Napcast 36 or The Killing Spree of Saturday Night
I am posting this now, because the podcast is finished, and to give Heidi a break from her blog woes today. 
Hello. This podcast will accompany a tale of Aleutian village living. I've shared a couple of stories about what it's like to live in this small village. So some of you have heard me tell of the things I will kick off this post with. Hang in there if you've heard it all before.I promise that I'll eventually get to the killing spree of Saturday night.
It's kind of hard for people to relate to living on this island because of the extreme differences between here and, say, where you are right now. We don't have any law enforcement. There's no Churches. There's no 911 operators. There's no swimming pools. There's no pavement. There's no movie theater. No cell phone service. No AM/FM radio. Sometimes I can catch NPR in between native village birthday messages and NOAA weather reports from a station in Dillingham, when the weather isn't shitty. The weather is always shitty. In fact, it's a favorite past time to insult the pussy storms in other places... places like where you live.
We do have some things here that you probably have there. Like clouds (but our sky has a smaller ceiling) and all kinds of berries and eclectic geologists and electricity and plumbing and the occasional spat of generosity and good times and ... Oprah moments. Our produce is all two weeks old when we get it off of the barge, but wait... ah. You almost had me there. See how easy it is for me to try and lose to your cheap buffet of excessive resources? It's tricky looking positive next to you... Don't try to help me. I've lived in both worlds and I'll only abuse your soft spot.
There's 6 children in the school.
There's about thirty of us on this island right now. In the past few months, we have held three funerals. Two people drowned off of our docks. Many other villages held contempt for our string of losses, and most of these tragedies were because of transient people's bullshit. All of us in the village are still freshly mourning our dead beloved, as a 1,000 mile long second rate trail of ink pours salt in our wounds with slanderous accusations from dirt bag reporters. Dear Dirt Bags, You suck at journalism and your intuition is pretty bad too.
Russian Orthodox funeral services are a very somber affair. So, I won't additionally crud up the memory of people we've lost by talking shit on the coke-guzzling priest that flew in here to whip up some holy water in a pot I left at the last spaghetti dinner and take cash donations for his troubles. You wanna know what holy water looks and smells like after it has sat for a month? It looks like malaria and smells like plague.
My dog was killed by wolves at summer's onset along with 5 other dogs here. There's no leash law. Dogs are untethered. Ever lived in a place where packs of dogs run the streets? We can't even euthanize them legally. If a dog can't be helped by me after being torn apart in a gang fight or run over, they get shot in the head at the garbage dump. That's pretty much THE option. Some cops in Dutch Harbor declined having injectable drugs to put down dogs, because they said "It could fall into the wrong hands and it's easier to just shoot them." Uh... Stellar work guys. Thanks for that. I hear there's positions open in Reno.
Dogs are largely allowed to run wild because of bears. This is a refuge with a thousand or so bears. Grizzly Bears kill salmon less than 50 feet from my front door in the creek's terminus... A float plane that seats 4 people comes to bring mail when the weather doesn't suck. The weather always sucks. We don't have runway lights.
It's a hard place to live, though it's gotten easier in the past 100 years, but it still holds the character of it's former self. The population swells in the summers when fishing is more lucrative. Violence and drunken crimes have always been par for the course. The Village has shriveled in the past few years. Marine traffic is slower due to IFQ's. A highlight, I suppose is that a harbor is being built. A land based value added seafood processing plant is under construction also. When it is eventually completed, the work force brought in to fill it will double our population. ... with more fucked up people usually. People who don't do so hot when getting their first dose of the real wild west. Anyways, the only way for this place to survive right now is with this development. So, good luck to us I guess.
But this is all just a little background information. There's more to this place than the hardships. There's beauty EVERYWHERE. But for the sake of brevity, I want to tell you what happened here last night, and I've already gone too far in to the set up.
We communicate largely via a VHF radio. CB radio essentially. Some people don't have phones, or we need to know what's going on in town if we are outside or on boats, so the radio is an essential part of our life. I am one of two medics here. My title is actually different from a medic, but think of me as a crappily outfitted field nurse in a place with no doctors, and only one or two EMTs who are never sober.
"911! 911! Emergency at X's house! Please come help us" It was shrieked over the radio at about 11 pm.
