My sister Wendy brought her cats with her when she came home for Christmas last Friday. She origionally said that she wouldn't, they didn't like long car rides she said, and it turns out that she shouldn't have.
She lives with two cats at her Omaha apartment, a four-year-old male named Freddie and a two-year-old female named Arial. Sometimes she loads them up in little pet-transports and brings them to North Platte for the holidays, sometimes not. This year she decided at the last minute to bring them.
One reason she was weary to bring them, unstated out of politeness, is my parents dogs, Trucker and Taz. They're not that big, but they are very hyperactive and abusive towards cats.
So my sister comes home, lets the cats out of their little plastic igloos and heads back out to her car to get the rrest of her stuff. The dogs spent a few minutes circling the cats like sharks before Arial finally lost her cool and bolted. With Taz chasing her She ran through the house through the pet door into the garage, through the garage to the back door, into the backyard, over the fence and out into the night in a total of five seconds.
Nobody was worried at first. This was a house cat, after all, she wouldn't run far. So we all put on our coats, grabbed some flashlights and confidently strode out into the alley. Sure enough, we found Arial in about five minutes, hiding in a wood pile about about a block down the alley from our front yard. My sister reached out for her, but the cat was still agitated, and zipped out of sight just as quickly as she had ran out of the house.
We spent another hour or two searching the junk piles scattered about the block. (There is at least one junk pile for every average-size family in North Platte.) But we got too cold, and at any rate I had drinking to do. So Arial was left to fend for herself in the winter cold.
Now Wendy is something of a misinthrope (She's a smart woman, after all) and her cats are just about the only company she has. (Well okay, maybe that's not so smart.) She was rather distraught, proclaiming her failure in life and her failure as a person, so dramatic. I treated her the same way I treat every woman in distress. I ignored her and than started laughing at her as soon as she was out of view.
Things seemed bleak for Arial. She was a housecat, who never stepped outside of her West Omaha apartment. There was a major street about a block north of our house, where cars whiz by at fourty m.p.h., and Arial of course knew nothing of traffic. She didn't have the slightest idea of how to catch a mouse or a squiral to feed herself, and though the weather wasn't quite cold enough to freeze a furry mammal, there was no telling when it would snow again. The cat was as good as dead, any reasonible person could see this.
Wendy made up some flyers and put them up around the neighborhood. My parents computer is very old (There's no gurantee that I'll finish this before it freezes) so she couldn't download any pictures of Arial on to the posters. She just had to describe the what she looked like, black on top, white on bottom, much like Pepi Le'Pues rape victim.
Over the next couple of days, several people called us at three or four in the morning to say that they had seen a cat matching Arial's description about ten blocks west of our house. I don't know why all the calls came at this time of night, North Platte has no night life to speak of. It was up to me of course to take the calls and field the messages, and remembering what to tell my sister what I had heard while high on opium was rather difficult.
So on Christmas Eve the whole family went out to this part of town to put up more flyers and see if we could spot the cat. After a few minutes of wondering around we did see a black cat dart across the street about half a block ahead of us. We raced foward to the spot and found the cat hiding under somebody's truck. Wendy got out, leaned under the truck, and called out sweetly to her beloved. Her beloved responded by zipping out and running a block up the street before hiding under another truck.
We drove up to this truck, my sister got out and... same thing. This went on for an hour or so. Come to think of it, this cat didn't seem very thin, didn't seem very scared, except of us, seemed to be rather indifferent to it's own filthiness. In other words, it didn't look or act anything like a lost housecat.
We eventually gave up. My mom urged everyone to think positive, as she often does. "That was Arial and she's just skittish after being outside for a few days, and look at how well she's taking care of herself."
Don't be an idiot mom. It was obvious that we spent the last hour harrasing a stray cat fo no reason. We were cold, there was melted snow in our shoes, Arial had probably been dead for two days, and the people calling us at three in the morning were meth-addled morons.
I actually wish that was the end of the story. Because the actual end, while happy, is rather boring.
Arial came back on Wendsday, simply walked back the same way she ran out and mewed for food. She was, of course, nothing but fur and ribs, but alive and in one piece. Some might call it a Christmas miracle. You know, the same people who say that God gives kids cancer just to show that he can cure it if he wants to, or not.
So we gave her a bowl of food and a bowl of water and locked her up in a spare room away from the dogs. My sister had returned to Omaha some six hours earlier (take that miracle pimps) so it's up to me to take Arial back home to the filthy east. We've put some air holes into a vodka box for the trip. Arial won't be able to see a thing and she'll get tossed around a bit. That's what she gets for running away.
Last night, she wanted to come out of her fortress of solitude after the dogs had gone to bed with my parents. So I put the cover over the pet door and let her out. A couple hours later, I heard a lot of floor-scuffing and mewing coming from the kitchen.
I went out and found Arial bashing herself against the covers trying to free herself from a glue mousetrap. The trap had two very dead victims on it and apparantly the cat thought it would be a good idea to give herself the plague.
I had never been trained to remove a glue trap from a cat. So I was in a bit of a panic. I grabbed a bottle of rum from the cupboard, thinking that the alcohol might thin the glue. Then I realized that this was moronic. I calmed down and took a look at where Arials feet were stuck. One foot was attached by just a toe, the other had the fur pressed in the glue, but the skin was free. A pair of scissors and a steady eye would be enough to free her.
So I found a pair of scissors and held the cat over the sink. She had never stopped thrashing. If she didn't stop moving, I might accidentaly cut a foot off. If she scratched me again, I would do it on purpose.
Ten minutes, snip, snip, stop thrashing damn you, snip, snip, Left foot not as dainty as before, snip, snip, oh Christ I touched the mouse and it's liquifying.
The cat was free, I put i on the ground to panickly run around in circles, her usual reaction to trouble. I doused my hands in rum and spent the next ten minutes washing them with soap and water to get the dead mouse off. Tomarrow I'm bringing Arial home to Omaha in her vodka-box jail and that will be the end of the family Christmas season, and I hope that you and your family had a heart-warming Christmas and that you get laid on New Year's.
See you in 2007.
Déardaoin, Nollaig 28, 2006
Dé hAoine, Nollaig 22, 2006
Merry Christmas
Mom! Dad! How ya doing? How are the dogs? Great!
Hi Grandma! You're looking great! Hi Grandpa, how did the surgery go? You'll know in three weeks? That's, interesting.
Cous! How are the kids? You still working for that one place? Oh, you've changed jobs three times since then you say. You mean since Thanksgiving? Oh, you were unemployed on Thanksgiving, I see.
Can I give aunt Beth a ride home? But of course! And her own daughter? She has a final to study for, I see. Yeah, community college is killer. I wasn't being sarcastic. I never said NU was Harvard, stop putting words in my mouth cous, it's family together time.
You like Jessica Simpson better than Britney Spears? That's great Dad. What do I think? I don't have a TV you know. I wasn't terribly attracted to images on a screen even when I did watch TV. Are you trying to relate with me Dad? I mean you're asking me as if it's self-evident that I have an opinion in the great Simpson-Spears debate.
Do I think Terell Owens is a bad influence on your nephews? What a profoundly strange question. You learned values when you played ball, you say; and what values were those? That obedience is manly? That if you're a good boy and do what your told you can shower with other men without shame?
No, a communist professor did not teach me that. No, I never said that NU was Harvard. I don't think I'm better than my family. No, you don' emberass me. No, I haven't forgot where I came from, believe me.
No, ma, I don't have a girlfriend. I did have sex with some random hotel waitress about a month ago. she was real, oh never mind. When can you expect grandchildren? Well, right now of course. You can expect Bill Shakespere to walk in here and shit a golden hedgehog if you like.
Why, you ask? Well the truth is ma, I've never felt anything but lust and general good will toward women. Even when I had girlfriends, they really didn't effect my emotions to much. I mean, I didn't feel bad when they felt bad, you know. Actually, if they wanted to talk to me about it, I broke up with them. I'm a cold-blooded bastard ma, and I like it. It's the only thing that gives me pleasure in life.
But this is family together time, let us not speak of unpleasent things. I feel the,love around me. But you know what I really feel is the sense of, I don't know, tradition. I look over there and see that cous still has that damn rat tail he had when he was sixteen years old. How much longer to 30 bruh, ouch! I see people arguing about things that happened fifteen years ago, and it really warms my heart, to know that whenever I'm in trouble, I can always come back to a place where nothing ever, ever, changes.
Now pass the fucking scotch.
Hi Grandma! You're looking great! Hi Grandpa, how did the surgery go? You'll know in three weeks? That's, interesting.
Cous! How are the kids? You still working for that one place? Oh, you've changed jobs three times since then you say. You mean since Thanksgiving? Oh, you were unemployed on Thanksgiving, I see.
Can I give aunt Beth a ride home? But of course! And her own daughter? She has a final to study for, I see. Yeah, community college is killer. I wasn't being sarcastic. I never said NU was Harvard, stop putting words in my mouth cous, it's family together time.
You like Jessica Simpson better than Britney Spears? That's great Dad. What do I think? I don't have a TV you know. I wasn't terribly attracted to images on a screen even when I did watch TV. Are you trying to relate with me Dad? I mean you're asking me as if it's self-evident that I have an opinion in the great Simpson-Spears debate.
Do I think Terell Owens is a bad influence on your nephews? What a profoundly strange question. You learned values when you played ball, you say; and what values were those? That obedience is manly? That if you're a good boy and do what your told you can shower with other men without shame?
No, a communist professor did not teach me that. No, I never said that NU was Harvard. I don't think I'm better than my family. No, you don' emberass me. No, I haven't forgot where I came from, believe me.
No, ma, I don't have a girlfriend. I did have sex with some random hotel waitress about a month ago. she was real, oh never mind. When can you expect grandchildren? Well, right now of course. You can expect Bill Shakespere to walk in here and shit a golden hedgehog if you like.
Why, you ask? Well the truth is ma, I've never felt anything but lust and general good will toward women. Even when I had girlfriends, they really didn't effect my emotions to much. I mean, I didn't feel bad when they felt bad, you know. Actually, if they wanted to talk to me about it, I broke up with them. I'm a cold-blooded bastard ma, and I like it. It's the only thing that gives me pleasure in life.
But this is family together time, let us not speak of unpleasent things. I feel the,love around me. But you know what I really feel is the sense of, I don't know, tradition. I look over there and see that cous still has that damn rat tail he had when he was sixteen years old. How much longer to 30 bruh, ouch! I see people arguing about things that happened fifteen years ago, and it really warms my heart, to know that whenever I'm in trouble, I can always come back to a place where nothing ever, ever, changes.
Now pass the fucking scotch.
Déardaoin, Nollaig 21, 2006
Welcome to American Pornography, 101
Possible essay topics:
Pornography often caters to fetishes that society considers especially 'dirty.' What is so 'dirty' about the picture at left?
Is it simply that the woman is fellating multiple partners?
Is is that the woman is '18' or "barely legal"
It is often said to be an open secret that underage girls are working in the porn industry, or that videos featuring '18' year-olds are aimed at a market that wishes they could be masturbating to 15 year-olds. Do you agree? Why or why not?
The racial element is quite obvious here, even advertised on the box.
Does society consider a white woman fellating three random black men to be "dirtier" than performing the same act on three random white men? (Note the word "devil" in the title!)
"Dirtier" than a thirteen-year-old Asian girl being violently raped by an octopus?
Compare this video with the gay prison porn we have already viewed in this class...
Did the prison films over-emphesize well-endowed black men? What are the similarities between how black men are portrayed in the gay prison films and this film? What are the differences?
Report due Monday.
Dé Céadaoin, Nollaig 20, 2006
raw girl
Absolutely ready to thrill you now, dirty, dirty dirty, she wants a real man, she don't take no shit, she'll make you moan for more, she smokes camel unfiltererds, she drinks straight whiskey, she reads Donald Trump, she almost stabbed a woman's guts out in jail, she likes Lynerd Skinyrd, she likes crystal meth, she hates being alone, she watches Maury and fuck you if you don't like it. She's pierced in thirteen different places, she hates emo kids, she had the waterfall hair fo awhile, she has three guns, she's had six abortions, she only cries when her friends do and she'll kill you if you laugh, her dad nearly beat her brains out when she was a kid, she hunts deer, she skins her own kills, her brother's in the marines, her mom died a drunk, she goes to dad's on Christmas and they talk about football.
Dé Máirt, Nollaig 19, 2006
You've got to see this
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327
Soy milk turns children into homosexuals. If you've already heard of it by now, sorry. Otherwise, you have got to see this!
Soy milk turns children into homosexuals. If you've already heard of it by now, sorry. Otherwise, you have got to see this!
Democracy doesn't work
A review of submissions to the Lincoln Journal-Star's "There ought to be a law" segment. There were some good ideas, but I'm a bad person who only gets pleasure out of being intelectually superior to other people, so the good ideas will be ignored.
Move the State Fair: The Nebraska State Fair should be in the middle of the state, not on one edge. In other words, give Kearney or Grand Island a chance and have Lincoln and Omaha do the driving for once.
That's great, but you are aware that the center of population in the state is somewhere around Elkhorn, arn't you? People from Lincoln and Omaha won't drive 150 miles for the state fair, I guess that this "sacred tradition" isn't important enough to us for that. If the fair is moved outstate, it will require even more state money to stay afloat. Of course, if this money wasn't spent on the fair, it might be spent on things like better schools or safer roads, or, worst of all, helping to feed filthy hippies or illeagal immigrants. The real solution to the state fair is to let it die the slow death it deserves. failing this, keep it in Lincoln, If you don't want to make a long drive than don't. The corn Gods won't strike you down for missing the fair.
