Drama.

Some people can't live without it. These people are catty emo gossip queens who aren't happy unless they have conflict and strife to wail and finger-point at. They are shallow, devoid of all intellect and mostly deserve your antipathy. They also claim to not be one of those people.

Full disclosure: I am not one of those people.

Today's object lesson is that people will surprise you and that anyone can snap at any moment.

Lesson The One
It turned out to be a dramatic weekend for my friends. Saturday saw the annual Labor Day camping trip for one group of my friends and I joined them for my third year. The weekend was fine but the canoe trip Saturday was an ordeal as a three-and-a-half hour float downstream was somehow transformed into a six-and-a-half hour enduro event which culminated in Heather and Jen accidentally tipping their canoe twenty minutes from the finish line. At this point, the elderly gentleman whose property they dumped in front out began screaming obscenities at the entire group ordering them to pick up their trash, that'd he'd seen "a hunnert damned kids today" and he was tired of it all. The group assured the man they would pick up the contents of the canoe and that he should calm down. At this point he ran into the house and returned with a rifle, pointing it at the group yelling again for them to retrieve their stuff and leave. Chaos ensued. Some people had the "Oh shit!" reaction that most people would have. A few of the guys (who'd had a shitload of few beers) openly challenged him, calling him names telling him they'd be back to take care of his grumpy old ass later (mature, that). One of my friends had to be restrained from charging up the bank at the bank at the crazy old fucker. It was also noted that for some strange reason the old guy's wife was videotaping the whole thing. Methinks she thought she was going to catch someone step on to their property and thereby give them the legal right to shoot. However, since this is not Texas, she would have been providing the county prosecutor what we call "evidence". Finally, Dale managed to calm the mad bastard down and everyone goes their own way.

I understand that maybe you have had enough of the hootin' and hollerin' on the river on one of the busiest days of the year, but at what point does pointing a gun at a group of strangers become the answer? For those struggling with this I have included a few optional activities you can do in place of grabbing trusty Ol' Lucille.

Put up a fence.

Move.

Watch a Law & Order marathon

Make loved ones watch 2 Girls 1 Cup and post their reactions on YouTube

Memorize Pi to the 50^th place

Drive to town and watch that new Batman movie with that guy from that queer movie in it

Call the grandkids

Have intercourse

Make an awesome new animated avatar for your WoW forum

Anything else in the world that's non-violent

Macrame' an owl like mom used to have on the wall

Teach yourself HTML and bitch about how you can't wait for the next version to be released

In summation, don't be a dickhole. Also: People are unpredictable.

Lesson The Two
Ok, so I have this friend. We'll call her "Abbey" I've known Abbey for something like a year. Nine times out of ten if I saw her she was with her friend Troy. Troy was a nice enough guy who was a little on the shady side and copped to being a former drug dealer but he was totally done with that stuff now. *Cough* So, like I said: an ok enough guy to have a beer with while telling jokes.

Anyway, for a while I was thinking that Troy was dating Abbey until she clued me in that while he had indeed applied for the job on many many occasions she wasn't interested. He struck me as kind of a puppy dog with her despite the fact he is built like a linebacker. You could see he really wanted her to like him in that special way but it just wasn't to be and that made him sad. I was empathetic since I've been in that position before. But at some point you just have to move on and he just couldn't seem to do it.

My phone finally registered a few bars and I sent a text to Abbey on Sunday asking how her weekend was. She wrote back "Not good. Troy came over looking for me last night with a knife. I wasn't here but [A's 14-year-old daughter] and her friend were here. He duct taped her friend and put her in the crawlspace. Cops are here, can't talk."

What??

Uh, yeah.

Linking doesn't seem to be allowed but you can look Troy up here.

Seems as though Troy has a prior conviction I never knew about. Abbey says he told her that it was just a statutory beef but according to Abbey the police investigating Sunday's incident told her he had tied up and raped a 17-year-old. The cops are really pushing the kiddie-fucker angle but in the interest of full disclosure, Abbey feels Troy had showed up to kill her and didn't intend on hurting the girls. Since I'm not Matt Drudge and I'm not Daily Kos I'm pretty much done with my reporting here as I don't know the legalities involved and the case is still pending. The messed up part is Abbey said she was unable to get a personal protection order since Troy hadn't actually done anything to her.

So yeah. That's the guy I've had many beers with and laughed and joked around with. And I thought it was bad enough that he had the same name as the bully on Diff'rent Strokes.

Goddammit, Troy.

People fucking suck.