Friday, June 05, 2009

The Pitbull by J.D. Smith -- a harrowing tale of dissolution, destruction, and redemption

This was first published in the Whole Earth Review in the summer of 1995. It is, in many ways, a sick story, but in the end, it is also a story of good luck and redemption. I have had this story cached on my hard drive for 10 years. It seems like a good time to whip it out!

(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n86/ai_17002689/)

Pitbull

by J. D. Smith


"Before Jesus stepped in and jammed the gun, I considered myself an outlaw. I know now that I was an addict, a thief, an armed robber, liar, fornicator, and a dealer. I broke all the commandments but one. I never directly killed anyone, but I tried.

"Speed does kill. Everybody I know is dead, killed by meth and crosstops and booze and stupidity and greed. My little brother got me started on speed, on the streets of Seattle, when he was twelve and I was fourteen. We were walking down along Pike Street and he just walked up to this dude, gave him five bucks, and we went into the alley. My little brother was packing the works, man, at the age of twelve. First time meth hit my guts, I messed my pants.

"A year later I was popping myself in the side of the neck, getting the rush that much closer to my brain. I weighed a third of what you see before you. Look. I ground my molars smooth, just walking around. I was busy.

"Speed freaks need money. No mon no fun. In the early years I got mine out of adult movie theaters. You walk into the back room of a girly joint, you rip back one of those little curtains, you put a gun to the head of some guy who has his unit in his hand, take all his money, his watch, his eyeglasses, sometimes his shoes. Nobody who gets heisted in a porno shop is going to
complain to the cops. There's forty-seven of those places between Seattle and Portland. Couple of times I got chased when I came back into the same place too soon, but I never got caught. Plenty of money for drugs and candy bars. There wasn't anything else to life.

"My little brother, he always was smarter than me. By the time he was nineteen he knew how to manufacture the stuff, so we moved to Pasco and started the Bros in the Basement crystal meth factory. It would take us eleven days to build a batch, then we'd haul back to Seattle, down I-5 as far as Oakland. Two years later we were big-time wholesalers, rolling high. Everybody knew the Bros. My little brother was into late-sixties Cameros, big block, tuck and roll. I liked big motorcycles and bad dogs. I kept pitbulls.

"Our trouble was that we were addicts, didn't separate the buzz from the bucks. On the day we got busted we had been drinking and shooting up for six steady days, getting a delivery ready. We were lost and crazy. My little brother was driving his candy-apple-green fast ride, and I was in the backseat with my big pitbull, Breedin' Butch, and a sixteen-gauge Winchester pump shotgun, sucking a fifth of black Jack. Lost and crazy, man, cruising down I-5 through the armpit of Oregon and I am blowing away freeway signs with the shotgun, at seventy miles an hour, all along the busiest commercial route in the world.

"My little brother was even crazier than me. He wheels out an exit in Roseburg, Oregon, leaves me and the car idling in front of a Payless drugstore, then comes running out five minutes later, tosses a whole garbage sack of prescription drugs in my window, downers mainly, seconol, demerol, codeine, then peels back onto the freeway. I mean, you don't do that man. You don't stick up a chainstore pharmacy then make a getaway in the only candy-apple green automobile north of Pasadena. We never even thought about that. We were so far gone we were invisible.

"Then, south of Myrtle Creek, my little brother decides he has to pee, twists off into a Texaco station and runs for the head, leaving me and Butch and the trunkful of drugs, the garbage sack and the shotgun just sitting out in the open, like turds in a punchbowl. First thing I see in the mirror is a bubble gum machine on top of an Oregon State cruiser, pulling up right behind us. I get sober and cranky and scared real fast.

