http://ramangrafik.com/images/wmnhl.php?xwel=xwel

Crazy: The Final Word

Sarah Palin, Uncle Ted's upside-down house, Don Young's legal bills, Bristol Palin, Don Young re-elected, a road to Nome, a Target on Muldoon, a guy drops dead on the summit of Denali, the three-time Iron Dog Champ First Dude, pirates(!), UAA in the Final Four, Mark Begich to the Senate and seeing Russia from my house.

As Jack said, sell Crazy someplace else - we're all stocked up here.

Crazy Pictures of Crazy Boat Rescue II

Here's a decent pic from the mission I was on to get a guy off a boat about 150 miles into Bristol Bay (north of the Aluetians, south of the Bering Sea).



For frequent readers, this was Crazy Boat II, as opposed to Crazy Boat I

Here's what you see:

obviously, its from the helo, looking down.

from the water off the boat, you can see we were moving pretty good, about 10knots through the water (front of boat is top of pic). obviously, its a good shot of the boat and how tight it is. realize that the deck the guys are standing on is actually sunke, probably 10 feet, below those railings. From top of the smokes stacks on either side into that pit is about 30 feet.

on the very bottom of the pic, you'll probably spot the guy in the orange and blue suit with the helmet, looking up. thats my partner paul, on the deck, looking up. the litter is at the end of the cable, the patient is wrapped in a blanket (his head is cut off on the bottom of the pic), and I'm attached to him on one side.

What also isn't obvious is that the patient is a 250lbs Samoan dude. keep that in mind as the story goes along.

Easiest way to realize what you're looking at is to realize that the white circle next to the patient is my helmet, but my drysuit is black so its tough to spot what i'm up to.

we're above the deck, halfway up the cable - its hard to tell how how high since the angle is looking down. but let me point out one more thing.

down on the deck is what looks like a line down the center of the deck. its impossible to tell, but that's a 3 foot railing that runs down the center.

So as we lifted off the deck, we got to about 4 feet up and the boat hit a wave and it what must have been a 5ft wave. Because suddenly the deck - and particularly that railing, came up and attacked me and my 250 lbs Samoan. in about .01 of a second, i found myself thrown over the railing, with the full weight of the Somoan crashing across my femurs.

For a moment I actually thought to myself, "well this is going to be a great 6-hour helo ride back home with 2 broken legs."

I rolled out from under him, which only brought the litter to rest on top of me on the deck. So I was relatively safe from being broken inhalf, but now pinned beneath 250 lbs of somoan-attached-to-a-helicopter.

at that point i looked over towards my partner and the rest of the crew, that had retreated from under the helo as we lifted off and thought to myself: "I'm here to rescue this guy. Somebody pull him off me."

Crazy sings the blues

Apparently, somebody decided everybody was having too much fun in Crazy.

the toughest football coach in America died after heart surgery last week. Let's take a moment to appreciate the sublimely named Buck Nystrom, whose legacy matches his name. Coaching in the 40-below-in-November Fairbanks area, first at tiny Eielson and then nearby North Pole (!), Nystrom won two state titles. He remains the only non-Anchorage coach ever to win State. He died after heart surgery last week, which is ridiculous because anybody who coaches North Pole High school to a state title ain't lackin' heart.

Here's one for ya: When Nystrom won his second title with North Pole, they trounced several Anchorage teams in the playoffs (needles to say, Anchorage, with its huge schools, is the giant black hole at the center of Alaska high school sports). Afterwards, Nystrom would tell people it was his first real title because when he won it all with Eielson, their path that year hadn't gone through any Anchorage teams.

http://newsminer.com/2006/09/24/2234/

Crazy Politics Heats Up!

As predicted here and absolutely everywhere else, Alaska will have a new Governor next year. Incumbant Frank Murkowski (R), running a full-scale re-election campaign and unencumbered by serious scandal or wedge issue, managed to finish THIRD in his party's primary for his own job.

