Confessions of a thief.

 

I was a petty thief, but I am trying not to be anymore. 

Which is good, because apparently I suck at stealing things unless I'm not trying to. Then I am the Napoleon of Crime. 

When I was a boy, my mom would let me wander the aisles of the supermarket while she was shopping. (Yes, kids, it was a different world then.) On some occasions I pocketed a roll of Rolos, my favorite candy. No one ever caught me at it. I probably thought I was pretty clever.  

As I look back, I think even then they had security cameras, and they probably saw me. But they probably figured it was worth a little candy to keep my mother shopping there. We were regulars; she even had her favorite cashier. If they'd busted me, Mom would have been embarrassed (furious, but also embarrassed) and we would have gone to some other supermarket. And now I figure the managers knew that. 

Later in life I got caught stealing a comic book. One of -- but far from the most -- humiliating moments of my life. It was clear that I was no master criminal. And a stupid comic book, full of heroes that fought crime! Ironic and embarrassing. I genuinely wanted to walk out into traffic when they let me go. The manager had gotten my name and phone number and I figured he'd call my parents (can you believe I coughed up the real number?) but he never did. I confessed to my folks anyway. 

I did not grow up in the most morally upright household. My dad's advice following the comic book incident was not: Don't steal. It was: Never steal anything small. The penalty is the same for small and large thefts at felony size, so if you're going to steal, make it worthwhile. My father was a taciturn man, not given to advising -- the only other piece of advice I remember him telling me is "Don't weaken. It's a great life if you don't weaken."

Alas, I continued to steal small. While I was in college I stole books (I really am a dork) from a publishing distributor for whom I worked on Sundays. He had to have figured it out. He would call me on Fridays to check my availability. One Friday he didn't call. He never called again. I really didn't seem to care at the time.

After that, there was less thievery. I took the Xerox subsidy at work later on, and stole postage to mail out manuscripts, but I eventually I stopped taking things that were not mine. Over time I seemed to have had the slowest, stupidest, most reluctant, most half-assed, but eventually effective spiritual awakening possible, and thank God I lived long enough for it. So I didn't steal anything anymore.  

Then I stole a skid of toilet paper. 

Just a couple of weeks ago.

It was a total accident. I was on the self-checkout line at Home Depot, with several things in a cart, including a 24-roll package of Charmin ($25 on sale). I was sure I had scanned everything with the scanning gun, but when I got home and looked at the receipt, I discovered that I had walked out the door without paying for the TP.

I had pulled that heist right in front of an employee who was watching me scan. Master thief!

It bothered me. My wife thought it was funny. A friend me mine called it "No big shit!" (hyuk hyuk). But I don't want to steal anything anymore. 

So, on Friday I went back for another $25 skid -- not like it will go stale -- and charged myself for two. The ledger is corrected, the inventory proper. Order and balance are restored.

Maybe no one noticed, no one cared. But I care. Because if I steal, I am a man who steals, but if I refuse to let myself steal I am not. Not anymore. I much prefer that.

Anyway, I have a lot of TP around, so if you stop by I can slip you a couple of rolls. Be my guest. 

Don't worry; it's paid for. 

Book thief!

Voltaire is supposed to have said, "Only your friends steal your books." I have not been able to find the quote to verify it, although it sounds like him. I have also heard a version as "Enemies steal your money; friends steal your books."

Nevertheless, there is truth to it. 

A friend of mine has recently found himself with time on his hands, and mentioned that for the first time in many years he is looking for books to read. I happily loaned a few from my library, most of which he enjoyed. 

Then he gave them away to other people. 

This is one reason why friends steal books -- if they are not true book lovers, they don't see the value in keeping a book at hand. Then they pass them along, figuring everyone should enjoy this nice book. I honestly had not anticipated this, but when he told me that he gave one of my books to his son and another to a friend, I knew I'd never see them again. 

"That's my book in your pocket, isn't it?"
“No, I’m just happy to see you. And
I have a rectangular schmeckele.”

I can sort of understand it, and yet at the same time I don't. No one does this with anything else. If I leant him a coat or my car or some tools, I know I'd get them back. He is very honest. I'm pretty sure if I'd leant him a DVD, he would not send it along downstream for someone else to watch. And yet hardcover books and many paperbacks are more expensive than CDs and DVDs. Maybe they expect you’ll watch a movie over and over, but no one ever rereads a book.

When I've stolen a book from a friend, I did it the old-fashioned way -- forgot to return it. Sometimes the book didn't grab me, or I had no time, and was determined to get back to it, only to find years later that it had been in my possession far longer than it ever had been in his. That's not larceny, which requires intent, but I still didn't give the book back.

Well, my pal still is looking for things to read, so you can figure what I have done -- I've bought him some as a Christmas present. I hope he enjoys them, and the same to whomever he sends them to next. I will not have to worry about those books. 

The Big Swim.

 

Man scammed.

ELDERLY MAN SCAMMED FOR
$3.6 TRILLION

"They Were Very Convincing," Says Befuddled Oldster

WASHINGTON, DC (March 21, 2024) -- The nation's capital witnessed another awful example of telephone scams and elder abuse, as the chief elected officer of the country was bamboozled by an artful trickster. 

