Of All The People…

So I took MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority –the f’ing train, alright?!) to work for the first time on Friday. I’ve been driving to and fro all week and it’s been kind of a pain because traffic is really bad around that area, especially when I get out at around 5 or 6pm (it took me half an hour to go one mile on Monday, utterly frustrating). Plus, the quickest route is by taking the toll road which costs 50 cents each way and I don’t know about you, but I am NOT accustomed to paying directly for my roads, that’s what taxes and vehicle registrations and speeding tickets are for, right? So as a little experiment I decided to borrow Adrienne’s student MARTA pass since she doesn’t have class on Friday and ride the rails to work.

I must say that it was quick (12 minutes each way), convenient (the station is a block from my apartment and drops me off across the street from my work) and virtually painless (clean, air conditioned cars, no crazy homeless people on board). The only drawback is not having my car to transport me to any place of my choosing for lunch and I’ve also developed a habit of listening to The Big Show with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann¹ on ESPN Radio while eating lunch within the safety and comfort of my vessel. But, oh well.

Today there was none of that.

I instead decided to take the short walk over to the Perimeter Mall which is directly across the street from my work and have lunch at the food court. The mall is quite busy at lunch time as there are many office buildings in the area surrounding it and the food court is especially teeming with activity. All the tables fill up quickly and you’ll find yourself sharing a table with some other stranger eating lunch by him or herself because of the lack of room. Plus, there was extra traffic today as the crowds anxiously lined up outside the Apple store to await the release of the iPhone at 6pm. There must’ve been 50 people in line. Crazy bastards.

As I was standing in my own long line for Chick Fil-A, a somewhat eerily familiar face caught my eye. I turned my head to follow this person back into my peripheral vision as he stopped a few feet to my left. The man in question was relatively short, rail thin, a slight curvature to his upper back (kinda like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons), and he was accompanied by a somewhat heavyset woman dressed in overalls. His face was so familiar to me, I knew it had been catalogued in my mind at some point but I just couldn’t put my finger on who he was exactly.

And then it came to me.

I immediately reached for my phone to confirm my suspicions. Adrienne didn’t answer. Dammit.
I kept staring at this man as he slowly walked away from me and toward the pizza place. “It’s gotta be him”, I kept thinking. “Definitely. But what’s the deal with the woman with him? How could anyone want his company? Doesn’t she know? And what the hell is he doing at the mall?”

I got my food and ate it quickly, all the time trying to remember some details from the case. It happened a long time ago, even though the press never let it die, and I never really paid much attention to it but you couldn’t really escape it for a while; it was all they talked about. “Did it happen in Atlanta? No, it was in Colorado, I think. Was he from Atlanta?”

I walked around the mall for a while to kill the rest of my lunch break and ended up in the FYE store looking at (of course) cds. Finally, my phone rang and it was Adrienne calling me back. I immediately jumped to it.

“Remember the little girl that got killed, like, ten years ago. The beauty pageant girl. What was her name, JonBenet Ramsey?”, I said.

“Yeah”, she said.

“OK. Remember the creepy guy who confessed to her murder or to being at her murder or something like that last year but was later released because there was no evidence tying him to it?”

“Yeah. John Mark Karr.”

“Was he from here in Atlanta?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why?”, she asked.

“I just totally saw him in the food court at the fucking mall!”, I exulted.

That creepy fucking look that you see in the picture above is exactly how he looked. Those dead, cold eyes and the child molester vibe were totally chilling. I have now stared evil in the eye and it was not good. That dude should be in jail for something, I don’t care for what, he should not be allowed to walk among us. It’s just a matter of time before he does something. And there he was, within reach. I could have done something, but I didn’t.

All because Adrienne didn’t answer her phone. Lives could have been saved.

Be frightened, very frightened. Evil walks among us. . . at the food court.

¹the only sport commentators who are journalists, make valid points, and most importantly, are not blathering conservative racist idiots like 95% of sport radio DJ-types. How did this become the archetype of radio DJs in general? Where did we go wrong that radio stations believe that only racist, narrow-minded, republican white males listen to commercial talk radio? I might have to explore this topic in another blog. . .

Banale Minutia

I’m incredibly bored right now. Adrienne went to bed at 9:30 tonight because she had been up and working since 6:30 this morning. The NBA Playoff game between the Houston Rockets and the Utah Jazz fails to entertain me. There’s nothing on the DVR that I haven’t yet watched. The Netflix dvds are currently en route. And in addition, the internet is no longer amusing.

Crap. Time for a blog.

I spent the day cleaning the apartment and doing laundry with occasional peeks at the NFL draft on television¹. I spent nearly five hours cleaning my 1,150sq ft hovel. Once I get going on the cleaning, I like to be thorough. I swept, vacuumed, washed, brushed, shined, dusted, scoured and scrubbed. I even pumiced. . . and I hardly ever pumice.

I can thank my mother for the innate sense of cleanliness I’ve inherited (although I also blame her for the domineering anal retentiveness, thanks mom!); it’s served me well. I’ve kept every place I’ve lived in progressively and exponentially cleaner. Consequently, I have to imagine that the last few decades of my life will be spent in an aseptic, sterile environment, relegated from the outside world with crazed, delusional thoughts offering the only company and reassurance. But that’s at least another five years or so away, so let’s not worry about that just yet.

I do often wonder if I am slightly obsessive compulsive or if I’m just a dude who likes to keep things neat. I mean, I don’t completely lose my shit if things are placed in the wrong place or anything, it just kind of bothers me to know that they should be placed somewhere else. I justify this behavior with my affinity for not losing things and always knowing where something is; in other words, I just really want to be on top of my shit, 24-7. Is such organizational excellence so out of the ordinary that it needs to be ridiculed and labeled as abnormal? It certainly shouldn’t be.

Let’s put it this way, if I ever need a 3/8″ hexagonal screwdriver I can have it in my hot little hand in six seconds flat because I know exactly where it is and where it should be. Is this a deplorable trait?

Fuck no.

I don’t know who was the first doctor to diagnose someone as having obsessive compulsive behavior but I bet you he was a messy son of a bitch who just couldn’t understand devotion to precision. Pity.

All right, I guess I’m off to bed. Brunch at Canoe tomorrow. Yum.

¹The coverage of the draft has gotten monumentally overblown. It’s the only thing that has been discussed on any sports media outlet for the last month and a half even though only a small portion of the players drafted will make an immediate impact in the season that is still four months away. Jeez, there’s other sports which are actually being played right now, is this kind of coverage really warranted?

The draft was on for twelve straight hours on ESPN today and it will be on again tomorrow morning for the same amount of time. They had a team of at least a dozen analysts there for the duration of the event, as if such massive dissection was really needed.

Who gives a fuck about Brady Quinn’s feelings about sliding down to the 22nd pick?! Should you and I really care that this prick will not make as much money as some misguided people thought he should have? Hell no. This douche will still be a millionaire by next week even though he’s never taken a snap at the professional level (or won an important game in college, for that matter). Why is he getting so much coverage?!

I blame it on the rise of fantasy football leagues which lately have become the biggest exercise in organized gambling in this country. Any idiot that’s part of a league now wants to have a leg up on the competition so we all have to suffer through months and months of speculation and superfluous analysis which is passed off as inside information. Just like in every sport, gambling determines design.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the NFL and I’ve played fantasy football for a few years (never for money), but this is why other sports aren’t given a chance to be popular anymore or are disappearing completely (hockey, anyone?). As a fan of most sports, I think this kind of coverage is displacing other worthy pastimes. I enjoy football, but I don’t need it covered twelve months out of the year.

Good lord, this was a long footnote.