Midtown Miscreant

The fading and forgotten.

2012-01-12T09:22:00.000-06:00

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.

2012-01-11T09:22:00.000-06:00

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.

2011-12-22T08:13:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-15T08:40:00.001-06:00

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.

A heartfelt holiday message from me to you...........

2011-12-14T08:39:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid there was nothing more anticipated than Christmas. That first bike, a maroon Western Flyer, high handlebars, banana seat, chrome fenders. I remember waking my mother before the first light of day, rushing into the living room, the bike gleaming next to the tree. The colored light reflecting off the chrome. That first ride in the basement parking area of the Wornall Bank. I rode that same bike for 5 or 6 years. I jumped shit with it, broke bones on it, even ran over my older sister while doing a wheelie on it. All good memories, for me anyway, for my sister, not so much. But the sweetest most vivid memory was that first morning, that first time I laid eyes on it. 45 years ago, and I remember it like it was last week. There were other memorable gifts. A Batman utility belt, when Batman was a slightly paunchy looking dude who came on TV, and the only special effects were BANG, POW, flashed across the black and white tv screen in our small living room. The Man from UNCLE pistol that looked like an innocent radio until you flipped the secret lever which turned it into a radio with a barrel and pistol grip. GI Joe frogmen. Some years there was more, some less, but every Christmas of my childhood was good. It was good because there wasn't anyone trying to Fuck... It... Up..

Jump forward 4 decades, and every douche bag with an agenda is trying to Fuck...It...Up. Much like Santa, I've got a list. My list doesn't need to be checked twice to find out who is naughty or nice. Everyone on my list, a shit list, is a dick wad, reprobate, PC shit heel, or just your average garden variety ass hat. Here's the list.

Atheists.
I'm not talking your regular run of the mill, I don't believe in God but don't feel the need to clown on anyone who does, type Atheist. Hey, I'm not exactly a believer, but I'm not buying the whole stars colliding, totally random, one in a gazillion chance, happenstance thing either. Not to mention, I don't want to be the dick whistle who spends eternity getting sodomized by some red dude with a pitchfork and goat feet, after spending my time on earth clowning on Christians. If there is a God, I'll refer him to this very post. Maybe I can get in on an exemption. Or at least get an anti sodomy rider on my one way ticket to hades. The atheists I've got a beef with are in the same vein as the mother and son whack jobs who decided to put a Santa Skeleton on a crucifix at a courthouse in Loudoun County, Virginia. An atheist mother and her son who some reports say is christian put the display up. Someone else took offense and knocked Santa skeleton off his cross.

Schools, government organisations, and anyone else who insists on calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree. Is it just me or does this PC horse shit seem like it's only targeted at CHRISTmas? I've yet to hear anyone demand that a Menorah be referred to as Holiday Candelabra, or that Kwanzaa should be renamed Newly made up holiday. Maybe Ramadan should be changed to "Man I need a sandwich day". No? Too much? Have I stepped over the line and offended someone somewhere?

Here's the rub. Christmas for most people in AMERICA has become less about religiosity and more about kids getting gifts and enjoying being kids. Some Christians aren't cool with that, but that's beside the point. Christmas in the 5 decades I've been around has been a time of year when kids get to enjoy the perks of being a kid. Free from having someones ideological tripe shoved down their throats. It's about food, family, memories, helping people out, all that. But the main thing Christmas is about, here in this country, it's about those first few minutes, that kid running out to the tree, that first look of pure unadulterated joy at seeing whatever it is they have been waiting for. It's about being a kid, even for adults.

So how about we ease the fuck up and stop using every excuse under the sun to find offense in a tradition that has been around longer than the clowns who are offended by it. If you don't like Christmas, don't observe. Make up your own thing, like Festivus, or Kwanzaa, or "I don't believe in shit" day. Just don't piss in every ones Post Toasties and pretend you are offended. You aren't, you just can't stand to see anyone enjoy something that goes against your own fucked up grain.

Merry Christmas Bitches.

Fast Eddie Friday....I was sexually harassed by Herman Cain.

2011-11-04T10:14:00.001-05:00

Here we go kids. Fast and loose.

It all started with sausage on a pizza. Sausage I did not order. Godfathers pizza. It wasn't anything really sexual in nature. Just a vague and ambiguous feeling of discomfort over the sexually suggestive meat product on my pizza. It made me uncomfortable. Then I found what appeared to be a pubic hair on my coke can. I want 35 grand. NOW. Now this all happened to me back in the 1990's, still it haunts me and I can't enjoy pizza to this day. Ok, that was clearly bullshit. I hate Godfathers pizza and I spent a fair chunk of the 90's in prison, where pizza resembles cornbread with beans, because they didn't serve fucking pizza, but served the hell out cornbread and beans. I just couldn't resist making fun of a black guys misfortune, free of the fear of being pegged as a racist.

I assumed when claims surfaced that Herman Cain sexually harassed 3 women in the previous century, the usual cadre of race police would rush to Cains defense, throwing the race card like ninja stars at anyone white who uttered a single critical word against this high profile black man. Strangely, I've yet to hear a single word from Sharpton, Waters, the Black Caucus, Jesse Jackson sr. or jr., The Grio, NAACP, and every flaming white guilt laden liberal who cried racism over the slightest criticism directed toward Obama.

Cain has about as much business being president as I do, or as the guy currently in the white house does, which is zero business. Cain isn't qualified to run this country. Sadly neither was Obama, and I say that as a one time supporter. That said, the hypocrisy of the left, the one sided racially loaded indignation that has been pulled out like a pistol at the slightest criticism of Obama, is nowhere to be found in the controversy surrounding Cain.

The first black president, Bill Clinton, tie dyed a woman's dress with his presidential tadpoles, he dipped his cigar, which was probably an illegal Cuban, into the who ha of an intern, yet he is the favorite elder statesman of the liberals. Ted Kennedy is probably going to be canonized by the democrats, despite the fact that he killed a woman, while driving drunk. Obama, managed to overcome Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and his formerly ashamed to be an American wife. Don't get me wrong, the right is as fucked up as the left when it comes pointing out the other sides dirt while sweeping their own under the rug. But when race is a part of the equation, there is no short supply of self righteous white and black folk circling the wagons to defend the honor and blackness of our current Potus. Clearly someone changed the rules without telling me. It is now ok to criticize the President without Maxine Waters picketing your front yard.

Rick Perry's dreaded N word rock didn't get nearly the press that Cains alleged Sexual Harassment saga is getting. Mitt Romney's religious beliefs have received next to zero press. Not that I give a rats ass about Mitt's belief in a religion that is barely as old as his secret underwear. I'm just sayin, I'd like a little more even handed slinging of the race card from the left. There is currently a BLACK GUY being eviscerated in the press over accusations that are coming from people who don't want to put their face or name to the allegations. Where the fuck is Al , Maxine, and Jesse when you need em?

Occupy Wall Street. Americas Arab Spring or Americas Coldest Winter?

2011-11-03T10:08:00.001-05:00

I keep hearing the Occupy Wall Street movement is Americas version of the Arab Spring.
If you think that comparison means an uprising against a murderous dictator, it doesn't. If you think that comparison means rioting, looting, tearing up shit, rape and assault, you are closer to the mark. Whatever OWS began as, whatever the message was originally, it's become lost on most of the so called 99 percent. From the handful of squatters in Kansas City, to the human landfill in New York, and now the riots of Oakland, this thing has devolved into a closer version of the Arab Spring than it's supporters care to admit. And by that I mean, whatever noble cause the original protesters laid claim to, is overshadowed by a disorganization, hypocrisy, petulance, stupidity, and increasing violence, and anarchy. Yesterday in Oakland rioters broke windows , built a huge bonfire in the middle of a city street, and shut down Oakland's port.

The violence, the sexual assaults inside OWS encampments, will be blamed on interlopers, outsiders, and the homeless, rather than actual OWS protesters. The agenda is finally clear in my mind. I wont presume to speak for the remaining 99 percent of Americans, which is the mantra of the OWS mobs. They claim to be speaking for 99 percent of Americans, I'd wager 99.99 percent of that 99 percent would beg to differ.

The message is clear. And the message is "We want your shit, if you have more shit than we do." The message is " We don't want to pay for our college degree. Even though we agreed to pay for it." The message is that of a petulant spoiled child who has been handed everything it could ask for, yet still demands more." Just like that spoiled brat, the OWS people are now starting to throw themselves on the ground, kicking, screaming, and holding their breath until mommy and daddy give them their way.

Are there people with legit grievances in the OWS movement? People who are older, paid their dues, become disenfranchised, lost their way, their hope? Sure, but they are the minority. Older, middle class, worked their asses off, lost it all. For those people I feel. But they aren't going to find their way among the majority of OWS degenerates. They have nothing in common with the young clueless shit heels who make up the majority of the group. So I'm not without sympathy. I just don't understand how throwing in with a bunch of green deadbeats is going to advance their cause or ease their burden.

The OWS mess will continue to devolve until it turns deadly. The lowest common denominator of America will continue to complain about their lot in life. They will bemoan the fact they can't get a job with that expensive Arts degree. When the reach a fevered pitch, when they take to the streets and start rioting and looting, and they will. When that happens, I won't shed a single tear or lose a moments sleep. The end result will be a whole lot of smashed heads and broken teeth. You reap what you sow.

Someone should have explained to these young chuckle heads that life isn't always fair. Some people will always have more shit than other people. Sometimes you have to settle for that less than idyllic job or life that you naively assumed would be handed to you after 4 years of Alcohol binges and worthless degree in mid century macaroni portrait studies.

Occupy Wall Street ....The Amish Occupation. Join us. We have pie.

2011-11-02T07:45:00.000-05:00

It's been a minute since my last post. Unless you count the one yesterday. I've been busy protesting Wall Street, corporate greed, and all things capitalistic. I had forsaken any and everything related to or provided by the war mongering, greedy, corporations. And by forsaken, I mean everything except, my smart phone, laptop, Internet connection, car, gas, electricity, medicine, and a whole bunch of other shit that I'm convinced I cant live without, and am totally entitled to as an American. Other than those basic staples of life, I'm living off the grid. No longer shackled by the bonds of capitalism. No longer enslaved by the corporations. I AM THE 99 PERCENT.

I was originally going to join the Kansas City Occupy Wall Street, but frankly I can't stand the smell of Patchouli oil. And I'm not about to pitch a tent at Penn Valley Park. (no Seacrest). The last time a straight dude pitched a tent at Penn Valley Park he walked funny for a week. While the Kansas City protesters were holding a rally/demonstration in front of City Hall , on a Sunday, apparently it's productive to protest the greedy gubmint on a weekend in front of a gubmint building occupied by a half dozen Nigerian janitors, I was busy with my Amish brothers, standing in solidarity against big oil, button manufactures, electric companies, and the frozen pie crust and filling industry.

We rode en masse to the demonstration.

We shut down Big Oil.

We shut down big business.

We shut down a gambling den / pool hall.

We ate pie.

Rather than raise hell, we raised a barn.

Then it happened. I never saw it coming. I was kicked out of the Amish of Mo. OWS movement. It all started with my beard, or lack of. Goatees are apparently a sign of Capitalism and pridefulness. My Amish cohorts told me I'd need to let my beard grow out if I was going to be a member of the group. My short trimmed goatee was putting on airs. They told me I'd have to wear a straw hat and let the hair grow on my shaved head. Then they found out I offered weed and a lady Schick to one of their hairy bonnet wearing women. They pulled my pie card. I was excommunicated from the OWS/ Amish division.

I've returned to KC. I went back to work for the greedy corporation that has enslaved me by enabling me to pay my bills and have shit like food, electricity, communication devices, and buttons. Not for nothing, but buttons are a highly under appreciated luxury. It's a bitch trying to peel the petticoat on a furry dutch speaking broad whose clothes are held together with hooks. So, if you were asking yourself " Where's MM", now you know. I was protesting, making a difference. Fighting the man. Now I'm back, just another zombie drinking corporate koolaid. Just like most of you rubes.

***Clearly this was a weak-ish attempt at parody, and some pretty harsh anti-Amish rhetoric. Same difference. I've been following the OWS thing, and I'm going to delve into it tomorrow.

Midtown Miscreant joins the Occupy Wall Street Movement

2011-11-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

I know you've all been wringing your hands, waiting with abated breath, wondering what has become of me. Did he finally quit this blogging thing? Did he go back to his criminal ways? Is he dead? In jail? Unable to pay his Internet bill?

Nope. None of the above.

I joined the Occupy Wall street Movement.

But blogger is fucked the fuck up. Probably an unscrupulous move by the greedy corporate types trying to silence my voice.

So your going to have to wait until tomorrow.

Expect an epic post, with pictures and moral indignation.

Tomorrow.

Three Mothers......

2011-10-03T00:25:00.001-05:00

Here in Kansas City the local news reports of a mother who runs into her burning home to rescue her children. She makes it out with two, her body so severely burned she can't make it back inside to save the third child. Three years old. Firemen find her on the ground near the front door. In time she will find cold comfort in the saving of two. She will forever be haunted by the loss of the third. That's what a mother does. It's what she is.

Another mother. Another inconceivable tragedy. She super glues her child's hands to a wall. The two year old girl was repeatedly kicked in the stomach. A week in the hospital. Two days in a coma. She survives and was just released. Hopefully to some stranger. The people who should have known something, The blood ties of family. In this case meant nothing. Hopefully the beginning of a better life. The police and press are calling it torture. Give it a name, but it seems to defy description.

My own mother, died at 42. I was 22. Now 10 years her senior, it's hard to separate the sentimentality from the reality. Thirty years can play tricks with a memory. A few old photos you can't remember being taken. Small flashes, moments in time. The lines soften, then blur. You end up left with a few mental snapshots taken with a soft lens by your minds eye. I think I've developed an overly sentimental belief, having lost my own, that mothers are what's right with the world. They are supposed to be that one unshakable certainty in a world that is ever reaching new lows.

I was reading about the two mothers. The good one badly burned but now expected to recover. The bad one, locked up in some Texas jail, her 3 other children safer than they've ever been. Two things. I am in awe of the first. Repulsed over the second. The mother who ran into that fire, she never gave it a single thought. She just did it. There was no other option. It gives a little hope. The second mother. She didn't just act. She thought it through. A sadistic twisted creativity. How does a person even think of something like gluing hands to a wall? It's the thinking it through, the deliberation, I can't get my mind around. They'll claim she is insane. Postpartum depression. Too much stress. Some other bullshit excuse. They'll ignore the forethought, the deliberation. That's the rub. The courts being what they are, they'll do that dance. Psychiatric examinations. Behind the scenes the attorney and the prosecution will cut a deal. There won't likely be a trial. She will get out. Sooner. Or later. Maybe karma will catch up to her, if it even exists. Most likely, she'll just get out and go on with life like it never happened.

You have to wonder how much the child will recall. You have to hope that time will blur the lines for her. The lens will soften the hard edges. If she is lucky it will all fade to black. Like it never happened. In a perfect fairytale ending, the suffering mother and the suffering child would somehow find one another. Each filling the void of the other.

When I was 7 or so, there were a couple of years where I had vivid nightmares. I'd wake up sweating, afraid. I'd take my pillow and blanket, slip into my mothers room, Go to sleep on the floor next to her bed. Safe. Nightmares imagined and real, kept at bay for the rest of the night. The cool hardwood floor and my mothers soft breathing meant I was safe. There was never a time in my childhood I questioned or gave much thought over my mothers love. It just was. The way it is supposed to be. But not the way it always is. Some aren't so lucky.

From grief to relief to anger. 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds

2011-09-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

The old woman next door, hair so white it almost seems colorless, back so bent her stance resembles an upside down letter J. We speak across the backyard fence from time to time. She tells me she and her husband were the first people to move on the block, in the mid 50's, a few years before I was born. The couple who originally owned our house, both long dead, were friends of hers. Our house sat unoccupied for close to 8 years, all the utilities stayed on and the children of the previous owners came by every couple of months to check the pipes, maybe to visit the ghost like memories that fill a childhood home, everything seeming so much smaller than they recall. Not long after we moved in I found hundreds of time cards in a box. 35 years worth. The mans name, small square holes punched in the cards, marking time like a convict making x's on a calender. The yard went to seed, the once manicured lawn grew ragged and bare in spots. The flower beds, just like the former occupants, died, leaving behind an empty impression lined with rocks and bricks. They were all friends and neighbors. Now it's just the old woman next door, and another across the street who rarely ventures outside. When she does come out, wearing those giant black sunglasses that practically cover the entire face, the two old women will meet in the middle of the street, talk, then retreat back inside their respective homes.

The woman's children show up about once a week. sometimes it's the son, other times it's the daughter. The son lives down in the Ozarks, has the look of an aged hippie. The daughter drives a high end imported SUV with JoCo tags. This week it's the daughters turn. She is standing just outside the front door of the house as I'm leaving for work.
"Mom " "Mom" She leans inside the doorway, like a frightened child peering inside a closet trying to see what's back in the darkest corner of it. I make myself look busy like I'm looking for something in my car. I don't want to appear to be intruding on her moment even though I am. Her voice gets softer after about the 4th or 5th "Mom". As I watch it all unfold, I wonder if this visit will end with an ambulance out front. No sirens, no rush to leave. The daughter seems to want to walk through the door, one foot is over the threshold. she is frozen in place. She is on her 10th or 20th "Mom" at this point, reduced to little more than a whisper. Just as I'm about to walk over to see if I can help, the old woman comes around the corner of the house. She gets within a few feet of her daughter. She speaks, but I can't make out what she says. The daughter jumps. she goes from concern, to relief, to chewing the old woman's ass for scaring her. As they go inside the softness gone from her voice, I hear bits and pieces. "Door" "Unlocked". The tone is like that of a parent scolding a child, the roles reversed now.
As the door closes, I hear "Mother". The tone no longer soft. The moment seemingly forgotten.

Understanding cultural differences...

2011-09-12T09:59:00.000-05:00

When I first got out of the joint I dated this crazy Laotian chick, which proves 2 things. One, I'm not racist. And two, I don't discriminate against crazy people. Before you get the wrong idea and conjure up some fucked up vision in your mind of me running around banging some wrinkled up old Laotian woman in a conical straw hat and betel nut stained teeth, I wasn't, and she wasn't. Her grandmother pretty much fit that bill, but I never laid a paw on her. In fact her granny didn't like me, or any round eyed cracker for that matter, but she especially disliked me. I'm pretty sure grams was what passes for a racist in Laos, and I'm equally convinced that she made racist comments about me, but the old bitch didn't speak a lick of Gods Language, which everyone knows is English, American English, not that fucked up gibberish English that the Limeys speak. So every time I happened upon the old bat, she would start speaking in clicks and whistles, shrill ear shattering, nails on chalkboard clicks and whistles. I'd ask the woman what the old bag O bones was saying and she would laugh and say ," nothing".

The entire family lived in an old brownstone building in Columbus Park, which the Asians have pretty much usurped from the Italians over the last 15 years or so. Everyone had their own apartment. The building was as clean as the Board of Health, but it smelled funny. Now the woman I was dating was about as Laotian as I am Irish or German, which is to say she had never set foot in Laos. She was born in Texas the late 1960's, maybe early 70's. She inherited her looks from her mother, who you could tell was once upon a time quite a looker. She inherited the crazy gene from her grandmother. One time the woman was bitching at me for something or the other and I tried to ease the tension with a little humor. I'm paraphrasing because I don't recall the exact words, but it was something about her calming down before she lost her temper and used Kung Fu on me. She went ballistic and got all ethnic prideful on me. Which seemed a little ludicrous to me, beings she was only Laotian genetically speaking. She had the black hair, almond eyes, porcelain doll features, but she also spoke with a Texas drawl, except when she was speaking gibberish to one of her family, and her voice took on that shrill tone just like the rest of them. We parted ways shortly after that.

I came away from that short lived relationship with a little better understanding of cultural differences. Foreigners eat fucked up food, but they find our food equally fucked the fuck up. If you think I'm oversimplifying cultural differences, you need look no further than this very blog for proof. A Cambodian boy, a real one, from Cambodia, and not Galveston, has made the news. Here's the skinny on this kid. He is around 2 or 3 years old. Hard to tell because the Asians don't age like we do. Sure you see some old ass wrinkled up Asians, but they are like 130 before they start to wrinkle. So in reality this kid could be 15 or 16, you can't judge by height, since the Asians aren't usually tall. His parents left him with his Gramps. Apparently the kid was still breast feeding when mom and pop dropped him off with the old man.

So the kid isn't eating. He is all the time crying. Then one day he has an epiphany. He sees a calf suckling at momma cow. Kid elbows the calf out of the way and goes to town. Which just proves that real Asians will eat anything, and they are genius innovators. Which explains how they have come to own more of America than Americans.

Meanwhile we Americans have organizations like PETA, who would probably be all over this kid if he were over here sucking on a cows tit like some frat douche on a beer bong. If PETA did show up protesting, they would probably be met by counter protesters from some mommy blogger million mom group, protesting the kids right to fresh milk. Me, I'm just glad the Cambodians don't keep dogs as pets, otherwise the little squirt might have got nipped by Duke the lab for getting fresh, if you catch my meaning.

Fast Eddie Friday..New Begining, or the begining of the end.

2011-09-09T09:25:00.000-05:00

As we all wait for impending doom, anyone with an Internet connection and half assed vocabulary will be waxing philosophic on the 9/11 anniversary. Despite meeting those qualifications, I won't be one of them. The last thing anyone wants to hear is some middle age prick go all Juan Williams on the Muslims. Hey, if I'd been around during the Spanish inquisition I wouldn't trust Spaniards, catholics, or anyone with a red hot set of pincers. So I'll continue to harbor suspicion toward anyone that remotely looks middle
eastern-ish including the guy who moved in to the house behind mine. He looks Syrian, or Hispanic, hard to tell. I've rigged up trip lines with empty cans to alert me if he tries to overrun my Independence compound. Just. In. Case.

With my racial profiling out of the way, we can get on to more pressing matters. I've got my own anniversary on the horizon. This bloggy endeavor will be 4 years old next month. It pains me to admit it, but this thing has gone to seed, untended, and largely ignored for the last 6 or 8 months. So, I'm going to make one last run at getting my creative juices flowing. If I can't get back to posting with a semblance of regularity, I'm gonna pull the plug on this blog like the life support system on Sunny Von Bulow. So stick around. Over the next few weeks you rubes are either going to witness the slow death spiral of this once promising blog, or the rebirth of same.

Nothing says, deluded douche bag blogger playing writer, like a blog series. Who can forget my ground breaking Urban Blight, Prison for Dummies, or Ruthless Worthless, and Clueless series? While the links remain in the side bar, they have long since quit working, you'll just have to take my word for it or search the archives. So without further ado, I give you my latest series................
The Route

Monday through Friday I drive the same tired ass route. Passing through the small towns and corn fields of northwest Missouri. If it sounds boring, that's because it is. But at least once a week I encounter that special brand of country crazy that you just don't find here in the city. In the days and weeks to come, you lucky readers will marvel at the oddities, eccentricities, and plum fucking nutty shit that I see from my cracked windshield. Either that, or I'll abandon this series in one or two posts, like the last few times I've started something.

That's one big dog. My first thought at seeing some knucklehead driving down a 2 lane blacktop with a Mule in the back of his pickup. The mule took up the entire truck bed. No tailgate. Wasn't tied in. Just standing there catching the wind like a big ass dog. The road to Trenton Missouri is pockmarked with a few small dying towns, Amish dudes in buggies, and slow moving dust covered pickup trucks. And at least one Mule that prefers to ride rather than be rode, or ridden, whatever. See ya next week.

Irene sings her siren song. Douche bags respond.

2011-08-29T11:11:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wondered why so many people throughout the world hate us? Is it our arrogance? Our wealth? Our obsession with celebs? Our fast and loose morals? Our military might? Taylor Swift? Sorry, Kanye got that one right. I argue none of these. The fear and loathing for all things American can be answered in one simple made up word. Douche-baggery. I've never watched the nightly news in Islamabad, Kuwait, or any of the other countries that are basically giant litter boxes. That disclaimer aside, I'd be willing to wager they run continuous reels of us, mostly white folks, doing retarded shit. When you are sitting in a mud hut in some third world dung pile, your battered wife holding the rabbit ears of your 12 inch black and white, as you eat your goat sandwich, some douche bag comes across the screen, carrying his douche baggage. If you happen to be Amir the angry goat herder, it's got to piss you off. "How the fuck did these people not only manage to survive natural selection, but thrive? I have to wear this hot ass beard and wool snuggie, with no a/c, whilst these capitalist dogs taunt Allah and flirt with death."

