The Great Isla Blanca Lifeguard Discussion

There have been 4 drownings this year in Isla Blanca Park. Therefore it's time to enter into the Isla Blanca Lifeguard discussion once again.

Every few years when the heat gets turned up on Cameron Cunty, the administration of Parks and Recreation do what they do the very best.......they host a series of meetings and discussions and talk about the feasibility of implementing a life guard system at one of the busiest most dangerous beaches along the entire Gulf Coast. And so the park honchos, Javier Mendex and Joe Verga get their lunches paid for, get to disappear from any real work, and ultimately when the issue goes before the Cunty Commissioners, it is tabled again until the next paroxism of public outrage surfaces...every couple of years.

Lifeguards at Isla Blanca Park? Don't hold your breath or bet your life on it.

The Wisdom of Saul (Ochoa)

Would you buy a used car from this man? No....but a lot of people entrusted him to be a Cunty Constable.....meanwhile he was selling dope on the side.

Of course the Cunty itself weighed in. The Cunty Judge, Karlos ("Napoleon") Casco-rones as usual talked out of both sides of his mouth, a couple of the cunty cumissioners expressed "surprise"...hell, how could an erected awful-official be capable of such a thing here en La Frontera, northmost Matamoros?

Buncha goddamn jerks.

They ought to be castrated (in the case of the males), or have their pussy lips sown shut in the case of the female type politico excuses for their complacence over generations of mismanagement of South Texas, so that neither genders has the ability to breed any more of their own worthless genetically inferior kind.

Hell, do we have to remind them of the pussy chasing Gilberto Hinojosa (who has recently resurfaced in another morph of human excrement), Conrado Cantu ("El Animo", I think "El Pendajo" is better though - one of the most corrupt sheriffs in recent history anywhere in the US.....oh I almost forgot....this ain't quite the US), Mark Yates (Who besides violating the Sherman anti-trust laws, inadvertently "gave" up all of the social security numbers to the public of all cunty employees by "mistake"....you should've seen the cunty scramble to try and save it's worthless asshole on that one!) or Rob Almon (tit grabbing fill in for Mark Yates) as just a few of the most recent shining examples of Cameron Cunty politics at its best?

Nope folks, thinks aren't likely to change till you demand better, and start watching over these worthless fucksticks with microscopic vision.

With respect to our history, I don't think that's too likely to happen though.

Two Minute Warning

Well....Yesterday I quit my phony-baloney county administrators job after Edna ("The Cunt") Tamayo sent me several insulting and degrading emails. I finally had enough, and I fired back an email to the wrinkled old bitch admonishing her for being such a goddamn, self aggrandizing, ignorant, prurient asshole.

The I realized that most of the verbiage I used probably wouldn't even register in the first place. Hell, her grasp of the English Language is so fucking poor to begin with that she would have a hard time discerning between the words "aggrandizement", "aggregate" and "aggravation". So I sent the smelly old hag another missive with that in mind.

Then I sent my two minute warning to the management, shut off my county cell phone and put my ID badge in the desk and left....

No Enda, it does not take a village, an army or anything else to raise a child. It takes caring and involved parents (which apparently you never had.....the best part of you ran down your mothers hairy leg)....

All of the learning centers, parks and other edifices that you are building in all of the "economically depressed" areas of your precinct of the Tragic Valley will become more billboards for more graffiti and vandalism.

You see Edna, these "children" are simply the soul-less vermin that inherit this area after you and all of your kind who espouse "entitlement" and "compassion" for our "recent immigrants" in order to engender more votes for your political gain foster are left with. They are the orts and leavings of people who fuck for pleasure and do not worry about the consequences thereof. They are the unwanted and unholy, who will forever be a problem to society, and much of it is YOUR FAULT.

Better you take the 6.5 million Certificate of Obligation dollars you absconded with and plow it into involuntary sterilization clinics for these people.

So, therefore I have declared war on you and all of your kind, and will do my best to expose your plots to subvert and mismanage the taxpayers money on parks, learning centers and the other nonsense that will quickly become more third world problem areas.

Be aware, I'm watching you and the other clowns in the Cunty Commission, and I am hell bent on exposing your wrongdoings.

A Post from CB

I received the following in email from my old friend CB who now lives in Austin (Autism)...."Keep Austin Wierd" motherfuckers...but keep it THERE...Don't bring it here!

Nonetheless this story was so good, and the lesson in discernment so profound, I just couldn't resist adding it here.



As I walked through the parking lot of Austin's toney Central Market this evening, a young man approached me with a prescription drug vial prominently displayed in his outstretched hand. His expression was theatrically plaintive. "Please, sir," he said in a trembling voice, "I've run out of anxiety medicine and I need just 4 dollars to buy more!" He sure did look stressed. I don't blame him, begging is a high-stress occupation. I stood silently for some time, considering what I would say to him (and no doubt worsening his anxiety). First, I wanted to recognize his superior effort in developing a unique pitch. I really thought he ought to seek employment in Austin's thriving theater scene.

A few years ago, in a strikingly similar encounter in an HEB parking lot in Weslaco, a man asked me for $10 so he could take his wife, who was dying of cancer, to the hospital. He didn't have any money, he just needed $10 for a taxi to the hospital. Leukemia, he said. She's dying. Please, sir. Uncharacteristically, I broke down and gave him $5.
"But sir", he said, I need $10 for the taxi." "Don't you have any family?" I asked. "Yes sir." "Well, you should get the rest from them."

