FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Paris St. Germain
4. Arsenal
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7.  Juventus
8. Manchester City
9. Roma
10.Raja Casablanca

I Need a DVD Player

Mainly I've been watching the 'Breaking Bad' marathon on AMC this weekend.  Today I noticed for the first time that the character of Jane, Jesse's first dead girlfriend, is to the very day exactly the same age as I am.  You can watch the vomit-choke/plane crash episode for yourself to find out exactly when that is. :-)  Personally I've tried most everything myself but never have danced with needles; not to claim exceptional wisdom for that but here I am alive enough to type this right now.  It was a tingly existential moment that one. 

My Mother is a Liquor Store Manager

For Christmas I got one hundred dollars and a bottle of Wild Turkey 101.  It is exactly what I would have asked for if I were the kind to be gauche enough.

A freak warm front moved onto the plains today, as happens from time to time over the winter, especially in the more unstable west.  Temps in the lower fifties Fahrenheit.  Earlier I took a hike to the southwest of North Platte, saw the lower South Platte valley and the hills beyond in all their starkness and felt renewed.  Once you reach the edge of this town, at 24,000 people the largest settlement in a hundred mile radius, the sudden change to frontier openness really is quite stark.  On South River Road I could have sworn that I heard a distressed fly.   

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Paris St. Germain
4. Liverpool
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Arsenal
9. Roma
10. Raja Casablanca

Hippies Get A Bum Rap Bill Jack

As a contemporary boho/lefty of course I would think so.  Hippies and mid-6o's to mid-70's culture in general get a bum rap.  (Either that or glorified as having invented rebellion and fun out of thin air, but that's another story.)  It was no radical break from American traditions that came before, quite the opposite.    And it is simply inaccurate to describe the flower children as hopeless utopian dreamers. They were in the main as perfectly well-versed in political theory, 'realism' and the art of the possible as anyone else.  

On the other hand, there was Billy Jack.

......................Yeah, the whole seven hours or so of three Billy Jack films committed to film are more or less like this, in fact generally worse.  No, no group of Native Americans have ever had themselves repeatedly injected with venom for inspirations sake.  You're smart people, I'm sure you knew that. 
 At any rate the White Indian Jesus seen above, Tom Laughlin, died last Thursday at the age of 82, still planning to get around to a new Billy Jack sequel  that would, in its own special way, deal with the War on Terror, police militarization in the drug war etc any day now. 

But though it is right and just that we despair the loss of a brother we should should despair not  the death of his work.  Steven Seagal has been making all the Billy Jack sequels fit to can for twenty five years now.  The spiritual parentage between Tom and Steve is clear in how both make action movies from a left-wing point of view: anti-corporate and anti-security state, instead of the more typically rightist  'punish bad guys and kill the foreign devils' bent of such film.  Seagal and Laughlin are also linked by a sympathetic but wincingly exoticized view of Native Americans (So Spiritual!  So close to the land!)  and most importantly by a hilariously earnest and wrong-headed messianic sense of self. 
Seagal's  "On Deadly Ground", is the film that betrays his celluloid paternity more than any other. In this famed career-killing opus Seagal saves the environment by firebombing an up & pumping refinery and invited to address the Alaska state legislature as a reward, which is of course the same favor those fine people would happily grant any other left-wing terrorist. 

Still, there's something about the tired look of a film still bleached by Southwestern sun that will always move my heart just a little bit more.  For me the original Godfather is the only dope that will ever truly do.  RIP half breed. 

Reminder

Internet trolls do not and shall never have shit on O.G. letter to the editor writers. 



"The Lincoln Journal Star should be more insulting toward communists in general and show much more respect to the so-called wing nuts because the wing nuts who hate and distrust today's government on both sides of the political aisle may just be the ones who end up saving this country from bankruptcy, civil war and World War III. The cartoon is fascist because it portrays American capitalists in much the same way Nazi Germany portrayed Jews."

Today's Feature in the Sunday Omaha World Herald

Good old fashioned eugenics!

Nikko Jenkins is by all means a bad person.  One who went on a killing spree after automatic release from prison for 'good behavior', made necessary to keep prison space open for I-80 weed smugglers and such so that small counties can pay their bills.  Jenkins was caught after killing the wrong person, a West Omaha white woman who legally existed before the fact, which brings us to where we are today.  But none of this remotely excuses the OWH's ritual shaming of 'Those People'.  This is nothing but Zenith style roll up the sidewalk  prig thuggery in three parts. 

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Arsenal
4. Paris St. Germain
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Chelsea
9. Roma
10. Real Madrid

Weather Conditions For Cairo, Nebraska

Clear. 35.2 degrees F., light snow cover, gentle north breeze.


Hmm...

What Mandela was Up Against

 I've no praise for the man that hasn't already been said at least as well, and in certainly with far more personal experience and feeling.  so in respect to some far-right diehards keeping the faith the Nelson Mandela was a communist, (Sort of but not really) or a terrorist; (a charge that, once the selective empathy and theatrically pious outrage is seen through, comes down to the simple belief that it is wrong for Anglo-Saxons to lose control anywhere they've invited themselves,  here's a quick review of some of Apartheid's greatest hit, the Sharpville Massacre

And lets not forget various cold-blooded assassinations of civilian activists, or not actually all that activist, such as  sleeping teenagers: (allegedly)

Or even, perhaps, the murder of disproving foreign heads of government,  who would otherwise be friendly fellow Westerners if not for the thing they were (allegedly) being killed in the defense of.

I am not personally a 'by any means necessary' sort of guy but then I have the comfort to not be.  And the United States, after all, made a violent break from the British Empire on far less severe provocation then what Black south Africa faced.  I'm not saying I'm just saying.      

FC Top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Arsenal
3. Juventus
4. Barcelona
5. Paris St.Germain
6. Atletico Madrid
7.  Roma
8.  Cruzeiro
9.  Chelsea
10. San Lorenzo 

For the New Winter I Bought my Own Grey and Logo Free Hooded Sweatshirt

And I'm coming to your suburb.  Fear my dark menace. 

In all seriousness these things really are a godsend in variable climates like the Great Plains.  It may seem both overflown and banal to christen the hoodie as North America's poncho but it's true anyway.  If one is say a truck driver, or otherwise has business that regularly moves them from Austin to Boston in the space of a week or from flatland to mountaintop and back again in a single day then the hoodie is straight up indispensable.  Finally I suppose it does make me feel a bit 'dangerous'/manly in a Celtic Punk sort of way.   I should of had one of my own long before now. 

