Breaking the Law, Breaking the Law

Matt Welch | February 28, 2005

Two English students are planning a summer crime spree across the Western United States, breaking every damned-fool law they can find:

Starting in the liberal state of California, they hope to evade the attention of local police officers when they ride a bike in a swimming pool and curse on a crazy-golf course.

In the far more conservative -- and landlocked -- state of Utah, they will risk the penitentiary when they hire a boat and attempt to go whale-hunting.

If they manage to outwit state troopers in Utah, and perhaps federal agents on their trail, they will be able to take a deserved, but nevertheless illegal, rest when they have a nap in a cheese factory in South Dakota.

Link via Highways West.

Comments

|2.28.05 @ 12:12PM|#

You gotta admit, if you went to all the trouble of bringing a whale to Utah, you wouldn't want some guy coming along and jabbing it with a harpoon.

|2.28.05 @ 12:21PM|#

Joe, please don't refer to my girlfriend as a marine mammal and don't even point your harpoon at her.

|2.28.05 @ 12:27PM|#

IIRC, it's illegal in Wisconsin to serve apple pie without a slice of cheese. Not that anybody obeys, but still.

|2.28.05 @ 12:34PM|#

BTW, I wonder if certain posters will show up to denounce these 2 foreigners coming here for the express purpose of breaking our laws.

|2.28.05 @ 1:02PM|#

Thoreau:

Don't you know the rules? These guys aren't Mexican, so they don't count.

|2.28.05 @ 1:17PM|#

They can come to Texas and risk buying a vibrator.

|2.28.05 @ 1:18PM|#

I would be much more impressed with those limey fuckers if they were to break a slew of stupid Enlish laws.

For starters they could fuck with the tv nazis, the parking super nazis, and a whole grip of other stupid limey crap.

|2.28.05 @ 1:20PM|#

I'm one of those people rather uncomfortable with whaling, whales being pretty smart animals. We wouldn't want Japanese trawlers hunting down endangered species in our coastal waters, so why tolerate Brits going after the Great Salt Lake Blue-Speckled Narwhal?

|2.28.05 @ 1:25PM|#

I would be much more impressed ...if they were to break a slew of stupid En[g]lish laws.

Well, if they were, they wouldn't get mentioned in The Guardian, now would they?

Franklin Harris|2.28.05 @ 1:35PM|#

I invite these guys to come to Alabama and purchase peanuts after sundown.

|2.28.05 @ 1:57PM|#

I invite them to come get married to each other in every state that just amended its constitution against it.

|2.28.05 @ 2:04PM|#

I invite them to jaywalk in Ohio.

|2.28.05 @ 2:28PM|#

smacky,

I would invite them to drive across Ohio, to see if they could not intentionally break any laws.

|2.28.05 @ 2:34PM|#

To roll two topics into one - it's illegal in the state of WA to post a write-in vote for anyone in the general election who lost in the primary. Ron Sims of weed control fame lost his bid for govenor in Sept which lead to 500 scofflaws who gave him a write-in in November.

|2.28.05 @ 3:16PM|#

OK, pops, I've been trying to figure this out and I give up. How would you enforce this law? I mean, ballots are still secret, right? How would anyone know who cast the write-in votes?

|2.28.05 @ 3:36PM|#

As long as we're talking about victimless crimes, here's something from The Onion:

Heroin Addict Better Off Than Poppy Farmer

NEW YORK--In spite of his debilitating addiction, junkie David Spellman is safer, warmer, healthier, and happier than nearly every poppy farmer in Afghanistan, sources reported Monday. "Mr. Spellman shoots up three times a day and squats in a filthy Bronx apartment, but at least he isn't slaving away in the Kabul poppy fields 18 hours a day before coming home to a meal of moldy bread in the tiny shack he shares with 14 relatives," said Dr. Terrence Arven, professor of sociology at NYU. "When Spellman finally decides to get clean, he'll have many options for counseling. The only support network available to a poppy farmer is the 'protection' of local warlords." When asked for a comment, Spellman curled up and vomited.

|2.28.05 @ 3:44PM|#

Limey fuckers or no, I'd be interested in reading the book that will surely result from this, ah, adventure. I'm easily amused.

|2.28.05 @ 3:46PM|#

Cool,
I invite them to come shoot heroin in Nevada then.

|2.28.05 @ 3:54PM|#

When it comes to obscure laws, libertarians are like one of those guys that has a Simpsons quote for everything you say. Dorks.

And wtf is "crazy-golf"?

|2.28.05 @ 3:57PM|#

Here's a new law that a lot of people on this forum might support: (also from the latest Onion) "Tony's Law", which would require marijuana users to inform their neighbors that they know of a good source.

