Why paintballs? Why??

Yesterday, I went to the wedding of two of my friends Ali and Alex. While unrelated to the subject of this post, it was one of the more fun weddings I've ever been to! There was great food, jokes in the ceremony, and people even had theme music while they walked down the aisle! (which is exactly what I've thought to do if I ever got married) They both looked so happy and I was so happy that I got to be there to share their day with them! For any lamers who thought that the USC/Cal football game was worth missing their friends' wedding, they all missed out on a really good time.

Anyways, so while I was driving home from Burbank, I was on the 110S going past downtown. All of a sudden, I hear this "THUNK THUNK THUNK!!!" sound all over my car! It literally sounded like someone was on the roof of my car and was banging on the roof and the windows with an enclosed fist. Since I'm going about 70MPH, my first thought was that ninjas or some homeless man had somehow landed on the top of my car and they were banging on the roof to tell me to stop. I was going to start swerving wildly to throw them off the car (and kill them, consequently, which didn't occur to me at the time), until I realized what was actually happening.

Some asshole(s) were shooting at cars on the freeway with a really loud/high powered paintball gun and my poor white car was one of the victims. Since I exited so fast trying to throw off the hypothetical ninjas, my car only took about 5 shots of green paint. Because I am completely OCD about having my car always look clean, I was REALLY pissed about it! I wasn't really upset about the act itself, but I was more annoyed that I had to go to wash my own car at one of those outdoor car washes in a suit because I didn't want the green paint to stain my paint job. So here I am, at midnight, in a full suit with my Salsa dancing shoes on, spraying huge blots of green paint off the windows and body of my car after an embarrassing drive down La Cienega with green paint peppered all down the side of my car.

I called the police, who transferred me to the LAPD, who transferred me to the CHP. What I've come to realize about the police is that they want to do the least amount of work possible. Do any of you have co-workers who always hand work off to other people so that they get to sit there idle and not have to do any paperwork?

I am convinced that the whole police system here in Los Angeles is filled with those kind of people. No one wants to help, nor care, and they just want to hand the problem off to other people and give you vague answers all the time because they want to have zero responsibilities beyond alphabetizing and filling out forms wrong (don't think I don't remember that, bozos from the Pacific division). This is a big reason why I don't watch police-based TV shows, because I know they are filled with more fantasy than the movie Big Fish and believe that someone from law enforcement, somewhere, sometime had to have paid off network executives to make it seem like the majority of people who work there actually care about their jobs. I'm sure that there are police officers and dispatch operators who really care about their jobs and take ownership over each and every person, case, or call, but I think they are few and far between.

Every police person that I have ever dealt with is "that guy" who is annoyed with having to answer any questions or passes work off to other people. I remember when I was younger, I used to think policemen and policewomen were the coolest, toughest people on the planet. Now, I can't even watch policemen doing heroic things on television and I roll my eyes during cop movies because I know that in reality, most people in law enforcement are just trying to get a paycheck, frustrated by bureaucracy, and staring at the clock because they want to go home.

The paint came off. I'm going downstairs to wax my car now. While it sucked to get "paintballed," it sucked even worse to have my complete and utter lack of respect for our police system be confirmed and justified yet again.