Mushroom cloud planned for this area in early June

This story appeared on the wire services yesterday to little or no national fanfare, but should be of grave concern to those of us living in the direct downwind path of this poisonous cloud of particulate matter.

Just another wonderful gift bestowed upon us by our benevolent government for the safety and well being of Murica. Another valuable tool in the Warn Terror.

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said.

"I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Tegnelia said the test was part of a US effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

By the way, I've never heard of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, but it certainly sounds Orwellian to me.

The full article:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/30/060330162648.wxde5ocl.html

Related article:

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Mar-31-Fri-2006/news/6638525.html

Everybody can go back to sleep now.

The Re-occupation

Welcome my friend. Buenos dias!

There have been widespread protests across the U.S. over the draconian measures that the Congress is half-way through enacting against so-called "illegal aliens".

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border.

This enlightened vision of fortress America is a last ditch attempt at pretending the U.S. even exists anymore in the traditional way the poobahs in DC think that it does. Most of the country has been ignoring what goes on in Washington for years now and this bill seems to stem from their sudden petulance about being dismissed as irrelevant.

Some observations:

1. To start with the U.S. border with Mexico is a sham because it is the result of an unjust war of aggression against a weaker neighbor. The fact that, 158 years ago, the U.S. decided to occupy northern Mexico and draw an unnatural boundary line across empty desert doesn't mean it would be respected by people wishing to move freely across what was formerly Mexican territory.
2. The white folks just ain't having enough babies. A functioning economy needs lots of workers to get things done. You know, stuff like building houses, washing dishes and pruning apple trees. The same is true in Europe, where the white folks there make even less children, with the result that the more fecund Muslims will be majorities in both France and Italy in the very near future and powerful minorities in the rest of "the continent."
   
3. The curse of American public education, after several generations, is finally coming home to roost as it continues to fail at promoting competency in the fundamental skills with which to prepare people for a wide variety of roles in an ever-changing economic landscape. The "illegals" will continue taking the low-skill jobs while the Indians, Chinese, Irish and Malaysians will continue filling more and more of the higher skilled labor niches. As for the multitude of ever dumber fucks crawling out of the armed and gated day care centers the government calls schools, they'll be standing on the sideline saying "like.....duh".
   
4. I can't imagine replacing all of the "illegals" that now perform the tasks of everyday American life. In Springdale alone, a tourist town, there would not be enough local people with either the work ethic or desire to do the jobs necessary to keep that busy town going. Doesn't anyone in Washington ever get out and see who is actually doing what in the community? Do they really think that getting rid of the millions of "illegals" working here would somehow make us all better off? Can't they see for themselves who is doing the road construction, food service, home building, leaf blowing and meat packing? It's not just in the border areas but in places like North Carolina and Illinois where the growth of their numbers has been most dramatic. Where have the poobahs been burying their heads?
5. We are now witnessing the end of Euro-American domination of the world. Low birth rates and the blind self-absorbed worship of the false gods of social welfarism and perpetual warfare have reduced this formerly monstrous beast into a bleating lamb that is now about to be stampeded to bits by the thunderous hooves of destiny.
   
6. As for all of these browner folks we is seeing 'roun here, well they eat much spicier food and that is enough for me already to welcome the rapidly evolving change of guard.
   

A letter to the Salt Lake Tribune about Cedar Breaks

Dear Salt Lake Tribune,

I read with great interest your recent article about changing Cedar Breaks into a national park by extending its boundaries to include Ashdown Gorge and adjacent areas of the Dixie National Forest. While this may sound like a good idea in theory, I think it is important for the local citizenry to ask some questions about what such a designation would actually accomplish and consider the consequences of turning over another parcel of ground to the chronically under-funded, zealously bureaucratic National Park Service.

I wonder if Iron County residents are aware of the elaborate licensure process that the park service has recently imposed on tour companies operating in Zion National Park? Several of these companies have recently begun curtailing their operations at Zion due to the onerous and silly dictates imposed without public input or feedback. The park service now exercises extensive regulatory oversight and charges hundreds of dollars in fees just for the privilege of bringing a tour bus to the park and walking with your group on a paved trail. You now also have to pass a test on your knowledge of Zion regulations! No lie!