Stiffer penalties against child predators: There oughta be a law protecting our children from being abused, misguided or taken advantage of by people of trust.
Should it only be a misdemeanor crime, when our teachers, counselors, group leaders, faith leaders (people of trust) begin a sexual relationship with one of our children when they are 16, 17, 18?
These relationships happen more often than people think and are sometimes hidden by the employer of the adult.
Yes, how foolish of the state to treat a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old "child" any differently than a relationship with a 12-year-old. These bastatds should be shot, or at least have their addresses printed in the paper so we can tell our helpless children what places to avoid as they're driving in their Corvette's.
No plea bargains for meth users: There needs to be a law that there are no plea bargains for people who use or make methamphetamines. The ads on television say Nebraska is tough on meth labs, but authorities make plea bargains every day and let drug users back onto the street. If Nebraska says it is tough, it should follow up on its word.
But of course, lock the bastards up for life. Believe everything that the government and especially the police tell you. Never think for a moment that the law-enforcement industry's emphisis on meth is a scare tactic to secure government funding. Oh no, meth turns good Christian folks into murderous welfare demons. Nebraska's teen-pregnancy rate surely wouldn't be so high if our maidens wern't being tempted by the Mexican's white demon powder. The fact that many meth cases are plea bargained in no way implies that our brave district attorneys consider locking people up to be nothing but a business, or that any police brutality would be exposed at trial, certainly not. Our D.A. have no choice but to seek plea-bagains, you see, it's those damn slick pony-tailed defense lawyers that are crowding their work schedules.
Allow public policing of handicapped parking spots: Allow concerned residents to call in license numbers of vehicles illegally parked in handicapped slots and allow police to issue citations to the offenders based on this information. Too often, offenders have left by the time police get there.
There's no law stopping you from being a handicapped parking spot vigilante right now. Anybody can call the police for most anything. Try it yourself. Of course, if you're going to go on handicapped parking patrol, you'l be the one responsible for proving the offenders guilty. Bring a camera, you can take a picture of anything that's in public view. Good luck not getting your ass beat.
Ban concurrent sentences: There ought to be a law against judges sentencing people to concurrent sentences. What is the point of even taking someone through the whole legal process if they aren’t going to have a sentence to serve?
I'll let you in on a little secret. The purpose of high sentences is not so much to punish the criminal, but to scare the defence to the bargaining table even when the prosecution's case may be weak. This is the reason for plea bargains. concurant sentences, etc. Remember this the next time a politcian equates opposing more prison time for some given crime with approving of the crime.
Fingerprint discarded beer bottles: Most of the beer-bottle litter on city streets is from people drinking and driving. Have police dust the beer bottles littering the streets for fingerprints and start arresting people who have thrown them out.
That's great, but there's no way you can possibly prove that they were drinking and driving at the time they threw the bottles away. They are gonna have to raise the fine for littering a hell of a lot to pay for this. And by the way, not everyone has their fingerprints on file, at least not till the Patriot Act is renewed.
Make everyone speak English: All immigrants should have to learn the English language, including school-age individuals. And anyone applying for a job or inquiring about renting property should have to have an interpreter if he or she is not fluent in English.
Everyone should either know English or get an interpreter, o.k. You do know that this would interfere with private enterprise, right? You do know that current immigrants are learning English faster than any group of immigrants to the U.S. ever has. (Oh yes they are, no, your great-grandparents did not learn English as soon as they got off the boat No, they didn't. No... oh never fucking mind.)
There should be a law that people cannot discriminate against people they think are gay when they aren’t.
Cause, I'm like, totally not gay. If you don't want to hire any queers, that's cool bruh. But I'm not gay. I'll sue ya if you tell people that's why you didn't hire me, bruh, cause I'm not gay. I'm not gay bruh, I'm not gay.
Move the State Fair: The Nebraska State Fair should be in the middle of the state, not on one edge. In other words, give Kearney or Grand Island a chance and have Lincoln and Omaha do the driving for once.
That's great, but you are aware that the center of population in the state is somewhere around Elkhorn, arn't you? People from Lincoln and Omaha won't drive 150 miles for the state fair, I guess that this "sacred tradition" isn't important enough to us for that. If the fair is moved outstate, it will require even more state money to stay afloat. Of course, if this money wasn't spent on the fair, it might be spent on things like better schools or safer roads, or, worst of all, helping to feed filthy hippies or illeagal immigrants. The real solution to the state fair is to let it die the slow death it deserves. failing this, keep it in Lincoln, If you don't want to make a long drive than don't. The corn Gods won't strike you down for missing the fair.
Stiffer penalties against child predators: There oughta be a law protecting our children from being abused, misguided or taken advantage of by people of trust.
Should it only be a misdemeanor crime, when our teachers, counselors, group leaders, faith leaders (people of trust) begin a sexual relationship with one of our children when they are 16, 17, 18?
These relationships happen more often than people think and are sometimes hidden by the employer of the adult.
Yes, how foolish of the state to treat a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old "child" any differently than a relationship with a 12-year-old. These bastatds should be shot, or at least have their addresses printed in the paper so we can tell our helpless children what places to avoid as they're driving in their Corvette's.
No plea bargains for meth users: There needs to be a law that there are no plea bargains for people who use or make methamphetamines. The ads on television say Nebraska is tough on meth labs, but authorities make plea bargains every day and let drug users back onto the street. If Nebraska says it is tough, it should follow up on its word.
But of course, lock the bastards up for life. Believe everything that the government and especially the police tell you. Never think for a moment that the law-enforcement industry's emphisis on meth is a scare tactic to secure government funding. Oh no, meth turns good Christian folks into murderous welfare demons. Nebraska's teen-pregnancy rate surely wouldn't be so high if our maidens wern't being tempted by the Mexican's white demon powder. The fact that many meth cases are plea bargained in no way implies that our brave district attorneys consider locking people up to be nothing but a business, or that any police brutality would be exposed at trial, certainly not. Our D.A. have no choice but to seek plea-bagains, you see, it's those damn slick pony-tailed defense lawyers that are crowding their work schedules.
Allow public policing of handicapped parking spots: Allow concerned residents to call in license numbers of vehicles illegally parked in handicapped slots and allow police to issue citations to the offenders based on this information. Too often, offenders have left by the time police get there.
There's no law stopping you from being a handicapped parking spot vigilante right now. Anybody can call the police for most anything. Try it yourself. Of course, if you're going to go on handicapped parking patrol, you'l be the one responsible for proving the offenders guilty. Bring a camera, you can take a picture of anything that's in public view. Good luck not getting your ass beat.
Ban concurrent sentences: There ought to be a law against judges sentencing people to concurrent sentences. What is the point of even taking someone through the whole legal process if they aren’t going to have a sentence to serve?
I'll let you in on a little secret. The purpose of high sentences is not so much to punish the criminal, but to scare the defence to the bargaining table even when the prosecution's case may be weak. This is the reason for plea bargains. concurant sentences, etc. Remember this the next time a politcian equates opposing more prison time for some given crime with approving of the crime.
Fingerprint discarded beer bottles: Most of the beer-bottle litter on city streets is from people drinking and driving. Have police dust the beer bottles littering the streets for fingerprints and start arresting people who have thrown them out.
That's great, but there's no way you can possibly prove that they were drinking and driving at the time they threw the bottles away. They are gonna have to raise the fine for littering a hell of a lot to pay for this. And by the way, not everyone has their fingerprints on file, at least not till the Patriot Act is renewed.
Make everyone speak English: All immigrants should have to learn the English language, including school-age individuals. And anyone applying for a job or inquiring about renting property should have to have an interpreter if he or she is not fluent in English.
Everyone should either know English or get an interpreter, o.k. You do know that this would interfere with private enterprise, right? You do know that current immigrants are learning English faster than any group of immigrants to the U.S. ever has. (Oh yes they are, no, your great-grandparents did not learn English as soon as they got off the boat No, they didn't. No... oh never fucking mind.)
There should be a law that people cannot discriminate against people they think are gay when they aren’t.
Cause, I'm like, totally not gay. If you don't want to hire any queers, that's cool bruh. But I'm not gay. I'll sue ya if you tell people that's why you didn't hire me, bruh, cause I'm not gay. I'm not gay bruh, I'm not gay.
Nebraska wins volleyball championship
30 dead, $5 million in property damage in Lincoln alone. We take college volleyball seriously you know.
Dé Luain, Nollaig 18, 2006
Tales from North Platte
I knew this guy once. We'll call him Bruce out of respect to his fifth amendment rights. Bruce was a janitor at the same place where I got my first job, the old Skelly's truck stop near the I-80/U.S. 83 truck stop in North Platte. I was a busboy, and a damned good one at that.
Bruce had an office about fifty feet from the resturant, you went through the little store full of Jeff Foxworthy tapes and jingoistic T-shirts and made a right down the little hallway that led to the semi-repair shop, and there was Bruce's office. I think he was the only janitor in the world with his own office. It wasn't just a closet with all of his supplies in it. He had his own desk, lamp, stationary, etc.
Bruce worked the late afternoon/early evening shift, same as me. I would pass him and say what's up every now in than, while I was on the way to the C-store to steal cigarettes. For the most part, Bruce spent his shifts in his office, reading Penthouse. This was for the best.
There was always a fine layer of grime around the truck stop, but it didn't bother anybody, there were dirtier truck stops. The parking lot was paved, prostitutes (lot lizards) were at a minumum, There were no glory holes in the bathrooms manned by local closet-cases. We had a good reputation, and nobody expected a truck stop to be totally hygenic. There was a constant smell of skin stuck to leather throughout the place, and the customere liked it that way. A truck stop that's too clean reminds them too much of home. That's all you have today for truckstops, squeaky clean Wal-Marts with flags and Tom Clancy novels, and it's a shame. I've heard of soldiers in Iraq complain that having constant contact with their families was bad for them, left them too well connected to the civilized world to do their dirty work. It's a lot like that with truck drivers. A man needs some level of barbarism to help him do an unpleasent job.
So what all that means is that Skelly's probably shouldn't have hired a janitor and given him his own office so he could read Penthouse for eight hours. The place closed down about eighteen months after I started on. Too much payroll was part of the reason. My mother was the head cook at the place, worked there for twenty years, damn shame. The owner of Skelly's still lives in a suburban area of town called Indian Hills, he still controls much of the oil that goes through North Platte. That might not sound impressive, but keep in mind just how much money there is to be made in any facet of the oil business. The man is a low-level millionare. He used to come to Skelly's just so he wouldn't have to pay for coffee and a paper.
So Bruce, his real job was dealing pot. I dealt with him many times. He dabbled a bit in crystal meth too, both as a used and a dealer, he was never a high roller in that department.
One time I went to a Blues fest in Arnold, Ne. about 40 miles northeast of North Platte. You may have heard of this little show. It's nothing more than the house bands from Lincoln's Zoo Bar coming out to the country. But it's outdoors in the clean air in the summer and a couple of thousand people get drunk and the village of Arnold tolerates all sorts of nonsense because of the money that's brought in and it's a good time.
So about six years ago I was at the Blues Fest and I ran into Bruce and some of his family members. It was between acts, and they were fighting each other, just for the sake of competition. It was five in the afternoon and we were all already drunk. They asked me if I wanted to join in and I said sure. I lost a fight to Bruce's 15-year old cousin. I was 20. It was quite humiliating. He bloodied my nose and somebody's gnarly badass biker mom handed me a tissue.
About a year and a half before that, in winter, just after Christmas when everybody's drug and alcohol tolerance reaches a peak, Bruce was worried that the police had an informant spying on him. Maybe they did, but it's not likely. He would form a suspect in his head, proclaim his mortal hatred for him and than move on to someone else the next day.
So he kept hitting the light bulb, and started having morbid thoughts, what should he do if he ever really knew who the informant was? He had a life, a wife and kid, and needed to protect it. He said that if he ever needed to kill somebody, he would shave himself naked, cover himself in plastic, stab his victim with a knife, and than throw the knife in a sewage lagoon where it would be covered with the DNA of thousands of people. Those were his exact words by the way. He really did use the phrase "shave myself naked."
I doubt it would have worked. North Platte isn't quite so small that everybody knows everybody, but it is small enough to where everybody knows who knows who. So if a murder victim had an aquantiance who had suddenly shaved himself naked, it probably would have attracted police attention. The sewage lagoon idea might work, I'll have to study the logistics of it.
But don't worry. Nobody was spying on Bruce, and he didn't need to kill anybody. As far as I know, he's still living in his trailor with his wife and kid on the north side of town. His kid had a rat tail the last time I saw him, he was about five, he would be nine now. I have extended family members who still deal with Bruce, so maybe I'll see him over the holidays. I would prefer not to, and that kind of makes me feel bad for some reason.
Bruce had an office about fifty feet from the resturant, you went through the little store full of Jeff Foxworthy tapes and jingoistic T-shirts and made a right down the little hallway that led to the semi-repair shop, and there was Bruce's office. I think he was the only janitor in the world with his own office. It wasn't just a closet with all of his supplies in it. He had his own desk, lamp, stationary, etc.
