Category ►►► News of the Weird
June 13, 2008
The Outlaw Bikers
I edit a small community newspaper in rural San Diego County called The Roadrunner, and last weekend my community had an experience the likes of which I don’t remember in my 30 years in the field.
We were “occupied” territory. Over the weekend the outlaw biker gang the Mongols, 500 or so of them, roared through on their way to the La Jolla Indian Reservation, to a small campground along the San Luis Rey River, for a “retreat.”
The Mongols have been designated an “outlaw” group by the California Attorney General’s office. There are actually four “outlaw” motorcycle gangs so identified by the FBI, and they are the Pagans, Hells Angels, Outlaws MC, and Bandidos. All are called “outlaw” because their primary source of funding is selling drugs, trafficking stolen goods and extortion. Their status is such that they can be prosecuted under the racketeering statutes (i.e. RICO).
They have nothing to do with respectable groups of people who get together to ride their Harleys for recreation and whose one “outlaw” characteristic may be that they like to play Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” loudly on the stereo when they ride.
Nice people. But I suppose even bad guys deserve to get away from it all and get back to nature occasionally. Hence the retreat.
I think the Mongols is a particularly appropriate name for an outlaw gang since in many ways, the modern motorcycle gang is rather like the migratory bands of old, such as the Bedouins of the Arab deserts or, if you will, the Mongols. Like sharks, they live to move. If they have their way they would never stay in one place for very long.
Way up at the top of this article I said that for a weekend we were “occupied” territory. I don’t mean by the Mongols. I mean by the police, who deployed hundreds of officers in a degree of force that I didn’t see even at the height of the wildfires last October.
I believe that one reason for the overwhelming show of force that this visit was met with was because there were rumors that the Hell’s Angels, another outlaw biker gang, were planning to visit the same area, although not the same campground.
The Mongols have an ongoing blood feud with the Hell’s Angels. In 2002 they clashed in Laughlin, Nevada. Guns blazed. Blood flowed. Worse -- because it happened in a casino -- the flow of money stopped for several hours.
The focus of law enforcment’s efforts was along State Highway 76, which runs from Oceanside to Lake Henshaw, particularly along perhaps 20 miles between Interstate 15 and Lake Henshaw. Along this strip of road things were, to put it mildly, a little unreal.
I was out on that highway quite a bit during the weekend. I saw patrols of Sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers in convoys of six squad cars apiece, moving up and down the highway. If the Mongols remind me of the nomads of old, these folks reminded me of the cavalry patrols of the Old West.
In addition to the patrols shuttling back and forth along the length of the highway, the police were also stationed at strategic intersections, with only a mile or two intervals between them. Here groups of cops, often outfitted in SWAT gear, with automatic rifles at the ready, giving everyone the eye as they drove by.
Living in Iraq must be like that.
I asked the Sheriff’s lieutenant in charge how many deputies were deployed. He declined to answer, saying that he didn’t want to reveal the details of the deployment in case he needed to do it again.
I had a photographer out that weekend too. He visited the Indian reservation where he ran into one or two of the outlaw bikers. They treated him with respect, but asked that he not take their photos.
The deputies were a little less polite, for whatever reason, and also in the majority of cases didn’t want their pictures taken. But they were on high alert, I suppose, so being polite was probably not part of the job. However, in my opinion, it is when tension is at its height, and the pressure is on, that we need to keep a watch on the watchers. In a free society that includes being allowed to take pictures.
I was never stopped as I went about my business that weekend, but quite a few people were, mostly, it seemed motorcyclists, although a heavily bearded friend of mine who is a wood sculptor and wears blue jean overalls and drives a beat up pickup truck was also stopped, or so I’m told.
There are a lot of eccentric people who live in San Diego’s Backcountry. If you stop them all you will create a bit of a traffic bottleneck. Fortunately the police didn’t stop them all.
The news was that after all that, there was no news to speak of. I’m not one who faulted the police for overreacting. I think they did exactly the right thing. But it did give me a creepy feeling to get a taste, and not a sweet one, of what it is like to live under occupation. A police state, even for the best of reasons -- and aren’t the reasons always the best? -- is not a pretty thing.
Hatched by Dave Ross on this day, June 13, 2008, at the time of 9:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 24, 2007
Cindy Sheehan's Day of Out-of-Tunement Manifesto
I rarely do this, as you know: I rarely link to some piece and say simply "read this." (I'm too in love with the sound of my own fingers typing on a keyboard.)
But here's an exception. Read Cindy Sheehan's Yom Kippur "sermon," delivered at Michael Lerner's Beyt Tikkun "synogogue;" you will be -- if not exactly glad, then at least agape. (Rabbi Lerner is Hillary Clinton's mentor, author of the Politics of Meaning and other works of Socialist agit-prop masquerading as theology.)
My response (I love this) is entirely contained in the list of categories I had to attach to this post.
(Well, one more thing. It has always been my understanding that Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, is a day for each person to atone for what he, personally, has done wrong -- not "atone" for his enemies failing to live up to his own lofty standards, apologize for all the times America hasn't followed his lead, or wallow in self-righteous indignation that nobody listens to him. 'Nuff said; read the list of categories above.)
