It gets so you don't mind it. That's the worse thing I have to confess.

Funny the things that will jar the memory, bring it all rushing back in a moment. I made a pick up for work last week and had one of those moments. I was at a local home for boys a week ago Saturday. It was pouring rain in buckets when I pulled up in front of one of several large old brick buildings. The kids were just coming back from supper, a fairly even mix of white and black, ages ranging from about 8 to 13. Three 20 something staff members charged with their care, looking bored, going through the paces, putting in time of their own. I had to ring a bell to get in, the rain was creeping down the back of my neck, no hair on my head to slow it down. I'm thinking to myself "this job sucks". I wasn't thinking, "This place is familiar, been here done this".  When the staff member let me in, practically a kid himself, young black guy in dreads, I stepped into the entryway my only thought was this is my last stop of the day. Then it hit me. The smell. All institutions that house people have "The Smell". I can't really describe it, a scent is a hard thing to put in words. Best I can explain it is to say that the smell of these places, boys homes, prisons, mental institutions, they all have this smell. Decades of sweat, shit, piss, old paint, industrial cleaners.  Al Pacino as Tony Roma delivers a line in Glengarry Glen Ross "All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind it. That's the worst thing that I can confess. You know how long it took me to get there? A long time."  That pretty much sums it up. You enter the institutional life at an early age and your senses are assaulted with that smell. After 5 or ten years it gets so you hardly notice it. You give up, you resign yourself to a particular thing. This is your life and there's nothing you can do but try to get through the moment.

That's how it starts. You grow accustomed to it all. You give in and up. That's how you get through it, you stop giving a damn.

I'm standing in the hallway, and all I want is to pick up the package and get out of there. But the package is locked up in another building across the campus, so I wait while one of the bored staff members goes to get it. The entryway is an institutional yellow. Not a bright sunny Martha Stewart Living yellow. More of a brownish yellow, like bile more so than daisies.

Then the sounds give my senses another wake up. The two remaining staffers are bitching at the kids, about a dozen of them total. They are going on about how this chore wasn't done right and there won't be any TV time until it is. A few of the boys are popping off, nothing like a little defiance to get you through the day to day same sameness. I can tell the staffers are holding back, on their best behavior because there is someone else in the building, an outsider, in this case me. The guy who went to get the package comes through the door, soaking wet, slightly pissed, he hands me the package, mumbles something I don't understand. I can't get out of there fast enough, away from the smell, the past. As I turn to leave, a black kid all of 8 or 9,  asks me where I'm going. I tell him I'm taking the package to a hospital. He asks if he can go with me. I tell him " Man, you don't want to go there". He looks up at me, all brown face and almond eyes as I move past him. Maybe I'm just getting sentimental as I get older, or maybe I am just reading too much into a nothing moment, but he gives me a look. That look says, "I'd rather be anywhere than here old man".

" All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind it. That's the worst thing that I can confess. You know how long it took me to get there? A long time."

The more things change the more they stay the same. In 1972 I started the Juvenile Delinquent circuit, Highview, McCune, group homes, halfway houses, a short stint in Western Missouri Mental health Center, and the cherry on the shit sundae, Missouri State Training School for Boys, or Boonville for short. By the time I hit prison I was like Ricky Roma, it got so I didn't mind. That's the worst thing I have to confess.

This all took place 9 days ago and I can't stop thinking about that kid, that look, those 5 words. "Can I go with you".  The entire incident lasted maybe 10 minutes, but I can't shake it. Maybe I'm just prejudiced by my own history, but I didn't see any signs that the institutional methods of dealing with these troubled kids had changed much over the past 30 or 40 years. House em, keep em busy, move em around like cattle from one place to the next, each one a little worse than the one before. When they reach a certain age you turn them out into the world, worse off than when they left it. If you ask me what the better solution is I'd be at a loss for an answer. But I can tell you the answer to how it will end. If you have been reading me for any time, you already know the answer, how it turns out. And I'm one of the success stories. I finally woke up after 30 years. Ain't that a bitch.

If a tree falls in Rockhill , does anyone really give a shit? And other observations.

I woke up yesterday morning, fired up that first coffin nail O the day, poured a cuppa John Wayne type coffee, and settled in to watch a little moaning news before I had to head out to my  sorta new, mostly shitty job. Some hipsterish/hippy-ish looking cat was on the tube standing in front of a fairly large tree that had been uprooted. Sharita Hutton, one of my personal favorite reporters, had the unenviable task of turning this non event into a live news bit. Fox 4 went live no fewer than 4 times in an hour and a half. Sharita, the hippy, and his tree. It's not like this tree fell on anything, nothing but some power lines maybe, no cars, school bus full of special Olympians, nada, nuttin, zilch. As much as I enjoy the humorous banter on Fox 4's morning news, and as much as I like Sharita Hutton, (no stalker) this  tree story was enough to make me yearn for a Kathy Quinn Payin it Forward bit. Not for nothin, but I can't stand those Pay it Forward spots, and Kathy needs to quit wearing all the Zebra print lounge wear on the morning news. I'm sure she is a wonderful person, but animal prints annoy me before I've had at least a pot of coffee.

