It was about seven in the morning this Sunday when my house started shaking.  I knew what it was, because I’d experienced the seismic wave of a far away earthquake once before.  That was when I was a kid in 1959, when a huge quake occurred in Yellowstone National Park and the shock shook my parents house in Sheridan WY 250 miles away.  But even though I was not confused about that ten second earth-spasming event, I was still alarmed.  I have a nice home.  I started to imagine the worse, something I do kind of regularly, but not in the way you might think.  I don’t consider myself to be a pessimist.  I simply like to analyze stuff and think ahead, something I took away from Boys Scouts long ago.  Be prepared.  Like, I just filled in a cavity in a small retaining wall in my back yard that a den of snakes was living it up in, and now I bet the timbers shifted around enough so those damn snakes will just make themselves at home back there once again.  Or worse, what if somewhere a coupling on my natural gas line got loosened up and my house exploded.  I guess at least that would take care of my fucking snake problem.

But here’s the thing.  Yellowstone is a natural hotbed of seismic activity.  There are thousands of earthquakes happening there every day.  They are very natural phenomena.  Takes a lot of pressure off the hydrothermal plumbing.  Sunday’s quake was not a natural phenomenon. The center of that thing was in northern Oklahoma, a good 400 miles from where I live now in Omaha.  Oklahoma too, has a lot of earthquakes, fifty or so a year.  That wasn’t always the case.  Used to be a couple a year, like most places in the midwest.  What happened to Oklahoma is oil fracking.  That’s not natural at all.  The state of Oklahoma is our nation’s gold medal champion of human-induced earthquakes.

But there is a new contender emerging- North Dakota.  Part of the Bakken Oil Field lies just underneath the western soil of about a third of that state.  Bakken oil shale brought jobs and prosperity to North Dakota, and it brought a lot of misery and- fracking.  You can find hundreds of articles written about the good and the bad about North Dakota’s oil boom.  One of the best I’ve read is this one. https://placesjournal.org/article/dakota-is-everywhere/?gclid=CMqg7Lj5-M4CFQ-EaQodaAwNBQ  It is really long.  If you don’t have time  to to read it, I feel compelled to point out one thing that caught my eye.  Deep into this text is a conversation a rancher, Brenda Jorgenson, had with a  state oil regulator.  Brenda recalled a discussion the two of them had about the waste pit near the oil well on their land.  He claimed that the plastic liner- the barrier between the toxic liquid in the pit and soil- would last for 40 years.  When Ms. Jorgenson voiced concerns, the regulator’s reply was “You won’t be around after that anyway.  What do you care what happens after you’re gone.”

I love the sate of North Dakota.  I went to high school there.  In my opinion it is getting raped by big oil.  Again, just my opinion. But the bust is already occurring in a few western ND cities.  The state of North Dakota, as well as you and I, can take heart though.  There is at least one dedicated group out there trying to save us from ourselves- the Native Americans living on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.  There is an oil pipeline under construction to carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois.  The charted path of the pipeline runs along the reservation’s northern border at some point.  Concerned about a future pipeline spill, and disruption of sacred tribal land, the people living on the reservation are protesting.  They have brought construction to a halt and it is getting a little ugly.  That’s about all you need to know, but in case you’re interested, here is more information.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/us/north-dakota-oil-pipeline-battle-whos-fighting-and-why.html?_r=0

Well, I guess there is another thing you should know.  The pipeline as mapped is going to run under the Missouri River.  What the fuck are these oil douchebags thinking?  How catastrophic would a busted pipeline be if oil gushes into the Missouri River.  I drink that water.   It is a known fact there is little oversight of our already vast network of oil pipelines, and guess what is in all likelihood going to be consistently happening with all the fracking going on in North Dakota.  It will be Oklahoma.2.  You can bet all the shaking has the potential to wreck havoc with any kind of piece of shit pipeline.  Geezuz these guys piss me off.  To them everything is just fine because we are perfectly safe- for 40 years anyway.

