Discretion the Better Part of Valor

How vain the opinion is of some certaine people of the East Indies, who think that apes and baboons, which are with them in great numbers, are imbued with understanding, and that they can speake but will not, for fear they should be imployed and sette to work.

                                                - Antoine le Grand, Cartesian philosopher and priest (ca. 1675;                                                                 cited by David Graeber, "Bullshit Jobs")

"A simple 'oooh ooooh ooooh' would have been enough, 

but you had to open your big mouth!"

The Samurai Next Door

Occasionally I volunteer my meager skills as a bicycle mechanic to the local bike clinic, run by Brian, who takes donated bicycles, renders them serviceable and passes them along to homeless indigents. The repair shop shares a large driveway with a halfway house where residents can undergo their probation and presumed transition into an enlarged realm of commerce and normalcy. One can easily imagine that the shop is frequently the theater of some raffish characters and lively conversation, much of it encouraged by Brian who readily engages them, transients and habitues alike.

On a recent weekend, as I was busily truing a wheel, the door opened and in walked a short, grizzled stocking-capped fellow in his 50s, I'd guess, a generous walrus mustache beneath a broad nose, an outmoded bit of eyeware above it. Brian recognized him from some past visit and promptly asked after his general well being. The following transcription is a true and reasonably accurate version of the ensuing conversation:

Brian: How are you? Haven't seen you in a while.

Protagonist: I just got out of jail.

B: Oh - what happened? Why were you in jail?

P: Well, back in December I moved into an apartment. On December 21st, pretty early in the morning there was a loud banging on my door. So I went and opened it but there wasn't anybody there. Then about 20 minutes later it happened again. Nobody there. I'm looking around and my neighbor walks over and asks if somebody was just banging on my door. I says yeah, somebody did it twice. I think it's the guy on the other side of you, he says. So I go back inside. Third time, bang bang bang - nobody. So I walk over to the guy on the other side and I knock on the door - hey, was you just banging on my door?

B: So what'd he say?

P: He says, yeah, turn yer goddam music down.

B: Oh, were you playing music?

P: Yeah, I was listening to some CDs.

B: Oh.

P: So I go back and shut my door, and he comes back over and bangs on it again!

B: Uh oh.

P: Yeah. So I get out my samurai sword and I go back over and he comes to the door, and I say, Do you know what this is? So he just says, Aw, put that effin thing away, you ain't gonna use it.

B: So what'd you do?

P: Well, I kinda poked it at him.

B: You didn't stab him did you?

P: Nah, I just kinda tapped him on the chest with it.

B: You didn't draw any blood.

P: Nah. I don't think so. Anyway, he called the cops.

B: So what happened?

P: I got a month in jail. They charged me with assault and menacing with a deadly weapon. And brandishing a deadly weapon. So now I owe three thousand five hundred in fines plus another fifty dollars for my probation.

"Gotta have my tunes."