What will it take for you people to learn?

ST. LOUIS • Police have made no arrests in the death of a man who was gunned down late Tuesday on a porch of a St. Louis home.

Police say the 39-year-old victim was fatally shot in the 8000 block of Church Street. Police got the call at about 11:40 p.m. Tuesday.

On Friday morning, police say the man had been shot once in the arm and once in the back. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died.

The victim’s name will be released once his relatives are notified.

Check back for updates.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_1afd4092-0550-11e1-b459-001a4bcf6878.html#ixzz1cYXrFzVl

Stay off the Porch! I done warned you!

ST. LOUIS • Police say a St. Louis man was found shot to death Thursday afternoon on the back porch of a home.

Demetrius A. Clark, 38, of the 3200 block of Chippewa Street, was found dead with several gunshot wounds about 2:45 p.m., police said. Officers found Clark after responding to a report of a shooting in the 3800 block of Ashland Avenue, a few blocks south of Fairground Park.

Police released no other information about the killing.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_47d77720-fc0b-11e0-8bf2-001a4bcf6878.html#ixzz1bRgK9NqQ

I Don’t Know Why Nobody Ever Listens to Me

Stay off the damn porch, people.

Teen girl shot on porch in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS • A teenage girl was hospitalized Tuesday after being hit three times by gunfire as she sat on a porch in the 4400 block of Farlin Avenue.

Police say the girl, 15, was on the porch with a friend when they heard gunshots at about 12:25 a.m. She was shot once in the hand and twice in the foot, police say. Police withheld the girl’s name.

Police did not provide her condition but said doctors indicated she was stable.
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_de813234-b790-11e0-9638-0019bb30f31a.html#ixzz1TEIhP4lH

My new house (like my old house) HAS no porch, and that’s just the way I like it. No porch=no getting shot on the porch. Porches of the world ain’t nothing but trouble.

Stay Off the Damn Front Porch

Gunmen on bicycles shoot two, kill one in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis man was fatally shot early Sunday morning by gunmen on bicycles, police said.

Juan Almanza, 37, of the 4000 block of Dryden Avenue, was shot multiple times about 1:30 a.m. after an argument with two men, police said.

Almanza and another man, 35, were sitting on a porch in the 3100 block of Utah Avenue when two men rode by on bicycles, stopped and began arguing, police said.

One of the bicyclists then pulled out a gun and shot the two men, police said. Almanza collapsed and died at the scene. The second victim was shot in his leg and ran off.

Police had made no arrests Sunday.

The Police Have Their Ways

This is weird:

ST. LOUIS: Man is fatally shot
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
06/21/2010

Darvin Love, 31, of the 5700 block of Lillian Avenue, was shot to death early Sunday.

Police said Love was sitting in a vehicle when someone approached and shot him in the chest.

Police said there were no witnesses or suspects.

If there were no witnesses, how do they know someone approached and shot him in the chest? Someone could have shot him from afar, perhaps. Someone could have strolled by and shot him in the chest.

Second most hazardous place to sit (after your front porch) is in your car. Don’t just be sitting in your car for no reason, you are likely to get shot. Move along, people.

Sitting on the porch in St. Louis – Classic sucker move.

I may pick back up with my six hundred and nine part series “Don’t Sit on the Porch, Dude.”

But then again, I may not. I am kind of an enigma, after all.

Teen, 16, shot in chest while on porch in north St. Louis

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

06/11/2010

St. Louis police are investigating a shooting that seriously injured a teenager in the 4200 block of Lee Avenue.

Police say the shooting happened at 9:45 p.m. Thursday as the 16-year-old victim and two friends sat on a porch. Shots were heard and the victim was struck in the chest and leg. Police say he is in serious but stable condition at a hospital.

Officers are looking for a late ’90s model black-and-red Chevrolet Impala.

Further Adventures in City Living, Pt. Eleventy Seven Thousand

Yeah, so my license plates got stolen last weekend. And because everything about my life is required to result in some sort of saga of ridiculousness and aggravation, I still don’t have any license plates now. The nice part is that no one, including law enforcement, seems to give two shits if I drive my unlicensed vehicle all over town, so I am not too bothered about it either. (It makes sense that they don’t care if I have plates, actually, as they really don’t seem to give even half a shit if someone’s stealing my wheels or fucking a hooker up against the side of my car or popping the passenger side door handle off with a screwdriver or whatever. I presume they have more important things to do. Like direct traffic and… well I’ve really ever only seen them directing traffic, mostly. Anyway.)

