Aquarian Weekly 7/13/05
REALITY CHECK

EMINENT DOMAIN & THE SAGA OF ZANDER THE BAT

"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
- President Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was one of the 19th century's grandest crazed monsters, and a serviceable model for the American President for decades. His mass genocide and forced extrication of Native Americans in the face of a Civil Rights Supreme Court ruling in 1831 rendered the pure meaning of Absolute Power and gave rise to beautifully prescient quotes like Richard Nixon's "If the president wills it, it can't be illegal." Jackson, ever the progressive, vehemently disagreed with the Supreme Court's ruling that his government was ignoring clearly framed treaties and proceeded to slaughter and/or evict American Indians from their land.

And it is that enviably defiant American Spirit and blind Manifest Destiny to which I turn to in order to outwardly challenge the federal government's right to expunge me from my land on the grounds of Eminent Domain or Clear Public Use. The Supreme Court has made its decision, now let the U.S. Government enforce it. Jackson was brain damaged, but he had to be right. He's on the $20 bill. We celebrate his madness. So pass all the Property Seizure laws or Flag Burning Amendments you want, you still have to enforce it. Good luck. I'm burning a flag right now as I write this.

This is why there is a preponderance of lawyers in this country. There are so many stupid laws, and alongside, the brave souls who wish to refute them with extreme prejudice. But you won't find me among them. Except for my preternatural lust to burn flags, I am an upstanding citizen of these United States living quietly in my bucolic splendor, and as such I look to the Bill of Rights to respectfully refuse compliance to asinine rulings of this or any court. I have a wife and two cats, a few homeless chipmunks and a confused bat to protect and support. They need a roof over their heads. This roof. And before I surrender it, there will be blood and guts, believe me.

To be fair, I did try and extricate the bat. It was hard to handle, and even less feasible to feed. It took to swooping nervously in and out of our living room and back into the greenhouse. The wife was caught up in the NBA Finals and decided it best to don a blanket and yell expletives at it. "Zander, damn it! Stop hitting the fucking television! The Pistons are making a fourth quarter surge! Damn it, Zander!"

The wife likes to officially dub all spastically frightened rodents trapped in our house Zander. They remind her of a psychopathic photographer from Westchester, NY named Peter Zander, whom she served under as an assistant for a little less than a year and whose violent mood swings and pained jabbering from the alleged eruptions of brain bubbles caused her alarm. It wasn't so much that she feared him, but it was, as she put it once, "infuriating to endure the struggle of the mentally challenged". Fed up, most times she would try whacking Zander on the back of the head with the business end of an enlarger, but that only caused the poor bastard to flail his arms about uncontrollably. She told him the best thing for it was excessive masturbation, but he said he couldn't jack off. Turns out he was unable to achieve an erection unless berating those in his employ, so she walked. "No sense trying to help that dickless ass," she told me. "At least no more of his mutated genes will infect the species."

And as much as I hated to admit it, I vividly recalled her terrible musings on the insanity of Zander when she continued to scream at the poor defenseless bat as it repeatedly crashed into the candle stand and bounced off the fireplace mantel. I tried to baby it, make it my own, but it did not work. The bat, I have read, responses better to tough love, especially with its metabolism running at frenzied levels. Zander was no different than his namesake. He too appeared to have the brain bubbles, and professional help was needed.

I rightly figured Zander the Bat a refugee from last year's relocation plan, when a conniving little shit heel called Alan Constantino sandbagged me. From my experience with him, Constantino seems to run a highly focused con fronted by an Animal & Pest Control concern. Last summer his ALCO organization took two weeks to install a working one-way tunnel outside of my attic and guaranteed it for at least five years. This bogus "guarantee" lasted less than a year, at which time the arrival of the confused bat named Zander prompted my repeated telephoned pleas to Mr. Constantino that went unanswered. Although that's not completely true. He smartly returned one about six weeks ago when we caught a little baby bat bouncing into the hallway upstairs, but he used our request for help to claim absentia due to a serious car accident, despite the sound of Hawaiian music and the titters of bar matrons in the background.

This, I decided, would not stand. Zander the Bat was losing its battle with my drapes. The ASPCA was apparently unconcerned. I had to act. But several of my desperately aggressive messages to his office had apparently caused Constantino to weep, answering my tenth such call with a girlishly whiny, "If you continue to leave nasty messages at this office, Jesus Christ would have a better chance to come out there than us."

He was shaken. I could tell by the cracks in his voice. I tried to offer him therapy, but what do you say when a grown man is simpering like a child while a bat is hanging precariously over your head. Just because his mommy failed him does not give him the right to renege on a deal. "Get a hold of yourself, Alan!" I screamed at him. "Stand by your shoddy work, or I'll have the district attorney after you!" But he could not contain his fear and hung up. He knew I was onto his scam: Half-ass the rube, how will he know I've ripped him off? He can't even rehabilitate a flying rodent, could he really tell we threw up some cheap chicken wire and collected on the bill with no real compunction to honor it. Sucker!

Ah, but the ALCO fuckers and Zander the Bat and the Supreme Court have underestimated the rugged guile of our resolve. They have nothing on the hearty souls here at Clemens Estate. We don't go in for the cheap thrills. It's all or nothing here. We have the power of the press and the grit to see it through. This is all that may be left of The Law as we know it, but it is a call to arms, and we shall answer it.

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