Don't get me wrong, I could not care less what any other country thinks of us. I just can't help but wonder what we look like when some outsider sees images of some nimrod showing his ass.

Unless you were ~~hidden in plain sight in a Pakistan compound~~ living in a cave, avoiding the non stop coverage of Irene was an impossibility. While everyone from public safety officials, mayors, gubners, and gubmints, repeatedly warned people in harms way to get the fuck out of Dodge, douche bags were busy getting caught on camera, doing douche baggy type shit. If there is a God, he was sleeping on the job this weekend. There was ample opportunity for him to cull the herd and get rid of some of his rejects. Apparently God does not have a recall plan in effect, because he put out some defective product that walks among us with impunity. It's one thing to refuse to leave your home like a captain going down with his ship. It's another sort of stupidity altogether, to climb the railing of a seawall and do your best Kate and Leo on the Titanic impersonation.

If there was any justice in this world, there would have been more than a few of these clowns swept out to see and devoured by sharks. Small ones. Slowly.

Social media Jihad...Save the Plaza from new business. Ignore the gunfire.

2011-08-25T11:03:00.000-05:00

They are back. Like an outbreak of herpetic lesions on an Indy avenue hooker.
Threatening business owners on the Plaza. Using bully tactics. Most of them don't even live in Kansas City proper. Many of them don't even live in the state of Missouri. The single purpose of this mob is to take over a shopping district they neither own or have any actual investment in.

If you think I'm referring to mobs of black kids running amok through the streets of the Country Club Plaza. I'm not. If you think I'm talking about a small group of single minded, pompous, pushy, non civic minded douche bags, from the Save the Plaza 2010 Facebook page...winner winner, free range, over priced, chicken dinner. You are correct.

This tiny but loud group of zealots who have appointed themselves not only the overseers of a privately owned property which they have no monetary interest in, but also the voice of a city. Never mind that half of these trolls don't even live in Kansas City, or the state of Missouri. TheFriends of the Plaza / save the plaza group is a glaring example of everything that is wrong with social media.

You would think this group who rabidly confesses their love for the shopping district would be up in arms over Highwoods piss poor response to weekly mobs of out of control kids. You would think that these suburban jihadists would be up livid over 3 kids getting shot on the sidewalk of their stuccoed hallowed mecca. Well you would be as wrong as a Nambla member at a boys leapfrog race. There have been no public showings of outrage and furious anger over bullets flying and ill mannered shit heels overtaking the streets of the Plaza. Not. One. Single. Concerted Peep. No protests. No signs. No Save the Plaza citizen patrols. No press conferences. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bupkiss.

The latest cause du jour. A new restaurant is set to open....and gasp......wait for it.......The restaurant won't be covered in stucco!!!!!!!! Seasons 52's facebook page is being inundated with threats from the self righteous french poodle crowd. Some of the members are calling for a blanket boycott of the Plaza. This would seem to run contrary to their professed love of and loyalty to the Plaza. In a rough economy, boycotting businesses that are already feeling the pinch might be the final straw for many of these businesses. With an unemployment rate hovering in the 9 + percentage range, these clowns are doing their dead level best to drive away employers, kill jobs, and stagnate progress in a city that is already in a downward spiral.

Here are a few money quotes from Plaza zealots on the Seasons 52 Facebook page.

Joseph Levi Oliver

Can't wait for this restaurant to fail and watch its insulting façade go down with it. Best, Concerned Kansas Citian."

Scott Murdock

Seasons 52 - It's not too late! Stop spending all that money making Kansas City angry! It's still far cheaper for you to do the RIGHT THING!!!!

Karen Walsh Williams

omg- highwoods was not thinking when they signed on this company.
or maybe money was talking. It is shameful how they have destroyed a
historic beautiful site to make way for this strip mall, low class facade,
Might as well signed on Chilis or wendys.

Heather Moore

Listen to Kansas City!! Right now we are mumuring; just wait until you hear us ROAR!!!!!!

Andrew Petersen

How many equally agitated Kansas Citians would it take to dismantle that scaffolding. Now that's a flash mob I could support.

Facebook specifically, can be and has been a great tool for some good causes. Want to find a cure, save a whale, make a wish, or any other do good type mission, then good for ya. There is nothing wrong with a good, selfless cause that benefits someone or something. Everything that is right about social media, is also everything that is wrong with social media. You get a relativly small group of people, loud, obnoxious, shallow, meat puppets, who become the self appointed voice for an entire city. So you get what we have with the Save the Plaza clowns. It's okay to bleed out on the sidewalks of the Plaza. It's perfectly fine to flash mob, bully, and harass shoppers. But by God you better be surrounded by stucco when you do it or there will be hell to pay.

Ever see a starving Ethiopian holding a cellphone?

2011-08-16T11:00:00.002-05:00

There is a small corner lot on 35th st just a block or 2 west of Prospect. I suspect in it's former life the lot held a house. Now it is surrounded by a black metal fence. A small cluster of mostly plastic playground equipment, a swing, slide, monkey bars. There's no basketball court, not room for one. From time to time I'll see some teenage mother playing with her child on the equipment. More often than not the park is occupied by another group. They wear matching outfits. I'm always reminded of those special charity walks that spring up in Kansas City.

You know the type. A sea of pink t shirts fighting breast cancer. Another one, although the particular cause eludes me at the moment, a sea of 20 and 30 somethings, broken into smaller groups, stumbling down Broadway and through Westport. Young white adults,matching T shirts, using the cause de jour as an excuse to get shit faced drunk. The occasional pair of girlfriends sitting on the curb, one holding the others hair up as she vomits Walt Disney Technicolor jello shots into the gutter.

Back to the little park. The T shirts are size 8 fuckin X. Always either white or red. Same with their shorts. They aren't really shorts, more like high water pants. Back in the stone age I came up in, you would have been ridiculed mercilessly for wearing shit like that. Crack a joke about one of this groups clown size clothes today and you're likely to get lead poisoning. Unlike the earlier mentioned groups, the giant T shirts don't have a symbol or catchy logo silk screened across the front. No pink ribbon. No "Fight for a cure". This group doesn't have a cause. They are a cause. A lost cause.

Yesterday there was just 3 of them at the park. Two of them sat on red plastic milk crates. The third was on a swing. Giant T shirt flapping in the breeze. Swinging. Last week there was a good dozen of them. A crap game on the sidewalk leading into the park. A girl who couldn't have been more than 15 or 16 watched her toddler play on the plastic slide.

There was a time in the not too distant past, at the inception of this blog, when I held some grudging sympathy/ empathy for these young guys. A regular reader from Chicago called me one of the most racially apologetic white boys he knew. I mistakenly saw a little of my own youthful ignorance in the sleepy eyed young thugs. I'd done the full tour. Every juvenile institution in the state had been home at one point or the other. I'd walked the same prison yards as guys just like the group in the park. So I felt obligated to give them a pass, lay the blame for their lot in life at societies feet. I'm over that shit. Over and done with it.

Which brings me to the Plaza MOB problems. I capitalized mob because that's what it is, even though Alvin Brooks, the octogenarian voice of the black community took exception to the term MOB. Local conservative talk show Shanin and Parks interviewed Brooks. When one of the hosts called the mass of black teens, tweens, preteens, and young adults, a mob, Brooks in his own words "spanked" the interviewer for daring to use a word that was so racially charged. And therein lies the problem. If you don't put on your PC hat, tiptoe around the race issue, then you are going to get "spanked".

So what is the connection between young, black, gang bangers and unruly black youth mobs on the Plaza? They are one and the same. Period. There is no difference between hundreds of kids taking over an entire shopping district, and a dozen teens taking over a small playground intended for toddlers. Three kids not yet in high school were shot Saturday night on the Plaza. How is that different from the endless string of shootings on the east side? Same perps, same victims. Same fuckin thing.

You need look no further than this money quote from some limey sociologist regarding the cause of the riots that recently crippled the UK.
"I strongly suspect that it's people who are unemployed or on very low income who are involved in this. People are constantly bombarded with advertising and they see these shops full of goods they can't afford and would like to buy and are being encouraged to buy, there's a lot of that going on." So says Paul Bagguley, a sociologist from the University of Leeds.

So it's the haves vs. the have nots. Never mind that the London riots and the Plaza mobs were largely brought about by cellphones. Ever see a picture of a starving Ethiopian holding a cellphone in one hand and an empty bowl in the other? No? Do you know why you have never seen a starving Ethiopian holding a cellphone? Because they are fucking impoverished, that's why. We don't know dick about poverty in this country. By and large you won't find children with distended bellies, flies covering their faces, waiting for death to do it's job. Not here. Not in this country. Poor people still manage to cart their kids across town to hang out. Poor people still manage to be the most obese group in America. Welfare feeds them, the government provides. the average poor kid in America lives like a fucking king compared to third world poor.

This shit on the Plaza is happening because the city lets it happen. Action is only taken when the Mayor gets within earshot of a pistol. This shit has nothing to do with poverty, lack of anything to do or the means to do it. Meanwhile young black thugs kill each other along with anyone unlucky enough to be in the area. It happens daily on the east side, on the south side, in northeast. Calling it a parenting problem is a joke, because the parents who drop their children off in an area that has been all over the news in recent weeks, are not really worried about parenting. They don't give a rats ass about their children. Give it a name, but don't sugarcoat it in a dusting of politically correct hand wringing over the plight of the less fortunate in this country. The least fortunate in America have it made in comparison to the truly poor in the world.

Fast Eddie Friday...Gloom and Doom.

2011-07-29T09:40:00.000-05:00

I figure I had best get in one final post before the shit heels on Capital Hill throw the country into a downward spiral and we all end up in a post apocalyptic world, fighting over gasoline and dented cans of cat food.
So here we go. Fast and loose.

I'm not ashamed to admit it, I'm way out of my area of expertise on the debt ceiling debacle. I feel like Rosie Odonell at a dick convention, it's all way beyond my grasp. You have one side of the debate telling us that we will be as fucked up as a soup sandwich if we don't raise the debt ceiling. DOOMED!!! On the other hand we are told nothing will happen, don't raise it. The one constant in this time of turmoil, the clowns who decide our fate are incapable of working together and getting a single thing done. The men, women, and ~~Barney Frank~~, sit on their collective ass in Washington, one pissing match after another. Like monkeys trying to fuck a football, they just can't seem get the job done. I keep waiting for the leader of the free world to step up and put a shoe on congress, make em get their shit together. Still waiting. In the words of Americas greatest poet, Merle Haggard, " Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?" I'd make my monthly threat to abscond from the United States, but shits not even safe in Norway , so I'm not sure their is anywhere safe to escape to.

Speaking of unsafe places, the hordes of misunderstood youth have apparently taken to descending upon the Plaza to scare the bejesus out of the french poodle crowd. I was listening to Shanin and Parks, fuck my life, the other day when the subject of last weekends shenanigans took place on the plaza. Caller after caller told the hosts horror stories regarding black urban scholars running amok in KC's stuccoed shopping/entertainment district. I tend to take radio callers comments with a cup of salt, however, between news reports of gunfire, seven young shit heels caught in an SUV with 2 pistols, and caller after caller claiming to see kids as young as 10 running wild and free through the streets, it's hard to dismiss it all as white racist paranoia. Naturally there is the same old defense of this fucked up behavior. There isn't anything for these kids to do, or anywhere for them to do it. A city that can't even repair its streets or keep waterlines from bursting every 5 minutes, is supposed to entertain bored teens and even tweens? It's an easy fix really. Charter a couple of buses. When the shit kicks off, cuff em and stuff em. A night spent in city lock up, smelling hobo shit and eating dry bologna sammiches, might persuade these delinquents to stay home and play with the xbox and the pitbull.

Maybe I'm just starting to feel my age, fuckin AARP magazines showing up in my mail box, buying Metamucil in bulk. I'm starting to feel like Wilfred Brimley. Out of touch. It seems like we've lost our way in this city, in this country. Washington is broke, absentee landlords disguised as parents expect the city to babysit their kids. It's enough to make you long for simpler times, before the internet came along with it's 24/7 instant bad news cycle, each story more fucked up and hopeless than the last. I'd hunker down in my basement with a weapons cache and canned goods, but I'm a felon so I can't own a gun, and my cellphone coverage is spotty down there.

Likes : Sunday School...Farmville...Tracking down Casey Anthony...Crazy comes to Facebook.

2011-07-19T11:14:00.002-05:00

Marsha Roush likes Tori Spelling, spending time with family, the movie Beaches, and Love. Nice huh? Middle class white soccer mom, probably belongs to the PTA as well, although her Facebook page doesn't say as much. She is also a big fan of the late king O pop. Oh, I almost forgot, she loves to post on another Facebook page. The I Hate Casey Anthony page.
Here's her first comment of the morning "Marsha Roush Good morning my fellow hunters... Is everyone locked and loaded....." If you think Marsha is just a lone nut bag trolling the fields of Farmville, you would be as wrong as Mike Jackson at a Cub scout jamboree.

Here's just a few gems from the I Hate Casey Anthony site:

Michelle Tyree

Hope somebody slits her throat!

Yami Sweet

Kill that whore kill that whore kill that whore..do u smell that?... its the sweet smell of casey anthonys corps in the everglades.

James Burkhardt

Casey Anthony would be worth killing if you dont think so keep readin your bible..

Diana Bishop no matter what we need to keep talking until justice is served, Casey Anthony baby murderer is on my back window of my car in white shoe polish, I would rather replace windows than shut up.....

Cherrada Shepard

i think we should all come toughter and sue that whore for bothering our lifes and now we cant get on with our lifes till she is dead come on who feels there children are safe with a baby killer walking the streets ROT IN HELL BITCH I JUST WISH I WAS THE ONE TO BE THE HERO :)

Connie Baker She IS a cunt. Time to go on a cunt-hunt. Why hasnt' she been reported killed yet?? unacceptable.

I think you get the general idea. 55,000 plus members. People just like most of us. Middle class. White. ( black Folks stand up. You guys get a pass on this one) Normal, and I use that in the loosest sense of the word. The Internet, especially sites like Facebook have become something right out of a Stephen King novel. The reactions on the IHCA site speak volumes about the idiocy and hypocrisy of a good chunk of our society. It also lays bare the pure D fuckin crazy people we brush up against on a daily basis. Most of these people are just talking shit, wouldn't bust a grape in a jelly factory. That said, how many actual fruit baskets do you think might be taking this thing seriously? Some loon sits in the glow of his computer screen decides to right the wrong, ala De niro in Taxi Driver. He practices in front of his mirror. "You talkin to me? You must be talking to me." Next thing you know some woman unlucky enough to have a similar look, similar name, ends up dead.

We live in world full of slack jawed morons. They become emotionally invested in the lives of people who live in another time zone, a different state, yet they remain mute about about the countless deaths, atrocities, tragedies in their own back yards. Their Facebook pages are filled with I love Justin Bieber, or, requests for a milking machine for their Farmville dairy. You wont find any links to sites to prevent child abuse, or crime, or breast cancer awareness. It's all games or look at me type shit. None of these Facebook trolls give a rats ass about Caylee Anthony. They just can't resist the attention, the mob mentality, the false sense of empowerment. One woman posted every few minutes for 12 hours. Her 3 kids probably running around with loaded diapers and sticking forks in fucking electrical outlets.

A white suburbanite talking about slitting someones throat, is more chilling in my mind than all the thugs and gangstas on the city's east side. My name is Mona. I like walks on the beach. Sunday School. Lady GaGa. And disemboweling Casey Anthony. The internet is as fucked up as a soup sandwich, but I'll never lack for material. Just be careful who you bump in to in the produce aisle. That blond mom in the capri pants might gut you.

Photos courtesy of the I hate Casey Anthony facebook page.

*** Need to give credit, lest someone shivs me for unauthorized use.***

Fast Eddie Friday...Monkeying around with Hippy Chicks...

2011-07-08T10:31:00.000-05:00

My 52nd birthday is rapidly approaching. In a couple of weeks I'll be a decade or so away from collecting Social Security, if there is any left to collect, and if they don't change the eligibility age to 80 or some such bullshit. I've noticed that the approaching birfday has got me all nostalgic and shit, at least in the movie reel I play in my head while driving the vast flatlands of northern Missouri. Monday through Friday with the city at my back, I drive north into the land of the Amish, run my route, and spend my time flipping the radio between Rush Limbaugh and NPR. Is it any wonder I'm all fucked up? Somewhere around Jamesport I lose reception, pop some Robert Cray or the Boss into the cd player, and allow my mind to drift.

For some reason I usually end up back in the mid to late 1970's. To quote Chuck Dickens "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". It's really a wonder that I can recall anything from that time period. I mostly just recall the myriad of Hippy Chicks I bagged. I was about as far removed from Hippiness as you could get. Don't get me twisted, if you could smoke it, snort it, or swallow it (no Seacrest), then I was all about it. Long hair aside, I didn't look or act like a dirty hippy. I was a hood, or what passes today for a waste of flesh with no redeeming social value. Good times. I have selective recall from that time period. I prefer to remember the Sunkist skin and bra less halter tops, while trying to block out the fact that most if not all of the girls back then looked like they had the Jackson 5 in a scissor lock. They walked around with chia pets down their long hippy bell bottoms. Vaginal afros aside, hippy chicks were free and easy. Which brings me to the actual point of this post, a movie review I caught on NPR right before the reception faded to some bluegrass station and I almost sideswiped some Amish prick who treated the highway like it was the Santa Fe Trail, or some midtown douche nozzle riding his bicycle down the middle of Armour road.

The NPR bit....Back in the 70's Columbia University researcher Herbert Terrace started an experiment on a baby chimp. Long story shortish, Terrace was trying to prove that language wasn't unique to humans. More to the point, he was trying to prove that a chimp could communicate just like us. So he gets a baby chimp, moves it into a fancy Upper West Side brownstone of Terrace's former student, Stephanie LaFarge. They dressed the monkey up like a little kid and taught it sign language.

I know what you are thinking..." WTF MM? We had to read your rambling bullshit just to find a story about a monkey living in New York". Short answer...Yes. But it gets better, or worse. The NPR bit goes on to say that the Lafarge woman breast fed the chimp. When the chimp, named Nim, reached chimp puberty, Lafarge let the chimp check her out. Now they don't come right out and say she let Nim peel her hippy panties, but they say she let him explore her. After the fun part about the chimp ~~banging~~ exploring the hippy, the story got all sad and shit. Nim ends up trying to eat another hippy chicks face. He also doesn't really learn language, just signs for food, play, and probably the international sign for blow me. You can read about Nim and the fucked up hippy monkey rapists here.

About the time the radio went tits up, NPR was starting to make me sleepy and Rush was replaced by a farm report. I went back to day dreaming about what it was like to have a 30 inch waist, a full head of hair, and 15 dollar ounce weed. Which, not for nothin, wasn't all that good. Weed today is way better. Just last night after my Preventive Glaucoma Bong Hits I was playing a video game and got to thinking, As some 6 year old kid in France killed off my character while talking shit to me in Frog, I had an epiphany. What if we really only exist to amuse the Gods. Maybe they are all hanging out somewhere in the galaxy, controllers in hand, laughing their asses off while they make us do stupid shit. Like I said, weed has got alot better over the years.

Casey Anthony and Nancy waste O space Grace. Symptoms of a bigger problem.

2011-07-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

Did the jury get it right? Wrong? Everyone and their cousin has chimed in, mostly with self righteous indignation. Nancy was so beside herself she claimed the Devil was dancing. Since the outset of this case Nancy has referred to Anthony as Tot Mom. Grace, a former prosecutor and a blood sucking waste of space, must have forgotten how the system works. We, the public, tried this case and handed down a guilty verdict, not based on evidence or facts, but on emotion, hyperbole, and the incessant media coverage. I called her guilty somewhere in this blog. My opinion hasn't changed, but that doesn't make me right. It doesn't make Casey Anthony innocent either. The verdict just means she couldn't be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

The bigger problem is not that our justice system is flawed. As distasteful as it may be to so many, the system worked. The media inundated us with pictures of the absentee mother, partying while her child decomposed a short distance from her family home. She lied more times than we could count. We hated her. We will never understand how a mother could behave as Casey Anthony behaved. Her baby was missing, she partied on. In the end, all of the media shit storm turned a tragedy into a circus side show.

My initial reaction when I heard the verdict...The biggest miscarriage of justice since the OJ trial. After a little reflection it was clearly a knee jerk reaction. OJ got off not for lack of evidence, there was plenty. OJ got off because of a racist cop, and a jury that was split between race and fear. The black members of the jury saw a brother getting railroaded by a cracker cop. The whites feared another LA riot. You'll never convince me otherwise. Casey Anthony got lucky. She got a jury that weighed the evidence and found it lacking. She'll get a fat book deal, develop a substance abuse problem, and eventually crash and burn.

And therein lies the bigger problem. Casey Anthony has become a Celebrity. Nancy Grace played a huge role in Anthony's celebrity status. The countless internet sites, threads, and blogs who obsessed nonstop throughout this trial also played a major role in the Celebra-tation of Casey Anthony. The morbidly curious and delusional came in droves for the trial. People spent hours and days, months and years, bloviating on what worthless excuse for a human being "Tot Mom" was. While I don't disagree, I do find it fascinating.

The truth is a hard thing at times. Getting at it, accepting it, looking it in the eye and recognizing it for what it is.

The truth is this....We live in a world where we have come to need people like Casey Anthony and Nancy Grace. They make us feel better about ourselves and our own flaws, shortcomings, and character defects. It goes like this, some bored housewife in bum fuck Iowa sits on her ass all day eating bon bons and writing poems to a child she doesn't know. She shares it in a thread or comment section with other unhappy people with no sense of purpose in their lives. For a few hours they forget about the mortgage, the neglectful partner, the ungraitfull kids. They forget about fucking the next door neighbor while the husband was away on that business trip. Pick your poison. Give it a name. For a minute or a few hours we get to luade over the world, show them how much better we are than this child killing whore. It's like Valium and Vodka. What it isn't about, all of this outrage and obsession, it isn't about a dead child. It never was. I'll wager the same people who raged so obsessively day in and day out couldn't tell you how many (read mostly minority or poor white) children were killed in their own city or state this year. The case they focus on is the case that is getting the most media attention. They inject themselves into the sideshow, and swell up on the crumbs of that attention. They tell the other obsessed types how horrible Casey Anthony is, how angelic poor Caylee was. They write poems, they wring their hands, they make this murder about themselves. Like Vampires. Like Nancy Grace.

In the end, that child is just as dead as she can be. The people who should have protected her, loved her, failed miserably. In a few days or weeks those nut jobs who pretended to know and love a child they never met will move on to the next media circus. Nancy Grace and her ilk will find another dead body to beat to death. There will be long threads on the internet. There will be websites devoted to the victim, manned by someone who never knew them. There will be crazy people at the trial. Because it's never really about the victim, not really.

Fast Eddie Friday...4th of July weekend edition....

2011-07-01T09:51:00.000-05:00

It's been a minute since I've drug Fast Eddie out of the closet (no Seacrest). Well all good things come to an end, so here we go...Fast and Loose.

Tulips on troost is one of those Feel Good projects that people take part in to make themselves feel like they are making a difference on a street that has long been the racial dividing line in Kansas City. I won't pretend to know all of the specifics and minutia, mostly because I don't care who is behind it. Suffice to say, planting flowers on a street where shootings are a common occurrence doesn't do dick to change anything. I'm sure the flower beds make for an awesome place to stash drugs or for the hookers to toss used condoms, which are not biodegradable. Troost is a shit hole. Sorry. If you have to live along that road, I feel for you. If you live there by choice (hippies and hipsters) then don't come crying to me when you catch a stray round in the ass of your skinny jeans.

Troost and at least one of it's denizens hit an all time low Wednesday. A woman had the misfortune to pass out from the heat. This happened at 11:30, broad fuckin daylight. Police say that the victim told them that she was walking with a friend when she felt light-headed and passed-out in a shaded area. She says that she has no memory of the alleged attack, but that she was told by witnesses that Melvin Jackson was having sex with her, and that when she awoke she was no longer wearing her underwear. She was taken to an area hospital for an examination.

Not for nothin, but what kind of friend leaves you unconscious on Troost? Shit gets worse. When Kansas City Missouri Police arrived on the scene, authorities say that Jackson told them, "I thought that lady was dead." I don't even know what to say to that one. Clearly our boy thought he was abusing a corpse rather than committing rape, rape. Keep in mind 34th and troost would be less than 3 blocks from the central patrol police station and one of the busiest roads in midtown. If I gave out awards, Melvin would get this weeks " waste of flesh" award. The only explanation I can come up with.......fuck it, there's no explanation for this kind of craziness.

