my curmudgeonly friend

We drove along, trading in palaver as usual.

I expressed that I could no longer bring myself to care what happened to people low enough to vandalize or steal. If they are to be bludgeoned with baseball bats, so be it. As long as I don't have to watch. (I don't have a stomach for violence. Which is why I couldn't sit through even one episode of the Sopranos. However, I suppose if they were strung up, pinata style, and I were charged with the task of pounding them while wearing a blindfold, I might consider it. Just trying to be open minded.)

My co-conspirator laid out his plan to rob otherwise good people and businesses of their livelihood by destroying their signage (with the vulgarity of vandalism if necessary) and replacing it all with handmade cardboard bric-a-brac and tack-on "Gar[b]age Sale" posters that will blow off in the wind and cover the earth in trash. I guess once you concede that a billboard is the Ultimate Evil, minor infractions like destroying other people's property, or covering your community in neon paper products that you have no intention of picking up even weeks after all your crap that you think other people should pay money for has been picked through and the left overs taken to the landfill, seem somehow less egregious.

But it left me thinking, "and I'M supposed to be the ornery one?"

It's what makes us so effective as a team. I'm the homebound curmudgeon; he's the extremist variety; and neither of us makes any sense at all.