Vinnie, Vince, Vincent '98-'15

So much has happened in my life over the past two years. Fortunately for you, I’ve been writing about it and publishing it on the internet for the world to enjoy. Since I will be quite busy cooking for my BBQ tomorrow, I wanted to get this out today. Although I don’t technically have two years sober until tomorrow, I have faith I will make it without a drug or a drink until then.

Two years ago I walked into a courtroom looking exactly like this. In fact, this picture was taken less than 20 minutes after my 50-month sentence was handed down.I had ingested a whole gram of meth just before I walked in to the courthouse, and you can see it in my eyes.

Of course I stole this picture from the world wide web so there are some additions to it but you get the idea, I was a mess.

13 days later I was transported to St Cloud prison where they were able to capture this gem on film, and I was able to track it down for you.

The following pictures are reminders of where my life has been. They are not in any particular order, nor could I possibly remember when or where they are all from. And sadly, these are only about half of the mugshots I have accrued over the past 19 years as a habitual criminal, I'm sure if I spent a little more time I could have tracked them down.  So, here goes...

 This of course is the infamous picture that was all over the news from the meth bust in South Rochester.

 This is a picture of a male model that happens to look like me.

 So, I'm definitely going to grow this hair out and see if maybe I can track this shirt down at a Walgreen's somewhere to recreate this look very soon.

 Uhh. I don't know, man.

 Ditto.

 Fuck me.

 This is my favorite, and was possibly the result of a broken ankle, a fight with a cop, and a little arson charge.

It looks like I was pretty cracked out here, but this is what I looked like in my early teens. 

Then there's this one. It's my other favorite. It was taken on September 6th, 2015 two days before my release from prison. I hope it is the last picture ever taken of me in captivity. There's so much I've been doing and so much I can continue to do to make sure this is where the mugshots stop. 

Tomorrow will mark my two year sobriety anniversary. Some might say that I had an unfair advantage being locked up for the first 15 months, but I don't agree. There were plenty of chances to use or abuse inside, but I chose the road less traveled. I participated in A.A. meetings whenever I could, and I refrained from joining in with the pill-popper trade that goes on inside the walls. I put everything into the six month cognitive behavioral treatment I went through at C.I.P. because I knew that I needed to face this thing head on (Head on, apply directly to the forehead...) if I had any chance of surviving on the outs. 

And here I am.

A.C., Pizza, Murder, and The President

For a little under a week I had a great life. That has all changed as a significant event occurred causing irrevocable damage to my existential being. Things will never be the same unless I make a drastic change, or maybe just a phone call.

Never in my lifetime have I owned a car that had had air conditioning or power windows. Two weeks ago I bought one of those A.C. refill kits, and it actually worked! With the touch of a button I could make my car cold inside. Sadly, after six days, the refrigerant leaked out through a crack in a coolant line somewhere and when I try to refill it again it just hisses out. I even tried some fancy stop-leak stuff, and it failed. I had it all, and it slipped away.

In the grand scheme of things it's not really a big deal. First world problems are a real bummer sometimes, I would know. I hate heat, and I hate sweating, that's why I bought a gym membership- I wanted to run in A.C. But it would have been even better to finish a run and be able to drive home in a cold car. Oh well. There are more important things I could write about.


For instance, I'm sitting at a desk at work right now eating an entire Davanni's pizza. The boss ordered lunch for everybody today, and I chose a medium veggie lovers. Now, I'm also a bacon lover, so I added that. And that brings me to the Orlando incident. I'm not calling it a massacre because too many things come to mind when I think of that word. I'm not playing it down, it was a tragedy. It's pathetic to think how many actions could have been taken by our government or even the perpetrator's wife, to prevent this. It's not the first nor the last mass shooting in this country, and in many countries these things happen daily, we just don't see it on the news because let's face it, Prince, The Kardashians, and I'm sure a shiny new tooth in a rapper's mouth are more entertaining.

I could go on and on but I don't have all of the facts. I'm not entirely sure anybody does, but it seems these days things are reported before any real evidence is gathered. Every news station wants to be the first to report people getting killed, and what terrible thing our Presidential candidates have done or said. I can't stand it.

I haven't read more than a couple headlines or watched a single news-related show in years. I may not be up to date on politics, but I'm a pretty anger-free guy.

Right years ago, through some miracle, my rights had been restored and I was legally able to vote for the first time in my life. I was excited because a certain candidate really caught my attention. He focused on himself and what he could do for our country, and not what the opponent did wrong. Today, I no longer have the right to vote and I couldn't be happier.

So there are a few topics to consider. I sort of jumped all over. I'm at work and I think this is where I am least creative. I'll write something with more substance (abuse) tomorrow.

Jobs Part 2

This is the second in a series of posts that starts here.

It’s a look into my past as an employee of so many jobs, I may not be able to recall them all. I believe I left off at the end of my tenure at Liberty State Bank, and started fixing windows and screens and doing various other duties at hardware stores across St. Paul.

For some reason I had a knack for fixing broken since my teenage years. Although I’ve never considered myself to be mechanically inclined, I knew my way around a torch, putty knife, and a dull pizza cutter. Those were the main tools in window and screen repair and I became quite good at it. I was also good at sneaking goods out the back door, and modifying prices for my friends on S&K tools, a very high end brand. I made enough money to not need the supplemental income, but it was the thrill of the thing that got me. And as it would turn out, I wasn’t actually very good at stealing because it’s how I lost the next three jobs. Maybe not outright, but in some way, I was let go with the implication that things were coming up missing and I had to go. So I moved on.

