During my adventures in California over the summer, I picked up a local newspaper published in that small, curious town of Pt Reyes Station. It's a quaint little paper, filled with weekly gossip about the local farmers and tid-bits of left-over stories from the rest of the state. (Might I add, just for the sake of complaining and listening to myself talk, that this paper needs a bit of a re-design, as well as new journalists, and a new editor. Really, for 6 or 7 pages, we don't need five different fonts for headlines, and by golly gee, stick to the grid people! One day when I return, you, I'm gonna propose a delightful new layout. I'm not even gonna talk about the web site.) I'm actually surprised they have their own paper, to be honest. The town I grew up in, not much larger than Pt Reyes St, did not have any kind of periodical, aside from our high school year book. Perhaps technology and the ability to publish just about anything you want to in this day and age, has allowed these teeny, tiny little paradises to circulate information faster than the women at the local salon. Anyhoo, or anyway, as some prefer to say, I did have a point.

Oh yes, my new favorite pastime. The paper, Pt Reyes Light (cleverly taken from the name of one of the west coast's most beloved landmarks, the Pt Reyes Lighthouse), has an online edition, and my favorite part – Sheriff's Calls! You too, can enjoy the hilarity of what is published in their local paper, and what many of these folks get to hear on their personal police scanners at home. Of course, like anywhere in the world, there are serious calls placed that simply aren't that funny. But these are basically all the wonderful little things, we in the larger cities, would never hear about, ever (at least not through any media resources, except maybe the Onion. The man who was talking too loudly on the sidewalk; the woman who thought her cat was dead, but just asleep; the kids who littered downtown while people weren't watching. Here are a sampling of my recent favorites, as well as my initial reactions while reading them:

Deputies at 9:57 a.m. Sunday received a report that three cars were illegally parked along Lucas Valley Road at Big Rock.
Holy crap, your totally kidding right? They should know better than to park on the side of the road! These people are totally going to hell, evil-doers.
Medics responded to Olema-Bolinas Road at 7:50 p.m. Saturday when someone had an allergic reaction to nuts.
This sucks, to be allergic to nuts, I have friends who can't eat nuts and it makes me very, very sad. They will never know the joy behind eating a cashew.
Sir Francis Drake Boulevard at 10:10 p.m. Friday Somebody under a bridge was yelling and screaming. A deputy went to the bridge and found a man "singing at the top of his lungs."
If it wasn't a jolly troll, it was a hobo, get used to it. I lived next to a few bridges in my day, and aside from the random dead guy, I heard heroine addicts screaming at the top of their lungs almost daily. After a while, it becomes routine, no one pays attention and they will quickly get over their bad high and either die or move to another bridge.
A woman on Calle del Mar Sunday Told deputies she needed assistance in turning a schoolbus around because of excessive traffic and pedestrians.
Aren't bus drivers supposed to have licenses and training for this sort of thing? Turn on your hazards, honk your horn and slowly begin the process of turning around. Most cars I know will see a giant yellow bus and stop for it, the pedestrians, also, will eventually get out of the way when confronted with a giant yellow bus.
An Olema-Bolinas Road resident at 3:05 p.m. Sunday complained that juveniles in three kayaks had been scaring seals in Bolinas Lagoon; however, the youths had now left.
Tragic, yes, the scaring of seals. I am very fond of seals and too would be upset if they were scared of children. I myself am scared of children. And since the kids are no longer there, that makes it extra, uber-bad.