Whiteclay Part 3.

I knew that Saturday night was the night of the time change, but I made no adjustments for it. Call it my protest. It's fucking absurd that we should switch to Daylight Savings while it's still solar winter. There's been days that were near freezing with the sun still out at 7 P.M. It's unseemly. I pride myself on being tempered by Nebraska winters. I know better than to celebrate spring prematurely. there will be another snow yet, or at least one more cold snap. Yet the late sun gives me the urge to listen to Sublime and drink Corona. Nonsense, it's still heavy metal and Newcastle season. So I showed up at Dan's apartment an hour late to prove that society's artificial clock has no power over me. I showed up at the real 11 A.M.

Becky had brought Matzza bread. It's quite good and if you have't tried it yet you really should. Yet it didn't seem right somehow. For one thing, I was hungover, and would have rather had meat and grease. (No, the Mc'Donalds wasn't enough. It's never enough. I demand more fatty food to increase the liver damage and make me look hideous by the time I'm thirty.) For another thing, all of us except our infidel cameraman were raised Catholic.

And I for one would like to see the old Catholic/Jew rivalry come back. It's like the Nu/Ou football rivalry. It has drama, portent, romance, even a little grudging respect. The current Jew/Muslim rivalry is, by contrast, more like Nu/Cu in football. It's classless, mean-spirited, a lame echo. Watch Passion of the Christ and the room practically fills with the smell of insense and burning flesh on the stake. People don't hate like that anymore. Nowadays they drop the theatre and go straight to the naked domination. I blame America. We're so philistine with our bigotry. We don't put any flair to it at all, and we set a bad example for the rest of the world.

Oh yes, the crew consisted of myself, Dan Feuerbach, Rebecca Ankenbrand, and the infidel Paul Clark. It would have been better to bring a fellow Catholic who would pay for cigarettes without smoking them. But we needed someone who could rent a university camera, and I dropped out of J-school.

We took Dan's clown car. He says it's a 92 Corrola, but I thought that they stopped making manual transmissions in 1958. At any rate, the only people who knew how to drive a stick were Dan and myself, which is to say that I drove a stick once or twice seven or eight years ago. Some people say that it's just like riding a bike. Some people drink Bud Light. Some people cry at Extreme Home Makeover.

So I had some relearning to do as we headed south to retrieve my own car at 14th and Old Cheney. I killed the engine six times in the first six blocks, held up traffic a couple times, held up okay on south thirteenth. Nearly drove into Highway two traffic when I had to "stop" the car with this stone-age technollogy, nearly rolled backwards into an SUV at 14th and Old Cheney, and for good measure, killed the car again in the parking lot where my car sat. It was decided that I would handle the driving in the west, where things like "stopping" and "slowing down" wouldn't be as much of a problem. My stick skills would improve over the course of the trip, there is nothing I can't do after all. I would eventually be able to shift up and down without makng the car sound like a dying panther. And eventually I could drive out of parking lots after only two or three tries. But enough about my weaknesses, let's talk about society's.

I gathered my car, led the Corolla back to my apartment in T-Town, loaded my stuff, and we were off. Interstate 80 to Grand Island, Highway 2 to Ellsworth, 27 to gordon, U.S. 20 to 87, 87 to happytown.

But first, the tire went flat.

Whiteclay Part 2

The story of the Whiteclay trip really begins for me on the night before, just as it really ends for me on the day after. I was spending a normal Saturday night out carousing and ended up at my friend's Myles's house.

Ths is important for several reasons. For one, we were playing poker while watching poker on TV. This would foreshadow a general theme of the trip, it was something that pseudo-intellectual freshmen and those of us who will always be psuedo-intellectual freshmen find hillariously absurd. Far more important were Beverly Hills Ninja, Mc'Donalds, and the alcohol.

"Beverly Hills Ninja" is one of Chris Farley's last movies and is, of course, absolutely fucking dreadful. We watched it for irony's sake. (Certainly not because we were a pack of drunks looking for an excuse to stay awake and keep drinking.) The entire crew consisted of professional sarcastics who live for opportunities to flog movies like "Beverly Hills Ninja" like it was Jim Cervezial. This is what we do, in lieu of having girlfriends and lives. (I should probably speak for myself on this.)

Yet something interesting happened. There were long streches of Beverly Hills Ninja that were so terrible, scenes that were not just unfunny, but threatened to destroy the very idea of comedy, that all of our razor tongues were left speechless. The cleverest thing anyone had to say about it was not a quip but a question. One Brandon Turner wondered aloud why Chris Farley was a ninja, and no one knew. There was no answer. The question was asked and then it hung in the air, like an unsolicited murder confession.

As intended, the movie gave us the opportunity to get very drunk and stupid, and we began to get hungry. I half-heartedly suggested De'Leon's. (The best resturant in Lincoln, if you are ever a visitor here, eat nothing else, period.) This idea quickly became a mission in search of food. But the De'Leon's in south Lincoln closes at night, which is proof that anything south of Highway 2 isn't part of the real Lincoln if nothing else is. The neighborhood Village Inn was also closed, which left...Mc'Donalds.

If it were up to me, I would have preffered to just go home and eat a box of Hamburger Helper, because I dislike Mc'Donalds. I am not a vegetarian, and have no political qualms against fast-food resturants persay, but I think that Morgan Spurlok and all the other evil veggie-socialists have given me some sort of psycho-somatic reaction to Mc'Donalds because Mc'Donalds simply tastes foul to me. I can taste the shoddiness and the bacteria and the granulated remnents of a thousand cows in each burger in a way I never noticed as a child. I really would have preffered to just eat my own food, but I went through the drive-thru with everyone else, and it's awkward to be the guy who isn't eating in a group drunk-fest, so I got the Big Mac meal.

We ate in the parking lot of Myles's apartment, without ketchup or salt, throwing our wrappers onto the ground and letting them blow away to desecrate whatever piece of nature they chose to. We were beasts, eating food not fit for beasts. It was the beginning of several days of drinking too much, eating badly, offending God and nature,and seeking visceral experience with no intention of contributing to society. (Rogues, ruffians, and rascallions.)

I was too drunk to drive, so I left my car parked in the distant wastelands of 14th and Old Cheney and let my travelmate Dan drive me home. He claimed to be good to drive, and so he was. Was he technically legal to drive? Never mind.

The night before set the table for Whiteclay in several ways. It complicated our departure for one. This was the night of the time change, so me and Dan woke up an hour later than we had planned to. Things were furthur complicated by the fact that I had to walk to his apartment on the other side of downtown and than get a ride to fourteenth and Cheney and then back too my apartment to load my stuff into his car. Because of this and the great median adventure which I will discuss tomorrow, we ended up rolling into the Gordon/Rushville/Pine Ridge area at least three hours later than we were planning too. Last but not least, Dan and I, the only two drivers on the trip, spent the entire day hungover and sleep-deprived. This was how I would experience every conscious moment of the trip.

