To Catch A Scumbag Part 2

We called the Woodson Terrace police and Captain Mike Thompson was the first to arrive. We brought him in and showed him where our stuff was and showed him the cord hanging out of the closed window. When we did, Kat noticed a bike on the patio of the house next door. That house has been vacant and been for sale for over a year. The bike did not belong there. We had not seen a bike in that yard at any time in the year proceeding. She mentioned it but we all did not think anything of it. A detective arrived and a patrol man and we looked to see if anything else was missing. They made some suggestions of things to look for. “Are you missing any liquor?” Sure enough we were missing several bottles of booze. “How about any loose change you collect?” We had been saving up all of our daily change in a jar all year. I went to where it was kept and it too was missing. I figured it was about $200 in coins.

The cops did their thing; took finger prints, snapped pictures, asked more questions. They gave us the police report number, asked us to call if we realized anything else was missing, and said they would be in touch. They felt confident that after they questioned everyone who had been working in the house, they would have a suspect. When they left we went back outside and noticed the bike that was next door was now gone. That got some wheels clicking. I went next door and saw the back door was open on that house and a suitcase was setting just outside of the door. It was obvious the suitcase was not left behind be the previous owners. It wasn’t wet (it had been raining) and wasn’t weathered at all. I told Kat to call the detective back because someone could be in the house. I did not go in, but stood in the back so I could see if anyone came out. The captain and Detective James “JW” Wethington came back and went in the house with their guns drawn.

Unfortunately, no one was in the house but there was a bike, not the one from the back porch, inside. They came out, opened the suitcase and the liquor from our house was inside! We knew for sure because we had just been given a bottle of homemade lemoncello as a Christmas present from our good friend Marty the day before. We put the bottle in our freezer. So these creeps literally went through everything in our house.

So we hung out around the house for awhile, doing laundry and watching some TV. I have always heard people say that when your house is burglarize, it’s not about the stuff, it’s about feeling violated that people were in YOUR house going through YOUR things. I was now in touch with that emotion. I wanted to spend the night there but Kat was able to talk me into going back to the hotel around 9:00 p.m. We canceled our plans for the night and just stayed in our room watching movies. Kat was asleep before midnight but I could not sleep. I just laid there getting pissed. I was determined that I was going to catch whomever it was that dared to break into my house.

So just before 6:00 a.m. on January 1, New Year’s Day, I couldn’t take it. I got up, left the hotel, and headed to our house. I had a feeling I was going to find something. When I pulled up there was a bike on the side of the house next door! I knew I had them. I thought better of going in the house myself and called 911. The Woodson Terrace police were there quickly and went in, again with guns drawn. I heard I loud slam and I was anticipating them coming out with someone in cuffs. No luck. However, there was a different bike in the house and they took the one that was on the outside. Damn. I thought this would come to a quick end.

So now there is no way I am leaving the house. I told Kat that she could stay at the hotel but I was staying at our house from now on. I called my brother-in-law Tony and asked if he could come over and put up some heavy plastic where the ceiling was missing so we could run the furnace warm enough to stay out the house. By the way, Tony is awesome and if you ever need a handy man in the St Louis are, call him. I also wanted to get the dogs out of the kennel. You can call Brinks or ADT to get a security system; I’ll take my dog Cali over them. She is a German Shepherd/Rottweiler mix and 70 pound of solid muscle. She is very territorial and if she would have been home when someone tried to break in we would have had a different mess to clean up. We have another dog, Harley who is much bigger than Cali and a good barker, but let’s just say she is not very intimidating. She might smack you in the calf with her tail, if she bothers to get up. The kennel was closed so I had to wait until Saturday to get the girls.

So all weekend I sat in the house, half watching TV and half watching the house next door. I had to go back to work Monday but was really apprehensive about leaving the house. I started looking up video surveillance systems on the internet. They are not cheap and not something you can quickly or easily install. So on Sunday, I get the idea that maybe I can do this with a web cam. So I start searching for a way to do time lapse images and I find Handy AVI that looks to do exactly what I want. I wasn’t completely sure it would work so I went to Wal-mart and bought an inexpensive web cam the Microsoft VX-3000. I came home and did a test and it worked well.

To be continued.....