So what the hell is your point M M?

Glad you asked. My point is there was plenty of more pressing and news worthy type news, and nobody really cares about some random dudes tree falling over in his yard. Maybe Fox covered the rest of the news that day, but it was all clicks and whistles to me after the pointless and incessant coverage of the fallen tree. So I figured I'd pick up the ball Fox 4 fumbled like Larry Johnson after a hard night of spittin on drunken women. So without further adieu.

Nmachi Ihegboro is the name given the new bundle of joy by parents Ben and Angela Ihegboro. Nmachi is a yellow headed, blue eyed, white baby. Ben and Angela are two full blooded Nigerians. They are not white, in fact they are about as far removed from white as you can get, not that there is anything wrong with that. When I was in the slammer, the American born black guys could be heard clownin the Jamaican and African convicts regarding their darker skin tone. Comments like " He is so black he is blue" were  pretty common. And there was usually some money line about running from lions tossed in for good measure. Never play the dozens with a black dude. They know more momma jokes than you can possibly imagine. " Your momma has a wooden leg with a kickstand, and her name is Ileane", is one of my personal favorites, but I digress.  My point is, little Nmachi's parents are very dark skin-ded, and that baby is as white as Rush Limbaugh. I would not be surprised if little Nmachi was born with a birthmark in the shape of a McCain Palin campaign bumper sticker on his ass end. Nmachi isn't an Albino, he is a Caucasian according to the doctors.

Nmachi's parents are calling it a miracle, a gift from God. I'm calling bullshit. Now would be a good time to mention that the family lives in Great Britan having immigrated there  5 years ago.  As far as I could ascertain through the media coverage, there has been no DNA test or paternity test. But poppa says his wife is entirely faithful so it must be a miracle. While I applaud his faith in and devotion to his wife, I'd suggest a gum swab just to make sure there hasn't been a Limey sharing more than tea and scones with the misses. If my girl had a baby that came out looking like Manute Bol, you can bet your ass I'd be skeptical. If she refused to do a DNA test, I'd be creepin on her in her sleep with a Q tip. If that kid turns out to be a match to both parents, I'll not only apologize, I'll send him a Nickleback cd, a Starbucks gift card, and a lifetime membership to Peta, or any wacky mostly white organization of his choice.

And that, boys and girls, is how you write a human interest piece.

Fox 4, Sharita, Call me.

The NAACP. the Tea Party, and Dancing Bears....Be sure to bring your own rocks.

" The people with short hair started throwing rocks at the people with long hair. The people with long hair started throwing the rocks back. Come to find out when they have a rock concert in Califorina, everybody brings their own rocks."        David Allen Coe

That's a money line from an obscure song called Dakota the Dancing Bear. It's about a bear that  is forced to dance at a roadside gas station, and ends up supporting a female bears heroin habit. I didn't say the entire song made sense, and it doesn't.  But the line about the rock concert is kinda deep when you think about it. In fact you can apply it to the  pissing match that is brewing between  members of the Tea Party and the shot fired across their bow by NAACP president Ben Jealous. More on that later, as it's just another rock being chunked at the oppositions melon.  I've been all contemplative and shit lately ,trying harder than ever to see the merit to opposing views. It's a funny thing, the more I try to see the "other sides perspective, the harder it is to find reason in it.

So which side are you on, M M?

I like to think I'm on the side of common sense. Unfortunately that leaves out the Left. It leaves out the Right. And I'm still pondering the middle, but they seem as full of shit as the rest.  At the end of the day it's all about who ends up King of the Hill. Everyone is scrabbling to reach the top of the pile, and stay there. The NAACP and the left pull out Tea Party protestors spitting on members of congress. Not to be outdone. the right pulls out the recent decision to not pursue charges against a couple of meat heads from the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation.
It's all political posturing and dick measuring.
It's Texas Hold Em, first one to show a tell , losses.

I'll see your racist Tea Bagger...............

and raise you one of the guys who just got free of the voter intimidation beef.



The people with long hair start throwing rocks at the people with short hair, the people with short hair start throwing the rocks back. Pretty soon you can't recall who threw what first. Meanwhile, we all lose. Promises of change are as empty from one administration to the next. It's all about hidden agendas, special interests, and staying at the top of the shit heap.
Meanwhile here in the real world............
Unemployment
Crime
Education
Poverty
Immigration
The real issues that are dragging all of us down, take a back seat.
Jesse Jackson compares Lebron Bazillionaire James to a runaway slave.

Some Tea Party member compares Obama to Hitler.

and the people with short hair..........well you get the picture.  

And don't ask me what the solution is. If I knew that, I'd be at the top of that hill enjoying the rock fight.

Fast Eddie Friday....... It's double M reader appreciation day.

