Black Rhombus

I heard this story on the way home from work today, & could scarcely contain the blood boiling in my veins.  In fact, I just searched for & found it, so I’m just all kinds of pissed off right now.

“Calvo said officers entered about 7:30 p.m., first shooting 7-year-old Payton. They then pursued 4-year-old Chase, who ran away and was shot by police from behind, he said.”

Now, I’m not sure who “feels threatened” when a 7yr old black lab trots up to them, likely with tail wagging, but naturally, the first instinct must be to bust a cap in its skull.  As if that wasn’t enough, they chased down the terrorizing pup’s younger sister, & shot her from behind.  Of course.  Logical.  Black labs, not pit bulls, not rottweilers, not dobermans.  Black labs.

It gets better.  The PG county geniuses never bothered to notify the local (Berwyn) police department.  Nope.  Just rolled up to the “suspect’s” house, kicked in the door, & promptly killed his dogs.  The kicker?  Guess whose house it was.  The mayor.

Hey, maybe that SWAT dude just wasn’t a dog person.

I got sick of the goatee again already. I just get to a point where I’d really like it off my face, & I can’t think of any better time to go clean shaven than a return to work after an extended illness. Bec gave me the flu for Valentines this year, & I’ve been sick & out of work since last Thursday (she actually is still sick, & she got it 2 Sundays ago). Anyhow, before I shaved it all off, I decided to have a laugh with some mustache goodness.

I surprised Rebecca when she came home. She backed away in fear every time I got close to her, & kept yelling, “take it off!” It was hilarious. I tried to get her to be in one of the photos with me, but she shot that down too. No fun at all, I tells ya

OK, so on my way to work this morning, there was a huge, adolescent (still a bit gray around the edges) mute swan (thanks Tammy) smack in the middle of the road. There were a couple of people there, helping to direct traffic around the poor thing. It was seriously enormous, though; I think its head was about even with the peoples’ shoulders. Six cars, including me, had to go around the “little” guy. He was obviously very confused. Tammy (out for her run) said that the swan had been successfully coaxed out of the road by the time she’d gone by, & that it was trying to navigate the railing on the boardwalk to get to the river (& having an equally difficult time).

Matty, on the other hand, had a completely different morning ride to work:

“Some 45 year old doofus-looking white dude passed out on the metro right at the takoma park stop. This woman was trying to call the train operator and she was an idiot so I had to point out where the call button was. Meanwhile the dude gets up and everyone was asking the guy if he was okay. he’s all “i’m fine, i just felt a little sick.” He’s like kind of adjusting himself and turning around . . . kind of trying to find a corner to hide in a little and become anonymous.

“Very quickly the car starts to fill with a horrible stench. Within a minute it smells as if we’re trapped in the diaper of a baby that someone’s been feeding Indian food to for a week. I mean people are gagging. All the while the guy is still fidgeting and adjusting himself and apologizing “I’m sorry. i shouldn’t have gotten on the metro. I’m sorry.” and you can see the back of his pants are glistening. It looked like someone pulled open the back of his pants and dumped a whole pot of stew down there.

“So we’re all about to start breaking windows on the train to get some air in there, but at the same time everyone’s trying to pretend like they don’t know what happened because obviously the dude is going to go shoot himself in the face later. I mean he’s a 45 year old man standing in the middle of a metro car in rush hour with his own feces running down his legs and everyone knows it. but the car is taking what seems like 10 minutes to get to the next stop. So we’re all trapped in this awkward purgatory.

“Finally we get to the stop and he gets off and we tell the train operator that the dude is fine and got off the train. That smell will haunt me for a while though.”

I think that if it came down to: developmentally-challenged mute swan, or 45yr old father of three passing out & pooping himself, the geezer gets it; hands-down.