2001-02-23 - 986021454

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Blueberries".

I witnessed an idiot experience the karmic boomerang yesterday, instantaneously.

It was a wonderful experience. I clapped and cheered.

It was snowing, and I was returning from the grocery store (for vegetables to make chili, NOT the DC-area panic staples of milk, toilet paper, or eggs). I was inching along at 15 mph or so. I stopped, well in advance, for a red light, and someone in the next lane ran the light.

"Fucker," I thought to myself. I usually try to be good about red-light running. And it was SNOWING, for godsakes. The person was going too fast through the light and showed no signs of skidding, so I doubt they were merely unable to stop due to snow -- I'm almost certain they were running it.

Then I noticed there was a cop in the oncoming traffic, waiting to make a left. This person had run a red light, in the snow, IN FRONT OF A COP.

The cop did a U-turn, and then I checked back with the scofflaw and was surprised (in retrospect, I shouldn't have been) to see him fishtailing, and finally turning sideways to smash into a TRUCK. Like, a moving-type truck. Big monstrous thing.

The whole side of the car was smashed, and the back of the truck appeared to be unscathed. I really wanted to pull into the gas station and gawk, but I was afraid the driver had been injured and didn't want to see that.

That was immensely satisfying. Run a red light, get seen by a cop, wreck your own car but leave the truck intact. Gotta love it.

Oddly enough, we experienced a cop-on-hand-when-person-breaks-law thing on the same street when we first moved to the area. We were at a red light, and a driver in a beat-up POS started drifting into the middle of the intersection. He was apparently quite drunk, since he didn't even realize he was drifting.

Two lanes over from us, about 3 cars back, was a cop talking animatedly with her partner about something. They didn't even SEE the drifter.

Poindexter rolled down the window, honked, and started shrieking to get the cops' attention. "There's a drunk guy over there!" he yelled. "Where?" they said, "RIGHT OVER THERE, SITTING IN THE INTERSECTION!"

They put their lights on and got behind him, and he was just drifting along at about 5mph. He didn't notice the lights. Finally one of the cops had to get out and run alongside his car to get his attention. He managed to stop the car, but seemed to have no idea what was going on.

We moved on. Upon returning from our errand, we saw the guy pulled over, standing on the sidewalk and the cops trying to talk to him. He looked Vietnamese, and didn't seem to understand a word of English. They would say something to him, and he would shake his head and throw his arms up in the air like they were going to shoot him. Oddest thing.

As for my own current relationship with the karmic boomerang, you can draw your own conclusions from the following:

On my way home from work at about 11:30am, the snow had just started and was really bad, since there was no salt or sand on the roads yet.

A car about 3-4 car lengths away was slowing down, so I hit the brakes. Nothing happened, as far as the brakes were concerned. I started fishtailing and struggling with trying to get out of it, the car stalled, I pulled the emergency brake, and finally came to rest against a curb. I sat a minute to get my bearings, and looked in the mirror to see a carful of teenagers in a Volvo that said "SNOVO".

They were so close it looked like they were touching my bumper, but I hadn't felt anything. Someone got out of the Volvo, looked at the front of their car, and then ran back. I decided to just start the car and drive. Then I got panicky, stopped the car, ran back and asked if everything was okay. They were fine. Apparently the cars never did touch -- they were about two inches apart. Amazing.

I DO NOT LIKE POWER STEERING AND POWER BRAKES. When the car stalls, the brakes don't work anymore and turning becomes difficult. That is frightening. In a manual transmission, in emergencies, if you slam on the brakes and forget to push the clutch in as well, the car stalls and the brakes STOP WORKING.

In my Volkswagen, which I was not driving in the snow because I don't want the salt to turn it into a rustbucket, the brakes work equally well whether the car is running or not.

So, I went shopping because the roads didn't look too bad at the time (just wet, like rain). I needed stuff for the weekend.

I needed basil for one dish, since my basil plants have about had it, but Giant didn't have any. Neither did Magruder. Finally I decided Fresh Fields HAD to have basil, since it is the Store For People Who Drive Mercedes SUVs And Won't Touch Pesticide-Laden Foods With a Ten-Foot-Pole. Snooty people like that would demand fresh herbs.

Well, they did, but it was hydroponic basil, of all things, and was $3 a plant. Gack. HYDROPONIC! I spent the rest of the evening saying it out loud apropos of nothing. "HYDROPONIC!" and "I am Cornholio!", the latter of which was where my brain went after reading the "Frijoles" label on the cans of black beans. Frijoles, Cornholio, whatever.

Anyway. Since the things have roots, I'm hoping I can plant them in dirt and get my money's worth out of 'em.

Speaking of corn, holio or otherwise, there is an article in the NYTimes about 129th Street in Harlem in which a man is quoted.

This man gave his name as, and I am not making this up, "Pimp Daddy Corn Chips".

See for yourself if you don't believe me. Seventh paragraph.

This is going to be my brother's new nickname.

This business of those rich guys opposing a repeal of the death tax makes me insane. Yes, THEY don't need it to be repealed. But the reason for repealing the death tax is NOT to help rich people out, it's to help out middle-class people like the following, as described by Jonah Goldberg in his column today:

"Family farmers, small business owners, independent car dealers, mom and pop shops on nice pieces of real estate: These are the kinds of people who are unfairly penalized by the estate tax. When they die, their children are often forced to sell the business because they can't afford to pay the taxes on the "windfall." What makes this even more unfair is that the investments that went into the business and the assets in the estate were already taxed throughout the deceased's lifetime, both by capital gains taxes as well as income taxes.

(There's also an aspect that should appeal to liberals. There is a tragic shortfall of family wealth in the black community. If you want more black business, stop taxing them to death.)"

If your parents own a small family business, that business can be worth around a million dollars even if it only allows your parents to earn a more modest amount each year (there's overhead, paying employees, and, of course, taxes). If you inherit that business, you could be taxed based on the fact that the business is worth a million dollars. And you might not have that kind of money lying around, so you'd have to sell the business to pay the death tax. What if you were already working in the business and had hoped to take it over? You'd be, to use my one of my father's favorite expressions, "screwed".

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