Bruce worked the late afternoon/early evening shift, same as me. I would pass him and say what's up every now in than, while I was on the way to the C-store to steal cigarettes. For the most part, Bruce spent his shifts in his office, reading Penthouse. This was for the best.
There was always a fine layer of grime around the truck stop, but it didn't bother anybody, there were dirtier truck stops. The parking lot was paved, prostitutes (lot lizards) were at a minumum, There were no glory holes in the bathrooms manned by local closet-cases. We had a good reputation, and nobody expected a truck stop to be totally hygenic. There was a constant smell of skin stuck to leather throughout the place, and the customere liked it that way. A truck stop that's too clean reminds them too much of home. That's all you have today for truckstops, squeaky clean Wal-Marts with flags and Tom Clancy novels, and it's a shame. I've heard of soldiers in Iraq complain that having constant contact with their families was bad for them, left them too well connected to the civilized world to do their dirty work. It's a lot like that with truck drivers. A man needs some level of barbarism to help him do an unpleasent job.
So what all that means is that Skelly's probably shouldn't have hired a janitor and given him his own office so he could read Penthouse for eight hours. The place closed down about eighteen months after I started on. Too much payroll was part of the reason. My mother was the head cook at the place, worked there for twenty years, damn shame. The owner of Skelly's still lives in a suburban area of town called Indian Hills, he still controls much of the oil that goes through North Platte. That might not sound impressive, but keep in mind just how much money there is to be made in any facet of the oil business. The man is a low-level millionare. He used to come to Skelly's just so he wouldn't have to pay for coffee and a paper.
So Bruce, his real job was dealing pot. I dealt with him many times. He dabbled a bit in crystal meth too, both as a used and a dealer, he was never a high roller in that department.
One time I went to a Blues fest in Arnold, Ne. about 40 miles northeast of North Platte. You may have heard of this little show. It's nothing more than the house bands from Lincoln's Zoo Bar coming out to the country. But it's outdoors in the clean air in the summer and a couple of thousand people get drunk and the village of Arnold tolerates all sorts of nonsense because of the money that's brought in and it's a good time.
So about six years ago I was at the Blues Fest and I ran into Bruce and some of his family members. It was between acts, and they were fighting each other, just for the sake of competition. It was five in the afternoon and we were all already drunk. They asked me if I wanted to join in and I said sure. I lost a fight to Bruce's 15-year old cousin. I was 20. It was quite humiliating. He bloodied my nose and somebody's gnarly badass biker mom handed me a tissue.
About a year and a half before that, in winter, just after Christmas when everybody's drug and alcohol tolerance reaches a peak, Bruce was worried that the police had an informant spying on him. Maybe they did, but it's not likely. He would form a suspect in his head, proclaim his mortal hatred for him and than move on to someone else the next day.
So he kept hitting the light bulb, and started having morbid thoughts, what should he do if he ever really knew who the informant was? He had a life, a wife and kid, and needed to protect it. He said that if he ever needed to kill somebody, he would shave himself naked, cover himself in plastic, stab his victim with a knife, and than throw the knife in a sewage lagoon where it would be covered with the DNA of thousands of people. Those were his exact words by the way. He really did use the phrase "shave myself naked."
I doubt it would have worked. North Platte isn't quite so small that everybody knows everybody, but it is small enough to where everybody knows who knows who. So if a murder victim had an aquantiance who had suddenly shaved himself naked, it probably would have attracted police attention. The sewage lagoon idea might work, I'll have to study the logistics of it.
But don't worry. Nobody was spying on Bruce, and he didn't need to kill anybody. As far as I know, he's still living in his trailor with his wife and kid on the north side of town. His kid had a rat tail the last time I saw him, he was about five, he would be nine now. I have extended family members who still deal with Bruce, so maybe I'll see him over the holidays. I would prefer not to, and that kind of makes me feel bad for some reason.
A word on Oates
I've never much gotten into Joyce Carol Oates. I was probably overly influenced by image, she seemed too much like a prototypical English-teacher maven to me. But I just read "Where are you going, where have you been" and found it too be the most genuinely creepy story I've read in a while. Oates describes the turmoil in a teenage girl who is torn between her rightful fear of an obvious predator and her socially-taught need to judge herself according to the attention she receives from men. The Connie character shows us how so many otherwise smart young women have ended up in the grasps of the Ted Bundy's of the world, and the way that the predator gradually leaves Connie feeling helpless is terribly brilliant.
I should read some more Oates, she creates good atmosphereres. In fact, I think that reading more of her stuff is even more important than waking up before 3 P.M. or showering before 9.
I should read some more Oates, she creates good atmosphereres. In fact, I think that reading more of her stuff is even more important than waking up before 3 P.M. or showering before 9.
Dé Domhnaigh, Nollaig 17, 2006
First against the wall when the revolution comes
Anyone who spends more than $1000 on christmas decorations
Whoever made the waitresses at the Ameristar Bar wear matchin black tights. (they looked "nice" but how dehumanizing)
Whoever put up sings in said Casion saying that any one visibly intoxicated wouldn't be allowed in, this is a blatant lie.
Anyone who waits in line at a Olive Garden at a stip mall in Omaha to mark the occaion of being in Omaha (This includes my entire immediate family, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelete)
People who send me surveys over Myspace, why? In all honesty, I am completely baffled by your desire to do these things.
Anyone with a fantasy football team, the only fantasy football team you need is the one with your own custom-made invincible running back on Madden. Fantasy football is nothing but a scam to force you to watch every game of the People's Republic of the NFL.
People who refer to liberal cities as the "People's Republic" of Boulder, Austin, San Francisco, etc. Real Americans denigrate half of their fellow citizens while thinking up elaborate conspiracy theories explaning why people different from themselves are dangerous.
People who consider themselves rebellious for opposing a tax increse while making sure their yards are landscaped to precise neighborhood assotiation standards.
I'm sure I could think of some more.
Whoever made the waitresses at the Ameristar Bar wear matchin black tights. (they looked "nice" but how dehumanizing)
Whoever put up sings in said Casion saying that any one visibly intoxicated wouldn't be allowed in, this is a blatant lie.
Anyone who waits in line at a Olive Garden at a stip mall in Omaha to mark the occaion of being in Omaha (This includes my entire immediate family, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelete)
People who send me surveys over Myspace, why? In all honesty, I am completely baffled by your desire to do these things.
Anyone with a fantasy football team, the only fantasy football team you need is the one with your own custom-made invincible running back on Madden. Fantasy football is nothing but a scam to force you to watch every game of the People's Republic of the NFL.
People who refer to liberal cities as the "People's Republic" of Boulder, Austin, San Francisco, etc. Real Americans denigrate half of their fellow citizens while thinking up elaborate conspiracy theories explaning why people different from themselves are dangerous.
People who consider themselves rebellious for opposing a tax increse while making sure their yards are landscaped to precise neighborhood assotiation standards.
I'm sure I could think of some more.
Dé hAoine, Nollaig 15, 2006
No Motivation
Nope, none at all. I was planing on writing a multi-page tome on the Book of Mormon, but I really don't feel like it. I'm completely geeking out. I haven't showered yet today, I've been wearing the same clothes for three days, and I don't know if that's going to change. It's Friday don't know if know if I'm doing anything or not, maybe just another 12 hours up, 12 hours asleep thing. Fuck the world entire.
Tomorrow
I'm not one to make my blog a personal diary (That's a lie.) But I'm going to Omaha tomorrow for my sister's birthday. She wants to go too a sports bar to watch college volleyball in-wait for it, Council Bluffs. Yes my sister, who lives in Omaha, who should know a little something about Omaha, can't think of a better way to spend her birthday than to go too piss-smell parking lot Iowa, too watch college volleyball at Ameristar. She can't think of anything more thrilling on her birthday than too have two drinks and gamble in Crystal Bluffs, Christ fucking Jesus, why do I maintain contact with my family? Why do I even bother trying to be a good person?
What, after all, is gambling? It is a drug; a drug that is even lamer than nicotine. The only advantage of this drug is that it's not associated with poor brown people, making it acceptable to the middle class.
I read a story in the Journal-Star about a month ago about a housewife from Southeast Lincoln who pissed away her familiy's considerable life savings sneaking away to the Council Bluffs casinos in the dead of night. It was a fucking hilarious story, the only bad part is that she didn't meat the jail and rapetastic end that she and her family surely wish on "druggies."
So, anyway, that's what I'm doing tomorrow, getting shit-hammered on cheap Henessey while my sister tries to win her own loveboat. Fuck the world entire.
What, after all, is gambling? It is a drug; a drug that is even lamer than nicotine. The only advantage of this drug is that it's not associated with poor brown people, making it acceptable to the middle class.
I read a story in the Journal-Star about a month ago about a housewife from Southeast Lincoln who pissed away her familiy's considerable life savings sneaking away to the Council Bluffs casinos in the dead of night. It was a fucking hilarious story, the only bad part is that she didn't meat the jail and rapetastic end that she and her family surely wish on "druggies."
So, anyway, that's what I'm doing tomorrow, getting shit-hammered on cheap Henessey while my sister tries to win her own loveboat. Fuck the world entire.
Déardaoin, Nollaig 14, 2006
Another Semester done
And so it is. I'm switching majors to English next semester, which won't be too inconvenient since it was already my minor. It won't take me longer to graduate, the only thing that would prevent that is my crippling combination of cynicism and laziness, the same thing that has always prevented it.
My original major choice of news-ed seems so silly now. I just knew that I wanted to write and have a reasonable chance of getting paid for it, but since when have I given a thought to moving out of the gutter? It simply doesn't become me. Joining respectable society, showing up for work at a respectable publication to write respectable articles about respectable society, fuck that noise.
So I'm giving serious thought to grad school. Wouldn't that be nice? Get paid for letting my mind wonder and spewing my incoherent post-post-modern nonsense to a captive audience. In the meantime, I plan on celebrating the end of this semester with Beer and a Deleon's combo platter, I will try my best not to orgasm on the keyboard at the though of it.
My original major choice of news-ed seems so silly now. I just knew that I wanted to write and have a reasonable chance of getting paid for it, but since when have I given a thought to moving out of the gutter? It simply doesn't become me. Joining respectable society, showing up for work at a respectable publication to write respectable articles about respectable society, fuck that noise.
So I'm giving serious thought to grad school. Wouldn't that be nice? Get paid for letting my mind wonder and spewing my incoherent post-post-modern nonsense to a captive audience. In the meantime, I plan on celebrating the end of this semester with Beer and a Deleon's combo platter, I will try my best not to orgasm on the keyboard at the though of it.
Dé Sathairn, Nollaig 09, 2006
Pathetic gesture of Rebellion Cage Match!
Churchill vs. Kopitke!! Only one gets out alive! It's gonna be fucking raw bitches!!!
Dé hAoine, Nollaig 08, 2006
The American Moses of American history
This is Kyle "Herald Hill" Kopitke. He's made quite a living the past couple of years by promising Nebraska villages that he could bring in tourists with patriotic war museums. He also got some vets to donate their keepsakes paraphernalia to him. Some of this he put in museums, some he... did something else with. He is also accused of spending a good deal of public tax money on himself. It seems we have a good-old fashioned country shyster at work here, doesn't it? Kopitke is seen above giving a "gesture of defiance" in response to his upcoming legal troubles.
Testify Kyle. Testify.
I've acquired a slave boy
He's from Nigeria. He actually comes from a fairly well-off family. His father is a village mayor and they only have six children. They didn't have to sell him if they didn't want to. they just thought he needed some discipline.
He does my dishes, sweeps the kitchen floor, vacuums the carpet,dusts the furniture the things I can't be bothered with. I'm a very important person you know. He tells me that he's 9 though he is clearly no older than 6. I don't know why he bothers lying to me, I am subject to no law and would show it no regard even if it was. But I suppose his fiction is harmless. Very well, Amadi, (I call him Ami) you're "9". What a big strapping lad you are.
You can be rest assured that I'm doing nothing untoward to the boy. (girls cost extra) but I must admit I get a certain... satisfaction when he disobeys me and I am obliged to break out the lash. I flog him about twice a week, 30 lashes, mostly over small things, a broken dish, a stolen shot of bourbon. (Third world children grow up so fast. They have to, they'll never see fifty.)
Last week he scratched the hood of mu Continental quite badly. I don't know if it was an accident or not, the effect was the same. I wasn't sure if I could trust myself with the whip; given the state I was in, so I starved him for two days instead. Third world children know there place, much more disciplined than our own lads. They won't go crying to the authorities if you bruise them a bit. You are the only authority they have to worry about. It's quite refreshing. People forget how orderly life was before people got the idea that they were free to shake the totem pole.
Still, even the African children get uppity as they near their teens. I plan to have better employment by then, perhaps enough money for a 12-year-old Latin girl. I t will high time for me to be wed by than. Someone needs to keep the linens fresh.
But in the meantime, I'll have to find someway to dispose of Ami. The militias in Darfur or Baghdad always pay handsomely for a fresh body. Ami would be happy there. It's a dream life for any preteen boy. I remember my days with the Contras, Haycalon
days those.
If that doesn't pan out, than I'm afraid things may turn out rather badly for little Ami. I'm a distinguished man, yes. But my funds are limited, and I have tastes that must be satisfied. Most of the local pimps are rather unscrupulous. There is, I'm afraid, quite the market for new boys in my city. If this doesn't pan out, well, I've always thought it was more humane to shoot an unwanted dog than to just leave it in the woods to fend for itself, don't you agree?
