Jaded Noir Detective Chronicles: The Chihuahua Chase

As I was driving home yesterday, a Chihuahua was running back and forth across the street. I sighed, stopped the car, and started to step out. Another car also stopped and a woman got out. I felt a little bit of hope. 

Working together, we tried to corral the dog. He darted down the easement, a wide dirt access road that runs beneath the massive steel power lines bisect my neighborhood. 

I jumped back into my car and sped around to cut the dog off. Opal (the woman's name turned out to be Opal) chased the dog on foot. 

The dog cut across the street and into the next part of the easement before I got there. Opal jumped into my car and we raced to the next one. This time I jumped out and cornered the dog. He juked past me and I gave chase. I yelled at Opal to take my car and meet me at the end of the alley. She did, and I chased the dog this time. At the end of the alley was a dead-end, and we were sure we had him now. But no, as we pincered him into a corner, he slipped through this tiny space where a block wall met a wooden fence, and he was gone into someone's back yard. That person had metal fencing on the other side and the Chihuahua easily slipped through and was gone. 

Opal and I trudged back through the dusty alley back to my car and I drove her back to her car. I thanked her for her help, we introduced ourselves, and then said goodbye. We hadn't succeeded but at least we tried. 

My house is on the corner, and this morning as I pulled out to work, that Chihuahua was lying there on the opposite corner by the stop sign. Looks like he'd been hit by a car. My sister had already called Animal Control so there was nothing else I could do for the dog. He was running through traffic in heaven now, being chased by a choir of angels.

She practiced a sort of manic, extrovertive, non-theistic, panenhenic mysticism. It was frustrating and hilarious 

You'd be struggling with some dire situation or moral dilemma, and then she'd appear out of nowhere, holding out a heavy ceramic plate with a huge chunk of honeycomb for your morning tea, or a slice of quiche delicately wrapped in waxed paper origami, beautiful and needlessly elaborate. 

Conversation would come easily, until she said some odd phrase that completely caught you off-guard because it was the answer to a question you hadn't thought to ask 

And it would be the solution to what had been vexing your soul when you had first put the kettle on for tea, or your stomach had begun to growl.  

She was frustrating in the way it might feel if you somehow were to suddenly realize you were just a character in someone else's funny story. Playing your part, only existing during the telling, fading away with the laughter. 

Which is ridiculous, because of course you're real; you're right here reading/writing this. 

Still, to know that the answers existed, and that someone could reach them, but that someone wasn't you....

Frustrating and hilarious. 

But damn that's good quiche. 

Happy Anniversary Remembrance Day, Blog

I forget how far back this goes. Has it been twenty years? Maybe. I'm...too lazy to look it up right now. 

Okay I'm lazy but also curious. February 22nd, 2003 was my first post. So... The blog is 21. Hmm. I guess I do feel a little old now. You couldn't just post a picture! I would have to upload it to a web hosting service, then tinker with the HTML to display the image from that link. 

I don't remember how to do that anymore. Now I just hit the little button that means "picture" and it yoinks it from my phone and sticks it in the post. I'm certain it's doing essentially the same thing as before, but it feels less futuristic somehow. 

Perhaps if I were better about anniversaries I would have thought to say something profound. Perhaps if I were better at life I would have kept a list of profound things to say at anniversaries. They happen all the time, after all. 

I should sleep.

I'm going to sleep. 

It's 85 degrees outside, Fahrenheit. I shiver and grab an extra blanket. I get a minus 5 to my constitution stat when the temperature drops below 90. 

Wait does constitution even work that way? It's been so long. 

Dungeons & Dragons is fifty years old. I should know this by now. 

Watching stylized Westerns and 19th Century Arctic expeditions. The century nomenclature has always bothered me, although it does make sense if you were there from the very beginning. 

The Franklin Expedition departed England in the year 1845... Which is in the 19th Century. 

I hate it. 

I'll probably never see the Northwest Passage in person. I'm okay with that. The Artic tundra is not my domain. 

I dwell in deserts, in the dust and the heat and the carrion birds circling over head as I pretend to lie dead; only to spring to my feet when they finally land, and laugh and laugh and laugh. 

Arms slender and strong 

Bamboo shoots 

Burst up at acute angles 

They are social but like to clump 

Soon they'll be big enough to shade themselves from the brutal desert sun

Until then I'll fly shade sails 

To buy them time

There is only one left

Out of the seven

A package arrived in the mail today. It was a chrome license plate frame. In black lettering it says "For Hire: Jaded Noir Detective".

That's kind of a long walk for that small of a joke, I thought, as I was attaching it to my car. 

I don't think I'm jaded. Not yet. It's pretty close but there's still some heart left. 

Now to slap some narwhal bumper stickers on there and my work will be done.