Monday, March 08, 2004

What can be made of this?

[statement of intent: I am going to continue with my determination (see Saturday post) to favor text over visuals in the blog, but this post just would not work without the graphic. A new resolution is thus made: I will stick with text only, unless an OVERWHELMING URGE, or necessity lead me to incorporate visual imagery]

A friend has taken to inserting an odd phrase into the conversation. We will be talking about not anything in particular, and he will say “the Triplets of Belleville.”

[It’ll be like this, for example: “So far, March hasn’t been a very tempestuous month; in fact it has virtually manifested halcyon elements a summer season [nc: ignore the choice of words – this stuff is normal for him] perhaps obfuscated a tad ‘the Triplets of Belleville’ by the intemperate cloud-cover, wouldn’t you say?”]

I really don’t know what to make of this. I’m not even sure he saw this film. Perhaps the figures have made an impression – of the sort that only ten years of psychoanalysis would begin to unravel, in which case I don’t want to question him about it, in the same way that one doesn’t ask someone with 11 fingers why they have been blessed with an extra.

Sometimes I think that winter puts us over the top. We say and do bizarre things, which can only be attributable to our almost uncontrollable desire to pilfer, ravage and destroy anything in sight, just because we have such anger within, all the result of severe light deprivation.


I’m going to give him some time. By next month, either his head will have cleared and we will again converse quite normally, or I’ll rebut with an equally obscure and irrelevant phrase (like ‘ooee, oo ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang’ --from Alvin and the Chipmunks maybe? Not terribly sophisticated, but undeniably noticeable) and see if he responds. This may open the door for a reasonable discussion of the problem.

One line


Meet Krtek, hero of Saturday's post (see below), the mild-mannered bandit that stole my calm over the week-end.

Why did I fail to post images? Tonya (of blog fame) stopped by my office and we went over the steps I followed, versus the path she had taken. The difference? One line. I was missing one stinky little line. That's it. Computers are insane in their fastidiousness!

Late night run-in with the Madison police

It’s not what you think. No one called the police on me. I called the police on THEM.

Late the previous night someone took a club to the car that we park on the street, shattering and ripping out side mirrors, antennas, and generally leaving their vampire-tooth gashes up and down the body of the vehicle.

Being reticent to go out on days when March gusts of wind make the outdoors inhospitable, none of us noticed this car-nage until late in the evening, when our visitor decided that she had to get out and see the world [our visitors often feel somewhat isolated in the suburbs, what with the nearest hub of commercial activity consisting of a strip mall with not much in it beyond a Bob’s Copy Shop (an essential to suburban living) and a Hooters Bar (no comment)].

The car is a nifty little Corolla that once belonged to my mother. It got left behind when my mother decided to move to California to become one of those weather-obsessed (“is it as miserable as I remember it in Wisconsin right now?”), radically-leaning (words such as imperialism and socialism can be heard among the clatter of soup spoons in her cafeteria), gray panther types (power to the aging!) of Berkeley. In the typical way of an older driver, my mother had never put many miles on the car. Thus, even though the vehicle is old (not quite as old as she is, but gettin’ there), the odometer would have you think it’s virtually off the showroom floor.

Feeling frugal with this inherited machine that is now mainly driven by visitors, we have never bothered to insure it much – though of course, we insure against the damage to the planet that may be caused by its gentle movement around town.

As soon as we noticed the shattered glass and the twisted metal last night, I called the non-emergency police number and had the following conversation with the officer-on-call:

nc: “I’m calling to report that someone bashed in our car.”
Police: “A real shame. Do you know who did it?”

nc: “I have my suspicions..”
police: “Good. Would you like to give us some names?”

nc: “My suspicions are only suspicions. I know better than to accuse people without evidence of their guilt. However---- now that you ask, I do know that the car has an enemy. Last year a driver ran into its parked little sweet body and we made her pay substantial sums to get it fixed. She may well hold a grudge.”
Police: “What’s her name?”

nc: “No no, you’re not going to make me say it.”
Police: “Well, would you say that there’s more than a $1000 worth of damage now? Because if it’s less, why then we can just mail you some forms and you can self-report!”

nc: “What, no house-calls anymore?? In any case, it’s more than $1000. It costs $5000 these days to repaint a scratch on a fender. Of course it’s more than a $1000! The car has been walloped by a maniac with a clear homicidal impulse.”

Several hours later, a very young, very friendly officer came to our door. I had hoped he would come with great fanfare, lights shining, siren blasting, to scare the bejesus out of the people who did it, should they be watching from behind a shrub. But no, all was quiet, save for our barking Ollie who obviously has not yet learned to be intimidated by a blue uniform.

The officer wrote up the damage and gave me some good advice as to where I can get some salvaged replacement parts (for those who are curious: at the dump). I asked if he’d had any other calls of this nature lately, just to see if our peaceful existence is coming to an end (today: quiet suburb, tomorrow: drug-trafficing, gang-infested mean streets of the south side of Chicago type -- our last place of residence prior to moving to Madison). He answered “well, I typically work the downtown beat. It’s a little less calm down there, you know. Nice little block you got here.. noticed there’s a pretty little house for sale up the street?”

Maybe he’ll be a neighbor one day soon. Good. Our battered little car will feel safer. So far, being surrounded by houses where people’s jobs run from stamp-collecting (that is seriously the income-generating occupation of our immediate neighbor) to film-making (where the flamingos reside, see post in February) hasn’t kept vandalism at bay (mailbox bashing is a neighborhood past time for the young and restless).