Expect no mercy if your car breaks down on the interstate, and never drink Hurricane Malt Liquor if you're the kind who likes to keep your emotions to yourself. Enough for now.

Whiteclay, Part 1.

I'll start with the end, maybe that can give me some grand theme or overiding idea to work with.

The real end of Whiteclay came when I woke up at 1 P.M. today. I had slept for fifteen hours. It wasn't until than that I realized just how draining the trip had been. The driving, the drinking, the irregular meals, the sudden waves of disgust, pity, rage. We came home last night around seven. I knew I was tired, but I still thought that I could accomplish something before I rested. Start writing my account, do some homework, pick up some groceries, maybe even go to some gathering... again.

This was absurd. I browsed the internet for a couple of hours, mostly glaring at the screen. Then I had some Hamburger Helper for dinner. I ate the entire box. A couple of nights ago, I had ramen and a bannana for supper, and a hurricane had swept the nutriants from my body. Than I fell asleep at 10:30. I collapsed, with all of my clothes on, just like the night before. Sleeping on a private bed in total silence for the first time in five days. I spent at least two hours today lingering in bed, enjoying the the beauty of the silence, the clenliness of a real shower.

But why have I spent the last two paragraphs talking about myself? "This is how we live" You got your degrees and philosophies? Yes, I had running water, clean blankets, and some means to feed myself for the entire time. No internet, country people who didn't find you clever, oh how draining, oh how you suffer, you had better indulge yourself, stay in bed past noon.

Well, what else am I supposed to do? I'm the one writing this. Sorry Warren, sorry Robert, I can't really write about you, that's a skill lost to my generation. No, I'm afraid you can only be examples, kinds, types, symbols. You don't sleep in burned out shacks with no plumbing or electricity, you only represent it. we have our degrees and philosophies, but we don't live the life.

But that's what life is now Robert, not the degrees if you can get them, but certainly the philosophies. Be clever, charming, quick-witted. We have discarded your superstitions, not because wer's more rational than our ancestors, but because modern life is already intangible enough. You have sat in Whiteclay for years, waiting for your turn to die in the dirt from undiagnosed cirrohsis or diabetes, wrestling with your nightmares. (I know how Hurricane blows those in) You know that the modern world ignores you and passes you by. But you have no idea how much, none at all.

Whiteclay preview.

We're going to Whiteclay, Nebraska for Spring Break. Me and three other people, each with our own purposes. None of us have a noble or moral reason. There are no shocking facts to expose that haven't already been exposed. You know about Whiteclay sure you do. Right accross the South dakota line from the Pine Ridge reservation, four liquor stores and a pawn shop. Capricious pawn shop owners who know their Adam Smith and don't feel the least bit of shame, thank you very much. Natives who are being actively ignored by the society that conqured them and have chosen surrender over charging the windmills of studied cultural indifference. Local police who look the other way so long as the natives don't show their faces in Gordon or Rushville.

Yes, you know all about Whiteclay. There have been several journalistic expose's. All of them have revealed that, guess what, the place is a shithole. As for me, I do not seek to expose anything or shame anybody. I seek not to construct pity-party personal profiles or give tribal leaders and local whites another sounding board to scream at each other. Me and my comrades are going to crawl right into the gutter with the people. We will drink Hurricane and Thunderbird and dance in the noonday sun and listen to out-of-date rap music right along with them. You may find this distasteful, very well, just what are you going to South Padre for than?

As for me, I seek to discover some deep,semi- hidden truth about the rural plains. I aim to reveal the nihilism behind all the God, country, and football nonsense. Not just in Whiteclay, not just in the western wasteland, but throughout the entire Midwest. Obsession with loyalty and tradition is based on fatalism and psychosexual submission. At the heart of America lies nothing at all, only a desire to deny one's own personality and acheive immortality by crawling into a black-and-white photograph and holding still. So I guess I do have something to expose, just more pretentious than what everyone else tries to expose.

Coming with me will be Mr. Paul Clark and his exceptional video skills, I'm sure we can produce something that can entertain the public. Ms. Rebecca Ankenbrand will be coming to give us all a reason to maintain our sanity in public. Mr. Dan Feuerbach is the amoral bastard who came up with this idea. He will surely get us all killed with his lack of respect for the downtrodden, but friends are friends you know.

I plan on keeping a journal of my thoughts, feelings, and observations. I hope to put these feelings toghether into a coherent narrative when I return. It will surely be groundbreaking. It'll make your akward teenage children want to be me.

We leave on Sunday, and I'm afraid that this is the last you'll hear from me before than. If you didn't already know that Whiteclay has no internet access, you are profoundly stupid. I'll be keeping my journal in shorthand, and if I should "disappear", anyone in the area should keep an eye out for a yellow legal pad covered in chicken scratches.

Yippee-Ki-Ye motherfuckers.

I had a real good idea

It came and left me while I was half asleep in bed. This happens from time to time. Some writers deal with this issue by keeping a notebook next to the bed, or even taking one wherever they went. This has always seemed a bit prissy to me, so I'm not going to do that.

But it was a great idea, right up there with my best stuff. It was funny yet profound. It was one of my bullseye-prescient observations of the delusions and hypocrises of Midwestern society. It was great satire, it was masterful satire. Nay, it was beyond satire. It would have changed your life. It would have been the first step to a new enlightenment. All of the old Gods and myths would have been finally and totally defeated by my atomic wit.

But I don't keep a notebook by my bed, because I pee standing up

Connor Oberst probably keeps a notebook next to his bed. He might have an idea similar to mine and right it down. But the "man" has no idea how to express himself.
I do.

I don't keep a notebook next to my bed because I never got dragged to the shrink for giving myself paper cuts on the wrists

so I can only give you a little scrap of my idea. Or maybe it's a scrap of another idea I had at some other time.

"How are we supposed to judge what makes a great man? There are so many walks of life, some so different from each other that they might as well be performed by seperate species. Few people know enough about other people's walks to have the slightest idea about whether they're doing a good job or not. So what then, is greatness? What is the objective standard that applies to us all? I tell you there is none."

Now, I know that was good, probably good enough to put in a book of quotes next to Oscar Wilde and Cicero, but I can see how some hard-to-please people might find it a little trite.

Oh, but if I could only show you the context, you would see that this quote is part of something far from trite, something, perfect. Your tears would flow for days. You would learn to vomit at the sight of all of your old status symbols.

But I don't keep a notebook next to my bed, because I only pretend to like Ani DeFranco.

Friday night fun and games

The Nebraska Unicam is considering cutting off Medicaid payments to non-citizens. That's non-citizens mind you, not illegal immigrants, the terms are not interchangeable. Maybe you've heard of a little thing called a green card, or maybe yu've heard of a little thing called an exchange student. (You should see what he's doing to your daughter.)

Of course, I'm sure you know that most people, citizen or otherwise, who receive Medicaid or some other government assistance. do work. Oh yes they do. They work shit jobs for minimum wage with no benefits, so they need the state to help them out. You may call it socialism. O.k. got ahead and call it socialism. I'm not a socialist myself, but the sound of the word doesn't scare me out of thinking.

