I had a crappy day and a crappier evening, fighting with a crappy job I have put off for well over a year (clearing the curb, where dirt accumulates and weeds grow and the neighbors look at you crosswise if you don't clear it and even more crosswise if you pick out the weeds and sweep the gravelly stuff into the street and then -- then, dammit, when you are chivvied into doing the right thing and sweeping it up, it is almost impossible to parcel the stuff out in small enough lots that the bags you sweep it into don't break) and I'm short of temper and filled with loathing for my fellowman (srsly, if all the rest of you would just leave or just vote yourselves into your own damnable gray dystopian paradisease, I'd be fine for decades, quite fine and unlike Burgess Meredith, I have multiple spare eyeglasses).
So of course, today we find out yet another IMPD officer got nabbed for DUI. I'm well over that sack of bastards, too; about the only way I might regain even a smidgen of respect for them would be if their drunkards would either start having the grace to eat their gun after being bonded out or started getting themselves shot while resisting arrest beforehand and neither one is gonna happen. Hell, you can't even get them to an AA meeting or in front of the TV cameras admitting they have gone wrong and pledging Temperance. The department itself has clearly got all the self-respect and self-discipline of a town drunk and no matter how many times it wakes up in the gutter, reeking of stale booze and staler urine, not a single thing will change. It's a damn pity, it was as good a police department as any, with Marion County Sheriff's Department running neck-and-neck, and then they had to go and combine 'em and suddenly no one was watching the watchmen, especially at the bars and liquor stores.
Feh. Today would sour anyone's beer, even those of us who don't drink it.
(Update: well, here's a bandaid for a sucking chest wound.)
Nice reference to a great Twighlight Zone episode.
ReplyDeleteMost cities have a private foundation already - they used to be called Employee Assistance Programs but have a bunch of names now. Sounds like the cop bosses want their impaired officers to go to treatment/rehab where they will only mingle with other cops, That's a guaranteed plan for failure.
ReplyDeletestay safe.
I long for a day when there are giant space station cities, and most of Earth's populace have fled to them. And then I can live in peace here on Earth with my friends and family.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 70's I had one of the Navy corpsmen explain to me what they did to dry out us Marines that liked their beer a little too much. 6 weeks in the naval hospital, fed a steady diet of orange juice and bologna sandwiches. Every other day someone would escort you to the mess hall for whatever meal you chose. At week 5, they gave you a pill that would react with the smallest amount of alcohol and give you liberty. Woe be to those that took a drink. That was a ambulance ride back to the hospital and a additional 3 weeks added on. If you malfunctioned a second time, it was a Courts Martial that usually involved a stiff fine, a reduction in rank and confinement.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't explain all of that too me because of curiosity. I did drink quite a bit of beer and whiskey back then. I went close to 20 years without a drink. Now, if I drink 2 beers a year I'm doing something.