But in the slim chance that anyone out there is curious; no, I'm not going to break my informal rule against showing my likeness on this blog so you can see how I look in it.  My mildly rangy Slavic mug is there for the searching somewhere out there in e-universe.  Use your imagination.

Being Gay: It's Metal as Fuck, Apparently

Mind you now that this is not just an excuse for posting a Judas Priest video. I actually highly recommend that you read Gina Miller's column while listening to their version of 'The Green Manalishi'.  It's a fucking glorious experience.  You'll thank me for it.  

 "While we certainly have human enemies aligned against us, our true enemies are Satan, his demons and the spiritual wickedness of those in places of great power. As Christians, we have read the end-times prophecies, and we know the warnings Jesus gave us about how awful things will become in the last days. Satan is working feverishly to fully cement his terrible, earthly rule and bring those hellish days to fruition.The Godless communists (or fascists, if you prefer) are using the homosexual agenda to work toward eradicating Christian opposition to their plans, which are Satan's plans. If you know your Bible, then you know that Christianity is destined to be outlawed. We are moving steadily toward a time when Christians here in America will be in danger of state-sanctioned murder for their beliefs. If you think I exaggerate, then you don't know what God has already told us, or perhaps you mistakenly believe that the United States is the exception, that it can't happen here. Christians throughout the world have always been persecuted, but here in the United States, we have enjoyed unparalleled protection and freedom during the existence of our nation. That protection is quickly being eroded, and the homosexuals are used as pawns in this process."

Over Thanksgiving

My stepfather let me have some of his Johnny Walker Blue.  The weather was mildly cool and there was stuffing.  My mother's dogs love me to death and I love them right back.  It was nice. 

A new guy in Writer's Group mentioned Karen Carpenter week before last so now when I drink alone and my feminine side slips out I'll start humming a bit of 'Superstar' instead of Donna Summer's 'On the Radio'.  At least for now.  I shall return. 

If you're from Colorado or driving with Colorado plates, my advice to you is to obey all Nebraska traffic laws to perfection and film yourself doing so.  Sucks that you have to do that but man, I know the No. Platte troop of the State Patrol is just hanging out at Big Springs junction straight fishing motherfuckers, pulling you over for doing 74 in a 75, saying you dis 76 and daring you to prove otherwise.  Federalism; bloody hell. 

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Arsenal
3. Juventus
4. Barcelona
5. Paris St. Germain
6. Atletico Madrid
7. Roma
8. Cruzeiro
9. Chelsea
10 Dortmund

Hmm

Next year's World Cup in Brazil would seem to be the most natural thing in the world.  And certainly I would never suggest that 'those people' are innately incapable of pulling it off.  Such blue-eyed blue-eyed northern chauvinism is beneath any decent person and even myself.  But this.....  This is no good, not at all.

  

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Arsenal
4. Paris. St. Germain
5. Juventus
6. Atletico Madrid
7. Roma
8. Dortmund
9. Cruzeiro
10 Zenit St. Petersburg 

You Learn Your Own Soul in Winter

I tend to binge on coffee when it's very cold outside, as it was here Saturday and I decided to stay in last night for the very same reason. After some hours of listening to music and reading I came across a bag containing three of my bosses' prescription hydrocodeine (why he left it there I don't know) and, feeling slightly bored, decided to take the whole lot. The opiate combined with caffeine produced a strong 'tweaking' effect. I spent the next several hours walking in circles around my house, chain-smoking naked with the heat at full blast while the walls breathed and the shadows flowed like a quick sand oil. At  about one in the morning someone visiting  the next door neighbors pulled up in an SUV and left the headlights bearing on me for 5-10 minutes while they went inside. When the person finally came back out he saw me staring through the window like a wounded feral beast and laughed. I think the neighbors are dealing something or another for money, which is fine for so long as they use it to pay the rent next Saturday when I return from the holiday outstate. 

Good!

Fuck the filibuster.  Get rid of it completely.  It has proven of little use in preventing the GOP from running roughshod over the people when they have the majority anyway.  Now use the minimum year and two months to 'pack the courts' with judges who almost pretend to care about the common peoples civil rights.  End of analysis.    

Maybe It's Just Wishful Thinking on my Part

But US society is becoming gradually more progressive on some things, gay marriage most famously and recreational drug use as well.  Should our liberalizing trend in regards to drugs continue I wonder, how will the nation's police deal.  As we move ever further from the extreme violent crime rates of the seventies and eighties,  (and yes crime is still going down)  how will our police police deal with the loss of prestige they must suffer as an incidental consequence of social improvement?  Because the day will come when they are no longer seen as by far the most important force in maintaining social welfare, when they are no longer given first priority in state and local budgets without thought or challenge, when drugs are no longer seen as so fiendishly evil as to justify giving police military-level training, gadgetry, and epic power, when even governors and Senators feel obliged to show deference to police.  At some future point, when I and my peers are old but not quite dead, all of that is likely to be a thing of the past, something our heirs will be unable to imagine  any decent person accepting as normal.  How will the police themselves, with their established prestige and heroic self-image, deal with what is to come?   Very,    very, very poorly, I fear.

BBC News Headline

"Venezuela Head Nears Special Powers"

I have nothing intelligent to say about this.  It's just funny is all. 

The Once and Probably Future President of Chile

Looks for all the world like an aunt of mine circa 1992. 

I bit thinner, I've sat at tables where auntie served steaks and pork chops at the same lunch.

She's not morbidly heavy mind. 

I Say This in All Seriousness

"The night of frenzied partying allegedly involved cocaine, OxyContin, vodka, a prostitute and Ford telling staffer Olivia Gondek, “I want to eat your p*ssy.”

Rob Ford and Anthony Keidis should trade jobs.  There are two keys between the Chili Peppers being a great vs. mediocre band.  One is having Frusciante, the other is having at least one member in constant risk of sudden death from a hard drug habit.  Without either of these things the band
has been hopelessly stale for a decade now and there can be no serious doubts that Rob Ford by his presence alone would bring much of their old fire back.  Keidis for his part, would probably find Toronto a likable place to run, now that he insists on being all old & responsible.  Similar to some California bay area cities in sensibility with a little bit of Chicago and a touch of Youngstown thrown in.  Different sure but one can always find something familiar to plant their roots in.