We have learned to not run out the door without knowing what kind of an emergency we are responding to. If it's a fire and we show up with no water.. that house is gone. At least this person identified the location. The whole village has torn off in every direction trying to help when someone's last transmission was "Fire! Fire! Help!". One of the saddest days here, was when we heard that the mayor's fishing boat was on fire. Million dollar investments gone. Livli-hood threatened. Sons no longer inherit a boat. It's honestly devastating. Alot of people don't recover from that. This family is though. But, that morning on the beach, standing and watching his boat burn. Watching 4 guys in a smoke engulfed skiff trying to save this village icon in 60 mile per hour winds... broke my heart. Here I am on the shore with oxygen tanks and juice when you're done failing... Where was I? Oh yeah. The murders.
"What is going on?" My husband answers.
Completely distraught, the woman yells, "Oh god. He's crazy! ... Killing everyone. ... 4 people.... blood everywhere.... house is destroyed.... they're beating the hell out of us. Won't anyone come. Send the Medic. Send the medic!"
As much as I think that running into a slaughter and donning my Punisher/Nightingale superwear, there is Reality ... first rule is scene safety. You can't help if you're dead.
Of course I am wondering who the killer is, since we know everyone here. I assume it is the burly blonde dude that jumped off of a boat last night when he quit his job. This isn't Seattle. You don't just dump your fucked crew members on us without warning. Thanks F/V Determined. My point is that there was a stranger wandering around town with nowhere to stay (not unusual)... and rumor had it that he was a little off. He was from Virginia and had done a tour in Iraq... So you know.. He could be our killer. If you are interested in my story of how a former pseudo cop attacked himself and tried to blame it on Ninjas, let me know. But I digress. Jesus. It's like I can't get out of the set up.
"This is the medic. I can hear you. Who is killing people? Where is the killer? How many people are hurt? What kind of injuries do you have" I say.
"I don't know. You're the medic. Won't anyone please come. oh god. help. Knives and his eye ball is hanging out. Why isn't anyone coming?" She shrieks.
"I need to know that the scene is safe for me to go in there, I have to know more details . As soon as someone can clearly explain to me what is going on up there,... I will come and help you." I say. My heart racing. Wanting to go, but knowing better especially since everyone here has guns. I am on the phone with three men as this is going on. Trying to get the guys to go check it out first. I mean, killers? No cops... The men aren't too interested in a shit storm either, but accept the request to investigate, knowing someone has to do it. They all have guns too.
During this exchange on the radio, this super drama queen who works at the post office has jumped on the radio, wasted, to put her two cents in. Nothing important to say really. No service to offer, in the midst of a major crisis. Just being a fucking moron. What's she gonna do, show up and lick some stamps for me in triage? That was my chance to finally give her what for, but my husband beats me to it and tells her to get the fuck off the radio until we know what's going on. She was at a bonfire here, drunk off her lips, telling people that they were partying with a federal employee. In her swimming eyes, she is an extension of the president. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention. Fuck the President and you suck at being a Postmaster.
Calls start coming back to me that there isn't shit happening at the house in the valley where the calls are coming from. Everyone inside has been drinking for days. There's no blood. No one is dead. No massacre. I don't doubt that there was some kind of domestic disturbance to kick off the calls, but seriously. What the fuck? "He's killing everyone"? "Eyeballs hanging"? I still had to go out and see for myself, so I wasn't being negligent. I left out some other details of the radio chatter, that would make this story even more interesting... But I'm already being a wind bag about one night in my little world.
After the fact, my husband was kicking himself for "falling for it." Falling for what? If a family is drinking and they have a history of violence, what else are you supposed to assume? That announcing a massacre is a joke? We have no lifeline here. We don't have the luxury of guessing people's motivations. We have no choice but to respond because we are all directly impacted by every single thing that goes down here. These people aren't natural comedians either, so I've pretty much given up on there being any decent comedy on the radio, like that households are being mowed down by some crazy fucker who's killing everyone.