"Sounded totally legit," said Mr. Joseph Biden of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "Said they were calling from the debt service place. Well, I keep hearing about the debt this and the debt that and I was glad that I had started the old ball rolling to get that taken care of. Thought I'd just left the paperwork in Delaware or something. All they needed, she said, was the main treasury account number and some passwords, no big deal. They were very convincing." 

An estimated $3.6 trillion has subsequently gone missing from the United States treasury following this event. Mr. Biden's coworkers were quick to point out that it's not really lost, however. 

"It's not like it's real money," said Janet Yellen, who oversees the treasury for Mr. Biden. "Just a bunch of IOUs, actually. We'll just run out a few trillion on the printing presses and replace it as fast as we can get the paper."

Mr. Biden says he regrets being taken in by a hoax, and intends to find the culprit and press charges. "Sounded like an Indian fellow, or maybe Chinese," he told reporters. "Shouldn't be too hard to track down. Just check the Seven-Elevens and Chinese restaurants in the area code." When asked what area code was displayed when he received the call, he explained that it was from "someplace called Potential Spam." 

A plea for reviews.

Well, artificial intelligence and the idiots who use it are certainly trying to make things worse for everybody already. 

Apparently the weenies are cranking out AI-generated books and "flooding" Amazon's publishing platform, among others. They are using it in some cases to take bread out of the mouths of specific writers, as Wired noted, publishing "books" that are just summaries of the actual authors' works but keeping the dough for themselves. 

Even if the work posted is original (meaning, generated by AI as its own piece of garbage, not a piece of garbage piggybacking on an existing work), these "authors" are unleashing a tsunami of computer-generated crap among the actual books, making it harder to find anything worth reading.

Amazon's efforts to combat this so far have been surprisingly low-tech -- asking "Is this AI-generated content?" (Oh, no, I wouldn't do that, Mr. Amazon!) and restricting book uploads to three a day, which for a single account is almost a hundred a month. The bits-and-giggles crowd doesn't care; they just hope to fool enough people to make a few bucks by doing next to nothing. 

My plea today is simple, for all authors, not just me, not just self-published ones: If you've read a book, please leave a review. It's a way to separate a real book from the fake ones, maybe the only way a searcher can find something that's real. Without a number of reviews, search engines tend to ignore books when compiling results. Sure, the weenies can make fake reviews, but that starts to sound like work.  

Seriously, even if you didn't much like the book, leave a review. I think it's fair to say most writers would rather fail on their own merits than because no one knew they were even there. If no one ever finds you, no one can ever read you.  

Thank you very much for hearing my plea. Skynet may not take over the world, but it sure is making it even harder for writers and artists to find an audience.  

What's up with Whos?

Something has been bothering me for many years, and it's about time I said something about it. Here we go:

What's the deal with the Whos? 

I was a pretty small kid the first time I saw the Chuck Jones adaptation of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Even then I was concerned about the ending. Because the fact is, if I woke up on Christmas morning to find that I'd not only gotten nothing from Santa Claus, but that all our decorations and stuff were missing, I would not drift out to the middle of town with my eyes closed in delight to start singing. I'd have given the Grinch exactly what he hoped to hear -- hysterics.

Santy Claus thinks I've been naughty!!!!! 😭

That seemed to me to be the flaw in the story: It only works if you believe that we, like the Whos, would react with holiness and brotherhood to the Grinch's massive heist. From early childhood, I had my doubts.

Imagine -- the whole town has had everything removed. The presents, all the decorations, the whole shebang. The Grinch didn't just take the food for the big feast, he took all the food, every morsel, every can of Who Hash. These people were in an isolated, snowbound community. They were going to be pretty damned hungry. 

What conclusions could the Whos draw? That not only had everyone in town been really naughty, they had in fact been so incredibly naughty that Santa took things that belonged to them already? What could cause THAT kind of Santa smackdown? I knew we shouldn't have collaborated with the Nazis!  

And that's assuming that Santa Claus is real in the Seussverse. If Mom and Pop had bought all the gifts, the police would be called. When the cops saw how widespread the emergency was, they'd probably figure it was the Grinch. Hmm, who do we know that hates everyone and hates Christmas? Everyone else lives in town and lost all their stuff. It's got to be the old green freak on the mountain! A raid would be ordered on Mount Crumpit, and the Grinch might die in a hail of bullets, defiant to the end. 

We hope Max would get a good home. 

What I'm saying is, I wish I could think of me and the other people I knew of as being like the Whos, who in the face of loss and maybe hunger, still go out to Dahoo Dores in the town square. 

I think in reality the Grinch would have been right on the money -- people would be upset. It doesn't mean that the Grinch is not a big fat jerk, because he is. It just means that home invasion, felony theft, property damage, and the removal of all food, in addition to ruining everyone's Christmas, is no laughing matter. 

It would be a real challenge for any population to resume its duty of faith and gather to praise God (or whatever the Whos were doing with that song) in the face of this situation. I do think normal human Christians would still want to follow their plans and go to church, but they would still be upset, and anyway they'd probably have to spend the day filling out police reports. They certainly would be hard pressed to act like nothing had happened, however devoted to the celebration of the Birth of the Savior. 

The Whos seem to be made of better stuff than we are, which is good for them, but as I say, undermines the story. Because if we were Whos and were just as confounded and hysterical as the Grinch had hoped, then the green a-hole would have felt justified in his Grand Theft Christmas. Which makes it seem like Seuss got it wrong, and we don't really know the true meaning of Christmas. 