Amazing, really. In his time at the state's helm he did little wrong (if less right) and was too boring to offend. People just have learned to roundly hate him.

The winner was Sarah Palin. She takes on Tony Knowles, who was already Gov. twice, but was outed by term limits, making room for Frank.

Which means our next Governor will be one of two things:

A Democrat.

Or Hot.

!yzarC

Jalisco has a silent J, right? Same with San Jose.

So if you pronounce them backwards, you'd keep the J silent, right?
something like "oh-ks-il-ah" and "Ay-zoh-Nas"

Don't bother sounding those out - just concede the Silent J point.

Now DO bother sounding it our for Juneau.

Does it sound like "Hoonah?"

Or you can take the Ferry.

"Stay Cool! Have a Crazy Summer!"

Take a good, hard look at this man. This is Frank Murkowski, Alaska's soon-to-be-former Governor and probably the most tone-deaf politician currently drawing a public paycheck in America.

And, boy oh boy, did he defend that title today.

Murkowski's litany of offenses to the political craft and to common sense are too long to retell here. Appointing his daughter to the US Senate ranks high on the list, as does his ceaseless, tantrum-like pursuit of a private jet to be placed at his disposal while Governor, arguing the state police could use it as well, despite its well-publicized inability to land on a vast majority of Alaska's unimproved airfields.

From ANWR to the Gas Pipeline to Bridges to Nowhere, Murkowski runs his office like Brewster ran his millions.

Today, though, I offer you the most astonishing display of political ineptitude since San Diego Republican Howard Kaloogian started publishing pictures of "peaceful, downtown Baghdad," his bestest friends in Iraq and his personal relationship with Dubya.

That might not be fair. Kaloogian was a small-time hack - nay, a no-time hack - who took a longshot on riding the Lie Train, hoping it could get him places his record and talent couldn't. He failed, which is what small-timers do.

Frank Murkowski isn't a small-timer. He shouldn't be failing. He was a US Senator for 20 years and he is the Governor of The ByGawd Biggest State In The Union.
He can run campaigns and win elections. So how did today happen?

(And let me be clear: I wish this Governor no particular electoral harm. He sent me a very nice, nearly personal letter last week for helping out on our Crazy tilted-boat rescue. And other than his personal plane, I can't name a policy of his I strongly oppose. His Gas Line work has been particularly yeoman-like. This post, and other chronicles of his antics in this space, is just a recording of an ongoing political trainwreck far too violent, gory and destructive to turn away from)

Facing a stiff primary challenge from two formidable opponents, Ken Binkley and Sarah Palin, Murkowski made the mistake of accepting the chance to debate them in a round table on local TV.

Sarah Palin and Ken Binkley are almost comicly young, energetic and good looking. Whether they are Rhodes Scholars or Kaloogian-order baffoons is immaterial. This was a TV debate and they each look like movie stars (OK, sitcom stars) and they talk a tremendous, TV-ready game.

Frank Murkowski, by any measure, is a jowly, akward, old man. He scolds and gets flustered and visibly pouts. He's Nixon without the hair grease.

As hopeless a mismatch as it was, it got worse in the studio.

The one thing Murkowski has is height - he's a big guy.

This debate was held sitting around a small, Denny's-sized round table. So not only was his height negated, he was denied an expansive square desk behind which to hide the fact that he is, unlike his opponents, fat. Also, being a bit gangly, he had nowhere to rest his arms, which made him look fidgity.

For the entirety of the debate, the incumbant Governor looked like a kid who flunked fifth grade and didn't fit in the desk his second time through.

My lesson is this: It is ridiculous that Murkowski's campaign staff even allowed him to go on.

Then the debate started. And it got much, much worse.

