This is not the D.M.Z., the demilitarized zone, this is the D.N.Z., The Dean Noble
Zone!
There have been times when the period between one Police Blotter story and another would be months. On this occasion, though, there are two Police stories written within one week. Life is a lot like that.
I love the Police. Who doesn't?
Society would be a much different place without them and a worse place at that.
Dawson Creek is a nice city. The people here are very kind.
Dawson Creek Kennels is a company that is located in Colt, Arkansas. It is a company that breeds and raises Olde English Bulldogs for sale to the public.
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POLICE BLOTTER 16
chapter one
Dawson Creek, B.C., Canada
Constable Chris Hines of the RCMP was having a beer and watching a hockey game on television. It was between the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames. People from two cities of a Province in a rare meeting in one of the cities of that Province. He didn't have to guess if this was some kind of omen, it was an omen and not the initial knowledge kind of omen, it was a confirming kind of omen because he already knew that he was to be in Vancouver on March 3 partly to commemorate the anniversary of the shootings of the four RCMP Officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The main reason he was to be there was to be promoted. Currently, Chris Hines was a Constable. That had no stripes on the arm at all. He was to be promoted to the next rank up which was Corporal which had two V stripes. The next rank up from that is Sergeant with three V stripes and a Crown above that. The hockey game was an omen because he was going to join his wife, Constable Melissa Finn who was stationed in Vancouver for an extended period of seven months as part of an investigative task for working on a classified assignment.
The anniversary of the shootings in Mayerthorpe Alberta in which Constable Peter Schiemann, Constable Brock Myrol, Constable Leo Johnston and Constable Anthony Gordon were gunned down while on a stake out at psychopath pot farmer James Rosko's quonset hut grow op was commemorated at a hockey stadium in Mayerthorpe Alberta in which four candles were lit, and then finally as a kind of capstone to that pyramid, Alberta MP Rhoda Ambrose lit a 5th candle.
chapter two
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
In Vancouver, the auditorium was thronged with so much black uniforms and brass. Constable and soon to be promoted to Corporal Chris Hines sat with his wife in the audience and was able to talk with her before the start of the ceremony.
The curtains were raised and the entire room stood at attention for Queen Elizabeth the Second who is the Honourary Commissioner of the RCMP. Chris Hines walked on to that stage as a Constable and walked off that stage as a Corporal of the RCMP.
chapter three
Corporal Chris Hines was riding in an unmarked patrol car with another Corporal when the call came in to attend to an apparent homicide at Stanley Park Zoo. When they got there, they found that Constable Melissa Finn along with her Police partner were there. They were the first and only ones to arrive on the scene.
Corporal Chris Hines noted to himself that he did not see his wife for months, and now he is seeing her twice in one day!
They got into the zoo grounds to see a distraught zoo curator wringing his hands in despair. The Police gave him a demanding and questioning look. He led them to the enclosure where it happened. The cage was cleared but the body remained. The cops also observed that there was far too much blood for one person.
The curator told the awaiting Police Officers the story of what happened.
chapter four
Sweet 16. Orangutans and tigers are wonderful animals and they are cute as babies. With that rationale, an animal handler named Irving Stevens decided to put together two baby orangutans along with two baby tigers. This makes as much sense as putting together newborn giraffes and baby koala bears together just because they are cute as babies. But that is exactly what happened and was lucidly chronicled on the 6 o' clock news when a beautiful blonde goddess of a news anchor sixteen years ago told the story of how infant tigers and infant orangutans wrapped in swaddling cloths as babies were nestled together for the camera lens to be shown to adoring masses all over the World.
photograph: Dean Noble with two tigers in Bangkok Thailand.
Irving Stevens loved these animals and he kept track of their progress after their inevitable separation and departure to different zoos.
As an upcoming surprise exhibit to the public, he decided to reunite them for a 16 year reunion. That was not a good idea.
