Saturday, February 4, 2012

I Have No Idea What I Am Talking About. Which Has Never Stopped Me So Far.

Mr. Moon has gone back to Monticello for more set work. I mean- this is just awesome! And bless his heart!
I feel sort of guilty but that's my default emotion so what the hell?

All right. I want to ask a question- if the state of Florida is so damn worried about the money it takes to run the prisons that they're going to privatize them, why don't they do something even smarter like let all the pot-offenders out?
I'm just having some very deep questions in my heart about prisons to begin with. I mean, sure, there are people who really need to be separated from the rest of society. Yep. I'll buy that. Child abusers. Rapists. Serial killers. Bernie Madoff.
Oh yeah. Can't have them running around.

But there are so many people in prison for things like pot and other non-victim-related crimes and why? Why the hell should the damn state care whether or not people smoke pot or sell pot or grow pot? Man, you can hardly stop that stuff from growing. Not that I'd know anything about that personally. Of course.
According to the NORML website, the US spends over a billion dollars a year on imprisoning people for marijuana-related offenses.
That's a bullshit waste of money if you ask me.
Well, no one asked me.

I don't know. Prisons are just completely a mystery to me. Doesn't seem to me that they do much good at rehabilitation. They let weirdo Christians into them to have Bible classes. That alone is bizarre. I knew a guy who did those Bible classes and his idea of good literature was The Left Behind series. Really? I wonder if I was in prison if I would become born-again out of sheer boredom. Maybe. Especially if it took some time off my stay with the state. Or, the company who was running the prison. That just seems wrong to me- to have COMPANIES running prisons. I mean, the more "customers" they have, the better, right? Won't this lead to at least some subtle push for more arrests? I'm not even going to go into the whole horrible situation wherein something like 10% of black males face jail time at some point in their lives for doing things that white people do all the time who DON'T go to jail.
Nah. Why talk about that?
And I SURE don't want to talk about the War On Drugs and what a great thing for our country that's been. And how successful.


Now speaking of the Rapture (and you know I do love to speak of the Rapture), when I was in Mexico I saw a pair of smallish sandals on a sidewalk arranged so perfectly that it looked as if whoever had been in them had just suddenly arisen out of them. I wondered what it would be like if the Rapture happened and so few qualified to be raptured (I just love that word) that no one noticed. Like maybe four people in the whole world just suddenly went missing.
Haha!

Damn. I might as well talk about nuclear physics now because I don't really know anything about THAT subject either.

Well, here's something I DO know for sure and that's the fact that my buckeye is leafing out.

This perhaps faux Spring just has me in a tizzy. I did not plant one damn pansy this winter. And now it's about time for the impatiens. My pots where these things go are empty and sad-looking. Should I go buy some pansies and plant them and then replace them in a few weeks or just leave them empty? I don't know. I feel like I should be planting something. My salad greens in the garden are bolting already. That's ridiculous! It's only February 4th.

I think I'll go to town and hit the library and maybe a cheap plant outlet. I can't allow myself to go to any of the nurseries yet. That would end up being expensive.
I am SO pissed that Target shut down their gardening sections here. Did they all? I loved their gardening section. It was so pleasant and I always found cool plants for cheap. Little surprises and lovely begonias. Remember when I was obsessed with begonias? I think that was a grandchild-substitute thing. Then I got a real grandchild and now most of my begonias are dead.
Too bad this doesn't work with small dogs.
Anyway, you can still get made-in-China garden gnomes at Target and I have nothing against made-in-China garden gnomes but garden gnomes, no matter where they are made are pathetic without plants to watch over.

Okay. I've rambled enough.

See you at the Mockingbird tonight?

As Owen would say, "Maybe!"

Love...Ms. Moon

20 comments:

  1. Ms. Moon, I watched a documentary about the privatization of prisons and it was disgusting. It is Big Business, with cheap labor. They fish farm, make leather goods, manufacture chemicals, you name it - for labor that gets paid pennies per hour, which gives them a huge price advantage which is driving traditional businesses into bankruptcy. Imprisoning minor offenders ensures a constant labor pool. It's all so very very broken. But I can't think about that today, I instead will think of other lovely things, like garden gnomes, even if they are made in China, and our strange warm winter - they called it Junuary here, which has been delightful, although confusing to the trees and plants, and your set and play and character coming together.
    Have a wonderful day.

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  2. You DO know what you're talking about! We've always been the most-incarcerating place in the world, but in the last 30 years or so it's really become a huge crisis. Even things like the eternal disenfranchisement of all the people after they've served their time - I have problems with that.

    I'm going to have to work to do something about this!

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  3. I can't speak for Targets everywhere, but the garden center at my Target is gone. I miss it too.

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  4. I think you should run for President.

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  5. 1. "I wonder if I was in prison if I would become born-again out of sheer boredom. Maybe." Spit coffee all over my keyboard. Thanks.

