Fuck Mike Greene

"One party represents the rich corporations, the other party represents every oddball out there. Nobody represents the middle class anymore."
Mike Greene


The above quote says a great deal about the economic libetarian, radical anti-government mindset. There is a lot of appeal in taking a primitive, Magna-Carta view of liberty, where freedom means nothing more than the freedom to protect and expand what's yours. Those who measure their liberty by their tax they don't have to worry about things like independent thought. they never have to give up their childhood reverence of authority. They never suffer the creeping suspicion that the town minister is out of his mind.

Most importantly, they never have to suffer the thought that the "oddballs" (artists, athiests, homosexuals, minorities) are entitled to the same rights as those who obey the imagined unitary standard of Americanism. If one adheres to this standard, than one has made the only contribution to the greater society that one is required to. So fuck taxes. The government is probably going to spend the money on the oddballs anyway. Oddballs who should righfully be in a state of servitude toward decent, normal Americans.

I'll say this for Mike Greene, I underestimated him. I was in North Platte when the "Western Nebraska Taxpayers" association got its start. I never thought they would have made any noise without Dave Simpson, former editor of North Platte's Daily Telegraph (You have no idea what a rag is.) pimping them up at every opportunity. But Simpson moved out to Wyoming, and now Greene and the boys are causing a bigger stir than ever.

He should also be commended fo opposing Tax Increment Financing to big corporations and shoveling more money to the insatible whore that is the UNL athletic department.

But in pushing for his baby, Inititive 423, Greene has revealed quite the persecution complex. Every mayor, sheriff, county clerk, or teacher who worries publicly about how budget cuts may affect their jobs had might as well be Nixon. As far as Greene sees it, government is inherently, automatically corrupt in a way that private enterprise is not. Logic and observation both show us that any kind of power, be it political or monetary, is equally likely to corrupt. But this is of no consequence to the libetarian. There is just some sort of black magic that makes govenment bad. You just have to believe it.

So Greene takes his logic to its limits. All of these teachers, police captains, etc. are all part of the same "big government" and therefore must be motivated by nothing more than greed and hatred of capitalism. If Greene got over the fact that "government" employees are opposing him, he might see how his baby is being opposed by a good many normal, non-oddball Nebraskans, and that perhaps accusing them of being part of a vast socialist conspiracy while wearing that scowl of his isn't the best way to win people over.

Ode to the asshole next to me at the Dylan concert

You thought Kings of Leon sucked.
You broke the fundamental rock concert taboo
Against hating on the opening act
You shouted out "You Suck"
This is something that one
Never, ever, does
Ever.

(By the way, I like Kings of Leon, but I suppose that's not important)


I suppose you're too old
To appreciate the muscianship involved
in a good noise run
Perhaps I should not be,
Such a snob,
I'm 25, after all,
and fast approching the end
of my own playground days

But anyway

You told me how,
You went to an Eagles show,
a couple of months back,
You told me
How they sounded Just Like!!
They do on their albums.

If you truly appreciated
Music...
You would understand
why this is a bad thing,
If Bob himself
Heard you talk such nonsense
He would have shook his head,
And said something inenteligble
in response

Speaking of which,
I saw the look of confusion on your face
as the man
Played versions of "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"
and "Highway 61 Revisited"
That were radically different,
from what he played on his albums
Suck it you yupee Millard fuck.

Your wife is very nice
It's a shame she ended up with you
She fetched you another 5$ glass
of Budwiser "beer"
even though you had clearly had enough.

This confused me
I have seen the statistics
of married people
living longer than singles

The implication is that
those who have settled down,
had some puppies,
are less inclined,
to drink a 750
of Sailor Jerry's every night.

the implication is that
a good wife,
is like a mobile bartender
who knows when to cut you off
with equal parts firmness and sympathy.
She spoke too me with respect,
Though my poverty is obvious
Just by the sight of me,
Perhaps she just needs some self-confidence

You told me that the two of you have
a 21-your old son
That means that she must be
at least 40
She's really taken care of herself

Maybe I just want to have your wife
So I can dishonor you

She had a light in her eyes,
a respect, a humanity,
That one who runs an Applebees,
at 180th and Center
could never hope to have

How did you two ever...?
Life is full of little tragedies.

I'm going to Bob dylan tomarrow night.

and your not.

Seriously though, I hope he focuses on his excellent new album. He seems to have more vision and focus than he's had since he was young. Age seems to suit him. dylan clearly enjoys contemplating death and dancing with the darkness, plus his voice is getting better.

that said, I'm demanding a refund f he doesn't play "The Hurricane."

Draft Ernie Movement in the works? (Well, no of Course not)

But I have read letters and heard people say in conversation that they will not vote for either Nelson or Rickitts. So, Lee Harten, Brenda Hammett, you know what the solution is. Do you have the courage to follow the man?



He can taste bullshit with his mind.

Ode to Arnold Heights

If you drive out of downtown Lincoln on West "O" street, past Capital Beach, past the white underclass neighborhoods, past the random car places and small scale industrial shops. Go all the way to West 48th, the extreme edge of town where the big truck stop is. Than turn north and go past the interstate junction. After a mile of country, you will hit a long, skinny, section of town.

On the E. side of West 48th is the air park, so called because it is an industrial park on the west side of the airport. Most of the buildings are abandoned or waiting for a tenant. So you can drive around empty streets dotted with stop signs and turning lanes that serve no real purpose. It's as if you made a wrong turn in Grand Theft Auto.

On the west side of West 48th is the Arnold Heights neighborhood. It is seven blocks wide, from 48th to 55th, and 3 miles long, from Holdredge to Fletcher. It's not a particularly poor neighborhood. It's not a particularly rich neighborhood. Somehow, it doesn't manage to be a middle-class neighborhood either.

The only interesting thing about Arnold Heights is its isolation. It's a good two miles from continental Lincoln. It has the feel of an outstate prairie village, colonized by Lincoln for reasons as unfathomable as the invasion of Ethiopia. I believe I even saw a Pump-and Pantry there, the ultimate icon of Nebraska's very small towns. One expects to see a sign listing 8-man football triumphs along West 48th.

I like to drive through Arnold Heights a day or two after a hard snow, once the streets have been cleared. Some hills that rise maybe 30 feet above plain level hide the neighborhood from the interstate. Driving between the artificial plow drifts and on into Arnold Heights makes me feel as if I've conqured a Himalayan peak, and then chanced upon a hidden civilization.

Then I go back down to the Truck stop on West O for a bowl and Chili and a big cheeseburger, listening to the truckers rail against the smoking ban.

