The Return of The Toddler
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From:          Todd Taliaferro [todd8080g@hotmail.com]
To:              Black Echo
Subject:    
Date:          February 17, 2003

In case you think I'm the only one who knows you're a few rice grains short of a bowl, there are others who see it, too. I thought you should read what Harley riders think of you, since you enjoy voicing your opinion of us. Ridgerunner posted this on my message board:

If you look around this guy's various sites, it gets even "curiouser."

The Harley bashing site is one out of a total of 11 sites this guy runs. In "real life" he's a 33 year old self professed "elitist" named Christopher Shields who works for the Mississippi Department of Transportation as a computer programmer. (i.e. He's a civil servant bureaucrat.) By night, he fights crime as an unpaid reservist for the Columbia Mississippi Police Department, although he apparently hopes to join their SWAT team, become a hostage negotiator or a security consultant.

Although he claims to have owned many different bikes, he admits he doesn't currently own one. His last appears to be a Ninja he had for three years from 1995-1998. (that's from age 25 to age 28) Interestingly, he doesn't tell us what happened to the Ninja, other than that he misses it.

There ARE lots of references to needing "wits and skill to own and ride a sportsbike or you're in for a world of hurt," "hanging corners," riding the street like a pro," "not overriding your skills" and "not forcing the bike beyond its limits" and then there's a cryptic "RIP Rosinante" at the bottom of one of the pages under a picture of a Ninja . . . but who am I to connect the dots?

In fairness, he does claim he's planning on buying a 2003 Suzuki GSX-R750 (and this guy rags on Harley for using letters to designate its models) but his wife just had their first baby in December 2002. Can I have a show of hands from those who have done the "motorcycle and new baby" thing how many believe there's a bike (other than a Big Wheel) anywhere in this guy's near future?

I feel safe in prediciting that he will be using his "more plebeian form of transportation" i.e. his Chevy Blazer, to run to the store for diapers and formula, then to take the kids to t-ball and soccer, and continuing to ride his "cyber Ninja" well into his 40s (by which time he will have discovered the cruel jokes gravity plays on the male body after age 40) before he picks up his next ride. Of course, we'll all still be plodding along on our outdated, overweight, loud, shiny, inefficient, paid for Harleys the next time he turns the quarter in under 10 seconds, but at least we will have gotten a few miles under our leather-bound saddles in the intervening years.

While I'm thinking about the fact he doesn't currently own a bike, does anyone find it strange that a guy who hasn't owned a motorcycle in five years (and who spends his life nitpicking everyone elses's grammar, spelling and usage) still talks in the present tense about "riding and owning" a sportsbike? How can his sportsbike "blow the doors off" my Harley if it exists only in his imagination? Of course, in MY imagination, my Fatboy can blow the doors off Todd's and my Sportster can wipe the floor with both of them. I may be dreaming (and I am) but at least the bikes are REAL!

And why does a guy who claims to be so grounded in reality gush like a pre-pubescent twelve year old over the Terminator movies, and talk about Terminators, Cyberdyne Systems, time travel and Skynet as though they were real? Get over it - - it's make believe - - just like your sportsbike!

Finally, why does a guy who rags on Harley riders because he perceives they are all a bunch of accountants trying to play badass biker, and who loudly proclaims that he would "rather be making his own identity than borrowing one from someone else," play at being a policeman, claim to be the "craziest officer" on the force, and adopt as his nickname, the name of a character played by Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon? Now, who's borrowing an identity?

There's some serious psychology in there, folks. I'm just glad I'm not as angry at the world, and as unhappy with myself as this guy seems to be.

Now I think I'd best go polish a headlight.

So just where is this imaginary motorcycle that you don't ride? Like I said, a piece of Jap crap on the bottom of a scrap heap ain't faster than anything. You just keep worshipping the Japanese, Christine, and leave the real American motorcycles to the real Americans.

By the way, I'll understand if you don't reply to this. After all, what can you say? It's the truth. What a pathetic joke you are. Sayonara, fishhead.

-Todd

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To which I replied

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“In case you think I'm the only one who knows you're a few rice grains short of a bowl, there are others who see it, too. I thought you should read what Harley riders think of you, since you enjoy voicing your opinion of us. ”Ridgerunner” posted this on my message board:”

Thank you, Todd for the wonderfully superfluous email. I’m particularly amused at the vainly naïve assumption on your part that the hastily collected duhpinions of a group of junk riding, bareback stacked, foreskin monks would really matter to me. I may reward you with a yawn, if you are lucky. Don’t count on it though…

Also, your rather pathetic attempt at overly dull Asian racial humor suggesting that I am “a few rice grains short of a bowl” goes far to showcase not only your monumental ingrained ignorance but also your complete lack of any formalized education as well. You humor is as clichéd as your make believe life, and like the motorcycle that you choose to ride, laughably long out of date. While I admire and study the Japanese culture and its history, I’m afraid I find that there’s nothing I care for with regard to their cuisine, especially anything dealing with either rice or raw fish.

Your message interestingly consists of three parts yet you are personally only responsible for a very tiny part of the overall message. First, we have your rather curt yet bland introduction, followed by a massive cut and paste job from someone you claim is called “Ridgerunner”, and finally your wholly unoriginal yet totally predictable closing statements. Judging by the content of your email, I can see that you really don’t personally contribute very much to your group on a whole other than maybe owning the message board (or so you claim) where you and the other knee-walking, knob-slobbering monobrow buffkins gather to discuss your otherwise rampantly pathetic lives and engage in a cyber circle jerk that makes you feel better about who you are.
I consider your message board (I know where it is, my cyber intel is better than yours) as the equivalent of an Internet version of a run down trailer park, with the usual suitably intellectually challenged, lowbrow, meth abusing social retards found dwelling therein.

The fact that “Ridgerunner” has done all of the legwork for you scoggins indicates that not only is “Ridgerunner” obviously the smartyscoggin of your group, but he’s also the only one in your sordid community that walks semi-upright, doesn’t drag his knuckles quite as often, has the better personality, probably gets laid more often (be that as it may), and has the largest cranial capacity of your group. “Ridgerunner” is the type of scoggin who has evolved to the point where he can understand big words and sound them out slowly to the other, lesser gifted chorescoggins such as yourself who merely grunt and scratch themselves while working tirelessly to try to turn common flatulence into an art form. As your email to me consists almost entirely of the work done by this smartyscoggin, “Ridgerunner”, work which you have somehow managed to figure out how to cut and paste into your own email (what an accomplishment), I will go with my initial impression that the reason that you are a man of such few words is simply because you apparently only understand a few words. In any case, since “Ridgerunner” didn’t deem it necessary to send me this email himself (after all, it is his work), you have only gone and proven yourself to be nothing more than the well trained errand simpleton of your group at best, and a rather inept one at that.

I see that “Ridgerunner” has been rooting around my website gathering some intel for you lowbreeds, but that he’s come to some rather erroneous and sometimes humorous extrapolations of the data he’s managed to slowly accumulate (not hard to do given the rather limited mental resources which you smegma munchkins have to work with). So, without further adieu, let’s look at what you and “Ridgerunner” have to say and I’ll try to get some honest answers for both of you as well as all of your French-kissing first cousins back at the message board.

Since I have never used my site to brag about myself, and since you honestly want to know, I will now take this time to talk about myself. Lord knows we’ve talked about you scoggins long enough, here’s my chance to let you know about your host and the greatest obstacle in your pathetic lives.

Be warned, “Ridgerunner” was wrong on many occasions and your assumptions are going to come back and take a bite out of your tender areas (that is, if the assumptions can stand the smell and the taste of your tender areas which normally might qualify as high traffic areas in certain locales and certainly haven’t seen soap in a month of Sundays).

“If you look around this guy's various sites, it gets even "curiouser."”

Thank you. I’m an incredibly deep individual, professionally educated with a lot of varied interests, many hobbies and an inquisitive, powerful mind matched to a domineering intelligence and a creative imagination that allow me to explore all of my interests as I see fit. I also have ample time to enjoy all of these hobbies and interests to their fullest extent. Author, poet, modeler, scratchbuilder, mechanic, artist, computer technician, network administrator, SCUBA diver, police officer, SWAT team member, motorcyclist, off-road enthusiast, aviation enthusiast, mountain biker, hot rodder, firearms collector, martial artist, husband, and now father. As Issac Asimov once said; a man should be many things, specialization is for insects.

