{"id":2477,"date":"2008-02-21T12:44:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T12:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2008\/02\/21\/the-odds\/"},"modified":"2008-02-21T12:44:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-21T12:44:00","slug":"the-odds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2008\/02\/21\/the-odds\/","title":{"rendered":"the odds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one<br \/>\nAnd they&#8217;re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>There were police dogs barking all over my block last night. About half past ten, four cars flared up, sirens going, loud red-blue lights drenching everything with a sheen of epileptic shock. Dogs poured out on leashes, perhaps there was a chase? There was no way to tell from my apartment and I was too firmly In For The Night to consider leaving. Perhaps someone ditched a gun up the street again. A few weeks ago, it was firetrucks. Crackle and roar. Someone had set a pick-up truck on fire around the corner. Broke in a window and doused the thing with gasoline. <\/p>\n<p><i>And the people in the houses all go to the university,<br \/>\nAnd they all get put in boxes, little boxes, all the same.<br \/>\nAnd there&#8217;s doctors and there&#8217;s lawyers and business executives,<br \/>\nAnd they&#8217;re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Monday evening, police wouldn&#8217;t let me onto Alex and Chrissy&#8217;s block for thirty minutes. Instead I sat on the edge of a curb in the middle of a growing number of thwarted pedestrians. Cruisers lined up were everywhere like a child had been playing god. When they let us through, police were going door to door, uniforms, typical questions, &#8220;did you see or hear anything suspicious?&#8221; With them came information, kidnapping, a woman walking on fourth fifteen minutes before I came along had been grabbed and pulled screaming into a shabby blue car that drove away at speed.<\/p>\n<p><i>And they all play on the golf-course, and drink their Martini dry,<br \/>\nAnd they all have pretty children, and the children go to school.<br \/>\nAnd the children go to summer camp and then to the university,<br \/>\nAnd they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The city falling into strange shadows, a forgotten language of violence, was it this bad before? When did the slide begin? Feet are washing up on the shore, only right feet, and in sneakers. We&#8217;re up to three so far. This is the headline that catches my eye at the bus-stop. It makes a break from the farm where they&#8217;re still digging up missing women, mostly prostitutes. Why can&#8217;t we legalize that already? Protect these people, keep them from street-corners, makes it taxable. I was told that our marijuana laws were repealed for the Olympics, replaced with ridiculously high-handed decisions. Six months for a gram of possession. Prison for intent to sell. Even the people who think it&#8217;s beautiful here, perfect to raise children, that mountains and ocean should be enough, even they should realize something&#8217;s wrong. <\/p>\n<p><i>And the boys go into business, and marry, and raise a family,<br \/>\nAnd they all get put in boxes, little boxes, all the same.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one<br \/>\nAnd they&#8217;re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same. There&#8217;s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one And they&#8217;re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same. There were police dogs barking all over my block last night. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2008\/02\/21\/the-odds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;the odds&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-2477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}