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 24, 2007, at the time of 2:36 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 26, 2007
Shoot the Chute
This is just kind of a creepy story; I'm only interested because it almost exactly parallels a book proposal I pitched a number of years ago... which was rejected for being too unrealistic.
Two gals are best friends (this is in the town of Opglabbeek, Belgium). They're both skydivers... but one starts having an affair with the other gal's weirdo boyfriend.
The cheatin' skydiver, her girlfriend, the cheatin' boyfriend, and an extra in a red shirt jump out of a perfectly good airplane. They form a "star." Four jumpers split apart and pull their ripcords; three parachutes pop open.
The cheatin' girl plummets earthward. Astonishingly, even her reserve chute fails. After a 13,000-foot freefall, she smacks into the ground in front of a bunch of spectators, planting herself deep enough that all they had to do was shovel some dirt over the top.
But when the authorities review the footage from her helmet cam, they realize that both her chutes had been sabotaged... and now her best friend, the girl whose boyfriend was having an affair with the dead girl, has been arrested for premeditated murder.
Here's a clip from the eulogy by the dead girl's sister:
At Mrs Van Doren’s funeral, about 1,000 people heard her sister deliver a bitter eulogy. “You did all you could during that final jump to save yourself,” she was quoted as saying in the Belgian press. “But someone did not want you to live.”
Huh, maybe I should dust off my proposal and make the rounds again... nah -- now they'd just say, "it's too derivative!"
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 26, 2007, at the time of 1:21 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
April 9, 2006
Be Off, Or I'll Kick You Downstairs!
Mentally unstable Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is now threatening to expel U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield from the country... for the crime of having been hounded by a Venezuelan mob.
No, really. This isn't a rib. Yesterday, an independent mob of independent protesters independently decided to chase after Brownfield's motorcade, pelting his car with independent eggs and independently thumping on the windows whenever the vehicle was slowed by traffic. A police car tailed the independents, doing nothing to stop them... but of course, there was no connection between the hooligans and the Chavez government; they are totally independent.
And today, Chavez went on TV to publicly threaten to punish our ambassador to Venezuela by expelling him:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the U.S. ambassador was "provoking the Venezuelan people" and threatened Sunday to expel the American diplomat, whose convoy was chased by pro-government protesters.
"I'm going to throw you out of Venezuela if you continue provoking the Venezuelan people," Chavez said in a nationally televised speech addressed to U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield.
And how, exactly, did Ambassador Brownfield provoke the Venezuelan people?
Brownfield had visited a ballpark in Caracas' Catia slums, a Chavez stronghold, to donate baseball equipment to a youth league.
The Los Angeles Times, hardly a chum of President Bush or his ambassadors, gives a few more details about Ambassador Brownfield's crime spree (hat tip Captain Ed):
Brownfield was handing out baseball gloves, bats and catchers' equipment to 140 youths at a sports stadium when several dozen protesters showed up and began throwing objects at the ambassador, U.S. officials said.
An official who identified himself as police commander Luis Villasana then approached Brownfield and ordered him and his staff out of the stadium.
Brownfield was accompanied by two former Major League Baseball players from Venezuela and had addressed a crowd that included the youths' parents. Before leaving, he told reporters at the scene that his intention had been to show baseball "as transcending politics."
Protesters on about 12 motorcycles then chased the ambassador's motorcade after he left the stadium and continued to throw objects at the car and pound on it when his vehicle became stuck in traffic, witnesses said.
This particular riot was witnessed by many Venezuelans. Presumably most of the country then writhed as they suffered through the spectacle of el Presidente threatening to expel an ambassador for his perfidy in handing out baseball equipment to a local youth baseball league.
If they follow the news, they must also know that Chavez repeatedly accuses the United States of sundry bizarre plots and conspiracies against his life (exploding cigars, perhaps?) They know that their President-for-Life has danced as close as he can to initiating a war with the U.S. without actually declaring one. He has openly buddied up to North Korea, Iran, and al-Qaeda; he foments Communist revolution throughout Latin America; and he makes constant threats to attack America with the mighty Venezuelan Army. Back to AP:
Chavez says the United States [is] plotting against him, an accusation American officials deny. The United States, however, has said Chavez is stifling democracy.
His subjects must be wondering "what have we gotten ourselves into?" I suspect they live in perpetual fear that someday, somebody is actually going to take the wild, Tourettes-like outbursts of their leader seriously.
Huh. Maybe Hugo Chavez is a Democrat, after all!
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 9, 2006, at the time of 4:46 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 12, 2006
The Spirit Was Willing...
Something meaty to chew on:
Scientists: Donner Family Not Cannibals
By Scott Sonner
Associated Press
Jan 12, 2005Cannibalism has been documented at the Sierra Nevada site where most of the Donner Party's 81 members were trapped during the brutal winter of 1846-47, but 21 people, including all the members of the George and Jacob Donner families, were stuck six miles away because a broken axle had delayed them.
No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, Calif.
All I can say is -- thank God the tiki bar is open!
