Stockton: 1. Truck: -1 Catalytic Converter

When I tell my friends that I live in Stockton, I'm not surprised by their furrowed brows and sympathetic eyes.  After all, it seems like every other Cops show is shot in Stockton.

Well today, after about 5 years of working here, we finally got hit with some of this crime that the news tells us happens here all the time.  Sure, this very cafe I'm sitting at has had purse snatchings and heated exchanges outside, but I felt that this was a fair exchange for free internet and access to hookahs.

Victim Of The Crime

Phoenix

1 comment

So my dad and I go in to Togo's to get a sandwich.  They were very good sandwiches.  We were looking forward to using the energy gleaned from this fine meal and quiet time to put back to work on the facility we own.

We get back into the truck, and I hear something rattling.  I step on the gas, and it sounded like a Harley Davidson motorcycle.  We check under the car, and sure enough, a large, expensive part is completely missing.  No twisted metal indicative of it falling out.  Tell-tale signs of Dremel tool on the rubber bracings.

My father took this particularly hard.  He's the kind of guy who watches Fox News and warns me that I could get killed every time I go downtown.  Which, may in fact be true, but that's beside the point.  The point is that his one and only media outlet makes its money by scaring its viewers into believing that everyone is an enemy, and/or will try to steal your shit whenever they can.  Case in point: that video of some guy trying to steal the microphone of a reporter who was reporting on the release of the iPhone (why the hell didn't he take the iPhone?!).

So, thank you Fox News, for taking my father, my invincible bulwark against fear -- he learned to swim in an overflowing river in a monsoon in the backwoods of the Philippines on the back of a caribow (or die) for chrissakes -- and turning him into a shut-in, afraid to walk the streets of this town.

I should knock on some wood.

There's this saying, from The Maxx, that goes something like "a liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet."

I hope this table is made out of wood.