Wild, Wild West
Aug. 16th, 2003 04:03 pmLet's see... I've been pretty busy at work and elsewhere, so I haven't paid too much attention to the LJ. Here's a quick recap of the excitement over the last week:
I was trying to go to bed early on Wednesday, but was thwarted by hollering outside. As this happens at times, with people having parties and whatnot, I paid it no heed. A little later loud grumbling came closer, so I peeked out the window, to see two guys, one with a baseball bat, marching past our building. Sensing trouble, I turned on my radio which actually can receive the local police frequencies, figuring someone's car was about to be beat up. Instead, a call went out about an armed burglary/home invasion in the next building over.
It's not quite clear what happened, but my suspicion is drug deals or something of that ilk, causing an armed confrontation in my yard. Oddly enough I didn't care much--a gaggle of cops came, collected dropped items, finger printed involved parties, wrote up a report and departed. My roommate, who got his car broken into earlier freaked out a bit, though. Upon looking the at the crime tracker statistics for our apartment complex, and chatting with a police officer he had befriended during the car burglary, he decided we're moving. So... my plan to live somewhere for more than a year is again being foiled. By this time next month, I should he happily in an up-scale luxury barrack.
On the way back from the leasing office of the aforementioned luxury complex we stopped at Waffle House and discovered that there was a gun show in progress. In order to properly expose me to American culture, we went. No particulary ominous vibes greeted me, contrary to my expectations. Yet, as I'm thinking about the experience now, from a European viewpoint, there's something very unreal about a fairground building full of assault weapons, urban combat shotguns, 50 caliber revolvers, and all form of accessories to them. Need a 50 round magazine for your glock? No problem. Need a 50 caliber sniper rifle? Show us the money and go home with one.
I didn't really detect any gushing anti-government sentiment or any of the militia attitude I somehow expected to see, everyone seemed pretty level-headed, considering. Still, skinny teenagers dressed in black and toting assault rifles, hordes of geriatrics with revolver belts, geeks with oversized, slick custom handguns, crates of Chinese assault rifles still in original oil... Well, I'm glad I saw it.
And now off to work, to move some fifty servers. Blah. At least there's pizza for the trouble.
I was trying to go to bed early on Wednesday, but was thwarted by hollering outside. As this happens at times, with people having parties and whatnot, I paid it no heed. A little later loud grumbling came closer, so I peeked out the window, to see two guys, one with a baseball bat, marching past our building. Sensing trouble, I turned on my radio which actually can receive the local police frequencies, figuring someone's car was about to be beat up. Instead, a call went out about an armed burglary/home invasion in the next building over.
It's not quite clear what happened, but my suspicion is drug deals or something of that ilk, causing an armed confrontation in my yard. Oddly enough I didn't care much--a gaggle of cops came, collected dropped items, finger printed involved parties, wrote up a report and departed. My roommate, who got his car broken into earlier freaked out a bit, though. Upon looking the at the crime tracker statistics for our apartment complex, and chatting with a police officer he had befriended during the car burglary, he decided we're moving. So... my plan to live somewhere for more than a year is again being foiled. By this time next month, I should he happily in an up-scale luxury barrack.
On the way back from the leasing office of the aforementioned luxury complex we stopped at Waffle House and discovered that there was a gun show in progress. In order to properly expose me to American culture, we went. No particulary ominous vibes greeted me, contrary to my expectations. Yet, as I'm thinking about the experience now, from a European viewpoint, there's something very unreal about a fairground building full of assault weapons, urban combat shotguns, 50 caliber revolvers, and all form of accessories to them. Need a 50 round magazine for your glock? No problem. Need a 50 caliber sniper rifle? Show us the money and go home with one.
I didn't really detect any gushing anti-government sentiment or any of the militia attitude I somehow expected to see, everyone seemed pretty level-headed, considering. Still, skinny teenagers dressed in black and toting assault rifles, hordes of geriatrics with revolver belts, geeks with oversized, slick custom handguns, crates of Chinese assault rifles still in original oil... Well, I'm glad I saw it.
And now off to work, to move some fifty servers. Blah. At least there's pizza for the trouble.