A few months back, I published The List – my unabashed, profanity-laced diatribe on all things irritating. It was a fantastically satisfying exercise – an anger-releasing orgasm that left me with a month-long afterglow of self-satisfaction and general sense of rightness in the world. It felt so good, that by the time I wrote my closing, I was fairly certain there’d be more volumes. The many visitors who grokked what I put to page only fed my certainty, and I immediately started a new cache of hastily scribbled post-it notes detailing my daily frustrations. So, even though there are plenty of real issues I could devote my fingers to typing, I’m taking a detour back to The List with hopes of another teeth-rattling release. So here we are, with the second volume of things that really tick me off; a proverbial beatdown of minor irritants which, when added together, make my life suck more than it should.

And another disclaimer:

Warning: (Really) Adult Language Ahead

In my last post, I issued a semi-adult language warning. Then I used the f-word about 900 times, often accounting (in some form) for 40-50% of any sentence’s content. So, clearly, there was nothing semi there. With that in mind, I amend my warning: I intend to swear at least as much in this volume. My profanity will be in noun, verb, adverb, and adjective forms, and will spew unapologetically across the page. If you don’t like that kind of harsh language, stop at the end of this paragraph and go look at my Goulash Recipe. The rest of you: welcome back, and I hope you enjoy. And I hope you’ll add more of your own world gripes. Misery likes company, and my blog LOVES comments.

See you on the other side.

The List (continued, and in no particular order)

Who/What: The Cancel Button on any Printer
Why: Oh, my fucking God! When I press cancel, don't print another thing. Don’t print the whole document, don’t print half a page and then stop, and for the love of God and all that is holy, don’t print 400 one-line-of-garbage-at-the-top-of-each-page pages. Stop immediately! That means right fucking now! Whoever designed this button should be strapped to the paddle wheel on a river boat and churned from New Orleans to Japan.

Who/What: Ronald D. Moore (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
Why: Battlestar Galactica’s last episode. Are you kidding me with this shit? That was your idea for a good ending? The bad guy gives up and shoots himself, the main character vanishes without any explanation of what the fuck she was, and the last remnants of the human race discard their technology and wander off to mate with cavemen? Forget the freakin’ plot holes you never closed – some of which were big enough to drive the Galactica itself through – this was just bad writing. I wanted to drive to your house and slap you. Seriously. I’m glad your next pilot flopped. I bet you pissed off the network executives as much as you did me.

Who/What: The Folks Who Loved and/or Defended the Aforementioned Finale.
Why: Well, you’re either stupid suck-ups or pretentious pricks, or both. Line up behind Moore, assholes, the slaps are coming your way next.

Who/What: Bands that Release CDs Without Lyrics in the Liner Notes
Why: It’s 2009! How do you not get this? People want to know what you’re saying. So much so that there are entire web sites devoted to translating your drunken, mushmouthed ramblings into readable text. Save us the hassle, and the embarrassment that comes when we sing the wrong lyrics around someone who knows the right ones. I’m giving you $15 for 15 songs. Spend the 1/10 of a cent on ink and print the freakin' words.

Who/What: Ron Livingston (Actor – Band of Brothers, Office Space)
Why: Put your fucking eyebrow down, jerkwad. Jeez.

Who/What: RoadRunner Web Mail
Why: Where is the Goddammed Empty Trash button? Are you telling me that nobody has mentioned that it’s missing from your interface? I shouldn’t have to delete messages from a folder, then go to the Deleted Items folder and delete them again. Every other fucking mail client on the planet has an Empty Trash feature. Get with the freakin' program, jerkholes!

Who/What: Joss Whedon, Screenwriter of Alien 4
Why: I know Ripley was being kind putting all of those other half-formed/mutant clones out of their interminable misery, but shooting them with a flamethrower is not the best or most humane way to do it. Yeah, it’ll end their suffering...with excruciating pain (a proverbial cherry on top!). "Hey, mutants! You thought you were in agony before, and it couldn’t be any worse? How about bathing in 1400 degree napalm for a few minutes as you die?" Writing a flamethrower-based mercy killing is just plain wrong. Shame on you, Joss.

Who/What: People my Pants Size
Why: You fuckers have been thwarting me for 25 years now, and I’m tired of having to shop for two fucking weeks in 17 freakin' stores to find one pair of jeans in my size. I mean come on – when I was a 30/30, I could only find 28/30 or 32/30. When I was 32/30, all I could find are the 30/30s I always needed. It’s like you’re following me through my exact nutrition/exercise/weight gain pattern, but just happen to leave the house five minutes before me. Stop it, Goddamn it! I need some freakin' pants!

Who/What: Unclear Windows System Messages (No matter what software makes them pop up)
Why: Here's another Oh, My Fucking God! I don’t know what SVCHOST or RUNDLL32 are, so how the fuck do I know whether they should have access to the internet through my firewall, or whether I should force quit them when they stop responding? How about telling me something useful, like which program is using those things? I’m not sure who to blame for this one, but who ever you are: fuck you, and your grandchildren, pets, neighbors, and anyone who serves you spit-free food in a restaurant.

Who/What: Elevator "Close Door" Buttons
Why: What the fuck? There weren’t any more jobs in the printer cancel button business, so you moved on to elevators? Don’t give me a button that doesn’t work, dickwads, or that only works in some elevators. Go back to every elevator you ever designed and make them work. In fact, just to pay me back, I want an additional Turbo Close button that will bisect a 700 pound man in less than a second, and get me to my floor before the bloody torso stops twitching.

Who/What: Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats (also good for any other flavor-coated foods or snacks)
Why: Listen to me very carefully, brain trust: if the wheat biscuit comes through without frosting, it isn’t a fucking Frosted Mini-Wheat. Send it back and spray it again. That includes the ones that were on their side, or went under the clogged nozzle. If you didn’t know, eating an un-frosted Mini Wheat is akin to eating a fucking Brillo pad. It’s called quality control, jerkwads. Do some.

Who/What: The Fucking NY State Lottery/Mega Millions
Why: Pay attention, stingy lottery gods: I’m tired of going to work, missing every sunny day, and never having enough cash to rent a fucking DVD. And I’m especially tired of seeing other people win. It’s my turn. No more “I never play the lottery, but I grabbed a ticket when I went to buy myself some Skoal and a Diet Mountain Dew on the way back to my mobile home” winners. In fact, no more fucking wins for other people at all until I win – they’re probably all pedophiles and atheists, and should never, never have access to big money.

Who/What: Democrats Who Know How to Comment on the Internet
Why: What a whiny bunch of know-it-all childish pukes you are. You make us all look bad. So just shut the fuck up. And when you do have something to say, try using good grammar, proper spelling, the correct fucking words, and some punctuation. The only thing worse than an obnoxious computer-savvy Dem, is one who writes like a retarded 5th grader. In fact, I bet it was you who designed all those cancel and close buttons. Fuckers...

Who/What: Sam’s Club
Why: What kind of sadistic mother fuckers sell me something for six months, get me hooked on it, and then NEVER FUCKING SELL IT AGAIN? Oh, there’s a special place in Hell for you, my friends – and I guarantee you it will be a place where the close and cancel buttons don’t work, and every Windows message is too obscure to be of any use.

Who/What: Television Stations
Why: Stop putting extraneous promotional shit on the screen when I’m watching a show. I want to see the entirety of the image, not clever graphics for other shit I’m never going to watch. And I already know what show I’m watching, and what channel it’s on. Stop telling me, “You’re watching 24 on Fox.” Really? I thought I was watching fucking Madagascar on PLEX! And another thing: let me see the fucking credits. I waited 45 minutes to find out who played that hot freakin' waitress or who sang that great song – don’t scrunch up the screen, run the credits at turbo speed, or tilt the whole thing to one side. And don’t fucking talk over the music/end jokes/epilogues/previews. Wow, that’s annoying.

Who/What: Town/County Tax Assessors
Why: $189,000? For my house? In 2009? Are you fucking kidding me? Did you pull that number out of your ass while you were sucking down martinis in Boca? Have you ever actually seen my house? Have you read about the economy? Are you fucking blind, deaf, and stupid? And don’t tell me I have to prove my house value is down. Is my house in some kind of magical fucking bubble where it’s unaffected by everything else that’s happening in the world? Of course it’s down, you prick. Pick up the paper, turn on the TV or the radio, or talk to any person in earshot. Know what they’ll tell you? Housing values are down, you pig-headed moron! Start cutting people’s assessments.