I live my life by the old Army recruiting motto of “be all you can be.” Hence the letters BE, or Black Echo, in military terminology. BE all you can BE. It’s a play on the old Latin phrase of “Cogito, ergo sum” which means I think, therefore I am. Explained simply, it means that no one is alive unless they think, unless they reason. Whatever you believe you can become, you may eventually become, if you discipline yourself enough. That is my life, that is my philosophy, and as I will show you, I have more than amply lived up to my own personal philosophy.

“The Harley bashing site is one out of a total of 11 sites this guy runs. In "real life" he's a 33 year old self professed "elitist" named Christopher Shields who works for the Mississippi Department of Transportation as a computer programmer. (i.e. He's a civil servant bureaucrat.)”

That’s Christopher T. Shields, I’m rather particular about that if you choose to use my full name, “Ridgerunner”. Interestingly, the middle initial “T” stands for “Todd”, with absolutely no relation to the current chorescoggin you all used to send me this. I’m smarter, taller, better looking, a much better dancer and I can count higher than ten without taking my socks off. That at least puts me three steps higher in the food chain than Todd here, as well as most of the members of your message board.

As far as the Harley bashing site and the other sites, the entire domain of goingfaster.com is my own personal website and virtual property, yes, that’s right, the entire domain. The domain is further broken down into eleven (soon to be thirteen) different areas, each of my own creation, each maintained by myself, and each revolving around a different interest of mine. My website offers something for everyone (except idiots and retards, which I make fun of as one of my many hobbies, but then you knew that already, it’s the reason why you’re here running around here fuming and stamping your big, hairy feet around my domain). And as for “real life”, like I state on my site, what you see on the site is what you get in the real world, whether you believe it or not, it makes no difference to me. Those who know me in real life know that my website is a mirror in the virtual world of my real world life, hence the name of one of the sites; “virtual shadow.” My presence in this world is so strong, that I cast a shadow even into the Internet.

Yes, I am an elitist, if you want to use that word. I hardly ever use that word to describe myself, not that I’m not comfortable with it, I just have a far better word.

Elitist? I freely admit that fact and I’m proud of it too. Even my wife tells me I’m an elitist, it comes from my innate desire to be the best at whatever I do and to be unwilling to accept anything other than success and to achieve that success at any cost. I also do not tolerate ignorance, stupidity, underachievers, slackers, losers, posers, idiots, retards, liberals, hippies, middle of the fence walking pansies, people looking for a handout, victims of society, people who buy their lives out of a catalog or off a dealer showroom floor, and a host of other banes of modern civilization and our current society. I do not base my elitism on race, color, creed, sex, religion or national origin. I’m an equal opportunity ridiculer, and I target idiots and stupid people regardless of who or what they are. I pull no punches and make no apologies, feel no remorse, and offer no repent or respite.

Elitist?

Maybe. I’m rather fond of the term misanthrope instead. The human race does not impress me, on the whole, especially when I find groups of people like you. People, by and large, are uneducated, flock minded sheep. Not all people, but the vast majority of the population of the world follows the beaten path and sticks its head in the collective sand when anything it doesn’t understand comes along. The sad thing is, in the higher advanced areas of civilization such as the United States, this docile behavior seems to be by popular choice rather than unfortunate circumstance. That’s what I abhor, voluntary ignorance, especially if it is deemed to be trendy to be ignorant, and especially if you paid large amounts of money in order to be that way.
Since apparently I’m much more educated and much smarter than most Harley riders who attempt to communicate with me (especially Todd here), being an elitist really isn’t that hard a task to accomplish in this day and age. After all, it’s just not that hard to be number one when all you have below you are total zeros, losers, and the various bottom feeders of society.

I don’t hate you because I’m ignorant. I hate you because you are not at the same level of the food chain as I am. I am a misanthrope. Think of it as a well educated elitist.

And yes, I do work for the Mississippi DOT. You speak of it like I should be ashamed to work in civil service, like it is somehow beneath any of you to work in the public sector. I love the sneering attitude you engender when you present this facet of my life for your inspection. I worked in the private sector for the first four years of my life after college, and found it lacking. In a world where businesses come and go, where corporations change their names depending on the direction the wind is blowing, I found a lot to dislike about working for the private sector, even when I was the network systems administrator for a billion dollar banking corporation. I found the coat and tie charade tiring, the corporate song and dance to a different piper each week to be ludicrous. I got tired of merely existing in Cubicleville, so I took it upon myself to change my life and my career, to take control and carve out a large slice of the pie for myself.

I like the civil service sector, once you get past the bureaucratic red tape and all the paperwork. I’m actually quite proud of my current position, no shame in being where I am. The state job pays extremely well for someone of my expertise, especially for someone at my rather young age of 33 years. I have one of only five such jobs in the entire state. In other words, I’m at the very top in my area of expertise, as far as I can go upwards. Not too shabby for this stage of my life, considering I’m just ten years out of college and already I’ve reached the very top. Most people spend their whole career trying to achieve what I have done in just ten short years.

Civil servant bureaucrat?

Oh my God! I am rolling on the floor laughing my ass off (ROTFLMAO) at you Lego monkeys. Bwahahahaha! Oh, how I love that title! I had never thought of my job in that way. I do not consider myself a bureaucrat by any means as I actually build and maintain the network myself, with my own two hands, my brain, my learned skills, my learned experience, and my God-given talent. I do not push buttons, read charts, or sit behind a desk and tell other people what to do. I’m not a bean counter or a pencil pusher, far from it. If you had to define my position, I’d describe it as a blue collar worker with a big fat white collar paycheck. I run and terminate my own network cables, install my own network components, condition and service computers, rebuild or maintain hardware and CADD systems, and maintain every bit of the network, hardware and software right up to the demarcation line of each site. I’m in charge of technology training for over 1500 people and regularly set up interactive class rooms and sessions. My responsibility includes over 200 individual workstations and laptop systems, 20 CADD stations, ten network servers, a gaggle of network printers, and a host of dedicated application software that is shared over the network. All of this responsibility is scattered out over several hundred square miles, at twenty-five different locations in fourteen counties in the southern part of Mississippi, from the state line on the east side at Alabama, along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and as far north as Meridian. If I had to drive to one end of my jurisdiction, turn around drive to the other end, turn around and come home, it would take most of a day just on the road, I’d see the sun rise in the morning and set in the evening before I got home and that’s not stopping to do any work along the way.

That’s my territory, my real world domain.

My ‘real’ civil service job pays all my bills, buys all my toys, and feeds and clothes my family with plenty of money left over for fun. But my civil service job is boring as hell, I could do network administration or build computers blindfolded in my sleep, so I branch out with my free time and have a variety of hobbies and interests which I share with the rest of the world. Since I’m lucky enough not to have to break a sweat (networking and computers is child’s play for me) to earn a living or feed myself and my family, I consider myself very lucky in that respect.

My wife, married to me now for 8 years, together for two years before that, and having just presented me with my first born daughter Amanda Catherine, is a school teacher by career choice. She’s will graduate with her Masters Degree in Education this August and then she will go on to earn her PHD after that. Together, we easily make more money than the supposed ‘target customer’ of Harley Davidson and because Mississippi has such a low cost of living, a little money goes a long, long way down here.

Life is very good.

Yes, she is a ‘civil service bureaucrat’ also, her job, like mine, is held by the state of Mississippi. As such, she and I just received substantial state employee raises (don’t you love those cushy state government jobs), and I’ve been told that my position is going to be realigned soon which means even more money for me in the near future. I’m still waiting on the third part of a previous three part, ten percent salary increase realignment, so you can add even more money to the money that I’m already expecting and have been subsequently promised. She’ll get another raise once she completes her Masters this Summer and another pay increase once she completes her PHD.

Money. Money. Money.

Is a civil service job sounding so bad now? Well, if you think working for the civil service or public sector is bad, wait until you hear what I have to go through each day. It’s pure torture! I listen to CDs or the radio all day long, preferably talk radio where I don’t have to hear all the liberal brain washing. G. Gordon Liddy, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O’Rielly, and Scott Hannity are my daily breaks from the otherwise liberal controlled media and the leftist slant that has a hold on this country. When I can’t find those talk shows on the air, I’m either listening to classic 60’s and 70’s rock or 80’s head banging / speed metal, whether in the office or on the road in my state vehicle.