One night, there was a blackout at the zoo. This was a new exhibit and Irving Stevens did not know his way around this particular zoo that well. Due to the pitch blackness, he did not see the sign tacked on the wall next to the zoo keeper's entrance to the cage:
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STANLEY PARK ZOO - TIGER DISPLAY - SAFETY RULES
Do not wear long sleeve clothing.
Do not make any sudden moves.
Do not feed the animals more often than needed.
Do not feed the animals less often than needed.
Do not be late for your shift.
Do not enter the grotto if the lights are not fully on.
Do not enter if under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.
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The zookeeper explained further. Due to a blackout that night, the zookeeper Irving Stevens did not see the newly posted sign.
The zoo curator saw it all. Over the zoo's closed circuit cameras, he saw the zookeeper drink swigs from a flask of whisky and then he saw the zookeeper toking from a marijuana cigarette. He also saw the zookeeper hunched intently over a desktop as he proceeded to chop up some cocaine into lines using a razor busted off from a one dollar disposable razor and then proceed to snort these pernicious white powdery streaks unceremoniously lined up there on the desk.
The curator then actually walked outside and was about to say something to the zookeeper, having in mind to tell him to take the rest of the night off due to the blackout. As he approached the animal display, he was in time to see Irving Stevens enter the cage. Stevens was drunk and his arms flailed as he sought to regain his balance. That was when the one of the orangutans grabbed him, and feeling territorially threatened, it proceeded to rip Irving Steven's arm from his socket. The shock of this was too much and he would have died from this anyway, but the motion along with the suddenly new smell of blood in the air triggered the hunting instinct of the tigers whose detected the motions. The eyes have cones and rods; cones detect colour and shape, rods detect movement. The tigers seeing that tantalizing blur of death motions responded intending to complete the call.
The tigers had also viciously mauled and then eaten one of the orangutans. The other orangutan escaped, hiding in a corner high up in the cage.
When the zookeeper told of the orangutan, it reminded the RCMP Police Officers of Poe's August Dupin who was the first fictional Police detective and one of Dupin's cases was to investigate the incidence of an orangutan slashing a man's throat with a straight razor and then pulling his body halfway up a chimney.
The tigers ripped off the poor zookeeper at the legs and then the torso and at that time, the zookeeper had long died.
The Police Officers shook their head with incredulity and thought this was one of the saddest stories that they had ever heard. This was one of their very few homicide cases involving animals. In this case, the suspects even though caught, are untriable in a court of law.
The animals involved were put to death by the SPCA and after some minimal required paperwork, the case was closed.
Dean Noble
March 3, 2007
Dawson Creek
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(c) copyright. Dean Noble
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MARK ROY
I once saw my friend Mark Roy in front of the Royal Bank, in August of 2003. He was at the corner of Main and Hastings. I walked closer and it was indeed Mark. I thought he had died, looking ghastly when he did, but clearly he was still alive when I walked up to him.
I saw his face. It was young and healthy. So unlike his condition before he died.
I said to him,
"I thought you were dead. But you are alive."
"Yes.", he said.
"So you really did not get sick, and I am going to see you around again soon and be able to talk to you."
"No.", he said.
The only thing is, Mark Roy died in May of 2002. I was in Thailand in August of 2003. And I saw Mark Roy in a dream. Yes, this is another ghost in this blog, which has become a city of ghosts.
This is a small segment of a longer dream of which I remember the entirety of.
Sigh, on APTN, there is a show with teenagers and the program is about Making the Link. That is the clue. I must make the link between all my dreams, particularly the ones chronicled on this website, if only them. One day, when I find that link and flesh it out verbally, I will tell you about it. It is as if I were working with a 1,000 piece puzzle and so far, I only have about 150 pieces. With years, one day, I will link my dreams and then I will have what the Natives call The Big Mind.
However, it is in how the pieces of the puzzle fit together because concentricity structure is exclusively required in the 3rd Dimension, not in the 5th Dimension.
