the world has turned and left me here

Mr. Grow,

I think you are letting your imagination run away with you on this one... I do have to admit that I am quite intrigued. Its odd that they aren't trying to hide. Does the woman you are speaking of live in your apartment complex? If so, does she live with anyone? The woman in the blanket, is she the same as the woman you saw walking the dog? Does the car keep running while they are in there?

Guesses:
1. She is infact schizophrenic or in a state of extreme emotional distress. For some reason she feels the car is her comfort zone. She is so disconnected from reality that she doesn't realize people might be watching her. The guy is: 1. some one who dearly cares for her 2. trying to cure his own emotional/mental troubles by focusing on her or 3. taking advantage of her vunerability in order to gain some type of assets or services.

2. Perhaps her air conditioning doesn't work in the house, so she likes to sleep in the car.

3. She is trying to make some one jealous that she knows can see her from that location.

that's my $1.98 (2 cents adjusted for inflation).

* I'm not sure if the woman lives here or not. Can you think of a way for me to discreetly test this hypothesis? If she does live here, though, she would certainly know that a gung-ho sheriff--who likes to arrest fellow inebriated tenants as they pull into their parking spots at night--lives in & patrols the complex. Why he hasn't swaggered over there and laid down the law is a mystery too. Supposedly, there are municipal laws against sleeping in your car.

* The woman with the dog and the woman in the blanket both have blonde hair, about the same haircut, just barely shoulder length. That's not much to go off; I'm probably just making random connections based on some other story I invented for the woman-with-dog-incident. That's why I'm asking you guys, you don't have any of these preconceptions I'm laboring under.

* The car is off. I haven't seen it start up since it appeared 3 days ago.

* She would have to be nuts to consider the car a comfort zone. The guy seems less distressed / crazy, I get the impression he's taking care of them both.

* They leave the car windows open for ventilation, which is what you'd do in an apartment here anyway since most of them don't have AC. Temps usually peak in the mid to high 70s here. I doubt they're trying to beat the heat.

* Your last guess is an interesting one, as it at least tries to explain their strange choice of location (beyond the obvious insanity argument). They don't seem very self-conscious though; they don't look expectantly up at the apartments as if this were all a show for some other tenant. Still, how would I test this hypothesis?

Here's another random tidbit: the license plate is from Washington state, but the license plate holder says "Dallas" at the top and "Central" at the bottom.

Well, count me intrigued.

Ok, here's a question - if they're actually making some kind of effort to put on a display for a tenant of the complex, is there a way you can scope out your neighbors to see whether someone is actually watching?

Also, this would definitely involved buying something, but when I was a kid (7 or 8), I had this little handheld microphone gun thing, with a big red plastic parabolic dish around it and a pair of cheap headphones. The whole thing couldn't have cost more than $15-30, and it had a pretty impressive range. If I were doing any serious Hitchcockian eavesdropping, I'd go find something similar.

Assorted unrelated thoughts:

1) The behavior you describe in the woman, besides paranoid schizophrenia, would also be characteristic of autism. Which might explain why she was being cared for by a (brother? husband?).

2) License plate frames most often indicate college or university.

3) Choosing a very public place on purpose reminds me of blind dates... it's safer, because nothing can happen to you without someone seeing.

4) Assuming there's not a limitless supply of food inside that car, they must venture out at /some/ point, which would be a good opportunity to inspect the contents for clues.

When I got home from work last night, the blue car was gone. But it reappeared at about 10pm. Apparently by day they're now venturing forth, and by night sleeping in this weird location.

So, that lends a little less credence to the theory that they're doing this for show.

Maybe they moved here from Texas but their buddy driving the Ryder truck decided to make a little jaunt into Tijuana for some prescription drugs, got caught with a handgun, and thrown in jail without his one phone call. So, under the blind assumption that all their worldly possessions will be arriving someday soon in a big yellow truck, they prowl their future home, waiting & agonizing.

But they have Washington plates...

