More Crap!

Man, I think I discovered what a hernia is all about? All I did was go out on the lawn to retrieve the Sunday edition of the Anchorage Daily Stool. See, the paper delivery guy was scared off this morning, by a bird seed eating bear, so the delivery was a little off target. Now this paper weighs a whole bunch. At first I thought it was wet, and the moisture added to the paper’s weight. This paper sucks, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the added weight came from that water wicking action. But it is just the normal Sunday crap. Now being the righteous citizen I am – defined by how pissed off Ted Steven’s gets when he receives my e-mails – I decided that this hernia producing newspaper needed an investigation. So it weighed in at approximately 2-pounds. And here is where it gets scientific. 2-ounces of stuff in print went to the local news. 1-ounce went to the national news. 1-ounce for the comic relief. 6-ounces to miscellaneous stuff, like sports and classified. And a whopping 1-pound for advertisement “bull” crap. Do I pay for this waste? And 1-ounce goes to some sidebar magazine about Senator Jim Webb, called “What it means to be a leader”. Just take a loaded firearm into the Senate! So this paper is indeed “crap”. It was basically 3-ounces worth of news. No wonder the newspaper establishments are going down under faster then Bill Clinton’s pages that wore those blue dress uniforms. Oh, that was old news, sorry! Anyway, so where did all the crappy roads come from? Hold that thought. Where did all the crappy drivers come from? Hold that thought with the previous thought already on hold. Where did the crappy weather come from? The roads here in Anchorage are so bad that the safety Czar should shut them all down. Think of how much money would be saved, from not using gasoline. Think of how this could offset the greenhouse effect. And maybe we could all loose some weight by walking to work. And with all that, maybe there would be enough worthwhile news to publish a decent paper! And how come we still can’t seem to buy road paint that lasts? I travel around, to places with climates far worse off then what is found here in the “Corrupt Bastard” state. And the highway men there don’t seem to have a problem buying paint that doesn’t wash away with the first snowstorm. In fact, the bike paths in and around Anchorage have better asphalt then do the main roads. So there must be something behind doing it wrong all the time. It is called job creation. What if this state built roads that lasted. It can be done. Money can cause research. Research can find solutions. Take for example the Nesbitt Court House. This was for many years a vacant lot right down town in Anchorage, a lot with a view. In fact it was a family picnic place. It was land considered dangerous, as it was in the “RED” zone and would never muster a building permit from the earthquake police. But need not worry. There was once a state governor that believed in research. He liked money also. So scientists from Stanford designed a “floating” foundation. Yes indeed, so with the research out of the way, the governor signed a declaration to build a new court house. First the once crappy land had to be purchased. But since it now had a future, with an expensive one-of-a-kind foundation, the land was re-evaluated from waste to royalty! Guess who owned the land? The foundation cost more then the building. Anyway, roads could be designed to last at least one Alaskan type season. But when things are done right the first time, it decimates the job market. And since this state has failed at building an infrastructure that actually caters to the employment ranks wherein our sons and daughters want to stay here because there is a future, it means more of the same. Like repainting the roads year after year. Like using crappy asphalt that falls apart soon after it cures and porous enough to thread the life of tire treads. My brand new studded tires have lost enough rubber over this last winter that it amounts to 20-thousand miles driven. Of course this was due the fact that my main transport path takes me down the “new” Elmore extension. What a piece of crap job that highway project is. Don’t we have inspectors out there? Maybe more like imposters. Same with the road-building contractors. And the way these fly-by-night contractors let loose gravel all around town during the summer “make-your-life-miserable” construction season, no wonder so many Subaru’s have broken windshields. Why is it that Subaru’s seem to be the targets? Maybe it has something to do with all those Don Young’s an “Idiot” bumper stickers. And get this, no longer is a new windshield a freebie, as the insurance companies decided the gravel was a liability, so if a rock comes flying your way, get the license plate number of that gravel truck out of control. If it occurs on a muni-road, call Mark and maybe you can blame the broken glass on the mayor being derelict in his duties to hire respectable contractors that give a damn and get him to pay for it. As far as the weather, no wonder very few bikers were seen out and about on Friday, “Ride your bike to work” day. It was cold out. As I departed the lower hillside, an excruciating pain like wind came off of the mountains, and since snow still hangs out at the higher elevations, it was indeed an uncomfortable wind chill. Then when I hit the lowlands, there was but a short reprieve, as the winds off of the inlet now made it more of the same, nasty. It was not fun at all! And it is almost June? And one has to be on constant lookout when riding a bike or for that matter trying to cross an intersection here in Anchorage. Drivers and bikers don’t get along! Anyway, the crap continues. We put up with it. Maybe someday this state will have something to be proud of, instead of a headline that talks about killing 124 wolves by an aerial invasion! I don’t get it. The wolves were Tommy-gunned down to save the moose and caribou population. That is how it played out in the print. But the wolves were killed so there would be more moose and caribou for the hunters. So we allow the killing of the wild things just so we can do the same. This was the headline on Monday in the morning Stool. Again, 1-ounce of news, but no advertisements. Remember, this paper sold by weight, not by interesting content. But just like the crappy roads and a crappy paper, it is all but a sign of this state’s failed infrastructure we find incarcerating upon our future. It will never go away, not as long as the priorities are sold by profit and not by righteousness. Hey, there are ads embedded in the Stool. A full pager - about some fandangle air purifier! OK, I am reminiscing again, just like with the Hickup court house follies. At one time the Anchorage air quality Czar broadcast not only the daily air quality, but the constituent content. It was at one time dried dog crap that made up the majority of airborne pollutants. But the constituents are not broken down anymore. I would say that one would find that “asphaltene” is now one of the major contributors to unhealthy air, from the crappy roads breaking apart. Now dried dog crap is one thing, as it is still natural. But this carcinogenic from asphalt breaking down? Maybe there is something in the air we breath that is causing us to think not straight. So maybe this air purifier ad that contains more words on one entire page then the entire paper itself, maybe it is justified as a health thing. What’s this? According to the ad, this device produces extra oxygen? Wait a damn minute. If it is a filter that sucks in air and cleans the air of MoanaLisa Murkowski’s constituents – mites and bed bugs – then where does this extra oxygen come from? Hey, crap in crap out. It must be false advertisement. And I called Mr. Phineas J. Whoopee - scientist extraordinaire - on this extra oxygen thing machine, he is still laughing. In the mean time, the assault goes on. I am talking the assault on ethics, as we still seem to be embracing the “Corrupt Bastard” mentality. But like anything else in the world of legaleze, we let it go on so that means we don’t seem to be bothered by it, so much for any punitive rescue. It will mean more of the same crap, again and again and again.

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