13 March 12022

☉   13 March 12022 is the Anniversary of the election of Pope Francis in Vatican City. It’s a pretty feeble holiday, but it’s what I have. It may also be Kasuga Matsuri (Nara, Japan), National Elephant Day (Thailand), and Africa Scout Day (no place given), but as these come from Wikipedia they may be the invention of a bored schoolgirl somewhere with a bizarre sense of humor and too much time on her hands. It’s JD 2459652, 28 February (O.S.) (or 13 March (N.S.)) 2022 CE, 10 Veadar 5782, 9 Sha’ban 1443, and 22 Esfand 1400. The saint of the day is Nicephorus I of Constantinople (died 10829) who was removed from office for his opposition to Iconoclasm. Notable people born today include Percival Lowell, Sammy Kaye, and Al Jaffee.

On this day in history in 12020 Breonna Taylor was killed in her apartment when the police broke in after midnight while she was sleeping and opened fire. According to certain self-proclaimed fact-checkers this was a model operation of how drug searches should be carried out. Although the police had obtained a no-knock warrant, they supposedly knocked and identified themselves as police before breaking the door down. How do we know this? The police themselves say so, and of course they wouldn’t lie. And one neighbor supports them, even though most witnesses disagree. Please note: the absurdity of saying that the police identified themselves when all they supposedly did was shout the word police before breaking the door down is palpable. If I “identified” myself in that manner at, say, my bank or a store, I would probably be facing charges. Ah, goes the argument, but the police had paperwork from a judge authorizing this conduct. How the HELL were the inmates of the house supposed to know that? Fuck that shit. Anybody can shout police before breaking somebody’s door down, and no sane person could object to a householder exercising his second-amendment rights under the circumstances. And, say the dumbass “fact-checkers”, Breonna Taylor wasn’t sleeping when the police killed her. The noise, they note, of the police breaking her door down had waked her up! What a fucking joke. And, I’ll note, all the police were investigating was the possibility that a drug-user had picked up a package at Taylor’s address. There is no reason they couldn’t have come around at a reasonable hour of the day to find out what that was about—if anything. Bad policework, government overreach, idiotic laws—time for a complete overhaul. Heads should roll.

And, yesterday, I exercised my right of something-or-other by going maskless to the store, which is now permitted. I didn’t get very far in before I panicked and put my mask back on. Baby steps, I guess. I like social distancing, and disinfectants, and hand-washing, and I always have. Now that the ice has been broken, maybe I’ll just keep on wearing my mask. I’ll have to see.

On the way back from the store I heard some asshole honking crazily apparently because the car in front of him declined to run a red light. The honking asshole didn’t seem to be any kind of authority—he wasn’t driving an ambulance, for instance—and I couldn’t see any basis for the fit he was throwing—trying to drive around the car in front of him, potentially endangering pedestrians who were crossing at the time. When the light changed and car in front of the asshole sailed on through, the asshole revved his engine and tried to zoom around the car ahead of him, but they were both out of sight before I could see any further development. Maybe he was desperately trying to get his dying child to a hospital or something, but if so it wasn’t apparent. I was just about to cross at that crosswalk myself, so I took a dim view of his actions.