Bloggie Sue

Airport scans or scams?

2010-12-07T13:02:00.001-06:00

On Sept. 11, 2001, I became painfully aware that I'd be writing the phrase "On Sept. 11, 2001..." for years to come. It was pretty obvious by brunch time that day that we were living through zeitgeist-altering events that would shape the new millennium pretty drastically and for quite a while, too. What we didn't know at the time, what we could not have predicted, was that our country would turn into a Terry Gilliam inspired paranoid comedy where business-as-usual would be the real devil in the details.

Take the current state of our nation's airports. Now, if you're like me -- and I know I am -- then you don't mind being publically groped by strangers or photographed in the nude by them so long as they have plausible deniability or an abundance of natural charisma. Protests about civil liberties aside, most of us don't mind a few silly security measures or even a host of monotonous questions and inspections. But what is difficult to come to terms with is when these measures become so laughably predictable in their knee-jerk responsiveness to grand failures that they offend reason and undermine the system they purport to protect.

As I learned at Iowa State, a little depravity goes a long way whether safety is an issue or not. But even if full body scans and prurient pat downs were able to keep us perfectly safe in flight, these measures stop no one from walking into an airport with a steamer trunk full of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, a gasoline can and a Zippo. For all the security on the concourse between you and your plane there is nothing more daunting than a couple of stupid questions from a bored ticket agent before that. Wile E. Coyote could successfully execute a terror plot at an airport without a ticket for a flight. It just isn't that hard and anyone with an imagination could cook up a scheme.

And yet every time some fool or zealot attempts to detonate their clothing in flight, we invest in millions of dollars worth of equipment and procedures experts admit aren't actually keeping us safe. The underwear bomber would have made his way easily through an x-ray scanner and an aggressive pat down. Airports are as vulnerable as they ever were and jets are only moderately safer due to a more vigilant flying public.

What we have here is business-as-usual dressed up as "new and improved." It's the same scam ad men use to sell detergent. We don't have safety so much as the illusion of safety. Something bad happened and it made us feel better for a while to know somebody somewhere was doing something. So long as nothing really bad happened again, we were content to take off our shoes in public and believe with all our might that double-checking everyone with a beard was working.

The problem is that crises always prompts the greedy to find the profit in our fear. Every industry in this nation has a lobby in Washington and security is no different. Manufacturers of the "naked scanner," awkwardly named Rapiscan, have a contract worth $173 million and employ former Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff as a consultant. According to reports in USA Today and the Washington Examiner, security firms have been doubling their efforts and dollars in D.C. There's lucre to be made in security and you had better believe your privacy and safety are the last things on anyone's mind but yours.

10/17/10 Spank your kids

2010-11-17T19:09:00.000-06:00

You know you are getting old when you start thinking of college students as the "kids these days." I suppose it was inevitable I would hit an age when I could no longer prop up my hipness in the face of change. I have tried for as long as possible to maintain youthfulness. I have used a combination of staying in school for an obscenely long time, only making friends with people 10 years or more younger than myself, avoiding long-term employment and never saying things like "well, THAT'S different."

Most importantly, I remain willing to adapt to new trends like swearing on basic cable, social networking, sandwiches with chicken breast buns, the "Star Trek" reboot, green technologies, the information age and even "Jackass" in 3D."

Failing to keep up with change will give you a case of future shock big enough to kill a llama. The worst cases leave you a broken shut-in afraid to leave the house, but the mild cases are almost as bad. They create in some minds the idea that coolness peaked when they did. That is never the case.

People stuck in another decade will tell you no good music has been made since Starship broke up and that rap cannot possibly last even though it has been around since the 70s.

I will admit that I am more old-fashioned than I care to admit in some areas and on one subject in particular. That subject is more taboo than strip poker on Sunday. If you are sensitive, turn away now because no one wants to force you to absorb the following opinion. Ready?

I have a lingering attachment to corporal punishment. We need to bring back into vogue the well-measured, non-angry form of physical repercussion for failure to acceed to demands that was last popular when I was a kid.

Just to be clear, I despise abuse as well as the abusive, but I think it is wrong to equate simple spanking with abuse. To the contrary, sparing the rod spoils the child, but more importantly it just feels right to advocate a modicum of physically-imposed discipline. It was good enough for grandma and she raised six kids with relative success.

Grandma was right to spank because children are not morally responsible individuals capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong when presented as mere theory. You cannot have an intelligent discussion with a five-year-old about the ethical consequences of their actions. You cannot explain to someone who has no real understanding of pain let alone a realistic concept of mortality why they should not run out into traffic. "Why" shouldn't enter into it, only "because I said so."

There are plenty of good kids out there and I don't intend to demean them in any way. Quite the opposite. Kids who misbehave around adults are anything from a bad example to a torment to good kids. Good kids know as well as adults do that ill-mannered children lack discipline. They want us to make those kids behave for their own benefit.

By the time kids get to their teens these days, they are uncontrollable if they haven't learned proper etiquette already. I do not blame the media, sugar or whatever reality star is the haps this week. I blame the namby-pamby policies that make it impossible for a parent to grab their kids by the arm in a public place and tell them if they do not stop screaming, they are going to get paddled in front of the whole store.

What happened to the America of the past, the one I knew and loved growing up? When parents could spank their kids for pushing at the public pool or give them a mild slap on the mouth for cussing? What happened to that country where parents could threaten their kids to keep them in line? Does anyone honestly think we are living in a better country for sparing the rod?
I believe wholeheartedly that there is nothing wrong with your kids knowing that if they cross the line, they've got a whoopin' coming to them. Respect, common courtesy and healthy fear are not always things you can teach a child about. Sometimes it takes a spanking.

10/25/10: Vote 'yes' to keep Iowa justice uncorrupted

2010-10-26T19:45:00.000-05:00

Thinking about this week's election topic, I could not help but remember a touching, personal story. When I was 6, my grandmother pulled one of my teeth out. The tooth she removed, with surprisingly little effort on her part, was right next to the loose one she had intended to pull. There was much wailing and not so much with the gnashing of teeth. Within the hour, the loose tooth I had been "fiddling" with fell out on its own. This resulted in two very important lessons being learned, in a very visceral way, by me. The first lesson is to never underestimate an old woman with a powerful grip, a clean, dry handkerchief and no patience. The second is never trust an interloper.

Of course, my grandmother felt terrible about what would constitute torture under the Geneva Convention. I know her regret was earnest because back in those days you could just about smack a kid with a log chain at a grocery store in front of a cop and not get so much as a ticket for noise pollution. She never said as much and I may be reading into things, but I believe if she could remember the incident, she would say she acted rashly out of personal irritation as opposed to a legitimate interest in what was best for everyone.

So it goes. Every generation has growing pains, obstacles and noisome interference to deal with. In this upcoming election, Iowans are being bombarded by outside interests to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices for ruling unanimously a year and a half ago that the state has no vested interest in prohibiting same sex couples from entering into wedded bliss, such as it is. Having read the ruling and being a fan of well-written jurisprudence, I can find nothing particularly biased about the decision. In fact, it's a model of pure legal reasoning so airtight you could can tomatoes in it. It's probably the best written legal opinion since Brown v. Board of Education. It makes me emotional just thinking about it and the best part? It's pure Iowa values written by Iowans for Iowans with no interference from outsiders (http://www.politico.com/static/PPM104_090403_iowacourt.html).

Agree or disagree, but in an impartial system you win some and you lose some. That's how you know it's impartial. If you get your way all the time, then something IS wrong.

