Baq's Weblog

- Don’t ask me, “How much?” if there’s a florescent orange sticker with $1 clearly written with a big, bold sharpie stuck on the front side of the handle. I know that you know that I know your thumb is covering the sticker.

- Don’t ask me if I’ll take $3 for a pair of brand new work boots worth $75 but are clearly marked $5 on a florescent orange sticker.

Of course I will.

- Don’t show up at 6:30 in the morning and ask me if the trampoline if for sale. If it’s still in the garage, it’s not for sale.

- Don’t side-swipe my garbage can as you do a drive-by with your wife’s head hanging out of the car window. Just stop and get out of your car like the other yard sailors.

- Don’t ask me if the TV works. It works. If it didn’t I wouldn’t tell you anyway.

- I know my dog is cute. Keep moving along hippie.

- Don’t drive up in your $30k car, look at my stuff like its crap, step on my tarp, and ask me if I’ll take $3 for my old set of golf clubs. The clubs are clearly marked $5 on a florescent orange sticker and come with the bag, a few balls, and a handful of tees. There’s also a brand new putter still in the shrink wrap that I didn’t know was still in the bag, but because I forgot to take it out I’m willing to part with it.

I’ll take the $3. Now leave before I kick your ass.

- No, I don’t know where any other yard sales are.

- What do you mean, “What time do you guys close?” If you think you’re going to come back before just before we pack-up to low-ball us in our moment of desperation and weakness… you better be back before 1 PM.

Posted by Baq at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Below is a small excerpt from a book I've been picking up and putting down for the better part of the year. Whatever shortcomings the book may have, take a minute to read the java below and let it soak in, on this, the eve of the 2004 political season.

… Tocqueville did not equate democracy with liberty. While it was true that, in America, freedom co-existed with democracy; tyranny was an ever-present danger within any democratic society. In the case of America, Tocqueville wasn’t concerned about the possibility of the government becoming too powerful since he recognized that the Constitution provides all sorts of safeguards against that. No, the danger lay with the people. The greatest threat to freedom in America was posed by “the tyranny of the majority.”

Tocqueville regarded a love of equality as the chief hallmark of a democratic society. Indeed, the principle of democracy rests on equality – only if all men are held to be equal does the rule of the majority make sense. The reason a greater number of votes is superior to a lesser is because each person’s opinion is given an equal weight. However, this means there’s always a danger that the majority will exercise dominion over the individual. Tocqueville wasn’t worried about people being oppressed physically in democratic societies, at least not in America. Rather, it was people’s minds that were at risk. Once the majority had spoken, once it had come down in favor of one point of view as opposed to another, how could anyone disagree? According to the principle of democracy, the majority must be right: “[T]he majority possesses an empire so absolute and so irresistible that one must in a way renounce one’s rights as a citizen and so to speak one’s quality as a man when one wants to deviate from the path it has traced.” In this way, freedom of thought is extinguished; the only opinions held by anyone are herd opinions. More than this, people gradually lose the ability to act under their own steam. They become docile and listless, followers rather than leaders.

Tocqueville referred to this form of oppression as “mild despotism.” An erosion of liberty far more serious than the violent form of despotism characteristic of feudal societies:

it covers [society]’s surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces onto act, it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.

Posted by Baq at 8:42 PM | Permalink

"Gana la Verde" ("Win the Green") has attracted big audiences and hundreds of contestants willing to eat burritos crammed with live worms, jump off high-speed trucks or wash sky-scraper windows in exchange for a year's legal help in speeding up their visa or green card cases.

I wish I had Tivo.

Posted by Baq at 8:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fed up with a tweaked knee that won’t let me run, and a nagging curiosity about my general health, I decided today that I ought to make a visit to the doctor. As I was searching for a new doctor, I came across a listing that fit the stringent criterion I had based my search on… a doctor’s office located just off the 5, between work and home, a smidge closer to home than work. I know, I’m lazy. But there was something about this doctor I just couldn’t quite shake…

His name: Dr. Richard Payne.

Dr. Payne

Dr. “Dick” Payne

That’s not even funny.

Posted by Baq at 8:56 PM | Permalink