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.

First against the wall when the revolution comes

Anyone who spends more than $1000 on christmas decorations

Whoever made the waitresses at the Ameristar Bar wear matchin black tights. (they looked "nice" but how dehumanizing)

Whoever put up sings in said Casion saying that any one visibly intoxicated wouldn't be allowed in, this is a blatant lie.

Anyone who waits in line at a Olive Garden at a stip mall in Omaha to mark the occaion of being in Omaha (This includes my entire immediate family, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelete)

People who send me surveys over Myspace, why? In all honesty, I am completely baffled by your desire to do these things.

Anyone with a fantasy football team, the only fantasy football team you need is the one with your own custom-made invincible running back on Madden. Fantasy football is nothing but a scam to force you to watch every game of the People's Republic of the NFL.

People who refer to liberal cities as the "People's Republic" of Boulder, Austin, San Francisco, etc. Real Americans denigrate half of their fellow citizens while thinking up elaborate conspiracy theories explaning why people different from themselves are dangerous.

People who consider themselves rebellious for opposing a tax increse while making sure their yards are landscaped to precise neighborhood assotiation standards.

I'm sure I could think of some more.

No Motivation

Nope, none at all. I was planing on writing a multi-page tome on the Book of Mormon, but I really don't feel like it. I'm completely geeking out. I haven't showered yet today, I've been wearing the same clothes for three days, and I don't know if that's going to change. It's Friday don't know if know if I'm doing anything or not, maybe just another 12 hours up, 12 hours asleep thing. Fuck the world entire.

Tomorrow

I'm not one to make my blog a personal diary (That's a lie.) But I'm going to Omaha tomorrow for my sister's birthday. She wants to go too a sports bar to watch college volleyball in-wait for it, Council Bluffs. Yes my sister, who lives in Omaha, who should know a little something about Omaha, can't think of a better way to spend her birthday than to go too piss-smell parking lot Iowa, too watch college volleyball at Ameristar. She can't think of anything more thrilling on her birthday than too have two drinks and gamble in Crystal Bluffs, Christ fucking Jesus, why do I maintain contact with my family? Why do I even bother trying to be a good person?

What, after all, is gambling? It is a drug; a drug that is even lamer than nicotine. The only advantage of this drug is that it's not associated with poor brown people, making it acceptable to the middle class.
I read a story in the Journal-Star about a month ago about a housewife from Southeast Lincoln who pissed away her familiy's considerable life savings sneaking away to the Council Bluffs casinos in the dead of night. It was a fucking hilarious story, the only bad part is that she didn't meat the jail and rapetastic end that she and her family surely wish on "druggies."

So, anyway, that's what I'm doing tomorrow, getting shit-hammered on cheap Henessey while my sister tries to win her own loveboat. Fuck the world entire.

Another Semester done

And so it is. I'm switching majors to English next semester, which won't be too inconvenient since it was already my minor. It won't take me longer to graduate, the only thing that would prevent that is my crippling combination of cynicism and laziness, the same thing that has always prevented it.

My original major choice of news-ed seems so silly now. I just knew that I wanted to write and have a reasonable chance of getting paid for it, but since when have I given a thought to moving out of the gutter? It simply doesn't become me. Joining respectable society, showing up for work at a respectable publication to write respectable articles about respectable society, fuck that noise.

So I'm giving serious thought to grad school. Wouldn't that be nice? Get paid for letting my mind wonder and spewing my incoherent post-post-modern nonsense to a captive audience. In the meantime, I plan on celebrating the end of this semester with Beer and a Deleon's combo platter, I will try my best not to orgasm on the keyboard at the though of it.

Pathetic gesture of Rebellion Cage Match!

Churchill vs. Kopitke!! Only one gets out alive! It's gonna be fucking raw bitches!!!

The American Moses of American history

This is Kyle "Herald Hill" Kopitke. He's made quite a living the past couple of years by promising Nebraska villages that he could bring in tourists with patriotic war museums. He also got some vets to donate their keepsakes paraphernalia to him. Some of this he put in museums, some he... did something else with. He is also accused of spending a good deal of public tax money on himself. It seems we have a good-old fashioned country shyster at work here, doesn't it? Kopitke is seen above giving a "gesture of defiance" in response to his upcoming legal troubles.