Do Iowans need help deciding Iowa issues from groups based, according to The Iowa Independent, in Mississippi (American Family Association), Washington, D.C. (Family Research Council), Arizona (Alliance Defense Fund), Georgia (Faith & Freedom Coalition) and New Jersey (National Organization for Marriage)? I don't think so, but then I have faith in Iowans to decide their own fate unlikepIpes Rep. Steve King who is happy to collaborate with interloping outsiders.

The most offensive piece of doublespeak being pushed this season is the "Vote NO to Activist Judges" campaign which would have us destroy our great tradition of a non-political judiciary in the name of keeping our courts "activist free" through political scheming which would virtually guarantee that any future judges would have to be political, partisan campaigners. The kindest thing anyone can say about this campaign is it's like pulling perfectly good teeth.

So let's set aside agendas for one moment and operate from a place of pure, unadulturated, utilitarian pragmatism. Let's use the kind of "enlightened self-interest" that would have made Ayn Rand smile quietly to herself.

According to Jennifer Merriman, communications/new media organizer for OneIowa, there are very good reasons of self-interest why no one should consider politicizing Iowa justices. They are: "Voting out the justices will not reverse the marriage decision. It will not change how justices are chosen. Voting out the justices will make them more likely to take popular opinion into account when making decisions. If one is opposed to gay marriage, one should know that popular opinion is weighing more and more toward gay marriage every day. Voting out the justices WILL make it more likely that a defendant will face a prosecution that's donated to the justice's campaign."

Connie Ryan Terrell of Interfaith Alliance Iowa offered good questions voters should ask themselves when deciding how to vote.

"Do voters really want to have this battle every two years? Do they really want to have to spend millions every two years? Do they really want judges who blow with the wind on whatever 'popular' opinion is every two years? Do they really want judges who are beholden to the other side’s special interest (whatever that happens to be) every two years?"

Greg Jerrett is a freelance writer and marketing consultant. He can be contacted at gjerrett@gmail.com.

Ignore the narrative, process is the point of elections

2010-10-26T19:33:00.000-05:00

Possible column topics whirled around my head while re-organizing my library this week. There is something humbling about being the caretaker of many great volumes of philosophy, science, politics and literature. It's not just the dusting involved -- though I confess it can be tedious -- rather it is the sheer magnificent weight of great historical thinkers that makes one feel as significant as a dirty penny in a jar of new nickels. Especially when one lives in an age of spare change.

With a Templeton Rye in one hand and a homeless copy of "Moby Dick" in the other, I was struck by the notion that no one knows ahead of time just how important their work will be when viewed in hindsight. Nor should we focus so hard on outcomes that we short change the process. Had someone told Melville he'd die broke, he might have chosen another line of work. Had he known his work's future worth, he might have written a sequel ("Moby Dick 2: They Still Call Me Ishmael") gutting our love for the original.

We live inside the big picture we help to create. We spring from cultural traditions we maintain as much as change. For better or for worse, we build the future from the bricks of the past and the mortar of right now. The quality of our work will be judged by generations yet unborn to parents and grandparents yet to be. We have an obligation to do our best because the only condemnation the future can ever teally saddle the the pastwith is that "the people of that time didn't try hard enough to be better."

So as we approach Nov. 2, I feel ethically, if not morally, obligated to discuss the election. First up, broad strokes. In bombastic times, I feel the need to make my positions as entertaining as possible without yielding too much dignity to populism. But then I remember that popularity, populism and politics are all rooted in the same notion of people-pleasing. It is no coincidence that people love to watch and vote for the next "American Idol" pop singer more often and more consistently than they pay attention and vote in boring local, state and mid-term national elections. These merely effect our lives.

It's about perception, investment and return. Even if one pays each time to vote for the next "idol" and their choice doesn't win, most viewer-voters don't feel they've wasted their time -- ironic as this might seem to Ruben Studdard fans. This is because no one perceives that they've been robbed. They were going to watch anyway. No one lives or dies by the outcome and if their contestant wins, they feel a part of that success. A week later, they can forget all about it and move on to the next reality/talent show.

Politics and talent shows can both be entertaining, but political contests rarely result in victory for the most talented participant. The only commonality between talent shows and politics is they both make good use of narrative to change the outcome.

"A narrative" is just a fancy way of saying "a story" without it sounding like a complete fiction. We all have a story, but how we tell it changes how we are perceived. Sometimes, people fudge the details, highlight their best points or just lie with varying levels of success. Sometimes, storytellers are so good at telling their story it doesn't matter so much what the truth is. Anyone who's read Hunter S. Thompson knows this.

An entertaining story overshadows dry issues and confuses voters. Political action groups depend on it to get their way. They're convinced of their righteousness so it doesn't matter if you are too so long as you vote the way they want you to.

Political victories can be hollow ones. Even the best are about as hair-raising as paying your bills on time but the long-term goal of a stable democracy is worth our diligence.

This election, please familiarize yourself with the issues. Vote your conscience, ignore the noise of outside influence and remember that process is the point with history our only judge.

Greg Jerrett is a freelance writer, marketing consultant and not a paid spokesman for Templeton. He can be contacted at gjerrett@gmail.com.

Sneak peak

2010-10-11T20:48:00.000-05:00

I'm often fascinated by how parochial our coastal cousins appear when talking about those of us living in what they condescendingly refer to as "the fly-over states" and patronizingly as "Middle America." They mean "hicks," of course, but like to think we don't "get it." They know nothing of our ways and lump us all together. They don't appreciate the diversity out here or the complexities of our lives, which aren't mysterious or idyllic, just different from theirs. And only a bit.

Justin Timberfake's first espresso.

2010-06-18T14:54:00.000-05:00

Death and Gravy ... as of today

2010-06-08T18:55:00.001-05:00

A1
Kay had eyes like a shark. Black but less soulful and more predatory. Thats not true, really. I just like to ssy it as if it were.

A2
The truth is she was damaged goods. At least she was when she wanted to be, but then who isnt?

A3 But then who doesn't when it suits them./Kay once told me in a late night phone call that she lost her virginity while being date raped.]

A4 She made it up. Added good details even like "I guess he felt he was entitled to it" and "I said no, but it was over before I knew it."]

A5 I figured out for myself months later she was full of shit. She never confessed to anything even when thoroughly busted.

A6 Kay was obsessed with finding a boyfriend, but she wore a shirt that said "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

A7 It would have been funny if it weren't so sad and ironic. Worse for me, I loved her. I guess I just didn't like myself very much.

A8 That fact goes some way toward explaining why Kay wasn't the first to get under my skin the way she did. Hell, she wasn't even the fifth to do that.

A9 I was hooked on fixing other people. Well, women. Focusing on them made it easier to ignore myself, my flaws, failings and relationships.

A10 You can't see yourself if your back is always turned to the mirror. My back was turned and I was running as fast as I could.

A11 It's funny how easily "running away" can be rationalized into "running toward something" -- love, happiness, success and other phantoms.

A12/ Kay was real enough. At 19, she was smart and sexy in an eccentric, coffeehouse way. She held out the promise of love and friendship...

A13...wrapped around a vacuum of neediness that made the super-massive blackhole at the center of the galaxy look like a clogged sink.

A14 Funny thing about black holes is that they aren't black at all; they're quite bright. Their gravity creates a shell of dying light.

A15 They're also created by what astrophysicists call "a singularity." Metaphorically, black holes focus only on themselves.