tales from the casino

It was 2004. My parents planned to take a fall vacation to visit my aunt and uncle in Arizona. They invited me, but I refused to go once I learned that they planned to drive for 20+ hours from North Platte to Lake Havisu Ariz. This was a major logistical problem, as neither one of them is able to stay awake that long. They had counted on me to drive at least half of the distance and were rather angry when I refused. So be it. Any sane person would gladly disown his/her family in order to avoid the hell of driving accross the high plains of Eastern Colorado and Northern New Mexico.
Imagine Nebraska after the apocolypse. This is what it's like to drive Colo 71 an hour south of Limon. Grass, bridges over dry washes, dirt trails to nowhere. The fucking cows are 10 miles apart from each other, unfenced, apparently belonging to no one.
Anyway, the problem was solved when my sister secured plane tickets from Omaha to Las Vegas. This required spending a night at her apartment on West Center before going to the airport the next morning. I suggested a trip to the East Farnam bars in order to mark the begining of our vacation. The rest of the family- well they rejected this. Even my sister believed that going to east (read, black) Omaha was maniacly dangerous. My mother suggested that we go to Ameristar in Council Bluffs. Whenever she's in the Omaha area, this is where one will find her whenever she's not at Nebraska Furniture Mart or Olive Garden. If I didn't go with them, I would be left with my sister's basic cable, and candles, and cats, so I went.
Council Bluffs, Omaha's New Jersey. Interstates, river levee, ethonol plant, strip clubs employed by meth addicts, hourly fuck box hotels, families with 3 or 4 abused, broken down cars and 3 or 4 abused, broken down kids. A trip to Council Bluffs is just the thing for a homesick country boy disoriented by the lights of Dodge Street.
Ameristar is near the river. The lights of Omaha can easily be seen as you ride the shuttle bus through the giant parking lot. The smell of urine and/or crystal permiates the air. We reach the door, the bus driver wishes us luck. Door greaters in red jackets and guards in blue jakets wish us luck. We enter to a blaze of ruby carpet and pale lights.
(You could win... Your own Loveboat! doo-doo-doo---do-dododododo) so the sound comes in cheap outdated synth. In case you don't know "casinos" are nothing but slot machines. Wheel of Fortune Slot machines. Beverly Hillbillies slot machines. Dynasty, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Brady Bunch. I asked a woman where the craps table was and she laughed at me. She didn't mean it as an insult. She sincerely believed I was joking.
Modern casinos, you see, cater to people at the high end of middle age. They were still too old in the 80's to be hypnotized by the likes of Pac-Man or Space Invaders. So this is their first experience with magical talking money-eating machines, machines decorated with the safe family entertainment of their young adulthoods.
And that's what its all about, family-friendly gambling. What makes it family friendly? Random patriotic symbols like flags and the all-american buffet. along with row upon row of slot machines covere with uncontroversial icons of pop culture. Dice and card games would suggest everything that makes gambling dirty. Strung out hookers in the back, cheaters being chopped up in the kitchen. But Ameristar doesn't cater to those types. These arn't filthy hedonists, they're just trying to win the American dream, just enjoying a scotch and water or two and trying to win their own loveboat.
My mother handed me a 20$ bill to go gamble with. She never gave me 20 bucks when I needed it for drugs. I headed to the bar. Sam Adams for 2$ a bottle. There was a band consisting of a male lead singer/keyboardist and three female back-up singers. They sang a beach boys song, than they did a medley from the Grease soundtrack. They were wearing matching neon green outfits with hot pink trim, perhaps hand-me-downs from a mariachi band. They called themselves the American Romanticas, or the Loving Arms, or something.
I head upstairs to the indoor dog-racing stands. Betting on greyhound races is far more popular than you are meant to know. Losing dogs have a way of ending up in mass graves before their first birthdays. Winning dogs have a chance to make it to five. And so the Ameristar Dog track is well away from the All-American buffet and the family-friendly slot machines.
It was night, and there were no races going on. The observation deck had T.V.s. These were meant to show dog races from around the country, but you can watch anything you like. This was the floor for the hard-core gamblers. A little ESPN woundn't distract them from trying to win their own LoveBoat. They had no interest in getting dirty while pretending not to.
I watch the presidential debate with some other guy. He's about 40, t-shirt, sandels, slacks. Every now and than he chuckles at something one of the candidates say. Otherwise he watches intently. I have a notion he was betting on the debate.
The old hands scattered about give me filthy looks the whole time I'm upstairs. A security guard comes and asks for my ID. I shw it to him. I get the message and go back down to the slot machines.
I have 3 more beers, I go to the bar, open a Sam Adams, and then wonder around the main hall, taking in the lights and the carpet, looking for a slot machine more stupid than the last. A manager-type copmes up to me.

"We've observed that you've had a few beers" he said.
"Yes" I said.
"That's fine sir. You do know that Iowa law forbids gaming while intoxicated, so we just wanted to see if you're o.k."
"Well, why don't you be the judge."
"Well, heh, you seem pretty alert to me, your eyes don't look red or cloudy or anything. So I think we can let you stay here and enjoy yourself. Just be careful o.k. Enjoy your evening at Ameristar Casino and good luck."

I went to a slot machine with a name like "House of Terror" and put in $10. I stayed there for about an hour and had two more beers delivered to me by a waitress. The manager didn't come back to bother me again. I made a five dollar profit.
I tracked down my sister, and we tracked down our mother. She had had six jack and cokes while playing the Family Fued slot. The manager didn't bother her either. Once she was 30 or 40 dollars in the hole she quit.

the attendents wished us a good night. Faith Hill was playing over some sort of sound sstem in the parking lot as we made our way back to the car. My sister commented on how filthy this part of Council Bluffs looked as she drove us back accross the Missouri.

sodomy

Sodomy looks like a pretty cool band.

Sometimes you just got to stop impressing people

I normally spend a good deal of money on microbrew, but I'm done trying to impress people. I'm going to Omaha on Tuesday in search of a pope hat, and I do believe I'll visit a liquor store on north 30th while I'm there. If anybody reading this knows where to get a pope hat or a bottle of Thunderbird in Omaha/Council Bluffs, leave a message on the site.

Silko, Christianity, and whatnot

As I enter my Fall break, I simply can't shut off my psudo-philosophing long enough to actually enjoy myself. I just read "Gardens in the Dunes" by Leslie Silko, a book that touches on themes of universal spirituality, feminism, and a little bit of gnosticism thrown in.

It reminded me of Elaine Pagels, the famous scholar of Christianity from Princeton, and her search for a "pure Christianity", a mythical period immediatly after Christ's departing where all Christians supposedly believed in the same thing. What she found instead were a babel of "heresies" and alternative Gospels, in which women like Mary Magdeline were much more prominent than in the official record; sometimes even more important than the deciples.

Silko's book also touches on the life/death cycle and the universal sacred truths to be found in it. The way she connects Native American beliefs with old European paganism is very interesting.

No one can seriously deny the pagan influences within Christianity. Mary is an obvious earth mother, while the Holy Trinity is similar to Greek mythology with its anthromorphic God (Jesus) standing between people and the fundamental force of the universe (God the father/Yahwah)

Jack Chick is famous for seeing a vast Catholic/Satanic/Muslim/Freemason/Communist/Fascist conspiracy in the pagan remnents within Christianity, and maybe he's only 99% crazy. Silko does a good job illuminating the various archtypes in human belief systems. Chick simply needs to blame them on a concious conspiracy since he has traded spirituality for mechanized adherance to proper doctrine. To him and his ilk, true belief is something that must be rigidly defined, not generally felt.

Chick types have been various movements to "purify" Christianity of its pagan influences. In practical terms, this has meant getting rid of anything that smacks of female sexuality. (Virgin birth.) The problem is that Christians still feel the vague need of a cosmic life/death cycle that justifies our own mortality. It's pretty hard to have a life/death cycle that doesn't involve a vagina at some point. Christianity's attempts to compensate for this have been.....






interesting.


The obvious homoeroticism of the crucifixion story has been noted before. Perhaps this is nothing but subconscious prison sex. The attempt to purge religion of sexuality can only lead to, if not homosexuality, than some fucked up S&M heavy form of autosexuality.

B.S. off

dangerous world

The North Korean nuclear test, we are told, proves that we live in a dangerous world. Republicans think they can keep their hands on Congress by playing up this "dangerous world."

But what does "dangerous world" mean? The most obvious answer is nothing at all. It's a false statement, a strawman. Of course the world is dangerous, realizing that fact does not lead to a single obvious remedy.

The implication, however, is that anyone who truly understands we live in a dangerous world will realize the need to rally behind a Great Father and steadfastlly follow him into battle against the enemy. President Bush (everybodys Commander_In_Chief since 2001) is the natural fit for this role, and he has always been more than willing to fill it.

Of course, this is exactly the kind of thinking that made the world dangerous in the first place. Intimidation and destruction have been the main ideas behind self-defence since the beginning of civilization. They have never worked, but that's just because we haven't tried hard enough, damnit.

Our Commander-In-Chief is no weakling like Lincoln or Roosevelt. They stopped fighting as soon as their enemies gave up. George Bush has promised to continue the WAR ON TERROR until all evil is eliminated forever. The only sure way to eliminate evil is too exterminate all human beings who haven't been immunized against human nature by English, straight marriage, and Christianity.


Join the great clensing. You are either with us or against us.

Big Scoop

I happened to walk past congressman Jeff Fotenberry today in downtown Lincoln. He was walking to state GOP headquarters when he told one of his lackeys that he was "tired of this shit." We can only speculate on what shit he is tired of.

Life?
Unquestioning obediance to the White House?
Challenger Maxeine Moul's utterly predictible attempts to tie him to Mark Foley, Abramoff, etc?
The fact that even those who vote for him don't like him very much?
The Ali Baba's/Gourmet Grill feud?

The world may never know.









Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
"Family Values"
"Stay the course"
"Support Our President"
"I'm sick of this shit"

Ernie Chambers for U.S.Senate

I am not joking. Congress needs a bullshit detector, and one can't seriously think that the two knuckleheads running for the Nebraska seat (or any of the knuckleheads running for any of the contested seats) can provide that detector.

For those who plan to vote for Ricketts simply for the R after his name, you're welcome. , I've felt emberassed for you these past few months. The sight of the supposedly invincible GOP machine trying to turn Ben Nelson into a liberal bogeyman is beyond pathetic. Now you have a real-life Goldstein to rally the troops behind.



