A break in the scene

With purpose

Here’s another great message that rolled across the scanner… I just couldn’t help but share it.

Dispatcher: We’ve got a man carrying a handgun walking down Sunset Drive.

A few minutes later…

Dispatcher: He’s walking with purpose.

The hunted

I should start a whole new page on funny things that come across the scanner in the newsroom. They’re perhaps more funny because you’re only getting part of the conversation and usually you are working and tune out the noise and only tune back in when something catches your attention.

This one caught my attention today:

“We have two hunters shooting at doves with shotguns on the boulevard.”

“What’s the location?”

“Sisk Auto Mall parking lot.”

“10-4″

Getting canned

My new job at a local paper in Western Kentucky has a very peculiar and very specific trash policy. At your desk, you are only allowed to throw away paper… just the printer type of paper, no newspaper. There is a specific bin for newspaper, one for other recyclables and another for anything else deemed trash-worthy.

This is a relatively new policy so at the Monday morning staff meeting the deputy editor was once again going over the specifics of the trash rules and his disappointment that some weren’t seeming to comply.

Mary, a 75-year-old member of the staff who was sitting next to me at the meeting, leaned over and said, “I’d have to get fired after 54 years for putting my donut napkin in the wrong place.”

When in doubt, choose C

My younger brother just took a stab at the SAT and when I called him to see how it had gone, there seem to be a few things they do different since I took it.

“Eh, fine I guess. Long though. Yeah I wanted to just get up and make a beeline for the door but now they make you sit there afterwards and write down your thoughts about the test,” he said. “Only I didn’t really care so I told the guy that and he told me just to write down what I was thinking.”

“And?”

“I wrote that I kind of needed to blow my nose, I couldn’t wait to eat a double cheeseburger and that my crotch had been itching for a half hour.”

I’m pretty sure the SAT board will appreciate that.

Fish, Fish, DUCK

Fishing is big in Idaho. Really big. A lot of trout fill the streams and rivers here and the best way to catch a trout is in rushing water because that is how they get their food, Elliott explained to me, they sit and wait for it to come to them. SO as we pass a fisherman, Expert Fisherman Elliott always checks out his fishing spot to see if it’s a good one. We passed a man fishing in a small pond next to the Snake River in calm waters.

“Oh he’s not going to catch anything,” Elliott said. “There are no trout in that calm pond.”

“Well maybe he’s not fishing for trout,” I said. “And maybe he’ll catch something else.”

We rode for a few seconds in silence before Elliott turned to me and asked, “What would he catch? A duck?”

2 miles to Civilization

The apartment in Idaho is situated between a movie theater, Walmart and several chain restaurants on one side and rural hills on the other. So in only 5 minutes Elliott and I can be completely away from civilization to watch sunsets, visit the giant windmill power generators, or just find some unpaved road for him to explore.

But on our way back into town, the main road is only marked by a tiny road sign on an unlit, two-lane road… making it difficult to see. Elliott almost always passes right by it.

Last night, once again we saw the road after we were five feet past it and Elliott had to slam on the breaks and throw the car in reverse.

“They really should mark this road better,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Yeah,” Elliott agreed. “It should say, ‘Civilization this way.’”

Wanted: hostile jogger and Jazzy Chair accomplice

I was making my third lap around the neighborhood near Elliott’s apartment with his elderly neighbor driving along side me in her motorized wheel chair for company, when I heard the sirens and turned to see a police car slowing near the curb where I was jogging. Surely it wasn’t for us?

But as the officer got out of the car I stopped running and he approached me to tell me that there had been complaints by residents of the neighborhood because someone was “making laps around the streets looking like they were eying the houses.”

What? Of course I was making laps- I was exercising. Did I really look dangerous? I had a senior citizen in a motorized wheel chair with me.

He let me off with a warning not to exercise in this part of town again. If I get fat, it’s Idaho’s fault.

OMG, IDK, LOL

“I hate words and names that aren’t in my quick-text,” my 16-year-old brother, Brian told me. “It just makes things harder. Don’t name your children anything that isn’t in my quick-text… you know, in case I need to text them something.”

So that rules out thumbnail and horticulture? I asked him.

“Right,” he said. “But Dumbledore is fair game because it’s in there.”

Whew.

Jesus wasn’t a groundhog

Despite the snow falling to the ground outside, I felt optimistic that the groundhog up north in Pennsylvania would come out of his hole on Saturday and declare that spring was on it’s way. I asked a 4 year old playing at the Children’s Museum if he knew that Groundhog’s Day was quickly approaching and found myself explaining the history of the holiday to him.

“Really?” he asked me, eyes wide. “A groundhog who’s a weather man?”

I was about to answer when his mother stepped in to our lesson. “No, she’s wrong,” his mother told him. “Look outside. It’s snowing. It’s clearly winter.” Then she turned to me. “I don’t know what you believe, but we don’t teach our children those rodent beliefs- we’re Christians.”

Apparently if you believe in God, there is no Punxsutawney Phil.

