What If You Threw a Riot (And Nobody Came)

Suppose you threw a riot, and nobody came? I’ll be honest with you, for all my talk about how we do things down here in Texas I really thought McKinney was about to fire up. And the mainstream media was working it like a dog on a dead armadillo. Speaking of, you will notice the police chief curled up at the very first hit on YouTube. Now I’m not going to call him names, but when I go to see my friend, Tom, well he’s got chickens, and there’s this stuff that sticks to your feet. That’s the police chief over to McKinney, Texas.

I saw some New Black Panthers strolling across the Tarmac at the airport. I’ve always admired that look. You know, the dark suits, shades, frown, really intimidating stuff. Now what’s funny is they looked just as serious about some chick getting booty slammed as they would if the cops had machine gunned the who lot of them!

“We gotta go to Texas and fight for the people!”

“What’s going on down there? Did some poor defenseless brother get killed for smoking a cigarette?”

“No, some girl got slapped down, and the cop put his knee on her butt!”

“Was she black”

“Yep!”

“Get the brothers and book a flight.”

I didn’t notice Sharpton, yet. I was really looking forward to that. I wanted to meet him. I mean, he DOES have a TV show, and I’ve always been a sucker for an autograph. So I sat up last night, drinking beer, scanning the news, waiting for the “guns of June” to go off. NOTHING! Not even one domestic disturbance. I even had the article already done. I just took the one imwrote about Ferguson, and switched the names, dates, and location. HEY! Works for Al Sharpton! But, this story just wouldn’t fly. And Fox News TRIED, oh God did they try. They finally scrounged up the only fool who got arrested and the charges were subsequently dropped, probably at the insistence of Chief Cover Mi Ase. He mumbled something about “helping that poor girl.” That’s when I went ahead and did THIS story. I thought that if I give it enough time something would come about. Maybe not the whole down town, but maybe burn the mayor’s doghouse . . . SOMETHING! Nope.

The Chief said he was very proud of the eleven officers who behaved according to procedures. Ok, dozens of kids running in dozens of different directions while the police trip and flop on the ground. I’m not kidding, watch the video. With ISIS on the edge of the Golan Heights, Iran waiting for its shipment of enriched uranium from the White House, the Chinese going through the US Goverment’s databases like they WORK there, we are all focused on a yellow bikini. Hey, like my Puerto Rican friend, Jay would say, “I ain’t even gonna lie to you,” I was looking at her butt, too. (Lord, I’m sorry I did that, I promise not to do that again.)

All this having been said, they just couldn’t crank a proper riot out of that bikini. For one thing, it’s just too hot to riot in Texas. Up in Ferguson, or Baltimore, you can jump around and act like a fool, but after say ninety-five degrees or so, the energy level goes way down. Uh, maybe that’s why the kids were swimming, you think? Also, McKinney is just a darned nice place to live. Summer just started . . . This is TEXAS!

One more thing. When someone like Al Sharpton takes hold of a “gig” he plays it over and over until it doesn’t sell any more. Sharpton watches the news, waiting for something, anything, that will fit into his race baiting formula. Any time a cop fires his gun, if there is a black person in the STATE, he’ll jump on the next flight and fan the flames of fury, collect his fee, and beat feet back to New York, waiting for the next big thing. With the ashes cooling in Baltimore he was desperate. Then, there it was! An itsy bitsy, teeny weenie, yellow poka-dot bikini, with a big ol’ white cop sitting right on top of it. This wasn’t race baiting, it was race trawling! One problem was, there really wasn’t a STORY here. Chief chickened out, cop quit, charges dropped, and the kids went right back to swimming. The people in Baltimore be like, “A bunch of spoiled brats crashed a Country Club swim party being thrown by some other spoiled brats.” And let’s be honest; that was a beautiful, well fed, well groomed young lady in a very nice swimsuit. I wish she’d crash MY party! Rosa Parks she was NOT! And them New Black Panthers sure did look good, didn’t they?

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Thoughts of an Illiterate Blogger

Do you know how hard it is to do a dozen articles a day, and not come off like a contradictory fool? I worry about that. I find myself combing over past posts to see if I’m reversing myself. I am not very politically astute. No, really. When I say I’m a Simple Ol’ Boy from Austin, what I’m really saying is I write simply. I can be complex, I just choose not to. I feel that the world is complicated enough without dancing around words trying to paint myself into a corner. And look at my qualifications. High School diploma from Killeen High School. Now folks, that’s about as illiterate as you can get and they still let you drive a car!