Who/What: Cottonwood Trees (and the people who own them)
Why: Holy fucking Christ! Does my entire ½ acre have dandruff? Why does anyone even have these freakin' trees? And I’m not just talking about my neighbor who has a forty foot tall cottonwood that hangs over my yard and craps so much white fluffy shit that it looks like ten flocks of birds got sucked into a jet engine 30 feet above my house (Karma will get you one day, my friend; if not karma, then Ripley with her flamethrower). No! In fact, it snowed cotton for a month in my town. Rise up, comrades! Burn those fucking trees down! Every one of them! I don’t care if the species goes extinct. It’s time to take back our lawns!

Who/What: Smokers
Why: Hey, assholes! The can is right there! It’s less then three feet away. What kind of lazy motherfucker are you that you can’t walk three feet to the can? Stop throwing your still-smoldering butts on the ground. And for those of you who smoke in your car: first, close your fucking windows – you wanted smoke, why are you letting it out? And second, there’s a place in your car to throw your ash and butts, dicklicks - use it! What’s that? You don’t want it in you car? Oh, I see. Then what the fuck makes you think I want it on my lawn, or bouncing off my car while I drive behind you? I’m a non-smoker for a reason, dipshits. And a special shout out for those bonus-sized assholes who bury their butts in the sand in the beach. You are absolute gems among human beings – I’m gonna tell Ripley to use a lower heat setting when she puts you down with her flamethrower.

Who/What: Advocates of Pretty Much Anything that isn’t Yet Mainstream or Legal
Why: What a self-important, self-serving, blind bunch of assholes you are. I know I speak for the majority when I say, "Oh, my God, shut the fuck up!" We don’t agree with you, and we don’t want to hear it. And what’s more, even if we don’t have strong feelings about your cause, I guarantee that your obnoxiousness will turn us against you. So to be clear: shut up and go fuck yourselves sideways in whichever holes make you most uncomfortable and have the highest risk of bruising.

Epilogue

Well, that’s it. I burned like 10,000 calories worth of angst and anger there; and yes, the language was pretty strong, and awfully harsh. I’m not usually an “in for a penny, in for a pound” guy, but this is a pretty faithful example of that. I’ll be writing a serious post at some point in the near future, so look for it.

Peace out, y’all.

If you read The List in February, you’ll know I take issue with bad retail practices (among many other things!). As I consider our failing economy – and specifically, the frothing nightmare that is now the retail industry – I can’t help but make one obvious observation:

American retail sucks.

Now I know that last word is kind of harsh, and unsophisticated, but every other word I typed at the end of that sentence couldn’t capture the overall “suckiness” I’m here to describe. So, I stand by it, and ask your indulgence as I write on...

So far this year, I've read more than two dozen stories (and countless more headlines) about the state of the retail industry and its effect on the flagging economy. Retail businesses are failing at an alarming rate, and consumer confidence is at a near-historic low. Economists know that a healthy retail industry is a key component in any kind of national economic recovery, but they rarely address issues in the industry itself. Instead, they talk about broad economic and employment trends that only factor slightly into the health of the industry: rising unemployment and gas prices, failing lenders and credit card companies, sudden inflation, and people saving for rainy days (or downright hoarding). They never – well, I should probably say, almost never – fix the blame where it belongs: on the shoulders of the many retailers and manufacturers who just don’t “get it.” You know – the businesses that suck. If you want to understand why consumer confidence is so low, perhaps it's time to look more closely at them. That's what I'm doing here.

To make it easy, I’m going to focus on three personal retail nightmares: replacing a worn-out cell phone battery; buying replacement supplies for two of my daughter’s toys; and trying to buy some strawberry ice cream. I have hundreds that I could write about, but I thought I’d start with a small, recent cross-section. As you can probably tell from the title, I expect this to be the first in a series of retail-critical posts. Not only do I have a huge backlog of nightmares to share, but I’m still shopping, which means plenty of new opportunities for retail suckiness and future posts.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what the heck a SpotShot is, it’s something I’ve been toying with for a while. It’s a play on “pot shot” that I've decided to use whenever I want to rant about a minor (or semi-minor) thing, and want to do it in a not-completely-serious way. The health and well-being of the retail industry isn’t exactly minor, but my concerns don’t necessarily speak to some greater purpose or philosophical truth. It’s gears-grinding with a message. So let’s get to it!

LG Electronics: The Cell Phone Battery Debacle

Let’s talk cell phone batteries. Back in summer 2007 – just under 2 years ago – I renewed my family's Cingular contract, and bought three brand new cell phones. It was time to upgrade phones, and since I was already planning to keep my existing service provider, it seemed a minor inconvenience to sign a new three-year contract – especially since it would secure three below-retail-price cell phones (one for me, one for my wife, and one for my mom). I shopped hard, and finally settled on the LG CU500. It’s an amazing phone: does lots of cool stuff, sounds good, looks mod, easy to use. Overall, a pleasing purchase. And with the signup discount, they cost me about $50 apiece, much lower than the $350 price for a non-contract-upgrade-related purchase. I walked away quite satisfied.

Fast forward fifteen months:

My phone battery started losing its charge. Or, more precisely, it started burning through its charge in an unusually short period of time. When it was new, the phone would stay charged for three or four days with moderate call volume, a few picture snaps, and a couple hours of MP3 playback. Pretty good performance, and one that was duplicated on my wife’s and mother’s sibling phones. (And remember, these are three identical phones – so the comparisons in performance and expectation is appropriate.) I thought it was odd, but I wasn’t that concerned. Batteries age, and manufacturing differences can affect the life of any specific battery. But when the problem got to be – well, problematic – I decided it was time to buy a new battery. (This is a key point of my story – I wasn’t looking for warranty replacement, or reimbursement, or any kind of compensation. I just wanted to buy a new battery.) So, I went to Best Buy, where I bought the phone, and learned that since the phone was fifteen months old, replacement batteries weren’t going to be an off-the-shelf thing. Apparently cell phones turn over quickly, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to stock them, or their parts, for very long. Not a big deal, especially when the salesman told me that batteries usually outlasted their phones. Fine. So I went to Radio Shack, then the Cingular store. Still, nothing – same set of reasons too. But again, I was okay with it. The Cingular rep suggested going online to buy one, so I headed home and fired up my browser. My first stops? My favorite shopping sites: Amazon, NewEgg, Buy.com, Overstock. These four sites came up blank. No such thing as a replacement battery for this phone. Curious… Next stop: the Cingular site. Again, nothing. Also odd. Final stop: LG. They’ll obviously have one, right? They make and sell the darn phone. But the result was surprising: a stunning, inexplicable nothing! What’s this? The folks who make the phone don’t have replacement batteries for sale? Huh? Headsets…cases…solar chargers? But no batteries? How can that be? Where’s that “contact us” link?

Even after all this, I still wasn’t annoyed. I was baffled that I could buy a solar charger for my existing battery, but not a new battery. So I wrote a quick note to customer service (fully expecting some marginally helpful, if broken-English, reply) and waited for them to send me a link to the correct product page. I got a response in 36 hours. Wow, talk about service! Except...the response told me to go the LG web site to buy a battery – the same website I used to click the contact us link. Okay, fine. I wrote back and explained that it wasn’t there, and asked for some real help. The next response: "Sorry, we don’t have a replacement battery for that phone." Chagrined and confused, I wrote back for clarification: were they out of batteries, or didn’t they offer one? I couldn’t get a straight answer. And that finally did it; I was peeved, and more than a little.

What followed was a confounding string of emails with "David G" at LG. He was about as unhelpful as any person I’ve ever dealt with. Not only didn't he ever answer any of my questions with clear, definitive language, he couldn’t even grok the fact that I wanted to buy a new battery for my expensive, not-so-old phone. Again, let’s revisit the proposed transaction: I (customer) wished to pay money to them (vendor) to purchase a product (battery) for a currently produced and sold phone. Simple right? Nope. And there was no information on why my proposed transaction was un-completable. I confirmed that they do still make the battery – although getting to that fact took months, especially because it was obscured behind David’s poor language skills and obvious mental deficiencies – they just didn’t have one to sell me.