Stupid, Stupid Poland

You know kids, Russia is still bigger than you.    I don't mean that to say that you should knuckle other to abusive pressure from Putin's Kremlin or any other Russian government, but picking a fight?.....I suppose that Poland is NATO, in a fight against Russia we would help them as much as we could without starting some nuclear shit.  Which is to say not very much, and Russia is still way, way, bigger than you kids.  Are you actively trying get your asses kicked so you can heroically suffer like your ancestors?

And again, why the total focus towards Russia in regards to past grievances? It's ignorant and untoward, at best. 

Even if This Were True

That is, President Obama actually did regularly trade gay sex for cocaine in his youth.  And of course everyone involved here knows damned well that it isn't true, get the fuck out. 

But if it were true then well, I do not wish to say that I'm 'okay' with that, because that would imply some mere libertarian neutrality towards trading gay sex for cocaine, and I wish to be very clear that trading gay sex for cocaine is inherently, universally and indisputably virtuous.  I am saying that anyone who seeks to be a good person must by definition aspire to trade gay sex for cocaine.  I am saying that it is impossible to be historically great, to have one's face on the money a thousand years from now, without having at least once traded gay sex for cocaine as a sacrament to Mohamarx.  If I learned that I had twice voted for a man who had never traded gay sex for cocaine I could never truly live with myself again.  Thank you, Mia Marie Pope, for allaying my fears.  Satan bless. 

Veterans Day

After my grandfather, Ivan Beran died three years ago, we found in his papers that he had been personal secretary to Douglas Macarthur in the war, the big one, the last one worth fighting.  Grandpa was physically safe in this position, and today here among others am I. 

He despised Macarthur, as it turns out, considered him to be the strutting arrogant peacock we know him to have been from historic record.  Reading about just how much leverage the Pentagon had; in the early days of the Cold War up through Vietnam (and at some level to this day) never fails to scare the hell out of me.  It was the cultural norm there, (I do not say this as a self-strawmannig flag burning lefty but in plain fact), the cultural norm you see, to view the potential mass annihilation of their compatriots to be worth the cost of feeling like the most important creatures who have ever been.  Macarthur, in particular, even more so that that chucklehead LeMay, was the closest thing to an M Bison. Pinochet that our own military has ever produced; the whole business of posing with expensive shades well into his sixties and that giant wooden cock of a pipe of his, Christ on a stick.  Also that whole business of trying to start a nuclear war on his own volition, that thing too sure. 

Perhaps this whole spiel has been inappropriate for this special day.  I know my mother, out laying regalia along graves for the VFW women's auxiliary right now, wouldn't approve.  Really though I couldn't care less.

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Arsenal
4.Paris St. Germain
5. Roma
6. Dortmund
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Juventus
9.  Cruziero
10. Zenit St. Petersburg

Yes I'm One of Those

A white rural man from a long established American family hat leans conservative*    who went to college, moved to 'the city',  and grew up to become a flaming lefty.  ( *my mother and aunt are blue-dog Dem, though culturally their perception of what is unfathomably strange can be safely said to encompass a solid 80% of everything and everyone.)

Dennis Prager is a hack who can often be half or one-tenth honest in the service of his own Greater Truths.  But I don't doubt that the sense of loss among him, his friends and my stepfather is perfectly sincere.  The old delusion of gaining second-hand immortality via shared belief in unchanging truth and one narrowly defined cultural identity through the generations is very much alive and well, especially in regards to religious doctrines with their pretense to eternity.

Prager's stated points here are all bad, though none are as disturbing as his overall tone of existential tragedy.  It reminds me of the five minutes of Mark Levin I happened on while driving through the Platte Valley some years ago.   As I recall Levin was riding to the rescue of Michelle Bachmann and said something along the lines of  By attacking her they are attacking our conservative principles; who we are'.   I've always had a strong interest in politics myself and I'd say that many of the things I believe are felt with what could be validly described as passion. But though I'm a solid liberal by American standards there is still enough mushy moderate in me to be appalled by this attitude of 'who we are.' No. Belief, no matter how truly important and no matter how much real impact it has on peoples lives is not who we are but simply a byproduct of who we are.  For belief, even those I would agree with, to play so dominant a role in defining oneself is menacing towards liberty in itself.  Such a relationship to belief is the first necessary step towards fanaticism violent or otherwise.  Everyone, after all, wants their own identity, their selves to be fearfully strong and destined to triumph.      

More basically it is impossible for one with this attitude to hold to both the letter and the spirit of liberty's rules.  If one's relationship to political belief is an existential one, then the electoral defeat that must eventually come, even if you're right, is bound to be seen as an act of banishment and condemnation from one's own kind.  Of course no person who chooses to live another day is self-loathing enough to think they deserve this, and the tension here is I think a large part of the modern US rights 'I win or you cheated'     response to it's recent difficulties.  The fact that modern conservatives spend the bulk of their mental energy, (in addition to purer than-thou internal witch hunts) on painting liberalism as not just wrong but illegitimate.  The painting of America's mild Keynesian left as alien and radical, the conspiracy mongering and logically tortuous tu-quoques   the necrotheist myth that the founders wrote the Constitution to cement One True philosophy of governance for all time, the despicable restriction of voting rights in pursuit of  some Higher Liberty, etc. etc.  I'll close now with comment on some of Prager's direct points.
 
"So it is sad when a parent who believes, for example, in the American trinity of “Liberty,” “In God We Trust,” and “E Pluribus Unum” has a child who believes that equality trumps liberty, that a secular America is preferable to a God-centered one, and that multiculturalism should replace the unifying American identity.
It is sad when a pastor or any other parent who believes that the only gender-based definition of marriage that has ever existed — husband and wife — has a child who regards the parent as a bigot for holding on to that definition.
It is sad when a parent who believes that America has always been, in Lincoln’s famous words, “the last best hope of earth” has a child who believes that America has always been little more than an imperialist, racist, and xenophobic nation."

