Border Drama (from a friend's journal):

Welcome to the new state of the border into Canada. Where a woman giving a ride to two friends becomes targeted and her car ripped open.

"I was going to let this drop, but after taking a good look at the interior of my car today, I'm fucking livid.

Saturday Afternoon I brought the Canadians back to the Greyhound station in Windsor so they could get back to Toronto. I dropped them off and immediately headed back to the tunnel - I was still a bit hungover bust mostly I just had a nasty cold coming on, all I wanted to do was get back into the US and crawl back into bed for a bit. I figred coming back alone was going to be simple. I know border procedures well. Don't look like shit, have a clean car and have all your papers in order. Aside from myself looking a bit ill, I was dressed sedately, my car was immaculate (fresh from carwash and vacuum, no packages or bags or trash, no music on, hatch cover open so the back was in plain view) and passport and license were out.

The first screener started off with the usual schpeel, then escalated into how long I knew my friends that I was dropping off, how I knew them, how I met them, where I worked, what my title was, and then it got weirder - why I was traveling with alone with two non-US men (wtf?????). Why there was no other females in our group...were one of these men my boyfriend? Do I have a boyfriend? How would he feel if he knew I was with two men from out of the country? (At this point this shitbag probably sensed anger off me, as anyone who knows me at all knows I don't take blanket gender stereotypes well...but I wasn't about to get into a philosophical discussion with this guy, I just wanted to go home and take a nap.) I was *never* short with him (even though I wanted to bite his head off), I was truthful (we went to a concert, yes I have a boyfriend, yes, he also knows them) then he just laid into me "why do you look so nervous" (I don't feel very well and just want to get home) and again repeating himself ... ("I'm really not nervous, I'm just coming down with the flu, want to get get home...)

He slapped the orange tag on my windshield and I was off to be searched. This isn't the first time it has happened - probably the 4th - but NEVER to this extent. I was instructed to leave everything except my money, leave any cell, blackberry, any kind of communication device, all pens and paper, purse - then they were all weird that I didn't have a purse - "where is your purse" - "I don't always carry one, everything is in my pockets" - "what kind of girl doesn't carry a purse?" - "uhhh, everything fits in my coat pockets" Then I had to empty my coat pockets. What kind of girl? WTF.

So I go into that awfully fluorescent lit room, present my ID again, they ask me the same questions but then really start into me "why are you nervous "why are you so nervous...people are only nervous who have something to hide...what are you hiding... WHY are you so nervous?!?"

Again and again I said I had nothing to hide, I just didn't feel well and wanted to get home. (I was coughing like I was going to lose a lung, this wasn't some mystery illness in my head.)

At this point they break out the dogs, they're jumping around like mad in my car, this escalates the internal freakout to about a + eleventy billion. Let me preface this by saying I have never had ANY form of contraband in my car. Ever. I don't smoke cigarettes or anything else (yes, I admit I have in the past, but my asthma has gone apeshit over the last year and a half and I've totally quit any of that.) So I should have no worries, right? BUT I was the only one thus far who was being searched who had NOT been hauled off to jail yet. They had found something on *everyone*. They were just hauling one guy off for having ONE pot seed under his floormat. SO I'm thinking shit...I have had passengers...what if something fell out of a pocket...what if something had fallen off a passenger of the the person I bought the car from...I've only had it for about a month...what if they are planting shit on people? I know I had no rational reason to worry but at this point, they were using what I realize now were just intimidation tactics, which were bordering on abusive. I couldn't jot down a badge number, couldn't call anyone...

I've now been detained for about an hour.

They went on with the "why are you so nervous...what are you hiding" for even more, somehow I kept it together and was just honest with them and stated that "I have been diagnosed with anxiety disorder, I am prone to panic attacks when I feel out of control of a situation, and when I do not have my phone or belongings, I feel out of control." I didn't want to get into my whole fucking psychological history with these people, but as my heart was doing about 180 and I felt like I was going to pass out, I didn't have much choice.