(I took a little side trip just then, back to my favorite online shopping sites. Suddenly, Buy.com had an “OEM” replacement battery through one of their “marketplace” vendors. I was saved! I paid and waited, and I finally received…a cheap Korean knock off that didn’t fit my phone, and clearly wasn’t made by LG. A few emails later, the marketplace vendor assured me it had been an honest mistake, and offered me a full refund if I returned the product. I did so, and still haven’t received an acknowledgment or refund…but that’s another story. Back to LG…)

Finally angry (no longer just peeved) I contact David G one last time, and reminded him of the entire four-month odyssey. His otherworldly response was perfectly in line with all his previous responses, and it was undeniably clear that he still didn’t understand the purpose of our long and unfortunate correspondence, or the transaction I was proposing. My next message to him would likely look something like this.

David –

You are idiot. Me want give you money. You sell me battery.

Signed: Dissatisfied Customer You Not Helped in MONTHS and MONTHS

Of course, this little LG experience wouldn’t be enough to spawn a whole blog post on its own, even though it scored the top spot here. But, it was one of a large patchwork of similarly fruitless and vexing retail experiences. Thus, the first SpotShot was born.

(And for those of you wondering, I did lots of at-home troubleshooting, including changing batteries and chargers between the three phones. The performance issue always followed the battery. That said, let’s move on to the next one...)

Toys R Us, Crayola, and Imaginarium

My daughter is 4. This past Christmas, we bought her some cool new toys from our local Toys R Us: a sidewalk paint sprayer, and a spin art toy. Fantastic toys, simply fantastic. Spin art was the first one opened – it was winter, and sidewalk painting is more of a summer thing. So spin we did, and the splattered toddler art flowed beautifully. I was quite happy. She was quite happy. All was right with the world. But – the replacement demons were waiting just out of sight! After one particularly spin-ful February day, we were suddenly out of supplies. No more fancy spinnable paper, no more glitter paint. No big deal, right? We packed up and took a trip to Toys R Us for supplies. They sold the thing, so they should have the refills, right? Wrong! (And to make matters worse, the shelves were a lot more bare than you’d expect for a major retailer – but more on that in my closing…) Since I’m sure you can divine what happened next from the cell phone story, I’ll just say this: it’s June, and we still haven’t found replacement supplies. Not from the retailer, or the manufacturer, or the countless online stores that sell knockoffs and universal refills.

Luckily, it got warm/dry early this year, and it was time to spray paint on the front walk and driveway. Another great toy. Effective, easy, creative, and my daughter loved it. Twice! Why twice? Because the supplies run out fast for creative kids, and my daughter has creativity in abundance. But I was fine with it: of course the supplies run out fast – they want to sell you frequent replacements to keep your money flowing. I get it. I’m good with it. Retail 101. Except – can you guess it? NO replacement supplies at Toys R Us. None online. None directly from the manufacturer. A favorite toy, basically dead because nobody wants to make or stock replacement supplies. Ugh, I say. Ugh!

(For the curious: local craft stores are going to be our last hope for both of these toys, but I’m not betting on a positive outcome. Let’s hope my daughter forgets both these toys before she needs therapy…)

Next Up: Wegman’s – the Store that Shuns Strawberry Ice Cream

This past Saturday, I wanted ice cream. It’s summer, it’s hot, I like sweet stuff…kinda makes sense, right? But Wegman’s, our local mega-supermarket chain, threw a wobbly curve ball at me. Seven major brands of ice cream, one store brand, and not one half gallon of Strawberry, That’s right. Two full coolers – probably 1000 gallons of ice cream – and no Strawberry. Now I know what you’re thinking: not everyone likes Strawberry…what’s the big deal? You could be right. Except, Strawberry is one of the ruling class flavors of ice cream – a member of the original ice cream triumvirate of Vanilla-Chocolate-Strawberry. A flavor that’s pretty much as old as ice cream. And yet it’s not part of Wegman’s plan-o-gram. (And yes, if you’re wondering, I confirmed with a department manager that they were no longer carrying the flavor…) Let me draw an analogy: you just bought your first box of crayons, the one that has the original seven colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet), and Crayola decided that it didn’t need to include Green. That would make me nuts. I wouldn’t be upset if burnt sienna or pumpkin was missing – those are more on the cusp of specialty colors – but green is a standard. Just like Strawberry. So the weekend math looks like this:

Wegman’s – strawberry ice cream = unhappy and hot consumer { frank }

Fix It! (Or: Fix it, Dammit!)

Now what’s the consequence here, and in fact with all these stories? Simple: I have money; in my wallet; that I’m actively trying to give to several different retailers; and I can’t. Get it? I can't buy four things that I want and can afford, because every company I deal with doesn’t have them to sell me. And it’s not because they’re hot sellers and hard to keep in stock. It’s a deliberate decision of the manufacturers and retailers not to have them for me to buy. That’s key mistake, and a boldface knock of the folks who make the manufacturing/stocking decisions. I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure that having a product for me to buy is a crucial element of retail success. When I do the math, it looks something like this:

Their product + my money = their profit + my consumer happiness

And the best part of this equation is that it leaves a remainder of healthy economy. It's a simple lesson: it doesn’t matter if it’s ice cream, a replacement battery, sparkly paint, or winter gloves and hats in January (again, see The List). If you don’t have the product, I won’t give you my money. And let me add a stern warning to the “marketing genius” who thinks, “well, they’ll just buy something else if they can’t find what they’re looking for.” You need to go back to school, buddy! Not only won’t I buy something else from your store/company – because I still intend to buy exactly what I’m looking for, and I need my money to do it – but I’ll be angry. And petty. I’ll visit your competitor, and tell everyone I know why I think you suck. And I’ll post stories like this in my blog.

Folks, this is not rocket science. This is basic supply and demand. I mentioned above that Toys R Us was remarkably empty. They aren’t the only ones. Store after store – in my town, at least – have empty shelves: signs and shelf tags for products they don’t stock, with unrelated products faced out in bulk – mainly, I suspect, to try and hide the basic lack of product variety which is the actual meat of a successful retail strategy. Like selling products that practically guarantee repeat business (in the parents who file in dutifully to resupply their child’s beloved toys), and actually selling the refills. Or selling common, expected products, like basic ice cream flavors, popular deodorant scents, potato chip varieties, or national brands! Otherwise, my consumer mind boils over with slews of uncomplimentary words and phrases, including a favorite that my daughter is starting to pick up: “Hellooooo? Duh!”

Want to fix the economy, or at least the retail portion of it? Here’s The FrankSpot recipe (the main ingredients, anyway):

Recipe for Better Retail

2 Cups Stock Your Shelves (Empty shelves mean empty cash registers.)
2 Cups Sell Replacement Parts/Supplies (If you sell me a product that needs replacement stuff, but don’t sell the replacement stuff, I won’t be back. I’ll shop at a competitor, and say bad things about you in the church bulletin.)
1 Cup Provide Good Customer Service (Good customer service means fast, efficient, and productive. I don’t want you to commiserate with me, I want you to help me in a material way. And if you can manage it, speak my native language as well as I do…)
1 Tbsp Let Me Give you Some Money (Of course, this is really more of a serving suggestion than ingredient, but the point is solid.)

I’d say it’s a pretty simple recipe, but stay tuned, FrankSpot readers. Since I have no real pull in the world, I expect that exactly nobody will cook this meal. In fact, I’d be surprised if, even after a forced feeding of this essay, any retailer could even see the problems I’ve described. I'd expect the typical follow-up thought to be: “I bet people will buy Worcestershire Sauce Ice Cream – let’s stop selling Chocolate.” Thus, there will be more volumes in my war against retail. David Horowitz, meet your successor.

See you soon.

Prologue: Writing the Unwritable Post

So let's talk about torture.

It's been in the news for a while now, and has quickly become a defining issue of the last 9 years: legally, politically, and ethically. It fairly clogs the news cycles on some days – the media trots out questions and talking points, which ripple into the morning shows, local papers, and countless web sites:

• Is it right or wrong?
• Who authorized what?
• Who knew or didn’t know, and how much?
• Republicans versus Democrats.
• Which religious demographics support it or don’t.
• How America + Torture = Nazi Germany.