A16 So in that sense, Kay offered something to the world: a way for scientists and psychiatrists to describe complex ideas to laymen.

Narcissism bordering on solipsism.

A17 "Imagine a black hole as a sophomore college coed," Neil Degrasse Tyson might say. "One desperate to be the center of attention.

A18 "Because of poor self-esteem and daddy issues, she lacks luminescent beauty. She can't outshine others.

A19 "But she can suck the energy from a room or the will from everyone she gets inside her gravity well. That's the power of a black hole."

A20 Besides lieing about her rape, Kay committed a great many other sins. Some were merely omissions; others were in a category of their own.

A21 Cries for attention were weekly. If her period wasn't late, she was deaf in one ear. Once she was driven to the ER for a lost tampon.

A22 She'd call 5 times a night in crisis mode to ask what boys liked her. She'd ask for the answer "as a percentage" but that made no sense.

A23 Having a boy was worse. He drank too much and couldn't come or came too quick. Did that mean he didn't like her? Did she deserve this?

A24 She once drooled on me while reading over my shoulder. I couldn't help but think it was on purpose. Seriously, who does that?

A25 Compassion was the fastest way to earn her contempt. Use her then walk away? She'd love you forever. Or until she had the upper hand.

A26 She burned through people like dessicated corpses leaving nothing behind but carbonized remnants of good will and bits of bone.

A27 She didn't like herself much. Hurting friends hurt her. Isolated her./When she finally killed herself, no one was shocked that she had.

A28 The only eyebrow-raising detail was she set herself on fire. It was a brutal homicide and she was her victim. Message sent and received.

A29 I had to hand it to the crazy bitch; she made an impact. Everyone who found her despicable or laughable blinked at self-immolation.

A30 You see this as a stranger's news story and wonder what possessed them. An unbearable, existential pain? You romanticize it instantly.

A31 When you knew the victim-love, hate, indifferent-it's personal. What could I or should I have done? That's the point. You're in it now.

A32 Detachment is out when there's a story to tell. "Remember the chick who used to hide in closets at parties? Well guess what SHE did."

A33 And "Weren't you friends with her? Did you see the signs?"/I don't know it all, but I know this: self-immolation… has no warning signs.

A34 What's the difference between drama & melodrama? A cry for attention or help? Successful suicide or botched fake attempt? Beige or ecru?

A35 The distinction is intent. To observers, that combines subjectivity, opinion, reflection, consensus. The dead don't intend anything.

A36 They might have while alive, forming their plans, writing a note, pulling a trigger or, in Kay's case, lighting matches. But not now.

A37 If forced to form a conclusion, I'd still offer it as multiple choice. I can see her playing with the matches, thinking about burning.

A38 Maybe she'd even burn a few magazines to watch the celebrities on the front crinkle and blacken. She'd make the connection to herself.

A39 See how long she could hold her hand to flame. Smell burning hair. How long could she hold a flaming page until she had to drop it?

A40 Exploring the boundaries of what she could feel included vodka and Xanax on top of Effexor, Wellbutrin and endless Marlboro Light 100s.

A41 On any given day she could swing from manic, anxious harpie to cold, emotionless zombie; all points in between, below and beyond.

A42 At what point is it OK to bail on a fragile nutjob? How many times can YOU be fucked over and get away with it? Once? Twice? 15 times?

A43 I've found my tolerance pretty high. I have more empathy than a grown man should and a sad desire to feel needed as a love surrogate.

A44 I'd benefit from a slightly more egocentric outlook. Waiting to be appreciated by others is high irony if you don't appreciate yourself.

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B1 It's not true that no one gets what they want, but it is pretty rare for people like me. It requires an astute sociological imagination…

B2…and the will to live as the person you want to be not as the person you were born to be. The middle class never understands this.

B3 Their sense of entitlement is innate. They might know hard times, but their hard times are never made worse by the assumption…

B4…they don't deserve everything they can get their hands on. The entitled believe hard work pays off because for them it does.

B5 They can ignore inequity because if anyone can be denied what they've earned, what anyone deserves becomes questionable.

B6 Life isn't fair and justice has a price. Only the fear of retribution stops anyone from testing the limits of these concepts.

B7 "Life isn't fair," taken to its rational conclusion, negates the social contract utterly. It works as an aphorism only in moderation.

B8 Americans disdain empathy for this reason. Pity acknowledges weakness as part of the human condition. twitter.com/deathandgravy

B9 Being a self-aware human being means acknowledging that at any moment you might be the next to beg mercy in a cold, uncaring world.

B10 Reactionaries call for fewer social safeguards after benefitting from them. Irony is dead; sarcasm flourishes like flies on its corpse.

A45 "A work in progress." That's what Kay called herself the last time we talked over 10 years ago. I'm sure we differed on the subject...

A46…of who needed more work. We had argued about breakfast of all things. She'd make plans with me then blow them off; leave me waiting.

A47 Nothing new. This time was just the straw that broke the camel's back right before the camel got its head bashed in with a jagged rock…

A48…for crying "uncle." The weak and stupid deserve what they get, right? If a grown man can't save himself from the caprices of a girl…

A49…who's emotional instability is unquestionable, demonstrable and ongoing, he's not really worth saving.

A50 After expressing my disappointment at having been stood up once again and my hope that it should never happen again…

A51…Kay screwed my roommate that night and made sure I heard the entire thing. I'm sure it struck her as a wily form of revenge at the time…

A52…I was grateful for such a grandiloquent "fuck you." It was liberating. Like coming to terms with getting your toe cut off.

C1 "Amputation" carries a bluntness thinly camouflaged behind it's elegant Latin root, "amputare." It's a word that carries more horror...

C2…than the concept it obfuscates because of its construction. At least it does when a doctor looks at you and says ...

C3…"We have to amputate part of your foot." I can tell you honestly, it's the worst part of the day—for both of you—bringing to mind...

C4…bloody Civil War images and a reflection of the mixed, sick feeling you get looking at an amputee with pity and revulsion.

C5 A reflection because even though you don't know it yet, you will look at your own naked, mutilated foot the same way and mourn.

C6 Modern medicine has eliminated the graphic audio-visual effects of amputation. There's no blood spattering or screaming, but…

C7…there is still the realization, the clarity of knowing like faith, that whatever else you do, you are only so much meat. Long pork in clothes.

C8 We speak of the animated flesh in hallowed terms. A sin of the flesh offends God, after all. Hubris, that's the real Hamburger Helper.

C9 Physically, you feel nothing while they cut. Psychologically, you feel better than ever—truly positive. Narcotics are brilliant.

C10 Conscious, but stoned silly, you note quietly to yourself the funny, little things that happen in the OR during your amputation.

C11The docs played "Name that Tune" on the oldies station. I chimed in as Asia came on. "Are you awake?" asked the nurse. "Yeeaaah," I said.

C12 "Can you feel that?" "Nooo." "Pass the bone-cracker, please," the doc said. "But I could stand to be a lot higher right now," I said.

C13 The return to reality is not a smooth ride. With a foot covered thick in bandages, you can delay the inevitable for only so long.

C14 The inevitable happens two days after surgery. Wound care changes the dressing and you see what's left of your foot for the first time.

C15 Laterally, the foot sans small toe and metatarsal looks like mortadella—ground pork flecked with white chunks. Bone, fat and infection.

C16 A deli clean slice to be sure. The visible man's foot. You make jokes for psychic defense. "At least now I can wear Italian loafers."

C17 The nurses laugh like they're working for tips, but eventually they all read your chart and as, "Why did you wait so long to go to the ER?"

