been reading the newspaper again

It's just too hard to read the paper some days. Never mind that the world is full of violence and all that depressing shit. Then, you have to cope with the inane.

Lewis Black decries the startling lack of common sense in the world. (Aside: I think Lewis Black is brilliant. Not just about the common sense thing, either.)

Here's a common, common senseless story from the Chronicle.

Police officers were being accused of not issuing tickets to drivers speeding 5-10 mph over the limit. The inference was that the cops routinely chose to ignore the letter of the law. A police spokesman vehemently denied that this was policy.

First of all, why the hell is this in the paper?

Second of all, is this really a surprise? Of course they don't have a written policy on this! Yet, just what do you think would happen if they started pulling people over for driving 5 miles over the speed limit? Traffic cops would by pulling over 10 cars at a time and the ridiculously backed-up court system would have a judicial aneurysm.

These kind of journalistic debates leave me sputtering incoherently. Idiots.

So this geriatric crossing guard is asked to pee in a cup. No, not a bad joke. Yet another story from the news. Seems this retired old guy has been a crossing guard at a local school for many years. A woman comes up to him (one presumes while he is at his station, clad in his regulation reflective vest) with cup in hand and tells him he has to pee in it. I don't know all the logistics but the septugenarian refuses. And he is fired.

HISD says that its policy mandates firing any employee for refusing to submit to a drug test. This whole war on drugs thing is completely out of control. How would we feel if an employer had the right to scan our personal computers every couple of months to make sure we weren't looking at porn or reading anything subversive or downloading rap or marijuana recipes. For christsake, why isn't anyone objecting? Maybe they have and we just can't hear them over the din of the righteous. The civil liberatarians must be frantically running from issue to issue, so rich is the landscape with violations.

As a graphic designer, I often rant at the stupidity of drug testing. In my job, I'm not likely to drop a crate of cement or drive into a pylon while using my little mouse to remove an eyecatching pimple off the CEO's face in Photoshop.

It's like this. You shouldn't go to work stoned or drunk because your employer is paying you to do a job. Not paying the incapacitated you. Which means you shouldn't go into work sober and hung over or sleep deprived and bitchy, either. Of course, they can't test for sleepiness in the workplace yet. Just wait until the day that your job is dependent on a portable EEG machine rolled from cubicle to cubicle. Bottom line is what you do on your own time is your own damn business.