Front Range

A long time ago, in a faraway place, Mike Gutierres said something to me. Faraway might be exaggerating, but 415 miles is a long way on foot.

He said, "You ought to quit your job and focus on writing. Then again, you seem to draw a lot of inspiration from frustrating work situations."

Boredom is writing fuel. Frustration. I wasn't feeling frustrated enough at work, so I went and got myself elected to the Homeowners' Board again. Some smart-ass nominated me, and seeing as how there were 3 seats and 3 candidates, I was voted in (with fewer votes than either of my competitors). I could have told them to go bugger, but I crave boredom. I chose this boredom because it is a nice, local source.

There are a cut of people who function only to yawp at the board. One shrill shrew almost induced me to loosen the honesty valve. She is the torchbearer of the torches-and-pitchforks crowd, which is effectively a teabagger party within our Condoplex, dissent as their primary mission.

They don't run for the board, ever. No new excuses for years, only the one: "I don't have time." Time to kick my balls each and every meeting, but not time enough to sit at the meeting table.

After the minor flare-up from Shrill Shrew, we waded through triviata for 55 more minutes. A pitchman for a local solar firm presented a solar panel rental solution for our rooftops, replete with long-term figures for how much we would benefit.

As he presented his crafted bullshit, my mind wandered. How could we not do the bidding of a man who looks so much like Larry Bird? Salesman didn't have a Terre Haute, Indiana accent, nor was he 6' 8". I'll bet my Cadillac (oh, wait, already pawned that), okay, my Civic, that I could beat him in a H-O-R-S-E contest.

Question from someone: "Can you give us references for work your company has done in this area?"

A: "We have installed units up and down the Front Range, and we have a list of people who will be happy to tell you their solar systems... blah blah blah....."

Jones looks out the window, listening only somewhat more than during sleep. A window in the conference room - bad idea. Distraction potential.

Women playing tennis on the courts tonight, shunting all future words from Larry Bird into the bit bucket. Jones can still hear the mellifluous voice of Can't-Carry-Jones'-Jock-At-Hoop in the background but focuses on the visual stimuli.

Jones' thought bubble: "Oh, yeah, honey, I'd like to install my unit up and down your front range. C'mon, go to the net! Go to the net!"

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My longtime classmate, nemesis and friend Sean Casey is on the verge of accepting customers to Bearizona, a tourist dairy on State Highway 40, Williams, Arizona. Caution: before visiting Arizona, cut a thin strip from a plain sheet of paper. Face your right palm downward and lay the paper strip over your right forearm. If you cannot distinguish where the paper ends and the skin begins, you are good to go!! If not, make sure and take papers!!! And backups!!!! Practica su Ingles!!!!!

Willams, Arizona is the turnoff point for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, which is the side nearly 85% of tourists visit. Mainly this is because of demographics, with populations distributed heavily South.

Most don't go via the scary Northern Rim entrance. This entrance passes through FLDS country. LDS stands for Latter Day Saints - Mormons. The "F" stand for Whackjob. National Geographic did an article about this most culturally bizarre place in the United States, the community of Hilldale/Colorado City in Southern Utah/Northern Arizona.

Not mentioned in the Nat Geo article are all the technically single women there who draw welfare. They are plural wives, but since that isn't allowed by law, they declare as single and draw welfare, food stamps, any handout available. White welfare at its most glaring. You don't hear a lot about that on the 24-7 Republican propaganda vehicles.

Meanwhile, in Williams, Arizona, not much is going on. Rather, not much WAS going on.
The new drive-through wildlife park is big news in this 3000-person villa of nowhere on the highway.

Bearizona was scheduled to open in bare bones fashion May 22nd, several days ago. This reporter has been too lazy to find out if the first paying touri have matriculated through the park, where they have the potential of seeing bears, goats, rabbits, grasshoppers, cats, rodents, deer, dogs, and foxes; all shitting copiously. Sort of like my front yard.

The grand opening is later in June. News is scant from that remote part of the world, but I understand road construction is somewhat behind schedule. Currently, access to this wildlife park requires a Class IV climber's license. All climbers must undergo a rigourous equipment check before being allowed in to the park.

Well, maybe it's not quite that primitive. When Sean described to me a bare-bones opening, I envisioned something else.

You notice I fail to quote any of my idioms? Bare bones, no quotes. Rigourous, intentional England mis-spelling, no quotes. This is a writing rule: Don't put quotes around common references. It makes it appear that you, the writer, are VERY proud of having used a clever idiom. I'm here to tell you, idiots can use idioms. Save pixels, omit quotes.