Having said that, I am an American, and I get a boner at the thought of being a better American than people different than me just like every other red-blooded American male does. And maybe there is too much welfare money going to those damned non-citizens.

So let's play a little game. Three of these pictures represent non-citizens who have receive more than 200 million dollars in government handouts from the state of Nebraska every year, and untold billions nationwide. One of these pictures represents a naturalized citizen who has found steady employment and doesn't require any government help at all. First one to guess which is which wins a free jar of Peter Pan Peanut butter.

Proposal

I have an idea, it's called anti-Lent. I realize that this is the basic idea behind Mardi Gras, but fuck Mardi Gras. What good has Mardi Gras done for New Orleans? None at all. It has only given the public the impression that New Orleans is a disposible cauldren of sin, so that we felt justified in letting the source for a good deal of what is interesting about American culture drown. (A bigger disgrace than 9/11, in my opinion.)

So this is what we do. It starts tonight, do homework, watch network television, go out to Applebees, do whatever you like, as long as you can't possibly get any pleasure out of it.

Tomorrow, and for the next six Fridays, we drink, we smoke, we fornicate. We eat steak for breakfast, pork for lunch, and double rabbitfat burgers for supper.

On the Afternoon of Good Friday itself, cocaine, mountains of cocaine, served to us by illeagal immigrants (Dressed as Mother Mary left abandoned in her old age) forced into prostitution after their husbands were deported.

I realize that even some friends of mine may be shocked by this idea, good. This shows that, no matter what religion you were raised in, you still feel some latant affection for the Catholic Church, or at least the modern Western Civilization that it spawned.

There are some gloomy, pretentious types who claim that Western Civilization is decaying. There are none, however, more pretentious than me. I say that Western Civilization has been dead for at least a hundred years. It is only the corpse we are watching decay. The decay is being accelerated by power elites who, inspired by the 1989 film Weekend at Bernie's, have stolen the corpse from it's deep freeze and now prop it up in front of the masses (who, out of either courtesy or ignorance, claim to see nothing amiss) in order to gain power and influence for themselves.

They claim to be the corpse's best friends. They say they love Bernie. They say they can nurse him back to health and bring the corpse back to it's glory days. "Just give us your loyalty" they say "and we can bring him back to the glory days." "Just submit to the old myths and traditions, and we can return the days when we raped and pillaged the earth with impunity."

So what now then? Shall we acquiecse? Shall we all be Catherine Parks, and necrophilize the corpse in a well played but insignificant bit role? Or shall we look into Andrew McCarthey in the eye and say "Come now, did you think we wouldn't notice the smell?"

I seek not to create depravity but to expose it, not to destroy morality but to show that there is not now, and perhaps never has been, anything to destroy. We cannot invent a new truth untill we are able to start from scratch. Those who still cling to the bloated carcass must have their foolishness shown to them in the clearest possible way.

We have no choice. We cannot allow the corpse of Western Civilization to return peacefully to the earth. In order to remove it's corrupting influence once and for all, we are forced to subject it to furthur outrage. We must shoot in the head with the arrow of hedonism, drag it through the bouys of licentiousness, use it as a float to escape the waters of slave morality.

And it starts tommarow. We're all gathering at my place for a breafast of De'Leon's and Sailor Jerry's. After this, black market Burmise Porn. This is the sanctifying moment, this is when anti-Lent officially begins. You can do whatever you like after that, so long as you regret it immediatly afterwords.

And some more on Nantkes

The other day I was listening to Drive-Time Lincoln, the local news show on KILN, the area source for Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge, and other such clowns. Drive-time is hosted by one Coby Mach, I can't trust a name like that, sounds Texan, fucking short-dicked psychopaths.

In fairness, Mach isn't as much of a jackass as the nationally syndicated assholes we all know and love. This is probably a matter of necessity. It's one thing to excoriate faceless baby-eating liberals from some far away Sodom that good heartlanders will never go to, but it's quite another thing to demonize the next-door neighbor with a Nebraskans for Peace bumper sticker whose kid plays on the same soccer team as yours.

But though he's a second rate thug, Mach is, after all, the host of an AM talk radio show, so the bullshit, delivered with a smirk instead of a growl, is still reliably delivered.

And so it was on Thursday, when Mock tried to put a populist spin on my belladonna Danielle Nantkes's recent drunk-driving incident. Nantkes, you see, wasn't technically arrested, as state senators are immune from being arrested for misdemeanors when the Unicam is in session. She was taken to a detox center and walked out the next morning to her well-earned De'leon's breakfast without having to pay bail or face a judge.

Mach, in his own congenially outraged way, wanted to know why Nantkes didn't face the same righteous punishment that common drunkards do.

Well, it's because of the English revolution, Coby. It's because Charles the 1st tried to use his soldiers to get Oliver Cromwell and his partisans out of his hair. It didn't work, and Cromwell eventually succeeded in beheading Charles and installing his own highly amusing Puritan theocracy.

After the English unrest settled down, Parliament saw this incident of how the executive could use the legal authorities (who are his employees) after all, to remove political opponents in the legislature for any number of crimes real or imagined. So they forbade the King from having MP's arrested while the house was in session. This prohibition was passed on to the American constitution, and the constitutions for all fifty states.

A local lawyer explained this to Mach on the air, in slightly less detail, killing any further rant he had to make on the matter. But local news shorts on KILN still question the fairness of Nantkes's non-arrest at any opportunity. this is bound to mislead the typical AM radio listener, whose knowledge of history is restricted to vague remembrances of American supermen kicking foreign ass and dirty hippies complaining about it.

Of course, there is also the small fact that my neighborhood would have no voice in state government if it's state senator is in jail, but then we don't represent the real common sense people who listen to KILN and our outraged that Lincoln refuses to turn itself into an extension of West Omaha. With Mayor Seng on her way out, expect Nantkes to become the new local Streisand.

Danielle Nantkes is better than anyone who doesn't drive drunk.

Nantkes is the state senator from my district. I voted for her, she lives five blocks down the street from me, just on the other side of 27th here in Lincoln. Two night ago she went to detox after driving into a snowplow at Nineteenth and P,presumably on her way home from getting down at the Haymarket or the O street strip. So now a state senator, my senator, is charged with DUI. It's caused a bit of a stir.

Full disclosure, I myself have been to jail for DUI (and, ummm, fleeing to avoid arrest, youthful indiscretion you know.) This makes me one of millions of people in rural America whose criminal record consists solely of drinking and/or driving related matters.

I'm not trying to excuse it. It's a terrible thing to do, it kills people. It's just that, you know, it gets too cold to walk here in the winter, and sometimes you got to go to another town to party, and this is a drinking culture, and a driving culture at that. Giving a ride or receiving a ride from someone else is seen as shameful charity. I'm not trying to excuse it, but, you know.

