Last night was a long night for me. Like usual, I "played" on the street for about 12 hours. Then I came back to the station for about 6 hours worth of reports (That part isn't so usual). By the time I got home, it was about 30 minutes till I had to technically wake up again. Good thing I have the next 4 days off, though. Anyway, the night was filled with the same types of stuff. I don't need to mention all the weirdo/depressing stuff, but one incident in particular became the highlight. We had a gang member (Southsider) who was a wanted subject. One officer spotted him heading east on foot (toward a major street).

There was a house that had quite a few areas for the Southsider to hide in the same area of where the subject was last seen. Now understand, nearly every unit in the area is there. I think about 8 of us hop this wood fence, and start perimeter searches. My partner and I stray away from the pack toward a little section of sheds. My partner goes to check the first, but there's a barrel in front of it. It's pretty safe to say our Southsider didn't go in there. It works the same way as we pass these other sheds. As we make our way toward the house, I start looking at a shed on my right, that has a set of stairs leading up to the door. Because I was the closest to it, I had a better view of the door. Because of this, I could see that the latch to the door was unhinged. RED FLAG! I tell my partner to come to me. We're both at the front of the steps with my partner behind me. I go up about 2-3 steps on this staircase, and I hear on my radio "Southsider is known to be armed (We wear ear pieces)." I pull out my glock 45 and press it against my belly as I aim the light toward the door.

I get up the staircase. With my flashlight, I open the door slowly. I want nothing but concentration from my body at this point. So I set the flashlight in front of the staircase so it lights up the shed. Now I have both hands on that glock. For building searches, we have a tactic called "slicing the pie." It's how we slowly cut pieces of "view" into a room. It's one man vs the room. When done right, it can take a few minutes just to clear a small bathroom. It's designed to be slow, so you can be thorough. So, I begin slicing the pie. The entire time I do this, I'm checking everything with every intention of firing my weapon. I keep imagining what this Southsider could do from each of these edges. I'll tell you right now, that's an eye opener. I finish slicing room. No subject is seen. I grab my flashlight and walk in. There's junk everywhere. A tarp covering stuff. A table in the center, and boxes of junk surrounding the area. I ignore the table, because I can see it has long legs. So it's obvious nobody is hiding right there. I head for the tarp, and check it. Nothing. I look around all the other junk. Nothing. This room is clear! That is until....

...I shine my light on top of the table. "What the fu*$ is that?" For a brief second, I'm thinking about brocolli. Then I get out of my mental tunnel vision, and realize I'm staring at a table full of dried, chopped marijuana. I show my partner, and we exit the shed. The owner was walking up toward us already.

"This your shed?" ...."Yeah." ..."You know what you got in your shed?" ... "Yeah." So we bust this guy for possession initially (Detectives took it over 2 hours later, and drew up a LONG list of charges).

"Do you have anymore?" ..."Yeah." This guy we bust had 18 total, 12 foot marijuana plants. Inside his house, he had about 15 or so large zipper bags worth of dried and prepared pot. The total at this point is unknown, but it's obvious what his intent was (Intent to sell).

Anyway, the whole situation was just so funny. A criminal got a criminal. We never found that Southsider. Unfortunately, he managed to get away, but he accidentally nabbed someone else for us. I even told the subject this who had all this marijuana.

"I'm going to tell you right now, I appreciate your cooperation with us and I hope you continue this trend, but I gotta tell ya until I met you, I thought I had the worst luck." Subject laughs.

---One last thing I want to mention is that we can't go into just anybody's shed, home, etc. I'm sure most of you understand how warrants work, etc. Because of what we were initially looking for, we had the right to search everything in the surrounding area. It's a section of the definition of "probable cause," and we can use that against an opposing subject that didn't have any relation to the original incident that precipitated the search. I just wanted to mention that, so you understand I just can't walk up to your shed and start snooping around.

