Punch-in-the-Face Tour 2003

While I was enjoying Winged Migration at City Cinema this evening (great film, worth seeing – here’s the trailer), a no-good-nik stole my portable CD player from my car.

While on the practical plane, stealing from an unlocked car is less of an ordeal than breaking into a locked car, I believe that on the moral plane it is a much worse transgression. For you, the thief, I hope the universe is more forgiving than I am (and I suspect it is). Also, I hope you enjoy my Pedro the Lion mix disc.

Punch-in-the-Face Tour 2003 logoMy friend Nick had an idea for a way of dealing with such injustices: the Punch-in-the-Face Tour 2003. The idea is simple, make a list of people who deserve it, and punch them in the face.

First on Nick’s list are the people in Markham, Ontario who made him send in a mail-in rebate to get the advertised price on a recent purchase of a wireless router (“Why don’t they just sell it for cheaper!?” exclaims an angry Nick as he brandishes his tour-namesake first in the air). For those interested, here is a PDF version of the tour logo (205 Kb PDF).

For the record, I have never (and hopefully will never), punched anyone in the face. I can’t speak to Nick’s entire history, but I don’t think he does it much either. Also, when we ask why companies that use mail-in rebates don’t just sell products for cheaper, it’s a rhetorical question – thank you.

If you hear someone humming along to Magazine by Pedro the Lion, punch them in the face.

 

30 thoughts on “Punch-in-the-Face Tour 2003

  1. Wow. Thats unreal. First your bike, now your CD player.
    It makes me so angry how people can do that. Who ever this guy is, I’m adding his name to my list of people to punch in the face as well.

  2. I punhced a guy in the face when I was about 13. I think it was part of an experiment I was unaware of as thre was quite a crowd egging me on. I was over 6 foot at 12. I felt really badly. Please create a second tour for me, the Kick in the Nuts Tour 2003. I have kicked people in the nuts inadvertantly playing soccer and wear no guilt. The effects are more comical as well – all the pain but still funny for some reason.

  3. My first, and so far only, experience with Island crime was having my briefcase stolen from my unlocked Nissan Sentra while it was parked in the lot at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and I was inside visiting an ailing friend.

    Dealing with the police on this issue was somewhat comical: because this was pre-amalgamation days, the hospital wasn’t actually in Charlottetown, it was in Sherwood. Which I learned when I reported the crime to the City Police and was redirected out to the Sherwood RCMP.

    My experiences with the RCMP in Sherwood are memorable for two reasons: first, the officer who took my statement had to leave mid-way through to have what I think is the longest-running pee I have ever heard (he left the door open; it went on for minutes). And, second, for the dressing down I was given for foolishly leaving my doors unlocked, a dressing down that was amplified when he learned that I wasn’t from around these parts.

    Fortunately my briefcase only contained papers, and nothing of value other than my pay cheque, which was cancelled and quickly re-issued.

    The briefcase was never found. I remember people telling me at the time that the hospital was a rich feeding ground for the amateur underworld, and they would target cars with briefcases based on the assumption that briefcase = rich person.

    I can’t remember if I wanted to punch anyone in the face. I was pretty mad, though.

  4. I hope they listen to your Pedro the Lion CD and are filled with a guilt that is so strong it causes them to punch themselves in the face, thus saving you the trouble and the bloody knuckles..

  5. We recently were robbed from our unlocked car that is parked in our driveway. In the backseat were two new tires to be installed that weekend. We called the RCMP only because it seemed they had attemped to get into our house too. They arrived quickly and was very interested in the whole story. He did not “dress us down” for leaving the car unlocked. He gave us some suggestions and went on his way – I guess as it turns out there have been several daylight robberies in my area so it has peaked their interest.

  6. if i were to leave a cd player on the roof of my car, would it be any less mine? no. does leaving it inside an unlocked car make my ownership less valid? nope. it’s mine no matter where it is, or how easy it is to simply walk away with.

    i lived in a sketchball area for a while. My jeep got broken into and things were stolen. favorite things. so, rather than fix the broken glass, i just kept the jeep empty. I figured that there wasn’t anything left to be stolen. Somebody one night ripped out the tape player. yeah, great for them. so i left the wires hanging from the dash in a sad state, reds and greens spilling from the dash. I thought, “ok now there is nothing to steal”. I leave my jeep on campus, windows down, wires out, and come back to find a parking ticket on the jeep. Somebody had scraped the parking pass from my window. humans are lame. locks only keep honest people out anyway.