With the coming of the Independence Day weekend, emergency rooms will be swamped with Whiskey Tango Trailer Dwellers turned pyrotechnic expert. Here in Independence and across the metro, loud booms, and if you are on the east side, semi automatic gunfire, will fill the night air for the next 3 nights. Even as we celebrate our freedom to blow shit up, a greater freedom is under assault. Freedom of speech and expression. Have you read or watched any news bits on the guy in the burbs of St. Lou that got a ticket for flipping off some clown who blocked an intersection? I'll link to it, but it's easier to just read my not so brief commentary, then move on with your life. Steven Pogue was sitting at a crowded intersection when a driver drove into the packed intersection; which kept Pogue stuck in place."The arm was there and, like I said, not proud, but I showed my displeasure of them blocking the intersection," said Pogue. A cop sees him flip the guy off, pulls him over, writes him a ticket for having his arm sticking out of his car. Apparently you can't stick your arm from your vehicle except when signaling. Pouges response "I was signaling".

It's official. The political correctness pussification of this country is complete. The terrorists win. It's legal to protest a soldiers funeral, display signs that say "God Hates Fags", but by God don't you dare stick a middle finger in the air directed toward some shit heel. We are officially fucked.

It's hotter than a half fucked fox in a forest fire outside. In between drinking too much, blowing shit up, and sitting in sobriety check point lines, remember to check on old people who can't afford AC and are reduced to eating cat food. Bring the dogs in, it's too fuckin hot for them out there, and if you are more worried about your hardwood floors than your pet, you need to be punched in the throat, and never should have had a pet in the first place.
Be safe, see you rubes back here on Tuesday.

Max....This ones for you.

2011-06-27T12:25:00.000-05:00

It is no big secret, if you have spent much time reading the dreck I spill out on the pages of this blog, my opinion of dogs is generally higher than that of the upright species to which we all belong. I've had this nagging worry lately. The kind of worry that hangs out in the darker recesses of the brain. The kind of worry that causes you to whistle as you walk past the graveyard late at night. That tiny yet creepy voice that whispers " If you run or look behind you, a thousand nightmares will spring from the earth and chase you down". So you continue to pretend to ignore the voice, the fear, as you nonchalantly stroll past. Still it's there. Always in your ear.

Most of you are familiar with Max the Yorkie, and no this isn't his obit. He is alive and kicking, actually he's sleeping, curled up against my leg on the footrest of my recliner. The same spot he has occupied since forever. But it's coming. Max is closing on 10 years. Teeth are starting to disappear, his step has slowed a bit. His muzzle is starting to gray. When that day comes, I'm not sure how much time will pass before I come to grips with it, find the words to write it down. It's coming. I can hear that little voice. So I just whistle a little louder and keep walking.

I was about a year out of the joint when I got Max. A Christmas gift from a girlfriend at the time. I saw him born. I'd keep him to the back of the litter when prospective new owners came to buy a pup. Max was the smallest of an already small litter of pups. That made him the most desirable. I suppose my attachment was so evident that the former girlfriend took pity on me and announced he was my Christmas gift. Best gift I've ever received. He outlasted that relationship by a good 8 years or better.

Max walked down 5 years of federal parole with me. He gave me a sense of responsibility. I knew he relied upon me, much like a child. As much as the years of criminal life, prison time, the constant looking over the shoulder wore me down, as much as those things kept my mind right, it was that sense of responsibility for Max that kept me out of trouble. That probably sounds crazy as hell to some of you. You would think doing right is something you just do. But we've already established that my mind, a criminal mind, doesn't necessarily work like the mind of your average square world type. So it is what it is.

We walked the streets of Midtown, skirting the winos, the beggars, and crackheads. We made the Christmas cover of The Pitch together. We have only been apart for one week his entire life. One day Max went MIA on me. I was frantic. Running up and down the streets yelling his name to no avail. Turns out he had walked in a closet door that was ajar. I found him napping away in the corner of the closet. When I opened the door of the closet the light spilled back in the far corner and he gave me a "what the fuck you waking me up for" look. There were closer calls. A bout of near kidney failure brought on by a moron behind our house here in Independence who sprayed weed killer like it was glade air freshener. Fortunately for that particular douche bag, Max made a full recovery, but it was touch and go for a couple of weeks.

We have a new life in a quiet Independence neighborhood. A girlfriend that has outlasted all 3 of my previous marriages combined and it gets better with each day. Life is good. Far removed from the a quarter century of lawlessness. A different world from the once gritty now hipster inundated streets of Midtown. Max has a fenced yard, two other dogs to run roughshod over. When the girlfriend is on a day off and I'm at work, he spends his days either tucked against her leg, or as the shadows begin to slip across the window he waits on the wide sill knowing I'll soon be pulling in the driveway. Every time I walk through the door he acts as if I've been gone an eternity, no matter if it's hours or minutes in actuality.

Life is good. But I know it's coming, so I whistle a little louder, drowning out that tiny voice that warns not to look behind me.

Lord of the Flies....Part 2...

2011-06-15T09:50:00.000-05:00

Old Man Konkel, the sharp shooting, unfairly harassed , falsely labeled Nazi, didn't have to worry about shit like litigation or being arrested. The day he dropped down in that drainage creek like it was a trench outside of Paris during WW2, and lit up the fat slow kid with a BB gun, was way back in the early 1970's. The rules were different, nowadays it isn't even the same game. Some out of control kid comes running around a corner in the grocery store and headbutts you in the balls you'll be lucky to avoid molestation charges and a lawsuit. A teacher barks at some unruly student, that teacher might be unemployed the next day. When I was in elementary school, a permission slip from one of your parents was all that was required for the principal to bust your ass with a wooden paddle. Today you can't even make a kid sit in a corner for 5 minutes without facing the wrath of some over protective, under corrective parent.

Last week 2 kids appeared on my block, brothers, a fat one and a thin one. Besides my girlfriends 13 year old daughter who lives with us, there are maybe 3 kids on our street, so when a couple of new ones turn up I tend to take notice. Let me clarify that last statement, when they turn up in my front yard I tend to notice. Last week wasn't the first time they decided to lounge in the middle of my yard, it was however the first time they showed up with crude yet pointy spears. The girlfriend and her daughter were away on vacation while I stayed home to tend to the dogs and work like a gubmint mule at my shitty contract job that doesn't allow for fancy shit like paid vacations.

I come home to find these two dirt magnets standing under the large Pin Oak in the center of my front yard. Now don't get me twisted, for all of my curmudgeonly grumbling, I'm not likely to get bent because a couple of kids happen to be in my yard. When they are armed with long makeshift spears, and when they are throwing said pointed sticks straight into the air overhead, totally ignorant of gravity, that's a whole different story. So I pull into the driveway, get out of the car and give em the fish eye, they don't miss a beat. They just ignored my presence and continue tossing their spears into the branches of the tree. The branches of a 40 foot pin oak are as thick as the under arm hair at a GLAAD convention. The spear hitting anything other than branches on the way up was pretty much nill. Returning to the ground was another story. Two thoughts go through my mind.
1. If I was them I'd cut and run.
2. Somebody is gonna put an eye out then sue the shit out of us because it happened in our yard.

The following transcript is a pretty accurate reflection of the conversation that followed.

Me...        "Hey, what are you guys doing"?
Fat Kid..."Trying to kill squirrels."
Me..        " How about you go kill em in your own yard"
Fat Kid..." You can't tell us what to do."
Me....      " How'd you like to limp home with that stick up your ass"?

That was pretty much the end of the conversation. The skinny kid, probably 10 or 11, and smarter by at least half, picked his bike up and scampered out of the yard. Fat boy, probably a year or so older, tried to stare me down. I figured I could take him. I had at least 6 inches of reach and 50 pounds on him. Even with the spear and 40 years age difference, I figured if I got him to the ground I could knock him out before I got winded from the 30 years of Marlboro smoking. It was a Mexican standoff. The chubby little shit stared at me, I gave him my best prison yard mean mug, first one to blink loses. He blinked, I took two steps toward him, and he beat feet 2 doors up and ran inside. I heard him yelling "MOM" as he went through the door.

Before some Mommy Blogger gets on here and reads me the riot act, of course I wouldn't ground and pound some fat 12 year old like we were having a MMA match. I would however take the water hose to him like it was Selma Alabama circa 1964. Just for the record the kid was white so no racism on the water hose comment. Besides, he looked like he hadn't seen a bath since the 3rd grade. After the admittedly insignificant and arguably petty on my part exchange, I half ass waited for the pounding at my door that would mean either an outraged mother or the police. It never came.

There is a curse, usually your mother puts it on you when you are nearing Teen hood. It usually goes something like this," I hope you have a kid just like you when you grow up." I figure that curse extends to kids who aren't yours. I'm guessing all the fucked up shit you did as a kid will do a karmic boomerang on your ass at some point. Seems like just yesterday I was running through a creek bed. laughing my ass off while Old Man Konkel cussed us out in German for chucking rocks at him. Now the storm trooper boot is on the other foot. Instead of rocks, my tormentors come armed with spears. Instead of threatening them in German, I use a slight okie twang laced with prison slang. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Lord of the Flies ain't got shit on kids today..........

2011-06-13T10:00:00.002-05:00

It may come as a surprise to some of you rubes, but I'm not real fond of kids, in general or otherwise. ( no Mike bad touch Jackson). I don't hate kids, I'm not anti kid, I just don't have much use for them or any tolerance for their bullshit. Having been a horrible child myself, I know of what I speak when I say that 75 percent of children , especially the male of the species, should be locked in a room and only let out to attend school, perform no wage labor, or for medical emergencies. From the age of around 8 up to 17, there is nothing more repugnant to me than some mouthy punk ass ill mannered boy child. Having once been a card carrying reprobate from that age group, I speak from experience. As fucked up as I was as a child, and make no mistake, I was as fucked up as a soup sandwich, I still knew my limits. I didn't run my mouth at some grown ass man who might put a boot in my ass. Kids today know all they need to do is call 911 or child protective services, and next thing you know you are standing before the bench for raising your voice at some little punk ass 11 year old.

Let me give you an example of how things have changed, then I'll get to the point of this Gran Torino rant. When I was around 12, running around with other delinquents, we took great pleasure in terrorizing the more eccentric adults in our neighborhood. One old guy in particular was a frequent target of our shenanigans. This guy had the misfortune of having a German sounding name, Konkel. Old Man Konkel. Not sure if Old Man was his given name, but that's what we called him. We also called him a Nazi, even though most of my friends had no idea what a Nazi was. Legend was Konkel was Hitlers go to guy, and he had lampshades made from human skin, ate soup from a human skull, the usual Nazi type shit. Of course this was all imaginary made up shit based on the fact that Old Man Konkel had an accent, and was too old and slow to catch us and put a beat down on our worthless asses.

There was a storm creek that ran through our neighborhood. Dry as a bone normally, and it ran right behind the home of the neighborhood SS officer and skull soup slurping Nazi, Old Man Konkel. Myself and a few of the other ner do well shit heels, would catch Konkel out in his garden, pelt him with rocks, talk shit, then run like rats when he came toward us. It was big fun for a minute. In retrospect I realize that Old Man Konkel had the patience of Job. He put up with mad shit for about half of a summer. Then came that fateful day when he had had enough of our bullshit. The last time we fucked with that old man, one of us got shot. The slow fat kid in our group. Craig Smith. He was shot. once in the back of the neck, and at least once in his fat slow ass.

To this day I'm not sure how that old guy knew we were coming. At the time we chalked it up to some Nazi military training. Looking back my guess is we were just clumsy noisy little shits. Whatever the case, when we tossed that first rock, that old man moved like greased lightning, and grabbed a rifle out of his wheelbarrow. Turns out it was a BB gun, one of those co2 powered ones. At the time we had no way of knowing it was a BB gun. All we knew was that old man was faster than we gave him credit for, and it's hard to make a fast getaway in a drainage creek lined with jagged rocks. Nazi or not, the old man could shoot pretty fucking swell. He yelled some shit in German gibberish, dropped down in that creek bed, and lit the slow fat kids ass up. At the time I thought he must be using a silencer, all I heard was, pfffft, pfffft, pffft, followed by the screams of one fat ass Craig Smith.

We never fucked with that old man again. He didn't get in any trouble. No cops were called. No parents were outraged. Craig Smith found a new group of kids to waddle around with. I learned a lesson that day. Don't fuck with old people, especially old German dudes.

Fast forward to present day...........

Since most people have the attention span of the common flea, I'm going to continue this post ~~tomorrow~~ Wednesday.

Weiner blows career, refuses to withdraw.

2011-06-08T09:33:00.000-05:00

*** A preemptive (No Homer, not that there's anything wrong with that) on this entire post, due to all the Weiner references.***

I figure it was a sign from God. His way of telling me to get off my ass and write something. I'm driving along I 35 yesterday, middle of bumfuck cow country, when I see the Oscar Meyer Weiner mobile in the south bound lanes. True story. I was flipping the radio between Limbaugh and NPR, no wonder I'm all fucked the fuck up, and the main story on both ends of the spectrum was the big Weiner mess. Rush was clowning on the guy pretty hard, while Terry Gross or some other NPR voice was assuring me that it was a small thing being blown out of proportion. Look, I could go on all day with these double entendres, but I don't want to be accused of milking this thing for all it's worth, or beating it to death.

Twitter. When are people going to figure out that Twitter is not Latin for " Turn my life into a soup sandwich". In the case of the Weiner he didn't intentionally post the photo of his beans and frank encased in plum smuggler drawers. His intent was to send his wood shot to some facebook college chica. None of that matters because one misplaced slip of the send button landed dude in deep shit. His career is over, probably his marriage too. It may take a few weeks or months, but you can bet your ass this thing isn't going to end well for Weiner. It's only a matter of time before some fame whore comes out of the wood work exposing a sordid affair or some super freaky pictures.

With all of the attention this Weiner thing is getting, it is a glaring example of just how twisted shit is in Washington. Unemployment is up. Obama is juggling 3 wars, don't try to convince me we aren't at war in Libya. The economy sucks balls. Impoverished urban areas across the country are war zones. The middle east has turned into one giant malevolent flash mob. And the top story is about some moron sending pics of his joint to facebook friends. Congratulations, we have become a perpetual 3 minute TMZ sound byte.

Anatomy of a con man...Harold ( oops my bad) Camping

2011-05-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned a time or two in previous posts that I wanted to be a Preacher when I was a kid. My maternal Grandmother, the now infamous, at least on this blog) Clara, was a big follower of Televangelists. She was a big fan of Oral Roberts. No Granny jokes about the Oral thing. Myself I preferred Jimmy Swaggert. Dude could cry on cue, real tears and everything. this was prior to him getting ratted out by some hooker. Jimmy wore a big ass gold watch, a couple of pinkie rings, and suits that never went anywhere near a rack, unless you count the hookers. I've always contended that regardless of my upbringing, family life, or any of the fucked up shit that may have marked my early years, I was destined to be what I was. What I was, was a not real great guy, a pox on society, and the bane of a few bankers existance. Looking back, I figure Jimmy Swaggert was my earliest criminal influence. Even as a pup, I could smell Jimmy's bullshit from a mile away. At the same time, I couldn't help but be impressed that he was able to hoodwink so many rubes. His church was huge. His followers in the millions.

One of my first hustles was going door to door with a green bean can that had a fake handwritten label on it that said UNICEF. One of the neighbors ratted me out after they got wind of me taking the neighborhood crazy cat lady down for a few quarters. Memory is a little clouded with time, but if I recall correctly, moms was still going to the belt back then. I'm pretty sure I had to give the cat lady her money back as well, even though I'm still convinced the old bat put some kind of catty hex on my dog Frisky. I caught her at Milgrams grocery store one day, bitch had my dog in the car with her. After that Frisky kind of lived between our house and hers. Mom felt sorry for the cat harboring old broad and wouldn't put the kibosh on her waylaying my dog. Said she was old and lonely or some such bullshit. But I digress.

The lesson I learned back then would have been a moral footnote type of story for a normal cub scout type kid. For me it was a lesson in superstition and what not to do. That lesson stuck with me through my criminal career. Don't hustle old people, churches, or anything to do with charity, lest the Gods of felonious enterprise smote your ass with some bad juju. Criminals, by and large are a superstitious bunch. Many criminals are also susceptible to their own bullshit. Which is to say, a weak minded criminal, especially of the conning trades often come to believe what they are slinging. Like method actors. They get into this role and then start believing their own lies. I figure this Harold Camping cat is of that type of cloth, How else do you explain it? Don't fall for the old " he is a religious nutsack" school of thought. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities. This Camping guy is not crazy, but he is probably in line for some super bad juju, since he swindled more than a few old people and borderline retards out of some major cheddar.

I want to feel sorry for these rubes. Some of them maxxed out credit cards, emptied bank accounts, pissed away life savings and future security all at the behest of a geriatric hustler who was slinging God like 5 dollar rocks on an inner city street corner. I feel some sympathy for the old victims. Let's face it, as death nears, time is short, people are vulnerable, afraid of the unknown, and ready to buy the brand of bullshit that some religious huckster is selling. That said, I feel zero sympathy and have utter contempt for the tales of misery and woe that younger 30/40/ 50's types are starting to tell the media. Some trucker was crying in his canned chili over having maxxed out his cards and spent all his money on dragging his wife and kids to Cali to await the rapture. These people, adults with children who depend on them to be the voice of reason and financial support, need to be taken out and punched in the throat for buying into something so ridiculous. Spending all of your money, sacrificing the welfare of your children, because you so arrogantly believe that out of billions of people, you are one of 200,000 worthy of heaven, is a throat punching offense. It also proves the old PT Barnum adage "There is a sucker born every minute" .

Bledsoe rental homicide. 2nd degree Murder and Armed Robbery, while on Probation for Robbery.

2011-05-19T10:32:00.000-05:00

When David Bledsoe was murdered during an armed robbery, one of the suspects, Andre M. Broadus, had an active warrant for probation violation. The warrant was issued in 2010. He was on probation, PROBATION, for Robbery. Yes probation, for robbery. The media must not have the url for case net, or they don't feel like it's newsworthy. Back in 2007 Broadus was indicted by a grand jury for what was eventually plead down to 2nd degree robbery. His original bond was 250k, so it must have been a little more serious than snagging some kids lunch money. He was given a 5 year sentence which was suspended for 3 years. He violated a few months shy of completing the probation.

The grandpa of the other suspect is the alleged driver of the getaway car. He has an unlawful weapons charge on his record. The other suspect Anthony Britton was just 18, so he hasn't had enough time to build a respectable rap sheet as an adult, though something tells me he was well on his way. If convicted, one would assume that probation won't be an option. Of course this isn't the first time I've pointed out a killer who happened to be on probation at the time of the murder they committed. The 2 scumbags who killed the pregnant woman in front of the Gotham apartments on Armour last year were also out on probation, one of them had a warrant for violation at the time of the killing.

Probation is a funny thing. It rarely works, the probationers aren't held to the stipulations. Broadus was charged for felony non support during his probation, yet he wasn't violated. He never even paid the paltry 68 bucks for court cost and public defender fees. He had an active warrant from 2010 which he either failed to answer, was never caught, or possibly made bond on. It's hard to tell for certain from the way case net enters info. What is certain, this shit heel shouldn't have ever received probation for a felony robbery case.

The Bledsoe family is closing the store they operated on Prospect for somewhere around a half a century. A man is dead. If you ever wondered why the east side of Kansas City remains an undeveloped wasteland, you need look no further than this case, and the countless others, where innocent business owners or their employees have died because some clown with a gun decided he wanted what wasn't his. There was the murder of at least a couple of convenience store/gas station clerks in the last year or so. The one that comes to mind was the clerk from somewhere in the middle east, who was attending college. That case remains unsolved if I recall correctly, even though they had a pretty good pic of at least one of the perps.

Who in their right mind is going to try to build a business in a fucking war zone? Our first lady recently lamented the lack of grocery stores in depressed urban areas. That same complaint has been echoed on Kansas City's east side. Let's be real here, the reason their aren't more big chain stores on the east side is because they would be a constant target for dick heads with low IQ's and an illegal pistol. Robbery, low level robbery, like grocery store and gas station stick ups, are the criminal equivalent of special ed classes. In all my years on the wrong side of the law, I never met a small time stick up guy who was much smarter than a dirt clod. I knew more than a few on the street, and several in the joint. Every one of them shared two distinct characteristics. A small brain, and a bully's disposition.

People who have good intentions but naive belief systems, love to bemoan the Prison Industrial Complex. Hell, I spent time inside and even I haven't been immune to sometimes blaming the system for locking up kids and young men, mostly black, warehouse them, then send them back to the same environment with no skills. Don't get me twisted, I still believe that to some extent. There are some that you can still reach, but here's the rub, even if you don't do a single thing to help those guys better themselves, they aren't likely to get out, walk in a store and kill someone over a little money. It's just not in their DNA. They may sell some dope, steal some cars, whatever their hustle is, but they won't take up a pistol. They won't snuff out a life. In those cases, probation might work. rehabilitation might succeed. But guys like Broadus, those guys you don't reach. If you catch a robbery beef, then you go do your bit. there is no crying in baseball, and there is no probation in a robbery case, or any violent crime. These types you can't reach. So you you put them out of reach. You lock em up. 5 or 10 years might do the trick. Might, but most likely won't. When you lack the humanity that prevents you from sticking a pistol in some square world guys face, you lack the humanity to live among those in the square world.

The Bledsoe rental murder is a case in point. Broadus didn't pull the trigger according to the other suspect who admits to shooting Bledsoe. But you can bet your ass Broadus is the one who planned it. He was calling the shots. He has the history. If the judge who doled out probation to Broadus, If the judge who heard the felony nonsupport case had violated Broadus probation, and made him do that nickle...then maybe Mr. Bledsoe would still be alive. That's a lot of maybe, but it's tough to argue that the court didn't have a hand in the death of this store owner.

IMF Cheif Dominique Strauss-Kahn is just Pepe Le'pew in a 1,000 dollar suit.

2011-05-18T08:18:00.000-05:00

What is it with the French? IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is all over the news for trying to make a quick get away after allegedly forcing a hotel maid to blow him. According to CNN a recent poll says 57 percent of the frogs believe he is being set up. Never mind that the guy left a bunch of his personal property in his hotel room, including his cellphone, as he was trying to get the fuck out of Dodge.

It seems like I write at least one derogatory post per year with one singular purpose. That purpose is to talk shit on the French. I'm not sure when my loathe affair with the smarmy pricks began, I think it might have been that cartoon with the skunk Pepe le'pew, or however the frogs spell it. When the French aren't busy being all pretentious and shit, their favorite pastime seems to be raping and sodomizing women, specifically American women. Even Pepe the cartoon skunk was all the time trying to shoplift the pooty off of that female cat with the unfortunate white paint stripe on it's back.

The frogs protected Roman ( Quaalude just means Skittles in French) Polanski. Never mind that Polanski drugged some kid who wasn't old enough to drive, then ass raped her before sending her home to her absentee mother. Now the French are offended that we crass Americans have subjected one of their fellow frogs to the perp walk. If you think I'm being a little harsh on the French, consider this money quote from France's former minister of culture and education, Jack Lang. And not for nothing, but that ain't exactly a french sounding name. Lang was complaining that we didn't let the perp out on bail, " when no violent crime has been committed -- even in America suspects are usually let go on bail if a violent crime has not been committed." So there you have it, forcible rape and sodomy isn't a violent crime, so long as it's committed with a French accent.

The French are pissed off because "in France" they don't allow the media to film or photograph the accused. Someone who speaks French needs to inform them that this ain't France. Considering the fact that Kahn has an entire wing of Rikers Island to himself, the french should thank us for not just turning him out into general population, where they don't numb you up with Quaaludes prior to making you sit funny for a week or two.

There is one bright side to this story. The NY Post is reporting that the victim lives in a New York apartment building that exclusively houses AIDS patients. She is from west Africa, so it sounds plausible. If that's the case, Kahn has more to worry about than trying to figure out what the mystery meat served for lunch consists of. If he is guilty and manages to buy his way out of this mess, he may not escape justice in the end. ( no Polanski).

I'll have the Hypocrisy Special and a glass of Milk please.

