Weak radio stations from far away remind me of clever killers and dead dogs.

Top of the morning gents,

Just finished assembling a super neato antennae for my little AM radio.

No prob with the local broadcast. Earl Finkler in the morning and NPR discharge all damn day comes in loud and clear, I was just missing far away broadcasts that teleport me away from 2 weeks of white out blizzard shit North of 70 lat, to late night radio throughout the Killing Fields of the Pacific Northwest.

Art Bell.

The Farm Report.

Theater of the mind.

Good stuff for late night radio buffs. Also good for lads that prefer to drive when they are their brightest; graveyard shift mates.

I recommend you drive across Washington, Idaho, or Montana. Late nights are the best, just truckers and driving enthusiasts in over-sized American sedans.

On late night drives through Healy, Cantwell, and Denali, there's about 200 miles of zero radio reception. Zero radio if you avoid "Your gospel voice in the Arctic. KJNP North Pole, Alaska and KJHA Houston, Alaska."

Yeah I know, the Christian message is a little thick and ripe, but it keeps me company.

Here's a real loser. I'll admit it, I've also listened to the Denali Park radio broadcast over and over until I drove beyond its transmitter range. Now that's a lonely fucking driver.

Watching the road is job 1, but the best audio stimulant is AM radio, good stuff aimed at yer imagination.

My dad and brother Tobus overhauled and renovated an old two-story house in Pullman, Washington, two blocks uphill from the main drag. My duties were to wrap up all the wallboard, paint, and trim, and hang hand varnished doors. The steps between major construction and groomed for sale. Nice project if I don't say so myself.

All summer I baked in the heat, enjoyed most days, some not. Like my smelly, yet highly adapted garments required here in the arctic, functioning in wheat field cheat grass burning smoke, at a roasting 96 degrees, forces me to readjust.

If I claimed the temperature was over a hunnert, I'd be lying. I'm a wuss fucking Alaskan, all aspects of interior or exterior dressing suck past 65 degrees above zero, so bite me.

All day I'd crank wheat farm talk radio, I could even hum most of the melodies, to goddamned farming equipment adverts more annoying than Cal Worthington.

Ya see, besides Barrow or Kotzebue, I adapt and settle in wherever I hang my hat. Looking back over the last 20 years, that's been numerous zip codes, and sovereigns.

Late at night, there were easily 2 or more Art Bell shows, with haunting music and phone interviews with UFO experts, and abducted amateurs. If you were normal fucking morons, you'd have normal fucking friends. Not amoral psychopaths that either assist or disable every municipal police department wherever possible.

I've got a tremendous curiosity for the phenomenal, including you sons of birches. Chilling thought.

From Spokane to the Columbia River, or Trapper Creek to Houston, Alaska I can locate a weak station, sometimes weird shit from Wyoming or South Dakota. Some skips are audible only for brief periods before Healy or after Cantwell.

Some skips can travel half way around the globe. About a hunnert years ago, I rode with Dean during my graveyard shift while Midol ran the comms. I was fascinated with the number of Russian radio stations our dude Westlake could isolate and lock on to, with shitty Jeep radios too.

We took a cigarette break near the dumps, chatted about our next gun and ammo orders with Pim, and thoroughly enjoyed a BBC news broadcast, from where I've no clue. On any other night, I'd be receiving shooting lessons, this dark evening we just enjoyed good tobacco and coffee and talked about man shit.

Hate to admit this with you vicious mother fuckers, but I used to lay awake some nights in my dorm room in Russia or Finland and reminisce about you guys.

I'd rattle on with my colleagues how awesome you guys were, even share tightly kept secrets of delicious police brutality with them. As the years rollled by, even my Russian and Finnish pals missed you boys, despite never meeting you. Ya see, all the characters in my life are storybook characters.

Sad to say, you'll all live on in my tales, long after I take you out to shoot all those fuckers that were insincere in their affections for you, and after Nolton and Nay bag you and pitch you into the trunk of their patrol car.