And let's be clear; what Nantkes did was wrong. She's a bad girl. A very, very, bad and wicked girl and I have half a mind to grab my bullwhip and show her some discipline myself. But her crime wasn't a "political crime." She didn't cheat the campaign finance laws, she didn't take any bribes, and she presumably got drunk on her own money. It wasn't the sort of crime where one abuses or takes advantage of one's authority. Anyone can get drunk and crash their car. It's a crime of the people.

Still, there will be some who will see the incident as reason enough to boot her out of the state penis. The Nebraska Unicameral is officially nonpartisan, but of course partisan and philosophical tensions have always been there. Now the term limits have forced out professional politicians (Such as Dave Landis, Nantkes' predecessor and a fine voice for my neighborhood who was stolen from us by the fucking T.L's)the nonpartisan label is almost total fiction.

The Unicameral is home to the true believers now, young vigorous, and proud to be uncompromising in a parliamentary system designed to force compromise.

People like Mark Christensen, holy warrior from Imperial, or Norfolk's Mike Flood, speaker of the Unicam and leather-slave of Governor Heineman.

Nantkes, an unabashedly liberal Democrat, has been a minor irritation for the state's power elite. Nowhere near as effective as Ernie motherfucking Chambers, but nobody likes getting nipped by a poodle.

And they may be looking to avenge the impeachment and removal of university regent Dave Hergert. (who was very friendly with the GOP elite in Lincoln and Omaha, pathetic pleas to Panhandle pride notwithstanding)

We'll see where it goes. In the meantime, Sen. Nantkes, I'd like to ask you out on a date. Meet me at O'Rourke's tomorrow night, I'll be wearing the red rose and Juventes scarf, and don't worry, I'll drive us home. Your place or mine?

Reminder

This current Nebraska winter does not disprove global warming, far from it. This is a historically normal winter, the only reason it's "below average" is because the average has been gradually creeping up over the past 25-30 years.

What is unusual is the lack of a "false spring" that usually hits the Great Plains sometime between mid-January and mid-February, where temperatures briefly rise to the 40's, 50's or even 60's for a few days. This gives everyone a break from artificial lighting and week-old cigarette smoke, a nice chance to stretch one's legs, take a walk through the park, get the cabin fever out of one's system before the second half of winter hits.

No such luck this year. Lincoln hasn't been above 40 since the solstice. It seems that the Jet stream (wholly unaffected by Global warming, btw.) which usually separates the Arctic from the American Midwest, is further south than usual this year.

This is important, because the plains continue unbroken to the north of here almost to the Arctic circle. Without the Jet Stream between here and there, there is nothing to prevent an "Alberta Clipper" or "Arctic Front" from blowing south from Hudson Bay, through the Dakotas, and on to here.

In a modern "normal" winter, we get one or two of these Arctic fronts a year, brining, snow, wind, and freakishly cold temps (single digits) that last for half a week. But with the jet stream to the south of us, these fronts are moving over Nebraska on a weekly basis. Just when temperatures are starting to get back to something reasonable; say, high 20's, low 30's Fahrenheit, here comes the next front.

So for you Huskers wondering what an Alaska winter is like, it's a lot like this. Anchorage is actually having an easier winter than we are since it lies on the air-moderating ocean. For all practical purposes, we are living in an interior Arctic climate right now, made somewhat better by the fact we receive ten or eleven hours of sunlight a day instead of none.

And like I said, historically, this is more or less normal, perhaps a little worse because the worst part of winter simply refuses to go away. Pioneers lived through Januaries that were even worse than this, while temperatures would usually be somewhere in the 20's by now and around 45 by the spring equinox.

So what does that tell us? That our ancestors were even more insane than we thought they were. We already knew that they settled a wasteland for no logical reason, but now that you are living through a real Nebraska winter, just consider the fact that they suffered for this, died for this, killed for this It's really too depressing to believe, isn't it?

Business idea

I've decided to record videos of myself masturbating for the purpose of masturbating to the videos of myself masturbating in the future. Traditional porn bores me, and even Hentai doesn't amuse me anymore. There's just not enough me involved.

The videos should be ready in a couple weeks. If you would like a copy, and I can't imagine that you wouldn't, leave me your e-mail address over this blog. Of course, you do understand that, due to the high quality of these videos, they will cost at least twice as much as your typical Hustler Real College Girls DVD.

In a few months, I hope to hav videos of myself masturbating to videos of myself masturbating. You know you want it.

A rememberance of sorts

Her house sits at the end of the block, accross Front street from the tracks. The inside is covered by paintings of Jesus, the Virgin of Guadalupe. She came here some years after being married at fifteen.

Her current house is the newer one, she's had it for over fifty years. She had eight kids, two died on another side of town. I was there to see her husband dying, he died slow and hard. He had been a strong man right into old age. Her grandaughter too, thirty years old, didn't smoke, didn't drink, stomach cancer, and left herself to the care of the North Platte doctors. I was there on her last night, with her grandmother, she begged me to let go of her arm so whe could tear her oxygen tube out. She stayed seven hours longer than she wanted to because of me. I was fifteeen and only knew what the church told me. I wore tie-dyes, smoked pot, listened to loud music, still I was fundamentally a child accepting what I was told about right and wrong. I'm sorry Julie.

The old woman has a basic understanding of the world around her. She knows that Mexicans are moving into Lexington. To her this means Goya, Valintina, all the brands of home. Nothing but Univision at the house, her accent forever as thick as boiling chocolate, her exclamations (never curses) forever in Spanish. She can understand you perfectly well, better than she lets on.

She knows what corruption is. She knows you don't get married young here, you go to school instead. That's what her kids did, went to school, than got married, than to work at the railroad, construction, plumbing. Her grandchildren, as often as not, didn't see the need to finish school. Pregnant at sixteen, just like home, only with know idea of what to do about it.

Adapt to our ways. She did that as well as a mayfly to October, no one dared say a word against her.

Her house is a block from my mother's and I don't know if she's still alive. I see her grandchildren around and exchange a few words, it doesn't seem right to ask. She would be over ninety now.

I'm a man now Elisa. How's that great-grandchild I used to cavort with?

You taught your family those things that are true forever it's a shame. You wern't meant to see this.

Age of terror ends with a giggle?

Never forget indeed, the Boston "terror hoax" may well be the funniest thing that has ever happened, period. It is certainly more culturally significant than the Dems taking Congress. People were afraid that an "electronic device" might be a bomb, and we didn't praise them for their caution, didn't sign them up to be comforted by Oprah, we laughed.

Political figures reminded us that we live in "a post 9-11 world" and we weren't cowed into silence and submission, we laughed even harder.

For once, if just for this one amusing incident, we treated the idea that terrorism should be our sole national obsession like the fucking joke it is. John Kerry was skewered for saying he wanted to make terrorism a nuisance again, how dare he suggest that one thing shouldn't be our everything, that building a national identity out of our greatest fear was something less than a fantastic idea?