This place isn't new to fucked up radio chatter, but that was a new one for sure. I thought I had heard it all on the radio here. I've been part of some of it, I guess. But it can be fucking mental here. Residents get blasted and play the most obscure music. Shit from the Twilight Zone. Gummo country. I think I did hear "Blue Bayou" once though... But I may have created that memory. If people can fabricate entire crime scenes for me to deal with, then I am a god damned amateur at story telling if all I've got here is some hallucinated Linda Ronstadt. People playing crap on the radio is a pain in the ass for a couple of reasons. If someone is using the airspace, you can only receive the transmission, and not transmit over it. If you happen to be sleeping when useless garbage is playing on the VHF, you would think that getting on there between songs and telling the person to shut the fuck up would be a wise thing to do. Not wise. Not wise at all. But you can't turn the radio down, because it's used to communicate things like you know... tsunami's, volcanic ash, a constant string of earthquakes, men overboard, bears, freighters, the ferry and general distress calls like "bloody murder".
It's interesting to note, that we just purchased the property in the photo at the top of this post, last week from the crazed lady of this story on the VHF. (You could say we enabled her binge, and many more to come, with the money paid for it.) I can't wait until it's completely renovated and she returns to visit her sister here. She will see what we've done to the place and probably burn it to the fucking ground or assault our tenants. Someone gave me a letter that she wrote to our City Council here 15 years ago. It was about how upset she was that the pseudo cop we had at the time had murdered her family dog in the corridor of their house. I never knew why the letter was supposed to be humorous until last night. Now I get it. That lady is fucking whack.
Oh and you know what. A friend was recently telling me the story of the man who gave up all his possessions and trekked off into Alaska. Sean Penn adapted the book into a movie about his life which is coming out soon. My friend asked me what I thought. And it's the same way I thought about the Grizzly Man documentary. The story in general. Good for you if you're an adventuresome naturalist. But I will never be totally inspired by your story because you made stupid choices and died. I'd rather watch 30 Days of Night, with zombies killing people in the Arctic Circle, than watch another depressing example of Man vs. Nature. Maybe that's because I live in that Bush, instead of where the majority of you live, where stories like that are generally touching and inspiring.
So, in conclusion... I am a misfit, but uh... looking around me. I'm pretty sure I am one of the stable ones. And I am not saying that this is THE most fucked up place to live on Earth, but it's pretty fucking fucked up. So, Hello from Alaska, bitches. Hope you like this podcast episode. Look forward to Charlie Naked hosting next weeks podcast. As usual, you can hear the episode by clicking on the link of the NAP home page. Oh yeah. And Anaconda, I know you weren't pitting vinyl against mp3s etc... but I didn't have time to script my intro. Finally, the play list will show up in your itunes window now when listening.
What does this story have to do with music? I am this weeks podcast host. And here it is.
Hello. This podcast will accompany a tale of Aleutian village living. I've shared a couple of stories about what it's like to live in this small village. So some of you have heard me tell of the things I will kick off this post with. Hang in there if you've heard it all before.
It's kind of hard for people to relate to living on this island because of the extreme differences between here and, say, where you are right now. We don't have any law enforcement. There's no Churches. There's no 911 operators. There's no swimming pools. There's no pavement. There's no movie theater. No cell phone service. No AM/FM radio. Sometimes I can catch NPR in between native village birthday messages and NOAA weather reports from a station in Dillingham, when the weather isn't shitty. The weather is always shitty. In fact, it's a favorite past time to insult the pussy storms in other places... places like where you live.
We do have some things here that you probably have there. Like clouds (but our sky has a smaller ceiling) and all kinds of berries and eclectic geologists and electricity and plumbing and the occasional spat of generosity and good times and ... Oprah moments. Our produce is all two weeks old when we get it off of the barge, but wait... ah. You almost had me there. See how easy it is for me to try and lose to your cheap buffet of excessive resources? It's tricky looking positive next to you... Don't try to help me. I've lived in both worlds and I'll only abuse your soft spot.
There's 6 children in the school.
There's about thirty of us on this island right now. In the past few months, we have held three funerals. Two people drowned off of our docks. Many other villages held contempt for our string of losses, and most of these tragedies were because of transient people's bullshit. All of us in the village are still freshly mourning our dead beloved, as a 1,000 mile long second rate trail of ink pours salt in our wounds with slanderous accusations from dirt bag reporters. Dear Dirt Bags, You suck at journalism and your intuition is pretty bad too.
Russian Orthodox funeral services are a very somber affair. So, I won't additionally crud up the memory of people we've lost by talking shit on the coke-guzzling priest that flew in here to whip up some holy water in a pot I left at the last spaghetti dinner and take cash donations for his troubles. You wanna know what holy water looks and smells like after it has sat for a month? It looks like malaria and smells like plague.
