Emily's New Hat

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It's my Friday.



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All week in crazy meetings with attorneys.


There is a huge difference between cops and lawyers. We might as well be different species. And I'm talking prosecutors, not defense folks. (They really are a different species.)

Cops are mostly linear thinkers, and big proponents of, and adherents to, Occam's Razor. We like to come onto a scene, size it up quickly, figure out who's who in the zoo, and then dispense ass-whippings to the bad men and take statements from the victims, let the amberlamps take away the injured and we haul someone off to jail. No matter how freaky, crazy, blood-and-smoke-in-the-air a goatfuck it is, pretty quick we've got it all handled and we're off to the next show.

Even as detectives, that same philosophical stance holds. After all, we all came up the same way. By the time we got into dicks, we'd gotten really good at it, which was why we were in dicks in the first place. So we roll up on a murder, and, yeah, it's a LOT slower and more methodical, but still, it's pull on a thread, and pull on it again, and keep pulling it until you get to the bad guy at the end of it. You don't go running down every blind alley you come across, you just can't. You'll get bad lost and you'll fuck up your case and your bad guy will spend the rest of your life laughing at you.


But a lawyer is a different bird altogether. They work it backwards. Take the simplest set of facts, and then see how fucked up you can make them. The defense is going to try to introduce doubts and questions, so lets beat them to it. Lets see how many possible permutations have been left unexplored by the cops so far. What if he was wearing a blue shirt? What if he had a green hat on? What if the video is wrong? What if the DNA results don't mean what we think they mean? What if they do mean what we think they mean, but no one believes us? What if this, what if that.

So all week I've been sitting in meetings watching attorneys clamber all over footballs, trying like mad to fuck them.

It makes me want to pick them up by the scruff of their necks and shake them real hard and then set them back down.



"Now play nice, goddamn it."




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But it is in their nature. God bless them.



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And I know what we look like to them. A bunch of ham-fisted, slow-witted deviants going off half-cocked all the time.


Which we kind of are.


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So, that was my week.



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My beautiful and amazing wife is down for the count with a bad cold. And I have not been taking care of her like I should have been. She's been on her own.

I'll try to make up for that this weekend and send her to pamperville. Not to be confused with Pampersville, a different place entirely.


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Tonight I made a frittata with veggies and shrimp and chipotle sausage and goat cheese, served with a loaf of crusty french bread.


It were good.


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I bet I missed a hundred opportunities to do something nice for someone this week.


Won't be the first time.


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Namaste.



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