A week later, the very same man approached me in the same parking lot and asked money for some other emergency. I looked him straight in the eye, and asked, "How's your wife?" "What?" He asked. "My wife? I'm not married." I then reminded him that I had given him $5 the week before to take his wife to the hospital. He seemed to ignore this fact, or perhaps had completely forgotten it altogether. As I walked away, he asked, "Well, how about giving me $5 today?"

I'm thinking now that he could be an advisory to Hillary's campaign. Despite all indications, he just kept pushing relentlessly on.
Every day I pass a dozen panhandlers at busy streetcorners with cardboard signs. Most are remarkably similar. Please! Anything helps!! ☺ Will work for food! ☺ Single mother of 3 - Need help! And so on. Lots of smiley faces and exclamation points. A few have pretty clever signs, because they know that if they can lure you into eye contact it will be a lot harder for you to get away without paying. They all appear to be able-bodied and at least have the where-with-all to carry on their acting routines until they have conned enough cash to get stoned again.

I went to lunch with a coworker today. The kitchen and cashier of the jewish deli were staffed 80% by Mexican immigrants who had managed to communicate passably well in English, despite a lack of formal training. They were efficient and pleasant, and appeared to enjoy working. In the median strip just outside the restaurant was another gaunt anglo panhandler with a cheesy cardboard sign.

Like you, I've worked since a young age. I was motivated out of necessity and a drive to succeed. I always enjoyed working, whether it was on the factory line, or waiting on tables, or out in the remote mountains of Guatemala, or in my cushy agency office job. I have no sympathy for people who will not work. You're hungry? You need medicine? Shelter? Clothing? Psychiatric counciling? Good. Maybe when you get really hungry, you will be motivated to be of some use to society. Have a nice day! ☺

I didn't have a penny for the anxiety-ridden limosnero, nor words of advice. However, one night a week ago as I pulled up to a gas pump, I noticed a car parked at an odd angle at one of the other pumps. As I began to fill my tank, the attendant emerged from the convenience store and began shouting to someone out of view "stage left." "Laty!" He shouted. "Yu CANnot leave YUR card heerd. Eet ees not Parking Lot heerd, Laty!" I judged from his heavy accept and appearance that he might be from Nigeria or thereabouts, and was struggling to learn English, though it is immaterial, except to note that there probably was a communication issue between the attendant and the woman he was addressing. I heard her responding from half a block away, and soon she entered the orb of light that illuminated our stage. I could not help but observe this performance as the gas trickled into my tank and the dollars whizzed by on the display. The woman, an angla about 30 years old, pleaded with the attendant. "Please, sir," she said, "I ran out of gas just now and barely had enough speed to make it up to the pump. But then I realized I left my purse at home. I just live a few blocks away. I'm just going to walk home and get some money, and then I'll be back to fill my tank." The attendant would heerd nothing of it, or better said, would understand nothing of it. "Yu CANnot leave YUR card heerd. Yu MUS park eet somewherd else." This dialogue went back and forth enough times to convince me that the attendant probably had no idea what the laty was saying. He was just a peon, and if he didn't follow orders, he would lose a job that probably supported 20 people in Africa. As he walked back to the store, perhaps to CALL de PolEEZ, the woman followed him, begging. She was about to cry (a unique last-ditch talent all women possess). I thought of offering her a ride home, but realized she would not know if I am trustworthy or not. So I pulled $5 from my wallet, walked over and stuffed it in her hands. "Lady," I said, "get yourself some gas." She seemed stunned. "And be safe." I then resumed filling my tank. She thanked me profusely, and went to pay for some gas. But when she came out, she found that her car had come to a dead stop about a foot short, and the hose wouldn't reach. Needless to say, the filler was on the wrong side of her car. So I went over to assist her in pushing her car forward, but the transmission was stuck in drive. She couldn't get it out. So I had her jiggle the steering wheel, which did the trick. We almost pushed the car far enough when it ran into mine. No damage done! I backed my car, then we pushed her car again, and this time I was just barely able to access the tank with the hose. As I was pulling out past her, she turned and smiled, and said, "Oh sir, thank you so much! You are so kind!"

You know, it was only then that I noticed how attractive she was. Not beautiful, like a pageant queen, but like a very decent person I would like to know. Of course the thought occurred to me to get her phone number or find some other ploy to "keep in touch," but I immediately realized that this would obliterate the value of the experience, for both of us. So I smiled and said, "Just get home safe!" And drove away.

MORE Pig Vomit....

Sponge Bobs Song

The EYE is back. With a Vengeance

OK. I am going to try and keep up with this one again too.....it allows me to rant on things I can't elsewhere, and I can use powerful adjectives like "Shit" and "Fuck" and "Asshole", all great terms for describing the best of the worst....

For the past several years I have been a phony baloney administrator for "da county", and have been privileged (until now) to a lot of the soft underbelly of Cameron County politics....which politicians are stealing from who and to what extent. And to that end, I still have some ear, although several months ago I shot myself in the foot by trying to get these miserable fuckers (see there it is, the use of a powerful descriptive adjective!) to try and think (something way beyond the capacity of a "pubic servant") about what's going to happen in the future.... things like what will happen after Cameron County builds 6.5 million dollars worth of new parks (in economically depressed areas where they will be the immediate target of vandalism and destruction), and since it hasn't made any plans to increase the staff or operating budget, what will become of the maintenance and upkeep of these new facilities? Jeezus, they don't have enough personnel to maintain the existing parks as it is, and most look no better than third world efforts.