My dog was killed by wolves at summer's onset along with 5 other dogs here. There's no leash law. Dogs are untethered. Ever lived in a place where packs of dogs run the streets? We can't even euthanize them legally. If a dog can't be helped by me after being torn apart in a gang fight or run over, they get shot in the head at the garbage dump. That's pretty much THE option. Some cops in Dutch Harbor declined having injectable drugs to put down dogs, because they said "It could fall into the wrong hands and it's easier to just shoot them." Uh... Stellar work guys. Thanks for that. I hear there's positions open in Reno.
Dogs are largely allowed to run wild because of bears. This is a refuge with a thousand or so bears. Grizzly Bears kill salmon less than 50 feet from my front door in the creek's terminus... A float plane that seats 4 people comes to bring mail when the weather doesn't suck. The weather always sucks. We don't have runway lights.
It's a hard place to live, though it's gotten easier in the past 100 years, but it still holds the character of it's former self. The population swells in the summers when fishing is more lucrative. Violence and drunken crimes have always been par for the course. The Village has shriveled in the past few years. Marine traffic is slower due to IFQ's. A highlight, I suppose is that a harbor is being built. A land based value added seafood processing plant is under construction also. When it is eventually completed, the work force brought in to fill it will double our population. ... with more fucked up people usually. People who don't do so hot when getting their first dose of the real wild west. Anyways, the only way for this place to survive right now is with this development. So, good luck to us I guess.
But this is all just a little background information. There's more to this place than the hardships. There's beauty EVERYWHERE. But for the sake of brevity, I want to tell you what happened here last night, and I've already gone too far in to the set up.
We communicate largely via a VHF radio. CB radio essentially. Some people don't have phones, or we need to know what's going on in town if we are outside or on boats, so the radio is an essential part of our life. I am one of two medics here. My title is actually different from a medic, but think of me as a crappily outfitted field nurse in a place with no doctors, and only one or two EMTs who are never sober.
We have learned to not run out the door without knowing what kind of an emergency we are responding to. If it's a fire and we show up with no water.. that house is gone. At least this person identified the location. The whole village has torn off in every direction trying to help when someone's last transmission was "Fire! Fire! Help!". One of the saddest days here, was when we heard that the mayor's fishing boat was on fire. Million dollar investments gone. Livli-hood threatened. Sons no longer inherit a boat. It's honestly devastating. Alot of people don't recover from that. This family is though. But, that morning on the beach, standing and watching his boat burn. Watching 4 guys in a smoke engulfed skiff trying to save this village icon in 60 mile per hour winds... broke my heart. Here I am on the shore with oxygen tanks and juice when you're done failing... Where was I? Oh yeah. The murders.
Completely distraught, the woman yells, "Oh god. He's crazy! ... Killing everyone. ... 4 people.... blood everywhere.... house is destroyed.... they're beating the hell out of us. Won't anyone come. Send the Medic. Send the medic!"
As much as I think that running into a slaughter and donning my Punisher/Nightingale superwear, there is Reality ... first rule is scene safety. You can't help if you're dead.
Of course I am wondering who the killer is, since we know everyone here. I assume it is the burly blonde dude that jumped off of a boat last night when he quit his job. This isn't Seattle. You don't just dump your fucked crew members on us without warning. Thanks F/V Determined. My point is that there was a stranger wandering around town with nowhere to stay (not unusual)... and rumor had it that he was a little off. He was from Virginia and had done a tour in Iraq... So you know.. He could be our killer. If you are interested in my story of how a former pseudo cop attacked himself and tried to blame it on Ninjas, let me know. But I digress. Jesus. It's like I can't get out of the set up.
"This is the medic. I can hear you. Who is killing people? Where is the killer? How many people are hurt? What kind of injuries do you have" I say.
"I don't know. You're the medic. Won't anyone please come. oh god. help. Knives and his eye ball is hanging out. Why isn't anyone coming?" She shrieks.
"I need to know that the scene is safe for me to go in there, I have to know more details . As soon as someone can clearly explain to me what is going on up there,... I will come and help you." I say. My heart racing. Wanting to go, but knowing better especially since everyone here has guns. I am on the phone with three men as this is going on. Trying to get the guys to go check it out first. I mean, killers? No cops... The men aren't too interested in a shit storm either, but accept the request to investigate, knowing someone has to do it. They all have guns too.
