Merry Christmas

To you and yours, I wish you a very merry Christmas tomorrow.

And to those of you who do not celebrate Christmas:

Happy Tuesday!

Games People Play

This is going to sound like whining or some sort of plea but it’s neither, it’s just the facts: my desktop computer is past her prime. She can do everything I *need* to do (internet functions, Word, Photoshop, etc.,) but about twice a year I get a hankering for play a video game. I understand I don’t have a high-falutin’ gaming machine but I expect to be able to play games in the $9.99 bin at the Fred Meyer. But noooo. Blah, blah, blah, pixel shader 1.1 needed, blah blah blah. Last month I bought 2 games and I can’t play either. Pisses me off to no end. And I don’t want to spend the money for an actual gaming system like PlayStation3 or Xbox of Wii (which would be guaranteed to play the appropriate games) because my attention-span only justifies the $20 a year expense.

Since I can’t play high tech graphic intensive games I’ve stumbled onto an online game which has become a bit addiction: BlogShares (B$) The Fantasy Blog Stock Market.

The idea is you start with a little bit of play money and your own blog and then sell shares in your blog and trade them on the overall blog market, etc.

Think “day trading” for blogs.

Check it out, it’s free*, and … well, it doesn’t require a pixel shader 1.1 compatible graphics card.

Click HERE B$ and I get credit for your clickage (although it's not enough to get all excited about).


Photo taken from http://chanceandcary.blogspot.com

*and by free I mean you get access to better tools if you buy a $15 per year Premium membership but it still falls under that $20 figure and it's cheaper than porn... or at least that's what I've been told.

Prostitution and You

In my state (and likely in yours) prostitution is against the law. There are all sorts of compelling arguments for making the act of exchanging sex for money perfectly legal and I’m all for keeping the government out of one’s sex life…

However…

Prostitution is not a victimless crime. Who are the victims?

The Customer

Prostitutes will rip you off!

There’s the hooker rip-off that goes:

Take a paid companion to your deluxe suite at the motor lodge and in your post-coital period of incoherence she (or he) takes your wallet, your jewelry, and possibly your motor vehicle. This happens a lot.

Then there’s the hooker rip-off that goes:

Accompany your temporary love connection to HER (or his) suite at the motor lodge and just inside the doorway her (or his) friend or friends beat the living crap out of you. Then they take your wallet, your jewelry, and possibly your motor vehicle. This qualifies as ‘no happy ending.’

The Sex Worker

Hookers get the crap beaten out of them by their customers, the coworkers, and their supervisors. Not all pimps are like Huggy Bear.

Hookers get raped and hookers get killed.

I’ll say that again: Prostitutes get killed.

Very few people deserve to die a violent death.

And then there are the drugs.

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll might be all sexy in the movies. But any sort of work to support your drug habit must suck. Okay that’s an unfortunate pun.

Hookers and drugs go together like Forrest and Jenny. And yes, sometimes people die at the end of the story of a mysterious virus and leave widowers and motherless children.

All of these crimes are underreported because of the nature of the business. If you are already engaging in an illegal enterprise, chances are you won’t find a sympathetic ear when it all goes bad. See also: reporting your drug dealer stole from you.

No one deserves to have violence perpetrated against them. I am sympathetic to any victim of violence in any setting (at least professionally) yet I’ll admit that it’s pretty funny sometimes to talk to some guy who had his car stolen by a prostitute.

You can tell from the get-go that they are leaving something important out of the story. There’s usually a lot of um’s and ah’s and hemming and hawing. Especially hawing. All kinds of hawing.

I’m professional but there is a point all the circular answers that I usually have to say “Jimmy, I don’t suppose this new friend of yours was a prostitute, was she?” Sometimes they come clean (again with the bad puns).

The most comic/tragic scenario is when the husband was driving his wife’s vehicle and the hooker steals it. So he’s definitely going to have some ‘splainin’ to do at home.

I feel for that guy. And by “feel for” I mean “oh man, it sucks to be you.”

So what’s our lesson today, boys and girls?

When it comes to a "ho," just say "no."

Photo found at http://carynnotincluded.blogspot.com

Check out her blog, there is good stuff in there.

sometimes it's them, sometimes it's us

Them:

I took a call Friday at 10:00am from a guy reporting his wife as a missing person. They have a paper route and she got up at 02:30 to start the delivery process and he was too sick or too tired or both to do the route so she left by herself in something of a huff over his lack of participation. When he woke up just before 10, he became concerned because even angry she should have been home by then. The newspaper wasn’t very helpful telling him if there were complaints about missed papers.

So I started colleting information and I got to the part of the conversation which goes: does she have another job?

Caller: yeah, she works for the State, the Department of (Blah blah blah).

Me: um, would she normally be at work right now?

Caller: uuuuuuuum. wait. Yes, yes she should. It's Friday, right? Oh man, I thought it was Saturday.

Another missing person case closed.

Us:

A coworker got a call about a male and female having a physical fight inside a vehicle. To clarify what was actually happening we are trained to elicit specific details. Unfortunately in the heat of the moment a calltaker might choose the wrong words.

Calltaker: You saw them physically fighting? Okay, tell me what you saw: was he slapping her or, um, fisting her?

Eeeyow.