Livestock currently graze in the proposed drainage basin of the new park, would this activity be banned because of its impact on water quality? Would light pollution from nearby Cedar City eventually become an issue of oversight, as it was in Springdale a few years back, when the park service attempted to micro-manage that town’s affairs? Would wholesale closures of so-called “pristine” areas, without adequate explanation, be the rule of the day as it is in other Utah national parks?

These are questions that should be asked before assuming that expanding the purview of a massive and lumbering federal bureaucracy would be a good thing for the long-term health of tourism and recreation in Iron County.

Second day of Spring

It was a beautiful second day of Spring here in Quichapa.

Princess of the world

You never know when a fantastic picture is going to appear before your very eyes, so it is always a good idea to have your camera handy just in case. This shot of my friends daughter is so life affirming that I just had to share it with ya'll.

Magic really does exist.

25 years of fun

The Bit & Spur celebrated its 25th anniversary with a music show by John Lee Hooker Jr. A good time was had by all.

Here's to another quarter-century of success!

John Lee Hooker Jr.

Cute young stud muffins

Give the drummer some!

Crowd blur

Eddie flashes gang signs

Dim bulbs

As a nation the U.S. is a land of mostly dim bulbs. Foreigners that I meet are always amazed that I know something about their country or region of the world. They tell me how few Americans they have met seem to know much of anything at all. Even the supposedly "uneducated" Mexicans, that I work with, know quite a lot about their culture and history. Every one of them can name all seven U.S. states stolen by the American military in 1848 and they also possess rich lively vocabularies. Their work ethic and determined purposeful toil is not only propelling their country along with the funds being sent home but is doing the same for ours as well. Imagine life today without illegal Mexicans. I dare you. They don't call it the "Re-occupation" for nothing. But I digress....

The slow insidious takeover of every local school system in the country by the federal gov-mint has finally succeeded in what it set out to do: raise a nation of dependent sucklings that are cluelessly in need of Big Brother to soothe the bumps and pat their rumps then blow them up in wars. The culture of dependence and acquisitive entitlement is instilled from an early age. Actual education is sparse at best. The pierced idiot you see every day gabbling away on his cell phone is the product of such a system. Parents have surrendered their young to Moloch and he has trained them to be the obedient and ignorant serfs necessary for his ambitions of command and control. Never mind that this eventually rots away his power by debilitating the population's ability to engage in productive endeavors and thus sustain the tyranny. A good parasite never kills its host.

Anyway, this is not going to be a sad blog post of woe but instead the celebration of the dawning global era, on this continent, which will make the State run model of education as a prison obsolete. It is already obsolete, as is the liberal arts college degree, but it won't be long now before we can feel the real pain of its dire irrelevance. The rest of the world is about to take over, and that makes me very glad.

My new Apple computer was manufactured in China and the tech support woman, who was extremely helpful, was in Bangalore, India. The electronic revolution now puts workers around the globe in direct competition with one another. The flattening of the landscape for high tech and service work is now exposing America's severe educational vulnerability.

At the low end Mexicans are rapidly taking over the industrial and manual labor jobs, while at the higher end more educated foreign workers are taking the accounting, drafting, engineering, computer tech and customer service jobs. These new foreign workers are multi-lingual and way more highly educated coming out of their country's eighth-grade than most of our dumbed down college graduates could ever hope to be. Have any of you hung out on an American college campus lately? It ain't a pretty sight. "Like whaddya mean dude, like....huh?"

I just want to say BRING IT ON! I much prefer dealing with East Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, Euros and Apaches. The more contact I have with these people the better. They have not been tainted by the false and fraudulently corrupt tenants of the Ritalin dispensing American education system. They are still more informed by the world they inhabit and use the handed down traditions of their culture, which stress family and clan loyalty, informed judgment and the love of learning as a life process instead of a forced indoctrination.

We are about to be bit in the ass. HARD! GOOD FOR US!


May I help you?

The civil war in Iraq

Brain Trust?

