The Neon Locusts

Every nice sunny day now in the Snoqualmie Valley we are descended upon by a horde of neon spandex wearing bicyclists, it is truly awful if you live here.

You might well think well these people are harmless, they are getting exercise and they aren’t increasing the carbon footprint and so on so what in fact is the harm? Let me tell you.

I call these abominations the “loud family” because as they stomp through life everything they do is loud. As they stand five feet away from each other they scream about their tiny ambitions, about how many miles they rode and how many miles they will go next week, about bike accoutrements and the hideous clothing thereof. Yes, they even dress as loudly as possible, some wear electrified clothes that flash and blink, others wear clothing so garish you would swear it has secret power crystals enmeshed therein. But at all times it is loud, loud and more loud.
These people do not live here. They come from Bellevue and Redmond, the hills of Seattle couture and the Woodinville’s of the world to evangelize their freakish hobby across our countryside. As we try and drive somewhere or commute through our beautiful, simple green countryside full of quiet farms we have to be constantly be visually assaulted by the Neon Nannettes. If asked, they will explain the roads “are theirs too”. Of course roads are paid for with gas taxes and various motor vehicle fees and who knows if these folks actually pay a cent for the roads. If however, I walked through THEIR neighborhood with my dog (on a leash of course), along the route they commute to work, the doctor and grocery store, holding hands across the road to make sure we blocked traffic, I really doubt they would see the humor. That is exactly what these people do, what they think is so cool, block our traffic at 3pm during rush hour on weekdays.

These people are not commuting to work. They are doing nothing useful at all other than killing time with their friends. I have the utmost respect for that solitary biker wearing rain gear and pedaling to work at 5am because he can’t afford a car, or is trying to save money to buy a house. I have done this twice myself once in Lynnwood and once in Burbank Ca. I know people now who bike to work. I also have a bike and take it places where I want to park the car (such as Leavenworth) and then use the bike to go to the store and get supplies or look around the rest of the weekend. I don’t block hiway 2.

Yesterday we discussed bike paths. The wife pointed out that even when peddlars have a bike path they wobble over on the road edge to block traffic or block the whole lane while they are chatting to their friends about how their nuts are going numb. Going down Hiway 203 yesterday she commented on how she thinks money should be spent to build more bike path and trails. I said “honey if you look 50 yards to your right you will see a beautiful scenic bike path that runs the length of the Snoqualmie Valley”. But no one was on that of course, it was empty. What fun would that be? Who would see their garish outfits that clash with life itself?

As they say; a bicycler runs into someone walking their dog on the Burke Gillman trail and says “get out of my way I am on a bike”, as they pedal precariously by doing 25mph, later as they go down the road they tell someone trying to drive down the hiway203 (limit 55) , “hey get out of my way I am on a bike”! As they go along at 25mph. There militancy can be seen in the annual bike thing they have in Seattle where they ball up traffic on purpose and every year the violence and fights get worse. I am not going to name it to give it any publicity.

Your little dog and pony show is not needed here, take your Halloween costumes and go home. Ball up traffic and create scenes in your own neighborhood. This is not a Disneyland playground for the tragically hip, it is where we live and work and have to commute. Figure out ways to make your own neighborhood scenic and rustic and then stay there.

Matt, I dedicate this to you.

Top Ten Crazy Women (of the last 30 years or so)

After reading recently that our PNW home girl Mary Kay Letourneau, is hosting “Hot for Teacher night” at a local night club on Saturday, I was thinking about making up a top ten list of crazy women. I mean why not? What-the-hell, over?