Tough stuff. And I’ve been ruminating on it the entire time; trying to decide if I could blog about it. I mean, it’s obviously a provocative topic – it riles and offends people, and triggers family-event-destroying blowouts – but it's dense, and impenetrably gray. I want to weigh in; I want to entice others to the public debate, and I want to enrich the public dialog. But it's a window that's hard to see through. Even in the brightest light of human outrage, the image beyond the glass is shadowy, and indistinct. How do we define torture? Is this it, or is that it? Why is it being used? Does it work? Look as I might, I can't get to a clear picture. And if there's one thing I like when I start a post, it's a clear picture.

When we discuss things like racism, or gun violence, or whether drugs should be legalized, there are plenty of folks with first-hand knowledge, and even more with second- or third-hand knowledge. Mention torture, and suddenly almost no one is an expert (even if they have an opinion). The folks “in the know” are people most of us will never meet. Many are deliberately hidden from the world, so even if you do know them, you don't know you know them. This makes torture a unique consideration to the common man. How do you genuinely contemplate something that you know nothing about? If you're a FrankSpot reader, you know that I lament that people generally opine (and take up fortified positions) in relative ignorance, but this topic is unique in that there really isn't any way for the average person to contemplate it with a foundation of experience. By default (and lucky for all of us), we lack the ability to speak on the topic from place of knowledge. Everything we think we know is anecdotal. That's one of the things that made it so hard for me to put words around this topic. What do I really know about torture?

But the story is still very much in the minds and in the media, and I’m drawn to it because it speaks to our fundamental humanity. I want to explore the philosophical notions that underpin the outrage, and the real world considerations of torture’s application and efficacy. Unfortunately, it more and more seems that every measuring stick is insufficient, and there’s a good chance that the only thing likely to be borne of the debate…is more debate. That poses a special and significant challenge for me: what do philosophers do with a conundrum like this? What if there is no final answer? No absolute right or wrong? No way to build true consensus? What if we just can’t solve this one?

These questions dogged me every time I tried to put words to page. What follows is my wholehearted attempt to make sense of it all.

Defining the Indefinable

What is torture?

As I mentioned above, the main problem with this discussion is that torture isn't one easily definable thing. It's a word open wider to interpretation and semantics than most in our language. Sure, there's a dictionary entry, but as I survey the outrage of everyone touched by the topic, it’s clear that that the “official definition” has barely informed the debate. It turns out, instead, that the notion of torture is as personal and subjective a thing as anything out there. People define it through a combination of religious, moral, and ethical beliefs, political affiliations, gut reactions, and their own sense of place in the world. So the dictionary entry doesn’t add any meaningful text to the discussion. What is torture? It’s whatever the debaters – the observer, the victim, the state enemy, the foreign government, the special interest group – want it to be. If we were discussing torture as a philosophical exercise, or a re-examination of unfortunate history, we could stop there. And it wouldn’t matter that we couldn’t reach a consensus. But the debate has changed: it is no longer a lukewarm ethics discussion, but an urgent legal issue. That brings us to the second problem:

The Legal Definition

In a society of laws (which I’m glad I live in, despite the sometimes rickety condition of our legal system), we classify specific behaviors as illegal. It makes sense if we want to surround ourselves with safety and order. But, there’s a catch, and it’s the same one that makes the torture debate so hard to resolve: what measuring stick do we use? This is an important consideration in any debate, and doubly so in this one. Laws require both a proverbial watermark as a starting point – a consensus-based standard to be used any time we perceive a transgression – and very specific wording. Like it or not, laws aren’t meant to be flexible; and well-written ones don’t leave much room for interpretation (even if they are dense with legalese and abstraction). That’s an important protection for us as citizens. (And yes, that creates a host of other issues, but I’ll save that for another blog entry.) Laws need to be specific if they are to be understood and enforced fairly. This applies to simple stuff – don’t take something from a store without paying for it – and deep, unwieldy stuff like torture. So, regardless of your personal feelings, torture needs a legal definition if we’re going to address it as a society. That means specifics, examples – dictionary entries. It means a legal consensus even when there is no philosophical one. And to be clear: it can’t be a moving target.

Let’s stop on that for a second, just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Torture – from a legal standpoint – has to be strictly defined. That means one clearly stated description of what constitutes torture. It can include a laundry list of citations and examples, but the definition has to be finite. It has to end. If you look to the law, you’ll find that there’s already a legal definition in place. That’s a key problem with the current debate: people keep forgetting (or ignoring) that definition in favor of their personal outrage, and want to categorize as torture treatments that currently fall outside the legal definition. In itself, that’s a noble pursuit. Something has rankled us, and we want the law to be rewritten so that thing can’t happen again. But, the problem is further complicated here by the public's need to punish someone: it’s not good enough to rewrite the law for tomorrow. People want to bend the law to create a retroactive illegality. An interesting idea, I suppose, but impractical at best, a path to absolute ruin at worst. As a rule, we don’t criminalize past behavior, only future behavior. Call it a conceit to the linear, forward-only nature of time’s passage – and to our basic inability to predict which of today’s legal behaviors would land us in the electric chair tomorrow. It’s a basic protection we have to embrace: what you did yesterday might become illegal tomorrow, but you won’t be prosecuted because it was legal when you did it.

Now some people argue here that the Bush administration’s lawyers deliberately exploited the finite nature of legal language to “get away with” treatments that don’t violate the letter of the law – but still cross into unethical/philosophically shaky behaviors we’ve retroactively classified as torture. They’re right, but skirting the law isn’t actually illegal. As despicable as it seems in this context, “going around the law” is just another part of the legal process. Those lawyers aren’t the first or only ones to do it. It happens every day, sometimes in our favor, sometimes to our detriment. That is a conceit to the vagaries of our language, and a basic fact of life. I recently wrote a post about the drive to legalize drugs in America, and I posited that every regulation (or law) breeds loopholes. This is the same problem. If you don’t list smacking someone in the head with a rolled up magazine as torture – or have intersecting laws that constrain any of the constituents of that treatment – then it’s legally not torture. And guess what – it’s not just lawyers and government officials who exploit that fact. Almost everyone you know does too (in some form), and so do you. It’s obviously not in the same vein as torture, but the principle is the same. We have imperfect language, so we have imperfect laws. The best – and some would say smartest – thing we can do, is use history and better language to help us redraw ineffective and incomplete laws. In this case, we can rewrite torture laws to include what was done to those alleged terrorists; add as many new clauses and behaviors as we like – dig into history books, and even popular fiction, and litter the legal definition with examples. We’ll be behind the curve, but we can be assured that those specific tactics will be illegal the next time they are used.

Which brings us to:

The Three Killer Questions: Efficacy, Intent, and Degree

Despite the basic disagreements about what specifically constitutes torture, there is one common belief that seems to resonate throughout the national debate, and across many international borders: torture itself is bad. It's something only bad people or bad countries do. Proof of that belief is found in treaties and pledges, and in the outspoken condemnation of those who torture. But just below the surface, beneath the philosophical condemnation of the act, lies the tricky question of efficacy. Does torture ever work? If you follow the national headlines, or read books like Daniel P. Maddix’s The History of Torture, you probably get the idea that it doesn’t. And if the national uproar is an indication, we don’t want it to work.

But there’s an important question that lingers, even if it’s fully obscured by the shining spotlight: what if it does work?

I know that’s a scary question. It sets people’s hair on end, and makes people reach for antacids, or their bibles, or the television remote. But, what if torture isn't the ineffective black hole of the popular belief? Sure, you can point to what happens when you torture an ignorant someone for information: they’ll say anything to stop the torture, and none of it is worth the breath it arrived on. But what happens when you torture a person who actually has the information you need? This is an interesting point that comes out of the Bush administration: they say that “harsh interrogation” produced actionable intelligence. Regardless of your personal feelings, if it’s true, then it’s a fact that counts in the reality of the world, and has to count in our debate. And it begs the larger question: how much is a life, or a handful of lives, or a way of life worth? How far would/should we go to secure something important for ourselves? What happens when talking simply doesn’t work, and when the clock is already ticking? I know this is dangerous water, but aren’t these questions valid parts of the debate? Some people argue that the loss we stand to suffer (personally or nationally) is insubstantial compared to the moral breach we commit when we abandon talking in favor of inflicting pain. They could be right. I think it's probably a question for the ages, and certainly for the people that have already lost something or someone because of our adherence to principle over the need for positive results.