The title Aliens vs. Predator should have been changed to Awful vs. Painful, because somewhere inbetween that is the emotion I felt forcing myself to watch this dreadful film. I would have been more entertained watching an hour and a half of Tampax commercials. I'll be the first to admit that AVP was a film I was looking forward to. It seemed to me that it would be too easy not to mess this up. The commercials showed AVP as a war that was going on between two alien races, and humans were caught in the middle. Little did I know, there was just a handful of predators in a secluded area, and maybe two dozen humans.

1.) The first thing I get troubled by was right in the beginning. The year is 2004 in October. Is the audience suppose to believe we discover aliens in this year, and keep it "hush hush" until we join up with Riply in her 4 picture series? I can't remember the year that started, but I could have sworn it's somewhere in the 2100's. You could argue that something obviously happens to that information from now until then, but it just comes down to the simple fact that....I hate the idea.

2.) What happened to the history? Predators have been coming to Earth to hunt humans for hundreds of years. This was showcased in the 2nd film, where one of the leading predators throws a gun that possibly dated to the 1400's, to Danny Glover. This told the audience that predators hunted humans. Maybe as a right of passage. In AVP, their history involves them posing as God's here on Earth. Returning every 100 years. They used humans to breed Aliens as a form of warrior-hood. What the heck?

3.) Kill her!! In AVP, they made the predators seem....human. I'm not gonna lie. They've done this before. In the 2nd film, a predator put down a female police officer after gazing into her chest and stomach. That's all fine and good to do this to Bishop, but allowing a predator to team up with a human? You've got to be kidding me!! It doesn't stop there. The predator rips off the head of an alien, clean it out, and then puts it on the chick's arm. Why you ask? Because she's suppose to use it as a weapon. You can't make this stuff up, guys!! It's bad enough we've got a human teaming with a predator and fighting better than the predator, but now our human hero is a dainty woman. Call me a typical pig if you wish, but if you're going to put a woman in this kind of role, you need to pick someone who can make the audience truly believe their tough. Not to many female actors are successful at this, period. The only few I can think of might be; Linda Hamilton, Michelle Rodriquez, Sigourney, and that tough spanish girl from "Aliens." Please stop casting dainty women in these tough roles. Give us a beefed up, scarred chick. Down with the Denise Richards' of our generation. Say no to Barbie!!

4.) Stop screwing up classic one liners!! This has GOT TO STOP!! I can't stand seeing all these sequels that are using successful lines from past films in order to help push nostalgia and new fans. At the end, the music and action literally stops for the female hero to say "You're one ugly mother @*($()."

5.) Wait a second... Aren't predators hurt by cold? In the 2nd Predator movie, Gary Busey's character tries to capture the predator with some type of snow blower lookin' thing. To be fair, I'm not sure what he was spraying. What I do remember was it was some kind of cold substance that was causing pain to the predator. It basically looked like he was just spraying snow at him. If it's true that cold was hurting the predator, how can they make it in Antarctica?

6.) "Antarctica is the last place on Earth that's truly free, and owned by no one." What? PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that everything is owned whether or not we have people living in an area or not. For example, major bodies of water are considered "international waters," etc. Since when does this idea not apply to Antarctica. Antarctica being un-owned is total news to me, as I would imagined it's considered internationally owned.

7.) Hollywood has got to get over this idea of humans as being the superior race. You're telling me a tiny black woman beat up a mother alien, while that same alien beat the living tar out of a warrior predator. She did it with a friggin' shovel, no less.

8.) Where's the war? I never saw a war.

If you base everything off of scores, this one's for you: 2/10. AVP was terrible, but I'll say that it wasn't as bad as the movie "The Hulk." ...But that's really not saying much.

AVP=A Vile Pile Trust me. Stay away from this movie.

This is my boss' home. Sits right across from the kennel.

Interior of his home.

..And now for the fiction. The rest of the city I'm just building what I want to build. Here's a veiw of a Church and Hotel. The Church will actually branch again, across another street. You'll be able to tell when you see the other side, as to what I'm doing.

^^^^ Basic room in the hotel.

Hallway of the second floor.