Non-quake Reistant Structure                                                          Quake Resistant Structure

I’ll tell you what.  This immigration thing needs some serious attention.  We just can’t have people like this walking around in all our cities and being so un-American.   All this stink up going on about shifty people slipping across our borders brings to mind something that happened to me a couple years back.   I drove to work one early fall morning with my lights on and realized when I tried to start my car to go home in the late afternoon, I had forgotten to turn them off.

We have two cars.  One of them will emit a ding-ding-ding sound if you shut the car off in this particular situation, as a considerate  reminder that you are a moron about to leave your car with the lights on.   Unfortunately that day I was driving our car that was not so equipped.   In my defense it was dark when I left home that morning, but the sun was up when I reached my destination, so my lights by then were not illuminating anything around me.  But still the circumstance is in itself surprising because the car I was driving was a Toyota.  I have always thought the Japanese are ever-intuitive and would have the foresight to anticipate the need for such a device, particularly in their cars they sell in the good ol’ USA.  As a group Americans kind of like to shift responsibly to others and a lot of times have others do our work for us.  And we are always in a big hurry.  I think you would have to agree the Japanese really fucked up there.

This happened back in the days when I considered a cell phone a cumbersome burden, and frankly those days are still going on.  My wife is always chewing my ass out for leaving my phone on my desk. To be honest with you, if I do happen to remember my cell phone nowadays, it’s only because the one I have now is photo capable and I want to be sure to have it on hand if I’m in a traffic accident so I can take a picture of all the damage you inflict on my car.  Believe me I am going to go panorama ballistic, so you better hope you’re not driving around with your mistress or alter boy.

I went back into the Target building I worked at that day, fussed through the Yellow Pages and finally contacted a  service station in the area that still did some field service work.  They told me it would be at least a half hour before they could get to me, and told me to put the hood up on my car so they could locate it when they finally did arrive in the parking lot.

Me Passing Time While Waiting for a Service Truck

I sat in my car fidgeting and mentally making fun of every passer-by.  I have to tell you I did consider there might be a remote possibility that someone seeing my hood up would make an offer to jump start my car, but that presented a dilemma I have always wrestled with.  I do not want to owe anyone anything.  It’s just the way I operate.  But in a desperate situation, I have been known to accept an accommodation, and at that time I was willing to trample this particular rule of mine.  But I am a pragmatist and held little hope for any assistance from a typical American shopper.  People have things to do and must be on their way.  Who can blame them?   I do the same thing all the time.  If you happen to be in a parking lot with the hood of your car up, don’t count on me helping you out.  It’s not that I am calloused, it’s just that I am pretty sure you have similar feelings and I  don’t want you to feel an obligation is in order.  I hate making people uncomfortable.  And as it turned out I had no need to worry.  At least thirty people scurried by without so much as eye contact.

Well over a half hour of waiting, a beat up pickup truck passed in front of my car, stopped, then backed up.  A young hispanic man stepped out of the truck and approached my open widow.  I thought about rolling it up, but by the time I deliberated where to hide my wallet it was too late.  To my surprise he asked if I needed a jump.  Actually the asking part was not performed in a normal American way.  Because neither of us could communicate in our vernacular language, the conversation was conducted as a series of one word sentences accompanied by some awkward hand maneuvers.  Reluctantly I said “Si,” which happens to be about the extent of my Spanish.  Ever alert to the possibility of shenanigans, I discreetly slipped my wallet underneath my drivers seat and walked to the front of my car.

The young man retrieved jumper cables from the back of his truck, and we both connected them to the appropiate battery terminals of our vehicles.  Twenty seconds later my car was up and running.  Hoping this good Samaritan would not recognize my embarrassment, I quickly walked back to my car seat and retrieved my wallet.  When he saw me digging inside of the imitation leather, he adamantly kept saying “No, no.”  I kept trying to hand him a ten dollar bill but he would not take it.  I tried to tell him ten dollars was a bargain for me, because he had probably saved me a fifty dollar service call.  But he still refused and summed up his feelings about the situation by repeating over and over “Today you, tomorrow me,” an obvious karma type of reference that carried with it the inference that I would one day do the same for him or someone else.

