There was an massive earthquake in China. Hillary still won’t quit. The Sex in the City movie premiered in London. A frat house here in Madison burned down. Food prices are high, which some people blame on biofuel. I guess it’s too difficult for some people to understand that in order to produce and transport food, fuel must be consumed. Oil prices are high, which makes fuel prices high. It really is a simple matter of increased costs. Let us also not forget that ethanol is not made with corn that people eat. It’s feed corn, which is used to feed cattle. There also isn’t enough biofuel produced to make any significant impact on fuel prices, let alone the cost of feed corn.

In better news, I received my coffee tree today. I actually received two, but one is a gift for someone. They take 4-5 years to produce beans, but I really like the idea of having a coffee tree. I love drinking coffee. Now I’m going to grow my own coffee, although not a whole lot. It will probably only produce a few days worth of coffee beans each year. The coffee trees I ordered came from Hawaii and they’re Kona Arabica. They should be easy to grow indoors since they should be kept out of direct sunlight and their temperature range is within the common household temperatures.

It’s Friday night and since I have to work early tomorrow morning, I’ve come home early. Life can be a thrill sometimes. I don’t want to go to bed. I probably won’t be able to fall asleep anyways. There are many things I have the urge to do, but don’t dare. Sometimes I think I should take more risks, but I fear the cost of failure.

So everyone out there, enjoy your night. I hope you do what you want.

There’s supposed to be isolated thunderstorms all day. All I know is it looks gloomy out there. I saw lightning flash and heard the thunder crack earlier this morning. Right on queue a sudden shower came down.

When I was a kid I used to love the thunderstorms that would appear out of nowhere in the middle of a hot day. The streets would be well warmed from the morning sun and the rain would steam as it struck the asphalt. The puddles that collected on the road would be warm and I’d run barefooted through them drenching myself in the summer rain. Simple pleasures for a carefree child.

There is something calming and exciting about rain I cannot describe or fully understand. I still enjoy the rain, but I don’t often run through the puddles. I watch the rain from a dry vantage point. I try to find a pattern to the density of the rainfall. If you look closely you can see that the rainfall moves across the land like waves across water.

Today is the First of May. Tomorrow is Jonathan Coulton at the Majestic. I went to his show the last time he was in Madison. It was one of my favorite shows in recent history. His opening act, Paul and Storm, was hilarious. I missed the first part of Paul and Storm before, but I won’t this time.

The last time he was in town, my day threatening to become utterly terrible. It was crazy cold and icy and metro was being pathetic. The bus to Johnson and Baldwin didn’t show up, so I had to hoof it four blocks to a stop on Washington Ave where I had to wait 30 minutes. Then of course the bus detoured away from State St and I had to walk a few blocks back towards State at Frances where I was meeting someone for dinner. Then of course after dinner we walked over to King St for the show. That was entirely too much walking for that kind of weather. The show definitely made up for the hardships. However, after the show the universe still felt like screwing with me. I called a cab and the dispatcher told me to be ready because the cab will be there immediately. I thought that was cool, so we went outside to wait. Apparently the dispatcher and I have a different definition of the world ‘immediately’. I’m fine with waiting for a cab. I’m not so arrogant or wealthy to expect a car to be ready at a moments notice to speed me off to my destination. Normally in the winter I’d wait inside the lobby until I saw the cab. Since the dispatcher told me the cab would be there immediately and given that many people leaving the show would be more than happy to steal our cab, I ventured outside. At least when I was walking I was building body heat to fend off the wind and cold. Remember, when you use the world ‘immediately’, it should not be 25 minutes later.

I learned some importants lesson that day. I won’t walk for any distance in the winter any longer and I won’t trust metro to be on schedule during any type of weather. I also stay inside while waiting for a cab.

Down in Racine an Alderman is working to make it legal for retired police officers to carry a concealed weapon. Am I missing something here? What makes a RETIRED police officer deserving to carry a concealed weapon when no other member of the public can?

For the record I am for a concealed weapon program in Wisconsin. However, I don’t believe the right to carry a concealed weapon should be restricted to select groups. A lot of people wrongfully assume that the right to carry a concealed weapon is rare. There are concealed weapon programs in 44 states. Wisconsin is in the minority. Opponents to concealed weapons like to scare the public with the threat that concealed weapons lead to violent rampages. That’s not true. There’s no doubt that there has been an increase in gun violence in unexpected areas, such as campuses or shopping centers. In all those cases, the perpetrator did not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

I believe the idea that retired police should be able to carry concealed weapons stems from the idea that police officers are not part of the general public. The police love to refer to the public as ‘civilians’. What exactly does that make them? They are civil law enforcement officers, commissioned by civil authority. Police are civilians and should be treated as such. They do not deserve and should not receive special treatment by the legal system or be granted special rights.

I’m sure one argument in favor of granting retired police the right to carry concealed weapons is that violent criminals may seek to exact revenge on a particular police officer. That threat is no different for witnesses to crimes. If there is a perceived threat, the retired police officers should have the same options as the rest of the public, such as police protection.