Maybe we should view the story as aspirational. Maybe like the Grinch, we should bump up our own hearts a size or two and be more like the Whos. 

But with better presents. I never wanted any great big electro whocarnio flooks. Too loud, too complicated. 

UPDATE! Couldn't resist:

Just Hoffa top of my head...

Friends of mine, fans of the Jets and the Giants, have been joking (I think) that they want Zombie Jimmy Hoffa to rise from his burial ground under the old Giants Stadium to play QB for their respective teams this year. In fact, they're willing to get into a bidding war over him. They think his almost-fifty-year-old corpse will show more life and resilience than they've seen from the live players.

But some cold-case hobbyists think they have a better fix on the location of Jimmy's remains. The one-time Teamster boss, who disappeared in 1975, is now said to have been planted by his Mafioso pals under third base in the old Milwaukee County Stadium. 

Best seat in the house?

The Giants Stadium myth was the claim of gangster Donald Frankos, who said in 1989 that Hoffa had been buried under Section 107 during construction. The story was so widespread in the 90's in the NY/NJ metro area that one could hear game promotions like: "In 1975, the mob buried Jimmy Hoffa in Giants Stadium. This Sunday, the Giants will bury the Eagles there." A 2004 episode of MythBusters was given over in part to disproving the story, with Jamie and Adam at the stadium, helped by then-Giants head coach Jim Fassel. 

But the new theory makes more sense on one level, or at least more sense than the Giants Stadium story -- Hoffa disappeared in a parking lot in Detroit, which is 225 miles closer to Milwaukee than it is to the Meadowlands. The mob doesn't get away with its hits by playing Weekend at Bernie's with the corpses; they dump them fast. Closer is faster.

But Giants Stadium was under construction when Hoffa vanished, and Milwaukee County Stadium opened in 1953. So why go to all that trouble to plant Hoffa in an extant structure? Plus, Hoffa vanished on July 30, right in the middle of baseball season. I can't think of a worse way to get rid of a body than bury it in a stadium that's always going to have someone on duty at the time. Furthermore, the Brewers were playing a long homestand from July 26 to August 5 that year. "Gee, third base seems a little -- elevated tonight, doesn't it?" is something infielder Jack Heidemann did not say.

To be fair, the cold-case group thinks that Hoffa was not buried there during the 1975 season, but for some reason was moved there in 1995. Which doesn't really make it any less crazy. Why move a body that had been tucked away safely for twenty years? Because the site had become risky? What could be riskier than the middle of a major league ballpark? 

But Richard III was found buried in a parking lot, wasn't he? Is it so crazy?

Yes. It is. For one thing, Richard's plot was not a busy car park in 1485. 

If by chance Hoffa turns out to have been entombed under what is now a parking lot, the Brewers might want to take an option on Zombie Hoffa. Sure, they had a good season, going 92-70 and finishing first in the NL Central, but they got swept by Arizona in the first round of the playoffs. 

If Zombie Hoffa's got a decent changeup, he might put the Brewers over the top. After all, he's kept more people guessing in death than he even did in life.

Dead Body Cooper.

The topic of D. B. Cooper came up around the table, and one of the younger folks asked who that was. Well, it's been a long time since that fateful night -- November 24, 1971 -- when a man calling himself Dan Cooper threatened to blow up Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle. 

I told her a little of the story. How the average-looking middle-aged dude got on the plane and once they were airborne told one of the young stewardesses that he would blow them all up with his bomb unless he got $200,000 -- and four parachutes. That once he got the money and got the pilots to lift off again, he leaped out somewhere over the vast forests of Washington while alone in the cabin. That he knew that a 727 was one of the few jets that had a rear staircase openable from inside, that the plane could be flown at 10,000 feet so the cabin would not need to be pressurized and he wouldn't end up like Auric Goldfinger when the stairs were opened. That he and the money and the bomb disappeared into the cold, rainy night. That a reporter's mistake caused his name to be given as D. B., and that it's possible the hijacker was naming himself for a daring comic book character virtually known in the USA. That Cooper was never caught, and the case remains the only unsolved skyjack in history.

She said, in a nutshell, good for him. He planned a heist and got away with it. 

It surprised me, although it's well known that Cooper was, and in some quarters still is, a folk hero. No one got hurt, he got his dough in a 22-pound sack of twenties, and vanished into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Everyone likes a heist! And everyone likes a guy who can (all together now!) stick it to the MAN.

Well, he wasn't exactly Robin Hood. He stole all that dough and kept it for himself. Or at least that was his intention. Personally, I believe that ol' Dan Cooper has been rotting corpse for fifty-plus years, and one day someone will find him. 

While parachutists have re-created the jump from a 727, they didn't do it at night in the rain over dense forests. Even then, the force of the jet engines has been described as being tackled from the back, so it's not easy feat. While at first the FBI thought Cooper had to be an experienced skydiver, it turned out that one of the parachutes, which was donated from a skydiving school, was used for ground training and had been sewn shut. Cooper took that one as a reserve chute. He may not have needed it, but a more experienced jumper would have realized it was no use. The other chute he took was an older type -- non-steerable. Which probably wouldn't have mattered anyway, in dense forest with the half-moon completely covered. But he would have had no control over where he came down. 

