“Mommy, they hurt my Tacoma!” I cried into the phone.
Before you jump to the conclusion that I am a momma’s boy, you should know that my mom and I are Toyota Tacoma pickup truck buddies. We don’t have matching jackets or anything, we just love our trucks.
Her Tacoma is newer, but I’ve had mine longer. The “Silver Bullet” is hers, a 2006 model that is usually coated with a thick layer of dust and speckled with bird droppings and tree sap. Mine is the “Love Princess,” a tasty black 1998 model with low miles that I keep as shiny as possible.
It’s something we have in common, which is kind of nice and we have fun with it. That’s one of the reasons I called my mom after my neighbor rang my doorbell last Thursday morning to inform me that my truck’s catalytic converter had just been stolen.
A catalytic converter is an exhaust component that cuts down the toxicity of an engine’s emissions. It is located under the vehicle between the engine and the muffler. Catalytic converters contain small amounts of valuable platinum and palladium, making them the target of thieves in recent years.
My neighbor Eric, who is in the military, had left for work earlier that morning but returned home because he forgot his driver’s license. He says he immediately knew what two strange men were doing to my truck because it happened to his brother a few years ago.
The two men had already unbolted my catalytic converter and were about to leave in a white pickup truck driven by a third man. The pickup truck took off, but Eric was able to follow them in his car while he called the police. He drives a new Mustang GT and was only happy to have the chance to give chase.
Rancho Cordova police, the California Highway Patrol and Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies all became involved in the pursuit. The pursuit ended a few miles from my house when the pickup truck slammed into a traffic light pole and knocked it down. The men abandoned their truck but were apprehended in the immediate area by a sheriff’s canine unit.
Back at the scene of the crime, Eric showed me the video and pictures of the crashed truck he took with his camera phone. A sheriff’s deputy arrived and interviewed me briefly. Another police cruiser pulled up, took my information again and called for the CSI unit to come by to dust for fingerprints.
We chatted with the officers for a while, and they explained that Toyota trucks were a popular target for these kinds of thefts. They said that they recovered four catalytic converters at the scene but would be unable to return mine right away because it was evidence. Now facing a bill of at least $800 to replace the converter, I called my insurance agent who arranged for the repair of my truck.
Being the victim of a crime is something new to me. I don’t like it, but it makes me think about what the world has become. Things could have turned out much different than they did. They could have had weapons, someone could have been hurt as they tried to elude the police, or they could have stolen the whole truck instead of just a small part of it.
As much as I love my truck, I realize that it is just a thing. But, it is a thing I earned myself and that I am proud of. I’ve been pretty lucky in life so far, but these criminals did more than steal my catalytic converter. They stole my peace of mind, and I will never be able to start my truck in the future without wondering if someone's going to steal it again.
On the Net
http://www.sacsheriff.com/media/0919_arrest.cfm
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
From Virgin To Whore
If you were going to build a house, you wouldn’t hire a kid from a high school shop class to build it. And if you were going to pay a woman for sex, you wouldn’t hire a virgin.
Especially when she’s asking what it costs to build a house for her virginity.
Taking the Internet by storm is 22-year old “Natalie Dylan,” the pseudonym of a woman who literally believes that one night with her is worth at least a quarter million dollars. And not surprisingly, there are men who have large sums of money burning holes in their pockets who are desperate enough to pay for the so-called privilege of being her first.
Ms. Dylan describes her virginity as a “capitalist” asset and claims that while she is prepared to auction that asset, it may not be to the highest bidder. Despite her apparent desire to be a prostitute, she is looking for a devirginizer with whom she has “chemistry.”
The story is that Ms. Dylan is from San Diego and a graduate of Sacramento State’s women’s studies program. She has ambitions of attending graduate school, hoping to earn a degree in family and marriage counseling. Due to some fraudulent student loans obtained in her name by her stepfather, she believes that auctioning her virginity through a brothel in Nevada, the same brothel her sister works at, will not solve all her problems but will help her on her way.
