Wouldn't That Ruin Your Pants?

I was in Lowe's this morning, buying ant poison and a flashlight* and when I was checking out I noticed a laminated sheet posted by the register that listed the most shoplifted items in the store. They call it 'shrink' but they mean 'five-finger discount.' There were the expensive things, like drills, and easily-concealed things, like drill bits, but I'll give you one guess as to the fourth-most-shoplifted item in that particular store. Go ahead, you'll never get it. I'll stand right here while you decide ... not gonna even try? Okay, fine, be that way. I'll just tell you.
   Circular saw blades.
   Ouch. Talk about your dangerous items to steal. I can think of two reasons these would be a challenge to shoplift: they're big and they're sharp. Really, really, really, really sharp. They're freakin' saw blades, they're designed to cut wood or ceramic or melamine or whatever is unfortunate enough to get in their path. Plus they're eight-inch diameter rigid steel disks, they're not going to fold up and slip in your back pocket, they'd have to fit on your chest like one of those discs from Tron.
   Think about it. Who's going to shoplift a circular saw blade? My mother? Well - she actually might, but my point is women aren't the ones stealing these things. Guys are. Contractors who come into Lowe's in paint-spattered jeans and sweat-soaked t-shirts. Not carrying a purse to slip the random saw blade into, and nothing extra to conceal a stolen item. Just the jeans. Can you imagine trying to walk out of a store with a circular saw blade shoved down your pants? You'd have not just the paranoia of getting caught, you'd have the paranoia of that saw blade getting loose and slicing your butt to ribbons. Your butt if you're lucky...
   And yet, it happens enough that circular saw blades feature prominently on the list of 'shrink.' I guess when you're desperate enough you'll find a way to steal almost anything.


* two entirely unrelated projects

Tales From My Past - I Voted For Gary

Back in 2003 I had been living in California for a little over a year, just settling in. In November of 2002 I voted in my first big California general election in which Gray Davis was re-elected Governor. Then in February 2003 someone started a recall effort. Some states allow the recall of elected officials, kind of a check and balance to the power wielded by those representatives.
   But, remember, we'd just had an election in November, three months before. Just. Had. An. Election. The recall was sour grapes maneuvering by Gray Davis's high-ranking political opponents, not a grass-roots effort by concerned citizens, which is what a recall is for. These bastards were getting a recall because they lost the election, not because of any particular reason (though they came up with many). A total abuse of the recall/referendum process.
   And they got their recall.
   Since it was in California the entire thing became a circus, and I mean that literally. Clowns came out of the shadows and trapeze artists amazed the crowd and the ringmaster orchestrated everything. I'm positive there was a calliope somewhere to accompany all the zany action.
   I was astounded, astonished, and dismayed. All this crass maneuvering and media manipulation shouldn't have surprised me but it did. Caught me with my pants down, metaphorically speaking. And then when the stripper girl and Ariana Huffington and Gary Coleman actually filed papers to get on the ballot, that's when I knew we'd officially gone too far.
   The recall election rolled around in November, far too late for my tastes but they didn't ask my opinion. In order to save money - too late - the recall and special election were on the same ballot. You first voted for or against the recall, then, in the event the recall measure passed, you voted for your candidate of choice. Yeah, crazy, but that's the way they do it in Cali.
   I figured that since they were making a complete joke of the electoral process I might as well do my part to make it a good one. So I voted against the recall - sour grapes doesn't mean you get to void the results of a legal election - and then I voted for Gary Coleman for Governor. He got about 10,000 votes too, not too shabby.
   I actually wanted Sir Gary to be in the Governor's mansion, it would have been a real-life version of Diff'rent Strokes. And even though he was more than a little wacky, I don't think he could have done that much worse a job than the Governator ended up doing.
   And, oddly enough, I can't think of any other semi-celebrity I would rather have had in public office. 'What 'choo talkin' 'bout, State Assembly?'

Metaphorical Elevator

I'm a pretty quick study, I can catch a clue like a major league outfielder, but sometimes... sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake. Every so often it takes me a little while. Like maybe a few months. Let me 'splain.
   Regular readers my know the elevator in my building is broken. Has been for months, and it's been so long I don' t think the landlady has any plans to get it fixed. As a matter of fact, the elevator stopped working when I went back to Texas for my father's funeral, that same weekend, and I've been trudging up the stairs ever since I got back.

   It didn't strike me until yesterday that this is one big metaphor. Lugging my groceries, my fencing gear and everything else up the stairs day after day, week after week, month after month, it's the Universe letting me know how things are going to be from now on. If I want to achieve something, if I want to make my mark, I'm going to have to struggle one step at a time. No more easy ride, no more lift to the top.
   Not that I was at the top, mind you, but I was far from the bottom. I had it pretty good, a corporate job, cable TV, more than enough to eat. Waaaay more than enough. Comfortable. Too comfortable. I was on the elevator.
   But now that I've been 'between assignments' for a while - forced to use the stairs - I kind of like it. Sure, there's less security, but I've traded real achievement for security for far too long. Traded giddy risk for dull certainty. But you know what dull certainty gets you at the end of it all? Same thing giddy risk does, a one-way ticket to the other side. And I think I'd prefer my life's journey electrifying rather than stultifying, thank you very much. It's time to make my own way, time to forge my own path. Create jobs for others instead of begging for one myself. 'Cause that really sucks, let me tell you.
   Like playing the craps table in Vegas, the only way to win big is to bet big. Fortuna audaces iuvat, as the Romans said. 'Fortune favors the brave.'

