Fine! I have given in to pressure once again to update. But be warned. This one is LONG. Ordinarily, I don’t find it difficult to update. For some reason, though, I just haven’t felt the motivation to get it done. And the longer I don’t update, the more there is to cover. And with more to cover, the more daunting the task becomes and the less likely I am to sit down and get it done. There is some sort of weird, inverse proportion of laziness at work there, but I’ll be damned if -I’m- going to sit down and do the math.

In the intervening two months since the last update, a LOT has happened, but very little of it is really worth writing about. I am training to transfer into our alcohol tech division, which means I’ll be responsible for maintaining the instruments the public erroneously and ignorantly refer to as ‘breathalyzers’. In point of nit-picking fact, there was only ever one ‘breathalyzer’ and most places haven’t really used that for going on thirty years now. The breath testing instruments we currently use here are called ‘Intoxilyzers’ which is a brand name of the company CMI, Inc, out of Owensboro, KY. How do I know? Because I spent two weeks there learning ALL about them. Two unrelenting weeks in Kentucky. The class, people and instructors were awesome, but Kentucky can lick my sack. I didn’t enjoy it. But yeah, they aren’t breathalyzers, people. And that should serve as an ample demonstration of my new-found dickitude. It was also pounded ad nauseum into my head during both the class in Kentucky and the class in Bloomington, IN that they are NOT ‘machines’. As the emotionless chant went: ‘Machines DO things, instruments measure things’. They are ‘instruments’. Personally, I believe the Semantics Police have stumbled into a heretofore undiscovered realm of ridiculous, but there it is. The instructors INSIST that magistrates and juries will take you more seriously if you call them ‘instruments’. Based on my experience with the intelligence of the average American juror (and even some magistrates) I really feel that’s dubious at best. The point being...I’ve been busy.

It would be difficult to rummage through the dusty drawers of my mental card catalog to pull out EVERY single instance worth noting in the last two months, so I’ll stick to a few more recent ones and hope that serves the purpose.

Last week our K-9 officer (who is single-handedly becoming the bane of pot-growing cartels everywhere) stopped a car carrying a load of fresh, newly-harvested Oregon weed from some hippie commune. The driver (let’s call him ‘Rainbow’ for the sake of brevity) had graduated from the MLK, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi school of semi-passive resistance. He wouldn’t grant consent to search (which is fine...that’s what the dog is for anyway) and started to just walk down the road in the middle of nowhere when they started searching anyway. I headed over there because the K-9 officer came on the radio out of breath and called for another unit. And when you hear your associates call for help while out of breath...you move your ASS. He was fine and just had to wrestle with Rainbow to get him in cuffs and detain him. No big deal. The humor of the situation came from the cookie-cutter cliche’s Rainbow started spouting once in handcuffs. I honestly didn’t think stereotypes like him existed anywhere outside the Natural Resource Dept. of any community college you care to mention.

I got on scene and the first thing that Rainbow said to the other officers now on scene was: "Is there any way you guys can just take the stuff and let me go?" If you laughed out loud while reading that, you’re a lot like me, which should scare you. I lol’d. (And ordinarily, I abhor ‘lete-speak’ with a fiery passion. The former ‘lol’ is used in an ironic or sarcastic sense, in case anyone missed it. I am a big fan of maintaining the sanctity of the language. Yes, I know... More dickitude. ) But yes, I laughed out loud at Rainbow’s plea. Turns out he had about 20 lbs of prime Oregon weed with cute little Woodstock names on the plastic bags like ‘Purple Gorilla’ complete with smileys next to the name. Awww......

"I can’t believe this is happening...I don’t believe in jail! It’s not right to just take someone’s freedom like this. I don’t believe in jail!" Yeah...as if jail is some mythical place like Shangri La. I leaned in and said, "Believe it or not, it IS a real place and you’ll see it tonight."

Some more gems culled from the resiny chasm of what’s left of Rainbow’s brain: "This isn’t right! You guys are like Nazi’s. I didn’t do anything wrong." When it was pointed out that he was smuggling 20 lbs of an illegal substance in his car he then fired back with: "The only reason it’s illegal is because of a government conspiracy! It’s not a drug! It’s all natural! It comes from Mother Earth. It’s a spiritual thing and the government doesn’t like that. You guys need to reconnect, man! Get in touch with Gaia..." The rest of the tirade drifted off into muffled obscurity as he was unceremoniously shoved into a patrol car and the door slammed shut. The sheer humor of the situation was sorta undercut by how sadly stereotypical the guy really was. I was left with wanting to sit the guy down and carefully explain that he would be better served by wearing pink polo shirts with popped collars and having carefully sculpted and deliberately messy hair underneath his baseball cap spun slightly to one side. You know...if he went with more MODERN fads and symbols of douchebaggery than being 45 fucking years behind the times. Oh well. I was poignantly reminded of Eric Cartman’s nightmare on ‘South Park’: "Hippies! Hiiiipieees! They wanna change the world but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad!"