Lets focus on that for a moment: why does anyone use torture? I’ve been exploring the efficacy question, but I haven’t really touched on the purpose question. Like efficacy, it’s an important thing to explore.

As I’ve absorbed the national commentary, I’ve noticed that there are lots of different ideas about why we used those interrogation techniques in the first place. A good portion of people accept that they were used to obtain information – some about yesterday, but most about tomorrow. Some people think it was to extract confessions – like the Viet Cong used, a way to demoralize the prisoner’s parent nation – or to exact punishment, or gleefully inflict pain on inferior races. They evoke images of World War 2 Japan and Nazi Germany. Provocative stuff, to be sure; more importantly, a prompt to discuss intent – to examine if and how the intent of the torturer factors into our considerations. Does a lack of sadistic intent count in the torturer’s favor? Is it a more acceptable practice if torture is used strictly to garner information, and not applied with malice or hatred? If it’s an unfortunate escalation, in situations where gentler methods don’t produce the needed results? If it’s applied clinically, dispassionately?

And what about degrees? As we build our new legal and national definition of torture, does degree count for something? Should we compare types of harsh treatments? Is that informative as we draw our lines? Is a slap as bad as genital electrocution? Is a flushed holy book as bad as pliers-based fingernail extraction? Is being forced into a naked human pyramid, or being deprived of sleep, as bad as being beaten lame with batons and 2x4s? If we take degrees into consideration, don’t we run the risk of more unethical treatments slipping through the legal cracks? If we ignore degrees, aren’t we opening the doors of interpretation so wide that our “enemies” can complain that restricting access to cable TV and alcohol in prison is just as harsh as crushing their fingers in drill presses? How do we factor in the common sense comparisons without opening the door too wide, or shutting it too tightly, and without ignoring something key? Is there even an answer?

Sudden Epilogue: A FrankSpot First

So, I’ve just asked a bunch of questions, and I know it seems like I have a lot more ground to cover. But I’m not going to cover it. As unlikely and abrupt as it seems, I’m going to end here – after two months, and 2500 difficult words. As I predicted in my prologue, I haven’t found any answers on this. Not for myself, not for my readers, and certainly not for the national debate. Instead, after all this time and typing, I’ve become exhausted by the topic. I’m truly at a loss to draw some profound overarching conclusion, or make any valid suggestions on how to address the ongoing issue. I can’t even answer most of the questions I’ve raised here. At least not definitively, and not in the space of a single post. The most I can do is ask my readers to keep this post in mind as they add their voices to the debate. I hope they’ll remember that religion, ethnicity, age, political belief, and level of education impact how people feel about torture; so do being touched by loss, or war, or terrorism, or fearing for the lives of people loved. I hope they’ll remember that the law is an important tool – especially in this debate – but one that shouldn’t be used for revenge, or to apply retroactive justice. And I hope they’ll remember that – even without one we can see from here – the pursuit of an answer is still important. As we strive, we grow; and as we learn, we change. Hopefully, all for the better.

Peace.

Sometimes, I just can’t believe the world around me. Every day, I see people who just don’t get it. It doesn’t matter the topic, there are people who have the wrong idea. Or are too self-involved to notice the bigger picture, or see what’s really important in the world. Today, those people are the folks who are fighting for gay marriage.

I’ve been working on a tough blog entry for a few weeks now. It’s about torture, and all that goes with it – the national focus, the moral and ethical debate, the legal considerations. Truly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to write about. And certainly an issue that deserves our attention. But every time I look up from torture, I get smacked by someone waving the gay marriage flag, and trying to push that issue into the center of the table.

I’m here to push back.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not writing to opine on the subject of gay marriage. I’m writing because I’m irritated by the debate. The country is in serious trouble – right now! – and gay marriage isn’t any of the reasons why. I know it’s an all-important issue for the gay community, and equally so for those who oppose it. But it’s not an issue that deserves center stage today. Frankly, no matter how important the gay community and its activists claim it is, it’s an issue that barely registers when viewed alongside (pay attention here!) staggering unemployment, foreclosures and homelessness, foreign wars, the pervasive use of state-sanctioned torture, international nuclear proliferation, and the human misery we call Darfur and the Middle East. Considering those things, I have a hard time conceiving a top five priority list that includes even a passing hallway conversation about the rights of gay people to marry. In fact, I’d be mortified if our new president spent any time at all on the issue right now. Yet, the gay marriage advocates keep pushing it into the spotlight: “The President isn’t working fast enough on this. He’s had almost 100 days and he hasn’t fixed it yet! Let’s go picket and protest! Let’s get on the nightly news! Let’s force the issue NOW!”

Did I mention that I’m appalled?

Okay, so they want their time at the top of the issue heap, and on the president’s calendar. I get that. But which other issue of the day should take a back seat to theirs? Which humanitarian or national crisis is less important than gay marriage? That’s really the question here. How does a gay marriage advocate see fit to elevate this issue above – well – pretty much anything that has the President’s attention? Every time someone steps into national view with an urgent gay marriage agenda, all I can see is a kind of blind selfishness and self-importance: “Hey, America – I need the President to stop working on everything else so my friends, Bill and Steve, can get married next week!” Yikes. Perspective, anyone?

Here’s some: Shut the Hell up and wait your freakin’ turn!

Sorry. I know that’s not very nice (and not very FrankSpot-ly), but it’s a pretty apt way to express my feelings on this. We’re trying desperately to crawl away from the brink of absolute national ruin, and we’re being snared and diverted by people without an ounce of perspective, or an ability to understand priority. People who clearly don’t know the difference between “no” and “not yet;” people who say they voted for Obama, but don’t trust him to address the issue like he promised; people who forget that there are only so many hours in a day, and only so much that can be addressed in those hours. That in itself is almost unbelievable. And it pushes me away from sympathy for their cause, and leaves me in a coarse mood. The notion that the Prez should forego ending wars, saving our houses, and creating jobs, so two women in Muncie, Indiana can have rice thrown at them next Saturday, is ridiculous. The ground of our society is still crumbling beneath us like a landslide – so fast that every time I pull into my driveway, I wonder where I’m going to put the For Sale sign that already seems a tangible part of my inevitably unemployed future, and where I’m going to park when my daughter and I are living in my car. How can anyone expect gay marriage to trump the issues that give life to that kind of hopelessness? Why would anyone want it to? What kind of person pushes marriage rights to the top of the pile when children are living in hatchbacks? Or when friends and family are dying in distant deserts and mountain ranges? Or when race and religion are justifying torture in dark, wet rooms? How can anyone champion that kind of selfishness? How can anyone be that blind?

The truth of the day is this: the gay marriage battle will continue – be assured of that. (And it won’t be won or lost quickly. So even if the president takes it up tomorrow, you shouldn’t plan on catching a bouquet anytime soon.) But, as a wise man once said: “Only a fool fights in a burning house.” Look around, folks: America is on fire. America is the burning house. You knew that when you voted last year. So instead of trumpeting how unfair the world is because your idea of marriage hasn’t been legally validated, grab a bucket and help. If you can’t do that because you’re too full of yourself and your cause, at least step back from the counter, and wait until someone calls your number.

I’m out.

Back in 2000, I worked for an interesting fellow named Bill. He was mostly a standup guy – straitlaced, religious without being a fanatic, educated by years of honest work, and a great debater. He was also a self-taught constitutional scholar, who carried a pocket-sized copy of the constitution with him everywhere he went. It was worn and dog-eared, and heavily marked up with yellow highlights and multicolor underlines. It was his conversation starter: if he wanted to talk to you about guns, he'd read you a portion of the second amendment. Religion: first amendment. And so on. It was a peculiar hook, but it seemed to work – at least on me. We had dozens of great conversations, and sometimes even broke new ground for each other. I was always challenged to look with new eyes at topics that were at least important to society of the day, if not the grist of seminal American debates. It was during one of these conversations that I first heard talk about legalizing illicit drugs. I have to admit: at the time, I hadn't given the topic much thought. I wasn't a drug user, I didn't know any drug users, and hadn't ever considered legalizing something that was already illegal. So I choked. I didn't know enough to talk beyond the standard fallback platitudes you'd expect when opening a dangerous topic. But Bill was always prepared. He pulled a thick folder out of his desk, and said, "Read through this, then we'll talk." I did just that. The folder was a veritable gold mine of information: the background of the Harrison and Controlled Substance Acts, the role of racism in the criminalization of some drugs, the impact of drugs on culture, the legal costs of prosecuting drug crime, and the ubiquitous War on Drugs that started under Richard Nixon, and gained renewed life under the Reagans. It was a good primer for me, and it armed me to go back and express my first opinion on the topic. It was no surprise that he took a pro-legalization stance – there was a barely perceptible "this is why anti-drug laws are unconstitutional" slant in the reading materials he proffered, so I expected that. But what did surprise me was how incomplete his analysis really was. Yes, he'd gathered lots of data, and clearly had read everything in the folder, so he came out like a shot on why drugs should be legalized. But when I challenged him, most of his arguments fell flat. There was some modicum of logic behind his position, but – like what happens when you ask a devoutly religious person where Mrs. Cain came from – he was quickly and utterly confounded by my counterpoints, and visibly struggling to cling to his ideas. Despite that, there was no clear winner in the debate. We moved on with an agreement to disagree, then never discussed it again. I didn't think much about it after that.