Yet how absurd would it be to say that cancer, or Aids, or heart disease should be the absolute national focus until nobody dies of disease anymore? Such a suggestion would be rightfully laughed at, but for the wrong reasons. When someone dies "naturally" it's God's will. When someone dies at the hand of another human being it's an outrage, maybe even a cause for war.

Friends, I tell you it's the same thing. Dying in bed "naturally" is no more and no less acceptable than murder or terrorist attack. We should allocate our resources accordingly, and stop deluding ourselves by vigilantly defending our herds from the next bogeyman as we march them off to the next artery clogging factory on a Friday night.

This shit isn't funny anymore

Never in my lifetime has it been consistently every day for the entire winter, I simply refuse to believe that this can be possible. Everything changes, atoms are deteriorating and reforming into new combinations at a constant rate, how the fuck can it possibly be this cold every fucking day for ninety days straight? How can the wind possibly not stop? I simply fucking refuse to believe that the reason isn't supernatural.

As humans, we are entitled to condemn God whenever he gives us weather that displeases us in the slightest way. This is fucking unacceptable, he knows what constant bad weather does to our psychology and he is fucking laughing at us, don't think he isn't. Anyone who still thinks God is worthy of respect, anyone who dresses their kids up all neat for church on Sundays is a fucking subhuman inferior and will be treated as such.

I am entitled to absolute climatic fucking perfection and fuck you if you think otherwise!

Nothing to see here.

A state rep in California is proposing banning spanking children under four. Some say this is good, that there is no conceivable reason to use physical force against such young children, others say that this is a shameful intrusion on parental authority it's got AM radio types all hot and bothered, nothing new here, bloggers on both sides debate like jilted lovers, nothing new here. Practically no one who has an opinion on the bill has read it of course, who has the time? Rather they formed their opinions after comparing and contrasting the soundbites of other people who haven't read the bill. This is the fair way to do it, this is how reasonable people reach their conclusions, by watching both sides do their 30-second bumper sticker raps on CNN and than judging which one sounded more passionate, outraged, and pro-children.

And me? I have no opinion. I haven't read the bill, and honestly, I have as much shit to do as anybody, so I have no intention of reading a theoretical law from somebody else's state. If you happen to think that there's something vacillating or unmanly about not having an opinion on everything one hears about, then I can only say, grow up.

What I do have is a strong suspicion that this controversy is just the latest in a long line of increasingly pathetic attempts to prove the existence of the imaginary politically correct bogeyman. Is this, then, the sort of news that the liberal media doesn't want us to hear about? Is this really the best you people can do?

BTW: News reports seem to think it's very important that the rep. proposing the law is a woman who, wait for it.... has no children! Well, now I can see reason for outrage; the woman is clearly a lesbian. It's a fucking abomination that she's allowed to vote for against laws in the first place, let alone propose bills regarding parenting. In the good old days we put these uppity maids at the back of the cannery where they belonged.

Goodbye

My grandmother is dying, my father's mother, 87 years old. My dad told me Friday night. Health problems over several years, slow decline, nothing unusual for a person her age. She was taken off of dialysis on Friday. Seven days, maybe less, maybe more.

I ordered myself to call her. You're her only grandson, she faithfully sent you a birthday card with a fifty dollar bill even until you were a man of twenty five? Or are you a man even yet Mr. Beran?

What are you afraid of? Arn't you so ironic? Don't you mock other people's fear of death? Don't you laugh at other people's attempts to dignify their mortality? Religion, marriage, poems on the tombstone?

I called yesterday. She was asleep, I got my aunt instead. She told me that she (my aunt) was fine. She asked me about my life. Of course she did, I'm not 87. That's worth quite a hell of a lot isn't it? Almost enough to make me stop prematurely age myself, still I drink wine from the bottle as I write this.

I'll try to get a hold of my grandmother again tommarow, but she's sleeping twenty hours a day, pills for both the pain and the dread. I have to try, but I'm not likely to speak to her again. And if I do, than what? Should I tell her I'm praying for her? Would lying be worse than not talking to her at all?

Goodbye, would that be appropriate? And what if that isn't the end of the conversation? What if she asks me about my future? My future.

Nothing to Say

I went to Wal-Mart today. I like to walk a couple hours a day, it's been too cold to do it outside, and the campus rec center gives me the creeps, so I went to the Wal-Mart at the north side of Lincoln. Perhaps I would find more evidence of social decay that I could pass on in my own hilarious way to my loyal readers.

But what can I say that hasn't been said by people who are smarter than me? People who actually get paid for social criticism while I engage in pointless, wheel-spinning, childish Fruedian rebellion?

I saw a woman in a cowboy hat and a Dale Ernhardt Jr. racing jacket. She had a cell-phone headset on even though she was talking to no one at the time. Her boyfriend wore an identical Nascar jacket but sported a black nylon do-rag instead of a cowboy hat. I have nothing clever to say about this, (maybe she wanted to leave her hands free to browse Guns'N'Ammo) I got nothin. I found it hilarious at the moment, maybe I had some brillient zinger pass through my consciousness at that moment, but the moment passed, and five minutes later it wasn't that funny anymore, so I have nothing for you.

I walked past a pair of Larry the Cable Guy boxer shorts, and I have nothing clever to say about that. Why should I? You know the score, you either know what's wrong with this or you don't. Larry the Cable guy, the Nebraska native embraced by his former state so that we can feel like we're part of the outside world. He who speaks in a blatantly fake cracker accent, he whose grammer is well below what one would learn in any substandard Nebraska high school, who makes racist comments without any attempt to attach a joke to them. He whose popularity lasted all of three weeks, even before his movie came out.

But he's our boy. We Nebraskans can blindly worship fame just like everyone else, so Larry will always have a place here. And he'll always have a place at Wal-Mart,

What do Larry the Cable and the rest of the blue-collar "comedians" represent anyways? The white-counter snob, the hick defiantly proud to be a hick (You might be a redneck if) embracing a phony "heartland" culture in rural America, denying the existance of a distinctive Southern, Midwestern, or Western culture while asserting that the generic fantasy of the "heartland" is somehow America incarnate despite the fact that it is based on nothing.

Wal-Mart is proud to help sell the idea of the Heartland, and considering how many local cultures they've destroyed, they had better be.

In the grocery section they sold packets of corn. Three ears in each box,grown in Florida, vacuum wrapped, boxed.

I'm a fifth-generation Nebraskan. My grandparents grow corn. I'm no flaming socialist. (not quite) I don't hate Wal-Mart. I don't shop there because it's three miles away from my apartment. I go to the downtown thrift shops if I need some cheap do-dad because my mama forgot to teach me to fear brown people. But I don't actively boycott Wal-Mart. I entertain no thoughts of throwing a Molotov cocktail through its windows or seizing Joyce Meyer paperbacks to redistribute to the peasents.

But this offended me deeply. I was witnessing a passive act of blasphamy. This is Nebraska, no, this is Lincoln Nebraska, Zion itself, and here was generic corn from Florida, pre-packaged in shrink-wrap, carrying some bullshit heartland company name like "Golden Acres" or something, and surely weeks from the field and as tasteless as raw hash browns.

