I decided to end the tour by spending the Holidays at the original home of Branch Floridianism, the Octopus Garden.  Gotta say: going back to Florida reminded me why I moved out of that state in the first place...

Check this shit out: cops set up random roadblocks down there, ostensibly to detect and detain drunk drivers.  If you get ensnared into one of these —and remember, a roadblock pretty much stops everyone— here’s what you can expect:

• Even if you are obviously sober, they run your (and any passengers’) licence(s) to make sure you don’t have any warrants (plus check that the vehicle is legit and in proper working order.) 
• At the officers’ discretion, if *anything* about you, a passenger, or the vehicle is deemed “suspicious,” you are pulled out of the car and put aside.  The criteria for what is “suspicious” is deliberately vague, and left to the officers’ subjective discretion.  
• When you are pulled aside, the police preemptively handcuff you, even though you are not (yet) under arrest.
• After you are secured, they then search you and your vehicle.  If it’s reached this point, they are considered to have “probable cause” and don’t need your consent.
• The cuffs only come off when the officers are satisfied that you are not actually breaking any laws.

How’s that for civil rights violations?

Fortunately that didn’t happen to me while I was down there, but it has happened to several people I know, all of whom personally gave me similar stories.  I’m still trying to find out if this is just a Martin County phenomenon, or if such gestapo garbage goes on state-wide.  Whichever, it is happening, and that’s not even the worst example of what’s going on.

Check this shit out (Part 2):  My friend Chip got arrested and worked over for speeding.

Now, for those who don’t know Chip, or have forgotten his infamous war cry of “I have no testicles or fat!” let me put him in perspective...   Chip once went in to Publix to buy just a pound of hamburger, bottle of ketchup, and a 4-roll thing of toilet paper... and with a straight face asks the cashier “do you think this is the right amount of toilet paper for this amount of food?” 

With me on him?  Good; so anyway, it played out like this...

Chip was driving a drunk friend home.  Chip was sober, which was why he was driving.  They’re on Federal Highway, where the speed limit is 55.  He was going about 10 miles over the limit when Flashing Lights nabbed him from behind.  Rather than get the more traditional ticket for doing a few miles over the posted, the police to tell Chip they are going to arrest him for the offense.  Chip protests at this bizarre breach of protocol.  The police decide that since he isn’t cooperating, he is resisting arrest.  And they reacted accordingly.  Chip’s drunk buddy got off the lighter of the two: he just got zapped 5 times with a tazer.  Chip himself got treated to a double dose of pummeling: after police pwned him on the Highway, they take him in to the detention center where he is promptly worked over again by the Law.  During this session, he is slammed into a wall face first, which breaks his jaw.  The damage is so bad that they take him to the emergency room.  The doctor who set his jaw couldn’t believe all he had done to deserve this was a 10 mph traffic violation.  I can just see Chip explaining this to the doctor through clenched teeth and a dead-pan expression: “I was speeding.”  The cuffs never came off the whole time the doctor fixed him up. 

Scary post-coda to this story: when Chip got out, he talked to several lawyers about it.  No one would touch the case, apparently because police brutality is common enough that there is the equivalent to legal precedent allowing it.  Like I said, none of the lawyers would touch it with a 10-foot gavel.

Again, I don’t know if this is a state-wide problem, or just a Martin County affair.  Either way, what do you expect from a state run by Dubya’s brother?

It had to happen eventually: the Branch Davidians have found the Branch Floridians.  

First of all, yes, they’re still around.  After all, not all of them were in Waco that fateful day.  Admittedly, they say it’s just not the same with out Koresh around, but the crash ’n’ burn the main group experienced 13 years ago doesn’t diminish David’s message, it seems.  The ’Net is as good a place as any to relegate them to, especially with their remnant scattered to the four corners like so much ash blown by a hot Texas plains wind.  Indeed, I discussed their Net presence a few volumes ago with the exposé (nyuk nyuk) that some wag was running a gay porn site at www.branchdavidians.org.  Mercifully, that’s not to be mistaken for the real Branch Davidians over at www.SevenSeals.com.  Aside from SevenSeals, there are a number of other, minor sites they meet at on-line.

Back in December, I noticed some odd traffic on the Cyber-Compound server logs, and for once it wasn’t some .gif-lifting nitwit from MySpace hot-linking one of my hedgehog graphics.  Intrigued, I followed the referring .url to see who/what was sending people out to the Compound’s Front Gate, and spent the rest of the session laughing my ass off.  Turned out it was from The Mt. Carmel Discussion Board.  I’ll spare you a click and just reprint the thread (don’t worry, it’s short):

Anyway, I don’t know if they spent enough time on the site to see my thoughts on Koresh, but at least I’m glad that one of them was able to figure out that this was “an elaborate series of inside jokes.”   They also didn’t seem offended, so I’ll take the barb about being “someone with *way* too much time on [my] hands and a twisted sense of humor” in good faith.

I was saddened by the penultimate comment, that “...it might almost be something dangerous.”   

This site is about *thinking for yourself* and that is dangerous!

Which is why we’re here to help.

Duck the Anser joins us from Australia, and yes, he specifically excludes the “w” from his name.  Just goes to show that even Down Under, they don’t like W.  He’ll be our third person on the Aussie continent, along with Setablaze and the recently-relocated Kiwi.

“Monsters! Monsters from the ID!”

  Intelligent Design says that “life” is too intricate and complex to have started on its own, let alone end up with what we have now, so there must have been some sort of sentient craftsman at work.  ID meticulously avoids identifying the “Designer.”  In theory, it could be anything from aliens to time travelers to a giant Flying Spaghetti Monster.  However, if you ask them, ID champions will quickly tell you there is no evidence for the existence of E.T.s or F.S.M.s (or even B.F.M.s) so the Designer is most likely—if not must be—God.

I should actually digress for a second and say that in principal, I have no problem with the basic concept of Intelligent Design.  Admittedly, I’m swayed by the data backing up Evolution—though much of my bias comes from my mom, Sisbooomba, who teaches middle school biology.  However, I’m also inclined to believe that us humans being the end product of evolution is so improbable a lottery that it likely required some Unseen Puppeteer here and there to get this outcome.  That branch of thought is known as theistic evolution, which I consider to be a kindred spirit of ID.  The two are compatible, so in a sense, I am an ID supporter.  

That right there should be your flag that something’s wrong: I agree with it.  

It should also be obvious that ID is designed to be intentionally vague and play well with other systems.  However, one system in particular seems to be the most homogeneous with it, and it smells like a brick of limburger.  

ID is thinly disguised and stripped down Creationism, and was calculatedly crafted as a Trojan Horse to lay the groundwork for a larger assault later on.   

The Conspiracy

Tangential Speculation