"To be innocent..."

 always liked this cartoon from the new yorker magazine...

where to begin...some years ago i was in an airport headed (i hoped) to a ship for a few days as an extra hand during a hurricane...i had recently purchased a nylon duffle bag to replace the heavy canvas one i usually used...when i put the bag on the conveyor belt to be subjected to electronic scrutiny the woman operating the equipment told me that the bag registered as having explosive material...either on or in it she did not say...i said i recently purchased the bag at a thrift store so i knew nothing of it's history...but i had never carried any explosives in it...i said we needed to call security and check it out...she said that was not necessary but i insisted as i realized she was just another crooked female running a scam...eventually i picked up my bag and headed to my flight....when i returned from this assignment i had my travel papers with me but went to where my apartment was and awaited another assignment...the papers were stamped with seven different travel orders complete with flight charges....someone was pilfering money from the budget by falsifying travel orders...some years before  i was in the Rainbow grocery in San Francisco  (supposedly the largest worker owned organic grocery in the world) a nice store which i frequented when i was in the town...i was standing in the middle of the store when suddenly a woman starts yelling something about a man who was molesting a child...there was this woman and there was this child and there was me...i suddenly realized the scam she was running and she started to laugh...obviously the child was not being harmed in any way but she had done her evil and was now headed to the door...i also left and encountered her still laughing in the parking lot...more recently (yesterday) i was buying a couple of money orders from the post office when when the woman who came in behind me... one of the dozens of women who keep me under constant surveillance  posted that i had bought some money orders...my financial situation is much scrutinized as there are those who think that my getting $110 a month in food stamps makes me a felon as certainly i have hidden wealth...so i have been burned from the east coast to the west coast and everywhere in between...this has been going on for so long that i realized that the number of corrupted people is enormous and should the opportunity to burn me present itself they will certainly not hesitate to do so...yep after more than thirty years of being burned you would think i had grown used to it...but one never does...

"To be innocent is to be not guilty: but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations." Penn