Shit, even an idiot can figure out those things.

I guess they'll just have to keep robbing from Isla Blanca Park (which doesn't even have enough budget for toilet paper right now) and live on the day to day basis....which is what these people are best at anyway. Instant gratification and entitlement. The typical. Nothing out of the norm here.

So anyway, whenever I run across anything funny, like Joe Rivera's (The County Clerk) assistants getting busted (again) for assault and battery with a baseball bat (how creative is that?) I will obligingly pass it along in a link.

Meanwhile, you can count on other county politicians like Sofie (a/k/a "Sonsa) Benavides absconding county funds to aggrandize her dearly departed husbands death anniversary by putting on a pachanga grande at the newly upgraded (the park was essentially new to begin with, but hey, we just had to get some new stuff there for the event....) Benavides (nee Browne Road)Park.

And then there's Edna Tamayo, the wicked witch of the west. Talk about ego centrism (try that word on for size bitch, and you....you were a region one administrator. You should've been wearing a dunce cap). In an internecine deal with the former County judge for some votes and supports she received the lions share of the money needed to construct the vast majority of the new parks, learning centers and Boys and Girls clubs, at the ultimate expense of poor old Isla Blanca.

Just politics as usual....status quo.

And so as not to become just another political blog, I vow to also include any manner of other rants here for my own goddamn aggrandizement. Just let me get a little of this squalid conjunto politico cheap third world federale crap off of my chest first.....

Learning to Fly

When I was little we lived in southern California, Chula Vista, just south of San Diego. We lived in a ranch style house in a new development along with many other newly affluent middle class. My father was an aeronautical engineer working for Rhor Aircraft. He owned a white 1964 Chevy Corvair Monza, before Ralph Nader made it a crusade to stomp the thing out of existence in order to keep us all safe at any speed. What a crock of shit. I don’t need any goddamn crackpot lawyer setting the ground rules for safety for me. But that’s another story.

We would drive the thing across the border to Tijuana Mexico at least once a month to get haircuts at the old fashioned barber shop that smelled of brilliantine and talcum powder. I’d wait for my turn looking at cheap Mexican crime magazines complete with gory photos, trying to understand the language on the pages, understanding a few words here and there before the barber with the Yosemite-Sam moustache would beckon me up into the red naugahyde covered board that lifted me high enough for the barber to shear off whatever hair I had down to the number 4 or 6 blade length. The whole experience took the better part of a Saturday morning and was one I dreaded, and is probably the reason I no longer cut my hair.

My best friend Steve Warren lived across the gully and we’d made the fields and ditch our domain. On the west side, we dug subterranean forts beneath the old abandoned melon fields that Mr. Iwashita once cultivated, covering them over with discarded two by fours, burlap bags and dirt, leaving a shelf at one end where we’d make a fire over which we’d cook cans of pork and beans, pretending to be warriors. During one particularly dry Santa Ana day, around the time that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedys’ head off a spark from our fire caught the adjacent dry vines and grass on fire. We tried to put it out, Steve and I frantically beating it with an old mildewed piece of carpet we kept inside our lair for creature comfort, stomping and pounding. Steve ran over to their property and turned on a long water hose, but it was too short, and the water just dribbled out of the end anyhow, there was no pressure, as the flames quickly spread across the field resulting in the Chula Vista fire departments response, and a general neighborhood scene. That was the end of our fort days, and our network of hideouts were filled in, never to be used again.

We were good at causing the trouble that only ten year olds can.

Seems like we were always setting things on fire. Fireworks were illegal there in southern California, but we seemed to manage to procure them, usually from Steve’s older brother. We’d pop black cats and lady fingers over by the bamboo stand that grew along the eastern margin of the gully, taking refuge in the drain pipe, where Steve had stashed some old copies of his dads Playboy magazines. I saw my first breasts on the waterlogged pages of those Playboys, wondering what it would be like to actually touch, smell, taste those wonderful appendages on a real life woman. Just the thought made me dizzy with lust.

Sometimes we’d accidentally set this domain on fire, but we always managed to quell it before it got out of control, but not before it left a tell tale smoke column. One day the smoke signal caught the attention of a cop passing by, who immediately investigated and caught us in the drain pipe, loaded us into the back seat of his patrol car and drove us to our houses, which caused another neighborhood uproar, all of the middle class housewives seeing the commotion, coming out into their yards to gawk as the blue clad cop marched us up to our respective parent unit much to our humiliation and their embarrassment.

Damn was I in trouble.

I spent the next several weeks on restriction, but that was OK because I had a balsa wood flying model of a world war one SPAD airplane that I needed to build anyway.

During those years I was a lonely only child, and I spent a great deal of time at the public library there in Chula Vista reading everything from ancient Egyptian history to the history of flight. My hero’s were the early aviators, people like Octave Chanute, Otto Lillienthal, Samual Langely and the Wright Brothers. I dreamed of flying.

Deciding to do just that, I designed rudimentary gliders after the designs of these early pioneers harvesting bamboo from the gully where we once popped fireworks, cutting it into sections with my dads coping saws, bending wing ribs and covering my big flying models with my mothers good linens, starching them to stretch them tight over their gossamer frameworks. Some of the designs flew, some didn’t. Some were wild designs, like the one I attached to my bicycle pedaling wildly down the nearby hill at Sierra Way, crashing before any sort of airborne takeoff could be achieved, smashing the wing and myself in the process much to the amusement of any onlookers.

