A "Parking License" Law is Needed

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Some people make their own spaces.

Silly Bugger Parking

There are two distinct skill sets necessary for being the operator of a motor vehicle. One is being able to make it go, stop and stay within the marked lanes while traveling from one place to another. The other set is the ability to park the vehicle in the designated spaces.


There ought to be two licences issued to people who want to operate a vehicle. There should be the Drivers License where they must read and know the laws and they must pass a proficiency test to prove they are capable of driving safely. The other license should be a Parking License.

Many parkers have no respect for fellow
parkers.

This guy was so far over the line that
he was in two spaces yet left just
enough room for a second car to
squeeze in.

Here is another person who can't
see well enough to park. Makes
you wonder about seeing well enough
to drive.

This trucker is just begging to be
 parked-in to that corner.

Many but not all of the photos shown here are people parking in Disability Permit Spots. They all have a permit or a plate to imply that they have the permission to park in these space. A survey conducted in MTA Commuter Train parking lots revealed that fully 25% of the users were using someone else's permit. What is not checked regularly is the ID card that is issued with all placards and plates that show to whom the permit was issued. During those "surveys" the Transit Police confiscated all bogusly used placards and issued violation citations. If the person chose to fight the ticket and could win they could have the permit back.

Most private property violations are ignored due to the Management not wanting to get into the quarrel and have to spend an time on the matter.

This guy really pissed me off because
that is my van he parked next to like that.

There are those people who should
understand the purpose of the
yellow lined space between spaces.
They don't.

Now this parker doesn't have a
"disability" to rely on for an explanation.
Just plain old rudeness.

Just plain and simple rudeness.

There is very little to do about the bad behaviors of people who drive cars and park like they are the only one that matters. More ticket issuance would do more to raise revenues than to change behaviors of the people who do silly bugger parking. One of the side effects of the Transit Police Officer checking every person's permit Id on a morning as they arrived to catch a train is that after a few people were caught and more people with bogus permits arrived, they just drove on by. At the end of the monitoring session the permit spaces were left have used. This condition persisted for a few days afterwards. The MTA did assign an officer to just sit in his car during the early morning hours and the results were the same. Half the spaces were unused.

This one was there when I went into
the Supermarket.

This one was there when I came
back out a few minutes later.

The logical conclusion is that at any time from 25 to 50% of the users of designated spaces are posers and liars. One can easily observe the people who use them and see that this is true. Hidden disabilities aside, there are a lot of P&Ls out there and people who are not competent to park much less drive a motor vehicle.

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Saving The Recruiters

Ask yourself this: If this Dynamic Trio are veterans, just why are they now x-military?

Really now. These earnest men and woman believe that they are doing their part to "give back to America" after being allowed to serve in the Armed Services for God and Country. There will be no convincing them to go back to mother's basement and play xBox and maybe smoke a blunt. The only sane member of this little troupe is Semper Fido lying there with his Service Animal vest. He came for the biscuits and water dish. He, being the only one who noticed the photographer is the only hope that these Patriots would survive their mission should the enemy be engaged.

Ralphie was out late the night before and overslept necessitating his report for duty in his Old Glory Pajamas. With his APMV battery charge nearly depleted, he will have to stop in next door at the Fancy Nails by Mo'niq for an electrical outlet. "Hey, Ralphie, that gun stock makes a great place to rest your weary chin."

Brian with his homemade Kamo Kilt is the envy of all wannabe Celt-like Patriots and boast of "going commando" with all the females who crossed to the other side of the cars that were parked in front of this Marine Recruiting Station. Just in case the situation arises, he keeps a spare pair of tighty-whities in his spurran along with a single gold plated round for himself if he is ever captured. "No, I'm not actually Scottish, but I want to be. I would have been 1/3 Scottish if my great grandfather hadn't been deported for talking so much like a Brit. The closest thing I have to Celtic-stuff is Wendy's red hair."