2011-05-04T12:05:00.000-05:00

Not wanting to beat a dead terrorist to death, so these will by my last words on Osama. I swear on my mama. I haven't seen this much media coverage and over analysis inundation since Mikey Jackson did too much dope while wearing some kids underoos. The thought just occurred to me, this instant no less, that Bin Laden the king of terrorism, and Micheal Jackson the king of Bad Touch, share a lot of similarities in death. Conspiracy theories abound, mystery shrouds their deaths, and their ardent followers refuse to believe they cashed in their chips. The biggest similarity, at least in my fucked up as a soup sandwich mind, is the hypocrisy in the reactions to the timely end of two world class shit heels. In Jacksons case, celebs and devout fans lifted the lover of little boys little smokies to near godlike status. We heard what a wonderful gentle soul he was, despite all of the evidence and payoffs to the contrary. His creativity aside, the guy was a dope fiend and a pedo. Period.

Bin Laden's assassination on the other hand has spurred hypocrisy on levels I don't believe I've ever seen.

The White House is concerned that releasing Bin Ladens death photo will offend Muslims in general, and incite radical Islamists in particular. I hear over and over that Islam is a religion based on love, peace, and saffron grease. Muslims, real Muslims, refute violence and jihads, and flying planes into buildings full of secretaries and stock brokers. At least that's the story we get. If in fact that is the case, then Bin Laden shouldn't be considered a good Muslim in the eyes on non extremist regular Muslims. As for the radical types. These clowns have decapitated Allah knows how many reporters and contractors, on video, which they posted proudly on Jihadtube, or whatever passes for it. We don't owe this particular group of cave men any courtesy or consideration. We do owe them the same thing that Osama got, which was one to the face and one to the chest. As for pissing them off, I think we accomplished that mission when we raided what passes for a mansion in the middle of nowhere and killed their poster boy.

I say show the picture. Maybe photoshop a little red mustache on him with a caption underneath, Got Jihad? or something. Showing the image of a dead Bin Laden won't make these pricks any more pissed of than they already are. Obama showed some testicular fortitude, but worrying about offending people who already want us all dead is the equivilant of the previous mentioned testicles ascending quicker than one of those grandpa polar bear club participants taking their first splash in frigid water. We need to be clear, stop trying to bullshit the American public and the world. We never intended to bring Bin Laden out alive. If we had, I've no doubt that the well trained seals could have subdued the unarmed Arabian version of Stringbean. We killed him to send a message. Now lets not fuck the message up worrying about PC bullshit. When you shoot someones face off of their head, then manners are kind of a moot point.

Credit where credit is due. Obama made a ballsy call.That said, if not for extreme interrogation there might not have been an end to the hunt for Bin Laden. While he won't come out and say it was waterboarding or torture, I'm pretty sure that extreme interrogation isn't part of the X games. And this is where the greatest hypocrisy comes into play. The right doesn't want to give too much credit to Obama. Palin for example congratulated Bush, never mentioning Obama. The left, ah, the left. They are stinking up the joint with their self congratulatory fart fest. Many of these rubes called for war crimes prosecution against the Bush administration for torture tactics. Now they are licking their lips from gorging on the Fruit of a poison tree. Which is to say, much, not all, but much of the info that lead to Bin Ladens demise was gained through torture in 2007. The couriers name was obtained from a captive in Gitmo who was tortured. The current administration can downplay it all they want, but the facts are the facts. Here's the rub, if you are claiming torture is wrong, if you feel that the Bush administration is guilty of human rights violations due to those tactics, you can't cheer for the assassination of a guy who was brought down in part from the very tactics you claim are criminal.

Ding Dong the witch is dead. That's a good thing, but lets keep shit in perspective. The world is not one fucking iota safer because of his demise. We assassinated Osama in his jammies while his wives and kids were in the same house. We shot an unarmed man in the face. I'm good with that. It sends a message. Don't fuck with the bull, you might get the horns. We got him because Obama showed some brass. We got him because Bush showed some brass in the past. I'm not saying we should reintroduce torture as a staple of everyday interrogation tactics. But when thousands of lives are at stake, you do what it takes. This shit ain't checkers, it's chess. We did the right thing. If you believe that, and I do, then you have to concede that Bush did the right thing as well. I never cared for Bush, I think he was a dolt for the most part. I thought Obama was going to be a great President, I was wrong on that one as well. But I can't fault him on this one. That said, in this particular case, they were right. Both of them. As much as it may taste like shit in your mouth to admit it, to deny it is hypocrisy on a grand scale.

The death of Osama Bin Laden....A reality check.

2011-05-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

In the movie Pulp Fiction a guy named Marvin gets his brains splattered all over the interior of an old beat Plymouth Duster, or maybe a Dodge Dart. Jules and Vincent end up cleaning the gore out of the car per the instructions of a heavy, known only as The Wolf.

To paraphrase The Wolf, played by Harvey Keitel, Let's not start blowing each other just yet. The announcement by President Obama that Bin Laden now sleeps with the fishes caused people to take to the streets, climb trees and light posts, and generally act a fool. The political types, newsies, and every asshole with an opinion, myself included, has chimed in on what the death of Americas most wanted caveman really means. Most believe that the news is a blow to terrorism. Most believe this is a victory for the U.S.
It isn't.
What it is, plain and simple, is a little piece of get back.
I'm okay with that. If anyone ever deserved killing, it was Bin Laden.

Already pundits are calling this thing a big boost for Obamas reelection. While punching this Neanderthals ticket was long overdue, it leaves more questions than answers, and it ends nothing other than the life of a guy who was sitting practically next door to a military base for Allah knows how long. Whoever steps up to fill his sandals, and someone already has, we can expect retaliation. Bank on it. Since we are dealing with a group of middle eastern hillbillies, this latest news is just a continuation of a long standing Hatfield and McCoys feud on a global scale. This shit ain't over, not by a long shot.

This isn't a victory for the U.S. We chased this schmuck around for the better part of 20 years, long before 9/11. Besides the horrific losses on 9/11, our soldiers have died on foreign soil in multiple wars, all in the name of fighting terrorism, and Bin Laden was the poster boy. We have spent billions. Bin Ladens death isn't a game changer, it's just a shuffle in power. In the eyes of his admirers, his followers, his legend and stature grew with his death. He is now a martyr in their eyes. He got his truckload of virgin goat herders when he entered that big cave in the sky.

What I find amazing is the status that Bin Laden attained, courtesy of our inability to punch his ticket for lo these many years. This guy walked around with impunity for a couple of decades, not to mention making countless shitty videos which riled up his followers to the point of flying planes into buildings and turning themselves into human bombs. When you have a group of zealots who have no problem shoving a pound of c4 up their asses, or under their junk, the death of their leader isn't going to slow them down. Just the opposite.

So let's not start blowing each other just yet. Nothing has really changed. We just cleaned up one long standing mess only to open a whole new can of worms. We buried his body at sea. Let the conspiracy theories begin. If we really wanted to make a statement, we should have left his head on a stick back over in that dusty Pakistani shit hole . Now there's a message that would be understood by a group who probably still wipes their asses with a hand full of pebbles and treat women like livestock. In the meantime, I'll look with suspicion on anyone who has that terrorist look, especially when flying. No Juan Williams.

Karma, The Korean, and the Hobo..........

2011-04-26T08:43:00.000-05:00

No doubt you rubes have been on pins and needles waiting for the second part of my previous post. There hasn't been a more anticipated cliffhanger since JR got a cap popped in his ass on Dallas. The problem with writing a 2 part post is waiting too long to write the second part. My short term memory sucks major balls, I forgot what I was going to write. Thanks weed. I'm sure it would have changed all of your lives, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Goodbye Pulitzer. Still I feel obligated to throw you all a bone. Heh. So consider this a consolation post/ special edition, or whatever.

So, I'm heading to work yesterday, I'm on Armour just west of Main near my former digs, minding my own biz wax. All a sudden I hear tires doing the locked brake boogie, followed by a little bit of metal on metal crash bang booming. I look in my rear view just in time to see some guy coming back down to earth along with his bike. I stop in front of the Red Cross building, the driver of the car that hit the guy stops, a Korean lady ( I can tell the difference. No stereotype.) gets out of the car all hysterical and shit. Having just run over a midtown hobo on a 10 speed will do that to you. The guy is laying in the middle of Armour road doing the Curly Joe. Remember how Curly would run in circles while laying on his side in those old 3 Stooges flicks? He finally gets up and starts stumbling around in the middle of the road. Cars are flying around him and the hysterical Korean (trust me, she is Korean) lady. Nobody stops. Fuck my life, so I turn around and park my car in front of dudes fucked the fuck up 10 speed with my flashers on. I call 911. A old hippie lady who reeks of Patchouli oil arrives on the scene and tries to comfort the crying Korean lady, whilst keeping clear of the punch drunk homeless dude.

There are pipe fittings and short pieces of copper pipe scattered all over the street. Homeless guy was apparently excavating job sites for scrap prior to going ass over tea kettle over the hood of a Honda. I tell him to sit his ass down, helps on the way. He continues to walk around ignoring the cars, picking up his treasures. The 911 operator is yacking in my ear, the Korean Lady is getting a hug from the Hippie lady, and the homeless dude is asking me if I see his glasses. At one point the Korean lady breaks free of the hippie lady and walks up to the homeless guy , her face all screwed up from bawling, she says " I'll buy you a new bike".

When the ambulance, pronounced "Amblance" in midtown, arrives homeless dude gets pissed off, at me. As the 2 cop cars show up, followed by a big ass fire truck, homeless dude starts giving me a bunch of sass. In between asking me if I see his glasses, he starts bitchin about me calling 911. Dude has about three or four goose eggs on his forehead, otherwise he seems okay. He's steady giving me lip for trying to help his goofy ass out. I'm thinking I'm going to be late because I stopped to help this douche bag. Meanwhile, the hippie lady is giving a statement to the cops who have managed to get the hobo to sit his ass down while the Amblance people check him out. Ironically, and kind of funny-ish, dudes bike is laying in a heap right next to one of those bike lane symbols that are painted on the street. Homeless dude is giving me the fish eye for calling all of this attention to him, pipes and fittings are still scattered all over the street, and a couple of the cops are looking for dudes glasses.

I ask one of the cops if I can go as I'm late for work. He tells me to go ahead. As I get back in my car the main thought running through my mind is how this fucking guy got mouthy with me for trying to help him out, that and a mental image of the crying Korean lady who kind of reminded me of an old episode of Mash where the cleaning lady had a crush on Hawkeye Pierce.

I'm thinking to myself that there's just no fucking being nice in this world as I pull away. Then I hear it! Karma. Who knew Karma makes a sound exactly like the sound of a car tire obliterating a pair of glasses. As I drove west on armour road I could see the homeless ingrate and 2 cops standing exactly in the same spot my car had been parked in, all staring down at the ground.

They had fun with it..........

2011-04-11T08:38:00.000-05:00

They were lined up along the shoulder of the road. One after the other. About 20 feet apart. Six of them in all. I had maybe a couple of seconds to take it in as my car sped by. When I saw the first one I thought it was just a clump of mud that had come loose from a passing truck. By the third I assumed they were bits of one animal that had been hit trying to cross the highway. The final two, I finally realized. They were kittens, maybe 6 or 8 weeks old, I'm guessing on the age. It took about another 5 minutes for it to sink in, what I'd glimpsed in passing at 70 mph. Northbound 35, just south of the Iowa border. I run this same route Monday through Friday. Bleached out farm buildings, falling in on themselves. Land as flat and drab as western Kansas. Six dead cats, spaced evenly, one after the other. I figure he , and it's almost always a he, must have thrown them out the window of his vehicle as it rolled down the highway. That would account for the even spacing. One after another, until they were no longer a nuisance. Certainly easier than being bothered with finding homes or a shelter. In my minds eye I picture a beat up pickup truck. A couple of half drunk shit heels, giggling like school girls as the one in the passenger seat tosses out the living breathing bundles of fur.

Of course I have no way of knowing the type of vehicle or who was in it. But the spacing of the dead kittens makes it a no brainer as to how they ended up there. So I think about it, chew on it. I decide whoever did it must have enjoyed it. He had fun with it.

The joint was , and always will be, filled with guys like I just described, I suppose you could find some comfort in that. Several of the clowns in the video posted the other day fall under the same umbrella. Life of any variety has zero value. Most of you won't find yourselves at a hip hop venue, so you can rest easy in that regard. The problem is, you just never know when you are going to cross paths with someone with that mindset, the one that has slipped through the cracks, spent a life flying under the radar. Maybe he kept his powder dry by tossing cats out his car window or smacking the wife and kids around. One day he wakes up and those faithful standbys just don't do it for him anymore.

I knew a guy like that, grew up in the same part of town, ran in some of the same circles. Like most of the guys I knew, he went on to try his hand in the dope trade. Like most of the people who get in that game he was his own best customer. Unlike most he was as sadistic a prick that ever walked the streets. I heard shit from time to time and it never came as a shock, as crazy as the stories were, it was right up his alley. There are a couple of incidents that stand out. Some junkie gets him to front him a bag of dope, tells him he has a customer waiting with the cash. But there isn't any customer, just the dope fiend and a ravenous monkey on his back demanding to be fed. We'll call the dealer Doug and the fiend Curtis, because that's their names. So Doug puts out some feelers, probably offered up a little powdered reward. He gets a call, catches Curtis in the wrong place. Curtis ends up spending a few hours, buck naked in a metal folding chair, doused in water. He gets familiar with the bare wires from a hot extension cord. I heard Curtis left town after that, but who knows.

There was another story going around about Doug giving some girl a hot shot. I heard it was Red Devil lighter fluid mixed with some kind of dope, most likely coke or meth since that's what he peddled. An older guy, a fence who bought the stolen stuff Doug acquired from junkies related both of those stories to me. This was 20 years ago, but I still recall how the fence got kind of scared talking about it. He whispered even though there was no one near us at the bar we were in at the time. A few years ago I heard Doug got his ticket punched. Not for nothin, but the worlds a better place if it's true.

So what's the connection? Cats tossed out of moving cars and a sociopath /small time drug dealer. You'll have to wait to find out.
To be continued.......

Fast Eddie Friday...I didn't know they stacked stupid that high.

2011-04-08T08:37:00.002-05:00

This is what it's come to. Trying to decide if I should write about the Bunny Lady of Roeland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, or should I just leave it alone. I mean it's too easy, isn't it? Local nut Job busts an egg filled with confetti over the head of a TSA nimrod at the Philly airport. She gets cuffed and held for 3 hours, can't seem to figure out why. Que the friend coming to her defense. Baul's best friend, Julia Spears, says that the authorities have Baul, who is set to graduate with a Masters Degree from Baker University in May, all wrong. "If they really knew her, they would understand it's not harmful," said Spears. "It wasn't hurtful. It wasn't negative."

Personally I think they should have given her a cavity search. Who in their right mind, in today's climate, in a fuckin airport no less, goes around doing stupid shit like this? Answer, the same type of person who runs around in a pink and green bunny suit. These TSA people are mostly borderline retards as it is. They need to focus on spotting possible security risks. Some basket case in a pink bunny suit just muddies up the water. Toss this whack job in a rabbit hutch for 6 months.

I suppose I could write about the impending doom via the government shut down. Now there's a serious subject. Right? Surely I can muster up some major outrage and righteous indignation. If not for this guy.

John (I'm all verklempt) Boehner. This clown cries at the drop of a hat. As fed up as I am with both sides of the aisle, this fuckin guy is really getting on my last nerve.

We have business as usual in Washington. Two dogs fighting over the same bone. Each side blaming the other for not being able to pass a budget. So the leader of the republicans gets all weepy and shit. Not for nothing, but I've been on the fence with the Dems for a while now. I've actually started leaning toward some of the messages the conservatives have been tossing out there. Then Boehner goes and fucks things up with yet another crying jag. How am I to take the republican party seriously when their front man bursts into tears like a goddamn baby every time you turn around? Could you imagine if this guy was president for christ sake? If you think the world doesn't respect us because our current President is more than a little wishy washy, just imagine if we had Boehner for a president. Grenada would probably invade us. We'd be the Rodney Dangerfield of the world.

Last but definetly not the least. As Boehner gently weeps, and the gubmint is as fucked up as a soup sandwich, where pray tell is our leader? Now you may recall that I had high hopes for bama when he won the election. I thought, and said as much, "here's a smart guy". I was smoking some pretty good weed back in those days. I still am, but as good as it is, I can't get high enough to think highly of the big O. The president spent Wednesday evening swinging off of Al Sharptons ball sack. This is the same guy who caused riots over the fake rape of Twana Brawley. The same guy who said.....

"White folks were in caves while we were building empires…. We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and those Greek homos ever got around to it."

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Obama pandered for votes and played political grab ass with a guy he avoided like the plague before the last election when he should have been standing on Boehner and Reeds necks. I'm over the hope and change song and dance. I've been bamboozled, hoodwinked, and hustled. I can usually see through bull shit a mile away, but this guy fooled me. I hate admitting I was wrong, but I was.

This would never happen at a George Jones concert....................

2011-04-06T09:16:00.001-05:00

This video comes by way of Byron Crawford. For those of you unfamiliar with Byron, who blogs under the pseudonym Bol, he is a St. Louis blogger who made his name in the Hip Hop world. You are probably asking yourself why in the hell is MM reading a hip hop blog? Good question, simply put the guy is funny as hell. He also isn't afraid to call shit as he sees it. Local blogger Tony of TKC credits Bol for a good deal of his writing / bloggy style. If you hate TKC, you probably won't dig Bol. But that's not the point. This video is the point, which originates from another hip hop site , World Star Hip Hop.

The video is grainy, a little hard to follow at times, but hang in there and watch it all the way through. There are several pistol whippings. An east St. Louis police officer walking away from the mayhem, and so much more. Watch it. I rarely post videos because this ain't that kind of joint. This one however speaks for itself. How and why this isn't all over the news and web is beyond me.

The TSA...Witches....White Indians..

2011-03-29T08:31:00.000-05:00

The TSA, that last line of defense when it comes to protecting the flying public from some clown with an Ass Bomb, which is not to be confused with a Bomb Ass ( J Lo), is in the news, again. Seems like these people are all the time in the news for one thing or another. This time it's because they fired a witch for putting a hex on a fellow TSA workers car heater. Yeah, you read me right. The MSN article didn't really go in to detail as to what the hex consisted of. I'm not sure if the woman's heater quit working, just made some strange noises, or emitted some kind of stank fumes, like the time an ex girlfriend put some shrimps in my defrost vent. . Anywho, the article is long as hell, you can read it here, or just save yourself the trouble, read this long ass post and take my word as gospel.

The condensed version goes like this. Witchy Woman was on probationary period, learning the proper way to cup a package, (no UPS), handle a wand, which should have been an easy one, and generally slow lines to a fucking crawl. She let the black cat out of the bag at some point, told people she was a wiccan, and that's when shit took a turn down hill. Long story short, it looks like the TSA supervisors were making her life hell after the officer training her reported that the witch put a spell on her car heater. I honestly don't know if this shit is all that funny considering the TSA worker who filed the original complaint and the retarded supervisors actually took it seriously. I'm thinking anyone stupid enough to believe in car heater hexes probably isn't smart enough to be entrusted with airport security when lives are on the line.

I don't know dick about Wiccans even though I dated a witch for a couple of years. I never saw her cast a spell, never witnessed any late night dancing with the devil, or any shenanigans that would indicate black magic, spell casting, or black cauldrons full of newt penis (no Gingrich), bat wings, or virgin blood. We never discussed it, probably because I never asked and she realized that I was a sarcastic prick who would mock her about her beliefs the first time we got in a scrap.

Odd religions, and aren't they all in some way or another, ain't really my bag. I've stated many times that I'm Agnostic and I plan to get religious as hell only when I think I'm getting close to cashing in my chips, just to be on the safe side. I'm not sure which religion I'll go with, but it will be one that believes in Hell and an afterlife, otherwise, what's the point. Right? What I do know is that some religious beliefs are best kept to yourself, lest you be mocked, ridiculed, villanized, or fired the first time someone has a malfunction with their cars heater.

As with all free world subjects, I derive much of my opinion from my criminal history, more to the point, from my time in the joint. Prison is a fucking fondue pot of religions. You name it, there is someone practicing it, or suing for the right to practice it, in the joint. Moorish Americans, sued more than a few prisons for their right to walk around in a Fez like they are Shriners, while calling all white folks European devils. More than a few Crackers are practicing some made up Nordic religion, which is basically just a reverse negative of the Moorish cats. In other words, these are a couple of made up religions, whose dogma is really just about hating on someone for their pigment, or lack there of.

The most absurd religion in prison is the Native American religion, even though I'm not sure they actually call it a religion per say. Now before you go all Geronimo on me, allow me to splain myself. I've got no problem with real Native Americans in or out of prison, who practice whatever their brand is called. That said, 3/4ths of the dudes in the joint who sit around in sweat lodges, beat drums, and have made up Indian names, are about as Indian as Jackie Chan. Unless there was some lost tribe of super pale, freckled, blonde or ginger Indians I never heard of, then prison is full of dudes who are full of shit where their religious beliefs are concerned. I recall the first time I ever saw a group of white Indians in prison. I like to refer to them as the Whothefuckarewee, because they are clearly having an identity crisis. Sort of like white guys who try to act black. A white dude in saggy pants, holding his crotch just looks like a white guy in saggy britches who needs to piss really bad. Same goes with these white indians in the slammer.

If there was ever a more ridunkulous sight than some skinny white cat, feather in his reddish blonde hair, maybe a wolf tattoo, a little leather pouch hanging around his white neck, then I don't know what could be more retarded. These naive-hoes, heh, were the object of much ridicule, clowning, and more Indian jokes than I've made in this post. My rational fair side said " these morons have the right to play Indian if they want to" while my prick side said " these tools deserve to be clowned for sitting in the middle of a prison yard playing a tom tom and chanting like the Indians on that old flick Blazing Saddles. One day you are sportin feathers in your hair in the prison yard, next day you are wearing a Winnie the Pooh suit washing some 300 pound black dudes socks in the toilet.

I know you are scratching your heads right now for several reasons, not the least of which is over my Winnie the Pooh suit remark. There aren't really people wearing bear suits in prison, it's just one of those slang prison terms that seems nonsensical to you square world types, but is actually genius. Winnie was a cuddly teddy bear, soft like that fabric softener bear. Thus wearing a Winnie the Pooh suit means you are getting nightly colonoscopies, only not from a doctor, and not with one of those cameras they normally use.

So, there's a point to all of this random shit I've been throwing at you, and it's this. Those non Indian Indians in the Prison yard should have just smuggled a couple of leg bones back from the chow hall on chicken night, tossed em under their bunk, and done their bongo drum and sweat lodge thing in the privacy of their cells, ideally in protective custody, safe from a life of sock washing and unspeakable violations. Just because you have an inalienable right to practice your religion of preference, it's wise to keep that shit to yourself if it's not mainstream. Likewise, our TSA witch should have kept that black cat in the bag concerning her beliefs. There never would have been allegations of Hexes and car heaters. She would still have her job. There are people who go out of their way to be martyrs. Some people who practice religious beliefs outside the norm, not all but more than a few, go out of their way to be all sensitive and shit while making sure everyone knows their religious beliefs . Having a PHD in human behavior, (not really), I get the sense that this witch lady is one of those martyr types. In order to be a martyr you first need to be identified as martyrdom material. So you announce your wacky beliefs to everyone who will listen, sit back and wait for the inevitable mocking and harassment.

Fast Eddie Friday....Beware the ides of March....

2011-03-25T09:40:00.002-05:00

Julius Caesar was warned by a soothsayer to "beware the ides of March", a few hours later a bunch of disgruntled cats broke some metal off in his ass. ( Thats early roman prison slang meaning you just got shanked bitch) Popular theory is that Caesar had pissed off too many people and they all got together and made a move on him. I've got my own theory and it goes something like this. Ides is just the fucked up Roman way of saying "the fifteenth" of the month.

The soothsayer, who was really just a latter day Miss Cleo, minus the fake Jamaican accent, African mu mu, and 800 number, should have warned Jules to watch his ass because spring was coming. The reason he got bumped was because of the warm weather, spring. The date was just luck on the soothsayers part, or he may have had some inside info. Point is, the killers were just waiting for the big C to get caught out running around with his guard down. Spring brings warm weather, and warm weather brings out the criminals. Fact. A fact that still holds true today.

So now that I've schooled you rubes on some historical shit, lets take a look at Spring in the metro and see whats sprung.

Here we go, fast and loose.

Something about warm weather brings out the crazy in folks, I figure that's why there will never be peace in the middle east, it's always fuckin hot over there. Right?

