The House That Bill Built

A few years back I was up in Cody, Wyoming.  It's a neat place. To the east are miles and miles of beautiful, but burning, high desert; to the west, miles and miles of tall, frozen mountains.  Caught between fire and ice, Cody is a true oasis. 

Other than the superb Buffalo Bill Historical Center, and perhaps the nightly rodeo, there is only one other must-see in this charming little cowboy capital, viz., the Irma Hotel.  Located downtown on the main drag, this venerable edifice was built by Buffalo Bill in 1902 and named in honor of his daughter, Agnes (just kidding!). On the eve in question I had supper at the Irma in a dining room surrounded by rich, dark wood and rustic appointments (above). The food was forgettable but the Teton Ale was capital.

Later, I carried my jug outside and sat on the covered porch where the mountain shadows had cooled things off considerably.  Nearby, a group of local loudies were seated around a table. They were in high galore. From what I could pick up, the group was celebrating nothing in particular; perhaps the end of a hard day's work at a dude ranch where they scooped horse apples for a living. The only woman in the group, "Christy," a most blasphemous wench perched precariously between 30 and 60 years of age, I allowed, and a woman who was already three beers over her three-beer limit, was down on handsome men, down as down could be.

"They're all ass holes," spake Christy loudly to her neighbor, Jim.  "I don't want nuttin’ to do with any good-looking men. They're ass holes . . . all of ‘em."

"Well you can kiss my ass!" said Jim indignantly. "That makes us here feel pretty damned good about ourselves."

"Jim, by Christy's standards," laughed another at the table, "you must be about the nicest guy in town."

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on," was Jim's witty rejoinder.

If one is patient and listens--and if one's ears can stand the heat--there is much free entertainment in this world . . . much.  

Life is food.  Eat it up.

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As Charlotte County buries a young cop today (shot dead when he answered that most dangerous of all calls, the “domestic”) over on the wrong side of the state, another funeral is taking place.  While the murder and death of our guy—a white man with a wife  and three kids--will not even be a blip in state news, this other funeral may make national headlines for days and days and those racial buzzards, Jesse & Al, may swoop in and start their feeding frenzy too.

We’ve all seen them—spray-painted graffiti and gang warnings on walls and steel shutters.  Miami Beach cops interrupted the some such “art” work of18-year-old Israel Hernandez-Llach dark-early this week as he plastered a fast-food restaurant with paint.  Even though Israel and what passes for his family had only been in this Great Land of Opportunity for a few years, seems he was getting with the gang program with precious little warm up.  When cops told Israel to stop and drop the can, he took off running instead.  When they finally caught up to him, and again ordered him to halt, the young man turned to fight.  Out came the tasers.  When one taze didn’t end the fight, another was applied.  This one, it seems, not only ended the fight but ended Israel’s criminal career and his promising art studies forever. 

Although they had not been in this country long, seems the Columbians composing the dead man’s family had already figured out that playing the victim/race card can reap great rewards.  And, of course, the media—especially the Miami media--is more than happy to give victims of “police brutality” and “white racism” a forum for as long as they can keep the screaming up.   If you are a Miami minority—i.e., if you are a white person living in Miami—and you complain about the tons of reverse discrimination and race-based crime that goes on over there every day, forget it.  Racism is a one-way street. 

Much like the sorry crew from Haiti last year who “just wanted answers” after their sweet, lovable naked relative ate off the face of a Miami man, and nearly chawed the victim’s head off, too (“Predators on Parade”, 6.1.12), so too does Israel’s family “just want answers.”  One might suppose that answers are exactly what they got when the cops filed the report—caught red-handed vandalizing public property, foot chase, refusal to obey, fight, taze, fight, taze, fight, dead--but I guess those aren’t the answers this crew is trolling for. In today’s new black and tan racespeak, “looking for answers” always means “looking for someone to blame this on so we can get rich and famous while we (sniff, sob, wail aloud) mourn the great and insurmountable loss of our loving and invaluable son, what’shisname.”

“He wanted to change the world somehow through art,” sniffed his distraught sister.

“His art was everything to him,” sobbed another inconsolable brother, sister, aunt, or something. 

Well, since Israel’s nickname was “Reefa” and since his MO as a gangsta was running from and/or fighting cops, I suspect there were other important issues in the young man’s life beside his “artistic” career.

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Perv Patrol—Some convicted pedo was rousted from his Punta apartment this week because he failed to register, even though he was squatting right in the center of a pedophile’s Wonder World—schools, day cares, school bus stops, toy stores, the gamut.  The chap did indeed move on, but, since he failed to register at his new digs (no surprise), local Lust Control lit him up.

Meanwhile, up the beach at Venice, some lurker tried to lure a little girl from the library with the hint, “Come on . . . you can make a little money for a small job, or you can make a lot of money for a big job.  It’s easy!”  This lovely gent was reported and hauled away in the Perv Wagon to Lust Court (where he, no doubt, posted Lust Bond and is out today making the same irresistible offer to other little girls).

Up at Tampa, another fellow, a worker for the local Police Athletic League (a cop group which sets up programs for kids) was busted by his bosses in blue when he was caught downloading kiddie porn on his computer.  So much for this kiddie fiddler trying to hide in plain sight, ala, priests, football coaches and scout masters.

Hmmmmm?  Seems to me that just about this time last year there was another carnal outbreak locally, but as I recall, back then it mostly involved consenting idiots overcome with lust who got it on in cars, parks, Burger Kings, under gazebos, on roofs; seems there was maybe only a dozen or so of actual degenerate monkey-spankers spanking monkeys on beaches and just a few perverts trying to flash little girls.