Of course as many submissions poured in I realized there had to be a few rulz. One is they can’t come from too far back in time historically. I was thinking 30 years or so. So that means Janis Joplin, one of my personal favorites, would be right on the border. Just flying off the deep end once or so really doesn’t merit getting on here either (except in one case), so Margot Kidder and Sean Young will be excluded. First alternate Lindsay Lohan.
So here we go:

1. Mary Kay Letourneau; I will never forget how on the day she got a six months sentence for raping a kid she taught in the sixth grade, a guy I worked with got five years for fondling his step daughter (she never got pregnant or was a parent now), because of the mind numbingly light sentence from a female judge she was out and at it again within months and now poor Vili was a double father! Most people don’t know the crazed woman still contacted him in prison and serves quite a bit of time in solitary—Double standard justice but also many-many women she nothing wrong with what she did and think of it as “true love” and other horseshit. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/19/sports/plus-court-news-harding-sentenced-to-3-days-in-jail.html

2. Tonya Harding; Another local girl-go PNW!! Tonya is deliciously athletic and violent rolled up in a white trailer-trash, tragic-comedy, and visage of legendary proportions. Try searching for “Tonya Harding” and you will see she has become an attack term!! People say things like “if they don’t watch it I will go Tonya Harding on them” etc. My favorite Tonya story is the time she attacked her boyfriend with a hubcap. The only way you can do this is if you have hub caps lying around in your yard…back to white trash… http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/19/sports/plus-court-news-harding-sentenced-to-3-days-in-jail.html Tonya is yet another person with a “sex tape scandal” http://www.nndb.com/people/502/000025427/


3. Lorena Bobbit; This is in fact just one go, but the side stories gave the thing some legs as they say. First it was taking his penis with her, driving around and throwing it out her car window, then calling 911, the John actually having it sewn back on! Both Bobbit’s went on trial, him for rape and her for “malicious wounding”, they both got off! What? Didn’t someone commit a crime here? This whole thing sparked so much public discourse there were tons of jokes, and even fifteen years later Lorena Bobbit gets TV interviews. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorena_Bobbitt

4. Brittany Spears; She of course married her high school sweetheart, then like an idiot listened to her family got an annulment and married the hideous Kevin Federline. She is always in the news about every little thing. She can just run around town not sporting panties and create an uproar. My favorite story though, is cutting off all her hair because she knew she couldn’t pass a drug test. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6nJzr3sEM4

5. Amy WInehouse; For starters her name really fits her doesn’t it? She and her Husband/X husband are always in the news for assault and of course re-hab stories. When your hit song says “I don’t want to go to rehab NO, NO,NO” it brings a certain notoriety methinks. Then main thing that always seems to get around her is the before and after pictures of when she obviously descended into heavy drug usage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TaPubacOLM Unlike many of the listees here she has actual real talent, hopefully she will buck the trend and pull out of it before it is too late.

6. Lisa Marie Nowak; Not really a household name of course, but can anyone forget the story of the NASA astronaut who put on a “diapers” so she didn’t have to stop on a cross-country,900 mile drive from Houston to Orlando to attack another woman who was vying for her true love’s affections. She was also wearing a wig and a trench coat. OK visualize this: a woman wearing nothing but a wig, trench coat and a diaper? WTF!! She then went and boarded the same airport shuttle bus as her rival Colleen Shipman. She sprayed pepper spray into the woman’s car when she cracked the window to talk to her. Bizarre behavior for a woman who has flown on the space shuttle and been to the international space station. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250415,00.html She has a master’s degree in engineering and isn’t bad looking… http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250415,00.html


7. Courtney Love; Does she seek out controversy? It seems she has no talent, similar to Bianca Jagger, she just married someone in Curt Cobain who did and now manages to stay in the spotlight through bizarre behavior. She lost possession of her daughter for drugs and danced naked at a re-hab clinic in Malibu for three hours before being convinced to stop. http://www.nndb.com/people/389/000022323/

8. Ann Coulter; How to describe Ann Coulter in the shortest space possible? A female Rush Limbaugh, I can think of no greater insult (while true), to give any person alive or dead. She has been described by others as a “pundit” and a “rightwing bomb thrower”. She was fired from CNBC for telling a disabled Vietnam veteran “no wonder you guys lost”. She was also fired from the National Review which is hard to believe. Ann Coulter’s books have been described as “page after page of ranting”, it is hard to imagine her having any following at all, from anyone. It does illustrate when one reviews the ultra-neo-con flag bearer’s vitriol and hatred, the depth of emotion involved in what is passed off as politics. Her is Ann at her shrill and strained best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wnPHFSdrME