I envisioned the bare-bones opening as being Sean sitting by Highway 40 in a lawn chair under a shade umbrella, handing out fliers at a stop sign. "Wanna see my chicken? Only 75 cents. I got me a REAL fine chicken on a tether right back chur and all you got to do is pay 75 cents. Whole family, only a one dollar fifty. Who wants to see 'eem? He's a good one, I tell ya."

www.bearizona.com

I hope no immigrants ruin this thing for Sean. You know, the wave of anti-immigration laws in Arizona. Okay, 2 laws, not a wave.

As Wanda Sykes riffed, "Why do they call them illegal immigrants? Illegal makes it sound like they're doing something bad. If somebody broke into my house - and started cleaning it? I don't think I'd call the cops."




Members of the Williams-Grand Canyon Chamber of Commerce prepare to cut a ribbon during a ceremony to mark Bearizona’s opening May 22. Pictured center are owners Sean Casey, Dennis Casey and Williams Mayor John Moore.


This photo is from the Williams News, a quasi-newspaper.

http://www.williamsnews.com/

Just for clarification, the guy in the center of the photo who appears to be attempting to chop off his own dick, that's Dennis Casey. Looks like he rode a motorcycle sans helmet to the event all the way from Rapid City, South Dakota.

The reverent-looking kid holding the purple rectangle (to the right of Dennis) is Sean Casey. Sean did everything on this project; Dennis is the figurehead, party-boy executive producer, the ilk that wear sunglasses with blue bows, like you would buy at a flea market for $3.99.

To the left of Dennis (reverse of the order listed in the photo caption) stands mustachial mayor John Moore. I hope that's the mayor. Otherwise, the mayor is the guy in the watch cap standing behind Sean. "Dude, as Mayor of Williams, I am proud to say that I think you're going to kick some serious ass, man. Party on!"

No, but really, judging by the crease in the Wranglers, the photo's tallest cowboy hat is mayor. He is wearing boots as part of his costume. Dennis is wearing boots for no discernible reason. Sean does not wear boots.

ROAD TRIP!!

Quimulus the Devout

Lemmings Myth Akilter

Friends, lend me your ears. You enemies, too, listen up. Lemmings do not follow other lemmings over a cliff. They do move quickly, and they move as a herd, a flock. At times the flock veers near a cliff adjacent to a coastline, and members on the side of the flock go over the edge.

Prey animals move in herds to increase the safety of the individuals. Even in the worst position, on the side or in the back, they still have areas blocked from possible predators by other members of the herd. The herd loses very few to falling off a cliff falls, very occasionally, but it doesn't hurt the overall health of the population. For lemmings to have sufficient numbers to herd, they must be in a boom cycle.

Arctic animals work in boom and bust cycles. Good year? There are lots of lemmings, and as a result owls and hawks and foxes have bigger nests or litters. How the predator parents anticipate this is unknown. Humans do it, too. We just aren't aware of it. We fuck less and have fewer kids in hard times. Which, for males, means we have fewer hard times in hard times. Less up time. I could go on for hours.

Fewer lemmings, smaller number of offspring from the predators. This is repeatable throughout the Arctic, no matter if it is North of the Western Hemisphere or the Wrong Hemisphere.

Lemmings feed like American bison. They graze as a herd in one area until it is mowed, then move double quick to the next feeding ground, pursued frantically by the owls, foxes, hawks and other feeders.

So please, don't make me overhear another reference to lemmings, as if the whole herd runs straight off the edge of the cliff, following Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Hairpie, whoever may be lead lemming at the time, the fat little follower lemmings with symbolic teabags hanging from their tri-corner hats as they waddle off the ledge in turn.

Because I Wanted To

"I've got to stop telling people I'm a writer," the former writer said, hating that the comma is supposed to go before the end of the double quote. It seems more appropriate after the quote.

I took down the Daily Bessemer in 2007 due to some production issues. I wanted to switch it to the Mac and make its management a little more mainstream. It is so web version 0.0 to have a home-grown navigation system, with no comments area where my different groups of friends could insult each other. That was leaving money on the table.

It was scarcely an HTML bang, the framework of the old Daily Bessemer. I tried to upgrade, but to quote the writers of the Simpsons (as spoken through the animation Bart, regarding the subject of playing guitar) "Dad, to tell you the truth, I tried it, and it was hard, and I didn't try it much longer before I just gave up."

Yes, I'm a Computer Science dude (capital letters, bub; we ain't civil engineers), but I'm a specialist. Yeah, that's it.

The Bessemer ceased for another reason. I started having trouble writing, because I was fixated on that single-vector malo piece of shit Dick Cheney.