Testify Kyle. Testify.

I've acquired a slave boy

He's from Nigeria. He actually comes from a fairly well-off family. His father is a village mayor and they only have six children. They didn't have to sell him if they didn't want to. they just thought he needed some discipline.

He does my dishes, sweeps the kitchen floor, vacuums the carpet,dusts the furniture the things I can't be bothered with. I'm a very important person you know. He tells me that he's 9 though he is clearly no older than 6. I don't know why he bothers lying to me, I am subject to no law and would show it no regard even if it was. But I suppose his fiction is harmless. Very well, Amadi, (I call him Ami) you're "9". What a big strapping lad you are.

You can be rest assured that I'm doing nothing untoward to the boy. (girls cost extra) but I must admit I get a certain... satisfaction when he disobeys me and I am obliged to break out the lash. I flog him about twice a week, 30 lashes, mostly over small things, a broken dish, a stolen shot of bourbon. (Third world children grow up so fast. They have to, they'll never see fifty.)

Last week he scratched the hood of mu Continental quite badly. I don't know if it was an accident or not, the effect was the same. I wasn't sure if I could trust myself with the whip; given the state I was in, so I starved him for two days instead. Third world children know there place, much more disciplined than our own lads. They won't go crying to the authorities if you bruise them a bit. You are the only authority they have to worry about. It's quite refreshing. People forget how orderly life was before people got the idea that they were free to shake the totem pole.

Still, even the African children get uppity as they near their teens. I plan to have better employment by then, perhaps enough money for a 12-year-old Latin girl. I t will high time for me to be wed by than. Someone needs to keep the linens fresh.

But in the meantime, I'll have to find someway to dispose of Ami. The militias in Darfur or Baghdad always pay handsomely for a fresh body. Ami would be happy there. It's a dream life for any preteen boy. I remember my days with the Contras, Haycalon
days those.

If that doesn't pan out, than I'm afraid things may turn out rather badly for little Ami. I'm a distinguished man, yes. But my funds are limited, and I have tastes that must be satisfied. Most of the local pimps are rather unscrupulous. There is, I'm afraid, quite the market for new boys in my city. If this doesn't pan out, well, I've always thought it was more humane to shoot an unwanted dog than to just leave it in the woods to fend for itself, don't you agree?

Happy birthday Noam Chomsky

Chomsky turns 346 today. It was also on this date in 1790 that he invented socialism during the French revolution. Finally, this date marks the 485th millionth time that a college student has referenced Noam Chomsky without reading any of his books.

Thought for the day

"Burning the Reichstag" would be a great euphemism for masturbation. I'm going to start using it, and so should you.

Country Justice

“If there was an overriding theme as to what went wrong, it was the lead investigators backed into a theory and just wouldn’t get off it when the evidence wouldn’t add up,”

I would highly recommend avoiding getting arrested in a small town. This can be rather difficult, mind you, since you don't actually have to do anything illeagal to get arrested in a small town, If a Sheriff's "hunch" leads to you, that's just about it. So the only way to be sure that you don't get arrested in a small town is not to go, which is even better advice.

But poor Matthew Livers has to live in one. He was charged with helping murder his aunt and uncle, Wayne and Sharmon Stock, last April, and has spent the last seven months in jail until it became glaringly obvious that not only did the evidence condemn him but actually seemed to exonerate him.

There was some tension between Livers side of the family and that of the murder victims, and rumors started to fly around after the killings. Understand, country folks are full of faith. They have a lot of faith in Jesus. They have even more faith in their rumors.
A pizza place North Platte went out of business a while ago because of rumors that the owner was a gay man with AIDS. Thirteen years later, there are still some that will get very angry if you suggest that this wasn't true. Our schools, you see, don't teach us how to sift empirical facts out the giant grain bin of bullshit, so we rely on the word of familiar faces to discern the truth. Please don't waste your time suggesting that this system doesn't work. There are those that know this, and there are those who will always refuse to know.