D1 I couldn't swim until I was 12. I learned in 10 minutes when a sadist PE teacher thought he'd get more time than that to shame me.

D2 I nearly died in a crowded pool at 9. No one noticed until I'd done all the hard work of drowning—panicking, splashing, aspirating.

D3 I think it would have been a temporary setback before a great personal rebirth had my mother reacted with maternal concern.

D4 Instead of reassurance and hugs, I was frantically berated for causing a pre-partum, post-resolution primetime panic attack.

D5 And yet it still took three years and a stranger to teach me to swim. There was a lot of existential ennui in that weird span of time.

D6 I remember thinking often that I could've died in that pool. Not piteously, but in an attempt to embrace my own life without fear.

D7 My parents made life a grind. They were plagued by self-doubt, fear of failure & the judgment of others. I'm surprised I learned to walk.

D8 I never felt good about surviving let alone being alive. I wanted to. I gave myself the speeches I thought my parents should have.

D9 One imaginary motivational included the homily, "After you've faced death, everything else is pretty much gravy." And it should've been.

C18 In the months leading up to my first amputation, I had become increasingly despondent. Even before the first foot ulcer, I was sick.

C19 Cardiomyopathy from the blue, uncontrolled diabetes and low thyroid were nothing compared to a crippling depression I'd had since 13.

C20 Everyone think they know what depression is because they've been depressed once or twice. This is a fallacy and a disservice to depressives.

C21 It's like saying you understand cancer because you had a mole removed once. Depression poisons everything. It is physically painful.

C22 It makes existing illnesses worse and creates new ones. It can't be shaken off any more than a broken leg, Parkinson's or leukemia.

C23 Worse yet, depression makes you not want to think about whatever the hell else is wrong with you. It makes you ignore your blood sugar.

C24 It makes you forget to take your meds. And it can make you ignore an infected toe until it is so black and dead you can smell it.

C25 And even then it can make you think, maybe I could wait two days until I see the new Star Trek movie and then go to the emergency room.

Real revolution, really?

2010-04-14T17:24:00.001-05:00

Any revolution requires creative destruction. While part of me would love to "jack some sh!t up," violence isn't my bag. I just want to have some options, a new way of working and living. That's all the revolution I need. I'm tired of being a wage slave, a pawn, a cog. I don't need to be a big man. It would just be nice to be a man.

Supercool 1943

2010-04-14T13:30:00.001-05:00

Something about listening to Glenn Miller makes me feel super hip. Man, that cat could swing.

Waiting is the hardest part... of revenge

2010-03-31T16:50:00.004-05:00

I battle constantly with demons. I sought from a young age to become enlightened. I've read, I've meditated, I've taken psychotropics and anti-depressants. Like an American Beauty, I've worked hard to climb my way out of the manure-soaked dirt of my bloodlines. Anyone who's traveled this path knows some days you smell like a rose and other days you stink of shit.

Guess which day this was.

I attended my Aunt Sharon's funeral today. I got up early, shaved, put on a clean, white shirt & wore dress shoes. I demonstrated my respect like a civilized man. Didn't expect a lot of warmth and hugging when I got there, but I never stop being amazed at some of the shit I am related to.

Today, I was reminded what classless trash Sharon's children are. Those animals deliberately left my mother off the list of surviving siblings. I don't believe it was my Aunt Sharon's will either considering their last contact was pleasant if not ebullient.

This act of pettiness was mean-spirited, yes, but surprisingly passive-aggressive. Really such a fey move. I was surprised by the femininity of it. It was like something a high school cheerleader would come up with. Good job, Robert. Now all you need is a sassy scarf and you win Bitch-of-the-Year.... so all right.

Mum wasn't phased. Uncle Kenny was not pleased, but let it go on her request. I, however, am vengeful. I don't believe funerals should be used for spite. I am smarter and meaner than those inbreds. I have a long memory and a lot of time on my hands. I know something they don't know about their mother and why she was so eager to make peace with my mother the last time they met.

So wait for it.

Snowpocalypse Now!

2009-12-25T18:45:00.001-06:00

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Solaris!

2009-12-24T23:08:00.001-06:00

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2009-12-17T02:45:00.001-06:00

The Last Word

2009-10-26T01:08:00.001-05:00

You know... I am the first person to admit that I

haven't done much with my life. Any potential I had

was burned up in a firestorm of anger and self-

loathing and left to rot in a desert of inertia and

clinical depression years ago.

The one scintilla of pride I have felt in my life is for

those accomplishments that have been so very

small as to be virtually meaningless, devoid of

genuine relevance and, for all practical purposes,

worth nothing to anyone BUT me. Others seem to

do so much more with what they've been given that

I am truly filled with admiration and envy.

I am a dried husk of a physically and psychically

damaged man with no career, no children, no wife,

no girlfriend, no prospects, no money, no fun,

sparse talent, little love, less hope and few friends.

I have taken some small comfort in my few and far

between fond memories, scattered friendships and

minor accomplishments. ... Read More

I have been petty at times and for that I apologize. I

cannot deny it and it would be foolish to do so. I

offer only this by way of explanation. I entered this

world poor in a variety of ways and continued on

listlessly but inevitably confronted by a wide variety

of obstacles. I've taken mountains of abuse

stoically only to snap at the smallest of further

indignities.

Oddly enough, I am probably proudest of the

occasional bursts of magnanimity I have been able

to offer with what little I have had to share. It's

important to me that I give especially when I have

so little because it makes me feel that much more

generous and closer to the divine spark that exists

buried under our all too selfish humanity. That is

the Indian in me. That is the best part of me. That

is the only thing I ever wish to leave as a legacy. I

have ALMOST nothing but it is mine to share with

an open heart and an open hand.

Game is for Punks

2009-10-26T01:06:00.000-05:00

Game? Oh boys. Boys, boys, boys. Love is no

game. Beaches, fireplaces, castles, fantasy suites

at the Radisson. A guy doesn't need "game" to

make a lady melt. If all the years I've spent in high

school have taught me anything about love it's that

a girl wants more than a few pretty words or a "nice

date" with some wine coolers right before

steaming up the car windows. That way leads only

to regret.

Girls aren't to be toyed with. They are like precious

gems, one of a kind each of them with her own

unique facets and value beyond a quick notation in

your little black books: "Michelle, brunette, OK

personality, dry kisser, father avid gun collector."

To find true love, real passion, you have to be

willing to give up a little part of yourself.

Her name was Misty. My love for her burned me

from the inside out. Every second apart was an

eternity. Every moment together, though bliss, was

fleeting. An hour seemed like a minute.

Then one day, Misty asked me if I really loved her. I

said, yes. But how do I really know, she asked,

you could just be saying that.

Sure I spent money on her. I bought her gifts. We

went for long rides in my sweet 1972 Mustang. We

had picnics at Joslyn Castle and I wrote her poems

(I know, what a pansy). But none of it was proof of

my love, she said. I might just have the greatest

game that she or any other girl had ever seen ...

ever.

I realized she was right. I agonized. How can one

guy show a girl solid proof that his love is real. Isn't

love intangible? Yes, yes it is. You can't hold air in

your hands either, still a candle will go out if

deprived of air.

So using only a serated edge steak knife and the

ink from a Bic pen, I carved Misty's name into my

left forearm then rubbed the ink into my wound

creating a jagged yet perfect symbol, a tattoo,

homemade, proof of my true love.

It worked.

Now THAT'S game, fellas.

