Respect.

Okay. See, this is impressive to me. Here’s someone who believes so strongly in something that they’re willing to plaster it all over their car for the entire motoring world to see… but not permanently. You see, they hate Obama… and commitment! Because, you know, they could change their mind, right? You just never know. Not to mention that one needs to keep the resale value of one’s compact Japanese SUV in mind. Or it could be that this person believes so strongly that soon we’ll all live in a right-wing utopia where Obama is defeated and all media is controlled by Fox News, and there’s no class warfare and everyone’s Christian and unicorns and fairies don’t expect special treatment just because they’re magic, and bumper stickers like these won’t even be necessary anymore.

Or maybe they tape bumper stickers on the inside of their back windshield because while they hold these particular extreme viewpoints, they’re open to new ones. Maybe it’s up to some brave lefty to help them change their mind and replace those current stickers with “The Moral Majority is Neither” or “Coexist” or “Who Farted?” But, you know, with tape. On the inside.

Blight, continued.

Look.  I don’t mean to get all real and stuff. I know everyone’s just trying to make it through yet another 50-degree midwinter day here in New England, and it’s not easy, what with the clear roads and limber, painless back muscles from not shoveling snow. But you know what? Life happens. Like it or not. And sometimes it isn’t pretty.

Look at this. Don’t you dare look away.

That is --- or rather, it used to be --- a whole, functioning streetlight and street sign. Well, kind of. It only marked one of the streets that make up the corner (the other one apparently isn’t any of your business), and the light worked now and then. Anyway, one night --- last week, last month, last year (who knows?) --- it all came crashing down. Literally. Now it’s just laying there, dead, on the corner where my office is. That’s right. I have to look at this carnage every day on the way to my comfortable office job with enviable benefits. People ask me, “After all this time, don’t you get used to it?” And the answer is No. No, I don’t “get used” to it. Sure, I've learned how to hop over potholes and frost heaves and avoid the larger expanses of broken glass and scatterings of party cards with pictures of gigantic-bottomed ladies on them, but how do you forget about an entire downed streetlight that isn’t going anywhere? Even the metal pickers don’t want anything to do with this. How are they going to fit that thing in a little pickup truck?

And what about the children….’s parents? Or childless adults who drive or walk in the area? How will they know where not to enter? Or which way to the path to health? This is a travesty. This is blight.

Also, the State of the State address happened. You can read it here. The gist of it is, we’re broke, and we’re jerks. Go Rhody!