Max 2001 to 2012 A real world shaker......

This morning, a little after nine, the world became a little less bright. Max the Yorkie slipped this mortal coil. I wanted to write this while the loss was raw, the wounds fresh, my ego and machismo momentarily absent. Max deserved an honest eulogy, and that's what I intend to give him now. 

Max came to me through a former girlfriend back in 2001.  He was  with me from his birth to his death, just shy of 11 years. 4.5 pounds of hair, piss, vinegar, and a heart that knew no fear. For all his heart and undying loyalty, in the end it was a bum pair of kidneys that finally got the best of him. I knew it was coming.  Friday I knew for certain, but I couldn't bring myself to make the short trip to the vet. I needed to be sure and I needed to finish saying goodbye. He ate rib eye steak all weekend, slept in my lap, and looked at me through his dark little eyes, in my mind telling me he would wait until I was ready. So it was with a heavy heart that we took that last ride together this morning. In the end, at that instant prior to drifting away, he was brave and calm. I was neither. The same vet who managed to bring Max back from the brink of death a year or so previous, was the same who helped me do what had to be done.

You have to know the type of person I was when I was released from prison back in 2000, to understand the real impact that little dog had on me. A career criminal, morally bankrupt, self serving, unable to rise above childhood scars and a misguided anger at the world. The first few years I was out, even at the inception of this blog, there were times I almost fell back into my old ways. A series of low  paying, back breaking jobs that I was lucky to have. The knowledge that I could hustle more money in a few hours than I'd earn honestly in a year, was a temptation that I faced on a daily basis.  The fear of dying old and alone in prison is a convict and criminals worst fear. It's like the fear square world people have of dying old and alone in a nursing home, surrounded by strangers, fluorescent lighting, and an institutional smell constantly in the air.  But that fear isn't always enough to keep a guy like me from back sliding.  While that fear was a big part of my turn around, it was Max that probably kept my mind right. Those first few years I had built such an attachment to him, there was no way I'd risk being separated from him. So I swallowed my misplaced pride and inflated ego. Eventually I started to fit in. I found a voice that a few hundred people a day bothered to read.  In the end, you can credit a 4.5 pound Yorkie for doing what 30 years of social workers, institutions, prisons, judges, police and parole officers could not do.

Winter days are short, night envelopes me as I pull  in front of our house after work every evening. Warm light glows through the frosted glass of a bay window.  My girlfriend, soon to be wife, is often there to greet me, if she isn't at work. It's home, a normal  home, something I lacked most of my adult life.  You can see the shadows of 3 dogs in that bay window back lit by the light inside.  A large shadow, a smaller shadow, then one yet smaller still. Max would wait in that window until he heard my key slide in the lock of the front door. As the door opened, he was always, always, right there waiting. I'm dreading that first night when I pull up out front, 2 shadows waiting, the smallest one no longer there, leaving an empty space which can never be filled. I loved that little dog.

I'll miss ya Max.

The fading and forgotten.

I'm working on putting together a series on some of the dead and dying rural areas around Missouri. My problem is time, I don't have enough of it.  I've always loved documentng the dead and dying areas of this city. I'm going to get back to that in the near future. I'm finding more than a few dead and dying places in my rural travels across the northern part of the state. I'm working on covering these as well.  I did find one place on the edge of the city that is about to become another suburban stuccoed McStrip mall.  I've been meaning to look around the property for years now. This past weekend I drove out there only to find that some of the buildings have been bulldozed. I snapped a few shots. I'll be going back this weekend and I'll write more on it then. For now, here's just a teaser of that place and a few  of the dead and dying areas I'll be covering later.

This place has been abandoned for a long long time, over a decade. It's as if the occupants left one day and forgot to come back. Forgot to take anything with them.

The roof and second floor is falling in. The house and outbuildings are filled with probably 100 grand in antiques. Or I should say, they were once filled with 100 grand in antique furniture. Not a single piece is worth a dime now. Vandals and time have exacted a heavy toll. Now it's just crumbling, rotting, someones once elegant surroundings gone to seed. I'll get more up tomorrow.

The number of towns dying on the vine to our north is astounding. More on those tomorrow.

Uncle Ed is Dead.

I wasn't going to write about the recent news of Ed (Uncle Ed) Muscare's death. He died in prison. I'd be lying if  I said  the news didn't give me a moments pause, a twinge of guilt even. Don't get me twisted, the twinge of guilt came not from the fact that an aged convicted pedophile died in prison, that's as good a place as any. The twinge of guilt was the realization that I ratted someone out.  Since I was a kid, I never ratted anyone out. It went against my grain. That said, and as unfortunate as the ending is, I think it's probably one of the few selfless, decent, albeit accidental  acts Ive ever been guilty of. 

