Complaining of dangerous working conditions, city sanitation workers gave notice they will invoke a strike clause in the union agreement unless measures are taken to increase worker safety.

Four waste-removal truck drivers have been murdered in the last four months. All were shot.

"I didn't sign up for combat duty, said one driver, who asked not to be identified."

Reports of a man wearing a porcelain mask and lurking among dumpsters are widespread among sanitation workers. "The mask. I saw it. It gives me the creeps to think about it," said another, who says he now carries a gun on his rounds.

Some workers believe the murders are the work of a serial killer. Law enforcement authorities are investigating.

Small things ruin large experiences. Take the memorial service for the sanitation workers, Edruder M Pomsheur, and Phom Reu Desid. Two normal Joes, murdered on the job who knows why. Probably just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I knew Ed from a ridealong I did a while back. You learn that virtually everybody's work, and life, is interesting if you spend enough time with them that they open up. I hadn't met his wife and daughters, though. They're soldiering on in this mad world.

I won't intrude on their privacy by repeating what was said. But clearly both Ed and Phom Reu were dearly loved. I was moved.

But then the fly. I noticed on the way in a bunch of those "Redpill" hipsters were hanging around a phone booth near the church. Ever notice how much they love phone booths? This, even though I see them using cell phones constantly. I stopped trying to understand them after fifty or so cryptic answers to my questions. Short version: they live in a different world than we do.

Anyway, near the end of the service, just when the group had reached one of those rare moments in life where the differences between humans fall away…race, wealth, religion, all of it…and you're feeling so damn close with everyone because this is what awaits you all, losing everyone we love, or leaving them…gunfire starts.

It was the Redpills at the phone booth. Shouts, fighting, cries (they're all nuts for martial arts), more shots. It put us all in fight-or-flight mode.

Once the shots died down, we cautiously came out. We found the Redpill crowd almost completely gone, and the few left looking up at the sky.

I asked one whether a helicopter had scared everybody off, and he looked at me oddly and said, "he needed no helicopter." Who? And the Redpill clammed up. So did the others I asked. I was so furious I just left. These freaks fight for fun. Well, let them kill each other, if that's what they're into. I don't care.

Funny thing, though. After all that shooting: no bodies, no blood. These people, they're different. We work, pay taxes, get killed hauling garbage.

For these people, it seems like life is just a game.