    2. "I'm not even going to go into the whole horrible situation wherein something like 10% of black males face jail time at some point in their lives for doing things that white people do all the time who DON'T go to jail." Let's also not go into the fact that more black males are in prison than college. That's just awesome! (insert fake-ass smile here with thumbs up)

    3. "I am SO pissed that Target shut down their gardening sections here. Did they all?" As the ambassador for all things Target, Tar-ghey, and Target Couture, I am realizing that short of a few crappy looking poinsettias during the holidays there aren't any garden sections in any of my Targets. And here in Atlanta, we have a slew of Targets. Even a two story one.

    Love your randoms. Yawning and curling up on your porch swing. And now, a nap.

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  6. I adore these posts. I wish that I lived down the street from you and could talk to you like this every single morning. Really, it just gets me going in the best of ways. And every time I pass the boarded up garden section of Target, I get pissed because I despise Home Depot.

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  7. Mel- Well, if it's disgusting and Big Business, you know that Governor Prick Scott is all over it like white on rice. Which he is.
    He could mess up the prettiest spring day in history, that fuck.

    NOLA- This is your mission. Should you choose to accept it...

    Stephanie- It was perfect for people like us. Damn. Why'd they DO that?

    21K- It'll never, ever get that cold in hell.

    gradydoctor- That's about the only way I'd get born again and you know it. As to the black males in jail- yeah. The US of A's dirty little bullshit secret. A two-story Target? What the what?

    Elizabeth- I can't hate Home Depot because they employee one of my brothers but what the hell? He hates them too to tell you the truth.
    You DO live right down the street. In my mind.

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  8. We have a two story Target in DC too. If you want to go up or down the escalator, you put your cart in this cart escalator beside you, and it just rides up with you. I just stared at it for a full ten minutes the first time I saw it -- I felt like the biggest country bumpkin that ever lived.

    I read "Left Behind." One caveat...I was 12.

    I don't remember your obsession with begonias, but mostly because talking about plants sounds like nuclear physics to me and I know nothing about nothing.

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  9. I'm afraid the idea of rehabilitation for criminals is very much a thing of the past. Not only is there a way higher number of minorities relative to whites in prison, but a good share of them are parole violators -- people sent back to prison for getting drunk or doing drugs or not reporting in; not for new crimes. The system is such that they can end up doing most of their life in prison for violations of parole. Think of how much that costs. A little rehab might save a heck of a lot of money, and a few lives.

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  10. Ms Moon, talk about breaking it DOWN. this is the whole shit right here. you hit every nail bang on the head. They need to just legalize pot and tax the shit out of it and that's fix the budget crisis right fine. or it would help, but then we would have all that free privatized labor in jails anymore, so no chance.

    i'd vote for you any day. you should run for office. not kidding either. (even if my wv is "wine")

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  11. forgive typos! that should be "we wouldn't have all that free privatized labor..." etc.

    drinking too much of that wine.

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  12. Heh, small dogs :)

    Finland is the place to look - shorter and fewer prison sentences, and significantly lower crime. I can't find a good snappy article on it though. http://newpol.org/node/52

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  13. I'll drink to your Pot Plan.

    There's a new novel about the Rapture called The Leftovers.

    Gosh, don't you wonder what happened to those Target garden gnomes. Where'd they go?

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  14. SJ- They have an escalator for carts at the Mega in Cozumel, too! Man, I still don't trust that thing.

    Rubye Jack- Yeah. It's sort of a continuously-self-feeding organism, isn't it? So fucked up.

    Angella- My son calls prisons slavery. He is right. If they legalize pot I hope they don't take away the option of growing your own. That would be awfully stupid.

    Jo- Those Scandinavians are like super-incredibly decent, aren't they?

    Denise- That would be me! A Leftover! Yum!
    Maybe the garden gnomes all got gigs with Travelocity.

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  15. How can they privatize prisons? How will that save the state money? How about turning them into work houses/schools so they can learn a trade and become productive. They can pay a little of their future earnings back into the system in gratitude. (sure)

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  16. incarceration is the American way and if we keep going at this rate the majority of our population willed be in jail.

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  17. Ah Ms Moon, oh to see you at the Mockingbird. As for prisons, I'm with you here. Thy seem such strange and unhelpful places, a waste of human potential, however much they're intended as a deterrent against further criminal activity. There must be a better way.

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  18. My cousin who is in the legislature in Virginia tried to get a bill passed to decriminalize marijuana there. Of course, it did not pass. But he also thought that it was a colossal waste of money to incarcerate people for smoking/growing pot.

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  19. Oh no another mission! Nooooo!! :)

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  20. I could not agree MORE about the pot thing. American public policy is so crazy when it comes to pot. In fact I tend to think legalization is the way to go with most drugs, to drag these underworld criminal producers and distributors up into the sunshine where they can pay taxes like the rest of us. And, hopefully, stop killing each other.

    Laughed out loud at the idea of four people being raptured!!!

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