One of the things I have most enjoyed since moving to the United States is the 'relative' respect and regard for law and order. I feel that generally there is accountability for wrong doings - particularly obvious when you come from South Africa, where lawlessness was the order of the day for a long, long time.
So, forgive me for this rant, but I get pissed off when authorities overstep their boundaries and display a remarkable lack of good judgement.
Here's what happened. After a lingering illness my mother passed away in November last year. For the last twenty years of her life she had always wanted to have all her children together at one time. There are five of us. Two live in Australia, one has lived in Iran, England and Jordan, one has lived in Germany, Brazil and is now living in China and of course, me in the United States.
As families go we have never really been THAT far apart. We've made whatever time we can for each other but that was never quite enough for my mother. Anyway, we all travelled from different parts of the world for the funeral and for the first time (probably ever) we spent a whole week together remembering the great times we had as kids and celebrating our mother for the fine job she did with us all. The day after a lovely funeral (if they can ever be lovely), we got together and for the first time had a portrait taken by a photographer. The photo above is a scanned proof. The photo is also a celebration of the woman who raised us and of each other.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. My brother living in South Africa mailed to me a CD of all the photos taken that day. When I received the envelope today, it has been opened and sealed closed and the CD had been removed by customs in the USA. It definitely would not have been in South Africa because the whole envelope would not have arrived!
So I have to ask what motivates a customs official to simply remove a CD which was clearly not an audio CD from an inbound package. One look at the photos would reveal some pretty special photos. If they had returned the CD to the package I probably would have been OK with it - but they didn't.
Of course the guilty party would never get to read this blog - but you just never, ever know! Maybe one of my followers with a large readership will take it up. So, to this miserable SOB I say that I really hope you rot in hell. You don't know the history or the purpose of those photos. What I do know is that there's someone up there watching and you don't want to piss her off because you really will rot in hell!
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