It doesn't matter these days

Such strange arrangements lately. I've been sort of out of it. Skateboarding the other night in mid town at a nice slippery high ledge and open park. 50-50 grinds, I couldn't land any, but shot sparks down the ledge. We, my roommate and a guest from Melbourne, drove up the FDR hoping to get off on like 41st street but the exits had been closed by NYPD all the way up to 96th street. We had to backtrack down 2nd Avenue I think it was to around 40th street. On the way a black sedan started to veer into our lane at our car at which point my roommate swerved and honked and the sedan corrected back into his lane. Then it happened again as we were passing and I banged on my window to get attention while my roommate swerved and then flipped the other driver off very excitedly.

We were having discussions in the car about how the NYPD is taking all sorts of liberties that were entirely unnecessary and sort of exploiting the tragedy at the World Trade Center. I personally didn't agree with him, my roommate and generally think that although his opinions are well presented a lot of the time, he fails to factor in things that counterbalance whatever he's saying.

I've had my run-ins with the NYPD and while they're not the most fun company, they do a complicated job. Not all of them are going to be the smartest, fairest, most polite, etc. but they're taking on a task that isn't usually glamorous and their praise is grossly outweighed by their blame. No one thinks about the body of police that were dealing with rape, shooting, assault, domestic violence, neglected children, heroin addicts and everything else while a few police were committing such vile acts as those publicly recognized in the Louima case. I'm not saying these people are saints. Far from it. But I'm sort of through with criticizing the Police as a whole.

My roommate was offended as we drove up the FDR that the police wouldn't shout back anything coherent as he loudly whined "where can we get offf" in a passing red honda civic at 30 or so MPH.

Then after my roommate flipped off the black sedan and I banged on the window, about two blocks after, we saw flashing lights behind us. Because this isn't abnormal right now, we thought they just wanted to pass until we recognized the car as the one he had flipped off. He had flipped off an unmarked car.

Now I'd like to mention that when I banged on the window the driver of the black sedan, who is now turning out to be a police officer, was genuinely surprised that I, inside a car, was so close to him. He didn't know he was cutting us off.

He asked for license and registration and then my roommate apologized but emphasizing that the cop almost hit him, which I thought was a mistake. The cop said that he shouldn't have been flipped the finger and so on. Another cop was flashing a light in the car, which was a hatchback and didn't really hide anything. The cop chastised, my roommate whined, and in between were funny exchanges like from the officer, "What if I was some crazy guy and wanted to get out and fight you, then what, huh? You know karate?" to which my dumbass roommate replied, and honestly so, that he had a black belt. Now having a 'black belt' doesn't necessarily mean anything, but he felt confident in saying it. After this, the officer asked him how long he'd been studying, to which my roommate replied, "16 years." The officer announced that he'd been studying 29 years and that my roommate should especially know about Discipline and then went on to say that, "Every action is a reaction," which sort of makes sense, but maybe "Every reaction is an action," would make more.

The cop went on for a little while talking about a car being a 2000 pound lethal weapon and how he had to see brains splattered all across a dashboard, stopping long enough to ask but not enough for an answer, "I've seen brains splattered across the dashboard, you ever seen that? NO!, I've been down there at ground zero digging out bodies for two weeks, you ever seen that?... I didn't think so." Whether or not he has been down at the recovery site for two weeks is not easy to know really, but it did seem a bit like he was playing the tragedy card. Eventually after my roommate shut up he told us to get out of there and behave.

As the car pulled out and passed us, the cop flipped us the finger.

I was skating well enough when we got to the spot, but fell really hard when this lid for some gas or water service or something that was on a pivot thing in the ground trapped my wheel and I was launched straight into the ground. I'm not as agile really as I used to be. My neck hurt the next morning, but that could have been from a number of falls.

I woke up with a fairly nasty cough and decided not to go to work in the morning, which turned into all day. My sleeping spot is not comfortable. I need a proper bed. I don't feel like building a loft either.