Some of the money was found buried on a sand bar in 1980 -- $5,800, all clumped up. A massive search was once again raised, but no other bills were found. 

I've always tended to be a law-and-order guy, so Cooper's no hero to me. Maybe no one got hurt, but there were three young stewardesses on that flight who thought it was going to be their last night on earth. One admitted to being paranoid and frightened for years after the event. The crew members were older, and the captain a tough veteran of World War II, but it was a hell of a night for them, too. 

FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who was on the case for years until his retirement, said, "He used foul language to the stewardesses. He's a sleazy rotten scumbag and I hope he died a miserable, wretched death."

Had Cooper survived, he'd be in his mid-nineties or more now, so I think Himmelsbach probably got his wish. But he, like agent Larry Carr, who took over the case, thought that Cooper did not survive the jump -- and even if he had somehow landed without dying or breaking a limb, he would have been deep in the forest, lost (the plane had to deviate from its flight path because of the need to conserve fuel at that altitude), wet and freezing, in a business suit and dress shoes. 

The forests hold a lot of secrets. One day someone will find some bones, shreds of a cheap suit and some parachute fabric, maybe even a pair of busted sunglasses. And that will finally put an end to the story of the man who got away with it. 

Dog burglar.

Merriam-Webster tells us that the term cat burglar goes back to 1907, and means "a burglar who is adept at entering and leaving the burglarized place without attracting notice". Although it was probably the inspiration for Batman's nemesis/girlfriend Cat Woman, the term seems to have gone out of fashion (just like second-story man) as a means of describing a particular kind of theft. And why not? If you can just walk into Target and walk out with whatever your little arms can carry, why go sneaking around? 

Nevertheless, as a dog owner, I wonder what kind of a thief would be considered a dog burglar. I just wonder.... [Cue wavy fadeout as scene cuts to the sketch]

[Scene: Dead of night, Suburbia, USA]

Wife: What's that?

Hubs: HMph?

Wife: I heard something downstairs.

Hubs: Mmmblmm.

[Hubs schleps downstairs. At door SFX: scratch scratch]

Hubs: Huh? [Opens door]

Dog Burglar: Thanks thanks thanks! I was whining for hours and hours!

Hubs: Hey, wait--

DB: Can I come in? Thanks! Say, where do you keep your valuables? It smells great in here! 

Hubs: Valuables? You got the wrong house, brother.

DB: There! [Opens fridge]

Hubs: That's what you want? You're hungry?

DB: Not really but -- Oh, wow! You got ham and turkey and even cheese! Okay if I steal some?

Hubs: Well, er...

[1 hour later]

Wife: What the hell's going on down here?

Hubs: Hi, honey! We're just having a little midnight snack.

Wife: At three a.m.?

Hubs: This is my new best friend, Finnegan.

DB: Hi, glad ta know ya. I love your house.

Wife: Uh... thanks? Hey, is that the leftover ham? That was supposed to be dinner tonight.

DB: Welp, gotta go! Thanks so much, Sam! I love you. And you too, Mrs. Sam! [exits promptly]

Hubs: What a nice guy.

Wife: Why did he steal one of my boots on the way out?

Mission: Get into places and back out.

In the old Mission: Impossible show, the one thing you could always count on was that the team would have really good forged papers. They never got caught because they used a Form 13-F when the guards would have expected a Form 16-B. Peter Lupus just handed over the clipboard, a guy looked at it, and soon a mysterious crate with Greg Morris inside would be delivered. Later it would open up and the cat burglar would get to work. 

In the days pre-9/11, a friend of mine was convinced that you could get into any office building in Manhattan with a clipboard and maybe a lanyard. Just look like you know what you're doing and brazen it out. Sometimes it wouldn't even be that big a deal. I read an article about how gorgeous the lobby and elevators are in the Chrysler Building, so one day I just went in there wearing my suit and tie. Went straight in, rode in the elevator, left. Didn't even have to sign a guest book. (They are gorgeous, BTW.)

The clipboard act might have been worth a try to get into more secure properties back in the day. But security began to tighten after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and now, well, it would be easier to get a four-ounce bottle on an airplane than to sneak into a building with such a simple trick. 

However, something tells me this probably would still work.

It's the same principle as my old pal's clipboard gag -- use the appearance of mission and authority to do what you're not supposed to do. It won't work in a Manhattan office building now, but apparently you can take whatever you want from stores. This is partly because security in a Walmart isn't that great, but partly because no one cares anymore. If Target and other stores in California are just going to let looters and thieves take off with whatever, why should a branch in, say, Omaha care that much? 

So that's the world we've built in the new millennium -- maximum security for everyday schmucks, crooks running wild in the streets. For the first time in my life I hear about stores being shut down because people are stealing too much. That's serious. Ordinary petty theft is a minor infection; this kind of thievery is a fatal disease. The parasite has taken over the organism.

I had another friend whose son got in trouble with the law back in the oughts. This Napoleon of crime had the idea with his buddy to go into Target, grab all the video game discs they could hold, and dash out the door. So, the kid got a criminal record for his trouble. Now it appears he wasn't an idiot, he was just ahead of his time. 

Meme Thursday?

Sure, why not? Work's pretty busy, but there's always time for memes! Just ask anyone! 

