Don't come to Alaska to strike it rich. Come and strike it poor.

Top of the morning gents,

I ought to be more sympathetic and understanding. On my daily routines I chat with every person I possibly can and do a complete detective douche, anal probe, DNA analysis of their speech patterns, language crap smear, poor English denture exam and personal hygiene taste test. I don't sniff their uch nor look for surgical scars from cleft palate rectum repair, but I do an overall assessment and collect billions of bits of data. Data about their origins like birth city and state, neighborhood slang, dialects and word usage. Then I come home and write to you coppers in a composite of these blended samples. And you thought I was creative. Nup, I'm a crook and steal everything I ever scribbled.

On my morning mish, I clean up and dress up, drive in town, hike a mile or two at the high school track, take a walk through Safeway or Walmart's, visit with my regular employees and chat up moose road kill counts, fish kill counts and the price of gas. I also chide my dudes about their commutes to work and one pal, Jeremy from Kasilof, I inquire when he's gonna load up his smoker with the 31 cats his wife has collected. My references to smoking hot pussy or when it's time to grease the cat's butt always get a good guffaw out of him. We know he'll never kill 31 cats, nor his wife, but we repeat variations of these stupid jokes. You shooters do the same with our oft recycled humor, and I like it. It provides continuity and patterns that we all need, count on and miss when one of us leaves Alaska. Or dies. Same thing.

Jeremy from Kasilof came to Alaska when his grandma died and left him a piece of property and trailer that he's now adding onto. He's been doing the camp life for years now: no running water, no electricity and wood heat. No shit, he charges his cell phone in the car and at work, buys batteries for his radios and flashlights and white gas for his lanterns. I'll ask him about his evolving structure and construction techniques, offer advice and deliver a lighthearted dude punch on his shoulder, or just a handshake. Simple. I got lots of new Alaskans that I raz with stupid humor, then wrap up my monologue with "we ain't inbreeds, we're 907 Negroes", "we ain't retarded, we're from Alaska" or "here in Alaska, we marry our own sisters, but we sleep with our brothers." Yup, that's kinda gross. When asked to drop by fer beer and liquor, I tell 'em that the last time I drank any alcohol, I awoke surrounded by 17 black children. Folks laugh at that shit.

On my morning routines, I bump with a hunnert new Alaskans. Most don't know where me and bun came from, and likely don't believe our stories. Meaning, they don't believe I lived, worked, drank and smoked with you fuckers. Rural Alaska is incomprehensible and the older I get, I'm starting to doubt my memories too. Ya see, these folks I banter with are all recent arrivals and are still trying to find where all the free money and gold mines with their names on them are located. After 150 years, Alaska is still marketed as the place to come and strike it rich. Someone oughta stop that shit.

I encourage all my morning visitors to go hunting or fishing: dipnet or setnet or just a fishing pole. Kings are extinct but silvers and reds react best to chemical treatments. I promote simple smoking recipes, canning in jars and of course just freeze the whole fucking fish. I explained that leaving the guts and head on can help retain moisture, but takes up weight and room in the coolers and freezers. I also recommend using alder or birch wood for smoking, saving money by avoiding those bags of store-bought apple, cherry, hickory or mesquite retail wood chips. Besides, the flavor of the finished product comes from the sauce/brine/soak process, the smoke only dries, textures and cures the fish and meats. I've lectured them that commercial smokers tend to run a little hot, so building a box outa plywood and piping in smoke from a nearly snuffed birch or alder filled fire box will produce a steady smudge fire smoke and damn good smoked meats. Ya see, smoked meat and fish is mostly soaked with flavors and dried in smoke. Very little cooking occurs, if any.

I explain that brining fish in salt and brown sugar for a day works good, but so does soaking yer fish in a tub filled with molasses, syrup, honey or brown sugar thick mud slop sauce. Skinned and cleaned salmon fillets quickly absorb whatever you soak 'em in. I've dumped in liquor, wine and beer and I've also poured in generous cups of any hot sauce I fetch. 24 hour soaks work best cuz any longer, the brine starts to turn into watery fish sauce and the salmon, caribou or moose gets soggy and mushy. After a day or two, just pull the pieces of meat outa yer thick sugar and spicy hot sauce, then place on yer drying racks and fire up a sweet smoke fer another day or two. Just pinch yer meats and pull it out when it's gone from mushy to smoked and dried and tender to the touch and looks mouth watering good.

