“I couldn't live a week without a private library
- indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor
before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.” ― H.P. Lovecraft

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Encounters with law enforcement officials!

So we’re out driving around Saturday night. We’re headed back to my place at about midnight or so and we come upon a roadblock and about a dozen cop cars.

We were all sober, as I was driving and two of the four occupants of the car had just gotten off work, but the seat-belt situation in my car is a bit iffy.

The one on my side is sticking out about a foot. It won’t come out, it won’t go back in.

The one on the passenger side goes in too far to reach with your fingers. I have a special hook made to reach into the mechanism to pull it out, but the hook is in the back of the glove box.

The ones in the back actually work. However, I just put the back seat back in the other day by myself and as I only have two hands I had to chose between clipping the seat into place or having the belt buckles sticking out where you can get at them.

So they were pinned under the seat and unless we stopped the car, got out, pulled out the back seat and in a concerted effort held the buckles in the right place and put the seat back in, the belts just weren’t going to happen.

We thought that might look a tad bit suspicious.

Even if they did work it’s a 70’s car and therefore has no shoulder belts so from the outside it would look like we weren’t wearing any anyway.

So I did the only thing I could do: I sucked it up and drove right in.

Turns out it was a sobriety checkpoint.

A checkpoint I knew about beforehand, but had forgotten about as my conscious and subconscious still aren’t speaking to each other.

Now, the secret to getting through a group of police officers is to be cool. Act like you have nothing to hide and you’re happy to see them.

Be careful not to act TOO happy unless you want to go through some rather interesting field sobriety tests.

It went like this:

COP: “Have you boys been drinking tonight?”

ME: “No Sir! We’re responsible citizens!”

COP: “All right. You have a good night.”

ME: “Thank you Sir! You too!”


Cops love it when you call them ‘Sir’. Actually, most people do. Well, most guys anyway. Women mostly seem to be some level of annoyed by it.

So that’s how you get through a checkpoint with four people in a car with no seat belts and a dead hooker in the trunk.

Remember, there’s nothing worse than when the whore in the trunk that you thought was dead starts banging on the trunk lid while you’re talking to a cop. Believe-you-me that’s a bit harder to explain than “My seat-belts don’t work”.

So remember this handy little rhyme:

Two shots to the head,
make sure the bitch is dead,
then there’s no need to worry,
when the cops around you scurry.


So it’s not the best rhyme. How many helpful verses on this subject do you know of?

I thought so.


That was Saturday night.

So tonight (Tuesday) I’m dropping off Jeremy the Kung-Fu-Jew at his residence. As his house is right on the street (as many of them seem to be oddly enough) and it was 2:30 AM I pulled two wheels up on the sidewalk rather than try to maneuver the confines of his parents front yard.

Before he can get out a car goes by followed closely by a local cop car. Realizing that my quick pull-up job looked like a drunk had run off the road I got a bit nervous.

You can imagine how I felt when the car turned around and pulled alongside me.

That reminds me, I need to change my underwear.

Anyways, it flustered me a bit more when, after asking if everything was OK, he called me by my name.

There was an interesting jumble of thoughts in my brain at that point. I knew he didn’t have time to run my plate, and even if he had he couldn’t have seen it. Not unless he typed it in as soon as he saw me from behind (here in WV we only have plates in the back) and he couldn’t see either of them from where he was currently parked.

So I’m frantically thinking of all the shit I did recently that would make the police remember my car and my name.

Granted there aren’t many white 1975 Ford Mavericks with “HELLBILLY” written across the back glass in 6 inch tall letters, but he called me by name.

That worried me.

The contents of my floor, glove box, trunk and right-front pocket worried me further.

And you already know about the seat-belt situation.

Long story longer, it turns out it was a guy I went to high school with.

He turned on his lights so people would drive around us and we caught up on things. It was pretty cool, and it served a purpose: it was proof that even with all my medical problems my heart is still pretty damn strong.

It kinda got going for a minute there.

As my bladder nearly did.

Two encounters with the authorities this week and it’s only early Wednesday morning. Actually, it’s three in less than a week if you count the call to the police last week about my fucking neighbors.

I’m going to sleep.

Oh, for anyone that has a snide remark about the WVU game; fuck you, at least we're not Marshall.

Later.