Requirements of the law

"European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent."

 This warning appears in the editing functions of this blog and I'll be honest, I never really paid any attention to it. This bit of legal argle-bargle, to quote the late Justice Scalia, was just another example of the usual boilerplate nonsense that you have to expect in an increasingly bureaucratic society, something that the mind dismisses without ever having processed the information in the first place.  Now that I have noticed it, however, it seems more than a little presumptuous, doesn’t it? First, there is the question of sovereignty: can the European Union, which by its very name is clearly located in Europe, order me, a citizen of this our Great Republic, to do anything?  Second, how do I know which of my visitors are from the European Union and which are not? I am not some international Internet traffic cop who has the time and the energy to keep up with the people who come here and then question them about who they are and where they come from. Strange as it may seem to the European Union and the, I assume, very well paid paper pushers who devised this rule, I have an actual life here in the United States of America and that this actual life requires the majority of my time and attention and does not require me to pay attention to the European Union or its strictures about cookies and visitors.  Third, as to the question of consent, I wish to point out to the Eurodrone bureaucrats in Brussels who are behind the aforementioned bit of legal argle-bargle that nobody is forcing anyone to read The Passing Parade—the management of this blog can barely get the writer who provides the content here to write for the damned blog—and so the question of consent is largely moot, unless, of course, said Eurodrones are demanding that I get the reader’s consent, in which my response is that you can go kiss my royal Irish ass, guys.

However, in the spirit of international amity, I will point out that The Passing Parade is not terribly fond of cookies, but that we do have a very nice pineapple upside down cake that my mother makes from scratch and that on occasion we will indulge in some freshly made gourmet doughnuts from the new place across the street from the egregious mold pit wherein I labor for my daily bread.  If you are ever up this way, I invite you to drop in and share a doughnut, unless you are intent on getting me to follow European Union law, in which case I will call the police and have you removed from the premises. Thank you for your time and attention.