They have this thing every year in Boulder, the Conference of World Affairs, a three-day panel-o-rama on subjects of intellect and art and ideas and issues. A symposium of the interested. The other end of the spectrum from gun shows.

I went to an hour-long presentation featuring a panel of 4 people in the journalism industry. The subject was Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon for Nixon's dictatorial criminal acts. I was shocked to hear the credentialed panel say it was such a good thing, and it helped us move on as a nation, "heal the rifts created by Vietnam". Within families, the young hippy sons wouldn't talk to their staunch, retarded, pre-tea-bagger dads because of the generational difference of views about the Vietnam war.

The conference took place right at the time I. Lewis Libby (Scooter Libby) was being prosecuted by Larry Fitzgerald. Libby exposed a covert CIA agent as retribution for her husband speaking truth to government. If you are unfamiliar with this recent U.S. history and I have to lay it out more than that, do some research and come back to the article.

The panel unanimously lauded the blessidity of Gerald Ford's pardon. One guy, a long-time writer for Sports Illustrated, pulled a Hunter Thompson quote about Nixon from his wallet and read the quote. Have you ever met guys who do that? Pull memorable quotes out of their wallet? I'm struck by the idiocy of the practice. You can't remember the quotes you find most memorable? Thrall me with your acumen, Mr. Read-Quote-From-Scrap.

The panel's take on Ford raised my hackles; they were wearing rose-colored glasses. I rang in from the audience. "The pardon of Nixon simply set the stage for what's going to happen to Libby. He's not going to jail. I predict Libby will be pardoned."

The journalist-biz panel acted shocked, like I was being a demagogue. They pooh-poohed that stance, then harumphed again about healing the rift. I can't believe that things like pooh-pooh and harumph are part of our dialect, but they are. Do you realize that things like "achoo" are pronounced differently in the rest of the world when people sneeze? That is insanely fascinating. Women express themselves differently during the libidinous acts, depending on the country where the movie was made, or whence the models moved to Los Angeles.

I'm wondering how salaciously I should express myself here. Here on the Big Web. Obviously I'm not going full-valve-open in saying "libidinous acts" and the like. For the first post, I'll stay clean. Reading backward, I think "shit" is the only scat word in the article so far. Writing this way feels like I'm still at work, prettying up and gaying up everything. OMG LOL. There. I've modernized my shizzit.

You can't even refer to something as "gay" anymore, like a plant or an idea, something that is clearly not homosexual. If you screw a male plant, does that make you gay? We know about the term bestiality. What do you call sex with a plant, foliagio?

In America, the coitus-receive sound is "oh oh oh oh". In Brazil, "Ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai". They enjoy it more. In Western Hemisphere Spanish-speaking countries it is "Oi Oi Oi Oi Oi".

This knowledge is at once fascinating and titillating, informational and libidinous.

I left the feel-good, intellectual hand-job, glory-hole Nixon-pardon session feeling angry. Were these journalism industry people dupes, simply desperate dead-end-career capitalists, what? I self-tested my bona fides: "You, sir, are a self publisher. By dint of what, sir, are your opinions of value?" No answer. Time would tell.

I had a leaking suspicion that my opinion was sound, was prophecy. I wrote an article about it, Cheney cutting his teeth in Ford's cabinet, seeing Nixon pardoned, realizing the American political system would never prosecute their leaders, never roll those fuckers up in a carpet and dump them in a river. What did Cheney have to fear in putting David Addington and Scooter Libby on point, pulling a Washington-insider career hit on Joseph Wilson's wife? None. They could always pardon them.

Missed it by a technicality. Libby was convicted, but not pardoned. His sentence was commuted. I thing that's the right term. I'm trying to say "richboy-goaway-ed", the magic cure of many a moneyed white man. Somehow Libby was to suffer no rehabilitation time, as is regular for those convicted of a crime.

When I wrote the article, the Daily Bessemer was effectively at an end. It never hit the web site. The article just froze me. I had reached a place where I was ahead of myself, too involved in writing. Consumed by it. If you aren't in the business of journalism, such obsession is a bad thing.

I'm sorta revived. Maybe it's time to talk again; three years is enough, and forgiveness is a part of moving on. Forgiveness for what, you ask. Mostly that thing with the goat, okay? It's not like the goat agreed to it or anything. Even if it did (Blaaah!!! Blaaahhh!!! means yes, right?), the goat was well under the age of consent. That goat was at most 4 years old, and a billy to boot.

Does it make you gay if you soil a male animal? Just wondering.

Quimulus the Devout