IHOP, Domestic Violence, and Meth-heads

Seeing as how part of the reason for keeping this blog is to share the strange goings-on in my life with the internet, I feel like I would be sacrificing some of my journalistic integrity if I did not share this little gem with the collective "you". This happened quite awhile ago, but it is still a part of my strange and unusual life. Instead of going through and editing my story to make up for the time lapse between when the event occurred and now, I'm just going to cut and paste the post I made about it at a forum the next day, because...well...I'm lazy.


"The unusual events in my life never seem to come to an end.

Last night, I was driving my friend Lauren home after hanging out with her at IHOP. We were sitting at a red light behind another car. When the light turned green, the passenger in the car in front of us hopped out, apparently against the will of the driver. From what I could tell, the driver had grabbed on to her arm or her clothes or something, and was restraining her. She was yelling and screaming and creating all sorts of fuss.
At this point, I thought what probably anybody else in this situation would have thought: “These people are fucking with me.”
This was relatively late at night, and I really needed to get home and get some sleep. I have to work during the day, after all.
They made a right turn onto the cross-street and got out of my way (with the woman still half out of the car). It was at this point, while sitting at the now-red light, that I noticed that the woman’s shoes were still in the intersection. Someone wouldn’t sacrifice a pair of shoes for the sake of fucking with the head of the driver in the car behind them…
I then made the same illegal right-turn-on-red-from-the-left-lane that they had made previously, and proceeded to follow them for a couple of blocks. All seemed well. There didn’t appear to be any sign of a fuss.
As I continued to follow them, they turned into the parking lot of a nearby shopping center. By the time I caught up with them there, the woman had already gotten out of the car, and was standing at the curb about 15 feet away. I pulled up behind the car, which was stopped in the lane of traffic, and asked the woman if she was alright.
“Can you take me somewhere? Anywhere but here?”, was her only response.
I could tell by her voice that she was obviously very distressed, so I unlocked my doors.
“Yeah, sure. Hop in.”, I said.
As she was climbing into the back seat of my car, the driver of the other car, whom I had lost track of while speaking to her, had gotten out of his car, and now was coming at my the lady/me/my car. I couldn’t quite tell, and I certainly didn’t want to stick around to find out.
I slammed the accelerator just as he had arrived at my car and started to reach into my window. I peeled around his car, and exited the parking lot at about 40mph.
“Jesus Christ, lady. What the hell was that about?” I said to my new passenger.
Catching her breath, she said, “Thank you. Thank you. He’s crazy. He was going to kill me.”
Great. Now I’ve got a psychopath pissed off at me, too.
I didn’t really get all the details, but she explained that he was her boyfriend and he was a very violent person who she was in the process of getting a restraining order against.
She also explained to Lauren and I that she was a tweaker, and really couldn't go to the cops about all of this because she is on probation or some such nonsense.
"Great...", I thought. "I'm going to get car-jacked by the tweaker that I just rescued."
Thankfully, that prediction didn't come to fruition.
I took her to The Cannery, a nearby casino, where she was going to have some friends pick her up. Before dropping her off, I gave her my cell phone number and told her to call me if she needed a witness or anything like that.
After that, I dropped Lauren off, and headed home to bed.
What a freakin’ night."

I never did hear from the lady again.

Al Roker Needs to Be Fired

And black-balled.

For those who are un-aware of what is going on, Al Roker made certain comments regarding the London Olympics Logo that could be construed as offensive.

"Remember that controversial Olympic logo for the 2012 Olympics in London? Some folks have complained that the campaign actually sent them into epileptic seizures. Well, we asked you to weigh in on our Web site in an informal poll; those of you who could get up off the floor after shaking around were able to actually log in . . ."

This has quite a few people in an uproar. Of course he has already done his little apology tour. All should be forgiven, right? Now we come to the point where I actually give a rats ass about this whole situation. Normally, I don't give a crap when someone says something that may be even slightly offensive. However, some of you may remember Don Imus. Al Roker was one of the many Mouthpieces that railed on an on about how what Don Imus said couldn't be forgiven, and that he should lose his job.

Well, Al, you need to be held to the same god-damned standard.

The only problem with all this is that Al has something that Don Imus wasn't fortunate enough to be born with: A race card.


I hate the media.

We were somwhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert...

There were no drugs, but there certainly was desert. Lots of it.
My ex-girlfriend/former room-mate and I were making an attempt at a road trip from Las Vegas, Nevada to San Francisco, California. She needed to pick up some of her belongings from her apartment there, as she was in the process of moving to Vegas. We got up and out the door around 8 in the morning, and started driving.

