Things appear to be getting interesting in our neighbourhood again. This is both good and bad: good because I was frankly getting bored with sleeping through the night, and bad because my levels of contempt for certain strains of humanity are reaching staggering new heights and also I like my car windows whole and unbroken.

There’s been a rash of smashing on our street over the last week or so. The curbs are littered with piles of sparkling glass chips, yet we’ve never seen the targeted vehicles. I’m pretty sure our car was “tested” – the other evening we heard a large thump, immediately followed by our car alarm. I looked out the window and saw a suspicious hooded character slinking away from the scene. He was far too tall to be a Jawa, so I’m thinking cars in the area are being scouted for future burglaring. I haven’t heard any glass being broken, though. You’d think that would make some noise, even without a car alarm. Maybe they’re just playing a prank to make everyone paranoid – get some glass chips, and sprinkle them everywhere. The first thing anyone is going to think is “OH NO CAR BREAK INS!” and scramble to buy clubs and large dogs and flaming pitchforks – perhaps these people are far more crafty than their meth teeth and fetal alcohol syndrome noses let on.

In addition to the upswing of crime, there’s been some wacky hijinks down at our local crack house. It’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy and our neighbourhood tweaker lives there, terrorizing us all with his yells of WOO! WOOOOOOO! at all hours of the night. The fights usually spill out into the alley, and I can hear their sordid tales of abuse and drugs and cheating and baby mama drama. It’s all very sad, but more importantly, it’s all very loud and never happens in the light of day. No, the crazy only comes out after midnight. What good is having a fight if a two-block radius can’t listen in?

To be safe, we’ve removed anything that might be construed as valuable from the Mazdabator. We don’t keep a lot in there as it is, but I had been keeping two routers and a DSL modem in the trunk for work purposes. Juniper SSG5 Routers are totally hot on the black market now, and the last thing I need is some meth head stealing my routers and trading them in for $1500 worth of asthma inhalers and fishnet stockings.

When all is said and done though, I would really prefer people to NOT break into my car or mess with my scooter. If you could be a total waste of skin somewhere else, that would be just super.