Minor Regulations for When I Become a Benevolent Leader of Humanity, Part 1

After the inaugural ceremony, after the last of the tickertape hits the sidewalk in Times Square and while the revelers are shifting gears from beer to whiskey, my vision for a better world will take its first steps. They will be small steps - not the abolition of armed conflict, the conversion to sustainable energy, or the legalization of gay marriage; those are big steps and best done slowly if by doing them slowly they may be done properly. No, the first acts of my Benevolent Reign will address that class of heinous behaviors that just rub me the wrong way.

We'll call it the Abolition of Petty Irritants Act, and it shall read in part:

• The use of unnecessarily large umbrellas on sidewalks shall be prohibited.
• No person, no matter how young, old, or nattily attired, will utilize or cause to be utilized, any umbrella whose span when extended is more than twice the width of the user's shoulders.
• Violations shall be punishable by a verbal warning and dirty look, followed by confiscation of the offending implement. Serious violations (such as using a beach umbrella to guard against rain, failure to collapse or otherwise secure umbrella when under scaffolding, obstruction of the pavement causing the Benevolent Leader to walk in the street) shall be punishable by the destruction of the offending implement; the violator shall be placed on a probationary status with all umbrella privileges revoked for a period not exceeding six months. At the discretion of the courts, they may be allowed a sheet of newsprint in lieu of umbrella.
• Exceptions may be made in the case of people who composed entirely of sugar. Preliminary research has shown that your mother was right; you ain't so sweet that you're gonna melt. Confirmation of a sugar-based human must be verified by a reputable medical professional.
• It shall be a violation to stand sheeplike and blankly staring in the middle of doors on the subway while people are trying to exit the train; it shall be a misdemeanor to bull your way onto the train while people are in the process of exiting.
  
• A specially appointed task force shall be created and authorized to use any force necessary to enforce this policy.
• Violators shall be made to stand in the back of the subway line. Repeat offenders shall be made to commute with the Militant Rastafarian for a period not exceeding six months.
• In extreme cases, the violator shall be strapped to the front of the subway, since they're in such a damn hurry to get to wherever they need to go and absolutely have to be the first one to arrive.
• The use of "buzzwords," whether in or out of the office, shall be STRICTLY prohibited. These include, but are not limited to:
• "Out Of Pocket" as used to signify unavailability.
• "Reach Out"
• "Next Steps"
• "Best Practices"
• Any other phrase determined to lack real-world application.
• Violators will be required to attend an elocution workshop and read three works of literature widely agreed to be "classic."
• The use of the phrase "Moving Forward" shall be punishable by the permanent closure of the mouth, by whatever means necessary.
• Shower curtains shall be sold with the necessary rings, instead of in separate packages. Rings may be sold in separate packages if a change is desired, but no shower curtain shall be sold sans rings.
• Misspellings and grammatical errors on printed signs shall be corrected, at printer's expense, within 14 days of notice. Handwritten signs may have their errors corrected by any person in possession of a pen.
• Exceptions to this rule include: instances where the error is intentional (for the purposes of advertising, etc), or instances where the resulting statement causes great hilarity.

More edicts shall follow. We'll start them off slowly.

Pearls Of Wisdom from a Militant Rastafarian

A new apartment means a new commute means new characters on the subway.

Gone are the troupes of dancing kids who haunt the express from 59th to 125th, the ones who know all the same dance moves and begin by shouting "Showtime, ladies and gentlemen! What time is it? Shooooow time!" The kids set up their boom box in the center door bay, and some of them really can move, though after the third or fourth time it loses a little of its charm. You know someone will turn a backflip, one of the smaller children will be flung up in the air to hit the ceiling (to the gasps of maternal ladies and tourists), and if the guys really know their stuff, two of them will hook shoulders-to-ankles to make a human circle which will roll expertly from one end of the car to the other, avoiding poles and shopping bags on the way. I like these kids and usually give them some change.

Also gone (thankfully) is the religion gauntlet at 42nd Street. There, one is more often than not harangued by evangelical Christians, whose lectures about Sin and Fornication and The Coming Judgment fall on deaf ears at ten-minutes-to-nine. Just in case you do start to worry about your soul, sympathetic, well-dressed people have a table set up where they administer free stress tests and information on Scientology. The commuter-cum-pilgrim barely has time to catch their breath before a smiling young man in orange robes and Birkenstocks offers them a paperback Bhagavad-gita and sends them on towards their transfer. Only three minutes in the station, and you've been offered three conflicting choices for the hereafter, as well as some dynamite reading material - there's always a copy or two of Dianetics floating around, and the acolyte of Dubious Subway Religion will doubtless want a few of the free Jack Chick tracts (since taking the cardboard signs or the giant poster of multitudes in Hell is frowned upon). One wonders where the Pagans and Atheists have their setup. Perhaps somewhere in Brooklyn.