To this day I am overcome with guilt when I recall that episode in my life.  That part I mentioned about not helping you if you need a jump someday- that is still my position.  What kind of piece of shit am I?  You’ll never convince me I’m a total asshole though, because as everyone knows there’s a good chance the only reason you have your hood up is to lure me to stop so you  can rob me at gun-point.  But still.  You see what happens when we let nice people into our country?  They make us feel like pond scum. They just don’t fit in with the rest of us.

Below are some photos of regular Americans and one irregular immigrant.  See if you can pick out the one that has no proof of citizenship.

If you’re like most Americans you zeroed right in on the man wearing the sombrero, but you are embarrassingly mistaken.  Look carefully- he’s holding pistols in both hands.  He couldn’t be more American.  Of course you have to rule out all the other guys with guns and a couple of these fellas are thankfully locked up in American prisons, but that doesn’t make them less American.  The guy in the tan shirt and the rabbi are my neighbors, and the woman is my aunt Agnes. I got this shot of her with my Gopro this Holloween.  I showed up at her door dressed as an Arab and she really came after me with that cane.   Yup, the troublemaker is the guy dressed up like Elvis.  That’s how those sneaky bastards slip into our country.  I bet you didn’t know that.  Now that you do, be a good American and report any Elvis sightings to the authorities.

HEADLINE:  70 teens ticketed for MIP at party    DATELINE:  Any Saturday night in America

Another one of these hit the news media this past week in our fair city.  For toppers, an upset mother made headlines by accusing the police of intimidation for telling all 70 kids they caught they had to take a breathalyzer test or go to jail.  The irate mother stated that that is a bold-faced lie, and that the police officers involved therefor used coercion in order to attempt to persuade her son into taking the test.  Little Johnny apparently held his ground and was one of three who refused to take the test, which didn’t set we’ll with the men in blue, and they got all testy I guess and handcuffed the three rabble-rousers.  Apparently this was an indignity Mom was not willing to let Johnny suffer through in silence, and thus decided to voice her displeasure via the news media and letters of complaint to any city official she thought worthy of a postage stamp.  She magnanimously admitted it was acceptable for the police to lecture the kids, but declared boundaries were exceeded when they corralled the entire reveling group of 70 in the basement of the home and got all pushy with the breathalyzer instruction.  Only a public apology from the police and mayor’s departments will appease her vexation.  Now I don’t profess to know what is true here, or whether Mom has her facts straight.  However, you would have to guess she is familiar with the law as it applies in such a situation.  After all, Johnny seemed to be well tutored in the proper way to handle himself should this very circumstance arise, and from all reports publicly available you would have to guess the person doing the tutoring was dear old Mom. It could be said, however, that perhaps Johnny needs a bit more tutoring in practical math- permutations and probability would be a good start.  Not sure how well Johnny will be doing on his SAT’s if he’s figuring 70 teenagers in one house won’t set off some very high-flying red flags of alarm in the neighborhood.

If you ask me the person really in need of a lecture and tutoring is this mother.  Mom, while Johnny is living at home, you should probably have better awareness of teenage drinking.  It’s part of your responsibly.  If you pay attention and give the kid some solid advice about drinking, maybe when he goes off to college or is otherwise living more independently and out of reach of your over-protective nature, he will be able to know how to extract himself from dangerous social behavior.   Not much is different now than 20 years ago when my two kids were going to high school. Dads and moms all over the country still choose to ignore the prevalence of underage drinking.  “Bad choices” seems to be a favorite term used to gloss over the problem.  The fact is these bad choices teens make are often times so ridiculously stupid any parent cognizant of their child’s activity and swirling peer conversation might easily suspect their upcoming Saturday evening’s agenda involves a smorgasbord of bad choices.  My wife and I pulled one of our teen aged children out of one of these drinking free for alls, and if we suspected alcohol was involved in their week end socializing we sat them down when they got home and performed our own breathalyzing and sobriety testing routine with the very accurate instruments God supplied us with on our faces.  Mom, your confrontation should be with your son, not the police.  Be prepared for push back and know how to handle it.  Grow some balls before one of the “bad choices” your son makes ends up being of the tragically ultimate type.