Ok--I give up (07/28/2005)

Ping me if you want to stay in touch.

I plan on starting troop withdrawal immediately

Hi mystery "reporter" for SG on your way to Bagdad. ENJOY IRAQ! I have a little wish list for you.

First off--I would like you to see (in person) these things that I personally wish were not happening

Out of those "Freedom infused Iraqis" I would like you to bear witness to:

1) A bunch of Iraqi civilians get blown up by insurgents using explosives "lost" by the Rumsfeld "new lighter/faster military"
2) A dead Iraqi child (preferably in the hands of a "liberated" parent)
3) A living Iraqi child, sans-limbs, (preferably able to explain to your interpreter his or her plans for the future in the "New Iraq")
4) A living Iraqi baby (deformed by depleted uranium exposure by the mother)
5) A living Iraqi who has lost a brother (or sister or parent or child) to the extremely brave and not at all cowardly American bombing of urban centers like Falluja and Bagdad proper (preferably I would like you to witness them cursing out your "Iraqi Freedom Blog" pals, if they allow the rank and file Iraqis in the green zone)

Unfortunately, since you will not be joining the army, you will not be able to see the joys you have helped to foment for our military personnel first-hand. I hope though that some random soldier gets the chance to tell you exactly what it is like to have you friend killed in front of you or to kill an innocent civilian by mistake--and that it makes you wake up crying on a regular basis for the rest of your life.

Oh, dear mystery "reporter" for SG, how I wish that you could have done the work that my good friend Mike got to do--where he interviewed the families of every single firefighter killed in 9/11. I wish you could do have done it so he didn't get to carry that around in his (clearly misguided) liberal heart along with the stories of his Polish holocaust surviving grandparents. I wish that you would have the opportunity to share first hand stories from his close friends New York like witnessing a fire-fighter killed 30 feet in front of you by a falling body from the WTC.


Oh dear mystery "reporter" for SG--I wish that you could talk some sense into our liberal, sissy boy hearts. You could make all of this seem like a "great success story" after all,

Well..hello there.



One time I built a cabin in Alaska--this is the view from there. I don't own it anymore, and it has totally been rebuilt--but I have a lot of very cool memories. I bought it for $18,000--built the place--and sold it four years later for 28k. It was heavily wooded then, and you couldn't see the bay, but after I sold it a spruce bark beetle infestation took all the trees. This added a shitload of wind and this view.

I was just fine without the view, because my woods were completely magical. They had about 6 to 8 inches of sphagnum moss and were absolutely thick with 2' diameter spruce (and spruce grouse). I was about a half mile away from a state forest tract to my south and about a 15 minute walk through a berry bog to the beach. The beach itself was bordered by hundred or so foot cliffs and, in my immediate section of beach, strewn with petrified wood chips the size of car tires.

I had a little valley to my east, and a stream ran down it—magically disappearing into the ground here and there and then re-appearing the form of a mysteriously bubbling pond, or just a hole in the moss with water running through it.

I had a mother moose that lived on my property and gave birth to twin calves (which by the way, are very fucking cool to watch haul ass through the woods chasing their horse-plus-plus sized mom). I think my second fondest fucking memory of Alaska (brace yourself) was sitting in my outhouse, which didn’t even have a door, watching that moose walk her calves 15 feet in front of me in a light snow storm on a Sunday morning.

My neighbors included Irwin Raven, the lawyer that once proved that marijuana possession was protected by the Alaskan constitution.

Yule Kilcher was my east bordering neighbor, but he had a pretty god-damn big chunk of land, so he was a ways east. The buffer between my house and his was in fact a 600 acre wildlife preserve he had created (like I said, big chunk of land)

It was pretty fucking cool having him as my neighbor; as he was one of the delagates to the Alaskan constitutional convention. Yule would have a pot luck two days a week at his homestead and the sauna was always going.

Everybody went buck nekkid in the sauna including me and Yule (and some of the most beautiful women in town) Yule was a bachelor at that time (but I'm sure this practice started before he found that condition--it likely helped him find it) and that fucker made me look shabby. He was so, well, buff. This is a 60-some year old guy! Myself, I weighed $1.50 at six foot and could toss those 16 -20"' double round cut logs like matchsticks--skinny as all get out with a massively aboriginal hairdo and one shitty-assed beard (oh yes, it was a sight to see)

--Next week, the thrilling conclusion, which reveals my absolute favorite memory from that time. This, along with how I got the handle Tenmile and why. And maybe a picture, and yes I do have a fonder memory than me crapping in front of a moose.