Also gone are the familiar panhandlers - the old Chinese woman who sits across from the evangelicals and never fails to draw more sympathy, even through the preachers won't give her the time of day - the stooped, middle-aged man who never really learned to play the violin but has one anyway and saws valiantly upon it - the nasal-voiced woman with a beat up snare drum, you've seen her, she latched on to someone else's gimmick about two years ago and for a while they were working in competition; then this woman teamed up with a guy who had a keyboard and the other drummer disappeared. Now she's gone solo, which is a shame because Mr. Keyboard was possessed of creativity, tonality, and charisma - talents not shared by his former counterpart, who preps the audience with the usual "I'm sorry to disturb ev'rybody" before launching into a drum solo that would send Neal Peart racing for the nearest window. The eternal line "It ain't no joke, for real I'm broke" makes an appearance at least once; on one memorable occasion I was treated to the album version (rather than the abbreviated radio edit) and got to hear it twice. O frabjous day.

This morning, a mid-sized man with angry eyes and a Rastahat got on the train two stops from my house. He certainly didn't look like your everyday commuter, but little did I suspect that this man was a visionary. He was more than a prophet, he was a True Subway Crazy.

My encounters with True Subway Crazies have been limited. Mostly they turn out to be simple drunks (as the gentleman who swore to protect everyone on the subway car because they knew his cousin, just as soon as he swept all the trash out through Chinatown), or their level of nuttiness doesn't quite qualify (as the woman with the teal Spandex dress). The True Subway Crazy knows EXACTLY what they're talking about, and more often than not have a burning desire to share their knowledge with others, willing or unwilling.

I spent a very educational 40 minutes on the train with our militant Rastafarian, during which time I learned the following:

• Haille Selassie is the black man's God. All praise and power to Haille Selassie.
• Black people should wake up.
• The white man will teach you to believe in Unity. There is no such thing as Unity. If black people grow their nappy dreds, they will realize this, and praise Haille Selassie. The Rastafarians already know this.
• Black people are stupid, and should wake up.
• Growing your nappy dreds will make the white man fear you. The white man will thus be less likely to put you on your knees, in chains, in the cotton field.
• The white man created the Church as a haven for pedophiles.
• Priests are uniformly pedophiles.
• So is Jesus.
• The earthquake in China was the last sundering of Heaven and Earth. The Rastafarians are angry about this. We will all die.
• Tibet does not just mean "Tibet." It is a code. "TI" stands for Tie, and "BET" stands for Between. Thus Tibet is the Tie Between Heaven and Earth, which is why the United States wants to control it.
  
• Wake up, black people.
• You should not trust the white man's government. The average black man does not have enough food on his table, whereas George Bush has rice on his table every morning. You know what that's called? Condoleeza Rice. (This got a round of laughter from the car).
• You should not trust the Vice President because his name is Dick. Do you know what "dick" means? It's a penis, specifically a penis that resides in a young boy's anus. Half the problems of the country can be traced to the name "Dick."
• You should not trust Hillary Clinton. She was not good enough to run the country until there was the possibility of a qualified black man becoming President. The white man is using women to combat the black man.
• Barack Obama is not Barack Obama. The "O" in "Obama" stands for "O Say Can You See." Try and stop him. You can't. You are all going to die.
  
• If you look at the left eye of the Mona Lisa, you will see an image of Jesus molesting a child. This is why the Mona Lisa is worth fourteen million dollars.
• Also, if you look into the "left eye of the Last Supper" you will see Mary giving birth to Jesus and interrupting her career. This is why the Last Supper is worth fourteen million dollars.
  
• "Career" is a code word for something as well.
  
• Jesus was crucified in the year 911, so the attacks on September 11 were not a coincidence.
• 9/11 was an inside job.

We learned all this by the time we reached the bridge. Evidently, we were not taking heed closely enough, and the Militant Rastafarian threw caution (along with any further references to Rastafarianism and most of his continuity) to the four winds.

• Secondhand smoke is a myth. The real danger is from "secondhand poof."
• "Secondhand Poof" is an affliction propagated by gay men engaging in unprotected anal intercourse. Ejaculate combines with some unknown chemical to produce malicious little particles, each carrying the AIDS virus. If a gay man so much as farts in your vicinity, you are at risk of contracting HIV.
• If anyone on the subway can produce a more tangible God than Militant Rastafarian, would they please step forward now.
• Militant Rastafarian is, in fact, bigger than God. He does not need God. He has quit God. Militant Rastafarian is capable of quitting anything he wants.
• Militant Rastafarian is outraged that mothers hide their children because he smells like weed. Weed should not be illegal. (Commuters suspect that perhaps Militant Rastafarian has been partaking in something a little stronger than marijuana).

By this time, Militant Rastafarian has been educating us for thirty or forty minutes. Each time the train stops, people waiting to enter our car are warned off in low tones. Few of them pay attention, and thus membership in the Church of Subway Crazy stays at a constant level. Occasionally there is some laughter, a few eyes are rolled, a few look genuinely offended but lack the gumption to stand up for themselves.

I got off at 42nd Street (far away from the evangelicals, the Scientologists, and the Hare Krishnas). Militant Rastafarian was still going strong, spreading his message of madness to the masses bound uptown. As the doors closed, cutting off his opinion on a homosexual teacher (negative), I couldn't help but think: in a certain day and age, someone like this would have found followers. Instead, he's a lonely visionary, a prophet of the uptown express. If that's not a sign of progress, I don't know what is.