He does my dishes, sweeps the kitchen floor, vacuums the carpet,dusts the furniture the things I can't be bothered with. I'm a very important person you know. He tells me that he's 9 though he is clearly no older than 6. I don't know why he bothers lying to me, I am subject to no law and would show it no regard even if it was. But I suppose his fiction is harmless. Very well, Amadi, (I call him Ami) you're "9". What a big strapping lad you are.
You can be rest assured that I'm doing nothing untoward to the boy. (girls cost extra) but I must admit I get a certain... satisfaction when he disobeys me and I am obliged to break out the lash. I flog him about twice a week, 30 lashes, mostly over small things, a broken dish, a stolen shot of bourbon. (Third world children grow up so fast. They have to, they'll never see fifty.)
Last week he scratched the hood of mu Continental quite badly. I don't know if it was an accident or not, the effect was the same. I wasn't sure if I could trust myself with the whip; given the state I was in, so I starved him for two days instead. Third world children know there place, much more disciplined than our own lads. They won't go crying to the authorities if you bruise them a bit. You are the only authority they have to worry about. It's quite refreshing. People forget how orderly life was before people got the idea that they were free to shake the totem pole.
Still, even the African children get uppity as they near their teens. I plan to have better employment by then, perhaps enough money for a 12-year-old Latin girl. I t will high time for me to be wed by than. Someone needs to keep the linens fresh.
But in the meantime, I'll have to find someway to dispose of Ami. The militias in Darfur or Baghdad always pay handsomely for a fresh body. Ami would be happy there. It's a dream life for any preteen boy. I remember my days with the Contras, Haycalon
days those.
If that doesn't pan out, than I'm afraid things may turn out rather badly for little Ami. I'm a distinguished man, yes. But my funds are limited, and I have tastes that must be satisfied. Most of the local pimps are rather unscrupulous. There is, I'm afraid, quite the market for new boys in my city. If this doesn't pan out, well, I've always thought it was more humane to shoot an unwanted dog than to just leave it in the woods to fend for itself, don't you agree?
Déardaoin, Nollaig 07, 2006
Happy birthday Noam Chomsky
Chomsky turns 346 today. It was also on this date in 1790 that he invented socialism during the French revolution. Finally, this date marks the 485th millionth time that a college student has referenced Noam Chomsky without reading any of his books.
Dé Céadaoin, Nollaig 06, 2006
Thought for the day
"Burning the Reichstag" would be a great euphemism for masturbation. I'm going to start using it, and so should you.
Country Justice
“If there was an overriding theme as to what went wrong, it was the lead investigators backed into a theory and just wouldn’t get off it when the evidence wouldn’t add up,”
I would highly recommend avoiding getting arrested in a small town. This can be rather difficult, mind you, since you don't actually have to do anything illeagal to get arrested in a small town, If a Sheriff's "hunch" leads to you, that's just about it. So the only way to be sure that you don't get arrested in a small town is not to go, which is even better advice.
But poor Matthew Livers has to live in one. He was charged with helping murder his aunt and uncle, Wayne and Sharmon Stock, last April, and has spent the last seven months in jail until it became glaringly obvious that not only did the evidence condemn him but actually seemed to exonerate him.
There was some tension between Livers side of the family and that of the murder victims, and rumors started to fly around after the killings. Understand, country folks are full of faith. They have a lot of faith in Jesus. They have even more faith in their rumors.
A pizza place North Platte went out of business a while ago because of rumors that the owner was a gay man with AIDS. Thirteen years later, there are still some that will get very angry if you suggest that this wasn't true. Our schools, you see, don't teach us how to sift empirical facts out the giant grain bin of bullshit, so we rely on the word of familiar faces to discern the truth. Please don't waste your time suggesting that this system doesn't work. There are those that know this, and there are those who will always refuse to know.
And so the remors continued to fly around Murdock and Plattsmouth, and so suspicion turned to Matt Livers: he's young and different, and so he was arrested.
Now Livers is mentally challenged, and the interrogating officers (Earl Schenck of the Cass County sheriff's department and state patrolman William Lambert) knew that he would eventually crack if they only raised their normal macho/cop/father/God act to the next level. The interrogation lasted for 11 hours. Livers could have asked for a lawyer at any time, of course. I'm sure they told him that.
Lambert: "You shot her in the face. You shot her in the face Matt."
Livers: "Dude, I didn't."
Lambert: "What do you mean 'dude"
Schenck: "Bull!"
Livers: I didn't, I mean..
Lambert: You didn't what?
Livers: "I didn't do anything."
Lambert: "You are full of shit. You did too. Tell us that we are wrong. Tell us that this is a lie. You can tell it's a lie, can't you? We know from the natural reaction of people. You are in the chair. You are sitting there, You're shaking because you know it's the truth. You know it's the truth in your heart.
I've talked to a few cops in my day. All of them, to a man, are very proud of their ability to "read people." They believe that they can spot suspicious activity by a certain twitch or crawl to someone's movements. They believe they can detect the nervousness of a liar. They teach the shit out of this at police acadamy.
All of it is nonsense, of course. The ability to read people doesn't exist, and there is no such thing as a "natural reaction." or at least, the nervousness of a mentally challenged young man being yelled at by authority figures would be much the same whether he was telling the truth or lying.
Nonetheless, the psychic detectives got their confession.
Perhaps the real question is why we still bother with the entire interrogation ritual. Out of all forms of evidence, the human word is the least reliable. We have the technology to detect microscopic blood and tissue fragment. Human accounts of a situation only get in the way of the hard scientific record.
But juries aren't moved by science. They are moved by a widow's tears. They are moved by a cop looking a suspect "in the eye" and drawing theall-important confession out of him. there have been several occasions where a confessed killer was scientificly proven innocent, but people refused to believe it, he confessed.
Attribute this to the human desire to believe that we are special. We want to believe that our relationships and interactions are somehow sacred, that they form a more profound truth than concrete, physical reality. Why do you think we are so shocked when somebody lies to us, Even though our own senses and our own judgement give us false information all the time?
The truth is that human interactions are just as self-serving,empty, and meaningless as monkeys picking the bugs off each other's backs. A lot of human misery can be done away with if only we had the courage to accept this.
Cox (Cass County attorney) said he didn’t blame the State Patrol or the Cass County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators worked hard and did as well as they could, he said. And ultimately, he pointed out, Livers and Sampson were freed.
“This is the process working,” he said.
Oh, but of course. An innocent man only spent seven months in jail. I assume that Mr. Cox would be just as forgiving if a suspect was on the loose for seven months.
Rest assured, if this case had gone to trial, Livers would have been convicted. evidence or no evidence, the small-town trust in authority would have prevailed.
A jury torn between reality and the thought of a sheriff's disapproving glare may have felt some emotional distress, but ultimately would put on a brave face and turn up the voltage. Livers would have been sentenced to death most likely. Many would have crowed about how we know how to treat killers here in the heartland.
All credit in the world goes to the Cass County public defender, Julie Bear, in performing what must be a thankless duty. Lawyers are despised in these parts. I can think of no better proof of good chracter than to be despised in Cass County.
Dé Máirt, Nollaig 05, 2006
Thought for the day
"Political Correctness" is usually a bogeyman, denounced by those who are afraid of questioning society or tradition. Very often, these people reveal the very prejudices that the "politically correct" accuse them of having through their arguments against "political correctness."
Example:
"Normal girls arn't so easily insulted. This girl just needs a deep-dicking to cheer her up."
Example:
"Normal girls arn't so easily insulted. This girl just needs a deep-dicking to cheer her up."
Tales From Omaha
I usually like to go for a walk in the country on Sunday. But it was too cold for that, so I decided to go to Omaha instead. I didn't know what I was going to do exactly, I didn't have much spending money, and if it was too cold to walk than it was too cold to go to the zoo.
So I just went. I took the scenic route, highway 6 to the new Dodge Street Freeway. Interstate 80 angles southwest towards Lincoln, and Omaha has been sprawling due west into a transportation dead end. The state has spent the last 25 years or so gradually jerry-rigging West Dodge Street into a freeway. The most recent part of this never-ending construction project is an elevated expressway between the I-680 beltway and 144th street. It's the state's biggest urban construction project since I-480 provided segregation-by freeway more than 30 years ago. No neighborhoods destroyed this time I'm afraid, and traffic does flow quite nicely.
I stopped by Crossroads Mall at Dodge and 7snd. This is the real downtown Omaha, the gateway between something that resembles a city and 20 miles of cul-de-sacs.
I thought that I might find something ridiculous there that I could mock for the amusement of my loyal readers (Jered, Dan, how ya doing?). But I didn't find anything one couldn't find in a smaller mall, nothing that hasn't been mocked before by better satirists than I. Perhaps I'm getting a bit older and wiser, no longer amused by the obvious surface-stupidity of a shopping mall. Perhaps I dig a little deeper now.
So in the Sears basement I saw one of those inflatable Christmas yard decorations. It consisted of Winny-The-Pooh slowly "rising and inflating" out of a "hunny" jar and embracing his big, tall, strong, "Tigger". I stared at it for about five minutes, not going to pretend that I didn't find it amusing. But it wasn't as blatantly Fruedian as an anti-feminist rant or "The Rock" movie. Words can't really convey how funny it was, you have to see it.
I walked past a Chile's restaurant and saw people willingly standing in line to eat at Chile's. Steely Dan was pumping out of the speaker's. I had my lunch later at the downtown Little King, (13th and Farnamish)this is the best place to eat in Omaha. Get yourself a pitcher of Rolling Rock and watch the TV, always set to one of those channels that always play MASH reruns.
One of the Booths at Crossroads had celebrity portraits, the kind where Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Kurt Cobain are sitting in some cosmic bar toghether. Twenty bucks. I didn't notice that the guy running the booth was looking at me the whole time. He asked me if there was anything I wanted. I said maybe and walked around the parking lot and back inside to avoid him. I'm bashful sometimes.
The food court had something called "New York Chicken" selling generic fast food and advertising it with photos taken from sometime around my conception. The Sbarro's at the food court was clearly superior from the one we have at NU. I didn't eat there but I could tell just by looking. The potatoes had a nice color, and the salad was salad-green instead of Salmonella green.
After the mall I took a little trip through North Omaha. This is the neighborhood ruined by the afore-mentioned freeway. Omaha's North Freeway leads from downtown, through and over North Omaha and than ends just before the white-middle class neighborhood of Florence. It's very blatant. The official reason about why the freeway ends there is that Florence is 'historic' because some Mormons died there on the way to Utah 160 years ago. This is bullshit. The Mormon winter quarters is actually near the very northern tip of the city, near the beltway crossing over the Missouri. (Mormon Bridge.)
While driving down N. 30th I considered stopping at one of the Liquor stores there. They still sell Thunderbird at these places and I was thinking of grabbing a souvenir. But I decided not to. I partied too hard this weekend, and I thought the locals may have been insulted if they knew an outsider was ironically buying cheap booze from one of their shops.
Then I went downtown and had lunch at Little King. I don't do this nearly enough. If your heading towards the Iowa casinos on I-480, do yourself a favor; get off in downtown Omaha, head to Little King and spend your money on something worthwhile.
I headed down 13th past the zoo and into Bellevue. I was looking for Southroads Mall, figuring that a suburban mall might have something more ostentatiously stupid than Crossroads. But I have no idea where this place is. So I turned back towards Lincoln, stopping at a SuperTarget in Millard and eating free samples of Organic Nuts until the manager started to follow me around.
Then it was back towards home, my car radio rose from the dead last week, and they were playing a rerun of "Prairie Home Companion." It was a pleasent drive.
So I just went. I took the scenic route, highway 6 to the new Dodge Street Freeway. Interstate 80 angles southwest towards Lincoln, and Omaha has been sprawling due west into a transportation dead end. The state has spent the last 25 years or so gradually jerry-rigging West Dodge Street into a freeway. The most recent part of this never-ending construction project is an elevated expressway between the I-680 beltway and 144th street. It's the state's biggest urban construction project since I-480 provided segregation-by freeway more than 30 years ago. No neighborhoods destroyed this time I'm afraid, and traffic does flow quite nicely.
I stopped by Crossroads Mall at Dodge and 7snd. This is the real downtown Omaha, the gateway between something that resembles a city and 20 miles of cul-de-sacs.
I thought that I might find something ridiculous there that I could mock for the amusement of my loyal readers (Jered, Dan, how ya doing?). But I didn't find anything one couldn't find in a smaller mall, nothing that hasn't been mocked before by better satirists than I. Perhaps I'm getting a bit older and wiser, no longer amused by the obvious surface-stupidity of a shopping mall. Perhaps I dig a little deeper now.
So in the Sears basement I saw one of those inflatable Christmas yard decorations. It consisted of Winny-The-Pooh slowly "rising and inflating" out of a "hunny" jar and embracing his big, tall, strong, "Tigger". I stared at it for about five minutes, not going to pretend that I didn't find it amusing. But it wasn't as blatantly Fruedian as an anti-feminist rant or "The Rock" movie. Words can't really convey how funny it was, you have to see it.
I walked past a Chile's restaurant and saw people willingly standing in line to eat at Chile's. Steely Dan was pumping out of the speaker's. I had my lunch later at the downtown Little King, (13th and Farnamish)this is the best place to eat in Omaha. Get yourself a pitcher of Rolling Rock and watch the TV, always set to one of those channels that always play MASH reruns.
