Now that my headache is finally gone....

For those who, for whatever reason, hit gremlin.net to see what’s going on, and then stop: there’s stuff going on. But, to date, it’s been on the board and at newsofthestoopid.com. Eventually, it’ll be at KingStoopids.com, I suppose—probably including this. But, since gremlin.net is a safer, less structured mess than NotS is, it makes more sense to go into all the revised detail here, instead of there.

So, here’s what’s happened. So far.

Our story begins in 1997. Because that’s when gremlin.net started. Also, it’s when gremlin.net had a chatroom. Which is pretty much how I first encountered Hunter: she was a regular in there, spending hours per day talking to everyone else. She was sixteen and had a strong interest in genetics and virology; so we had a bit to talk about.

Then, in 1998, she joined the army. Mostly to become a virologist and to play with viral warfare. There are those who’d consider that kinda crazy; but, at the time, she was more or less sane.

Unfortunately, it was Clinton’s army, in that transitional phase from Death before Dishonour to Veggies before Dessert. Meaning that everyone above about E2 was resisting the change and generally taking it out on the new recruits. So, by the time she got out, which partially involved me talking to an O3 [I could go into some detail on that; but I might have to do it again sometime; I might, in fact, have to do something like it regarding what’s going on right now], one of her disabilities was PostTraumatic Stress Disorder. Which, as Carlin has explained, is shellshock with a happy, convoluted euphemism over it.

Which means that, while Hunter’s okay in chatrooms where she’s not technically confronting anyone, she’s a little different offline where she can’t answer the front door. She okay with me [partly because of that thing with the O3], but, with strangers...it took her a couple years of hiding behind me and watching the same guy at Starbucks before she could develop the ability to ask if she could maybe have some tea. It’s a shellshock thing: she can’t operate as usual in society, because everyone out there is the enemy; and she’s a bit outnumbered. She can’t even sit at a restaurant for long, because it’s full of enemies and she gets claustrophobic. That sort of thing.

One factor of all this is that she’s not too happy about hitting a grocery store when it’s full of people. So, when she needs more soda and stuff, she’s better at waiting until everyone’s asleep, including most of the people working at grocery stores. Which brings us up to last night. Or, really, two in the morning on 3rd June, since which I’ve slept once, making it last night. Ish. She’s out of soda, it’s two in the morning, and the only place open nearby is KingStoopids.

In fact, it’s KingSoopers, which everyone I’ve ever met calls KingStoopids. That I was able to get KingStoopids.com yesterday [whatever day that was, before I got some sleep] was a bit surprising; but that’s its own thing.

So, we walked over to KingStoopids. Which is an important factor. It’s maybe a mile from here, so it’s an easy walk. The method is to wander over with an empty backpack or two, get soda, get outside with it, get the soda into the backpacks, and walk back home. We’ve been doing this once or twice a week since buying the house in 2004. It’s not a big deal unless there’s a blizzard; then it’s a little upsetting.

As for KingStoopids: it’s a mess. This is a rich neighbourhood, so the place has hardwood floors and speciality foods and brandnamed microwaves and blenders and things. But it’s also got outdated buildingcodes. At night, when it’s only transients and shoplifters out on the streets, they close up the big friendly main doors, leaving only the customer service exit open. Which has always bugged me a bit. Partly because, if I’m awake at two in the morning, I’m not good enough to use the real doors; partly because, as a nominal cripple, there are still nights on which my knee isn’t too happy about having to wrench open a hinged door which swings outward before I can pivot around the thing, get inside, trigger the automated exit, limp like the wind back outside to grab a cart, and counterlimp back in with it before the automated doors close. I’ve been meaning to say something, probably including the letters ADA, about that for a while now.

Last night [or whatever] my knee was okay, but only because all the painkillers I’d been taking for the headache I’d had since May, which hadn’t killed the headache, had at least got me to forget about my knee. Not that having a headache and being reminded that I’m some sort of criminalistic mendicant who can’t be trusted with the real entrance does good things for a headache. But that, at this point, is just kinda life as usual.

So we get inside and get the soda. Then we wander around a bit looking for munchies, largely because I’m not sure I can get back home without passing out. It’s a headache thing. I need kilocalories. Maybe it’s also a metabolism thing. Don’t judge me: at least I’m thin. It should probably be mentioned, in all lament, that this will probably prove to have been the last time in years to come that Hunter was okay with having me stray an aisle or two away from her at a grocery store in the middle of the night without having a panicattack and shutting down for several hours. Though I’ve since learned that she’d noticed at the time that some creepy guy in a cheap outfit was stalking her the whole time we were in there; I’ll take her word for it: as much as my head hurt, I was having trouble noticing whether a Cuisinart qualified as munchies; I’ve since concluded that it doesn’t. I got some JackLink’s A1 beefjerky into the cart and we were done.