Wendy, aka Flame, has hung out with the boys since she was 9 years old. Not exactly former-military, she loves to play air-guitar with her weapon. Her camo flak vest is covering up her "covert military assets" which can just be discerned peeking out with a blue starry field. She made her own outfit, too, by cutting the legs off of an old pair of Levis just above the length of the front pockets. "The boys never turn me away when I am in uniform. Sometimes I play M*A*S*H Nurse when we are not on deployment."

Marco (not pictured) headed over to the Shop 'n' Drop for a pack of Camels and four BigBurrp colas. Fortunately for Ralphie, the Recruiting Center is located at the previous location of Chin's Tiki Outi Restaurant and they have two wheelchair accessible restrooms in the back for when the BigBurrps make him more full of piss than crap. Semper Fido can just use the front wheel of the Camry parked nearby.

The Marine Lieutenant inside came out at 10:30 and asked the Dynamic Trio to take their "support services" over to the Shop 'n' Drop since they have been robbed several times in the last year and were far more of a target that was his Recruiting office. The silly buggers insisted that they had a right to sit on a public sidewalk with their weapons any time they wanted to. He explained that while he personally wanted to thank them for their good intentions, they were scaring away all the prospective recruits. Said he, "your presence here gives people the impression that military service is dangerous and that is something we are trying to dispel."

Intransigent in their insistence that they were indeed keeping the military safe from crazy armed people, they stayed until their bus arrived at noon.

Jeffersonville resident, Joseph Frye, an apparent Silly Bugger of the Realm has found his calling after sleeping the sleep of the Righteous Dead for several hundreds of years.

His plea is to come unarmed unless you have proper permits. Bring your own lawn chair and plenty of water.

Similarly, if planning to wear chain link armor you might want to wear a catheter or pack a pair of wire cutters to remove one crucial strategic link, if you know what I mean.

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Now is the Time for All Silly Buggers to Come to the Aid of Their Party

Now is the time for all silly buggers to come to the aid of their party. There are many valid labels and icons that need to be deprecated due to having been widely co-opted by some other cause that is not in accordance with the original connotations of the label or icon. A case in point is the swastika.

The broken cross symbol is an ancient one that signified positive things like health and good fortune. Its pattern can be found carved in ancient Hindu monuments, wrapped around the cornice of rooms in Masonic temples, and stitched into cloth and tapestries.

The unfortunate history of the swastika is that the National Socialists Party, aka The Nazis, adopted it for their logo and their ideologies forever making it a symbol of hatreds, torture and murder. No one can expect to use swastikas in their designs unless they are trying to embody that extreme negative imagery.

A second case is the design of the Confederate Battle Flag of the American South, aka Dixie. Although many Americans feel a kindred with it others feel only the dread. Sometime after its adoption as a national symbol it was likewise adopted by the Ku Klux Klan and brandished it as a symbol of terror, torture and murder.  Like for the swastika it is time to deprecate its use other than to signify the terror, torture and murder that it has come to be known for.

As an unfortunate parallel the Star of David and the Crucifix have similar mixed usage histories. In the former case, it has become synonymous with the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the mistreatment of those people by the State of Israel. In the latter case, the Crucifix as the hopeful symbol of Christ has also been carried into battle against Muslims armies in numerous Crusades throughout the centuries. It has been linked with the atrocities of the Inquisition. The main differences between it and the Confederate Battle Flag seems to be couched in the relative numbers of people who hold it as a positive symbol.

Prior to Christianity's claim to the symbol, the Romans employed the full sized versions of the cross to punish, torture and kill their enemies. In a land where the image is positive, it remains. In a land where it stands as a negative, it is banned. Therefore, in this land where more people see the "Stars and Bars" as a negative racist throwback to the 19th Century it will be banished from polite usage and varying measures of where it shall be allowed to remain shall be debated.

In private usage, where a relatively small number of people associate, the Battle Flag will surely remain for decades to come. But where it is displayed in public as a symbol for a State, a judiciary, or a legislature it cannot and will not prevail.