When I wrote yesterday about my Neighbor from Hell, I didn’t intend to start a discussion about how to deal with the nuisance.

I should have realized comments would go that way, though. And I’m glad they did because as always you guys came up with ideas that are interesting, helpful, and delightfully devious (sometimes all three at once!).

In the long run, I’m pretty sure the neighbors will have to deal with Mr. Karaoke on their own, non-violently but decisively. Some of your techniques will surely be put to good use.

As it happens, though, this week we caught an unexpected break. And yes it did involve “people in charge.”

After the week’s third party, I begged Mr. K’s landlady to give him an ultimatum: stop the noise or be evicted. This she would not do. But she talked with him, then called me back with a story that, at first, didn’t make much sense. Mr. K was quite indignant because he claimed that he now had the city government’s approval for all this racket!

He had gone to the chief of police and the city council and gotten specific permission to hold musical events (by invitation) around the city in honor of what landlady called “Mexican Mardi Gras” — Carnival, the extended pre-Lenten festivities celebrated down south.

Nobody is going to be so churlish as to begrudge a neighbor an occasional loud holiday celebration.

But Mr. K. — who frankly shows more signs of arrogant cluelessness than malice — decided that the city had given him carte blanche — for parties, for rehearsals, for pretty much anything. The government approved of him. He had Followed Procedures. So how could the neighbors possibly have any legitimate objection?

I went to city hall and explained our dilemma to the mayor. He gave me a fair hearing, talked with the police chief, and by the end of the day the chief had sent a sergeant out to Mr. K’s place with the message that the city had not endorsed anything beyond by-request holiday performances during Carnival.

With luck, this will keep Mr. K. quiet until seriously nice weather sets in. Then we’ll see. I’ll be very, very surprised if this buys us long-term peace.

Am I happy that I went to “officials”? Nope. But this time, in all innocence, those very officials had triggered the problem and they decently took responsibility.

And as I wrote yesterday, when you’re facing a dilemma that increasingly looks as if it can’t be solved politely, it’s easier to live with yourself if you can say, “I tried everything else before I resorted to guerrilla warfare.”

I’d say we’ve now tried everything else.

Do me a favor, if you would. Go back to yesterday’s post and take another look at the second part — the part about mindset and hesitancy to act. Because I really do think that the way everybody’s handled (or failed to handle) this mini-mess bears on our current situation as lovers of freedom in an unfree world.

That’s what I’d like to talk about in part III.

—-

But first … you want a LOL? I wrote the above Thursday afternoon and scheduled it for later posting. As it turns out, I’d rather not post it at all, except that I promised part II. I’m adding this coda at 6:30 Thursday evening — while listening to the sounds of Mr. K’s latest “performance.”

The best I can say is that he is keeping the volume down this time.

But yes, we’ll have to solve this problem ourselves.

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Since last July neighbors and I have been forced to deal with an intractable problem. A man who lives just across the intersection acquired a professional-grade karaoke system and has held approximately 35 blindingly loud parties in a doorless garage. His music can often be heard five blocks away; this close it’s like a jackhammer to the brain.

When asked to turn the music down, the man smiles, nods — and goes right on doing exactly what he wants to do. Sometimes he responds by turning the volume up. The police come out. They make him lower the noise to something more tolerable (but still plainly audible inside our houses). He keeps it low for an hour or two. But his next party goes on at full blast.

I’ve never called the cops on him. Not my style. Others have done the calling. But I talked to him three times and when that failed, I got his landlady to chat with him. That — and winter weather — gave peace-loving neighbors a small break. For a few months we had to put up with “only” two parties a month, not the two a week we endured last summer.

Then suddenly this week we had springlike weather — and he threw three parties-from-hell in four days. The first brought two calls to the police. The next two featured lower volumes of music — but a crowd of people dancing and shouting in the street.

This emphatic return of jackhammer music and unneighborly behavior triggered a community crisis — and an awakening.

And the whole process feels like something freedomistas, or could-be-freedomistas, are going through in the wider world.

