Trailer Parks, where everyone gets off on presidents Day

As I said in an earlier post ,I was "working", driving around the Raytown area today. There is a trailer park that sits up on a hill around 47th and Raytown road, which may actually be KCMO. Anyway I took at least one sweet ass picture, while I was driving through this quaint little village on wheels. Here are some observations. There are a whole lot of people living in this trailer park that work nights. I figure that explains why there were so many cars lining the street, and why everyone was home. Of course at least one busy house, may have been occupied by patriots celebrating Presidents Day.

I saw at least 3 different skinny white guys, and only one had a coat on. Another was wearing shorts , to his credit, they were those real baggy super long shorts that look like high water jeans. From the absence of winter attire, I deduced that the temperatures were at least 20 degrees warmer than anywhere else in the city. Must have had something to do with the higher elevation.

They have a really vigilant neighborhood watch program. The skinny yet warm, white 20 sumthin fellas would watch me all the way up the street, and then dart inside their respective abodes. I'm thinking they were alerting other under dressed denizens of the area, that a stranger was in their midst. I'm telling you I got so many hard stares I felt as welcomed as Al Sharpton at a Klan rally.

Trailer parks get a bad rap. Sure there is an overabundance of camaros and fire birds, and yes a fair number of the men and women look like Joe Dirt and white trash Barbi. But there are small pockets of class and panache in the sea of aluminum and mullets. Clearly Martha Stewart's second cousin , Mardell Stewart lives in this funky retro retreat pictured above.

I wont swear to it but I think there might have been something funny going on. Which leads to this article as linked by Tony's Kansas City . The long and short of the story is that the Mo. Highway Patrol, is saying that Bush cut off 9 million in funding in the war on meth in Missouri. The HYPO goes on to lament that the war on meth will fold and the war will have been won by the skinny insomniacs.

May I say , BULLSHIT . If all of these years, all of the money and resources directed at the war on meth, haven't eradicated the problem, then throwing more money at it wont help. The truth is the war on meth and the war on crack haven't been fought to win. The sad truth is that if the drugs stop flowing, so does the money. Most meth in Missouri comes from Mexico via California and Texas, as does the majority of cocaine, and heroin. While there are still labs operating in Missouri, chemicals are hard to come by and small labs only supply a tiny portion of the current demand. So the authorities take down these small albeit, dangerous labs, and pat themselves on the back. While local meth labs are A problem they arent THE BIG problem.

The war on cocaine is pretty much the same story, just replace paranoid white wanna be chemists, with young sleepy eyed black guys. Sure we hear of the occasional "big" haul of dope and money, but in relative terms its a drop in the bucket. Mostly, when the police or feds talk about a major multi count indictment, its just some small loose knit group of street level dealers.

When a meth or crack dealer get popped, there are dozens waiting to fill the void. The supply and demand doesnt stop due to token small time arrests.

It is relatively easy to pop a small group of mental midgets who sling dope out of the same house, or the same corner, or the same shitty motel room, day in day out. Its also pretty easy to bust some idiot that tries to cook meth in a populated area, hopefully avoiding a huge explosion in the process, although that's not always the case. My point is its fairly easy and cost effective to take down these clowns, but it doesn't do much to stop the flow of poison. Before some genius posts a comment equating drugs flowing from Mexico with undocumented Mexicans, there isnt a connection. So dont even try it. Jorge wouldnt be up on your roof, or washing your dishes at Applebees if he was slinging dope.

So the Federal, state and local authorities lament the loss of funding while holding up the occasional small time lab rat or popcorn pimp, as proof that they are on the job, The truth is when it comes to true drug interdiction, the guys in white hats are nothing more than absentee landlords.

Soap and Suds Surrealism

Saturday I made a trip to the local laundry mat due to the washing machine in my building being out of order. I could have gone to one of the local hipster places that serve beer and have big screen tv, instead, I opted to go to the Wacky mat on 39th street west of Southwest Trafficway.

On first arriving I figured I had picked the right place. There was only one other person there, a late 20's early 30's something woman. She didn't seem crazy, and didn't omit any noxious odors. In fact she was a really good looking woman, coffee with cream colored skin, almond shaped eyes, the right bumps in all the right places and a v neck sweater that was so revealing I could see all the way to ........., well, you get the picture. So I'm thinking its not going to be so bad.

Across the street there is one of those tax places, a short pudgy guy is doing the Statue of Liberty bit, waving at cars as they pass by. After awhile he is joined by another Statue of Liberty, this one a woman. A guy in an Uncle Sam outfit is with her and carrying a chair. When they get out to the curb Uncle Sam puts the chair down and Miss Liberty takes a seat. WTF, since when does the symbol of Liberty and Tax preparation sit? Are they using handicapped or injured workers in the hope of flagging down some sympathetic person who just happens to be looking for someone to do his taxes? Maybe its a metaphorical take on the whole immigration debate since most of the customers coming in and out of the tax place seem to be of Hispanic dissent. Perhaps the people who own the tax place are members of the Minute Men and this is their way of saying, " enough already with your tired, your poor, Your huddle masses yearning to breath free, I need a break".