By what coherent definition of liberty is equality ever opposed to it?  Some feudal state where every patriarchal 'head of household' dominates his wife and children, is all I can guess.  How can multiculturalism possibly be opposed to 'The' unifying American identity.  The fact that we are still here after several decades of being far too big for one narrowly defined culture is proof enough that there is no such conundrum.  Finally Mr. Prager I tell you personally that this is my country and I will not stand to have you tell me what I must only either feel about it.  Being conservative does not make you the normative default and it is not your or anyone's place to define the poles which everyone else must choose. 

There is no choice between believing that the USA is essentially glorious or essentially villainous.  It makes me feel like a kindergarten teacher to write that, and if Prager did not see his own self as personally embodying the United States he'd probably be able to see that 'clear eyed' choice for the nonsense it is.  And why should this one man, prominent in his own way but narrowly so, see himself as embodying the nation?  Well, as much as I don't believe that the US is fated to always be 'imperialist, racist, and xenophobic' it is a matter of factual record that we can be and have been. 

Dennis Prager is a comfortable WASP man who sees himself grandly enough to speak for America's soul.  The mathematical odds that one has nothing to do with the other are very low, and this is what ails modern right today.  It's demand for absolute submission of one's identity to it's dogmas is about White Americans who can agree, on the surface, that racism is wrong, but still long for some assurance that they will always be the 'mainstream'.  Conservatism in it's current form endows them with that sense of biblical 'chosenness' they suppose our ancestors felt without challenge.  It's no way to live.  It basically dooms them to have their essential selves rejected (aka. their opinions disagreed with) by family, neighbors, and compatriots at least every once in a while, along with all the sense of mortal loss that comes with that.  

Protip

Whenever you hear about "those people" doing fantastically evil things in regards to eating babies or using puppies as bombs, it's probably bullshit.  Anyway a properly constructed puppy bomb does not need to be dipped in gasoline to go boom.  If forced to watch its mother flogged to death by its siblings and then fed on nothing but a precisely arraigned recipe of devil voodoo humus  the puppies very own tears shall become flammable.  Even then the damage a puppy bomb can do is quite minimal.  The threat from a Mohmadian rabble is the summoning of suicide bomber genies.  A coordinated attack from those things can take out an entire megalopolis.

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Dortmund
4. Roma
5. Arsenal
6. Paris St. Germain
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Juventus
9. Cruziero
10 Porto

At work Today

I tore out ninety inches worth of old degraded caulk and inserted new caulk in it's place. 

I hacked the old caulk loose with a hammer and axe head and then ripped it off in one large jerk.  Then I hacked away the leftover shreds of old caulk with a boxcutter. 

When my new caulk proved  too thick to fit in the crack I sliced some of its length away with a young trowel. 

In the end it took me about an hour and a half to change caulks.  It's a simple job but hotter and heavier than you'd think. 

I Somehow Just Heard About This Yesterday

Mari Pesek graduated from NU a few years after me,  girlfriend to a good buddy of mine for several months and personal friend to myself as well. She was brilliant and sweet and the fact that's she's dead at 25 is a fucking disgrace.  It was an accident.  I'm not condemning anyone on this and would never think to do so.  I'm saying that the fact such a thing is physically possible in this universe is a fucking disgrace.  I'm saying that any universe where such a thing ever happens is a fucking disgrace. 

"Fuck death" ain't no motherfucking flip you see.  It's all there is.  When I state this formula I mean to say that being alive is being at war.  I mean that being alive is in itself an act of defiance.  It is an act of solidarity with those who have been taken and protest against there loss.  Natural means nothing and every death is unjust and 'pointless', is what I mean.  I mean that there's no need for humans to seek tribal drama and struggle against each other. We are all romantic underdogs in the war against death whether we choose it or not.  We will of course lose, but not until we lose hard, not until we make death pay for the pain it caused us in life and the pain it brings to those who survive us.  Fuck death is everything, is what I mean to say.  Fuck death. 

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Dortmund
4. Arsenal
5. Paris St. Germain
6. Roma
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Juventus
9. Cruzeiro
10. Porto

I think this might be the same as last week.  too lazy to check.

Popular Advise to GOP Aspirant for Governor of Texas

 "A free one way bus ticket to commiefornia for all the libs. Send em home and hope they stay."

"How about making people pass an iq test before they can move here from another state, and    
especially before they can vote."

"Find a way to remove Federal 'Ownership' or Oversight from all the National Forests, Parks, etc, Federal buildings, and ANYTHING controlled by the Federal Government. They are PURE EVIL and nobody i know wants them and their tyrannic behavior inside the boundaries of the State of Texas. There is, in the fine print, rules that give the States rights over federal "property" when the feds shut down and can't do their jobs. Ill be DAMNED if they try to keep me out of any land owned by THE PEOPLE. Washington is a government AGAINST THE PEOPLE. We are STUPID not to draw ANOTHER line in the sand bigger than the Alamo, and Guard it like never before. Obama is PURE EVIL. He should not even be allowed in our State. If i can help, you just let me know."

"Start treating loberals like Coyote's."

"Wendy Davis will Rot in Hell. Baby killing atheist bitch."

"Take a look at the child support you mother fucker. Then you can have my vote you bitch"

"Dump Obama the Treasonous and the US and become an independent country"

"Expell muslims and illegals and close the border behind them!"

"Round up all the muslims and move them to mexico. Along with the illegal's"

Hmm....

 

As I've Said Before

The original purpose of school sponsored dancers, the reason that such things are or ever have been, is to indoctrinate conventional gender roles.  One can not honestly do so and than blush when boys and girls start dancing a little bit freaky with each other.  Somewhere in this world there may be a dance that pantomimes getting married in a Presbyterian chuch immediately after college and then signing the child you named after Grandpa up for Boy scouts.  I don't know.  But the fact remains that most forms of dance are, have been, and ever shall be ritualized sex charades.  It isn't something unheard of before kids these days and y'all know this as well as I do. 

