On False-Alarm Cop Log Items

Even in the daytime, I generally like to keep the drapes closed and the blinds down. It's not that I'm doing anything shady or illegal, despite what some may think, and it's nothing personal. I just like my privacy. At night, then, it's a no-brainer -- drapes closed.

Recently I was sitting in the TV room, watching the 11pm news, when I saw the outside motion detector lights go on. I was unfazed. There's a black cat that's adopted our mudroom as its home, and frequently sets off the motion detector while wandering about the driveway, hunting for its next meal or waiting for me or one of my roommates to let it back into the mudroom.

Then I saw a shadow go by the window.

This clearly wasn't the cat, who is not the Shaq of felines. It was a human silhouette. It also wasn't my landlord/roommate, who was in her room, nor was it my other roommate, who works graveyard shift. As a general rule I feel safe in my surroundings, but you never know in Fitchburg (or anywhere, for that matter). The landlord/roommate says in the past she's been victimized by break-ins.

With one hand on my phone, ready to call the police, I went over to the driveway window and peered through the blinds. It was a woman who lives up the street, who occasionally brings the black cat back here when she sees it while walking her dog. She often opens the door and lets herself into the mudroom. I'm not a big fan of that -- as mentioned earlier, I like my privacy -- but the landlord/roommate doesn't seem to mind so I let it go.

I have to draw the line somewhere, though, and in this case that line gets drawn at 11:10pm. She scared the crap out of me. If someone was trying to break in through the TV room, I would be the first person they'd encounter.

Now that I know the situation is not cop log-worthy, I open the door to the mudroom, where she's now playing with the cat. [Blogger's note: the cat doesn't have a name, partially because there's a dispute as to whether it's male or female, and I have no interest in fact-checking its gender. Apologies for the ambiguous writing.]

"Hi, can I help you?" I ask her.

"Oh, I'm just bringing the cat back," she said.

"The cat will be fine," I said. "It's a cat. It's used to being outside."

"I know, but--"

"Do you think it's appropriate to walk into someone else's house uninvited at 11:10 at night?"

She squirmed and look down at the floor. "Well, I, umm--"

"I almost called the police on you because I thought you were a burglar. Please don't walk in here this late at night again."

"I'm sorry," she said, dashing out.

The next thing I did was talk to the landlord/roommate, who agreed that 11:10pm was a little late for a cat shuttle service. She said she would talk to the neighbor. I don't know if that talk ever happened. But since then the neighbor has kept her cat-depositing duties to normal daylight hours. Sometimes common sense prevails.

The Decline and Fall of James

I see some interesting things in my part-time spy gig. Tonight, I'm trying to be stealthy when I hear someone over the loudspeaker:

"James, to the office, please. James to the office."

I think nothing of it and go back to my espionage. A few minutes go by. Then, the loudspeaker lives up to its name.

"JAMES, TO THE OFFICE, PLEASE. JAMES TO THE OFFICE."

Wow.

Seconds later, someone wearing a sour-puss look on his face and a name tag that reads "JAMES" trudges inside and heads for the office. I wait for awhile. He never resurfaces.

You see a lot of things as a spy -- like retail executions.

On Being Dubious

The Wikipedia article for the obscure dinosaur Pterospondylus begins thusly:

"Pterospondylus (meaning "winged vertebra") is a dubious genus of theropod dinosaur from the Late Triassic."

I understand what they mean by dubious -- i.e., it's known from such poor, sketchy material that it can't be defintively proven to be a valid type of dinosaur. Still, as someone who himself has been called "dubious" in the past, I think it's a lousy word to describe a fossil. Which led to this conversation between myself and my friend Linsey:

 

 me: i think it's a little presumptive and disrespectful to call a dinosaur who's been dead for 216 million years dubious

 

how does wikipedia know?

 

did wikipedia lend pterospondylus money and then get stiffed?

 

did they see pterospondylus at a seedy bar?