"Jesus! You see what God just did to us, man?"
We were about 60 miles outside of Barstow when her P.O.S. Volvo broke down. This car was old. It was legal before I was. Luckily, Moriah had a Triple A membership, and she had two free 100 mile tows. She called triple A, and about 15-20 minutes later, Larry showed up. Larry was an oddly quiet guy with a cleft lip. I began to worry that we were headed into cheesy horror movie territory. He hooked up the Volvo to his tow truck, and drove us to THE mechanic garage in Barstow. Moriah filled out the paperwork to get her car fixed and such, Larry lowered Moriah’s car off of his tow-truck, and I smoked a cigarette.
Larry was just about done lowering the car when Chris, the mechanic working the front counter came out and asked if we were in any position to rent a car. Of course we weren’t. As it turns out, the shop only had one guy that could work on a Volvo, and he was out of town until Wednesday. This was unacceptable, as Moriah and I both had to be back in Vegas for work by Monday.
We ran back over to Larry to ask him if he could take us to another shop. He told us that he didn’t have time, and left.
Thanks Larry.
A little annoyed, we got into the car (which, at this point, could get up to maybe 25mph and shakes violently when running) and looked for another shop that could help us. Long story short, we found one, and they told us that we had a dead cylinder. In a Volvo, a dead cylinder is a totaled car. This thing wasn’t leaving Barstow today. We had to start coming up with ideas on how the hell we were going to escape. We decided that maybe the Greyhound was an option. A crappy option, but an option nonetheless. We got back in the piece of crap car that sounded like a lawn mower, and drove to the local Greyhound station. Which, in Barstow, is the same thing as the local Mall.
We got to the Greyhound station and started asking about fares and times, and how long it would take to get to Vegas, or how long it would take to get to San Francisco. We still hadn’t abandoned that idea completely. The next bus to Vegas wasn't leaving until 5pm. The next bus to San Francisco isn’t leaving until 5:30pm.
Useless.
At this point, it was high noon in the desert, and we were feeling like we were never going to escape this town. We were standing in front of Moriah’s car looking at the engine in bafflement, trying to think of what to do, when a man rolled out from under the pickup truck in the parking space next to us and said “Car trouble?”
The local sleuth, apparently.
He was having some trouble of his own, but he had just finished fixing his car. He decided that he would try to help us out and take a look at our car. He tinkered around with the engine for a little while, and decided that the cylinder wasn’t dead, it was just a bad spark plug. He needed more tools to fix the car.
He asked us to follow him to get his tools, so we got in the Volvo, and he got in his truck. We followed him across town to an alley behind some stores. At this point Moriah and I were slightly concerned, once again heading into cheesy horror movie territory, but we were desperate. We just wanted to get the hell out of Barstow. We had already spent several hours more than we wanted to in that town. We parked, and the guy goes into a camouflage-painted door. After sitting on the hood of Moriah’s car for about 5 minutes, we decided that we should follow him.
We walked through the door, and found ourselves in the back room of a Military Surplus store. We continue on into the store and see a Native American man sitting at a desk putting a pistol back together. We really didn’t think that this encounter could get much weirder. The man from under the pickup truck continued to work on the Volvo, but decided that it was not the spark plugs after all. This time it was a bad pick-up coil. This is a good thing, because that is an easily replaceable part. Moriah called Autozone and all of the other car part stores in Barstow (which is about 3)
None of them had the part she needed.
Useless.
We browsed around the military surplus store for a moment, and the Native American man and the man from under the pickup truck showed us a knife that had evidently been used to cut off the head of an Iraqi Insurgent.
We decided that it was time to leave.
Back at the Greyhound station, feeling completely hopeless, we decided to start calling some rental car companies in Barstow. At this point it was about 2:30 or so. All of the rental car places in Barstow closed at noon.
Useless.
The nearest open rental car place was 100 miles away, in Ontario, California. We decided that it was high time we get out of Barstow, so we called Triple A again to make use of Moriah’s second and last free 100 mile tow. About 15-20 minutes later, Damien, a local tow truck driver showed up to rescue us. He hooked the Volvo up to his truck, and off we went.
Who would have thought that we would have been ferried out of hell by Damien himself?
It was a little bit over an hour drive from Barstow to Ontario, so we passed the time by recounting the events of the day up to this point to Damien. Damien told us that many of the current residents of Barstow didn’t intend to stay there in the first place. They ran in to car trouble, or financial trouble, and got themselves stuck in that god-forsaken town. I guess we were lucky to escape.
Damien dropped us and the P.O.S. car off at the Ontario airport, and we thanked him and wished him luck in Barstow.