Tales From Around North Platte

I'm nowhere near old enough to "remember" Charlie Simants' murder of an entire family in the Village of Sutherland., 15 miles west of the rail yards and about twenty from the center of North Platte proper. I was in fact a reverse toddler.  But I do remember how the events sort of hung over the greater community in my childhood.  I remember the tales of snipers being placed on the downtown roofs to protect Simants from vigilantes while he marched across the town's main street from jail to court. (A security problem for all rule-breakers great and small that wasn't relieved until last year.)  I remember hearing the rumors of how Simants was part of a larger network of satanic or whatnot assassins who would terrorize the greater population shortly.  I remember hearing in both high school and college about the absurd attempt to place a media "gag order" on a public trial in a small town, one where the massacre was naturally the main subject of all conversations.  I'm not sure how I feel about this World-Herald story though; I mean, I don't think that Simants should be released until maybe he's on his last legs and completely enfeebled, but I'm really not all that concerned that's going to happen here.  Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I suspect this story was written to cater to a 'tougher than thou' crowd that desperately wants to believe that everyone but themselves are intolerably soft on crime and will lap up any information that tells them so.  Simants, almost certainly, will remain locked up. 

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Dortmund
4. Arsenal
5. Paris St. Germain
6. AS Roma
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Jeventus
9. Cruzeiro
10. Porto 

I Saw Christmas Shit Up at Home Depot Earlier this Week

Christmas fucking sucks.  Yeah I said it.  Not the weather, I can deal with cold.  I mean the entire ritual of insipid "joyful' music and energy sucking gaudy ass blinking shit on everyone's house and worst of all the way that the 'Christmas season' perceptually shortens life with the way it keeps creeping into a longer and longer time frame.  When I say fuck Christmas I don't mean fuck the commercialism in favor of the 'spirit'.  I mean fuck the commercialism and the spirit. Fuck the lucre sure but fuck God and fuck love too. Fuck Christmas.  Motherfuck Christmas to the fuck.  I'm going to Chicago on New Year's Eve to see Cheech&Chong along with WAR.  That's where it's at.

  

I Strive to Respect All Peoples and Cultures Without Condition.

I never would have dreamed of strutting about Mexico like an entitled Brahman among the primitives.  Never would have....

Oscar Hijuelos Died Younger Than Cesar Castillo

And that just fucking sucks.  Hijuelos' prose was zestful and perceptive.  RIP Cubano. 

 

Odd Second Sleep Wine Dream

I and some other Sp ce friends of mine travelled to Kearney, Ne for some sort of writerly business.  In my dream it was, for the most part, the actual Kearney, with small college campus laced with canals, yards, houses and streets as broad as those who laid this prairie town had absolute freedom to make them.  It was if anything a little bit 'too' real Kearney though that's a trifle.  The main thing is that there was some sort of tram-shuttle thing that moved at like a hundred miles an hour which I personally controlled with my mind.  It would shimmy, rise and dip on my half-conscious whims and several of my friends were tumbled out onto the ground by the twists of this machine.  They all turned out fine though I think. 

Sunday Reflection

I'm currently living in the neighborhood of 'Clinton', Lincoln, Ne.  It's a glorious place.  White, Black and immigrant all drinking together, negotiating over mowing duties or an overly gaudy lawn sculpture etc.  This is my my hood in my American ass motherfucking city and it's fucking beautiful.  I'm a little bit tipsy from a meeting with some Mexican roofers and the 49'ers won today.  Soon I will walk to O'Rourke's for a cheap but more than palatable bloody mary.  Life is fucking magnif. 

'Krokodil' Is Indeed Nasty Shit.

You shouldn't do Krokodil.  You should really seek to avoid becoming addicted to any opiate or opiate accessory if it's within your power to do so.  I'm not going to tell you what's best for you but that really is what's best for you. 

I'm very skeptical however about CNN's assertion that krokodil is 'gaining popularity' in the US.  Such a thing is always declared about a 'new' drug and this rarely turns out to actually be the case.  I remember how during the first 1990's wave of ecstasy the drug was portrayed as some sort of ultra-dehydrating cocaheroin superkiller, or more recent rumors about shit-gas drug 'jenkum' spreading here from Africa to 'gain popularity' among our kids when really there have never been any Africans doing such a jack-assed thing either.  (Africa does have its own local equivalents of MD 20/20 etc people.  There's poverty there sure but not fantastic alien poverty from beyond the mists of time.  Yeesh.)   And finally I most certainly remember sitting in school and having it taught to me as fact that crack-cocaine was something like 130 times stronger than the rich WASP friendly powder form. 

There are some people who simply want to believe that bad drug habits, and public morals in general, are forever on a irrevocable downward slide and that people these days are at the lowest we have ever been until tomorrow.  Mass media have often been bizarrely willing to tell these doomsayers what they want to hear , especially in regards to the class-shaming sex appeal of street drug addiction,

Anyways, happy Friday. 

Erudite :)

Unlovliness Here in Nebraska

A sixteen year-old girl has been ordered to bear a child against her will,  in rather clear violation of the Constitution, (Yes that's right.  Ownership of self is an easily deduced underlying principle behind the Bill of rights) She's in foster care you see; with, one can be assured, all the official state labeling as lesser and deviant that already comes with that.  And since Nebraska law requires minors to gain parental consent before an abortion*, the state has claimed, and the normally rational state supreme court has agreed, that it itself is the girl's legal parent and therefore has the right to forbid her from seeking her own medical care as she sees fit. 

Nebraska is, due to a nominally nonpartisan legislature and other factors, not quite so theatrically more conservative-than-thou as other GOP-leaning states.  But it most definitely is more anti-abortion than though, and not the least bit above playing the same sort of dishonest and childish legal games as say Texas or Kansas in order to make those dirty tramps suffer for it. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we have the technology.  We have had the knowledge to separate sex from pregnancy for a long time now and that cat ain't never going back in the bag. The days of using the specter of accidental pregnancy to enforce (exaggerated, protest-too-much) traditional gender roles are dying and soon to be gone forever.  And in the end it will be just as good for you as the oppressed women you grind under your heal to accept that. 



(*since of course parents have the right to know if they're being denied the grandchildren that everyone knows they are entitled to. And as for this law being used to cover up incestuous rape; well that's only a problem for those dirty other people; back east, not for Us.)  

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Dortmund
4. Arsenal
5. Juventus
6. Paris St. Germain
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Napoli
9. Cruzeiro
10. Porto

So, same as last week in other words.  Yep.  Waisting everybody's time there. 


In interesting news, General Giap was still alive until Friday.  I'm not going to get into my own views on Vietnam or the domestic era around it here.  It's mostly for the good that Baby-Boomer dominance and the corresponding tendency to view all things through the filter of those times is on its way out.  Still I do know the history and of course I know who Giap was.  One hundred and two years old.  That's a real thing.  That actually happened.  Damn. 

