A. Blinken..... I have no truck with criminals, unless they’re relatives and I have no choice. A criminal, as I use the word, is a thug, a menace to the community; they have a problem either in their world view or their brain that tells them that it’s OK to screw other people over, to rob or harm or kill them. People who do these things are rarely punished, unless they are poor and stupid; really astonishing criminals are most often supported by tax dollars, they lie big, publically-funded lies, they kill thousands through proxies, they hand millions of dollars to their friends: people adore them. I try to avoid criminals great and small, popular and obscure. Neither am I comfortable with the ticky-tacky people, with respect to Malvina Reynolds. These are the people who know exactly what is at the crest of popular culture. To me it seems the most important thing for them is to be the person in the commercials we see. They are mall people: young women who market their bodies along with the logos of their exploiters; couples who live on the edge of bankruptcy in order to drive the right Hummer, wear the right clothes; people who swim ceaselessly toward the middle of the stream, knowing only what they see on TV or the internet. To me these folks seem strangely separated from themselves, masking their body odor, changing hair color, physical profile, and personality, to meet some contrived image. (If that description fits you, no offense, I probably don’t know what I’m talking about anyway; I’m kind of ugly, if that’s any consolation.) This leaves a third group, people I have, through a recent epiphany, come to understand are outlaws. An outlaw, yes, probably breaks laws. I know good, decent people who find a thousand ways to live that are, technically, breaking the law. Sometimes the law is a stupid one, like the prohibition against cannabis. Sometimes the law is a poor fit, like when a local family can’t get a deer tag while some valley dweller with a two thousand dollar rifle, who doesn’t need the meat, does. A gal can sell a kidney, but she can’t sell her... assignations? These are unfortunate laws, an embarrassment to a noble people, best ignored. Breaking these laws doesn’t make you a criminal, but it makes you an outlaw. People who choose to live in relative poverty in the hills instead of harnessing themselves to a corporate desk or a bureaucratic cubicle are outlaws because they violate the law of consumption and capitalism. People who home school their children are outlaws because their children may not learn to conform properly without experts with government and commercial propaganda to shape their little minds. People who fix their own cars, who make their own clothes, who barter, who work for cash, who make things in their home and sell them, these people are all outlaws because they have denied the corporations their profit, denied the government their taxes, and failed to perpetuate the crest of popular culture through consumption. (Organic gardeners used to be outlaws, but now the idea has been gobbled up by big agriculture and big chemical makers who have twisted the word "organic" and made it an upscale marketing slogan.) There is no end of things that make one an outlaw, and most of them have something to do with living simply, doing for one’s self, and knowing what is real and what is crap. I can also see how we might look to people on the other side: we’re "odd, sod and common, by God" as Granny likes to say, meaning, we’re a little strange, a little too earthy, and not distinguishable by our betters. We’re not too proud to smell like ourselves, to talk like ourselves, to spend our time as we like. I’m happy with that, happy to be living with decent outlaws, and glad to be causing whatever consternation I can for criminals great and wee, and all folks ticky.