As Palin and Binkley took turns in a particularly long-winded spat of gang-up-on-the-Incumbant (what did he expect?), this time over ethics, Frank - looking pissed - turned to Binkley and accused him of lying about his education on his website.
What, exactly, asked Binkley, is a lie?
Frank then accused him - outloud, on camera, bigger'n'shit - of NOT GRADUATING FROM HIS FAIRBANKS HIGH SCHOOL!!!!

To everyone's credit, neither astonished silence nor raucous laughter overcame the set.

That would have been my reaction because that is a staggering accusation if it is true, and an even more staggering one if it isn't.

In fact, let's take a hard look at it.

Ask yourself - have you ever heard of a person higher up the food chain than, say, asst Night Manager at a Target, accused of lying about graduating from high school? It just isn't one of those things that people lie about.
College, sure - everybody, it seems, lies about college. People lie about thier GPAs, lie about activities, even lie about how many times they got laid, bending the truth up or down depending on the audience.
There was Notre Dame's old football coach who said he graduated from somewhere and just flat didn't. There's that Republican running for congress out east who says he has a Masters from Harvard, only what he has is a Masters from Harvard's "extension" school , aka night school (and who called himself a Gulf War combat vet but never left the US... but let's stay focused).
There's Dan Quayle who didn't want to lie so he refused to discuss college altogether.

We accept some lying about college because those of us who went probably lied a little to get INTO college and lied a bit more to get a job that got us out.

But surely nobody lies about the simple, true/false question of finishing high school, right? At least not outside of MySpace.

So now we have to decide: which of two seemingly impossible events has occured?

• Has a man reached a status in life where he is a serious threat to become Govenor of a state, and yet feels safe lying about the basic act of graduating from high school, and may have a history of doing so? Maybe he graduated, maybe he did not - surely the latter is no bar from office. But has he lied about such a small thintg? And if so, has he never been caught?

Or....

• Has Alaska's second-most successful politician (who studied behind Alaska's most successful politician when they served together in DC) just inaccurately accused an opponent of a sin that can literally be proven or disproven in less than a minute? Has the Governor of Alaska, veteran of a dozen major races, on a televised debate, announced the the sky is green?

The answer: the sky is blue. And Murkowski blew it.

Binkley, as his campaign joyfully proved, graduated from high school in 1971. In fact, he finished early, and apparently did not march with his graduating class (another jaw dropper: Binkley produced the original letter from the principal inviting him, as an early-graduater, to come back and march - who would keep that?).

If you need my wild-ass guess, it appears Murkowski's staff took Binkley's absense at the ceremony (perhaps recorded in a picture) as evidence he did not graduate and ran with that - which would be the all-time, hands down worse "Op-Research" work in Dirty Tricks history.

There may even be some 'missing credits, later earned'-issues developing in the story.

But Binkley is a high school grad.

His claims to college education, as presented on his website, may be open for criticism - it lists Western Washington University under "Education", which a reader might take to mean 'graduate.' The site claims no degree, but then it doesn't steer the reader away from assuming it, either. Predictably, Binkley didn't graduate from there.

Deceptive? I'd allow for 'slightly' but a) its a campaign website and b) so what?

It can't sully the shining brilliance of Murkowski's high school debacle.

That just can't be topped....

Or. So. I. Thought.

So here is what happened next: apparently, behind the scenes, Murkowski said if Binkley could prove he graduated, Murkowski would apologize.

Fair enough. Dangerous ground for Big Frank, but fair enough.

Binkley proved it.

And Frank apologized... ON TV!!!!

The picture at the top of this post - the sad-sack, back-alley-lookin', whipped-dog picture - is from the interview. He looked die-rectly into the camera and apologized to Binkley, by name.

I'm beginning to think Murkowski wants out of his race worse than Tom Delay.

How could this have happened? How could a man, whom the camera despises in his most triumphant of moments, be sent out to humble himself like this?

Has the campaign never heard of a press release? "Gov. Murkowski Announces New Information In Binkley Research; Issues Apology; Binkley Still Sucks"

There are only about 10 million low-key ways to weasel your way out of that mistake.

