After a little more than two days, my cousin and I have arrived in Baton Rouge. As you can see, our hotel room faces the Mississippi River which is fucking posh.

Now, arriving in a mid-sized city on a Sunday night means not a lot of things are available no matter how revitalized their downtown district is. Fortunately my nose found the hotel bar and a Macallan 12 neat which hit the spot after 1,830 miles.

Now I would have written an update last night, however the Motel 6 we stayed at in Fort Stockton, TX failed to give us the Wi-Fi key, and we were too tired to go back to the front office to pick it up. Some notable things along the way:

• Buc-ee’s. We saw signs of it coming in and out of San Antonio. One of them talked about Beaver nuggets. Another talked about the best jerky. So past San Antonio in Luling, TX was Buc-ee’s. It was an extravaganza of a store that could only be appropriate in Texas. Jerky, snacks, bbq, hunting equipment, gift shop. It was a huge orgy of crap. Gifts were almost bought and could still be bought as we head back. I haven’t decided yet.
• Fuck Texas drivers. Signs on the interstate clearly say that the left lane is for passing only, made especially for the fucking idiots who don’t know this rule of driving etiquette already. So why did we still encounter cars going 60 mph even thought the speed limit is 80 mph?

  Oh. THE SPEED LIMIT ON THE OPEN ROAD IS 80 MPH IN TEXAS!!!!!. Talk about burying the lede.

• Texas lasts forever. 883 miles on the I-10 through Texas. And boy do the Texans love themselves. “Don’t mess with Texas,” the slogan reads. Fuck them. I messed with them all right, and boy were they sorry. By the way, Pepe’s in Ozona, TX rocks. If I were forced to live in Podunkville, Bumblefuck and could choose a town to live in, it would be Ozona, TX.

Rain is expected here in Baton Rouge tomorrow. That will put a damper on things. But exploring will happen.

So there was more traffic than I had anticipated as we were heading out of Los Angeles last night. Being the dense person I can sometimes be, I failed to realize that this is president’s day weekend and everyone would be heading out of town also. Doh!

Nonetheless once we got past Riverside, things were okay. Of course this brought up one of my peeves of California drivers: their utter lack of care or ignorance on how to drive on a 4 lane highway. The first lane is for passing not for cruising.

This stupid cunt was driving her little Hyundai at around 65 in the passing lane. 65!! We damn near rear ended her.

Trucks trying to pass other trucks? Is that even legal?

It became very apparent that as I sat stewing in the passenger seat it was a good thing I wasn’t packing heat. Unfortunately I wasn’t carrying any drugs on me either so this anger is allowed to fester.

Regardless, things are well. We spent the night in Blythe right at the California-Arizona border. One thing that struck me as we were in the middle of nowhere were the random lights seen off in the distance. One particular row of amber lights in the distance turned out to be a state prison.

I haven’t killed my cousin Aaron, nor has he wanted to kill me. Yet. Things can change very quickly. I got a whiff of what the product of his morning sit-down session in the bathroom can be.

Dispatches from Arizona and daytime pictures coming next.

As you can tell from the photo above, I am in dire need of a haircut. That will be done today. Along with packing and tying up a couple of loose ends at the homestead. Fortunately I shopped for travel-sized toiletries and did laundry yesterday.

My cousin Aaron and I will be taking off around 6 or 7 tonight for a road trip to Louisiana. Many pictures will be taken. Many FourSquare check-ins will be made. Hell, I may resurrect my Flickr account.

And I will be documenting the trip here.

The following Senators voted against the reauthorization of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act:

Jeff Sessions (AL)
John Boozman (AR)
Marco Rubio (FL)
Jim Risch (ID)
Chuck Grassley (IA)
Pat Roberts (KS)
Mitch McConnell (KY)
Rand Paul (KY)
Roy Blunt (MO)
Mike Johanns (NE)
Tom Coburn (OK)
Jim Inhofe (OK)
Lindsey Graham (SC)
Tim Scott (SC)
John Thune (SD)
John Cornyn (TX)
Ted Cruz (TX)
Orrin Hatch (UT)
Mike Lee (UT)
Ron Johnson (WI)
John Barrasso (WY)
Mike Enzi (WY)

They have their reasons to not like the law. My suspicion is the fact their genitals protrude from their bodies was their main justification for voting no.

The law passed easily 78-22 and will face an uphill battle as it goes to the Republican-led House.

Here’s is the text of the most recent reauthorization in 2005, and here’s a summary of the act courtesy Wikipedia.

I’m waiting to hear a convincing argument against this law. I’m waiting…

Here are some final thoughts about this saga.

1. There is some stupid shit being said out there. “Where’s due process? He was never found guilty.” He shot at cops. He shot at cops using a silencer. What did you really think was going to happen?

Try this. You go out there and start shooting at cops. What do you expect the result to be? If it’s anything other than you on the ground resembling a slice of bloody Swiss cheese, get your fucking head checked.

