One way ticket, man

Road from the shore, 1936 - Benton Spruance

I was having coffee with the fellas when I saw the blinking colored lights in front of my shop this morning. One, two, three, four, five cop cars showed up, all parked akimbo on the street like random pickup sticks. Interested in the commotion, I walked over and asked a cop what was up?, after a quick glance confirming the still inviolate state of our shops.

The sheriff said that a guy was trying to break into a car. Said the voices told him to. Neighbor watched it going down and called 911. The distinct impression I got was meth.

I told the other shopkeepers the story when they came to work and it turns out it is not the first time for this guy. Someone caught him in a friend's car. The story was the same; he was directed to, by some outside presence, an entity whose identity is not really clearly defined.

This kind of story gives me the willies. Call me old fashioned but I would rather we had a guy steal because he was hungry than from a guy with a cauterized neural network that is receiving cryptic messages from mission control. Because how will we know when our Manchurian candidate finally gets the long awaited kill command?

Meth and opiate users are a sad, forsaken bunch, Marooned on a very cold and inhospitable planet, in a dark tunnel of pure self interest, not sure if any of them ever truly make it back.

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In other news I hear that strange black helicopters are flying over Santa Margarita.