A quick scan of the Internet reveals the same general facts about Ms. Dylan, something that is quite uncharacteristic of the online world. All of the stories about her are similar and the same two photos are used repeatedly. Her age has been said to be 21 and 22. Her degree goals have been said to be a master’s or a doctorate. She has been said to be from San Diego and Sacramento. We think we know where she’s from and where she went to college, yet nobody has come forward for their 15 minutes of fame to reveal her true identity to the media.
Something just doesn’t seem right. A women’s studies major prostituting herself, an evil stepfather who stole from her and a sister who works at the very same brothel she wants to utilize sounds more like a David Letterman monologue than the actions of a chaste woman with dreams of furthering her education.
The official web site for the brothel she is offering herself through does not have any bidding mechanisms in place. There is simply a brief statement about her, the same two pictures everyone has seen, an email address and the promise of a chat room featuring Ms. Dylan in the future.
Even radio personality Howard Stern, who recently featured Ms. Dylan on his program, has distanced himself from the topic. There are no prominent mentions of the subject on his official web site and it has been reported that he was not as involved in the matter as has been mentioned in the news.
It takes too much energy to make moral decisions for other people. Right or wrong, it’s legal to do what she wants to do whether or not there is a Natalie Dylan. So everybody’s talking about prostitution, which seems to be what the owners of the brothels in Nevada want, especially since the courts have recently ruled that they may start to advertise their businesses in Reno and Las Vegas.
What will happen? Nobody knows and way too many people care.
Especially when she’s asking what it costs to build a house for her virginity.
Taking the Internet by storm is 22-year old “Natalie Dylan,” the pseudonym of a woman who literally believes that one night with her is worth at least a quarter million dollars. And not surprisingly, there are men who have large sums of money burning holes in their pockets who are desperate enough to pay for the so-called privilege of being her first.
Ms. Dylan describes her virginity as a “capitalist” asset and claims that while she is prepared to auction that asset, it may not be to the highest bidder. Despite her apparent desire to be a prostitute, she is looking for a devirginizer with whom she has “chemistry.”
The story is that Ms. Dylan is from San Diego and a graduate of Sacramento State’s women’s studies program. She has ambitions of attending graduate school, hoping to earn a degree in family and marriage counseling. Due to some fraudulent student loans obtained in her name by her stepfather, she believes that auctioning her virginity through a brothel in Nevada, the same brothel her sister works at, will not solve all her problems but will help her on her way.
A quick scan of the Internet reveals the same general facts about Ms. Dylan, something that is quite uncharacteristic of the online world. All of the stories about her are similar and the same two photos are used repeatedly. Her age has been said to be 21 and 22. Her degree goals have been said to be a master’s or a doctorate. She has been said to be from San Diego and Sacramento. We think we know where she’s from and where she went to college, yet nobody has come forward for their 15 minutes of fame to reveal her true identity to the media.
Something just doesn’t seem right. A women’s studies major prostituting herself, an evil stepfather who stole from her and a sister who works at the very same brothel she wants to utilize sounds more like a David Letterman monologue than the actions of a chaste woman with dreams of furthering her education.
The official web site for the brothel she is offering herself through does not have any bidding mechanisms in place. There is simply a brief statement about her, the same two pictures everyone has seen, an email address and the promise of a chat room featuring Ms. Dylan in the future.
Even radio personality Howard Stern, who recently featured Ms. Dylan on his program, has distanced himself from the topic. There are no prominent mentions of the subject on his official web site and it has been reported that he was not as involved in the matter as has been mentioned in the news.
It takes too much energy to make moral decisions for other people. Right or wrong, it’s legal to do what she wants to do whether or not there is a Natalie Dylan. So everybody’s talking about prostitution, which seems to be what the owners of the brothels in Nevada want, especially since the courts have recently ruled that they may start to advertise their businesses in Reno and Las Vegas.
What will happen? Nobody knows and way too many people care.
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