And yet here I am, killin' it

Not one of mine but I love it. Wife says "He looks so happy!"

FTX? No, FFTW!

Hello, friends! It is I, your friend, friendly Fred of Fredcoin, the friendliest cryptocurrency in the world! How friendly is it? Just look at that smile!   

I've been hearing from a few of our happy customers in the wake of the FTX crypto collapse, what with rumors of police involvement and Congressional hearings and the founder playing video games poorly during billion-dollar-meetings and all other sorts of unpleasantness. They say, "Fred, you'd better not be running Fredcoin the way those unbathed, drug-addled twerps ran FTX!" And "Fred, why should I trust you any more than I'd trust those creepy nerd-frat kids?" And "Fred, where in the Bahamas are you burying my money?" And "Fred, you'd better turn my Fredcoin back into real dollars right now or you're going to get a mouth fulla teeth!" And "Fred, why does 'polyamory' always look like it involves people you wouldn't even want monoamory with?"

To which I say: Please, friends! Be calm. There's no need for all this hue and cry, this brouhaha, this hullaballoo, this foofaraw. Can't you see that this is just a case of everyone being tarred by the same brush? Why, it's like the famous bank run in Bedford Falls during which the Bailey Brothers Savings & Loan was almost ruined by the unscrupulous Mr. Potter! The company and the town were saved when people took a breath and left their money in a place that was solid, just as I'm asking you to do right now. 

To reassure you, I want to give you some answers to some of the important questions I've been getting. Just to put your mind at ease. Here they are:

💰 Yes.

💰 No.

💰 Maybe.

💰 Probably on Thursday.

💰 Of course not! Not Switzerland or the Caymans either, although I did have a law professor who recommended going to the Caymans for the turtle races. No, it's under the mattress, and that box spring is under constant surveillance.

💰 I agree -- anyone who couldn't tell Sam Bankman-Fried was crooked just by his hair should expect to be ripped off constantly.

💰 Obviously the answer is: Rosey Grier on Match Game '74.

💰 No fresh-ground pepper for me, please.

💰 It's just a spot, nothing to worry about.

💰 Do you want Mary to be a spinster? Do you want Nick to throw out Mr. Gower out in the snow? Of course not! And think of little Zuzu!

💰 Beetlebomb in the third at Delta Downs. Cannot miss.

So there you have it. Please forward any more questions to frederick_key AT yahoo DOT com, our high-class business email address, and we'll be happy to answer them in eight to ten busin

Sorry, just had to look out the window. Thought I heard a siren.

Cheers, all, and remember: Fredcoin is the only cryptocurrency with Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sue! We couldn't say it if it weren't true! 

Mailbox of doom?

We all know, or should know, that ATM use has its risks. People in urban areas (what we used to call cities) are routinely warned to be cautious when using any sort of cash machine, especially at night and especially in dodgy neighborhoods. Dumb punks will rob you as soon as you have your dough, even force you to take out more. Smart punks will use skimmers to get your card data and clear out your accounts. When security cameras were placed in the machines and the surrounding areas, they helped deter some of these bad acts, at last for a while. However, these days our big-city district attorneys don't seem much interested in prosecuting even violent crime, so why should the criminals worry?

And even in places where they do prosecute theft and violence, you might get jugged. 

Jugging is the delightful practice wherein the punk follows the ATM user for some distance, sometimes far from the point of cash withdrawal if by car, and when the victim is in a less secure location, helping himself to the cash. 

"The robber then follows the customer outside the establishment before taking the money from the victim or breaking into the person's vehicle, most often at a new location but sometimes outside the bank," as the Austin American-Statesman describes it. "'There, they are approached, threatened with violence, or assaulted while the suspect demands the money or aggressively takes the cash bag,' the Austin Police Department said in a statement."

So the common ATM is increasingly a hotspot for crime. But what of the more mundane, totally anodyne United States Postal Service mailbox? 

Glad you asked!

"Whether you’re sending holiday cards or gifts, or just mailing your monthly rent check, you may want to avoid using those large, blue collection boxes—at least for the next few months, United States Postal Service (USPS) officials have advised," writes Elizabeth Yuko at Lifehacker. Well, that's all right; no one sends any mail around the holidays, do they?

You'll be hard-pressed to find the relevant press releases from the USPS's own site, which has a tendency to BAD REQUEST you out of anything that isn't brand-new, but according to KY3 in Springfield, Missouri, here's the problem:

Before you drop an envelope in one of those blue boxes, United States Postal workers want you to keep a few things in mind.

USPS reported an increase in thefts from these boxes during the holiday season. Here are a few precautions to make sure your gifts are delivered.

First, look at the time of the last collection for the day on the front of the blue box. Make sure you are putting your mail in the boxes before that time. You don’t want your letters or packages sitting overnight or over holidays and weekends when thieves could target the boxes.

“One of the best things that you can do is hand it off directly to your postal carrier, obviously, then it’s already in their hands, and it’s into the system,” said United States Postal Inspector Paul Shade. “The other option would be to take it directly into the post office. And obviously, it would have to be during regular business hours, but that’s the most secure way to protect your mail.”

