For the record, I did not mean to suggest that Tom Metzger was dead, and I do not believe that my blog post about a plastered neo-nazi sticker could be honestly be read as such, let alone by Tom Metzger.  Hence, I can’t even really come up with even a weasly apology of “If read as such” with any force of honesty attached.

But, to reiterate, Tom Metzger, the leader and founder of the “White Aryan Resistance”, is not dead.  His Ghost wanders about nowhere.  His live self resides wherever it is he resides these days, plucked over to interviews whenever media feels the itch to document neo-nazis — or rehash events from two decades ago as the Portland Mercury did a few weeks back, and where he keeps track of whenever someone might mention his name on a blog.  Bottom line:  Rumors of Tom Metzger’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

As for Minneapolis, with a quick nod over to this old news item:  Mixing hippies and vegans with street thugs, neo-nazi’s and police agents…err…uck?

Though, I do not believe they are much anywhere.

AND… I will not be carrying on with this topic.

Striding through a park en route to a bus stop early this morning, I looked over and saw that someone had stuck a sticker to the “Park Rules and Regulations” board.  I immediately unplastered it.

Most Endangered Species:
THE WHITE RACE
Help Preserve it.

And then bullet-point information on where to reach our local Neo-Nazi organization, and how you can purchase more stickers to plaster about.  They’re plenty cheap.

Now that I have posted this, I can safely throw this sticker away.  I note that my second or third most viewed entry on this blog is one noting a bit of racist Obama-related graffiti (“It’s a White House, not a Black House“).  I don’t know if that is a sign that this is going to be systematically filed into some odd “Portland neo-Nazi/Racist Activity Watch” — (I suppose there is worse activity than plastering stickers about) — but I guess the ghost of Tom Metzger hovers about here and there.

In the aisle of a grocery store, I spy  shifty looking man with a case of acne which seems to betray drug use of one type or another.  (My caveat being to reference one time where based on sunburned nose up against a pale face someone assumed a similar betrayal — false of course.)  The suspicousness of the man is confirmed when he strides past me, and out from under his coat drops a carton of chocolate milk.  He akwardly creeks and he picks the thing up to shift back under his coat, “Hi… Just… trying to… get some food… to eat.”  Good meal, I suppose, chocolate milk.  I roll my eyes around to see where we are in relation to the camera or security, but otherwise just walk ahead, muttering something either perceptibly or not perceptibly to the shop-lifter.  But I draw no attention to him.

So it is that I am an accomplice to petty theft.  And now so are you.

…………..

I walk up to a cross-walk, at the same time a bicyclist stops.  The streets are clear of traffic, which in the usual course means I will walk on and jay walk — unless there is a mommy/daddy/child unit, in which case I am obliged to be a proper stranger role model to the child to OBEY TRAFFIC RULES.  The fellow next to me stops, obviously waiting to see if I walk on — following my lead.  I have the power of decision in my hand, this bicyclist has opted to leave me with the decision — somewhat analogious to my Child Rule of strictly adhering to cross-walk rules, he encompasses it further to what society around him does.  It is an odd stand-off.  So, after a few seconds, I walk on — and he proceeds to do the same.  We are accomplices to each other’s petty jay-walking.  And now so are you.

There’s this International Hostel located in Northeast.  It has a giant blue-background sign up for Barack Obama — Obama’s name written in large white block letters.  Someone has, in stages, been writing in the letters such things as “Tri-Lateral Commission”, “Council of Foreign Relations”, “9/11 Was an Inside Job”, “Infowars.com”, and “NO CHANGE!!!”

The sort of Insurgent 9/11 Truth plastering continues as stickers have been posted inviting the passer-by to some 9/11 Conspiracy websites — the same that are chalked about the town sidewalks.  It is an interesting change from things that go on in the pastm, and go on right now, where supporters of the other candidate would scribble anti-Obama and pro-McCain messages.  I assume that if there were a McCain sign of similar vintage somewhere in this city it would be vandalized in the same manner — CFR/Tri-Lateral/9-11 Inside Job — somehow they all blur into one.

I sort of want to catch the vandalizers in the act, because I want an answer as to what they think they are doing.  Is someone going to happen by this sign and think “Wow.  I never thought of that.”  Will this direct them to Alex Jones’s website or the various blogs — where they will be introduced to that neat oragami trick with the dollar bill to show the toppling towers if you fold the money just right?

In front of the public library, a giant “9/11 Inside Job blahdeblah911truth.blogspot.com” has been chalked, as often is the case.  Also as often is the case a man was hawking, while standing on this message, copies of “Street Roots”.  This seems an incongruent message, even if it is not mutually exclusive that 9/11 Truthers would be concerned with the plight of the Homeless or that a homeless man might think that 9/11 Was an inside job.  It’s dual purpose space, I suppose.

I am starting to think of referring to all manner of situations as “Inside Job”.  My apples have gotten rotten, for instance.  It was an Inside Job.  I accidentally died my underwear pink in the Laundary.  It was… an inside job.  Run with it, I say.

