Sick of Winter and taking out the damn Milltown Dam, and kayakers, too

Hello, suckers,

Well, sheee-it, I’m sick of winter. How about you? Supposed to be spring around there, and some blue skys, too. One thing (well, there are lots of things) that sucks about old Moo-town is the clouds. I’m used to things out east of the mountains where it may get cold as hell and the wind might blow trains off the tracks sometimes, but at least there’s sun. Around here it’s so damn dark sometimes. I’ve heard some old timers say this is the dark side of old Montany and sometimes I believe it.

One good thing that happened today is that they knocked a hole in the dam up there in Milltown. I watched it on a computer at the school. I was going to try and drive out there but then I heard the Govenor Schweitzer was going to be there, and other digni-taries, so I figured they’s have a bunch of those fancy TV trucks with the satelite dishes on them, becuase you know how it is whenever there are politicians the TV news fools follow right behind. And my old truck would attract attention from the police and all the river lover wankers and get me bad looks, so I figured I’d be new fangled and watch it from what they call a web cam. I went to the library and some young guy showed me how to call it up on the screen. And I saw the big bucket loader make its way down the ridge and start digging, and then I couldn’t get the picture anymore.

That young guy said the server crashed. Don’t know what that means, the only kind of server I know is one in a cafe (and I guess them girls in Hooters will be called servers!), and a crash means a server dropping a tray full of plates and glasses. Never know what there is to learn today until you go hang around a college and talk to the young people. (and let me tell you, there some prime Hooter’s gals over there; they make them good in old Montany. Must be the wheat and the water)

But I don’t undertstand one thing. They’re going to all that trouble to move all that dirt – the clark fork coaltion and other river freaks – and build a railroad spur and clean it up out there (and dump it all around them poor folks in Anaconda) and take the dam out so the river runs free. But then they go and make some concrete bullshit right downtown in the river, the part of the river that most people see, and trash it up again. I want to see the river like it was and not fake. I can tell those rocks are fake; who can’t?

All them long haired river lover organizations rolled over and played dead when that thing went down. I thought they were supposed to save the river from shit like that. I liked the old concrete and rebar in the river. It was history. It showed us that Missoula used to be a little milltown, a train town, not some yuppie town. Now, in the summer, they have some punk ass kid shouting rap bullshit through a megaphone over the noise of a big stereo while more punks paddle back and forth and roll over and try not to drown their sorry asses. They were selling some shit like RedBull. What is that? Some kind of health drink? I think it makes them kids crazy. They should outlaw it. Find your phonebook and call your congressman.

Must be the money grubbers at the Moo-town Missoula Downtown Association behind selling out the river. They’ve got a new director from butt fu*k Tennessee or some damn place, and she got here with the same cranky feelings that many people get in Missoula with: that we’re a bunch of cowboys who don’t know nothing, don’t know what we got, and we need someone from the great fu*ked up east to show us.

And then there’s that memorial to the dead kayaker. What’s up with that? What’s the deal with dead kayakers? I mean, what’s the deal with stringing up a rope full of dead flowers and corn stalks and all across the river at Brennan’s Wave? That’s what is called. That was last year, stringing up them flowers, and they built the wave a few more years back. I can’t remmeber.

But then last year another sorry kayaker got drowned. Now they want to put up some sort of memorial for him? Another one. The river front ain’t a memorial walk. It ain’t like it’s a war memorial for people who really deserve a memorial. If that’s going to be a memorial walk, it should be for the veterans.

The river front is for everyone in town, not a bunch of selfish kayakers who drive around in the SUV’s while yakking about how they are going to save the world from global warming. I guess they do want to save the world from global warming, because if they don’t, there won’t be enough spring run off to float their little boats.

I do know one thing – them kids at the college know there computers even if its tough to figure out what they’re saying sometimes. One of them offered to help me with this blog when I asked him how some things work on it. I didn’t show it to him yet, and I’d have to swear him to secrecy, but I might take him up on it.

So long suckers

Damn Land Rapers

Hello, Suckers,

Well, what is it about Montany and around Missoula that attracts all these greedy land rapers? I guess the same thing that makes me live here: it’s purty, the people are generally nice (except for some of the peace sign hippy types), and there’s room to roam around.

But that’s what attracts all the land rapers. Like this blow job up the Bitterroot named Perry Ashby and Wesmont Builders. He got his big land development shoved back at him last year cause he got all hot under the collar about wanting to shove 600 houses in the Bitterroot before the county commissioners had time to really think about it. Now he thinks it’s going to go through, but some laws and changed and he’s got people pissed at him for being an asshole, so have some hope. I hope the county commissioners aren’t scared of some blow job land raper and send him back to where ever he came from. Tell him to go get a real job somewhere and learn not to be greedy.

Now I’m no fan of government regulation, and personal property rights is pretty high up on my list for rights that can’t be taken away. But, what happens if someone up stream from you let’s there cows wallow in the creek and muddy the water and trash the place so bad it all erodes way in the spring? What about a miner who ain’t responsible for his own tailings and fouls up water and the land and it hurts your spread? People are packed so close to one another anymore that they have to learn something like the Cowboy Code, except for suburbs.