—–

People in this neighborhood pretty much keep to themselves. I’ve learned just this week that all last summer people were thinking pretty much what I was: “This is godawful. But surely it’ll be only temporary.”

Then we moved on to, “I can’t stand this one more minute. But nobody else seems to mind. Maybe I’m just some grouchy old weirdo.”

We would jam in our earplugs or crank up our own music and spend his party evenings gritting our teeth and fantasizing about clever, bold, devious — and entirely unrealistic — ways we’d get that bastard. We felt impotent. Our lack of ability to change the situation enraged us perhaps more than the actual noise did.

The first sign I saw that others were suffering came when one of the tenants in Mr. Karaoke’s building heard one of my requests for quiet, came to my house a few days later, and begged me to call the police. He said he didn’t have a phone, but also that he was too scared to call on a nearby pay-phone — that he feared Mr. K and his friends would punish him. (This despite the fact that Mr. K has never threatened violence to anybody.) Too scared.

He’s the one who told me the police had already been out several times. So others are upset. But who are they? Where are they?

Realizing I was no longer just speaking for myself finally gave me more gumption, more motivation. That’s when I got the landlady to buy us that (unfortunately temporary) reprieve.

Then came false hope. When a week would go by without a party, we’d all breathe a sigh of relief and think, “Thank God. Maybe it’s over now.”

Because we were in this state of hopeful denial, this week’s three noise-fests just devastated us. We finally had to face the fact that absolutely nothing had been solved and that as we looked with anticipation toward the coming months of better weather we’d also have to cringe with dread, knowing that every pleasant day might be turned hellish by this one man.

I know this thought process was common because this week’s return of chaos finally got neighbors talking with each other. Our angry, frustrated thoughts poured out. We belatedly realized that we were well-and-truly stuck with this situation and neither the police nor the landlady, despite all their visits to and talks with the culprit, were going to save us. We would have to come up with our own plan. We would have to stomp our own snakes.

But even after being smacked in the face with reality and making the first tentative beginnings of an organization, we weren’t quite ready to believe that we had exhausted all the possibilities of the “people in charge.”

And as it turned out, “people in charge” really did have one more part to play — even though I’m pretty sure it will end up being the part that goes: “Well, we really couldn’t have lived with ourselves if we hadn’t tried every, single last means of working within the system. Now we really know we’ll have to take care of it, ourselves alone.”

This whole thought/action process sounds ridiculously — and sadly — familiar doesn’t it?

—–

More tomorrow.

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I turn the blog over this morning to two commentors at Earthineer:

Oilman2, who says that small farmers (and by extension many more of us) should opt out.

And Earthineer founder Dan Adams who answers that we should opt in.

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Nothing heavy today. Just finished up a round of deadlines and am tired. But thought you’d enjoy some word from small-town nowhere.

—–

Took one of my dogs for a walk downtown this morning and stopped at a tourist kiosk that extolls the local history, hardihood, and industry. For the first time, I learned that a large part of the local economy is based on “fur” trees.

I must say that came as a surprise. During all my walks in the woods I’ve never seen one. They must be rare but yield a very expensive product.

Don’t anybody tell PETA that they’re cruelly sawing them down.

—–

Was at a gathering a few days ago where a number of the attendees were of a certain age. Some had passed that age quite a while back.

“I need to make a phone call,” said one 70-ish lady.

“Here.” A 70-ish man flipped his cell phone open and tried to hand it to her.

She backed up a step. “What’s that?”

“It’s a phone.”

“They’re making them that small these days? Oh my gosh. I’ll bet that’s even one of those that takes pictures!”

“Yep. Here, I’ll take one of you.”

He raises the phone and presses a button — an act she clearly doesn’t recognize as taking a photograph.

“You can really take pictures on it?” she asks. “Have you had any of them developed yet?”

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I have to admit it; if I were rich I’d have left the U.S. by now. Or I’d at least have prepared a nice little offshore getaway — a vacation place that would be there when the day came that it was really, really, indubitably time to escape.

I’m not a rich person. You’re probably not, either.

