Corrupt Brown Shirts, Broke Villages and Puny PFD.

Top of the morning gents,

Wouldn't you know. Right after we hashed the issue of
bankrupt villages all throughout our blessed FAZ, I
find a redundant article basically repeating our
diatribal 'elephant talk.' (King Crimson)

Most of you lads will feel the similar sting with
every fuel order old man Don Tucker delivers to the
tanks on the front of your homes. If you keep a spot
of brandy or nip of bourbon on hand, Tucker will smile
blissfully upon your bill, smoke yer cigarettes and
leave a lasting odor of cigarette smoke and diesel
fuel on your sofa.

Such unsolicited servings of alcoholic generosity also
shaved handsome margins off my Midnight Sun Cab charge
accounts. Both Charlie Reich Sr. and Charlie Jr. took
a diminishing approach to the addition of my cab fare
debts when I cracked a Half Gallon Seal on a Jim Beam
or sneaked into the back grow room and fetched a
fistful of chron pine.

MicroDot and Kudra CatButtNugget used to chuckle every
time I mysteriously disappeared and climbed into my
closet, past the Lyon (Thatan the Afghan Hound) and
the Witch (screeching Rene Bulkhead) through the
wardrobe to take a gander at what Cousin HackHack
bestowed upon us and filled the Industrial Bong.

There's something magical about waking early, taking
good coffee and sunglasses into the grow room and
sitting with pert near sentient female plants that
meditate like impaired humans. The warm halide stadium
lamps would hypnotize us with their humming
transformers, warmth and brilliant illumination.

I'm lying. We were likely more hypnotized by the
strong coffee and bong rips, and the accumulated haze
from our pine plumes. Wake and bake dudes.

Watching rural kilowatt rates skyrocket make my
hobbies rare pleasures no villager could ever afford.

I have a charge account with Northern Lights Nursery
on Boniface. Damn good COD service or sometimes
they'll just bill me for larger purchases like my new
super efficient 400 watt metal halide that I can plug
into any 110 volt wall socket.

The larger 1000 watt lamps can bump your power bill
quite a bit even with super cheap electricity rates
here North of 70 lat. Ya see, Barrow is the only
community burning up your cheaper'n shit stranded gas
here on the North Slope. My new 400 watt lamp has a
really quiet transformer and puts out 2/3 the lumens
of a 1000 watt system--at less than half the power
demand. Heck of deal mates.

In essence, it's more efficient to run multiple
smaller lamps instead of one large and hot bulb.

Enough about my clandestine hobbies, let’s talk about
our corrupt local cops.

I got a phone call from the North Slope Cop Shop last
week. Apparently they failed to see the legality in my
listing passport cameras and a Polaroid IdentiCard
machine for sale on the local radio SwapNsell,
SwipeNhock and ShopTalk.

I may have mentioned previously how Timo Aristo, Paul
Quinn and Dwayne Weleschuck shipped me all my
counterfeit identification equipment from our shop in
Inari, Finland. Receiving international mail packages
like these from wealthy and educated gangsters scares
me shitless.

All this passport and ID card equipment is stacked in
Bun's sewing room (adjacent to Karlukmun's growing
room) next to all my slide projectors, negs, vacuum
cleaners and carpet steamers.

What the fuck? I might as well sell my tradecraft
devil's workshop equipment here in Barrow where prices
are highest, so I advertised some goodies for sale.

That's when the NS coppers phoned me. They responded
to my advert, with attitude.

The head bitch brown shirt first wanted to know if I
was behind the city hall robbery where a box of Alaska
Drivers License and ID blanks were stolen.

What kind of a question is that?

No I didn't answer her questions honestly. Honesty is
the highest form of respect and few people on Earth
deserve it. And no I dared not confess to any of my
felonious playtime activities to her. My honesty
doesn't extend beyond a covert team of graying
gunslingers and gray eyed serial killers.

This bitch was direct. "I know everything about you
Mr. Ewing." "Your name comes up almost every week."
(Am I supposed to be embarrassed or flattered?)

"If I find out you're dirty, even your FBI pals in
Fairbanks can't help you. Neither can your buddies at
Statewide."

"Your court testimony in the Logan case stating there
was 'zero drug and alcohol enforcement' here in Barrow
didn't make you any friends, and Mattern told us you
were no longer under subpoena and fair game."

I responded by denying any acquaintance with these
characters and that she must have me mistaken with
somebody else. I could smell steaming and pissed off
diarrhea emitting from my phone a mile away. If the
cunt were going to arrest me, she wouldn't have phoned
me for sex talk and a jerk sesh.

While listening to KBRW this morning, I noticed my
advert for my photo gear wasn't broadcasted. Pity.