Hot smoking fish at higher temperatures, meaning kippers, is okay, but a little tough and not as good as that soft chewy shit we occasionally produce with lower temperature longer smoking. I've taken salmon caught down at South Tent City and Cook Inlet, smeared it in table sugar and store-bought smoke flavor extract goop fer 24 hours, then simply dried it, leaving all the paste crap all over it. Decent product, but cheating, without smoking, in the minds of connoisseurs, like us.

Okay, back to my chatting with armies of lower 48 arrivals. Truth be told, I've tried to paint a picture that's prettier than reality. A lot of my new arriving 907 worker bees are from destitute regions of the lower 48: primarily coal country and are actually welfare tourists. Black diamond mining is a good industry for our coal states and the unions have negotiated decent wages and benefits. And pensions. With the closure of America's coal mines, whole populations migrated north to Alaska. Sound familiar? Sounds a lot like myself, fleeing Washington State's massive depression in the 70's and you funny fuckers fleeing Michigan's massive depression that's been brewing for 60 years. A few of these new arrivals go to work, look to buy cabins, shacks, shanties and even trailers, hoping to strike it rich.

Most arrive to merely strike it poor and march into the Public Assistance Office and start receiving food stamps, housing vouchers, heating assistance, energy assistance and the biggy, Medicaid. At my Safeway pharmacy, I'm only one privately insured customer outnumbered by 10 Medicaid customers. Private insurance is small potatoes in the total revenues any Alaskan pharmacy rakes in. 90% is a majority and highly subsidized and highly profitable Medicaid medicine drives up everybody's prescription drug costs. Medicaid really ain't helping anything.

Most of you shooters know that I was hired at the Welfare Desk in Krotchebue to examine eligibility and transition recipients toward work and self-sufficiency for the thousands of welfare niggers in the NANA Region lofty and stupid goal). I closed most of the cases due to non-compliance. None of these butt-colored Inuit-midgets would attend Adult Basic Education nor get General Equivalency Diplomas (ABE/GED). Some stinky niggers couldn't even perform work-activities such as gathering firewood, setting fish nets nor harvesting caribou nor moose.

Them little butt-fuckers just sit and eat government commodity garbage, watch wrestling on TV, consume tobacco and get REAL fat. TV wrestling is so gay and artificial it makes me chuckle when punk-ass nate-puke micro-homos chatter on about VCR tapes of staged episodes and phony stunts. The arenas you see on TV wrestling have more microphones, effects boxes, amplifiers and speakers than any rock concert. When a wrestling actor dives or stomps on the wrestling mat, the concussion is louder than cannon fire. Little micro-nad boys like TV wrestling cuz it's a homosexual outlet. Sure, they're not butt-fucking faggots, they're re-enacting TV wrestling they saw on RATNET (rural Alaska television network) television last night, better known as Rat-Fuck-Net, truly bad TV fer poor minorities. These porch monkey runts have no idea how bad it will be to wrestle one of us inside the KPD jail. Midget wrestling oughta be the new Inuit Tough Guy TV sport, stagger drunk into the ring, wheel them back out in a wheelchair.

At the welfare desk, after my 6-month evaluation, I was let go. My lay-off was actually called a probationary non-retention. I was hired to ADD to my case loads and increase benefits and programs. What was I thinking? Natives are supposed to be welfare niggers, sucking on black titty resources and joining the ranks of ghetto residents, homeless campers and sidewalk sleeping, puke wearing Eskimo drunks. Reggie Joule once stated that "welfare has destroyed a once great culture." He's so cool and well-spoken. Then I discover that ALL of his kids are on fucking welfare. What a chump-ass nigger lover. I smell something.

On my discussions with new arrivals, striking it poor, instead of striking it rich, is completing the AK-49 pattern. This wave of unemployable hillbillies, niggers and Methicans aren't here to work hard at figurative gold mines and strike it rich. They're here to join the Natives and strike it poor. Welfare teams in Alaska line up for the black man's grub stake, with ignorant cowboys and farm trash sluts reaching for the brass ring normally assigned to ice-niggers.

