Tag: crime

Two quick book reviews

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews5 Comments

I am in a horrendous mood, as the world is continuing to go to shit and nothing seems to be able to stop it or even slow it down, but there are still books out there, so I may as well talk about them. I don’t have the energy to make a full post about either of these so let’s just do a couple quick paragraphs each and call it a day.

Samantha Downing’s Too Old For This is a book about a serial killer forced out of retirement when a documentarian comes calling who wants to make a series about her. She was never actually brought to trial for her crimes, but changed her name and moved across the country anyway, and she’s less than interested in someone dragging all of that back into the light again.

She’s in her seventies, by the way.

This book ended up being lightweight and quick and more fun than it probably had any right to be, as Lottie Jones’ life keeps getting upended more and more as she attempts to cover for her crimes– both the old ones before she moved away and the new ones she has to keep committing as she keeps making mistakes that wouldn’t have mattered when she was killing people decades ago but are a bit of a problem in an era of near-constant surveillance by our own possessions. I can imagine a reader who is bothered by the fact that the protagonist is an unrepentant serial killer who we’re more or less expected to like, or at least enjoy reading about, but I’m not that reader and I had fun with this. I may look into more of Samantha Downing’s work if I ever allow myself to buy books again.

So, yeah, okay, I finished it, and it’s a thousand pages long and I have a full-time job and I still finished it in less than a week, and because of that I can’t really call it bad, but … if you weren’t going to buy this anyway, don’t let anyone talk you into it. SenLinYu is a perfectly cromulent author and no one would ever read this book and figure out on their own that it was originally brought into the world as Harry Potter fanfiction, but it’s way overhyped, at least from my perspective. I keep seeing videos about people who were in tears for the last two hundred pages or whatever, and I feel like these people need pets or significant others or something, because in the end it’s just a book and it’s being treated like a life-altering event online. I said in my first post that I was buying this out of FOMO, and I’ve got to stop doing that. I’m never going to be missing out if I don’t read a book TikTok likes.

(I deleted the app again today; we’ll see how long it lasts this time.)

Again, it’s not awful, but it’s definitely romantasy despite all the people insisting that no, it’s dark fantasy— I’m pretty sure “dark fantasy” is just romantasy with at least one rape scene to these people– and I’m tired of romantasy as a genre. It’ll look good on my shelf, and I didn’t hate it like I figured I would, but those are the best things I have to say about it.

To be completely clear: On immigration

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics3 Comments
photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

I have said this, or variations on this, before. But this is the type of message that bears repeating.

No human being is illegal.

I favor completely unrestricted immigration to the United States. I don’t care if you get here on a private jet or by walking across the border. I don’t care if you have “papers” or not. If you think a better life can be had by coming to America, I think you should be allowed to live here.

Immigrants are not taking anyone’s jobs. The way I know this is the kinds of jobs immigrants work are always hiring, and I don’t see anybody lining up to work them.

Immigrants are significantly less likely to be criminals than US citizens, and frankly I don’t give a fuck if we end up bringing a statistically insignificant handful of criminals along with all of the honest immigrants. We have plenty of home-grown assholes and criminals as is, and I’ll happily trade that Nazi trash creature Stephen Miller for a dozen Mexican murderers anyway. They can move into my fucking neighborhood. We’re still better off. This is the “poisoned M&M” question all over again. If the M&Ms represent human lives, I’ll eat the whole fucking bowl. I don’t give a shit.

ICE should be abolished immediately, and anyone who still works for that agency could be dropped into an active volcano with no actual loss to humanity.

Let anyone who wants to come here in, and give them a path to citizenship. If they break the law along the way treat them like anyone else who broke the law.

Immigration is an unconditional societal good. We are better off because of these people, and the people most opposed to immigration are reliably the worst among us.

I know who I stand with, and I will not apologize.

Dr. Lawrence Curry, DO update

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

This was kind of an annoying week; I spent way more time than I usually want to trying to get people to call me back who were manifestly refusing to do what I wanted. I’m trying to give people money to mow my dad’s lawn and no one wants money. I tried to cancel a doctor’s appointment, discovered I could book an appointment but not cancel an appointment online, called and was told by a recording to leave a message, and no one called me back. I left messages with various denizens of the city I live in for various other reasons. Very little luck.

So, Dr. Curry. I went back on the 31st and checked his office out again. This is its current condition:

That’s taken through the window, which gives you a sense of the current security level of the office and how guaranteed it is to be broken into by someone looking for drugs in the very near future. I took more pictures, but all of the rest would require some level of image manipulation to hide people’s names and addresses and shit, because there are documents with people’s Social Security numbers on them sitting in the windowsill.

