Category: Bad People

There be Robbers…

~ kongo ~ Leave a comment

On September 7, 2026, two thieves made off with a pair of Renoir paintings from a museum in southern France. Each painting was estimated to be worth $10.4M. The alarm system for the Cagnes-sur-Mer’s Renoir Museum went off at around 5:48am local time, with the police arriving on the scene within five minutes. By that time, the robbers had broken a hole in the garden fence and cut through bolts holding several paintings’ frames, making off with four paintings, two of which were later recovered abandoned in the garden.

Five Minutes. $20.8 million dollars. If I’m thinking, there must be 200 million other people thinking….. Museum Directors are thinking…”Holy shit – five minutes!”

Police are thinking… “Five minutes ain’t bad!”. Security firms are thinking “ I’ve got to print some brochures”.  Steel bolt manufacturers are thinking “Maybe special SPECIAL bolts for paintings!” Garden fence suppliers are thinking, “Do we need security sensors?” Criminals are thinking, “I’ve got to get me a stop watch!”.

I’m not particularly (note unnecessary adverb) happy about this shit but frankly (yes, another fuckin adverb) it’s a sigh (sic) of the times (pun intended). Technology is at least temporarily (adverb) favoring the bad guys. Think about the French crooks – they just had to watch the premises and maybe test the police response to get their “Safe Window” – five minutes in their case. Pretty low tech. Kinda Bonnie and Clyde tactic. But it worked. It’s a good time to be a crook.

Not to say it hasn’t ALWAYS been a good time to be a crook. I give you Matthew at least 1900 years ago:

“Do not store up riches for yourselves here on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and robbers break in and steal. Instead, store up riches for yourselves in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and robbers cannot break in and steal. For your heart will always be where your riches are.”

Matthew 6:19–21

So it’s been Bugs and Water and Robbers from the beginning and it will be Bugs and Water and Robbers for evermore. Let’s just learn better ways to deal with it. Guns come to mind (for robbers at least), there is no way to defeat water (I’ve found from great experience) and bugs – well – I’d rather not go there.

Bad People 1

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Bad People:                                                                                                   

There have always been Bad People. If you believe in the Bible, when there were only 4 people ON THE EARTH, Cain killed his brother Abel. That’s a Bad vs. Good ratio of 25%. Or 1 in 4 people are Bad. 340 million people in the USA; that’s 255 million Good people (I’m an optimist). Of course, that leaves 85 million Bad people. Kinda puts your local police force in a different perspective, huh?

Sometimes Bad people get together, and a Bad Group is formed. This is never good.  Ninety years ago, a few Bad Groups REALLY got out of hand and took over whole Countries and even tried to take over the World. For a few years in the 1940’s many Americans Hated and Killed Japanese on sight and called them the “Yellow Hoard”. Now they are our friends and partners and one of my favorite local restaurants is Japanese Fusion.

Twenty-two years ago a few Bad people managed to hijack several airplanes and make some big trouble in the USA. From the upstairs deck of our ancestorial home atop the Palisades my lovely wife and I observed the plume of black smoke that represented the World Trade Center site. I waited for my 11 year old son to get home from school. He did.  I started by asking what they had said at school. Just the facts: terrorists, suicide crashing and deaths. Evidently, they had had the news on a TV. Here was my contribution to the experience: “Some people, Son, are born with a hole in their Heart and every now and then they get this feeling that if they do something really BAD they will fill that hole and be happy. But it never works the way they expect, and the hole doesn’t get filled and they are still not happy. These people can be mean and trouble and are best avoided.” There was a pause as he thought on what I’d said then: “I get it, Dad, I’m going to play now.” And off he went to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. “He’ll be fine,” I later said to my lovely wife. And he is. The World, I fear, is not as fine.

Bad People 2

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Beware the Bat-Shit Crazies:                      

In 1968, Pop artist Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, a peripheral figure in the New York art world. Two bullets from Solanas’ .32 Beretta ripped through Warhol’s stomach, liver, spleen, and lungs. Doctors barely saved his life — in fact, he died, briefly, but was revived — and the experience had a lasting effect on his art.

Valerie Solanas was born in 1936 in New Jersey. The only thing GOOD society ever gave Valerie was her name. Before she could reason she was beaten and broken. Valerie died in 1988 in San Francisco of pneumonia.

Between those two dates, Valerie led an interesting life as a struggling  fill-in-the-blank. While Milton Berle was entertaining most Americans at least one American was sodomized little Valerie. Is it any wonder her views have been described by Alice Echols as “unabashed misandry“.  Let me save you the Google lookup – it means she hates men with great passion.

The Andy Warhol press release of his shooting described Valerie as ” a peripheral figure in the New York art world”. In real words, Valerie was a bat-shit crazy hanger-on mostly seen clutching a worn self-published Manuscript that she would swear to be the next Moulin Rouge or some such ranting fodder. We all know the Valeries of our respective communities. We silently moan when they spastically flop into a chair and holding their manuscript as if a club, await the comments period.

In 1968 Valerie was one of maybe a thousand that was crazy enough to need help. Valerie actually GOT help at hospitals several times in her life. Did they work? BUT TODAY  –  here’s the bad news: the number of Valeries has increased. Maybe one in twenty? What do you think? It sure as hell ain’t getting better. Shame on us, or as Aunt Edda would say: Tch Tch Tch . Be careful out there. If we were looking at a very old map the seas surrounding all lands might say in large forbidding font “Beware the Bat-Shit Crazies”.

Al Sharpton – Douchbag

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Al Sharpton – “heading” to the Ninth Circle

In 1998, after an eight-month trial, a jury found that Al Sharpton had defamed Steven Pagones when he accused him of raping Tawana Brawley.  Sharpton was ordered to pay $65,000 in damages to Pagones. Sharpton has since paid off his debt with money raised by supporters. Tawana Brawley was ordered to pay $190,000. With interest the judgment against her has grown to more than $430,000.

Unlike the reverend Al, Tawana didn’t have any supporters to pay her debt. She was 15 at the time. She did have Advisors – that would be the reverend Al Sharpton and two expensive attorneys. They advised her right into a life of hiding and debt. Did anyone hold a fund raiser for Tawana? Did Al? I looked up slimebag and sleazeball in my Webster’s but didn’t see Al’s picture next to either definition. Sometimes life can be cruel.

Rumored to be suffering from adult-onset Dwarfism and Stage 3 Hydrocephalus, Al has had to scale back his activities lately. The rare combination of Symptoms can be witnessed by his shrinking body and large bulbous head. Death, most of the time, occurs during public urinal elimination, when the head unconsciously looks down and the spinal cord can no longer support the weight and the patient’s neck breaks. The Lord works in mysterious ways.