Drug policy out to be a bit more sane. I have a suggestion for all future drug policy. Place this on the ballot next election:

Q. Do you think that people who have smoked crack are better off for having done so?

   ( ) yes ( ) no

Q. Do you think that people who have injected heroin are better off for having done so?

   ( ) yes ( ) no

Q. Do you think that people who have smoked weed are better off for having done so?

   ( ) yes ( ) no

Q. Do you think that people who have snorted coke are better off for having done so?

   ( ) yes ( ) no

Q. Do you think that people who have smoked cigarettes are better off for having done so?

   ( ) yes ( ) no

Then you don't outlaw ANYTHING. You just tax it. The bigger an asshole it's expected to make you, the bigger the tax. Ok, now everyone can smoke weed because it's dirt cheap but it's still considered a beat drug, a ghetto drug because anyone can afford it. The middle class spends all their time trying to be the upper class who can afford the asshole chemicals. They can have all they want.

Good. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the stop.

Watched the meteor shower while damned near incapactitated, chatting with a friend at his new place. How to make a surfboard, the relative power of some 1200cc motorcycle sitting in his living room, Cranston customers ...it was basically themeatic musical chairs for three, four hours.

Got back on the bike, headed home. Fuck, front tyre feels like a jelly donut. Bike is steering like a fat kid walks. I'm riding on a road that has no cars on it. Not one. Three AM and I'm slurring down this abandoned, fully moon-lit road, silent as death, no lights, twenty-five miles per hour.

The following is precisely what went through my head roughly 45 minutes ago while on the way home in the dark:

Why is that shadow so much darker than the others? ...that can't be what it is... Oh man -- it's another dead fishercat. This one is awful small though. Gr, no light. I want to check it out, make sure it isn't slowly dying in traffic. How the hell am I going to do that without risking it panicking, clawing me. Dude, you're blazed, you do NOT want to have to call an ambulance. Go home.

Lessee if I can make out a stick, something at least a little bit long so I can prod it and see if there is a response. ... It's limp, not at all rigid, and it's not a fisher cat. It's a neighborhood housecat. No collar.

Maybe brush it with some of the leaves on the stick, try to provoke a reaction.

Nothing.

I nip behind it's head with thumb and forefinger, carrying it with the other hand and remove it from the road. I place it on the edge of a garden and feel its side. It's warm and there is no heartbeat at all, not even so much as a twitch, and it isn't a fishercat. It's a neighborhood housecat. No collar.

The temperature outside is too low to account for the heat.

At this point I wondered if it died just before I arrived or if it was dying right then. And, as dumb as it sounds, who expected the cat to come around tomorrow.

Why does this shit always happen to me... ... DO NOT even THINK of calling 911 when you're here in your current (*cough) configuration.

I take out my phone, unlock the keypad.

There's a cat that's been run over to within an inch of it's life, you're calling 911. Just hit 911, don't think about it, hit 911 and send. Once you do you know you can't hang up, so...

[ SEND ]

I told them what I found. The dispatcher listened. Politely noted that the cat was probably dead. Which was a seaside, costal resort town way of saying "either it's going to die or it isn't, and which ever of those happens is going to be without the town's intervention." When you shorten the bitstream, you lose resolution. Though the inverse isn't true, is it?

Something I should keep in mind.

The friend I visited is on the oh-crap-this-is-the-end (possibly) portion of his relationship with a girl *I* am also friends with. In fact I met them both by going to their shop so they're both pretty equal in respect to my friendship with either. He's accused of cheating on her. WITH one of his employees BY another employee. Huh.

All he has EVER talked about is pin-thin girls. Rail thin. So thin you can see their ribs thin. And the girl he's being accused of getting with is ...not thin. Not huge, not even large, but not even in the same ballpark as "thin." That's one point.

The second is he and I have discussed subjects which are not usually broached this openly after only knowing someone for a month or two.
This guy will admit to a severe character flaw just as readily as he'd scratch his ass but he was adamant that he never had any more-than-friend contact with the girl.

But who knows. Maybe he's a pathologial liar. I'm lousy at judging character so I don't even try. A friend recently recruited me to lie to his girlfriend on his behalf without being told the little detail about it being bullshit. So I'm reluctant to vouch for anything I cannot verify firsthand.

And if that person is reading this, no, this isn't a dig at you. I'm just in a very similar position again so it bears repeating on a contextual level.

So in the morning the cat will be found. It'll be found lying down on a wooden berm bordering the kind of garden you get when you pay someone else to make you one. I figured it was better than the results if I'd left it in the road. Who knows, maybe the owner will be the one to find it, or be notifed by a neighbor who knows who it belongs to.

Tank and Ruby are about the two greatest cats ever. Can't even imagine them getting hit by a car.