I ain't afraid of Hell because I been to Kansas.

To continue on with my writing about my trip through Americas Heartland, wherein there is a whole lot of land but not a lot of heart, I would like to point out one of my odd yet deeper thoughts that would not have come to me if my mind was not so devoid of entertainment. You see, as you travel across the great, flat, treeless expanses of our nations prairie land, one can not help but note how horribly depressing everything beyond your windshield seems to be. I believe it was just minutes before reaching Liberal, Kansas, which should be renamed Conservative, or Sparse, they just seem more fitting, when I had a deep thought. the thought was this, " No wonder all those loony rapture religions come from areas like this". That was it, simple but enlightening. really if you think about it, the most devoutly religious people in America seem to live in the parts of the country with the least to do. Perhaps the thought that one day God will summon you to his side and float you straight up and outta this hellhole is the only thing that keeps those folks going. It has to be easy to believe in the bibles "literal" time line when you have nothing to look at. Of course he created the universe in six days. After all how hard is it to create absolutely nothing? Not too damn hard I would think, that is if I had grown up in nowhere. Don't get me wrong, I didn't grow up in New York or San Fransisco but I did grow up around trees and lakes and let's not forget books, gotta have them. These are the things, that if you are a believer in a higher power, make you think that creating a universe might take a smeeutch longer than a week. I saw several signs as I drove as well, not signs of the end of times but signs of the end of intelligent times. These signs stood, planted on the edges of farm land or hung from overpasses. " Get on your knees and for your sins to be forgiven?" That was a good one because it made me wonder if getting down and praying at that point would cause some sort of horrible crash on the freeway resulting in several deaths and I doubt that I would be forgiven for them even though prayer caused the accident. I saw another sign near a casino that said, "Gambling is a sin, double down on Jesus". I don't know the idiot that wrote that sign but I can say, without any forbearance, he or she was an idiot. You could never bet against Jesus, he really holds all the cards against you and he has God for a pit boss and I suppose the Holy Ghost would be, i don't know, running the buffet I suppose. There was another that said "He is coming, will you be ready?" Next it was a mid-eighties Camero with a "For Sale" sign taped to it. this must have some deeper meaning, like perhaps Jesus is expected to make his Earthly return rockin' the mullet. Once again I am no expert, just guessing. Oh so many stupid signs of stupid did I see I wish i could chronicle them all for you but, alas, i do not have time. I leave you with this parting thought. It seems to me that people believe harder in something when they are surrounded by nothing.

I'm sorry Wal-Mart

I did learn a few things on my way across the country this time. First, if you ate three pounds of spicy burritos, pooped on a hot frying pan, waited till it was burning and then urinated on it to cool it down you would get the basic idea of what a methane plant smells like, only on a lesser scale. Second, the mom and pop diner is dieing out and being replaced by taco stands, don't get me wrong, I love tacos but there is something special about a little place with a fat, ex-trucker cook and a retired rural prostitute for a waitress that is just, well, comforting. Third, I learned that Wal-Mart isn't as bad as I thought before. I have always laid claim to Wal-Mart stores destroying the economies of small town USA. That, sadly, is only partially true. Sure they may not pay too well and, in larger towns, not cities but towns, they may absorb main street and the businesses therein, however, in really small towns it seems that Wal-Mart actually helps them stay out of ghost town status. I was in a tiny burg in the center of New Mexico where there were big box stores of any kind. Guess what, Main Street was dying. Over half of the businesses on Main street were closed and had looked to be deserted for years. There was nothing else, no town, no trading post, not even a wise Indian Shaman for the next seventy miles. Odd, don't you think? Even without the intervention of a big box, the town was dieing. Now, as I crossed the desolate Oklahoma Pan Handle into Kansas, which is it's own story but I found a town that was alive, due, only to their having a Wal-Mart. The town was as boarded up and rotten as any I had seen however, this one still had some hope left in it's shuttered windows, all that hope, due to Wal-Mart. I was shocked, see in big cities they do ruin the living wage and bring small business to it's knees but in tiny towns they keep the economy afloat and give the poor a job and a better wage than they would otherwise be making. Now don't think I have gone soft on these companies, they are still bad for most of us but at least now I have learned that they harm but they can also help. Screw Home Depot though, they can go straight to hell and burn therein.