So I’d be pissed if I lived on a quiet road up the east side of the bitterroot and all the sudden some young whipper snapper blow job wanted to line his own nest with gold by jamming houses all around me. And I’d be more pissed if he wasn’t nice about it, either. So Perry Ass-by got all hot under the collar and called in his lawyers but got it all kicked back to him.

And then there’s even a tree hugger involved with a land raper. Or, I’d rather call him a whore these days. He used to be with one of them river lover groups, the Clark Fork Coalition of River Loving Hippies, but now, he got himself a job working as a mediator for this Oregon blow job who wants to shove a bunch of houses at Rock Creek. (As far as I can see, and from what a colege kid told me in the library while I was reading the paper is that a mediator tries to help gets things fixed before they have to go to court; either that, or before the guns come out and people start racking rounds).

But this Oregon blow job comes into town and starts digging a hole there are Rock Creek and making himself a lake without any permits (now once again, I ain’t no fan of goverenment, but some of these rules are liek speed limits; you gotta have some of them or the side of the highway will be lined with crosses and the cemetary will be full of dead kids) and generaly making an asshole of himself. We don’t like that kind around Montana. The people around there had to lawyer up themselves and all the government themselves and get this blow job to stop what he was doing. Guess he thought that people in Montana were stupid. Well, mountain people might be a bit slow compared to city folk, but when a mountain folk gets pissed, look out.

So Geoff Sutton (where the hell does he spell his name like that?) starts working for him. What a whore. Guess he used to be an art fag in town, with an art gallery, but that went tits up. So now he’s a whore for a land raper. Even I think that’s kind of whore is a sad whore.

And don’t get me started on old Maclay near Florence and his god damned ski hill plans for the bitterroot resort. He’s as crooked as a drunk built fence. He’s got himself sued even by the Forest Service for cutting trees and stealing water. And he’s got some big wig consultant from Jackson Hole to help him ram that ski hill through the government.

But he just ain’t that smart. He thinks he’s going to make a bunch of money on that ski hill and make a bunch of money using Forest Service land, but the only person making any money is this guy that he hired that has sold him on the idea that he can get it done. Any fool who reads the crappy newspaper will see that it’s been tried before, and it ain’t worked before, and no amount of congressman are going to help. As far as I can understand, it all hinges on the Forest Service turning the land over to him. How the hell is that going to happen? Tell Maclay to go down to the river and hold his own head under – we’re sick of hearing him talk. His dad would be ashamed of him.

Greed. It ain’t pretty. Now, I ain’t the religious type, but the holy book has some good things to say about greed and how bad it is. Give your stuff way to people who need it. Don’t gouge out people for what they need. be nice to people cause you want them or would want them to be nice to you. Things like that.

And don’t get me started in the yahoos and whores who jammed in that concrete play park for the kayakers right downtown. And that guy in Greenough who says he’s a rancher and had a hissy fit in front of the city council when they didn’t approve his development. Maybe I’ll cover that next week. Hear that? I said cover that. Kind of like someone who works for the newspaper. I like the way that sounds.

So long, suckers, till next week

That Damn Missoula Peace Sign

Now, I’m no hippy freak, that’s for sure. And we all know that. And I like to say live and let live, because, after all, I’m a cowboy, and I like to respect living things. And people, too.

I like what old Gene Autry (the singing movie star cowboy, if you Moo-town suckers don’t know that) said in a movie once:

1. The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man or take an unfair advantage.
2. A Cowboy must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
3. A Cowboy must always tell the truth.
4. A Cowboy must be gentle with children, the elderly and small animals.
5. A Cowboy must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant views and ideas.
6. A Cowboy must help people in distress.
7. A Cowboy must be a good worker.
8. A Cowboy must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action and personal habits.
9. A Cowboy must respect women, parents and his nation’s views.
10. A Cowboy is a patriot.

That’s the Cowboy Code, and it’s a good way to live. I wish more people lived like that. Lots of good things to say. Almost like the cowboy bible.

But what the hell is that damn Missoula peace sign doing on the hill? Years ago, they tell me, there was a peace sign painted on some sort of antenna on the hill, and you could see the track of a particular species of critter called the “American Chicken” all over town. I didn’t live in Moo-town then, but I came through a bunch of times to carouse on my day off the ranch, and I remember laughing at that thing with my buddies.

Now I heard that the phone company or someone took it down and all the hippies in town were crying about it, and some got parts of it stashed in their garages. What a crock of shit. I thought we were though with that bullshit. Now, according to the paper (which, by the way, I started reading as it seems like I need to keep up with things better, and hell, it’s a good source of things to say Moo-town sucks about, anyway) some freak has donated some land (which was near worthless, anyway, being right on the highway – bet he got a big tax right off for it) and now some freaks are hauling rocks up there and painting them white and putting them in the shape of a peace sign, or as some of us say, the footprint of “The American Chicken.”