And so the remors continued to fly around Murdock and Plattsmouth, and so suspicion turned to Matt Livers: he's young and different, and so he was arrested.

Now Livers is mentally challenged, and the interrogating officers (Earl Schenck of the Cass County sheriff's department and state patrolman William Lambert) knew that he would eventually crack if they only raised their normal macho/cop/father/God act to the next level. The interrogation lasted for 11 hours. Livers could have asked for a lawyer at any time, of course. I'm sure they told him that.

Lambert: "You shot her in the face. You shot her in the face Matt."
Livers: "Dude, I didn't."
Lambert: "What do you mean 'dude"
Schenck: "Bull!"
Livers: I didn't, I mean..
Lambert: You didn't what?
Livers: "I didn't do anything."
Lambert: "You are full of shit. You did too. Tell us that we are wrong. Tell us that this is a lie. You can tell it's a lie, can't you? We know from the natural reaction of people. You are in the chair. You are sitting there, You're shaking because you know it's the truth. You know it's the truth in your heart.



I've talked to a few cops in my day. All of them, to a man, are very proud of their ability to "read people." They believe that they can spot suspicious activity by a certain twitch or crawl to someone's movements. They believe they can detect the nervousness of a liar. They teach the shit out of this at police acadamy.

All of it is nonsense, of course. The ability to read people doesn't exist, and there is no such thing as a "natural reaction." or at least, the nervousness of a mentally challenged young man being yelled at by authority figures would be much the same whether he was telling the truth or lying.

Nonetheless, the psychic detectives got their confession.

Perhaps the real question is why we still bother with the entire interrogation ritual. Out of all forms of evidence, the human word is the least reliable. We have the technology to detect microscopic blood and tissue fragment. Human accounts of a situation only get in the way of the hard scientific record.

But juries aren't moved by science. They are moved by a widow's tears. They are moved by a cop looking a suspect "in the eye" and drawing theall-important confession out of him. there have been several occasions where a confessed killer was scientificly proven innocent, but people refused to believe it, he confessed.

Attribute this to the human desire to believe that we are special. We want to believe that our relationships and interactions are somehow sacred, that they form a more profound truth than concrete, physical reality. Why do you think we are so shocked when somebody lies to us, Even though our own senses and our own judgement give us false information all the time?

The truth is that human interactions are just as self-serving,empty, and meaningless as monkeys picking the bugs off each other's backs. A lot of human misery can be done away with if only we had the courage to accept this.

Cox (Cass County attorney) said he didn’t blame the State Patrol or the Cass County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators worked hard and did as well as they could, he said. And ultimately, he pointed out, Livers and Sampson were freed.

“This is the process working,” he said.

Oh, but of course. An innocent man only spent seven months in jail. I assume that Mr. Cox would be just as forgiving if a suspect was on the loose for seven months.

Rest assured, if this case had gone to trial, Livers would have been convicted. evidence or no evidence, the small-town trust in authority would have prevailed.
A jury torn between reality and the thought of a sheriff's disapproving glare may have felt some emotional distress, but ultimately would put on a brave face and turn up the voltage. Livers would have been sentenced to death most likely. Many would have crowed about how we know how to treat killers here in the heartland.

All credit in the world goes to the Cass County public defender, Julie Bear, in performing what must be a thankless duty. Lawyers are despised in these parts. I can think of no better proof of good chracter than to be despised in Cass County.

Thought for the day

"Political Correctness" is usually a bogeyman, denounced by those who are afraid of questioning society or tradition. Very often, these people reveal the very prejudices that the "politically correct" accuse them of having through their arguments against "political correctness."

Example:

"Normal girls arn't so easily insulted. This girl just needs a deep-dicking to cheer her up."

Tales From Omaha

I usually like to go for a walk in the country on Sunday. But it was too cold for that, so I decided to go to Omaha instead. I didn't know what I was going to do exactly, I didn't have much spending money, and if it was too cold to walk than it was too cold to go to the zoo.

