Thursday, August 09, 2007

Mall cops are funny

I went out to a nearby mall to grab some lunch and I had to laugh at the security guy I saw there. He was young (probably under 25) and, quite frankly, stupid looking. He'd bought every bit of kit he could think of. He had a walkie-talkie, a big torch, a truncheon and he'd even gone and got an earpiece with a springy cord trailing out of it. The dork even had a military style buzzcut.

Some people might have expected him to go for the wanker gadget du jour - the Bluetooth earpiece. But you'd be missing the point. You see, all the CIA spooks in the movies have these spingy cables coming out of their ears. Bluetooth is for civilians.

What does the jerk think he needs his hands free for anyway? The CIA and Secret Service need it to deal with potentially lethal threats. This bloke's biggest problem seem to be the way he was utterly failing to chat up the teenage shop assistant.

I feel sure that this idiot gets a semi-erection every morning when he looks at himself in the mirror wearing his pseudo-military outfit. "Yeah," he thinks, "I totally look like that Jack Bauer bloke what's on the telly." Face it dickhead, if you're under 30 and working as a security guard that pretty much means you're too fucked up to make it as a soldier or a cop.

On top of everything else, in Australia a mall cop has all the authority of a school crossing guard. I've heard some outrageous stories from the US about mall cop excesses. You'd be in jail in five seconds flat if you tried that shit here.

He reminded me of the security guards I used to see on the streets back where I used to live, except they were way more serious. I was in the eastern suburbs of Melboure, the area John Safran called "Jewtown". There was a major synagogue on the same block as me and they had security up and down the street. This crew were in full spook mode: black suits, white shirt, earpieces and talking into their sleeves.

I often wanted to ask them if they were responding to a specific threat or if they were generally cautious. But they scared me. I'm pretty sure they were packing heat. I used to call them "Jews on Patrol". But not to their faces.

They were actually one of the reasons I used to laugh when self-proclaimed nazis said they were going to come and get me because of something I'd written in a post or said in a video. Showing up in my neighbourhood ranting about "killing the jew-lover" would be a shortcut to getting shot.

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