With my friends and supporters I walk a line trying to agree with and please, but I do have rules. I’ve found that when I write an article that I personally think will be my undoing, THOSE are the hits! I really do avoid being controversial, but let’s face it, when you have a pen name like, “Bill the Butcher,” well, people expect things, you know.

The more I write the more I settle on what I believe. Like Doc said about me last week, there are times when I don’t even know my position until I begin to write. I do take inspiration from others I respect. Our opinions differ. For instance, I’m not all torn up about Jade Helm. I guess it’s from living near Fort Hood, and putting up with cannon fire and gun ships flying over my head most of my life. I AM concerned about ISIS because I know the dynamic driving them, and I really DO think Muslims in our state bear watching. I don’t give a flip about gay marriage. I can accept gay people, I just don’t want one of them marrying my sister.

My neck is not near as red as it used to be. Time was when I really said, and wrote some outlandish stuff. Here’s the deal. YOU sell three million records on the black market out of a garage in Harker Heights, Texas, then come back and tell me all about it! Publishing has changed a lot since 1994. Back then you had to have “distribution.” Now, all you need is an iPad. Being exposed to loads of other opinions has lightened my neck considerably. Hey, I can even get along with someone from California if she’s cute.

I study all the time. You may not believe it, but as I was writing about the attack in Garland this week I was reading a psychological study of Joseph Smith’s mindset in the context of his times. In modern times he would have just wrote the Book of Mormon and left the “inspiration” involved to the conjecture of his readers, but in the magical world view of the 1830’s . . .well, people expect things. Understanding people like Joseph Smith helps me understand politicians. Connect those dots! There IS a connection there people, trust me.

People believe the absurd. They want magic. Hence religion. Now don’t get me wrong. I am a theist. I even believe in Jesus Christ. I just don’t believe in religion. Religion is man’s feeble attempt to explain the unexplainable. I try not to really pick on people’s religious beliefs, but as a writer I KNOW how Mohammed came up with the Qu’ran and Joseph Smith penned the Book of Mormon, and it ain’t hard to figure out, folks. I have a nephew who once spent hours trying to convince me that during a seance, Satan, the evil one, arch angel, fallen from glory, source of all evil, came all the way from hell to beautiful downtown Killeen, Texas just to chunk rocks over a fence at him. I don’t try to pick on people’s religious beliefs, but it’s hard. People read into religion their own desires. Now, that’s ok until you start stoning pretty girls for looking good in jeans or tell me I can’t have a Martini, then we gotta talk. Come to think of it . . . pretty girls . . . martinis . . .stoned, but I digress.

I don’t chase women as much as I used to because I have a bad leg that seems to be getting worse with age, and they keep getting away. Also I’ve found that double amputees do not attract me. Wait, let me think about that one. Sometimes I worry about myself. Anyway, as I blog myself to literary hell I thank you for putting up with me, and reading. Communication is the most important thing. I figured that out after five ex-wives you know. I keep my style simple, like I said. I write like I speak. I have a friend with like a double degree in writing, literature, stuff like that. Kid writes for a solid week, ain’t said nothing! I now have written thousands of articles that have gone all over the world. Not bad for someone who couldn’t pass high school English, huh?

Happy New Year

Well, it’s New Year’s! Back when I was a card carrying Catholic January 1st was one of those days you HAD to go to Mass. Now think about that for a moment. New Year’s party, Church! Connect the dots. I just ran to confession the next Friday. Don’t EVEN try to do Mass with a hangover. Catholics don’t just sit there and wait for the spirit they go LOOKING for it! Up, down, up, down, in your knees and on your feet. Yeah, confession next Friday.

I’ve never in my life made a New Year’s resolution any more than I ever gave up anything for Lent. I grew up so poor what could I give up . . . AIR? This year it’s going to be different. I’m making a resolution. I’m going to set my coffee pot to automatically make coffee every morning at 7:30! There! Now there’s a method to my madness. First off the responsibility for maintaining this resolve is placed solely on the little timer in the coffee pot so if something goes wrong I can place the blame squarely on the pot and I, personally, didn’t break the resolution. Also, it’s a practical resolution. Every morning I get up between 7:30 to 8:00 and this way the coffee is waiting for me. I’ll even set up a cup with a spoon in it so I don’t have to think before I can see each morning. For you younger folks out there, somewhere about fifty or so things stop launching in the morning like they used to. You young folks hit the ground running, but when you’re sixty-three you wait until your legs start working, and you ease to the ground shuffling. Some time after your second cup of coffee you eyes focus, and that’s about the time you find the bathroom.

