I couldn’t sleep last night. Two reasons. One’s not a good one: I had a mashup of the “awoos” from “The Monster Mash” and INXS’ “Devil Inside” stuck in my head. As earworms go it’s one of the more bizarre one and I think it’s entirely of my own devising.
I don’t think that’s something I could possibly have heard anywhere.
The second is a pretty solid one though. 5am Monday morning a house in the neighbourhood was burglarized by three armed men who tied up the residents and stole laptops and tvs and cellphones and a red purse. That’s about 9 blocks down the road if you’re taking the long way, and though that translates to a LOT of row houses betwixt us and the scene of the crime, it reminds me of how absolutely helpless one can be.
Lulu’s Fate in the house!
There isn’t a lot of information out there. The house was “broken into”, no information as to how forcible that was. The assailants were unknown to the assailees – so it sounds like they weren’t hiding their identities, but there’s no description. The only real information is that it happened at just before 5am and it sounds like they whirlwinded around the house and did their deeds in about 10 minutes wielding a “long gun”. Not even sure if that means a long-barreled pistol or a “long-gun” – like some kind of rifle or something.
I Live on the edge of a massive city. According to my zip code I Live IN a massive city. That comes with all of its urban problems, and indeed I’ve had my car broken into in this town, Heather’s had HER car broken into in this town, and last night someone broke into a FRIEND’S car at my open mic in this town – but Charm City tends to be either gun in your face on the street or rock through your window on the street – house burglaries are big news. Home invasions (as far as I know) are pretty rare or instigated by associations (i.e. the only other break in, tie up, steal stuff, terrorize incident I’ve heard of in Catonsville was like drug-dealer related or something).
Jeff Miller in the house at the Teavolve Cafe & Lounge open mic in Baltimore, MD.
In any case, it’s a big area. There’s a LOT of homes here and many of them are occupied by people a lot better off than I. I can’t get a dog, but maybe I SHOULD look into some home security upgrades…. I Live on a street with two police officers and a department of corrections officer and I know for a fact that plenty of my neighbours are gun owners… but this trio has been successful once and the power trip involved in having other people’s Lives in the palm of your hand is probably quite a high… they’ll no doubt be trying it again.
I worried about that and jumped every time Juno knocked something over upstairs. A chance meeting with mOsno at 1.30am on the stairs had my heart pounding.
Horrible things happen in our world, and I think that there’s been a surplus of horrible in the news recently. Having something like this strike so close to home seems to have a lot of the local community on edge. The coming of summer will make it worse.
