Friday, March 5, 2010

Long Arm of the Law

So on Monday night, me and my roommate Chris were up at 1 am trying to study for a philosophy midterm exam. Needless to say, I was studying for this exam by watching Sting music videos, and it just so happened that the ad before the video for “Fields of Gold” (favorite song ever by the way) was an ad for Chicken McNuggets. And we all know what happened next; desperate for those little bite-sized morsels of chicken-flavored Styrofoam and an excuse to stop not studying, I told Chris we should drive to McDonalds and go get some.

Five minutes later, we pull out of the Drive-Thru with twenty nuggets, fries, and happiness in a paper bag (I literally mean happiness; that was not a drug reference). It seemed like nothing could go wrong (aside from failing the midterm that is). This was a sign that everything was about to go horribly, terribly, Bieber-esquely wrong.

Now, at 30th and Baseline, there is a no u-turn sign that everybody ignores. I mean everybody. When the Pope goes to this McDonalds he pulls a u-turn in the Pope-mobile (I’m assuming that is what he drives). It was one in the morning, and the road was empty, so we pulled the turn. As he is doing this, Chris jokingly comments “I hope there aren’t any cops around.” Of course the last time he said this to me while making an illegal turn, we saw a cop. So I jokingly told him not to jinx it. As most of you have already figured out, sure enough a cop car appears out of nowhere and pulls us over. Now, we assumed that once he figured out that neither of us were drunk or high he would let us go with a warning (although it’s harder than you think to convince someone you aren’t high when you have two pounds of chicken nuggets sitting on your lap at one in the morning). But instead, the cop gave Chris a $100 ticket. These are the same Boulder cops who every year let 10,000 people gather on a field to smoke pot.

So basically, we ordered $110 McNuggets. With our luck, I was half expecting to open the bag and find out they got our order wrong, at which point my head would have exploded thus releasing the hamster that lives in there (his name is Happy). I haven’t had a fast food experience this bad since I was walking back from Wendy’s and I was jumped by a herd of raccoons (flock?). For those of you who can’t understand why this is scary, clearly you have never encountered a pod of raccoons (gander?). Just one of those things is scary enough, much less an entire school of them (maybe it’s a pod?).

Now, this story illustrates several points. First, studying is bad. If I had just conceded I was going to fail this test and gone to sleep like I should have, none of this would have happened. Also, no matter how great he was with the Police, watching Sting music videos past midnight never leads to anything good. But most importantly, we need to remember whose fault this really is: the cops.

Now I’m not ragging on all cops. I’m sure that most of the cops out there are drug-busting, cat-grabbing, rapist-catching, gun-toting, hyphen-using, bad-ass defenders of the innocent. But then again, there are cops like these. Now, I’ll at least give them this: if I were in a drug lord’s house for nine hours, the Wii wouldn’t have been the first thing I would have gone for, if you get my drift. But still, we pay these guys to get drug dealers off the streets, not beat their high scores on Wii bowling. Also, look at the cop’s celebration at 16 seconds into the video. I don’t want guys who celebrate like that confronting heavily armed criminals; they would eat him alive.

Now let’s go to the other end of the spectrum, from cops who don’t take their job seriously enough to cops that want to shoot you. Now, I understand using tasers on dangerous criminals and drunken people, but a 76-year-old? Where was the guy going to go? He was on a tractor (and why do they drive tractors in parades in Wyoming?) and he’s 76 years old. I’m pretty sure the cops could have handled him without shocking him (and yes, these cops were later fired).

I mean, if cops were serious about stopping real crime and drug use, they should just watch a Denver Nuggets basketball game on TV. The Nuggets have a deal where Taco Bell offers four tacos for $1 if the team scores more than 100 points in a game. This is a very big deal for the Nugget’s two announcers, Chris Marlowe and Scott Hastings, who occasionally mention it.

Marlowe: And Carmelo scores! The score is tied at 12.

Hastings: Only 88 more points until tacos.

Later on…

Marlowe: Basket is good! Nuggets ahead 97-95.

Hastings: Someone should shoot a three so we can get tacos.

Marlowe: Billups drains a three! Nuggets win!

Hastings: TACOS!!!!!!!!

Now don’t tell me that these two just like tacos. They have the munchies. The other night, with the Nuggets up by 40 points, Hastings stopped talking about the game and just started giggling and talking about tacos. If the cops just checked under his table, they probably would have found a bong the size of a large dog. But no, instead of arresting stoned sports announcers, they are on empty roads ticketing students merely trying to get some study food. Then again, maybe they’re just trying to catch Hastings coming back high from the Taco Bell Drive Thru.

Cop: Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?

Hastings: TACOS!?!?!?!

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