Here's a quick primer for those of you who aren't familiar with Muscare.  Ed Muscare was a local KC TV personality. He had a children's program and he did the late night fright movie on Friday nights, back when Me and Jesus were in short pants. So Ed moves away, catches a beef for sexual battery on a child. He does a stretch, gets out. He moves without notifying his parole officer, catches yet another beef. He moves again , no notice, fails to register, he goes away again. He gets out and starts posting creepy shit on YouTube. I wrote a post, website Fark picks it up. It goes viral. The majority of his YouTube subscribers are kids, teenagers. Turns out, Uncle Ed isn't supposed to have Internet, and especially Internet interaction with kids. He gets a nickle. He died in prison a few days ago. I played a tiny role in his last conviction. I didn't go all Simon Wiesenthal on his ass. I didn't lurk in the bushes doing surveillance. I just dropped the dime that started the ball rolling. This link goes to all or most of my posts on Ed Muscare.   The MM / Ed Muscare saga.  

Look, I was pretty candid about my childhood run in with a similar version of Muscare. Kids getting molested is nothing new. It isn't rare.  If your lucky, you move on with a few scars and fucked up memories. If you are unlucky, it rules the rest of your life. I mostly moved on .Other than a few nights, deep in a bottle when I almost paid an old freak a wake up visit, I moved on. There was nothing unique about my story, or Ed's victims story, or any of those before or after. The storyline is always, always, always the same. It ends bad for the kid. It can never end badly enough for the Pedo. I can't tell you the number of emails I got from Ed's fan base. Whatever he did, it didn't matter. He did his time. I was a prick, a dick, and several variations of mother fuckers.  I also got several emails from a couple of different people who claimed they had fallen victim to Ed or someone like him. I don't have the time or inclination to look into those claims. That said, it's pretty rare for someone to get caught right out of the gate, first time.

There are different levels of crime. All of them are wrong headed, bad, anti social things. I get it. We all get it. Some crimes, most crimes, you can find a way back to the light. One serious brush with the law is enough for most people. Some like me, the slow and dull witted, it takes longer, half a lifetime. But eventually, you can fit back in with the world. Your past never goes away, it pops up in job interviews, background checks, the routine traffic stop that results in your prior felony alert pinging in the cops radio. I'd been out for about a year when I got pulled over for having a brake light out. Some country cop in Drexel Mo. He had me face down on a gravel road while he tossed my car. Nothing to find. A condition of my federal parole, submit to all searches by the police. It's part of the price you pay.  Your past never goes away, but it fades and dims with time.


You steal, lie, put your hands on someone in anger, a million crimes, you can eventually see them fade, dim with time. Ed wasn't guilty of one of those. He fell into the category of crimes and horrific shit you should never do. Child molesters, rapists, people who kill for pleasure or profit, those are the crimes that never really end. The gift curse that keeps on giving.   For every person who understands that, there are dozens of  slack jawed morons, who, just, don't, get it. Ironically, they also make the best victims.  Go figure.

Fast Eddie Friday....the early edition.

Before one of you clowns point out that it's Thursday and my title is premature or just plain wrong, put a sock in it. Nobody is going to read this shit on a Friday before Christmas. So Santa came early, heh. Lots to cover. So here we go , fast and loose.

Pulling out early can sometimes be a good thing, at least for the person pulling out early. The party who was pulled out early on however is often left dissatisfied and feeling a bit used, with a big mess on their hands. Right now the folks in Iraq are feeling that way I imagine. This headline greeted me this morning. "A wave of bombings ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 60 people and injuring more than 150 in the worst violence Iraq has seen for months. The bloodbath comes just days after American forces left the country."  Just days after the withdrawal, Iraq's fragile power-sharing government is grappling with its worst turmoil since its formation a year ago. Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish honchos are at each others throats. Start the clock on another chapter in the so called Arab spring.  Egypt Arab spring sprung a leak, and the mooslip brotherhood has the people riled up at the military. They are back in the street, raising hell, and calling for another overthrow. This time it's the Military they hate, the same military they were praising just a few months ago. We continue to stick our beaks into other folks business. Hillary Clinton is complaining about the Egyptian military beating women, yet she never uttered a fucking negative peep, when the Freedom Seekers were raping our female reporters during their previous riots.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again, " You can't reason with people who are so backward they think the Flintstones is a documentary." Millions of women and children are raped and murdered in the Congo, Darfur, and a dozen other African shit holes, yet we remain mostly mute. Toss in a few million barrels of oil and all a sudden we are the defenders of freedom.  While our POTUS pats himself on the back for bringing home the troops, shit is going from bad to worse less than a week since the last American boot left the ground. 