Still, we Americans are living in a country whose government (not our government, but some strange occupation force, some junta that seized power when good people and fools alike weren’t watching) has declared its authority either to assassinate us at will or “disappear” us equally arbitrarily.

That’s not tolerable. One way or another, that has to end. It ends either by us leaving or by that government being ended through resistance.

—–

Do you think about leaving? I know there are people here who say, “Never. Absolutely not. This is my country and they’re not going to drive me out of it.” “I’ll fight for it,” some say. “I’ll die before I surrender it to tyrants.”

Part of me understands that and agrees. Part of me, on the other hand, says, “Freedom is my only country and it goes where I go.” Part of me says, “If you have to fight or fear all the time, then by definition you’re not free and never will be.”

—–

I know a handful of non-rich or non-connected people who’ve made it as ex-pats. One has lived in Central America for 10 years, scraping by, living in a quasi-semi-sort-of not-too-illegal status.

He periodically nags and browbeats me about my failure to leave the U.S. He’s also generous with ideas and offers of hospitality. He makes me think.

Of course it’s possible for less-than-monied folk to get out, if they’re willing to live like gypsies or are okay with a quasi-semi-sort-of not-too-illegal status. Or if they marry a foreign national. Or have lucked into dual citizenship. Or get a job that stations them outside the U.S. Or qualify for a critical-skills immigrant status. There are a lot of ways.

None of those ways apply to me, probably not to you, either.

—–

I’d go if the right opportunity came along. My Central American ex-pat friend thinks that’s just a dodge. He thinks it’s a way of making excuses for not having the guts to pick up and leave.

He may be right.

Yet my objections are real. For all the faults and growing terrors of this country, I don’t know of another that’s “better enough” to dislocate my life for.

Gun rights? The U.S. is still outstanding. “But you can get a permit to own a firearm so easily here!” my ex-pat friend says.

“But I don’t want no steeeenking permit,” I reply.

My friend in Central America has to deal with bribing officials — something I’ve never contemplated doing here and don’t want to contemplate.

He points out — rightly, I’m sure — that it’s not the laws on the books that matter; it’s how those laws are enforced (or not). Plenty of places with “worse” laws than ours are, in practice, pretty much live-and-let live. Yet I live in a small town where, mostly, the laws and I leave each other the hell alone. And I know that the country where he lives — a very good place in many ways — has become a horror story for some ex-pats.

I’m thinking of a couple of Americans there who got into an auto accident with locals — no witnesses, strictly he-said-she-said — and literally had to flee the country because the locals were able to turn a corrupt legal establishment on them. The Americans in question were rich, and somebody decided to use that against them, hoping to profit.

But then, you and I probably aren’t rich. We wouldn’t have to worry about that. Unless, in the wrong circumstances, somebody thought we were rich.

—–

There are so many factors. Dogs. Have you ever looked into the costs and complications of transporting dogs to live in another country? Some countries are easier than others. But nowhere is it a cheap and easy process.

I take the dogs to another country — and you know I wouldn’t leave them behind — and 1/3 or more of my resources are gone — poof! — before I even get started on a new life.

And dogs are … well, just dogs. You may have family you can’t leave. A job you can’t give up. Property you can’t sell.

My friend in Central America would say that’s all just excuses.

He’d say, “Yeah, the Jews in Germany in 1933 made the same objections. And they were fools. They died. Get the hell out while the getting’s good.”

And we might say, “It’s bad, but it’s not going to get that bad here.”

And he’d say, “That’s what they said, too.”

And he’d be right.

Still, the Nazis were an anomaly. Weren’t they? Weren’t they? Please let them be an anomaly.

—–

A week or so ago there was a good, commonsense article on reasons not to go ex-pat. The author — who had tried it himself — makes thoughtful points.

Even non-political ex-pats often warn that going offshore isn’t for everybody. Here and here, for instance.

And many of the people who agitate eloquently for getting the heck out are still clearly talking to the well-off. (Here, too.)

Oh yes, just buy yourself a second passport. Take $100,000 or so and invent in an offshore property. Diversify your assets among a host of countries. EZ-peezy.