Take the dude pictured above with the fucked up complexion for example. John Gallagher, 19, a former student of some Platte City High School got busted for breaking in to the school, multiple times. His crime, besides burglary? Johnny boy was burping the nephew, choking his chicken, jerkin his gherkin, and spilling his seed on underwear he found in the boys gym locker room. He allegedly told the cops he was doing it to exact revenge on a certain type of student, the same type who bullied him when he went to school there. John's explanation stinks worse than a gym sock. While I've no doubt he was bullied, I mean seriously look at the mug on this clown, still I'm guessing this crime is one of passion and not pay back. Spring not only brings crime, it makes the libido go haywire. School officials should count themselves lucky that Johnny didn't take his lust to the cafeteria. " This tapioca tastes funny".

Anyway, blame it on spring.

Nothing says spring in Kansas City like rolling gun battles and increased shootings on the East side. I've lost count how many people have been shot so far this month, but it's a bunch. Warm weather is conducive to thuggish types for a variety of reasons. When your ass is hanging out of saggy pants you don't want an arctic wind frostbiting your crack. So they wait until it warms up before they step up spraying random bullets and killing each other over a particular block or bandanna. Fair warning, like the Robin that you see in your yard, a harbinger of spring, that Robin migrated with the warm weather. Urban criminals also migrate with weather, so expect an increase in robbery, car jacking, and all around mayhem, coming to a neighborhood near you!

If you think I seem to have taken on a glib attitude about crime and the freaky freaks that roam this city, you are correct. I gotta be honest, the righteous indignation thing got tired, played out. They say laughter is the best medicine, and really, who wants to read the same morose shit day in and out. I've come to the conclusion that I've wasted 3 years on this bloggy thing trying to be all serious and shit. I think that's what killed my writing mojo. So look for an uptick in my posting frequency, and a downturn in the serious factor. I'll still write the occasional tear jerker, but not nearly as often. Spring is here, even if it isn't official yet. New beginnings, hope springing eternal, and a heavy dose of sarcasm, that's the ticket. You rubes stay tuned, shits about to pick up around here.

Fast Eddie Friday... Is that a spider on your head or are ya just glad to see me?

2011-03-04T09:45:00.000-06:00

So last night I'm making the last stop on a new route I'm running. The route starts out in Midtown, runs up into North Central Missouri, and ends back in Midtown. Seven to eight hours of monotony. Towns like Jamesport, Chillicothe, Trenton, and several others too small and forgettable to bother mentioning. Don't get me wrong, there are moments, little shit that keeps things interesting. My first day on the route I almost head on with some no button having Amish dude in a runaway buggy, for realz. I crest a hill out in the middle of cow country and hear comes fuckin Jedediah up the center of the 2 lane highway in a black buggy being pulled by some plow horse who has seemingly decided to go bat shit crazy and act like he is Secretariat. The rest of the trip that day was uneventful, a series of small towns, bleached out fields, old men in old pickup trucks who think the speed limit is 40 rather than 55 or 60. Fun it ain't. but it pays the bills.

I get back to Midtown and my final stop, night starting to fall. The city is lit up, a beacon welcoming me back to familiar territory. The familiar in Midtown is a long looooooong way from the Amish buggy guys familiar ground. I'm reminded of the vast difference a couple hundred miles can make as I exit my car at my final stop.

I notice her making a beeline for me, walking fast but not particularly straight. She looks like she is doing a slalom run, weaving in and out of those orange cones, except she is the only one who can see them. Stocking cap pulled low over a weave that has seen better days. The fake hair looks like flat dreads. The brown stocking cap and ragged hair extensions look like a giant spider perched atop her head. As she approaches it dawns on me that she is running the same pattern as the Amish guys out of control horse. It also dawns on me that those hair extensions probably came from a horse. Horse hair, a fine thread that connects two people who could not possibly be more different from one another.

I'm unloading my car while keeping one eye on Crackzilla. Crack heads really do remind me of Velociraptors, those medium size carnivores from Jurassic Park. When she gets about 30 feet away I can hear her repeating something, at first it sounds like she is saying something totally nonsensical. It sounds like she is saying, "Please feed the mice", but as she gets closer I realize she is talking to me, and she is actually saying, "Please be nice". I give her my best scowl, the one that makes babies cry. The one that says "Fat fuckin chance" to whatever shpeel she is about to run on me. Normally my trademark scowl is enough to squash whatever ploy/plea for money from all but the most determined or high panhandler. It doesn't even faze her.

Like any veteran crack head the eyes are her tell, the thing that gives her away. Bright and a little manic. She looks like Chris Rocks girlfriend from New Jack City, the one he put his shoe on over a turkey leg. If you've seen the movie you know the scene. She starts her sales pitch, the one about how she got left behind, stranded by friends or some shit, and I'm already cutting her off as I walk away. I can't say where I was, mainly because I don't want to lose this shitty little job. Ambiguity aside, let me just say that the place is crawling with security guards. So here I am, a load of stuff on a dolly, with a 90 pound boofer trailing me like a cat following a fish monger. (Kudos to me for using the terms Boofer and Fish Monger in the same sentence) .

I've got no idea what she is saying, she is throwing up words, machine gun fast mumbling, another tell that this whack job is in love with the glass pipe. When she realizes that the "Please be nice" mantra isn't cutting it, she starts screaming. She isn't saying shit at this point, just screaming at the top of her lungs. A cross between pure D fucking crazy and a "I'm being raped" scream. I pick up the pace, walking fast like my feet are on fire and my ass is catching. But you cannot out fast walk a crack head. I don't care if you are one of those Middle age power walker women from JoCo, little pink dumbbell in each hand, swinging your arms like an Indy Avenue hooker, you can't out walk a crack head.

As luck would have it the screams from the Velocicrackster, heh, brings 3 security guards out of their little trailer. They are looking at me like I must have done something fucked up to elicit such a high pitched sustained scream from the woman with the horse hair spider on her head. I give them a look that says, "drop the fuckin donut and get this bitch in check". I'm 20 feet from the entrance of the building, a big pair of automatic glass doors that will separate this crazy dope fiend from my heels, but the security douches block my path to freedom. "Whats going on" asks one of the 3 stooges. It's important that you readers understand, this woman is screaming at the top of her lungs, maybe 2 feet behind me.She is wearing clothes that look like she lifted them from the Nick Nolte character in Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Bag lady chic, finished off with that giant spider arrangement on her head. She is screaming like a stuck pig, my hands are full, dolly in one, big black bag in the other, and this douche bag is going all mall Cop on ME. I resist the urge to ask him if he is an idiot or just mildly retarded. I just look at the guy like he has 3 heads, turn to look at her, then back to him. The wordless exchange lasts maybe a minute and she never stops screaming. The bitch should hook up with the homeless golden voice guy. Get her some singing lessons, teach her a couple of Opera songs, she definitely has the pipes for opera. They could do a show together, then pop some rocks back at the hotel after the show.

I guess all the screaming finally convinced the stooges that the bitch was nuttier than a payday bar. Stooge one gives me a head nod to go through the glass doors. I leave the screaming crack head to deal with the three meat heads. when I come back about 20 minutes later they are still surrounding her, she is still screaming albeit not nearly as loud at this point. I already know that this thing will end with her in the back of a paddy wagon headed for the fruit factory.

On my way home it strikes me that the Amish dude would have probably reacted differently if the crack head found her way out to the sticks and approached him for a ride. He probably would have loaded her up in his buggy and taken her back to his farm. The missus would have served her some pie, because the Amish make hella pies. They would have made her a spot to sleep and awoken the next morning to find their butter churn missing along with the horse and buggy.

The moral of this story, if there is one, " You can take the crack head out of the city, but you cant take the".............never mind. There isn't any moral or message, just another typical evening in Midtown.

From the imaginary western plains to Kansas City schools, violence rules the day.

2011-02-17T09:29:00.000-06:00

I've been working like a white mouth gubmint mule lately, hence the lack of entertainment for you rubes. Along with the heavier work load, no Seacrest, I've also been on video game crack. Weed will rob you of your ambition, add PS3 to the mix and it's a wonder I ever get out of my chair. There's something disheartening about a 6 year old kid talking smack in what sounds like French in a squeaky cartoonish voice, while stomping the shit out of you in Red Dead Redemption. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Red Dead is an old west cowboy type version of Grand Theft Auto. I'm always a little late to the technology trough, I only recently stopped making mix tapes on cassette. I stopped short of getting one of those headsets to talk shit back to the little pukes who keep shooting my horse out from under me, not because I can't talk shit, I can, but I'm afraid I'll get arrested for threatening the life of some random kid in Belgium, video controller in one hand, while he eats Gummi Bears in his Underoos. So I'm stepping away from the PS3 long enough to grind out a few posts to get you people to stop emailing me asking if my Parole has been violated. It hasn't, yet, but it might be if I ever get my hands on the little prick who keeps shooting Ol Blue the Wonder Horse out from under me.

Speaking of young Pricks, can someone explain to me why no Arson charges have been filed in the near daily fires being set inside Southwest High School? They don't call it a high school nowadays, it's a college readiness, Afrikaan centered, preparatory academy or some such bullshit. Here in the soup sandwich of a school district that is the KCSD, fancy school names and drum circles seem to have taken the place of readin, rightin, and rithmetikin. For those of you fortunate enough to live outside the Kansas City area, let me bring you up to snuff, so this shit doesn't sound like the disjointed ramblings of a middle age pot head. Kansas City has had a Guinness book of records number of Superintendents in the last couple of decades. If I recall correctly, more than 20 in 20 years, or some crazy stats to that effect. White folks have fled the area like someone set their collective ass on fire. The black folks who could leave, have probably left as well. Who can blame them? After years of backroom deals, palm greasing, special interests, and apathy, the current school system in Kansas City seems to excel only in dropout rates, ill educated students, and general madness and mayhem reign supreme in the once hallowed halls of most of the schools. In recent weeks some little shit heel or heels have been setting fires inside Southwest. The situation has gotten so out of hand that the Teachers Union has filed a grievance demanding that the district do something to make the school more like a school and less like Thunderdome.

I know what some of you might be thinking, " M M is being a little flippant about such a serious issue". Look, in the last few years there have been riots in the hallways of Kansas City schools, videos posted on You tube proved as much. Last year a kid was hit by glass after a stray bullet came through a classroom window. I know of one young lady who received serious back and neck injuries after some punk hit her with a chair in a classroom. I could go on forever, but I won't. The point is , the district has by and large done little to make Kansas City schools safe and productive. Sure they fancy up the names, call the students scholars, make empty promises to change things for the better. In the end it's the same ol same. The district and now the Teachers union have been content to blame the kids, a few bad apples. Bullshit. Kansas City schools are in the dire straits they are in due to complacency. If this craziness took place in a JoCo school, the parents would march on the school like one of those mob scenes from an early Frankenstein flick. There would be facebook/twitter protests. There would be people getting fired. The bullshit would end. At the end of the day, the Parents of KCSD students share in as much blame as the district officials who have turned a blind eye to the years long madness and mayhem within the halls of it's schools.

So forgive me for failing to muster up the proper amount of hand wringing and moral outrage. This shit is nothing new, and the complacency of the parents of students in the district has played a large part in the current situation. Parents should be enraged, and maybe they are. Sadly, they haven't bothered to get that point across to the officials responsible for the care, education, and safety of their children. So you get what you got. Somebody wake me up when the protests start, until then, I'm going back to the plains to find the kid who keeps popping a cap in my trusty steads ass. ( no Seacrest)

Fast Eddie Friday... House cat with picture of Jesus in it's fur saves family of crack heads from house fire. I feel better already.

2011-01-21T08:32:00.000-06:00

Ted Williams, the homeless guy/ alky/ crack head, with the golden voice captured the hearts of Americans. People bought the bull shit the media sold them. When it comes to feel good stories we lap em up like cats to cream. For about one week Williams was the media sweetheart. Here's this shaggy guy with a mediocre 1980's style radio voice, claiming he has been sober for 2 years, and people bought it. Like a trout rising to take the fly (no Seacrest), folks bought the story, hook,line, and sinker.Williams hit the lottery. Kraft foods paid him 30 grand to pimp some cheese. 30 K will buy a whole lotta crack and Thunderbird. Williams story would have ended right there with the 30 k pay day, except for leeches like Oprah spawn Doctor Phil. Some of Williams 13 kids, or whatever the ridiculous head count is, came out of the woodwork to get their 15 minutes. They ratted him out, told Dr. Phil and the rest of America that the absentee Daddy was still hittin the bottle and the pipe.

Prediction time........Williams comes out of rehab and is back to the bottle and glass dick quicker than you can say " Brother can you spare some change for the bus?" You don't have to be Nostradamus to figure out how the Williams story ends. The guy was shitting in peoples hedges just a few weeks ago, higher than Cooter Brown, beggin for change. He stumbled over a stack of money. His life changed. But Williams hasn't changed, couldn't have changed, not over night. Six months, a year from now, he will be king of the Cleveland hobos, or posing for pictures with Asian tourists on Hollywood Blvd. At the end of the day, America didn't embrace Williams. We embraced the story. We made ourselves feel good because we cheered for some random homeless guy, while avoiding eye contact with the never ending stream of random homeless guys holding cardboard signs at virtually every corner in America. The television screen softens the reality. You don't have to avert your gaze when watching a Youtube video, and the smell of stale booze and ripe B.O. can't offend your senses through the computer screen. That's why most of us cheered for Williams. It was safe, made us feel good.

We live in a cynical real world, with good reason. In a world where 13 year old children will kill you for a 15 year old car, you learn to keep your eyes scanning your surroundings, careful not to let that gaze rest too long lest someone take offense and turn you in to a slab of cold meat. Whack jobs take a break from writing Manifestos in their own poop, to go out and dump a couple dozen rounds in to whoever happens to piss them off. Some guy with 6 goats in the middle of some Godforsaken dust bowl is wiping his ass with his left hand one day, flying planes in to buildings the next. You never know where the next batch of buzz kill will come from. So we take a little comfort in fluffy stories about the cat that saved a family from a house fire, or some mediocre radio voice that happens to come from some shaggy homeless guy who is looking for his next hit. Never mind that the cat was just trying to get outside so the neighborhood Tom could crack her cat panties. Forget that Williams left a pack of kids behind for someone else to foot their bill.

In a few minutes we will move on from the Williams saga if we haven't already. We will forget all about him until he pops up on TMZ or turns up in an E R after trying to cheek a hot crack pipe because the "Tree People" were after him. Next week we will become enamored with a milk cow that has Jesus face on it's ass, or some crazy character that goes viral on Youtube. Then we will fall in love all over again. We know it won't last, but for a minute we get to feel warm and fuzzy. Unicorns will dance. Midgets will cry Gummi Bear tears of joy.

Yep, it's a cynical world we live in, but we keep trying to believe.

Three fingers of Makers.

2011-01-19T07:35:00.000-06:00

I have penned some beautiful stuff. I don't say that with an ounce of ego or a hint of self aggrandizing. It's just a fact. Those stories are sprinkled throughout this blog. Scattered like ashes. Hidden between impotent rants and pointless diatribes. I've made more than a few of you tear up. Even when the subject matter has been dark, unbearably sad, there was always a thread of redemption or at least a few bright moments running through. This isn't one of those times. This isn't one of those stories. Usually when I write something really good, it is of a personal nature. There is almost always a trigger, something I saw on the news for example. This time it was the Ted Williams saga. Not the ball player. I'm talking about the homeless guy with the voice who was begging on a street corner and pissing in parking lots. The only common link between this story and Ted's is booze. Any similarities begin and end at the bottle. I'll write about Ted tomorrow, maybe. Right now, this moment, this story needs told.

I've mentioned this before, just not in great detail. Booze turned me in to a first rate prick. Having a short fuse to begin with, booze was just lighter fluid on the fire. I haven't had a drink in 20 years or there about. Every now and again I long for a couple of fingers of Makers Mark, a cold beer to chase it with, sitting in a haze of smoke in some dark seedy bar, watching it unfold around me. Those days are long gone as are the days of seedy smoke filled bars. When I was 20, too young to drink legally, not that being legal ever stopped me, I was stabbed by a pissed off husband in the entryway of the Club 95. He got me in the chest, the neck and the gut. I had been running around with the guys wife for months. Hey, I was a criminal, if stealing didn't bother me, adultery didn't even merit hesitation. I keep telling you rubes that "good guy crooks" are a Hollywood myth. Bullshit fabricated by men and women who lack the balls to see themselves in the mirror as they truly are. Robin Hood is a fairy tale.Honor among thieves is a fabrication. Anyway, it all came to a head the night he hemmed me up in that little entryway. I was drunk, his wife was evil, and the dude was nuttier than a Pepperidge Farms fruitcake. I'd been sitting at the bar, his 35 year old wife kept the liquor flowing, as he sat in a dark corner booth watching it all unfold. She knew what she was doing, no doubt in my mind. I was young, invincible, and naive when it came to just how twisted and fucked up people can be.

They were separated, she had him put out of his own house , wouldn't let him see his kids very often, made sure she kept her hand elbow deep in his pocket. I was an idiot who didn't have a clue. When I got up to leave, her hanging off my neck and rubbing against me like a cat, I didn't notice that he made an exit for the door ahead of me. I stepped out the first set of doors and there he stood. He was a big guy, but he wasn't intimidating, at least in my boozed up eyes. We stood there for a few seconds. He was rambling on about his house and his kids. Big guy, crying. I said something smart, don't recall exactly what, and as I brushed by him, he hit me in the chest. Except he didn't hit me. He stabbed me, in the upper left side of my chest just beneath the collarbone. Then he cut my neck, then he got me in the gut. She screamed, I was still trying to figure out what had happened. He turned around and left. He drove his car into a bridge pillar on 71 highway about 20 minutes later.

I went to the emergency room, got out the same night, had a drink and nailed his wife, in his house, just out of spite. I was a real piece of work back then. He was in the hospital for 3 weeks. The day he got out, he walked in his old home, walked past his wife and kids without uttering a word. Of course he knew she would follow him, probably yelling at him to get the fuck out of there. She did just as he knew she would. He stepped in to the bathroom, stood in the shower, and just as she stepped through the door, he stuck the pistol he had on him in his own mouth, and blew his brains out.

She came by my place that same night. The. Same. Night. Told me all about it. Just as calm as if she was telling me about some mundane daily occurrence. At one point she reaches into her purse, pulls out one of those blue Crown Royal bags. She dumped the contents out on my kitchen table. A gold bracelet, a wedding band, a diamond pinky ring and a mans wallet spilled out on the table. " Can you sell this jewelry for me"? I gave her a look. I scooped the shit up, put it in the bag, put it back in her purse, and threw her out of my house. Physically. I got blinding drunk that night. I never saw her again. Don't get shit twisted, I wasn't suddenly overcome with guilt and shame for having an indirect hand in the guys death. I wasn't capable of that type of remorse back in those days. The regrets wouldn't come for another 20 years or so. I put her out because she spooked me. She was ruthless.She was far colder than I was ever capable of being, and that's saying something.

I continued to drink through my 20's. I continued to do stupid shit when I was hammered. I finally gave it up when I was in my early 30's. I was never a stereotypical alcoholic, but I know now as I knew when I finally gave it up, booze clouded my judgment, changed my personality, and it never chased away whatever personal demons and problems I battled. In the end it started to affect my hustle, and I wasn't having any of that shit. I went to a single AA meeting and never went back. I didn't need it, and I didn't need to listen to a bunch of ex drunks talk about booze. I just quit.

I like to think that I wouldn't have helped torment that poor sap had I not been drinking. I know for a fact I wouldn't have let myself get caught in that entryway had I been sober. I knew it then and I know it now. Booze didn't ruin my life, but it probably contributed to ruining the lives of those two kids that were caught between a weak minded father and an evil mother. When I was 20, in that moment, I never gave any thought to those two kids, never cared if I was helping drive their father crazy. I did plenty of stupid shit in those drinking years. Here's the rub, I knew every time before I took a drink that things could turn out bad. Still I drank.

Tomorrow we'll take a look at the Ted Williams farce.

Don't piss down my neck then tell me it's raining......... Ferrets, Fanatics, and Fucked uppedness.

2011-01-12T08:57:00.000-06:00

I probably should have saved this title and text for a Fast Eddie Friday installment, but I'm about to bust a vein in my forehead if I don't spit this shit out. If any one thing will keep me hanging on to this blog, it will be my need to vent to someone other than my Girl, my dogs, and the TV screen. You long time sufferers of this blog have by now formed an image of me and how you think I probably spend my time, how I react to certain things, how much dope I smoke, shit like that. If you imagine that I sit in my recliner in a haze of ciggarette and weed smoke, yelling at the talking heads on the news, while Max the Yorkie bogarts the footrest of said recliner, then sadly you are spot on. If you imagine that I blew a cerebral gasket over the story of the finger munching ferret out of Grain Valley, again you hit a bullseye. If you haven't heard about the latest case of extreme Hillbilliness to come out of the great state of Missouri, then allow me to enlighten you.

The short version. A couple of mouth breathing breeders spit out 3 or 4 kids. They decide that a Ferret would be a great addition to the Family. Their youngest, a four month old boy is turned into a buffet for the ferret. As mom sleeps in the living room alongside the baby, and dear old dad snoozes in the bedroom, the ferret casually eats all of the infants fingers, save both thumbs and a pinky. The baby according to the parents screamed but not before being turned into lobster boy. That's right, these shit weasels were supposedly right there in the house, even in the same room, as the Ferret, also a weasel, ate the baby's fingers off like they were those little pickled ears of corn that come in Chinese food. I don't think most people actually eat those baby ears of corn, I know I don't. Sadly Ferrets don't have that same aversion to baby fingers. Apparently baby fingers are to Ferrets what Gates ribs are to humans. The Grain Valley Police are investigating the matter.

Are you fuckin kiddin me?

No, I am not....

Look, I lost just partial bits of two fingers in a motorcycle related incident. Chains, sprockets, copious amounts of weed, and moving parts are a bad combination and I've got the nubs to prove it. Doesn't take a major brain to figure this shit out. Same goes for this Ferret incident. Expect the parents to be charged, and hopefully anything living and breathing in their home will be removed for it's own safety. Strangely the actual incident isn't what has me wound up. The incident speaks for itself, so you don't need me to tell you how fucked up it is.

Now here's the rub. The Ferret rescue lady. "I was just devastated for the baby. I was devastated for the ferret. I was just, I'm shocked, quite honestly. Because that is not normal ferret behavior," said Sharon Cannon, director of the Kansas City Ferret Hotline, a rescue and adoption group for the animal. She continues. Cannon said it's wrong to assume the animal just snapped. She said it needs motivation to do something and it often times responds in the manner in which it's being treated.
"The ferret became an animal, because they were forced into that situation, absolutely. The ferret didn't go crazy," Cannon said.

Ms. Cannon spit this bullshit out on channel 5, which makes her fair game. Kind of like baby fingers to a Ferret. This whack job and defender of Ferrets is a prime example of why we are all doomed. The money line,
"The ferret became an animal, because they were forced into that situation, absolutely. The ferret didn't go crazy," Cannon said.

I guess I missed the part about what the Ferret was prior to it becoming an Animal. You can catch the video here. Call me crazy, but I always assumed Ferrets were animals from the git go. What with the Fur, pissy smell, and mouthful of needle teeth. Somewhere buried in this blog is my tale of the Ferret I once owned. I can't find it because the search function is all fucked the fuck up. My experience with the Ferret was not good, it bit my feet when I'd walk across the living room in the mornings, it even bit my junk (no Liberace) when I woke up with a pup tent one morning. I ended up trading it for a bag O weed. Ferrets are wild animals that have been domesticated to some extent, and I'm sure some of you rubes will enlighten me on how warm and cuddly they are. Having been bit on the dick by one , unprovoked, I'm gonna beg to differ on how cuddly they are.

But back to the crazy Ferret Lady. Nobody forced that Ferret to be a Ferret. It already was a Ferret. The problem is people. When that Tiger tried to date rape Sigfried or Roy, it was just a Tiger doing what tigers do. When that chimp ripped that woman's face off, it was just being a chimp. When that ferret ate the baby's fingers, it was being a ferret. Nobody turned it into an animal. The problem is irresponsible retards turning animals in to people, then acting all surprised when they do animal type shit. Maybe if the crazy Ferret lady had suggested that people shouldn't have a ferret running wild around an infant, I'd have given her a pass.

Disclaimer ** 4 pound Yorkies don't fall under the animals are not people rule.***

Fast Eddie Friday..... Hate Crimes in black and white..........

