The Weak in Review 10/18/99
I got a bad haircut this weekend.
I went in with Jeff Daniels Dumb and Dumber hair, asked for “just a regular
trim” and left with a Jim Carey Dumb and Dumber cut. When the barber
lady gave me the mirror to see what she had done, I thought about asking
her whether I was supposed to be ‘Dumb’ or 'Dumber’, but I knew that the
answer would most likely be “who you kiddin’ chiil'...you Dumbest,”
so I just kept my mouth shut and went home to prove her right by trying
to “fix” the haircut with electric clippers. Now I have a hacked-up
dumb and dumber cut. I was kind of annoyed for a little while, then I realized
that the truth of the matter is that the only person who gives a rat's
ass what your noggin looks like is you and, unless you're looking in a
mirror, you can't see your own head anyway.
Mike is leaving
our lab this week for Stanford and last Friday we took him out for a few
beers. When I picked him up at his place, he walked out the door,
then paused, held up his index finger, then went back inside for a minute
and reappeared. “I wasn’t going to set the alarm because I’m afraid
I’ll be too inebriated to disarm it when I get home. But I don’t
think that’s going to happen-- I just like the peace of mind,” he
explained.
I told him
how I was lucky if I could get my roommate to shut our doors, let alone
lock them, and that we don’t even think about the windows anymore.
We have a dog so its no big deal. Nevermind that the dog, Jake, is
in his golden years and probably wouldn’t so much as lift his head unless
one of the burgalars happened to say his name over and over again
in an enthusiastic vioce.
One thing
I will say for Jake is that he loves to urinate on stuff. He loves
to urinate and he’s damn good at it too: he never uses up all his
pee all in one place the way we do because he knows that there’s going
to be lots of other stuff on his walk that needs to be peed on. He
looks so happy and free when he’s running around peeing on stuff
that I can’t help but be reminded of that "flowers in her hair" song:
“peein’ here and there, peein’ everywhere. Ja-cob’s the urine guy.”
Speaking
of urine, Mike and the rest of us had our “couple‘a beers” and a good time
was had by all. The bars had closed and our ride home was dragging
his ass, so I decided to split and, being somewhat intoxicated, opted for
the jog home.
At home,
I showered off the second-hand smoke and, as I lay in bed, I considered
digging through my the closet and getting out my softball bat for security
since my roommate and his dog were out of town for fall break. I
fell asleep thinking that I probably couldn’t bring myself to clobber someone
with a metal bat just for sneaking into my place. Nobody likes that
crunchy sensation you feel when you step on a big spider-- just imagine
what it’d be like to do that to a guy’s head with an aluminum bat. But
it would still be nice to have a bat on hand to bang on the ground in an
ape-like territorial display if I needed to drive off any intruders...
At some point
in my sleep I remember semi-consciously being a little dissapointed to
hear my roommate come in because he wasn’t supposed to be back until Sunday
and I was kind of looking forward to having the place to myself for a while.
I opened my eyes and for some reason there was no burst of adrenalin when
I saw a flashlight shining through my bedroom doorway from the kitchen.
I just figured “whoever that is must think that I’m not here-- I
guess I should say something.”
I mustered
a not-quite-threatening “Hey”. It was about the same “hey”
you’d use if you were in the middle of dropping a duece and someone started
to open the bathroom door. It’s the “hey” that translates to “you
are obviously unaware that someone is in here, so please leave before this
situation becomes any more uncomfortable for the both of us.” The
light froze for a second, presumably considering fight vs. flight,
then retreated back through the kitchen and out the back door. It
was a good thing he chose flight, because the most menacing weapon I had
within arm’s length was a 1700 page hardcover dictionary.
From what
I’ve seen in movies, a dictionary would probably make an effective weapon
as long as I had a good one-liner to go with it. For example, if
I hid behind the door, smacked the guy across the face with the dictionary,
and then, in my best Austrian accent, said “time fah ya vocab-ya-larry
lesson”, he would almost certainly be knocked cold.
I was pretty
satisfied with the way it worked out: I said “hey”, the guy split, now
I could sleep again, but then I thought that this might be a situation
where I should call the police. It may have been a mistake because,
in the course of talking to the police, my grog lifted and I wasn’t able
to get back to sleep until 7am.
As I was talking
to the police operator, a civilian car pulled into my lot, stopped, and
reversed out in a very quick and smooth manner. Because they reversed
out, I never got a look at the license plate. They were real
pro’s-- it was like a medical chopper making a touch and go pick-up in
a war movie. I turned on the outside light and opened the front door.
A police cruiser pulled up... and kept going. The phone rang.
The police operator told me that a unit was in the area and asked me to
please stand outside my apartment to help him find the place. Had
I accidently speed dialed Papa John’s instead of the police?
Officer
Willie Quick arrived on the scene and asked me to show him the door where
the perp had gained entrance. I was surprised to find the door shut
tight. Had I imagined everything?
“Yep, someone
was here alright,” Officer Quick said as he shined his light on the concrete
back step. I took a look and was thouroughly puzzled-- apparently,
the intruder had spilled some sort of liquid on the back step, and, for
some reason, Quick acted as if he had fully expected this. “Those
aren’t your footprints are they?” Quick asked. At that point
I noticed the heavy dew on the grass and the shoe-sole pattern of the liquid
on the concrete. Willie Quick was no Papa John’s delivery guy.
The only typical Cops banter
came when a second officer arrived and told me that if I was going to have
the windows open, I should put nails in to keep them from going up any
more than six inches because, she said, “no one can squeeze through
a six inch gap”.
“No one?” Officer Quick
challenged.
“Not even a child ‘s body
cavity can fit through a six inch gap. You’ll learn that in Crime
Prevention.”
“You’d have to be half snake
I guess. Then again, anyone in the burgalry buisness is half
snake to begin with.”
...Bad boys, bad boys what'chu gonna do, what'chu gonna
do when they come for you, bad boys...
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