Dummy of the Day

So if you know me well, then you just might know that I hate the Los Angeles Lakers. Hasn’t always been that way, but it is that way now and will stay that way as far as I am concerned. But, enough about me… we are joined here today to talk about the Dummy of the Day.

The day: June 14, 2009
The Dummy: A Los Angeles Police Department Officer who we will call: “Aru”

I passed through the intersection of Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard. Back in the day, Sunday nights on Crenshaw would be packed with young people cruising the strip of road between Rodeo Road and Florence Avenue in their Nissan Sentra’s and Mustang 5.0’s. Sadly, long gone are those fun days, so it caught me by surprise to see so many cars and so much hoopla going on up and down “the Shaw.” People were yelling, flying Lakers flags and most importantly, blowing their vehicle horns. I didn’t hear any gunshots or witness any unruly revelers, just people celebrating the victory of the team that I personally hate. I kept it pushing. I was headed to a friend’s house which was located 6.5 blocks from the intersection. When I arrived at my destination, I could still hear the various vehicle horns blaring from Crenshaw Blvd.

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Around the same time, what I didn’t yet know was, another friend of mine was being pulled over by an LAPD officer. My friend was riding in the passenger seat of her Camry while her friend drove the car. They were on their way to pick up a family member. They were in the far right lane, headed south, preparing to make a right turn on Slauson Avenue. As they approached Slauson they passed a clearly marked police car which was on their left. In the police car was officer “Aru.” My friend’s vehicle stopped behind several cars at the Crenshaw/Slauson light near the check cashing place. When the light turned green, the police car merged behind my friend’s vehicle, hit his lights and sirens and forced them to stop in the driving lane – thereby impeding traffic.

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Well, if it’s possible for me to make a long story short, I will try. Officer “Aru” pulled my friend’s car over and cited the driver for an apparent event of “unnecessary use of a horn.”

27001. (a) The driver of a motor vehicle when reasonably necessary
to insure safe operation shall give audible warning with his horn.
(b) The horn shall not otherwise be used, except as a theft alarm
system which operates as specified in Article 13 (commencing with
Section 28085) of this chapter.

The following would be my questioning of the officer at the LA Municipal Court (in my best Johnny Cochran voice}:

“Officer is your first name Aru? As in, are you f’ing serious? How is it that in a sea of cars and horns being blow at one time, YOU can tell which cars the sounds are emitting from? Oh yeah sure, I’ve heard of eyes in the back of one’s head, but I know that shit doesn’t exist. Now you want us to believe there are ears back there too?

Furthermore, you expect sensible people to believe that a teacher and a corporate professional woman are going to be blowing the hell out of a car horn right behind and/or alongside a police car, on Crenshaw Blvd? These are LA natives; they/we know how the beat goes down on Crenshaw! Or, should I say, how the beat down goes? Sure, there were a lot of people out there blowing horns that night. I saw and heard them myself. Nevertheless, you pulled over the Camry and actually wrote a ticket for something you claim to have heard with the ears behind your head? You claim to know that the Camry excessively blew its horn correct?

Wait, hold on! Perhaps you saw the driver of the Camry blowing the horn with the eyes in the back of your head? Was he blowing so ferociously with hand gestures such that it was obvious what he was doing? I find that hard to believe. Especially when if you look at Exhibit “A,” it is clear that a driver need only push down with one finger to blow a Toyota Camry’s horn.

Exhibit “A”:

Is it me or is the horn access well below the window line? No, don’t bother answering that one. It’s rhetorical!

Officer, is it true that there was a “zero tolerance” mandate on Crenshaw issued for that evening?

http://www.topix.com/forum/sports/T499L6CU41PMCLI25#comments

"As defined, a zero tolerance policy is: - any policy that allows no exception." If that is the case then there should be a record of hundreds, if not thousands of citations being issued by the LAPD for VC violations 27001(a.) and/or (b.) on the night of June 14, 2009 correct?

In fact, police should have been stopping people left and right. Right?

SIDEBAR: I wonder if a zero tolerance means different things for different people. For the Blacks on Crenshaw it meant no blowing horns…but what did it mean for the “people” who trashed the downtown area near the Staples Center while the police did nothing to stop it? Whoops, maybe it meant for the two Black people in the black Camry on Slauson and Crenshaw there is a zero tolerance policy - for anything and everything and well, nothing. Yeah, maybe that's what it means...hmmm?




