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.

Crazy B4UDIE

I've lobbying for people to come take advantage of my guest bedroom for over 2 years now. I've tried to be nice about it, friendly even.

Not so much the AK tourism board. They just let you know the clock's tickin.

thanks to Danny and LB for pointing me towards it.

matt

ps - Extra-super credit to anybody in Seattle, LA or Minneapolis who sends me a picture of one.

Crazy FishPlane Taking Fire!!!

Oh, fish plane... will you ever learn?

and I'm one wise-ass remark away from putting John McCain on the
Rabbi's Enemies List.

He may love Freedom, but McCain clearly hates Crazy, which in my book
is the same thing.

matt

Crazy FishPlane

And it only cost you $500,000.

The airline got a federal grant - courtesy of the Alaska Congressional Delegation - for the paint job.

That's a King Salmon, by the way. A Chinook, they call it, the biggest of the breeds. You can tell it's a Chinook by the specks on top, the the black tail and it's the size of a 737.

Kiss His Crazy Ear

Hurricane Katrina hits Alaska. Sort of.

Those gunning for Don Younge's bridge - which, really, is anybody on
earth who's looked at it - are now using Katrina to slow it down. Of course, what
they're really doing is trying to defund stuff they already hated,
using the hurricane as a cover, but there it is.

If you like Crazy, then this may break the record: Don Younge may have
to go to bat for PBS.

matt

Crazy Goes Bankrupt

How the bankruptcy changes are playing against the PFD.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AK_BANKRUPTCY_LAW_ALASKA_AKOL-?
SITE=AKFAI&SECTION=HOME

XCRazy

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6979973p-6880201c.html

"Neighbors said the man who lives in the apartment upstairs from the
shooting was not home at the time the shots were fired."

Phew. course, who could live upstairs from a raging Anchorage XBox
party?

matt

Larry Csonka goes Larry Crazy.

had the football waiting for him.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6956452p-6856256c.html

Cannonball Crazy: An Update

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6943903p-6843093c.html

"He plans on using the new cannonball as a doorstop. That's what he was
going to do with the other one."

matt

Red Letter Day for Crazy

twice in one day - crazy is on the march!

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6933283p-6832200c.html

i flew over this bridge a few months back. nicest bridge. big river.

you have to drive about 50 miles of horrible road from the nearest
anything to get there. and by 'anything', i mean, a town you can't
drive you to in the first place.

and then you cross the bridge. and a mile later, no more road.

matt

Firing the Crazy Cannon

Man can't believe APD blew up his beloved artifact cannonball
ARCHAIC PROJECTILE: He just wanted to find out if it was volatile.

By MEGAN HOLLAND
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: September 5, 2005)

When he called police and the bomb squad showed up at his Anchorage home last week, Yale Metzger just wanted them to examine the cannonball he had picked up in Cordova. He didn't want them to bring out the remote-controlled robot, haul away the cast iron ball and blow it to smithereens.

But that's what they did.

Now Metzger is saying the Anchorage Police Department was looking for an excuse to dynamite something and that they owe him a cannonball.

The police are calling Metzger "an idiot" for carrying the incendiary device around in his truck, then bringing it into downtown Anchorage, where they say it could have sent shrapnel flying for blocks had it exploded.

Metzger, a 45-year-old Anchorage attorney, found the 4-inch, 8-pound, cast iron ball in downtown Cordova last summer while excavating property he had purchased. It was unearthed in what was most recently a snow dump.

Metzger put it in the back of his pickup, where it rolled around for a year, he said. Over time he began to investigate how a cannonball -- an archaic projectile that stopped being used more than a century ago -- could have ended up in Cordova at the southeastern end of Prince William Sound in the Gulf of Alaska. One possibility he came up with was that it came from the ships of Russian or European commercial traders in the 18th century that were in the area looking for lucrative sea otter pelts.

State archaeologist Dave McMahan said other cannonballs have been found in Anchorage, Valdez and Sitka, adding that the Russians were pretty much all over Alaska during their occupation in the 1700s.

But "it is doubtful we will ever know where exactly it came from," he said of Metzger's find.

Linda Yarborough, archaeologist for the Chugach National Forest near Cordova, says round iron balls were used to crush ore in gold mine machines. Not having seen Metzger's, she can't say for sure, but her hunch is that it could have come from a mill at the historic McKinley Lake Mine east of Cordova that dates to the early 1900s.

"Unfortunately, not having it, it is really hard to look at a picture and figure out what it might have been," Yarborough said. Photos of the object are the only evidence Metzger now has of his souvenir.

Anchorage police, however, say a fuse hole in the device convinced them it was a cannonball, and the explosion when they destroyed it backs that position.

The experts say whichever possibility may be true, the ball was of historic value. And that is precisely what incenses Metzger.