I don’t want to look at that damn thing. Why should anyone look at a damn peace sign? All the Missoula tree huggers are bitching about preserving land and having “view sheds” (another word I picked up out of the paper) and all that, and now that peace sign is no better than a billboard downtown. Next thing you know they’ll want to light it up with bright lights at night and make everyone look at it at night, too.

They say they’re trying to make everyone think of peace, all the time. Well, I tell ya, if you want to think about peace, do it on your own time and do something about it, too. What about that poor guy who got kicked to death on the bridge a few months back? If you’re so into peace, go out and help the homeless bums that hang out on the streets and under the bridges, and give all the kids something to do so they don’t hang out in the same place and get drunk and mean.

It’s OK for an old guy for me to get drunk and mean, because I don’t have the piss to kick the shit out of someone and I don’t want to anyway. I’m too old and wise for that. While you’re at it, find out why those two kids were all screwed up and fix that before it gets bad enough for them to do what they did.

Like I say, “If you want peace, work for justice”, as those bumperstickers say, go do it instead of wasting a bunch of time building a damn peace sign on the side of the hill. Go help out the food bank (hell, I go there once in awhile myself). Go help out someone less fortunate. Help an old lady cross the street. All that boy scout bullshit they taguth you, which is true, by the way. I was a boy scout once.

And one more thing. Since all these peace freaks aren’t putting there money where there mouth is, if you’re living on the street, get some insurance. I got one word for the insurance you need: Glock. Preferably a 9 millimeter. That’s your peacemaker. Like they used to call the old .45 Colt revolvers: Peacemakers. Act like Gene Autry and use it wisely, but be ready. With all the peace freaks running around like chickens with there heads cut off, you got to take care of yourself and be ready to make peace yourself and not look for help from a bunch of peace freaks or think they’ll watch your back.

Peace? Bullshit. If you want it, get your own house, barn, ranch or brain in order first, and take care of something that’s right in front of your nose. And be ready to defend yourself.

Sorry if I sound cranky. It’s beer-thirty on Friday afternoon. Time to head downtown and then go home before the kids get crazy.

Till next time, suckers.

Well, I went and hunted…

Well, I went and hunted down the Missoula paper that had all the articles about Hooters and all the worries in Moo-zoola about purty fillies with fine sets of headlights bending over too far for some folks taste while they pour beers or sling burgers, and I gotta tell ya: they’re all a bunch of hippo-crites.

Someone wrote in and said that those gals were going to be exploited. Well, I tell ya. To be exploited I think you gotta be paid low, treated badly and not have anywhere else to work. I hear them Hooters gals will be paid pretty well (and the tips – jeez, if it’s anything like going to Fred’s Lounge and seeing all the cash them womens collect in their whatever-little-they-have-on), ain’t exactly going to be treated badly (at least they’re going to be treated better than I was when I worked shoveling shit for a drunk wheat farmer from Havre) that is, if they bend over enough times and sport them headlights and twitch them little butts, too. And well, Moo-zoola isn’t exactly a hard town to find a job in. Hell, look in the paper. Look around town at all the help wanted signs. It ain’t that hard to find a job. Now, if this was Two Dot or Moccasin or one of them little burgs out east, different story. But it ain’t.

Well, that’s enough about Hooters for now. Maybe I’ll wait until they open and I can go do a first hand assay (hah – get it?) and check out the mother load.

But there was something in the paper this morning that got my goat up. The Missoula city council went and bought themselves a bunch of new chairs. Now, these ain’t your average chairs they got down in the Oxford Cafe or the ones the coffee houses scrouge up at the yard sales in the summer. These are brand new, expensive-furnature-store chairs. Like 300$. and 400$. And more. Hell, that’s rent and drinking money for a month. What doe’s our elected officials need a damn 400$ chair for? They were complaining that they couldn’t see over their laptops. Well, shit. Before they didn’t care, cause they were busy e-maleing each other with snarky things about the people in the audience. I read about that in the paper.

Now, they got new chairs so they can see who they’re talking to. I hope they catch some shit for spending all that money. I would have went to the Sally (Salvation Army for all you people who ain’t never bummed around) and seen what they had. Hell, they just bought Bubba Engen a new SUV. Ain’t he got a soft enough spot for his fast ass aslready? Maybe they should have punched a hole in the side of the room and put in a garage door so old Bubba could just drive his fat ass in and roll down his electric window down and be mayor that way? But I guess a garage door would have cost money, too, and then nobody else would have gotten a new chair, and so a whole Missoula council meeting would have been burned up with people arguing about how the major got a garage door and no one else got shit.

Well, hell. Maybe I should be done bitching for the day. The sun is peeking through. And it’s Friday. I can walk downtown and check out all the gals at the art night. What do they call it? GAGA? Gallery walk? Around the Missoula Art Museum and all that? All them places with the free wine and crackers….

My buddy out east calls it the Art Fag Walk. I call it the Purty Filly Strut. All them fillys getting ready for the races, just like the county fair. They’re all brushed up and buffed up and smell gooood…. Makes an old guy like me a little jealous that old man time got ahold of me so bad. Guess it happens to all of us.

So long, suckers. Till next time.