This Wal-Mart was a fucking corn field fifteen years ago. I mean here it was; entropy, the death of local identity, people sacrificing the future of their small towns to shop in this Babylonian waste because it they have to go where stuff is cheap, and at any rate, this is where normal and decent people go, and people who complain about Wal-Mart think they're better than us, better than America, and how dare they?

There it was, the future of American civilisation, fuedalism without flavor, Rascal Flatts instead of the Latin Mass. Go to work straight out of high school, get a job doing grunt work at some local shop, shop gets run out of business by Wal-Mart, shop at Wal-Mart, they're cheap, buy some of the corn in plastic wrap, the wife says some corn on Sundays reminds her of home, and ain't that just the Nebraskan thing to do anyways? Eat some corn, watch the game? Might as well get an application while you're there. It's steady work, they don't pay much, you won't get health care, they won't let you form a union (But you're not communist, you're where you're at because that's how God planned it.) So you'll have to shop at Wal-Mart, you'll have enough money to send the kids to the doctor every couple of years, and you'll quit smoking someday, you'll be fine, you're the provider, the protector, and you're teaching the kids the value of hard work, this is how the world works, this is what they're meant to be.

There it was, but you knew this. Department stores tend to be rather banal, I should turn that idea into an essay and turn it in to Look magazine.

Ode to Target

I left my old hat in my hometown of North Platte. I'll be sure to get it back when I go back there, but hopefully that won't be for many months. My hats really are signatures of mine. There's been a cold snap here, and I've been getting by with a woolen cap, but this isn't 1994, I needed an official Josh hat.

But there was a dilemma. Should I look for a hat at one of the charity shops in Malone? Maybe I would find a cool hat for cheap, or maybe there would be nothing but cowboy hats still carrying the sweaty stench of their previous owners. At any rate, I have a social conscience (If no other kind of conscience) and I didn't want to come across as some pseudo-hipster buying crap from the thrift shops in a phony show of solidarity with the working class that actually insults them. This isn't 2002, either. The same logic excluded me from going to the "hip" "boutiques" downtown. That and I'm not gay.

So today I went to Target. I needed something to drink tonight anyway, and why make two errands? In my old age, I've come to appreciate Target's trendy, hip, vibrant image that still respects the American family. It's the store of the ruling class,
understand. We appreciate the finer things in life, like Justin Timberlake, cute little kitty pictures on the internet and stacks of unread Newsweek's on the coffee table. wW're not the fucking proles you find at Wal-Mart. We're not Toby Keith people, we're Faith Hill people.

Take their wine section, for example; the Lincoln Target doesn't even sell beer, so I'm drinking wine tonight. The type of wines they have there, names like three lizards and yellow tale, are catered towards the sort of middle-class families that, while striving to be respectable, still like to show how they're "with it". Something that will give the old college chums a little giggle when they come over to watch the game. These are my people, this is our society. We're on the go. We keep track of the stock market, still flip it to VH1 every now and then.

I'd like to say that I bought the three lizards, but alas, I still have a bit of the country in me and have not yet adapted to hip Lincoln ways. so no, just a jug of Sutter's Mill for me.

I ended up purchasing the wine, a Digornio's pizza, and a nice brown fedora with a phony fluer-de-lies on the side, something like you would see Usher wear. I'm glad I made the trip. It's one-stop shopping, I'm a man on the go, the business class, neon collar baby.

On Metal

Everything that any heavy metal band has ever done has already been done on Black Sabbath's first album. Think about it, the album has death, Satan, some LOTR shit to keep the nerds happy, Satan, hedonism, sex, etc. etc.

As if that wasn't enough, Sabbath used it's next album to elaborate on these basic themes with war, drugs, and homocidal comic book characters.

Other bands can work with the same mix. They can change things up by emphesizing Satan over drugs or mingling sex with death, but really, what's the point?

Just listen to NIB, a brilliant inverson of the Christian "lust=satan" equation. Listen to how the music is perfectly matched to the lyrics, auralizing the sound of a dark lord aroused. Than realize that your favorite childhood band did the same thing, and when you were fourteen you thought it was brilliant. then, dispair, and realize that you have wasted your youth and subsidized the wasted youths of others. Dude, all we are, is dust in the wind.

ah, school.

School is back, the now familier rythms, four years now. Class times, (and also waking times) are scattered throughout the day, leaving my internal clock ruined. It is during the school year that I become truely, physicaly addicted to caffine, If I go half a day without coffee, I will pass out for a time in mid-day no matter how much sleep I had the night before. Caffine is the addiction that will follow me into middle-age. I am domesticated. I'll buy Foldgers if it's on sale, I'm not lying.

Speaking of domesticity, I'll need a day job, a real one, where one has to wake up at the same time every day.

The entire first class being wasted on the sylybis, pointless meet-and greets. Professors who are clearly packing it in and teaching the same class they taught when the Apple-2 first came out. Professors who care deeeply but are a little nuts. Hot braised pork, good shit.

And me, staying motivated as best I can and waiting for the next phase of my life to hurry up.

Happy birthday

He's getting laid more on his 60th birthday than we did/will on our 21st, and you know this.

Fun Fact

There is just as much rape in prison as you've heard there is. This may not sound surprising, but when people hear about a bad situation in a government institution, they usually assume that's it's even worse than what they're hearing. This is usually a smart assumption, but not in this case. Prison rape is as bad as you've heard, not worse.

I know a few ex-cons, and they're actually more eager to tell prison rape jokes and otherwise keep prison rape in the public consciousness than other people. Why is this?

Because it distracts people from thinking about how much voluntary gay sex goes on in prison, which I assure you is quite a lot. There are lots of cons who are "only gay in prison" and claim the ability to magically turn their man-lust off when they're on the outside. This is utter nonsense of course, and by the way, the criminal element is no gayer than the general population, so we all need prison rape jokes to keep us from thinking about things we would rather not.

One bad situation in prison that is worse than what you hear is the guard beatings. They are not just isolated incidents. Any prison guard you've may have met has probably beaten a prisoner just for fun. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is not the imaginary beef of difficult criminals and their slick lawyers. Everyone in prison gets beat for no good reason except for the narcs. It is quite simply endemic among the guards. You can go to prison yourself and see that I write the truth. In fact I would even advise you to rob a liquor store just for the educational experience.

Quiz

Here's Richie Incognito, batshit offensive lineman for the St. Louis Rams and formerly of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The question for the day is weather Richie is going to

A. Have sex with all of the women in the background, or
B. Beat them to death.

Correct answer wins a free bottle of Crown Royal.

Everybody dies except you

While driving your car, or engaging in any of the basic activities of life for that matter, always remember this simple fact, everybody dies except you.

Yes, everyone is cursed with being a thinking creature aware of his or her own mortality, except you, you can't die, you're you.