Several weeks ago, he decided to bring his find to his Anchorage home on 11th Avenue. He got a friend to pack it with him on a state ferry. Metzger had heard of old cannonballs blowing up, but he chalked up those stories largely to urban myth or at least something that happens extremely rarely.

Still, once it was in Anchorage, Metzger was slightly concerned the ball could be still active and thought he would check it out. He wanted to know if his cannonball was solid or hollow, and if it was hollow, did it have volatile black powder?

He tried to get a friend at the airport's Transportation Security Administration to put it through one of the machines. That didn't work; it would have gotten his friend in trouble. He tried to get a friend at a medical office to X-ray it, but the machine was judged not powerful enough.

So he called the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They told him to call the Anchorage Police Department.

Police said they would take a look at it. Last Monday, the bomb squad took one look at it sitting in Metzger's garage and treated it like a bomb seconds away from blowing.

"Could it have exploded?" Metzger asked. "Sure. So could a meteor fall out of the sky and hit your truck."

The bomb squad vehicle contained a portable X-ray machine that could have determined if the cannonball was hollow, but that wasn't an option, said police Sgt. Ray Jennings, head of the bomb squad. The super-powerful rays to see through metal would have punched through Metzger's walls and his neighbors', exposing everyone to the harmful rays, he said.

Taking a look at it, the police knew by the fuse hole that it was potentially live, they said.

"A cannonball is nothing more than a large grenade," Jennings said. "It could have sent metal flying blocks."

Metzger wanted the squad to take the cannonball and X-ray it elsewhere, but deputy chief Audi Holloway said, defending the department's decision, that moving it just puts officers in unnecessary danger.

"You never know what point an explosive device is at," he said. "If it is anything that may have explosives in it, that may cause damage to a person or property, we have to assume it will explode. We have to destroy it."

The bomb squad exploded the cannonball at the Anchorage Landfill, said Lt. Paul Honeman, but police won't say how for security reasons. Sgt. Jeff Morton confirmed that a secondary explosion occurred and said a different color of smoke blurted out, making it certain that the cannonball had volatile black powder.

Did the police destroy a potentially important historical artifact?

"We're not going to put a bomb technician's life in jeopardy over a cannonball or anything else," Jennings said. He called Metzger "an idiot" for bringing the bomb into town and for questioning the bomb squad's decision to destroy it.

Now Metzger wants the police to buy him another cannonball on eBay.

"I was going to make a doorstop out of it. They owe me a cannonball."

Crazy Protesters

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6865519p-6761391c.html

A guy named "Dick Traini" is being protested by... strippers.

matt

Crazy Scouts

You may have heard about the four - four! - Alaska Boy Scout leaders were killed putting up a tent pole under a powerline at the National Jamboree.

As this article makes clear, the craziness didn't end there.

First, Bush tried to visit the Scouts - grieving for their lost Alaska fellow scouts - but he cancelled for weather.
Something like 300 scouts promptly got sick from the heat.
Bush Visit Take 2 was then postponed for crowd control reasons.
"Succeeding on his third try to visit them," as the News puts it, the Scoutmaster in Chief got to see the Scouts... and a blackhawk carrying a bunch of photographers almost crashed on them all.
It wasn't in Alaska - but I'd like to think we set off the avalanche.