I was the oddity of the neighborhood, and the other kids mostly thought I was completely stupid, crazy or both. They took to calling me Peter Pan, taunting me every time they saw me, so I began to conduct my experiments in secret in the gully on the hill that ended at the ditch where the bamboo grew. My friend Steve Warren remained faithful, often acting as my assistant, steadying the wing as I’d charge down the slope, trying to get the glider to lift it and myself into the air.

One day we succeeded, but I had no way to control the thing, and apparently the center of gravity was way out of whack, and the thing lifted me up, up into the air, nosing sharply upward in a profound stall, and like Icarus, I plunged back downward, except instead of crashing into the sea, I slammed into the hard ground, severely spraining both ankles, and splintering the glider into a pile of bamboo shards, twisted cloth and wire rigging. Steve was seriously worried as I lay there screaming and writhing, clutching at my swollen ankles which were beginning to take on a life all their own. I finally managed to hobble home, hiding my injuries from my parents and every one else, despite the pain, filled with wonder and awe that I’d actually flown aboard a contraption of my own design and manufacture.

It wasn’t long afterward that some of the older neighborhood kids caught me behind the oleanders separating our house from the neighbors, pinned me to the ground and proceeded to endow me with a “pink belly”, slapping and pounding my bare stomach as I lay there screaming, crying, taunting “Peter Pan, Peter Pan”, in a cruel manner that only children know. When it was over, I composed myself and went home, not mentioning that either, just figuring it was my fate for being different.

But, I never built another glider after that, and it wasn’t long before my father was out of work as the aviation boom of the sixties came to an end, and we moved from southern California.

I gave up my childhood fascination with flying things for many years, until much later when I became an aircraft mechanic, specializing in what else? Structural repairs and airframe fabrication.

Jokes on You

Last night I stopped over at one of my favorite eateries to catch a quick bite to eat. I’ve been way busy lately, and dinner has been an afterthought.

So, we were enjoying a quiet beer and a pizza when some folks I know walked in and the husband immediately said to me; “well looks like we have a new County Judge…..”, “He’ll sure be better than what we’ve got!”

“Oh yea” I said to him. “Well tell me about this guys record, what has he done?”

The guy admitted that he didn’t know.

“Well” he said “he’s gotta be better than what we’ve got” and his voice trailed off.

By this time I was getting irritated. “Just how in the hell can you vote for a person and not know his qualifications, his record?”. “Jeezus H. that’s about as fucking stupid as you can get, are you on drugs or something?”. “I mean, just to get somebody OUT of office?”…”How do you know your guy will be any better, he might be worse.”

“That’s irresponsible”.

I could see the guy shrinking, his wife grimacing. I guess they hadn’t thought of it that way.

Yesterday the fiends of Isla Blanca held a 5th grade like pep rally at the park. “Go Cascos go” they chanted in unison.

Fucking rah, rah, rah.

Well folks, the truth of the matter is that you elected an (as Teddy Kennedy says) unelectable abomination. You didn’t bother to check out the mans credentials, you voted for him just to get your hated opponent out of office.

There was no mandate for Carlos Cascos. No, the mandate was against Gilbert Hinojosa. Because of this you have opened a pandoras box.

You were more concerned with preserving your pot smoking parking lot than the good of Cameron County. You don’t care if this guy is good, bad or ugly…..and as a result of your selfish selfcenteredness, Cameron County will probably suffer a period of chaos and disorganization as the faithful and the faithless battle it out. And there are a lot of innocent folks caught in the middle.

You didn’t give a goddamn about the welfare of this County. Hell, a lot of you only voted here under technicalities, establishing residences in Isla Blanca from Hidalgo County and even other states just so you could protect your vested interest, cheap rent, a good place to smoke dope, your hallowed surf break.

Pathetic bastards.

Do you really believe that this guy will take care of you now that he’s in office? Do you know his track record?

I thought not.

Keep smiling motherfuckers. The joke's on you.

Tom Bell

Obituary here

A glowing testimony to a worthless piece of shit.

What they failed to mention was that he was a white trash, perverted, evil son of a bitch with a hair triggered temper who had no compunction against destroying relationships between fathers and children, eliciting violence, and pounding people in the face with coke bottles….

None the less, I feel strangely connected to this death as he violated me in a way I don’t think anyone ever has. In a rednecked rage, the man took me to the brink of my own death, and it was only by the intervention of God himself that I survived. It is a frightening and fragile part of my own psyche that I only take out on occasion to examine.

I have forgiven him, and tried (and try) to expunge the venom from my own life lest it consume me. My heart holds compassion for his children (daughters), and even his fucked up son who is a one balled, crack cocaine addict with the same penchant for violence as his father had.

I have a harder time feeling sorrow for his wife, who is a manipulative evil cunt, holding the same lack of values and honor as he had. They belonged together.

We all have to answer for the things we do in this life.

A dreadful chapter of this book is closed.

Coca Cola

The trauma shrink said that peoples' minds are like mailboxes; someday I'd fill the mailbox with other mail that could be taken out and examined at my discretion. That this incident would fade like newsprint on an old paper.

It was a sunny Sunday day in February, I had returned the previous evening from a five or six day trip to southern Mexico, Colima and Michoacan doing some undergrad work in petrology, vulcanology, some required classwork for a degree in geology. I returned to find my world turned and twisted like the broiling lava flows that I had been mapping for a week.

When a child smiles at you for the first time, when you see their newborn face, the whole world is right, the awesome responsibility is worth it. You are complete as an adult.