2011-01-07T09:13:00.000-06:00

By now most of you locals are aware of the woman who ran over another woman after words were exchanged in an Indy Ave grocery store. A mixed couple, one white, one black vs. another woman in the store aisle. Words were exchanged, who knows why. Around 30 minutes after the spat, the couple leaves the store. The other woman runs over the female. One is white, one is black. The driver of the vehicle according to the husband of the victim made at least two racial comments. " That's why I hate blank people". I'm being a little vague and ambiguous here, but stick with me, we'll get there. If the woman who was driving the lethal weapon, in this case a P T Cruiser, was white, having made a racially tinged comment prior to running over the other lady, who let's say was black, is there any doubt that this case would already be turned over to the Feds to be prosecuted as a hate crime? As it should have been. Well as of this writing, it has not been picked up by the feds. Probably won't be either.

As most of you already know the woman who was turned in to a human speed bump was a white woman, her husband is black, her alleged assailant is black. According to the husband the woman made 2 references about hating white bitches, waited in the parking lot for 30 minutes, then ran the other woman down with her car. They were able to track the driver down because she used her EBT card in the store. Most of you are probably thinking this sounds like a hate crime. Pretty cut and dried. Right? I mean, if you say "I hate white bitches" then run over a white woman, one would figure that statement and the criminal act that follows constitutes a hate crime. I thought so until I saw the following report on Fox 4. The family of the accused straightened this shit out for me.

See, nothing to be alarmed over. The woman behind the wheel of the PT Cruiser was going to be a social worker. A wonderful woman, with a slight anger control issue.

Let's cut through the horse shit here, if this situation were reversed and the perp was white, the vic black, the hate crime guantlet would have been laid down before the engine of that PT Cruiser was cooled off. Rightfully so, in my not remotely humble opinion. The usual suspects on our local interwebs would have been writing in giant cap letters. You can't have it both ways. When the scumbags in Texas dragged a black man behind their truck, when the knuckle draggers in Wyoming hung the young gay man from a fence, those were hate crimes. Only an idiot would believe otherwise. So someone explain to me how this case is any different as far as the main motivator being racial hatred. The only difference is the victim in this case was white. If you downplay the racial aspect of one crime over another, you taint all instances of racially motivated crimes. So this isn't a case of white folks trying to extract a pound of flesh as payback.

On a more positive note, bondsman don't accept EBT cards so unless she can raise 100 grand our budding social worker and hater of white bitches is off the road.

Shaking like a Magnum condom on an Asian swimmer...............

2010-12-07T07:50:00.000-06:00

I'll let you in a little secret, I've got a couple of phobias. Mostly it's the typical things. Can't stand being too high off the ground. Small spaces, especially elevators, that 1 or 2 second pause right after the elevator stops and right before the door opens. I always have this moment wondering if the door is going to open, or if I'll have to shimmy out the trap door in the ceiling, if there is a trap door in the ceiling. I rarely get through an elevator ride without formulating an escape plan, even if it includes using some blue hair or dude in a wheelchair as a step ladder to reach the overhead hatch. Unreasonable fear of tight places, heights, spiders, divorce lawyers, closet doors slightly ajar at night. Those are pretty typical, no doubt most of you rubes have at least one unreasonable fear or three. No biggie, I'm not here to judge or analyze. On second thought, I'm always passing judgment and picking at peoples scabs, so scratch that previous sentence. Besides, we aren't here to talk about you.

I haven't used an ink pen for illegal gain since the latter part of 1995. It's been 15 years since I did any dirt. When I walk in a bank today it's for legit purpose, no criminal intent, although I do admit to scanning the employees to see if I can spot the easy mark. I can. My point is, the occasional stick of medicinal herb aside, I pretty much live like most of you L7 's. No need to look over my shoulder. But I still do. A couple days ago I had to go to a Police station in the burbs. Work related, pick up a package, take it somewhere else. No big deal. So I step into the lobby, tell the woman behind the dispatch window I'm with Acme Whatever Company here to pick up a widget. She tells me Detective Whoever will be right with me. The guy comes out opens the door to the inner sanctum and ushers me back. For a millisecond, the time it takes for one breath, I hesitate.

A tiny voice says " Don't go back there. It's a trap."

I know what you are thinking. MM is a retard.

You also might be thinking. MM just said retard, that's a derogatory term.

Blow me. Want nice ? Go read a mommy blog. And don't forget to wear your helmet.

Back to this phobia thing. Now in my reasonable rational mind, I know there is no way I'm being set up. For starters I retired from the life 15 years ago, and there is no way the cops would go through some long drawn out charade just to trick me into walking through that security door. Nevertheless, my heart rate increases the second I step through that doorway. I'm pretty sure the Detective is giving me the fish eye as we walk down the hallway. We trade a little small talk, although I couldn't tell you what it was about. He leaves me in his office for a few minutes, Brooks and Dunn singing about scooting their boots on a radio. As I'm waiting for him to return, I'm surveying the room, which smelled of Fritos, cheap cologne, and farts, I'm looking for possible escape routes. He comes back, I sign some shit, take the package for delivery, and he walks me out. As I'm driving back to the city I replay the 7 minutes or so when I was behind that locked door, one I didn't have a key to. Looking back, there was this moment when I'm signing his paper work. I looked up from the paper as I slid it across his desk and we locked eyes. He knew I had some history, that we played on opposing teams at some point or another. You might think it's all in my head, but I'm pretty sure he knew. Most any Detective worth his salt can spot a guy with some history. Just like anyone who lived the life can spot a cop in civilian clothes. True story.

I'm pretty sure I'm suffering some kind of Post Conviction Stress Syndrome. I can even trace it back, pinpoint the root cause. I blame it on the now defunct , at least I think it was disbanded, Career Criminal Unit. I have mentioned Bob Guffy and his pockmarked partner who I only remember as Poncho, in this blog a time or two. These two Detectives would sit in front of my house. I'd come out and there they would be. Just sitting there. Sometimes they would get out of their car, sometimes they would just roll the window down. We might exchange a little small talk, not unlike the random exchange I recently had with the unnamed suburban detective. Other times, when they were getting under my skin I'd talk shit to them. Occasionally it included something unflattering about their mothers or wives. But those times were rare. More often than not we would just lock eyes for a second or two and they would either drive off, or follow me around for a little while. Our last encounter was behind a VFW or Moose lodge in Grandview after a lengthy car chase. I'd parked my car back behind the building, was sitting there waiting for them to fly past me. Sadly a dust cloud in the gravel gave me away. Guffy crept up on me, had his gun a couple inches from my melon, finger on the trigger, hammer back. For a second I thought he was going to punch my ticket. There was just him and me, no witnesses. Obviously he didn't splatter my brains all over the inside of my car ala Pulp Fiction. At the time, when I was in that life, cops didn't really rattle me so much. They were just part of the equation. Now that I'm a Hoople Head like you square world rubes, just the sight of a cop behind my car makes me shake like a magnum condom on an Asian swimmers meat whistle.

I figure its some kind of stress related mental disorder. Soon as I figure out who to sue, it's gonna be on like Donkey Kong. So is there a moral to this story, or was I just trying to figure out a way to use that line about a dick rubber and an Asian swimmer? Actually both, but there is a moral to the story, or at least a lesson of sorts. Square world citizens, that's you rubes, often operate under the assumption that criminals get off too easy. Sadly that is often true, especially when it comes to the ridiculously light sentences that many sex offenders receive. But going straight for your normal criminal types isn't exactly a cake walk. The entire time you are on parole there is always that threat of being sent back. Sometimes it's subtle, unspoken by the Parole Officer, other times it's more direct if that PO happens to be a douche bag, or if the parolee is a major fuck up. Here's the thing, even after the parole is walked down, a small part of you is always waiting for the shoe to drop. There is always a concern that some old warrant will appear or that the cops will mistake you for some other knuckle head, especially if you have a rap sheet and a name like Mark Smith. The funny thing, the irony in this unreasonable fear, in a way it's a good thing. That little bit of unease and worry is like a rubber band on your wrist, the one you wear to make you remember something, or to snap when you feel the urge to smoke or eat that box of zoo zoos and wham whams. That little bit of fear keeps your powder dry, makes you walk the mostly straight and narrow.

Is that a crotch rocket, or are ya just glad to see me?

2010-11-16T09:05:00.001-06:00

Unless you have been living in a cave, ( no Bin Laden), then I'm sure you have heard of the growing protests over Body scanners and frisking in the nations airports. Some clown has become an innerwebs sensation for telling a security dude to not touch his junk, or else he will have him arrested. Now there is National Opt Out Day. Some douche nozzle is urging air travelers not to go through new, high-tech body scanners the day before Thanksgiving, which means they'll have to undergo pat downs if they want to board. Which in turn will pretty much grind shit to a halt at the airports that have the scanners. Of course these "Patriots and defenders of Liberty" will be just as offended by the body search. Now I realize I'm probably in the minority here, most folks probably don't like the idea of giving an X-ray peep show to some stranger, and the pat down is none to popular either. Speaking as someone who was routinely frisked and strip searched on a daily basis for 5 years, I have to say it isn't that big of a deal. Granted being in the Gray Bar Motel isn't the same as some square world citizen paying hundreds of dollars for an airline ticket, but stick with me for a minute and I think you might see my point.

In prison there are 2 types of body searches.
The pat down.
The typical pat down consists of holding your arms out like you are being crucified. The hack usually starts at each leg, runs his or her hands up each leg, feels your pockets, continuing up each side of your torso, across your chest, and usually down the center of your back. I was probably subjected to 3500 or 4,000 pat downs in 5 years.

The Strip Search.
You get buck ass naked. If you have hair on your head, I didn't, you run your fingers through your hair, open your mouth, show under your tongue. The hack is standing a few feet away as you do this. Then he tells you to lift em. The "em" being your package, your junk, your meat whistle, bait n tackle, what ever you want to call it. Then you turn, lift your feet, preferably one at a time. Then you spread em, the "em" in this case being the cheeks of your ass, then you squat and cough, being careful not to squat too far lest your balls touch the cold concrete prison floor. I went through hundreds of those as well.

In extreme cases the prison staff might decide to do a cavity search, except there isn't any dentist involved. In all my years inside I never heard of anyone being given a cavity search. If the guards thought you had something stuffed in the safe (your ass) they would just lock you in a dry cell for a couple of days and let nature take its course.

I know, I know, What the fuck does some dirt bag like me being in prison have to do with a free world citizen being subjected to an intrusive search? Plenty, so shut your cake hole for a minute and I'll splain where I'm heading.
In prison there is a small minority of cons who are more than a little crazy. If given free reign they would be running around with 2 foot long plexiglass shanks stabbing the shit out of anyone that looked cross eyed at them. As unpleasant and intrusive as strip searches and to a lesser degree pat downs are, being stabbed everywhere but the soles of your feet by some wobble head, is far more unpleasant. It's a necessary evil in a place where there are people who would just as soon kill you as look at you. While I call Prison Guards hacks, let me just say it's not out of disrespect, it's just what I've always called them. At the end of the day, if they had just stayed inside a bubble and pushed buttons, leaving the cons to our own devices it would have been a killing field inside. As with any position of authority there were cool hacks, and douche hacks, likewise with the prison population. Same as the free world.

Still with me? We live in a world where religious zealots will strap bombs to their feet, their crotch, and even up their ass. We are one of, if not the most hated country in the world. So how are the square world hacks, in this case the TSA, the Gubmint, supposed to protect us from the crazies in this world who will gladly pack their crack with explosives, or make a jock strap out of C4? You can't start targeting everyone with olive skin and funny last names. That shit won't fly in this politically correct world, and to be fair, most middle eastern types aren't out to blow us up anyway. So the necessary evil is to check everyone. If these measures weren't taken, the first time some whack job jihads an Airbus full of travelers, the same people who are bitching about Gubmint intrusion, would be up in arms because the Gubmint didn't do enough.

You might recall that I got banned from a certain airline just for cussing out some clueless Travelocity dude in India over the phone, while standing too close to the ticket counter at MCI. In hindsight, I've got to admit it was a bone headed move on my part and I got what I had coming. It's becoming increasingly popular in this country to spout shit like "Take back our country", "don't tread on me", people toss around words like Patriot, and imply that anyone who has opposing views is somehow less of an American than some chuckle head waving a sign and screaming along with a bunch of other nimrods holding signs. This TSA protest thing is just an extension of that same paranoid the gubmint is out to strip us of our rights and turn us all in to a bunch of Mao quoting lemmings in drab PJ's and cereal bowl haircuts. I'll be the first to admit that our country is run by a bunch of self serving ass hats, regardless of their political party. I don't trust a single politician, they are all as crooked as a barrel of snakes. That said, I don't buy into the conspiracy theory Illuminati tin foil hat rhetoric that is growing in popularity. Sometimes you just have to take one for the team. Until the mad scientists at area 51 devise a terrorist detector from secret technology derived from the aliens they keep locked up in hyperbaric chambers, everyone is just going to have to bite the bullet, walk through the machine, let some stranger feel your leg, or take a fuckin train.

The Beard and The Yellow Dog................

2010-11-15T11:01:00.000-06:00

I call him The Beard. He posts up every day. A small white guy. Beard that runs clear up to his cheek bones, to just under his eyes. Hair the same length as the beard, coarse, thick, a couple inches in length. A hairline that most men would have envied in their 20's. The overall effect, the end result, is like a reverse mask. All you get is a 3 or 4 inch strip running horizontally across his face. A pair of eyes peering out from a carpet of dirty dark hair. I see him late in the morning, early afternoon, on my way to pick up my route for the night. He spends his time at the base of the North 435 and Front street off ramp. It's impossible to tell his age. Maybe 30, 40, could even be my age, 50's? Normally he would be just another guy with a sign begging for money. There is no shortage of seemingly able bodied men standing on various street corners, holding a beat up cardboard sign. The messages rarely if ever phase me. I normally have a " Too lazy to work, Too scared to steal" opinion of these guys. Disdain, scorn, isn't really what comes to mind, doesn't really describe my attitude for the many homeless beggars throughout the metro. I'd say it's indifference. You can afford to be indifferent when you are on the outside looking in. Sitting in the climate controlled interior of your car, shit seems to be black and white like that. Fuck em, it aint my problem.

The last couple of weeks this guy has peeled about 30 bucks from my meager bankroll. He has an ace in the hole. A trump card. A yellow dog, a Chow mix. He keeps him on a leash fashioned from what looks like clothesline rope. The dog is plump, well fed, seemingly cleaner than his owner. On sunny or rainy days an old floral patterned umbrella serves as shade or shelter for the dog, while his owner stands or sits in the open. Opposing corners at the same intersection are the chosen spots for a 50 or 60 something man and woman couple, on another is a 20 something guy holding a homeless vet sign. A few times a week an older man in a wheelchair with his legs or at least one leg amputated at the knee. I've honestly never looked long or close enough to recall if it's one leg or two. The signs all say pretty much the same thing. WILL WORK FOR FOOD, but not really. The signs always end in a God Bless, even though I have my doubts that a God is doling out very many blessings to any of these people. That kind of shit never has had much weight with me. But throw in a dog, and I'll usually break weak, drag a few bucks out of my tired pocket.

So I was driving along the other night kind of chewing on the why's and wherefores of it all. How is it a yellow dog trumps a homeless vet or a guy missing a leg, maybe two? I'm thinking I must be one of those people who care more about dogs than people. Another 100 miles or so of pondering and I think I figured it out. I think it all comes down to being able to identify, find some common ground. This guy with the dog, I can identify with him on at least some level. I figure that dog helps keep the guys powder dry. What I mean to say, the dog keeps the guy in line. I don't know if he has a drinking problem, but it's a pretty safe bet he does. Drinking problem or not, he can't get too out of control lest he end up in jail, and would be separated , probably forever from the yellow dog. That dog is all this guy has. If he steps off the edge, loses his grip, the dog ends up without him, or vice versa , both. I figure the dog is what keeps this guy alive. So the next time I see them standing in their little gravel and glass shard paved spot I pass a bag of Pedigree out the window along with a fin for the guy. Funny thing, the dog food cost more than the 5 spot I gave the guy.

Don't get me twisted, this isn't a self aggrandizing masturbatory piece where I sit here stinking up the room with my self congratulatory farts all because I gave some hobo a couple hours pay over the course of a month. There are countless equally and more deserving that I won't ever give a second glance. This isn't a lesson in helping your fellow man, or giving a hand up to the weak and down trodden. I'm thinking out loud, with an audience.

I actually started this post a couple weeks ago. I got in a pattern of starting to write something, then part way through I'd hit a wall or lose interest. So I'm picking up where I left off. This past week has come and gone without the beard and his yellow dog posting up at their spot. I can't help but wonder where they have gone, what's become of them. The corner is now occupied by a steady stream of men and a couple of women, ragged cardboard signs, picking up where the previous needy types left off. Maybe the Beard got smart, headed out west or down south, a warmer climate. Maybe he lost his grip and ended up in a jail. I've had a coat and a bag of dog food in my back seat for a week now. I want to get this guys story. Not necessarily to write about, just to satisfy my own curiosity. I've often wondered how someone comes to that place in life. You drop all pretense of pride, set yourself up to be alternately looked upon with disdain or ignored all together. A popular point of view is that these people like living like this. Hell I've been of that opinion myself. Winter is coming on, Kansas City winters can be harsh. It's hard to swallow that anyone would enjoy living in the streets this time of year. So I'm going to give this story a temporary ending. The Beard and the Yellow Dog are basking in the Florida sunshine. Living the life. If he ever shows back up on that corner, Ill be sure and ask. Until then, I like my ending, it's probably a lot nicer than the reality.

**The photo at the top of the post isn't The Beard, but it's pretty close to how he and the Yellow Dog look.**

Fast Eddie Friday.......Of Mice, Men, and Mushrooms.

2010-11-12T09:40:00.000-06:00

Let me just say this; I'm a live and let live kind of guy. I have never been one of those folks who feel it is incumbent upon them to pass judgment on anyone's sexual proclivities. If it's between one or more consenting adults, and as long as no children or animals are harmed, I say whatever floats your boat, trips your trigger, or keeps your powder dry, is your business. I don't care if you spent the evening trying to retrieve a G.I. Joe from your partners ass, via one of those acrylic hamster tubes, during a game of Chilean Miner Rescue gone wrong. People do some strange shit. Add hallucinogens to the mix and and an already freaky disposition can go completely off the charts. That said, if you decide to abuse an innocent animal then I'm gonna be on you like stink on a pig. Hence the post about this scumbag pictured below....................................

Meet Noah ( I stuffed a mouse up my ass) Smith. Now it's bad enough that this clown decided to use his colon as a habitrail, shit gets deeper. Mr Mouse Trap then decided to up the ante. He breaks in to a house, naked, gets in a fight with the police who show up to arrest him, and to make matters worse, he gets pepper sprayed and tazed. One of the arresting officers notices our boy has something hanging out of his rectal-assall area.

Wait a minute..........

It appears the mouse in question wasn't an actual living cheese eating type of mouse. It was a computer mouse. Well hell that's a huge relief. I'm glad no actual animals were harmed. Still you have got to wonder, what would posses someone to burgal a house, buck naked, with a computer mouse wedged up his hot pocket? The answer is simple. MUSHROOMS. Now I've tried shrooms back in the day. When I was younger, back in the mid to late 70's, I'd try just about anything that would get ya high. A few of us ate some peanut butter looking stuff we got from a hippy at Volker Park. I woke up at home, 3 days later. One of the other lab rats I ran with woke up in the hospital after chugging a can of radiator stop leak that he mistook for a can of beer. Not sure what that hippy sold us, but we went back a few days later and beat a refund out of him. So I'm no stranger to drug experimentation. I ate mushrooms a few times. They made me throw up, fucked up my vision, and tasted like sunflower seed shells dipped in hog shit. I dont eat pork, so I'm just guessing what hog shit tastes like. Anywho, at the end of the day I decided mushrooms were not for me. I never felt compelled to burgal anything while under the influence, and I didn't have an irresistable urge to plug my balloon knot with a keyboard from a commador computer. I don't think they had mouses/mice back then.

In keeping with the original theme of this post.....Have you seen those dog toys where you stuff a treat inside a cavity in the toy and the dog goes crazy trying to get it out of the rubber ball/bone thing? Michelle Owen took that shit to a whole new level. This nut job was already in the pokey for some kind of drinking related charge. She decides to turn over her laptop to the cops claiming her ex had been surfing child porn. The detectives get the laptop, low and behold they find two, count em, 2 videos of Michelle having marital relations of the oral variety with her beloved Beagle, Buster. You can read the details on the Smoking gun if you want, but I'd advise against it. The police report describes this woman smearing something on her no no square and then letting Buster have at it. They don't say what the substance was but it clearly wasn't a kibble that Buster cared for. The money quote from the detective, " The dog appeared to lose interest and walked off". I hope Miss Owen gets that thing checked out while she is in jail. There are few things a dog won't wallow around in, and if your holiest of holies is so repugnant that you have to mask it with bacon grease or whatever she used, and the dog still doesn't want any part of it, then you have a major issue going on down there . I hope Buster finds a good home, preferably one where the humans aren't as fucked up as soup sandwiches.

And finally. It looks like my late nights working are about to grind to a halt. You can look for a little more regularity in regards to posting around here. I'm going to make one final attempt to get my writing mojo back on track. I've already got a few posts in the can ( no Seacrest), so look for those starting Monday. I know at least a couple hundred of you clowns have been faithfully checking in on a daily basis to see if I have anything new posted, so thanks for hanging in there.

Maybe I'm paranoid. Or maybe they really are out to get me.

2010-10-28T10:16:00.000-05:00

I think they have some kind of vendetta against me. They are looking to get some pay back. I killed one of theirs, doesn't matter to them if it was an accident or not. I'm sure they are out to get me...................

I suppose I should explain. It all started about 2 weeks ago. I've been running routes 7 nights a week, every week, for the last 10 weeks or so. About 2 or 3 weeks ago is when it all went down. I know, 2 or 3 weeks is a big spread, but the nights are all running one into the other. This ridunculous work load is whats kept me from doing much writing, or much of anything else for that matter. They tell me it's all going to wind down by the 5th of November, I can't wait, I definitely need a break. I'm just worried I may not make it until the 5th. They may get to me before then. If that proves to be the case, if they manage to take me out, I want it on record. Need to leave a trail for the cops to follow.

Back to that night.

I'm driving south on 65 highway, a few miles outside of Warsaw. Hillbilly country. At least this time of year. It's getting too cold for the lake crowd to come down. They've mostly all pulled their boats out of the water, winterized their lake cabins. Now it's just the locals. I haven't seen so many pickup trucks since my last trip to Oklahoma. All the stores I've been delivering to in these parts have that same vibe, heavy with B.O. and lots of Camo clothing.......

Let me back up for a minute, try to explain what I mean. I've been running a seasonal product to various locations of the nations largest retailer. The one with blue haired greeters in blue vests. Yeah, that one. Occasionally I'll run some of the local stores here in KC, but for the most part I'm spending my time running up and down every two lane piece of shit "Highway" in the rural areas of Missouri and Kansas. Now you would think that a retail store that sells everything from T Bones to Televisions would have plenty of hygiene products on hand. Soap, deodorant, shit like that. And they do, but judging from the pervasive odor of armpits and ass these Billy Bobs are spending all their cash on skoal and Taylor Swift posters, rather than soap and Right Guard. Doesn't seem to matter if I'm in Warsaw Missouri or Hiawatha Kansas, they all smell the same. Reminds me of prison, same smell. So now that you get an idea of where I'm spending my nights, back to The Night it all went down...........

Like I said, I'm running 65 mph down 65 highway. It narrows down to just a narrow 2 lanes a few miles north of Warsaw. I crest a hill and just as I notice that the oncoming traffic has stopped, it happens. The stupid fucker just walked right out in front of me. A deer. About the size of a Great Dane. I hit the furry fucker before I can even touch the brake pedal. You know how you can look back on an incident that took a matter of seconds, and you recall all the minutia like it was in slow motion. This thing was like that. I notice the pickup trucks lights aren't moving in the oncoming lane. I see a big ass buck standing on the narrow shoulder to my right. Next thing I know the now dead doe is right there in front of me. I've still got some of her hair in my grill, kind of my way of sending out a message. Problem is, I think it's pissed off the rest of the deer community. When I hit her I got mad lucky. Normally you hit a deer at 65 mph in a small 4 door modern-ish car, you can pretty much kiss your car goodbye. If you are lucky, a few grand later and your car is about the same as pre-collision. If you are unlucky, you end up on the 6 O'clock news. Man dies from deer antler to the face. This time I was lucky. I hit the deer, she does a triple back flip across both lanes of road. Max is snoozing in the passenger seat, never even wakes up until I stop the car. I pull to the narrow shoulder, rattled. The Billy Bob in the pickup drives on, never so much as a " You okay?". So much for country hospitality. You cant get the pricks to stop waving as they pass you on the road, but that friendly farmer bullshit goes right out the window if it requires actual speaking. I examine my car. I come away with a dent in the front of the hood, a cracked headlight cover, and a bunch of deer hair embedded in the grill. I cross the road, the deer is as dead as a door knob. I spit on her just for good measure.

