Click images for desktop size: "Explosion" by Timelikeit My puppy has a new game. She thinks its funny. When I go to bed she stands at the foot of the bed and presses her head down very hard on my toes. When I look at her she smiles and jumps up next to me, looking down, staring and grinning. Then she lies down next to me and looks adorable and loving. If not for the fact that she thinks it hysterical to spend the next ten minutes trying to push me out of my single bed it would be a sweet daily moment.
It is anyway.
Sometimes she sleeps with her head under my arm and it feels like the world is far away.
It isn't.
I live now in a small town. They don't like to think this is a small town but it is. With cable and satellite TV everybody in the world is hip to the latest trends and fads. Everybody thinks they're cool, with it and small town rich. With the internet they can order anything. I figure that's why baggy clothes have become popular . . .
This makes them smug and all knowing. They misuse slang, deny others rights they demand for themselves and generally behave like people everywhere always have. I think the difference is that they don't have a diverse population to expose the fallacies they concoct. they don't have confrontation, and when they do have it they behave like Catholic Priests knowing their Bishop will protect them.
About a mile and a half from my puppy's and my house is a ratty looking bar. They call it a night club.
Maybe to them it is. Any other corner of the world its a grotty neighborhood tavern.
I've noticed that in small towns like this there is always a tiny barrio. In this town it means a restaurant with a salsa bar and good burritos and ceveche.
This club is in the barrio and even has an hispanic sounding name: “La Zona”.
What makes La Zona interesting is that it is owned by a deputy sheriff. Most of the employees are also deputy sheriffs.
Its not a cop bar. Maybe it was opened with that intent but economics take things where they want you to go, not always where you dream.
What makes La Zona with all these Sheriffs working there interesting is that they sold crack . . . out of the bar/club. It also appears they fenced stolen goods and most interesting is that they operated a murder for hire business. At least thats what they were arraigned for.
Cops have to make a living too. Cops also have yuppie dreams of American wealth.
At first I was surprised by the murder for hire business. Then I figured that people in small towns must hate too, maybe even more than their big city counterparts. I wonder if life in this town is cheap or expensive and how much hate you have to have to put a dollar amount to it.
Would you kill some one for five bucks or ten thousand? If it were five hundred would you set up a biannual hit list, work your way up the corporate ladder or expunge the world of those ex-significant others?

Click images for desktop size: "Flames" by J Bensch Is their a premium attached when you have a professional killer, a cop, doing it for you?
They never put the interesting stuff in the newspaper.
What I find odd though is that this wasn't a big front page story. In LA and London and Chicago it would have been all over the papers, TV, radio for weeks. In a small town it was just a blip. Maybe it goes on all the time and doesn't perk anyones interest.
“Did you hear the cops are running crack, stealing and killing people for money?”
“Again? Oh well, but did you hear that the high school team had to forfeit some games?”
“What! We ought to string him up!”
Not making a point here but you can't help but notice that TV and the papers have mentioned the team every day and no mention of all about cops selling their guns to anyone who walked through the door.
All I'm sure of is that my puppy and I take good care of each other, even if there's times when it seems funny to try and push me out of bed.

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