This child would never see the world. It ended it's life as a 12 week old fetus, sucked down some ungodly drain in some unholy charnel house while I was gone. Neat and tidy, the entire cost paid for by plastic credit card, provided by caring Christian neighbors.

I did not understand.

We argued.

She left, went down the street to those caring Christian neighbors.

I needed to know.

I drove down to the end of the street where they lived, knocked on the screen door which was open.

No answer.

Like a fool I stepped inside and called her name. No answer.

Then like a whirlwind, big, fat four hundred and fifty pound Tom Bell flew down the stairs as if jet propelled.

I tried to ask him where she was, but before I could get a word, maybe two out, he sucker punched me, and I crumpled to the wooden kitchen floor on my back.

Equally as fast, he was suddenly sitting on top of me, pounding my head into the dirty floor, as if hammering a nail. He was cursing at me and spitting in my face. I did not understand.

I was clawing and scratching, trying to breathe as the weight of his grossly obese body pinned me to the floor.

With uncontrolled rage in his eyes he screamed at me, fleshy contorted face inches from mine; "Why did you have to bring up the abortion?"

We struggled as I tried to break free.

Somehow, he managed to turn me over. I saw his thick arm snake out, near the base of the water cooler, where a stack of glass coca-cola bottles were. He grabbed a bottle, and as if in slow motion, closer and closer to my face it came.

I could read the logo.

I knew I was going to die.

The bottle hit me square between the eyes, and it was as if someone had turned on a faucet of red. Blood poured from my nose in a frightening stream.

Then the bottle came again, only this time I did not feel the whack, I only heard it, a squishing, wet sound of cartilage and bone shattering.

Oddly, I felt myself being handcuffed, but there were no police?

The bottle came one more time, and I disappeared into a netherworld of crimson, drifting vaguely away, detached and musing that if this really were the end, than there truly was an oxymoronic state between violence and the peace.

Then I saw other people standing there, I heard my oldest daughter screaming hysterically: "leave my Daddy alone!".

And someone else was there too, I recognized her.

And then I heard her say, emotionless: "That's enough Tom…."

I could sense the handcuffs being taken off, and I was pulled roughly by the hair to my feet, shoved toward the door.

All I could think to say, to tell him was; "I'm going to kill you".

Somehow, I managed to leave, get in my car, and drive home, knowing that this was the end. I tried to clean myself up best I could. I held my young son in my arms, tried to comfort my little daughters who had been at the house alone.

Soon the police arrived, and took the kids. I could not understand why, but did not argue.

I knew this was the end.

Tom Bell went to church that Sunday morning along with his family, even sang in the choir.

I went to the hospital.

There's a lot more to the story, hell, I even ended up victorious winning court battles, winning damage money from the fat fucker, but to what end?

Needless to say, I never did kill him, in fact I forgave him (in my heart), sent him on his proverbial way. Doesn't mean that I'd eat dinner with him, or even acknowledge his life or death, just that I'd no longer destroy myself with the awful burden of that day.

The trauma shrink was right, I eventually replaced the images, filled the mailbox with other, happier mail. But not before several years of flashbacks to that awful day, which robbed me of time and space as I tried to finish struggling through college (I eventually did).

So when I hear that abortion is simply a private matter for the woman involved, I think back to that day and want to tell them that it's bullshit.

Trans Fat Free Island

Well those jokers who identify themselves as the South Padre Island Board of Aldermen (and gals) are at it again according to inside information.

On Wednesday night the hot topic of discussion was whether to designate the Island a “Trans Fat Free” borough. Extraordinarily pressing issue.

I don’t know what the motive is behind this ridiculous waste of time, but I can just see it now, undercover City investigators showing up at the Palmetto, Jesses, the Seraton with sample kits….maybe a SWAT team, headed up by Dewey Dickwell busting into kitchens to make sure they only use cholesterol free oil. No manteca here folks.

Talk about micro-managerial. These guys really crack me up....

But wait....maybe I got it wrong, maybe they mean fat free transients? What are they gonna do, weigh everyone coming over the bridge? Pepper them with 20 questions "excuse me sir, but do you live on the island?", "when was the last time you consumed Mexican food?".....

Or perhaps they mean endomorphic transvestites? Seems a little more plausible, keeping in line with the Islands sense of tolerence for "alternative" lifestyles. Maybe they need to check each and every cross dresser for the proper amount of body fat? Don't want any fat queens ugly-fying the landscape.

.....OK so here's what I'm gonna do littleman. I'm gonna head over to the Radisson and start out with a couple of king sized shrimp cocktails, followed up by a great big goddamn 48 ounce porterhouse steak fer Chrissake, never mind the friggin shrubbery, just bring me some greasy onion rings, that'll suffice for veggies. I'm gonna tell the management that I'm doing it to honor these jerkoffs new silly assed resolution.

Hell, if they really wanted to trim the fat they'd get rid of do nothing douchebags like Dewey Dickweed and Cate Ballsack....

The Season of Our Torment

The Winter Texans are back. We have entered the season of our torment.

Lord, it seems like they just left, migrating North late last spring in a drove of aluminum RV’s and shiny trucks.

Farmers on subsidies, milking the great American tit……

And now they’re back, with their cheesy jokes, and mid-western farm field bullshit. If I hear jalapeño pronounced jal-ap-ano one more time, I may have serious issues with the Oshkosh-overall clad fucker. They can get the silly umlaut right, but give them an enyay….