I've run that same route about 4 or 5 times since. Every single time I've had at least one near miss with a deer. I'll see them standing 3 or 4 deep off the side of the road, just staring at me. It's like being mean mugged in the prison yard. Some prick giving you the fish eye, trying to size you up. Whoever looks away first loses. Last night I had like 5 of these fuckers just step out on the road, stand there, looking at me like they are Sam Jackson, daring me to say "What" one more time. I'm so jumpy I locked my brakes up when I thought I saw a deer standing at the edge of the road. Turns out it was a mailbox. One of those stupid mailboxes that looks like a giant fish, a bass or something. I get home at night, I've got to self medicate with a stick of hippy lettuce the size of my thumb. It helps, don't judge. When I started running these routes, before I killed the bitch, I was relaxed, driving through the dark, having fun winding through the curves. Now, I'm hunched over the wheel like your grandma, trying to scan both sides of the road. I ran over an already dead coon or opossum last night. A little effeminate shriek escaped my lips before I could check myself. It's a fuckin embarrassment.

I know what you are thinking. " MM has lost it. Dude has sugar in his tank" Maybe so, maybe I am losing it, but I tell you these deer are fuckin with me. They know. I figure its come down to this, Fight, Flee, or Climb a Tree. I'm afraid of heights, and I'm too stubborn to run, so I guess it's on like a pot of neck bones. Its either me or them. I'm gonna blow up a couple of these Jason Miller pics, stick em to the side of my car. I figure the deer don't know shit about this guy. All they'll see is some whack job holding one of their cousins melons. Far as they know, dude is like a deer Al Qaeda or something. Next time I see one of these furry hoofed rats standing on the side of the road I'll do the old open car door clip on em. It's on like Donkey Kong, if I quit now, the deer terrorists win. But just in case I don't make it. If they manage to take me out in some crazy suicide brown bomber type plot. Just know I didn't lay down. I went out sitting up.

And somebody, Feed Max.

Late night thoughts from the road...................

2010-10-05T09:46:00.001-05:00

It's been a minute. Then again, I've been on the road every night since my last post. They've been working me like a white mouth mule. I wrote a long post on the trials and tribulations of this newish job, it's still unfinished and I'll probably get around to wrapping it up eventually. But first I want to tell you about a kid I knew way back when. Funny thing about this new gig, it gives me huge chunks of time to think, to recall, yet it leaves me with little time or desire to write it down. This past 5 or 6 weeks, I've spent the better part of nearly every night driving the rural roads and highways that wind through Missouri and Kansas. There's little to see at night, just dark shapes slipping past, and the occasional deer jumping out in my path like a hoofed kamikaze. I pass through these small towns, that are already sleeping well before midnight. Small towns at night are the exact opposite of city nights. Even late into the night and dark early A.M., the city doesn't sleep, it dozes. There's always someone out there, moving. It's still lit up. Small towns go dark at night, save the occasional motel sign, it's neon partially lit. Vacancy glowing in red, maybe a letter or two missing. I suppose passing through these towns at night reminds me of my youth, summers spent in Oklahoma with my grandparents. And Brent Riley. It all reminds me of Brent.

I don't know if Parents still send their kids off to stay with the grandparents for the summer. From the age of 6, up to about 12 when I just became to much to handle, I spent virtually every summer in Marlow Oklahoma. I made maybe 2 or 3 friends during those years. Brent was one and probably the only one I'd really count as a friend rather than just some kid I hung out with for a few days, before they annoyed me with that Okie twang and Opie Taylor like personality. I just never was able to find any common ground with small town kids. Ironically, I picked up that okie twang as a kid, still carry it to this day.

Brent was a wild kid, fearless as rough neck kids from working class roots tend to be. His father went by the name Pee Wee, short guy who ran a D X service station on the east edge of town. I remember him as a quiet type. Always smelled of oil and gasoline, never much to say. In 6 summers I imagine I saw him sleeping in a chair in his living room, more than I saw him up and moving. Brent's mother on the other hand never seemed to stop moving, and talking. Really more like yelling. She yelled everything. Not in a particularly angry way, she was just a loud woman. What I recall about her is strange, the things our memories attach to people. She had gray hair, was probably in her mid 30's and completely gray. She was also the first woman I'd ever seen who didn't shave under her arms. She wore those shapeless summer shifts that were common back then. Some kind of floral pattern, the material thin and the color all but washed out. She had hair on her legs, and even on her chin and upper lip. An attractive woman she was not.

The Riley's were strict, or at least the mother was. She was quick to the belt, and more than once I noticed Brent or one of his brothers walk stiffly from one of her getting your mind right sessions. That said, I don't think she was a cruel woman, I just think it was how she was raised. It was what she knew. Also it was a reaction to an older son who had died in a car wreck on some Oklahoma dirt road. Liquor and the wrong crowd cost her a child, and she would be damned if it would ever happen again. At least that's how I see it now. They never talked about that lost brother. I heard about it from Clara, my grandmother. For some reason Brent's parents thought I was okay, I was one of the few kids ever allowed in their house. One of the few friends that Brent was allowed to have.

One of Brent's older brothers, by a couple years, was a fat kid. The thing I recall about him is that he would eat just about anything. A couple miles outside of town was a spot we would all go hang out at. Beaver creek. The local swimming / fishing hole. Okies noodle, everyone else fishes. Noodling is when you get down in the water and feel for holes in the bank. Feel in those holes for large catfish, and pull them out with your bare hands. Brent noodled, or at least tried to. While I never witnessed him catch a fish I did see him stick his arm up to the shoulder in holes along the banks of Beaver creek. Brent's brother on the other hand was a bait fisherman. We would stop off at Pratts Redbud grocery store and the brother would buy a box of frozen bait shrimp. Brent and I would go about the business of swimming and unsuccessful noodling, while his brother would thaw the block of shrimp in the warm brown water. He might bait his hook once. Beyond that single shrimp, the remainder of the shrimp found it's way down his gullet. He would start a small fire and roast the sand filled shrimps like marshmallows on a stick. He was fat for a reason, and like I said, he'd eat anything in his path.

It was during a trip back for a funeral, I don't recall which one, that I heard the news about Brent. He had also outgrown his childhood, if not his small town roots. His mothers belt no longer to be feared, no longer enough to keep him in line and safe. Not even in a small town like Marlow. The details were sketchy, and I recall it was my aunt that informed me of Brent's death the previous summer. At the local drive in , where the small town kids hung out, filling their coke cups with cheap whiskey. A fight broke out, Brent was stabbed once through the heart and bled out in the gravel lot. A good kid, from a simple background. Belts, protective parents, and a sleepy town wasn't enough to keep him safe.

It was while driving through a string of small central Kansas towns the other night, that I thought of Brent. Just me, the dark shapes sliding past my window, and ghosts from the past. Funny how a kid like Brent could meet such a fate, tucked safely away in some small town. While I tempted fate on a daily basis, year after year, and grew old enough to try to make sense of it all. Driving through the night, thinking of people and places in the distant past. Trying to make sense of it all. Coming up blank.

You say Apartheid, like it's a bad thing........

2010-09-16T09:15:00.000-05:00

Gotcha with that title, didn't I? I' m not talking about Apartheid like in South Africa. There's no Nelson Mandela. No white Dutchmen with funny names and those hats that have one side of the brim flipped up like Teddy Roosevelt. No blood diamonds, Zebras, or anyone being decapitated by pissed off Zulus. It's not a white thang, or a black one, race doesn't even enter the equation. No friends, my vision of Apartheid is one where the world would be a better, safer, more pleasant place. If we could just separate one special group from the human herd, we could all coexist, just like those blue bumper stickers with all of the worlds religious symbols spelling out coexist, which are usually displayed on the bumper of a 25 year old Subaru or Toyota, promise. Fuckin Hippies.

Oh. I Have A Dream. But let me back up for a second, and explain where this dream was born.

All of my adult life I have had a policy of not getting friendly with my neighbors. It's more than a policy really, it's my mantra, my religion, and while it may seem a little reclusive and curmudgeonly to most of you rubes, my self imposed standoffishness has served me well, saving me untold grief and probably saved a life or two in the process. So I was on high alert when the dude next door introduced himself to the Nurse and I when we moved in to our new digs here in Indy. First impressions are everything, so I always try to make myself as unapproachable as possible. The Nurse on the other hand is as friendly a person as I've ever met. She is the exact opposite of me. Where I see people through skeptical spectacles, she is all rose colored glasses and handing out benefit of the doubt passes like a Jehovah's witness hanging Watch Tower magazines on random doors. So it came as no surprise that she thought our new neighbor was a nice guy, while I saw him as a nuisance.

Familiarity is a dangerous thing. When people think they know you, they often think that gives them a free pass to do stupid shit that might effect you in an adverse way. The douche next door is a prime example of this theory. A few days ago I'm sitting here in my lair, drinking my morning coffee, hammering out another Pulitzer worthy post, trying to ignore the orange colored glass bowl full of goodness on the end table next to me that will rob me of my ambition and make me eat a whole box full of cereal, when it happens. BOOM!! Then the computer loses it's wireless connection, the TV goes black, the lights go out, the dogs jump up in the bay window and start barking. I already know what happened and why. I know without looking that the doofus next door has just pissed in my Wheaties and fucked up an otherwise tranquil morning. I know this because he spent 10 minutes the previous morning telling me from across the fence how he has some guy from Craigslist coming to trim a tree in his yard. I know this because he has become familiar. So I get up, walk out on to my back deck. There is a tree limb as big around as my waist laying over my now crushed, bent and fucked up fence. My power line is down, my phone line is down, the conduit ripped from the box on the side of the house. There's my neighbor. There's some clown holding a 78 dollar green and purple chainsaw.

The conversation went something like this.
Did you lose power?
Yeah, that generally happens when you take out a power line.
I can't believe that limb fell in your direction.
It was hanging over my fence and power line. Gravity being what it is, where the fuck did you think it was going to fall?
I'll fix your fence.

I go back inside, call the P&L people, call the phone people, and say "Fuck self control", as I reach for my glaucoma preventative medicine. The power line gets fixed in about an hour. The phone line the following day.
Next morning, I hear the chainsaw fire up. I walk out on the deck, there are the same 2 thorns in my side from the previous day about to cut another limb from the same tree. This limb also hangs over my fence.

That convo goes something like this.

I think this one will miss your fence for sure.
Still trying to defy gravity?
huh?
You know, if you'll tie a rope around that limb and pull it away from my fence as he cuts it, chances are it wont take out more of my shit.
Hey, that's a good idea!
You're kinda nonchallant about other peoples shit.
That conversation ends with a long uncomfortable silence.

Here's the rub. This all could have been avoided if the guy next door thought of me as the unapproachable, surly, prick, that I pride myself on being. When people think you might put a foot in their ass, they don't do stupid shit like smash your fence and knock out your power line. They think before they act, lest the find themselves being attacked by the recluse next door. Fear and uncertainty trumps familiar and friendly, every, single, time.

Back to my apartheid thing. I figure if we could round up every mouth breather in the nation, exile them to Idaho or Alaska, the world would be a better place for the rest of us. It ain't gonna happen. Stupid people doing stupid shit is our cross to carry. We can't put em away, we can't put em down. We just have to put up with em. I'd build a wall around the house, but then I couldn't blow all my leaves out in the street come Autumn, pissing off all the surrounding neighbors who spend countless hours raking and bagging. I've no doubt they would complain, except the aren't too sure of me.
They aren't familiar.
I like that.
It even makes me smile a little.
I just never let them see it.

How to Pimp an entire country in one easy step...........or something.

2010-09-08T08:14:00.001-05:00

Some hayseed preacher in Florida has pimped the media. He has pimped the military. This guy even has the White House responding to his Burn a Koran day. You could even argue that he has played yours truly, beings I'm writing about the whole hot mess. The Rev. Terry Jones is right up there in the Pimp lineage with Fillmore Slim, who is famous for the following Quote "Pussy gonna sell when cotton and corn won't". I know what you may be thinking. Double M has finally gone off the deep end. He is being all flippant and shit over this evil preacher who is endangering the lives of our troops . Not to mention disrespecting the memory of all 9/11 victims. Hell he may even be endangering our lives here on American soil. Let alone the damage this preacher is doing to the image of America where Muslims are concerned.

I want everyone to take a deep breath, step away away from the koolaid. I'm here to help.

Unless you have been living in a cave, like the worlds most wanted man, lookin atchoo Osama, then you surely have heard about Floridas answer to Fred Phelps, the Rev. Terry Jones. Up until a few days ago he was just another whack job small time preacher, preaching about end times and berating the gays, the liberals, or the gubmint. Know why you haven't heard of him until recently? Because he only had 50 followers, that's why. I have way more followers than that on this obscure, but top shelf bloggy thing. So the Rev. who I will refer to from now on by his pimp name, T Dawg, was probably sitting around trying to figure out if snake handling or speaking in tongues would bring in more cheddar, and young girls, when he had an epiphany........" I'll do some outrageous shit on 9/11. That'll mos def get me some attention! Besides, those fuckin snakes bite."

So our boy T Dawg, who is sportin a hella porn mustache, feeds the local media a tip. "Preacher and crazy congregation to burn hundreds of Korans on 9/11 !!!!" Next thing you know there is a big ass Facebook page, Chock Fulll O Crazy, and the national media grabs the story and runs with it like a dog with a newly liberated rack of baby back ribs.

This small time douche nozzle has managed to get responses from our Secretary of State, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of American forces in Afghanistan, White House dood David Gibbs, and God knows who else. Think about that for a minute. Nobody even knew about him a couple weeks ago. Here's the rub, this story is fairly old as news goes. CNN started the ball rolling back on the 20th of August.
Like any good ad campaign the media has built this thing slow and steady, until it gets stuck in your head like a catchy tune or phrase.

Soon the media will descend on this small time Gainesville church and give them even more free advertising.
General Petraeus says he is endangering American Troops in Afghanistan. That statement would lead one to believe that our soldiers were somehow not in danger before Eb from Green Acres decided to burn the koran. I guess he knows what he is talking about, but I can't help thinking that being at war, on foriegn soil, fighting an enemy who has no problem strapping a couple pounds of explosives to themselves like a sanitary napkin, then casually walking into a crowd and blowing themselves to smithereens, is just about as fuckin dangerous an environment as there is. As for the PR hit America will take from Muslims world wide, gimme a break. We are about as popular with Muslims as Tiger Woods is with Promise Keepers.

Will extremist Muslims go on a killing spree over this clown burning the Koran? Maybe. But if it wasn't this, it would be something else, and this thing wouldn't have been an issue at all had the media not made it one, and the White House had not taken the bait. Now we Americans have risen up and condemned this clown, or embraced him. We have all been pimped by a guy who is about as articulate as a hair lip with a mouth full of Double Bubble. The media and government officials who have responded and helped blow this guys name up, are all walking around with coat hanger pimp stick marks on their legs and ass.

Our troops were in big time danger before this debacle ever started. This lame act of book burning doesn't heighten the danger, it was already as high as it gets. When people hate you so much they will die just to kill you, that is as bad as shit gets. Period. Nothing can make it any worse.
This doofus isn't any more dangerous than Fred Phelps or the countless other small time hate mongering attention whores that manage to catch our attention through outrageous statements and acts. Will there be effigy burning and demonstrations is the land of sand ? Sure. But they do that shit on a daily basis anyway.
At the end of the day, the biggest tragedy in this thing is that the media has given this guy so much attention, it will take the focus away from the victims of 9/11.

Hey Baby....

2010-09-01T09:09:00.006-05:00

Call me a skeptic. Accuse me of being a pessimist when it comes to human nature. Once again a baby has been found wandering the streets of the city. This time it was in South KC, and the kid just showed up in front of a daycare center in his Sponge Bob jammies, barefoot. Apparently the kid was knocking on the window of the daycare. One of the daycare workers said the kid was dry, his feet were clean. Beings how it has been raining, and the kid was soaking wet and had clean feet, one of the daycare workers said shit didn't add up. Cops were called, because, well, toddlers can't just check themselves in to daycare centers. I'm watching Fox 4. There's Kathy Quinn, all decked out in her best leopard print outfit, relating the story on camera. Then the camera man swings around to catch Mom and a few other people. Just right off the cuff, and because there is no firewall between my brain and your computer screen, here's a couple of observations.

(1) Mom looks like she needs to eat a fuckin sandwich and get some sleep.
Am I saying she looked high? Possibly on some type of stimulant? Never that.
Actually, that's exactly what I'm saying. At the very least she looked like she had a long night.
Harsh? Judgmental? Making accusations based on a couple of seconds of film footage?
Absolutely. And I'm making a judgment based on the fact that this "Mother" discovered her kid was missing when a neighbor "told her" this morning.
(2) If your kid wonders off, and it happens, that's one thing. If your kid has been gone long enough that you don't notice he is missing until you peep him on the morning news, or someone tells you he is missing, that's a whole new ball O wax.

Now that I've hopefully pissed off and offended at least a few people, allow me to splain how this thing is going to play out. I've got 3 scenarios, should I be wrong, I'll publicly apologize and buy Mom a five dollar foot long from Subway with all the trimmings.
(1) Mom left her 2 year old home alone, he went for a stroll, lost his shoes, showed up at the daycare place.
(2) Mom left kid with someone who is as irresponsible as she is. Said person got pissed mom didn't show back up to get her kid, so they dropped him off in front of the daycare.
(3) Baby is a two year old reincarnation of Harry Houdini. He slipped from the confines of his crib, managed to open a door that should have been locked, then showed up 5 blocks away in the rain ,with clean, bare feet. Now that's some David Copperfield shit right there. It's like when David Blaine does that levitation trick.

Look, we've had this talk before. Readers have pointed out how I'm being unreasonable to question a Mothers veracity because her story doesn't sound right to me. I've also been called to task because I've said someone was a piss poor parent for not being sure their kid can't escape the supposedly safe confines of their home in the wee hours of the morning.
If you are of that opinion then I respect that, but I'm still not buying what you are selling. This isn't the first time we have heard of babies strolling around the streets of this city.

I know there are more instances of this, I recall at least 2 others in the last year or two, but I'm too lazy to look. And it's a moot point , because that was then, this is now. If your 2 year old is able to show up at a business, 5 blocks from your home, and you find out about it on the news, you are a shitty parent. Period, end of story. Call me harsh, claim I'm a cynical prick. It's all true. But this is the big city folks, it ain't exactly Mayberry round these parts. Bad shit happens, it often happens to the most vulnerable of us, children. So pardon me if I just can't find a positive spin. I always like to close a post with an appropriate message, a lesson if you will. Call me the Aesop of the greater Kansas City area. The moral of this post.............
If you don't want to be judged by some random doofus on some semi obscure blog, then don't let your 2 year old wander the streets of this city. And eat a sammich and get a nap. Seriously.

DANGEROUS DUDE COMING TO A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU!!!!!! BOLT THE DOORS AND HIDE THE WOMEN!!

2010-08-31T07:43:00.000-05:00

Two posts in one day, great day in the mornin it's like manna from heaven for you rubes. Just don't get your hopes up that it will be a common occurrence. I've got more important things to do than fire off literary gems for your amusement........or something. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to join in on the media frenzy over George Dudley. In case you haven't heard, Dudley walked out of the WyCo courthouse while one of his guards, from Larned State Hospital, aka the nut house, went to the bathroom. The other guard or Orderly was off getting the van. Dudley finished his sentence, not his first mind you, way back in 96. The state deemed him a habitual sexual predator and committed him to the nut house for an indefinite period of time. The media has sounded the alarm, as they should, but they couldn't resist the urge to scare the cowboy shit out of their viewers, by making it sound like Jason from Friday the 13th was wondering the streets of kansas sans hockey mask. While Georgie Boy definitely needs to get caught, there are far more dangerous people roaming the streets. Now here's the rub. George went down for a level 7 offense. For those of you not familiar with the Kansas sentencing grid, a level 7 is just about as bottom tier least severe a felony as there is.
I've got to assume that the state got lazy, and rather than build a solid case on this freak, they let him plead down, all the while intending to hit him with the habitual sexual predator act, thereby taking away the need to actually try a case that would put him away for a lengthy sentence. So he does a nickle, they tuck him away in the booby hatch, pat each other on the back and declare the public safe and served.

Not so fast Skippy, and not really so safe. Since Dudley isn't a convict, he gets transported like a patient. Street clothes, no chains, cash in his pocket, a credit card he later used at 39th and Main, and Oliver and Hardy in charge of watching him. Is he a danger, sure he is, but he ain't exactly Hannibal Lecture. I'm not even sure they can charge him a felony for walking away, beings he served his bit already. Unless this shit heel is totally crazed, I highly doubt he is going to start bum rushing kids on the playground or hiding at the bottom of the ball pit at your local McDonalds waiting to grab some hapless child like Jaws, anytime soon. More likely he is trying to get as far away as possible. Eventually he may get around to his old tricks, but chances are he will get caught PDQ. In the meantime, the media can focus on scaring the bejesus out of viewers, rather than doing some actual work and questioning why this guy wasn't prosecuted properly the first two or three times he offended. They need to address the issue the courts have when it comes to sex offenders. They want to treat them for a disease, a mental disorder, rather than lock em up and toss the key. So these freaks catch a case, fuck some kid up for the rest of his or her life, and the courts send them off for a short stay. Give em some treatment in a sexual offender program, then cut em loose. After they catch on that the treatment isn't overriding some Chomo's urge to molest a kid, or rape a woman, they pass the buck and send em to the state looney bin. And you get what we got with George.

Okay, that's a wrap. See you clowns in the funny papers.

A natural death to make way for progress.

2010-08-31T06:41:00.000-05:00

There is a haunting beauty to be found in many of the decaying buildings in this city. They remind me of the elderly, largely ignored, taken for granted. Like our old folk, we wait on these buildings to die. Eager to replace them with something new. A road, a bridge, another structure of some kind or other. Progress, give it a name. We put our old people in the ground to be forgotten by the next generation. We bulldoze our past,to make way for something new. We move on, until the day it's our turn to become a distant fading memory.

Over 100 years of history, first one purpose, then another. Eventually outliving it's usefulness.

Time leaves its mark. We grow old and gray, not much to look at, barely given a passing glance. The stories we could tell die with us. Just like the stories that still reside in this old building. It began life at the turn of the last century as an old folks home for couples, at some point in time it became a seminary. Now it sits on a hill falling apart and forgotten. Even in its present state, like some aging once beautiful woman, if you stop long enough to look, you can see what once was. If you stop long enough to really look, she can still take your breath away. Old and graying falling in around itself, forgotten if it was ever remembered in the first place.
Countless people in this city can tell you all about a building that sits on the plaza, among dozens of buildings that look exactly the same. Only a handful can tell you where this building sits, 21st and Tracy, even fewer can tell you what it was, or who built it and why. She was constructed for $42,000.00 in 1904.

A new road , a new bridge, progress edges ever closer. Before long she will be gone, taking her stories with her. All across this city history is dying a slow death. For us death is inevitable, and I suppose it's the same for most buildings.
From old hospitals...........

Old schools...........

Old churches............

Before long they will all be gone. Replaced by progress. Forgotten. The stories and history covered in dirt.. If it's any consolation, you can always buy some overpriced bullshit in a stucco clad plaza building, that will go out of vogue before you can even get it home. So, there's that..........

One bad tooth ignored, that's how it starts. Urban Blight and Decay.

2010-08-25T08:08:00.000-05:00

For those of you who have followed my previous Urban Blight series some of these buildings may look familiar. Every photo was taken yesterday. I revisited a couple of places just to see how much further they had deteriorated. Aside from one or two spots, the rest of the photos are new to this blog. I spent maybe an hour yesterday searching these places out. In the span of an hour I took about 30 pics, wandered on to a police raid, and found that one of the city's most notorious apartment buildings had been boarded up again for at least the third time in the last 4 years. Unlike my last series on blight I wanted to show the progression of blight and urban decay rather than just a series of random shots taken in different neighborhoods. This series begins where I believe the decay and death of the inner city began. As the series progresses I'll try to follow the trail of decay as best I can in the order it's taken place.........Click the photos to enlarge them.

