Blue dreams

There's a little guy who wanders up and down North Market Street -- although I haven't seen him lately -- who dresses cop-like. Not very cop-like, because he doesn't seem to have much money or cop fashion sense.

A typical get-up includes a white motorcycle cop helment, SECURITY shirt, blue trousers, wide black belt, but he usually spoils the effect by adding some odddball bits.

I spoke to him for  a while once. We had an Army helmet for sale in the shop at 42 N. Market, and he was really interested in it, but the price ($150) was way out of his range.

He seemed a pleasant enough fellow though somewhat -- hmmm -- vacant.

I bring him up because of a strange story out of Los Angeles about fake cops. LA is the big city, so the fake cops are flossier and more numerous than our poor Maui schmoo, but my guess is that they are just about the same underneath.

I could be wrong. A commenter (who snarkily suggests that the LA Times reporters should have got there first) links to Grandmaster Henry's Google+ page, where in addition to Beyonce and Obama links there's a weird photo suggestng a 40,000-person Masonic army from Mexico, and hopes of a bigger army soon. No suggestion, at least from what I saw, of what this army's job would be.

So perhaps the Masonic Fraternal Police Force is not merely the sort of fancy-dress fantasy that bubbles up among the underclass in all societies but is on a continuum toward the really dangerous Teahadi, Cliven Bundy-protectin' self-appointed police.  The ones with guns.