Funny, I thought as I stepped onto my porch, I don’t remember leaving pieces of a deadbolt lock there.
It took a minute for the information to register, and I think it was the sight of the side door slightly ajar that finally pushed me out of the dark and into the cold light of realization: my house had been broken in to.
Like any good American male living in the “CSI” generation, I immediately barked out, “Don’t touch anything!” to my wife to ensure that any fingerprints, footprints, blood droplets, fibers, microbes, and residual psychic impressions left behind by the culprits went undisturbed for the police when they arrived with their dazzling array of scientific gizmos and widgets.
It took but a few quick glances to determine where the culprit (or, as I later learned, culprits) had been and what he (they) had stolen.
Nearly 70 DVDs, running A through mid-C, then picking up again at the Ds and running through the Fs, gone.
Several pieces of jewelry possessing mostly sentimental value for my wife, gone.
A digital camera that once cost $300 and now, thanks to the blazing speed at which technology advances, could be purchased on eBay with money collected by cashing in our soda cans, gone.
Our sofa and coffee table, gone.
No, wait…sorry, they’re still there. I just wasn’t paying attention.
But the cats! THE CATS!
No, wait…they’re there too. They were hiding behind the couch.
But the van Gogh! THE ORIGINAL SIGNED VAN GOGH!
The police arrived in short order and were quick in collecting the evidence, those tiny, oh-so-subtle clues that, with time and effort and painstaking labor, would eventually reveal the culprit’s identity. The muddy footprint on the door was a good start, and the fingerprints left on a DVD that didn’t quite make it out of the house helped.
Personally, I think what really cracked the case open was the discovery that the thief handed the DVDs over to an accomplice – his sister – who then sold them at the FYE store three miles down the road.
Did I mention that stores that buy used DVDs make you show a picture ID just in case the merchandise later proves hot?
Did I mention that the manager refused to take more than half the DVDs in one shot and told the woman to come back the next day?
Did I mention that she went back the next day?
Did I mention these people were screaming imbeciles?

(An aside: most of the DVDs have been returned, though not without more of a headache than I expected. The store manager tried to tell me that my stuff was store inventory now, no way to prove the DVDs were mine, so sorry, go pound sand. That lasted until it was pointed out to this fellow that not everyone in the world owns a copy of “Army of Darkness” signed, “To Mike – Stay Groovy! Bruce Campbell.”)

So the suspects were easily identified, and it was no surprise to learn that this was far from their first foray into the exciting world of smash-and-grab burglary. They’d done this sort of thing many times before, and apparently with equal success (which is to say, almost none) as they had lengthy criminal records.
To summarize: not only are these people too damn stupid to pull off a criminal act successfully, they’re too damn stupid to realize they’re thoroughly inept as criminals and should find a more law-abiding career.
I inquired of the cop taking our report what the Bristol County courts are like, half-jokingly remarking upon the Falmouth courts’ well-known leniency under Judge Michael Creedon, the man known to local police as “Judge Freedom,” whose last words upon his deathbed will likely be, “Continued one year without a finding…”
I was hoping to hear something like, “The judges are cruel and terrible men, like spirits of vengeance made flesh. Their gaze turns the sinful to salt, their touch brings flaming death to the guilty. Woe be unto those who must tremble before their dread and puissant selves, for they are the holy soldiers of justice and harbingers of destruction for the wicked.”
Instead I got the kind of look you give a woman after she asks, “Does this dress make me look fat?”
So yeah, there’s a good chance these dolts will be back on the streets the same day as their disposition. Doesn’t that just fill me with the warm fuzzies?

Now, there is definitely a place for forgiveness in our justice system. There is a time for a gentle hand rather than a punishing fist, a time to give someone a chance to make amends and rectify a mistake so that he or she might live a good life.
This ain’t one of those times.
Nay, this is one of those times when the culprits should be…well…okay, I need a visual for this.

I want to do that to them.
Except I’d replace the net with pungi stakes set at the bottom of a deep pit.
Yes. Yes I am bitter and vindictive, why do you ask?

