December 15, 2004
around: Isa's Rape
I woke up this morning planning to run down to Bay 101 and test my mettle in their spread limit hold 'em tournament. But around 0920, when i got out to my car, i decided that it would be much more fun to file a police report and get my front passenger window replaced. Fortunately, some time last night, someone decided to facilitate this for me by breaking Isa's front passenger window. As compensation for helping me out, my nameless friend also took two cases of CDs, my phone charger, and a handful of change.
He (and i'm making a broad assumption based on stereotypes for the sake of ease of pronounification) also rifled through my glovebox and center console, but did not steal any of my oil change receipts, my spare pair of eyeglasses, toilet paper, flashlight, rubber bands, broken $3 sunglasses, or medical tape. I guess he did grab the two singles (2/3 of bridge toll) hiding between my Richard Cheese CD and my Billy mix CD, though he did not take either of these CDs. Nor did he take the bag of twenty or so actual CDs (in original jewel cases for easy resale!) sitting on the floor in the back seat.
Most mysterious is the fate of Isa's pet sea horse. Last July, Matt discovered the sea horse abandoned in the parking lot of the El Ranchito Taco Shop in Poway. We adopted it and gave it to Isa, who has faithfully carried her marine pal wedged comfortably underneath her front rack bar on the passenger side. The sea horse had been dislodged from his perch as part of the evening's proceedings, and was sitting on the floor in the back seat, next to the undisturbed bag of CDs.
This finding was not of any particular interest to Officer Diaz, who didn't even comment on it (which can't speak well of any aspirations he may have to becoming a CSI), but it caused my imagination to positively race with possibilities. Did our brave sea horse try to prevent the robbery, throwing himself at an attacker that was certainly much larger and more powerful than himself? Was Isa attacked by X-Man Gambit, who seized upon the first throwable object he could find to hypercharge with kinetic energy and throw through the window? This picture is all we have from which to reconstruct the scene:
One of the ironies here is that the CD cases are worth a lot more to me than the CDs inside. Not only were most of the CDs burned (apart from Bjork - Post, Ozomatli - Ozomatli, Rush - Chronicles, and undoubtedly something else truly irreplaceable that i've forgotten about), but my mass of CDs was already in complete disarray due to a lack of CD cases, such that CD cases are the top entry on my christmas list. I haven't even made a christmas list since... possibly ever, on account of a long history of being a bad capitalist, bad american, and bad christian.
It is additionally frustrating that i finally got off my ass and bought some new CDRs less than a month ago, which allowed me to burn and listen to a lot of the music i've collected and not listened to over the past year. It was like, sweet, i've got Death Cab in the car now! But now i get to start over.
All in all, things could have been much worse. Being unemployed means i've had all morning to deal with this shit (even though it also means i can afford the resulting clean-up and repair effort even less). Also, there's an auto glass shop literally across the street from my house (it's three doors down from the Taco Bell). Finally, i'm sure i would've lost in that tournament this morning.
So thanks again, anonymous friend, for all you've done for me today. I hope the change you stole is the kind that never works in the vending machine, but that always just comes right back out the coin return, no matter how many times you rub it against the side of the machine. I hope that your CD player can't read burned CDs. And i hope that you write me a check for $190 + tax for the broken window, and that the check doesn't bounce. Thank you.
Posted by tyler at December 15, 2004 02:03 PM