I passed by the Planned Parenthood construction site on MLK Day … Friday?  I saw that horde of protesters, waving signs showing fetuses, chanting about The Hands of Death and the Signs of Satan and the Love of Jesus.  And I saw a young woman bicycle past, and stick out her middle finger, sort of leaning over as far as she could without falling down.

A couple of thoughts occured to me.  #1:  This will receive news coverage shortly, for one reason or another — sure enough, it has because one of the contractors pulled out or something.  #2:  There will be some quotation from one of the protesters saying that Planned Parenthood is building here because they want to kill black babies.  Sure enough, there is.

I saw a woman  with low-cut jeans (hip-huggers, renamed something else a few years ago) and thong underwear peaking up above the jeans.  It struck me as two things: #1: An incredibly stupid look, and the uncomfortably unsexy while seeming to be meant to be sexy (and in this case it was by a skinny woman who theoretically was someone who, quote in quote “could wear it”, but it still just looks awful).  #2:  A fashion which we passed through around 2002 and perhaps tapering off for a couple years from there which I had thought as it tapered away we were done with, and I could avoid seeing it for at least another decade when perhaps some retro-look of 00 fashion will come back to vogue.  But, no … there it was.

But viewing the fashion palette, it strikes me that we’re cycling through the 1980s and will hit some stuff from the 1990s fairly shortly.  Which is interesting, because the 1980s is a collection of retro 1950s on to 1960s fashion and the 1990s ends up being retro 1960s on to 1970s fashion.  When we get to retro 00 fashion, it will be retro 00 retro 80s retro 60s fashion, and our collective heads will just explode… along with our peaking up above our pants thong underwear, which I guess will be worn by men in our famously gender=confused and bending future.

PRUNE After First Bloom
FRENCH AND ENGLISH ROSES

I don’t know which free newspaper box she stuck this one in, and once again the effect ends up being fairly sad.

WHO WAS Hypatia?  Pythagoras?

The words are written all on a page with a political cartoon — an anti-war message that’s reverberated over the years and has been copied to the point of cliche: a loudmouth shouts out a whole batch of missiles.  A smaller person has a horn to his ear.

MARTHA ON T.V. Says Don’t Prune French or ENGLISH ROSES Until After BLOOM

All a very odd obsession, and I don’t get it.  But next comes the biographical tidbit of what she thinks she is doing here:

I SAY WHERE ARE MY 3 SONS.  3 SONs?!  I Have not SEEN OR Heard from them in 12 Yrs!
HERSTORY

I imagine I’ll stumble past the same place one year from now and see much the same message, just as I did a year ago.

The headline for The Oregonian’s sports related “Grab everyone’s attention who walks by the boxed containers” front page yesterday was “Celtics Pierce Lakers”, obviously a play on the name of the Celtics star who had a big game, um…  I’m not much of a sports fan or particularly basketball fan, so … is it… Franklin Pierce?

Anyway, I asked someone who doesn’t follow sports”
“See The Oregonian’s front page headline?”
“No.  What did it say?”
“Celtics Pierce Lakers.  Guess who the big star of the game was?”
“Was it… Pierce?”
“Yep!”
“Lucky guess, I suppose.”
“What you need to do is show off to the next basketball fan you see by saying ‘Wow!  Did you see what Pierce did to the Lakers last night?”
“I’ll be sure not to do that.”

I quit shopping at Safeway a while ago, roughly because I resented having to swipe my purchases into a database of shopping knowledge in order to get a preferable price and roughly because I had moved to a location where two Fred Meyers were located closer to any Safeway.  For their part, Fred Meyers introduced their own piece of crock “Loyalty Card”, which “offers money back” for accumulated purchase, and I guess probably ends up just swallowing up money otherwise I would have “saved” if I had done what I generally do in clipping coupons.  It is, at the very least, less obnoxious than Safeway’s.  The terms of agreement of what the store demands for their “Loyalty Card”, and my desire not to have one, makes me loyal to Fred Meyers over Safeway.

But I had reason to shop at a Safeway this weekend.  I purchased some junk food item of ill health, quite frankly, which cost $1.39, $1.25 with the “Loyalty Card”.  I wait in line.  And the cashier cheerfully scans the object.

“Card?” she asks, as I lay out the buck and forty cents.
“No,” I said.
She looks at me confused.  “Do you… want to sign up for one?”
“No,” I said.
At which point she looks at me confused once again, and I smile weakly.  14 cents, into the ether.  I am confident that the cashier’s reaction can be extrapulated into some meaning for society in general, but I cannot quite articulate what that would be.

“TVs are made out of human blood.”

“What does that mean?”

“Plasma tvs.”

“Hm. Okay. The future, Today.”

“I’ll look it up on wikipedia.”

“There’s no way it can be the same plasma.”

tap tap tap.  “This isn’t as sensational as I thought it might be.”

“Well, you can just believe it.”

“Sure.”