According to the Dorset "Daily Echo," his reply to Captain Bennett read:

"I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour.

"While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed of oceanic currents, I have another name for it, litter.

"You Americans don't seem to be happy unless you are mucking up somewhere. If you wish to foul your own nest, all well and good. But please refrain in the future from fouling mine."

He also vowed to continue his habit of tossing bottles into the sea for the fun of it, regardless of where they end up, because, in his words, "In the day and age of emails and satellite phones, I think it's such a wonderful way to communicate." Kind of really low tech spam!

To be fair, "Henry Bigglesworth" (a slightly different spelling) is a pretty common name. A quick Google check took me to William Henry Bigglesworth, who seems to be involved in some sort of shady deal in Amsterdam; John Henry Bigglesworth, a historical colonial government worker; H. Henry Bigglesworth, a Republican fund-raiser; and references to Sir Henry Bigglesworth the 3rd, Wing Commander Nicky-Henry Bigglesworth, and one Dr. Henry Bigglesworth, a retired English professor. So maybe the whole thing is a put-on.

On the other hand, I can't help thinking that "Mr. Biggelsworth" has a point! Here on the hurricane-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast, broken glass bottles on the beach are a real safety hazard, and cost us residents scarce county tax money to clean up. My five year old son stepped on one, cut his foot, and was terrified because he thought he was going to die! You can go to jail for even having a glass container on the Mississippi beach. Maybe Americans "get a real bad rap in this world" precisely because we "muck up" other people's countries without giving a damn what they think about it. What right does Captain Bennett have to throw trash on other people's beaches anyway? And how, exactly, is doing so a good deed?

Too often, as in this case, the "good deed" is the punishment, and it is the recipient who is punished. I am SICK of people who decide for other people what are good deeds!

When I came back from Montgomery, Alabama, after evacuating there for Hurricane Katrina, I found my yard full of trash (see above). My travel trailer had got up and floated into the side of my house, split a seam, and filled with water. My tool shed was rolled up into a little ball, and my boat had picked up its trailer and floated into my back yard. My beautiful, fully restored, freshly painted "copsucker red" 1979 Corvette with the black racing stripes had water sloshing around inside it, and my motor home van had waterlogged grass on the interior carpet. Miraculously, my house hadn't lost a shingle or a pane of glass, and only a little damage had been done by water leaking under my front door.

After having survived the greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States virtually unscathed, my side door and the attached jamb was smashed in by somebody who also painted a big X on the my bricks with waterproof paint. Subsequent conversation with our civil defense director/fire chief indicated that the people who did this were looking for my body!

Now, maybe I missed it, but I looked all through the Mississippi Code, and I don't see a single thing in there that says that the government has the right to smash down my door to look for my body. I don't even see anything that says that they can enter my property without my permission, much less smash things, for that purpose. If my door is locked, I want the government to leave my body the heck alone!

I think that's what the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution says.

Now, I have talked to a number of people about this, and the universal response is that I am an arrogant, mean, curmudgeonly old fart who is not properly grateful for the wonderful rescue service provided by our heroic police, firefighters and National Guard during this time of tribulation. They claim that whoever did this believed he was doing a good deed! Could be! But I'm still out the money that it took to repair my door, and the people at city hall just chuckle when I ask who's going to do the good deed to pay me for it.

The overwhelming majority of people with whom I spoke respond with "Well, what if you had been sick or hurt?" The answer, of course, is that I would have felt awfully silly to have stayed in my house in the middle of a freaking hurricane and then got myself sick or hurt inside my house with the doors locked! Shame on me! But frankly, I'd consider it evolution in action. Hurricanes are God's slum clearance measures, by which He gets rid of dead trees, improperly located buildings, and stupid people all in one fell swoop!

What if I'm sick or hurt right now? Does that give the government the right to break down my door this afternoon? Does the state have a vested interest in looking for dead bodies in every single locked home on the street with no apparent structural damage and no cars in the driveway? "Hey, maybe Lindorfer's sick or hurt. Or better yet, dead! Let's break down his door and find out. It'll be a good deed, guys! While we're at it, let's spray paint his bricks! We don't have anything better to do today!"

I'm all for rescuing people who need, and/or want, rescuing. I even think that's a function of government, not just good deeds. I also think it's a government function to protect the public health and safety by removing dead bodies. But I believe that they are rarely found in locked, undamaged houses after hurricanes. (I have never heard of it happening, and I've been through a lot of hurricanes!) As an expert on finding dead bodies of the sort concealed in Vietnamese jungles, I can assure you that Nature provides a positive method of announcing their presence in the community that anyone who has ever experienced it is unlikely ever to forget! Someone who doesn't know that (or care) probably shouldn't be trusted with the job of searching for them in the first place!