No, I don’t like lutefisk. Can’t even stand the smell of the stuff. Give me menudo any day.

How long Lord, oh how long must we suffer the bastards?

My friend Don thinks they snuck in on the heels of the Bikefest crowd, unnoticed among all of the motorcycle trailers. I think he’s right. And, now they’re here; doing whatever they do, driving slowly, like they’re still out in the fields on their subsidized John Deere tractors, lost to oblivion, why oh why can’t they just stay up North and drive badly on their tractors? And they're out on the bay in their walleye boats tossing shrimp and great chunks of squid at hapless hardheads and whiting, or crowding the streets of Nuevo Progreso looking to “jew down” the locals. Winter Texans are everywhere en todos lugares.

Everywhere you go, you can overhear them talking about how things are so much cheaper back home, how they do things different back home, how things are so much better back home. Hell, why don’t they just go back home then? Get out of our hair.

Friends of Isla Blanca?

I was just made aware of the "friends of Isla Blanca" website. Apparently their message board has been rather active lately, and not all entries in favor of their cause either. Here is the link for your viewing pleasure. Let em know what you think (either for or against....Le Menagerie don't give a fuck).

Perspective

The older I get.....the better I was.
-Overheard at the Leo Najo oldtimers baseball hall of fame celebration

Billy K.

The third coast and its inhabitants gauge their existences by hurricane season, by hot and hotter by the tides rising and falling around oyster encrusted pilings holding up forlorn and ancient docks reticent with neglect, against which rusting shrimp boats lay, relics of another more prosperous era. They lay tied to the dock with umbilical cords of bleached and frayed three strand line wound in neglected figure eights around cleats thick with powdery corrosion, and no life pulses through the processing plants or the umbilical cords connected to boats and docks. The people of the third coast hurry and scurry like the Sally-lightfoot crabs that live under the ancient docks reticent with neglect, hurrying and scurrying to the shade, from piling to piling.

The people and the tourists on the third coast seek refuge from the relentless sun, ducking into ancient seafood and ancient Mexican food restaurants where humid air conditioning belches out of veiled vents, condensing the vapid air on windowpanes and the sunglasses of the tourists who scurry back outside to another destination of artificial shade and comfort, to palapa bars or bayside bars where they drink Corona beers and piss away their vacations on the third coast, or to the white sand beach where Gulf waters lap the shoreline and mullet swim in great schools between the legs of surf fishermen and children playing with bright plastic toys in the calm of the first sandbar.

There are no trees on the third coast capable of providing any respite from the relentless sun except for a few scraggly mesquite and tepegujues, and the omnipresent nopal which provides only enough shade for the rattlesnakes and tarantulas to escape the relentless sun, concealed in near lifeless torpor, until the relentless sun finally gives up her stranglehold on the third coasts’ southern latitude and the night wind begins to pick up, signaling the time to slither and crawl from ectothermic reptile and insect siestas in search of a midnight snack before the relentless sun makes its appearance again in a hurrying and scurrying few hours, in a unisonous and endless cycle like the tides, like hot and hotter, like the annual ebb and flow of hurricane season.

The National Weather Service calls it tropical cyclone development and they send in airplanes and instruments to measure, predict and verify, but the people of the third coast know it in their bones, in their psyches, and they suffer from June through October when the Gulf heats up like a bowl of Caldo Mariscos, and swirling bands of clouds converge to rotate in a counterclockwise dervish of convection, traveling over open ocean till for reasons that may never be understood by mere mortal, they join the shoreline in a rush of energy that the Mexicans call Chubaso, La tormenta, pounding la tierra with powerful winds and torrential rains before exhausting themselves over perennial coastal desert and monte ruled by the relentless sun, leaving behind a wake of carnage and cleansing.

Billy K. is a tall stooped man about sixty five years old with the countenance of forlorn beagle. The entire world is out to get him.

Perennial residents like Billy K. become the human counterpart to the perennial hurricane. Billy has lived in Port Isabel all of his adult life, working first as a commercial diver, salvaging valuables from the myriad of shipwrecks from the past, recovering gold, silver and other treasures, only to have the State of Texas claim their rightful share of the plunder, which Billy doesn’t think they have any right to. So he tried to hide the bulk of the take from one particularly well endowed Spanish galleon, but the State found out, and took the whole thing plus more since Billy tried to keep it all. They never did found the remainder of the stash though, and Billy invested a good deal of that into a Marine Salvage operation, where he has made a fortune over the years recovering the largesse from named and unnamed tropical tormentas and hurricanes.

He has a salvage yard full of treasures that savvy wharf-rats know are worth as much as their weight in the gold and silver salvaged from long sunken Spanish galleons. Brass portlights, lifeboats, life preservers, engines and deck machinery, everything from sailboat rigging, blocks and fairleads to fishing winches, trawl doors and nets.

Billy K. owns a giant rusting hulk, bleeding long trails of iron oxide down it’s sides to its barnacle encrusted waterline, a British built ferry boat he obtained through some back alley deal, lying against one of his docks, tucked in there between filthy tugs and abandoned shrimpers.

Billy contracted a couple of guys from up the valley, out west in the desert area to sandblast the hull, get it ready to paint so that he could sell it to some unsuspecting soul.

So they hauled and drydocked the boat there on his property, and began to sandblast it, letting the paint, rust and sand fall into the open channel, and onto the drydock where it could be washed into the channel at the end of the day with high pressure washers.