Yeah, well, the one time we had something stolen in transit it was a Home Depot gift card in a birthday card, and it was stolen right out of the USPS processing center in Brooklyn and used at a Home Depot in that borough before we even knew it was missing. Of course we filed a complaint, but we never heard anything -- and of course the money was gone forever. So your trusty postal worker, especially some asshat hired to help out during the busy season, may also not be so trusty. 

Still, I guess it's better than leaving anything in a secure mailbox, which is secure. Everyone knows tampering with the mail is a federal offense, and that means real trouble, right?

Ha. Yeah.

What's going on out there? We can't use ATMs, let alone the bank itself. We can't answer our doors, because burglaries are on the rise, especially in cities. Every house in America is getting security cameras, willfully pushing along a dystopian end of privacy for the fear of violence and theft. And now we can't use the friendly blue mailbox? Meanwhile, despite the cameras and guards, retail giants like Target are losing hundreds of millions because they can't stop organized shoplifting rings; no one gets arrested and no one goes to jail. (I'm no fan of Target, but this is ridiculous.)

You know, the whole rampant crime issue was supposed to be the real needle-mover on the midterm elections, and is certainly a prime issue with which most adults have been grappling. But there seems to be a lack of understanding among freshly minted idiot voters. In City Journal, John O. McGinnis writes: 

When I get together with friends, the conversation often turns to their children’s political views, which are almost always significantly more liberal than theirs. Sometimes, their children’s stances are so far to the left as to baffle them. The daughter of one friend supported prison abolition, but she could not explain to her father how this policy could possibly work in practice.

This last bit really caught my eye. I've heard the term "prison abolition" before, and when it's accompanied by the slightest attempt to suggest a replacement for imprisonment, it's a thin goo of psychological service promises and equity spending. 

We've been using psychology on criminals for over a century; we've been social-spending out the bazooty since LBJ's Great Society; and yet crime and our cities become worse. There will always be human beings who would rather steal than work; there will always be psychopaths who want to kill and destroy; there will always be sociopaths and narcissists who think they deserve whatever they can take; and there will always be people whom a decent society will have to incarcerate to protect the innocent. Attempts to reform the guilty are admirable and important, but they are a distant second to providing protection for the innocent and justice for the injured. Anyone who can't understand that has been educated beyond intelligence and into a world of pure emotional nonsense. 

In the end, there are only three ways I know of to keep bad actors away from their victims:

1) Lock them up for a period society finds fair for their crimes;

2) Butcher them and drop them in mass graves (a favorite of socialist revolutionaries, who like to throw in political opponents as well); or

3) Let the beasts run wild and force everyone else to live imprisoned behind high walls, sharp cameras, barred windows. 

Hey, kids! You're all about the fairness. Does choice #3 seem fair to you? Does it seem like equity that your grandma can't leave the house, or mail you a check from the postal box? Maybe your college professor or online influencer or favorite musician has his or her head up his or her behind? Just a thought.

Ban all the things!

I got a little taste of what it would be like to be Rip Van Winkle, Buck Rogers, or some other person who wakes up to find things have changed in strange and unexpected ways. 

It happened at a group down at the church, which had been meeting again in person following the Chinese Death Virus Lockdowns. The meetings had resumed for some time, but someone (not me) said, "Hey, instead of everyone bringing his own coffee, why don't we make coffee again like we used to?" It was decided to do a trial balloon by getting a Box o' Joe from Dunkin' (nee Dunkin' Donuts) and some bagels. 

I had nothing to do with any of this except that I had a big wholesale-club carton of Styrofoam coffee cups at home, a remnant of the pre-COVID era, so I figured I'd bring some to the meeting in case we needed some extras. 

That's how I found out I was a strange visitor from the past.

"You must have had these hidden in your basement or something," a friend of mine said.

"Well... yeah, why?"

"Because they're illegal now."

Yes, although New York State has been busy chasing its grotesque governors around, inviting illegal aliens to move in, and watching its wealthy people and businesses flee, it still had time to ban Styrofoam last year. They slipped it in last year when we were all celebrating Christmas, and now I know why I can't find the really good 16-oz. Dart travel cups anymore. Like the plastic bag ban of a few years earlier, this is another way to make life less convenient, less hygienic, more expensive, and more annoying, all in the name of the environment. And now we're using paper and cardboard, which means cutting down more trees. 

I'm a rebel and I'll never
ever be any good

You can't recycle Styrofoam, it's true, but guess what? All our other legally mandated recycling goes in the landfill as well, because nobody wants our garbage. 

But if you've been a reader of this blog, you knew that. 

As an experiment I put some Styrofoam cups in my Amazon basket, because of course you can buy polystyrene cups on Amazon, and got no red flags saying they cannot ship to New York. I'm going to try to smuggle in some of those Dart cups. I think this could be the next great smuggling opportunity in this state, after cigarettes and plastic bags. 

I'll also keep an eye out for the next big ban. The more they make illegal, the more we all become criminals anyway. 

He did that.

I was gassing up my little car the other day -- a painful operation, especially here in deep blue New York, when I noticed a couple of things at the pump. 

I'm not 100% sure that the removed sticker on the price line was one of those "I Did That" Joe Biden stickers that have been irritating the president, but I'm almost 100% sure that the one to the left of the window is. 