Because a locked, essentially undamaged home is highly unlikely to contain a dead body, or even one not quite dead yet, my personal feeling is that people who break in to find one should either be invited to do so or get a warrant. In either case, they should pay for the damage! If we really want government agents to smash into our homes and then leave them open to looters on the pretext that they are doing good deeds, we should pass a law that says that -- and then fire the goat ropers who voted for such foolishness and ship them off to North Korea where people like to do that sort of thing!

I like to think that it's a government function to PROTECT me from door smashers, not SUBJECT me to them, and take people who do that to jail! So far, NOBODY I've talked to agrees. Their position is that during hurricanes it's a good deed for public officials to become crooks as long as it doesn't involve the taking of money, molestation of small children, or suggestive talk in front of puritanical women!

I even talked to a retired Mississippi supreme court justice about it! Just judge that he is, he refused to commit himself, but he reminded me that "the law is continually evolving and has to be adapted to new situations." Yeah, right! Since when is a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast a "new situation?"

Some years ago I was awakened in the middle of the night by not one but two, count 'em two, telephone calls by which a recorded message informed me that a truck had overturned on Interstate 10 in Gulfport, a good 8.3 miles away as the crow flies. The next day I visited our county civil defense office and asked that my telephone number be taken off the notification list. The snotty clerk informed me that she couldn't do that because the list was for my protection and it was her job to make sure that every county resident was on it. I asked her just how waking me up in the middle of the night protected me, and why I was better protected than I would be, say, if I had been told what I was supposed to do with the information, if anything, or if the police would have done a better job of managing traffic so the truck wouldn't have overturned in the first place. Well, we both started yelling at each other (I admit, I started it.) and attracted the notice of one of our county supervisors, who asked why she couldn't just delete my telephone number. She replied that it was her job to make sure my name was on the list and he replied, with, "OK, you've done your job. His name is on the list. Now delete his telephone number." She did what she was told, but it was obvious that she DIDN'T LIKE IT!

In talking with the good deed doers, the conversation frequently turns to having to partially disrobe before I can board an airplane. I'm against that! Of course, I admit that nobody has a right to fly aboard a commercial jetliner, but I would like to have a choice between those that require me to take off my shoes and pull down my pants to show some otherwise unemployable Transportation Security Agent that the steel pin in my hip isn't really a terrorist weapon, and those that don't. I'll fly on the latter, thank you very much! In response to the puzzling question, "Well, how would you like to be on a plane with someone who had a bomb" my reply is that I wouldn't like it at all, but I am willing to accept the minute additional risk of sitting next to a bomber who might have been detected by pulling down his pants in return for not having to do it myself. I watch the news a lot, and I have never heard of anyone trying to board an aircraft with a bomb being apprehended because the TSA made him take off one or more items of clothing! Shoot, (little terrorist humor, there, folks) I drive on public highways, for heaven's sake! Thirty five thousand people get killed on those every year, and nobody is even suggesting that we have TSA people checking everybody who gets behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and forcing them to take off their shoes or make sure the vehicle isn't full of high explosive, even though vehicles filled with high explosives have killed lots of people.

(Perhaps at this point it might be germane to point out that in supervisory tests of the bomb detecting abilities of TSA inspectors, they fail miserably. The argument is that the airplane riders are still safe because of the "multi-layered" security protocols, but the reason they are multi-layered in the first place is because the layer with the TSA inspections in it doesn't work! If we really want to keep terrorists off the airplanes, we could compile all the information that the government already has into a database that could be accessed by the airlines and the results stamped on the ticket. I think I'm a pretty good risk. I am a natural born citizen, honorably discharged veteran army officer. I've never been arrested or convicted of anything more serious than speeding. I've never been declared mentally incompetent, bankrupt, or a menace to public health. I pay my bills and taxes promptly, and I've raised four children to maturity. I don't drink, smoke, gamble, chew, shoot up, or consort with loose women.

On the other hand, If I were a national of a country known to support terrorism, with a string of convictions for violent crimes and a history of treatment for psychotic episodes, recently bankrupt and deep in debt as the result of non payment of taxes, gambling debts, drunken binges and evasion of child support, I should probably be watched a little more closely or, preferably, not even be allowed inside the terminal.

