It's hard to be all that sympathetic...

A "Farm-to-Fork" celebratory dinner gets shut down by the "health department." Amazingly despicable officious inspector does amazingly despicable and officious things. Victims submit, whine, make video. Honestly, you'll get the message less painfully if you go to the link and read the text. Don't watch more than the first twenty seconds of the video, because things get really, really Birkenstockish really fast, and increasingly so until toward the end you'll want to join the "health department" yourself just so you can screw with them too.

But that would be wrong, folks.

I had no idea that the Health Department would become involved. I received a phone call from them two days before the event informing me that because this was a “public event” (I would like to know what is the definition of “public” and “private”) we would be required to apply for a “special use permit.” If we did not do so immediately, we would be charged a ridiculous fine. Stunned, we immediately complied.

Yeah, that 'immediately complying' thing wasn't even your first mistake. I mean, where to begin?

Okay, yeah, sure, the vile evil controlling uberbitch inspector in the first twenty seconds of the video would make excellent fodder for a hugelculture site. No doubt, but we all knew that. Let's move on. At what point do you stop actively cooperating? There's like a hundred of you and one of her, and nobody's waving guns. She made you jump through an amazing array of regulatory hoops, then showed up at the event and made you humiliate yourselves repeatedly, in completely absurd ways. Pour bleach on it? She's just screwing with you! There's no such law! You guys are upstanding, law-abiding citizens, to the point where I want to puke on your sandals. So make her take you to court, for god's sake! Have you no pride at all?

It's funny: Just yesterday a friend and I were trading emails on a similar issue. At what point do you stop submitting? It's a very difficult question, and not one where anybody else can legitimately say, "Why don't you shoot?" Though you do hear that sort of thing from provocateurs on the web. Hell, why don't the provocateurs shoot, and lead by example? Certainly Mr. and Ms. Birkenstock aren't going go, and nobody would reasonably ask them to. Once you're in the clutches of the Big Bad, shooting - or any other sort of active resistance - is elaborate suicide. But!

Who even let them know about this "public event?" I was involved in a subscription farm once, and it was really cool. Fresh veggies, more than I could even eat, for just a little work. I wish I could do it again. But not in such a way that the government even knew about it.

At what point do you stop submitting? Right From The Beginning. What you put in your stomach is your own business. It's private. Keep private things private. How hard is that? If they want to screw with you, let them find you first.

The first and fatal mistake here was even letting the government know about it. Full Stop.


H/T to Crusader Rabbit.

ADDED: BTW, read this.