Small time criminals

A conspiracy to eat Thai food (and maybe break bad)

Last weekend, we met some friends at a Thai food festival in North Hollywood. We noshed on pork belly skewers and banana fritters, but passed on the chicken butts. We drank too much Thai iced coffee. And at some point, we hatched a criminal conspiracy.

The crime talk began when Todd expressed outrage at a new iPhone update.

“Hey Michael, you know all about Big Tech, right? Where do we go to riot? This new Apple AI is fucking up my email, and I hate it.”

“Cupertino,” I said. “You should’ve received a calendar invite. You’ll need to RSVP to attend the riot.”

Boy was that the wrong thing to say. Todd’s wife, Andrea, lost her damned mind at the thought of combing through her broken inbox to find her invitation to a riot.

“I want blood,” she said. “Heads on spikes.”

I thought it would end there, as Andrea is primarily focused on raising their son, Cannonball, and running her kickass cookie business. But Andrea continued to advocate violence. Her proposals included pipe bombs, paper cuts and vinegar; playing Milli Vanilli nonstop until heads literally explode; sharks; chemical weapons; drawing and quartering, assuming we can get the horses; defenestration.

“Since Todd and Andrea brought it up,” Gina began, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you guys about something.”

Gina sounded serious, so I put aside my pad see ew and gave her my full attention.

“Guys, I think we need to start doing crimes.”

This made sense, as crime pays, despite what you may have heard. Crime pays even better in a kleptocracy. As an added bonus, the odds of being caught and punished drop dramatically in a kleptocracy — if you know the right people.

The thing is, I’m anti-crime, as anyone who followed the saga of my stolen catalytic converter knows. And even in a kleptocracy doing crimes is still risky, especially if the Kleptocrat-in-Chief isn’t a fan of your work. Also, it’s wrong to crime.

But I was outvoted. Todd said he loved the plan. Andrea felt likewise and volunteered to be the muscle. Christina said, “I’m in you sonofabitch.” And Chad took the long view saying, “YOLO” as he cast his vote in the affirmative.

“What kind of crimes should we do?”

Andrea was dead-set on murder. It was the case that they gave her, she said. Plus, she had seen Hit Man with Glen Powell several times.

“It’s based on a true story,” Andrea explained. “You learn so much about how the cops catch these people. We’ve got out good research material and our street smarts. We’re way ahead of the game.”

Todd said he was willing to kill, but wasn’t sure if he was able to kill. Chad said he was able to kill, but unwilling.

“What about this guy?” Gina asked, pointing to me. “I don’t think he can kill.”

“No, I can’t. But Christina would be great at it.”

“Andrea too,” Todd said.

Gina didn’t say how she felt about killing, but I knew her feelings. She told me once, “I think if you make it to 100, you should be allowed to murder anyone you can overpower with your bare hands. I’m looking forward to my many attempted murders.”

“What about stealing stuff?” Gina asked. “We’d be good at that.”

“The tricky part is finding a fence you can trust,” Todd said. “In the movies the fence usually double-crosses you.”

Other ideas were thrown around. Kidnapping seemed like a logistical nightmare and creepy. Mayhem sounded fun, but like most fun jobs, we guessed the pay was low. With Andrea’s art skills forgery wasn’t out of the question.

“I like the idea of something white collar,” Christina said. “I wanna be a bougie criminal bitch. Dollar dollar bills y’all.”

“That’s easy, we should do fraud,” I said. “There’s a lot of money in fraud, and it’s very hard to prosecute.”

Fraud went over about as well as the chicken butts. Nobody wanted to do crimes on the general public.

“But that’s where the money is,” I said, adding that fraud was having a moment, thanks to the digital economy. “Paul Krugman wrote that crypto is for criming. We could do a rug pull, which is totally illegal, unless you’re selling crypto, in which case, it’s considered innovative.”

The mention of crypto was a total buzzkill. Everyone immediately lost interest in the criminal conspiracy. We watched Cannonball murder some ice cream, cleaned up our our table, and walked around the temple for a bit. Eventually, we said our goodbyes, and went our separate ways. Later that evening, however, Chad changed the name of our unencrypted group chat.

I didn’t like the idea of breaking the Stringer Bell rule, but I was still bullish on fraud. Plus, I had some exciting research to share from a Bloomberg article about how fraud is booming on social media.

“Aww mail scam is like the Little Scam That Could,” Gina replied.

“C’mon little Mail Fraud, you can do it!” Andrea wrote.

I thought about replying, “look at the growth opportunie$ in #social, ppl!!! Fraud4LIFE.”

But I didn’t do that. What was the point? Crimes Club was rooting for mail fraud in 2025, proving that we were small time criminals, at best.

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Update on goat yoga

I booked a goat yoga class for March 9. Assuming I don’t get arrested, the goat yoga story should hit your inbox March 16. Thanks again to the situation normies who stepped up to sponsor another act of absurdist journalism. As I like to say, when the going gets weird, the weird turn semi-pro.

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A criminally underrated novel

This Situation Normal story is about amateur crooks, but my novel is about an amateur sleuth working at Porn Valley’s second best trade publication and trying to solve a murder, without getting killed. Total strangers have said Not Safe for Work is “hilarious.” It’s available in eBook format for 99 cents, so you can’t go too far wrong by picking up a copy🍆🍑🍈🍈🕵️‍♂️🔫

Find Not Safe for Work on Amazon, or all the other book places.

Shout out time!

Big criminal shout out to Manoel Silvestre-Borges IV for having a kickass name and being the newest paid subscriber at Situation Normal. Thank you, Manoel! The good vibes are on the way.

Stick around and chat!

I ask, you answer, or you can take the 5th, just like the current FBI Director.

1. What kind of crime would you do, if you decided to do crimes? Get creative!

2. Have you ever had chicken butt? Explain.

3. Why is crypto a conversation-killer?

4. Andrea really is a kickass baker. Have you ordered cookies from her yet, or do you hate food that tastes amazing and looks rad? Don’t answer, order cookies.

5. Apps like Nextdoor and Citizen are obsessed with local crime, but if you report a Kleptocrat, you get trolled and may even be banned for violating the terms of service. What’s the deal with that?