A Romanian In A Junkyard

Like a kid in a candy store. Or like a Cuban mechanic in an American junkyard. (Back in Romania we were also fixing almost everything, although the luckier (than me) could buy new French Renaults built there under license or Russian Jigulis.)

That's how i felt back in @96 when i first entered one. For between 2 and 20 bucks could get most of the parts provided you had the tools and knowledge to take them off. I would have hugged any shiny engine in there. I was getting high just by realizing the richness of the country i was in. And i was sure in a few years i won't be needing to get there anymore.

The first part i ever bought was a carburetor for my first car ever, an 83 Fairmont with 6 cylinders of 2.9 liters (of wich 5 were working LOL). But that was at a junkyard where they were pulling the part for you, somewhere on Columbia boulevard.

Today i went just for the pictures. But i stopped when i got next to a car that was identical with Angela's 93 Sentra. Everything in there was newer then her car. The car sat on wheels that didn't have time to get lower in the gravel. But all i wanted were the headlights. It had glass headlights, not plastic ones like her car has and went opaque over the years.

But i didn't have tools. I went looking around to burrow a tool, which is kinda difficult in a junkyard because everybody there is grumpy anyways. All the actors that came in after i got in and jumped in front of the camera every time i was taking a picture of a car disappeared. Came back still looking at those headlights when i saw one was rock chipped.

Then i ran out of battery for the camera.

When i came out i told the guy that gave me permission to take pictures when i got in that i wanted those headlights but one was chipped and he said the one that's not cracked is 31 bucks.

Everything got more expensive since 1996. I don't feel rich anymore. In fact, i feel like a bum. And today i realized. Never got over that stage when i loved junkyards.

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Rulez Of The Newz

Breaking news that start at the beginning of the weekend. That make us open our mouths like Paul Alen during the yesterday's Superbowl. Then the grumpiness of the Monday mornings comes and after one our in traffic and listening to the real new news about all the accidents and shootings that happened during the weekend here we are again tabula rasa ready to start a new week and confront our boss.

How they end up? The news that make us worry about our safety threatened by the big cats yawning in the gardens of Salem that are actually cats or the flasher of Estacada? They could certainly make us close the backdoor (not that i have one) or in my case look into the parking lot so see if the cars of the guardian ninja are still here.




















I know they covered well Dave Dahl's story including the happy ending. BTW. I never saw anywhere written that Dave Dahl payed at least the 270 dollars fine that i payed for not completely stopping at a red light right turn twice. (Nobody does but only some get fined). (Don't care about how much he payed his attorneys or doctors).

Not the one about the homeless being kicked by basketball player leaving the club in the morning. No i'm wrong this one has a happy ending as well http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/04/nbas_terrence_jones_has_crimin.html

Ok i already changed my mind about what i wanted to write at the beginning or maybe not. Some of the ending of the stories, the happy ones are presented as news in their own right, when unexpected.

The 2012 Lake Oswego stabbing. "Shortly before 6:30 a.m. Sept. 17, Fritz and Maggie Hayes returned to their home in the 900 block of Atwater Road after taking a walk together. When Maggie Hayes entered the kitchen, she saw a tall man with some kind of head wrap holding a machete in one hand and a knife in the other. She ran out a back door, screaming. When she looped around to the front, she saw her husband lying outside the front door and called 9-1-1".

Fritz Hayes suffered several "large cuts across his head, neck and facial area" in the attack. He was dead when firefighter-paramedics arrived.

According to documents, a Lake Oswego police officer spoke to Meiser around 10 a.m. at a bus stop, but had no probable cause to arrest him at that point."

http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2012/10/suspect_in_lake_oswego_murder.html

Ok. So i read in other place he admitted hitting Hayes with a machete 4 times. So unless he changed clothes and showered somewhere, how could he not have been arrested 3 hours later? And how was he still waiting relaxed in a bus stop and IDd when all the Police of Lake Oswego was looking for the suspect including in the Tryon park, where i was lucky enough not to go in that day?

"Meiser fit the brief, initial description of the killer given to police by Hayes' wife and properly identified himself to Officer Ken Engstrom" http://www.oregonlive.com/lake-oswego/index.ssf/2012/09/officer_encountered_erik_meise.html

I am just curious, when the officer id'd the suspect, was he looking like this?

Can't remember where i heard or saw during @ that time that the headwrap and clothing of the guy ressembled those of a (very low budget) movie character. And the victim, Fritz Hayes or the company he was working for had some Hollywood connection.

I remember that day because i took apart the frame of the sliding door at the bathtub. It is made of four, rather long straight pieces of brass plated aluminum profile laminate that are covered in brass. And cleaned them near the kitchen window.

Now he's incompetent for trial after a life long of arrests, trials and incarcerations. Probably this whole case could not stand the scrutiny of a jury.

to be continued

Death Penalty

One purely juridical argument against death penalty.

Death penalty is a remnant of the past.

A past when (land)lords didn't want to spend much time into arguing and wanted to teach easy lessons to their serfs. Now that we have evolved into a society of law, we could afford to be more lenient.

But sometimes there are horrible cases of stubborn serial killers like the one just revealed in the international press.

By (physically) destroying one person you destroy one person's memory. And with it any chance of recovering information about other crimes that he/she might have witnessed or committed and could prove valuable into establishing someone's innocence. Even a serial killer might have committed crimes that he did not confess, remember or have not been discovered. His/her later testimony/confession may help society by exonerating somebody else. Sentencing a person to death penalty carries a 99% percent chance of destroying evidence pertaining to other cases.

It had been argued that there is a cost paid for by society for keeping them alive and it would be cheaper to just kill them.

But they usually are not killed right away. The decades spent on appeals that (sometimes) overlap the entire rest of their lives come at even a higher cost as their (mostly paid by public) defense and continued prosecution is also paid for by society. Expenses for people that are in prison for a long time for much lesser offenses are also paid for by society.

But in the case of hardened criminals, they usually have been living in environments of crime. The bigger the offense, the more likely a prisoner might have had the chance to witness/commit other major crimes and posses valuable information again for helping exonerate innocents.