Writing dangerously & mournfully

It’s been an odd week; not entirely sure why.

One thing, maybe, is that I’ve been stuck for the past three days in a civil funeral for my murder vict… I mean, for the murder victim in my novel.

Let me just say that being mired in a funeral service is a whole lot less fun than being hung up in a country pub unable to get dinner on the table. At least there I had booze.

It’s a “civil funeral” (a term which I did not make up, but which brings to mind the probability that there are uncivil funerals) because the deceased in this case was opposed on principle to churches. He also didn’t have a whole lot of friends, so that limits the possibility of having people get up & tell remember-the-time stories.

He was, however, a blues fan, so I’ve been immersing myself in CDs from my collection. I’m not going the mournful route—the geezer was as ornery as they come—so I’ve got a few of the classics by Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins & some others.

But I couldn’t let it go without Bonnie Raitt. I’m thinking her version of “Louise” just has never been topped, but I can’t find a decent YouTube video of that one to share with you. (There’s something about the line “Louise rode home on the mail train” that just does me in.) So here’s another of hers that kind of speaks to me right now.

Bring on the weekend.

Another bite out of crime

Not directly related to my post last week about the Great K9 Krispy Kreme Kaper, but here’s a story out of England about another police dog giving evidence that the law is, indeed, a ass.

It seems that one PD Peach was mentioned in reports of some incident by the West-Midlands Police, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) requested a witness statement from PC (Police Constable) Peach.

The coppers wrote back that PD stands for Police Dog, but the CPS didn’t seem to care. They wanted their bloody witness statement, thank-you-very-much.

So Peach’s handler filled out the proper form on behalf of PD Peach—a true marvel of concise, succinct reportage, And signed it with a paw print.

Aside from being sent to the CPS, it got posted on the station bulletin board, someone took a photo of it and before you can say FacebookTwitterKaiThnxBai, it was viral.

And the CPS proved itself to be in need of a sense-of-humor transplant. They’ve opened an investigation. Like they don’t have enough actual, you know, crime to chase up.

(Okay, okay—so the form does state that it’s RESTRICTED (When Complete). Slap a fine on someone and move along. Nothing to see here.)

Naturally, PD Peach now has his own Twitter feed; although so far he’s not nearly as communicative online as he was in his witness statement. And he might take a page out of @BronxZoosCobra for engaging followers.

We’ll have to see if the CPS can get the poker out of its butt. It’s just too bad Law & Order isn’t still in production. I know they’d have got their heads around this “ripped from the headlines” story properly.

Infrastructure matters

A friend of mine who lives in Boston posted this on his FB page; I think it may have been a share from George Takei, but whatever:

& it reminded me of driving around on the borderlands between Fairfax & Loudoun Counties in Virginia, back in the wild days of the mid-90s, before cars had sat-navs & you were lucky to find some roads marked at all, much less with a name.

It occurred to me at the time that this might be some strategy left over from The Woah: in case of another Yankee invasion, while the bluecoats were milling around trying to figure out where the hell they were, the Confederate forces could group in one of the adjoining fields & just start picking off the enemy one by one, working from the back to the front like Sergeant York.

Can’t do that, now, of course—all those country roads are four-lane highways & the fields are filled with townhouses & strip malls.

Still not sure who won that war.

Crime bites

I don’t quite understand why this crime story out of Gwinnett County, Ga., didn’t make the nationals: a local man jonesing for doughnuts jacked a Krispy Kreme truck and sped off for the Interstate.

There was a high-speed chase by a variety of law enforcement teams (including a K9 unit) that ended up in a dead-end street. The suspect, James Freddy Major, 45, is alleged to have been “under the influence”, although the story doesn’t state exactly the influence was.

It (the story) does quote the police incident report: “The suspect…was apprehended by K9 dog bite”, which just makes my day.

Although I do wonder why you’d need a K9 team to follow a Krispy Kreme truck.

Truly love

Turns out I have one more story that fits in with Valentine’s Day—from NPR’s Story Corps.

I’m not going to talk about it. Except to say that you should listen to it.

If you want love, this is it.