Supposes I were to mix these real dream images on this blog with some other made up images. A real dream master could tell which pictures were real and which are a fake. My goal is to reach that level of precision that if someone were to present me with an alleged dream CGI, especially a ghost dream CGI, that I could tell if it was real or not. One day I will have reach that level of precision.
"That guitar. It will be mine, yes it will be." -Wayne's World
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NOT GOING TO THAILAND
I am getting cold feet when it comes to going to Thailand again. It will cost me $2,500 for 28 days. That is a lot of money.
I got a quote from a travel agent. It would be a two hour flight from Dawson Creek to Vancouver. Wait in Vancouver three hours, then a 20 minute flight to Seattle. Then a three hour wait in Seattle. Then 12.5 hours to Seoul Korea. Wait in Seoul for 3 hours. Then a five hour flight to Bangkok! And then do it all over again in 28 days.
I was thinking of going on a ten day trip to Vancouver, Nanaimo, Victoria. I would stay with my friends in downtown Vancouver. I miss the Vancouver geomagnetic vibes,
the Chinese restaurants like Hon's with the thin crispy noodles drenched with red chili oil. I miss the sushi restaurants of Vancouver.
In Victoria, I would visit the IMAX theatre, the Royal BC Museum, eat at Earl's restaurant in Victoria.
In Nanaimo, I would just walk around. Then return to Vancouver. Stay a couple of days there, then back to Dawson Creek. And I could do that on less than $800!
Thailand has taken a turn for the worse. Within the last year, about a hundred bombs have gone off, with half of those having gone off in the last four months. What with countless cell phone detonated bombs having gone off in Southern Thailand one just two days ago, and bombs exploded in Bangkok during the New Year's celebrations. More attacks in the South of Thailand. Civilians killed for being on the wrong side of a religious war.
Obviously the Muslims of the South of Thailand in the Provinces of Narathiwat, Songkhla, Yala, Pattani, are taking advantage of this current unelected government's status which is one that is unrecognized by the United Nations to make a case for independence.
The current PM Surayud Chulanont cannot represent Thailand at the United Nations.
Not to make too fine of a point of this, Thailand is a member of NATO, I mean SEATO. With Thailand having a leader unrecognized by the UN, if Thailand were invaded, would SEATO jump in and help? Probably. Because it is Thailand! Everybody likes Thailand. And would Thailand be obligated to provide military assistance if another SEATO member nation is invaded?
As well, Thailand may be ineligible for IMF funding because of the government's unelected status.
Ironically, the present unelected PM is less corrupt than the democratically elected Thaksin who he replaced. Thailand is already a land known for corrruption. So for a PM to be called corrupt by the Thais is really saying something!
The current PM Surayud Chulanont would probably make a good PM, but he is a military man. I don't know how they do things in Thailand, but in Canada, a PM is usually an MP who has won a leadership race, and then he runs against the likewise internally elected leader of the other Party in a democratic election whose victory would be decided by the people. Except that during these times of martial law, emergency decree, or whatever, political Parties like Thai Rak Thai and Chart Thai are not allowed to assemble. How then can the next PM'ial candidates of Thailand be appointed?
The ban on political Parties was because there were, understandably, concerns that the ousted Thai Rak Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra might try to regroup his disbanded Thai Rak Thai Party through installing puppets who are loyal to him. Come to think of it, these concerns still exist. Because of this, it would not be difficult to see Chart Thai winning the next election in Thailand. However, a read of Wikipedia's 'Thai Rak Thai' elucidates that TRT is composed of multiple factions.
You know what? According to Wikipedia, 'You Tube' is blocked in Thailand:
http://www.2bangkok.com/blockedyoutube.shtml
My colleague said that life in Thailand is cheap there right now. Lots of people are being killed. If what I am reading on the internet is right, on a good day, two or three are killed in a gunfight often involving Police. And on bad days, well, in the South, apparently scores [!] are killed in an effort to root out insurgents.