Fast-forward to 2009...

The Legalization Argument...Again

What happens when a bunch of lifelong marijuana advocates have access to the internet, and a web savvy guy takes up the mantle of President? No, this is not the beginning of a killer FrankSpot joke – which, I assure you, would have split your sides. It's a legitimate question. And here's the answer: more than a thousand stoners reach out to the Prez, and suggest legalizing pot as a way to jump start the flagging economy and pump up the federal tax coffers.

"What? Are you kidding me? Wow. How...stupid."

Yes, I was shocked. (And a little less open minded than I would have liked, which is another example of me not living up to the ideals I espouse here, and another opportunity to redouble my efforts on that front...) Here we have a world leader poised to talk directly to the electorate – someone genuinely engaged with, and interested in, the common man's issues – and the sum of some people's interaction is, "Legalize it, maaaan."

Like I said: Wow! Way to represent the needs of your neighbors and children. Way to fix the country. Way to go, boys.

Unfortunately, this newest legalization suggestion didn't fade away at the end of that day's news cycle. Instead, it pushed the war on drugs back into the spotlight, and sparked a new national debate. And although I'm a big advocate of debate, this one rankled me instantly. Not because of the "clever" stoners who touted legal pot as a way to fix the ailing economy, but because it brought out all those folks who pedal the legalization of all illicit drugs as a national cure-all. "Make 'em legal," they shout, "and you can tax 'em, regulate them, put drug dealers out of business, secure the borders, end crime, empty the prisons!" ...and give every Jack and Jill a free pass to shoot up and let the world go to hell around them. Again: wow. Talk about a bad idea. To quote a source I can no longer properly cite: "This is the worst idea in a world of bad ideas..." Why? Read on.

Legalization as Miracle Cure (Or: Doesn't Anyone Actually Think Anything Through in This Country?)

So here we are, looking down at the game board of life, death, law, and social problems in America. And one of the biggest barriers on the board is this thing called illegal drugs. It's a monolith. It drives crime and murder, fills prison, and destroys families and communities. And no matter what you score in the pop-a-matic bubble (props to the makers of the game Trouble!), you won't be able to move enough spaces forward to cross it in your lifetime. That makes it even too big to ignore. Its ominous, seemingly insurmountable size makes it an issue that has to be addressed – definitively! On this, I think we can all agree. The problem starts when we start brainstorming the vaccine. Legalization, more and more, seems to be the "go to" move. And it's just a bad one. Don't believe me? You're not alone. That's why I'm writing. I want legalization advocates to see the Biblical "Where did Mrs. Cain come from?" problem with their plan. I want to loosen their grip on a solution that won't drive the results they're expecting. They can still choose to argue their point and push for their legalization solution, but it won't be because I didn't point out some of the giant flaws in the plan. Let's start with some of the common arguments:

• We're losing the war on drugs. Drug trade is at an all time high, and drug crime continues seemingly unabated.
• Our prisons are overcrowded, and arresting drug users just adds to the problem.
• The war on drugs is expensive, and that money could be better spent elsewhere.
• More people are killed every year by...

I can't argue with any of these statements. So I'm still in lock step with the legalization crowd. We both understand the problem, and agree that something needs to be done. But when we start talking about how to fix the problem, the legalization crowd goes down paths that I just can't follow. Let's look closer:

We're losing the war on drugs...
Yup. True. There are so many drugs, so many users, and so much corruption that underpins the whole thing. It's a tough nut to crack. But does that mean we should stop trying to crack it? I know some consider analogy to be a weak way to debate an idea, but let's use one anyway. It's hard to housebreak your dog. So, why not just allow him to poop anywhere? Silly, right? Yet, that logic is at the heart of many legalization arguments. You hear similar suggestions where illegal immigration is concerned. It's hard to stop, so let's just stop trying. Here's my question: when did we become a people who don't want to do something just because it's too hard? I know some of you will argue that legalizing is doing something. To some degree, you're right – learning to be helpless, then comforting yourself by adding some cursory rules around that thing you can't control is doing something – but is it the best solution? Is it any solution at all? Isn't it like trying to make a murder a little cheerier and bearable for the victims, instead of trying to stop murder outright? In effect, that's what you're doing here. Not fixing the problems caused by the drugs, but putting a thick salve on the wounds and hoping for the best. Put a pin in this one...I'm coming back to it a few paragraphs...

Our prisons are overcrowded...
Again, true. But the fault always lies with the criminal. Not society. Not the law. We have a very simple system. It's a system that my toddler already understands: if you break the rules, you get punished. Period. It's irrelevant if you don't like the rules. You have to follow them because that's what it is to live in a world of laws. No matter who you are, you should be able to grok this idea. You should be able to put blame for crime on the criminals themselves. They chose to do something they were told was wrong. How is that anyone's problem but theirs? Now, here's a twist: I don't think it's inherently bad to decriminalize something. In fact, I'd say it's a natural part of our legal evolution. Societies outgrow laws, and those laws have be dissolved. However, there's at least one rigorous test that has to be passed before we confer a legal status on something illicit: the decriminalization has to benefit society, not generate a new hazard. Otherwise, all we've done is given one group of scofflaws a free pass. Sure, the prison populations dwindles for a bit, but at what long-term cost?

The war on drugs is expensive...
Yup. It is. But is that really a reason not to fight it? Some expensive things are more than worth the money. Ask me if this is one of them...

More people are killed every year by...
This is a common and completely indefensible, invalid argument. Let's use the perspective of the stoners who wrote to the President last month.

"Alcohol kills more people than pot...so since alcohol is legal, pot should be too."

<Buzz!> Wrong answer! This argument is acutely flawed for several reasons. Here's the big one: pointing out that something legal is more dangerous than the illegal thing you're doing, is actually an argument for criminalizing that other thing, not legalizing your thing. If the goal of law is to protect and improve society, then you should act to prohibit things that hurt society. That's why murder is illegal. And rape. And theft. Let's play with more analogies, and you can decide if any of these make sense:

• Alcohol kills more people every year than burglary. So, since alcohol is legal, burglary should be too.
• Alcohol kills more people every year than assault rifles. So assault rifles should be legal...
• Alcohol kills more people than rape, so...
  

It's absurd to look at it that way, isn't it? So go all arguments of that nature when our goal is to protect life, limb, happiness, and freedom. A correct argument goes more like this (and forgoes any comparison):

• Alcohol kills people, so it should be illegal.

Or:

• Pot doesn't kill anyone, so it should be legal.

I wouldn't necessarily agree, but I'd give you points for forming a valid argument. It doesn't rely on the status of some other thing, but on the inherent merits of your subject. If you want to win an important argument, that's a good rule of thumb to use. Then we could talk about the validity of your point. (Now, just to be clear, I DO know the difference between pot and harder drugs. But in the context of this debate, it's not a valid delineation. If you're high, you've already been compromised – in judgment, attentiveness, coordination, and the ability to follow rules. The degree to which you've been compromised is irrelevant. You know that jerk you see on the freeway every day? The one who's always four seconds from rear-ending someone because he's texting, juggling his Tim Hortons' and morning butt, and took a little too much Benadryl before he left the house? What happens if we also let him blaze up 5 minutes before he slots himself into traffic beside you? I'm guessing that'll end badly more often than not. So, for the sake of this discussion, I'm lumping pot in with every other illicit substance.)