This isn't the first time I've seen them in New York, either. Now, I will note that geographically, most of New York State is pretty red, including a fair bit of Orange County, where I live. Across the river is Westchester, where rich people who couldn't care less if gas hit $10 a gallon live, but the OC is a little closer to the bone. That's why they had to gerrymander our Congressional district a while back to link us up with part of Westchester; we kept sending the wrong people to Washington. 

People have said if you cut off everything north and west of Albany you'd have a really conservative state, so much so that Buffalo would be a blue outlier. I am inclined to think it could be true, especially as of this year.

Here's another sticker I saw at the pump, one that was also new but courtesy of the management:

Hmm.

At first I thought this warning was for people trying to get gas out of the pump without paying, although I am not sure how this would be done. I think you have to pay in advance if you're using cash at this station. And if you don't, how would they know you're unauthorized before you try to skip out? 

A little digging tells me that this may be a notice to warn off people who plant credit card skimmers. Because it's not hard enough to pay for a tank of gas that would have doubled the value of my first car; now I have to give my credit card up to thieves. So I'm glad the station is being proactive -- but are they, really? This isn't much of a warning. "You try anything and... we'll make it not work" isn't much of a disincentive to thievery. "You plant a skimmer on this machine and we deliver 5,000 volts through you" would be. 

Alas! That much juice would probably be dangerous around all that gasoline. It's not a perfect world, is it? And so many attempts to push it that way result in more problems. 

They never forget.

 

CSI: Porch.

I was inside the house with the dogs, and yet none of us heard what almost certainly was a battle to the death raging outside on the front porch. 

Not sure if the fight knocked over the shovel, 
which I have left out to prevent any 
further snow. You're welcome.

Our preliminary examination shows two different kinds of bird feathers -- larger, well formed wing feathers and smaller, fluffier down ones. Also, we immediately notice that blood was spilled here. 

By far the smaller feathers dominate, in the area around as well as upon the porch. 

Because, in truth, I know nothing of ornithology, I have had to guess that either a large bird got hold of a smaller one that fought like hell, or a large bird got hold of a mammal that may have even successfully fought to escape, leaving different types of bloody feathers from the same bird behind. Anyone who actually did pay attention to this in Cub Scouts is invited to tell me what you think in comments.

Of course, Baby Dog Izzy zeroed in on the blood like a kamikaze. Once I wrestled him away, I swept off the feathers and washed off the blood with soapy water. Dogs, like other carnivores, know that blood = good eats!

And alas, I am reminded of Tennyson's immortal words: 

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final law

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

Personally, I think there's no problem believing in a loving God and yet knowing nature is cruel. It's only wibbly wobbly types who walk up to grizzly bears to say hi that worship Nature as an all-benevolent goddess, dispensing kindness to all. They may get corrected suddenly and effectively.

The sandwich of sin.

Many years ago on a Friday night of drinking, we lads staggered into Subway to get some needed sustenance. My Irish-descended pal I'll call Jim got his favorite, the roast beef with all the toppings. He was a big man, and hungry. We all sat down to dig in. Just as Jim was about to tuck the end of that delicious meaty hoagie into his chewing apparatus, a mutual (and Jewish) friend said, "I thought you weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays in Lent."

Jim froze in shock, and started to make frustrated alarm noises like a man having a seizure of some kind -- an angry seizure, that is. He'd either forgotten it was Lent or thought it was Saturday. He dropped his food with disgust.

This story is not that story, although they both involve takeout sandwiches and Lent. This is how I stole a sandwich during this solemn season. It did not happen in my misspent youth, as with Jim's misfortune; it happened Sunday night. 

 

The Sandwich of Shame

This time the place was Panera, not Subway. We like their sandwiches and soup, the latter especially on a cold day, as Sunday was. The only problem is that they keep screwing up orders. Every sandwich has a lot of components, and my wife likes to exercise options on the ingredients, so while I'm very careful about what is in the order I place, they have not always been so careful about what they actually put on the sandwich. Maybe their system is too complicated for a fast-food place. I have to say I've seldom seen the same employees in there twice. Big turnover means constant training and endless rookie mistakes. 

This time, we got someone else's sandwich in addition to the ones I ordered. 

I didn't check order as I often do, so I didn't find out until I got home. Then I felt bad. The Panera is not close to our house, so there didn't seem to be any point to driving back; by now they'd have had to make a new sandwich for the person whose food I got. If I reported the error with apologies to the Panera site, it would just expose the employee to reprimand. I guess I could have run out in the street and handed the sandwich to a homeless guy, but one of the key points of living in suburbia is that one is not surrounded by mendicants at all hours of the day. Also, it was a little late, and even the bums would have eaten by that time.

So I put it in the fridge and ate it for lunch on Monday. No point in compounding my shame by wasting perfectly good food. Yes, I felt a little guilty, but I also felt full, which helps ease the inflamed conscience.

Lies, damned lies, and TV shows.

I feel like I can't trust anything I saw on TV growing up. Yes, I am really bright that way, just tumbling to the fact. But it's worse than that, because not only were TV dramas lying about life then, but they continue to do so today. 

Some of this I knew. Like, I knew that being knocked out, which happened to TV detectives about every other week, is a serious medical situation. Concussions are dangerous. And then I got one, which reinforced what I had read. Everyone kept asking if I had blacked out, because that's even more serious. If I had been a TV hero, I would have shaken my head, rubbed the spot, asked if someone'd got the number of that crosstown bus, and got back in the game. Instead, I was so dizzy I could barely move for hours, and it took me weeks to stop spinning entirely. I still sometimes feel the effects, three years later. 