Until the U.S. government reaches its tentacles into your offshore bank. Until your pleasantly prosperous offshore dream is shattered by FATCA.

Because of course, that’s the other thing. The U.S. government is everywhere.

Whether you’re rich or poor, it’s there. The eye of Mordor on the Potomac sees around the globe.

Still, unless Mordor seeks you directly, getting out can be a relief, and more and more events are pointing in that direction.

And every time you get a reminder about how bad it’s getting … don’t you at least think about leaving?

—–

I know one man — well off and very smart — whose version of “going offshore” simply took him to a U.S. state that he believes will probably secede when push comes to shove.

And more power to him. He has other reasons for locating where he did, of course. But I gotta admit that’s a creative idea — even if it’s one I think is farfetched.

And I have my own idea of “offshore.” Being in a tiny, out-of-the-way town is pretty good.

Until, of course, the moment it isn’t.

But that’s true anywhere.

—–

This is all just dithering and therefore possibly pointless.

I’m choosing not to see it that way, though.

I don’t know about you but I’ve found that in my life the worst dithering often comes just before the biggest decision points. Sometimes the dithering and inaction seems as if it’s going to be endless … until suddenly it ends. And ends in a powerful burst of resolution.

Mud becomes clear. Helplessness becomes power. Confusion becomes enlightenment. Weakness transforms into an irresistible force. It happens. The mind is a miracle worker — though one whose ways are sometimes as mysterious as God’s.

Through struggle we become our own leaders, our own gurus. There aren’t any shortcuts — at least none that lead to good ends. But damn, what wimpy leaders and gurus our poor selves often seem!

Some things we can be sure of, though.

One thing I know at this moment is that the present state cannot stand. Wherever our country truly lies (in our hearts and minds, and other places), these bastards cannot, do not, will not own it. Not &^%$#@ing ever.

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So my friend and I showed up at the courthouse yesterday, properly (or rather improperly) disarmed. She even left her nail file in the car, just in case, and I carried a purse (I never carry a purse) that was so light I felt naked. No flashlight, no pepper spray, no multi-tool, no spring-assisted pocket knife, no hardware whatsoever.

The courthouse, in a bigger county than this one, was a “real” courthouse — swarming with lawyers and built to impress 19th century citizens. Domes and grand staircases and mosaic floors and all that.

In the courtroom, the ceiling soared to 20 feet to make room for a pair of murals meant to convey the Majesty of Justice. On one side of the judge’s bench, a gaggle of Greek ladies stood in Renaissancy poses, balancing scales and reading big books al fresco. They appeared quite uncomfortable despite their sunny day. But they were better off than the folks in the other mural.

On that one, a host of avenging angels wielding swords, torches, and daggers took off after some naked-except-for-strategically-placed-drape guy like a mob of peasants after the Frankenstein monster — except airborne, as angels are wont to be. The guy in the mural had just murdered another guy and now he was running like hell. (I think it might have been Cain and Abel, but since the muralist didn’t include any symbolic hints like scattered produce from Cain’s garden, I’m not really sure.)

Above the judge in foot-high letters was a motto (I paraphrase): “To the just, justice is a holy blessing. To evil-doers it is righteous vengeance.”

This was Superior Court and everything about the place was meant to convey that it’s superior to you, indeed, little peasant.

Beneath all this, a bored and mumbly judge and a weary flock of public defenders gave 30 seconds each to a parade of mostly young, mostly male, mostly haggard, sometimes ragged, often not too bright looking “evil-doers.” That is, they gave 30 seconds (sometimes as much as two minutes) to the ones who showed up. About half on the docket didn’t — which seemed to be such business-as-usual that the drooping judge didn’t even pause before calling out the next defendant’s name.

Even sitting in a forward row, we could hear only snippets of the proceedings. Those 20-foot ceilings play havoc with the acoustics. It seemed pretty clear, though, by the way they trooped in and out of the courtroom on their own, that this pack of “evil-doers” … well, wasn’t.

At least not of the level requiring heavenly hit squads.

