One year ago today: October 31, 2016, professor-baiting, in my day.
Five years ago today: October 31, 2012, um, at least it worked.
Nine years ago today: October 31, 2008, who your real friends are.
Random years ago today: October 31, 2014, on gynocentrism.
[Author’s note: I’m settled back home, so here is your treat for the day. A top-notch article about crime, a tale from the trailer court unavailable anywhere else. So enjoy, grab that extra coffee and ponder what I have discovered concerning the not always so leak-proof connection between police and detectives. It’s not at all the same rift portrayed in the movies. The bottom line is money. The way they are paid and promoted creates different motives.]
This notable incident was finding what I thought was a detective story published in 1991. Instead, it is a summarizing (and rather gruesome) account of how detectives evolved from ‘private eyes’. Which,, by the way, predates any police forces, including Scotland Yard. Paradoxically, one of the forerunners of that occupation was blind. By page fifty I’m finding the information to be shamefully revealing of the motives and methods of bad cops. “On Death’s Bloody Trail” you’ll find the logic behind today’s worst police practices.
So far, the book focuses on murders. It tells about changes in how the suspects are, what’s the word, managed? What used to be public executions are now highly private affairs behind prison walls. The unintended result is an expose on why people now fear rather than respect the police. The early forces were paid not by the conviction, but by the arrest. Sound familiar? It thus became in the police’s own selfish interests to maintain large and secret card files on everybody, not only suspects. We’ll just ignore for now the fact that this turns everybody into suspects unless they can prove their own innocence.
You’ll have to revisit here because I’m still reading how the detective evolved from a few real-life practitioners who were by and large former criminals. How Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, and Henry Fielding based their characters on how there came about a shift from the former police methods of trapping criminals or catching them red-handed to establishing the concept of crime scene and collecting ever smaller traces of evidence. Traditionalists need not worry for the police set-up and framing of suspects continues unabated. The police still love the arrest. The conviction remains mostly somebody else’s job.
Aga Maru.
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Aha, the mystery of the 420 showers begins to unfold. Uh, Ken, that’s the number four hundred and twenty, not, you know, four-twenty. Recall that, how in a recent month, an electric bill went up by the equivalent of 420 hot showers? I put the bills since 2015 onto a spreadsheet and went looking for a correlation. Careful here, that is not the same as cause and effect. By coincidence, those were the months the spare room was rented out. But the tenant worked and no way could have used that much hot water. Time to go looking for a lack of correlation. Sure enough, the city has a weird policy of tacking charges onto the electric bill based on water usage.
Whenever he rents out the room, the usage goes up more than double. Hmmm. There would seem to be an underground leak that either opens a pipe crack or joint, or maybe raises the flowing water level to a hole that is above the water during lesser usage. Now, how does one find such a leak? No matter how this is approached, it is going to be expensive unless we do it ourselves. I’ll drive over there this afternoon with the news.
Tired of sleuthing, I went downtown for coffee and watched what they’ve transformed Halloween into. Not much to my liking, so I took some time off to look again at the porch. When I say porch, I mean a covered porch, not just a platform in front of the house. My original diagrams were lost in the fire but I have the basics memorized. I had to make sure the area was roped off so no kids would approach the construction area, but I needn’t have worried. The only kids in this entire subdivision have parents not likely to let them celebrate the Devil’s birthdate. Back to my important porch.
Not only may I have spoken too quickly about not buying gravel, I’ve got to spring for one of those tampers. Seems I don’t know anybody I can borrow from. This, while listening to the all news station. The government is saying the phone people don’t have to provide back door software provided they agree to record every conversation in plain talk. Yes folks, the conspiracy theories were right all along. It’s off to the FEMA camps with the surplus, which would include most people with “nothing to hide”. That’s probably the government’s definition of useless.
The porch would add another 228 square feet. It would have to be screened in completely to be useable for most anything. The city does not spray for mosquitoes My plan remains the same, build the deck first, then add the porch walls later, with a railing. That would give me the option to store things out there until I catch up on the interior. Stay tuned for the progress on that. The delay is because this is the month all the documents I filled out last May begin to change my situation. It would be too much to expect everything to go smoothly.
I’ve had to establish a mammoth backup system and don’t dare touch a penny of it until things begin flowing again. You may trust the American system, but not me. Come to think of it, I trust other systems even less. Once again I blame that car for causing financial anguish around here. Hang on, let me tell you what that thing has cost me in gas in one month. Here it is, $292.50. Nearly half what I’ve spent on gasoline year to date. That does include two trips to Miami, but still.
“If your wife wants to learn to drive
don’t stand in her way.”
~Sam Levenson.
The photo? It’s actually a place-marker. But you can read all kinds of things into it. Like at some point today, according to Timex, it as 9:58AM, at least in central Florida. Or it is a reminder for me to quick being such a cheap-ass and go buy yet another camera because my birthday is in November? That remains to be seen, because for all we know, my birthday could be in February. But my fiscal year certainly ends in November, the month I was hired by the phone company and began my financial career.
Remind me to purchase one of those detergent sprayers that fits on the garden hose. The bright daylight showed me how much of a bug jungle I must have driven through on Sunday. Plastered so thick it looks like I hit the locust swarm. It’s them Florida midge flies they try to keep a secret. Billions of them per acre and they are the exact size to fit through those vane holes in your radiator. And I discovered my windshield washer spritzers don’t work. They are plugged, I mean. I can hear the pump but don’t get any squirt. And seriously, that was my afternoon and days like this serve to remind us this blog is a journal, a diary. Not everyday has thunderbolts and computer fairs.
Now if I find out who went through the trail mix and picked out all the M&Ms I’ll be on the warpath. No, wait. I’m the only one here. Okay, I confess. But in my own defense, I left all the raisins. Some people like raisins. Don’t they? That does it, I’m finding me a Schwarzenegger movie. Here’s one, “Collateral Damage”. Sounds too familiar, but if it is Ah-nuld, I’ll watch it again. Take my mind off being $541 over budget this month.
in November, the taxes are due. It’s a good thing I’ve had them ready for months or I’d worry about it like everybody else. Bonus, I have never seen this movie before. That’s because I spent my youth doing just about everything except watching TV.
Last Laugh
(There has never been any
American law against this.)
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