…..But since this ain’t the wild west nomore, pretty soon his jerry-rigged operation came up on the feds radar screen……The Coast Guard, and the environmental police showed up and shut Billy K. down. “Hell” he claimed, “It’s not my fault, they’re just picking on me”. “If I hire a company to do work for me, than how could it be my fault”? “If you hire somebody to paint your car, and they wash the unused paint down the drain, would it be your fault that they violated the law?”

Later Billy K. got a contract from Mr. Z who owns about half of the town, to put in some decorative pilings and cement rip-rap out in front of Mr. Z’s’ new waterfront eatery, the Pelican Station. Give it a real rundown coastal look. A perfect opportunity to use up some of that old trash lying around the salvage yard, out of sight, out of mind. When the feds caught up with him again, for not having the proper permits to place fill in the water, threatening to fine him fifty thousand dollars a day for illegally filling coastal waters, Billy moaned; “they’re just picking on me, they’re always picking on me, why me?”….”how was I supposed to know that there weren’t any permits to do that?”…. “I can’t be responsible for this!”….

Billy K. owns a restaurant over on the island, the Palm Street Pier. An open air joint on the bay, the Palm Street pier is classically furnished with salvaged bits and pieces from Billy K’s. Marine Salvage Yard. Fresnel lights and ships’ wheels, cabin furnishings dating back to the 1950’s all held together by turquoise paint over its weathered lumber.

Billy K’s. neighbor to the South, Tequila Frogs, own the property that Billy uses for a parking lot out in front of Palm Street Pier, and recently decided for reasons not clear to anyone except he and Billy K. that the parking lot property was now off-limits to customers of the Palm Street Pier, so in the middle of a busy Saturday night crowd, the island constabulary came bursting in (well, came bursting on to palapa covered restaurant and grill), announcing that the patrons would immediately have to move their cars to the parking lot that was included in the lease when Billy K. originally leased the property several years prior, a parking lot located two blocks distant.

There hasn’t been much business at the Palm Street Pier since that happened. Billy K. swears it isn’t his fault. Hell, everyone’s always picking on him.

Another Public Service message

Well folks....it's time to call a spade a spade. The Isla Blanca controversy has turned into a strictly political battlefield. In this case, the candidate who portrays himself as the knight in shining armor is in reality, the wolf in sheeps clothing.

Come on Mr. Cascos, tell your loyal minions how you:

1.) As County Commissioner voted in favor of each and every rate hike increase for the park,

and

2.) campaigned to demolish a pefecty sound Convention Center structure within the park, so that the City of SPI could have a monopoly on a new, better structure (constructed in a hurricane washover no less).

Does this sound like the track record of someone with the best interests of a park in mind?

What makes folks think that if they succeed in getting this guy elected that he won't just sell out the park anyway? He's already proved willing to do that on numerous occassions.

Don't be ignorant folks. Question ALL motives....

(Not paid for or endosed by ANY political candidate, just common sense questions and observations)

Happy Trail(er)s

The seasons spin by the older I get.

Sometimes I feel like the disappearing man.

It's the annual "bike fest" here on the island again, and the fuckers are showing up en masse. High dollar RV's and trucks, pulling trailers loaded with high end Harleys that only get ridden a couple of times a year.

Some of these people tow their two wheelers hundreds, maybe thousands of miles to their destination here at the "roar by the shore" so that they can ride up and down Padre Boulevard, a total distance of something like 6 miles. Real easy riders.

On Saturday they have a bike parade scheduled. They all act naughty, blasting over the causeway, and up the street to climax over at the convention center.

I have a novel idea for them this year.

Why not have a trailer parade? Cut through the crap. Their trailers get a lot more highway miles than their bikes anyway.

SPI makes a splash....

Last week the wonderful berg of South Padre Island hosted “splash”, a homosexual debauchery on the sandspit, celebrating the cuteness of “being gay”

And what the fuck is “being gay”? I’m not the first to pen that the word “gay” used to have a totally innocuous meaning in more innocent times. Gay meant “happy”. Hell, I even had a “Gay Yellow Schoolbus”. Created when we were more innocent, and perverts stayed in the closet. It pains me to think of what that little toy would be today, or what the jokes surrounding it would be.

It pains me to see us having taken a giant step toward Gomorrah . Never mind Sodom .

Call me a homophobe if you like. I don’t give a shit.

To legitimize abhorrent behavior is to give the devil his due. Have we become a society so tolerant of deviancy that we will legitimize anything between two individuals, even at the expense of our own freedom, and the country in which we live?

Christ, I even saw a banner across the road welcoming participants of “splash” to the island. Real savory for families and children. What’s next? Hosting an annual convention of NAMBLA? It’s just a little further down the old (dirt) road. Thanks a lot SPI

I thought that Republicans were against this sort of thing? Seems like the political infrastructure of SPI is mostly the “R word though…..

So what gives? Could the town be so money hungry that it would sell its soul for a few lousy silver shekels? Could the City Manager (and I use that term loosely), Mr. Dewey Cashwell (you know him… of Hughy, Dewey and Louie fame) be persuaded to put aside principal for hotel occupancy? I tell you, I feel sorry for the hotel and condo cleanup crews after an event like this. Better wear full body protection, face masks and keep the industrial disinfectant nearby!

Ah well, what can we expect?

This type of behavior is totally in line with a place whose citizens are more concerned with building sand castles, putting on parties and catering to ill behaved annual spring break children, than with issues of morality, global crisis or the impending implosion of western civilization. I say keep fiddling while Rome burns ya’ll, it’s easy when you’re insulated from the real world.