All we really knew was that my friend’s son — the person for whom we conducted our entire exercise in disarmament and submission to the state — wasn’t there.

He wasn’t in the bizarre conga line of chained county jail inmates in teal jumpsuits shuffling out as we entered. He wasn’t among the bedraggled, humbled, or swaggering defendants who approached the bench in civilian clothes. Nor was he among the orange-suited and chain-trussed few who came in with cops on all four sides of them, officers grimly clearing the hoi palloi out of the way. (We were imagining each and every one of the orange-suiters a Hannibal Lecter, but when they stood before the judge we occasionally caught terms like “malicious mischief” and “assault.”)

We’d already discovered her son wasn’t on the docket before we went into the courtroom. We stayed around a while just in case he and his attorney turned up unscheduled, as a nice woman from the county clerk’s office said sometimes could happen.

But nope. He was in jail because he’d missed his November court date on theft charges. And now he’d done it again. He’d told his mother he had a hearing today when in fact it’s next Monday. Yeah. He’s a flake. Next time, she’ll check with his lawyer before making the trip. Next time, it’ll be without me.

Anyhow we spent the day going to thrift stores and consignment shops instead. We met no more avenging angels. And no evil-doers, as far as we could tell.

—–

Oh yeah. Even in the “real” courthouse — no metal detectors, no searches. We could have walked in with Tommy guns under our skirts and nobody would have given a hoot. (Nor should they have given a hoot, I hasten to add, because we’d be strictly responsible Tommy gun owners, ready only to aid the cause of justice by defending the innocent.)

In fact, their Big City courthouse had even more liberal weapons rules than our local backwoods one.

Our local Palace of Justice has also been known to indulge itself in a mural or two, but mostly depicting grubby 19th century loggers (though the two-man saws they bear are more useful than angel swords, all things considered). The edifice, such as it is, is primarily a place to renew car tags and get marriage licenses. It’s a very much more workaday building for very much more workaday rednecks. Yet it forbids all weapons within its very doors. (A rule I’m sure gets broken six times before breakfast every day, and thank heaven it does.)

The Courthouse of the Avenging Angels only forbade weapons on the floors housing the courtrooms and apparently had no problems with Tommy gun-toting ladies in the administrative areas.

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In the summertime this house sits in a verdant meadow near the bank of a river. I pass it on dog walks and think what a lovely place it would be to live.

In winter … maybe not so lovely. Although this is the wettest I’ve seen it, the river rises frequently to within a few feet of the foundation.

Definitely not the home for someone concerned about preparedness.

Today there was a pumping truck of some sort sitting outside with a big red hose snaking into the yard. Can you say “exercise in futility”?

While I was at it, I took this picture of another house on one of our dog-walking routes:

The house is derelict and in person feels quite spooky. I sometimes think of it as haunted. But with its too-cute pink color glowing on this gray day, it strikes me that if it were haunted it would probably be by Casper the Friendly Ghost.

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• The road from self-reliance to self-pity.
• Whole gangs of “constitutional sheriffs” in Northern California? Wonders never cease. (Too bad this intriguing article never gets around to mentioning the very important state of Jefferson.)
• Via Wendy McElroy: You’ll never believe the latest group the FBI considers a threat. (I’m going to have to create a new topic category for Stupidity Above And Beyond the Call of Even the Government.)
• While I don’t agree with this writer’s snarky take on Occupy Wall Street, it sure does seem some young lefties are learning some real-life lessons. Including one right out of Atlas Shrugged.
• Scott Olsen update.
• Hard to know whether to say OMG on this Stupid Government Trick or what the hell did you think would happen when you got in bed with the regulators in the first place.
• Speaking of getting in bed with the wrong people … lessee, you get yourself on a TV show that’s promoted as being all about “drunken dares … to war-like fights and sexcapades” … then you claim they didn’t treat you nice???
• Let us focus on a more intelligent species: The six best dog Halloween costumes on the Internet. Plus two, courtesy of Joel.
• Steve Jobs’ wonderful last words. And a touching eulogy from his sister.

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