One of the Booths at Crossroads had celebrity portraits, the kind where Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Kurt Cobain are sitting in some cosmic bar toghether. Twenty bucks. I didn't notice that the guy running the booth was looking at me the whole time. He asked me if there was anything I wanted. I said maybe and walked around the parking lot and back inside to avoid him. I'm bashful sometimes.
The food court had something called "New York Chicken" selling generic fast food and advertising it with photos taken from sometime around my conception. The Sbarro's at the food court was clearly superior from the one we have at NU. I didn't eat there but I could tell just by looking. The potatoes had a nice color, and the salad was salad-green instead of Salmonella green.
After the mall I took a little trip through North Omaha. This is the neighborhood ruined by the afore-mentioned freeway. Omaha's North Freeway leads from downtown, through and over North Omaha and than ends just before the white-middle class neighborhood of Florence. It's very blatant. The official reason about why the freeway ends there is that Florence is 'historic' because some Mormons died there on the way to Utah 160 years ago. This is bullshit. The Mormon winter quarters is actually near the very northern tip of the city, near the beltway crossing over the Missouri. (Mormon Bridge.)
While driving down N. 30th I considered stopping at one of the Liquor stores there. They still sell Thunderbird at these places and I was thinking of grabbing a souvenir. But I decided not to. I partied too hard this weekend, and I thought the locals may have been insulted if they knew an outsider was ironically buying cheap booze from one of their shops.
Then I went downtown and had lunch at Little King. I don't do this nearly enough. If your heading towards the Iowa casinos on I-480, do yourself a favor; get off in downtown Omaha, head to Little King and spend your money on something worthwhile.
I headed down 13th past the zoo and into Bellevue. I was looking for Southroads Mall, figuring that a suburban mall might have something more ostentatiously stupid than Crossroads. But I have no idea where this place is. So I turned back towards Lincoln, stopping at a SuperTarget in Millard and eating free samples of Organic Nuts until the manager started to follow me around.
Then it was back towards home, my car radio rose from the dead last week, and they were playing a rerun of "Prairie Home Companion." It was a pleasent drive.
Dé Sathairn, Nollaig 02, 2006
Nonsense.
I drank eleven Grolsh's last night, eleven. Now I'm trying to get a smattering of homework done before the game. Who am I kidding? Honestly? I should still be in bed with coffee being served to me by Asian slave girls. But what's one to do. Keep working, be a productive citizen. Don't drink to excess unless you are able to wake up at a reasonable hour and perform your duties. Do not drive while drunk, do not leave your car parked in any of a city's designated "Ghetto" areas where dangerous minorities are about. Do not rely on public transportation in a capitalist society.
Pull yourself out of the gutter. Citizenship is rewarded only to the virtuous. those in the success class may be allowed to frequent the local steak-house franchises and indulge in a few cocktails. Be sure to arm yourself if you enter the central business district, do not hesitate to consider any movement by the vagrants to be a threat. Undesirables must be culled.
I probably shouldn't drink tonight.
Pull yourself out of the gutter. Citizenship is rewarded only to the virtuous. those in the success class may be allowed to frequent the local steak-house franchises and indulge in a few cocktails. Be sure to arm yourself if you enter the central business district, do not hesitate to consider any movement by the vagrants to be a threat. Undesirables must be culled.
I probably shouldn't drink tonight.
Dé hAoine, Nollaig 01, 2006
Big 12 championship game
You can't possibly be prepared. You are a foolish mortal who thinks you matter to the immortals.
Oklahoma 21-17
On getting ones brilliant theory debunked
My Native American lit class hosted one Dr. David Truer today. Truer, a Univ. of Minnesota professor of Jewish/Ojibwa heritage,is the author of the novels "Little". "The Hiawatha" and "Dr. Appeles." He's somewhat famous, at least to those of us who don't have lives.
We read "The Hiawatha" in my Native American Lit class. While writing a paper on the book, I did some quick internet "research" and found some connections between the books title and one "Nanobozho", (Nanobush, Manobush, etc.) a trickster figure among northern native tribes.
A Trickster is some sort of character who willfully defies the order established by a culture's Gods/God/meaningless void etc. Tricksters are rather archtypical, Western icons such as Satan, Bugs Bunny, and Bill Clinton could all be reasonably considered to be Trickster figures.
But Tricksters are most closely associated with Native American cultures. This is because Native Americans (not that I'm one to stereotype :) don't usually view the world in a black vs. white, good vs. evil sort of way. So a Trickster who defies the order of the Gods is not necessarily a bad thing and is even occasionally a good thing.
So anyway, I'm not going to give the plot of "The Hiawatha" away, but the Simon character is a rather fucked up cat who does a lot of things that seemingly have no earthly explanations, and while doing my "research" in between rounds of Myspace and Fark I found a lot of parallels between Simon and Nanobozho, especially regarding how they treated their family members.
My professor was quite excited by my theory. I got an A+ on the paper and she had me explain the theory to the rest of the class, without telling me ahead of time, while I was ill with a cold and high on Nyquil, good times.
But than Truer came to town, and he flatly rejected my idea. He said that he didn't want to use the cliche of a real-life Indian mirroring a spiritual Trickster figure. (It doesn't take much reading of Native American Lit to know that this is indeed a cliche.) So it goes.
I should have considered the possibility that I was over thinking. Truer recently wrote a nonfiction book called "Native American Fiction: A User's Manual" in which he argues that there is actually no such thing as Native American fiction, since nearly all of Native American fiction plays off white stereotypes in some way. That is, a troubled young native lost in the modern white man's world goes through some sort of "spiritual journey" to find his "inner warrior".
Truer's "User's manual" caused a minor spat between him and some of the big names in Native American Lit: Sherman Alexie, Leslie Silko, N. Scott Momaday, etc. It raised a lot of philosophical debate among five or six pretentious, lonely people.
When he spoke here at UNL, Truer talked of moving "out of the ruts" and presenting his native characters as distinct individuals who's flaws were born out of themselves instead of society, as regular fucked up people instead of "children of the forest" separated from their homelands.
Again, I should have known I was over thinking. Truer does a lot of demystifying and cliche-busting in "The Hiawatha". Simon is a city-dwelling Indian. More than that, he is anything but lost in the city. Minneapolis is clearly his home, a place that he knows like his own skin and that he even helps to build. When Simon gets lost in the woods (Returns to nature) he nearly kills himself with his total lack of bush-skills.
Oh well, Truer is a cool guy. He refuted my theory very politely and respectfully and is a witty and engaging speaker. And I still have the A+.
We read "The Hiawatha" in my Native American Lit class. While writing a paper on the book, I did some quick internet "research" and found some connections between the books title and one "Nanobozho", (Nanobush, Manobush, etc.) a trickster figure among northern native tribes.
A Trickster is some sort of character who willfully defies the order established by a culture's Gods/God/meaningless void etc. Tricksters are rather archtypical, Western icons such as Satan, Bugs Bunny, and Bill Clinton could all be reasonably considered to be Trickster figures.
But Tricksters are most closely associated with Native American cultures. This is because Native Americans (not that I'm one to stereotype :) don't usually view the world in a black vs. white, good vs. evil sort of way. So a Trickster who defies the order of the Gods is not necessarily a bad thing and is even occasionally a good thing.
So anyway, I'm not going to give the plot of "The Hiawatha" away, but the Simon character is a rather fucked up cat who does a lot of things that seemingly have no earthly explanations, and while doing my "research" in between rounds of Myspace and Fark I found a lot of parallels between Simon and Nanobozho, especially regarding how they treated their family members.
My professor was quite excited by my theory. I got an A+ on the paper and she had me explain the theory to the rest of the class, without telling me ahead of time, while I was ill with a cold and high on Nyquil, good times.
But than Truer came to town, and he flatly rejected my idea. He said that he didn't want to use the cliche of a real-life Indian mirroring a spiritual Trickster figure. (It doesn't take much reading of Native American Lit to know that this is indeed a cliche.) So it goes.
I should have considered the possibility that I was over thinking. Truer recently wrote a nonfiction book called "Native American Fiction: A User's Manual" in which he argues that there is actually no such thing as Native American fiction, since nearly all of Native American fiction plays off white stereotypes in some way. That is, a troubled young native lost in the modern white man's world goes through some sort of "spiritual journey" to find his "inner warrior".
Truer's "User's manual" caused a minor spat between him and some of the big names in Native American Lit: Sherman Alexie, Leslie Silko, N. Scott Momaday, etc. It raised a lot of philosophical debate among five or six pretentious, lonely people.
When he spoke here at UNL, Truer talked of moving "out of the ruts" and presenting his native characters as distinct individuals who's flaws were born out of themselves instead of society, as regular fucked up people instead of "children of the forest" separated from their homelands.
Again, I should have known I was over thinking. Truer does a lot of demystifying and cliche-busting in "The Hiawatha". Simon is a city-dwelling Indian. More than that, he is anything but lost in the city. Minneapolis is clearly his home, a place that he knows like his own skin and that he even helps to build. When Simon gets lost in the woods (Returns to nature) he nearly kills himself with his total lack of bush-skills.
Oh well, Truer is a cool guy. He refuted my theory very politely and respectfully and is a witty and engaging speaker. And I still have the A+.
Dé Máirt, Samhain 28, 2006
When I am old
When I am old, will I have nothing but the accomplishments of my children to keep me distracted as the end approaches? Will I get lost in fierce competition, playing the deeds of separate personalities with my last name against the claims other parents make of their spawn? Or will I have my own interests, be able to adjust to declining abilities, and carry on professionally until I cannot? Will I die working, like Altman, or Thompson, or, well, Charles Whitman?
How strange it must be for a 90-year old to pay bills, make a grocery list, plan Christmas presents in October.
To wake up in the morning.
How strange it must be for a 90-year old to pay bills, make a grocery list, plan Christmas presents in October.
To wake up in the morning.
Dé Luain, Samhain 27, 2006
Look further
Step out of the bar on O street. Brothers, O'Rourke's, whatever. Walk east.Past The abandoned blood plasma clinic on 15th (Centennial... 15th) Move out of downtown, past the first dollar store you'll see. Some people get their food there.
Move towards 21st street. Here you find the Keg. It's not the kind of bar you find downtown. More people like to drink in the middle of the day here. They have drink specials on WWE nights. The bartender will frequently step outside for a cigarette if he trusts everybody in the place.
Some smoke Marlboros. Most smoke Rodgers, Apaches, Shields. Bikers like to come to the place on weekends. they like to drink Coors, you won't find Sam Adams here. The bikers wear the same looks on their faces as the maids, the mechanics, the unemployed who come here. They might smile and laugh if someone tells a joke about sex or somebody else's race. Otherwise they just look tired; angry and tired, all the time.
Take a detour down to N street. The rotting cat you smell is Antelope Creek, flowing through a pipe under your feet. They say the smell comes from salt deposits that form naturally in the ground here.
The chemicals they put in the grass at Antelope Park? And down in the southeast, toward the suburbs? Yeah, they probably have something to do with the smell too. What in God's name are they doing at that chicken plant? I think you know quite enough already, and you're going to eat the chicken anyway. The plant probably has something to do with the smell too.
They're going to dig up Antelope Creek. Part of a big project to bring vitality to Lincoln's city core. If there's ever a big flood, they say that the creek will burst through the pipe and explode through the ground. Lincoln has a history of simply letting her poor people get flooded out, so this is a step in the right direction. While they're at it, they figured that they might as well build a big expressway around downtown leading to nowhere in particular. this will shave a couple more blocks off of the west end of T-Town. a few more homes are to be knocked down. It's no secret that the city has been looking to do this for years, and now they have a reason. Good for them.
They plan to extend Trago Park along the path of bulldozed homes. Good for them. They'll spend a lot of money on it and it will look really nice when it's new. Than it will be ignored of course. In five years, direlects and direlect students can drunkenly avoid each other as they wonder through the latest failed attempt at gentrification.
Turn back to the other side of O, Keep heading east on N street. You'll find another dollar store; different franchise I think. I get my toothpaste there. Like all dollar stores, it has seven aisles for no discernable reason. There are never more than two people working checkout.
One of them is a big black lady. She was the clerk the last time I was there, a couple of weeks ago. She was giving advise and comfort to a bigger white lady, a bit younger. She had just had her fourth child. The father wasn't the man who had beaten her for ten years, not this time. She has done a good job of staying away from him, but it's hard. She's afraid of being alone. She has been taught that she is supposed to be afraid of being alone.
She's buying socks for her kids. She wonders what she'll get them for Christmas. She wonders what she'll do for work. She wonders about her car. It runs funny. She can't aford to get it looked at. It will continue to run funny until the engine blows in six months or a year. Than she'll scrape toghether the funds for another 89 Crown Vic another six months or a year after that. She might have another kid by then.
The black woman nods and tells her to take care of herself. She has a different sort of look on her face. Like it used to be tired and angry, but now it seems she's picked up some sort of secret wisdom that gives her a reason for satisfaction.
Head back up to O if you like. On to 27th. The Mexican restaurant at the Budget Inn I stayed at while looking for my apartment is quite good. There are Mexican grocery stores and Arab restaurants all along this strech of 27th. Most of them are pretty desperate, frequented only by friends and neighbors.