So when driving on the interstate, you can take comfort in the fact that the forces of nature understand perfectly that you just have to get to that meeting, that dinner, or that shopping engagement on time. why should it be otherwise? The universe was created for you after all. The entire interstate highway system was created just so you could be driving on it as fast as you like right now. Your Ford Explorer was mass-produced on an assembly line just so you could be driving the one you're driving right now.

so it goes without saying that you were more than entitled to install the DVD player between the driver and front passenger seats last year, it's not that distracting, you don't even watch it, of course, it's for the kids. (Well, okay, maybe you sneak a peak every now and then,you know, just when traffic is light?) At any rate, so what if it is distracting? Remember, you're you, and these are your kids.

(Your kids probably can't die. They're only hal-you, after all, but that's why you hedged your bets and had six of them, isn't it? as for the wife, soon enough my friend, soon enough.)

The rain, of course, is here to provide you with water for your showers and half-caffinated coffee. The snow? It's there to give you something pretty to look at as you put the baby in cruise control and let your mind drift. Or maybe it's there to give you some story to tell the guys at work or at family gatherings when your military cousin shows up and you need something tough to say besides re-iterating your hatred for queers.

"I tell ya I gotta laugh when they get one or two inches of snow down south and they shut down everything. We can get eighteen inches and everybody still has to go to work, winters tough up here in Nebraska, but we're tough Germans arn't we cous?"

Everybody dies except you, so let your eyes drift to the video, go ahead and drive with half of your submissive hand while eating a burger or smoking a cigarette or drinking your half-caf coffee in the dominant hand

And above all, drive hard, drive hard, pound the gas pedal into it's slot until the engine screams like the orgasmic beast you, I mean your car, is.

Go ahead and drive 85 through the rain, but take it down to the speed limit if you hit snow or ice. Not that it matters to you, of course, but there are other people on the road who arn't you, and they're going to die of something or another someday.
So slide her in easy, nice and easy, easy.

What am I talking about?

Who are these people anyway? Obstructions, nothing more, forcing you to have to turn off and reset the cruise control, take your eyes off of the Blue Collar Comedy tour, put your coffee in the holder.

Who are these people except sticks crowding your interstate? Heading to appointments that arn't yours, jobs that arn't yours, families that arn't yours, movies that arn't yours, music that isn't yours. Taking up your road, your town, your taxes, your gasoline, your schools, your restaurants, your bars, your theatres your world.

So push the pedal down into it's slot. Your Explorer will hold, everyone knows they handle great on ice. everyone else is just going to have to get out of your way. They might slide off the road, but so what. Nobody exists except you, and your universe would be much better off without these obstructions.

Hello Mr. Beran

We hope you enjoy your trip on Amtrak today, gee, it must be nice going someplace warm this time of year, gonna snow bird it are ya? I have a grandmother living in a nursing home in Pheonix and she says it's just beautiful, no weather at all. I'll just need to see your I.D. before I let you board.

"No problem"

Alright than, and your social security number?

xxxxxx

Very good sir, and could you confirm the date of birth, just to make sure?

4/4/81

I'm afraid that just doesn't sound right.

"It's right there on my drivers license"

I know what it says on your driver's license, Mr. Beran, it's just seems a little too, cute, you know.

"What's 'cute' about it?"

I don't know, the way the number of the month and the day matches up, just seems funny.

"Are you kidding?"

Don't get smart with me Mr. Beran. You'll see how much I'm kidding when I throw you off this train and call the police.

"What the hell? I'm just as likely to be born on April 4th, or June 6th, or December 12th, as on any other date"

It doesn't seem likely

"Why not, somebody is born every day, and this was the day I was born on"

Well I've never met anyone who had a birthday where the month and date matched up and I've never seen any passangers on the train with that sort of birthday. I'm afraid you'll have to come with me.

"You can't be serious" There are thousands of people who board this train every year.

Yes and I remember them all.

"No you don't"

Excuse me sir. 'Security to car 26, security to car 26 we have a hostile situation.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?"

If you talk to me in that tone of voice Mr. Beran we will have to assume that you have some violent intent. We at Amtrak are fully aware of how important we are to American comerce and culture and we know it's only a matter of time before somebody tries to attack us. Now I'm not accusing you of anything but you are clearly dishonest and unstable. We have to take precautions.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

It's against federal law to use that name in vain Mr. Beran

"Look, just listen to me for a minute. There is nothing biological about calended dates. They are a totally human invention. A day where the date matches up with the month is just like any other day. there is nothing on heaven or earth to prevent me, you, or anybody else from being born on such a day."

Until now, sir, I only had a faint idea about just how profoundly your madness has affected you. You are without question a threat to yourself and others, a varitable walking time bomb. a padded cell and soup out of a metal bowl is the only hope for you, nothing but alphebet soup for the rest of your days; otherwise you're bound to hang yourself with Chicken Noodle. Here comes the guard now, I bid you good day sir, let's see if Allah can get you out of this.

Get on the floor now!

"But I didn't do anything"

Shut the fuck up and get on the floor before I tase you through your scrotum

"What the hell is wrong with you people?"

What is your major malfunction? I own you sugertits!

So they hanged Saddam Hussein

At last the world is free form the next Hitler. Place your bets on who the next Hitler after him will be. Ahama.. from Iran? Kim Jong Ill? Hugo Chavez? All of the above?

What an interesting world it must be to those who imagine every antagonist to America to be "the next Hitler." If every foreign bogeyman is Hitler, than there's only one course of action to deal with all of them, isn't there?

Oh God yes.

No negotiations, no games, no patience, just the thrust and the explosion.

Hussain always was a pretty shitty Hitler, especially in the last fifteen years. He was only a serious contender for the title when we were supplying him, but you already knew that. It has been a good three or four years since Hussein has had any real influence on other people's lives. He wasn't running the insurgency after all. His capture didn't set us on the course to whatever victory means. Neither did those cute little elections.

But maybe the death of a 70-year old man who always expected this sort of end for himself will be just the thing to set all the bad guys straight. Or maybe it will be the big surge in troops. It's not as if the bad guys can go on forever, they're just fighting on their native soil with nothing in particular to live for, after all.

Than again, there was a time when saddam Hussein mattered. So his death is a legitimate occasion. You can even call it a milestone if you like.

And if you must call it a milestone, if the death of Hussein fills you with sincere glee, maybe even a sense of personal accomplishment, good for you, you're an asshole.

The sort of asshole who believes in "victory" as a moral end unto itself. The sort of asshole who feels sincere moral outrage when his (oh yes, his) favorite college football team fails to bring him satisfaction.

The sort of asshole who is deeply and irrevecably attached to the traditional masculine ideal, that man exist to form large flocks and protect them, and clings to this ideal in lieu of actually accomplishing something.

This ideal requires several things, worshipful children, thousands of dollars worth of automobiles, back yards, electronic do-dads, grand sporting events that allow assholes the opportunity to admire the masculinity of other men (In a completely non-sexual way, of course) and submissive women.