All throughout America, the maximum draw on welfare is 5 years after President Clinton pushed through legislation called the DRA (deficit reduction act). This DRA was happily rubber-stamped by George W and Obama. Up here in Alaska and far away from the real world, in 21 of Alaska's 28 boroughs, the draw on welfare is unlimited. A lifetime of free-ninety-free nigger food stamps, public housing and sucking ass on the dole. Yup, slavery never left our state. Poverty is the first life-style choice of first Alaskans. And worst Alaskan welfare tourists.

We just put shackles on multi-colored niggers in the form of eating garbage foods, chronic sickness and obesity, living in the shittiest neighborhoods, consuming subsidized tobacco and breeding with their own kind. The most concentrated drug abuse and overdose deaths occur in low-income poverty stricken neighborhoods, better known as ghettos, barrios and slums. And Native villages. I guess I need to accept the world is absolutely perfect, exactly as it is. I can only affect change in my own life, so I follow an elderly native woman to the gym every day.

I'm so sneaky, I hide locker room talk inside compliments. As I enter the weight room everyday, I compliment the men and women already working out by stating they "set a high standard" and "in a country dying from tobacco and obesity, you motherfuckers are better than everybody." The ladies (both young and old) blush and smile, the dudes give me a hoorah, flex their muscles and mimic Arnold with "yer a girly man" or SNL Hans and Franz's "we pump you up."

I settle in and warm up by lifting the most weight in my life. I just turned 61 on June 30 and I'm sort of the unofficial maintenance monkey and sports bitch. I also out-lift most of those goofballs holding the record at 350 pound bench presses and show up at the gym more frequently: 7 days a week. One insult I toss at 'em is "when you get to be my age...oh wait, you won't live that long." I'm a funny fucker. Plus, all this keeps me from dying of loneliness.

Ya see, old women's peer groups expand with age. Men's peer groups contract over the years. After we leave our jobs, pull the pension and settle in our rocking chairs, Geritol and Medicare, and stare at the TV, we see little of our friends. I fucking fight that shit everyday. TV is now specifically made for us old farts, so don't look at it. All the advertisements are for old fart meds, hunchback old bitch bone supps, masculine and feminine napkins and the silly myth we're not old fat prune-skinned crippled TV-hypnotized blobs of fecus. The more we watch TV, depression becomes a significant factor cuz when yer watching TV, yer not amongst friends. Yer all alone, or sitting with yer nugger wives. Not good fer geezer squawboys like us. Kill yer television. Okay, maybe yer wiff too.

Me and bun got no TV (cable or antennae), zero Internet access and just listen to radio broadcasted all over Southcentral Alaska. When I dial in chick puke bitch tune radio, bun starts throwing shit. Women's lib means more whiny radio, and bun gets ballistic. So I try to find a station that don't whine too much and piss off bun. She hates girley shriek pop rock, Michael Jackson queer nigger-butt poaching songs and will vacate the premises if I play any New Cunty and Western stinky bitch stations. I've created a monster.

I'm married to an elderly Eskimo broad that prefers Zep, Floyd, Stones, Who, SRV, Albino Winters, Healy or Kenny Wayne. Ain't no Motown here on the white klan peninsula and all else is for ass-sucking queers. I've only got a few classical music broadcasts on public radio and Bun loves opera. I try to avoid it. If I hear tearful opera, I get flashbacks and my shit gets fucked up. I don't recall why this happens, but if the music strikes a tragic nerve in my thousand year memory, I'm overwhelmed, dizzy and wrought sick with images that ain't mine. So, after breakfast news broadcasts, it's off to run our first errands, walk the Kenai High School track a mile or two, shopping and chatting up my dudes, back home for lunch. Then it's weight room time. Walk, lift, repeat.

According to the Welfare Desk Training Manual, the 3 causes of poverty are poor health, poor education and poor family planning. Don't that sound intelligent? What it really means is poor motherfuckers are sick, stupid and breed like mud-colored rabbits. Or to quote the late Scott Whalin, "poor people breed the best." He'd tell me funny stories working for OTZ telephone and the squalid conditions of the houses he worked installing phone lines, the foul smelling grovels and rotting shit, food and garbage stacked all over. He once asked his Noorvik village nigger relatives why they "don't fucking clean their homes" and their response was, "the government never come and clean up."

Scott'd laugh and tell me that Eskimos collect all their cuktaq soaked fly buzzing diapers and used tampons in case they run out of food. Mr. Whalin razzed me about loose stool villagers making Inuit Top Ramen made from brown chunky diapers and Red Rose tea made from rusty tampons. I miss that guy. He sure grew a set of big nads and turned on the sperm production after he dumped dry stink-uch Charlene Ferguson and scored that younger babe. Fucker died surrounded by a batch of cute infants and children. Dude sure came a long way.

