Dirty Harry, SFPD

Novels are no longer allowed to begin with the words, 'once upon a time' but are now to begin with the words, 'everything happened so long ago.'

Everything happened so long ago in the age of hyperbole when the USA was the greatest country on earth, having invented blended whiskey and Betty Crocker layer cakes that came in a box and could be made with 2-eggs.

And then the nation was seized by Buddhism and couldn't get enough of it, incorporating eastern practices into group thinking. The CIA funded a literary journal in Paris. JFK was shot by the novelist Don DeLillo; an independent Post-Modernist Commission was appointed to investigate and issued a 110-volume offcial report. This all seems so long ago now that it seems like it never happened.

Now, only movies are allowed to begin with the words, 'once upon a time.' I can't watch too many movies these days, especially detective movies where the crime is always solved with panache. I'm staying up much too late, past my usual bedtime, for the reassurance only cinematic reality can provide during the pandemic. 

In the morning I stumble down the stairs to begin making a checklist of fun things I can do with the day, things that could start with the words, 'once upon a time.'

The checklist today includes a trip to the apartment building in the 1600 block of The Great Highway where a severed head has been found in the freezer compartment of a refrigerator. This doesn't mean of course that the decaptiation had taken place in the apartment, only that the head was found there, covered in a sheet of Saran Wrap.

The case, as of yesterday, was not closed.