That said, let's get on to my point – why the legalization idea is unworkable.

Legalization Debunked (Or: You Don't Always Get What You Pay For)

So, let's legalize illegal drugs. Why not, right? The benefits are obvious:

• We can control them; the FDA will make sure they're safe, and of good quality, which will decrease accidental deaths.
• We can tax them. With the huge interest in drugs, that will be a small fortune, one that we can use for health insurance for kids, and to fix our roads, and create new jobs.
• No more user arrests. You can't be arrested for buying and using something legal.
• No more illegal drug dealers – drugs will be legal, so they won’t have anything to sell.

Good arguments, right? Nope. Not even close. They come from the same body of "research" and level of critical thought as the points made by my former boss. On the surface, they may seem to make sense – especially if you've lost a loved one to some form of drug crime or punishment, or are a lifetime democrat – but there's no substance; no depth; no tensile strength. Each argument is insufficient to address the complexities of a legalization scheme. They are dismissive of key facts about human nature, the general order of things, and the business of illegal drugs. They just don't make any real sense when you shine the light of critical thought upon them. They fail on almost every level:

Regulation Can't Work
Regulation is an interesting and tricky thing. Let's for a moment forget the complexities in preparing a drug for public consumption, and skip right to the very nature of a regulation. Regulations are rules – rules that, by default, govern who can sell an item, and for how much, and in what quantity, and on what day, in what venue, and to which consumers. These rules are the problem with regulation. Every rule you create is a rule to be broken, which, in turn is an opportunity for crime. Let's say a legal heroin fix at your local drugstore is sold like this:

• 5 cc
• $50
• Only to people over 21
• No more than once a day

In the legalization model, everyone says, "Hey, cool," and goes to the drugstore to buy a fix. But, what about the 20 year old who wants 50cc, twice a day? Oops, here comes illegal heroin again, which demonstrates that:

Crime is Fluid
The legalization model supposes that there will be no way for illicit drug makers, importers, and dealers (read: criminals) to make a living. I guess the legalization advocates just assume that all the folks on the supply side of the issue will pack up shop and go work at Wal-Mart. Well, as I just pointed out, EVERY regulation creates an opportunity for crime. And criminals know their shit. They're criminals because they like to be – they like the life it affords them. They're not a group of enterprising rogues who sell drugs as a form of social protest. Don't believe me? Look at DVDs. DVDs are legal, and cheap. Yet, there's a multimillion-dollar illicit DVD trade out there. Criminals realized that people don't want to wait for the official release, or don’t want to pay the studio price. We created a demand, and the criminals rushed to meet it. It would be the same here. That flexibility is actually at the heart of the failing war on drugs. So, yes, there would be a whole host of mainstream consumers who would buy FDA-approved crack. But there's an even bigger population who wouldn't. They're the folks who want higher doses, or more frequent fixes, or are too young to buy drugs legally, or who don’t want their local pharmacist or doctor to know they're stoning up every day. And if I know this, the criminals do too. It’s their livelihood. They can find the illegal outgrowths of every regulation you place. Unless the legalization movement says free drugs of any kind to anyone, in any dosage, and is willing to dispense them to kindergartners, then the problem hasn't shrunk even a little bit. And let's add this: what about all the new drugs? You know, the ones in this model that haven't yet been approved by the FDA, or that are too dangerous to ever be approved. Do you think anyone will want those? Do you think the criminals won't be out there making those? Of course they will. The Feds have stepped on their action, and they're not going down without a fight. At that point, they could cook up a drug with a 50% guarantee of death, and people would still buy it...

Addiction is Still Addiction
Here's one that's underrepresented in every legalization discussion: addicts are still addicts. It doesn't matter where they get their drugs. They have a problem that's driven by a combination of the drug itself, and their own personality/body chemistry. It's not reasonable to expect that addiction will no longer be a problem just because the drugs are legal. I suppose the FDA could try to make all drugs less addictive, but oops, then we've created a new crime loophole – an illicit variant of every legal drug, that has whopping more addictiveness. And I'm not even going to dive into the problem of everyone around you being stoned at any given moment of the day. That makes me positively YEARN for my next 747 ride. (What's that you say? Pilots would never take legal drugs before a flight. Of course they would. You made it legal to do so. And people who take drugs tend to suffer from bad judgment – not necessarily before taking them, but certainly afterward. Maybe as part of this plan, we can test everyone for drug levels every morning before work. That wouldn't have any negative impact on our economy or society, would it? And before you talk about punishment for those who break the rules, if I hear you right, you're talking about a form of criminalizing drug use again...interesting catch 22, huh?).

Legal Drugs Aren't Free (Or: Where Does the Money Come From?)
Here's another one that the legalization crowd ignores: drugs aren't free. This is an important point, since the plan includes taxes on drug sales. What happens to the folks who can't afford to buy them, legal or not? Do you suppose they're just going to forgo their daily fixes? My guess is that they'll do what they do now: lie, cheat, and steal. Drugs are a powerful draw, and heavy drug users aren't deterred by empty wallets. The fact is that it won't matter if they're stealing to pay the pharmacist or the Columbian on the street corner. People are still being victimized to support a drug habit.

Flash Forward: The (Crime Free?) World of Tomorrow

So: now we've legalized drugs. In the ideal model, we've changed the face of the most common drug user. Instead of a gaunt trembling junkie cowering in a dark alley, it's the honorable Reverend Godfearing and his wife, Prudence, snorting coke with Mr. and Mrs. WASP from the country club. And they're not doing anyone any harm, so all is good, right? But let's look out the window:

Oops! Look at that. The problem is still there. The criminals didn't go straight after all – they're smiling across the border as drug mules deliver their quadruple-strength cocaine (now with fresh pine scent!) to the US border guards who want to buy bigger sailboats than they can afford on public servant salaries. And the kids who aren't old enough to buy and use all those newly legal drugs aren't saving up to get high on their 21st birthday. They're under the bleachers getting high today on the ULTRA-POT that was grown in the house across the street – the one with the garbage-bag covered windows, and daily foot traffic that's on par with that of an urban shopping mall. Welcome to the safe, clean, crime-free world of legalized drugs.

Okay, maybe that last paragraph was a little more Harlan Ellison than it should have been. But I wrote it so to drive home my main point. You can't win the war on drugs through legalization and capitulation. You can't regulate the problem away, and there's no level of concession to the destructive nature of drugs that has any positive impact. It's a zero-percent solution, even before you invoke the more obvious unmitigated problems in the plan, like its impact on employment and poverty, quality of goods and services, or public health and the cost of medical insurance. In the end, the whole notion of legalization leads nowhere good. Crime rebounds, prison populations stay high, and our society pays an even higher price than it pays today. As the national debate continues, I hope the fundamental truths I've described here start to ring in everyone's ears. I hope that the smartest of us, especially those who hadn't thought deeply about the subject before the conversation went public, will realize the folly of legalization as a salve, and lead us down a better path.

Then, hopefully, this will never come up again.

Thanks for reading. Peace.

It's been a while since I blogged for real. Yes, I posted a good recipe last month, but that was a little bit of a cop-out on my part. The truth is that I've just been too busy to blog in earnest. I recently transitioned from one consulting gig to another, and have been neatly sidelined – almost blighted – by a month of terrible luck. You've heard about life throwing you curve balls? My life has been holding my head underwater and waiting for the bubbles to stop. And in the meantime, lots of hot, timely, blog-able topics have slipped through my fingers: bailout fever; gay marriage; the new president; unemployment. I had plenty to write about, but no time. Pretty irritating, even without the emotional torpedoing I've suffered at the hands of 2009.

Luckily, I've been keeping tabs on the things that have gone wrong for me recently. Well...actually...I've been keeping track for most of my life. I know it's probably a bad idea: people who do that with too much diligence usually end up on the same rocky path: ulcers, depression, unemployment, divorce, and a dark final day on a clock tower with a high powered rifle. But, all that notwithstanding, my bad times have inspired my next real post. But first, a disclaimer:

(Semi-) Adult Language Warning

I like to swear. I don't do it very often anymore – I have a daughter who's at a highly impressionable age – and until now, I haven't felt a need to do it here. That changes with this post. As I contemplated what to write here, I realized that I needed to unleash some colorful (read: immature and vulgar) language to fully convey my irritation with the those things and people that made the list. That said, you're probably still wondering what The List even is. Read on... (even if you've already figured it out.)