During this exchange on the radio, this super drama queen who works at the post office has jumped on the radio, wasted, to put her two cents in. Nothing important to say really. No service to offer, in the midst of a major crisis. Just being a fucking moron. What's she gonna do, show up and lick some stamps for me in triage? That was my chance to finally give her what for, but my husband beats me to it and tells her to get the fuck off the radio until we know what's going on. She was at a bonfire here, drunk off her lips, telling people that they were partying with a federal employee. In her swimming eyes, she is an extension of the president. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention. Fuck the President and you suck at being a Postmaster.
Calls start coming back to me that there isn't shit happening at the house in the valley where the calls are coming from. Everyone inside has been drinking for days. There's no blood. No one is dead. No massacre. I don't doubt that there was some kind of domestic disturbance to kick off the calls, but seriously. What the fuck? "He's killing everyone"? "Eyeballs hanging"? I still had to go out and see for myself, so I wasn't being negligent. I left out some other details of the radio chatter, that would make this story even more interesting... But I'm already being a wind bag about one night in my little world.
After the fact, my husband was kicking himself for "falling for it." Falling for what? If a family is drinking and they have a history of violence, what else are you supposed to assume? That announcing a massacre is a joke? We have no lifeline here. We don't have the luxury of guessing people's motivations. We have no choice but to respond because we are all directly impacted by every single thing that goes down here. These people aren't natural comedians either, so I've pretty much given up on there being any decent comedy on the radio, like that households are being mowed down by some crazy fucker who's killing everyone.
This place isn't new to fucked up radio chatter, but that was a new one for sure. I thought I had heard it all on the radio here. I've been part of some of it, I guess. But it can be fucking mental here. Residents get blasted and play the most obscure music. Shit from the Twilight Zone. Gummo country. I think I did hear "Blue Bayou" once though... But I may have created that memory. If people can fabricate entire crime scenes for me to deal with, then I am a god damned amateur at story telling if all I've got here is some hallucinated Linda Ronstadt. People playing crap on the radio is a pain in the ass for a couple of reasons. If someone is using the airspace, you can only receive the transmission, and not transmit over it. If you happen to be sleeping when useless garbage is playing on the VHF, you would think that getting on there between songs and telling the person to shut the fuck up would be a wise thing to do. Not wise. Not wise at all. But you can't turn the radio down, because it's used to communicate things like you know... tsunami's, volcanic ash, a constant string of earthquakes, men overboard, bears, freighters, the ferry and general distress calls like "bloody murder".
It's interesting to note, that we just purchased the property in the photo at the top of this post, last week from the crazed lady of this story on the VHF. (You could say we enabled her binge, and many more to come, with the money paid for it.) I can't wait until it's completely renovated and she returns to visit her sister here. She will see what we've done to the place and probably burn it to the fucking ground or assault our tenants. Someone gave me a letter that she wrote to our City Council here 15 years ago. It was about how upset she was that the pseudo cop we had at the time had murdered her family dog in the corridor of their house. I never knew why the letter was supposed to be humorous until last night. Now I get it. That lady is fucking whack.
Oh and you know what. A friend was recently telling me the story of the man who gave up all his possessions and trekked off into Alaska. Sean Penn adapted the book into a movie about his life which is coming out soon. My friend asked me what I thought. And it's the same way I thought about the Grizzly Man documentary. The story in general. Good for you if you're an adventuresome naturalist. But I will never be totally inspired by your story because you made stupid choices and died. I'd rather watch 30 Days of Night, with zombies killing people in the Arctic Circle, than watch another depressing example of Man vs. Nature. Maybe that's because I live in that Bush, instead of where the majority of you live, where stories like that are generally touching and inspiring.
So, in conclusion... I am a misfit, but uh... looking around me. I'm pretty sure I am one of the stable ones. And I am not saying that this is THE most fucked up place to live on Earth, but it's pretty fucking fucked up. So, Hello from Alaska, bitches. Hope you like this podcast episode. Look forward to Charlie Naked hosting next weeks podcast. As usual, you can hear the episode by clicking on the link of the NAP home page. Oh yeah. And Anaconda, I know you weren't pitting vinyl against mp3s etc... but I didn't have time to script my intro. Finally, the play list will show up in your itunes window now when listening.