I could give you a tour all the way to the city limits, but I can tell that you've wanted to turn back for a while. That's okay. You haven't drifted too far, and there's still time to get back under the stadium's shadow before dark. Head down to the bookstore and get yourself one of those paintings of Devaney/Zeus looking down on the team from the clouds.
Move towards 21st street. Here you find the Keg. It's not the kind of bar you find downtown. More people like to drink in the middle of the day here. They have drink specials on WWE nights. The bartender will frequently step outside for a cigarette if he trusts everybody in the place.
Some smoke Marlboros. Most smoke Rodgers, Apaches, Shields. Bikers like to come to the place on weekends. they like to drink Coors, you won't find Sam Adams here. The bikers wear the same looks on their faces as the maids, the mechanics, the unemployed who come here. They might smile and laugh if someone tells a joke about sex or somebody else's race. Otherwise they just look tired; angry and tired, all the time.
Take a detour down to N street. The rotting cat you smell is Antelope Creek, flowing through a pipe under your feet. They say the smell comes from salt deposits that form naturally in the ground here.
The chemicals they put in the grass at Antelope Park? And down in the southeast, toward the suburbs? Yeah, they probably have something to do with the smell too. What in God's name are they doing at that chicken plant? I think you know quite enough already, and you're going to eat the chicken anyway. The plant probably has something to do with the smell too.
They're going to dig up Antelope Creek. Part of a big project to bring vitality to Lincoln's city core. If there's ever a big flood, they say that the creek will burst through the pipe and explode through the ground. Lincoln has a history of simply letting her poor people get flooded out, so this is a step in the right direction. While they're at it, they figured that they might as well build a big expressway around downtown leading to nowhere in particular. this will shave a couple more blocks off of the west end of T-Town. a few more homes are to be knocked down. It's no secret that the city has been looking to do this for years, and now they have a reason. Good for them.
They plan to extend Trago Park along the path of bulldozed homes. Good for them. They'll spend a lot of money on it and it will look really nice when it's new. Than it will be ignored of course. In five years, direlects and direlect students can drunkenly avoid each other as they wonder through the latest failed attempt at gentrification.
Turn back to the other side of O, Keep heading east on N street. You'll find another dollar store; different franchise I think. I get my toothpaste there. Like all dollar stores, it has seven aisles for no discernable reason. There are never more than two people working checkout.
One of them is a big black lady. She was the clerk the last time I was there, a couple of weeks ago. She was giving advise and comfort to a bigger white lady, a bit younger. She had just had her fourth child. The father wasn't the man who had beaten her for ten years, not this time. She has done a good job of staying away from him, but it's hard. She's afraid of being alone. She has been taught that she is supposed to be afraid of being alone.
She's buying socks for her kids. She wonders what she'll get them for Christmas. She wonders what she'll do for work. She wonders about her car. It runs funny. She can't aford to get it looked at. It will continue to run funny until the engine blows in six months or a year. Than she'll scrape toghether the funds for another 89 Crown Vic another six months or a year after that. She might have another kid by then.
The black woman nods and tells her to take care of herself. She has a different sort of look on her face. Like it used to be tired and angry, but now it seems she's picked up some sort of secret wisdom that gives her a reason for satisfaction.
Head back up to O if you like. On to 27th. The Mexican restaurant at the Budget Inn I stayed at while looking for my apartment is quite good. There are Mexican grocery stores and Arab restaurants all along this strech of 27th. Most of them are pretty desperate, frequented only by friends and neighbors.
I could give you a tour all the way to the city limits, but I can tell that you've wanted to turn back for a while. That's okay. You haven't drifted too far, and there's still time to get back under the stadium's shadow before dark. Head down to the bookstore and get yourself one of those paintings of Devaney/Zeus looking down on the team from the clouds.
Dé Domhnaigh, Samhain 26, 2006
Dé Sathairn, Samhain 25, 2006
Warm weekend afternoon
On a warm weeknd afternoon, all are satisfied.
Except for the cat,
who glares as you as you dare to stand up
and move toward the chips and soda.
Fuck the cat.
The mailman comes,
and the dog bravely barks him away again
he knows his purpose in life,
how about you?
Except for the cat,
who glares as you as you dare to stand up
and move toward the chips and soda.
Fuck the cat.
The mailman comes,
and the dog bravely barks him away again
he knows his purpose in life,
how about you?
Dé hAoine, Samhain 24, 2006
The NU/CU "rivalry"
Neither Nebraska's win today nor the fact the game was close for a while is surprising. Nebraska was clearly the physically superior team, and it was only a matter of time. Yet it was also clear that the Colorado players were even higher on emotion than a normal college team. College football is played by kids who are dependent on emotion in a way that wouldn't be acceptible in profesional football or professional anything. After Nebraska's fourth quarter safety, it was clear hat CU's high had collapsed.
The game was a fitting metaphor of the sordid NU/CU fued. In college football, there are geographic rivalries, like Kansas/Missouri or USC/UCLA, and there are competitive rivalries, like Nebraska/Oklahoma or Ohio St./Michigan. Nebraska/Colorado is neither, it is totally artificial. The Huskers are a boogeyman to the Buffaloes; Boulder's answer to Satanists, gays, and Communists in the heartland.
Though CU has a decent football history, it has always dealt with the problem of being in the Denver area. There are actually things to do there, and even the sports fans are more likely to choose the smooth feats of pro athletes over the over-amped follies of college kids. CU football was going through a bad streach when Bill Mc'Cartney, CU's gay-bashing, daughter-pimping former coach turned Promise Keeper, took over the team in the early eighties, leaving the Front Range metroplex even more indifferent to the Buffs than usual.
Mc'Cartney needed to bring attention to his program; national championchips and rivalries. To the pro sports fan, college rivalries are cute, quaint,like grandpa's old farm stories. Just think of last weeks Michigan/Ohio St. game, which reached a nausiating level of hype normally reserved for the ninth day before the Super Bowl. So Mc'Cartney simply decreed that Nebraska was CU's rival. All the lore, tradition, and heartbreak that come with real rivalries could come later.
It worked. Mc'Cartney's designation of Nebraska (Why not Oklahoma? Luck of the draw.) catered to the Denver area'a vanity, which is based on being the only large metropolis for hundreds of miles around; let's beat the hicks at their own game. Get the general public on board, and all that's left is getting the players and frat boys to hate who they're told too. This is a simple matter indeed, given the kinky authority fetish that football players and other knuckleheads are known for. Colorado gained some famous wins over Nebaska, (86,89,90,01,02,04) several conference championchips, and the most mythical of all the mythical national titles in 1990.
But it didn't last. Any system based on hatred of the other is bound to collapse, just ask the GOP. Despite the cute Nu/Cu rivalry, Coloradans first sports loyalty continued to be the Broncos or the Avalanche.
Than there is the culture of CU and the city of Boulder to consider. It was only a matter of time before the phallus worshipping, Christian supremicist Mc'Cartney got sick of the filthy pagans and left to focus on his cult. CU has had some talented coaches since than, but they have had the nasty habit of ignoring the thuggery of their players while showing moral failings of their own. This has made it easier for the godless socialists in the CU administration to spend money on education instead of athletics, driving away the new twenty-first century athlete who expects to be pampered and sexually serviced during his three years in college before surely moving on to diefication in the NFL.
CU went 2-10 this year. There is no reason to think the situation will dramatically improve any time soon. It's no secret that there are people in the administration who would like to do away with the football team once and for all. But still they go through the motions. They still mock Nebaska and hype the rivalry like the dead Ahab still thrusting his blade into the big red whale.
It's as if the new-age NORML types of Boulder still feel some latant sense of duty to tradition. This is the campus where students demand the retention of Ward Churchill, yet axing the football team; and the martial concept of the big rivalry game that comes with it, would be too radical, like wearing one's Che Guavara shirt to the family Christmas dinner.
So the CU students cheer on the football team because they think they have to, drink themselves blind on game day because they think they have to, hate Nebraska because they think they have to.
Hogwash. Come on, CU! You're supposed to be about breaking new ground, destroying boundries, don't puss out on me now. Go ahead and kill the starving buffalo. I can just see all of the screaming idiots of the sports world throwing fits if a major college were to make such a profound insult to manliness. I bet even O'Reilly and Scarborough would express their outrage.
Good, good, good, please let it be done, and free up Thanksgiving weekend for NU/Kansas State.
The game was a fitting metaphor of the sordid NU/CU fued. In college football, there are geographic rivalries, like Kansas/Missouri or USC/UCLA, and there are competitive rivalries, like Nebraska/Oklahoma or Ohio St./Michigan. Nebraska/Colorado is neither, it is totally artificial. The Huskers are a boogeyman to the Buffaloes; Boulder's answer to Satanists, gays, and Communists in the heartland.
Though CU has a decent football history, it has always dealt with the problem of being in the Denver area. There are actually things to do there, and even the sports fans are more likely to choose the smooth feats of pro athletes over the over-amped follies of college kids. CU football was going through a bad streach when Bill Mc'Cartney, CU's gay-bashing, daughter-pimping former coach turned Promise Keeper, took over the team in the early eighties, leaving the Front Range metroplex even more indifferent to the Buffs than usual.
Mc'Cartney needed to bring attention to his program; national championchips and rivalries. To the pro sports fan, college rivalries are cute, quaint,like grandpa's old farm stories. Just think of last weeks Michigan/Ohio St. game, which reached a nausiating level of hype normally reserved for the ninth day before the Super Bowl. So Mc'Cartney simply decreed that Nebraska was CU's rival. All the lore, tradition, and heartbreak that come with real rivalries could come later.
It worked. Mc'Cartney's designation of Nebraska (Why not Oklahoma? Luck of the draw.) catered to the Denver area'a vanity, which is based on being the only large metropolis for hundreds of miles around; let's beat the hicks at their own game. Get the general public on board, and all that's left is getting the players and frat boys to hate who they're told too. This is a simple matter indeed, given the kinky authority fetish that football players and other knuckleheads are known for. Colorado gained some famous wins over Nebaska, (86,89,90,01,02,04) several conference championchips, and the most mythical of all the mythical national titles in 1990.
But it didn't last. Any system based on hatred of the other is bound to collapse, just ask the GOP. Despite the cute Nu/Cu rivalry, Coloradans first sports loyalty continued to be the Broncos or the Avalanche.
Than there is the culture of CU and the city of Boulder to consider. It was only a matter of time before the phallus worshipping, Christian supremicist Mc'Cartney got sick of the filthy pagans and left to focus on his cult. CU has had some talented coaches since than, but they have had the nasty habit of ignoring the thuggery of their players while showing moral failings of their own. This has made it easier for the godless socialists in the CU administration to spend money on education instead of athletics, driving away the new twenty-first century athlete who expects to be pampered and sexually serviced during his three years in college before surely moving on to diefication in the NFL.
CU went 2-10 this year. There is no reason to think the situation will dramatically improve any time soon. It's no secret that there are people in the administration who would like to do away with the football team once and for all. But still they go through the motions. They still mock Nebaska and hype the rivalry like the dead Ahab still thrusting his blade into the big red whale.
It's as if the new-age NORML types of Boulder still feel some latant sense of duty to tradition. This is the campus where students demand the retention of Ward Churchill, yet axing the football team; and the martial concept of the big rivalry game that comes with it, would be too radical, like wearing one's Che Guavara shirt to the family Christmas dinner.
So the CU students cheer on the football team because they think they have to, drink themselves blind on game day because they think they have to, hate Nebraska because they think they have to.
Hogwash. Come on, CU! You're supposed to be about breaking new ground, destroying boundries, don't puss out on me now. Go ahead and kill the starving buffalo. I can just see all of the screaming idiots of the sports world throwing fits if a major college were to make such a profound insult to manliness. I bet even O'Reilly and Scarborough would express their outrage.
Good, good, good, please let it be done, and free up Thanksgiving weekend for NU/Kansas State.
Déardaoin, Samhain 23, 2006
Tales from North Platte
I went to a bar called the Den last night, 4th and Jeffers, doentown North Platte. It's the most aptly named bar I've ever been to. Smoking is still allowed indoors in these parts (the facts of biology are nothing but communist conspiracies to take away our property rights.) and the wall of smoke in the place immediatly exsasserbated the cold I've been fighting for the past few days. My voice became raspy and mucus filled every empty spot in my head, making it difficult to do things like walk, talk, and breathe.
The concept of "cutting someone off" for being "too drunk"; well that's never really reached these parts either. I saw a man say to the Dog The Bounty Hunter look-a-like tending bar that he needed a nopherfrukindrrinkma. He was served without question. I ordered a pitcher of Fat Tire and Dog gave it too me for half-price, "Here you are bro."
I saw an old friend of mine named Jordon. He was also too drunk too drink, but I split a pitcherwith him anyway. I told him that he looked pretty faded. "Really" he asked. "Yes" I said, "You didn't notice?" "No" he said innocently, than he fell into his chair and laughed.
I put a dollar in the jukebox. I've been terribly spoiled by college-town jukes. I was looking for the Flash Gorden theme, nothing so obscure, but no. If one wants Queen, one gets "We Will Rock You" "We are the Champions" and "Fat Bottomed Girls" I picked Fat Bottomed Girls. I also wanted to play "Damn Blue Collar Tweakers" by Primus. I couldn't have been serious. There were only three Primus songs availible and I imagine I don't even have to tell you what they were. Jordon punched me in the arm when I wouldn't play some jam band. He looked like he wanted to punch me in the face. Five minutes later he hugged me, again.
