Nice Bones, Nicer Taxes, Nicest Season

The TV show ‘Bones’ has really grown on me since I started watching it in reruns. When it debuted I never tuned in because I didn’t care for pre-premier ad campaign. I thought it was just another twist on the cop drama. To an extent it is. This time, they put an anthropologist and other research scientists in place of your run of the mill forensic pathologists. The writing is clever, the plot twists are quirky and the characters are all odd balls without being weird. I came to like ‘Law and Order’ after first watching reruns. But where Law and Order intentionally avoids very much character development outside the precinct and courthouse, Bones gives vivid portraits of this group of people professionally and personally. Bones doesn’t take itself too seriously either. Sometimes it can be the story that stretches credulity, sometimes it’s the technology and sometimes it’s the IQ of some of the characters. I’ve got to say this too, the title character Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist hence the ‘Bones’ nickname, played by Emily DeSchanel, and her co-worker/best friend Angela Montenegro played by Michela Conlin are the easiest women to look at on the small screen.

I was surprised to learn today that Russia has a flat-tax system in place for collecting government revenue. Amazing that a nation that has only been “free” for less than twenty years, and is having real problems defining their version of democracy and market capitalism, managed to get this issue exactly right. I haven’t actually seen it but I’d bet the entire Russian tax code could be written on one of Sheryl Crow’s single sheets of TP. So why, after 223 years of practice is the American tax code nine or ten inches thick?

Spring is here, and as sure as fall follows winter, summer will arrive soon. Summer brings a lot of nice stuff with it. Water sports, cook-outs and outdoor stuff in general, the Fourth of July, football training camp and the thing that makes it all possible, the warmer weather. This is why I don’t like summer very much. I prefer the cool weather of autumn most of all and I can even enjoy the biting cold of mid-February in the northeast. But the heat itself isn’t what bothers me about well, the heat. It is the effect of the heat on the everyday disposition of most folks that turns me off. From June to September people are just way more easily pissed off and hyper-prickly. And it’s because they can’t get out of the heat. Let’s face it, when you start to get hot and sweaty you start stripping off. If you wind up naked and are still uncomfortable hey you’re stuck. I’m talking about the outdoors, not escaping into an air-conditioned Wal-Mart. Uncomfortable people are not much fun to be around. Less courteous, less cheerful and way more impatient. Ever notice how pleasant life seems when the leaves turn? Sleeping with the window open is rest at its restful best. And when you get cold, there is always another layer to throw on. Hell, Alaskans have all kinds of fun outdoors all the way through the winter because there are clothes that can keep a person comfortable – including the lovely Governor Palin. People are nicer the cooler the temperature. What’s more fun? Sitting with your person in front of an air conditioner trying to stop schvitzing, or curling up together in front of a glowing fire? Summertime? Something else that has a reputation that bears small resemblance to reality.

Should marijuana be legalized? I used to be firmly in the ‘no’ camp. Even when I smoked daily for a long time. I believed – no still believe – that it is a gateway drug. Not in the sense that a pothead will crave a greater high and seek out and find the chemicals. That happens a lot less than folks are led to believe. Pot is a gateway drug because being illegal; it puts even the casual user in contact with dealers who are willing and indeed hoping to get the pothead to try coke, crack or any other thing available to increase the dealer’s profit. But, if pot were legal and could be bought in a liquor store, or grown legally for personal use, lots of potheads would never drive to the local stop-and-cop street corner, or ever see the inside of a crack house. Potheads are mellow, like to avoid not create hassles, especially hassles like getting out of the recliner, and will only travel as far as the refrigerator, in an emergency the closest diner. Potheads are certainly never violent, over indulging just leads to nodding off to sleep, not vomiting or life threatening OD’s and smoking it is no more addicting than smoking cigarettes. Less I’d wager. I stopped smoking when I moved to a place where I didn’t know anyone who smoked, didn’t know where the street connections were and wasn’t willing to go on safari. There were no withdrawal symptoms physical or psychological. So now I’m a supporter of legalization, and I’m saving my money for when the day comes. To buy stock in Twinkies and Frito-Lay.