Yet I’d like to think I’d be just as righteously indignant (and bloodthirsty) if this had happened to anyone. I’d like to think everyone with a moral compass that points north-ish would be upset by the thought of our justice system failing to do its job and letting people like these go with negligible repercussions.
There is a time to forgive, there is a time to rehabilitate, and there is a time to punish, and when those fail, there is a time for our judicial system to take whatever steps possible to remove harmful elements from society for as long as possible.
Does it solve the problem of chronic criminal behavior? No, it is far from a true solution and does not address the myriad root causes, but as The Man With No Eyes once observed, some people you just can’t reach. Some people cannot – or worse, will not – be rehabilitated. They exist only to take from others, literally as in my case, more figuratively on the grander sense: they deprive neighborhoods of a sense of security and community; they drain taxpayer-funded resources from police and the courts; and if they have any family of a stronger moral fiber than they possess, they commit the most grievous crime of all and rob their loved ones of their pride and dignity.
Okay, I grant you, they generate carbon dioxide so trees can eat, but that’s the only nice thing I’ll say about them.
I plan to be in the courtroom when these criminal get what I hope will be their comeuppance, and if that comeuppance does not materialize…well, let’s just say I hope the local ZBA will grant me a variance for my trebuchet.
Wonder if I can write that off on my taxes as a home improvement?

A few months back, I was neatly nailed in a speed trap in Boston.
It was one of those stretches along Route 1 where the speed limits rise and fall at erratic and seemingly arbitrary intervals, ping-ponging back and forth between lows of 20 and highs of 55…yes, even the speed limits don’t make much sense in the Boston area.
I passed from one high-speed zone into a low-speed zone and, before my sleep-deprived brain could register this and tell my foot, “Press the wide pedal now, dummy,” I found myself getting waved to the side of the road by a statie. He wrote out my ticket while several other cars went screaming past at such speeds that they left trails of fire on the asphalt like Marty McFly’s Delorean.
I’d planned to contest the ticket, not to escape my responsibility (technically, he had me dead to rights, I admit this), but because I wanted to spare my meager bank account a shock that could kill it.
My court date was on a Tuesday. As luck would have it, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series days before, and guess when the rolling rally was scheduled? And guess which courthouse it was scheduled to end near?
I had already received one deferment from the week prior as I was busy, well, dying of pneumonia, so getting my date pushed back was not an option. Unfortunately, neither was driving up to the city. Or finding a parking space at any T station in the entire state of Massachusetts.
So I wound up stuck with the fine.
Sucks rocks? Yep, but my plight is completely trivial compared to what a New England Patriots win would do for voters trying to get to the polls on Super Tuesday.
It seems that Mayor Tom “Mumbles” Menino has laid out tentative plans for a celebratory parade for the Pats, that celebration of course contingent on another Super Bowl victory, and he has scheduled it for February 5.
Menino said he chose that day reluctantly, claiming he had no other choice because it was the only day that fit the Patriots’ schedule.
You know: their heavy schedule of doing NOTHING for the next several months because THE SEASON IS OVER.
The logistics behind pulling off a massive parade – and mark my words, it will be massive – on the same day as a fairly major election during one of the most active and heated primaries on record is staggering as police are required to be present at 254 voting precincts in Boston proper, at the same time hundreds more will be needed to keep traffic and crowds in line. Menino said the city could address this by planning a parade route that circumnavigates the polling locations, and thus would not impede voters trying to cast their ballots like good Americans.
(That Pats fans are more up in arms over the idea of Menino’s announcement jinxing the team than screwing up Super Tuesday makes me weep for the future of our society.)
So, to review: Boston will on the same day host two events, each with the potential to draw tens of thousands of people, plotting the course of one in such a manner around the labyrinth that is the Boston transportation infrastructure to avoid interfering with the other and vice-versa.
The invasion of Normandy was less ambitious.
Smilin’ Bill Galvin, our secretary of the Commonwealth, has criticized the decision in his own understated way: “With all due respect to the New England Patriots — and I wish them well, I hope they win — holding the election of the next president of the United States is a little more important.”
Say it with me: Y’think?
Menino’s rationale for holding the parade on Super Tuesday is pathetic and inexcusable. He is blatantly placing the spectacle of sport (and the inexplicable need society has to prostrate themselves in homage before their overpaid sports gods) above the necessity to actively engage the populace and get them involved in their government. People are reluctant to get off their cans and hit the polls under the best and most impediment-free of circumstances, and now His Honor is spoon-feeding voters a reason to stay home.
Any chance of the Patriots living up to their name and asking for this orgy of ego-stroking to be rescheduled?
Nah…didn’t think so.

I would like to apologize to my loyal readers — all four of you — for my unexpected disappearance from the blogosphere.
But I won’t since it totally wasn’t my fault. I was a victim, I tells ya.
The sass will return soon enough…and possibly, so will my older posts. I’m trying to scrape up the ransom money even now.
I suppose I should throw something pundity up here for the time being, huh?
Um…
Y’ever notice that Mitt Romney looks a lot like Guy Smiley from “Sesame Street”? I have. See?

(Gimme a break, okay? It’s early.)