Neil,
Are you implying we should remove our Catholic bumper stickers & decals?
Perhaps displaying them will become a criminal offense?
Ah, Martyrdom! The fast "elevator to Heaven", per +W.
I wasn't even thinking about bumper stickers.
So far, bumper stickers are not a punishable offense, but I have
heard of police pulling over someone and writing them up when
they didn't like a particular bumper sticker. Of course, the offending
officer isn't going to admit that in court, because his lawyer will
encourage him to steer clear of it.
If you're looking for ways of being miserable, then fine, don't check
your tail lights, don't bother to be sure your rear license plate
lamp is working, don't replace a headlight when it goes out, and
ignore the courthouse mail when it comes. Throw in a few rolling
stops at stop signs and straddling lanes on the highway, maybe
even letting your left tire run over the double yellow line on Kanan
Dune Road, Malibu, not even so much as crossing over the line
(that one will cost you $900 and up last I heard), just for the fun
of it. Live life to the fullest.
Maybe you'll have a lot more time for Rosaries in prison, if you
can't afford to pay off the exorbitant court fees.
For the times, they are a-changin' -- Bob Dylan.
Speaking of Folk/Rock music, there is a man named Roger Daltry
who's probably better at harmonica than Bob Dylan, but didn't
make that a centerpiece of his career, perhaps because it's too
Bob Dylanesque, and he had a comrade who played drums. Now,
35 years after the drummer died of an overdose of drugs that
he had been prescribed to help control his penchant for drug
addiction (seriously), he is still sorely missed by the two survivors
of his band, The Who. There is a lingering story of the mad hatter
of Rock drummers, Keith Moon, who had a cigarette lighter that
looked like a US. GI handgrenade. He was a passenger on an
airline flight, in the days when you could smoke on such, and he
rolled this lighter down the aisle, and other passengers saw it.
There was a commotion, as you might expect. It seems that
Moon had done this precisely to evoke the said commotion, so
in that respect it was "successful." He was notorious for such
pranks, that most often did not hurt anyone, but quite often
involved the "conspicuous consumption" of material and the
property even of others, which he paid for many times over.
What would happen to someone today who does such a thing?
Would there be punitive damages in the lawsuit?
The point is, doing something that is considered an innocent thing,
or perhaps even a practical joke, could later, in a different political
climate, become a capital offense, perhaps even eligible for the
death penalty.