Sent at 9:09 PM on Tuesday

Linsey: oh man that's true

 

what do they know about pterospondylus?

 

as a soul

 

he could have been a beautiful soul

me: it's bullshit man

Linsey: TOTAL bullshit

 

i don't like their crap

 

THEY are the dubious ones

me: I KNOW

 

Sent at 9:12 PM on Tuesday

 

me: maybe pterospondylus just fell on hard times

 

Sent at 9:14 PM on Tuesday

 

Linsey: yeah, they're so quick to judge a man

 

whose claws they have not clawed in

 

me: i hope wikipedia has learned a valuable lesson from this

 

never assume

 

 

There ya go Wikipedia. Linsey and Pterospondylus just showed you. Maybe next time you won't be so quick to judge.

Menial Labor

The assignment: Walk 8 minutes to the nearest mailbox, dump two letters in the chute, go back home. Bills paid, some degree of exercise attained.

Then there was the walk home. Suddenly I hear "Yoohoo?!"

I turn to see an elderly woman waving me over to her. My first instinct, as it is with most strangers who try to approach me, is: "Walk away. Who knows what this cold lead to?" This is how violent scenes in spy novels and movies like Ironman3 start. Then I notice that she looks like a stiff breeze could knock her over. Maybe it's a good risk.

She asks me to fold up a rug that is too big and heavy for her and put it in the back seat of her car. I really don't want to do this. But there's no legitimate excuse for me: I have nowhere to be for a few hours, it's a nice day and she clearly can't do this by herself. To say no would be to be a jerk.

So I do it. Then she points to another rug. And another. And another. Pretty soon I've moved four rugs into her back seat, four more into her garage, and thrown one welcome mat in the trash. It's been 10 minutes -- certainly not an eternity by any stretch, but it's more than I bargained for, and at some point I'd like to eat lunch.

Finally after all that, she asks: "Would you like something for that?"

"Sure."

"Just a minute." She walks inside, and emerges a couple of minutes later with $1. "Go buy yourself a can of soda with this."

For 10 minutes of work, at Massachusetts minimum wage ($8/hr.), I really shouldn't accept less than $1.33 for this. Also, a can of soda at most places (with $0.05 deposit attached) is $1.04, so I would still need the pennies. But whatevs. This was my good deed for the day. And I made it home alive.

 

Electoral/Musical College

It's come to this. There's an article in Time that suggests Justin Timberlake would top a list of musicians in a presidential preference, according to polling data. He beats out Justin Bieber 34%-8%.

Here's what I think:

* While theoretically possible, 34% is such a low plurality that I highly doubt it would be enough to carry the 270 electoral votes necessary to be elected president. So I suspect the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives, and who knows how those shady characters would vote.

* At 32, Justin Timberlake is constitutionally ineligible to be president (though, to be fair, he will have reached the minimum presidential age of 35 by the next election in 2016).

* Justin Bieber is permanently barred from holding the office of U.S. President, having been born in London, Ontario (though the Constitution could always be amended).

* Personally, given a choice of musicians, I'd vote for Beyonce for president.

EZPass History

There are many crappy things about living in Fitchburg (hills, lots of shady characters, I could go on), But one nice things about it is that it's a straight shot to Boston on Route 2 -- thus I can avoid the Mass Pike.

Still, I didn't realize how well I've avoided the Mass Pike until I got my EZPass statement emailed to me. The last time I was on the Pike was last September. That's one car ago. That's two jobs ago.

In fact, I was trying to remember what I was doing on the Pike that day. I think I was coming back a friend's house in Connecticut, watching the first Patriots game of last season.

Hopefully I can keep the streak going. Any time you can avoid a toll road, you take advantage of it.

Smile, Boston

Last week I was doing some work for the part-time job where I pretend I'm a spy. In the process of cleaning up, I noticed there were still a couple of these, which have been on since the holidays last year and which I had to remove:

 

 

 

 

This seemed poignant, given the events of last month. So I'm scanning it in here. We all could use a smile these days.