That brings us to getting the hell outta this snobby little store, stalkers notwithstanding. Because no one evidently works at KingStoopids after dark, all the checkout lanes are characteristically closed, leaving only this horrid little bot to deal with. I’ve heard that these machines are spawning and festering throughout the country now, so you might know what I’m talking about here: a large computer with a small CPU allowing [forcing] You the Consumer to scan the barcodes of everything you’re buying from this happy fluorescent automat, one thing at a time, before hoping to hell that the weightplate beneath the suspended sack will believe that you’ve got one case of soda into the bag before scanning the next, identical case of soda you’d had in the cart. The system is doomed; apparently, I’m the only one who’s noticed.

But, after a few minutes of fighting with Edgar the Computer from Electric Dreams [I hate it when cultural references are so arcane that you have to identify the source], we got done, got the receipt, and got going.

At which point Hunter’s phantom stalker appeared. Possibly an employee [though we had our doubts, since an employee might be employed to run a damned checkout lane]; probably an idiot [it had the outfit for one]. I’ve already covered all the dialogue as well as I can remember it over at http://ks.newsofthestoopid.com so I won’t clone the kilobytes here; what counts is that he selfimportantly if uncertainly informed us that he had to search our backpacks now.

I declined his offer and kept walking until I was out the door where I could light a cigarette. Which in retrospect was stupid. Because he got in front of Hunter, if not in front of me, and physically prevented her from leaving. Call it what you like: kidnapping, abduction, felonious detainment, unlawful arrest; her hostage situation had begun.

So: two things. First, and my fault, if I’d stayed behind her as we left, watching what this stalker was up to, he’d have kidnapped me too, at which point I’ve got this fun rule: if you kidnap me in a grocery store, I reserve the right to light a cigarette after the amount of time it would have taken me to get outside had I not been kidnapped; call a cop if you like, I wouldn’t mind making a statement myself. Second, and his fault, he’s kidnapped a shellshocked disabled veteran who took two years to trust the Starbucks guy well enough to ask for tea.

Should I expect this idiot to have known that she was a shellshocked disabled vet? No more than I should have been expected to know that KingStoopids was a gametrail of kidnappers. Now, of course, we all know both these things: don’t kidnap Hunter; don’t go to KingStoopids without a gun.

All of which is retrospective. As it played out at the time, I was outside with a cigarette, and she was inside with a kidnapper. Again, the dialogue is at the other site, along with the footage.

Something else I’m not sure about, and I can only blame the headache trying to convince me that blenders were edible, is why I didn’t just go the hell back inside and, optionally, kill the kidnapper to death. Sure, the doors aren’t cripplefriendly; but I probably could have gone back to the hinged door, got it open, got inside, and smoked at the guy. I didn’t. I kinda wish I had.

Ultimately, the guy forced Hunter out of the way, grabbed the backpacks, slapped them to the floor [I think he tried to slam the to the floor, but backpacks full of air don’t tend to slam properly], unzipped them, gawked at them, and meekly told them ‘That’s weird’, which is when I came within a tenth of a second of consoling the moron with ‘Awww; who’s deh stoopid crimmynell’ but decided against it.

Mostly because backpacks are inanimate and replaceable That this idiot had pursesnatched and searched them was a crime, but not major damage. Now, though, Hunter’s angry. And that’s been known to get ahead of the shellshock and allow her to confront an idiot. She heads for the rack of commentcards, asking for this idiot’s name. His reaction was to grab for her, which woulda worked if she hadn’t shifted out of his way. Backpacks aside, we’ve got this problem now; that got me to remember that I’d actually thought to grab my phone before we left the house.

Funny. In leaving the house, I’d grabbed the phone thinking that it wasn’t impossible that I’d eventually need it to call an ambulance; my headache was about that bad. Instead, I now needed it to call the police.

Then I remembered two more things: that the closest school of squadcars was likely five minutes away, and that my mobilephone records video. So I switched to cameramode and aimed it at the guy. Mostly to stun him into realising, I suppose, that, whatever he did next was about to be filmed and EMailed from the phone to my secured server. Though, in retrospect again, I was probably taking a chance in hoping that a guy who didn’t know about PTSD or the laws against kidnapping would know that phones have been able to do that for a couple years now; this is the sort of twerp who, in 2008, still regards my palmtop from 1997 as a gift from the future.

That I was filming him, though, worked out amazingly. Not only did he back away from his probable plan of tearing Hunter apart to see whether any KingStoopids property was to be found in her spleen, but he got narcissistic enough to remind me, on film, that he’d searched my backpack without my permission because, as the store’s manager, it was his right and responsibility.