What does this story have to do with music? I am this weeks podcast host. And here it is.
Labels: Aleutian Living, killing spree, podcast
18 Comments:
You know what's hard? It's hard when you go to the grocery store and have to choose from the forty different varieties of breakfast cereal there. How is a person supposed to deal with that? And I'll be damned if I didn't catch every red light on the way to work today. And do you have ennui up there, Missy? Do you? All you have are bears and guns. Quit your complaining.
"And do you have ennui up there, Missy?" Are you fucking kidding? You have got to visit Alaska in the winter time.
And I wasn't complaining. I was reveling in the glory. Basking in the holy. Rolling in the pretty dirt, cuddling in the happy death grip that is this place.
This is a long ass post. I should cut it in half or something.
sheesh! your life sounds, oh. maybe just a tad more intense than mine. i cook here in austin and i stress when i put to much salt in the soup. anyway, after reading Into The Wild, about the drifter who starved in the bush, and watching werner herzogs' documentary Grizzly Man, i have these conflicting thoughts: both of these guys were idiots, and both were heroes. i understand your take about people travelling to your harsh neck of the woods ill prepared and ill informed, but there is much more to the story. both of these men were complex individuals who were brought to alaska by desires that could not be satisfied in the modern world, desires they probably couldn't really articulate. that their adventures ended in death seemed to be a tragic loss of worthwhile, though misguided, people. after reading their stories, i really couldn't decide if they were genuses or jackasses. i'm not meaning to be funny, my ambivelence is genuine.
i'm not ragging on your opinion at all, just saying that there is almost always more to the story.
anyway, excelent post. you should keep a journal and write your own book. i'm serious.
brian furr
p.s. : is there any way you could pump a mixture of antibuse and prozac into the village water supply?
Wow. that was worth taking a break from wet-scraping lead paint off the garage. jealous?
I agree with Brian. There's more to Into the Wild. In fact most of the book doesn't even take place in Alaska.
Speaking of "more to the story" I found the comments to Brian's post really added more dimension to the Matt character. Nice job all, Sparrow especially.
HI Brian, Thanks for reading and commenting on my out of control rant.
Sean Penn could pretty much put some sugar on his shit and I would eat it. I am sure I will end up watching Into the Wild. I haven't read Krakhauer's book about McCandless.
I just looked at this wiki summary, and felt bad for being one of the chiding Alaskans mentioned... for about one second.
I can fall for any story of hardship. I can appreciate the drive that puts naturalists in the wilderness. This is going to sound really fucked up, but there's just not too many naturalists that don't bore me to death. Spending alot of time with them is like sitting in a room full of religious zealots to me. Get me the fuck outta here.
I have had friends who have gone off on soul seeking journeys into the wild for months with very basic tools. People come to this island regularly to hike it or the volcanoes. They usually don't finish what they started. I guess I should at least read Christopher's journal before I knock him... It's just. You play, You pay. I think it's sad that he had decided to return to society and then he died.
A couple of years ago, I had to fly with a helicopter pilot to another side of the island, where some guys were filming a BBC documentary. They had this guide from Denali. This isn't Denali. They had run out of food. They were surrounded by bears (which was good for the doc) but they had no gun.
The Denali guy was like, "we don't need guns. you just need to know how to deal with the bears." Ok guy. You're so smart, that's why we're bringing you food one week out from completing your shoot.
It's not that bears can't be dealt with without using guns. If you're going to camp in the middle of where they eat... you might not want to die.
It's one thing to live off the land. That's a way of life here. But it's not a way of life that is just dumped in your lap and you go at it alone.
Do I have compassion for McCandless? sure. Do I think he fucked up? Maybe not in his eyes. But in my eyes.. Yes. He fucked up. He didn't have a way to ask for help. And that is stupid, if you are going into extreme places alone.
I also enjoyed your post Brian and agree with Kilian.
Oh and Brian,
I used to cook graveyard at the Gagnolia cafe on Congress for a few years in Austin.
one cook to another.. I just want you to know that too much salt is not the problem. The problem is the wait staff.
And also, antibuse in the water supply would be great here, except people would get tired of throwing up and stop drinking the water, and only drink whiskey.
I thought they only did drink the whiskey.