So I just went. I took the scenic route, highway 6 to the new Dodge Street Freeway. Interstate 80 angles southwest towards Lincoln, and Omaha has been sprawling due west into a transportation dead end. The state has spent the last 25 years or so gradually jerry-rigging West Dodge Street into a freeway. The most recent part of this never-ending construction project is an elevated expressway between the I-680 beltway and 144th street. It's the state's biggest urban construction project since I-480 provided segregation-by freeway more than 30 years ago. No neighborhoods destroyed this time I'm afraid, and traffic does flow quite nicely.

I stopped by Crossroads Mall at Dodge and 7snd. This is the real downtown Omaha, the gateway between something that resembles a city and 20 miles of cul-de-sacs.

I thought that I might find something ridiculous there that I could mock for the amusement of my loyal readers (Jered, Dan, how ya doing?). But I didn't find anything one couldn't find in a smaller mall, nothing that hasn't been mocked before by better satirists than I. Perhaps I'm getting a bit older and wiser, no longer amused by the obvious surface-stupidity of a shopping mall. Perhaps I dig a little deeper now.

So in the Sears basement I saw one of those inflatable Christmas yard decorations. It consisted of Winny-The-Pooh slowly "rising and inflating" out of a "hunny" jar and embracing his big, tall, strong, "Tigger". I stared at it for about five minutes, not going to pretend that I didn't find it amusing. But it wasn't as blatantly Fruedian as an anti-feminist rant or "The Rock" movie. Words can't really convey how funny it was, you have to see it.

I walked past a Chile's restaurant and saw people willingly standing in line to eat at Chile's. Steely Dan was pumping out of the speaker's. I had my lunch later at the downtown Little King, (13th and Farnamish)this is the best place to eat in Omaha. Get yourself a pitcher of Rolling Rock and watch the TV, always set to one of those channels that always play MASH reruns.

One of the Booths at Crossroads had celebrity portraits, the kind where Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Kurt Cobain are sitting in some cosmic bar toghether. Twenty bucks. I didn't notice that the guy running the booth was looking at me the whole time. He asked me if there was anything I wanted. I said maybe and walked around the parking lot and back inside to avoid him. I'm bashful sometimes.

The food court had something called "New York Chicken" selling generic fast food and advertising it with photos taken from sometime around my conception. The Sbarro's at the food court was clearly superior from the one we have at NU. I didn't eat there but I could tell just by looking. The potatoes had a nice color, and the salad was salad-green instead of Salmonella green.

After the mall I took a little trip through North Omaha. This is the neighborhood ruined by the afore-mentioned freeway. Omaha's North Freeway leads from downtown, through and over North Omaha and than ends just before the white-middle class neighborhood of Florence. It's very blatant. The official reason about why the freeway ends there is that Florence is 'historic' because some Mormons died there on the way to Utah 160 years ago. This is bullshit. The Mormon winter quarters is actually near the very northern tip of the city, near the beltway crossing over the Missouri. (Mormon Bridge.)

While driving down N. 30th I considered stopping at one of the Liquor stores there. They still sell Thunderbird at these places and I was thinking of grabbing a souvenir. But I decided not to. I partied too hard this weekend, and I thought the locals may have been insulted if they knew an outsider was ironically buying cheap booze from one of their shops.

Then I went downtown and had lunch at Little King. I don't do this nearly enough. If your heading towards the Iowa casinos on I-480, do yourself a favor; get off in downtown Omaha, head to Little King and spend your money on something worthwhile.

I headed down 13th past the zoo and into Bellevue. I was looking for Southroads Mall, figuring that a suburban mall might have something more ostentatiously stupid than Crossroads. But I have no idea where this place is. So I turned back towards Lincoln, stopping at a SuperTarget in Millard and eating free samples of Organic Nuts until the manager started to follow me around.

Then it was back towards home, my car radio rose from the dead last week, and they were playing a rerun of "Prairie Home Companion." It was a pleasent drive.

Nonsense.

