There Is

Do you care if I
don't know what to say
Will you sleep tonight
or will you think of me
Will I shake this off
pretend its all okay
That there someone out there
who feels just like me
There is

There are a lot of movies about heros, and a lot of them involve exciting thing like invading Mordor or fighting fires with John Travolta. In real life, though, I think a lot of us know that heros are just people. Maybe its your older brother. Maybe its the ever evocative single mom trying to raise a kid or two with no help from the absent father. Maybe its an underpaid science or math teacher frustrated with our public school system. Maybe its a red cross volunteer. Maybe its the guy that set fire to the Ride the Duck tour building in Seattle.

That man is my hero.

I don't care if he was high, or that his alibi was lame. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and that man, that courageous, amazing man, is my friend. And my heart is filled with gratitude. Perhaps I will someday meet up with this saint in a bar and buy him a drink. Perhaps he also hates the duckboats and wasn't just AFU. If so, we could trade stories of the duck boats' crimes into the night and drink to the possibility of their demise. Dear tour guides, I drink to your death.

Admittedly, I may be going overboard. After all, the building is clearly still standing, and I imagine the mostly-metal duckboats (which are actually military amphibious vehicles) were unharmed. I doubt this man did any irrepairable harm to their business. Maybe they'll be closed for a week, but eventually they will be open again, playing bumpers cars in the streets and terrorizing people as they barrel down Broad street (a detail to keep in the back of your mind, by the way). If this guy had just stopped and thought about what he was doing, if he had been a more responsible person, he could have done a lot more damage. I mean its not the way I would have done it at all. Still, my heart is filled with gratitude.

I was actually driving by on broad street the same night, and was giddy with excitement when I saw a fire truck in front of the duck boat place. I was so excited I could barely operate my cell phone camera. I apologize for the picture being sideways; maybe I'll edit this post and fix it when I get home. If you twist your head to the left, that red light in the middle is from the fire truck. It was a lot easier to see in person. I guess I'm not much of a photographer.


Its not the way I would have done it. In fact, I used to fantasize about destroying that place, or at least that business, every day as I drove home. I had the same fantasies about the people who run the parking garage under my apartment building, though, so it doesn't mean much.

I think if you really want to put a stop to the business, you have to do at least one of three things.

First, you can destroy the boats. They are (I'm told) from world war II, and I doubt anyone is making new ones. The boats aren't easy to destroy: they are mostly solid metal, which is why they gave Jessica such a raping. The only ideas I've come up with include drilling holes in the hull, damaging the landing gear (the wheel mechanisms--I dont know what call it on a boat), the engine/propeller systems, or the hull itself. Holes can be plugged, the landing gear and engines can be repaired, and destroying the hull would require the kind of explosives that gets your name onto a list in some shady government office like homeland fucking security. I've also thought of stink bombs, and spray painting male genitalia on the sides of the hulls. Both approaches are mostly ineffective, although...if there was some kind of paint that started invisible, but only appeared after a few hours in sunlight, then maybe we could rig it so that giant penisi would appear right while they are driving down the street. Or something more offensive. Maybe write something mean about gay people. Or democrats. The only way to truly get rid of the boats would be to steal them, and then sink them in the middle of the sound: that has the least cost to accomplish, and the most cost to recover from. In fact, the costs of getting them up from the bottom I'm sure would be prohibitive. In fact, maybe we could do it without a drill or dynamic: just get a bilge pump and run it backwards. We could call it operation Fleeing Fowl.

A second approach, is to attack the building. All of their advertising directs people to that spot on broad street. If you burned the building down, they would have to rebuild it or relocate. And if you were able to use nuclear waste or some other kind of chemical agent, then the place would have to be sealed off for a while. This would be highly disruptive to their business.

A third approach: Attack them via public relations and laws. Corporations and political parties have been misusing the laws for decades to get rid of things they don't like. We could do the same thing. I would want to do this as a last resort though: it goes against my intuitive beliefs in freedom to make things illegal that don't need to be; I believe that if you want to drive a tank around on the roads, you should be damn well allowed to, so long as you use your turn signals and don't run people over like the duck boat assholes. Another side of this coin, perhaps a better approach, is negative PR. Make everyone hate them. Get videos of them hitting cars. Maybe make a documentary on how they get into accidents and then say that their passengers who couldn't see the anyway are witnesses that the person getting run over by the tank was at fault. I am also thinking about putting four cameras in my car, facing outward, to film them in case they run me over. Maybe bring a lawsuit and try to prove criminal negligence.

A fourth approach: sabatoge them from the inside. This would take a really long time. I would have to have people. I would have to get them hired. And I'm not really sure what would be next.

There is also the Broad Street contingency: I've heard they regularly drive unsafely there. Using this to one's advantage, without risking persons or property (other than the duck boats) would be tricky. You might need to line the crash zone with sandbags, or stage an empty vehicle somewhere.

For the records, I am against any such act done in bad faith against a business. And I don't condone any of my ideas I wrote here. It is purefly an intellectual exercise that I enjoy. If anyone else hates them, or is just bored on a saturday night and does one of these things, it will be karma. And I hope it happens. I mean, I'm totally against it, and I denounce all such acts in whatever way absolves me of any legal responsibility for it. I just hope someone does something. Again. But better this time. Don't set a fire and call the police. Disable the fire alarm and then set a fire. Preferably using something like thermite. You'll need some kind of device with the word "magnesium" in it to light the thermite on fire. Maybe a thermic lance? Set up a water shield so if the fire company shows up they won't be able to put it out in time? Could a thermic lance cut the duck boats? Give them a big scar in the face....