Ahh: the Soft Bigotry of Grumpy old White Suburbanites.

I'm the son of a single mother, Chris, the two of us in the very same lives and skin have been both welfare-dependent and part of a 'traditional' church-going, nuclear married family both alike.  We are all white as cooked sauerkraut by the way.  I know you didn't mention that specifically but; yes you did, and I am the only person in the family with enough South Omaha Spanglish to communicate with someone who doesn't speak book English. 

And me, I read the newspaper anyway.  expense compels me to read the Sunday NYT online but otherwise I get my hands on the actual paper whenever I get the chance. Blogger though I am I actually do loathe the decline of traditional journalism as much as you do; still it's bizarre to claim that financing your paycheck is a sign of good moral character , and your assertion that it's caused by people these days being inherently less moral, less respectable, more 'ghetto' than we used to be is simply bullshit.  You seem to be in the habit of thinking about Those People on the other side of the tracks a bit too much. Because you are most definitely  overestimating our power to influence events.

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Dortmund
4. Arsenal
5. Juventus
6. Paris St. Germain
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Napoli
9. Cruziero
10. Porto

Something to Understand About Poland

The Poles existence as mostly Catholic Slavs (Along with the Croats anyway, the important thing is that the Poles see themselves as unique) has led them to see themselves less as Eastern Europeans and more as the eastern frontier of the West.  This identity has allowed them (or us, in a kind-of-sor-of not really way) to maintain their national pride, to see themselves as heroic martyrs defending civilization from Asiatic hordes instead of the poor bastards who always lose.  For this reason the Poles maintain far more anger towards Russia than Germany or any other Western state that has tormented them in the past.  There's a healthy dollop of Islamophobia too, since the Ottomans were one bully that the Poles were actually able to consistently win against.

Which brings us to Lech Walesa, whose good work in freeing my Ddistantcousinland from the Soviets remains, but whose intervening taste for xenophobia, homophobia, and theocracy has destroyed any claim to being a  Great Liberator of history in the vein of Lincoln or Havel.  Now the man has apparently grown so enthralled with the idea of his land marking the border of Real White People that he thinks Poland should merge itself into Germany.    

To this I can only reply: Boy, what the fuck is wrong with your motherfucking ass?

Polish Nazis are, of course, an actual thing.  But that's far too Goddamn depressing for me to get into right now.   

An Aesop of Sorts, Maybe

In my late teens or early twenties maybe, I forget, the late former editor of my hometown paper,  Keith  Blackledge,  wrote an emeritus column describing his trip to Lillehammer Norway for the 1994 Olympics there.  He described how he was shopping for things one Saturday there and was shocked to find that all of the stores closed early on Saturday.  Keith went on to decry how Scandinavian socialism  had destroyed to good entrepreneurial spirit of the Norwegian people.  Mind you that Lillehammer is a town only the same size as my North Platte, about 26,000 people.  I'd guess with some confidence that it's the smallest place to ever host even the smaller Winter Games. And I emphasize now that this is actually what Blackledge actually reported to the people as fact, that small corner shops in a small town closed early on the weekend because socialism.  He had stepped off the plane expecting to see alien leftist decadence all around him,  so he did. 

There are Indeed Many Latinos Coming to Nebraska

and they are indeed especially prevalent in the 'Big Bend' region of the Platte between Omaha and Grand Island that so fascinated Stephen King.  Still you'll be glad to know that Latino children, as a rule, still prefer Catholicism over abominable Lovecraftian  blood god worship.  This right here is just fucking weird. 

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Normative gender indoctrination is indeed a big reason why such a thing as school-affiliated dances came to be.  Still the cart of 'allowing' the kids themselves to make whatever they will of their own dances has already done passed.  Deal with it bro.  P.S. , I'd hate to use the scare quotes again, but rightfully there is no such thing as schools 'allowing' students to express their identities. 

FC top 10

First time I've done this so early in the year.  We'll see how goes.

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Dortmund
4. Arsenal
5. Napoli
6, Paris St. Germain
7. Atletico Madrid
8.  Manchester City
9.  Juventus
10. Cruzeiro 

Hiroshi Yamuauchi

R.I.P. Mr. Nintendo.

 

Aaron Alexis Didn't Use an AR-15

Some major media outlets had reported that the Navy Yard shooter did use this particular gun.  They were wrong on that, and it seems as if this has some great importance beyond some fact-checkers getting their paychecks docked.   Apparently this mistake delegitimatizes calls for gun control in ways so obvious to Real Americans that they feel no need to make any effort in explaining how.  My best guess is that they take this as yet another sign that the coastal media are a bunch of wimps and therefore have no right to hold either gun culture or the lack of laws regarding it to the slightest hint of scrutiny.  Gun-rights absolutists are within the Real American tribe after all and are endowed with all the privileges that come with that.  It is their prerogative to declare that familiarity with guns is either a basic universal norm in American culture; or a sign of rarefied courage and wisdom exclusive to themselves; or both of these things; depending on what suits their needs for the moment. 

To this I can only say that I'm a western boy myself; bastard son of a farmer and truck stop waitress and step-son of a truck driver.  I fired guns with some regularity in my childhood and I dare say that I do share that special knowledge of what they really and what they are really about.  What they really are is dead machines; no more intrinsically evil than intrinsically good for that I suppose, and what they are really about is nothing.  A firearm carries no magic powers of manly heroism or invulnerability from threat.  And it is superstition beneath contempt to believe that private gun ownership is the only true guarantor against potential tyranny.  There is no such thing as that. The only, best and imperfect insurance against tyranny is a mind that rejects dogma and is unimpressed by both the actual authority of politicians and the imaginary authority of husbands and fathers.  Gun nuts who fancy themselves as defenders of a non-existent true American way wouldn't know either freedom or tyranny if it bit them in the ass. 

Addendum

My cousins house in Greeley, Co, did in fact get flooded; they got out with car and clothes on back; I'll have to talk to them to learn if they have anything to go back to.  And the south end of my North Platte is indeed threatened by the coming water.     North Platte still treats it's sewage in old-fashioned lagoons near the forks of the Platte by the way, and the mother Platte is naturally where both Lincoln and Omaha get a big chunk of our drinking water from.  We'll see how that goes. 