Finally after sitting there for another 15 minutes, the dogs were done, their demeanor immediately changed 100% - ok, Ms. S****, have a good night, and told me to go.

They didn't find anything, of course.

So I was pretty "off" for the rest of the day, trying to get rid of the panic attack, was about to put it behind me into the "shit happens" category...then this morning I actually look at the interior of the rear of MY NICE NEW FUCKING CAR and it is completely destroyed. There are holes in the door (through the pleather and into the foam/body of the door), holes in the seat, rips in cloth, my cd changer in the back doesn't work at all, won't recognize it - hopefully it is just a wire that got ripped out. nail scratches all over the interior. Carpet cut on the floor. I was so pissed off to see this I haven't documented it all. This was the first time I've had something nice and new (well, new to me, I know it wasn't new but I got it in immaculate condition). I can't bitch to anyone, I have no names, no badge numbers and like I'm going to go complain to these scary motherfuckers? Yeah, that'll blacklist me forever. I hate this intimidation shit, I hate this fucking country, I hate that they can just rip your shit apart and assume you have crap on you when you don't, make absurd generalizations about gender and just be douchebags."

The scary thing about this is that in the comments from friends of this person, one person had even the doors removed from their car. Their car looked like the nun car in Up in Smoke and they had no fucking recourse. Apparently this is happening more and more between here and Canada. And that freaks me out and bothers me immeasurably.

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."

I die with a little help from my friends:

This story via Yahoo news (actually it's a Reuters story, but god DAMN they make it hard to find it on their site) via a friend talks about how the internet has made it easier for suicidal people to find one another so that they can go through the process of killing themselves together.

Weird and interesting and yet oddly compelling. Another friend is studying suicide on the internet and this just goes to show that there's a lot more out there than probably she even realized.

I've wanted to write about the whole Coretta King funeral uproar, but so many people have done such a better job than I could already.

Steve Gilliard, Digby, Firedoglake ... Well, especially Mr Gilliard. I'm not Black and my husband's only partially Native American (he didn't grow up on a reservation like at least one person I know did) and my closest Black friend doesn't believe in racism (he's psycho though ... he also believes in astrology at the same time as studying for his doctorate in mathematics) so I think that Mr Gilliard has the most true and honest and fucking right on feeling regarding this whole thing.

I saw Reverend Lowery give a speech that held true to the precepts of his church, his people and his friends. Fuck Bush if his trying to go somewhere he wasn't wanted made him uncomfortable. And fuck his wife for sitting there after every single person in the church has stood in admiration for the words and heartfelt sentiment. It's obvious she only stood after she was forced to before the cameras cut from her sitting down long after the tumult had reached it's plateau.

Between the right-wing racist attack on this and the Alito confirmation and the NSA syping mess ... it sure feels good to be an American.

A little deconstruction of the received hate email:

I want to deconstruct this little email of hate and pure psychopath and write what I would write if I could write back to this a**hole.

1. If you don't like our ad, ignore it. Why waste your spell checker on us? Though Shawn likes the snark of "...chips on your shoulders..." quite a bit. It shows you can use your mind if you want to.
2. I'm disabled. So wishing I die of cancer's a really nice touch of hate. What if I have cancer and already am dying of it? Do you do the touchdown dance?
3. My husband works full-time and then some. In case you're unaware, working half-time from home means he works from home half the time he works. Or do you have no clue about how some computer jobs get handled?
4. Trust fund? Our parents bought this house? Don't make me LAUGH. As if. That's the stupidest part of all the stupidity of the whole email.
5. You don't like the fact we want to ask our roommate to have similar tastes or at least respect our mores? Well, have fun hooking up a Christian with a Scientologist with a Satanist. I thought being up front with our house rules would weed out morons like you.
6. We don't want drugs because we're actually druggies and lazy to boot. Okay, I was wrong. There is a more stupid statement to be found. This is it.
7. Oh, sending all this hate, vitriol, wanting me to be raped and me and my husband killed using your email with your name? If this does turn out to be your email and your real name I can not WAIT for the cops, hotmail AND craigslist to get in touch with you. Seriously.
8. My friends have my back. They really do. So you can just go back to your little militia hideaway where nobody ever moves from where they're from (oh, and we moved here from upstate NY, not CA, though we have lived there, but we've also lived in London and spent time traveling, which is obviously more than I can say for you) to any place else, because god forbid they might get COOTIES.
9. Oh, and you're a foul-mouthed mouth-breathing cretin. Just to reiterate your head up your ass status.