So last Friday night I went out to the bar and then to another place to see a friend’s band play, and that was all really fun until my other friend got maced by a third friend. And that’s another story entirely, and I don’t even know if I can do it justice, so I really won’t try. So anyway, I am sure I had license plates when I left that place, and here’s how I know: last year when I had to get new plates my dad sheared off one of the bolts on the back plate holder thing when he was trying to change them, and then w/o asking he strung the license up on one side with wire, so it hung down at a jaunty angle. And every single time I’ve approached my car since then I’ve though “Jesus Christ, I am a hoosier.” and then I’ve gotten in my car and driven away contentedly, because I hope my car looks extremely hoosier, to keep these ghetto motherfuckers from wanting to mess with it. So I remember seeing my dangling plate late Friday night/early Saturday morning when I got in the car to drive my friends back to their cars. Continue reading »

Once would have been sufficient

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a billion times, don’t sit on the motherfucking front porch.

Man shot four times on porch in north St. Louis

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

11/24/2009

ST. LOUIS — Police say a man was shot four times as he sat on the front porch of a home in north St. Louis early Tuesday.

The unidentified man, 29, was in critical and unstable condition at an area hospital, a police spokeswoman said.

The man had been shot once in the head and three times in the back at 12:19 a.m. Tuesday in the 8600 block of Riverview Boulevard.

Police released no details on any suspect or suspect

Stupid Cop! Now I am Really Peeved.

So that cop stopping me has been bothering me all weekend. I really didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, and it freaked me out to be stopped for doing something I didn’t even know I was doing. So I decided to look it up in the MO Drivers Manual just now, and guess what? I WAS DOING IT RIGHT! Totally right! From the manual, page 38:

Exactly what he said not to do is what I was supposed to be doing. What a jackass! He didn’t even know what he was talking about. I am printing this shit out and taking it with me in case that fucker pulls me over again. What an idiot! And made me broody all weekend! Ugh!

Because all the murders have been solved already

I was leaving work today, and as I pulled out of the parking lot I realized that there was a cop not too far behind me. And there are four four-way stop signs between me and the next main street, and no one’s ever at any of those intersections. I determine that I will stop completely at every single one and go 25 MPH on the street, as I am supposed to. So I do. Full stops. Excruciating slowness. Last stop sign I look behind me and the fucking cop has his fucking lights on. What the fuck? So I pull over. He pulls up beside me and says (with an attitude like I am some kind of moronic fuckwit)

“Where did you learn to stop at stop signs?”

I look at him like “Wha?” And then he says to me, for real, that I have been stopping PAST the stop signs, by a FOOT. AT LEAST. I am not stopping level with the stop sign, but the front one-foot of my car is past the stop sign. I don’t know about you, but I stop with the front of my car positioned somewhere between the curb and the stop sign. I don’t know anyone who stops with the front edge of their car directly level with the stop sign. I just gape at him. His attitude is very rude and assholish, he’s gesticulating wildly and talking about how I am “halfway into the intersection” before I stop. And he does this mock ‘looking around cluelessly’ motion, like that’s me in the middle the intersection, looking around and not knowing where I am. Or something. And he’s saying I am stopping “in the middle of the intersection” right after he’s just said I overshot the signs by a foot. Which would make for a smallish intersection. He’s talking to me like I am the most retarded person, doing the most insane thing, that he’s ever seen.

So he’s all berating me, and saying how he’s supposed to write me a ticket (In the meantime, he’s never even left his car. He pulled up next to me and is blocking traffic himself in order to bawl me out through his open passenger window.) Then, weirdly and suddenly his attitude changes. The more I gape at him the more conciliatory he gets. “It’s alright.” he says “I got you covered, I am not going to write you a ticket. But you have to watch out, there’s lots of us out here, and we’re hiding all over the place. We’ll give you a ticket for that.” And I am thinking “Mother-effer, I KNEW you were behind me. That was my cop’s-behind-me stop. WTF?” So I said “Sorry, I had no idea.” And then he tells me to drive carefully and takes off. I am just sitting there like “WTF just happened here?”

I don’t know what his story was, or why he was so rude, then so faux-nice all of a sudden. It was so ODD. I mean, maybe he thought I was a student and could be easily intimidated by him, then saw I was a grown woman. Maybe he thought that in that neighborhood I would be someone who was up to more than over-shooting stop signs and he could drug-bust me. Maybe he was just pissed that there was someone in front of him doing the speed limit and coming to full stops at stop signs like cops NEVER do. It was bizarre. So I drove home. And there are a LOT of four-way stops between work and home, and I watched very carefully to see what other people were doing. Guess what? Everyone stops with their front bumper beyond the stop sign. They stop with their body right behind the stop sign (bumper somewhere between stop sign and curb.) Everyone. And the cop acted like I was the only person who ever did that, and I was like Speed Fucking Racer behind the wheel.

I don’t know. I hate to make generalizations, but cops can really suck. Power-mad weirdos who act all erractic and have the power to arrest you. It’s unsettling.  I’ve been driving for 20 years, I’ve always driven the same way, plenty of cops have seen me stop at a stop sign, FFS, then this one freaks out on me. It makes me feel paranoid and it makes me think cops suck ass, all cops. And I know they don’t, but they need to really stop with the random petty and subjective shit and get to busting all these people who are shooting people.