With the Iraqi civil war now fully underway it is safe to say that the U.S. federal government has gone and unleashed forces that were destined to finally come to blows in one way or another. After all the Sunni-Shia split dates from the year 632 at the death of the Prophet. It's just too bad our government has spent a half-trillion dollars (of borrowed money), not to mention the loss of 2500 lives and 40,000 permanently disabled bodies (so far) on this bloody nightmare.

The tens of thousands of Iraqi dead, wounded and homeless from our bullets and bombs will burn in the memory of many generations of Muslims to come, and the brutal psychological effects of intense warfare on the 130,000 future U.S. veterans saddled with nightmares and family problems is only now just beginning to dawn on many. Why did it need to cost so much and for who's benefit? We have paid dearly just to hold the exploding bomb.

What did the federal gov-mint really think was gonna happen when they artificially granted the majority group (Shias) the right to vote their own people into power? In this Churchill created divide and conquer oil principality the only logical outcome would be sectarian violence. Mark another victory for truth, democracy and the American way!

It boggles the mind that the insulated poo-bahs in DC are now acting surprised at the strife torn outcome. Could these people: Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Shrub, possibly be some of the dumbest political leaders of all time? This ill-advised military invasion ranks right up there with the vain arrogance and stupidity of the Nazis when they invaded the U.S.S.R., while simultaneously fighting the French and British on a western front. The smoking ruins of that debacle still fill the nostrils with the bitter smell of annihilation and the horrific death and injury of millions. Could Condi be as much of an idiot as Ribbentrop? Rummy as solicitously slimy as Jodl? Cheney as fat and happy as Goering? And the solemn Shrub posed with little children and cute animals just like der Fuhrer?

These silly comic book characters are all now about to reap their harvest of sorrow and I can't wait to witness the sordid end of their cynically written plot line.

A good article on the Iraqi civil war from today:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/zeese/zeese26.html

Brain Trust?

Mojave Snow

Suri and I had planned weeks ago to photograph and gather data to complete the final two segments of my Las Vegas to Zion road blog (www.lvtz.blogspot.com) on this particular Saturday. Unfortunately the weather has been quite uncooperative. In fact most of the Utah portion of the trip was either socked in with fog or snowing. It is fairly rare for snow this far south in March. We decided to still take the trip but shifted focus and made the most of our day by drinking and going to thrift stores.

Our first stop was the Dam Bar in Beaver Dam, Arizona where we enjoyed very tasty Bloody Marys served with an olive in a Styrofoam cup. I was thrilled that Suri loved the place because it is definitely one on my favorite joints to have a drink in. She loves to people watch and this is as good as it gets for colorful characters. The place was packed by twelve noon so we decided to head on to Mesquite after buying $5 worth of Arizona Power Ball numbers (today's jackpot is a mere 62 million dollars).

The Dam Bar

In Mesquite, before loading up the car with alcohol to smuggle back into Utah, we hit the Salvation Army thrift store and scored on some very cool stuff, including a 1950's Risk game board that I've needed to complete a vintage set of this classic Parker Brothers game. The store was having some sort of sale and was practically giving the stuff away. Next stop was the Rite Aid drug store where we found more great bargains on alcohol and stocked up on Peeps and malted eggs.

Blue Peeps (who knew?)

We took the back road into St. George on old Hwy. 91 (after a second trip to the Dam Bar) and made a photo stop at the Joshua tree preserve near the Arizona-Utah line. I have never seen snow on these mountains in all my 20 some years of acquaintance with these here parts. I know it snows in the Mojave but this was my very first time actually seeing it. Needless to say it was a breath taking sight to behold.

Beaver Dam Mountains


Mojave beauty


Suri chugs a Tecate (God love her)

After dinner in St. George we stopped at the Deseret Industries store and I scored a biography of Meyer Lansky (my bedtime book....oh boy!) and Suri some cool kitchenware and tacky stationary. Lattes at the Bit & Spur and the end of a wonderful day has finally arrived. All in all not a bad Saturday, with the original mission of the blog still yet to be accomplished. Maybe we'll go in another two weeks. I'll keep ya posted.

