#136 The Long Arc of the Law

A disturbing story came across the wires the other day. No, not the all mail election here in Thurston County. That’s how that news item came over the wire this year: Thurston county has decided to conduct an all mail election. Okay if you’re reading it. The difference in spelling between M-a-i-l and M-a-l-e is pretty obvious. But if you’re a D J reading it and a listener hearing it, well, let’s just say radio stations got a lot of calls about suffrage that day.
This story was about a urinating prison guard. Specifically, a prison guard from one of our neighboring cities who got into a fracas in the bar zone of Olympia and was incarcerated as a result. While he was in a holding cell, he unlimbered something other than his sidearm and proceeded to spray a computer, monitor, fax machine, and other hardware. Perhaps an example of the eternal struggle between Laptops and PCs.
An error in judgment to be sure; perhaps precipitated by too many brewskies, both on the psychological and physical level. Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances. Perhaps there were no facilities in the holding cell. Perhaps the corrections officer was nearsighted and had lost his glasses in the earlier scuffle. Perhaps to his fuzzy-visioned eyes the computer in question—could it have been one of those streamlined IMAC things—looked like a thundermug and even though he was, according to the article, a few feet away, his admittedly compromised judging capabilities, with perhaps a burst of urgency and/or pride, estimated that he could bridge the gap. The long arc of the law, as it were.
We only know for sure that the computer was damaged and that the whole system, now contaminated with bodily fluids, must, by state mandate, be replaced. And that’s a shame. File corruption, viruses, pop-ups and spam are bad enough. To have to replace your computer because someone has contaminated it with bodily fluids, I don’t think even Norton has come up with that kind of total PC protection. But they will by the next update. “In this ever-changing, dynamic, fluid, computer universe there is only one total PC (and PP) protection. Trust Norton.”
I feel sorry for this guy. The place where he works? Let’s just say they didn’t shower him with accolades. As you might imagine his prison employers used this as an excuse to let him go. His protests that he was, after all, in a holding cell fell on deaf ears. It was how he didn’t hold it that was the issue. And the issue was the issue as well.
If he does any hard time for this e-pis-ode he’ll be in hot water too. Imagine if you will, what it would be like to be cooped up in the same prison with the inmates you formerly guarded. I don’t care how drunk I get, that thought alone would be sobering. I wonder if he’ll run into that dental embezzler.
“What ya in for?”
“Embezzling a dentist office. How ‘bout you?”
“Urinating on a computer.”
“Think this’ll count against that three strikes you’re out thing, cause I already got a “Give em a Brake” and a “Click it or Ticket” on my record...”
“That’s nothing. Try a ‘Hose it, you Blows it’...”
America, ya gotta love it.