I've Got You, Bender

Pullover


It's like seven in the morning and I'm probably still drunk.

Issaquah used to be a small town, until Microsoft and Costco came and turned it into a borough of Seattle.

And don't think the hicks don't forget this.

Sure, they'll take the millions in park funds and road construction and spend it on mayoral orgies under park benches, but they'll be damned if some bastard from the city is going to come and wreck "their" precious land of garage sale nostalgia.

Hey, kudos to them, but I have to work here.

Trust me, I wouldn't visit for any other reason. The place is a mess of traffic and drugs.

I lived down the street from work once, and when I say "down the street" I'm talking a couple blocks. Now, that should be an easy commute, but no, it was like a half hour to get to work. Five minutes to walk.

"K, so we basically have two parallel streets and the sides are lined with Costco, Home Depot, Fred Meyer, Krispy Kreme, Tully's, Starbucks, endless/nameless fast food, and corporate headquarters galore. So, now that we need two zip codes for this two mile area, let's go ahead and put a shitload of apartments in as well."

The drug scene is ugly as well. I lived in this one apartment for only two days before some cracked-out whore ended up on my doorstep asking me to go in on an eight ball.

"I don't even know who you are."

"So, let's party." In retrospect I shoulda fucked her and taken her coke, but I was a different man then (i.e.; believed in monogamous relationships and the idea that fucking a cracked out 20 year old was bad karma – I've grown since).

Every bar in this shithole has at least three drug pushers playing pool in it. And, if you want to see the effects of ecstasy on an 18-year-old with a fake ID, go no further than the Joker pub.

So, there's a little byte of what this city is like. Now, to live here is nuts, but to call it home and be proud is insane; that's why I had to laugh when...

I'm driving around, probably still drunk, at seven in the morning.

I pass a Target and see this cop.

I know the cops here suck: they park next to "no right on reds" and issue tickets all day while crackwhores break into apartments and give Dobermans oral sex for want of anything better to do, while urinating and defecating on silverware they steal and sell to immigrant farmers working at the Taco Time.

Ha, and I don't even know what hyperbole means.

So, I'm driving and thinking to myself "Let's not blow this, I have an egg Mcmuffin to be had."

Sure enough, the fucker begins pursuit.

It always amazes me the amount of Armageddon these cops use on the simplest pursuit.

I've got rollers, chasers, reds, blues, and a siren that sounds like Nazis are dropping V rockets on the roofs of school buildings; meanwhile, I'm doing five miles an hour and slowing down to stop.

The prick, because he is a prick if I ever met one, takes like nine years to approach the car. My guess is this is a cop trick to make you sweat.

The whole line about license and registration falls out of his mouth like so much gibberish from a Korean calculator manual.

He asks, "Why are you shaking?"

See, I'm a nervous person by nature, and with this pig's snout in my face and a venti Americano in my gut; I'm shaking like a bobcat on crack.

"Uh, well, it's been awhile since I've been pulled over."

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"No clue." And I didn't. I was driving safely and I'm a registered voter who only half believes anarchy is a legitimate option to government.

"See this?" He motions to my outer door panel, which is kinda hard to see from inside the fucking car.

"Um...." I poke my head out and begin thinking this guy must be nuts or maybe the T-1000. I start thinking of liquid metal forming a large machete and halving my head open.

"That's ash, son." He seems genuinely disgusted.

I look again and realize he's talking about what looks like the outside of an overused Weber. See, he's not nuts and he's not a robot from the future coming to decapitate me – he's just a prick.

It seems he didn't like the idea that I was driving a car with a mixture of rain and cigarette ash down the driver's door. "Sorry, sir. But, I put my butts out in the ashtray." I say, figuring that that's the only reason I could get a ticket: flicking the butt out the window. But, I was lying anyway.

"Don't matter. You know what ash can do?"

I'm dumbstruck. What the hell could ash do? I mean, it's somewhat a pollutant, but it's not like agent orange. "No."

"You get a motorcyclist behind you and you flick your cigarette ash and it gets in his eyes...see what I'm saying?"

I guess I saw what he was saying; the same way I see what politicians are saying when they exclaim "I have a plan."

I guess, in this cop's mind, ash is more dubious than the millions of pebbles on the highway that get kicked up in motorcyclist's face every day. In fact, a single flake of ash smacking a motorcyclist over and over could cause them to experience eye irritation on such an atomic level that he or she would be rendered blind by duck bites.

He left me with this gem, "I'm gonna give you a warning, but if I see you flicking your ash in my lovely city again, I'm gonna come down on you."

What pissed me off the most was this guy really thought he owned this city.

And what made me laugh is that he can have it.

I drove away thinking about him beating his children savagely for spilling juice on his lovely rug. Or, branding his wife's pussy with "my lovely pussy." Or, burying his billy club in a hooker's ass before burying her in a shallow grave in Renton.

The savagery that is the American Pig is mind-boggling and is the thread worn hole in our society that exposes just what kind of animals we really are.



Pleace,

Matt