I have a flexible schedule, and have a hell of a lot of fun at my job. Sometimes I’m there at 4am in the morning, sometimes I’m there to midnight or later, it just depends on what needs to be done and how soon. Lunch is when ever, where ever, and what ever. Sometimes it’s in a road side truck stop at a greasy fast grille, other times it’s in a restaurant overlooking the sunlit ocean waves crashing into the beach on the Gulf Coast. My department is small, there’s just myself, and my coworker Jonathan, aka “Gimp” (who hates Harleys, hates idiots, drives a Toyota Mark III turbo Supra and has the same sense of dark humor that I do) and even though I’m the boss, we operate as a team of equals. I trust him to make decisions I may not be around to make. In other words, if my back is turned, he’s got my six covered, and vice versa. His input or opinion is always invited and taken into careful consideration. I don’t ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do first myself, so please don’t think I’m sitting behind a desk all day long doing useless bureaucratic crap. My philosophy is “if you want a job done right, do it yourself.” When I can’t do it myself, I send someone I trust and know will do the job right. The triplicate paper work sucks a long dick to hell, but otherwise, it’s a living, and a very, very good one at that.

The pay and the benefits of my ‘real’ civil service job are quite smurfy, I promise you. Dress code? I go to work every day in a T-shirt and jeans, sneakers and tennis socks and I make money on the level that would make most guys who have to wear a tie, a business suit and carry a portfolio around with them blanche. To put it in a ball park figure, take what your beloved import powered V-Rod sells for and almost triple it. You’ll be close enough for government work to the money I make per year. Salary.
I don’t punch a clock, I went to college so I wouldn’t have to punch a clock.

All in all, not too bad for a 33 year old “civil service bureaucrat”. The funniest part of this is that I probably make more money than most of you… and I don’t even have to break a sweat to do it.

“By night, he fights crime as an unpaid reservist for the Columbia Mississippi Police Department, although he apparently hopes to join their SWAT team, become a hostage negotiator or a security consultant.”

Can you just see the sneer in “Ridgerunner’s” voice when he says “unpaid reservist”?

He thinks he’s actually on to something monumental here and he’s slobbering over this tidbit that he’s dug up, rubbing his thumb over his tiny pink apple with delight. I love it! Since I grow weary of being asked this question, I will now explain what an ‘unpaid reservist’, as Mr. Smartyscoggin refers to it, really is, and maybe you other inbreeds will be able to understand, though I don’t hold high hopes of it.

Stay close with me on this, I’m going to move fast, I don’t have time to draw you any pictures and I’m all out of paste and construction paper so if you fall behind, call your mommy because I’m not coming looking for you. You’re all big scoggins now, you wanted to go on a field trip into the Virtual Shadow of the Dark One, so it’s up to you to stay with the tour group.

The only differences between myself and a “regular” officer is that the regular officer gets a paycheck every two weeks and has to follow a very rigid work schedule. As an ‘unpaid reservist’, I do not draw a paycheck and I get to make my own schedule with regard to when I work with the PD. I’m free to dress out and come and go on duty as I please or see fit. If I can’t sleep at night, I can go in and ride for two hours in uniform and then leave. And as far as assuming that I’m some kind of ‘play cop with a plastic badge’ with no training and no experience to back it up, I have to say that you’re dead wrong on that assumption as well. I’ve received the exact same training and certification as a paid officer has and then some. The reserve officers actually were put through about 20 hours more training than the regular officers received. Since graduation, I have continued to train and improve my skills in law enforcement for the past three years of my service to my police department, in any technical or service oriented program that was made available to me. Short of the work schedule and the paycheck, there are no other distinctions between ‘regular’ officers and ‘reserve’ officers. Oh, well, yeah, there is one. Regular officers have a facial hair code that prevents anything other than a mustache or goatee, reserve officers can have full beards (I do). The Chief said since we volunteered our time, and didn’t get paid, he wasn’t going to hold that over our heads. Because we volunteer with no expectation of a reward to be given to us, we’re given some slack in the restrictions as well.

Even though I may choose (yes, choose) be an unpaid reservist, I can assure you, I write real tickets, carry a real gun, chase real criminals, use a real radio, drive a real cop car real damn fast, wear a real badge, get into real fights, real take downs, kick down real doors, spray real pepper spray, have real fun, and have a real loyal following at the PD. I don’t foresee me drawing a paycheck from the PD for a long time, if ever.

Why?

Well, in order to do so, I’d have to take more than a two thirds pay cut if I quit my ‘civil service bureaucrat’ job and became a ‘real’ cop like you are fond of saying. Given today’s legal and political climate, you would have to be crazy to be a cop and if you ever did it for free, to take all that risk for nothing, to put your life on the line for nothing other than the chance to make a difference and your only reward is a feeling of accomplishment, then you would have to be certifiably insane to do so. I fall into that latter category.

Although I am classified as an ‘unpaid reservist’, no one likes to call us “reserves” mainly because of the negative connotation that is normally associated with the word “reserve” or “volunteer” (case in point, what you are doing in this email). As such, my identification carries the rank of “Patrolman”, not “reserve” and I am referred to by the rank of “patrolman” at all functions, not by “reserve.” Even the regular officers who do not hold standing rank are referred to by the title of “patrolman”, which makes me equal in rank to the regular, paid officers you refer to.

The Sheriff’s office has reserve officers, they are untrained and never allowed to carry firearms when on duty. There is a big difference between reserve officers for the Sheriff’s department and reserve officers for the city police department, and that distinction is one of the reasons why our chief does not refer to the CPD ‘reserve officers’ as ‘reserves’. We may be voluntary service, but we’re not ‘reserves’.

As far as training and certification goes, I am fully certified as a police officer in the state of Mississippi and trained on all manner of firearms from backup handguns, standard service sidearms, tactical shotguns, chemical munitions, tactical gas, and even tactical carbines (Mini-14) and semi-automatic rifles (AR-15, etc.). Martial arts (another hobby of mine), pressure point combat, hand to hand, collapsible baton, knife fighting, verbal judo (some of what you scoggins get a taste of in my other emails), and a host of non-weapon disarming experience is also available to me and practiced regularly.

As an ‘unpaid reservist’, the department gives me almost jack in the way of equipment. Everything I or any other reserve officer owns and uses on the street, from our uniforms down to our boots, from every piece of equipment on our belts; flashlight, handcuffs, tactical gas, holster, sidearm, ammunition, body armor, etc. is all purchased by each individual “reserve” officer, out of their own pocket and at their own expense. Of course I write my purchases off on taxes at the end of each year, including the large quantity of ammunition I go through. When I graduated from the training academy, my department gave me my name plate, some lapel brass, my badge, a whistle on a chain, and a personal radio with mike and scrambler. Everything else was mine to pay for and acquire as I could.

I purchased my own duty / carry rifle, a very smurfy .223 Bushmaster XM-1-EA2 heavy barrel shorty tactical carbine (civilian version of the Special Forces M4 to you trailer scoggs) and carry that in my Interceptor when I’m on patrol. It’s fitted with two 30 round magazines (hollowpoints), a tactical combat sling, and a BSA “Deerhunter” 9x32 variable scope. Monday in tactical rifle qualification, I put a dead center headshot into a B27 target over 400 yards away with the Bushmaster. In case some of you scoggins might be trying to add and figure that up on your fingers and toes, that’s me standing at one end of a football field, and drilling a tango through the middle of his monobrow noggin from over four football fields away.  I'm not sure how that would equate to, say distances measured by NASCAR fans, but it's a pretty damn long way.

I know what I’m doing.

I have the skill, the talent, the desire, and the training certificates in my file to prove it.

When other officers ask for you by name or fight over you to get you to ride with them when the tour of duty begins, then I must be doing something right. Yes, we ride around and make fun of idiots as well, all night long.

Yes, all things considered, I guess I am just an ‘unpaid reservist’, if you want to use that term instead of my proper rank which is “patrolman”. I’m a patrolman by night and sometimes by day, especially weekends and any state holidays, plus I’m subject to being called up at any time I’m not actually working for the MDOT. I see that “Ridgerunner” has found a pretty out of date page that I’ll have just have to go and update soon. I’ve honestly not updated any of my police stuff for the longest, I’ll have to get some more stories up on the TOD site, dig out my notes and type them up. I’ll get to it when the ‘real’ police work slows down and allows me to do so.