I'm excited to receive another phone call from the NS
brown shirts next week when I advertise I'm selling my
2 grow lamp systems: one halide, one sodium.

You know me; I'll keep you all posted.

Have a good weekend gentlemen, I'm gonna sneak through
my closet and sit in my private Idaho tropical
aquarium: coffee in hand, Vuarnet sunglasses on and
put flame to a spot of ghost bud.

I've kept seeds from Mountlake Terrace, 85th and
Greenwood near the dumpster Zabrisky sucked a magnum,
Willow, Kotzebue and Denmark. My lottery pays out in
random sex, strain and grade.

One hitter quitter, or two-toke terror: give it a
name. Whatever, I'm spending this Frieday morning
speaking with the dead: Tucker and Charlie Sr.

Coffee and bong hits, tea and toke mates.

Wake and bake dudes. Jargon you'll need Columbo or the
Sgt. to decipher.

They'll know.


Karl.

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Rural Alaska Towns Struggle to Stay Afloat

By DAN JOLING
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 22, 2005; 9:18 AM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The city clerk in Holy Cross
doesn't spend much time at her desk these days.
Instead, she pitches in as needed for the
cash-strapped village of about 200 people. Connie
Walker was laid off because of a lack of town funds,
but she still performs such tasks as preparing City
Hall for a bingo game to help a family pay for a
funeral _ for no pay. She even drops by to pay city
bills, open mail and answer the phone.

Holy Cross, about 420 miles southwest of Fairbanks, is
one of dozens of rural communities across the state
facing serious financial problems _ or in some cases
have shut down _ since the state ended a
revenue-sharing program.

City Clerk Connie Walker stands outside of the city
office building in Holy Cross, Alaska on Friday Sept.
16, 2005. Lack of money has forced the Yukon River
village to close its doors. Holy Cross is one of a
host of Alaska rural municipalities facing serious
financial problems.

"We've got no money to plow the roads," said Holy
Cross Mayor Jeffrey Dementieff. "I've been having to
ask for volunteers."

Revenue sharing and matching grants allowed villages
to perform maintenance and small construction
projects. Both programs were vetoed by the governor in
2003 as the state faced a gap between spending and
income.

In the late 1960s, when construction of the
trans-Alaska oil pipeline was under consideration and
Alaska native leaders questioned how it would make
their lives better, they were told that villages
should form municipalities and participate in revenue
sharing, said Kevin Ritchie, executive director of the
Alaska Municipal League.

"It didn't create some huge political infrastructure,"
he said. "But it was enough to keep the lights on,
have a city clerk that collected utility bills, things
like that."

According to the municipal league, nine villages have
ceased day-to-day operations. Eighteen have serious
management or financial problems and another 39
communities have financial problems so severe they
could be insolvent in two years.

Holy Cross, which is only accessible by airplane or
riverboat, is typical of these towns. Census data for
2000 shows that 45 percent of its residents live below
the poverty line, with only 56 residents with jobs.
More than 96.5 percent of the population is Alaska
Native. Like much of rural Alaska, residents rely on
fishing and hunting to make up for a lack of cash.

Dropping services is affecting public safety, road
maintenance and other life and health issues, critics
say. The layoffs of Walker and four other employees,
including a heavy equipment operator, has meant
pothole problems on roads but no one to take the
complaints.

The state has more than $31 billion in the Alaska
Permanent Fund, a savings account whose earnings
politicians so far have been unwilling to tap.

With crude oil at more than $60 per barrel, the
state's budget gap has disappeared. But the glut of
state money from high oil earnings so far has not
crossed over to help small cities. Meanwhile, the cost
of fuel, a huge expense for villages, has climbed.


Becky Hultberg, spokeswoman for Gov. Frank Murkowski,
said the state has provided help to small cities in
the form of a small community energy assistance
program and money for employee retirement expenses.
She said Murkowski made "some very hard decisions" to
keep the state solvent when he cut the revenue-sharing
program.

But Hultberg said that with the revenue picture
improved, "He is certainly willing to look at new
solutions."

---

Alaska oil dividends smallest in 17 years
Published in the Asbury Park Press 09/22/05

Alaskans will get the smallest dividend checks in 17
years from a $31.5 billion state fund as stock market
losses three years ago damped the earnings of
investments made from the proceeds of state oil
production.

Every man, woman and child registered as a citizen of
Alaska will get a check next month for $845.76,
compared with $919.84 last year and down 57 percent
from a record high of $1,963.86 in 2000, according to
a statement from the Alaska Department of Revenue.

Alaska's Fund was established in 1976 to save oil
revenue for a time when the oil boom subsided.
Bloomberg News Service