Most of all though, this ideal requires a constant supply of enemies, becuase a man cannot fullfill his duty without something to protect his herd against.

Internal enemies are quite popular these days; liberals, lawyers, uppity celebrities, college profesors, any city-dweller with the audacity to claim moral equality (lot's of brown people live in a city, not quite a coincidence.) homosexuals, "feminazis" ohhh, especially them, Hillary Clinton, that bitch.

For the more radical assholes, there's the police and fire departments, doctors, social security, OSHA,etc., any state entity that suggests that the protecters need protection.

Then there is the oldest and most effective sort of enemy, the monster from outside. The foreign invader who threatens to infiltrate the herd and pollute the gene pool. (There are those who honestly believe that ileagal immigrants are solely responsible for the recent increase in crime, most especially sexual assults. Those of us living in the rural Midwest have no need to wonder what life was like in 1890 Mississipi. The lynchings are coming, do not doubt this.)

This sort of enemy is especially useful to those in power. The outside monster, you see, can only be defeated through total obedience to the alpha male.

Those who fail to submit to power are always held suspect, of course. Failure to yield to the top cock implies disrespect for them all. But to disrespect those who, by establishing and conveinently fullfilling society's standards of "success" have symbolicly lengthened their own cocks, is simply unacceptible when the outside monster lurks.

This is a battle for the top dogs. We can rightfully do nothing except stand back and watch the alpha male fight off the intruder, anyone who tries to interfere will get his tail bit off.

The outside monster fears our discipline, fears the way we line up straight behind the head penis. To doubt this is to reject your own penis.

Read Free Republic or some other Right-Wing Forum. I assure you that nearly all of the opinions dealing with Iraq, "The War on Terror" Immigration, the economy, everything, will describe these issues in precisely these terms, many will be just as blunt about it as I have been. Just remember that these are the words of cowards. Cowards who turn to a wholly imaginary "natural law" because they are unwilling to accept that there is no such thing as human nature. cowards who embrace the non-existant maxim "survival of the fittest" in order to shirk their duty to create themselves and invent their own truth. Cowards who would rather burn the whole world down than embrace the most frightening concept of all, freedom.

I have decided to clone myself

I've decided to clone myself. The technology is already here, has been for a long time. Cloning a human being is just is easy as cloning a cow. The only reason they haven't, who says they haven't?

I'm fully aware of the controversy surrounding cloning, and it's not that I don't think cloning is wrong, not at all. Cloning is wrong, very, devient. It's just that cloning isn't as wrong as I am important.

Nebraska's own Unicameral seems likely to forbid the university engaging-in stem cell research, that's how much people fear the devience of cloning. One can only hope that Ernie Chambers can be motivated to do his voodoo on an issue not related to race or class in order to kill the idea. Because this is something the university badly needs to be involved in, we're a serious institution you know. Are we going nothing but a nursery school for the rich and a platform for deluded would-be politicians? Or are we going to be a nursery school for the rich and platform for would-be politicians that also helps the extend the average-life span?

An outsider may see the American right-wings opposition to stem-cell research and conclude that we are anti-science. This may be true, but only indirectly so.

What we are is demi-Gods, most of us anyways. The liberal media makes a hue and a cry about "diversity" but everybody knows that 97% of the country is made up of white middle-class Christians.

As Demi-Gods, we shouldn't have to try to understand anything; certainly not "science" or "facts". Schools serve no purpose beyond indoctrinating our children with the sense of their own divinity. This simply takes up to much time to leave any room for "book smarts."

It really is quite simple. There are those things that are easily understood and validate our sense of Demi-Godness. Anything that we have to try to understand must be evil. the real God is white and middle-class just like us, after all, so if we can't understand it, than God doesn't abide it.

A human zygote is "human tissue" It's "human life". That's simple, that's clear, that's meant. Should we measure humanity by the ability to think and feel? Nonsense! Anything that requires more than two steps of logic is of the devil. The truth has already been given to us. why should we busy ourselves looking for it? We are Americans.

And we Americans are not against science. We simply know that what we don't know isn't meant to be known.

So why than have I chosen to clone myself? Well, I think it's because I have matured to the point where I have accepted my own mortality. If I can't live forever, than the least I can do is to pass my genes on to another who will carry memories of me, perhaps even inherit my personality and mannerisms.

This is a desire as old as life, of course. Most people satisfy it by having children. How weak. Why should I pass on only half of myself and see my heratage diluted with each passing generation? I'm me, you understand, and the world must have the total me, one copy at a time, forever, and not a half-me polluted by female chromosomes.

I feel a new pulse within me. My decision has inspired me to grow, to acheive, to gain. Never before has wealth held much appeal for me. I'm a man of simple tastes. My only indulgences are are expensive liquor and cheap prostitutes. I don't require a lot of money to live happily.

But I do need quite a hell of a lot of money to die happily. I've figured that I'll need at least a hundred million, and that's just for a budget job. If I don't want a down-syndrome Josh or a hermaphidite Josh, I'll need to double that.

So I'll need a high paying job. Reporter, professor, lawyer? No, I'm afraid that nothing "above-board" will do. I'm only a demi-God, after all, mortal just like you, ad I do not know the day or the hour, could be any time.

So I'll need to raise two hundred million quickly, like in the next five years. Something like taking over a cartel, weapons dealing, cornering the rice market in a fourth-world country, have a torrid love affair with a major poltician and than blackmail him/her. (Note to self, this won't work in Europe)

Rest assured, I will get the money, it's only a matter of how many peasents have to be destroyed before I do.

So any healthy Teutonic woman between 18-30 interested in being the vessel for my new self should contact me. There's no need to get romantically involved, in fact it would be better if we didn't. Otherwise we could never really be sure could we? In fact it would be best if we never met at all, as I am quite irrisitible.

Do realize that you will be subjected to some rather, intimate tests if you so any sign that you are unable to keep your mouth shut, than, you do understand yes?

If you can keep your mouth shut, than you will of course be paid handsomely. But honestly, I don't want a woman carrying me if she's just in it for the money. This is your chance to be the new Madonna, a superior, technologically advanced Madonna. doesn't that mean so much more than money?

Of cpurse, Mary wasn't a real "mother". Her mortal genes did not the divinity of Christ. She was just a vessel, as shall you be. In order to protect my new self from the diseases and vulnerabilities of infancy, I've decided that my clone shouldn't be born until he is three years old. This will leave you quite infertile for the rest of your life, of course, and I cannot gurantee your own survival. I can only promise you the money and something like immortality, nothing like the real immortality I've planned for myself, of course, but understand that you are a woman and shall go the way of all the vaginite demons. You can do nothing meaningful except to contribute to the glory of a man, and doesn't this sound so mush better than getting married and cooking porridge for fifty years?

A heartwarming holiday story for you

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Nebraska wins volleyball championship

30 dead, $5 million in property damage in Lincoln alone. We take college volleyball seriously you know.

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.

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.