Wisconsin remember that it i illegal to use a laser pointer to do so. ~ Racine: It is illegal to wake a fireman when he is asleep. Women may not walk down a public street at night without being accompanied by a man. ~ State Law made it illegal to serve apple pie in public restaurants without cheese. ~ Whenever two trains meet at an intersection of said tracks, neither shall proceed until the other has. ~ Wisconsin law provides for a fine of $2 to $20 for anyone under age 17 caught jumping onto a railroad car while the train is in motion. ~ You must manually flush all urinals in a building. Wyoming ~ An ordinance in Newcastle specifically bans couples from having sex while standing inside a store’s walk-in meat freezer! ~ Cheyenne Citizens may not take showers on Wednesdays. ~ In Wyoming it is illegal to tattoo a horse with the intent of making it unrecognizable to its owner. ~ It is illegal for women to stand within five feet of a bar while drinking. ~ It is illegal to wear a hat that obstructs people’s view in a public theater or place of amusement. ~ Wyoming required that every inmate of the state’s training school for girls be issued crinoline bloomers. ~ You may not take a picture of a rabbit during the month of June.
Help Al Qaeda Succeed
There is some talk in the media about what are tastefully called drone strikes. Unmanned airplanes are piloted by remote control. The focus on a target, and fire a AGM-114 Hellfire II Missile. Often, a second strike is made, after rescuers come to the scene. When the dead are buried, there is sometimes a strike on the funeral.
This kind of warfare costs money. The Hellfire II Missile costs $40,000. The drones use lots of fuel, and require maintenance. For a broke government, this adds up.
The moving lips in Washington say that no civilians are killed by these attacks. The dead are labelled militants. Anyone speaking out against this can expect to be denounced by the government.
“More recently, on February 8, the Times reported the BIJ’s findings that the CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan “have repeatedly targeted rescuers who responded to the scene of a strike, as well as mourners at subsequent funerals.” But after highlighting BIJ’s report, the article then allowed a “senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity” to not just question the report’s findings, but to state: “One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help al Qaeda succeed.”
Code Pink has a few comments on why drones matter. “The difference with drones is that drones make these wars possible. From being able to wage them without even having to go to Congress, because according to the Administration’s definition of war, war is when you put your own soldiers’ lives at risk. And since we’re not doing that with drones, it’s not war, it doesn’t have to be agreed in Congress. It doesn’t even have to be open to the people. It can be carried out in total secrecy.
And as some people said in the conference, drones are the only way to wage some of these battles because of the issue of national sovereignty. You could never get away with the boots on the ground. And because, for example with the terrain in Yemen, you wouldn’t be able to do it any other way than with drones.”
The use of drone warfare has increased dramatically under BHO. This tactic is employed against populations in countries like Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. America is technically not at war with these countries.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. They are Union Soldiers, from the War Between the States. Drones were not used in this conflict.
The Lady In The Lake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKDw2hwi5I%5D
PG recently used a few hours of his life to read The Lady in the Lake . It is a story by Raymond Chandler. As you might expect, the central figure is Philip Marlowe. It is set in Southern California at the start of World War II.
Mr. Marlowe is hired by a wealthy man to find his no good wife. When Mr. Marlowe starts nosing around, bodies start to show up. Mr. Marlowe almost becomes one of the deceased. After a few plot twists, a meeting is held in a mountain cabin, and a finger is pointed at a suspect. This person storms out of the meeting, and dies.
This may not be the best plot ever. There are a few too many coincidences. One character is Mildred Haviland. First, she is the wife of a drunken caretaker who drowns. Then we learn she was the nurse/gf of a doctor who specializes in narcotics. This doctor lives across the street from a boyfriend of the rich man’s wife. A crooked policeman gets involved in the story. It turns out he was married to Mildred Haviland. After a while, you wonder just how small Los Angeles was in 1942.
You don’t read Mr. Chandler for the logical plots. You read him for the way he massages the language. Take this description of Chris Lavery, the ill fated lover of the runaway bride: “The man was a hefty dark handsome lad with fine shoulders and legs, sleek dark hair and white teeth. Six feet of a standard type of homewrecker. Arms to hold you close and all his brains in his face. He was holding a pair of dark glasses in his hand and smiling at the camera with a practised and easy smile.”