It is a very Neko Weekend. She's playing First Ave on TUESDAY--well worth the school-night shenanigans.

OK, had to listen to this one twice (Warning Sapfactor 6 of 6)

Edited to say: Neko Case is a very good kisser and makes a mean vegetarian omlette.....or so I'm told

To whom it may concern:

gilliard

Do not gloat about these dickheads being wrong, learn from them.

These guys are very effective teachers about what is wrong with our culture. In the same way that a vaccine gives your body a little taste of the virus so that it learns how to eventually kick it's ass. Take what you learn from these guys to become a real fighter in the real world.

This, my dear friends, is a sandbox—a little forum that doesn’t mean shit. This is the first place I ever participated in a thread and it is great in that you develop pseudo relationships with the major players---but again, you really should be reading lots of other stuff to learn your chops for when it counts. Here, the SG threads are home to “Special Olympians” of opinion. Just look at the archetypes we are given here:

Stockula—my personal favorite and the most clear and completely inadvertant example of “coyote logic” that I think I know. He’s absolutely full of shit, usually childish, and always monumentally frustrating if you let him get to you. Work a couple factory jobs and you will meet you fair share of these types (though he is actually some sort of “Stock” broker when he’s employed)—and there is no escaping the fact that you have got to learn how to deal with this type of asshole. “Coyote” is in some Native American mythos known to be the “trickster”, the spirit the teaches you something you need to learn. This lesson is seldom pleasant and the Coyote doesn’t really care if you actually learn anything—but pay attention to this dickhead. You will learn a valuable lesson about what goes wrong with people, and what to do about them. Learn how to deal with him without getting his stank on you, and don’t take him seriously—he sure as shit doesn’t take you seriously.

Patrick—Patrick is a nice guy. He’s got an old dog, loves his wife, likes to “Put on the Brit” and read comic books. He has served this country for many years in the armed service, and is about to again. For that I respect him. He is also trying his hand at writing in this little microcosm of SG, and I expect that he does so with what he assumes is the same meticulous attention to detail that he probably thinks he does most things. He’s a stickler for spelling and grammar that guy! If you are wondering “why the fuck is this dude on SG”, it is because he was asked to provide conservative viewpoints. Unfortunately for our reading pleasure, Patrick seldom provides anything of substance. My armchair diagnosis is that he is suffering from a very acute case of Cognitive Dissonance. Colors that fall outside of his limited palette do not appear within his spectrum--he just doesn’t, and will not, see how horrific the results of his limited worldview (magnified to 51% of our country) have made the world for the rest of us. Ever read “Of Mice and Men”? Well you probably should. Be nice to Patrick, but keep showing him where he’s wrong. Also watch out, because he might be right once in a while (and he uses cool and manly phrases)

Totten—“Pure slime” My grandmother liked to use a phrase “Never trust a salesman who tells you he’s honest” Enter Michael J Totten who thinks boots taste like black licorice and would step over his own grandmother for the next chance to feed his goateed ego at the trough of third string hack-dom. Michael used to be a “Liberal” but now he’s an “Independent” who takes every opportunity to prove it by endlessly parroting White House talking points on the Middle East, kind of like an idiot version of Juan Cole--but more like a marginally smarter version of Jeff Guckert(presumably without the butt-sex, since he’s legit now). Michael respects guys like Jonah Goldberg and Christopher Hitchins—in WWII there were lots of guys like these guys. I believe that they were called “collaborators” but you just as well call them “De-facto Murderers”. Ever read “Mother Night” by Vonnegut? Well, you should (read all his shit)—Mother Night has this great line where he says "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." (that doesn't have much to do with Totten, but it is a great line--especially for coporate dickheads like me. The book overall does have a lot to say about him) Someday, we can only hope, America will scrape shit like Totten off of our collective shoe and get the carpets cleaned. For now, I humbly suggest that you take the--I don’t know, 10 minutes of--time that it takes to see through his shit and call him on it. Assume that he is a bottom feeder and you are half way there.

Stay strong brothers and sister--someday you could be as cool as this guy

Yep, got one more month on my membership—Zot at will.

Christ almighty--why can't Americans fuckin' be SMARTER!

Listen to this guy: GALLOWAY

*sigh*