No. Let's send the ol' bear out there, tell him to eat shit on camera, let the anchors laugh and laugh and laugh.

To put this political event in the context I put all political events, if I was told a West Wing character was running Frank's campaign, just about the only one I could still suspect would be Zoe's French boyfriend who put Ecstacy in her drink and got her kidnapped.
That might be Frank's last chance.

FINAL POINT: two days ago, BP shut down it's Prudhoe Bay oil operation, a news story unequaled in size and scope since the Exxon Valdez, or at least since those 12 people took simultaneous headers off the mountain outside Anchorage.

Meaning... this would have been a GREAT WEEK to take a page from Dubya, and Act Like A Leader. Be A Decider. Do What Governors Do.

If Murkowski could have just put forth the IMPRESSION that he was On The BP Thing, he'd have bought huge points. But if that was out of reach, at least this was almost an impossible week to screw up so badly in the campaign that your screw up actually makes the news.

And there he is, on the news.

Well, I'll tell ya how I would have handled it. I'd have sent him out there with a 1971 Lathrop high yearbook and a sharpie. I'd have told him to grin as wide as those jowly cheeks will let him and sign it:

"Binky!
Stay cool!
Have a Crazy Summer!
BFF!!!! - Frank"

8% of domestic Oil, 100% of domestic Crazy

The World's All-Time/All-Comers/Retire the Trophy/Grand Mullah Champion
of "Blandness of Name-times-Power Wielded", John Browne, CEO of
British Petroleum for the last 13 years, was in Anchorage recently.

Though you may suspect he wanted a shot at our late-arriving Salmon
run, it turns out he dropped by to - a deep breath may be in order here
- SHUT DOWN Prudhoe Bay!

!!!!

That's 8-percent of US oil production, and the US is 10 percent of
world supply!

I'm no economist but- wait, I almost am an economist, and my Laffer
curve sure hopes you filled up your tanks this past weekend. And maybe
bought a good bike.

Big Crazy. But there's also some BP CEO-Small Crazy to soak in, too.

Mr. Browne - or rather, LORD Browne, thankee - is one of the top -
what? - 100? 50? 20? CEOs on earth. Unimaginable wealth, lecturer to
Kings and Presidents, an oil imperialist of the highest order,
conquests all over the world. In fact, I direct your attention to the
link below - the BP press release on the shutdown - and to the title of
the next BP release listed: "BP Hosts Blair and Schwarzenegger Climate
Change Meeting"
On the Juice scale, I think we can safely put ol' John in the "You
sendin' Lord Browne? Shit, negro - that's all you had to say!"-Level.

So take the time to read through this interview as he recalls his
younger days in Alaska. He lived off Spenard, the eternal armpit of
Anchorage.
You can feel the glee and astonishment as he recalls it all. He may
overthrow governments for breakfast now, but when he lived here, he had
to get up early to even have it.

Interview -
http://www.adn.com/money/industries/oil/story/8049219p-7942242c.html
Shutdown story -
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?
categoryId=2012968&contentId=7020563

As always - crazywhitenoise.blogspot.com

Crazy "wouldn't say it like that."

An all-timer of Alaska Crazy today.

How would you say it, judge? "Crazy?"

Crazy Boat, Take II

Another boat, another run-in with Crazy.

As chronicled just below in last week's post, we went out to a very-broke boat off Adak, way-the-hell-out-there in the Aluetian chain. As mentioned, while my friends and teammates assigned that day to our helicopters got to pull everybody off the ship, I got to circle it and take pictures on the C-130.

Thems the breaks.

Cut to last Friday, where I was for the second time in a week called at work to come in, this time at the consulting firm I work at. This one stung, too, since our boss there had JUST sent me to get beer for the office, and I'd spent his money on a Black Butte Porter, my favorite of all the flavors.
Another boat mission, another way-the-hell-out-there in the Pacific deal - this time North of the Aluetians rather than South. But this time I was on the helicopter.