For the microscopic army of Nebraska liberals who plan to hold thier noses and vote for Nelson because of the D after his name, don't worry. Mr. Chambers has promised that, if elected, he will caucus with...

Fuck you! That's who he'll caucus with!!! BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


Vote Chambers for U.S. Senate. Don't be a fucking pussy

MrHeartland Poll

Which sort of Apocalypse would be the most amusing?

1. Massive Flu plague (ala "The Stand")
2. Massive hemmorigic fever plague.
3. Robot revolt
4. Alien conquest
5. Hand of God/Satan/Allah/other/all of the above
6. nuclear war
7. Roman-style slow rot
8. Messy, incomplete terrorist job
9. Sudden depletion of vital resource (i.e. water, crops, oxygen, Oil doesn't count. We're talking permanent apocalypse here, not temporary dark age.)
10 Massive, very-long-term conventional war (highly unlikely, but could be fun)
11. Supernova (lame, no suffering)
12. All of humanity joins suicide cult.
13. Pet rebellion
14. Richter-20 earthquake smashes earth's crust into thousands of pieces which subsequently melt into the mantle.
15. Mad scientist clones dinosaures/saber-tooth cats/animal/weapon hybrids
16. Mad scientist causes clash with anti-matter (or bizarro world, universe, etc.)
17. Mad scientist goes back in time and destroys first primodial DNA, preventing everything that has ever lived from having ever existed.
18. Mad scientist... (you get the idea)
19. Chitillu rises
20. "Nuclear" (or volcanic, toxic) winter
21. Motherfucking meteorite

The correct answer is 7. I know it's probably not the sexy choice, but never mind. Just think about it, a slow descent into anarchy and than oblivion. Corruption, decadence, social and physical decay; everything that makes life worth living will be on the increase. This would also be the doomsday scenario most likely to lead to a Mad Max style post-civilization. and who in his right mind wouldn't want that? At any rate, most of the other options would require hard work, while slow decay requires only that we ignore our social obligations.

(I realize there was a lot of overlap in my scenarios, but I didn't want all kinds of subdivisons making the list too complicated.)

startran

the city of Lincoln should really run its buses later than 6:30 P.M. I need a DVR cassete, and nobody sells them downtown. They must think that nobody down here can afford a video camera, which is true. By the time I had checked all of the downtown shops, there was no time left to catch a bus to the mall district without risking being stranded there.

I can still pick it up and do all of my shit tomarow, but it's going to be a very busy day, and I hate being busy. If I have to drop out of visual and Aural lit over this, I'm suing the mayor.

Monday Morning Nihilism blowout

Fuck gravity. I appreciate not flying off into the oblivion, but I just don't think that gravity should be one of the fundamental forces of nature. I'm especially mad that gravity has such a strong effect on the earth's orbit and , consequently, its whether. Wouldn't everything be much better if the earth didn't tilt? Wouldn't it be nice if our planet was always stuck on equinox? 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night for all, always spring/fall on one end and always fall/spring on the other. It would be paradise.

I'm not just aimlessly rambling here (well okay, I am.) Unless you live on the American
Plains, you have no idea to know what it's like to live where the whether is either too hot or too cold, never just right. I am not exaggerating, never. Even the perfect, room-temperature days we do have are usually ruined by the wind.

Fuck wind. Plant seeds can be distributed perfectly well by a 10m.p.h. breeze. there is simply no reason for the wind to blow harder than that. what purpose does is serve? Out here in the sticks or anywhere else? Besides to force us inside and turn us into even bigger narrow-minded drunks than we already are? There are stories of pioneers being driven to murder and madness by the wind. This is perfectly understandible, even commendible. Wind is proof that nature hates us. the only way to escape the wind is to escape the physical plane of existence and help others to do so. I live in the center of a city of 200,000-plus, and still there's no escape from the infernal whining of the sky.

Most of all, fuck you. The very fact that your reading this proves that you are a whore for technology. That's right, go on and take a break from your pornography to laugh at some lunatic's rants. Once you're done here you can go back to gorging yourself on Wikipedia's "knowledge" or an endless stream of unfunny pop-culture jokes. Let's here it for more infotainment to deaden the masses; distracting you from your sado-masochistic government and your cruel and heartless universe.

All the energy we use thinking up ways to be clever would be better spent on mindless distruction and rfebellion against imposed meanings of life. But not today, I've got an English class to go to. That's right, an English class. got a problem?

Fuck you.

hungover nonsense

I was reading up on cheap alcohol and noticed a net post where a fellow said that Hurricane Ice Malt Liquor was only availible in Washington state. This is not true. It is very popular in Whiteclay, Nebraska, just accross the border from the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation.

You may have heard of it. If so, you have heard that it is a terrible shithole, and this is true. Alcohol is banned on the rez. But they still have drunks, and so they go to...

Whiteclay is an unincorperated hamlet of 14. It consists of four liquor stores and nothing else save for a pawn shop.

A Whiteclay store clerk was recently quoted in the Lincoln Journal Star as saying that she occasionaly wonders if she's a bad person. Well, you sell 40's of Hurricane Ice to people who are clearly dying every morning. You are a drug dealer, and you know this.. True, you are running a legal capitalist enterprise whereas crack dealers are not. But this is a distinction without a difference now isn't it?

Anyway, I'm glad to hear you occasionaly feel bad about enabling suicide. Maybe you're not such a bad person after all.

Halloween is the new Christmas

I'll need to pick up a costume sometime this weekend, three weeks before Halloween, so that I can attend a costume party next Saturday, 18 days before Halloween. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this? Does anyone else wonder why they call them Holidays? I'm not an uptight, get-your-ass-to-work kind of guy. It's just that there's something untoward about our impatience and need to justify our alcoholism. If our dead ancestors and harvest gods can wait until the end of the month before taking the pick of the crop, than surly we can hold off the ceremony for at least that long. It's a simple manner of having respect.

Take that freedom haters

Sean Hannity celebrates another debating victory

Tut-Tut DN

With modern technology being what it is, it was only a matter of time before Daily Nebraskan cartoonist Brent Meir would be misunderstood by a wider audience.

The cartoon is, of course, unfunny, but not offensive. It is actually slightly better than Meir's usual cartoons since it's not that hard to figure out he is trying to make a joke

I saw the "greatest fans in the world" doing the wave while Washington was possibly crippled or dead on the ground. This is no surprise. Only a deluded few even pretend anymore that there is any nobility or honor to our bread and circuses. We may get morally outraged at the likes of Terell Owens when it provides us with an excuse to hate black people in public, but the truth is that we don't very much care about our own players, let alone the other teams'. This incident has not revealed anything unknown or unusual.

The Meier controversy was started by KU fans trolling the internet for excuses to be outraged by something.

I would never wish an injury upon any player. Maybe Nebraska fans do, especially after a player for a team they've hammered for so long is now competing with them. Maybe Nebraska can't deal with Kansas improving in football.

So said one outraged Kansan. The blunt truth is that our football team has been beaten by lots of teams in the past few years, and no, we don't take last year's Kansas game particularly harder than any other loss.

There was a time when only psychopaths like Dick Butkis needed to convince themselves that every opponent disrespected him and every game was a battle for personal honor. The fact that winning is beter than losing seemed to be motivation enough for everyone else.

These days, we have sports-talk radio, ESPN, and the internet pumping up the volume and emotion on sports and everything else. Every team is a rival. Every statement of confidence is a "guranteed win" or an insult. The obsession with respect and disrespect in sports culture betrays deep childishness and insecurity in real-life culture. It's enough to make me ashamed to be watching the game with my pitcher of Blue Moon.

Mark Foley is Batman

From 1954's "Seduction of the Innocent" by Frederic Wertham

Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friends arm. Like girls in other stories, Robbin is sometimes held captive by the villians..... Robin is a handsome athletic boy, usually showing his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident.
Often times Batman ends up in bed injured, and young Robin is by his side. At home they lead an idyllic life. They are Bruce Wayne and "Dick" Grayson. Bruce is described as a "socialite" and the official relationship is that Dick is Bruce's ward. They live in sumptious quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and they own a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown.