The only black man in New Mexico

So to begin my chronicles of cross country travel, I would like to tell you all about my experience with racism and bigotry. It had been an interesting trip so far, Jaime and I had seen the most amazing truck stops in the southern part of California and Arizona. We had also stopped by my brothers house to visit and go get some pictures of the Chiricaua monuments nearby. We had stayed in a Super 8 in a town called Wilcox, it should have been named Fatdirtanus which would have been far more descriptive but alas, I do not choose city names. The next day we stayed in Truth or Conciquences, I could barely sleep as I was waiting to be assaulted by the ghost of Burt Convey for a large portion of my stay. The next day we stopped in a little place outside of Albuquerque called Tuccimacari ( I will point out that to get there I had to take a left turn at Albuquerque. If you miss the significance of that then you don't watch enough cartoons). There are these dirty little travel stores called Love's and TA's all over down there and we decided to go to TA's, mostly because the people who work at Love's seem one bullet shy of a killing spree. I was standing bye the broken video games looking Scandinavian, as I tend to do most often, when a black fellow walked passed me and just gave me the finger, no eye contact, no verbal taunts, just the finger and then walked out of the store. That's when I noticed that there were no other black people in the building. There were Latinos and Whitey had a majority presents but that was it. Suddenly I realized that Mr. Finger was the only black person I had seen since Yuma, strange? yes indeed but what is even more strange is that he must have decided that I was a nazi or a bonehead of some kind and it would be a good idea to flip me off. Now if I was a mad racist as he may have suspected I probably would have taken exception to his finger and cut him a few times with any of my various knives that I carry but I am not, so I did not. It is just as likely that he wanted me to get involved in an altercation with him because he had a knife or a gun and wanted to have a reason to use it. At any rate I just let him walk away and out of my life. Think what you want about me , I really don't care and the middle finger is a pretty weak insult anyway.

I'm back baby!

So it was that I traveled across this land of ours and am once again found, deposited upon the frozen vagina of our mother Earth. Yes, Minnesota, the coldest land inwhich I have ever lived. We Minnesotans now hold the record for coldest state ever since one of our Eastern tip cities achieved a wopping 40 degrees below zero and that was without the windchill. Yes it is cold here and, unlike my beloved California, there is little sun. The people here I find to be disagreeable, with their Midwestern passive aggressive-isms and their backstabbing wishy-washiness. I feel that it is indeed a terrible yet wonderful place to live, nothing really makes you appreciate warmth as much as freezing half to death simply walking from the car to your door. I tell you you, once you have had your toes stiffened while shoveling snow, you will never take a warm day in vain again. Bare foot in a hot sun beam, yeah that's the stuff. I have found that my beard grows faster here, which must be the Viking in me forcing the hair out, also the urge to build a long boat is getting relatively strong within me, the urges to burn, loot and pillage are at the same level as ever, that being very high. I am amazed to see that milk is more expensive in Minnesota than it was in California. That should tell you something about how retarded our corporate system is. For God's sake, we have all the cows up here and you need less refridgeration to ship dairy goods around, yet somehow it costs more to ship milk from Wisconsin to Minnesota then from South Dakota to California, cheese seems to be the same price which just adds to my theory of corporate retardation. Well I could bitch all day about the oddities of Minnesota life ( I will avoid, for now, getting involved in the MN policy of giving everyone who doesn't deserve it or earn it welfare but I am sure that story will come out once I have a steady paycheck that the state can rape so a few lazy idiots can pump out some more crack babies. can you tell that will be a good one?) The thing is, no matter how bad it is here at least I don't live in the Oklahoma Pan Handle or any part of South Western Kansas. Wow, what a shithole and I say that with all the love I can muster. In fact these next few blogs I will use to chronicle my trip across this desolate wasteland we cal America. It'll be fun, tell your friends.

Bombs, Buicks and Buckley.

Finally something to write about. Sorry folks, I have been feeling pretty good since my surgery and have been enjoying life, what with all the breathing, that I haven't been as pissed off as usual. But, if you know me, you know that won't last too long, so here I go again, just like David Coverdale when he had that former hotty Tawny Kitaen dancing on the hood of his car (that's right folks, I just made a Whitesnake reference). Anyway, back to the irritation. I just caught up on this news story about a man in Welch Township, Minnesota, who blew up a dump truck with one hundred pounds of Tannerite which he had purchased off the internet. He was then arrested and charged with three felonies and five lesser charges. Sounds pretty scary huh? A man blowing up a truck and endangering human life, what a terrible fellow. Yup, you could form a pretty horrible idea of this man and truly demonize him, especially in our media frenzy kinda world. Oh, but wait, there is a video. Yes, the man who set off this explosion, a Mr. Brian Wesley Childs, taped it. It is on his property you see. He invited friends over, placed the truck in the middle of a field, packed it with Tannerite and set it off with a .50 caliber slug. Now this would be a terrible idea inside city limits but, as you all know if you read regularly, I am from the insane state of Minnesota and I grew up in an area not unlike where the bomb was detonated. No one, other than the people that showed up to watch the bomb go off, were in any danger. Sure metal fell as far as a quarter mile away but that doesn't mean anything if no one was there. If a burning chunk of metal falls in the woods and no one is around to get hit by it, does it cause massive internal hemoraging? Answer that Confusious. This guy didn't do the smartest thing but he didn't do anything really illegal. You may legally purchase Tannerite on the internet because it comes in two parts and separated, these parts are non-explosive. You may legally own a rifle in Minnesota without telling the authorities you have it. Maybe setting off an explosion without a blasting permit but that is a gross misdemeanor at best. The fact is that they could feel the rattle in the windows at the local nuclear power plant, more than a mile away and it put them an alert. So, they make a call to the Feds and they come and do what they are paid to do, harass free people and make them stop doing things that make the people in power nervous. Speaking of people in power, I found a quote from the guy that runs the power plant and also alerted the Police. “We take all this type of abnormal — or suspicious — activity very seriously,”. That was from a Mr. Mike Wadley, VP of Excel Energies Nuke plant. Well Mr Wadley I am from a small town in the middle of Nowhere, Minnesota and I have been so bored before that any distraction, including seeing how long it took for your face to melt the frost on the kitchen window, was not just welcome, it was needed. And yes, I have exploded many things in my days o the farm. So for Mr. Wadley to say that his was "suspicious" or "abnormal', well he obviously grew up in a bigger city than Childs. Personally I think that the government just found a window of opportunity to make the Tannerite mixture illegal and they are going for it. Go ahead and Google earth this area and tell me who was in so much danger. Mr. Childs didn't commit any felonies he just did something that wasn't too bright and we can't put people in jail for being dumb. most of our country would be behind bars.