Yes, I’m just a “civil service bureaucrat”, an “unpaid reservist”, and a “small town play cop” that serves because I feel I have a civic duty to my community to volunteer my time, talent, and skill in order to help keep the community I live in safe from felons, crack-heads and pedophiles and to make sure that the city that I intend to raise my daughter in is a place that she and her friends can play and grow up without being victims. As for how much time I put in behind the badge, I usually put in over 100 hours a month at the PD through a variety of functions, that’s not counting SWAT training, classroom instruction, or any other physical training which does not usually count toward my required minimum hours (which is 20 hours per month in order to maintain my badge, rank, and rating). So, on top of a regular 7 to 4 job with the MDOT, I also put in the equivalent of over four full days working non-stop around the clock with the CPD each month.

Oh, did I mention SWAT?

I guess that brings us to the part about me being a member of the CPD SWAT team.

Columbia has never had a SWAT team before. We had a STAC team but not a true SWAT team. Until recently. When the call went out for officers to join the SWAT team, I volunteered and after thorough review, I was accepted for one of the limited slots on the team. Yes, I am currently a member of the newly formed CPD SWAT team, one of only six individuals selected thus far, so again I must be doing something right to be included in something as prestigious and physically / mentally challenging as a tactical urban spec ops team. My next goal is to obtain the position of SWAT team sniper, another rank and title I’m well on the way to obtaining if Monday’s score on the rifle range was any indicator of what the future holds for me.

Due to my extensive knowledge of networks, computer systems, and software, I’ve been appointed the Intelligence Officer for the SWAT team, as well as the Information Systems Specialist for the SWAT team. After my team and I bust down the door, kick ass, take names, and haul off the meth-scogs, it’s up to me not only to map out the building for future reference (creating a map of the building using a CADD program and storing it in a tactical database for retrieval at any time in the future if we have to plan a strike against that building again), but also to correlate all the information from the raid; names of suspects, equipment recovered, weapons recovered, tattoos, aliases, etc. It is also my responsibility to tear apart any computer or AV equipment systems found on the premises and gather further intelligence or evidence for use in the case.

The hostage negotiator part I can mark off my list of goals to accomplish in life, I have no interest in it anymore and we already have an officer in that position who has far more tolerance of idiots than I do. Judging by how I deal with idiots like Todd here, I doubt I would make a good hostage negotiator. I don’t deal with idiots, I take them down hard. Maybe that’s why they wanted me on the SWAT team, because when the sugar turns to shit, the time for talking is over.

I’ve found that unlike owning a Harley, being a cop actually does take two essential things in life; a brain and a set of balls; the bigger the better in both instances. I’ve also found out that there are three kinds of people in the world, there are sheep, there are wolves, and then there are those who protect the sheep from the wolves. Guess what you all are. Here’s a hint, you don’t wear a badge, and you don’t have big pointy ears or a mouth full of sharp teeth. That narrows it down now, doesn’t it?

Just on a side note, and this will only be of interest to everyone but you scoggs, as I am somewhat skilled with graphics, and several of my fellow officers visit my websites, I was asked to design the logo for the department’s new SWAT team. You’ll find that logo displayed soon on my Tour of Duty site along with an update. It’s rapidly become the talk of several other SWAT officers from neighboring jurisdictions who may want me to design something for their teams other than the clichéd Eagle carrying an M16 type motif that’s been overdone to hell.

Here’s the graphic I designed for our SWAT team logo that has been accepted and is about to be made into patches and shirts.

The Latin phrase means “Deeds not words” because like I said, when the sugar turns to shit, the time for talk is over and my team goes in.

And as for a security business, I also have a private security business on the side which brings in even more fun money and I pull complex and installation security for several local business as well as the local hospital / ER. I pick my clients and my schedule.
Security pays quite nicely as well, and with the current state of the world, it’s only going to pay better. People with law enforcement or military experience will shortly be able to write their own ticket, especially if they have background computer experience.
So all of that which you have found out about me is true as well, though not in the context of your humorous assumptions. Sorry that you had to go on such outdated information, I’ll try to update soon, when I can slow down enough to do so.

“Although he claims to have owned many different bikes, he admits he doesn't currently own one.”

I do not currently own a motorcycle, that much is freely given. However, that does not mean that I do not currently ride. We will get to that misconception shortly. I understand how this may be utterly confusing to a group of people who base their entire existence around a particular type of motorcycle that they own. For you, ownership is critically essential in defining who and what you are, for me, it’s an optional enhancement to who I am.

“His last appears to be a Ninja he had for three years from 1995-1998. (that's from age 25 to age 28) Interestingly, he doesn't tell us what happened to the Ninja, other than that he misses it.”

Here’s where “Ridgerunner’s” intel breaks down, not because he hasn’t put forth the obvious effort, but because the story of the Ninja and its fate is one part of a two part story, and the tale of the Ninja is, of course, the second part, hidden somewhat behind the first part. It can be found on the SPO site, under the TALES FROM THE DRIVER’S SEAT link, under the “YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY” link. However, since I realize what level of mental retardation that I am dealing with, I will give you a brief recap.
So, you are curious as to whatever happened to the Ninja ZX-6R? It’s a good story and one that probably wouldn’t be believed if I didn’t have an eye witness.

Highway 587 (aka “Red Bluff road”) is a local two lane backwoods twisty that is a serpentine series of left / right / left / right hand turns interspersed with mile long straights. 587 stretches from outside of Columbia all the way to Monticello, or about 30 some odd miles. It snakes over Red Bluff (the highest point in several counties where you can look out into adjacent counties on a clear day) and not a few bikers have lost their lives on 587 in the last three decades, one while he was videotaping his high speed experience (ouch).

The Ninja was completely destroyed when I hit a full grown deer at 70mph in August of 1998 while sport touring on Highway 587 with my riding partner, Julian. Following the impact with the deer, I low-sided a hundred and fifty feet from the point of impact down the right hand side of the highway and my bike went over four hundred feet from the point of impact down the opposite lane of the highway, leaving debris and pieces as it slowed in its careening, cart-wheeling dance (Julian and I paced it off afterwards). I walked away with three inches of road rash on my right leg, a dislocated right shoulder, and all of my safety gear destroyed (helmet, gloves, jacket). Before you scoggs start your ‘piece of jap crap couldn’t avoid a deer’ routine, two days before I hit the deer, a Harley rider, with 30 years of experience riding Harleys, hit another deer on another local highway. His impact was at 45mph, or much slower than my impact. He couldn’t avoid the deer either. His bike scissored over on him, slamming him head first down into the asphalt and snapping his spine. I’m walking today, sometimes with a limp, he’s paralyzed from the neck down, with a full time nurse to feed him and wipe his ass when he shits himself.

I was about to use the insurance money settlement to purchase Julian’s ’97 Ninja ZX-7R (since he was about to purchase a brand new Yamaha R-1). I had done most of the maintenance and upgrade work on the 7R, installed the aftermarket pipe, re-jetted the carbs, and knew the bike as well as I had known my own. Transition would be easy from the 6R to the 7R. Right before I received my insurance settlement, Julian had both his ’97 Ninja ZX-7R and his brand new Yamaha R-1 stolen from in front of his apartment by a roving gang of professional out of state bike thieves. There went his brand new bike and my ‘next’ bike I was about to purchase. Heartbroken, Julian took his insurance settlement and bought a Mitsubishi Gallant then took up a job as a programmer in New Orleans, moving away out of state after college graduation. I took my insurance settlement, since the bike I wanted had been stolen (the ’97 Ninja ZX-7R of Julian’s) and used that money to start a hobby of building hot rods and small block Chevys. I gave the fast bikes a rest for a few years, much to the relief of my wife and parents, and concentrated on going fast on four wheels.

The police never recovered the brand new Yamaha R1, but they eventually got back the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-7R in Slidell, Louisiana over a year later. Since Julian had already taken the insurance settlement, the bike went to the insurance company and that was the last of the two green, white, and purple ZX series Ninjas that used to cruise around Hattiesburg all the time. RIP, Rosinante.
However, since I have taken up security work, police work, become a member of the SWAT team and now ultimately a member of a multi-jurisdictional narcotics task force (another team I got voted on to, but I don’t know where I’m going to fit it into my schedule), you can say that riding a motorcycle is the least dangerous of my chosen hobbies and occupations.