2009-09-27T01:46:00.000-05:00

I once dropped my ancient copy of Pierre Boulle's "La Planète des Singes" in the john pre-flush. Nothing too nasty got in there. I washed the outside but I had that niggling feeling you are now experiencing. So I put the book in a ziploc bag and microwaved the hell out of it at work. I figured if no one got violently ill, the book was probably OK.

2009-09-12T17:33:00.001-05:00

Dear President Obama

2009-09-12T14:09:00.003-05:00

I just faxed this letter to the White House on behalf of Leonard Peltier. Why fax? No one faxes any more. The man gets 10,000 letters a week and more emails than that a day. I edited the text of an example letter @ http://www.freepeltiernow.org. One cannot be a whack job and get noticed. If you would like to use this letter as a template, feel free to make a few changes and call it your own. The result is what's important. Mahalo.

-------------------------

Dear President Obama,

Like many registered voters who proudly voted for you, I'm concerned about the high rate of unemployment in our country. I'm particularly concerned about the highest rates of unemployment, as seen on Indian Reservations. I learned about the living conditions on reservations from the writings of Native American activist Leonard Peltier. It saddens me that not much has changed on the reservations in the past 30 years. Nothing much has changed for Leonard Peltier in that time, either.

I've read that the White House has recently begun to host special listening sessions with representatives of the First Nations. I'm grateful that you've taken this step to improve relations between the White House and the tribes. Thank you. Perhaps a session could be dedicated to discussing strategies that may help ease the effects of unemployment on the reservations? I'm thinking of the community gardens Mr. Peltier used to plant. Peltier knew that, with simple tools and proper resources, reservations could not only feed their residents, but improve their health and reduce health care costs.

Perhaps you will consider, though, that the most dangerous disease on reservations is hopelessness—a byproduct not only of unemployment and poor living conditions, but of the ill-treatment suffered by Indigenous Peoples for hundreds of years.

During your campaign you said, "The criminal justice system is not color blind. It does not work for all people equally, and that is why it’s critical to have a president who sends a signal that we are going to have a system of justice that is not just us, but is everybody... It requires some political courage, because oftentimes you are accused of being soft on crime."

Mr. President, you have the opportunity to show Native Peoples that the promise of "justice for all" applies to them. As a first step, please grant clemency to Leonard Peltier. Bring hope to Indigenous People across this great land. Heal the wounds of the past and uphold the constitutional values we Americans hold so dear.

Thank you for your consideration. Mahalo.

Sincerely,
Greg Jerrett

LEONARD PELTIER: I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now

2009-09-11T23:58:00.003-05:00

If you don't know who Leonard Peltier is please look him up and, if at all possible, please add him to your list of political concerns. Related topics include Wounded Knee Incident, Pine Ridge Reservation and the American Indian Movement.

-------------------------------------------------------------

If Only the Government Had Respected Its Own Laws...
I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
By LEONARD PELTIER

The United States Department of Justice has once again made a mockery of its lofty and pretentious title.

After releasing an original and continuing disciple of death cult leader Charles Manson (sic - Lynette Squeaky Fromme) who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford, an admitted Croatian terrorist, and another attempted assassin of President Ford under the mandatory 30-year parole law, the U.S. Parole Commission deemed that my release would "promote disrespect for the law."

If only the federal government would have respected its own laws, not to mention the treaties that are, under the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land, I would never have been convicted nor forced to spend more than half my life in captivity. Not to mention the fact that every law in this country was created without the consent of Native peoples and is applied unequally at our expense. If nothing else, my experience should raise serious questions about the FBI's supposed jurisdiction in Indian Country.

The parole commission's phrase was lifted from soon-to-be former U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, who apparently hopes to ride with the FBI cavalry into the office of North Dakota governor. In this Wrigley is following in the footsteps of William Janklow, who built his political career on his reputation as an Indian fighter, moving on up from tribal attorney (and alleged rapist of a Native minor) to state attorney general, South Dakota governor, and U.S. Congressman. Some might recall that Janklow claimed responsibility for dissuading President Clinton from pardoning me before he was convicted of manslaughter. Janklow's historical predecessor, George Armstrong Custer, similarly hoped that a glorious massacre of the Sioux would propel him to the White House, and we all know what happened to him.

Unlike the barbarians that bay for my blood in the corridors of power, however, Native people are true humanitarians who pray for our enemies. Yet we must be realistic enough to organize for our own freedom and equality as nations. We constitute 5% of the population of North Dakota and 10% of South Dakota and we could utilize that influence to promote our own power on the reservations, where our focus should be. If we organized as a voting bloc, we could defeat the entire premise of the competition between the Dakotas as to which is the most racist. In the 1970s we were forced to take up arms to affirm our right to survival and self-defense, but today the war is one of ideas. We must now stand up to armed oppression and colonization with our bodies and our minds. International law is on our side.

Given the complexion of the three recent federal parolees, it might seem that my greatest crime was being Indian. But the truth is that my gravest offense is my innocence. In Iran, political prisoners are occasionally released if they confess to the ridiculous charges on which they are dragged into court, in order to discredit and intimidate them and other like-minded citizens. The FBI and its mouthpieces have suggested the same, as did the parole commission in 1993, when it ruled that my refusal to confess was grounds for denial of parole.

To claim innocence is to suggest that the government is wrong, if not guilty itself. The American judicial system is set up so that the defendant is not punished for the crime itself, but for refusing to accept whatever plea arrangement is offered and for daring to compel the judicial system to grant the accused the right to right to rebut the charges leveled by the state in an actual trial. Such insolence is punished invariably with prosecution requests for the steepest possible sentence, if not an upward departure from sentencing guidelines that are being gradually discarded, along with the possibility of parole.

As much as non-Natives might hate Indians, we are all in the same boat. To attempt to emulate this system in tribal government is pitiful, to say the least.

It was only this year, in the Troy Davis, case, that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized innocence as a legitimate legal defense. Like the witnesses that were coerced into testifying against me, those that testified against Davis renounced their statements, yet Davis was very nearly put to death. I might have been executed myself by now, had not the government of Canada required a waiver of the death penalty as a condition of extradition.

The old order is aptly represented by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who stated in his dissenting opinion in the Davis case, "This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged 'actual innocence' is constitutionally cognizable."

The esteemed Senator from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, who is now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, used much the same reasoning in writing that "our legal system has found Leonard Peltier guilty of the crime for which he was charged. I have reviewed the material from the trial, and I believe the verdict was fair and just."

It is a bizarre and incomprehensible statement to Natives, as well it should be, that innocence and guilt is a mere legal status, not necessarily rooted in material fact. It is a truism that all political prisoners were convicted of the crimes for which they were charged.

The truth is the government wants me to falsely confess in order to validate a rather sloppy frame-up operation, one whose exposure would open the door to an investigation of the United States' role in training and equipping goon squads to suppress a grassroots movement on Pine Ridge against a puppet dictatorship.

In America, there can by definition be no political prisoners, only those duly judged guilty in a court of law. It is deemed too controversial to even publicly contemplate that the federal government might fabricate and suppress evidence to defeat those deemed political enemies. But it is a demonstrable fact at every stage of my case.

I am Barack Obama's political prisoner now, and I hope and pray that he will adhere to the ideals that impelled him to run for president. But as Obama himself would acknowledge, if we are expecting him to solve our problems, we missed the point of his campaign. Only by organizing in our own communities and pressuring our supposed leaders can we bring about the changes that we all so desperately need. Please support the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee in our effort to hold the United States government to its own words.