Anyway, where was I, oh yes, my resolution. I fully expect to be able to keep this resolution the entire year. Each night I’ll set the trigger and my little pot will do the rest. Also I don’t have to give anything UP! I mean you struggle all your life to HAVE some kind of life and some jerk comes along and tells you that you should give something up you worked all your life to get! You’d have to find something that is totally useless, irritates you, and you can’t imagine why you even began doing it in the first place. Wait! Something did occur to me. I’ve got once more thing. While I’m having that cup of coffee on my porch, and smoking a very politically incorrect cigarette, I WON’T be reading ABC News! There! I feel much better now! X

Quiet Afternoons

I love quiet afternoons. Afternoons like today. Weather is perfect. Made an early dinner. I’m a simple guy. I boiled some water with five meatballs in it, dropped in the Mac and cheese and voila! Redneck health food. The meatballs were the kind with all those ingredients that make politically correct people cringe, but I don’t care. I grew up poor, and my dad was a Cajun. Now, let me clue you in. An old Cajun will cook guts. It’s not all that bad. We’d have liver and onions one day, and rice with liver gravy the next. Brains and eggs. A Cajun can cook almost anything. Squirrels, rabbits, slow tourists, you name it. And meat wasn’t a vital part. Poke salad! May-hauls (and I know I spelled that wrong) that were the little apple things that floated in the swamp.

One thing I could never eat was a frog. Daddy would eat some frogs, now. Picture this. He’s sitting there with his brother eating frog legs and the frog’s heads are sitting there on the sink BLINKING at them. That’s a whole new level of screwed! And the frogs were cool with it. They had thus calm look on their faces, just blinking away. Frogs are weird like that.

All the kids got to eat first and the adults last. That’s Louisiana! The kids would chow down and daddy would “sop” up some gravy with a piece of bread. Nobody sops anymore. One more little piece of America lost. I don’t think I ever saw a steak until I was in high school. Oh, we had “round” steak, but that’s not really a steak, it just some crap they shaved off a cow’s ass. Hey now, get this . . . Dog Bone Stew! I crapith thee NOT! Daddy would go down to A&P (That’s gone now, isn’t it?) anyway, he’d trot down down there and pick up some dog bones. They were left over bones from sides of beef being cut up in the back. Then he would bring them home and boil em up! Throw in a little rice and you have a first class stew. Now THAT’S the whitest trash you can be right there.

And health care? I don’t know what the big deal is. In 1950’s Louisiana there were two options. You got well or you died. Daddy would drag me over to Benton and some old VooDoo woman would blow smoke in my ear or make me drink sassafras tea. She taped a penny on a nail hole I had once so the spirit of Mr. Lincoln could draw the poison out. Come to think of it I’m lucky to be alive.

Dad got throat cancer. Oh, he took all that radiation nonsense, but when they gave him six months to live, and sent him home to die he went for a more holistic therapy. That was in 1974. He started eating Blue Bell ice cream and drinking whiskey every day. He died in ’88. Mom got cancer, did what the doctors told her and lasted one month. That’s why I have this psychological thing about doctors.

On calm afternoons all these things come back to me. I sit, and watch the sun set with a drink, and a smoke. Goodnight Puck . . .goodnight PaPa . . .goodnight Chris . . .goodnight NewBaby . . .goodnight Spartacus . . . Who let Spartacus in the HOUSE?

The Smoker

The Smoker

The smoker wasn’t anything special. In Texas, however, a side box smoker is the one thing every back porch needs. Without it the porch is just a concrete slab. It looks like a big barrel with a smaller one attached to the side. You put the wood in the little barrel and fire it, and as it burns down the smoke it generates drifts into the larger barrel, and across the meat, never exposing the meat to an open flame. It takes hours to cook anything that way. If you have a brisket it takes all night, and that’s a good thing because the men nurse the fire and the women folk watch the kids, make the extras, and talk about the men. There is always a grill in the small barrel so you can grill sausages as the main course matures. Of course you must have enough beer to get you through the night, even though the get together never goes much past two in the morning. The last man standing throws more wood on the fire and retires for the night. The next morning, usually Sunday, everyone gets up. The fire has dwindled, and the meat is slightly charred. The ladies take it to the kitchen. If you do it right there is a red ring around the inside of the brisket signifying it has been cooked to perfection. You can pluck a piece off with a plastic fork. Custom has it the oldest lady gets first bite. Then the kids, then the adults.