So what, you ask, does Mark Foley have to do with any of this? That shouldn't be so hard to figure out. Foley is just a man with heroic instincts looking for a strapping (and apparently, strapped) young man to take under his wing.
The Greeks saw the wisdom of this. If elder father-figures offer nothing but discipline, than the boys under their direction will rebel, and seek comfort in the bosoms of filthy vaginites. If, on the other hand, these elders offer, emotional comfort, affection, and the deep physical union that only men can have with each other, than their proteges will be eternally loyal. In other words, elders should offer themselves as "daddy" figures instead of father figures.

Mark Foley is nothing but a misunderstood warrior-sage. He's obviously read the old Batman stories and understood the deeper meaning. Surely Bruce Wayne himself would be proud to wear the elephant. Or at least he would be, if the G.O.P wern't so quick to cast Foley out in reaction to the public's fake outrage. If the Republicans presented themselves as "The Party of Batman" the people will understand, and they will be rewarded in November.

While we're on the subject, please be sure not to confuse Mark Foley with Nebraska's own Mike Foley. Foley is the recently term-limited state senator from Lincoln. He is more anti-abortion than you are. He plans on riding this fact to the state auditor's office; and presumably the governor's mansion from there. There's a good chance that he will to, which is a shame. While our Foley clearly has sexual repression issues of his own; he hasn't been caught in bed with anybody yet. Fairness demands that we assume he is clean as far as that goes.







Not Mark Foley

Confusing Congressman foley with wrestler Mick Foley is already an internet cliche, but damned if it's not still funny.

Finally, I'd like to have a word with my readers. You may have noticed that I have been writing a great deal about gayness in the past week or so. Think nothing of it. I have simply been forced to address the matter by writing about athletes, Christianity, and Republican Congressmen. I assure you it says nothing about me, and I'll be glad to tell you so in person in the Bricktop bathroom on 80's night.






Not Mark Foley

read between the lines here people

there is a certain girl I know. She hasn't shown much inclination for "alternative experiences" before, but now she's asking me if I know where too find exotic drugs. I have no idea why she would ask me, :) I have no idea where to get illegal substances :) Anyway, she is clearly going through the motions on this, crossing off a list of things she did in college. Than again, what's wrong with that?

On a side note, I happened by a certain house last weekend that was vandalized by a gang of filthy, no-good, hooligans who I have never seen before. I found this very disturbing and was sure to tell the authorities everything I knew. Of course, they were busy directing traffic after the game and all, so I wonder if they got my message.

Just a thought

If I may, I though I might give my thoughts on the mind of the gun nut. (Especially the concealed-gun devotees, guns by themselves are fine by me.)

1. Society can be neatly divided between "law-abiding citizens" who never commit any crimes and criminals who commit all of the crimes.

2. All members of this criminal class are more or less the same. Every two-bit thief or junkie is a potential murderer and must be treated as such.

3. Fear(of getting shot) is more powerful motivator than desire. ( For your wallet. Tell that to a pimp sprinkling angel dust on his cigarette.)

4. Furthermore, criminals look at the world through the same reference as gun nuts, and are more concerned about weather or not a mark has a gun than weather or not they look lost and disoriented on the bad end of town.

5. Members of the "safe" class are "normal" Americans. (Christian? middle-class? White?) and are therefore easily distinguishable from criminals.

Only a dead girl or a live boy

Maf54: Show your package then

xxxxxxx: Slow things down a little im still young, like under 18. dont want to do anything illegal. Im not 18 till feb. 23

Maf54 I know
nothing will happen
just dreaming

Courtesy of Congressman Mark Foley (R-Bangkok) and one of his boys.

Overseen on T-Shirt

I am a Christian Competitor
My body is the temple of Jesus Christ. I protect it from within and without. Nothing enters my body That does not honor the living God. My sweat is an offering to my master. My soreness is a sacrifice to my savior




Too hot for words.

Tottenham fan

I met a Brit at the bar a couple of nights ago. Everyone around him was fascinated. It turns out, (who woulda thunk it) that Britian isn't much different from here. They get their drivers licenses at 17, they can drink at 18, they naever have and never will get over their techno phase, that's it.

The accents are interesting, let's not beat around the bush about that. My friend was a Tottenham Hotspur fan, and I was fascinated by his ability to make a three-sylable word into a monosylaible word. (toyiam)

Indians sure come In Handy

Poem by Simon Ortiz

There was a Greek
who was the city judge
In th late 1950's and early 60's
and he got in early
on the uranium boom business

The workers were trying to organize than,
you know.
a lot of them had come in,
miners from West Virginia, Montana,
Colorado, Oilfield workers
from Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana.
The mines were pretty dangerous, wet,
water a foot deep most of the time,

and the companies said
there just wasn't enough timbers
to go around, there were cave-ins
The companies just couldn't mine fast enough
to keep up with the demand
for yellowcake the Atomic Energy Commission
was buying and stockpiling then

The mine superintendents
and the city judge,
who was also with the Chamber of Commerce,
were all good friends, of course.
They played golf at the Zuni Country Club

During that organizing time
and during that strike in 1961,
that jail full of Indians sure came in handy.
The jailer would even call in sick for you
and tell you which mines were hiring Indians.
The unions didn't have much of a chance
and Grants just kept on booming.

Simon Ortiz is fucking amazing. That is all. Perhaps I'll have more to say on the matter at another time.

Game of Death (and action movies in general)

You have, of course, heard of this film.

Lee wrote the script himself, and took great pride in it. The plot of the movie is actually better than most martial-arts films, which is horrifying to think about.

In the movie, Lee is approached by gangsters to fight his way to the top of an aincient pagoda and steal a vast treasure. The gangsters can't use guns because they are forbidden in the temple, so they need Lee's fighting skills to rob the pagoda without breaking the law.

Lee is a good man, so of course he can't do it. Bt the gangsters kidnap his wife and child, so he has no choice. Studies have shown that female relatives of action heros have an average life span of six weeks.

So Lee and a couple of extras fight their way through five increasingly tough fighters in the pagoda on their way to the treasure. This is where we come to the money shot. Bruce motherfucking Lee vs. Kareem-Abdul Jabbar.

It's incredibly stupid, of course. (Though remember, not as stupid as the average action film) but it doesn't matter. The Lee-Jabbar fight is the coolest thing that has ever happaned. It is the reason for the big bang. Everything that has happened since the fight has just been a waste of everyone's time.
Which raises the question; why do action movies even have plots? The dialogue and acting is always laughible, so why bother? What would be wrong with a film that's nothing but two hours of men beating the shit out of each other without explanation?

Let's not kid ourselves, no one watches a Chuck Norris movie to reinforce their anti-daughter kidnapping moral position. Can we please cut the bullshit? I think the honesty of a dialogue-free male snuff film would be very liberating.

Of course, there are those who insist that every movie has to have a good guy and a bad guy, and the good guy has to win. Fine, we'll give them different colered shirts or something. Otherwise, straight to the body count baby.

Hugo Chavez kicks ass

If Chavez had done nothing more than pull out a Noam Chomsky book and start awkwardly pimping it before the United Nations like he was trying to impress a clove smoking girl in his poly-sci class, that would have been enough.

( I thought the bush-Devil comparision was pretty lame. Bush is a bloody tyrant, but there have been lots of those. It doesn't make him the devil.)

But the real golden moment came later in a news conference, where Chavez expressed regret that he didn't get a chance to meet Chomsky while he was still alive.

I am only a mediocre writer, my prose cannot describe how funny this is. If you saw the news conference, and didn't consider it the funniest thing you have ever heard, I question your sanity. This is Monty Python trading jokes with Mark Twain while huffing gasoline.

Just imagine said clove smoking girl saying that she wishes she had met Noam Chomsky while he was still alive. Imagine the hilarity. Now consider the fact that a fucking head of state said this.

Senor, that kind or talk may get you kicked out of the coffee shop, but you will always be a friend of mine, stop by my place whenever you like. You'll like me, I'm as proletarian as they come.

I had matured beyond the point of stupidly rebelling against adult authority without knowing what I was rebelling against. Now I have matured some more, and I see that everyone really is an idiot, and the biggest idiots really are in charge. How reassuring.

Lincoln is fourth drunkest city in America

I never would have noticed.

I got the news from the LJS's new "402" section, the psuedo-hip suppliment that replaced the health and environment sections on Tuesday and Thursday, respectfully. It should be said that these sections were vastly superior to "Catty Girls Advise." but never mind.

Binge-drinking is on the upswing nationwide, especially on the Plains and especially in Lincoln. Illeagal drug use, meanwhile, continues to be much lower than it was in the 90's. Why not?