And I'd read many times that there is no such thing as the little silencer that screws onto the end of a pistol and turns the loud BANG!! into a little pew! In reality they reduce the noise and flash somewhat, but that's because gunshots are really loud, so any reduction is helpful. There is a famous essay by mystery writer John Dickson Carr, "The Grandest Game in the World," that goes into some of the myths that are perpetuated to this day, including this one.

Arthur B. Reeve, who began in an earlier era – as, indeed, did most of the lady waltzers – entered the 20s with his once immense popularity fading away. Nevertheless his tales of Craig Kennedy had been read by hundreds of thousands, praised by Theodore Roosevelt, and turned into early film serials which held us petrified.

     Craig Kennedy was Professor Kennedy of, presumably, Columbia University. Like Dr. Thorndyke, he was the scientific detective. His laboratory flashed with stranger sparks, and bubbled with more weird beakers and test tubes, than the laboratory of the late Dr. Frankenstein. For each occasion he had some new gadget, guaranteed sensational, to clap on somebody’s wrist or wire underneath the chair. Square-jawed Kennedy in his high collar, whom we remember so well from the illustrations in the Harper editions, has marched into limbo with all his gadgets loaded on him. Much of his scientific knowledge, I believe, has been discredited. Nobody reads about him now. And yet…

     He was first in the field of fiction with the lie detector, with murder by electrolysis, with radium poisoning, with death from liquid air. He taught writers the use of the Maxim silencer, and neither tears nor prayers nor curses can induce them to give it up. As a final achievement among many, in a story called “The Dream Detective” and later in a novel called The Soul Scar, it was he who introduced the profession to psychoanalysis.

The Maxim silencer was a real thing, but I suppose Reeves used it the way we see in TV detective shows, as something that enables a gun to be fired in a bathroom at a volume that would barely disturb someone taking a shower. 

Now I read that an all-time crime show classic, the fast forensic ballistics examination, cannot with accuracy pinpoint the gun that fired the fatal bullet. As posted on Books, Bikes, Boomsticks, "'ballistic fingerprinting', like many other forensic techniques, relies on pattern matching and is highly subjective, despite being presented to juries as 'science'." Proprietor Tam posts reports on the much-lower-than-depicted accuracy of ballistics matching, noting "Jurors have watched plenty of police procedurals on TV and think that projectile matching is some precise science when in fact going much beyond 'Well, the octagonal polygonal rifling tells me this .45 caliber bullet was likely fired from a Glock' is educated guesswork."

Even so-called realistic crime shows like Law & Order have never been shy about the forensics expert saying things like, "That's the gun that fired the shot, no question about it." In truth, even if the gun was found still hot at the same scene as the shooting, there might still be some question about it. 

"Ballistics proved that's the gun that killed him, Your Honor!"

I might almost suspect that the FBI likes people to believe that guns can be matched to bullets this way to make us think it's more difficult to get away with murder than we might hope.

Things like that lead to what is called the CSI effect, after the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spinoffs. It's a somewhat disputed idea that jurors will be reluctant to convict absent powerful forensic evidence, right down to the man in the lab coat on the stand showing matching fingerprints and bullet casings and DNA samples on a projector. Whether this is a real phenomenon, and I suppose it might be to some extent, the blame can be placed not only on shows like CSI, Quincy, Bones, and Criminal Minds, but even real-life shows like Forensics Files. Sometimes crimes are solved by scientifically derived evidence, but more often by plain old detective work, and idiots found red-handed with the goods, or who break under endless hours of yakking down at HQ.

Another famous essay in the crime fiction genre is Dashiel Hammett's "24 Rules for Detective Writers," which certainly gets its heft from Hammett's personal experience as a real detective. Rules that have to do with guns are as follows: 

1. There was an automatic revolver, the Webley-Fosbery, made in England some years ago. The ordinary automatic pistol, however, is not a revolver. A pistol, to be a revolver, must have something on it that revolves.

2. The Colt’s .45 automatic pistol has no chambers. The cartridges are put in a magazine.

3. A silencer may be attached to a revolver, but the effect will be altogether negligible. I have never seen a silencer used on an automatic pistol, but am told it would still make quite a bit of noise. “Silencer” is a rather optimistic name for this device which has generally fallen into disuse.

4. When a bullet from a Colt’s .45, or any firearm of approximately the same size and power, hits you, even if not in a fatal spot, it usually knocks you over. It is quite upsetting at any reasonable range.

5. A shot or stab wound is simply felt as a blow or push at first. It is some little time before any burning or other painful sensation begins.

10. It is impossible to see anything by the flash of an ordinary gun, though it is easy to imagine you have seen things.

22.When an automatic pistol is fired the empty cartridge shell flies out the right-hand side. The empty cartridge case remains in a revolver until ejected by hand.

So there are a lot of things that crime writers, especially ones on TV shows, ought to know that have been known for a long time. 

The one Hammett rule that I can vouch for, growing up in New York, is rule #18: "'Youse' is the plural of 'you.'" Youse can take that one to the bank.

The jury gasped.

A shocking moment in Fred's competency hearing.