Hey Aqualung or.....

Only pussies apologize. That was the alternate title for this post. So a lot of people are upset that Michael Phelps was smoking a little weed. Yes, that is very unusual activity for a 23 year old with no job. Some of his sponsors are even dropping him including Kellogs. Who do they think is easting all of that cereal? So Michael apologized for his behavior. I don’t think he should have.

Someone else who has felt compelled to throw out a bunch of mea culpas is Christian Bale. He had a bad day at work and yelled at someone. Big deal right? Who hasn’t yelled at someone who didn’t truly deserve. Sure, listening to the rant has been a loot of fun, but that could have been any one of us. He just happened to be taped. Besides, what is point of spending all of your life training 12 hours a day or committing so much to your work that you drop to 100 pounds for role if not take advantage of the fame. And why would anyone want to be famous if they can’t become self-indulgent? Sure, some actors are committed to just the craft, but most simply want to be famous. Now Phelps and Bale feel the need to apologize for typical human behavior.

It’s strange that those who really do not need to apologize are quick to offer up an apology and those who need to be the most sorry are often unrepentant. You know who needs to apologize? The media needs to apologize not only for making too big deal out of these situations, but also for foisting octomom Nadya Suleman on us. Who cares? If someone crazy bitch wants to treat her vagina like a clown car then so be it. Don’t waste my time on it.

So with all that being said, I present to you Christian Bale vs. Bill O’Reilly.

Orphanages R' Us

By now, everyone and their only-a-few-kids-tops-making mother has heard about Nadya Suleyman and her octuplets. The ridiculous results of overzealous IVF frequently make the news, not to mention corporate sponsorships and endless jokes about having a litter.

The Octo-Mom (term courtesy of Perez Hilton and I am stealing it) is no different. When the story first broke, she became kind of a saint for the pro-life cause. Of course a normal woman would learn about 8 babies living inside her and freak out. It would be perfectly normal for her to terminate one or two or seven of them. But Nadya Suleyman is not normal. Shit, she's not even sane. She also shouldn't be considered a representative for anyone other than the kinds of people who hoard dozens of cats in their minivans.

A few days after Nadya gave birth to her eight newest children, it was revealed that the 33-year-old has six other children already. SIX. ALL of whom were also conceived via IVF. "All I wanted was children," she told Ann Curry this morning. Bitch, you had children! Listen, I went to Catholic school, okay? My parents weren't totally into reproducing, but there were a couple of families who didn't believe in birth control. The largest family in the parish had seven children, which, though not typical, was still acceptable. All those kids were a couple of years apart. All those kids were conceived the old fashioned way. All those kids didn't belong to a woman who is single, lives with her parents in a 2-bedroom house, and declared bankruptcy last year.

I may not be up on my financial terminology, but I always thought bankruptcy meant no money. Like, not enough money to pay for IVF, an extremely costly and painful procedure that most heartbroken women turn to as a second-to-last resort before considering adoption.

Right?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Nadya Suleyman really does just love babies as she claims. Maybe she really will give all 14 kids the best upbringing ever. Maybe she's not a wackjob whose mission in life is to collect as many human beings as possible and -- you know it's true -- collect government assistance for at least half of those little bastards.

Maybe she's not trying to steal Angelina Jolie's baby crazy thunder, though the below image certainly suggests otherwise. All I know is that if I were Zahara Jolie-Pitt, I'd put down the Montessori toys and start whittling a shiv out of Maddox's toothbrush.

Far be it from me to disparage someone else's reproductive rights, but in this age of celebrity worship and terrible choices involving reality television, doesn't Nadya Suleyman's decision to have eight children at a time with six previous children being herded about by the grandparents seem a little odd to you? As if the blessing of eight screaming, shitting, money-sucking machines wasn't enough, Nadya hired not one, but two publicists to field her interview requests and, it's presumed, assistance *cough* sponsorship *cough* opportunities.

Which is why it's heartening to know that the standard baby-loving corporations Procter & Gamble and Gerber have stayed way the hell away from Nadya and her mess of a brain (not to mention cervix, ZING!). We may reward criminals and fame whores and all sorts of other weirdos in this country, but child hoarders are a different story.