I thank you all who have stood by me all these years, but to name anyone would be to exclude many more. We must never lose hope in our struggle for freedom.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier #89637-132
USP-Lewisburg
US Penitentiary
PO Box 1000
Lewisburg, PA 17837

Time to set him free... Because it is the RIGHT thing to do.

Friends of Peltier
http://www.FreePeltierNow.org
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2009-06-13T10:26:00.000-05:00

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2009-06-13T10:25:00.001-05:00

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Review: W

2008-10-17T15:30:00.000-05:00

Surprisingly even handed portrait of still president Bush lacking the massive attack I was hoping for from Oliver Stone. I'm sure conservatives will hate this movie because it isn't laudatory and some liberals might not dig it because it isn't damning enough. That might just be what makes this movie a fitting tribute to a 3rd rate prez, but not a good film. Save your money; wait for the DVD.

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2008-10-12T10:00:00.001-05:00

Review: Appaloosa

2008-10-10T16:50:00.001-05:00

Short story: Rocks. Long story: Rooooooocks. This western has a traditional storyline with a revisionist look&feel that's like a warm bath for the mind punctuated with dapples of gunfire & a supcong of uniquely western romance. Only downside is Renee Zellweiger's bright white ass in one scene but it was entirely organic to the plot. 7 out of 10 whatevers.

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Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

2008-10-10T16:28:00.002-05:00

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is the most unfathomably boring & pointless hipster teen romance I have EVER seen. The most unbelievable part of this movie-besides anyone wanting to screw the protagonists- is that it's based on a book. What a monumental POS that must have been. Movies like this are what make red-staters needlessly hate New York. Rent After Hours or High Fidelity instead.

Have I mentioned I hate drunks? pt 2

2008-09-29T00:50:00.002-05:00

cont'd ... I offended the drunkard by suggesting we postpone talks until Kissinger frees up his schedule. This guy must have been accustomed to scaring people at some point in his life because he fixes me with this thousand-yard stare like I'd flinch. It was probably just Miller Lite poisoning keeping him from seeing straight but in spite of my cast and other infirmities, I just don't blink once I start shit. It'll probably get me killed one day but this time I got my 8-piece and my psychiatric meds and got the hell up out of there.

Have I mentioned I hate drunks? pt 1

2008-09-29T00:23:00.002-05:00

Had another brouhaha this weekend. I was @ HyVee Food Store trying to pick up some herb roasted chicken just as the deli was closing @ 8. Not usually a problem except some drunk as fuck 1992 throwback was trying to dicker with the high school chick behind the counter over the price of a piece of dessicated meatloaf. She's not authorized or willing to give Drunky McDrunkerson - Tipsy to his friends - a break. Then he tries to get her to give up a little extra loaf. Normally, a guy wants to get a little extra for his money I figure good for him. But when it means making me wait around, listening to some babbling brook dirty alcoholic skank who's too shitered to know or care just how boring and pathetic he is in his best concert tank top and pajama bottom combo, his red eyes barely able to focus, I say screw all that noise. So just about the time the negotiations hit UN ridiculous levels,
I offended the drunkard by suggesting we postpone talks until Kissinger frees up his schedule. -30-

My own personal Bigfoot

2008-09-25T14:44:00.001-05:00

I see this Super Mario looking brother around town every once in a while & always try to get a shot of him. He is elusive this one. I had to follow him around the HyVee produce isle for over 20 minutes to get this pic unseen. Critics have accused me of faking this photo. Others have suggested this is just a man in a Mario suit. I hope to get a better shot of the mustache at some point in the future.

Socialism to the rescue... again

2008-09-24T22:48:00.001-05:00

$700 BILLION of taxpayer money going to bail out the rapacious capitalist/corporatist hordes? Why not? Clearly helping people who have no health insurance is just encouraging them to be a drain on society, while helping people even President Chimp Apely, MBA recognizes as greedheads who've brought our economy very nearly to its knees is okey dokey because ... why? They've learned their lesson and have promised to be good from now on? Hell no. The only thing they've learned is they can be greedy to the point of treason and suffer NO CONSEQUENCES AT ALL. To the contrary, these banks are being rewarded for gross irresponsibility. So much for the free market. Can there be any greater example of the need for corporate regulation that actually keeps these mammon worshippers in line? There are laws to keep me from wreaking havok. Let's spread the law&order around a bit huh? -30-

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Khhhaaaaaaan!!!

2008-09-24T19:48:00.001-05:00

Geek street cred established. I spent $5 on this articulated (10-points of it!) piece of plastic just so I couid leave it in the bag on display in my apartment. Yeah, I'm cool like that.

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Why's this bitch keep talking to me?

2008-09-24T14:47:00.002-05:00

Seriously, I don't bother you while I'm reading Star Trek

fan fiction at the library do I?

My favorite bit of food porn

2008-09-23T23:56:00.002-05:00

The world's most awesome combover

2008-09-23T12:22:00.001-05:00

I STILL DIG MY VCR

2008-09-23T12:16:00.002-05:00

Call me a Luddite if you must but for day to day recording I still prefer my VCR to my DVD burner. My VCR never refuses to record a PBS Johnny Cash special because it's copy protected. My VCR will record 3 sequential shows on 3 different channels without a 1 minute break at the end of each show where sometimes stuff happens I want to see. DVRs are great if you have money to burn & no disks to which you'd like to do the same.

My love life & other mythological creatures

2008-09-22T19:51:00.002-05:00

I was stuck inside Target this summer during a storm.

Well, as the storm raged on, one thing led to another and ...

I snuck this pic for the old spank bank. Sigh.

The day they knocked down the Palais...

2008-09-22T19:23:00.002-05:00

... part of my childhood died ... just died. I used to work

here in high school. This used to be called Sam's Hamburgers.

I could throw down 120 patties, flip 'em, cheese 'em, top 'em

& wrap 'em in 3 minutes. I was the Burgermeister Meisterburger.

Jesus vs Batman: Who would win in a fair fight?

2008-09-22T14:32:00.002-05:00

My buddy kevin is all pissed at me for posing this
query without immediately surrendering to our
Lord championship status in the only field in which
he never claimed superiority: violence. We figured
Bats could beat Wolverine and even Superman but
Kevin just wouldnt give the Dark Knight the W over
JC even if neither one used batarangs or magic. I pointed
out that its hard to do roundhouse kicks wearing flip flops
and even harder to make a fist with holes in your hands
but Kev would have none of it. He is truly faithful
that one.

It stands to reason that if Jesus could get beat down by
a bunch of guys in sandals with no guns while weve
all seen the Bat take on way tougher like Joker and
Two Face then by the transitive property of basic logic
Batman could more than likely beat our Saviour in a
friendly dust up. This doesnt mean Christianity is
meritless. It it does anything it reinforces that
Christianity is a religion whose believes are supposed
to allow their asses to be kicked.

QED.

porn or ice cream?

2008-09-21T20:52:00.003-05:00

Cherry Nut Crunch
Oreo blizzard
Dippin Chocolate
Chunky Monkey
99 cent Banana Split Junior
Exploited Black Teens 27

Song for Jason

2008-07-13T06:10:00.001-05:00

Alright mother scratchers, let's see if I've got one more in me before the big sleep comes down. First off, congestive heart failure: yes, it IS a chronic condition. Starting some time last July, I started going down hill. Bloated right up, couldn't breathe, couldn't sleep. Being the real man I am, I toughed it out until November when things got so bad, I couldn't even drive any more. Couldn't feel my feet. Couldn't find the brake. Didn't realize my shoe had come off and was stuck under the pedal. Almost wrapped the Hyundai around ... well, another Hyundai as it it happens. It was only owing to my excellent driving (I've seen Mad Max and The Road Warrior like 40 times each) that I grabbed at the emergency brake and skidded to a stop ... on the median.