“There ARE lots of references to needing "wits and skill to own and ride a sportsbike or you're in for a world of hurt," "hanging corners," riding the street like a pro," "not overriding your skills" and "not forcing the bike beyond its limits" and then there's a cryptic "RIP Rosinante" at the bottom of one of the pages under a picture of a Ninja . . . but who am I to connect the dots?”

Obviously “Ridgerunner” isn’t exactly detective material or else he would have found the information he is looking for already in his deep searches for my personal information. He’s apparently been traipsing through the rest of my site at his whimsy, taking careful notes, making assumptions, and as he puts it, trying to connect the dots. This admission of his leads me to questioning the nature of his psychology and his mental stability. I must really be making a lot of you double chin, comb-over sideburn rednecks angry for you to go to this much effort and spend this much time just to find out what little information you can about me personally just in order to try to ridicule me.

I’ll take your Herculean, if ineffective effort as a compliment because it means that I’m still doing my job, after all these years. Just like I’ve been doing since 1993.

“In fairness, he does claim he's planning on buying a 2003 Suzuki GSX-R750 (and this guy rags on Harley for using letters to designate its models) but his wife just had their first baby in December 2002. Can I have a show of hands from those who have done the "motorcycle and new baby" thing how many believe there's a bike (other than a Big Wheel) anywhere in this guy's near future?”

I rag on Harley for jumbling letters with no discernible pattern, not for using letters. With the import bikes, the designations follow a predictable outcome. Honda produces a CB series of bikes which are standards and cruisers. Any designation with an “R” in the name is usually a high performance model and quite possibly a sport bike, hence CB, CBR, GS, GSX, GSX-R, VF, VFR, etc. With Harley, you never know what a designation means. FH = Fucked Hard, FHXL = Fucked Hard Xtra Lube, FHRW = Fucked Hard Rode Wet, etc. No wonder your bikes have names like “soft tail” and “hard tail” and “springer”. By the way, isn’t Springer that guy on TV who interviews all the trailer park trash and has fights on his shows when some guy finds out that his brother is actually his father?

And funny you should mention my impending motorcycle purchase because the timing of your question is impeccable. I had a few thousand dollars set aside for the purchase of a new bike but a mint, one owner 1985 Mazda RX-7 GSL appeared on the Internet for sale in Missouri and I chose to purchase that car first for $3600 as a father / son project. The seller even drove the car down from Missouri to Mississippi when I agreed to purchase the vehicle. As clean, one owner first generation RX-7s are rare, not to mention ones which come with the original window sticker and all the maintenance records, I didn’t waste any time in snagging it up for my stable. I can always get a motorcycle, but a nearly 20 year old car, in nearly perfect condition, those don’t just appear every day. An RX-7 is an enthusiast car, pure and simple. It has a twin rotor engine, displacing 70 cubic inches, with a four barrel carb feeding it. It makes a hundred horsepower and a hundred and five pounds / foot of torque, meaning my seventy cubic inch engine still makes more power than your 70 cubic inch engine. Given this remarkable find, I gladly put the purchase of a new bike off a few more months in order to add the RX-7 to my collection (to replace the one I threw off a cliff and twatted up way back in 1998).

It is my hope that my father and I can transplant a 1992 Turbo II twin rotor, intercooled, port fuel injected 13B engine into the Gen 1 chassis, along with the heavier duty 5 speed transmission, then trick it out with aftermarket HKS parts to make a 300 plus hp sleeper able to dust most American offerings. It’s a project that’s only been done a few times, to great success since everything is basically drop in and bolt up to existing mounts. I’m a big fan of the Mazda rotary engine powered RX-7s (wish they made a rotary powered EFI motorcycle) and lost my last one when I flipped and rolled it (that story is also on my site, right in front of the fate of the Ninja story). That and since the birth of my daughter, I’ve kept a large amount of my savings held in reserve as an emergency cash fund in case something dire happened to my daughter or my wife and for any medical emergencies.

That’s just common sense.

Last night, I sat down with my wife and told her that I still planned on buying a new sport bike either in June or July of 2003. She and I then went over the budget for the household, we found that after we pay off our land in May, a sport bike will fit quite nicely into the monthly outlay, so rest assured, the sport bike is still on full go ahead for this Summer. Look for pictures of the bike either in June or July, possibly sooner, but certainly no later. I’m still partial to the 2003 Suzuki GSX-R750 because I’ve owned every other type of motorcycle but a Suzuki and the three quarter liter Gixxer is a beast of a bike with a long heritage of championships, in other words, its descended directly from thoroughbred competition racing stock, unlike anything that Milwaukee rolls out which is only descended from whatever didn’t sell well last year. However, lately I’ve been drawn to the full liter Gixxer, and all the aftermarket speed parts available for it. It weighs less than my ’95 Ninja, has better technology, fuel injection, and will be the future home of a Hahns Racecraft intercooled turbocharger setup boosting the power to well over 250hp and the top speed in excess of 200mph, allowing me to own what sport bike and trade magazines refer to as a UFO, or “Unlimited Flying Object”, just another goal of mine, to break 200mph and then some before I grow old.

The current favorite choice for my next bike is a 2001 Suzuki Gixxer 1000 because of the color scheme.  The 2001 and 2002 bikes are identical except in colors, so I'll probably buy a used 2001 as I prefer the black / silver color scheme.    I’ve found several examples for sale, owned by adults, with low miles. The black and silver graphics / paint scheme has really hooked me and that is what I’m angling for now. Here is a picture of my future bike, just a teaser for you.

More pictures soon.

“I feel safe in prediciting that he will be using his "more plebeian form of transportation" i.e. his Chevy Blazer, to run to the store for diapers and formula, then to take the kids to t-ball and soccer, and continuing to ride his "cyber Ninja" well into his 40s (by which time he will have discovered the cruel jokes gravity plays on the male body after age 40) before he picks up his next ride.”

Well, there’s another bet that “Ridgerunner” will lose. Jesus H. Chrysler! I sure wouldn’t carry this scab to the casino or the track with me if I were you scoggins, or trust him with your money anywhere out of your sight. He’s managed to dig up a considerable amount of information on me and not called a single shot correct yet despite all his effort and time spent doing his research.

When I get in my 40’s, the one thing I do know for certain is that I won’t be waking up realizing I’m a loser and then going out buying the biggest, shiniest, loudest Harley I can just to prove that I still have the virility of a teenager or to live some pathetic store bought outlaw biker fantasy with my new 22 year old trophy wife, Mitzy. I’ll still be riding sport bikes until I can’t ride bikes anymore.
I look forward to turning 40 in six years. If the last six years have brought about such unbelievable leaps in technology in motorcycles (Harley of course being excluded), then I can’t wait to see what the next six years will bring.

Speed and technology are just two of my hobbies, forced induction and computer controlled electronic fuel injection are nice complimentary hobbies to my chosen career as a computer specialist, the ability to create custom fuel maps with a laptop computer and dial my equipment in for performance using keystrokes instead of a set of screw drivers sets me apart from the old school mechanics. I guess that’s why I waited so long on buying a new bike, the import factories are just now producing some really fast EFI sport bikes. Turbocharging and supercharging don’t really come into full use unless you match them with intercooling, fuel injection, and computerized engine management systems. As the Gixxer 1000 is already a computer controlled, EMS equipped, EFI fed bike, incorporating an intercooled turbocharger kit onto this bike will only take a weekend. It’s a bolt on kit, and for someone who understands technology like I do, it shouldn’t be too hard to install. I’ll document this build up as well. There are Suzuki GSX-R1300 Hayabusas right now running Hahns Racecraft intercooled turbo systems, pumping out over 400hp on premium pump gas, and being street ridden. You want to impress me with power, Harley isn’t the answer. Harley only impresses the weak minded and the ignorant.

And what is this ‘cruel trick’ that gravity plays on the male body after age 40? Is it the fact that you wake up next to a boring fat nag of a woman, with two little fat screaming kids, a boring ass dead end job, a boring house, a boring life, a Honda Odyssey minivan for your wife and kids to toodle around in, a four cylinder, four door Honda Accord for yourself, matching in color of course, and you finally decide that you’ve had enough of the rat race and that you’re going to get off your NASCAR watching lard ass, to get off your Krispy Kreme doughnut and coffee in the morning pot belly and have some real adventure? Sure! You need a Harley Davidson, because that’s the American way! You’ll stop being a total loser, strap on a big hawg, and instantly become a REAL American and a real bad ass outlaw biker, it says so right there in the catalog.