To Catch A Scumbag Part 1

Strap in kids. This story is long and involved but the payoff is worth it. This is the true story of having our home burglarized, and how we caught the people who did it and got our stuff back. I have decided to break this story up into several smaller posts due to the length.

Just to give you some context, let me tell you about my and my wonderful wife Kathy’s (Kat for short) big Christmas vacation plans, which is when these events took place. Both Kat and I took two weeks off of work and had all sorts of plans to do things, which also included plenty of time to do nothing. On the first day of our “vacation,” Monday, Dec 22, we started off by watching movies. We were watching The Hulk when Kat said

“Hit mute. I hear something weird.” So I did and I heard it too. I got up and walked toward the source in the kitchen, and water trickling down from the ceiling in one spot. Then quickly another, then another, and another. Now water was coming from everywhere, including out of the light fixtures. It was obvious that a pipe burst in our attic so I had to shut off the water. The indoor shut off would not budge so I went to the main in the front yard. No luck there either. I needed to find my tools but by now I am panicking a bit and cannot think where they are. Finally, we did close the main shut off but by then the damage was done. There were several inches of water on the floor in every room in the house.

We got out the wet/dry vac and got all of the water sucked up. It looked like no real damage was done and none of our stuff was damaged. Kat had the presence of mind to grab all of our valuables, including portable electronics, and put them in the car. We were feeling pretty good that we mitigated the damage as much as possible when the ceiling collapsed, spreading drywall, more water, and wet insulation over EVERYTHING. Crap! We called the insurance company who sent over a company who came and cleaned up that mess and set up huge fans and dehumidifiers in an effort to dry everything out. That meant we could not stay in the house, so we went to a hotel and the dogs went to the kennel.

So late on December 22, we checked into Hilton near the airport (got a good rate off of Hotwire). Got up the next morning to meet the representative from the company doing the clean up to see how the drying was going. Turns out the damage was worse than initially thought and it was going to take several days to allow the equipment to run and determine what could be saved and what would need to be replaced. So we met again the next day, then the next, and on Friday it was determined that we would let it go the weekend and check again on Monday. Monday came, and while there was progress, it was not where they would like, so the next target was Wednesday. If there was not more improvement then more of the ceiling would have to come down.

Each day we had been coming and going from the house. Meeting the insurance people, doing laundry, meeting contractors, and such. There was one exception - Tuesday, December 30. Kat had to work that day and I had made plans to go geocaching with my friend Jeff. We did not go by the house at all that day. We had to meet the clean up company at 11:00 a.m. on New Year’s Eve (Wednesday). We arrived and the crew was right behind us. Keep in mind that the house is in total disarray. Nothing is where it should be and the furniture that was in the two most affected rooms, the kitchen and the dining room, was spread throughout the house, making each room cluttered. As we left the guys to work, Kat says “Where is your (stereo) receiver?” I looked around and could not find it. I also could not find my Sirius satellite radio receiver. Then we notice various drawers are open and things are more out of place than we left them. Kat went outside in the back and notices the cord for the blinds in our family room is hanging out of the closed window. As we toured around more we found a box of our checks thrown in the neighbor’s yard. Now we are certain someone was in the house. Since we were sure that the windows were locked, we assumed that one of the workers left the window unlocked and that he or some friend came back later. That made sense since no one knew we were not staying there and the dogs were in the kennel, except those people. Not to mention that most of those workers did not look like fine upstanding citizens.

To be continued…….

Here's An Idea For Democrats

PAY YOUR F&CKIN' TAXES!

Holy crap, does no one within the D.C. beltway pay the proper income tax? Utterly ridiculous. And for the ultimate in irony, please enjoy this commercial from Tom Daschle's 1986 senatorial campaign.

You Are On Notice!

Coming Soon - The unreal, but completely true, story of how I caught the scumbags that broke into my house and got all my stuff back.

And yes, I suck at Photoshop so piss off.

Never Under Estimate Americans

Please note that while all the movies that are nominated for Academy Awards (Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader,Milk, Benjamin Button) are currently playing at the the theaters, the top grossing movie is Paul Blart:Mall Cop. Never under estimate American's taste for crap. This also explains why Hell Hound Nancy Grace continues to have a television show. And you thought this was going to be a patriotic post?