I’ll Have An Espionage Latte, Please
THINGS ARE GETTING JUST TOO WEIRD, even for me, and I have a pretty high threshold for weird. After all, I lived in San Francisco for 25 years – the Ground Zero for Weird.
This morning I stopped by St. Arbucks for a sip or two and to commune with The Usual Suspects who spend enough time there to establish legal residency.
While there I casually cast a glance out of the front window just in time to see a radio controlled drone fly through the parking lot.
Now, that got my attention – real quick.
A Drone? A Drone – the kind of thing they use in Afghanistan to take out Taliban #%%6##s with laser-guided missiles? I knew that Dunkin Donuts was scouting for a location nearby, but… They must be serious.
I could see the guy controlling it standing just inside the supermarket parking lot. He sent the Drone back and forth over the Starbucks parking lot and drive-thru lane about fifteen feet above the ground. It then zoomed up and hovered right next to the big Starbucks sign. Mysterious, no?
The “pilot” was dressed in black and wearing sunglasses (Ninja Drone Master – Mr. Wei Too Lo?) From where I was I couldn’t see any insignias on him – you know – something like “Police,” “CIA,” or even “Kroger’s.”
This “incursion” into St. Arbucks’ airspace continued for about five minutes before it flew away.
If this was just some hobbyist playing with his new toy it would have made more sense to fly it over the Kroger’s parking lot which was pretty empty at that time of the morning. To fly it where and when he did was deliberate and dumb. If one particular member of The Usual Suspects had been in attendance that Drone would have been blown out of the sky. Our former Marine, the owner of an arsenal bigger that some NATO countries would have walked out to his truck and returned with a weapon or twelve that would have turned the Drone into pieces from an Erector Set. (If you are under forty, look up “Erector Set” on Google. Erector Set – think of it as a Lego set for someone with an IQ above room temperature.)
I’m seriously beginning to wonder about this St. Arbucks store. It seems that almost every day there is either someone or something truly strange going on. The other day we had the Rev. Benny Hinn Interpretive Dance Recital and this morning we are being buzzed by a Drone in the parking lot.
Right now, as I sit here in the corner typing this blog post there is a guy loudly trying to convince another customer that the Apollo Moon Landing in 1969 never happened. The target of his argument is actively ignoring him and gathering up his newspaper and heading for the door.
See what I mean? Is it me? Am I a Whacko-Magnet that is drawing all of this nonsense here? In the last year or so we have had the guy walking across country with his goat here and then recently another guy carrying a full-sized, Golgotha-ready, wooden cross stopping by. Just last week a full-blown, stumbling Meth-head came through for a cuppa. Maybe she was looking for the young preacher who comes in to write his sermons – reeking of pot to the point of giving everyone a contact high.
If all this entertainment didn’t come with a free refill on my coffee I might actually consider moving to the other coffee shop a couple of blocks away, but I just can’t pass up the Caffeinated Vaudeville Review that goes curtain-up every day at the corner of Wabash Avenue and 25th Street in beautiful, and 5 degrees off of plumb, Terre Haute, Indiana.
Terre Haute – That’s French for, “Here we go again.”
Down the Hall on Your Left 