While I was standing in the lot, another car pulled in. It turned out that the driver was the mother of another of his patients, one who also had spent time trying to convince their family member to stop going to this guy. Unfortunately, her daughter in this case is not only on Medicaid, which makes it difficult to just pick up and switch doctors, but she’s also on a thyroid medication that she can’t currently get her prescription renewed for. Because no one can get ahold of this fucker.

Again, this situation is literally going to end up killing someone. He has a lot of elderly and Medicaid patients. (This makes the “no insurance/$50 a visit” thing on his door even worse– if you’re on Medicaid, it’s because you don’t have fifty bucks to toss at the doctor every time you go.)

I found an article from several years ago that suggested that at that time he had “over 6,000” patients, by the way.

I went to the nearest pharmacy, just for the hell of it, and they told me that as far as they knew he was still practicing but that his hours were limited to “between six and eight in the morning.” I told the pharmacist that the lobby had been cleared out and she seemed surprised by that; apparently they’ve seen him relatively recently, so I very well might just drive over there at seven on Monday and camp out in the parking lot for a little while and see if anyone happens to drive by.

Dr. Curry also had an FNP working for him. She has also disappeared. She’s considerably younger, so I have to assume she’s going to turn up somewhere with another job? I’m still trying to find her. She’s got privileges with a hospital south of me but it’s not like you can call those hospitals and find those people; that’s not how it works.

I also called the local newspaper and a couple of lawyers. One called me back and explained that he couldn’t help me. One has not. The newspaper guy called me back and said he was treating the situation as an action line situation, where they just help out readers with shit, but that he was looking into things and would get back to me if he found anything out. I haven’t heard back yet, which I’m choosing to not treat as sinister just yet.

We’ll see what Monday morning has in store for me.

In which I can’t win

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

I was not picked for jury duty, and my number in the pool was high enough that I’m not sure whether I was actually eliminated or just that they got the required number of jurors they needed before they got to me. The process itself was … fine, I suppose? It would have been significantly more fine had the St. Joseph County courthouse #3 at any point investigated the concept of moving air, or a similarly comfort-related concept called don’t cram sixty fucking people into tiny rooms during a pandemic. Unfortunately, neither of those rules were followed and I suspect that, despite being one of three (3) people who remained masked for the entire process, I have contracted Covid, Anthrax, monkeypox and probably rabies and fucking wandering womb syndrome as well.

Honestly, the most entertaining (or at least worth talking about) parts of the whole process were that 1) when the judge is conferring with attorneys they actually play static over the intercom to make it more difficult to pick up what they’re saying, and 2) the absolutely outstanding level of rudeness of the cop manning the metal detector on the way into the courthouse. Actually, a few things about that:

  1. I walked in behind a handful of people on the way into the courthouse. All of them put masks on as we were entering the courthouse; I assumed that they were mandatory. The moment everyone but me got through the metal detectors, they all took their masks right back off again. The hell?
  2. The cop was barking “Do you have a cell phone?” at everyone who came in. The gentleman in front of me answered in the affirmative. The cop actually picked up a copy of the summons we were sent and yelled at him about whether he’d read the “big box at the bottom,” and made him read out loud the part where it said to not bring cell phones into the courtroom.
  3. Three of us, including me, set off the metal detectors and were waved in without further investigation, so apparently the pistol I had taped to the small of my back was fine. I said I didn’t have a cell phone, though, so all good.
  4. I happened to be sitting where I could hear people coming in while we were waiting for everything to start, so I got to witness it when the same poor bastard who had gotten chewed out about having a cell phone realized that the room he had on his summons was different from everyone else’s. He made the mistake of asking the cop about it, and the guy yelled at him again, because you’re supposed to call a number the night before you have jury duty to make sure your trial is still happening, and this guy hadn’t done that. “You did not do what you were supposed to do!” the cop yelled. “Why would that be? Do you not know how to read instructions? I’m surprised you found the courthouse at all!”
  5. Dick.

The other big realization of the day is that people get too tied up in hypotheticals and don’t think shit through very clearly, but that shouldn’t be surprising because I teach and so I should know how fucking dumb most people are. It was still weird– and, frankly, it clearly had one of the attorneys confused– to see how many people indicated that they would not be able to render an impartial verdict were the defendant to choose not to testify. Several different people expressed variations on “I wouldn’t be able to make a fair decision if I didn’t hear both sides of the story,” which sounds reasonable and good so long as you don’t think about it at all. Like, y’all, we just had “beyond a reasonable doubt” explained to us a couple times. It’s not all that complicated a concept. The defendant does not have to testify. Period.