Rain Dreary

The Eastern plains of Nebraska are just now coming out of the mundane leftovers of the rain that murdered the Colorado Front range.  Here it was eighteen hours of light mist, about two and a half days of gray.  It made me oversleep work today and overall I've been in a moody and lethargic sort of mood with a weirdly low appetite.  I know it's fucking perverse to mention how what for us is a non event has affected my precious sensibilities but there it you have it.  I know that Greeley, Co has been hit hard and I have cousins who live outside there, slightly more than a football field away from the South Platte river.  I've internet messaged them about their state and have received no reply.  If something truly awful happened I'm sure I would have heard by now.  There are a couple reservoirs between there and my hometown of North Platte so I can be assured that place at least will probably be unaffected.  Me, me , me, me, me right?  Take care now. 

Tree Poem

In Nebraska City
We have the power to pardon murderers
by turning our apples
into Raw meat.
Fuck corn.  

Hornets

At 17th and Y here a colony of hornets have made a nest out of an abandoned railroad traffic signal.  They were sedate as I passed by and of course I did nothing to change that.  Still there's a very strong nightmare-surreal effect in watching dozens of the God damned things crawl about in their business.  I cower and freeze without shame when a venomous hymenoptera touches me.  I'm not allergic and I don't think my tolerance for pain is worse than average it's just that, the thought of being poisoned by these mecha-looking Other Things makes me cold.
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Voyager 1 is the first human made thing to leave the solar system.  That's fucking awesome.  It's true that we are well into the 21st century now and while progress in space travel may seem to be coming along slowly you must remember that James Kirk's birthday is still a hundred and twenty years from now. 

12 Years On

I remember how the Dolchstoßlegende. came immediately on the day.  Naturally spontaneously and without any demagogic prompting, at least at first.  I remember several people staring at the burning rubble and saying something along the lines of "America learned a lesson today".  They didn't specify this it was very clear what they were implying; that the mere fact that we had been and could be attacked was in itself proof of some failure of strength courage or action on our own part.  I remember how when people spoke of hitting the terrorists back they were cheered with equal sincerity, in perfect confidence that to speak of retaliation was in itself a sign of exceptional courage, honest certainty that the very concept of self-defense was the personal property of White rural conservative Americans and that nobody else was strong or good enough to truly understand such a thing.  We, (Not me even then, but I was native to the group and counted as 'us) had been proven right you see.  Right wing ideas regarding not just foreign policy but also social issues and more than that had been proven right.  This was the big I-told-you-so-event.  The one thing which proved that a life and culture fixated upon power control and hierarchy was the only possible alternative to hellish chaos. Here was the one proof that the nation was dependent on not just our choice of leaders or ideal of leadership, but could not survive without Our cultural dominance.

Our nation's behavior in the years after 9/11 does not surprise me in the least then.  Even if the Iraq war hadn't of happened some other violation(s) of Vizzini's first law would have.  The spirit of the time and all number of chauvinistic demons released by our anger demanded it. 

Off-topic as this might seem I have just finished reading "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke and can't help but feel that it is in some ways appropriate for this anniversary.  The main villain of the book is a fairy, I mean the literal magic sort, not the slur, and at several points in the book the Fairy species is described as "mad", "barely sane", etc.  By our standards they are indeed every synonym for batty there is ; but only as a consequence of being privileged.  The fairies are aristocrats; not metaphors for aristocrats but in manner, speech, lifestyle and attitude the real deal.  The actions of the 'gentleman' villain are in many ways simply exaggerated echoes of how the largely upper-class protagonists disregard women, minorities, foreigners the poor etc. themselves.  And I don't think it's a coincidence that Clark set her novel during the Napoleonic wars, near the beginning of the West's fitful, violent transition from hierarchical to democratic social norms. 

Clarke's point here, at least partially, (and yes 'anyone looking for a moral will be banished' etc...') was that both the sense of entitlement to privilege is insane and the actual fact of living in privilege induces insanity.  Anyone who honestly believes their privilege to be naturally deserved instead of arbitrary is bound to fall into 'stabbed in the back logic'; to make a god of their own strength as the only real determinative force in the world, to grossly overestimate what their own power toughness and ability to fight and punish can possibly accomplish; unable to grasp that every other group of people is an 'us' to themselves with their own self-centering interpretation of the world, so that other peoples action do not result chiefly or even mainly out of fear/respect vs. envy/contempt for 'us'.  Privilege makes you hostile, bestial, unable to notice when the rest of the world has outmaneuvered you or simply passed you by.  Privilege convinces you that your tactics of intimidation from fifty years ago will still work today and always will.  Privilege leads you to make that preemptive strike, start that land war in Asia, to sign that letter of succession convinced the weak Yankees could never defeat you and your fellow landowning Supermen.  Privilege leads you to turn on the firehoses, convinced those Outside Agitators stirring the Negroes up will simply cower away forever once they've seen your superior courage.

Even before 9/11 the political Right of this country were very much inclined to think of  themselves as the strong fathers whose leadership the rest of the nation could not live without.  Modern conservatism is, after all, 'politically correct' in its own way, a replacement for old direct appeals to white supremacy as the go-to claim of ownership over the United States, the go-to claim for entitlement to privilege.  They had their chance, after the crisis at the beginning of this century, to prove their pretentions to being our natural leadership class was objectively true.  They failed.  Famously, miserably, and totally.  Too enamored by the illusion of inventing reality that is an unavoidable comes with a life of privilege. And while there are signs that they recognize this failure deep down it is still clear, with every claim that President Obama is weak towards terrorism, (when the fact is that his tactics here have been depressingly similar to Bush's) with every eighth or ninth dozenth vote to repeal health care reform (Refusing to accept that their failure has been so complete that not even 'big government' is taboo anymore) that they are still clinging to that sense of ultimate vindication they felt on September 11th'; gained through the blood of multicultural urbanites they only grudgingly acknowledge as compatriots. 

Self Appointed Patriotism Police Keep Busy Until the Next War

I've been somewhat following Steven Salaita's neo/retro/timeless thoughts against patriotism and the way it is presented as essentially linked with militarism in this country.   I agree that this is a despicable thing, and the way that some responded to his article even more so.  The labeling of Salaita as a 'faggot' is however predictable still very disgusting, and needless to say those who view patriotism as essentially male and equate national identity with manliness/ability to dominate are far more in love with flags and crying eagles than they are with the soft-fleshed human beings who actually compose the USA.  As for the racism highlighted in his article, well, Salaita is a half Arab half Latin atheist people, so even if you Real American types do get your Muslim genocide I'm afraid that this guy would still be around to annoy you. 