Bush makes it to Boy Scout Jamboree (08/01/2005)
After Alaska leaders' deaths, president offers praise, speaks of military
By DEB RIECHMANNThe Associated Press
Published: August 1, 2005 Last Modified: August 3, 2005 at 12:36 PM
BOWLING GREEN, Va. -- Succeeding on his third try to visit them, President Bush comforted thousands of Boy Scouts on Sunday at a national jamboree marred by the electrocutions of four leaders and stifling heat that sickened 300.
"The men you lost were models of good citizenship," Bush told the estimated 50,000 Scouts, leaders and visitors attending the event near Bowling Green, Va., where boys yelled "Boy Scouts rock!"
"As Scout leaders, they devoted themselves to helping young men develop the character and skills they need to realize their dreams. These men will always be remembered for their leadership and kindness, and you Scouts honor them by living up to the ideals of the Scouting they served."
The four Scout leaders were electrocuted when they were putting up a tent and the metal pole came in contact with overhead electrical wires. Those killed were Ron Bitzer, Michael LaCroix and Michael Shibe of Anchorage and Scott Powell, who moved to Ohio from Alaska last year.
Shibe was at Jamboree with his twin sons, while LaCroix was there with one of his four children.
A fifth Alaska Scout leader, Anchorage dentist Jay "Larry" Call, suffered electrical burns in the accident.
"Through the generations, Scouts have made America a stronger and better nation," Bush proclaimed. "Thousands of Scouts have shown the highest form of patriotism by going on to wear the uniform of the United States."
Marine One landed in a grassy field, and Bush, a former Cub Scout in Texas, was ferried by van to a stage where he was met by a sea of cheering Scouts wearing uniforms covered with colorful patches and badges.
As the sun set, Bush told the crowd that the first man he often sees every morning, chief of staff Andy Card, is a former Scout from Massachusetts; Vice President Dick Cheney was a Boy Scout in Wyoming; and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was an Eagle Scout in Illinois.
Bush's speech was about patriotism and community and military service, but he also recalled how his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, was the den mother of his Scouting pack.
"It's about the time her hair turned white," he joked.
Before Bush arrived on stage, an Army band performed and a man wearing an Army T-shirt led groups of Scouts in chants of "OO-rah" and "U.S.A." Tall pines provided a backdrop for blue, red and black hot-air balloons emblazoned with military and Scouting emblems.
It was Bush's third attempt to travel to Fort A.P. Hill, the Army base hosting the Jamboree where Scouts are trying to end their 10-day gathering with cheery memories of mountain biking, fishing, scuba diving and trading patches with newfound Scouting friends across the nation.
On Wednesday, Scouting enthusiasts waited hours in the heat for Bush, who later canceled his appearance because of threatening storms. Scouts began collapsing from high humidity and temperatures in the high 90s. More than 300 people were treated for heat-related illnesses.
Bush's second attempt to visit the Jamboree was postponed from Thursday at the Scouts' request. Officials wanted to review safety procedures for large crowds and replenish water and other supplies.
The illnesses came as the Jamboree participants were still trying to overcome the deaths Monday of the four adult Scout leaders. An investigation into the accident is under way.
The day before, a volunteer was taken to a hospital, where he died of an apparent heart attack.
"I appreciate the rain check," Bush said.
The weather was considerably cooler Sunday, but Scout officials took extra precautions. Scouts hiking to the arena from the most distant subcamp about seven miles away set out at 3:45 -- more than an hour later than on Wednesday -- to give them less waiting time in the sun.
Several running buses with signs on the windshields reading "Cooling Station" were available, there were more tents to provide shade and stretchers were spaced out over the field in case they were needed.
Cases of bottled water dotted the sloping lawn of the arena like hay bales.
Even so, the day was not without incident.
A military helicopter carrying several photographers made an emergency landing at the Jamboree after its engine failed Sunday afternoon, Jamboree spokeswoman Renee Fairrer said.
She said the Black Hawk helicopter was carrying adult photographers for the Boy Scouts. She was unable to say how many people were on the helicopter, which she said landed at its designated spot on base.
The Daily News and the New York Times contributed to this report.

The NY Times goes crazy

No less than the NY Times ran this marvelous column on Alaska transportation bill atrocities. Since it won't be free within a week, here it is:

Alaska's Road to Nowhere
By HEATHER LENDE
Haines, Alaska
YOU have probably already heard about the pile of cash going to Alaska from the federal transportation bill. There's about a quarter of a billion dollars for a bridge to connect the airport on Gravina Island to Ketchikan (population 14,000). The bridge will rival the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges in length and height.
Then there's $230 million or so for "Don Young's Way," a bridge between Anchorage and a swampy, undeveloped port, which is named for the man who got us the money, Alaska's lone congressman.
But it's the $15 million designated for a road between Juneau and Skagway that is dearest to me. Haines, the small town I live in, is close to Skagway - separated from it only by the waters of the upper Lynn Canal, which is not a canal at all, but the longest fjord in North America. The transportation money will go toward the first road ever to be built along the canal. Actually, the project will cost about $300 million to complete, but Gov. Frank Murkowski assures Alaskans that he'll get whatever he needs from the federal government.
The communities directly affected - Haines (population 2,400), Skagway (population 870) and Juneau (population 31,000) - have voiced opposition to the road for a host of good reasons: it is a waste of money; with at least two dozen avalanche chutes, it will be too dangerous to drive in winter, which is most of the year; we already have a fine ferry system that gets us just about everywhere we need to go in all kinds of weather; some places are too nice to be paved over.
Oh, and did I mention that the road won't fulfill its ostensible mission? The whole purpose of the new road was to connect Juneau to the Klondike Highway at Skagway, so that Alaskans who live in the interior would be able to drive to the state capital rather than rely on planes and ferries. But now the road is going to stop in the middle of the wilderness, 18 miles south of Skagway. Earlier this month, the Federal Highway Administration announced it would not finance a road that went through Skagway's Gold Rush-era park, a national landmark. The result? We're on course to get a $300 million road to nowhere.
The highway's designers promise to fix the problem by building a new ferry terminal at the end of the proposed road and purchasing new boats to haul people and cars from there to the ferry docks in Haines and Skagway, frequently in the summer, less so in the winter.
But this will make regional travel even harder. Right now, I can get on a ferry in Haines and take it all the way to Juneau. I can also stay on and go to Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, Ketchikan, Prince Rupert, British Columbia or even Bellingham, Wash. With the new plan, Haines and Skagway residents (or my son's high-school basketball team) will take the ferry across Lynn Canal for about an hour, get off, and then have to drive about 75 miles to Juneau, which has no roads out of it.
The plan makes no sense. Instead, Alaska's politicians should do something they don't do very often: they should put the money for the road in the bank. The interest alone could go toward operating and maintaining the current Lynn Canal ferry system. A few rules would probably need to change, but I'm confident Alaska's politicians have enough clout when it comes to dealing with federal transportation money to bring this about.
John Muir warned young people not to travel up the Inside Passage of Alaska. After you see it, he pointed out, you'll either have to stay, or every place else will be a disappointment. Nothing much has changed since he died. The Lynn Canal still looks like Yosemite by the sea. If the road ever gets built, I'll call it Disappointment Highway.