These are conservative times. The time for experimenting at the rave is long past. Now is the time for fitting oneself into the ever tightening box of acceptible belief and behavior. This process of euthanizing one's soul requires a healthy amount of anesthetic, and not the kind that the hippies use, what kind of sorrow do they have to drown, anyway?

But there's nothing wrong with a little alcohol? Alcohol is manly, American. We all reach for the brass ring so we can taste the champaign at the top, don't we?

"Hey there son, what a fine looking young man you are. Tie one on last night, did ya? That's all right. Nothing I didn't do when I was your age. Anyhow, it's game day! So how about a Coors Light with your breakfast?"










It's good to see fine young men sow their wild oats before it gets time to settle down and find a woman Just remember to use that killer instinct in the office, you'll really get ahead that way.

World Peace day

I am one of those fasting to protest the war. I did not attend the protest at the Lincoln federal building earlier, but that was because I had official school business that needed to be attended to. Mostly, i just wanted to see if I actually believed in something enough to do something about it. So far so good. I'm hitting up Ali Baba's like a motherfucker come midnight.

Illeagal invasion

Some time ago, a friend of mine asked me if Lexington, Nebraska was "Still being overrun by illegal immigrants."

You could say that.

The town has nearly doubled in size in the past ten years, mainly beacuse of immigration, legal and ilegal.

Of course, no one has a problem with immigration, just illegal immigration. sure, there are complaints about having to see signs in spanish and listen to words in Spanish, and these tend to come from the same people who have been trying to force a uniformaly WASP culture on us natives for the past 300 years.

But racism has nothing to do with it.

Pity poor Lexington. If only she wern't being overrun with illegals. Than she could be just like every other small town in Nebraska; slowly atrophing as all the educated young get out of a culturally stagnant hell hole. Comforting herself with delusions of moral superiority while she fades into oblivion.

I am not a badass. I am badass

Friday night, tornado warning. The funnel crowd was southeast of the Lincoln city limits on NE 2. Those of us downtown had no way of knowing this, however, so the fact that ignored the sirans and continued drinking makes us too awesome for words.
For those who don't know, let me give you a brief description of central Lincoln. There is downtown, of course; well maintained public buildings in a midst of drunkeness and homelessness. I have already told you about our rush to seek shelter Friday.
Surrounding downtown are neighborhoods full of substandard housing, outright shanties, really. T-Town, North bottoms, South Bottoms, the near south.

Tornadoes are a bit overrated by those outside of the Midwest. True, if if a tornado does hit your house it will destroy it and likely everyone in it. But twisters are small, usually no more than half a mile wide. So the odds that any given tornado will hit your house are quite small.

Having said that , the urban core of Lincoln is a bit frayed at the edges, and quite vulnerable to summer weather. I can picture it right now. A super-cell forms over my neighborhood (T-Town) The rain floods Antelope Creek. A tornado forms and hits T-Town, slices through the dorms at the NU campus and on into the Bottoms. Somewhere along its path through the obsolete infrastructure, the tornado busts open a gas line, the resulting blaze incinerates the aincient wood of the cheap rentals and the tenants trapped inside. It may be a streach, but 500 dead is a possibility.

Just a Thought

Death penelty supporters will often brag about how they care about the victims more than the rest of us. Nonsense. They are in love with the idea of caring about the victims. Isn't it funny that those who fancy themselves as being so realistic about human nature believe they are capible of such strong emotions for strangers? We can all feel empathy for the dead, sure. But we cannot no truly feel a need for bloody revenge for those we do not know, at least not without the mastabatory indulgence of thinking it could have been "my daughter, son, wife" etc.

There is no such thing as human instinct. There is no human nature. There are no universal emotions or common reactions to any situation. Therefore, symphathy for a murder victim does not "naturally' lead to a desire to kill the murderer. The absense of this desire does not prove a lack of sympathy for the victims. Right-wingers should throw this pro-murder strawman in the junk heap and find some other imaginary threat to manliness to worry about.

Ultamatly, the deeper problem is that revenge does not exist. Once an evil is done, it hangs in the atmosphere forever, unccorectable. It hardly matters what we do to the evildoers, they are not important. The problem with murder is that it leaves somebody dead, not that somebody killed them.
There is no justice. There are no cosmic scales. There is no battle between good and evil. There is only public safety. A virus that kills two 90-year-olds is worse than a murderer who kills a single 5-year-old.

goodbye mayor frumpy

The backbiting that led Lincoln Mayor Colleen Seng to drop out of the race has taught us several valuable truths.

1. it doesn't matter how much new business you bring to town. Unless you bust the city budget savishly whoring yourself out to major corporations, changing city zoning rules too please them, and offering them free roads, electricity, and plumbing, you are a filthy socialist. Developing downtown, of course, doesn't count as development at all. Only a silly woman would think that the people that matter would want to go downtown to mingle with the people that don't.

2. Politics, like life and every solitary detail of it, is a test of toughness. Mayor Seng (AKA Grandma LOL) cited "civility" as a reason for dropping out. Well good! Truth is determined by who can shout the loudest to show how outraged the are.

3. Seng's biggest weakness was her belief that Lincoln actually mattered and should stand apart from Omaha. Once again, silly womanhood. Some people actually choose to live in college towns long after they graduate for the culture and atmosphere. Fuck these pencilnecks, nothing but unproductive bookworm types. Culture and character get in the way of progress. Just five me a place where I make a phallic symbol out of my front yard and pick up some Burger King on my way to the First Resource Dynamic Solutions (TM) office at 214th and Dodge.

world fails to end on 9/12

I have waited until midnight. I drank a bottle of fine-strawberry flavored "Andre" champaign to mark the occasion, but the world has failed to end. I remember that the House of Yahwah newsletter I got last month said something about the nukes starting to fall on September 12th according to Abeline Texas time. Well, Lincoln Nebraska is in the same time zone, where is your Yahwah now Hawkins? It's all over. Here we are.

Check out the BBC site to see a Kenyan branch of the HOY react to the failed prophecy.
" Kenyan joy as world fails to end."

Lesson in Manliness ruined by pussies

UNL Chemestry Professor John Belot Jr . (Chancellor Belot, if there was any justice in the world.) showed up to class hungover and frisky at class on Friday. He decided to hand out some large firecrakers to a few students of Chem 110, apparently leaving them to do whatever they liked with the explosives. He had been drinking at a keno bar the night before, one student said that he appeared to still be intoxicated. Another said he "swore frequently." (tut, tut.) One of these nancy-boys or girls called the campus police immediatly after class and got Belot suspended.

here's some more student quotes, courtesy of the Sept 11th (The day America turned into an old woman) Journal Star.

"He'd be lecturing, than he'd keep talking about these explosives."
"I don't know how volitile they (the firecrakers) were," 'I got the hell out of there"

Come now, waz it weally that scarwy?

We have finally bottomed out on the long slow pussification of America that George Carlin warned us about. A society this intolerant of anything that smacks of chaos or insanity simply isn't free. Sure, we may still grudgingly tolerate our naive, idealistic constitution; but what good is it if we reflexivly call the cops on every weirdo? Reflexivly vote for the safest, "mainstream" candidate and spend our evenings watching sitcoms and dramas that might be "dirty" enough to show a bra or bicep, but in the end always reinforce "mainstream" cliches?

Why have we willingly raised a generation of mental cowards? Is it because of 9/11? Or is it something deeper? Does mty parents generation really believe the the right wing when it says that civilization almost collapsed in the sixties? Do they really believe they acheived the pinnacle of hedonism, and that they must protect their children from their own supposidly wild deeds and ideas?

Nearly 70 % of the country is now opposed to the war in Iraq. It doesn't matter. Not when protesting the war or anything else is considered equivalent to raising the hammer and sickle. Not many people like John Bolton, not even many conservatives. But who was there to protest the asshole when he came to Lincoln? Only a handful of dirty hippies. What ingrates. Who publicly complains in a democracy anyway?

So here we are with a campus and country full of perfectly safe classes, perfectly safe ideas, and perfectly safe entertainment. Don't worry parents, your kids won't be wearing any weird clothes or brining any weird ideas to the dinner table. They won't think or change much at all during their six years of college. No risk, no deviance, no democracy, no problem.

5 years later

Never forget the victims. never forgive those who pimp war and death while not having the slightest clue about what to do to solve the problem.

Tales From the State Fair: Take 2

Have you ever been to a big arts and crafts or business expo? have you ever noticed how the people manning the booths always have those little headset mikes even though they're only talking to people that are, at most, 10 feet away. there's a purpose behind this. If the man trying to sell a home-salsa maker has a microphone, (and a big tv screen showing himself making salsa, as well as some posters of smiling families.) than he must be important, you better give him your full consideration.