"The windows of the Camero are smoked, way smoked, so I know that the state cop doesn't see me. I pump a shell into the shotgun. When the cop steps out of the car, I level on him, through the back window, and fully intend to remodel his face with safety glass and number six shot, but when I jerk the trigger there's just a big hollow click. I'd fired a thousand rounds through that gun, and that was the first dud shotgun shell I'd run into. I believe that Jesus Christ came into that car and saved me from the gas chamber and the fiery furnace of Hell by seizing the gun and causing it to misfire.

"Meanwhile my little brother comes out of the toilet, spots the cop, and splashes, man, faints all over the sidewalk before Allard, the arresting officer, even knows my little brother belongs to the green car. I gotta hand it to Allard. He was careless and stupid and very lucky, but he took us alone.

"While Allard is leaning over my little brother, I decide to call it quits myself, so I open the car door real easy, sticking my hands out first, but, when the door comes open far enough, Butch blows through the hole and takes Allard by the hamstring, big time. Pitbulls earn the reputation. This one was stout and awful close to mean. Allard is screaming and pounding Butch with the butt of his revolver. Butch ain't letting go.

"There is only one sure way to get a pitbull to stop biting. You grab it by the tail and you put about this much of your finger straight up its butthole. That is what I did. Butch reached around to snap at whatever was buggering him, and Allard shot him through the head, then arrested us.
"Four counts of manufacturing a controlled substance, four of intent to deliver, one of armed robbery, one of illegal use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, one of interstate flight. I was looking at thirty years before Allard testified to the sentencing judge about Butch and how I had saved his leg. As it was I got five to fifteen, indeterminate, and spend six years and four days, working in the print shop, reading the Holy Word. Been on the streets three weeks. My little brother is still in there. Praise Jesus."
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How to shave your hooha or tallywhacker?

I get that this is a little weird. But, on the other hand, it appears to be information most everyone under the age of 45 needs. . .It's even safe for work. . .they've used shadow most effectively




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Braap Bra-a-a-a-ap brap brap--Mattel sells machine guns


click to en;arge
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Thursday, June 04, 2009

Student caps speech by firing up a joint


"Student caps speech with pot smoke"

By STACEY MULICK News Tribune
June 3, 2009, 5:22PM

TACOMA, Wash. — "The teachers wanted persuasive. And they got it."

"At the end of his speech Tuesday urging legalization of marijuana, a 17-year-old Peninsula High School student (with a 3.8 grade average) pulled out a joint, lit it and smoked away. Then he ate the remains.

"For that he got a quick escort to the school office and then a ride to Remann Hall juvenile jail."

Read the entire story here.
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The Field Trip

Field Trips - An Important Part Of The Educational Process Demotivational Poster
DemotivateUs
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Poem: Ghosts



1
I look over my shoulder
For the ghost tracking me.

2
I see a face in the crowd,
With a sad smile and a halo.
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Drawing: The Commission


click to enlarge
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Wednesday, June 03, 2009

The Jeff pinup


click to enlarge
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Ex-Veep Cheney weighs in on gay marriage: President Obama? You've been Dicked.


click Dick and Barack to enlarge

by Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor
Illustration by Jack Brummet, Editor-in-chief

How often in the last nine years has Dick Cheney taken a stand to the left of our current President? As far as I can tell, once. On Monday. Ex-Veep Cheney, who has made a hobby lately of defending his administration's choices, did the right thing and came out squarely in favor of gay marriage (not unlike another arch-conservative, Ted Olson). And he did it with sincerity and panache. Barack Obama, in the meantime, is left to babble about civil unions.

Incredibly enough, Dick Cheney took time from his relentless defense of the former Bush administration to say, yeah, gay marriage is OK. Barack Obama, for possibly ethical, but more likely politically expedient motives, sticks with the civil union dodge.

I would almost grant Dick Cheney an All This Is That halo , but I just can't bring myself to do that. The ATIT halo is only awarded to real heroes (like Mario Cuomo or the hero pilot Sully). After all, Mr. Cheney has spent the last six months spouting his self-justifying gibberish to anyone who would give him the time of day, in hopes of derailing Barack Obama (or at the very least, burnishing the Bush Administration's pathetic "legacy"). But like the stopped clock that is right twice a day, even Ex-veep Cheney gets it right every now and then.