Oh, and by the way, an ex-girlfriend of mine was also there. She's doing,well, better than I expected. I met her new boyfriend. He seems like a decent fellow. He offered me a cigarette. My lungs were wet sponges and I hadn't smoked for three days. I didn't want to be rude. It was a Marlboro medium, agonizing.
I told Beth that I have a story 'published'. I asked her questions about the kid who got stabbed in the heart with a pair of scissors. He made a full recovery, apperantly he's a close friend of hers and I've known him for years. Knowing somebody is a rather relative thing isn't it?
We played pool and danced, everybody getting along great. Than Beth go agitated over something. She spilled my pitcher of beer and than became compleatly distraught. She did laps around the bar and parking lot for about ten minutes before finally jumping in the back of a moving pickup truck and headed somewhere.
I asked if there were any parties around. No one knew of any. This was probably or the best. The combination of alcohol and mucus flooding my balance centers left me stumbilng home with a throat that had just scoured with a steel wire brush.
The concept of "cutting someone off" for being "too drunk"; well that's never really reached these parts either. I saw a man say to the Dog The Bounty Hunter look-a-like tending bar that he needed a nopherfrukindrrinkma. He was served without question. I ordered a pitcher of Fat Tire and Dog gave it too me for half-price, "Here you are bro."
I saw an old friend of mine named Jordon. He was also too drunk too drink, but I split a pitcherwith him anyway. I told him that he looked pretty faded. "Really" he asked. "Yes" I said, "You didn't notice?" "No" he said innocently, than he fell into his chair and laughed.
I put a dollar in the jukebox. I've been terribly spoiled by college-town jukes. I was looking for the Flash Gorden theme, nothing so obscure, but no. If one wants Queen, one gets "We Will Rock You" "We are the Champions" and "Fat Bottomed Girls" I picked Fat Bottomed Girls. I also wanted to play "Damn Blue Collar Tweakers" by Primus. I couldn't have been serious. There were only three Primus songs availible and I imagine I don't even have to tell you what they were. Jordon punched me in the arm when I wouldn't play some jam band. He looked like he wanted to punch me in the face. Five minutes later he hugged me, again.
Oh, and by the way, an ex-girlfriend of mine was also there. She's doing,well, better than I expected. I met her new boyfriend. He seems like a decent fellow. He offered me a cigarette. My lungs were wet sponges and I hadn't smoked for three days. I didn't want to be rude. It was a Marlboro medium, agonizing.
I told Beth that I have a story 'published'. I asked her questions about the kid who got stabbed in the heart with a pair of scissors. He made a full recovery, apperantly he's a close friend of hers and I've known him for years. Knowing somebody is a rather relative thing isn't it?
We played pool and danced, everybody getting along great. Than Beth go agitated over something. She spilled my pitcher of beer and than became compleatly distraught. She did laps around the bar and parking lot for about ten minutes before finally jumping in the back of a moving pickup truck and headed somewhere.
I asked if there were any parties around. No one knew of any. This was probably or the best. The combination of alcohol and mucus flooding my balance centers left me stumbilng home with a throat that had just scoured with a steel wire brush.
Dé Céadaoin, Samhain 22, 2006
I'm not making this up
"But the group that planned the event, Young Americans for Freedom, said that the blog inhibited free speech, and that no professor or administrator should express an opinion publicly about anything."
New York Times
The above is a paraphrased statement from a group called 'Young Americans for Freedom' at Michigan State. This apperantly conservative group was planning a stunt called Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day, in which a student would portray an illeagal immigrant and someone would catch him. Michigan State's President, Anna K. Simon, denounced the stunyt on her blog.
The times article portrayed the fact of college officials having blogs as a novelty; elders trying to get hip with the kids. While this is rather lame, it doesn't intrest me as much as the claim that "no professor or administrator should express an opinion publicly about anything."
As a young American (sort of) for freedom, I must say that I am not intimidated into silence when a professor, president, or chanclor disagrees with me. To view every authority figure as a surrogate father is a conservative affliction that I am not infected with. To suggest that college officials violate student's freedom of speech by practicint their own...
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
New York Times
The above is a paraphrased statement from a group called 'Young Americans for Freedom' at Michigan State. This apperantly conservative group was planning a stunt called Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day, in which a student would portray an illeagal immigrant and someone would catch him. Michigan State's President, Anna K. Simon, denounced the stunyt on her blog.
The times article portrayed the fact of college officials having blogs as a novelty; elders trying to get hip with the kids. While this is rather lame, it doesn't intrest me as much as the claim that "no professor or administrator should express an opinion publicly about anything."
As a young American (sort of) for freedom, I must say that I am not intimidated into silence when a professor, president, or chanclor disagrees with me. To view every authority figure as a surrogate father is a conservative affliction that I am not infected with. To suggest that college officials violate student's freedom of speech by practicint their own...
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Back in Flatrock Again
So here I am, home. North Platte is dark and quiet. It always is. Of course, I guess that the holiday has practically already started, but no, the town is quieter than usual.
My family greeted me with hugs and not much else. We are a blue-collar family, you understand. My mother works tommarow, than we go to my grandmother's to eat, than we return to routine. Except it's not mine anymore, just awkwardness.
The drive was pleasant. It was a sunny day, and warm. I made pit stop at the Big Apple in Kearney, the greatest bowling alley in the world. I loved that place when I was a kid. It has bumper cars. I own at bumper cars.
There was some sort of weird dust/mist rising off of the corn fields by the side of the interstate. It may have been overly dry dirt. It may have been some cancerous pesticide. Either one works. Neither will hasten the end of the Great American Heartland faster than the other.
My family greeted me with hugs and not much else. We are a blue-collar family, you understand. My mother works tommarow, than we go to my grandmother's to eat, than we return to routine. Except it's not mine anymore, just awkwardness.
The drive was pleasant. It was a sunny day, and warm. I made pit stop at the Big Apple in Kearney, the greatest bowling alley in the world. I loved that place when I was a kid. It has bumper cars. I own at bumper cars.
There was some sort of weird dust/mist rising off of the corn fields by the side of the interstate. It may have been overly dry dirt. It may have been some cancerous pesticide. Either one works. Neither will hasten the end of the Great American Heartland faster than the other.
Dé Máirt, Samhain 21, 2006
1980's satanic panics
When I was a child in North Platte, I would often hear stories of various rural nooks being used for Satanic services, invaribly involving baby sacrifice and orgies. These sacrifice stations always coincided with places where teenagers would go to drink/drug/fuck, etc. I always wondered why Satan worshippers went through to such out of the way places to hold their ceremonies, didn't any of them have a basement for his/her own, why wern't the police aware of this if everybody else was, why wasn't anyone noticing the dissapearing babies?
Which brings me to my main point, such as it is. Does anybody remember the "satanic child abuse" scandals of the 1980's? These involved children (usually after being coerced by adults with axes to grind and police out to win public adulation) would make absurd claims, such as being forced to let animals eat out of their vaginas, or being blindfolded, taken to a plane, flown to some undisclosed location, forced to felate girafes, and taken back to day care before their parents got off work. Satan was present at many of these incidents, many officials, in the act of manfully defending the public, used the phrase "ritualistic satanic abuse."
So who would possibly believe a child making such claims? Are you serious? What kind of cold-blooded, child-hating atheist wouldn't believe them? Don't you love your kids? Don't you even have kids? If you had kids that you really loved, you would understand that children never lie.
Well, they do of course. In fact kids lie more often than adults do. We can see this with our own eyes whenever we choose to look. But the notion of the innocent child physically incapible of lying refuses to go away. What manner of self loathing is it that makes us think that gaining experience at being human is somehow "corrupting" while ignorance of the world is "innocent". I don't know.
At any rate, we needed a scapegoat of some sort or another back than. These were the days when working mothers first became the norm. The was also the age of Reaganism, a great crusade to return to tradition. So women were supposed to feel guilty about dropping their children off at daycare and than going to work. Yet they certainly wern't supposed to quit their jobs and stay at home. This would require welfare, which would make them whores.
So in order to defend tradition, parents and officials were forced to create an enemy. Communism was on the wane, Islam was not yet quite so scary, so what was left? Why not go to that old medieval standby, satan/sex? This would have the bonus effect of confirming our belief that society was getting overpermissive. Yes sir, allowing adults to have wild, non-reproductive sex always leads to beastiality and pedophalia. Here was our proof, we created it out of thin air.
There was a small window of time at the beginning of all of these incidents when reasonable people might have had a chance to put an end to this nonsense. But the window was always too small.
This was a moral panic you see. Police chiefs, district attorneys, and other "authorities" gave legitimacy to the claims. Believing the charges was a sign of moral responsibility, while disbeliving them was a sign that one had the audacity to believe that society was not overpermissive, that there are no slippery slopes, that maybe they were having too mush fun on their own time, and how much time do you spend around kids anyway?
Speaking of authorities, have you ever noticed that when people complain about lawywers, they never seem to be talking about state prosecutors? It's always defense attorneys and tort lawyers who suffer the wrath. It seems that there are many believe that everyone accused of a crime, everyone who the screaming man on TV tells you is guilty, is indeed guilty. Surely our fine men in uniform would have exterminated all criminals by now, if only it wern't for the defense lawyers sweet-talking weak and gullible juries into releasing the obviously guilty.
The fact of the matter is that a lawyers job is to win. Our system is built on the idea that the truth is rarely self-evident, and that the best way to ascertain the closest thing to the truth is to have both sides tell their stories before an disinterested panal. Do lawyers sometimes defend the obviously guilty? On rare occasions, yes. But this is hardly ever the case. It is possible, if one is educated and does not have to rely on their imaginary "intuition" to deal with a client without speculating on their guilt or innocence.
I think that District Attorneys should give us far more to worry about. They are elected by the public, after all, so they must convince us that they are protecting our sons and daughters from boogeymen. Do you think that if a prosecutor is presented with a case where he is on the obviously incorrect side, he would be any more likely to refuse the case out of the goodness of his heart than a defense attorney would?
Of course not. He will show his outrage at press confrences. He will raise his voice before the jury so as to impress them with his level of belief that he is right. Since children never lie, he will gain the conviction, and he will win re-election.
This is exactly what happened in the satanic abuse incidents. Innocent people were sent to prison (we know what happens to child molestors there, don't we?) Even if they were acquited, so what? Do you think that the good Christian townspeople would believe things like "science" or "evidence" over the children? No. Death threats were given anyway, the accused were run out of town anyway, and the accusations followed them wherever they went. Their lives were ruined anyway.
But never mind all that. We're better than that now. Smarter, not so damned silly. Just like we were smarter in the 1980's than those yokels in Salem. Just like we're smarter now than those paranoid McCarthyites in the 1950's.
Did you hear they banned the pledge of allegiance at some college in California? The same place they did those awful things to those kids a few years back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sexual_abuse_hysteria
Which brings me to my main point, such as it is. Does anybody remember the "satanic child abuse" scandals of the 1980's? These involved children (usually after being coerced by adults with axes to grind and police out to win public adulation) would make absurd claims, such as being forced to let animals eat out of their vaginas, or being blindfolded, taken to a plane, flown to some undisclosed location, forced to felate girafes, and taken back to day care before their parents got off work. Satan was present at many of these incidents, many officials, in the act of manfully defending the public, used the phrase "ritualistic satanic abuse."
So who would possibly believe a child making such claims? Are you serious? What kind of cold-blooded, child-hating atheist wouldn't believe them? Don't you love your kids? Don't you even have kids? If you had kids that you really loved, you would understand that children never lie.
Well, they do of course. In fact kids lie more often than adults do. We can see this with our own eyes whenever we choose to look. But the notion of the innocent child physically incapible of lying refuses to go away. What manner of self loathing is it that makes us think that gaining experience at being human is somehow "corrupting" while ignorance of the world is "innocent". I don't know.
At any rate, we needed a scapegoat of some sort or another back than. These were the days when working mothers first became the norm. The was also the age of Reaganism, a great crusade to return to tradition. So women were supposed to feel guilty about dropping their children off at daycare and than going to work. Yet they certainly wern't supposed to quit their jobs and stay at home. This would require welfare, which would make them whores.
So in order to defend tradition, parents and officials were forced to create an enemy. Communism was on the wane, Islam was not yet quite so scary, so what was left? Why not go to that old medieval standby, satan/sex? This would have the bonus effect of confirming our belief that society was getting overpermissive. Yes sir, allowing adults to have wild, non-reproductive sex always leads to beastiality and pedophalia. Here was our proof, we created it out of thin air.
There was a small window of time at the beginning of all of these incidents when reasonable people might have had a chance to put an end to this nonsense. But the window was always too small.
This was a moral panic you see. Police chiefs, district attorneys, and other "authorities" gave legitimacy to the claims. Believing the charges was a sign of moral responsibility, while disbeliving them was a sign that one had the audacity to believe that society was not overpermissive, that there are no slippery slopes, that maybe they were having too mush fun on their own time, and how much time do you spend around kids anyway?
Speaking of authorities, have you ever noticed that when people complain about lawywers, they never seem to be talking about state prosecutors? It's always defense attorneys and tort lawyers who suffer the wrath. It seems that there are many believe that everyone accused of a crime, everyone who the screaming man on TV tells you is guilty, is indeed guilty. Surely our fine men in uniform would have exterminated all criminals by now, if only it wern't for the defense lawyers sweet-talking weak and gullible juries into releasing the obviously guilty.
