Appropriate Use of Force

For many crimes I believe to know the right and just means of punishment. There is a certain class of misdemeanor for which the punishment should be that a large cat should come over and smack the evil-doer on the nose.

Whack! Penance absolved.

Like you're an actor and agree to be in a show, but your girlfriend is Jewish and suddenly you remember you need to be home for some obscure Jewish holiday in the middle of the run even though when you were hired three weeks ago you said you could do the whole run of the show and none of the dates were a problem for you. But now that you're "converting for her" and you don't really know when Jewish holidays come and go so now you've got to bail out (with a week's notice thank-you-very-much) and the producer needs to come up with a replacement for one performance you need to spend with your future Jewish in-laws.

Welcome to the world of irrelevant images.

Is this a mitzvah? No. God should send a very large cat down to the street to smack you on the nose.

Or say you're offered a lead in a feature film. Is the whole summer OK for you? Yes, you have weekends off for the whole summer. So you start shooting and then  "Oh, I can't do the month of August. I'm going to be out of town!"

Big cat, when you least expect it, swats you on the nose.

You agree to produce for a week-long show of short plays of Manhattan Theatre Source's Estrogeniuous. But two days before first performance you drop out, citing... well not citing any reason at all.

Later than night, while opening your mailbox at your apartment building, a large cat WHUMPS your nose and skidattles off.

That's the way things ought to be in my Solomon-like wisdom. So Say I. So say we all.