If Scarface was Made Today, Tony Montana would be a Bicycle Thief

Back in the Glorious Golden Age of America (notice that double G double A alliteration/assonance? If you didn't, go read my previous blog entry) they used to reprimand people who committed actual crimes. People for whom the highest punishments should be reserved. You know, the big ones: murder, drug dealing, and talking during movies. Nowadays, it seems as though the only people being punished are the good guys, for minor vices.

As an example, my father has gotten two (count them, two!) parking tickets for parking (wait for it) in front of our own house. We have a driveway but we also park on the grassy knoll outside of our house. Well, the first ticket was for parking against the flow of traffic, even though we live on a one lane street where there's no real traffic and you can drive either way on it. Then he got one for "parking on the grass" even though we're not allowed to pave over the grass because it technically belongs to the city, and in addition, we've been parking in the same place for 20 years and no one has cared.

The first of these tickets was on Christmas Eve, and the second was on Good Friday. Coincidence?

I don't believe in them.

Tickets are, and will always be, a way to siphon money out of people who are too busy being productive in society to contest it in court. A way to put down the nice guys. Isn't it bad enough that women don't like us as much as the edgy dudes and that we end up doing all the work on our 4th grade group projects? They have to steal our money too? And when do they need this money? The holidays. They charge all the Tickle-Me Elmos and Peeps to their credit cards, and then expect me to foot the bill. Which I will likely do, and why? Because I'm too nice.

This of course brings me to my fish tank dilemma. I, like my father, am a nice guy (I like to think, I've met several people who seem to think I'm evil because I'm smarter and better looking than them, also more humble) and for this I am punished. I'm like poor Jack Bauer on 24. All he's ever trying to do is save the day, but he keeps getting arrested, tortured, infected, etc. The people I lived with in my second semester of college had ripped out the smoke detector from the ceiling, meaning that if the alcohol-soaked floor (not my doing, my brain is too important to be distorted by alcohol, I drink tea) were to catch on fire I'd basically be dead. Sadly the only thing the university could do was offer me counseling for my likely impending doom. Anything more would be an "invasion of privacy." I could give them permission to enter the common room, I learned that a year later in a law class. So HA! You have been lawyered! I'm gonna get some kryptonite-fused wiring to send this blog back in time to myself so I can bring them to justice.

I've also only been late to work a total of one time, and it was because I was up late with a cyst in my gumline (a product of the orthodontal conspiracy, more on them later) and when the Advil finally started to work, people in the dorm started throwing beer bottles out of the dorm onto the ground, from the ground onto the dorm, as well as a few firecrackers here and there. Have any of them been reprimanded? No. How about the guy who dealt drugs? Nope.

But poor Domenic, who has only ever broken the "don't talk when the teacher is talking" rule? Domenic who doesn't drink, smoke, or disturb others in his place of dwelling? Yeah, he has a fish tank that's too big and it's causing the fabric of the universe to unravel. Would I have brought it in had I known? Of course not, I'm an obsessive follower of the rules (although I do tend to follow the stupid ones while complaining about them constantly in the hopes that they will be changed). They give you all of about twelve seconds to initial twenty-five pages on the lease, and when you occasionally look down to see what it is you're signing you see the usual: No sacrificing goats (unless it turns a profit for the University), no C4 explosives (or Semtex, we've played video games too!), and no waging technological warfare with Lichtenstein from your laptop (because their infrastructure just can't handle it!). I didn't see anything about fish tanks until later when they wanted me to move it and they whipped out the lease. It could've been a different lease for all I know, I never got a copy. Lawyered again!

The point is, the University clearly feels insignificant. With the threat of lawsuits protecting the activities of real criminals, they have to assert their authority somehow. So they take down anyone they can find. They do this by finding nice people like myself to destroy. Let's look at some fictional examples that might have turned out differently with this line of thinking:

In Return of the Jedi, what if the Rebel Alliance decided to cease their attack on the Empire in favor of arresting Luke for making out with his sister? Well, let's just say the Ewoks wouldn't have fared so well by themselves. Thanks for killing the teddy bears, Rebel Alliance.

In Spider-Man, what if they arrested Spider-Man for his use of quirky one-liners, along with second degree theft of Superman's colors? Well the Green Goblin, Doc Ock, and Venom weren't just going to wait around for Spidey to change his repoir or his color scheme. We'd have had to deal with those baddies by ourselves (or see if Ant-Man can get the job done, which I doubt).

In the X-Men series, what if they arrested Wolverine for having sideburns that exceed regulations and are a possible harm to passersby? Well, Magneto would have destroyed the human race in the name of mutant power three times over (possibly four if there's another sequel)!

So as you can see, we should be going after the Dr. Dooms of the world, and not the Captain Americas.