I debated him a bit about that, rewording his argument into the communist manifesto, which may have flustered and distracted him enough to let Hunter escape. And that was basically that. Outside, we got the stuff out of the cart and got to the sidewalk, down the street, across a couple of crosswalks, down another street to [how funny is this] Safeway, closed, but customerhappy enough to have these little umbrellatables out front; we sat down, got the stuff into the violated backpacks at last, and walked home where I could write a NotS and format a phonecammed video for webcast. If the video is hard to find at newsofthestoopid.com [the software running on the site doesn’t underline or discolour links; it emboldens them, which confuses people] it’s at http://newsofthestoopid.com/eugene.html.

The story since then....

By now...16.02 on 4th June, a few thousand people have seen last night’s article and had various things to say about it, from ‘wow do kingstoopids suck’ to ‘how could you not have known that kingstoopids suck’; to the latter, I can only say that, while I knew they sucked, I hadn’t known they were Gitmo. Now I do; and knowing is half the battle.

The other half is more fun. Of the people I’ve talked to or heard from, none has yet tried in any way to defend KingStoopids’ crimes [meaning that, to date, the EMail Hunter sent to KingStoopids Corporate asking about their policy of holding disabled vets hostage for saving the planet by walking to a store with a backpackshaped purse containing a driver’s licence, creditcards, and housekeys she was in no hurry to hand over to a kidnapper hasn’t yet got a reply]; but, lawyers, a judge, other KingStoopids employees, managers and owners of other retail stores, et cetera, have all assured me that, legally and ethically and intelligently, you do not ever kidnap a suspected shoplifter; the corporate and legal procedure is invariably to confront the suspected shoplifter, ask him to wait while you call the police, see whether the police think you have a case, have the police detain the suspected shoplifter on site while they review the evidence you might have and determine whether it constitutes probable cause [exempli gratia: a security video showing the suspected shoplifter stashing things into a backpack; not the word of a stalking kidnapper who though he maybe witnessed something], and then, if all those requirements are properly met, the police, and only the police, can conjecture exigent circumstances and search and seize whatever the suspected shoplifter might have stolen. Which incidentally leads to two important points.

First. Provided that the police have done everything correctly before searching a backpack, yet still found nothing of stolen property, they and the idiot who called them are still liable for legal and civil damages. So there’s still that risk, whether that lessens the comparative risk of merely kidnapping a disabled vet and performing an illegal search while impersonating an officer with the best case scenario of finding something entirely inadmissible at the end.

Second. It’s not shoplifting until you’ve left the store. In point of legal fact, you, as a shopper, can walk into a store, use a backpack as a shopping cart, fill it up, and get to the edge of the premises before you can be rationally suspected of intending to steal anything; until you’ve left, there remains the probability that you intend to go to the checkout lane and pay for everything. Which I suppose is why you see all that stuff near the entrance, on the public side of the registers, which you can somehow magically attempt to buy without going to prison for touching the stuff in the first place.

All that said, everyone I’ve talked to or heard from hopes that I’ll take this to the police and press charges, or at the least sue KingStoopids to hell for several dozen crimes and damages. With one exception. Hunter. Who’s back to being shellshocked and unable to ask the Starbucks guy for tea. She’s unable to contemplate talking to the police, who are as much uniformed control officers as everyone from E3 to O2 in the army were, about any of this or anything else. Starbucks aside, she’s never been much for answering the door and dealing with the uniformed UPS guy who needs a signature for an XBox.

Which is why I haven’t yet told the police. So far as I know. Unless there are a few cops who happen to read this stuff online. Who, in the apotheosis of irony, would lack the probable cause to subpoena InterNIC for my records so they could get hold of me and discuss my options. Maybe someone at KingStoopids can use their soviet policies to get that information for the constabulatory.

So I’m not sure what to do next. That I’ve waited...around thirty-six hours without having done anything more than got a percentage of the world to laugh at and swear to avoid KingStoopids in the future is acceptable: it took me this long [maybe longer] to get Hunter to calm down about it all. No one’s likely to fault me, without angering a jury, for dealing with a basketcased shellshocked disabled vet before hurrying out to call the police to the scene. Whether the police can process my statement without having to talk to Hunter, and whether there’s any way for me to go give them a statement without leaving Hunter here alone, are questions. Though in fact those are questions that the police might be able to answer. Maybe I’ll go ask them in a minute.

So, for now, the story ends. I’m sure there will be more eventually. Probably, one day, KingStoopids Corporate will have worked out their damagecontrol spin and Emailed Hunter back to...who knows; maybe they’ll report that Eugene N Manager is now running a store in Peru; maybe they’ll report that the security video of the only exit from three in the morning on 3rd June has been misplaced indefinitely so they’re unable to confirm or deny any events which might have occurred. Whatever the news, I don’t acknowledge gagorders or write retractions; the best I can promise are updates. And I suspect there’ll be updates soonish and often.

More later....

Tags: KingStoopids | NotS