But fear not, there is hope and solace to be found in this fucked up soup sandwich. We can just blame it all on Bush. After all, that's been the standard line of defense for every fuck up and ill conceived plan by the current admin. So why fuck with prosperity at this point?

But you rubes don't come here for my world views. You come here for one liners, fucked up analogies, and the occasional ride through the gutters of prison stories and crimes once committed.  I think that's where I've run off the tracks. Lost my mojo. Misplaced my desire to write, Anything, the past few months.  So, beginning 2012, we are going to get back to the type of stuff that made this blog whatever the fuck it was, which is still open to debate.  In the new year look for more blight posts, crime posts, and more than a little bloviating and self promotion. 

For now go read THIS. Do it Now. 

I don't promote many sites or writers on this blog. Hell, I rarely post a link anymore. But this guy can write. I first read his Christmas Story in 2008. I've been a fan ever since. The writer suffered a near fatal heart attack recently. Thankfully he is still around. A finer writer you won't find on the internet.

See you rubes next year.
Mark Smith
Midtown Miscreant

The Duggars, the fetus, and my Aunt Dixies cat

I'm pretty sure the last time I penned a missive about the Duggars, I robbed a line from somewhere on the inner nets. Something about how the Lady Duggar had a Who Haa that must resemble the Holland Tunnel or a clown car, or something. I could go back and search through my massive archive, but this is a blog, not Dateline NBC.  If I didn't say it, I should have. Given that this is a blog, and beings this is the Internet, the following post may seem needlessly cruel, judgemental, and pointless. All of which makes it perfect Internet fodder.

By now those of you who follow this kind of non news gossipy shit already know about it, those of you who are inclined to steer clear of non news gossipy shit, most likely don't read the tripe I write in the first place, so I'm not too concerned about offending anyone, not that I ever do worry about it anyway.  Anywho, the Duggars are the freaks who have a reality show based on the fact that they keep having kids. 19 or 20 so far. I'm pretty sure they are neither catholic  or "undocumented" which pretty much are one in the same anyway. That said, just to be on the safe side, maybe that reality show Border Wars should consider setting up a checkpoint in this ladys cooch, which is probably shored up with beams and timber to keep it from collapsing in on itself, possibly trapping several miners or drug smugglers.

But I digress. The Duggar baby factory had a glitch on the assembly line, and she miscarried. I'm not sure what went wrong, but i suspect the conveyor belt broke and trapped the lil guy, or it's quite possible he got mugged or something, since I'm certain there is at least a small village up in that thang. Hey, if I'm glib it's because anyone who is so fucked up that they would bring 20 kids into this already crowded world, are pretty much the epitome of glibness. Lets face it, even if they can afford 20 kids, eventually the reality gravy train is going to jump the tracks. Then what? I suppose with 20 kids you could move to Indochina and set up your own tennis shoe factory. But the Asians wouldn't really welcome a small herd of missionary/breeders that are so fucking white bread white they make Rick Perry look like Tupac. Point being, eventually this shit is gonna cost somebody.

So Mrs. Duggar had a miscarriage. The family decided to hold a memorial.  All semi normal so far. Then they slapped this picture on the memorial notice they sent out.

Are you kidding me? Fetus feet? Is it just me, or if you photo shop some ketchup and chicken giblets onto the photo, blow it up onto some dayglo poster board, and put God Hates Fags in sparkle letters across the top, it would look like a sign from the Phelps klan. Who in their right mind thinks it's okay, even emotionally moving, to pinch your dead fetus little feet between your thumb and pointy finger, then snap a photo, and share it with the world?

"But M M, have a heart. They lost a baby".

My aunt had a cat when I was a kid. She never got the cat fixed, which may not even have been an option back in the dark ages of my childhood. This cat would drop a litter and in the coming weeks that litter would get smaller and smaller until there was like one or two kittens left. My Aunt didn't have a clue where the fuck the kittens were going, and when I asked her about it she told me they went to live in heaven with Jesus and all the missing kitties that came before them. Turns out momma cat was eating them. Maybe there was something wrong with the kittens, or maybe there was something wrong with momma kitty, or maybe they tasted like chicken. Who knows. My point is, the momma cat clearly didn't have any emotional attachment to these kittays, else she wouldn't have eaten the little furballs. 

All of which brings us full circle to the Duggars. I figure at this point, the parents have the same amount of vested emotional attachment to their kids as that momma cat had to her meals on paws baby cats. These people are as crazy as a shit house rat, possibly as crazy as an Arizona road lizard. They keep spitting out more pasty kids to boost ratings, draw attention to themselves, and line their coffers. Sending out a photo of your dead fetus feet, or is Fetuses, the proper term, whatever the case, this fucked up repugnant display is just another ploy for ratings or attention, by quite possibly the most deranged two human beings in the world. Ever.

Happy Hannukah bitches.