It seems that one of our neighbors has a stalker. Isn’t that fucking wonderful? There is a woman who apparently lives in the house next door to our apartment building, and her ex-boyfriend can be seen at pretty much any hour driving around the block in his van, parking in her driveway, or, if he’s feeling really frisky, sneaking into our back yard to spy on her window. This I love. Our building manager caught him pressed up against the wall the other night and called the cops, who promptly let him go. Thanks, guys! I had a conversation about this with Jason, the guy who called the cops.
“What the fuck? I mean, what the fucking fuck? FUCK!”
“I know,” Jason calmly replied as I fitfully gnawed on my arm.
“Why didn’t you . . . I don’t know . . . hit him with a shovel a bunch of times?”
“See, you can’t. I have to lure him inside.”
“Are you kidding? That’s fucking stupid.”
“I know. But I have taken my guns out of the safe again.”
Well, now I feel better. So we have a crazed stalker diddling around in our back yard and an armed, bloodthirsty building manager. How can we add to this picture? I believe I’ll set up a combo crack lab/abortion clinic! It is imperative that I maximize the horrific danger quotient here. But there are some other anti-stalker methods I can take.
- I will stop recycling. Not only will this hasten the demise of the earth, and thus stalkers, it may also act as a psychologic depressive on intruders. They’ll sneak into the back yard, and will inevitably see the woefully underused recycling bins. “Jesus, that’s terrible,” they’ll think. “Recycling is important to the global community. I’m too depressed to murder my estranged girlfriend now. I’m going to go read some Carlos Castaneda instead.”
- I will litter the back yard with my famously inedible pot roasts. This is almost too cruel, but my safety is paramount to people like me. So the stalker will creep into the yard and spy a pot roast sitting there. “Pot roast!” he will think, “What a delicious surprise! I will eat this pot roast before I murder my estranged girlfriend! O happy day!” Then when he discovers that the pot roast is, in fact, horrible, he will become incredibly depressed. “Who can’t cook pot roast? This country is going into the toilet. I’m moving to Indonesia.”
- I can pay William Bennett to sit around in my back yard and intercept the wicked. Again, the stalker sneaks into my yard, and there’s William Bennett. The stalker panics. “Jesus Christ in New Jersey! A shrill, right-wing moralizer is back here!” And William Bennett will thunder, “This nation’s poor have only themselves to blame!” And the stalker will cringe and think, “What? Is he insane? Why won’t he let me murder my estranged girlfriend in peace?” William Bennett will be unperturbed. “Images on television are destroying our nation’s fiber,” he will dourly intone. The stalker is plunged into a paralyzing morass of confusion and terror. He gibbers fearfully while William Bennett continues his ruthless attack on his psyche. “White people are great! I am frightened by the young! I’m a quacking programmable mouthpiece for the Republican Party!” At which point the stalker, now terrorized beyond reason, chooses to die, and eats an entire pot roast. And William Bennett looks on approvingly; a criminal has died horribly, and recycling is on the wane. It’s morning in America.