Oh, life goes on, long after the thrill of blogging is gone...

Sorry not to have posted for a few days; given the nature of the preceding blog post, it is understandable that one would give blogging some thought before continuing on. Thinking about NBC's Law and Order, one thinks of Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni; their squadroom temperament is strong, strong like being able to crack walnuts with one's hand. In contrast, I really have to say that the cop on Adult Swim's Squidbillies is a cop I would find myself able to emulate, transferred to an urban setting, of course. (This has no bearing on my appreciation of Detectives Sifowicz and Simone of NYPD Blue.) In reflecting on the differences between Chris Meloni and Commissioner Squidbilly, one might consider that the officer played by Mr. Meloni on Law and Order has a certain type of clientele; he finds it to be a regular occurrence to simply get energized and get results in a very short amount of time; the morality generated during his largely successful law enforcement efforts is very intense. The thesis being presented here is that one could not actually survive that level of moral action for more than a few seconds at a time; contrasted with Commmissioner Squidbilly, who seems (accounting again for his clientele and adjusting his persona to an urban setting) to work on about 55% of the maximum moral action potentiation, a level under which one could live and work comfortably for the many decades of one's life. Whereas Meloni's character is an optimal choice for an interview room emergency, the Commissioner, for normal citizens who may have shoplifted a couple of times as a teen, or who dealt a lot of weed and then quit dealing weed because he or she got too old for it, or who receives inexpensive cable service, or any other number of things that people do, that person could find it to be very copacetic (to borrow a term from Hill Street Blues) to be able to think about the Captain on Squidbillies in an office at City Hall and at the Police HQ.

What would be the title of the Squidbillies if it were to be set in urban Baltimore or New York? People who feel slightly uncomfortable with the law agencies, due to unfamiliarity, wrong impressions, recreational drug use, et cetera, would have plenty of energy to work at the auto shop, the insurance company, the department store, the transit authority, et cetera. What's the deal with eating grapes at the supermarket and with illegally throwing one's trash into a convenient dumpster that one isn't paying for? If law can remove presences in society that prevent people from getting to work, it can also speed the Bart Simpsons, Courtney Loves and Cosmo Kramers to that place of work.