The List...of things that really piss me off

Over the years, I've developed a strong set of opinions on things that diminish the quality of my life: things that make me want to rage against the world, and turn away from the open-minded, even-keeled philosophy I try to live by. Things that make me want to cry out in astonishment, or take my toys and go home.

Things that make me want to slap the shit out of somebody.

So what is The List? It's my darker side put to words. It's a telling of things that – as Peter Griffin would say – "really grind my gears." Why is it called "The List?" Because I couldn't come up with anything better. And because this way, if someone pisses me off, I can say "You just made the list!" and have it mean something. If I like how it comes out, maybe I'll make this a regular feature.

The List (in no particular order)

Who: Retail Buyers (and/or whoever decides what to stock, and when to stock it...)
Why: It's January, fuckers! Why can't I buy a pair of gloves and a nice fucking hat? I don't need a bathing suit yet: I need to stave off frostbite while I'm running the snowblower. (Okay, it's February right now, but this happened around January 15th, and every time I look at my suddenly hole-peppered gloves, it pisses me off anew. So dates be dammed! And anyway, don't some of our worst winter storms come in MARCH! Get with the program!)

Who: Time Warner (Roadrunner)
Why: I know you fuckers throttled down regular RoadRunner service when you decided to start selling your TURBO service. And I also know that that your modem speed test gives phony results. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Who: The City of Rochester
Why: We need more parking downtown, not less. Stop closing garages! (And I KNOW you followed it up by putting on more parking enforcement officers. Don't lie about it...)

Who: Wegman's
Why: Stop littering the ice cream aisles with knock-off brands! Perry's and Breyers are better than Blue Bunny and Turkey Hill, and every time you steal freezer space from them, I end up having to make an extra trip to Tops.

Who: RG&E (Rochester Gas and Electric)
Why: Our power lines are brand new and underground: why can't you idiots keep the power on for more than three consecutive weeks? And why don't your customer service folks ever know what the fuck happened or how long it's going to take to fix it?

Who: Parking Garages (the ones that are still open)
Why? $6.75 a day, and you're STILL not responsible if anything happens to my car?
Are you kidding me? And sell more goddamned monthly passes!

What: The Wind on the Night Before Garbage Pickup
Why: Oh my fucking God! Stop blowing my recycle bins into the woods across the street! I don't live in Chicago or on some wind-swept delta. And why do you only blow so much on THAT PARTICULAR NIGHT? There are six other nights when my garbage wouldn't be involved!

Who: The Local News
Why: Where is the story on the huge fucking accident that made me an hour late to work?

Who: Wegman's (again, and still on ice cream)
Why: What idiot told you to stop carrying Strawberry ice cream in ANY of the brands you sell? It's one of the most important flavors, and I shouldn't have to buy Neapolitan to get it!

Who: Highway Advisory Radio/Radio Traffic Reporters
Why: Aren't you supposed to actually tell us something? What exactly has to happen before you broadcast it? And why is it that if I'm in the car for an hour, I still can't catch a report that tells me anything about what I see in front of me? Do you idiots ever actually go outside and look at the roads? Where are your damn traffic copters?

Who: Time Warner (again!)
Why: How fucking stupid is this DVR? Why do I have to manually add time to the end of my scheduled recordings every week? When I set a time, freakin' keep it! I'm tired of missing the ends of shit.

Who: Rover (the morning DJ)
Why: Dude, breathe through your nose; don't talk through it. You sound like an idiot.

Who: Cops
Why: Why did you pull ME over for a lapsed inspection sticker when there were people buzzing by you at 30 miles an hour over the speed limit? Who did you think I was? John fucking Dillinger? You made me late for my doctor's appointment...

Who: The Makers of Levaquin
Why: My arms hurt, you jerks. Both of them, in the same place. For five months now. Don't sell bad medicine!

What: Glasses with Anti-Glare Coating
Why: Could these things BE any harder to keep clean? (Thanks, Chandler!) And that "cleaning solution" I got for free from Cohen? What kind of bullshit nonsense is that? I'd be better off licking them.

Who: People who Comment on CNN's Political Ticker
Why: You people are a bunch of fucking idiots. Learn to type, spell, and format, and figure out what the site is for. Stop telling CNN what they should and shouldn't post there, and stop mentioning how ashamed you are of them. What are you, their mother? It's not your site. When it's your site, you can post whatever you like. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.

What: My Prostate
Why: You brought me in here to pee. Now fucking let me pee, goddamn it!

Who: Loud Coworkers on Long In-cube Conference Calls
Why: Wow! Really? You're lucky it's bad form to hock a stapler at someone, because mine would be over the wall nine minutes into your three hour call. Your laugh is shrill and obnoxious, and you're awfully confident for someone who sounds like such an incompetent moron. Go find a conference room, dumbass!

Who: Doctors' Offices
Why: Why aren't you open in the evening? Or on weekends? What the fuck?

And finally:

Who: Greedy, Corrupt Companies Who Think Laying Off Employees is a Remedy (So, pretty much, every company in America)
Why: This helps, how? You can suck your bailout money out of my ass.

In Closing

Well, that's it: The List. It was more of a catharsis for me than I expected. In fact, I feel lightheaded, giddy, and a tad winded. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. While I contemplate both my next post and the possible next edition of The List, I hope you'll take a few minutes to share some of your own little irritants with other Frank Spot readers – if for no other reason than the good feeling you might get from doing so. Or blog about them on your own site. Who knows: if enough people starting calling out this stuff, maybe some of it will actually change for the better.

Wouldn't that be a hoot? Ah well...

See you next time.

Something in the air today said "Potato Leek Soup." Never one to disobey the air, I grabbed the handful of recipe ideas and notes I'd collected over the years, and set out to make a damn good pot of soup. A few hours later – and with almost no false starts or mishaps – I'd crafted this final recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Recipe

3 Large Potatoes
4 Large Leeks
3 Tbsp. Butter
4 - 4½ Cups Chicken Broth (less broth makes a thicker soup)
1 ½ Cup Heavy Cream
2 Tbsp. Celery
2 Tbsp. Shallots
2-3 Garlic Cloves
¼ - ½ Tsp. Salt (to taste)
Pinch of Freshly Ground Pepper (to taste)
Dash of Marjoram
Chives and Parsley to Garnish

Separate and thoroughly clean the leeks – remember that leeks grow in sandy soil, and have lots of layers to hide bits of dirt. For the best results, cut the leeks in half lengthwise before rinsing, then rinse each layer separately. Now, chop off the dark green ends – although it's safe to use the entire leek, the best flavor/texture comes from the white and palest green parts. Chop the leeks into ¼ to ½ inch pieces and set them aside.

Peel the potatoes, then wash them in cold water to remove excess starch. Chop them into 1 to 1 ½ inch pieces, making sure to remove any bad spots/blight. (If you're doing all the chopping in advance, you can let the cut potatoes soak in a bowl of cold water, then simply rinse them before adding them to the soup. This will keep them white, and like the initial rinsing, will remove extra starch – which doesn't do anything to improve the flavor of the soup.)

Chop the celery into ¼ inch pieces (or smaller) – for the best flavor take the two tablespoons from about two thirds up the stalk.

Melt the butter in a large pot, then add the salt, pepper, garlic, and leeks. Gently sauté the leeks until they start to turn shiny and clear. Remember to stir often or constantly when sautéing, and don't let the leeks start to brown – brown leeks will give the soup a burnt flavor. Once the leeks are cooked, add the chicken broth, potatoes, celery, and shallots. Bring the mixture to a boil, then cover, and simmer until the potatoes are tender. (Check the potatoes with a fork – if they're soft enough to make mashed potatoes, they're soft enough for the soup.) Reduce the heat to low, then scoop approximately half the soup – focusing on the potatoes, more than the leeks – into a blender, and beat until smooth. (If you use an immersion blender, target the potatoes, and try not to liquefy the leeks.) Return the blended soup to the pot, then fold in the cream and marjoram. Stir until the soup is uniform in texture and color, then remove from heat. Serve immediately with a sprinkle of parsley and chopped chives. For a spicier garnish, top your bowl with a turn of cracked black pepper, or a light dusting of cayenne.

Makes about 4 1/2 (yummy) quarts.