"As your attorney, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top."
We began talking to the different rental car companies looking for someone that would rent to us for a decent price. The fact that Moriah and I were both under 25 posed an issue. Hertz, however, will let you rent a car under 25 if you pay them a somewhat exorbitant fee. Whatever. We just wanted to get back on the road.
I filled out the Hertz paperwork, and we were going to get a brand new Mustang Convertible with Sirius Sattelite Radio. Finally! Something is going our way.
I handed my debit card to the Hertz lady, and she swiped it through her terminal.
Declined.
Bank of America, in their infinite wisdom, had frozen my account due to “Unusual Activity”
Fan-Fucking-Tastic.
We were just about ready to give up when the lady at the Hertz counter said “There is a guy here in town that I refer customers to when I can’t help them. He’ll pick you up and take you to his office and rent you a car.”
Why not? We had already tried every other scheme we could imagine to try and escape. Lets give this a shot.
A little while later, a short wobbly man with bad teeth showed up in a 1984 Honda. This is the guy that is renting us a car? It seems like things are going to get worse before they get better.
At the Sunshine Rent-A-Car office, we filled out paperwork and rented ourselves a brand new Toyota Corolla. Finally, we’re going to escape!

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
As we drove the 450 miles to San Francisco, we started noticing things about the car. For example, it had one headlight. The airbag had been deployed at some point, so the Airbag light remained on in the dash-board. The god damned thing had a MUFFLER, and a body kit that didn’t really fit the car. The window cranks popped off if you rolled down the window too vigorously. Oh yeah, and it had one Ford hubcap.
There is no way this thing was brand new.
I opened the glove compartment, and pulled out the owner’s manual. It was a 2005 Toyota Corolla. But dammit, this thing got us to from Ontario to San Francisco on one tank of gas.

This trip from Las Vegas to San Francisco should have taken 8 hours. It took us 19 hours.
This was the road trip from hell.

No, seriously. My life really IS this strange.

This is one of several strange events in my life that has prompted me to start a blog. I've decided that I really should start chronicling the unusual happenings around me, so here we are.

The North Las Vegas SWAT Team conducted a raid on the house next door to mine yesterday. Seriously.

I was sitting at my computer after work, and I heard an extremely loud BANG. My first thought was that one of my neighbors had shot someone. The family that lives next door to me consists of 3 generations. The grand-mother and grand-father, the mother and father, the two sons (who are about my age) and the youngest daughter who is about 7 and as bright as a gold-fish. These people always get into very loud arguments with each other. The cops have been called several times in the past, and one time the youngest son even pulled a gun. These people are genetic sludge, to say the least.

So I look out my window to find out just what the hell is going on. I see this:

Immediately I hear my family yelling back and forth to each other from different levels of the house about what is going on. The SWAT Team had busted down their door, and was currently clearing the house and pulling the family out. It was at this point that I grabbed my camera and dutifully started taking pictures. Keep in mind that a few of these pictures are somewhat fuzzy, because I stayed in the house to take several of them, and I have screens on my windows that are un-removeable.

More SWAT Team:

They even had a pair of "snipers" posted in the yard behind mine watching the back door. The one on the right, I assume, is packing rubber bullets. The one on the left has an actual rifle.

Animal control showed up to deal with the Pit Bull owned by my neighbors. Unfortunately either the dog was over tranquilized or SWAT shot her (for good reason I would imagine) After the raid was all over, they put Diamond in a bag and put her in the animal control van. Unfortunate, but you can't really fault the cops for this one. (I didn't get any shots of the dead dog, nor would I post them if I had, so the squeamish need not worry)

After everyone was out and the house was cleared, CSI showed up to take a look around.

Also, a couple of detectives were there.

For a little bit of a humorous twist on the whole situation, the unmarked car that had been watching the house before the wrath of the North Las Vegas Police Department came down upon it broke down during this whole event, and they had to jump start it with a squad car.

I'm not entirely sure why all of this went down, but what I've been able to gather from neighborhood gossip is that they had a warrant to search the house because they believed that at least one of the two sons (my age) had been been breaking into houses and performing home invasions (the burglar knocks on the door, and forces his way inside when the occupants answer).
I suspect there was probably more to it, as I'm positive that the youngest of the two sons is involved in drugs. He is scrawny as hell and has that signature tweaker laugh. Total meth-head.


UPDATE

Earlier this evening after everything had settled down and we sort of knew what was going on, my mother remembered having a conversation with one of the people next door about them renting a storage space somewhere. She called the police and gave them this information, as they may want to search that as well. The detective assigned to the case called just now to follow up on that lead and find out if we knew where the storage unit was. During the course of the conversation, my mother was able to determine that the police suspected that the guy in the house that is around my age had upgraded from bicycle theft to ARMS TRAFFICKING.
Also, the loud bang that I heard at the beginning was not the door being smashed down as I initially suspected. It was a flash-bang.

I feel so safe, here in suburbia.