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 12, 2006, at the time of 8:03 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 10, 2006
Of Human Bindage
From Local6.com News, via Drudge:
Some Of Nation's Best Libraries Have Books Bound In Human Skin
The practice of binding books in human skin was not uncommon in centuries past, even if it was not always discussed in polite society.
Sometimes it's best not to say anything at all.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 10, 2006, at the time of 6:49 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 7, 2006
The Nutcracker Sweet
Soap-opera city!
I've been sort of following off-and-on the story of the honeymooning couple on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship: she was found passed out "on a floor in a corridor far from the couple's cabin;" he wasn't found at all. A blood trail ran from the balcony of their cabin to the lifeboats, but she claims no memory of what happened after a vicious argument they had in the bar.
One witness claims that the argument escalated to the point where "she," Jennifer Hagel-Smith of Cromwell, CT, hauled off and kicked "him," George Allen Smith IV of Greenwich, CT, in the yodel-a-hee-hos:
[Witness Margarita] Chaves said she was in the bar with her friends when another group introduced them to Smith and his wife. She said the couple was heavily intoxicated and Hagel-Smith was leaning on a male passenger.
"We were afraid a fight was going to start," Chaves said. "She was flirting with him."
Dominick Mazza, a 24-year-old auditor from New Jersey, said Hagel-Smith was leaning on him because she was drunk, but he did not believe she was flirting.
Smith then began calling his wife names, the witnesses agreed.
"She kind of pushed him away lightly and suddenly stood up and kicked him in the private [sic] and stumbled out of the bar," Mazza said.
The next day, "he" was found missing.
I know this is just tacky tabloid talk, but I find it fascinating. I clearly remember our own honeymoon in Hawaii: we flew into Honolulu, then took an island hopper to Maui. We stayed a few days there, snorkeling and lounging on the beach (or around the pool; after six or seven Mai Tais, I don't remember).
We went to a luau. Then we flew to the Big Island, where we wandered up to take a look at Mt. Kilauea, where I interviewed one of the vulcanologists there.
We had rented a Jeep, and we drove around the island until we got to the site of a recent lava eruption; we wanted to hike out to get a real close look at the lava.
we started wandering vaguely in the direction indicated by a few other tourists. Just then, we noticed a passel of Germans beetling out in the same direction, following a guide who seemed to know what he was doing. Despite not having paid the guide a dime, Sachi and I followed after as "free riders."
Alas, the guide was tall and the German tourists were uniformly twenty-three, blond-haired, and six-foot five, or so it seemed (even the girls): we had to practically run after them. As we were sprinting over solidified lava flow laced with leftover lava tubes that collapsed the moment one stepped upon them, this was a treacherous undertaking. But we realized that if we ever let the guide get too far ahead, we would be stranded there in the middle of (ahem ) an active lava flow field, which didn't seem particularly romantic.
We busted a gut, but we kept up. It's a miracle neither of us broke an ankle. But eventually, we began to feel distinctly hot; we also started to hear a dull roar. Then finally, the guide stopped and pointed. "That's it," he said, pointing directly forward.
We stared eagerly, looking for some red running river... but the lava was actually silver, not red -- and we almost missed it. In fact, if the guide hadn't stopped, we might well have actually stepped into the molten stuff! It was virtually invisible, just another vein of rock -- until a closer look revealed that the rock was flowing.
Just to make sure, I picked up a hunk of obsidian and heaved it into the silver stream. Sure enough, where the volcanic glass penetrated was bright red, just a rouge hole in the silver lining.
The heat was terrific! We were downwind from the flow, and even standing fifteen or twenty feet away was scorching my eyebrows and burning my face. On the other side of the molten river, a different group of tourists went right up to the edge of the stream, leaning over for a real close look. If the wind had changed, I'm quite convinced some of them wouldn't have made it out alive.
We finally headed back... and I was surprised to discover, when we finally made it back to the lava information desk (yes, there was one), that Sachi and I were less tuckered out that the tall, thin German tourists. Since we were neither tall nor thin (nor German), I thought it a major accomplishment. And we got some great pictures, though the edges are a little crispy.
We moved on from there to Kauai, where we did some hiking, then took a boat ride around to the other side of the island and did some more skin diving. It was here that a sea turtle swam too close to me. I latched onto its shell and let it tow me a for a bit; but it eventually figured out why it was moving so slowly, and it dove very deep (about forty feet, which is a lot when one is simply holding one's breath). I let go and stroked to the surface.
Sachi had unwisely allowed herself to be talked into taking a noodle to float on; she had been fine until then, but bobbing up and down like a cork made her seasick.
We had a great time. The food isn't all that special in Hawaii, but we managed to find edible restaurants. On that trip, we steered clear of Honolulu, except for having to utilize the airport. The last time we were there was entirely spent in the Honolulu area... and I discovered why I'd wanted to skip that city the first time: it's just a medium sized city with nothing spectacular, nothing "Hawaiian" about it.
All in all, I'd say our honeymoon was an unqualified success. And you know what? In the entire two weeks we were there, not once did Sachi ever kick me in the yin-yangs, and neither of us turned up missing.
I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get a little suspicous in the Smith/Hagel-Smith case.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 7, 2006, at the time of 5:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
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