Nighty night now.

March Snow

Bridge Mountain

A big wet, juicy, springtime snowstorm has settled over the Beehive State today, even bringing accumulations way down south in Zion's. Oh how purty it is.

Raging in Rockville

Shelter from the storm

Would you eat a Mr. Softee?

This photo was taken in Queens late at night. For some reason the Mr. Softee truck scared the hell out of me. It just sorta showed up out of nowhere and then just as quickly disappeared into the New York dark like an evil omen. It sent chills down my spine.

New York

I recently unearthed a trove of photos that were taken in New York City back around the turn of the century that I have just transferred into the new Macintosh. Thought it would be fun to display a few for your viewing pleasure. NYC is a great subject for photography.

Mike's Diner in Astoria, Queens


Subway beatnik scum


Backwoods of Central Park


John the Baptist at the Metropolitan Museum


Polish market in Greenpoint, Brooklyn


4:20 in the morning on the N train


High above Queens

The Hellgate Bridge

In Like A Lion

After a mild dry winter here in southern Utah were are now recieving a cold blast of Pacific storminess to begin the month of March. It has been a fairly radical change from sunny & mild to snowy & wild.

The ravens have just hatched their little chicks, so I'm gonna have to bring 'em some chicken soup to keep 'em warm n' nourished during all this storminess.
KAWK-KAWK-GAWK-GAWK-SNIGSNORTLE! (Raven for "thanks a heap dude!")

Sorry about the mutated carrot comments. I'll never tempt those folks again, knowingly. Don't click on Monkey's link if you want an appetite. Who are these people anyway?

Mutated carrot

Naomi Fern Wright (of Virgin, Utah) gave me this carrot, which was discovered during prep work at a local restaurant a couple of years ago. At the time I photographed it and stored it tightly in Tupperware in my fridge for awhile, until the fateful day arrived for me to donate it to the six-foot tall jackrabbits that inhabit my desert neighborhood.

I thought this might be a good candidate for a title contest, or even a haiku maybe.

My entry: "Penis de Milo"

DD: forward to Monkey please!

Word from the Bagwhan

I have recieved word from the Bagwhan who has been in isolated seclusion of late. His message to me was this:

THE BAGWHAN will be back to the BLOG in a big way starting thursday march 16th
THE BAGWHAN loves MARCH MADNESS more than any thing on this earth except for cold beer
THE BAGWHAN OWNS the first and 2nd rounds of MARCH MADNESS
THE BAGWHAN takes a 1 week vacation from work just for MARCH MADNESS
let the bloggers know that I am back!

50 miles north of Las Vegas

Jack Wild R.I.P.

It was with a twinge of sadness and regret that I read this recent obituary:

Actor Jack Wild, best known for playing the Artful Dodger as a teenager in the Oscar-winning 1968 film "Oliver!" has died from cancer. He was 53. Nominated for an Academy Award for that role aged just 16, he went on to star in the U.S. television series "H.R. Pufnstuf" and in several films before his career began to derail, in part because of excessive drinking from an early age.

Could H.R. Pufnstuf have been any more schlocky and putrid? It was low-budget taken to new depths by the Hollywood dream team of Sid & Marty Kroft. These are the same giants who also brought us the Banana Splits and Sigmund & the Sea Monsters with Johnny Whitaker.

Poor Jack Wild, I'd drink a lot too if I had gone from an Oscar nomination to playing Jimmy in that inane stinker of a series. It had to be all down hill from there. How couldn't it be?

By the way, whatever happened to Johnny Whitaker? Is he now wiping down a bar in Rapid City?

What it is about that period of time that makes me glad it is over and will never again return? I remember cringing at this crappy stuff as a kid and realizing that being stupid and passively tolerant of mediocrity were part and parcel of my national culture. Yes I was 10 and fully cognizant of how insipid and trashy American mass existence really was.

"And they called it puppy loooo-oove".

By age 12 I had begun listening to the Mothers, Dylan & Jimi and started reading underground comics by Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. The cellar door had suddenly been flung open. The rest, as they say, is history...thank God.