  7. Yeah, crooks suck. They seem to be getting worse here in Summerside too. We’ve had our cars checked several times at night while they were parked in our driveway, and one night a truck was stolen while we were up watching tv! (It was recovered a few hours later in a ditch.)

    I think the best anti-theft device might be to drive a slightly rusted, old junker of a car. Anyone that thinks it might have anything valuable in it is just kidding themselves 😛

  8. You need the “Punch in the face’omatic” which will deliver a “good punch in the face” when an unauthorized person enters your car/house.

  9. I punched David Blockberger in the face, in Mrs. Titmus’ second grade class. He’d been bullying me for a year. I suppose I’d had enough. He cried.

    Returning to Oklahoma City on a business trip to Naples, Florida in 1989, we touched down briefly in Sarasota-Bradenton. Nobody was changing planes; some got off, some got on. I entered the small terminal to stretch my legs, leaving a Walkman on my seat near the rear of the plane. I’d bought it in Grand Central Station a few months before. It was inexpensive.

    I returned to my seat a few minutes later and, after take-off, realized the Walkman was gone. Worse, whomever had taken it was still on the plane, probably seated near me. I enlisted a stewardess to help look for it (under adjoining seats, etc.), making a visible fuss, then repaired to the restroom in hopes that conscience would return the Walkman.

    It didn’t. It galled me all the way to DFW that I could see the theif but couldn’t identify him.

  10. “Thief.”

    Dammit, I’m the best speller you know. The number of words I misspell is tiny and they have narrow, idiomatic characteristics that this one doesn’t conform to. Not sure what to make of it. In an odd way it might be age. Bears watching. Shit.

  11. Lou, I don’t know if there are grizzly bears watching you or if you’re being sarcastic, but while you’re chastising yourself over your spelling, I believe that it’s “bares watching.” 😉

    I too will join your punch in the face tour Steven. Top of my list is the moron who stole the quick-release seat cuff off of my bike. This is a specific sized part that will only fit a very specific sized seat post collar. Anyhow, it also meant I couldn’t sit down biking all the way to the bike shop where I spent $15 replacing it.

  12. Daniel: I believe that it’s “bares watching.”

    I’d be first to agree that bare-naked ladies bear watching, but that’s as far as I’ll go.

    “Bares watching” implies exposure somehow. Perhaps the object begs to be scrutinized, but that doesn’t mean it’s showing itself. Maybe the observer would lay the object bare in the course of analyzing it, but that’s a future event. For now, we’re just watching.

    The decision to keep an eye on the thing is made by the observer, not the object. The object is just sitting there, baring nothing.

    “Bears watching” springs from the “carry or support” sense of “bear,” stretched to “call for” or “warrant.” The action or behavior of the thing — in concert with prudence — support the premise that it should be monitored.

    So we can decide whether to punch it in the face or not.

  13. I’m pretty sure that if someone was stealing my CD player, and I happened to catch them in the act and the only way to stop them was to punch them in the face, well, I wouldn’t, and never mind any after-the-fact punching. (Incidentally, you guessed right, I don’t play hockey, but I have been punched in and around the face, and have done likewise to others and my considered opinion is that it’s pretty much overrated and sounds way, way better on TV.) Hey, you think Pedro the Lion has you on their list Steve? Or did someone pay for those tunes? (And does A Mind Of Her Own not remind you of Catherine Wheel? It reminds me of The Limey on account of the last repeated lines, but mostly because I like to be reminded of The Limey. The screaming in Almost There is awful nice too.)

  14. Pedro the Lion was actually aquired through an emusic subscription – completely DRM free, legal, decent quality mp3’s… If your tastes tend to not be completely mainstream, its well worth the $10 US a month subscription fee.

  15. Although your rebate question was rhetorical, since you get comments from many non-regular readers, someone is sure to ask you about rebates. Perhaps they’ll read this comment first and no longer feel compelled to ask.