What is left goes into a chili, or a pot of beans. Dogs get the fat. Brisket is just about as sorry a piece of meat you can legally feed to a human being, but a side box smoker will turn it into prime rib. You never clean the smoker. That would be an abomination. Every brisket leaves a bit of itself in the metal. You just “burn it off.” You take a stiff wire brush and scrape the lid to remove the “char” so it won’t fall down onto the meat as you open the smoker to check it. Always cook a brisket with the fat side up so it self seasons. Bar B Que sauce is a no no. Use hickory wood and pour Italian dressing all over it. You don’t need a meat thermometer. If you can pull a piece off with a fork then it’s done. First bite!

There is a spiritual side to a smoker. As it gains age, people come and go. Some die. If you live in Texas you tend to think the departed come back on special days and they, too, sit around the smoker, and commune with family and friends. If you are not a believer then you at least remember the happy times, and great briskets of the past. The children grow up remembering all the times family and friends gathered, the smoke filled the air, and for a little while all was well. And the old, black smoker was always there.

When a smoker is gone you can buy another one, but everyone will always talk about the old one as if it were a family member. Even bitter fights would cease on special days because it took so much to attend to the smoker. Here’s to all the smokers out there. Here’s to all the families, and friends who ate the brisket, drank the beer, and wished the smoker would never go out. Happy Labor day everyone.

The Targeting of America

Targeting America
by Wilbur Witt

I haven’t written a lot on the shutdown because I was watching to see how it rolled out. Now, I’m just a simple ol’ boy from Austin so silly me, I thought shut down meant, well, that meant shut DOWN! Like everyone else I was a little perturbed when the open air Vietnam Wall was fenced off. The WWII memorial was a trip. Then Yellowstone, Big Bend, THE OCEAN! And I began to see a pattern. It seemed like the people most affected by the shut down were the middle class, elderly, responsible citizens. Didn’t look like any of Obama’s food stamp constituency got touched very much at all!

The administration has gone through great pains to make sure that middle America felt the shut down to the NTh degree, but that people who couldn’t tell you what state the Grand Canyon was even in hardly felt it at all. This is a specific targeting of America. Obama is paying middle America back for its sins of affluence, hard work and responsibility. This struck me, and one other thing; If parks and oceans, and holes in the ground fall under this system, is that all they do? JFK said, “We choose to go to the moon,” Obama can’t even keep NASA open!

And I know the liberal Obamists out there will scream it wasn’t Obama’s fault. To them I say one word . . .OBAMAcare! That’s what started this ball rolling. Ignorant, insolvent, Detroit-style health care that almost NOone wanted, but it was Obama’s “signature” effort and if it fails (and it IS failing) then that’s the icing on the cake and this big, liberal experiment in nincompoopery is revealed as the three ring circus is always has been!

This is why the Republic of Texas is so vitally important. The last bastion of common sense. The last place where people realize that keeping a park open is not all that hard. The last civilization that understands that keeping a granite wall accessible to old men who want to roll up in their wheel chairs and simply touch a name! The last group of people who clearly comprehend that in order to vote you simply MUST be able to prove who you are and prove you have a right to make decisions for the country you’re living in!

For the life of me I will never know how Obama has dodged impeachment. What does he have to do before the Senate and the Congress wake up and bring him up on charges? And they’re at fault, too. If they had one iota of civic responsibility in the lot of them they could end this and override any veto that slithered out of the White House. But they won’t do that. They’re too busy giving a standing ovation at the killing of a mother who drove her car too close to the White House.

Roulette Method

Roulette
by Wilbur Witt

Found this method last year but didn’t get a chance to try it out. Throw $50 toward this and see how it works. It came from a team of students at Harvard.

Buy $50 – $100 in chips, all $10 denominations. Sit at the table. Never bet on a number, only colors. Watch the computer screen and wait until there are five consecutive red or black wins. Sometimes you have to wait a while. Don’t let yourself be rushed. When you have the five consecutive wins bet on the opposite color. Bet $10. If you lose, bet $20. Lose again, bet $30. When you win, wait again and do the same thing over and over again. If the Green Bastard gets you start the process over again. Continue this method, and don’t get stupid. Don’t let the bet ride, or leap to trying to cover a bunch of numbers in an effort to “cash in.” If you lose your original investment leave the table and come back tomorrow. Down side, you lose $50- $100. Upside, you have to cash in your chips and sneak out to another casino.