Hey Coppers, somebody on the right has a horn…see it? It’s green.

What the F*** is the fire for?







So Officer, please direct yourself to the table in front of you. There you will find eight tape recorders. We shall push play and listen to a different type of vehicle horn on each tape. I will then ask you to identify which horn/sound you heard being emitted from the vehicle in question.

Everyone in the court gasps…and someone yells out “You got his a$$ now girl.”

Oh, by the way, the eighth tape has a recording of each of the seven horns on the previous tape superimposed on a loop so that all the horns are sounding at once. You know, similar to the way it was on the night in question.

You say it was easy to distinguish which cars were blowing their horns on the night in question? Oh, okay well, I will make it a point to come back to that topic in just a few moments...Sir.

We all know how this is gonna end so I will just skip to my closing paragraphs.

I wanna know what the hell was wrong with this Negro (Aru) that he pulled these people over. They weren’t out dippin’ in an Impala. They weren’t throwin’ up gang signs like SOME people (see photo above). And you wanna know what kills it; the officer told the driver that the driver was being an a$$hole when he questioned the officer on the validity of the citation.

Maybe instead of making this a “Dummy of the Day” piece, I should have called it an “I Wish A Nigga Would Moment,” cause the bailiff could sell tickets to my court date if I got a ticket like this. (Cue the music – Hall & Oats – “Maneater.”) And just in case you think I’m playing…I leave you with this bit of proof – Johnny Cochran style.

C L I C K T H I S L I N K:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFooRp3uknU

W A S E T © 2009

The Drama Of Facebook

Facebook. It’s like an ever evolving virtual yearbook. You play games, take really stupid quizzes, meet up with old friends and possibly make new friends – cool stuff! Yet, one thing facebook can also bring to a cpu, blackberry or iPhone near you, is drama.

I was somewhere recently and overhead a conversation about a woman who set up a fake facebook account to see if her boyfriend would hit on another woman. This chick created a fake email account, signed up on facebook and posted pictures of some hot chick in order to entice her boyfriend. Yeah of course he bit and of course she was mad – talking about, “how could he do that to me?” I felt it was best to stay out of the conversation, but I’m sure my eyes were looking at her screaming, you brought that ish on yourself fool! Drama.

At least that’s drama you can foresee. But what about the simple drama that facebook brings out in all but the most seasoned and emotionless of its flock?

You know exactly what I’m talking about! Silly emotions that you didn’t even know you had. Waiting to see if someone responded to your post. Saying “goodnight” on facebook because it has become such a part of you that you feel like you need to tell people when you are going to sleep. You can tell who cares by who says goodnight back. If no one says anything when you say goodnight, you can stop saying it. Just saying. I wouldn’t want you to sing in an empty club unless you’re just rehearsing.

And what about stuff like this…
You respond to your facebook friend’s status update and you see a comment already left by someone who is supposedly your friend too; although they aren’t on your facebook friends list. So you post a comment on your facebook friend’s list as you had planned, and you think in the back of your mind that the friend who is supposed to be your friend too will see your post and send you an add request.
Days go by and you don’t get a request from your friend. You begin to question the entire scenario.
a. Did they actually see my post directly below theirs on the status update?
b. Have they even logged on again after they posted their comment?
c. Are they mad at me?
d. Are they really my friend? Because surely if they are my friend then they would ask me to be their facebook friend…right?

Three more days go by.

In fact, you return to that status post to find that your “so-called friend” has posted again on your facebook friend’s status update from 5 days ago, and their new post is located 13 posts below yours and 14 posts below their post that you posted your comment under. (Stay with me.)

Now you’re like…
a. Did they read all the posts after their first post? If so then surely they saw me on facebook…right?
b. Maybe they didn’t read all the posts. But if they didn’t read them all, then how could they accurately comment on the issue?
c. Are they mad at me?
d. Should I post again in the chain? Not really cause I have nothing to say.
e. Should I send them a friend request now? Hell no, because they saw me.
f. But, are they saying the same thing I’m saying? (“I ain’t sending no friend request) thereby they are waiting for me to send them a friend request so they can accept?
g. Or, do they not want me on their page?
h. Is it because they aren’t really my friend?
i. Because I didn’t sleep with them?