9. Anna Nicole Smith; (real name Vickie Lynn Hogan), The posthumous award goes to the former playboy bunny, eighth grade dropout, and former Wal-Mart cashier who married an ancient millionaire, Howard Marshall 88. Her husband lasted 14 months and when he died she was left nothing his son was sole beneficiary of the will. So you can guess what happened there LAWSUIT! Howard K. Stern was her lawyer and was even there at the end trying to say he fathered her baby. http://www.nndb.com/people/766/000028682/ . Her 20 year old son preceded her in death. http://futurenurses21.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/annanicole1.jpg
Of course there are many nude photos of her out there and even death bed photos, but we don’t need to go there do we? http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/anna_nicole_smith31.jpg Apparently both her boyfriend and doctor were charged in her death for conspiring to provide her with illegal drugs. http://thebsreport.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/boyfriend-and-doctor-charged-in-anna-nicole-smiths-death-for-prescription-drug-felonies/ Anna, you wanted to be like Marilynn Monroe it is too bad you got your wish.


10. Tammy Faye Baker; (AKA: Tamara Faye La Valley), was nominated by several people. At first I thought well, yeah she is a phony TV evangelist and her husband went to prison for fraud but people like that are a dime a dozen, aren’t they? Well, no, she did in fact take it to a new, historical level. For one thing did you know the PTL ministry launched its own SATELLITE for 24 hour coverage? Not only that but her second husband Roe Messner who made his fortune building churches ALSO went to jail for fraud, WTF! She will be known forever as Mrs. Mascara.
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Womens%20Page/jewelry_and_makeup.htm YIKE!!

The twittering life:

So how in the name of baby jesus did I get HERE anyway? And maybe more important is why? Why did I start twittering?

Unlike many, maybe even most, I am not trying to sell you a bill of goods. Many I follow, or have read, are selling photos, services, or seminars. Some have lodges they are trying to fill and some are selling ideas they think-they wish they might have, about how to be a better twitterer.

There has to be a way to butcher this bird for dinner!

This seems to involve getting a bigger audience. More followers the better I guess, bigger is always better, more is more-better and bigger too… and this is America after all. It seems the main way to get a hell of a lot of followers is to follow everyone else like a F’ing madman, and of course none of you actually read each other’s tweets, but you say LooK AT MY FolloWERS damn-your-heathen-eyes! The more followers the more important voice you have, the more convincing you are, the more influential, supposedly. Of course I could say well Brittany Spears has a lot of followers and does she really influence anybody? Isn’t that the classic case of people slowing down on the freeway when there is an accident? They say it is for safety but really they are just looking for blood.
I can see getting caught up in it. Should I find a ap like quitter to see which post made someone quit following me? Then me thinks if I do that and just twitter away my time learning how to be twerfect (politically and perfectly twitterly correct), just to gain followers what have I become? Some kind of digital glad-hander, almost like a politician who wants to be something to everyone, so he becomes nothing to anybody, and he is nothing but a bag of pink methane gas (just like…uh…don’t want to alienate you…).
Besides, this all seems like too much work. It takes away from why I did this in the first most place. Which was it, “twitter”, being a small quick way to communicate, and shout at the world, in a bite sized way, occasionally throwing in a http://www.tinyurl.com/ for spice and the whole enchilada is searchable for topics and names and stuff. Here I am very tempted to insert a list of top ten reasons, or top five thoughts about this, because anytime a person writes about twitter it is almost a requirement to have a list.

TOP TEN WAYS TO HAVE SEX ON TWITTER
Five ways to make twitter followers quit following
Seven deadly sins of Twitter
EIGHT IS NEVER ENOUGH WAYS TO MONETIZE TWITTER
If trapped on a desert island what FIVE Social Media would you choose to take with you?
This is one of the unwritten rulz of twitter; LISTS!

