So, commenter Levislade is "starting to worry" about me and gloomy gus thinks I want to "rule the universe" and Fifty-Two-Eighty says I'm a "whiny little bitch" because I want to live in a place where I can buy liquor when it's snowing.

We're gonna have to disagree. A couple fucks when the state pulls shit like this and shit like this are well-deserved, and maybe they'll get someone in Olympia to do something about the state's ridiculous monopoly on retailing liquor. (Don't say the state is desperate for the markup and taxes on liquor for enforcement of liquor laws because they're not; they're using that money to pay for enforcement officers to hang out at the Eagle and watch gay porn.)

A friend called yesterday to say he was doing some leg work to find an open liquor store—and after visiting the one on 23rd (closed) and the one on 12th (closed) he discovered that the one on Broadway was open. After work, I walked to the Broadway store and encountered a total fucking zoo.

Since it was the only store open for miles in every direction, it was obviously jammed with people. So jammed that the lines coiled around themselves within the store. It was odd that there were so many people standing outside the store because it was 21 degrees at 6 pm last night.

Then it became clear: A liquor store employee was stationed outside the door and was not letting people in. He gestured to all the people standing in the cold. They were the line. There was a line outside the store just to get into the store to wait in more lines. After a few minutes, we were let in, and guess what was inside? Many, many, many empty shelves. You could not buy a fifth of Beam, for example, or a fifth of Jack or a fifth of Jameson or a fifth of Maker's. The shelves were all flagged with discount prices and everything with a discount price was long gone. The employees were very pleasant, considering the headache of having to deal with being the only liquor store open for miles, but customers were grumbling and stumbling into each other and saying "excuse me" and buying their third or fourth choice thing because the thing they wanted to buy from the state wasn't on the shelf.

The system we have doesn't work. It's corrupt. It's corrupt on the store side (capricious store managers who post signs like "Due to weather conditions we will not be opening on time, and we will be closing early if we do open"—because the customer doesn't really matter and has no other options anyway), corrupt on the political side (politicians in Olympia too intimidated by the employees union to do anything the union doesn't like), and corrupt on the enforcement side (straight bars where women expose their breasts to drinking customers get a pass but gay bars where a man touches his own penis on video do not get a pass).