6 hours later, we pulled into a hover over a perfectly upright but steaming-at-10knots fishing vessel. Myself and Paul Nelson hoisted down onto the deck, between smokestacks and cranes, and retrieved a relatively healthy by medical standards, and VERY healthy by body-size standards, Hawaiian fisherman. Listed at two and half bills, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was low.

Back on deck, trying to hoist out with the litter, I got about 3 feet off the deck when the ship hit a wave and sent me and the patient crashing over a railing, his 300-lbs-counting-the-litter on top of me. Not often you get the chance to snap both femurs 500 miles from help, but here was my chance.
It was not to be.
I rolled off of the railing the one direction I could, which was directly under the litter - I'm here to rescue this guy; somebody pull him off me.
So that was fun.

But once we got up the hoist, it was an uneventful 5 hour ride home. After 30 minutes of monitoring, pulse and BP checks and starting an IV (got it on the first stick, thankee), I gave up pretending that he was sick and let him sleep most of the way home.

Fortunately, Paul grabbed a lifering from the boat on the way up. When we got back at about 2 a.m., we took some shots at the Section.

If you're wondering what's in my right hand, that's a Black Butte Porter I grabbed on the way out the door 12 hours earlier. Thankee.

The Far End of Crazy

Had a chance to be part of the Air National Guard's almost unpredencted effort to save the 23-man crew of a sinking ship way way WAAAAYYYY the hell out there on the Aluetian chain.

Here's proof.



If the Aluetians are famous at all, than its only for bad weather and unimaginable remoteness. As it turned out, they were astonishingly beautiful. Sheer cliff faces drop into the ocean, covered in tropicly-thick, green vegetation, either hardy grass and shrubs or trees. Of course, the weather was, by Aluetian standards, impeccible, and all those trees and shrubs had that clingy look that comes from regular batterings of 80 mph winds in freezing temps. But as scenery goes, there was hardly anything BUT cliffs, waterfalls and beaches.
Oh, also the occasional volcano. Or four.



Aluetian Islands, 8-aircraft, 14-hour rescues and 80-degree-listing, 4600-car-carrying ships Rule.

matt

Crazy Beach

A day at the Crazy beach.

A video from a high school field trip to a beach in Prince William Sound. They pour water in the sand, and the oil still in the beach perculates out.

Kotlik, Alaska

From notmuch.com

I sure hope this is true:

....Where the Yukon delta meets Norton Sound in the Bering Sea, is the nearby native village Kotlik. It gets its name from an Eskimo word for pants, because the Yukon River parts here like legs on a pair of trousers.

Crazy Throws In Its Hat

We know that all of Alaska's recent US Senators are Crazy.

• Ted Stevens - current Ceasar of Crazy in the Senate
• Frank Murkowski - moderatly incompetent Senator but fabulously Crazy current Governor, whose first act was to appoint to the US Senate...
• Lisa Murkowski - whose Crazy arrival set her well on her way to a moderatly incompetent career.

Turns out, the old-school the Old School Alaskan Senators take a back seat to no one.

Hits for the Crazy cycle!

Ugly, Crazy, Cold AND Lazy!!!

matt

Crazy Airlines

I did get a chance to view the Crazy Fish Plane up close, when a flight
I was on parked next to it at Anchorage international.

On the other hand, this article mentions seven - SEVEN - inflight
depressurization events in a week. Throw that on the pile with the
five they had two months ago.

Crazy Fish Plane - what the hell's going on?

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7478826p-7388873c.html

A Bridge Too Crazy

The troubled waters under the Crazy Bridge to Nowhere have risen to catastrophic levels. How catastrophic? After years of predictable abuse by the New York Times, John McCain and other Enemies of Crazy, the Bridge was taken out to the woodshed by the muckracking assaassins of... nationally-inserted, mid-paper Parade Magazine.