I drank eleven Grolsh's last night, eleven. Now I'm trying to get a smattering of homework done before the game. Who am I kidding? Honestly? I should still be in bed with coffee being served to me by Asian slave girls. But what's one to do. Keep working, be a productive citizen. Don't drink to excess unless you are able to wake up at a reasonable hour and perform your duties. Do not drive while drunk, do not leave your car parked in any of a city's designated "Ghetto" areas where dangerous minorities are about. Do not rely on public transportation in a capitalist society.

Pull yourself out of the gutter. Citizenship is rewarded only to the virtuous. those in the success class may be allowed to frequent the local steak-house franchises and indulge in a few cocktails. Be sure to arm yourself if you enter the central business district, do not hesitate to consider any movement by the vagrants to be a threat. Undesirables must be culled.

I probably shouldn't drink tonight.

Big 12 championship game

You can't possibly be prepared. You are a foolish mortal who thinks you matter to the immortals.

Oklahoma 21-17

On getting ones brilliant theory debunked

My Native American lit class hosted one Dr. David Truer today. Truer, a Univ. of Minnesota professor of Jewish/Ojibwa heritage,is the author of the novels "Little". "The Hiawatha" and "Dr. Appeles." He's somewhat famous, at least to those of us who don't have lives.

We read "The Hiawatha" in my Native American Lit class. While writing a paper on the book, I did some quick internet "research" and found some connections between the books title and one "Nanobozho", (Nanobush, Manobush, etc.) a trickster figure among northern native tribes.

A Trickster is some sort of character who willfully defies the order established by a culture's Gods/God/meaningless void etc. Tricksters are rather archtypical, Western icons such as Satan, Bugs Bunny, and Bill Clinton could all be reasonably considered to be Trickster figures.

But Tricksters are most closely associated with Native American cultures. This is because Native Americans (not that I'm one to stereotype :) don't usually view the world in a black vs. white, good vs. evil sort of way. So a Trickster who defies the order of the Gods is not necessarily a bad thing and is even occasionally a good thing.

So anyway, I'm not going to give the plot of "The Hiawatha" away, but the Simon character is a rather fucked up cat who does a lot of things that seemingly have no earthly explanations, and while doing my "research" in between rounds of Myspace and Fark I found a lot of parallels between Simon and Nanobozho, especially regarding how they treated their family members.

My professor was quite excited by my theory. I got an A+ on the paper and she had me explain the theory to the rest of the class, without telling me ahead of time, while I was ill with a cold and high on Nyquil, good times.

But than Truer came to town, and he flatly rejected my idea. He said that he didn't want to use the cliche of a real-life Indian mirroring a spiritual Trickster figure. (It doesn't take much reading of Native American Lit to know that this is indeed a cliche.) So it goes.

I should have considered the possibility that I was over thinking. Truer recently wrote a nonfiction book called "Native American Fiction: A User's Manual" in which he argues that there is actually no such thing as Native American fiction, since nearly all of Native American fiction plays off white stereotypes in some way. That is, a troubled young native lost in the modern white man's world goes through some sort of "spiritual journey" to find his "inner warrior".

Truer's "User's manual" caused a minor spat between him and some of the big names in Native American Lit: Sherman Alexie, Leslie Silko, N. Scott Momaday, etc. It raised a lot of philosophical debate among five or six pretentious, lonely people.

When he spoke here at UNL, Truer talked of moving "out of the ruts" and presenting his native characters as distinct individuals who's flaws were born out of themselves instead of society, as regular fucked up people instead of "children of the forest" separated from their homelands.

Again, I should have known I was over thinking. Truer does a lot of demystifying and cliche-busting in "The Hiawatha". Simon is a city-dwelling Indian. More than that, he is anything but lost in the city. Minneapolis is clearly his home, a place that he knows like his own skin and that he even helps to build. When Simon gets lost in the woods (Returns to nature) he nearly kills himself with his total lack of bush-skills.

Oh well, Truer is a cool guy. He refuted my theory very politely and respectfully and is a witty and engaging speaker. And I still have the A+.