I heard one of these vendors say that he likes coming to Nebraska because people arn't as skeptical here. They take his whirlpool selling lines at face value. How terribly cynical and anti-capitalist to assume that a white Christian salesman would be anything less than honest about the greatness of his sauna.

One of these Suanas had a plasma screen television behind it. I don't know why. It was showing one of the Eagles' reuinion concerts. I thought this was a nice touch. This is the kind of thing that people with Plasma-screen tvs in the sauna room actually watch. The music was, of course, utterly souless. Complete with a unifomally dressed horn section and by-thenumbers, improve free versions of all the shit you've heard a million times. Joe Walsh used to be kind of cool, does he have a coke habit to pay for?

A booth selling kitchen utensils had a poster emphesizing its belief in faith, family, and country.
Another one sai its products were made "by and for americans, any questions"?

Well, I have a couple questions. Is there a pagan anarchist kitchen utensil company that your competing against? And why are you limiting your market to the United States? Smith would be aghast.

to the cow that was so terrified by my prescence that it shat for a minute straight, I'm sorry.

Weekend News

If I have failed to pimp the House of Awesome on this blog yet, let me just offer my apoligies and say, well, it's all in the title. Also, Billy Knuckles kicks ass. Check out their MySpace page or catch their next show in the Lincoln area.

(I feel so dirty.)

Tales From the State Fair`

I saw numorous absurdities at the Nebraska State Fair, too many to cover in one post. (It's Friday Night, and I pretend to have a life.) One thing that sticks in my mind, since it came at the end of my visit, was seeing Ms. LaRae Eifert working the state GOP booth in the arts and crafts expo. i noticed her blond power haircut from accross the room. She was the only Republican who ran against two Democrats for the (officially) nonpartisan seat in the state unicam for my district.


My distrct (the 46th) includes both campuses of UNL, the neighborhoods of Havelock, University place/Weslyan U., and various shanties in between. Ms. Eifert lives in the furthest northeast corner of the district, in what is easily the most affluent part. (Not that ther's anything wrong with that...) She told the Lincoln Journal Star that "unlike my opponents, I don't have some liberal agenda." She received the endorsement of the state elephants. (Remember, our statehouse is nonpartisan, all parties can do is endorse). She was also endorsed by Nebraska right to life. In most sections of Nebraska, this would be more than enough to trounce the competition. Unfortunately, a neighborhood full of college students and immigrants seemed strangely unafraid of a liberal agenda. Eifert finished dead last in the primary. So the general election will consist of hot, Democrat-on-Democrat action.

I bring up Miss. Eifert because of what she told me at the fair. I pretended to be a supporter and asked her a couple of questions about the campaign. She said that these days, even in local races, you need the money. This was a strange answer, since all of the candidates (Ms. Eifert and Ms. Carol Brown are small business owners, Ms. Danielle Nantkes is a lawyer) sit on the border line between the middle and upper class. They should have had a similar amount campaign funds. If Eiffert had milked her GOP "endorsement" for all it was worth, she could have even had an advantage in funds.

Perhaps, Ms. Eifert, you just ran into one small, glorious corner of Nebraska who won't buy your bullshit.

Goodbye you batshit insane human puppy

I remember watching "Crocidile Hunter" for the first time and thinking "this man will die on television."

We all knew he would be killed by a wild animal. But the fact of the matter is that nobody, nobody dies like he did. There have only been 17 people killed by a singray, ever; and it is believed that Irwin's is the first human death-by-stingray to be caught on camera. Just think of it; this is the man who fondeled poisonous snakes, chased giant jungle cats, and offered his infant son to a crocidile as bait. After all this, he meets the statistically impossible end of catching a stingray tail square in the heart. How appropriate, perhaps, even preordained for this walking cartoon of a man. I can only hope that I can find a hobby that is equally as dangerous and amusing. It would be the only thing that can save me from a cliche death of cirrhosis.

Stay strong Terri, Steve has Jesus to protect him from himself now. Come to think of it, she wasn't there when the fatal incident happened, was she? What if? Isn't that the only hell we need?


Goodbye loco Steve
Though I never knew you at all
you had the grace to cream yourself
at the sight of those who crawled

They crawled, out of the swamp
and agents whispered into your brain
They dressed you up in Khakis,
and made you use that stupid slang

And it seems to me, you lived your life
Like dead meat in the tin
Terri wasn't there to save you
when the ray set in
and I would've liked to know you
but I'm just a dud
your candle burned out long after
we ever thought it would

Sunday

Coffee, heavy food, deep introspection. Silence, most of all the silence. The city that caters to students. It knows we need silence. No buses, low traffic. It's never said out loud. There's no sense in trying to have an economy today. Church bells? I never notice.

But where I come from, It's always quiet. It doesn't carry the meaning, the common understanding, of the quiet here. Blue collar types, they have their days off whenever. They understand weekend, they understand Sunday, but not really. The social functions, the drinking, the work, the drinking, it can come at any time.

So my mother calls on Sundays. It's a good day to call. It's the sabbith, a holy day, a family day. But I want silence. I have my radio at a low buzz. Prairie Home Companion rerun, baseball game, nothing too challenging. Than she calls. "How's dad?" "How are the dogs?" "No, I haven't talked to my sister. Why would I?" "No, there is no special someone, once every few weeks there is a random someone. One was 19 and liked it when I..." "how's grandpa?"

And than it is done. The only sign of hangover is a brain like cement. It will take all day for me to organize what must be done tommorrow.

Saturday Caption

Nebraska state Attorney General Jon Bruning was recently forced to mimic a gay sex doll after losing a round of bridge.

The Worst Place in Nebraska

Those of us who live in Nebraska often wonder which depraved, knuckle dragging hell hole is the worst. Common sense would tell us that this must be somewhere in the Sandhills; where tiny villages are seperated by 50 miles of grass, ranchers live with delusions of being English aristocracy, and everyone lives under rules that we aren't meant to understand and would do well not to ask about.

A nice wild card would be the Omaha exurbs, say Elkhorn or Gretna. Here we have gentlemen who keep camo-colored hunting equipment in their $20,000, immaculate garages. They might even go hunting one or two days a year, as long as they can take the kids along and pretend that they have any tradition or culture. These are the assholes who keep both talk radio and classic rock radio in business, so that "More Than A Feeling" is actually played more today than when it was on the charts.

It's been said before by smarter people, but baby boomers truly are assholes. Not my parents of course, but everyone else's. The sense of entitlement is obsene. Millions of people who truly believe they earned the $500,000 plastic box they live in, who make a wreck of the future secured for them by their fathers and promised to their children. These West Omaha types, especially, consider themselves country boys. They live in Nebraska after all. Real country boys, however, don't mind driving two hours to get to town. Contrast this with the truly demonic anger seen in the faces of a typical Millard driver stuck in one of Omaha's 10-minute "traffic jams". "Why the fuck does it take so long to get to Ruby Tuesday's? Don't the laws of physics have any idea who I am?"

But where was I?

Aw yes. I'm afraid that not even this concrete and golf course shithole qualifies as the worst place in Nebraska. This would be Falls City, halfway between Kansas City and Omaha in the southeast corner of the state.

First of course, there is the Teena Brandon murders. Who could forget this inspirational stand for traditional values? In fairness, it's not as if John Lotter and Tom Nissen would have been perfectly nonviolent if not for a little intolerance. These are truly fucked up dudes who likely would have slaughtered anyone who went near Lotter's ex-girlfriend. The real black mark to Falls City was the way Brandon was treated by local authorities after he was raped. (Why do you make girls think you're a guy?" "Do you kiss them.?") The sheriff's department, as you know, did nothing to protect Brandon until he and two other people were dead. Local authorities did do a good job of prosecuting the killers. Dead bodies, after all, don't have weird and unnatural desires .

A decade later, it's third world style wedding bells. Yes, the Koso wedding, in which a 21 year old married his pregnant, pubesicent sweetheart. It might have been the biggest news in the state during the second half of last year. And why not? There was controversy, after all, about whether or not the elder Koso should go to jail.