Here is a sampling of the hard-hitting journalistic endevours that Parade has taken on in recent months:

An aging pop harpieA minimally tempting Housewive

A distinguished graduate of Yale University

A broadly popular African American

A Presidential Assassin*

His accomplice*

Another distinguished graduate of Yale UniversityAnother broadly popular African American

The Fraud Against the American Taxpayer which is
"The Crazy Bridge To Nowhere"

*not actually killers of a President. But Smitz is the flagship face of the "New" West Wing, which is KILLING the show's legacy, until recently the best TV show since MASH.

Wow - A murderer's row of muckraking, eh? That's about like getting rolled for lunch money by the chess team. If you can't get a fluffer-piece from Parade, you may have a loser on your hands.

And, they do.

This week, Congress, in a desperate lunge at the shores of Sanity, pulled the plug.

Or DID THEY? Thanks to Ted Stevens, Alaska does not get the money for the bridge. But they do get the money.

And Stevens calls it a "compromise." More, surely, to come.

Crazy Radio Ads

(UPDATE: The below-discussed "Maggie's Song - Walls Of Stone" Is it me, or is there more than a hint of Phil Collins' Coming In The Air Tonight in this)

this one's for my buddy Anthony because I know he is, like me, a
collector of unredeemably horrible radio ads, which is a hobby anyone
here in Anchorage must take up if they want to listen to the radio.
Anchorage, for obvious reasons, doesn't have the highest ad rates
for radio, most notably on its hopelessly feeble sportstalk network
(major announcement from earlier THIS YEAR: "we finally have a
website!"), and now, i've found, on it's Air America affiliate, which
carries Al Franken (snapshot opinion: Al is great; the rest of AA's
talent is unlistenable).

Anchorage's radio, in fact, is so feeble that the sports station -
which has nothing but ESPN's network feed and, inexplicably, Seattle
pro teams, but nothing local - fills a solid half of it's commerical
time with public service announcements. I assume they just can't sell
the time.
So these PSA: there are, maybe, 4. All horrible, all boring, all
insulting ('don't be an energy hog' 'natives saved lewis and clark,'
'poverty sucks' 'gun crimes' etc).
They suck.
And then, over the horizon and gone from the pack, is the Arbor Day
Foundation ad.
This ad, which i guess is supposed to help trees, incites me nearly
to forest arson. It's this soaring, pulsing, hateful song by some
overwrought woman singer, extolling trees, who wants you to plant
"trees across the nation!!!"
It's like Helen Ready-goes-Green. Absolutely the most brutal 30
seconds you'll ever sit through in your car short of an engine fire.

I actually have seen a toned-down version on TV - similiar music -
but the radio one is 30 times as grating. And it's on EVERY SINGLE
commercial break, occasionally TWICE.

It's been probably a year since i heard the end of it - it's a
stone-cold channel turner everytime.

I know Anthony and I have had several conversations about the
unassailable horrors of the Arbor day ad.

Well, we have a serious contender:

over here on 1080, during Franken (and other times) is the Maggie The
Elephant ad.

Maggie, you'll recall, is the Anchorage Zoo's elephant, which they
shouldn't have. It's Alaska. We don't need elephants! Not surprisingly, she's gotten a
lot of press over the years.

Evidently, there is a "save maggie" group. (UPDATE: it's called Friends of Maggie, and this is their site). They want Maggie out of the
state. As far as i know, they might be a front group for some Lower 48
Zoo looking to get Maggie on the cheap. I don't know. I'm not getting
involved.

And i'm REALLY not getting involved after being subjected - over and
over - to their ad.

So you get the over-wrought woman, but this time just talking and
reading a script, with every cliche of useless feel-goodism imagineable
("we love maggie but we need to think of her needs" "elephants are
social, and they grow lonely when seperated from their own kind").
But over the top of this ad is - well, it's amazing.
It's another woman (maybe the same one) chanting - yes, chanting -
in a distinctly native-america way, only in complete white-girl
English. Only not in sentences. Just words and phrases. Just
uninterrupted moans of "Free! Freedom! Set us free! Love free" I'm telling you, tuneless moaning. Unreal.