This is almost the opposite of the Vietnam War; during those years, Vietnam and Cambodia were war ridden while Thailand was peaceful. Now, Vietnam and Cambodia are peaceful while Thailand is awash in bellicose internecine conflicts!
There's always next year! I think I will go there after the next Thailand election which is slated to take place this October. It's just too hairy over there now!
Thailand will be fine as it is under the authoritative control and protection of the Thai Monarchy who is the top authority when it comes to political authority in that land. In other words, Thailand is in good hands.
There is always, for example, Oaxaca Mexico. Pronounced Oh Haka, it is the Aztec word meaning temple. Initial tentative searches on the internet produced websites containing lists of guesthouses where the price is about $10/cdn a night.
The Third World is rife with not bad hotels at the $10 - $15 per night price range. Not bad if you are only staying for a couple weeks.
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CHINESE FOOD REVIEW
These are my favourite Chinese dishes in Dawson Creek's Chinese restaurants. Similar to Chocolates Review on this blog, this is a write up of my very favourite Chinese dishes which is why this review is so easy to write.
Orion Restaurant:
To the South of Dawson Creek in the night sky is the constellation of Orion the Hunter clearly delineated from the three stars which make up the belt of Orion, one of the stars is the Red Giant star Betelgeuse. I learned about Orion at the Vancouver Planetarium.
For a brief two months, once upon a time, I worked at this restaurant as a dishwasher.
a) Ginger Beef: This is a very exciting sizzling dish served on a heated flat-iron plate giving it a sizzling sound as it is brought to your table. The smell is a husky smoky peppery smell that could make a person cough with the sweet gourmet acrid smoke of the ginger beef. The beef is deep fried boneless pieces. Red and green peppers accent the appearance of this dish.
b) Honey Garlic Boneless Pork: The pork in this dish has a dreamy soft texture and the sauce is an unforgettable alchemy of the tang and sweet taste of what is probably a secret recipe.
The Orgasmion, I mean the Orion restaurant is one that is a local favourite.
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Inn on the Creek Restaurant:
a) Cantonese Chow Mein: This is a perfect mix of thin crisp textured noodles and a rich hearty mix of bbq'd pork and bok choy, etc. Best had with a dash of soy sauce and a few tablespoons of chili oil. This dish is a beautiful one.
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Meng Fan
a) Chicken Fried Rice: Surprisingly, out of all the cities I visited and had Chinese food the chicken fried rice at Meng Fan's restaurant is the best I have had anywhere. The rice itself individually coated with a light layer of oil. The rice has such a contrived flaky texture that one can feel each grain in their mouth.
The flavour is a slightly salty chicken flavour that is meant to be enhanced with the addition of soy sauce. Inn on the Creek restaurant has a very similar chicken fried rice of the Meng Fan's chicken fried rice. If I were them, I would guard this as a secret recipe.
The Meng Fan restaurant at the Airport Inn in Dawson Creek is a far hike from where I live. I usually succumb to laziness and go to the much closer Inn on the Creek restaurant for the Chicken Fried Rice.
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DRAGON PALACE
The Dragon Palace Chinese restaurant in Dawson Creek.
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Dean Noble's recipe for Cantonese fish
from: www.myspace.com/drdrtfehytf
La piece de resistance: or la pisces de resistance....
fish
green onions cut into 3" julienne style
ginger cut into coins
oil, any kind
soy sauce
white pepper
accompany with rice
Get a fish, any kind*, and splay it flat on a plate. This plate should fit into a steaming pot. Use a support to place under the plate that the fish is on. Even if it is a couple of smaller plates. On top of the fish, slice fresh raw ginger and fresh raw green onion. Add water in steamer but not too much water. Place fish in steamer and cover, steaming for about 15 minutes. Do not undercook, do not overcook. Lean on the side of overcooking and place in there a little longer if not sure.