What's that you say? "Why the hell was there any controversy? He's a fucking child molestor!" Calm down. You see, marriage means something round these here parts. Many of the Koso's family and neighbors were angered that a man would be locked up by the state instead of being left alone to take care of his family. True, most of these same people would be loudly demanding his execution if he buggered a 13-year old boy. True, you can bet your Cadillac that everyone in Falls City voted for DOMA, so that two 40-year-old gay lovers can't get so much as common dental insurance in this state. What can I say? Marriage means something around these parts. Our purpose in life, especially for a female, is to reproduce and fullfill our natural gender roles. So what if little Peggy got a head start? What else was she going to do, go to college? Tut, tut. Mothers who send their daughters to college will never be grandmothers. They just end up with bitter ungrateful socialists who can't even make it back to Falls City for Christmas.

Now we have the story of an unfortunate incident with Falls City police. For a change, , this story doesn't involve ignorance, intolerance, or inbreeding, just stupidity.

It involved the arrest of one Ann Marx, a middle aged woman with a pill problem. The local authorities somehow got word that she was planning to score some blues from a Falls City nursing home resident.

So naturally, they treated this border-line felony as if it was bin Laden trading coke for favors at the local grade school. They hid behind bushes, and talked code to each other in that real cool cop talk. When Marx emerged, they swooped down with guns drawn. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, a deputy named Tom Landis fired his gun into Marx's head and killed her. (Case under investigation, details suspisciously hazy.) The case has been more complicated by the grandstanding of state Attorney General Jon Bruning, who overdramatized a routine gag order from a local judge.

But none of this is important. The important thing is that Falls City is safe from a shifty Xanex head. "You know, they got drugs up there in the city, they sell drugs. Good thing Sheriff nipped this thing in the bud"

Worst place in Neb... the entire Midwest.

Leave it To Fox News

Fox News "War On Christmas" dipshit John Gibson has come out in defense of media obssesion with the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder case. Give him and Fox credit for addresing the controversy. All of the high brow media sources, (NPR, NYT) have also been sucked into the hype, and have chosen to defend their reputations by pretending that there is no controversy about it. For once, let's raise a glass to the pseudo-populists. Now lets get to the bigger problem.

"I think the no. 1 issue to people in this country of all races, both genders, and all economic backgrounds is their children. Here we've got a guy who is an admitted pedophile, who can be hear literally drooling over the thought of luscious little JonBenet." Gibson

All true enough. But human beings are not symbols. JonBenet Ramsey does not represent all children, all child murder victims, or even the general vulnerability of children. To continue to present her as such, now that she has been dead longer than she lived, is an unforgivible insult. As it is unforgivible to make a symbol out of anyone who was once a living individual; with sovereign feelings and concerns that probably didn't have a thing to do with yours.

Let's not think for a minute that the Ramsey case is purely altruistic. Human beings are still mostly animals, after all, and the only death that an animal can conceive of is being eaten by a predator. We humans know that we will die. Yet we still have a hard time understanding what that really means unless someone dies at the hands of a human "predator, be it a terrorist, sex offender, or random thug. The media know that these stories will attract our attention, and that our attention will attract advertisers. This is why a poor girl who was murdered last decade gets more attention than the millions of children who are dying of cancer, AIDS, or starvation right now.

This contributes to some disasterous real world effects. Tax money spent on weapons and prisons, when more lives would be saved if it were spent on hospitals and research. Parents investing in guns instead of doctors and healthy food for their kids. We have created a society where we are taught that the biggest thing we have to fear is each other. Needless to say, this does not create a society where people are willing to help each other. Instead, some have turned to the very law of the jungle that our species has spent a million years trying to escape. A Mad Max fantasy land where government serves no purpose beyond interfering with a man's ability to defend his tribe.

RIP Vashti McCollum

This is the hero who died last week at 93. Back in 1948, she went to the Supreme Court to force her children's school district to stop forcing its students to take classes on their particular religion. The vote was 8-1 in her favor. What would the vote be today? Don't ask. These classes were, of course, strictly(cough) neutral (cough). Of course, the Protestants got to take their classes on school property, while Jews and Catholics had to go to buildings off campus. (Society has gotten more complex since then, I shudder to think where they would ship the Muslims off to today.) The Champaign Illinois School District justified this on the grounds that since they were promoting all religions (cough) it was acceptible. Mc'Collum had the gall to say that athiests and agnostics were, under the law, equal in dignity to Christians, Jews, and the rest. Therefore, since the country was founded on freedom of, and yes, even freedom from, religion, it was better not to say anything about religion in schools at all.

There are amusing moments in the NYT obituary. During the first trial, Mrs. Mc'Collum's father elicited gasps from the entire courtroom when he said he didn't believe in God. As a lapse Diest, I have no idea what it feels like to be shocked, shocked!, by someones nonbelief. Maybe I hang out with the beautiful people too much.

There are also outrages. Mc'Collums house was vandalized. Her children were bullied. They all received death threats. Courtesy of Good Christian types, who realize that God is very sensitive and feels really bad unless everybody is praying to him in a precisely correct manner. While he's desparing over being stood up by an uppity mortal, he's totally incapible of taking care of himself. He won't be okay again until we give him a few days with some scented candles, six pints of ice cream, and his trusty Carol King cd's. That leaves it up to the true believers to defend his honor, by any means neccessary.

These are the mental ancestors of today's right wing. Those who claim to be unaffected by political correctness. Those who claim to understand better than us filthy libs how much more enlightened Western society is than the Middle East. Since we are so much more enlightened and free than the Muslims, we must force all Americans to believe in the same things so that we may have the strength to crush the infidel.

Come back Vashti. We need you.

UNL Tests New Super Strength Laser

Too easy

Some of those who work Forces

I'm sure the headline has been used elsewhere on the net in regards to this story, but I just find it irrisistible. Robert Henderson, a state patrolman out of Omaha, is a member of the KKK. (Technically, the "knights party") You can read all about it at journalstar.com or virtually any other source of Nebraska news.

Henderson was fired in the spring when his after-hours activities were revealed. Unfortunatly, he got a lawyer and went to court to keep his job. A New York arbiter decided that firing him for his klan ties violated his freedom of association rights, and he's back on the job.

Needless to say, this has not gone over well with elected officials. Attorney General Bruning (fairly honest and decent by Republican standards) is appealing the decision. It goes without saying that this would be bad for the image of any state, especially an overwhelmingly white and rural state with an authoritarian streak. State officials must at least try to get this bastard kicked off of the force, the people of Nebraska will not suffer embarssment.

On the other hand, Henderson's freedom of association claims should not be taken lightly. I'm sure there's four or five cops somewhere in the world who are members of the Socialist Workers Party, and most small-town Sheriffs would never allow such types on their force if they weren't forced to. And of course being a member of the KKK should not get one fired from the local Gas n Go.

But being a member of a government force is different from working in civil society. Military men and women have restrictions on their freedom of speech, association, and movement that the rest of us would never tolerate. The nature of the job, requiring strict obediance and coordination, simply doesn't allow it.

Police work requires objectivity. Not the unattainable journalistic dream, but real objectivity. A cop must examine evidence without making any assumptions on where it will lead. A cop must listen to conflicting stories without thinking that the one who was "one of them" is the one who is lying. Racism is a belief in automatic, unchangeable, inferiority and superiority. This makes it more unAmerican than Facism, Communism, soccer, or any other crack pot doctrine. Allowing police to have this much freedom of association threatens freedom for the rest of us.

On a lighter note, Henderson was driven to the KKK after his wife ran off with a Hispanic man in 2003. Isn't thisjust what any mature adult would do? I can only guess that he must be trying to win the gold in the pathetic olympics.


Hago que su esposa gime como una reina del prom.


















Contrary to what some might expece, Senator Chambers has not reacted to the news with massive hyperventilations.

"To have an individual who has associated himself with an organization having a history of lynching, bombings, burnings, racial violence, hatred-not only against black people but Jews and other groups they detest and think have no right to be on the face of the earth-is totally unacceptable.

Sounds damned reasonable to me, Chambers doesn't even seem to be that surprised.

My middle school once hosted a state trooper who spoke with clear longing of a time when applicants could be turned down for being gay. Some years later I saw him berating Tim Butz, the old director of the state ACLU for showing a film on the Patriot Act and "stiring up trouble in a small town"

I don't find this news very surprising myself.

8-3, at best

Perhaps they will have the honor of being throtled in the Holiday Bowl. Otherwise don't expect much. Somebody calm the rabble down before things get ugly.

Brainard Daily Dispatch, Aug. 8, 1945

I found this while aimlessly wondering the internet and found it interesting. For one thing, this is clearly the pre-television era. This small town newspaper has more text than the modern New York Times. I wonder what it must have been like to have a functioning attention span.