2. Why is there so many questions about who started the fire? KCAL9/CBS2 reporter Carter Evans who notably was caught in the final gun battle was right there on the scene. He described the officers throwing canisters of what he believed to be tear gas, then the flames immediately started.

I was following events on different channels while scouring Twitter and trying feebly to listen to any police scanners in the area, so maybe the events didn’t come as a shock to me. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department had talked about wanting to burn him out. So they did it.

In my mind it was an intentional blaze set by the sheriff’s department. So what’s unclear about that?

All I know is that it looked an awful like Waco there. Just without the women and children and God and Janet Reno.

3. What the hell happened in this last week? After burning his truck last Thursday, Dorner hid out in a cabin by a golf course. That cabin happened to be about 100 yards away from where the sheriff’s department set up a command post and where they held press conferences.

The story goes that after last weekend a mom and daughter team entered that cabin to do their housekeeping. Dorner tied them up and kept them hostage. For some reason he decided that yesterday was the day to make a run for it stealing their purple Nissan. As he was driving the mountain, he lost control of the vehicle.

Dorner then jacked a white pick up truck. Soon a Department of Fish and Wildlife ranger drove past him, recognized him and got into the first shootout. It was a mini shootout, no one was injured and he fled. The sheriff’s department set up a road block on Highway 38 at Glass Road, about 20 miles away from where Dorner initially holed himself.

It sounds like a pursuit then happened. Dorner came upon the road block, and that’s when that final shootout occurred. Two sheriff’s deputies were shot, one died on the way to the hospital. He hid in that cabin, they burned it to the ground, his body was eventually recovered and his California drivers license was found.

How did the cops not know he was hiding out 100 yards away? It was either a great job by Dorner or a incompetent job by the sheriff’s department. I don’t quite know which one it is yet.

4. What’s the LAPD going to do? So Dorner is dead. The poor cops can now breathe a sigh of relief. But that doesn’t mean the issues Dorner raised which came to life as both the LAPD and the Torrance PD reverted to their shoot-first primal instincts have gone away. It’s still there front and center.

What’s probably more difficult for the LAPD this time around is their indiscriminate shooting has caused mistrust across a broader spectrum of people. It’s not only the black community, the Latin community. This antipathy transcends race and gender.

Mr. Delicious Tacos put it best in his post “The Girls Cried When They Shot Dillinger”,

Cops: learn this lesson. The way you felt about Chris Dorner is the way we feel about you. A heavily armed human nightmare who could pop out of nowhere at any time with a gun in your face and fuck you on some technicality. Sure, Teresa Evans kicked some crazy guy in the head while he was cuffed. So fucking what. It’s against the Code of Conduct, but everything you do every day is technically against the Code of Conduct. Yeah, my brake light is out. So it’s against the law, what isn’t. Yeah, I have a gram of coke on me, so fucking what. It makes me feel happy for once. But suddenly someone can come grab you by the scruff of the neck over some shit we all do and stomp your face into the sidewalk and take away your money and your dreams and your freedom and maybe your life. Quis custodiet ipses custodies.

That just about sums it up, right?

LAPD had a news conference at 8 p.m. PT, and it turns out no one has stepped foot in the burning cabin since it was too hot. That means no body. No Dorner.

So let the conspiracy theories rain down. Let the cheering sections root on. Let the previous rumors run amok.

The rumors: Dorner escaped in a sheriff’s vehicle right after the shootout; Dorner shot himself in the head; Dorner is burned/suffocated to death in the cabin; Dorner fled to a nearby horse corral; Dorner jacked another car to escape; Dorner fled on foot.

Stupid CBS News and John Miller.

I was wrong. Dorner apparently was still up in the Big Bear area. No one knows where he was since last Thursday.

But one thing is clear. He jacked someone’s car and tried to get the hell out of the mountains. The po’ blocked the road. A gun fight ensued that caught a reporter in the middle. Two San Bernardino sheriffs deputies were shot, one dying on the way to the hospital. Dorner ran into a cabin to hide out. A standoff ensued.

After the po’ realized he wasn’t holding anyone hostage, they tossed in tear gas or incendiary grenades into the cabin which set the cabin on fire. There are reports that a single shot was fired. At around 6:40 CBS News John Miller reported his sources said that Dorner’s dead body was dragged out of the burnt cabin.

And there it is. Laissez les bon temp rouler indeed.

The one thing that is really amazing about this Chris Dorner manhunt is how much the citizens of Los Angeles are against the LAPD.

I talked to my mother Sunday night, and we talked about this. Back in the day she owned a liquor store on the border of Long Beach and Compton, and when the LA Riots exploded she was very much pro LAPD. Fortunately she also got along with the residents of the neighborhood, so they helped protect her store by keeping vigil on the roof with their various assault weapons. See? That’s love.

Fast forward to Sunday, and imagine my surprise when she told me she was a Dorner fan.

Okay, maybe “fan” is an exaggeration. But she made it clear that she thinks the LAPD is awful. It’s amazing what a little over 20 years can do to one’s outlook.

But my mother is not the only one with that sentiment. The picture above shows the amount of antipathy towards the LAPD people are showing. There are bumper stickers, makeshift signs on various cars, t-shirts.