Welcome to the War Zone

STLtoday – 4 injured in 4 shootings in StL

Four shootings yesterday. Four separate shootings.This city is insane. Do not linger on the streets, people. It’s not safe.

Favorite badly-written PD sentence in this article has got to be:

The girl and a woman were arguing and a man in a crowd that had gathered fired shots.

That’s not only badly written, that’s also funny in that it makes it seem as if the man got fed up with their arguing and shot at them. Which may or not be the case, actually. Hrm. Must rethink guns as a solution to making people STFU. Though I do understand the urge.

STLtoday – StL logs 100th murder this morning

STLtoday – StL logs 100th murder this morning

ST. LOUIS — In what could be the city’s 100th murder this year, a man was shot while sitting in a car Tuesday night and died early this morning, police said.

The man was sitting in his car about 10:11 p.m. Tuesday night, when a man attempted to rob him and then shot him, police said.

Further proof of the St. Louis maxim “Sit thee stationary neither on thy front porch, nor in thy vehicle. For if you do, surely shall ye perish.”

Another vote against public transportation

Maybe I am not helping the environment any, but rarely does someone with a Rambo knife pop up behind my seat and decapitate me.

Man decapitates passenger aboard Greyhound bus in Manitoba: witness
“When we came back on the bus, it was visible at the end of the bus he was cutting the guy’s head off and pretty much gutting him up,” said Caton.

The attacker ran at them, Caton said, and they ran out of the bus, holding the door shut as he tried to slash at the trio.

When the attacker tried to drive the bus away, the driver disabled the vehicle, Caton said.

“While we were watching the door, he calmly walks up to the front with the head in his hand and the knife and just calmly stares at us and drops the head right in front of us,” said Caton

Only way to stay safe is to minimize/cut out most contact with strangers and crowds and enclosed spaces. Seriously. Not that people you know are necessarily safer, but at least you may have some idea when they’re going to blow and know where they keep their weapons.

The fuck.

MetroLink riders attacked minutes apart at 2 stations

Why I do not now, nor will I ever, ride the Metrolink. At least if I am in my car I can run your thieving, assaulting ass over, motherfucker.

STLtoday – MetroLink riders attacked minutes apart at 2 stations

ST. LOUIS — Police are investigating two violent attacks on MetroLink riders that occurred within minutes of each other late Saturday night at the Delmar and Forest Park stations.

St. Louis police arrested two teens after one of the attacks, officials said. At least three of the victims were taken to area hospitals.

I hate that my Mom and brother ride the Metrolink to the ball games. I think that whole system is a filthy, gang-and-thug-infested attack waiting to happen. When you have a group of 10 violent thugs who have no qualms in attacking *groups* of people, you have a serious problem with your security presence.

And no, I have nothing against public transport, I used it pretty much exclusively when I lived in Europe. But public transport with free and unregulated on/off access which goes to and from some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the country… that’s just a retardedly bad idea. Especially in a city with the murder rate St. Louis has.

Maybe it’s because Metrolink stations look too much like front porches, people think that the riders are asking for it.

Jury Duty Done

(picture is the view from the 6th floor of the criminal courts building)

Sat in voir dire all day but was not selected for the jury. I was impressed with the judge, she was charming and funny, did her best to make an intolerable process more tolerable. I was not impressed with the prosecutor or the defense attorney, they both were rather rambling and unfocused. I was not impressed with my fellow jurors, from what I could tell more than half of them either didn’t brush their teeth or bathe with any regularity. Several of them were more than commonly stupid and had trouble grasping the most basic of concepts regarding the case at hand.

I am extremely glad I did not get picked for the jury, as it was a criminal trial involving forcible rape/sodomy and kidnapping as well as 1st degree assault. I won’t go into any details because the trial is still going on, but I would have found that very hard to sit through, though I would have if necessary.

I was called early, 10 a.m. or so, and the rest of the day was spent in slowly losing the feeling in my ass as I sat on a wooden bench listening to interminable questions about things that really shouldn’t have taken that much clarification. So I didn’t get to read most of the material I brought with me. But I did read a back issue of The Sun, which magazine I dearly love but never make or take the time to read. There was a poem by Ellen Bass titled “Winter Solstice” and these lines were very resonant for me and the way I have been feeling this year:

I am so tempted to wish myself into the future,
the night over, as though life were infinite
and I could afford to throw away the inferior bits—

Isn’t that true? I am wishing away “inferior” bits of my life all the time. I need to either stop wishing them away, or make sure that there are fewer bits I find inferior, I suppose.

I stopped subscribing to The Sun because I would never take the time to read it, and it made me guilty when it sat there untouched. I was thinking that re-subscribing to it would be a good birthday present, but I think a better birthday present might be allotting myself the time to sit down and read it when it arrives – no matter how busy I feel. Can you gift yourself with time?

There was also a quote from Mignon McLaughlin in their “Sunbeams” section that read:

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.

I have not been feeling like a very courageous person lately. But judged by that standard and the fact that I have arrived at this moment, I suppose I am doing OK.