Remove the steamed fish from steamer. Remove the steamed raw ginger and the steamed green onion. Add another layer of sliced fresh raw ginger and sliced fresh raw green onion. In a separate electric frying pan, fry up a half cup of oil, or more, until the oil is positively sizzling with a noticeable smoke rising from it, but do not overdo it! Then pour the oil over the fish.
Wait for a minute and then pour liberal dashings of soy sauce over the fish. To be served with rice. Add a sprinkle of white or black pepper to the fish.
A guaranteed to be an unforgettable dish and one you will like. Another variation is to add a couple of tablespoons of prepared black bean with ginger on top of the fish just before it goes into the steamer and do not remove these beans after the steamer process.
*I have always enjoyed halibut, tilapia, bass and red snapper filet is good too. Either a filet of a big fish or an entire smaller fish is good for the steamer.
This is a dish that is impossible to make a mistake about. No alchemy required, unlike a lot of dishes. The Mee Krop Lard Nah recipe that I wrote in the Airports posting is the only one which requires the exact amount of ingredients so that recipe would be given a rating: Alchemy.
The rest of the recipes would be given a rating: Impossible to fuck up.
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A HORSE IN DOWNTOWN
fiction
William Noble lives in Dawson Creek Canada and one day, years before he decided to sign on to The Running Man that would take him on an unforgettable trip to Southeast Asia, he decided to get a horse rather than a car. He was somehow able to have a lot of money through finding a very cushy and lucrative job. After 5 years, through semi frugal budgeting, he was easily able to accumulate $50,000. It is nothing special for a mid-level executive to be pulling down $75,000 these days. William Noble however, was able to realize $30,000 a year. He still chose to live in the cheapest of rooms that he held at the downtown rooming house.
One day, he decided to get a car and in the midst of this thought that a horse would be a good idea. A few years ago, he decided, at great expense to get a baby Asian elephant from Bangkok's zoo as a pet while he lived in the city. The place that he leased for 6 months at a time had a small adjoining outdoor atrium garden with grass and a few flowerpots.
The landlady shrieked when she saw the elephant. Her husband was with her and he looked none too pleased. His arms were folded and his head was looking downward with an angry look.
The elephant was shaking its head back and forth, back and forth as if perpetually refuting its current situation.
Needless to say, William Noble was immediately evicted from that living arrangement. The Bangkok zoo however bought back the elephant for the full price that he paid for it, so all went well.
William Noble knew that to get a horse involved moving to a different place near a stable corrall where he could keep a constant watch on the horse. He decided to get a grey with tan speckles coloured quarter horse. It was a beautiful young mare.
He paid $5,000 for the horse. He decided to call the horse Herbessa.
Having a horse is not easy. Having a horse is like a part time job, just like owning a boat. He remembered one summer when working at a five star European continental hotel, a fellow steward sold him a boat at rock bottom prices. That is because the bottom of the boat had in fact struck some rocks a couple of weeks previous.
He bought the 15 foot Fairliner schooner which was not a sailboat. It was a boat with a motor and a busted motor at that. The price was $1,000.
The owner of the boat liked his beer and pot.
One morning, he was thinking about how much it would cost for the yearly hauling of the boat to scrape and clean the bottom and then give it coats of expensive copper paint when he looked to see a foot of water at the bottom of the boat. Water was running out of openings built into the boat, or the level would have been higher.
When William Noble went outside of the boat to start thinking about how he was going to deal with this, the person who sold him the boat was there like a benign apparition. He was with a couple of rich looking people, a father and a son. They were all experienced sailors and were expecting this. They were laughing.
William Noble got twice the money he paid for the boat.
Owning a horse is very much like owning a guinea pig. Except a horse is a 1,500 pound guinea pig. Horses are vegetarians like guinea pigs. Like guinea pigs, William Noble cleaned the cage out of the excretive detritus of the horse Herbessa.