This is the right-wing America:

I had this lovely email in my inbox this morning regarding a post I have up on craigslist (austin):

------- Original Message --------
Received: (qmail 8351 invoked from network); 3 Feb 2006 08:53:47 -0800
Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mxo1s.craigslist.org ; Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:53:46 -0800 (PST)
Received: from hotmail.com (bay7-f17.bay7.hotmail.com [64.4.11.17]) by mxi1s.craigslist.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 71A8710DDD for ; Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:53:46 -0800 (PST)
Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:53:46 -0800
Message-ID:
Received: from 70.113.97.68 by by7fd.bay7.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Fri, 03 Feb 2006 16:53:45 GMT
X-Originating-IP: [70.113.97.68]
X-Originating-Email: [mfosmoen75@hotmail.com]
X-Sender: mfosmoen75@hotmail.com
From: Mark Fosmoen
To: hous-XXXXXXXX@craigslist.org
Subject: Your ROom For Rent
Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:53:45 -0600
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 03 Feb 2006 16:53:46.0279 (UTC) FILETIME=[65D49B70:01C628E2]

A hearty and healthy FUCK YOU to you and yours. I like how you want someone
to pay for a room and then you want to dictate thier lifestyle. Must be a couple of cocknobbers with no self esteem and a boat load of inherited money
from parents. Just coasting along, drinking & drugging but doesn't want a
renter doing the same for as to not remind them of thier lazy shitty life that they've become.

You sound like 2 arrogant assholes who I hope get cancer, robbed, raped (in front of the husband, who halfway through gets a bullet in head when he attempts to be the hero). Hell, I hope you miss some insurance payments and your house burns down. I hope you are left outin the street with nothing but the chips on your shoulder and you both fight over them b/c you're so hungry. I hate California assholes like you and I wish the fuck you'd go BACK TO CALIFORNIA because you make Austin a worse place just by you living here. You incompetent, lazy, hippy, silverspoon assholes, FUCK YOU AND FUCK OFF!!!!!!

Mark

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This is the new, better, shinier America. Where somebody who posts a request for a roommate who won't eat meat or smoke in the house gets accused of not only the most insane things, but also a wish for them to be raped, our house burnt down and both of us killed.

It's been forwarded to both hotmail and craigslist and we've called the Austin police. Under the new laws? This counts as terrorism. Oh, and I just want to put the email here so that any possible employer doing a search comes across the name and email here at some point. Because even if this is just a troll, it's so beyond troll (the first paragraph would have had me ignoring this) that they deserve the police on their ass.

** Update **

Sent to abuse@hotmail.com and abuse@craigslist.org -- Husband's calling the Austin police department to find out what our next step is.

** Second Update **

APD counts this as "terroristic" and is cross-referencing it. Husband's on the phone with APD finishing up filing the report. I'm still pretty freaked out, but knowing this is getting handled and the police are involved makes me feel a LOT better. Yes, I'm a bleeding heart liberal, and I know people who've been beaten by the police, but I've also known some good cops and had some really excellent consideration from the ones I've called in the past. In this case I'm GLAD to have them on our side. Seriously.

Bahahaha! It's only February...

But I've found the best post of the year.

The take down is just brilliant. And it's snarky as all hell. I love me some snark. Well, some well delivered and righteous snark anyway.