My theory is that they have had some kind of trauma. They got kicked out of their place, they're on drugs, one or both are mentally ill, they lost a baby...you could go on with ideas. I think they probably know someone who lives in the apartment complex and are using their place for showers and the bathroom. I'm guessing there is not room to sleep in the apartment, they don't want to impose, or they had an arguement with the person that lives there but nowhere else to go. Keep in mind that just because the woman is the one acting a little crazy doesn't mean that he's necessarily the sane one taking care of both of them. Women tend to be more expressive when they are traumatized where men tend to clam up. If I were you I wouldn't go ask them what they are doing but I would say, "I've noticed you sleeping out here, is everything okay?" If they say they are fine then you can just say, "well if you need anything..." but most likely they will just tell you. It will drive you crazy not to know and you should do it before they leave.

I would dress up in a bright yellow and orange hiway workers jumpsuit with a bass boat red scooter helmet, walk up to the car and ask to borrow some sugar. If they look surprised and uncomfortable, they are not crazy but just strange, you should ask them why they are parking in your sleeplot. If they invite you to join them, they are crazy and I would. If they offer you something else for a small fee, I would buy it and then ask them why they can't afford an appartment with their dirty drug money. Finally, to resolve the situation, I would tell them that you are spying on them with listing devices, camcorders and high powered long range sniffers. That should solve your problem, as they will probably get the hell out, unless they try to kill you first...Good luck!

Thank you, Jamaimer, for the sound advice. Thank you Andrew for the even sounder advice. I think I'll combine both of your approaches...dressed like a psychedelic spaceman, I will walk up & attempt to empathize strongly with them.

At the moment, they're gone, but they may still be roosting here tonight. (Bird watcher metaphor?) However, I found this letter stuck in the door to Jonas's apartment:

CRIME NOTICE LETTER

To all residents:

We were recently informed that there has been a series of car break-ins and car thefts in our parking garage. Please do not leave any valuable belongings in your car overnight...

If a crime is suspected or is occurring, contact the police immediately...failure to do so could result in crucial delays...etc. etc.

So a new possibility is that these people are the criminals in question, which makes me at least somewhat responsible since I've known about their sketchiness for days & haven't reported them. Neither did anyone else, though, so maybe we collectively paid for the entertainment value & the score is settled.

Damnit Alan, are you daft? These people knew about the car break-ins and were simply trying to protect their car by sitting in it all night and rocking back and forth. Wouldn't you do the same thing? For a smart guy, sometimes you're a real dumbass....

Oh, so it's solved already? Fuck. I was going to suggest 'road head with an expired license' but I guess the Hardy boys were on the case. Curse my crapulatory tardiness.

"Solved" is definitely a misnomer here. I have no conclusive evidence for anything, except that, yes, the Hardy Boys definitely had the hots for each other. Anything prefixed with the word "Hardy"...geez...

Nancy Drew on the other hand always kicked ass & took names. She was like a hot Angela Lansbury. If there can be such a thing. Sorry Nance, I let you down on this one.

I always felt like there was something a little less than wholesome in the dynamics between the Hardys and their good chum Chet. At least, I think his name was Chet. The ragingly incompetent fat kid with the unique new hobby or gadget-related interest in each book which unfailingly proved invaluable just when it looked like All Was Lost...

(Chet is into shorthand radio! What a dork! Oh no, we're stranded at sea with only... A shorthand radio and a power source!)

Oddly enough if you spell 'Fat bastard Chet' backwards and run it through the babelfish translator a few times, from German to English and vice versa you eventually get 'deus ex machina'. This isn't pertinent to the blue car mystery but it explains a great many things.

Oddly enough, I once wrote a program to iteratively translate the same sentence using google's translation service.* I was curious to see if the sentence would (1) settle down to a steady state, (2) would cycle between several possible states, or (3) would wander chaotically through the english language. I observed both (1) and (2). (2) was more common than you'd think...without too much work I got a sentence which eventually oscillated between 3 states whilst roundtripping from English to German.

I think (3) is highly unlikely if your translation engine is worth its salt. Because, usually, the engine will err on the side of simplification...wouldn't make much sense to make the sentence more flowery or add new words. Ultimately, I think the dampening term is too large in these translation engines to observe chaos.

Though, a Smashing Pumpkins album from a Hardy Boy's character doesn't exactly provide the order I so desperately demand of the universe either...

*hands down, this was the nastiest screen scraper i ever wrote. let me tell you, my universe became much more ordered after that particular rm -rf.