One quick story from an Ace Hardware. I worked in the basement, and one day a kid started there as his first job ever. It was the day of a glass shipment and it all had to be carried from a truck outside, to the basement where it sat upright and sideways on shelves, the glass sticking out about an inch. It came wrapped in cardboard so it wasn’t sharp until it was opened and put on those shelves, but it was very heavy. On his very first trip downstairs, on his very first day, in his very first job, this poor kid stumbled just a bit and brushed his hand against the shelf while he was carrying a heavy, awkward box. And that was his very last day. The back of his hand was completely gone. Blood flowed freely onto the ground and I laughed as we both stared at the massive wound because I thought somebody was playing a joke on me. I could see every white bone, and every spurt of blood as he tried to move his curled fingers. I told him to get to my car and I pushed him up the stairs and threw him in the passenger seat. He was crying, and I was stark white as I’ve always had an aversion to blood. I drove down the streets like a madman, blowing red lights and using the opposing lane, and I got him to the E.R. in less than five minutes, certainly quicker than calling for an ambulance and waiting.

I’ve never been that seriously injured, but I’ve cut at least four of my fingers down to the bone with razor blades while working with screens. I also had an individual piece of screen wire imbed itself all the way under my fingernail. Pulling it out dropped me, and I awoke to the manager telling me I needed to find different work. There were too many suspicious things going on with me around. I think he thought I had passed out from drugs.

I don’t believe it exists anymore, but there used to be a gas station, a 76, on the corner of Concordia and Snelling in St. Paul. Well, as an 18-year-old kid, I worked the overnight shift in what was then a pretty dangerous part of town, possibly because I contributed so much to the local crime effort. I’ve hinted before at a daring heist I pulled off with a friend of mine, and I think I’ll share that….. In my next post J

I did figure out how to syphon money from the gas tanks, figuratively, as I would  be allowed a certain number of drive-offs per night. Things weren’t-t prepay back then, and they didn’t want me to confront anybody stealing gas at 3:00am. Well, I made up more that my share of drive-offs and pocketed the cash. But still that wasn’t enough to satisfy my thirst for money. I had to do a robbery.

Did That Just Happen? Part Deux

I had spent considerable time over the last two months caring for these plants. For a month, they grew from inch-high babies, to foot-tall teenagers, which is when they were ready for the flowering stage. I brought them out of 24-hour fluorescent light into the big room for 12 hours of light, and 12 of darkness. That is how you trigger the marijuana plant to produce its potent buds. I spent hours a day in the room looking after them. Checking them over, looking for bugs or any signs of strain, but they were perfect. I had many friends that grew before me for years and I learned from them. I was all set up to be a fairly good size producer, at least large enough to keep all of my friends happy.

The plan was to crop 20-30 plants every six to seven weeks, which would be pretty easy with the strain I had been blessed with. We called it simply, Magic. And I think its name was derived from the feeling it gave us when we smoked it, looking back I can see the smiles on our faces every time it was in the room, it was magical. There just wasn’t any better weed around back then.

So on that beautiful Summer day with myself and three of St. Paul’s finest in the room, it all went away. Of course they wanted effect, so they made me rip them all out by the roots which made a huge mess in the room, then put them in giant black plastic garbage bags and carry them down to the undercover vehicle. That process took a little under an hour. They said they were done in that room and we closed the door. I decided not to mention that they left 30 living clones and all of my light fixtures alone.

They then told me that they wanted to search the rest of the boudoirs. No big deal I thought, but I had thought too soon. We started in my room, they wanted me to watch so I couldn’t claim later on that they planted anything. They looked high and low through my disaster of a bedroom but found nothing until they made me lift up my mattress. Underneath we all saw at the same time a large mirror covered in cocaine residue and a variety of bits and pieces of crack pipes. I thought I was fucked but the main officer man just pointed at them and said, “Those would be a lot of felonies.” And he lowered the mattress down. Uhhhh, ok. We proceeded downstairs as the rest of the rooms had been searched with their respective owners. Now it was time to check for warrants. I knew I was clean because I had just taken care of my warrants a few weeks previous, but one of my roommates did and the officers, again, said something quite peculiar… “Ma’am you should go get those taken care of as soon as possible.” And that was the end of that part.

One last look around and one of them disappeared into the basement and came back up and stated there was a fire hazard downstairs and that they would be sending a fire inspector back in a week to make sure it was cleaned up. And then, without so much as another word, they all left. They just left. Did that just happen? How in the fuck am I not in handcuffs? It didn’t make any sense, but I wasn’t going to run out and ask them.

We all sat in stunned silence for a while. Then we all decided who would help clean the basement and who would move out. I was the only one beside the owner of the house that helped clean, so I stayed on as a resident. Shortly after that incident, I met a girl that would become my girlfriend for about two years which were some terrible, drunken years.  The fire inspector never came, and we never again heard from the officers. I decided it best to halt my growing operation and distribute my clones and lights to friends that could use them without fear. I would never grow weed again.