Last night Mikey’s colleagues were handling the scene of a fatal car crash when a dark green Lincoln Continental drove through very obvious traffic cones, across a road closure and then side-swiped a marked patrol car with all lights activated. The Lincoln then continued on until it was frantically flagged down while driving right through and over the evidence of the fatal crash scene. The driver was then yanked out of the car and placed in handcuffs by officers who were, shall we say, slightly annoyed by his behavior. Ok! Time for Police Academy 101:

Did the cock-knob drive through the road closure and side-swipe the car because:

A) The fucking pigs have no authority to close a public road. I pay my taxes! I’ll drive where I want! They’re MY roads!

B) The closure was set up improperly and road flares should have been used rather than traffic cones.

C) The green Lincoln experienced a mechanical failure and was unable to stop.

D) The afore-mentioned cock-knob is a drunk asshole.

If you answered with anything other than D, please report to your local humane society to have yourself spayed and/or neutered. And if you have to go with the ‘and’ when reporting to the humane society, that’s fascinating...but please keep it to yourself. Luckily, no one was in the patrol car when it was hit. I responded to handle the crash and DUI.

I got the guy out and prepared to do tests on him. Had Rainbow been there, the worthless hippie smuggler (think of Han Solo’s pasty, hairy and inbred cousin whimpering "Not in the face!") would have been awed by the golden majesty of this guy’s beery aura. There was a sour, ethanol haze wafting from his very pores. "What happened?" I asked him. "I was driving north (he was driving west) and missed my exit (he wasn’t on a freeway) and I didn’t see the barricades (there were no barricades, only cones) and I hit the cop car. I stopped even though people were waving for me to get out of there (they were frantically waving for him to stop)." "How much have you had to drink tonight?" I asked. There was a pause. Blink. Pause. Swaying. Inhale. Pause. "Nothing." he said finally. Well shockingly, the field sobriety tests showed he had been LYING about the ‘nothing’. Can you believe that? Before the handcuffs went on AGAIN, I asked if he wanted to revise his ‘nothing’ answer. Feigning shame and remorse he then mumbled, "I had one beer," He meant one KEG, but he forgot to clarify...

He tested at twice the per se limit of .08 and I think when he saw the results, he was a little upset with himself for taking the test. He was POSITIVE he was going to blow under. Positive! He asked me no less than five times what I would do when he blew under the limit. He saw the formidable security at the jail and then became agitated. "A huge fence and bars! I’m not gonna run! This is fucking stupid! I didn’t hurt anyone! This doesn’t need to happen this way!" And on and on for a minute. He expressed outrage at the fact that he was going to spend a night in jail because ALL he did was drink and drive. The two of us then had a heart-felt discussion about the fact that he was SO drunk that he blew an obvious road closure with flashing lights everywhere and could have killed not only my boys in blue but the tow driver and civilian witnesses still on scene. That pissed me off. It’s one thing to complain about going to jail for DUI when I stop a car for a broken taillight or something. I’ll still smile all the way to the jail to book your drunk ass, but I won’t scream at you for being a fucking asshole. It’s quite another thing to be shocked and horrified about ending up in jail when you side-swipe a marked patrol car while twice the per se limit. I mean, if you don’t go to jail for hitting a cop while DUI, what DO you go to jail for? But, he was just a good guy who made a simple and understandable mistake. Why couldn’t I see that? Well, I suppose it’s because my blind spot for humanity’s innate goodness tends to grow exponentially when my fellow officers are put in jeopardy because you think you’re ‘ok to drive’. I explained in more diplomatic terms than I’m writing here that I thought he was an utterly worthless human being and then explained my hope that he rot in the drunk tank with the rest of society’s detritus. Amen and peace be with you.

Friday night/Saturday morning, I got called for the first time in a couple months for a search and rescue in the helicopter. It was a pretty standard flight. The FLIR was actually inoperable, but they already knew where the guy was. He was reported to us as a 24 year old male on a mountainside, possibly hypothermic. They had cell communication with him, and his answers were delayed and slow. He had a flashlight or headlamp, which is how we found him once we got the approximate GPS coordinates. Our job was to ferry a couple of SAR teams up the mountain to go get him since there were no suitable landing zones ANYWHERE near the guy. Our job was then to try and guide the teams in by providing a hovering point of reference. We believed the guy was at least still conscious at that point because it looked like he kept flashing the light at the helicopter. All was going smoothly.