Maybe too much THC and LSD during the ‘60’s?

Any town that bases it’s entire economy on this type of thing is only a shove from total economic and moral collapse. Better keep whistling past the graveyard.

Peace and love ya’ll

Isla Blanca Park is Never Safe?

Surfrider Mission Statement:
-The Surfrider Foundation is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches through conservation, activism, research and education.

Isla Blanca Is Never Safe!

That’s the rhetoric I spotted on the Marquis at “On the Beach” the other day when I drove past. It’s also bullshit. So is the above mission statement for “surfrider”.

Let me ‘splain again. This is getting to be a tiring topic, but one that is so deeply mired in politics that it probably deserves the weight of truth.

As you know, Isla Blanca County Park had been given a contract by the County Commission for development by a group called the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group. The park itself is located on the extreme south tip of South Padre Island, adjacent to the north Brazos Santiago Jetty. Because of it’s geologic setting, there is a net loss of property due to erosion produced by the inhibition of sediment transport by the northbound longshore current as a result of the granite jetties which were built in the early part of the 20th century. Bottom line, nature, and the acts of man are causing this small tip of the barrier island to disappear.

As a side product though, it is perhaps the most excellent wave riding spot on the Gulf of Mexico. Here the continental shelf is at its narrowest point, allowing deep water swells to roll all the way to the beach, which themselves play a role in the exaggerated rate of erosion. The same waves that “surfrider” is so concerned with preserving access to, are also relentlessly wearing down the beach front, and sweeping the park away.

On Tuesday I took my little ketch offshore, out the jetties, which are a great place to drill home the effects of nature and man by observation. When I was just about in line with the south beach, Boca Chica, I was able to turn around, and look west at the North beach (Isla Blanca Park), almost a half mile further west, a result of erosion and shoreward transport of this part of the island.

So there’s not much we can do about it. Nature will eventually have her way, always has. The island will continue its relentless march shoreward, eventually accreting with the western shoreline, subside and disappear in a process that will be repeated during the next regression-transgression of sea level.

I don’t think surfrider understands this, or if they do they certainly aren’t making their members aware of it, members who consist mainly of aging affluent still pot smoking yuppies, who only see a threat to their parking lot where they can conduct unrestricted hedonism. What else could it be?

Certainly, a development in Isla Blanca Park of the sort that the “enhancement group” proposes would have little, if any impact on the ultimate geomorphic process that I’ve attempted to describe. And in reality, as the plans showed, fewer inhabitants than currently utilize the RV park would be present at any given time, probably reducing “ecological impact”.

Wouldn’t this fit in with surfriders mission? Judicious development can produce beneficial results. Furthermore, in Texas, public beach access cannot be restricted, and the surf break that these former 60’s hippies are so adamant about is really a non-issue. So where is the problem?

Cameron Counties political infrastructure even negated the lease in order to placate these bastards, who, selfishly don‘t even realize that the income would’ve funded other low income facilities for the benefit of the rest of the counties population. Hell, I had one even tell me, when I asked him about what the underprivileged kids would do for recreational facilities, kids who don’t even have an opportunity to travel from their colonias to the beach; “let ‘em play at school”.

Real caring individual, unfortunately reflective of the majority of self centered surfers, who drive their high end SUV’s down to the park to “catch a wave”……These folks are isolated from the rest of their community, choosing to live here in the affluence of the island and coast, insulating themselves from the true reality of where they live, the same as they choose to insulate themselves from the reality of what really is happening at Isla Blanca Park. Wake up and smell the Sargassum folks, it’s really all about erosion.

I heard one of these assholes remark the other day about their petition with “over three thousand signatures”, but what they failed to mention was the percentage of signatures by folks outside of this area, this county, even this state. Can’t forget the almighty “Winter Texans” either (and yes Virgina….these bastards are returning again, all too early!), folks only concerned with their own ability to stay on the beach all winter cheap. They don’t give a flying fuck about this place either. Just what’s in it for them. What’s free. And that’s the sad reality.

It appears to me that from the beginning this has been a political issue, dominated by a single individuals quest for County-judgedom. The way I see it, this Cascos character has been in the fracas from the beginning, using the naiveté of the cannabis consumers as a forum, a moving billboard. Next to damn near every “Save Isla Blanca” sticker is a “Carlos Cascos” sticker…….Do people really believe that this man won’t parlay an opportunity into gain? Damn near every “rally” put on by surfrider et al has involved a political rally for this guy.

Now they’re at it again, over some perceived intricacy within the vestigial remnants of “the lease”, but this time there’s a problem. It’s blatant bullshit, and they’re caught, pants down. However, this doesn’t seem to make a difference. These people will not stop until they finally implode like the draft card burning jerks they once were. It’s like a Phoenix rising from the flames in reverse. I smell a rat, the unholy triad between Cascos (the father), Surfrider (the son), and the chosen few (the un-holy ghost).

I really don’t much care about political alliances, but what I do care about is this place, and that’s what’s got me so red-assed. All of this misplaced energy.

There are true ecological problems that should be addressed. For example, how can we mitigate the effects of erosion in a common sense way? What do we do about the denigration of water quality from an ever expanding population? How do we deal with the siltation of the navigable passes and channels? Limit trash on beaches?

I don’t hear these concerns voiced by Cascos/surfrider/the privileged few. They instead, have chosen to target a totally banal and political cause for their own selfish gain. In that, there is no difference between them and their enemy, the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group