I am learning this as I go (making it up as I go along). But I don’t have a Facebook page (http://425writer.blogspot.com/2009/01/should-i-facebook-myself.html) and it reminds me years ago I didn’t have a TV. People look at me incredulously, YOU DON”T HAVE FACEBOOK!! Like they saw a small slave child chained to my toilet, it seems truly horrific, un-American. But look, in retrospect, now the only people that use MYSPACE are; angst-ridden pre-teens, lousy bands, William Shatner and child molesters, who would have known?

I am sure some figure to play the social media game, the more different pla
tforms a person is on the wider the net is cast, and each network promotes the hell out of the other until you are a superheated, ultra-branded commodity, of a internet nova-shooting star person. At that point you quit the day job and the biggest issue is getting to the bank everyday to cash the checks.
I like twitter because, so far anyway; it is quick and easy. It is my new Digg, (since it seems Digg has gone to hell), I get information which is much more sharply focused from people I choose to follow, and have met new folks I never would have known existed before, (most likely). I can express myself without much work or thought beforehand, which is a pure type of a free-form free association thing for me because hey, I am not trying to sell you anything, or change your mind about much of anything or become the next Steve Buscemi/Christopher Walken of twitter.
So that makes it fun.
Always worshiping at the feet of my furtive followers @425talker

Journalism 2009: Insightful or Incitefiul?

Right now there is a great deal of talk about journalism all across our media; mainly because so many newspapers and magazines in the US are going out of business. People assume it is because folks are reading the papers online but there is also a lot of discussion about blogging. Many so-called or self-professed “professional” journalists have decried the amateurs which seem to be taking over the web. Many of these upstarts have become quite powerful very quickly. The Perez Hilton’s of the world do not have to be politically correct and can entertain by being outrageous. Gossip, rumor and innuendo are all fair game and good for readership numbers and hits.
Here in the Seattle area many have decried the loss of the Seattle Post Intelligencer. But where did the PI come from? It is a Hearst paper and Randolph Hearst in his day was thought of being a “yellow journalist” for publishing something akin to a National Enquirer of its day. Hearst bumped up crime coverage to 24% of the paper and published rumors about suicides, affairs and printed pictures considered to be very racy to gain circulation. He catered to large population of immigrants where English was a second language and reading content and accuracy were deemed secondary to a good story.
Both Hearst and Pulitzer (now Murdoch), discovered that when going after advertising revenue more circulation meant more money for them. The Spanish American war prequel of 1895 is where Hearst really went nuts, publishing lurid tales of Spanish brutality of very dubious accuracy. He was pushing a war-hawk agenda. In fact when the war started in earnest Hearst actually claimed credit for it. So that is where our beloved PI came from, a quick buck artist who cared little about the integrity of journalistic ethics.
This latest swine flu epidemic scare has already been beaten to death shamelessly by the local media. KING5’s coverage can only be described as hysterical. Clearly they are still selling fear, the meat and potatoes of the FOX NEWS network. It goes deeper than that though; these news organizations get in bed with those they cover. They have reporters that cover things like “Aerospace” and if you think for a minute they are going to be critical of the decision making going on at the Boeing Company you are nuts. If they were they would lose their privileged status and would be persona non grata. Besides that it would be more work. They literally take the company news releases and print whatever they are told, amazing.

So all I can say is this: thank god for the internet, thank god for bloggers and the niche news people all over the world, thank god these established papers and TV finally have real competition from real people who aren’t always just after more circulation, more money and keeping the status quo. Most have nothing to really gain, only that wonderful feeling of community and connectedness.

If you think these people that have been in charge of information dispersion for so many years really did their jobs admirably during the Iraq War, or 9-11, or the torture scandals of the last 8 years, then watch FOX NEWS read the Times and go to bed scared witless every night. So what was the headline today in the online PI? One guess.

Nowadays, with a little work the truths of the world can in fact be gleaned out. This is a tremendous time for people who are citizen journalists all over the world to tell the real, non-commercial, non-politically correct, un-strained, un-washed gritty naked truth.