Every now and again one of the readers of this blog will make a comment about another reader who they perceive to be riding my sack. In regular English, that means  the commenter  thinks the other commenter is a brown noser. I've  taken down maybe  a half dozen comments since I first opened up this can O worms bloggy thang. I'm a free speech kind of guy, besides there is nothing like a pissing match in the comment section to brighten my day. Then some chuckle head will take shit too far, threaten to make the other readers colon into a necktie, and I might take it down.   So you have to say some pretty twisted shit to get erased from the comment section. Sometimes the comments are pure golden ingots, even if the ingot is shaped like a turd.  An example is this recent comment regarding an old post about Ed ( I like lil Smokies) Muscare .

" Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Uncle Ed Muscare gets five years..

 ": your a motherfucker and usually i put **** in my swears but this time i don't cause you are. putting someone innocent in jail is not a legal criminal state law you motherfucker. ps by the way LET HIM FREE OR YOU ARE COOKED HUMAN MEAT SOLD FOR FREE! :p you suk and i hate those kind of judges and edward the famous mokie making man is 77 and if he is in prison for 5 years, he will be 82 and won't exist and only the prison people may see him which is not good or great when he is not on youtube. o yeah forgot and this is for mm, i am only 4 and i am helping edward make videos bitch."

Now how can I walk away from this blog after drawing a response like that?  Simple answer, I can't.  I don't know about all of you rubes, but I for one appreciate writing that is mostly clicks and whistles, slathered in crazy.

So lets get to it. Fast and Loose........

Some shit is just too good to make up. Meet Dorothy Cascone. A local lady who decided to put a contract out on her ex husband George. She had several insurance policies on the still alive and kickin George. While the case itself isn't really noteworthy, the cast of characters is straight out of an Elmore Leonard novel.  Dorothy's picture speaks a thousand words, but I'd like to add a few more. For starters she has a mug on her that would make a freight train take a dirt road, seriously that is one haggard looking man eater. I say this fully realizing that I'm not exactly a joy to look at. Still there is ugly, and there is mud fence ugly, and one look at Dorothy is enough to make Rosie O'Donnell start dating Ron Jeremy.  Her intended target, George, is a character as well. In one interview George says she got caught because she  only paid a couple grand for the job, and used her boyfriend , who rolled on her, as the hit man. George went on to say she should have hired some out of town talent for the job because  there isn't anyone in KC who likes her..

Unnamed sources tell me that Dorothy was trying to reach out and touch George in retaliation for years of having his arm jammed up her ass as he recited mother in law jokes in Vegas. As evidenced in the photo.

The dude in the above photo is an Iranian official explaining acceptable hairstyles. Mullets have been outlawed in Iran. While I'm not totally unsympathetic to the banning of mullets, I do live in Independence Mo, the land of meth, 1980's cameros, rebel flags, wiggas, and the mullet , I'm not going to be able to side with Iran, even though I agree mullets are responsible for the decline of civilization. Iran is preparing to stone a woman to death for adultery. They bury the woman until her breasts are below ground, then chunk rocks and sticks at her until she is dead. They even have strict protocol, use a particular size rock so she won't die or get knocked out too soon. A cleric in Iran recently delivered this money quote, " "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he said.
That's right, not covering up everything except your eyes can cause earthquakes. If there ever was an entire country that called for being turned into a giant crater, it's Iran. These fuckers think the Flintstones is a historical documentary, although Wilma and Betty would definitely end up to their necks in dirt for being all trampy and causing earthquakes.

Their were smallish riots in Oakland last night after a Bart cop was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The case involved a cop who shot a guy who was face down on the ground and had one hand under him which he wouldn't show. The cop  pulled his pistol and shot the guy. But here's the rub, the cop claimed, and the jury believed him, that he was reaching for his tazer, which is shaped like a pistol. I won't rehash the whole case, but the story seems plausible, and the jury believed it was. Naturally lawsuits were filed within days of the incident, and the family of the dead guy have gone out of their way to incite folks in Oakland. So the tired and downtrodden took to the streets of Oakland to seek justice. The broke windows, burned some shit, and.........At least a dozen businesses were damaged, including a looted Foot Locker store and a ransacked jewelry store, police said.  And there it is, looting which is really what this riot was all about. Judging from the photo, even a few anarchist douche bags  needed some new Nikes. I'd suggest the folks in Oakland who are sick and tired of young black men dying, take to the streets and target the killers of those young black men. Say what? The killers of young black men are almost always other young black men? Oh, never mind.
My point is this, nobody can deny that police often use heavy handed tactics against young black guys, it's a fact of life. Also a fact of life, police shootings of young black men is minuscule when compared to the violence and death that young black men and boys perpetrate upon each other. Gunshot is the number one cause of death for the young black males, and it's not cops who are doing the majority of the killing.  The people who go out rioting after a case like the one in Oakland, are by and large the same scumbags who spend their time killing one another, and any innocents that happen to get in the line of fire. The shit going on in Oakland isn't about justice anymore than the L A riots after the Rodney King verdict. It's about opportunism, vandalism, and seeing how much free shit you can grab while you fuck up your own neighborhood. You can't go insane over a few isolated incidents while ignoring the day to day killing of your young people, by your young people, and expect to be taken seriously when you rage about perceived injustice. That dog just won't hunt.

Thats a wrap. Have a safe weekend.