Harley Davidson has been turning utterly pathetic losers into facades of real men for over three decades now, time and again! They’ve built a financial empire on that fact alone! All you’ve got to do is go take out a third mortgage on the house, get a brand new Ford F150 Harley Davidson edition pickup truck, a brand new environmentally controlled and sealed HD cargo trailer, and the biggest, loudest Harley Davidson you can find. Trick it out with lots of genuine accessories, flood your wardrobe with all the poser gear, and you’ll be set. Then you roll the Harley carefully into the environmentally controlled trailer and tow your bad ass outlaw motorcycle all around the country while you buy tacky crap from every road side stop and tourist trap you pass. At just a few hundred miles a year, your Harley will look brand new for a long time to come, probably up to the day you manage to finally pay off your mortgage you took out to indulge in your make believe lifestyle.

Oh, that’s what you must have meant by life somehow playing a cruel trick on you.

Sorry, I live my life on the edge, all the time, 24 / 7 / 365. No remorse, no regrets. For me its full throttle, balls to the wall all the time. As such, I don’t have time to get fat or slow down or sit around thinking about what I could have done, where my life has gone and thinking about the good old days. And as I live my life on the edge, I’m not going to turn 40 and wake up realizing that I haven’t done jack with my life and I need to go out and buy an expensive piece of crap just to pretend to be someone I’m not so I can make friends with other people who pretend to be just like me before it’s too late and I die a miserable old has-been with a bunch of regrets and nothing to show for it.

You people are beyond pathetic, you’re laughably obsolete.

I really feel sorry for all of you geezers who constantly whine about comfort and riding position and how it hurts your back or your hands or your feet and how you have to have cruiser pegs and highway bars to ride around looking like you were teenage girls waiting for your first OB-GYN exam. Hell, as loud and shaky as most Harleys are, no wonder half of you geezers have hearing aids, only a few teeth, and nervous twitches. What a bunch of sofa riding, whining geriatric old ninnys.

As for the bet on the new motorcycle, you might all want to go ahead and get “Ridgerunner” to lay down some serious cash. That way, when I post pictures of my new bike, you can take him to the cleaners financially and possibly each of you will be able to buy some minor new officially licensed and endorsed trinket or piece of HD tacky crap for your rolling easy chairs or your double wide mobile homes. After all, he’s been wrong about everything else so far.

“Of course, we'll all still be plodding along on our outdated, overweight, loud, shiny, inefficient, paid for Harleys the next time he turns the quarter in under 10 seconds, but at least we will have gotten a few miles under our leather-bound saddles in the intervening years.”

Saddles?

You catalog and showroom cowboys don’t ride horses, you ride big cushy sofas. You have the sex drive and sex appeal of the Maytag repairman and the personality of a door to door encyclopedia salesman. Hell, the only thing you have to worry about losing on a Harley Davidson is either your remote control or this week’s issue of TV guide down between the big fluffy seat cushions. And at the way that you only average a few hundred miles a year on your bikes, given that they are ridden only in sunny weather and warm days when the designer leather poser gear doesn’t get too hot or uncomfortable or chafe in tender places, I can fully understand why Harleys last forever. You almost never use them for anything other than garage door stops! No wonder your Harleys last so long and go for so many years. Next time I see a 20 year old Harley, I’m going to bet it has less than 10,000 miles on it. Your Harleys should last you quite a long time indeed with the scant little wear and tear which you subject them to. If I were you, I’d worry more about over-polishing them and rubbing off all that aftermarket chrome than actually putting any road wear on them. You’ll see that kind of material damage long before you see rock chips from extensive riding.

Around here, we have a phrase for when huge groups of Harley riders pull into the local Shoney’s or Denny’s. We all laugh and say “the S&M circus has come to town.” You can guess who the bondage clowns are, they certainly dress the part. The other joke is to ride by and offer to throw them some soap or a razor, to introduce them to some advanced personal hygiene technology (otherwise known as “scrubbing magic”) they might not normally be familiar with. The guy who got off his Harley the other day had a clip on pony tail! What a fucking retard! Has it gotten so bad now that Harley has to sell clip on hair extensions to complete the poser image they sell? Maybe his goatee and his tats were peel and stick as well. The smell was real, though, I’m pretty sure.

You can’t fake something that bad, even with modern chemical science.

And as for turning the quarter in under ten seconds, that, dear scoggins, is a goal that none of you will ever understand or obtain, at least not as long as you continue to ride anything produced by Harley Davidson. Nothing American made on two wheels, stock from the factory hammers the quarter that fast except in your imagination.

“While I'm thinking about the fact he doesn't currently own a bike, does anyone find it strange that a guy who hasn't owned a motorcycle in five years (and who spends his life nitpicking everyone elses's grammar, spelling and usage) still talks in the present tense about "riding and owning" a sportsbike? How can his sportsbike "blow the doors off" my Harley if it exists only in his imagination? Of course, in MY imagination, my Fatboy can blow the doors off Todd's and my Sportster can wipe the floor with both of them. I may be dreaming (and I am ) but at least the bikes are REAL!”

I nitpick idiots who never graduated high school yet think they are smarter and superior to anyone else simply because they own a Harley. I also nitpick idiots who think that a Harley somehow is a status symbol or a right of passage that makes them better than other people.

So you own a Harley.

Whoopde-fucking-doo.

Lots of people own Harleys, not everyone rides the Harleys that they own and just because you can’t ride, doesn’t mean you should.

No, I currently do not own a motorcycle, we have already covered that. However, people that I do know do own motorcycles, some of them own very fast motorcycles and not only do I work on these bikes for these people, installing aftermarket parts as part of my SPO business, but I also often get ‘paid’ for my maintenance and time by getting to ride their bikes or borrow them on occasion. If I am sitting on a borrowed sportbike and hammering some corners, then that bike is, by definition, ‘mine’ until I return it to its owner.

Hence the nomenclature.

And as for borrowing and lending bikes, it was nothing for me to let Julian borrow my Ninja ZX-6R for days, even weeks on end, leaving me without a bike while his Ninja ZX-7R was in the shop getting warranty work done (adjusting valves) on it or tires mounted (a task we did not have the equipment to do ourselves). Since he co-op’ed several counties away and our work schedules conflicted, he often got to borrow my Ninja for long periods of time until I had the time to get his bike and ride it up to him to exchange them out. I rode his Ninja until that time, hence the bike I was currently riding may not have been mine in title, it was mine in current possession.

Not everyone has the time to work on their bikes, I have extra time and it’s a hobby to me, I’m quite good at working on sport bikes, so I volunteer my time and skill to those who do not have such time or skill. I also sell performance parts and install them on sport bikes locally. It’s a hobby, going faster, taking what someone else made, tearing it apart, making it better. Just one of many hobbies.

So, to recap this bit of confusion on your part. I haven’t owned a bike in almost five years, however that doesn’t mean that I haven’t ridden a bike in five years. Big difference. With a bike to ride whenever I felt like it, why should I buy a motorcycle in the last few years? Anytime I wanted to ride, all I had to do was pick up the phone and make a call to pull in a favor owed for service rendered.
Unlike the rest of you, my life does not revolve around my motorcycle, my life is complete without any bike. If I do not have a bike, I don’t cease to be who I am or lose my identity and image. In counterpoint, you all are defined by the motorcycle you choose to ride. You have met together on an area of the Internet that is about your bikes specifically, that is, your bikes have brought you together, not your personalities, not your lives, and not your deeds as a person. If you didn’t own Harleys, most of you would never have met each other or formed bonds in the first place, and you certainly wouldn’t have been posting on your message board. You are all products of the collective brain washed commercial worship of a piece of trendy archaic technology. I find that amusing, that one piece of outdated hardware can dictate so many of your actions and responses, it’s a pagan religion for the unwashed villagers who live in the trailer park of the mind. The collection plate is passed around at the dealership, and salvation is always just another officially licensed and endorsed accessory away.

“And why does a guy who claims to be so grounded in reality gush like a pre-pubescent twelve year old over the Terminator movies, and talk about Terminators, Cyberdyne Systems, time travel and Skynet as though they were real? Get over it - - it's make believe - - just like your sportsbike!”

Make believe? You have no room to stand and make an accusation about something being make believe. Your whole lifestyle is make believe. The badass outlaw, real American lifestyle you lemmings profess to live and the real American motorcycles you claim to ride, the REAL American motorcycles that are more than 30% constructed from parts made in other countries and which breathe through Japanese carburetors? Talk about make believe! What a bunch of deluded redneck buffkins!