So I creep

Walking to my car alone from the Kernel last night, I met up with a SafeCats (a group meant to patrol campus for the protection of people like me) golf cart. Somewhat comforted by the presence, I barely noticed it following me as I wove through campus. It’s shadow still lurked a few feet behind me several minutes later as I began to cross Limeston which prompted me to stop and ask the guy, “What are you doing?”

“Making sure creeps don’t follow you,” he replied frankly.

I considered asking if he thought HE was being creepy… but I already had my answer.

You say kimono, I say “What am I wearing?”

Sitting at lunch yesterday my brother Shh-ushed me so that he could eaves drop on what he insisted was a “curious” conversation at the table next to us.

“I wish those costume stores were open year-round,” one guy said to his friend. “I used to love to get drunk and go buy costumes and wear them places.”

Brian raised one eyebrow, picked up his burrito, took a bite and calmly said between chewing, “You gotta wonder how many mornings those guys woke up and asked themselves, ‘Why the heck am I wearing a kimono?’”

Superheroes vs. Superpowers

Matty is the king of inventing lame (but entertaining) games to pass the time. We could be waiting for a table at a restaurant, sitting through movie previews, or wasting away a Friday night. They typically involve words, illustrations or in his finest moments dance moves and most often end in an eruption of laughter or me smacking him on the back of his head for stupidity. Usually he’s pretty good for a random factoid as well…

In need of an answer to her question, Emon interrupts the the game we were playing at the moment, probably finding celebrities who’s names are sentences (think Britney spears.), and asks, “Matt, who started the League of Nations?”

To which Matt immediately replies, “Superman.” and then pauses for several seconds as we look at him in puzzlement and recovers with, “Oh wait, that was the Justice League.”

Why does one roam?

Sometimes you have to be specific when you ask a question. Case in point: last night at the basketball game at Rupp Arena I was frustrated by my inability to make an outgoing call from my cell phone. ROAMING flashed in red letters across the top of my screen. “Ugh,” I looked at my friend Amanda. “Why am I roaming?”

Amanda stared at me for a few seconds before answering, “Well, that’s a deep philosophical question. Do you think the basketball game is an appropriate time to talk about it?”

So you’re a Met’s fan?

On route to the Courthouse to pay a parking ticket, my dad and I walked by Pheonix Park in downtown Lexington. For those of you who don’t know- Phoenix Park is the exact center of Lexington and popular hangout spot of a high concentration of the city’s homeless community. As we’re standing at the crosswalk waiting to cross Main Street, a homeless man walks up to us and asks my dad for money.

“No, I’m sorry sir, I can’t help you out,” my dad told him.

“It’s cool,” the homeless guy replied. “You’re wearing a Yankee’s hat (and yes, my dad was). You’ve got it worse off than me.”

Now if only they’d put the toilet seat down

One of my best friends lives in Amsterdam, a place far enough away for me to miss him terribly, but fascinating enough that I always look forward to calls and emails documenting his adventures in the most liberal city in the world. He sent me an email this morning with a picture of what he calls “the best bathrooms in Amsterdam.” “Who knew a couple of sculptures could teach us males so much,” he wrote. I couldn’t agree more.

Peaceful pipes

The smell of a suspicious 5-leaved plant rolled out of the presentation room at the top of the second level stairs during the Explorium’s annual Native American celebration. I followed my nose into a set up of tipi’s and wigwams to find a circle of native americans smoking their ‘peace pipes.’ I tell them they can’t smoke inside- can’t smoke anything- and that I don’t want to know what they’ve put in those pipes. One man turns to me and says, “well you’re no fun. this is part of our heritage.” I explain to him as politely and calmly as I can that their heritage (not unlike the practice in my culture) is against the law, especially around children. The tallest one pauses for a moment before smiling at me as he said, “Well, you could take it from us but it won’t be peaceful. You know us crazy Indians… we’ll chop of your head and do a ceremonial dance around it. With feathers.”

You know, I let them keep their peace pipes- I don’t think my head would look good with feathers.

Country roads take me home

Stef and I left early for Wake Forest, like 5:00 am early, so when we crossed the state line into West Virginia we were just starting to wake up. We’d talked through Eastern Kentucky, but had settled in silence and the comfort of Ben Folds somewhere outside of Ashland. So the car had been reasonably quiet for several minutes when we passed under the sign that screamed “Welcome to West Virginia.” Now, every state has a motto that is supposed to embody the personality of the state. WV’s jumped out at me right away: Open for Business.

“Did that sign just say WV is open for business?” I asked Stef. “Yeah it totally did. Do you think that means the state is a brothel?” she answered.

Yes Stef. I think the entire state of West Virginia is whoring itself out.

I see London, I see France

I have no washing machine. Which is frustrating. And it leaves me carrying load after load back and forth between my mom’s house so that I can keep my closet full. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly lazy and all too needy, I like to leave my dirty laundry at my mom’s house to see if it miraculously gets washed. Often, it does. Tonight, I stopped by to pick up some laundry and found my brother quite disheartened by my clean clothes.

“I want to talk about a problem I’m having with your clothes,” he said. “I don’t like it when Mom washes our underwear together. I feel like they shouldn’t touch.”