I suppose one of the bad things about committing a crime is how your whole appearance gets summed up in a brief descriptive APB. Here’s one from an alert at a local university “Male caucasian, bushy white hair, mid 30s, black overcoat, black shirt, black shoes,” Pretty evocative, especially the omission of trousers. But it’s got to be infuriating to the guy. I mean no one wants to hear that they have bushy white hair. Imagine the following conversation at Princeton in the 50s:
“Who do you have for physics.”
“Some German guy with bushy white hair.”
I would like to commit a crime. Nothing too heinous, but bad enough that the police would put out an APB. I would like to think the APB would read something like “Bearded male, caucasian, brown eyes, brown hair, mid 40s, muscular build, well dressed with fabulous shoes.” But in reality, it would probably be something like “Bald bearded paunchy man, caucasian, Jewey, academic looking and dressing, Bald. Last seen driving a hybird at or below the speed limit.”
So while I obviously would prefer the former description, if I were guilty of a crime I think I would prefer the latter as that fits 50% of the people walking around my home town. They’d never find me. If they used the former, I just might turn myself in, although they probably wouldn’t believe me.
I found this blog entry to be relatively offensive. May you travel at the speed of light to America’s Most Wanted.
Left by A. Einstein on March 3rd, 2008