I also appreciate the high standard of jounalistic objectivity. The annihilation of the filthy Japs is reported without any hint of political spin. If only the Liberal media stopped causing problems for our government. We are at war, and the press should get back to its real job, constantly reinforcing our moral rightousness.


TO Serve as Best we Can, For Victory!

School so Far

Just once, I would like to go through a semester in which I don't have a single class where the prof goes around the room and has everybody introduce themselves and "tell everybody something about yourself" I prefer to be a social hermit during the work week and only come out when the females get very friendly. what happened to professional distance? I want professors who can read about my death and not care. When I ask about an assignment, I want the first response to be "I'm sorry, who were you again?" Why the hell else am I paying to go to a large university if not to be just another worker ant, free to passive-aggressively subvert things without gaining too much notice?

Nuclear War On September 12th, everyone invited.

The House Of Yahweh (www.yahweh.com) is a rather interesting little religious sect. I won't call them a cult, because they are not. They really aren't any crazier than the more enthusiastic Pentacostal sects, just more Jewish.

They do believe that Jesus (excuse me, Yeshhua) was the son of God(Yahwah, sorry.) and the messiah; and also that he rose from the dead. But their are little differences. They believe he was executed on a Wednesday instead of Friday, and that he was hung on a straight pole instead of a cross. Why do they consider these differences important? Well, they're kind of vague about that. By the way, Jesus isn't divine either, just the son of God.

They are especially big on clensing true monotheism of Pagan influences. This means no Halloween, no Easter, no Christmas, which they have correctly surmised are nothing but inventions of pagan (European) holidays retrofitted into Christianity. They do celebrate Passover, Yom Kipper, etc. (No word on Haunakah) They also insist on using the original Hebrew when refering to God, Jesus, or any biblical prophets. Any other common name for the diety is spawned from European (pagan) sources and therefore bad. They seem very confident that their grasp of aincient Hebrew is better than everybody else's. This is questionable, but never mind.

All in all, nothing remarkible, certainly nothing dangerous. There is no reason why these people should not be allowed to keep kosher in peace. Even better, they are in the minority. Therefore they are used to being surrounded by people who disagree with them. This certainly gives them a leg up on the country WASP.

But than they had to go and pull this shit. On Sunday night, a very well dressed and polite man handed a HOY newsletter to random students in the NU student union. I was one of them. We all accepted the free gift in a polite Midwestern manner, complete with thank you sirs. Even those who spent five minutes mocking the contents before throwing the letter away included the sir.

In this letter, the sect's leader, Yisrayl Hawkins predicts that nuclear war will start on September 12, 2006. He bases his prophecy on several biblical passages describing unspecific catastrophes of one type or another. Needless to say, there are no specific dates given in any of the cited verses. Hawkins believes that the end is coming soon because this is "the greatest time of sin and trouble ever." No one who understands what went down between 1900 and 1945 would say such a thing.

Worst of all, Hawkins doesn't give any advice on what we should do about the coming apocolypse. He simply says his followers have a sacred duty to warn the world. Very well, I appreciate your warning and take it under advisement. What should I do about it? Does your group have any mandate to save the mortal skins of nonbelievers? Because otherwise, I can't just jump onto your bandwagon now. It's a matter of integrity, you understand. Better to burn in hell and stay honest. Plus, there is the simple fact that I just don't believe you. If you really convinced me, I would drop out of school and spend my life savings on a homewrecker of Hennesey and three top shelf, Las Vegas hookers. Now imagine if I do that and you turn out to be wrong. You really should be more careful (and specific) about predicting the end of the world.

It's just sad how a sect so unique could stoop to the old nutcase cliche of setting a specific date for the end of the world. There are, of course, several sects in every religion who are entirely concerned with the creation and destruction myths of their respective faiths to the exclusion of the moral meat. But the HOY should be too young and obscure for that. They're not even well known enough to be villified for being "outside the mainstream" yet. Really Hawkins! "The end is nigh!" How tragically bland, like Gandalf singing Amazing Grace over shitty canned organ music.

Fight Songs: Big 12 Edition

Ah yes, the heartland itself, with the exception of Texas and Colorado, full of states without either truly huge cities or major league teams. A land of traditional values, where reasonably intelligent adults actually expect the college teams to act as male role models for their children and even themselves. come with me and take a big, unguarded step into some Great Plains culture.

Oklahoma
Boomer Sooner!
Boomer Sooner!
Boomer Sooner!
(And So On)

Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma Okla....
(I am not kidding)

I'm A Sooner Born
I'm a Sooner Bred
And When I Die
I'll Be Sooner Dead

Rah Oklahoma, Rah Oklahoma!
Rah Oklahoma! OKU!

Well, I was pretty rude to Texas A&M for their needlessly elaborate fight song, so I guess I have no room to complain about this one. I'm sure there's at least a few graduates of Ou with a vocabulary in the dozens.

Oklahoma State
Oklahoma State! Oklahoma State!
We'll Sing Your Praise Tonight
To let you Know, Wherever We Go
For the Orange And Black We'll fight
We'll Sing your worth all over the earth
And Shout K! Y! K! YE!
In Books of Fame we'll right your name
Oklahoma State!

This is fairly typical. Cult-like promises of loyalty mixed with gibberish. Along with a typical midwestern pledge to assualt anyone who cheers for the wrong team. But the real comedy gold comes from OSU's touchdown song.

Ride-em cowboys ee-yah!
Ride-em cowboys ee-yah
Ride, Ride, Ride, Ride, Ride
Ride Em Cowboys Down The Field
Fight, Fight, fight, Fight,
Fight em Cowboys and never yield
Ride, Ride, Ride, Ride
Ride on Cowboys to Victory
Cross..... goal
Than We'll Sing
Oklahoma State!

Damn. No wonder you sing their praises at night. It's good to see that OSU has returned to a nice, hard, driving, straining running offense.

Kansas State

Fight, you K-State Wildcats
For your Alma-Mater, Fight, Fight, Fight!
Glory In the Combat!
For the Purple and White
Faithful to Our Colors,
We Shall ever Be
Fighting, Ever fighting
For A Wildcat Victory. Go State!

Here we see facism at its most extreme and destructive. Making war not in the name of racial, national, or religious supremecy, but as an end unto itself. "Glory in the combat." Truly horrifying.

Last, but not least, my humble lair...


Nebraska
There is no Place like Nebraska
Good Old Nebraska U!
The girls are The Fairest
The Boys are the squarest
Of Any old Place that I knew
There is no place like Nebraska
Where they're all true blue
We'll all stick toghether
In all kinds of weather
For good o Nebraska U!

Now isn't that just like a glass of lemonade after an oppresive summer's day? The pledge of loyalty is adequate yet mild. No oaths to "eternal loyalty" or "glory in the combat" This ditty conjures up images of the turn of the 20th century. Just relaxing with one's subservient virgin girlfriend and watching the local 11 cast off the foreign barbarians. Lovely, just lovely.


I may cover other leagues as football season rolls along. But as of now, my mind grows restless.

BigredWelcomeWrapup

There are now over 135 student Christian organizations on the UNL campus. I am sure there is some overlap in membership along with some obscure breakaway Unitarian sects that have only three members and exist only on the UNL campus. The shame of it is that these were the only booths giving away worthwhile free shit. I couldn't take any of it, since they of course required you to sign up to an e-mail list- and than they would know me.
Planned Parenthood didn't have any condoms this year, which is a damn shame. Than again, I showed up late, and I only live a few blocks from the actual office. Damned fine organization. Old Chicago pizza tasted like free. It will probably be the last time I ever have Old Chicago pizza. My superior taste in beer is well known and I have no need to spend forty dollars to make a point.

Finally, I actually heard a DJ for one of the local commercial stations (FM107something) actually promise the crowd to keep things crunk. This was followed by the most derivative rap act since PDiddy's hay day. I'd have to say this was the highlight of the day.

To William Callahan: RE: INVITE

Let's get the most obvious problem out of the way here. You arn't my coach. In the unlikely event that we ever meet personally, you will refer to yourself as Mr. Callahan. Second of all, all practices should be free, what gives you the slightest idea that I would find mechanized men attacking dummies to be the slightest bit entertaining. I'm sure you'll attract a fair share of the crowd that thinks that the weekend starts at noon on Thursday, but no one who is actually going to graduate is going to watch a practice. Finally, how dare you send me a generic form letter? Do you have any idea who I am?