4/20/04 4:20 AM: To quote Xzibit, "Lately I been havin' dilemmas with insignificant n****s and half a$$ rappers who think they can get it ..."

I've really been trying to be in a good mood. Looking around, I have a lot to be happy about -- affection, friends, a relaxed lifestyle, and tons of free time.

Little things keep chipping away at my desire for joy and keep twirling my internal compass towards melancholy. Week after week gets a surprise or a challenge for me to overcome, and they keep getting more and more ... challenging.

For example, my left cheek is a little sore right now. It's sore from where the back door of the police cruiser hit it when I was put inside. I was put inside the police cruiser because a sheriff's deputy opened my door and saw the $7 camping axe that sits by my foot and panicked. Why was a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy opening my car door? Because I was sitting in the alley behind the chiropractor's office, in my car, waiting for a parking spot to open up, so I could go in and get my twenty minute "treatment." The "treatment" is part of the lawyer's gambit for the insurance company to pay off them and me after the wholly unresolved car accident I had last month.

The horn and air bag cover for my steering wheel are on the floor of my car. Upon seeing this, as well as the axe, they decided they had probable cause for a search of my vehicle. They found a $5 slim jim I bought at the African-owned 99-cent store, the $25 electrical inverter (which they didn't recognize and/or understand) and got all brands of persnickety. All of a sudden, they suspect I've stolen my car.

"Why is the air bag on the floor?" the Latino deputy asked me. He was really pretty unhappy.

"I had a car accident," I said for the fourth time. "It came off in my lap."

"You're sitting there with this weapon," he said, ticking points off on his fingers, "and I find a slim jim in your car, and all the wires on your steering wheel are loose, and I don't even know what this thing is ..." pointing to the inverter there, which has an explanation of what it is all over the side of it ... "and I start to think this car is stolen."

Now, I've been in his car for fifteen minutes by then, twenty minutes after all this started, and he's had my wallet most of that time. He's never once asked for the car's registration. It's in the wallet, by the way.

"The registration is in the wallet," I say for the third time. I'm careful to keep my tone conversational and not show any signs of hostility, referring to both as "sir" and maintaining "proper" English. My father's words come back to me -- "never argue with a bigger piece of metal," and the semi-automatic pistols on their hips outrank anything I've got.

He gets out and talks to his partner, plus a man in a denim outfit who never was identified. Now, I'm a thirty-one year old who grew up in not the best neighborhoods. I've probably committed scores of crimes. I won't deny that (I won't give specifics on what any of them are either -- that's just stupid). However, I wasn't committing any crimes at the time, but all of a sudden he thinks it's a "felony" to have something you can buy at Target next to your foot.

There were no weapons on my person. I have no outstanding warrants, no convictions, not even an arraignment as an adult. I was sober and cooperative. There was no evidence I had committed any actionable crime. After another ten minutes of poking at my PDA (which I observed the Latin deputy was unable to turn on at all), they let me go.

I haven't much mentioned the Black deputy because he was clearly the secondary party here, despite his panic at seeing the axe (and opening my door, which may not have been wholly legal) and because after the first minute or so, he seemed really embarrassed to be a part of this. He asked, "Do you know why we're searching your car?"

"You're doing your job," I said, holding back my disdain, "you're just being careful."

Honestly, there's nothing either deputy did that was outside of their training. Which is my problem all along -- had, say, they asked to see my registration, or asked me any of a dozen questions, they could have gotten information they ended up with a lot sooner and without antagonizing me. Which they did -- the Latin deputy was openly confrontational, but I know better than to argue with a gun-toting man who has me secured in his car.

As they let me go, the Black deputy talked to me. He seemed to want to apologize, but any admission of fault is not only a legal issue, but against the culture of arrogance that southern California law enforcement has been infamous for in a number of books, LA Weekly articles and so on.

"You have a cell phone," he said, almost pleading. "Call 911 if somebody tries to get into your car."

I wasn't able to stop the chortle that came out.

"Just keep an eye out," he said, looking more and more uncomfortable. "Be aware of your surroundings."

"Right," I said, smiling bitterly.

They wandered off, I parked my car, and tried to relax on the chiropractor's table. "Did you get the badge numbers?" my chiropractor asked. "Why bother? It's not worth it," I replied. I stewed with fury. If i hadn't been dressed like a teenager (I threw on a hooded sweat shirt and some jeans, since I was just going to get my check, hit the chiropractor's nearby, and come home), if my car hadn't been so jacked up, if I'd have gone back to the house for my iPod ... a million variables could have put me in that alley after that cruiser rolled past, but none of them did.

I drove home and was shaken. I booted up Grand Theft Auto: Vice City with a saved game, remembered some cheat codes, and spent two and a half hours killing cops dressed exactly like the ones I'd encountered. I suited up (dressed more "adult") and left to go sing karaoke. I was so mixed up I forgot to do my CBR column.

Law enforcement stumbles on more crimes than it actively seeks, so their blunt force approach is a systemic process bred into its drones. Let's also not forget the New Haven Police Department, who once turned a man down for a job as a cop because he was too smart. Innovative thinking is not what law enforcement breeds nor seeks. Which is okay if they're intended to be an occupying force, a big stick to cow the populace into holding up their end of a social contract.

My mistake for expecting more.

So that only compounds my frustration at having a jacked up car (which might have saved me from a lot of this), and at not having the financial wherewithal I once had (as I could have just paid to get this fixed back when I worked at eHobbies or Disney Channel), and at not having a whole lot of that money in the first place because I poured it into a house that I don't even own, and at the fact that the money mistake was caused by the fact that I chose to ruin my own life by choosing that sister in the first place, which is of course a fun reminder that Friday will be (in addition to the one year wedding anniversary of my brother Denzil and his wife Folami) one year to the day that my ex-wife gave up on our marriage and we called it quits.

I really am starting to understand exactly why people drink.

As Mercury stands retrograde, I've had a PDA die on me, CompUSA refuse to honor their agreement to replace said PDA (which meant I had to blow a Franklin to get a new one), my OS completely conk out on me and need reinstalling (eating up 36 hours of my life, including work time), and been unable to find time to either re-organize my office area as I've wanted to do almost since I moved in nor properly back up my files as I like to do. Which, funny enough, caused me to be unable to find all my tax forms and need to file for an extension. I'm beginning to wonder if The Crown will ever get back on schedule, let alone any of the other writing I want to work on so badly I've start dreaming about my own storylines. I am still being besieged by tempermental singers at this insipid karaoke contest at my job. Speaking of karaoke, none of the people I do business with seem to be able to hold on to a clue for longer than fifteen consecutive minutes. I haven't bought the Oxygen 8 keyboard to make my GarageBand software fully functional. My iPod battery is slowly dying and I can't deal with it right now. I wanna buy a $75 custom CD from Soundchoice.com, but I can't make it fit right now. It's only April, and 2004 is kicking my ass on a pretty regular basis.

All this, and I have an insipid voice class to attend today, do two jobs, and try to maintain a sunny disposition. I feel like Bigger Thomas, and days like today I wanna swing my fist and blot out the world. I really see why I stay in bed so much -- the world is not a place worth bothering with sometimes.