As I am sitting in one of those hard plastic Laundry mat chairs, looking at the twin Liberty's and glancing over at the Nubian laundry princesses twins hoping to see them liberated, in walks character number 3. A woman in her late 40's to early fifties with a price chopper grocery cart parked outside. She steps through the door with 2 pillow cases stuffed full of dirty clothes. She dumps both loads in to a single washer, crams them in so full that the lid barely shuts. She feeds the machine some quarters, and no soap. She the proceeds over to the television bolted to the wall and begins to carry on a lengthy conversation in fluent gibberish. This goes on for a few minutes while Foxy Brown and I exchange knowing glances that we are clearly in the presence of someone whose elevator is stuck between floors.

I make my way outside to have a smoke and to be close to my car in case the shopping cart lady goes crazy, pulls a meat cleaver from under one of the 4 sweaters she is wearing, and hacks Ms. Brown to pieces. Someone has to remain alive to call the cops and an ambulance, and I figure it may as well be me. Besides things are starting to pick up across the street at the tax place. Apparently in the world of big time advertisement and instant tax returns, the more people you can dress up like caricatures of patriotic symbolism the better. In the 5 minutes it took me to smoke, 2 more uncle Sam's and yet another Statue of Liberty appeared at the curb across the street. It was a giant bobble head mascot like Statue of Liberty. Just as things were picking up across the street, the crazy lady came out of the Laundry mat and went next door to the second hand children's store, talking to her imaginary friend all the way .

I went back inside and threw my stuff in to several dryers. After about 10 minutes or so the crazy lady came back with a newly acquired duckling. It was a stuffed toy and much to my dismay not a real duck. I guess she was in need of a well worn ,stained, stuffed duck, and really, who isn't? The crazy lady picked up her conversation with the duck, where she had left off from her earlier exchange with the television.

So there I sat, at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning in a Laundry mat in midtown. To my left were waving Statues of Liberty, Uncle Sam's and one freakish looking ,wobble headed ,mascot like ,Statue of Liberty. Directly in front of me was a really nice display of cleavage, and to my right a crazy woman was talking to a toy duck. It was surreal, and the reason why I love living here. You just don't see this kind of shit in the burbs.

Beetle Juice.....Beetle Juice...Beetle Juice.

So its all over the news that this guy was arrested and charged for child molesting. The cops are saying his crimes may date back to the early eighties, and apparently people are coming forward with more allegations. Its an almost sure bet that as this story unfolds it will be revealed that there were previous complaints or allegations made but that nothing came of it for one reason or another. I may be wrong but I doubt that I am.

Needless to say that anyone who harms a child to fulfill some deviant desire should be subjected to equally vile punishment and never given another opportunity to live in society, unfortunately that’s not the usual outcome in these cases. The best I can tell statistically the average pedophile serves around 7 years. There is so much conflicting data its hard to really pin it down. Suffice to say the vast majority of them will reenter society at some point down the road.The problem as I see it is that these creeps are treated as if they have a disease when in fact they are a disease.

In most prisons sex offenders are given the option to seek treatment while inside and rewarded with an earlier release than if they opt to do so. In Rochester they were kept separate from the general population while going through "treatment" and then shipped elsewhere when they were done. Shrinks will tell you that these guys are as much victim as predator, that almost all of them were abused as children. What they don’t bother to tell you is that the vast majority of victims of molestation do not go on to becoming child molesters themselves. I’ve never bought in to the school of thought that says they cant help it, its uncontrollable, but even if it is true then how does sitting around in group therapy with like minded dirt bags make them better? The short answer is that it doesn’t. If your wiring is so fucked up that you would rape someone, be it man , woman or child, then no amount of Rorschach tests and psycho babble is going to fix it.

Fucking up some kid for the rest of their life will get you seven years, and growing 10 pot plants can get you life, that’s the world we live in.

And what about the family and friends of these wack jobs, are they not paying any attention at all? I’m sure we have all worked with or lived near someone who we instantly knew that this guy is one creepy mother fucker. People who aren’t right in the head or who are capable of heinous shit are for the most part easy to spot. If a middle aged man spends time dressed as beetle juice working for free at haunted houses, dresses in an uber creepy Grinch outfit for xmas, then I’ve got to believe he was throwing up some other tell tale signs of weirdness. Ever see a picture of notorious wacko serial killer John Wayne Gacy in his clown suit, or sans clown suit for that matter?

People need to wake the fuck up, know who their kids are around and take measures to protect them. I realize that there will still be those who slip by undetected and in the end there is no way to protect every child all of the time. Bad shit happens, its inevitable, but I cant help but think that more of it could be prevented if people would wake up and look around.