Jack Wild R.I.P

H.R. Pufnstuf,

Who's your friend when things get rough?

H.R. Pufnstuf

Can't do a little cause he can't do enough.

Masks & idols

Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder

Francis Marion (the Swamp Fox)

A visiting friend asked what I thought about terrorism, because I imagine she was thinking that I'd HAVE to be against that. My reply: it depends on who is complaining about it. One man's terrorist is another's sacred national savior. In fact many establishment Jews & Romans during the ministry of Jesus in Palestine would have readily branded him as a terrorist leader. Mohammed was definitely a shit-disturber as were many of the Israelite patriarchs who preceded him. Rabble rousing is often a necessary prerequsite when seeking out a higher power.

I told my guest that since the gov-mint schools no longer taught American history, the young cheerin' ain't gwine learn that this country was founded by terrorists who defeated the British in the exact same way that the Iraqi "insurgents" are holding down 10 divisions of U.S troops, today as we speak. This little known national history inspired me to gather together a selection of blurbs about my favorite terrorists of the American Revolution for your reading pleasure.

I am grateful to my father for getting me interested in history at an early age, especially in the Revolutionary War.

Francis Marion (1732-1795)

When British forces captured Charleston in 1780, American troops pulled out of South Carolina. Francis Marion, however, stayed and organized a small force of poorly equipped men, training them in guerrilla tactics. Living off the land, Marion and his men harassed British troops by staging small surprise attacks and explosions in which they captured small groups of British soldiers, sabotaged communication and supply lines, and rescued American prisoners. After these attacks Marion withdrew his men into swamp country unfamiliar to the British. Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a British commander, gave Marion his nickname when he complained that it was impossible to catch the "swamp fox." Near the end of the war, Marion and American General Nathanael Greene joined forces. In 1781 they successfully fought at the Battle of Eutaw Springs and forced the British retreat to North Carolina.


Ethan Allen (1738-1789)

Allen spent a considerable portion of his life in the effort to achieve independence for what is now Vermont, commanding (1770-1775) an irregular force called the Green Mountain Boys, so named in defiance of the New York threat to drive Vermont settlers off the fields and "into the Green Mountains." The "Yorkers" at one point put a bounty of £60 on Allen's head, to which he responded by offering his own of £25 on any of the officials involved.

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) he led the expedition that captured Fort Ticonderoga in the first colonial victory of the war (notwithstanding the fact that he and the Boys basically knocked on the door, walked in and took over). Allen was no military genius, rather an overbearing, loud-mouthed braggart. He was also a staunch patriot who apparently did not know the meaning of fear. More importantly, he had the loyalty of the Green Mountain Boys, as unruly a bunch of marauding terroristic roughnecks as any in history. "He could control them better than anyone else, and they would follow him anywhere" George Washington would later write of Allen.

The North Carolina Regulators

During the years leading up to the American Revolution many North Carolina people became strongly discontented with the way the provincial government was handling the colony's affairs. However, their quarrel was not with the form of government or the colony's laws but with abuses by government officials.

Grievances affecting the daily lives of the colonists included excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and illegal fees. Scarcity of money contributed to the state of unrest. Those living in the western part of the province were isolated and unsympathetic with the easterners and it was in those frontier counties that the War of the Regulation began.

Minor clashes occurred until the spring of 1768, when an association of "Regulators" was formed. Wealthier colonists considered them to be a mob. The Regulators never had an outstanding leader, though several men were prominent in the movement; including James Hunter, Rednap Howell, William Butler, and Herman Husband. Husband, a Quaker and follower of Benjamin Franklin, circulated political pamphlets advocating peaceful reform.

Discouraged over failing to secure justice through peaceful negotiations, the reformers took a more radical stand. Violence, lawlessness, and terrorism reigned. When the government retaliated against them, the Regulators defiantly refused to pay fees, terrorized those who administered the law, and disrupted court proceedings.

It fell to royal governor William Tryon to bring the backcountry revolt to a speedy conclusion. In March 1771, the governor's council advised Tryon to call out the militia and march against the rebel farmers.