    Companies offer rebates because most people fail to return them. Sales increase because people feel they are getting a good deal and then neglect to send in the rebate form. A well-known maker of name-brand CD burners has an average of 11% of their rebate forms returned.

    And of those returned, many of them are incorrectly filled out or are missing the required documentation. The company obviously doesn’t send rebates to those people.

  16. While i have never been robbed, it has been attempted a few times in my travels and at times i even carried a machete with a 2 foot blade in my hand for a full 6 months!
    I do feel for those who have been, and in some ways i feel that i was robbed by the lovely financial institutions we so jovially call the banks. i HATE the banks, and i realize that hate is a strong word. But they really do stealo from the average working joe. i just had to vent on how coporate big wigs steal from us every day, yet the fella who steal the CD player is the one who gets into trouble. add up all of the bank fees, hidden or not, and see what kind of CD player you can buy!!

  17. I am glad that I found this link. I questioned a cop in Charlottetown wondering if it was safe to live around here( B and E’s)He said “Well we don,t have any driveby shootings here like in Toronto. You guys straighten nme out with these posts. I always ask a cop if it is safe in communities that I want to live they always give me a round about answer!

  18. If you car is unlocked isn’t that like hanging out a big “Please Take Me” sign?? You’re lucky that they didn;t steal your car as well.

  19. in the face, yea i punched shane mooney right in the face. right in the face yea in the face. he better be opin im not angry

  20. I liked your speach about punching people in the face phil.I am currently being bullied at school and i was trying to buld up come confidence to do something about it. After going through all of the other ones on this website,i thought to myself this is a crap site that was untill i read yours. I went to school the next day and the bully named paul stared on me again. I got so angry i punched him right in the face and broke his nose. The teacher was very suprised, she took me out side the class room and had a go at me. I am now suspended for a week but i feel that that bully has learnt his lesson……THANKS MATE!!! P.s please reply

  21. I’ve got a moron you can add to the punch-in-the-face-tour-2003. The other day outside St. Jean’s School on Queen Street someone broke the sideview mirror on the driver’s side of my beautiful parked 2000 VW Jetta. All this while I was at a teachers workshop inside the school. No message apologizing with a phone number, no witnesses, nothing. Blllggghhh. Only going to cost me $400 to fix.

  22. I feel that punching a dude in the face is ok if they steal your stuff, but if it is a girl….sex in the butt! remember kids….anal sex isn’t a sex act, it’s a revenge tactic!! ps i put your sign on my wall at work!! the idiots who usually annoy me leave me the hell alone!

  23. so there is a joke that a friend of mine and i play around with by dane cook called punch in the face. every time you’re pissed at something you would say “f*ck you (something) i’ll punch you in the FACE.” for example, F*CK YOU cold weather, i punch cold weather in the FACE!!! see it is funny and you don’t actually have to do it. so you won’t get arrested for punching people or things in the face. F*CK THIS WEBSITE, i punch you in the face website!

  24. I’d like to register the bugger whole stole my backpack from under *my* desk at the University (I’m a grad student, we actually have assigned spaces)for the “Punch in the Face” 2003 tour. The backpack had my 3 month old laptop (a nicely supped up Dell 8500) in it with all my research on it. They even had the gonads to unplug the adaptor that was plugged into the wall and take it too. I given the points for the sheer audacity of the crime since it was in an area that it fairly busy, but I give them even more for being a jackass and stealing something that they know somebody is using for their school work.

    It figures that it was the only day that I didn’t come in straight away and lock it up. I decided to grab a bite to eat at the cafe and was only gone 30 mins. I think it was an inside job since a bunch of other things were stolen around the department around the same time.

    Why can’t people just leave things that aren’t their’s alone. Is it so hard?

  25. get the bastards that stole my bicycle. I hate crime, I was so close to catching the thief one day. If I do, I will beat them sense less. Stealing people’s property needs to stop. Let’s create a MASSIVE Punch In The Face Day in 2006. Get every criminal, and punch them all in the face once. Paedophiles for a castration…? Bit harsh for something like this?

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