Dear Thief,
I'm not sure whether you read the Daily Kos; if you do, I don't know whether you're part of that 25% of every front-page poll -- you know, the respondent pool expressing admiration for Sarah Palin -- or whether you're a good-hearted Front Page diarist who, despite your manifest talents as a prose stylist, suffers from cleptomania. Regardless of who you are, you are currently in possession of my bike saddle, and I'd like to share my feelings -- personal, political, and otherwise -- publicly in the form of this diary. Ride with me below the fold...
When I came downstairs from my office yesterday and saw my partially denuded bicycle, I'll admit that my first response was less measured than it might have been. Had I composed a diary at that moment, it likely would have comprised a combination of violent threats and suggestions for innovative ways in which to go fuck yourself (some of which would likely have violated fundamental laws of physics as well as the laws of most states).
I'm calmer now, and really kind of glad that I didn't interrupt you in your liberation of my saddle. I'm not a small person, and I grew up in circumstances wherein recourse to physical violence was not only common, but expected as a solution to a variety of problems. It's quite possible that in the heat of the moment I would have done something that was not only ill-advised, but illegal and in violation of my basic conviction that physical violence is never justified in the mere protection of property.
I'd like to assume you're a Neocon theorist who reached the quite rational conclusion that there was merely a difference of scale between grabbing my saddle and supporting a tax code that favors wealth over work, rich over poor, inheritance over merit, the bank bailouts ('nuff said), subsidies of oil companies, etc. In the retarded perversity that passes for your intellect, you likely figured that your natural derring-do was being rewarded by market forces.
But that's probably not fair. You might be a Democrat; just because a person has reasonable political convictions doesn't mean that they're perfect; in any community as large and diverse as this one, there are bound to be people who display bad judgment. Indeed, one of the bedrock assumptions of a functioning democracy is that people make mistakes -- even criminal ones -- but still have the right to participate in the affairs of their nation, especially after they've paid for their crimes.
Hell, if DailyKos were actually as radical as the talking heads seem to think it is, you might even have a well-reasoned and perfectly coherent political philosophy that property itself is, by definition, theft.
Given the orientation of the place, I suppose political radicalism is highly unlikely. Since my saddle was expropriated in United States, it's much more likely, however, that you were walking around, feeling hungry because you've been perhaps intentionally left out of the "recovery" that Wall Street is enjoying. You saw my saddle -- -- light of my life, anodyne ease of my booty -- and you quite reasonably concluded that anyone with the disposable income to purchase an item like this was doing better than you are. Fair enough, and I hope you really do transform that saddle into some healthy, nutritious food for you and your family, because even though I can't really afford to replace the thing right now, I don't have to go to bed hungry.
You couldn't have known that my bike is my primary mode of transportation, which I consciously chose not only because it's super fun, but because the world is ending. You certainly didn't know that I'm not rich, that I didn't come from a family with money, that I saved up and bought that fancy saddle because my junk falls asleep after 20 minutes on any other saddle and that's no good no matter who you are. You may or may not have known that it took me well over a year to break that saddle in, and that it's now formed nicely to my unique, bony arse.
But that doesn't change the fact that today I had to dig deep in the garage and attach an ancient, tattered, horribly disfigured, crumbling, foam saddle on my ride, thereby severely limiting the distance I can travel as I go grocery shopping, on errands, or while trying to get a bit of exercise. It doesn't change the fact that -- since you also stole my seatpost with the light attached -- I have to get home before dark. It doesn't change the fact that every time I get on my bike in the next few months, my ass is going to hurt because of you.
Most important, it doesn't discount the possibility that you're nothing more than a cheap piece of crap who figures that your desires are more important than anyone else's; that your desire to acquire goods shouldn't be modulated by anything resembling morality or ethics or basic decency or common sense.
And for that possibility, fuck you very much. Whomever you are.