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Continuing the tale that I started in my last entry, I was on mushrooms, so was K, and my roommate was just plain acting weird. (You may have noticed I have begun omitting proper names from my entries. I plan to continue this practice from now on.) K and L arrived with a case of whip-its, but the craker soon broke, and of course they HAD to go back to the store to get more. I wondered how long K could push his luck in the state he was in. He had no license, no insurance, and expired tags. In addition to mushrooms, he had alcohol and muscle relaxers in his system. He wasn't ready to give a shit about the consequences his actions could have.

Free from the frustration of people I could not relate to, I decided to take another walk. It started out like most 3 a.m. mushroom walks, I pulled leaves from the trees and slowly rubbed them between my thumb and middle finger. But as soon as I got to 21st street, things were a little bit different. A cop pulled up beside me and started slowly following me down the street. I remained calm, smiling and telling the cop a million "fuck you"s in my head. The cruiser stopped, pulled into the middle of the street, slowly turned around, peered toward something in the distance, and then took off after it. I feared that he was following my roommate and his intoxicate, illegal driver. Pushing it out of my mind, I walked on.

Five blocks later, I turned around and headed back to my apartment along 19th. Crossing Broadway, I found myself face to face with yet another police cruiser parked on the side of the road. I gave a thought to acting natural, but quickly realized that I already was natural, and natural quickly turned into a wild-eyed stare and uncontrolable laughter. The cop pulled up beside me and slowly inched his way down the street, following right beside me again. After a few blocks of trying to look casual, I thought "what would I do if I hadn't missed that court date, and didn't have a bench-warrent?" I would be very angry at this cop for disturbing my pleasant walk, that's what I would do. I'm not guilty of anything, and this guy was invading my privacy, so I let him know with a simple sneer in his direction, and then went back to enjoying the trees.

I don't think my glance of confident defiance had anything to do with him suddenly resuming his patrol at an appropriate speed. It's more likely that he knew where I lived due with recent run ins with the police I've had (arrested at a protest a few months back, and after that my former roommate called the police on me for reasons that are too absurd to describe between parentheses,) and maybe they suspect that I'm up to something. I know it sounds paranoid, but I really don't know whether to laugh or worry about it. I plan on taking care of my bench warrant soon.

The reason I don't think I'm being paranoid is that when I got back, K and L had returned only a minute earlier, and they too had been followed by the police!!!! The way K told the story, they took a quick left, cut through a parking lot, and then made a right, then a left back onto 21st, and then quickly turned onto our street, killed the engine and ran inside. He thought the cop had its siren on, but L assures me it didn't.

I can't imagine why police would ever want to watch me. I guess in a country where you can be investigated for reading the news, anything is possible. If I was to indulge my paranoia a little bit further, I could say that it's possible that police are reading this weblog, in which case I probably shouldn't mention anything about those Jehova's Witnesses I killed in Ohio.

P.S. I'm kidding.