GAVEL GAMUT
By Jim Redwine
www.jamesmredwine.com
(Week of 30 December 2024)
THEY DESERVE A SPECIAL PLACE IN ….
Gentle Reader, as we face a New Year, my thoughts are ever hopeful we have learned something worthwhile from the years that have gone before us. I realize this has been the dream of most of you too. However, we all know there are those whose thoughts and behaviors never turn towards improvement but, in fact, are often the very things that need to be improved.
The best example I know of placing such cretins where they deserve to be is The Divine Comedy (The Inferno) written by Dante degli Alighieri (1265-1321) in the 14th century. Dante did not just suffer the infuriating faux pas and social sins of people such as Dante’s political enemies in Italy, he created an elaborate hell of deserved punishments and placed them in it. To that I say AMEN! Perhaps, we should at a minimum list and expose some of the boorish behaviors that call for condemnation. You, Gentle Reader, will surely wish to recognize many others that quickly come to mind.
I will lead with those lazy louts who defile our roads, streets and sidewalks with their litter. Is it too burdensome to put one’s trash in a designated receptacle? Oh, and that includes cigar and cigarette butts, you buttheads. I humbly suggest such losers should have to dine off unwashed dinner plates previously used to gather stockyard feces. Then there are the geniuses who ”child-proof” medicine bottles by making them completely unopenable except by a chainsaw. This genre of misled child saviors should acknowledge that if a medicine bottle that contains medicine for children and the elderly cannot be opened, it does not protect but endangers the intended classes. I think a reasonable punishment for such bottle cappers would be to have to open every can or bottle only with their teeth. Another group of public minded workers in need of training are traffic officers who, even once a traffic accident scene is secure and any injured are removed, fail to direct vehicles so that people lined up for miles in each direction can continue on. Often officers forget that most of the world’s citizens were not involved in the accident but do have other things to do. A proper sanction might be making such unconcerned public servants always be the last in line for Taylor Swift concert tickets then telling them it is sold out when they finally reach the ticket seller.
And what about those makers of products such as expensive clothes who are so concerned that some miscreant might steal one of the thousands of items on the shelves that they stick or staple or otherwise attach labels to each product that can only be removed by damaging the product? Perhaps a label should be affixed to their forehead with a staple as a reminder not everyone is a thief.
Another place that reciprocal treatment might be called for is drive-through establishments, such as coffee shops, where cups of scalding liquid are filled so full there is no way to handle them without the liquid splashing upon one’s lap? Do the baristas get some satisfaction from seeing us drive away in fits and jerks? Workers at such establishments might be sentenced to a lifetime of sitting in a hot tub of tar heated to a toasty 103° Fahrenheit.
Now, I know we have just skimmed the greasy surface of situations that call for divine, or at least heartfelt, retribution for behaviors we wish we could see change for 2025. On the other hand, Dante knew he could not expiate all of Italy’s 14th century uncalled for behaviors. He just did the worst he could. I call for the same deliverance from the jackanapes who show no concern for the rest of us.
You, Gentle Reader, might desire the same including the extinction of newspaper columnists who campaign for never to be achieved outcomes.
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