After all, with my father gone, I am the man of the house now. Better start acting like it.

Better Than I Remember

A while back I wrote about something that was not nearly as good as I remember. Visits to things from your past are sometimes dangerous journeys onto wind-tossed shoals of memory, where one wrong move can drive your fond recollections onto the sharp rocks of reality. But not everything you remember fondly from your past is doomed to turn out poorly in the present. Today, for example, I was pleasantly surprised.
   I'd just finished fencing and was driving home in the hot rod when some Jethro Tull came on the radio. Even though Tull was a regular part of my youth, it's been quite a while since I've listened to any of my old favorites. Sure, the songs are on my iTunes list, but the last time I was really into Tull I had to listen on a cassette tape.* And that's quite a while ago.
   Gotta say, I remember why I liked them all those years ago. I was jamming out on the highway to 'Aqualung,' which is about a 6 minute song, so I got pretty far down the 134 with Tull blaring, almost like when I used to pop the cassette into the player in my '72 Chevelle on my way to pick up my friends for a night of mischief. Good times, good times.

So not everything I liked when I was a kid is crap. It's a good thing I thought parachute pants were stupid back in the day, or I might have more to regret than Heavy Metal the Movie.


* Kids, cassette tapes replaced 8-track cartridges in the national zeitgeist and were co-existent with vinyl LPs, which themselves were like big, fragile, black CDs. CDs are what your older brothers and sisters used to buy back before iTunes.
** also, Jethro Tull was a real person a few centuries ago. Sounds like a Dickens character.

Tales From My Past - That's Not Stolen, Is It?

There's something about me - the way I look, maybe the way I carry myself, maybe the way dress - that attracts crazy people, homeless people, people with some sort of agenda, and desperate people of all sorts. Now, if you add all those things together, a crazy, possibly homeless desperate person with an agenda, then you'll get something special.
   You'll get someone trying to sell stolen goods.
   It doesn't happen to me so much any more - with one recent exception - but for a while there when I was younger, I had the opportunity to buy something hot about once a month. Here are a few I can remember:

A guy trying to sell me a pickup truck bed full of auto mechanic tools while I was mowing the grass at my grandfather's rent houses. No lie. Drove right up while I was emptying the clippings and told me they would make a great Father's Day present. When I asked if they were stolen he laughed nervously and sped off. I was sixteen.

A guy trying to sell me a clarinet when I was at the Greyhound station waiting for the bus from Austin to San Antonio. He kept cajoling me, telling me he could tell I had money, even though I was taking an $8 bus ride. I finally turned my pockets inside out, showed him I had $1 on me, and said if he'd take a dollar for it, I'd love the clarinet. I was eighteen.

A guy in Sherman, TX trying to sell me a ditch witch, you know, one of those cool, rentable power tools that you can use to dig a trench? I was at the Wal-Mart buying shampoo and Pringles (really), and as I was leaving he drove up with the ditch witch on a little trailer. Said I could have it for $100, and that I'd make my money back with a good weekend's work. I told him if he could figure out a way to sneak it into my dorm room I could find a hundred bucks. I was twenty.

Two guys in Rome tried to sell me tickets to something. Since I barely spoke Italian and I read it even worse I had no idea what they were tickets for. But since they were trying to sell them to me around midnight as I was taking pictures of St. Peter's, I'm pretty sure they were stolen. I was twenty-seven.

A woman in O'Fallon, IL - if you've never been, don't bother - tried to sell me a box of cigarettes. Not a carton, a box full of cartons, probably a gross of cigarette packs. Camels. She started at $300 and worked her way down to $75 as I repeated over and over that I didn't smoke. When I asked her if they were stolen she told me she got them from an Indian reservation, which didn't really answer my question. I never did check to see if there was a reservation around there. I was twenty-nine.

A scary-looking little Japanese guy in Okinawa tried to sell me stereo equipment. He spoke English very well, and I could see the tattoos peeking out from under his long-sleeved shirt. I was extremely polite to him as I refused his business, explaining that Japanese electronics wouldn't work when plugged into American power outlets. I ran back to Kadena AFB and locked my billet door. I was thirty-one.

Maybe It's Me?

I think I'm giving off an odd vibe. Odder than normal, I mean. Usually I'm a magnet for strange people, crazy people, people with an agenda. I'm used to that, it's been that way for me for as long as I can remember. But I was just walking back from the gym now, and I had something odder than usual happen.
   A guy tried to sell me groceries from the back of his car.
   Seriously. On Colorado Blvd, a major thoroughfare in Pasadena. I was minding my own business, just going home, and I saw this guy messing around in the back of his little beater car. He had a collection of grocery bags - plastic not paper - and he just seemed to be rearranging them. As I approached he turned around, eased forward like Lefty the Salesman from Sesame Street, and asked me if I needed any apples or milk. I declined and moved on. It was like a very bad film noir, especially since it was 9 AM and I was wearing shorts and a sweaty shirt.
   But I got to thinking, setting aside his rank amateurism - how did he know I wasn't a cop? - this guy has to be desperate, things for him have to have gotten very, very serious. Bad enough that it became a good idea to sell stolen groceries. (And I have no doubt that they were, in fact, stolen.) Economic recovery? Maybe it's not as close as the media wants us to believe.
   And what is it about me that I look like the kind of guy who would buy a gallon of milk out of the back of a Yugo?