Mister President, I think you've been Dicked.
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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Alien Lore No. 154 - Life on the moon?


click to enlarge


A couple of years ago, President George W. Bush gave a speech promising a return to the moon. We've shuttled back and forth to the International Space Station numerous times, but no one has returned to the moon since 1972.

One of the most visible and exciting facets of the space race was our ("our" here means earthlings) visits to the moon. As you know, there is a contingent of conspiracy theorists who claim we never actually landed there, and that the 18 manned and unmanned spacecraft landings on the moon were bogus--all filmed on a soundstage. Particularly, that first landing of Apollo 11 in 1969.

12 U.S. citizens have walked on the moon. That's it, as far as we know. (If you don't believe the story of The Skeleton On the Moon: See All This Is That, March 28, 2005).

Only a rocket (but not a balloon or jet) can actually increase its speed at high altitudes in the vacuum outside the Earth's atmosphere. Or at least that's what they say. But some people believe you don't need a rocket at all.

In the Southern Literary Messenger of June 1835, Edgar Allan Poe published the tale of Hans Pfaall, an unemployed bellows mender from Rotterdam, Holland, who worked clandestinely, and built a giant balloon. His goal was "to force a passage, if I could, to the moon." He gambled he could acclimatize to the extreme altitude [as have many mountain climbers over the years, although the highest they have reached is just over 29,000 feet].

Hans Pfaall took off on April 1, 1935 and, because of the thinning atmosphere, soon suffered spasms and began bleeding from the ears, nose, and eyes. He made it 'though: after 19 days in space, his balloon, the Flying Dutchman landed amidst a crowd of homely looking moon people, who "stood like a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and my balloon askant, with their arms set akimbo."

Despite the strange welcome, the world's first astronaut lived among the moon folk for five years. He then then wrote a letter to the Mayor of Rotterdam in which he described some of his experiences and begged to be allowed to return to earth, and Rotterdam.

A lunar messenger Pfaall entrusted with his letter reached Rotterdam (also by balloon) but "frightened to death by the savage appearance of the residents of Rotterdam," he couldn't be persuaded to land. He dropped the letter, and disappeared into the heavens without waiting for a reply, according to Poe.

The story snowballs from here. Imagine if you can, a telescope lens with a diameter of 24 feet and a weight of almost 15,000 pounds. With it, you could see insects on the moon, or so the readers of the New York Sun were told.

In August 1835, the 'paper reported the findings of British astronomer Sir John Herschel. In a six-part series, a reporter--Richard Adams Locke--told how Herschel used his custom-built telescope in a planetarium at the Cape of Good Hope (in Southern Africa), to spot many incredible species on the moon. Among them: horned bears, tailless beavers, and 4-foot-tall ape-like creatures with thick beards and large wings. Locke referred to them as "bat-men." There were bat-women too, and the bat-men and bat-women apparently engaged freely in randy behavior that Locke refused to describe, because their acts would be considered improper on earth.

Herschel was a legitimate, respected scientist who remained unaware of his "discoveries" for months. When word of Locke's confabulations reached him, he tried to debunk the story--but no one wanted to hear that!

On June 20, 1977, Anglia TV in England caused an uproar when it broadcast a documentary called Alternative Three. By linking facts with half-truths, and by staging interviews with so-called "astronomers" and "astronauts," the makers suggested that both NASA's space program and the Cold War were decoys. The power elite in the USSR, the US, and Great Britain had in fact been working together on a secret project - Alternative Three - that had established bases on the moon and on Mars, so that they could escape the coming ecological nightmare on earth. Insiders who were deemed a security risk were callously murdered. Scientists had been abducted to do experiments in the space colonies. Even regular folks had been forced into slave labor on the moon and Mars.
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