Hard-assed days . .

Major Bunny Colvin got tired of all the violence in Baltimore. He got tired of all the shootings, all the innoncents getting victimed, all of the waste of time putting dope on the table. He wanted to make a real difference.

Hard-assed days . . hard-assed ways of learning to live together

Sounds like the story line for any one of a dozen episodes shot on location in Vancouver for DaVinci's Code or some television series that's gritty and real. It's a re-hash of an edisode another blogger would like to see made real in New Orleans. A re-hash with a purpose by Ashley Morris.

We are about to cut out from Cheap Priceless Editions to a blog from a citizen in New Orleans who is fed up with all the killing down there, a young NOLA resident who turns to places like Baltimore or Chicago or anywhere depicted on television or in grit-lit (but also real places) where the police mean business about protecting people's lives from that violent fringe, the craziest victims and self-deluded 'redeemers' of the hard drug trade . . carrying guns.

If you cannot bear to see the word 'fuck' on your computer monitor, THEN don't CLICK ON THE LINK. But Blogaulaire thinks that, despite all the macho-man talk (encouraged in music, pop fiction, video and the like), we all should encourage THINKING OUT solutions as down-to-earth implementation of programs: police programs, social programs, community clinics and, yes, public libraries.

A take on season three of 'The Wire' from Ashley Morris, who I thank for this:

Bunny decided he’d take a different track.

Bunny lectured his troops on how, in the 1950s, a “civic compromise” was struck between the guys drinking a 40 or some Thunderbird on the corner and the police. The drinkers would put their beverage in a bag, and the police would pretend not to notice.

No harm, no foul.

This allowed the drinkers to continue what they were doing, as long as it didn’t hurt anyone; and allowed the police to spend their time on more important issues.

To implement his plan, Bunny found an abandoned stretch of row houses. It shouldn’t be too hard to find something similar in New Orleans these days. He rounded up all the corner boys, all the dope slingers, all the mid-level dealers, and took them to this area. He told them that in this area, they could sell all the dope they wanted. The police would not interfere, and would, in fact, stand watch to make sure the place didn’t get violent. The corner boys had to leave their guns at home, though.