The story was made into a movie in 1947. Robert Montgomery played Mr. Marlowe. The text is available online. Pictures today are from the The Library of Congress.
Happy Birthday Mr. Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg would be 86 today, if nature had not made other plans in 1997. The son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg arrived, in Newark NJ, June 3,1926.
Allen Ginsberg had a part in many new age dramas, with a few musicals and comedies thrown in for good measure. Hippie, beatnik, gay, artist, peace promoter, Buddhist convert…these are a few of the labels. He became famous for being famous, well known to people who never read a word of his poems. Two of the more famous were howl and kaddish.
Howl became scandalous in 1956 when it was busted for obscenity. It is mild by today’s standards, but almost landed Mr. Ginsberg in prison. PG heard about howl in the early nineties, and looked high and low for a copy. He could not find one. Today on the internet, not only is the text widely available, there are recordings of Mr. Ginsberg reading his work. (Here is an updated version, Howl 2011.)
The original plan was to listen to Mr. Ginsberg read while editing photos. PG was going to listen to the words, and think of something to say while listening to the bard. About the seventeenth time Mr. Ginsberg shouted “Moloch”, the plan began to fall apart.
The next poem was Kaddish. This is about Naomi Ginsberg, the mother of the poet, who evidently had some issues. This was tough for PG to listen to. The other night, PG had a disturbing dream about his own late mother. In this dream, a fearsome shouter came in wearing a black suit, which meant that he intended to do some scary shouting. PG went into another room, where his recently deceased mother was laying on a table.
In the aftermath of his mother’s passing, PG worked closely with an aggressive Jesus worshiper, who enjoyed humiliation for Jesus. This person declared war on PG, when asked to turn his radio down. PG feels like Jesus let him down, and finds it difficult to forgive the so called son of G-d.
1956 was the year of the obscenity trial for howl. This took place on the other side of america, from the Brookhaven where PG was two years old. This was the year when his brother was born, the year when the Georgia legislature voted in a new flag, for whatever reason. In 1955, President Eisenhower had a heart attack. Many wondered if it was a good idea to have Richard Nixon as the vice president.
Finally, PG could stand no more of that voice. The player was turned off, the files stored on an external hard drive, never to be heard again. PG just is not a poetry person. The pictures, edited while listening to Allen Ginsberg in performance, are from the “Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” The text above is a repost.
The Eleven Rules
You have probably heard about “The speech Bill Gates gave at a High School”. PG saw an image on facebook, and the BS detector went off. When did he make the speech? What high school, in what location? Was this the same speech we heard about a few years ago, when Microsoft was being sued for antitrust violations? Are these questions fair? Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!
These days, the answer is easy to find. Snopes is a friend of Mr. Google. The authoritative word is “misappropriated”. Bill Gates did not make a speech to a high school. Nor did Kurt Vonnegut. The eleven rules came from a newspaper column written by Charles J. Sykes. The column was published in the San Diego Union Tribune on September 19, 1996. The fourteen rules in that column were taken from a book Mr, Sykes wrote, 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education.
“Charles J. Sykes is senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and a talk show host at WTMJ radio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” “The Institute is guided by a belief that competitive free markets, limited government, private initiative, and personal responsibility are essential to our democratic way of life.” Mr. Sykes is probably not a liberal.
The eleven rules have been floating from one email address to another since the Clinton administration. Ann Landers has printed them several times. They have been the rest of the story for Paul Harvey. “The prize for misattribution, however, has to go to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, which published the list twice in the space of three weeks in mid-2000, the first time crediting it to “Duluth state Rep. Brooks Coleman of Duluth,” and the second time to Bill Gates.” The footnotes say “Brack, Elliott. “Legislator Offers Teens No-Nonsense Advice.” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 14 June 2000 (p. J3).” and ” “Advice from the Experts.” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 2 July 2000 (p. R1).”
The book has fifty rules. The column has fourteen. These are the three rules left out of the emails.
Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for “expressing yourself” with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You’re welcome.
Maybe someone should take a critical look at these rules. If you get tired, and think this is negative, then you are free to skip ahead and look at the pictures, from The Library of Congress. The LOC is part of the big government in Washington. It is an very valuable resource. 
Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.
No argument here. This is a catch 22 whenever you find a contradiction in the rest of the rules.
Rule No. 2: The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)
If you start to feel good about yourself, don’t worry. Between the church, radio talk shows, and back stabbing co workers, someone is sure to bring you down.
Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won’t make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.
Conservative rules for living do not age well. Today, everybody eating solid food has a cell phone.
Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.
This is the rule that set off the BS detector. In the “real world”, it is not what you produce that counts. It is how well you kiss ass. If the boss is impressed by you, you can screw up from now until bankruptcy. Ditto if you are a minority, and the company is recovering from a lawsuit. LINF
Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.
Your grandparents had a different word for your dark skinned co worker. Not all political correctness is bad.
Rule No. 6: It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it’s on your dime. Don’t whine about it, or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.
Fifty years ago, the parents of baby boomers said things like this. The younger generation is always going to hell, and somehow they manage to get it together. The baby boomers are the generation who was ordered to go to Vietnam and kill Asians. They said “hell no we won’t go”.
Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.
Your parents got to be boring by listening to motivational speeches.
Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t. In some schools, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone’s feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. (See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4.)
Teachers have a tough job. They are an easy target for criticism. Some of this whining is fair, even if life isn’t. Mr. Sykes has written several books lambasting the education system. There is a saying, those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Maybe this could be amended to say: those who can’t teach, whine about education.
Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we’re at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)
If you are the buddy of management, you sometimes take the afternoon off to play golf with a client. You go to conventions, while someone else works to produce. LINF
Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.
Life is not a motivational speech. Those after dinner platitudes are entertaining, and make you feel good about yourself. They have little to do with real life.
Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
One more time, LINF. Regarding Rule No. 14:, this sounds like privilege speaking. If parents are human, they are possibly doing some very dirty things to their kids. This includes abusive religion, alcoholism, drug abuse, and conservative politics. The other kids can be pretty rough. Your preacher says you are going to hell. Since the real world does not care about your self esteem, you may be tempted to end your life. A smarmy list of rules is probably not going to help.
When writing a blog post, go ahead and publish before you read the one star reviews. There is a reply, from a teacher, about the list of eleven. The title is A teacher’s response to a mean man. This post is more thoughtful than the collection of one liners above. The post you are reading is already too long. Follow the link to read something better.
There is one review that needs to be shared. (This is from the amazon page for the book, 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education.)
And I thought liberals were condescending?!, Watujel (San Antonio, Texas) October 12, 2007
The reason you don’t get this stuff in school is because any savvy teacher knows that trying to motivate 30 restless kids with Sykes’ hoary platitudes and nagging tone will inevitably have the opposite effect. Everything’s here in cliched condescension except for maybe “back in MY DAY”
Rule number one of imparting advice to anyone of any age – gain their trust first. If you blunder in, wagging your finger as Sykes does, you’ll just get a backlash. It’s actually worse than keeping your trap shut.
Sykes should try his material on a classroom of average eighth-graders and see if he can get them to do anything close to what he intends.
Sykes expresses resentment toward teachers for getting tenure and suggests that this is not part of the “real world.” I envy teachers’ schedules (but not their jobs) as well, but just because you resent these perks doesn’t mean you can simply write them out of the “real world” unless you’re in serious denial. Without tenure, how many people would choose to become teachers what with so many other options available? That’s the real world.
It’s ironic that he claims to want to instill respect for authority but encourages his young readers to devalue what they’re learning from those who are acting in loco parentis. Teachers don’t create the curriculum. Changes in curricula are driven by administrators and education colleges. Blaming teachers for teaching too much self-esteem doesn’t make any more sense than blaming cops for giving illegal immigrants a pass. In both cases, the priorities are set elsewhere.
In one rule, he complains that kids are too materialistic. Then in another one, he complains about their idealism. Frankly, the Millennial Generation works hard, serves its country, and in general is the most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I’ve seen in quite a while. They’ve really done their best to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of a generation of broken homes left by Sykes’ fellow Baby Boomers. But not many of them are going to respond to something this unfocused and mediocre.
Chamblee54 
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