The Boys Of Summer

Today I had my first drink of the year in an English pub garden. It was sunny and almost windless, and as I was driving home, on an impulse I stopped at a pub, and bought a beer.

And a minute or so after I’d sat down and lit up, the piped music in the garden started playing The Boys Of Summer, by the Eagles, or maybe by the lead singer-drummer of the Eagles, who was probably providing both the vocals and the chugging drums.

And with that it almost felt like summer had come.

And so I sat smoking and drinking in the sun, thinking about yesterday’s subject of discussion: an NYC councillor’s proposal to ban smoking while walking on the city sidewalks: i.e. an utterly tyrannical measure.

Last night I was thinking that if I lived in NYC, I’d bombard that councillor with emails. And I ‘d bombard his fellow councillors with emails. And I’d doorstep them. And more than that, I’d press for Peter Koo to be deported back to Hong where the little bastard came from back in 1971.

But I don’t live in NYC. So I can’t.

But as I sipped the beer, I wondered if maybe, just maybe I could.

Maybe I could become an undocumented immigrant? After all, Peter Koo is quite possibly an undocumented immigrant who arrived in the USA just like millions of others, And they’re welcomed by the Democrat party, because they usually vote Democrat, since they’re most of them on welfare.

Maybe I could get myself a home in NYC, with an address to go with it?

I wouldn’t actually ever go to New York, but I’d have a “home” there. And maybe that “home” would just be the house of someone I knew in the city. And they’d collect any mail that arrived for me, and answer any phone calls for me:

“Frank? He’s gone to England. Try again in January. He might be back by then. Bastard owes me a cheeseburger and a milk shake.”

And then I actually could start emailing Peter Koo and his batshit-crazy fellow councillors giving my NYC address. I might even manage to send them scrawled, hand-written notes. Who knows, maybe I could even register for a postal vote, given that Dems think it’s OK for undocumented immigrants to vote? Maybe, like Peter Koo, I could even run for office, given that the Dems think that’s OK too? Why not play the Dems at their own game, and bring in your own undocumented immigrants?

And since quite a few of my readers and commenters yesterday were about as angry as I was, why couldn’t a few of them do the same, and set themselves up as virtual immigrants in NYC. And bombard Koo and co with emails and letters and phone calls?

You could have a whole army of people parachute into New York.

Or anywhere else where an army of people were needed.

And the arrangement would be reciprocal. Want to be able to write to a British MP? Become a virtual English citizen, living in Herefordshire or wherever. You could email him direct, and give the UK address in his constituency. And you could even send handwritten letters to him, which would be opened and re-posted with UK stamps on the envelopes.

And that way you could build up a network of identities and addresses all over the world. In England, in Europe, in the USA, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

And every time you were needed anywhere, you could parachute in as another undocumented virtual immigrant.

It needs more thinking about. But it’s right in line with my belief that us smokers all over the world need to come together. We come together already in places like my blog and a few other blogs. And we come together in the Smoky Drinky Bar. And maybe we could also come together as virtual citizens of each others’ countries. And we could form a little Undocumented Parachute Regiment, parachuting in wherever needed.

And nobody would have to do anything much more than they already do. They’d mostly just be sending emails and letters, or making phone calls. No need to actually go anywhere. No need to do what I did at Stony Stratford, which was to drive across England and hold up a placard, and then drive all the way back.

I’m not really any sort of activist. I’m an inactivist. I like minimal action. I always look for minimal ways to do anything. I don’t regard writing my blog as any sort of activism: I think it’s a form of inactivism, because I write all the time anyway. I don’t think the Smoky Drinky Bar is activism either: all I need do is sit and smoke cigarettes and drink beers, and I do that all the time anyway. Even the ISIS survey was inactivism: I just sat in pub gardens like I always did anyway, and occasionally wandered over to talk to people I saw smoking.

Activists are people who do things that they’d rather not do.  Activists are people who’ll march on streets and wave placards and stick up posters and spray-paint walls. Who wants to do that?

But I think a mobile army of inactivists could be very influential, if there were enough of them. And the nice thing about inactivism is that it doesn’t require much effort. So it’s probably much easier to raise and army of inactivists than activists.

Maybe I should do a poll of readers to ask them whether they’d like to become inactivists? Would they be prepared to offer their homes as the homes for a few undocumented virtual inactivists? Would they be prepared to write a few letters or emails? What were they prepared to do? And how often?

…

Rose brought up something interesting today:

“Since 1 October 2012, at least 1 legible no-smoking sign must still be displayed but owners and managers are now free to decide the size, design and location of the signs.

How about printing a few No Smoking signs that are the size of postage stamps? Or smaller?

And stick it on the back of the front door, right at the top?

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