Japanese carburetors, Japanese forks.  Hell, if it wasn’t for rice, your bikes wouldn’t even run!

I love the hypocrisy of your claim that you ride REAL American bikes, nothing could be further from the truth. So much of what Harley sells is produced in third world nations and other countries that it’s laughable. If anyone would know about make believe, it’s definitely Harley owners. They’re the de-facto experts on make believe, sometimes I think they even invented the term. Before Harley, people had to earn their reputation the hard way. Today, you can order your image and a reputation right out of a catalog or just walk into a dealership and pick one up on your lunch break. Clip on ponytails, stick on tattoos, HD brand cologne, and everything else that the bar and shield logo can be plastered on is your mana from your pagan religion.

And as for the Terminator site, I’m afraid that it’s nothing more than an amusing mental exercise, another hobby, a simple interest of mine. I like science fiction (it’s the realm of the educated, thinking person) and Terminator is not only good solid science fiction, it’s interesting modeling. I don’t believe any of it is real, but technology is already well on the way to artificial intelligence. Terminator was an underdog of a movie, filmed for a meager budget, that blew the box office away. My Terminator site has been called the one of the best Terminator sites on the web, not because it deals with the actors, but rather because it deals with the imagined hardware behind the story, which is a first since very few other sites even deal with the hardware involved. Please don’t read into it anything that is not there. I’ll laugh at you if you do, even more so than I am laughing now.

Also, if you dig a little deeper in my site, you will find that I have the foremost site on the Internet dealing with the various aspects of the delta-shaped spacecraft from the old 1968 cult movie classic Planet of the Apes. Once again, I’m exploring the technology (something you scoggins think is magic) behind the aspects of the movie, not the actors, not the characters. Both sites are simply interesting hobbies which generate a good deal of correspondence from many other interesting, educated people (coincidently none of which ride Harleys).

I can understand where someone such as a Harley rider would fail to see the rather obvious connection. After all, no one has ever claimed that Harley owners were either original or deep thinkers. Hell, most of you probably went and saw T2 and stood up and shouted “Well I’ll be dipped in shit, rolled in oats and called a Granola bar! Will ya look at that! Arnold is riding a FATBOY! Yee-haw! I’m going to go out and buy me a Fatboy after this movie is over! Then I’ll be an unstoppable bad-ass like that there Terminator sumbitch!”

That was probably your greatest collective extent into the Terminator mythos; shallow and minimum.

“Finally, why does a guy who rags on Harley riders because he perceives they are all a bunch of accountants trying to play badass biker, and who loudly proclaims that he would "rather be making his own identity than borrowing one from someone else," play at being a policeman, claim to be the "craziest officer" on the force, and adopt as his nickname, the name of a character played by Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon? Now, who's borrowing an identity?”

Oh, for the sweaty, forbidden love of Willie G. and Arlen Ness …

I love how you lemmings search every nook and cranny and grab at the tiniest of straws for justification of your pathetic banal existence or for something to lash back at me with. Like the saying goes, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers, apparently your group is proof positive of that line of reasoning. If there’s one thing I have to give you Harley riders, it is that you take everything you see and read at face value, you don’t question anything, you believe every single thing you read, whether it’s on the wall behind the parts counter, or it’s in the official MoCo catalog your thumbing through while you’re on the can. You have proven that you simply cannot think deeper than the ink on the paper.

I had a nickname in the Academy…

Since you simian twats are effectively clueless even about this aspect of my life, I will try (emphasis on the word “try”) to enlighten you. When I was in the police academy, everyone got nick names, it was part of the initiation process, you lost your identity and you gained another, temporary identity. My partner and I were called “Murtaugh” and “Riggs”, after the two characters in the movie Lethal Weapon. He was black, I was white. They could have just as well called us “Salt” and “Pepper” after the two make believe secret agents in the ‘60’s Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. movie (some of you scoggins might just be old enough to remember that film or still have a few brain cells left that haven’t rattled out your ears). My humor and our interaction during our training reminded people of the two make believe cops in the make believe Hollywood movie (and some of you dress like you were extras in the movie Easy Rider …)

I didn’t give myself the nickname, it was given to me by my instructor and if you spoke up about your nickname, chances were, you probably got a far worse one in turn, so we all took what we got. The similarities were there though, as was often pointed out to me and my partner by the other members of the group.

My weapon of choice was a high capacity 9mm Taurus PT-92AF (an identical copy of Mel Gibson’s weapon of choice in the movie, the 9mm Beretta) and I was absolutely nuts in training. My voice was the loudest, I hit the hardest, threw the longest, and always came back for more, volunteering to be an example for everything from pressure point combat to hand to hand fighting to knock down, drag out dirty fighting / officer survival. I took my training very seriously. I went into every situation head strong, cracking smart ass comments at every opportunity, making everyone laugh and I wasn’t afraid of anything that was thrown at me. When everyone else closed their eyes and squinched up their faces during chemical warfare training, I kept my eyes wide open and smiled at my instructor when he stepped forward to spray me with pepper spray. He looked at me, shook his head, laughing.

“Jesus! Are you sure you want to see this shit coming, “Riggs”?” he asked. “This shit is going to make you find religion real quick.”

“I’ve got religion.” I said. “I want to see God, now spray me, damn it.”

“Hardcore.” My instructor said and then he sprayed me in both eyes with pepper spray and moved on to the next guy.

I spent the next twenty minutes learning how to readjust to not having any eye sight, having my nose and eyes run uncontrollably, my nerves fire off in pain, the skin on my face felt like it was a second degree burn, and having to find some way to get that stuff off and get back in the fight if I had to. I shut off the external stimulus as best as I could and concentrated on what I had left to me in the way of senses, namely feel and hearing. I think I did pretty good, at least I wasn’t whining and crying and screaming like the other people, I was too busy methodically decontaminating and trying to get back in the fight.

I actually looked forward to getting sprayed, and I’d do it again just for the experience and the rush. That’s one of the reasons why people today still refer to me as the craziest white man alive, not the craziest officer on the force. We don’t have any crazy officers on the force, at least not officially.

I don’t go by the name of “Riggs”, that was a temporary training nick name that lasted six months and no more. People on the force either call me by my real name, my badge number, or openly by “Black Echo”. Even my SWAT commander, who visits my ANGST site often, refers to me sometimes during training as “Black Echo” or just “Echo”.

One of my officers recently saw the new Vin Diesel movie “XXX” and found me the next day, after a particularly brisk foot chase ending in a suspect’s hard takedown and he asked me if I had seen the movie. As I brushed myself off and made sure all of my gear was still in its correct place, I told him I had not. He commented on the part where Vin Diesel is about to get yanked out the back of the cargo plane and he realizes what is about to happen. Vin Diesel then turns to the camera and shouts “I live for this shit!” before the chute opens and he gets yanked backwards out the rear of the plane at about 40 miles an hour. The officer then said “That’s you, Shields. You live for this shit. No lie, son, you really do!”

Hell, I’m also a self professed adrenaline junkie. If it isn’t fun, forget it, and if you can’t get hurt doing it, it isn’t worth doing. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Or, as Nietzche once said; “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”

Oh, you might also watch the excellent war movie “Full Metal Jacket”, the opening scenes of training at Paris Island will give you a clear indication of how nick names are given in highly regimented orders of training. Other than that, I can’t help you. Either you get it or you don’t, and so far, you obviously don’t.

If you need more information or background on how people get assigned nick names, just ask “Ridgerunner”. I doubt that’s his Christian name or what appears on his birth certificate, so here’s a guy riding a pretend bike, living a pretend life, going by a nickname he made up himself, not one he earned and not one given to him by his peers, and he’s nitpicking on me for having a nickname that was given to me by my peers and then claiming that I live in a fantasy world. Right.

You guys are hypocrisy at its finest!

“There's some serious psychology in there, folks.”

You haven’t touched the surface of it, “Ridgerunner”. My site is very intricate, its many sites overlaid as one single site, not many people get that, and there are many hidden aspects of it, Easter Eggs if you will, that only certain people will get or recognize.
Judging by your comments, most of my site will be well above your intellect or your basic ability to understand and perceive, but then that’s to be expected. When it comes to having an audience, I’m shooting for a much higher grade than what you and your group could ever hope to represent. The email which I receive offering compliments to my site and the follow-up correspondence with other intelligent individuals indicate that I’m hitting my target audience, which pleases me greatly.