Still Saliata seems to share the right wing assumption that patriotism is invariably tied to military dominance/imperialism even while disagrees with the notion and so rejects the very idea of patriotism out of hand.  I can't get behind that myself. 

"We can spend energy formulating a more inclusive and thoughtful patriotism, but ultimately it wouldn’t be energy well spent. Patriotism can only benefit all citizens if the state and its institutions are inclusive of the entire populace. Until that happens, and it has never happened in any epoch of American history, patriotism will have a stronger relationship with ethnonationalism than with movements for equality"

Not so fast friend.  No nation has ever achieved the ideal of being inclusive of its whole population.  Not to be flip or tu quoque about it, and I honestly hope I have no such unconscious motives, but every society has always condemned certain people to be gypsies tramps and thieves out of some irrational prejudice or another.  One could argue that the United States has been especially bad in this matter vis-vis other wealthy countries or not.  No tu quoque like I said.  But in spite of limits and inequities of the nation-state the fact remains that people are still going to seek out ways to express love of home and a mass identity beyond the self.  Patriotism will exist, there's no helping that, and I'm not sure why Salaita assumes out of hand that patriotism is essentially chauvinistic; that the far-right "ethnonationalists" are precisely the true enforcers of real patriotism they fancy themselves to be.  They aren't.  We are all agreed on fuck those guys, and patriotism has no eternal essence beyond what we make of it.  It is only ever whatever we choose to make of it, and I have a hard time seeing how we can maintain the energy towards an all-inclusive ideal nation without the emotional power of an all-inclusive compatriotism,   And yes a proud American identity can most certainly exist without being either overtly or implicitly linked to the conquering power of White Men.  It already does and always has.  Motherfuck John Wayne and all that but I still share a flag with Bessie Smith. 

About Town Today

I saw a woman I've had a sexual experience with wearing a pair of panties for a hat.  This wasn't a dream and I don't mean it as a metaphor, not a contrived one anyway.  This actually happened.  I didn't approach her to talk and probably wouldn't have even without that.  She's married see.  I didn't know that until several days after, that happened.  Husband was in jail apparently, and how she passed the time beyond with me than or now I have no idea.  She does like bourbon. 

RIP Tommy Gunn

Dead Monday at an Omaha hospital from a conspiracy that most definitely wasn't AIDS.  Some will never forgive Tommy for rejecting Rocky's fatherly wisdom in favor of the slick talking black man.  But he still smart enough to almost double a boxer's average lifespan. 

In the Late Summer Dawn There is Great Precision

Just something I thought to myself when I woke up briefly to see it this morning.  It was a halfly dreamt thought, obviously, and yet my waking self is at a loss to thing of any meaning for it save the literal one.  In the late summer dawn there is great precision.  I have a teenage memory of Lenny Kravitz having his pubic hair dreadlocked within the cover art for 'Circus' but I can't say now if this memory is accurate or not. 

It is somewhat surprising that such a thing a Labor Day ever made it past the gatekeepers of capitalist purity here in the US.  But I'm glad that it did and I'm happy that it's a separate thing from May Day here.  The old school rite of having young virgins flag up a penis is much more enjoyable than all the Very Serious political agitation one sees elsewhere. 

Feelings of Age/Feelings of Rejuvination

I'm in my thirties now.  Not 'youthful' certainly, but young enough to honestly floored and mystified when reminded that there are Still Americans who see hip-hop not as intrinsic to the general American culture but as other peoples music.  Seriously, what the fuck is this shit? 

* In other news, the seasons in Nebraska have consistently been about six weeks behind schedule this year.  Winter was more or less normal, routinely chilly and only truly frigid on occasion. The thing of it is that it started two weeks into January and lasted through several false dawns into April.  "Summer" has mainly been mainly mild until this week, when we are just now receiving the blast-furnace 95F+ heat normally felt in mid-July.  I don't know what if anything climate change has to do with it or what the end of this year will be like but it is damned odd.

** Still, school is back in session, and football has returned to make daylight drunkenness socially acceptable.  It is unquestionably late enough in the year to start listening to Venom.  Temperature be damned, if you will. 

*** In other sports news; Hail, Hail :-)

Watched "Frog Baseball" Just Now

I was of course a huge "Beavis and Butthead" fan as a teenager and always felt a deep sense of imcompleteness over having missed the original 'Liquid Television' pilot.  I finally did see it at about 19 and found it hilarious.  I watched again today and found it goddamned horrifying!  I don't know if this can charitably be chalked up to 'maturity' or what but, Jesus Chirst those fucking sociopath ghouls just up and bludgeoning living things like that!  It's fucking sick and anyone who finds it funny is fucking sick!  Ayy. 

 

 

 

 



Anyway "Liquid television" will always be cool.

 

 





AYYY.

I'm torn as to whether the US should be involved in bombing Syria or anything along those lines or what.  On the one hand it burns me to see a murdering dictator win but.... I don't know.  Let the French do it, or Israel maybe, if they can get over seeing Iran as the only true puppet-master behind everything bad that is, aren't we paying for their military for any actual benefit to ourselves or our policies at all?  Shit.

RIP Prague Spring. 45 years

Actually a very sad reminder that history is not a series of tales about the good guys facing hazard and winning for our moral edification.  History is actual breathing shitting people doing things and shit just happening.  The good guys lose quite a lot actually.  But I guess in this case "we" did end up winning in the end.  And certainly it was worth the effort.  Don't tread on my ninth cousins Uncle Joe. 

Late Summer Makes Me a bit Wistful-Nostalgic in Music Choices.

Especially when it comes to classic indie rock.  (The fuck did I just say that?)

The state fair moved outstate from  Lincoln several years ago now.  This actually makes me quite happy.  That shit sucked.  I did see 'Styx' when I had just transferred to UNL an eternity ago.  It was fun sure.   I am not going to post a Styx video here however.  Have some 'Achilles Last Stand' instead.

If you use the ATM at 20th an O on the edge of downtown you will be fucking eaten.   God forsaken demon bastards.....