Examples:

  1. This was an armed robbery case. The defendant was caught on video robbing the store, clearly showing his face. There were several eyewitnesses to the crime, including the arresting officer and the store owner who was robbed. The robber dropped the gun while fleeing the store afterward, which had his fingerprints on it and was registered in his name. Before committing the crime, the thief posted a selfie on Twitter and Facebook of him outside the store and holding the gun, with the caption “Bout ta rob these motherfuckers.” In this case, I really don’t need the defendant’s version of the story. Guilty, thanks.
  2. Keeping with the metaphor of armed robbery. There were no witnesses other than the shop owner, who picked someone else out of a lineup and furthermore described a thief of a different race and gender than the person who was eventually arrested. The defendant has a solid alibi documented on social media for the time the crime was committed. There is video of the crime and the thief is clearly not the person on trial. In this case, again, I don’t need to hear from the defendant to decide to exonerate them.

These are both exaggerated, but it was really weird to hear so many people claim that they could not and would not be able to come to a conclusion without hearing from “both sides.” And again, the defense attorney was visibly surprised. The prosecutor had a similar situation in trying to ascertain if everyone understood the concept of “accessory to” being the same as having committed a crime; ie, you drive somebody to rob a bank and act as the getaway driver as well, but you weren’t the person who went in and robbed the bank. You’re still getting sentenced for bank robbery. Now, you could argue about whether this was fair, but the number of people who wanted to “what-if” this relatively simple hypothetical was still kind of alarming. No, the person wasn’t carjacked. Yes, they knew the robbery was happening. No, we’re not going to posit that someone was killed and the robber had promised not to kill anyone. Please stick to the current hypothetical, Juror 42. You know what, never mind, I’m rejecting all of you. Go home.

One way or another, I’m free for two years. Still haven’t made it to a trial. Hopefully next time it’ll be on a cooler day, but … yeah.

In which white people are still the absolute worst, plus some light whining

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, PoliticsLeave a comment
Pictured: an entitlement of wypipo

I’m doing the thing where I’m trying to make something I said on Twitter a bit less ephemeral by putting it here: I want a change in the rules. If white people are going to keep calling the police on black people for fucking existing in public, well, you go on ahead with your white self and keep doing that. But once the cops have investigated, when it turns out the black person was walking his dog, or taking his damn kids to the park, or buying groceries, or having a barbecue, or whatever goddamned normal-ass thing that black people are allowed to do unless white people are nearby, once the cops have investigated and determined that, yeah, that check for $1000 from this dude’s employer is really his check, and maybe y’all shoulda figured out that your average check cashing fraudster isn’t likely to volunteer two forms of ID and his fingerprint and just cashed the damn thing?

Once the cops figure that out, that accused black person gets five minutes in which he or she cannot be arrested or prosecuted for anything they do, up to and including stealing and detonating a nuclear weapon, if there happens to be one close enough. And the white people don’t get to run away. They gotta stay there while the five-minute rampage happens and if that five-minute rampage involves a white ass getting beat then maybe you shoulda thought of that before you called the cops, you dumb racist cracker motherfucker.

A story of what may actually be the last time I tried to cash a check: I am a high school student, and I have helped out an old lady down the street from me by mowing her lawn for her. A very old lady, who has rewarded me by writing me a check for, supposedly, $25. The only problem is that $25 check is so illegible that I’m the person she handed it to and I can’t decipher my own name, nor can I really honestly figure out how the scrawl in the little box says $25.00, and there is no way any human could possibly look at the part that counts, where you write out the amount in prose, and see “twenty-five dollars and 00/100.” She’s very old and palsied and this check looks like a toddler scribbled on it. There are no recognizable words. I need y’all to realize that I’m not exaggerating here.

I briefly think about not taking the check anywhere at all and just not worrying about it, and then take it to her bank, because there’s no way in hell my bank is touching the thing. And the teller not only agrees to cash it, but she asks me what the amount is supposed to be, and then prepares to withdraw that amount, based on nothing more than my say-so.

Now, okay, this was 24 years ago at minimum, and shit’s supposed to be more secure now. But there wasn’t even the vaguest suggestion of suspicion on her part. Because: white boy.

And then it turned out the check was NSF, and I told her just to throw it away, because … nah. The whole thing was skeevy and even in high school $25 wasn’t enough money that I was gonna go to too much trouble to get it. It’s possible my dad ended up covering it; I don’t remember, but I didn’t end up ever cashing the check.

I have been doing make-up standardized tests all week, and by all week I mean basically every minute of my day other than lunch or advisory. On the one hand, this has been kind of wonderful, because it pins me in my room and people can’t pull me out of my office to make me do stuff, and it exempts me from things like hallway duty, which can be obnoxious. On the other hand, I have literally spent 24 solid hours out of the last three days in a damn near silent room with somewhere between eight and thirteen sixth graders all taking a test as I “monitor” them, and I am so bored I might die.

I mean, given my job’s definition of “exciting,” don’t take me whining about this too seriously, because there is a big difference between boring and stressful and given the choice I will leap joyfully into boring’s arms every time. But …. man. I gotta do this again tomorrow? Really? I’m playing music or summat during the test, because I can’t take the quiet any longer. It’s fuckin’ unnatural.