And for once it’s not only the black community against the LAPD. It’s everyone. White, Asian, Latin, Eskimo.

Hours after Dorner’s last shots and victims, the LAPD down in Torrance shot around 50 rounds into a truck that was neither the make nor model of Dorner’s 2005 Nissan Titan early Thursday morning. Obviously instead of a 33-year old, six-foot 270-pound black man, they found two tiny Mexican LA Times delivery ladies.

The septuagenarian mother suffered two bullets to her back while her 40-something daughter had a minor wound to her finger. They have since lawyered up, and the LAPD trying to save face offered them a new truck.

Soon after and very nearby another truck, also neither the make nor model of Dorner’s truck, was rammed by the Torrance Police Department causing it to spin around and shot at. Again, to no one’s surprise, the driver was not Dorner. Instead it was a skinny white man looking to go surfing before work. He was not injured.

For the most part, people in Southern California are not afraid of Dorner. People are more afraid of the police who in their state of panic and fear have dispensed of protocol and decided to have a shoot-first policy despite martial law not being declared.

On Sunday the City of LA announced a $1 million reward for the capture and successful prosecution of Dorner. Hours later, the cops shut down a Lowes in Northridge. Why the hell would anyone willingly go to Northridge? I’ve never stepped foot in Northridge, and I’ve lived in Southern California for most of my life.

I can already picture the racial profiling gone mad, people desperate for the cash to turn in innocent people for the cops desperate to regain control.

One thing LAPD chief Charlie Beck said was that he wanted the reign of terror to come to an end. Hate to break it to him, but most of the terrorizing of the citizens was done by his agency not Dorner.

But the terror within the LAPD is palpable. The terror of them not having control in this situation, of them being the hunted has them dispensing with protocol and regressing to their primal self: the instinct of just shooting everything in sight, and fuck the consequences.

It has been entertaining watching the police stumble over their own footsteps during this manhunt. But the oddest and perhaps scariest is all the fan groups that have sprung up. One can agree with Dorner that he might have been wronged, that the LAPD is still riddled with corruption, that NRA president Wayne LaPierre can go fuck himself.

But Dorner has killed three people. He’s a murderer. I have a hard time putting anyone on a pedestal, but I sure as hell am not going to take my moral cues from a murderer.

I’m interested to see how this is going to end. Unfortunately I’m starting my road trip to Louisiana on Friday, so I might miss a thing or two.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not always sunny and 72 degrees in Los Angeles. Because those are the conditions we expect in living in Southern California, whenever that stasis is upset we freak out. Now a bunch of people around the country make fun of us for freaking out when the temperature dips below 60 degrees or a couple of drops of rain fall from the sky.

Which is fine. If that means I spend more than 300 days in sunny warm weather, I’m okay with it. Besides, how many dumb asses will be out and about in the Nor’easter on the East Coast tonight?

The weather forecast the last few days here in Los Angeles has been for a cold weather system to drop in with not a lot of rain. So I was expecting some sprinkles and dampness and minor inconveniences.

When I woke up this morning, the sun was out with ominous clouds in the distance. Right at 10 a.m. boom. The heavens unleashed a downpour I haven’t seen in a couple of years. And with it was some hail which you see above. Sure I’ve been through worse hail storms, but it’s not a common occurrence here.

30 minutes after the downpour the rain and hail stopped, the sun peeked out of the clouds and thunder was heard from a distance. It’s going to be a fun weather day here in LA.

Here in Southern California, we’re caught up in this manhunt for former LAPD officer Chris Dorner who is going on a killing spree which has taken the life of a police officer in Riverside County. He released a manifesto which gives his reasons for doing this, although it is in dire need of an editor.

I’m hoping he is caught dead or alive soon.

There, the preliminaries are done.

Early in the morning here in the South Bay in Torrance, cops were keeping a lookout over a person on Dorner’s potential target list. A vehicle possibly matching Dorner’s vehicle, a dark Nissan Titan, was found.

No details have been given, but the results were as clear as day. Anywhere between 20 to 30 rounds were fired at the truck. It turns out the truck was a Toyota Highlander. Oops. And it turns out the driver was not a 6-foot, 270-pound 30-something black man. The driver and the passenger were two little old Asian ladies delivering newspapers. One was hit in the hand and the other in the back. Double-oops.

Fortunately both will be okay.

So I have a couple of questions. Was any attempt made to make sure the two little old Asian ladies were not Dorner? Was any attempt made to make sure their was not a Nissan Titan, a vehicle description known by police at that time? Were they under shoot-first orders, and if so, why?

I get that it was dark outside. I get there are a lot of emotions involved since Dorner has killed at least one police officer. But was this necessary?

I don’t know if I should be shocked at this shoot-first mentality. After all the Obama administration is now justifying killing American citizens abroad with little more than a suspicion they might be involved in terrorist activities. Hell, W only captured, detained and tortured them.

So if they can shoot and kill first before asking questions, why not the LAPD? Why not the Torrance PD?