Anyway, I ended up in the emergency room with a cod sack the size of a watermelon. Apparently, it's pretty common for a dude's scrote to swell up with fluid during an illness especially congestive heart failure because edema is basically the cells hanging on to water because the heart isn't working. It took two weeks for my marble bag to return to its normal proportions and even longer before I could spend more than a few minutes out of bed.

Long story short (too late) I've had some pretty major changes to my former "swingin'" bachelor lifestyle. I'm diffuse as a mug. My brain, which was never too good to begin with, ain't working at 100 percent. It's hard to concentrate, read, work, clean or write. If that weren't enough, my neuropathy has gotten much worse. That means I can't feel my feet OR my fingers. And that means typing is a major bitch. I can't feel the keys any more and I type at a fraction of the speed of my prime with 400 percent more errors. In short, my flow is fucked. I'm better off writing on paper now when I can muster the energy, which is not often.

Luckily, I can just about manager a hard-on in time to prevent serious injury to the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro area. But my libido is shot as well.

Psychologically, I'm stranger than ever. Getting a powerful OCD and social anxiety on top of the chronic depression and anxiety.

Then last week, a 27 year old friend of mine killed himself for reasons unknown. He had tons of friends. It was the most crowded funeral I've ever been to. It was and is the most God damnedest shame I've seen in some years.

On the bright side, I've got air conditioning, which is nice because it has been hot as balls around here lately.

Seacrest OUT!

Cop whose ass I kicked in court when I was just 17

2008-03-18T20:26:00.003-05:00

Give me a bullshit ticket for snow ties will ya?

New Tat

2008-03-18T20:24:00.001-05:00

Millennium

2008-03-11T09:42:00.001-05:00

Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.

Trailer Park Boys: The Big Dirty

2007-12-09T22:31:00.000-06:00

They Love It?

2007-12-09T22:20:00.000-06:00

Well, at least he's happy

2007-12-04T03:31:00.001-06:00

glitch

2007-12-03T11:25:00.001-06:00

wtf is this shit?

Kenny vs. Spenny: The Worst Show on Television

2007-11-26T00:46:00.000-06:00

As I get older, people enjoy telling me I just don't get things any more. "South Park," for example, doesn't amuse me much any more. Swearing kids were cute once upon a time, but the world has moved on. It's one thing to be vulgar and pretentious about a show that says something about anything even if it IS disgusting. There are lessons for those at the top of the heap from those at the bottom of it as well. It's another thing to just be a massive piece of audio visual detritus from the get go.

"Kenny versus Spenny" is just such detritus masquerading as entertainment for a new generation of dullards incapable of perceiving entertainment as anything above the level your run-of-the-mill sociopath might enjoy. It is one small step from watching two grown men try to eat as much meat as possible to torturing animals. Watching grown men try to not get aroused while trying mightily to arouse each other just to win a bet, makes pornography seem operatic. Pornographers once argued for the legitimacy of skank films as art. Their arguments, i retrospect, now seem as intelligent and full of merit as the works of Milton, Willa Cather and Bertrand Russell by comparison.

This program is Idiocracy at its finest.

Ouch, that's gotta hurt!

2007-06-23T19:06:00.001-05:00

Wow, that's gotta hurt. None of the biggies -- at this point -- want anything

to do with the skank, Paris Hilton. Read on folks!

I also give it less than 24 hours before someone else snatches her up, though.

This is right up FoxNews' alley.

Building a website is a piece of cake.
Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online.

Sorry for using "peccadillo" as well

2007-06-18T19:14:00.001-05:00

Here's a little peccadillo of mine. The other day, I used the word obsequious

in a meeting. Of course I got "I don't know what that means.

Even from the context, it should have been pretty obvious

that obsequious meant "kissing ass." Mea Culpa, I guess, for not

dumbing things down for the masses. What gets me is how grown people

can shamelessly admit they don't know the meaning of an 8th grade vocab

word that just rolled off my tongue and brain from habit and not some deep-

seated desire to impress others. I actively avoid using big words most times

because people do assume that no one can use "big words" unless they

are faking it for some perverse reason. I guess I secretly like having to come

up with dictionary definitions that the masses can also understand.

I made the point once that "irregardless" isn't a real word in the sense

that it is listed in the fuckin' dictionary as an improper form of speech

probably confusing regardless and irrespective. On that occasion I got,

"It is a word.... I use it all the time." Followed by awkward silence.

Oh yeah, that's the proof that a word is proper, that lots and lots of dumb

people use it. Like "zesty" and "lite" and "crumbalievable" and "wassup."

Dear stupid people of the world, fuck off!

P.S. Spell check didn't blink at "Zesty" or "Lite" so fuck you too, spell check!

We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love
(and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list.

Just Desserts: Duke lacrosse prosecutor disbarred

2007-06-16T19:41:00.001-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/16/duke.lacrosse.ap/index.html

Good. Now if we can just get rid of that massive hole, Nancy Grace,

the world will be a slightly more just place ... slightly.

My UFO Story: Mystery at Big Lake

2007-06-12T19:06:00.000-05:00

"And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.
- Ezekiel 1:4

Ezekiel saw the wheel and spoke of it as a mystical vision.

Was Ezekiel's vision a sign from God? Or did it signify something entirely different? Something the prophet was incapable of explaining?

Since the earliest of recorded history, man has seen and reported things that could not be explained. In the sea, on the land and in the sky. The bizarre and unexplained have always been dismissed as myth, vision and fantasy.

The great mountain gorilla was once just a crazy story - not unlike Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster - told by madmen and savages. It is only in the modern era that gorillas have been accepted as the most common attraction at any municipal zoo.

Mermaids were just manatees, not sea borne lovers as many sailors had hoped. Leviathans and other denizens of the deep have been identified as whales and large squid, nothing more.

Even the Bermuda Triangle is losing its mystery as scientists begin to fathom that its bubbling depths sink ships more often than the devil, aliens and ghosts.

Troy was a myth until it was discovered, what then of Atlantis?

Mysteries give life depth. It is our nature as rational beings to try and solve those mysteries. It is all a part of the great adventure of the mind.

Council Bluffs is not without its own mysteries. One of the greatest unsolved riddles in this sleepy railroad town occurred on Dec. 17, 1977, when Kenny, 17, and Carol Drake, 16, and Carol's brother Randy James, 12, were driving Kenny's Dodge Challenger to the Richman Gordman store on North 16th. According to a Daily Nonpareil story dated Dec. 18 of that year, several witnesses in addition to Drake, saw a bright red object fall from the sky toward Big Lake. When Kenny, Carol and Randy saw the object, they went with great haste toward the lake. On the dike along the road between the lake and the railroad tracks, was a molten "blob" of glowing orange metal. The pool of metal was slowly running down the sides of the dike and was too hot to touch.

According to an article published in the now defunct Omaha Sun on Feb. 9, 1978, Kenny Drake, who is now dead, saw four men about 18 or 19 years old drive by the site in "a tiny foreign car." As they passed the three on the dike, they asked if "they saw that thing fall out of the sky, too?"

The car turned around and drove by the sight again without stopping. This fact would become more relevant later on as the possibility of a hoax was discussed and who, if anyone, might have perpetrated such an act and how.