Loved the post, fantastic job as always. Wish there were more of them.
I also enjoyed the Krakauer book, but you are right, McCandless got what he asked for. Yes, it's a shame in a way, I guess, but that's part of the deal. If you play, you do pay. Chris did. Things still go on.
HS - do you know Jim Parsons who did a lot of early IBP stuff?
He's on a new CBS sitcom called Big Bang Theory that is on right this very moment in Chicago - pilot episode.
The show will probaby suck but Jim Parson is a funny guy.
i hope, for your sake, that all the crazy people where you live don't read this blog.
god dammit i'm bored. i think i'm gonna start yelling random shit on my useless radio.
too bad no one will hear it.
Amazing story and well told. Very intense situation and excellent descpription of your island.
Kilian,
I knew I recognized that guy. He was in his underwear on that episode. That's not how I recognized him.
Anonymous,
The people who live here, know me. If for example, the postmaster read this... she'd try to beat me up and lose.
Jonathan,
That's the spirit.
Anaconda,
Thank you sir. And thank you.
The more that I think about it Anonymous...
I don't think I said anything wrong. Nothing to hide from at least. Once you live in a town with 30 people, you lose the luxury of being anonymous. I do miss that most probably. Seeing people I will never have to deal with daily, is a luxury by the way.
Several songs about small town living are coming to mind, none of them all that cozy.
ugh that made me want to throw up. it caught me by surprise. thanks though hs i do love a good story. and well told!
dd i know i've never told you this but i never read your posts about the island because the very notion of being alone on an island - even hypothetically - makes me distraught.
i've never appreciated the kind of man vs. nature types mentioned in commentary. the first thing i think is "don't you know you're gonna get some local (who can't stand by and let you kill yourself) killed?" kinda like interpreters in iraq who translate for the military - or those sherpa people who take idiots up into the mountains - or the natives who push the boat up and over the mountain for herzog - or that grizzly idiot who got his girlfriend killed. goddamn each and every nincompoop who is so self-centered that they gotta get innocents involved in their crazy.
oh lovie...your ranting is what reminds me that you are, and will always be one of my best friends...
so, pissed the fuck off is the right emotion that fits the scenerio you described.
it sounds as if the pass of falseness remains to be entertaining, to say the least.
i'm still tossing around the idea of heading down the islands and visiting for a few weeks, i've got to check into the last ferry dates and get my schedule together here, i'm still waiting for a certain boat to hit the dock, i hear they may arrive within the week, or in a week...yeah yeah, you know the routine...Weather permit's all...
so the Determined was determined to leave it's bad child on someone else's doorstep heh...how christian of them to share in the wealth. (they could have atleast made the trip to the cove to ensure this red-headed stepchild could have some sort of accomidations) i mean, don't get me wrong, i've had my share of crewmembers that i'd like to drop of on a rock before, but some sort of civility should be in order, atleast duct-tape the fucker and throw him in the lazarette until you hit the dock to deliver, it takes two weeks to starve to death, he'll last a few days.
hey- do you have the right to refuse service to certain "personalites" or is that against some oath of 'care-givers' and considered taboo amoungst the main stream medical advisory boards....or what ever the fuck they call themselves....you know those people that regulate our morals and decide when enough is enough....when was the last time this 'girls' (i would say woman, but that is an insult to the rest of us) mental state was evaluated,
the little girl that cried wolf sounds as if she could use a little intervention before she erupts like Pavaloff.
don't let the ash settle upon you.
shake like a duck, water off your back. you can teach the electric eel that one, a new dance from her aunti-christ-i.
call you tomorrow.
love and miss you.
sorry to hear about joan jett--
reminds me how close, yet how far away i am.
never anonymous.like you
Sweet. How I've been missing the Aunty Christ.
Same old shit over here obviously.
By the way, crazy lady went home. To the village YOU adopted.
Mental health... yeah. You would think something could be done there. Problem is the alcohol. And as you know, alcohol treatment and facilities in AK..... not cutting the mustard. After detox, you wait 8 months for a bed in a residential center.. So what happens when you return to the village before your bed comes up in 8 months? It's an endless cycle of abuse. I used to think I knew what drunk was from working in bars. Little did I know.
Look forward to your call.. Hopefully we won't be in Demolition when you call. Let's talk a time.
MIss you too.
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