Every once in awhile, William Noble had to arrange for horseshoes to be taken on and off the horse. He obviously knew it was beyond him to try and put the horseshoes on the horse himself. It was enough of a challenge to clip guinea pigs toenails without cutting to the quick. He paid a farmer who charged $100, that is $25 for each foot to take off and put on horseshoes.
photograph: The CoOp on 103rd Ave. Due to this time of year, there was mounds of snow in the parking lots which is fortuitous for it allowed me to climb a couple of feet on the mound of snow to take the photograph which is meant to represent a SPOV* camera shot, as it would be to that of the height of a horse. This similar technique was also employed for the Wal-Mart photo to follow.
*S.P.O.V.: Spectator's Point of View
The first day in traffic was interesting. He decided to go to WalMart from the CoOp on 103rd Ave's parking lot. Everybody commented on the horse. Audible loud whispers floated through the air. A few farmers leaned knowingly, having owned a horse for years, in some cases decades.
The first thing that William Noble noticed about Herbessa was the clop clop clop of her feet as they clacked resoundingly on the concrete walk below. On the highway, he decided it was better to ride the shoulder of the highway, near the sidewalk. A segment of the Highway from Alaska Highway going to Pouce Coupe runs through Dawson Creek. He remembered accidentally stumbling upon and seeing the words "Pouce Coupe rules" on a website. But he knew that this was an example of apophenia, which was the manufacturing of coincidences, to draw imaginary lines of connection between two or more obscure and completely unrelated events.
http://amazingpornvids.com/tgp/teens/kat1466/pichunter.html
At some of the stoplights, Herbessa had to perform her bodily ablutions. She evacuated her bowels and then she urinated. When William Noble saw the dilation of the cloaca of his mare when she urinated, it reminded him of his last girlfriend!
None too pleased was he when he had to quickly shovel the mess into garbage bags he had brought with him. He then tied these bags and threw them into the nearest dumpster.
The swaying motion of the horse and the sidewalk reminded him of the elephants that he saw at Future Park shopping mall at Bangkok. As a matter of fact, William Noble had ridden a pachyderm at Samphran Elephant Grounds. The elephant had a very pronounced lurching swaying motion side to side, to and fro. The ride on a horse is a lot smoother.
When William Noble got to WalMart, an Arab man was there and asked him if he wanted to sell his elephant. This also reminded William Noble of the time he was in Vancouver and a rich Arab man asked him if he wanted to sell his Razor brand kick scooter. The using the scooter with the one hand in Vancouver the way that he did made him think that this was an omen of his then upcoming using-a-pallet-jack-with-just-one-hand, working at Wright's Food Service in Dawson Creek.
The Arab man was in his late fifties. He had salt and pepper hair. He knew horses and he knew that William Noble did not know horses.
The English are the Lords of the Manor and the Americans are just a bunch of hick colonialists. In the early days 300 years ago, the English would criticize how the Americans did not know how to saddle their horses and how their knots were all wrong.
Like one of those discerning Britons in 1700's America, the Arab man saw that William Noble was missing out on a lot of essentials of horsemanship and livery.
He will have lots of opportunity to learn, the Arab thought, for he also saw that Herbessa was a five million dollar horse. Her perfectly formed racing flanks. Her spirited tail was raised as if she were running through a river. Herbessa was in the same class as Secretariat.
William Noble did not have to worry anymore about the loud clackety noises, and the constant scooping up of the shit, because the Arab man offered him $500,000 dollars for the horse Herbessa which he accepted. The Arab man also agreed that he would not ever change the horse's name.
A car was the next vehicle of transportation for William Noble after Herbessa. He decided to get a two toned, baby blue and sky blue 1957 Bel-Air being offered locally for sale at a price of $3,500. After getting an elephant, a boat, and a horse, he decided on this 1957 Bel-Air because he wanted something more normal!
Thanks to the rich Arab man, thanks to destiny, he has the money now.
Dean Noble
March 18, 2007
Dawson Creek
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That's all for now. See you next time.
Dean Noble