If you aren't an Onion premium subscriber you'll have to wait a few days to read it.

|2.28.05 @ 3:58PM|#

Pavel-
I believe that's just what Brits call miniature golf.

|2.28.05 @ 4:06PM|#

I believe that's just what Brits call miniature golf.


So by that logic, are midgets ("little people", sorry) considered "crazy people" in Britain?

|2.28.05 @ 4:11PM|#

Huh...

I always thought of mini-golf as just smaller golf. But now that you mention it, that windmill with a clown mouth for a door is kind of crazy.

pococurante|2.28.05 @ 4:44PM|#

Why do Brits say "crazy golf" when they generally eschew the word "crazy", preferring "mad"? Is the sport ("") an American import?

pococurante|2.28.05 @ 4:51PM|#

Oh, and Pavel: "I must hurry back to my comic book store, where I dispense the insults rather than absorb them."

|2.28.05 @ 4:51PM|#

Too bad Tony's Law isn't in effect in my new neighborhood. Driving 500 miles to restock is a bitch, not to mention a lot hairier now thanks to the Supreme Court.

|2.28.05 @ 5:29PM|#

I say more power to these guys. But I think they should cap it all off by returning to the U.K. and shooting a burglar.

|2.28.05 @ 6:14PM|#

Thoreau wondered:
"if certain posters will show up to denounce these 2 foreigners coming here for the express purpose of breaking our laws."


As no one has risen to take the bait...

(properly works into a righteous, law-abiding, xenophobic, anti-terrorist fury)

These gawdam fur'ners coming over here to break our laws? Raise the Homeland Security Alert to Double Secret Red! We're under attack! The second you hear some limey bastard's accent, open fire! Your country needs you!


Aw, it just isn't as fun as reading one of Lonewacko's deadly serious posts, is it?

|2.28.05 @ 6:19PM|#

By the way, it's heartwarming to see a Judas Priest reference in the headline (possibly by way of Beevis & Butthead?).

|2.28.05 @ 8:20PM|#

Nice Headline Welch!

...I'll keep hoping that someday, somehow, I'll see "Screaming for Vengeance" as a headline.

|2.28.05 @ 8:25PM|#

i hope these students have fun with their own small contribution to the fall of the west. laws are a way by which society enforces the notion of responsibility for the greater order. deliberately undermining the fabric of law just reinforces the rampant individualism that our nietzsche worshipping society is overdosing on. these laws were meant as ways to express notions of decency and restraint, quaint concepts these days.

oh for the heady days of the roman republic.

|2.28.05 @ 9:02PM|#

badius,

"oh for the heady days of the roman republic"

You don't have that one right. gaius appears to believe that the roman republic started western society down the road to nietzschean hyper-invudidualism, from which the Roman Catholic Curch strove to rescue it.

|2.28.05 @ 9:11PM|#

gaius and GG are going at it big time on the Catholic gay marriage thread.

There is about 100 posts, and just between the two of them. Long posts arguing about historical minutia, and using big words and long ass posts. I can't really tell what they are arguing about, except that I think that Gaius thinks that the Catholic church is standing between humanity and chaos. And GG thinks that Gaius is wrong because he has some minutia wrong.

|2.28.05 @ 9:28PM|#

"I think that Gaius thinks that the Catholic church is standing between humanity and chaos. And GG thinks that Gaius is wrong because he has some minutia wrong."

*chuckle* It's not my fault that gaius can't make a logical argument. I've suggested that he read a few dozen books before he tries arguing with me any further.

And you, kwais, are obviously a bigot.

|2.28.05 @ 11:22PM|#

Hahahaha,
You know I was fixing to answer that one seriously until I did a double take.

GG has told me before that I was a bigot.

|2.28.05 @ 11:38PM|#

*chuckle* The fact that kwais almost fell for this spoof just proves that he's unfit to argue against my intellect.

And you still haven't answered my questions.

|3.1.05 @ 4:41AM|#

No more *chuckling*, please.

|3.1.05 @ 1:55PM|#

I'm going to go to England and break some stupid english laws:
1. Smuggle toy gun into england.
2. Go fox hunting.
3. Declare allegience to the United States and to the Pope.
4. Say unkind things about radical islam.
5. Resist mugger.

|3.2.05 @ 9:41AM|#

We would all be better off with tourists breaking our various & variously stupid laws.

|3.2.05 @ 7:12PM|#

are you sure these guys are english students, ie. students in an english department. usually people are described as British when they are from England, to avoid confusion.