“I'm just glad I'm not as angry at the world, and as unhappy with myself as this guy seems to be.”

Unhappy with myself? Angry at the world? Far from it! I’m not unhappy with myself, but I’m never satisified for long, if there’s something I haven’t done, I’m angling out a way to do it. I get bored with my life, which is better than being complacent. Each higher goal I set for myself, each higher goal that I reach merely becomes the next stepping stone for the next goal which I set for myself in my life.

No, I doubt you are very angry at the world, or unhappy with yourself either, Ridgerunner. Sheep generally are pretty nonchalant in their outlook on life. They hang around in safe little, private pastures, oblivious to what goes on around them. They bleat at each other and try to cheer each other up when they’re feeling down. They chew grass and mew bravely at things which frighten them, knowing full well that there is nothing they can do. Sometimes they get their wool fluffed up or bent out of shape, but that’s about the extent of it. That’s what makes them such easy prey for the wolves, not only are they not the smartest creatures on the Earth, but they are so damn predictable. Their sole reason for living is to be sheared of their only valuable commodity. They’re a renewable resource.

Kind of like most Harley owners.

Remember, no matter if you are the baddest sheep in the flock, Ridgerunner, you are still just a sheep.

“Now I think I'd best go polish a headlight.”

Or better yet, “Ridgerunner”, maybe you should go and polish Todd’s helmet. Judging by his email here, he’s a little uptight and could probably use some immediate relief from all of his pent up frustration. And now, we return to Todd for his closing statements.

”So just where is this imaginary motorcycle that you don't ride? Like I said, a piece of Jap crap on the bottom of a scrap heap ain't faster than anything.”

I ride a lot of bikes, Todd. None of them are imaginary. The bikes I ride may not belong to me (therefore I’m not tied to one particular bike and what I am is not ultimately defined by what bike I base my existence around) range from a 2002 Kawi ZX-6R to a 2001 CBR600F4 to a ’93 750 Magna (same engine minus the gear drive as my ’93 VFR750F had) and even some cruisers, such as the ‘99 Shadow that I rode four days ago. Any of the sport bikes which I borrow or ride from time to time would whip, stock for stock, anything Harley produces including your own home grown pseudo-import, the V-rod with its all import engine. Please don’t kid yourself otherwise.

I’ve been somewhat impressed with the Honda CBR929RR that I got to borrow two weeks ago for several hours, it was much better than the 1994 CBR900RR that I once got to ride, but then you expect that from several years of technological improvement, something that Milwaukee is still ignorant of.

“You just keep worshipping the Japanese, Christine, and leave the real American motorcycles to the real Americans.”

Real American motorcycles my ass, Todd, and no, that isn’t an invitation to go out on a date with me, sorry to disappoint you. I tell you what. How about I leave the pretend American motorcycles to the pretend Americans because America doesn’t make any real American motorcycles, they haven’t for decades. America makes fashion accessories and strap on dildos for the penile challenged.

The only REAL American bikers ride imports, Todd, or haven’t you figured that out yet?

A Harley Davidson is just one step above a combination of a paint shaker and an old wheel chair, with half the style and no where near the God given grace. That and it’s ridden by people who look like the cast of Hee-Haw collided head on with the Stepford Wives on their way to a gay trucker all you can eat buffet. Your pathetic antediluvian engines would be better suited as common irrigation pumps used in the Sudan by the Peace Corps rather than laboring to push your rusty old frames from stop light to stop light.

When America makes a real motorcycle, Todd, then I’ll buy a real American motorcycle. Until then, I’ll keep buying my real motorcycles from overseas, since it’s obvious that America can’t figure out how to build them. When it comes to motorcycles, those scoggins in Milwaukee, and those who buy their pathetic inbred products, don’t have the first fucking clue as to what a real motorcycle is. If you did, you wouldn’t be riding Harleys.

Oh, and I see that you went and called me by a feminine form of my name, Todd! How very first grade of you. Is there any doubt why we refer to you as "Toddler" on the message boards?  You live up to your name so well.

I have to say that foreskin felching assmonks such as yourself are nothing if you aren’t predictable, even your insults are clichéd and recycled. Here’s a big clue, Jethro Dull, Harley doesn’t build motorcycles, not any more. They build fashion accessories for ignorant, no-life taint elves like you. Your ignorance not only defines what you are, who you are, but also what you will buy and what you will ride.

Your ignorance rules your life.

The one thing you scoggins never realize is that you can’t buy patriotism and you can’t buy the right to be an American. It isn’t something that comes in snack size or family size servings. Sorry if you paid for those two ideals, or thought you were getting something you weren’t but you got screwed. You don’t ride a real American motorcycle, Todd. Harley hasn’t made a real motorcycle in decades, not since they sold out in the early ‘70’s and started kissing and licking government bureaucratic ass just to survive as a business. The very thing you claim I am in real life is what your beloved motorcompany owes its very existence to today.

”By the way, I'll understand if you don't reply to this. After all, what can you say? It's the truth.”

Most of it is the truth, and I have corrected you where you were wrong, which is several instances, but that is to be expected because face it, none of you are truly even entry level rocket scientist material.

I’m not ashamed of my job, my life, or my views.

Your opinion of me won’t change my life nor will it make me lose any sleep. Why wouldn’t I respond, Todd? Putting lemmings like you in their place is but one of my many hobbies. Hell, making fun of dumbass redneck pretend bikers who think line dancing is a form of foreplay and Shoney’s breakfast bar is blue ribbon cuisine is just too damn easy. You guys have got to stop handing me this stuff on a silver platter. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort or time.

You’re a toy, Todd. You and your friends and people like you exist as nothing but prime examples of how my argument is all the more valid. People like you, as ignorant as you are, do your best to validate my stance time and time again and to reinforce what my site advocates. You prove my argument just by existing, let alone by speaking out and sending me email.

“What a pathetic joke you are.”

The only joke here is you, Todd. You and your tight knit little group of collectively ignorant, identically dressed, deeply confused, pseudo-individual, conformist posers are living a dream and think its reality, not a dream you created yourself, but one you subscribe to. You scoggins aren’t even creative enough to come up with your own dreams, so you rely on someone else to create it, package it and sell it to you. You’re all just facets of the same cliché.

The real reason for your email is that you cannot stand the fact that I have more of a life than you can ever dream of having or the fact that I managed to carve it out of this world with my own skills, my brain, and my own two hands instead of buying it out of a vending machine or over a counter from some guy named “Skeeter.” You cannot stand what I am, and how much more of an individual, a real individual, I am than you could ever possibly buy or hope to be.

Beware the power of stupid people in large numbers for they keep Harley Davidson in business.

Do you hear that music, Todd? That means the circus has come to town. I’ll be sure to wave to the leather clad assmonk on the big shiny pretend bike as you ride by. You better hurry though, your pancakes at Shoney’s will get cold if you wait too long and they might run out of maple syrup. Scoggins like lots of maple syrup, it keeps their pot bellies bloated so they don’t fall off their toy bikes.

“Sayonara, fishhead.” –Todd

Ah, so, grasshopper!

Thank you for the racist remark there at the end, Todd. It shows me just who and what I’m dealing with, not that I had any doubts in the first place. Your email is trailer park entertainment at its finest, just like your big hairy ass is every Friday night. Polish that stump, Todd. You’re not good for much else in this life.

For what it is worth, I’m not Asian nor do I have any Asian ancestory, so your remarks have no impact on me though I’m sure that you’ve probably offended some Asian visitors to this site. Thanks again for showing the world what Harley ownership stands for; utter tiny minded ignorance.

In closing, I’d like to say that the funny thing is… According to people like you, I’m just a small town cop, I’m just a civil service bureaucrat, and I like science fiction but you know what? I’m still more popular than you will ever be. I get more positive email in a week from people all around the world than you get in a year. I bet that really chafes you to no end in places where you can’t quite reach, now doesn’t it? I am everything you pretend to be, that you wish you could be but don’t have the God given balls to ever become. That’s got to be one hell of a rude awakening to all of you scoggins living in out there in la-la land.

Oh, and you can post this reply to the other scoggins as well. I’m sure that was your plan in the first place. I’ll be sure to post it to my site as well.

You have your laughs, we’ll have ours, at your expense of course, just like we’ve been doing since 1993.

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