Actually, I'm not concerned about terrorists at all. To hell with 'em! I personally don't know anyone who has ever been even injured by a terrorist, and there haven't been any known terrorists living anywhere near me in living memory. On the other hand, people within 70 miles of me are getting murdered or assaulted daily by members of an identifiable subculture who already have a string of convictions a mile long. The federal government isn't doing anything, not a single thing to keep me safe from these known dangers to peace-loving people everywhere!

But that would be "racial profiling." Can't have that! Gotta have equal protection for everybody. Treat everyone as a bomb-totin' terrorist! That's the American way! Besides, it creates more of those government jobs that make it possible for politicians to get votes for "creating government jobs." Travelershave to take this treatment it if we don't want to subject ourselves to the overwhelmingly higher risk of driving where we want to go on highways supposedly kept safe by ineffective state officials. Get groped or take your chances with drunk drivers! I'll take my chances with the drunks, thanks! God bless America!

I find it interesting that the public thinks it's OK to break into law abiding people's houses when they're not even there, but gets upset with the police when they do their job and protect it from criminals who are really, really scary! A few days ago I saw a guy on TV get taken down by a group of armed police who punched him and kicked him to take the fight out of him before they got the handcuffs on. He was known to have shot at the police, but CNN reporters (and others) were asking with a straight face whether the police had used "excessive force." My idea of "excessive force" in that situation would have been a platoon of M1 tanks! Not long before that, I saw an interview with an absolutely furious father of a lawless teenager whom the police had shot dead! This guy was enraged at the police for using deadly force because the kid had threatened his schoolmates with an exact replica of a firearm and then had pointed it at an officer. One wonders who let the kid have the gun in the first place! ("It's OK, son; it's only a pellet gun. Pretending you're going to shoot the nice officers will be good practice for when you're old enough to do it with a real firearm!")

Not long before that, police shot and killed a passenger they thought was planting a bomb on a grounded aircraft. This guy refused to obey their order to put down the package he was carrying and stand still. According to his wife (girlfriend, nurse, wrangler, keeper, whatever) he was certifiably insane and wasn't taking his medication. I did NOT hear why she let him get on an airplane in that condition, or why the alert, reliable TSA agents did, either, for that matter! It probably would have been a good deed to tie him up real tight and ship him to wherever he was going in a padded panel truck! I think the woman should have gone to jail at least for keeping a public menace!

And you can't turn on the TV nowadays without hearing somebody gripe about warrantless monitoring of overseas telephone conversations, in spite of the fact that such surveillance is specifically authorized by Title II of the Patriot Act. I don't like the Patriot Act either, but this authority has been invoked only about 5000 times, and information is collected on only about 10 US citizens per year. Yet to hear tell, it's like the government is breaking down people's doors and roaming around in their homes without any legal authority at all!

(When the government is breaking down people's doors and roaming around in their homes without any legal authority at all, my neighbors claim it's a good deed!)

Those of us who have survived Hurricane Katrina recognize the importance of good deeds. I was in Montgomery, Alabama, watching on television as the storm came ashore. I was surrounded by Red Cross and Americorp workers who were already loaded up with food, water, blankets and medical supplies. They were doing a good deed. Since then, I ate at God's Katrina Kitchen, run by Thy Word Network and other evangelistic and altruistic organizations that provided free food, supplies and clothing for those who lost everything (or for people like me, who have just lost their favorite restaurants). That's certainly a good deed! Some people from the Methodist Churches in Pass Christian came over and helped me move some heavy pieces of fence and furniture after the hurricane. That's really a good deed; I'm not even a Methodist!

We deeply appreciated and greatly benefitted from the selfless contribution of the thousands and thousands of generous volunteers who gave freely of their time and abilities to help us recover from utter devastation! This is a life saving ministry of love, comfort and compassion! There are residents in my neighborhood with potentially fatal psychological injuries that they don't even know about. These don't manifest themselves until the victim is overwhelmed by them and decides to step in front of a speeding truck or simply blows his brains out! The dedicated men, women and even children who have come here to help us are truly doing the good deeds of the Lord's work by literally saving these people's lives! But there are others who have been drawn here by the promise of free food, free clothing, free shelter, and the opportunity to loot, pillage, plunder and steal. We don't need 'em. The hurricane was bad enough!

If you have read this far, I would like to thank you for your good deed in letting my vent my frustration about what I believe are very dangerous precedents, not to mention violations of my personal civil rights. If you would like to discuss this matter pro or con (or anything else, for that matter), feel free to e-mail me. It would be an additional good deed on your part.

But I should probably warn you, no good deed goes unpunished!

John Lindorfer