"It looked like a great big sparkler at first. Then it cooled down and seemed like lava, glowing and bubbling. I thought it was a meteor," said Kenny in the Sun article.

Randy James is still alive and living in Council Bluffs. He said he is not now and never has been "a real UFO buff."

He said that he hasn't really talked about what has been referred to as "The Big Lake Incident" since he spoke to Dick Ulmer for the Sun story in 1978, not for any reason dramatic or suspicious - though Kenny told the Sun that he had purportedly received a call from the United States Air Force insisting that he never mention his sighting again.

"Basically, we were heading down North 16th, and we saw what kind of looked like a ball of fire streaking from the sky. It appeared to come straight down. We saw a flash so you could tell it kind of hit the ground," Randy said. "Maybe it was space junk. We stayed there with the fire department and picked up a couple of pieces. There was a blue crystal in the middle of the pool of metal. When it cooled down a bit, we picked up a piece of the metal about the size of a toothpick and couldn't break it."

The bluish crystalline pieces were not affected by the heat, according to both Randy and Kenny.

At the same time that Kenny, Carol and Randy were driving up North 16th, Mike and Criss Moore were driving east on Broadway. Just as they crossed 16th, they saw what Criss described as "a big round thing hovering in the sky below the tree tops."

"It was hovering. It wasn't moving," Criss told investigators.

Criss also told the Sun she saw "red lights around the perimeter of the object, blinking in sequence."

A middle-aged couple who saw the event and spoke to investigators by telephone, but refused to be identified for fear of ridicule said they saw "a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lake."

Former Fire Chief Jack Moore, father of Mike Moore, was called out to the scene where the grass had caught fire and the ground was smoldering. He told the Nonpareil in a story at the time that Kenny told him "something red fell out of the sky to the southeast, hit the ground and exploded in flame."

When he arrived on the scene, Moore said he found a grassy area about four by six feet on a levee off Big Lake to be covered by a mass of molten metal, said the Nonpareil article.

"It was running, boiling down the edges of the levee. The center of it was way too hot to touch," Moore said at the time.

It should be noted that calls were made to Eppley Airfield as well as Offutt Air Force Base by investigators, according to the Sun. They could not explain the phenomenon as an air crash.

Astronomer and Nonpareil Columnist Bob Allen was a secondary witness to the event. He heard about it by the next day, Sunday, and went to take a look at what remained. Overnight, most of the metal had been chipped away, but a few pieces remained.

Allen did several things that would later make the Big Lake incident important to another investigator. The first is that he took a sample of the metal to Griffin Pipe to have the metal analyzed. He also sent a sample to Ames Lab at Iowa State University. Both said the metal was simply high-carbon steel of a very terrestrial origin. Part of it seemed to be slag, the kind of metal used widely in manufacturing.

Allen also sent samples to the Foreign Technologies division of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and received a letter from Col. Charles H. Senn who confirmed that the object could not have been space-borne because of the lack of an impact crater; could not have been part of a satellite because the metal was too common and space debris does not become molten or glow; the USAF had no interest in the case.

Meteors fall from the sky as stones and even the earliest of space craft were made of light metals with a high alloy content. The molten metal of Big Lake was far too primitive to be a satellite of human manufacture.

Part of an airplane perhaps? Even if the metal had come from an aircraft not noted by Eppley or Offutt, it would not have fallen in a semi-molten state.

All of this leads to one explanation that would satisfy the theory that a hoax had been perpetrated. Remember the four unidentified men in the small car who seemed only vaguely interested in the flash, but not enough to stop?

Perhaps they had planted the metal in its molten form or melted it using Thermite then set off a flare to attract attention but didn't count on the quick reaction time of Kenny, Randy and Carol who would have practically caught them in the act?

This was also right at the time that "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was in theaters. In fact, Mike and Criss Moore joked about having seen the movie only the night before in the Star article. Perhaps imaginations were running wild and one thing seemed like another.

But in any event, a hoax would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to pull off just for a few laughs. For one thing, molten metal is hard to come by. It can't be transported easily and certainly not in "a small foreign car" with four men in it.

Allen concluded that the use of Thermite to melt the metal at the location would have been extremely unlikely as no local sources of the material were available at the time and considerable amounts of ice should have been present on the ground around the metal had pranksters attempted to cool the metal with water as was indicated by surface structures on the metal itself.

And so we are left with what we began, a mystery.

If the Big Lake incident is a hoax, it is one of the most cleverly perpetrated hoaxes requiring the perpetrator to be simultaneously smart enough to pull off the hoax while being simple-minded enough to be amused by a prank that just as easily could have gone unnoticed. The pranksters would also have had to be willing to spend a great deal of time, energy and money.

In many ways, this incident has not drawn a great deal of attention. It certainly doesn't garner much attention even locally.

The incident did catch the attention of Jacques F. Vallee, noted computer scientist, astronomer, astrophysicist, writer and member of the Society for Scientific Exploration where he has studied unidentified aerial phenomena.

In a report entitled "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples" presented at the Pocantino Conference in Tarrytown, N.Y., in September 1997, Vallee used what he calls "the Council Bluffs case" along with descriptions of nine other similar events from around the world to describe what he speculates could be part of a liquid metal electrical system in which the high conductivity of liquid metals makes them an attractive means of current collection, according to the author, that could also be a part of a nuclear design for a flying object's power plant using direct energy conversion rather than a heat driven engine such as a plane uses.

Put simply, magnets could move liquid metal inside a "magnetohhydrodynamic" generator instead of gasoline being used to move pistons to create motion. The MHD generator would be quiet and could explain why even base terrestrial metals might be found associated with such a strange phenomenon.

Sadly, we might never know what fell from the sky on Dec. 17, 1977. Bob Allen and Randy James agreed that one explanation has yet to be fully explored. It is possible, according to both men, that what fell to earth that night did land on the levee.

It is possible that what fell to earth actually fell in Big Lake and what ended up on the levee was merely a splash that wouldn't have left a crater.

"Look in the lake," said Allen. "Get your scuba gear on and look in the lake."

Bloggie Sue

Airport scans or scams?

10/17/10 Spank your kids

10/25/10: Vote 'yes' to keep Iowa justice uncorrupted

Ignore the narrative, process is the point of elections

Sneak peak

Justin Timberfake's first espresso.

Death and Gravy ... as of today

Real revolution, really?

Supercool 1943

Waiting is the hardest part... of revenge

Snowpocalypse Now!

Solaris!

The Last Word

Game is for Punks

Dear President Obama

LEONARD PELTIER: I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now

Yahoo! Mail

Review: W

Review: Appaloosa

Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Have I mentioned I hate drunks? pt 2

Have I mentioned I hate drunks? pt 1

My own personal Bigfoot

Socialism to the rescue... again

Khhhaaaaaaan!!!

Why's this bitch keep talking to me?

My favorite bit of food porn

The world's most awesome combover

I STILL DIG MY VCR

My love life & other mythological creatures

The day they knocked down the Palais...

Jesus vs Batman: Who would win in a fair fight?

porn or ice cream?

Song for Jason

Cop whose ass I kicked in court when I was just 17

New Tat

Millennium

Trailer Park Boys: The Big Dirty

They Love It?

Well, at least he's happy

Kenny vs. Spenny: The Worst Show on Television

Ouch, that's gotta hurt!

Sorry for using "peccadillo" as well

Just Desserts: Duke lacrosse prosecutor disbarred

My UFO Story: Mystery at Big Lake