Anyway, these anarchists, the angry looking ones, they had stones in their hands and were lighting some kind of not-really-smokey-or-stinky-or-even-explosive thingies, but not really ever hurling them, moreso just dropping them and kicking them around. They were also the group yelling the most "fuck"s. "Fuck you pigs" or something like that, I think. Anyway, fine by me.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Gratuitous fucking Fuck.

But mostly they were off to the side. The "real" activists and the police were the ones that were now really doing the mexican standoff, about ten feet between them, the activists in their sweatsuits, hooded shirts from 1972 last washed in 1982, dreadlocks, some of them closer to Japanese chic, some of them with digital cameras, trying to get the whole thing on tape, some of them with signs, "Gates has the bomb," "We don't need an enemy," "World bank was made to fuck you." I might be making some of these up but they're pretty close. "Bush: so many bombs, so few countries to lob them at," "Cheney: Enron pensioners one day, impovrished arabs the next." Etc., etc., etc.

The cops in super Doom rage gear. Like the video game where somehow you are able to carry 10 gigantic weapons of mass destruction (not to steal that phrase or anything), plus super armor and a shield and a helmet and a radio and a GPS and a supercomputer and a battering ram and a canteen and a and a and a and a and a really bad fucking attitude and a need to enforce something anything just give me something to fucking hit will you!

Then a couple rocks were lofted up over the protestors and in the general direction of the badasspolice. I think I saw one bounce off a riot helmet. Kinda like a superball you dropped from the balcony as a kid.

Euw. Bad news.

The cops moved to within a couple feet of the protestors (by the way, just to give you some perspective, I'm like in the far corner of the crowd, conveniently at a place where I can see just about everything). The tension in the air is like frozen butter. You couldn't even cut it with a knife.

Then, all of a sudden, and I didn't see anything flying through the air, this window right by the crowd of cops breaks! One smaller window completely shatters, and another gets a huge spider-crack going all the way up its story-height. I'm like "whatthe?" when the cops storm forward, shoving the first row of protestors to the ground with their riot shields.