2002-10-25 - 11:54 p.m.

Sniper

Well, they finally caught the sniper who's been shooting folks in the Washington, DC area. While I'm as relieved as anyone else is that they caught the guy, I'm a little disturbed by the fact that at the end he (or they) seemed to be helping the cops by dropping all sorts of clues that helped them narrow the search. I have the disquieting feeling that the sniper could have kept potting civilians for quite some time before getting caught if he hadn't decided to communicate with authorities.

There is something just so fucked up about this. The people who got shot had nothing in common except they happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I'm trying to understand someone who feels so useless and powerless that the only way that they can feel they exist is to play God with the lives of random strangers.

We actually have a little problem like that around here, except it's more silly than serious. There are some unknown people, definitely more than one of them, that are in the habit of cruising down the street that the Hamster Palace is on, and hurling eggs at people. They also like to scream insults, in fact I may have had a run-in with them myself here.

Their main targets seem to be people who have just left the convenience store down the block. Someone will be minding their own business, then they'll get hit by an egg, tossed from a speeding car. Generally, by the time the person realizes what has happened the car is too far away to even tell what kind of car it was. These attacks seem to nearly all take place when it's dark, making identification even harder.

Seriously, isn't life difficult and annoying enough without random people fucking with you for absolutely no reason?

I don't have to be any kind of FBI profiler to figure out that it's probably some young guys, just goofing around. However, they seem to be past the usual age for such pranks, since at least one of them is old enough to drive.

What got me thinking about this? The other day I came within a few minutes of getting nailed myself. Instead, they hit the front of the store. Also, as I've been walking along the streets I keep seeing chunks of eggshell. Recently they've stopped using white eggs, and started using brown. Why? Does the color affect trajectory?

Of course this is a very trivial example, compared to what was happening down in Washington, and I'm trying to keep it in perspective as the petty annoyance it is. However, even such stupid stuff can turn deadly - I recently read a story about a man who roughed up a kid who hit him with an egg, and the kid and his friends responded by beating the man to death. I'm looking for the article, but I can't find it. I guess the message is - if a kid hits you with an egg - let it slide. There's a lot worse that can happen to you.