One Tooth At A Time.

That's how it starts. You neglect your teeth, ignore that occasional toothache. The decay begins. You lose one tooth. Then another. The neglected rotting tooth infects those on either side of it. The decay spreads. Soon there is nothing left. The first neighborhoods to go are the poorest. Low income, working class, plagued by poverty, gangs, and all that comes with it. Life still goes on here as does the spread of decay. People are stuck. They can't move away. Who is going to buy a home no matter how well cared for when it sits beside one that is either falling down on itself, or being used as a dope house? Many of these places have been handed down to sons or daughters. It's all the have. Walking away isn't an option. So they ride it out, stay put, and hope for a promised change that won't ever come.

Most of you won't wake up some lazy Sunday morning and decide " Hey let's take a drive down 31's and Jackson !" Sure you might catch a glimpse as you drive by the outer fringes of a particular part of the city. Give a passing glance at a few rundown store fronts, maybe see the tops of a few roofs in the process of falling in on themselves. But you can't really get a feel for the enormity of the problem until you drive up and down the streets. The decay seems to start in the center and work it's way outward, just like that bad tooth.

Entire blocks are absent of homes, turned into dump sites. The trees and weeds taking back what was once theirs. The only signs of humans, old tires, trash, and utility poles turning gray and slowly being pulled sideways to the ground. No children play in these streets, neighbors don't stand on the sidewalks and share a minute or two of random talk. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and found that half the houses on your street were empty, boarded up, falling down. Imagine looking at it day after day.

You don't have to travel to New Orleans. No need to go visit Detroit. This is our Lower Ninth Ward. It didn't take a hurricane or the death of a particular industry. Just the slow erosion brought on by time, a disconnect from one another, a fucked up set of priorities. We, and by we I mean middle class folks, white, black, and any other shade you want to toss in, we moved away to safer, cleaner, newer areas. Now you don't move from one of these neighborhoods, you flee, you run for your life. Or you stay put because you have no other choice. As people leave, the storefronts go empty.

The schools shut down. Playgrounds go silent.

Theater marquees are replaced by gang tags.

The remaining people reside in a deteriorating war zone.

Meanwhile we become enraged and join together over a single building in a cleaner, sexier part of town. The

Mayor walked the streets of the Plaza yesterday.

When was the last time he walked down Forest in the Urban core?

More to come...........................

One building in the Plaza trumps a city full of historical buildings.

2010-08-24T07:13:00.002-05:00

Everybody get in line. No pushing, shoving, or having your doofus friend hold your spot while you make a Latte run. There will be plenty of time for all of you to tell me how fucked up and uninformed I am, so wait your turn. At least half of you are going to think I'm so far off on this one I must be high on Hippy Lettuce, and I may be, but believe me when I say I'm right. I am. And I promise if you chew on this one for a minute or two, you will come around to my way of thinking. So, what say we get to it.

The uproar over the proposed office building on a Plaza corner has more peoples shorts in a wad than that time TKC compared the Waldo Rapist composite to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The local news outlets have been as excited over this thing as Liberace discovering a dick tree. Everyone has an opinion on why it would be sacrilegious to build a modern glass structure smack in the middle-ish of Spanish Architecture. I was listening to 3 or 4 clowns on Steve Kraskes show going on and on about how The Country Club Plaza IS Kansas City. How our history as a city is entwined with a shopping district that few of us ever actually shop at. How important the Plaza is as an entertainment destination, even though most Kansas Citians don't really dine there, or drink there. Oh sure, you might take your significant udder out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory or Plaza 3 once a year. And we all like to go look at the lights around Christmas, Hanuka, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, whatever , pick your poison. And yes the streets are often crowded with posers and drunk women hoping to catch the eye of some sports figure, or spittle if it's Larry Johnson. But the Plaza isn't Kansas City, it's just a small sliver of stores most of us can't afford to buy a pair of socks at. It's like the really hot chick in high school, nice to look at, but not of much use on a day to day basis. She might bat her eyes at you, she might give you a glimpse of cleavage, but at the end of the day, she is going to go with the biggest over privileged douche bag in the school.

Anyone with an interweb connection has chimed in on what a disgrace it is for someone to suggest building something on property they own. They being Highwoods. So I wasn't going to bother with throwing in my 2 nickles. However, by the end of Kraskes show, after every single caller went on and on ad nauseum over how horrible it is to even suggest tearing down one of the old Plaza buildings, I'd heard enough. Like a mighty trout rising to take the fly, No Seacrest, I couldn't resist the bait, the pointing out of what is either glaring hypocrisy, total ignorance, or a sense of entitlement. I'm going to go with all 3. Here's the rub, I don't really care if they put up the building or not. I would even say I agree that the Plaza should stay looking like it does now. I agree it is a historical part of the city. No problem with the Plaza per say. I just have one question.

Where was all of the outrage, the face book pages, the radio, news and print soup stirring, before the Plaza conflict? The same people who are so incensed over the thought of a modern building amidst the Spanish Stucco themed Plaza, were as quiet as a group of Deaf Mutes over the Sprint Center and the P&L district. Or they cheered it on, called it progress. Someone please explain to me how a giant mirror disco ball building lives in peace and harmony, all feng shui and shit, among a downtown that is dominated by Art Deco buildings. Where is all of the outrage over a Jazz District that is nothing more than crumbling facades with a couple of money pits thrown in for good measure.

Historic homes, buildings, places with more history in their bricks and mortar than 10 Plaza's, have been crumbling, dying a slow death in this city for decades. I've given more time and space on this blog to Urban Blight and the death of this city's history than all of the local media combined. Let that sink in. Give it a minute. You're almost with me, despite yourself.

In one of the greatest movies ever made, Cool Hand Luke, there is a particular scene, it's really the biggest scene in the movie. Luke gets brought back from another escape. They throw him in the bunk house, beat up, broke down, tore up from the floor up. Some of the cons crowd around him, all carrying on about a picture he sent them while he was on the run. He is flanked by two flashy looking women in the photo. All smiles, all Cool. He tells the cons the pic was a fake, he paid to have it taken. Tells them to stop feeding off of him, get their own lives. He tries to make it to his bunk, but he falls and can't get up. He sticks his hand out, looking for a hand up, and they all turn their backs on him. "Where are you now?" is his money line.
See, it's like this, when Luke was all flash they loved him. Couldn't get enough of him. Then he falls, he is all dirty, beat up, not a trace of flash. They turn their backs, to a man, every last one of them. This city, the majority of it's people, they turn their backs on the dirty old bricks and mortar buildings. The old homes where lives were lived, the backbone of this city, it's reason for existing in the first place. It's just not pretty, no flash, just blood, sweat and tears. In the minds and eyes of most, the real history of this city can't hold up to the stucco , the fashion, and the fountains.

I know what some of you are thinking, "Why not both? Can't all historical areas of the city be important? Does caring about the Plaza mean we can't care about other parts of the city?"

Good point, and I've no doubt that many of you probably do care. Sadly there are only a few hundred of you lonely rubes who regularly take time out to read this shit. The majority of the people who are raising a stink over the Plaza, the ones getting air and face time from the media, they could give a shit if some old building gets demolished downtown. They could really not care less about some stately old home on the Paseo, or some craftsman bungalow in Midtown. The majority of the people in this city have never ventured beyond the commercial districts, the Plaza, the Power and Light district, maybe the City Market area. So when I see the outrage, and I hear all the sanctimonious horseshit about "Saving the Plaza" from the greedy corporate types, it pisses me off. When I get pissed off these days, I write. There was a time when if I got pissed off, I'd get in a fight. At 51 carpal tunnel is more appealing than swollen hands and the likelihood of getting my ass handed to me. So write it is. Over the next couple of weeks, starting Wednesday, I'll be giving you rubes a history lesson, with pictures and everything, Double M style. It's time for another Urban Blight tour with hopefully a little history thrown in. Maybe some of the French Poodle crowd will stumble across this humble lil blog and it's humble lil writer. And maybe, just maybe, they will find out that there is more to this city than a half dozen blocks of pretentious stores and overpriced restaurants. The Plaza doesn't define Kansas City. There are far more important parts of this city decaying, slowly dying, and it's bigger and more important than one building, in a place most Kansas Citians rarely visit.
Where's the outrage?
Where are you now?

Fast Eddie Friday......Is that a Daisy Red Ryder?

2010-08-20T07:28:00.000-05:00

It's been a minute since my last installment of the non award winning Fast Eddie Friday. After receiving tens of pleas for it's return I've dusted off the Fast Eddie photo, the one with the worlds most graceful fat man. So without further adieu........Here we go. Fast and Loose.

Getting shot in Kansas City is a hot topic. Getting shot for your pants, which probably came from Hot Topic is another matter entirely. A guy is playing with, riding, whatever the terminology, his skateboard in downtown around 19th and main. Two chuckle heads approach him, shoot once and miss, shoot again and hit him in the chest. Skater dood falls to the ground. Robbery in progress......and that's where shit gets strange. As our vic lays on the ground the would be stick up artists take his pants. That's right, his pants. According to the victim his wallet and cellphone were in his pockets. This story is as fishy as a Hippy chicks daisy dukes on the 4th day of a week long Grateful Dead festival. Seriously, who the fuck steals the britches off someone? Are our criminals that desperate? And here's the kicker, skater guy was treated and released. What the fuck? While I'm glad to hear the guy wasn't mortally wounded, getting shot in the chest isn't the same as a paper cut. Using my Sherlock Holmes like powers of deduction, I figure there was something inside this guys pants other than a phone and wallet. No Seacrest. I've seen the garb these skater types wear. I figure the vic had on some of those Hot Topic type shorts or pants, the kind that have a gazillion pockets, maybe a few chains and buckles for accents. The robbers didn't want to spend hours riffling through all these fucking pockets. Solution. Just take his pants. As for being shot in the chest, treated and released in a matter of hours. Either the bullet was deflected by one of those big silver skull medallions, or Kansas City criminals are too poor to afford bullets and have resorted to using BB guns. It's embarrassing is what it is.

Fox 4 has a story this morning that caught my eye.

A guy drives himself to a gas station at 13th and prospect after being shot twice in the noggin and once in the chest. Now this isn't just any old gas station, this is the station where cops fill up their cars. Quik Trip is where they fill up on donuts and free soda pop, but at 13 and Prospect they fill their cop cars. Here is the money line from the story, "Police said a man, after being shot twice in the head and once in the chest, has refused to talk." That's right skippy, he refused to talk. Before he clammed up he told the cops he got capped at 53rd and Garfield after stopping to let a female passenger out of the car. Then he tells the cops he aint talking. Usually when you get shot twice in your head, let alone another time in the chest, talking isn't an option. Generally that is the type of wound that will turn you into an organ donor. If the cops can find the persons who shot this guy, they might want to see if they are connected to the skater shooting. Clearly firepower is an issue with the current line up of gangsta types in the KC area. Hey times are hard, the economy is tough, and decent guns and bullets are apparently hard to come by. It's rough all over, even for our local criminal types. Shitty guns, piss poor bullets, and pants stealing. What in the fuck is the world coming too?

Have a safe weekend, and if someone puts a gun in your face, hope it's one of the Apple Dumpling Douche Bags that are armed with substandard weaponry.

Remorse.....The most over played word in the english language.

2010-08-19T07:31:00.001-05:00

Phillip Markoff, the med student who killed a craigslist hooker, robbed another, killed himself in his jail cell. Of course the speculation is running rampant. The prosecution claims it was a clear sign of guilt, which implies this guy had a conscience and the guilt just got to be too much. Sounds good, but I doubt it's true, the guilty conscience part. I've read a few articles that seem to think dude was all bereft over losing his fiance. He did have a bunch of her pictures around him and had written her name in his own blood. So according to the prosecution and several news outlets, this scumbag was an enigma, kind of Jack the Ripper meets Romeo. Might make for a good movie, but those theories mostly self serving horse shit. Which is why you rubes come here, to get the real skinny. No Seacreast.

Being in jail isn't like being in prison. If you are a high profile detainee, county jail time is even worse than if you are just a regular inmate. SHU program, 23 hour lock down. So there you sit, nobody to talk to but yourself and the hacks, who probably have nothing but contempt for you. So I say our boy took himself out as a last act , a self serving grab for attention and to inflict pain on the ex fiancee and his own family.

But remorse it ain't.

Shaquan Duley, the South Carolina mother who is all over the news for killing her 2 babies with her bare hands, is said to be remorseful. She sobbed in court. The judge, the prosecutor, even the sheriff who arrested her, all seem willing to cut her a little slack. The explain away her horrific act by alluding that her mother was hard on her, demanded that she man the fuck up, act responsible, be a mother. They say the pressure was too much, she folded under the weight. She snapped. So when she sobs in court, it means she has remorse, she is sorry.

What Shaquan has isn't remorse. She shares something with the Craigslist killer. She has regret. Regret she was caught. Regret that her thin cover story didn't hold water. Regret isn't remorse. If you are capable of taking a life to suit your own selfish desires, you are incapable of remorse.

End of story.

Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated..........sorry.

2010-08-10T13:34:00.001-05:00

I got an email from some fan (douche bag) hoping that my lack of posts meant I had passed on to the great jail house in the sky. While I hate to disappoint someone who took the time to pen a three line email, full of errors, I'm very much alive albeit uninspired. That said, I never consider derogatory emails a bad thing, in fact I kind of like the fact that I can inspire some tub of lard to stop eating chili with his fingers long enough to express himself.
Since I'm here I might as well phone one in...................

The heat in Kansas City is making folks lose their rabbit ass minds, seriously. I have to drive around in this shit all day long, busy delivering everything from blueprints to spleens, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of the daily near death experience of sharing our dilapidated metro roads with a bunch of wobble heads who believe multitasking while driving is a good use of time. By the end of the day I'm spewing so much venom, my car window is covered in spittle and my blood pressure is nearing 4 digits. Seriously, the vile shit that comes out of my mouth makes Eminem sound like Mr. Rogers. In light of my new and improved bad attitude, I've found a new hero.

Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who turned into a rice crispie, snapped , crackled, and popped, after a passenger refused to sit her ass down and wait like everyone else to retrieve her bag from the overhead compartment. According to the news, some woman who felt she was above everyone else on the plane, got up and started to retrieve her bag from the overhead. She apparently told Slater to go fuck himself when he asked her to wait until the plane stopped moving. She dropped the door to the overhead on Slaters head. Slater asked for an apology and thats when the woman told him to break one off in his own balloon knot. Slater got on the intercom, told everyone to go fuck themselves, grabbed a beer from the fridge, hit the escape hatch, slid down the ramp, and went home.

Now you might be thinking that Slater pulled a bone head move, flushed his career down the toilet, and ended up getting arrested to boot. But this is America, and here, in this country, Slater just made a major climb up the ladder of success. Look for this guy to be all over the morning news shows and talk show circuit. Look for a book, a reality show, whatever. You can bet your ass he will parlay his moment into some serious cheddar. Flight attendants are alot like wait staff, in that they have to put up with a steady stream of mouth breathers, ass hats, and shit heels. Kudos to Slater for not poppin this pushy beeatch in her soup cooler.

Now I hate to be stereotyping the guy, but I think our boy might be teh ghey, not that there is anything wrong with that. In fact, I figure dude just squashed a major stereotype about teh gheys being sissified. Slater manned up, did a kamikaze on his 28 year career, and then did a Stone Cold Steve Austin by knocking down a stiff cold Bud on his way to sliding down the chute.....( No Seacrest on that entire last sentence). My point is, Slater finally had all he could take, rather than tuck tail and take more unwarranted abuse, he made a stand.

So today I'd like to salute a real American Hero, Stone Cold Stewardess Dood, Steven (oh no you didn't bitch) Slater.

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

2010-07-28T08:43:00.001-05:00

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.

2010-07-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

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.

2010-07-14T08:56:00.000-05:00

" 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.

2010-07-09T10:41:00.001-05:00

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.

What NOT to call your Customer Service Rep.......................

2010-06-30T10:05:00.001-05:00

I'll turn 51 on July 20th, mark your calendars, it's going to be a momentous day, because anyone who ever knew me thought I'd never make it, myself included. While turning 51 is an accomplishment given the way I spent my teens, 20's, and 30's, in the grand scheme of things, it ain't exactly a big deal. I have however managed to learn some shit along the way. What I haven't managed to learn is when to shut my pie hole. Sure I can bite my tongue most times, I'm not as easily provoked as I once was, I've learned to walk away, more often than not. But every now and again, usually at the most inopportune times, I just can't shut the fuck up.

Two weeks ago I was at the airport intending to board a Midwest Airlines flight to Boston. I'd booked the one way flight through Expedia. I'd be picking up a truck and bringing it back for a guy, so all I need is a one way ticket. I get to the check in counter only to find that my flight was booked for the following week. I'm like 2 hours early, so I figure I can fix the mistake, there are empty seats on the plane, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Right?
Wrong.
I call customer service for Expedia and after about 10 minutes on hold I hear that increasingly familiar clipped sing song English coming over the line. The customer service guy informs me his name is Roger, although I'm guessing it's really Roj, or some other East Indian name. Now, I'm already annoyed because I know when I booked my flight. So I explain to my new phone friend Roger that they made a mistake with my flight. He recites the standard customer service lines. "Oh, I am so sorry" and " Let me check". After a few more minutes of holding, my buddy Roger, who sounds exactly like the guy I buy my cigarettes from at the smoke shop / cellular store, comes back on the line. He tells me there is no mistake, I booked the flight for the following week. My neck starts to get that familiar heat creeping up. It's almost like the itch you get from a visit to the barber shop after the barber shaves your neck. In my case , that itch means I'm starting to get pissed off. I explain to Roger that I'm certain of what date I booked my flight and that date is today. In the back of my mind I'm thinking "Maybe I fucked up. Maybe I clicked the wrong date on that little calendar". At this point I'm more irritated at myself for possibly making a bone headed move, than I am about the possibility that my trip is going to be delayed a week. Then Roger does it, he tells me it is impossible that the mistake is theirs. He tells me there is no way I booked the flight for today.

100 percent impossible. His words, not mine.

Now that's a pretty bold statement, not to mention arrogant. I even tell Roger as much. He repeats that it is impossible that the blame rests anywhere but squarely on my shoulders. So I let it alone, I say, okay lets fix it. Can you get me on this flight today. Sure no problem he says. That will be 485 bucks. Keep in mind, I only paid 155 beans for the one way flight. But there is a service charge, and fees, and the new flight. I no longer feel the burning in my neck, my entire head feels like it's on fire. What about a refund I ask. Sure says Roger, except we don't refund. He tells me I can cancel and reschedule, again the cancellation fee is more than the original ticket. I'm standing about 15 feet from the check in counter, my voice gets louder as I try to explain to Roger that there is no such thing as impossible, and that it is possible I didn't make the original mistake. Roger retorts that it in fact is impossible the mistake is any ones other than my own. I tell Roger "In this country we understand that anything is possible", and I say some other shit I can't recall.

I tell Roger to give me a supervisor. I go through the whole explanation, again. The supervisor, who is also on the same continent as Roger, pretty much tells me the same thing. And then it happens. I forget the Supervisors name , but I'm sure she told me it was something American, like Sally or Joan. Doesn't matter, by now I'm livid, I've reached that point where most reasonable people with nominal impulse control just let it go. I call the customer service lady a curry eating cock sucker, I refer to Roger as Haji, as in the cartoon sidekick of Johnny Quest fame. That deeply buried bit of racism and bigotry that we all, regardless of race, posses, came boiling to the surface, and I cussed out the woman on the other side of the world. I'm not proud of it, it was wrong, I lost it. I called her and Roger shit like they have never seen or heard in those English classes. I don't regret the cussing out part, just the ethnic slurring part. At the end of the day I was wrong as a priest at a cub scout camp out.

Jump forward a week. I'm at the same check in counter ready to board my flight to Boston. Turns out, I'm not assigned a seat on that flight. In fact, the lady at the counter advised me I can no longer fly on Midwest. Long story a little shorter, I cussed out a couple of people in India, and somehow I got pegged as disruptive.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the TSA.

But did I learn anything?

When I do something stupid, I always try to come away a little better for it, try to salvage the wasted time, make the moment something less than a total loss. So I sat down after it was all over, tried to analyze myself and that particular melt down. I'd like to be able to tell you that I reacted like a symbol of the angry men and women in this country who are struggling to make a living. Millions are out of work in this country, myself included. Long term unemployment, jobs being lost overseas. American corporations who farm out their business to India, or Mexico, or buy cheap shit from China, dipped in lead paint. I'd like to be able to tell you that my bigoted rant was the result of that final straw. I did it for all of you, the down trodden masses. Like the line from the 70's movie Network. I was Peter Finch shouting out the collective frustration of the American people "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

I'd like to tell you that my intentions were pure, that I'd just reached the end of my rope.

Sounds kind of nice, noble even. But that's not the truth.

The truth is I snapped. I was pissed off to the extreme. When you get mad enough, when you allow your anger to slip it's bonds of rationality and reason, the unfettered end result is usually pretty fuckin ugly. If I could have laid hands on the person on the other end of the line, I'd probably be locked up, or in the hospital because Roger or Sally knew some kind of Hindu Kung Fu and kicked the living shit out of me for the curry remark.

In the end I learned something, so it's not a total loss. I learned the customer service people in India are as cool as cucumbers, even when being cussed out and racially slurred in a Midwestern twang. I learned that cussing out anyone within earshot of an airport ticket counter is probably ill advised.

Last but not least, it looks like I may have to drive or take the train when travelling in the foreseeable future.

***Posting has been on hiatus around here lately. I'm going to take one last run at it, so hopefully shit will pick up to at least a few posts a week. If I can't find my passion for it, then I'll probably pull the plug on this thing. So stay tuned, you will either witness a bigger, badder, M M. , or you'll watch a blog die. Which is like watching a whale succumb to the attack of Orcas. Except without all the water, blood and whales.***

Remember Bali..................

2010-06-14T10:44:00.001-05:00

In Bali a teenager was forced to marry a cow, and when I say cow, I don't mean the Balinese version of Rosie O'Donnell. I mean a bovine, 4 legs, udders, cud chewing, moo cow. Shit gets a whole lot deeper, but let me back up for a second.

We, and by We I mean us, all of us, this country, We catch more than a little flack for our fucked uppedness. We are seen as materialistic, shallow, vain as peacocks. Bullies, invaders, too conservative, or not conservative enough. The world doesn't Really, like us much. Sure they pander to us, scrape, bow, and kiss the fat of our collective ass, but by and large the rest of the world views us much the same way a cowed dog views it's master. They wag their tail when we reach out to stroke them, but they'd just as soon bite the shit out of us, were it not for the repercussions, that often warranted bite, would garner. Make no mistake, we are as fucked up as that proverbial soup sandwich I refer to so often. But compared to much of the rest of the world, we can't hold a candle to their fucked uppedness. Which brings me back to the cave people of Bali.

Ngurah Alit, 18, was seen in a Bali paddy field standing naked behind a cow. I'm sure that "standing naked behind a cow", really means, Dude got caught knocking the bottom out of a cow. Now, I know what you are thinking.
Big deal, right?
People routinely dick down animals in this country, and far worse.

Not so fast, I told you this thing gets deep. The guy said the cow was at fault. He claimed he believed the cow was a young and beautiful woman, and it had seduced him with flattering compliments. So what ever passes for a legal/court system, forced our lactose tolerant freak to marry the cow. You would think a guy who was ballsy enough to stand in an open field while getting all up in a cows bidness, wouldn't rattle easy.

You would think.

In reality, not so much.

He fainted at the altar. No report on the cows state of mind. As if all of this wasn't bad enough at the end of the ceremony, they drowned the cow. Reason being, drowning the cow and dunking dudes clothes in the river purged the bad JuJu from the village.

One villager said: ‘Poor kid. He’s actually a quiet kid.’

Of course he is quiet, he fucks cows. People who do that sort of shit aren't usually real chatty types.

We may fuck the occasional farm animal or dog in this country, and be we, I mean everyone but me, we may do some twisted repugnant shit, but we don't drown the victim, even if it tastes good on a grill. And we don't call our animal rapists" Poor Kid". We call em sheep fuckers, or whatever species applies. So chin up America. We may take some heat. Sure we screw up, a lot. But the next time you are feeling low, when the rest of the world is pointing an accusatory finger at us, remember, Bali.

Tomorrow I head to Boston, where everyone talks like a hair lip with a mouth full of marbles. I couldn't leave you rubes unenlightened for an entire week. Who knows, I may post one from the road. But don't hold your breath.