If any of you follow in my footsteps to remote dumps on other continents, you will merely have to mention your names and village of origin, it's a sure bet a few dozen Finns or Russians will insist on buying you drinks.

To refresh my loathe for subhumans-subarctic, I broadcasted KOTZ in every goddamned computer lab I haunted. Dan Henry was the gut buster extraordinaire, we'd all try to decipher his toothless mumblings, then gag at his sexual attachment to Elvis.

At a posh dinner party with Dwayne Weleschuck and Timo Aristo, a Canuk and a Finn, I was asked to recite the tale of dead dogs, the embellished version.

On numerous occasions I'd retell my overtime duties from Chief Nolton about cleaning out the old fire hall of a few dozen dead dogs. I'd also relay how Mike Kramer and I would stack freshly killed dogs all around his fox, wolverine, and wolf traps as an enhanced form of bear baiting, but with freezing and leaking dogs of all sizes and flavors.

I'd drag my audience right into my tales of savagery and cruelty. One tale that evoked numerous glasses of port, brandy, and sherry, was when I went out shooting dogs with Blanchard. We used his in-laws pickup and pulled double duty on canine assassination detail. I wore my nasty coveralls and fish stink coat, boots and gloves, and a 22 rifle compliments of Pim.

I popped dogs running all over. Some dogs were still leashed on their chains, but got snuffed anyway, cuz they were as mean, smelly and ugly as their ice nigger owners.

Some pooches thought they'd hide under their owners houses. Rotsa ruck. I climbed under a bunch of houses to shoot fleeing non-felines, awakening their occupants above me. The folks that didn't awake to the muffled pop of a 22 rifle, also slept through seeing me drag clusters of canine corpses out from their yard and pitch them into Blanchard’s pickup.

If someone started yelling at me for being under their house, I merely left their dead mutt to freeze and escaped out the back undetected. A stinking and rotting present to improve their quality of life after breakup.

Ya see, Blanchard stayed with the truck and police radio, I meandered through the back yards shooting everything in site. Blanchard met me at the far end of each block assisting me in loading the truck with fresh killed poopy pooches.

The capper to my tales was the total number of snuffed puppies; 1500 a year. Yes, I know this figure is a bit far fetched, but it was accurate for a couple of years. I never claimed to kill more than a few truck loads of dogs, a couple dozen for each shift.

After Blanchard moved to Spokane, Washington I rode with Billy Bird, or Black Bird as I fondly called him. He and I were just plain stupid. I shelved my 22 rifle for my shotgun and we went crazy killing as many dogs as we could. The problem with shotguns is pellet control. Wide dispersion guaranteed instant death for the poochies, but also implied a few of our pellets hit windows on houses we denied ever being near. Those we blamed on Garoutte or Downing.

Killing is a fun sport. No matter who yer killing or why. My hands are still adept at tundra mammal disassembly faster'n a Spic with a speed wrench. But my favorite sport is theorizing the complete disintegration of characters just like myself; bootleggers, drug dealers, and serial killers.

Even with Black Bird's insistence I ride along and shoot the fuck outa shitty dogs, graveyard shift was boring until Nolton returned, then our conversations grew in complexity to include smuggling, drug dealing, and the metric system.

I get homesick a lot. Meaning I frequently miss the company of good folks from bars and taverns overseas, or sick and violent native communities nearby.

Ya see, I befriend vile and clever killers every where I hang my hat, even overseas, hence the ballistic similarities consistent throughout my relationships.

Living here in Barrow, I've gotten quite homesick for funny and witty Eskimos. Healthy killers prefer to be by themselves. This makes me one lonesome loser.

All I ask of a bar is that it be open.

None such north of 70 lat, so I party with psychopaths; you lot.

God loves you killers in uniform; I'm pretty fond of you too.

Fuck ye.

Karl.