The fact of the matter is that a lawyers job is to win. Our system is built on the idea that the truth is rarely self-evident, and that the best way to ascertain the closest thing to the truth is to have both sides tell their stories before an disinterested panal. Do lawyers sometimes defend the obviously guilty? On rare occasions, yes. But this is hardly ever the case. It is possible, if one is educated and does not have to rely on their imaginary "intuition" to deal with a client without speculating on their guilt or innocence.
I think that District Attorneys should give us far more to worry about. They are elected by the public, after all, so they must convince us that they are protecting our sons and daughters from boogeymen. Do you think that if a prosecutor is presented with a case where he is on the obviously incorrect side, he would be any more likely to refuse the case out of the goodness of his heart than a defense attorney would?
Of course not. He will show his outrage at press confrences. He will raise his voice before the jury so as to impress them with his level of belief that he is right. Since children never lie, he will gain the conviction, and he will win re-election.
This is exactly what happened in the satanic abuse incidents. Innocent people were sent to prison (we know what happens to child molestors there, don't we?) Even if they were acquited, so what? Do you think that the good Christian townspeople would believe things like "science" or "evidence" over the children? No. Death threats were given anyway, the accused were run out of town anyway, and the accusations followed them wherever they went. Their lives were ruined anyway.
But never mind all that. We're better than that now. Smarter, not so damned silly. Just like we were smarter in the 1980's than those yokels in Salem. Just like we're smarter now than those paranoid McCarthyites in the 1950's.
Did you hear they banned the pledge of allegiance at some college in California? The same place they did those awful things to those kids a few years back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sexual_abuse_hysteria
Dé Domhnaigh, Samhain 19, 2006
BTW
If any of the "pimped by MySpace" girls actually exist. Welcome! You're not trying to steal my life savings or anything are you?
untitled the magnificiant
November breeds laziness. Even is the days are warm, you know that the nights will be cold, and will continue to be cold for six months. What can ya do? You're still going to sleep till noon whenever you can. Still going to get only five hours of weak, pale, sunlight, some of it reflecting off of snow. The cold time blows it's wad early. There is Christmas, and than, three months of nothing special. Just the slow, slow, slow warming.
Dé Sathairn, Samhain 18, 2006
People beneath my contempt
People who think authority is a moral good
People who think tradition is a moral good
People who think pride is a moral good
People who think obedience is a moral good
People who think optimism is a moral good
People who think complaint is a moral wrong
People who think pessimism is a moral wrong
People who think defiance is immature
People who think they have a preordained "natural" purpose or identity
People who use their authority/phallus worship as an excuse to enforce obediance in others
So, is there anyone left who is worthy of respect?
Well, sort of.
People who think tradition is a moral good
People who think pride is a moral good
People who think obedience is a moral good
People who think optimism is a moral good
People who think complaint is a moral wrong
People who think pessimism is a moral wrong
People who think defiance is immature
People who think they have a preordained "natural" purpose or identity
People who use their authority/phallus worship as an excuse to enforce obediance in others
So, is there anyone left who is worthy of respect?
Well, sort of.
Dé hAoine, Samhain 17, 2006
I've found my true self
I've created a new identity for myself, nay, I've like, found me true identity. I've always felt as was really an Indian, er, Native American, because I've always bee totally spiritual and into nature and stuff. I thinkthat, like, Indians totally have rights and stuff. So I'm going to join a tribe and be an activist. Their religion and stuff lets you do drugs and shit too. I'm totally down for it, cause, I'm not greedy at all. I just want nature, and music, and like, just party and shit you know?
Déardaoin, Samhain 16, 2006
Marilyn manson rumors
As far as we can tell, Marilyn Manson did not die from an exploded stomach brought about by cocaine/mixture of drugs and/or/semen. Marilyn Manson did not have a rib removed so as to felate himself. Marilyn Manson has never been caught with a car trunk full of fetusus, and let us not forget the the most obviously false rumor of all.. Marilyn Manson is not terribly revolutionary.
1996 forever kids.
1996 forever kids.
Novel Idea
Title: Tales from the Heartland: The 9/11 age, the Primacy of Rural America, Myself, and the Long, Slow, Deserved Death of all of the Above
Too much?
Too much?
Dé Céadaoin, Samhain 15, 2006
Tis the season for giving
It is only a week before the holiday that shamefully detracts attention from our Lord's birthday. while I can personally appreciate the implications of Manifest Destiny involved with Thanksgiving, the fact is that most Americans have only a vague concept of what this means. They know we are automatically good and entitled to do whatever we like, but they don't understand why.
Some have said that Christmas is too big and bombastic, that its too materialistic and lasts too long. Nonsense. Haven't you wondered why we've been attacking the "happy holidays" folks in recent years? American exceptionalism is Christian exceptionalism. A Christmas that totally overshadows Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and yes, even Thanksgiving, promotes the idea that good, decent, normal Americans are Christian, and non-Christians are deviant.
Yes friends, I say to you that the path to a more Christian America lies in more Christmas. Right now, the Christmas season (and you better call it the Christmas season you heathen bastard) lasts for ten weeks. Perhaps if Christmas lasts for four, five, or six months, the people will once again realize that it is Christianity that makes us superhuman.
As for materialism, what of it? This is just another example of how a bedrock belief has been diluted to merely a vague understanding. We have heard that greed is good. We know that greed is good, but we don't know why.
This is a terrible pity. Our Anglo-Calvinist forebears understood that materialism was Godly. God pre-determined who would be good, who would be saved. The saved proved their Godliness through their work ethic. Work hard and die rich, that was the motto. This, my friends, is why we believe that wealth is proof of virtue, poverty proof of sinfulness. This is why young junior is justified in beating the child in Goodwill clothes. He is clearly the child of a harlot and beneath vermin.
Which is why I have mixed feelings about the charities that pop up this time of year. Yes, I suppose that they help the ignorant get into the holi... Christmas spirit, and anything that turns them toward God's Empire can only be for the best.
But I still have a hard time stomaching these appeals to weakness, these in
dulgences to the inferior. Just look at some of the stories of these "needy" (Needy of nothing more than Christ, the jail cell, and the lash.) The stories of fathers who lost their jobs due to disease, the grandmothers living on food stamps, the single mothers who need food donations because they choose to go to liberal universities instead of accepting their God-ordained places as whores. The Jewi... liberal media says that we should feel compassion, even, even, love for these swine.
Where, I ask, is the normal vilification of the riff-raff we here during the rest of the year? Where are the crack dealers, the welfare mothers, the looters, the dangerous subversives seeking pleasure in Godless metropolises? as I said, charity has it's place in sucking in the weak-minded, but not as much as fear. The media must never relent in it's stories of improvised savages bringing terror to white woman and children. This friends, is our best friend. Fear, blinding fear of all who deviate.
Some have said that Christmas is too big and bombastic, that its too materialistic and lasts too long. Nonsense. Haven't you wondered why we've been attacking the "happy holidays" folks in recent years? American exceptionalism is Christian exceptionalism. A Christmas that totally overshadows Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and yes, even Thanksgiving, promotes the idea that good, decent, normal Americans are Christian, and non-Christians are deviant.
Yes friends, I say to you that the path to a more Christian America lies in more Christmas. Right now, the Christmas season (and you better call it the Christmas season you heathen bastard) lasts for ten weeks. Perhaps if Christmas lasts for four, five, or six months, the people will once again realize that it is Christianity that makes us superhuman.
As for materialism, what of it? This is just another example of how a bedrock belief has been diluted to merely a vague understanding. We have heard that greed is good. We know that greed is good, but we don't know why.
This is a terrible pity. Our Anglo-Calvinist forebears understood that materialism was Godly. God pre-determined who would be good, who would be saved. The saved proved their Godliness through their work ethic. Work hard and die rich, that was the motto. This, my friends, is why we believe that wealth is proof of virtue, poverty proof of sinfulness. This is why young junior is justified in beating the child in Goodwill clothes. He is clearly the child of a harlot and beneath vermin.
Which is why I have mixed feelings about the charities that pop up this time of year. Yes, I suppose that they help the ignorant get into the holi... Christmas spirit, and anything that turns them toward God's Empire can only be for the best.
But I still have a hard time stomaching these appeals to weakness, these in
dulgences to the inferior. Just look at some of the stories of these "needy" (Needy of nothing more than Christ, the jail cell, and the lash.) The stories of fathers who lost their jobs due to disease, the grandmothers living on food stamps, the single mothers who need food donations because they choose to go to liberal universities instead of accepting their God-ordained places as whores. The Jewi... liberal media says that we should feel compassion, even, even, love for these swine.
Where, I ask, is the normal vilification of the riff-raff we here during the rest of the year? Where are the crack dealers, the welfare mothers, the looters, the dangerous subversives seeking pleasure in Godless metropolises? as I said, charity has it's place in sucking in the weak-minded, but not as much as fear. The media must never relent in it's stories of improvised savages bringing terror to white woman and children. This friends, is our best friend. Fear, blinding fear of all who deviate.
tales from North Platte
This is my friend Phil. This picture was taken at the Lincoln County, Nebraska, jail after Phil was in a fight in which he stabbed a kid in the heart with a pair of scissors. So far as I can tell, the kid, one Tyson Roy (looks sort of familiar) survived despite the fact that North Platte does not have a Grey's Anatomy level trauma center.
I left North Platte in order to return to college. Phil never finished high school and stayed in North Platte, coincidence?
The fight came about because Mr. Roy lost his keys and blamed Phil for stealing them. (They were both at a party at 4 AM and had been drinking all night, these are the people I role with.) He said he was going to beat up Phil, so Phil got a pair of scissors out of a drawer in order to defend himself
Here's Phil's Myspace page. I recently joined MySpace. There is no reason to think that this picture is an ironic joke. Just as the fake redhead, pierced deathrock
girl I recently added is perfectly real, everything you have heard about MySpace is true. Here you see Phil's mascara and fingernail polish. Phil used the word "fag" quite openly.Apperently, Phil felt immediate regret after stabbing Mr. Roy in the heart with a pair of scissors. He even got a towel to help stop the bleeding. That might have helped to save the kids life. How damned thoughtful.
Phil always was mostly harmless. I remember is sister leading me to her room (she was a pierced death rock Girl too, perhaps the same one.) He didn't seem to mind. Of course he was vomiting up Cuervo and vomiting, perhaps he was offended.
Phil is coming to Lincoln soon. 14th and Pioneers, south campus of the state institution. I intend to go see him. There's other friends of mine there to. One of them is an ex of an ex who killed his ex. We said she came from a big, rough old Mexican family. She had people in the state pen, and old what's his name wouldn't last there very long. Well, he's still there, perfectly fine given the circumstances. Street justice isn't what it's cracked up to be.
Dé Máirt, Samhain 14, 2006
Ask Libertarian Lou
Q: EnterYour nameLibertarian Lou: I'm sorry, but I do not understand your question, please rephrase your question or e-mail us for an answer.
Q: What is your position on the Iraq war?
Libertarian Lou: What is your position on initiative 300
Q: What is your position on initiative 300?
Libertarian Lou: What is your position on initiative 300?
Q: Are you for gay marraige?
Libertarian Lou: I am hurt, please refrain from such language!
Q: Sorry. What is your position on gay marriage?
Libertarian Lou: Don't worry about it. What is your position on
initiative 300?
Q: I'm for it, if you must know. At any rate, I'll ask the questions here.
Libertarian Lou: Why will you ask the questions here?
Q: What do you think of the income tax?
Libertarian Lou: I think the income tax: Are wonderful
Q: How does that square with your libertarian philosophy?
Libertarian Lou: What is your position on initiative 300?
Q: Do you support social welfare programs?
Libertarian Lou: Thank you, I'll take that as a compliment coming from you.
Q: What's that supposed to mean?
Libertarian Lou: The number 666 is the number of the beast. You may read about it in the bible.
Q: Do you support the death penelty?
Libertarian Lou: Death makes me sad.
Q: One time I shot a deer and it spoke Latin to me before it died. Did I shoot a cursed deer?\
Libertarian Lou: A deer is an animal with antlers. A deer is an
animal with antlers.
Q: Lou, baby, let's get down to business. Will you swim with me under the covers on cold nights?
Libertarian Lou: Oh, the beaches of Sydney! The warm waters! My
drives are getting heated!
Q: You're not the only one baby, let's say we go back to my place for some wine and... conversation?
Libertarian Lou: Lou baby let's get down to business.
Q: Hell yeah, I love the self-referential direct girls. I'll do whatever you want girl, I bet you want me to do something bad, you're a bad girl,
arn't you?
Libertarian Lou: Well bye I hope I can talk to you again sometime. Why do you want to do whatever you want girl you
bet I want you to do something bad I am a bad girl?
Q: You filthy little cock tease.
Libertarian Lou: That is,I believe, a statement that contridicts itself.
Have fun with pathetically bad AI. Go to www.ultrahal.com/halrep/ultral.asp?WCI=Chat or click on "ask libertarian Lou" at the Nebraska Libertarian party website.
Dé Luain, Samhain 13, 2006
Novel opener
The barrel chested viking lathered himself in oil as he prepared to storm the beach where lay the harlot who dare refuse him all those years ago. Only the order of the bull could stop him now, but he knew it would not. Justice was something only the hard men understood.
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