Ps. Whitesnake was the music that Bon Jovi and Winger fans listened to to get pumped up but it was usually too hardcore for Van Halen fans.

Fasterbation.

Okay everyone, I am sure if you read this you know that I am against almost everything that makes humankind tick but today I feel I have to let you all know about a great new self help program.
We all masturbate, it is a given that is attached to the deepest part of our monkey bretheren but, like everyone else in todays hectic world, sometimes we have trouble finding the time for even the briefest moments of self gratification. I know I do. So I was exstatic when I came across this book. It is by a writer by the name of L. Roy Filburt.In this book he teaches us to not only, truly and deeply love ourselves but also to do it with the efficiency of the German army, circa WWII.
The book is titled,"Fasterbation" and if you read it you will have the same insite into your body that I do now.
So, what is Fasterbation? Why it is masturbation for the busy person. How many times has it happened? You are in a public place, maybe at work or even on a date, when you suddenly feel urges rising. Well, in our uptight, non-monkey society, it would be rude to just start pounding one out at a supper table. So, we just sit there, sweating into our gin and tonics and praying that the moment will pass. Sadly this makes us, not just repressed and surly but also dangerous and angry. Humans need sexual release to feel clear headed but also to keep there body and mind and genitals in harmony with the world around them. There have been many times where I have felt the need but neglected it until my body went insane. Once, my crotch actually caught fire. No longer, however, not since I read the wisdom of Mr. Filburt.
In "Fasterbation", he will teach you, quick, efficient and all around secretive ways of masturbating in public without catching the eyes of religious naysayers and social "don't do that" police.. I don't want to give too much away, I really think buying the book is important. First, to support the writer and second, to show the public what a wide spread problem this is.
Chapter one,"Our bodies, our pockets, our selves", helps you to discover the importance of loose fittine, shear clothing but it doesn't stop there. For instance, in chapter five, "Hiding the shame stains", Mr. Filburt discusses how simple it can be to make an ordinary bar towel or paper napkin your own personal accomplice in the dark art of hidden self love.
Then I will skip ahead to chapter twelve, in which we all learn a valuable lesson about silk undergarments and high friction trousers. you will also learn how rubbing against homeless people on the trolley or subway is not just ignored but socially acceptable.
There is so many things we can learn from this man I hope you run out tomorrow and but his book. If you are anything like me, almost blind from horn rage and bleeding from the eyes because of those Victoria's Secret posters at the mall, then this is the book for you. Now if you are the kind of person that claims you never masturbate because you are in a committed relationship, or because it is a sin to touch yourself, then maybe you should take a looka the wisdom of Mr. Filburt who says," Shut up you loser, it's a natural thing to do, and to you pious, self absorbed pricks, you go to hell for lieing too".

Only the nose knows

Sorry I have been gone for a while. If you know me well, then you know I was laid up for a while because of surgery. Sinus surgery to be precise. You see a few years back I allowed a person to smash his fist into my nose a few dozen times until it stopped bothering me with all its annoying breathing. Now, so many years have passed and I think to myself,"Shoulda ducked tough guy". Yet, alas, duck I did not so I came out on the loosing side of a minor beating but, with a broken nose. Sure the old shnozolla has been busted before but this time it was different. This time it was broken on the inside and the outside, deep in my head things were not well. So fast forward to the 27th of December, I go into the ER because I just feel awful, really think I am dieing. I get the whole big check up thing and it turns out that I have a bunch of blockages in my head and behind them, an infection. I don't know how long this demon had been living in my face but the doc said it was probably quite some time. So, to shorten it up for you, they had to take out the blockages, suck out the infection and straighten out the inner walls of my nose. It took two weeks but I finally feel pretty normal and hearty again. I am slowly regaining my sense of smell and I think it will be a whole lot better than it was, plus I won't have that nagging infection poisoning my body anymore so it can finally get to looking after all those weird viruses. The one bad thing about this whole ordeal however, is this. I just realized I had a nose job. How Southern California pathetic is that?