See the link above to hear it.

It's the audio-version of a trunk covered with bumper stickers.
But here's the hammer: somebody has a drum. Ya know, a
drum-circle, bongo-like drum.
And they have no earthly clue what to do with it.
bangbang-bang-(pause)-bang-bang-(pause)-bang-(pau-)bangbang. Like,
rhythm-on-opposite day. Absolutely no connection to the voice, nor to
any sense of time.
bang bang.

Just absolutely horrific. Moaning, rhythm-less banging and an
annoying woman prattling on about an elephant's feelings.

Anthony - you need to get in on this.

ps - i just realized: the sports network has local programming - high
school football playoffs and hockey - local minor league (go Aces!) and
UAA.
Which still doesn't explain why the hell they think anyone wants to
listen to the Mariners.

Crazy Smoking

 

Driving down one of our more optimistically named thoroughfares in Anchorage - Northern Lights Blvd - I passed a van.

   From the open driver's window, a small dog was sticking its head out in the wind.

   Driving past, I saw the dog was sitting on the lap of the driver, who was driving with just one hand.

   The window was open, I could see, not for the dog but because the driver was smoking, blowing the smoke out the window.

   He had on only a collared shirt - no gloves, no hat.  We were going 40 MPH.

 

   It was 12 degrees.

 

   Three possibilities:  that guy really likes to smokel  he really, really hates smelly cars; he's flat-crazy.

 

Can you guess which I suspect?

Crazy Halloween

Happy Halloween - In the vein of Holiday Craziness, do not miss Christopher Walken, replete with echo
effects, screaming wind and accompanied by eerie guitar, reciting The
Raven. Still another gift of Coverville, the best podcast I know
about.

And straight from the U. Alaska-Anchorage catalog:

Distance learning, from New Hampshire (really!)
- enrolled students must have access to broadband internet, spreadsheet and database software, extreme cold and lotsa Crazy.

Crazy Takes The Floor

Ted Stevens. Went. Nuts.

And that's his own press release.

Some of the better lines he let fly on the floor of the Senate: he
said he would quit the Senate if the Coburn amendment passed, saying "I
don't threaten people, I promise people."

I do enjoy the comparison between the Bridge To Nowhere and the Golden
Gate Bridge.

Crazy Pets

Animals gone Crazy.

among the highlights: the state rep referenced in the top of the story
is my local rep. muldoon, the stated neighborhood, is my nieghborhood.

and as good as the story is, go through all 10 of the pictures - don't
miss the one with the gator at the top of the stairs and the nervous
cat at the bottom.

i said 'gator'.

matt

Crazy Hits the Poor House

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7105489p-7012472c.html

Only half a mil? But winter's coming and baby needs new muckluks!

Weekend's Craziest Headlines

#1: "A crazy conquest for USC"

That was the real headline on Yahoo! sports all weekend. Couldn't
have picked a better word. (Here's what I thought)

#2: Meanwhile, back in CrazyLand: "Inmate flees after father's
funeral"

it's not for all the marbles from the one-inch line in hip-high grass.
Just another weekend in Crazy.

Crazy International. Part II.

Here's a great story that covers several drums I like to bang here on
the Crazy list.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7055837p-6959976c.html

This story provides both the context and details of the absurdity of
the "The Bridge to Nowhere" in Southeast at Ketchikan. $223 Million of
federal money for a bridge connecting an isolated town with a
population of a few thousand, and a completely empty island.
Now you will be able to take flights be able to get on the Crazy
FishPlane at Ted Stevens International, land at Don Young International
and take the Bridge to Nowhere - all of it courtesy of the American
taxpayer.
I can't wait.