It's a rocking Friday night here in downtown SJ

Well, this is certainly exciting. A party across the street was disintegrating into argument, whch I was listening to with one ear, when I heard a firecracker pop. Then two more, sounding so much like gunshots that I ducked down on my couch to get my head below window level. Nothing more, and I thought I must be wrong because the shouting voices stayed at argument level instead of breaking up into screams. I called 911 anyway, just to report the argument, and said diffidently that I had heard pops but I didn't think they were bullets. There are now eight cop cars on my street, people lying face down cuffed on the asphalt, and I heard two cops discussing the blood trail down the sidewalk they were cordoning off.

excitement continues, sort of

There are still cop cars and evidence vans outside, 8 hours later. "A single, possible double homicide", according to the cop that is stationed closest, and the street is a network of orange yellow tape crisscrossing as it blocks of paths of evidence. One of them apparently died about 30 feet from my front door; I couldn't see it last night, because cop cars were in the way, but there's a rather pathetic pair of sunglasses sitting in front of the neighbor's driveway, marked with a little yellow evidence marker, and spiraling out from it a dark trail of blood that wanders thickly from gutter to sidewalk and back, and ends in a dribbling narrowing blankness that is creepily suggestive.

I'm stuck here for the moment, as no one can leave.