We touched back down at the command center when it seemed like the intrepid guys on foot were well on their way. Idle chatter at the incident command ensued while we waited. "What’s this guy’s name?" someone asked. "John Doe," another replied (Not his real name...for those of you wondering...and if you are...see my comment above about the Humane Society.). "You’re shitting me?" a third demanded. The second guy blinked and looked at #3. "No," he replied, with a look on his face that seemed to say, "Why? Does that seem like something I’d joke about? If it were a joke I would’ve said his name was Holden McGroin."

#3 shook his head as the fires of rage began to simmer. "John Doe?" Another head shake, "This is the third time we’ve rescued this kid in the last two weeks!" Now...I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, "Oh, now #3 is just taking a big ol’ tug on everyone’s collective fleshy cranks. There’s no way that’s true." And I would’ve thought the same thing were it not for the very genuine rage in his face. This was the THIRD time in two weeks that Search and Rescue had been called to help John Doe off a mountainside. The burning question then became how that was even possible. Turns out that John is mildly autistic and probably a little mentally handicapped in addition to that. That’s bad enough. Ok. We can deal with that. But how does he keep ending up in the boonies? How does he end up with his ass on a mountain, stranded, three times in two weeks? Most mentally handicapped people are given a helmet and left to their own devices and they don’t just wander into the fucking woods. If they HAVE that propensity, most of them have care-givers (either blood or hired) that would prevent that from happening. Right? Well, not John. Turns out John’s dad is only too happy to indulge Johnny’s wanderlust. Dad keeps driving his autistic and occasionally suicidal son out to the mountains to hike. Alone. With no supplies. And no cold-weather gear. Just a cell phone with the Search and Rescue on speed-dial, I guess.

Well, the incident commanders were LIVID. The SAR team up there consisted of the team from the local city PD, the team from the local Sheriff’s office, the captain over both those teams and the fire chief from the local city. It was then decided to bring ol’ Dad up to the incident command to have a look-see at all the resources his dumb ass was wasting. The pilot and I just sat over to the side smiling at the cluster-fuck this situation had suddenly become while dad stood, gape-jawed and wide-eyed while four VERY important guys (two ranking incident commanders with extensive experience, the captain over both of them and the fire chief for the city) quietly vented their frustration with this guy. He had one guy on all four sides. They threatened to charge him with the entire cost of the operation. They came to the pilot to get some fiscal figures on how much the bird was costing them. It was not cheap. I’ll just say that. Dad got what some in military circles refer to as a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting. A ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting is an earnest discussion wherein a critical problem is addressed and the subject of said discussion hopefully begs the Almighty Lord for guidance and strength in finding the remedy for their own Earth-shattering retardation.

The end result was that they didn’t charge Dad for anything, but sure as hell guaranteed him they WOULD if this EVER happened again. Because they could argue that Johnny was a danger to himself and definitely a danger to the poor SAR guys trudging along the mountain, they forcibly admitted him to a mental wing of a local hospital for observation. Hopefully that’ll pound some sense into him. Oh, and he wasn’t hypothermic when the guys got to him. Just autistic. Hence the slow reactions and difficulty understanding questions or instructions. Moral of the story: Don’t drive your mentally handicapped relatives to the wilderness and leave them there. Many might think that self-explanatory. But apparently it DOES need to be explicitly spelled out for some people. I will leave you and this painfully long post with a final comment from #3: "That light he’s flashing at you is probably the same fucking head lamp I gave him LAST week!"

Here’s your horoscope:

Aquarius January 20 - February 18

The nation is stunned by Amelia Earhart's miraculous return, especially when she knees you in the groin and shouts, "Thanks for nothing." (www.theonion.com)

Hey Christian, thought I'd catch up and holy crap,I could hardly believe what I read about John Doe. Either his father has cracked after years of dealing with him or he is the missing link they are searching for in Autism studies :o That is just insane. When we go bush here, Jack likes to stay close but then again, he is only 8, not 24. I don't even want to think that far ahead to tell you the truth, I just think he understands all my wild animal stories, I show him pictures, read him the news etc. I'm really surprised his dad wasn't charged this last time, Utah is pretty heavy when it comes to things like this.

Hope life is good for you...not bad here, pretty quiet actually. No drama and that's a first haha!