You let it go, but see, it’s still drama.

Now the next time you see that person in person, you’re gonna give them the side eye and they probably won’t know why. But then again, if they didn’t send you a friend request, they probably don’t care. In fact, they probably did see you on facebook and didn’t add you-- on purpose – because you didn’t sleep with them. Case closed.

What about the tricky ways people blow you off on facebook? Oh don’t sit there and act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Either it’s been done to you or you did it to someone else. One time I sent an add request to this guy I’ve known for probably oh about 30 years. I didn’t go looking for him or anything and we don’t “kick it,” but I saw him on someone else’s friends list and as a friendly gesture, I sent an add request. Well, he added me, but then took me off a few hours later—maybe thinking I wouldn’t notice. But check it out; if you have 17 friends and then you gain a friend, that friend becomes friend number 18. Then, 3 hours later, you only have 17 again; it shouldn’t be hard to tell that somebody dropped off. The funniest part of this is that the drama probably goes even deeper than it should. The person who added then deleted me is best friends with somebody I used to “kick it” with. Therefore, I’d bet a pair of Carl Lewis’ biker shorts that this virtual triangle, (which is really a radius) has something to do with that Tom Foolery. Nevertheless, if I see dude on the streets of Inglewood or something, I’m definitely going to give him the side eye. Not for any drama, but for messing up my facebook friends’ list average.

I never understood the slang word “hater.” I mean sure, I understand the meaning at face, but if someone says “I hate” something, that doesn’t mean they hate everything. Plus, the only person that isn’t a hater is a person who doesn’t hate anything. Why do I bring this up? Well, the term “hater” is sorely overused on facebook and the abuse of the word could potentially bring drama. The word hater should be banned from facebook the same way that the word “texture” should be banned from the Food Network. So just for the record, I hate zucchini, flies, earthquakes, snails, biker shorts and Kobe Bryant. Now no one calls me a “hater” for hating flies and biker shorts, but I am often labeled a hater for “hatin’ on Kobe.” Surely I take all of the banter in jest and can roll with the best of them when it comes to defending my position on pretty much anything, but, why zoom in on the Kobe thing? Is he like “un-hateable” or something? Do I have to like Kobe because you like Kobe? I think I am going to start a new slang word such as “liker.” Yep, I am a liker of Boyz II Men and Eddie Jones. So all you facebook haters, step off.

I haven’t figured out how bad the drama gets for married folks who have their own separate facebook pages. I can’t imagine having a spouse who would want me to share a facebook page, but I hear it happens.

Husband: “Let me log on baby, I wanna play mafia wars.”

Wife: “No, you wanna see that Bit*h! That’s what you wanna do. But she sent
a message when I was playing Sorority Life -- thinking you were
online. Oh, don’t worry, I told that bit*h that I would whip her like
she stole Kristie Alley’s last can of buttermilk biscuits if she didn’t stop
sending you messages.”

Husband: “It ain’t even like that.”

All I’m saying is, if you can’t have your own facebook page, maybe you should seriously re-evaluate your situation. Now, having said that, I know there are some baddies on these social sites doing some very bad things. It starts off innocently enough. You help somebody out on a mafia job, then they say “thank you” in a private message. They start looking at your pics and reading about the night you got drunk off that Cuevo with your girlfriends… Next thing you know, you’re at the Howard Johnson with a guy holding a bottle of Patron in his hand. Drama!

For the most part, people can avoid most of the drama by only adding family members, people that ask you first or people that you need for Mafia Wars purposes only. Don’t go searching for people you know you don’t need to find. Damn, that should be rule number one. I live by that one.

You just have to understanding what facebook really is. It is a tool that the government is using to find out your likes, your dislikes, your hates, your wishes, your top 5 favorite comedies (well really top 4 because they already know Friday is on everybody’s list), your Japanese name (men don’t need to do that survey—Cherry Blossom Hamachi), what causes you support, what teams you cheer for, who you voted for (Go Palin—ha), what your kid got on his last report card, what time you get up (because you log on) what time you go to bed (because you say goodnight facebook)... They already have your birth date and since you talk about your pit bull named Chauncey, they can probably figure out the password to your bank account too - if they do, more drama.

WASET © 2009