Remember, after Richie Reich stabbed that child-molesting ass-raping motherfucker to death with scissors, Scott Whalin helped drag the dead faggot out of the Midnight Sun Cab garage and into the old 1974 Dodge Coronet, where said bleeding dead rapist fecus-eater froze solid, bonded permanently to the metal. Way to go Scott. When I reported that the cops had to bring that old Dodge into the Fire Hall to thaw out Mr. Butt Cream Fart Hammer and tear his frozen ass outa the trunk. Mr. Whalin paled. Despite locker room sick jokes with me, we never get over these things.

I chatted with Scott Whalin's mom (Anna Henry Whalin) while awaiting bun's appointments at the NSHC (Norton Sound Health Corp) hospital in Nome. She was cool to broach the subject of Scott's culpability, but stated "that man was getting young boys drunk and molesting them." When asked about Richie Reich killing him and dragging him out to the trunk of that old Dodge Coronet to freeze solid as a rock, she declared Richie should have never spent a day in jail. "To wake up with that man on top of him, I'd a killed him myself." She told me that when she heard Rena Ward Barker's son hanged himself in that same Midnight Sun Garage, she was relieved the shop was torn down.

My belief is that buildings aren't haunted, but cultures and people are. And sad to say, that's what I found so fascinating. The oldest, most ancient aspect of rural Alaska and it's inhabitants as a whole, torment themselves, much like us. We may have demons, memories and cultural ghosts inside us, but they're invisible and silent until we leave our hometowns, fly thousands of miles up North and back in time and interact with new, long-suffering communities. Hell, some we married into. My battles with invisible nightmares serve as a tool belt, travel guide and translation manual to understand my contract jobs all over village Alaska, my neighbors and even my marriage. Nonetheless, we ain't healed shit.

Explain why this makes sense. We cut down hangers by the dozen, bagged crushed bodies and tried real hard to inflate dead Eskimos with CPR. I've seen you boys hurt your back hustling injured human beings to the ambulance and froze yer hands on shovels chipping bits of poor souls offa frozen dirt roads. I suspect you soldiers remember every little child's last breath, girl's heartbeat and woman's final cup of bleeding warmth upon yer face and hands, but injuries and incremental dying of yer poor battered souls and bodies never got better. Only so much worse. You boys know these inescapably painful fractures and horrid impact wounds sting and ring so terribly, right now as you read this. Decades after the screaming, weeping and wailing stops and we bury the quiet ones, you boys will only hurt more and more, forever. That's a sorrowful and ever heavier sack of burden on yer back.

Writing is distracting. We wake and shake off night horrors, then go out and absorb what little pleasantness we can. Then you'll see I sent another email, read it and come back to that place where it all stops making sense. Stop reading. Tell yer coworkers that they should resign for new work, else they soon look like us. If they take work at Safeway or Walmart's, I'll get a chance to flee this place, tell a stupid joke and go back home feeling little better.

The world is perfect exactly as it is. But I'm not.

If you insist on leaving yer TV on, you'll see we're no more divided as a country than any other era. It used to be called the "generation gap", but now it's about liberals, conservatives, blacks and whites and straights and faggots, gender fluid nut cutters and men with silicone boobs and stitched sphincters with dentures stapled in. A hunnert fifty years ago, it was about slavery and the Indian Problem. Now the issues leading the news is abortion, gun ownership rights, black lives matter (but not red) and natives buried at boarding schools. Boo fucking hoo.

Working with cops, narcs and ambulance drivers, I've learned to make exceptions in my intellectualism and my racism. Marrying an attractive rich native woman only drives my lessons home. I fought hard to be a heartless drug addicted dumb ass, brainless alcoholic red neck and retard farm fucker. After 40 years smoking and joking with you lot, the composite tapestry you see here, typed over miles and decades of empty white space is eventual acceptance as a member of your club: intelligentsia. You fuckers are so logical, calm and patient in bearing my extreme mood swings, mysterious rage and inexpiable fury.

You guys are laughing at me.

Now I get it. To be young and not liberal is to have no heart. To be old and not conservative is to have no brain.

Karl.