Crazy Neighborhood

In Alaska, we like our sunsets, northern lights, formal wear and domeciles the same way - as colorful as possible.

These houses, both of which recieved these paint jobs in the last year, are about 100 yards apart on my street.

Crazy Fishing II

Went fishing last weekend in Seward. In two days of trolling around the Kenai peninsula, I caught....


Alaska's smallest halibut (not to be confused with this halibut)...

...And...

Alaska's ugliest fish.

If you can't see the bulging eyes, orange and yellow scales and the huge mouth (it's a kind of bass), then take my word for it: it's ugly.

Crazy Lawn Care

Got the bikes out last night and went for a quick ride through the
neighborhood- near 60s, bright sun 9pm (post-Hacienda's, so speed was
not the goal).

One guy was mowing his lawn, odd since everybody's grass is dead.
Another guy within a block, was snowblower-ing his lawn - odd because
all the snow is gone. except i guess at his house.

matt

ps - got our 'favorite' waitress at Hacienda's. Had to ask for a knife
3 times and soda 4. Then when we paid with 2 credit cards (party of
4), she took one to the register, said she'd come back for the other.
she did - 10 minutes later. by that time she was giving us the
stink-eye for taking her table.

Crazy Dots II

Well, look who suddenly seems squeemish on ANOTHER high-profile, too-close to call, power-for-power's-sake Senate vote?

First the rules of democracy, now the fate of the UN. James Bond, call your office - the Native Corps got ya beat.

Crazy Bears

If Soldotna is the Capital of Crazy, Kaktovic is the extension office.

Rising Tide of Crazy

Here we go.

Crazy Dots

Hmmmm..... let's play Connect the Crazy Dots.

Let's see. Dot 1: the US Senate is currently considering the "nuclear option," yanking the filibuster out its rulebook for votes on federal judge confirmations (an horrific idea regardless of your ideology, but that's not what this post is about. not at all).
One of the key votes the rule-changing Republicans need to pass that rule change is none other than the otherwise inconsequential junior Senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski. Senator Murkowski's highly Crazy road to her current post has been well chronicled here and elsewhere.
Senator Murkowski, who if she does anything well, it's vote as she's told, has a superb record as being an automatic vote for whatever the Establishment Republican Leadership wants (keep in mind, her "boss," as she's publicly called him, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, is very much a heavy-hitter in that Leadership).
Why, then, this week is she acting so coy on this highly-charged, hyper-high profile vote?

Meanwhile, in what we can all safely assume is utterly unrelated government lawmaking minuteau (sp?), reps from other states are starting to ask a question that Alaskans have comfortably not asked themselves for many years: Just what in the hell is going on with all these Alaskan Indian companies?
And that is VERY bad news for Alaska's well-documented federal pork habit and, nominally, for Alaskan Natives.
Dot #2.
Here's a Mother Jones article that nails it completely, but very briefly, thanks to Ted Steven's legal acumen, Alaska native tribes (DON'T call them Eskimos... (read to "Mascot")) can set up corporations that are utterly exempt from government contracting laws - they get special access to no-bid projects, and the projects have no legal size limit. They can also sign up to do these contracts with "partners."
This is true, in all of Federal contracting law, ONLY for Alaska Native Corps.
On the upside, it beats forcing natives into the casino game (which would likely be doomed in, say, Nome).
On the downside, it puts Halliburton and similiarly sized (and connected) firms, through the 'partners' loophole, bypass nearly every line of defense between them and the Republic's Treasury.

Alaska is still the great untamed land in nearly every resepct, as I hope this blog chronicles - and it certainly is true for politcal gouging.

So now let's draw our line....
A couple of relatively tough reps from state's not lucky enough to have licences to steal start poking around Alaska's and Ted Steven's Golden Rule.
And, out of nowhere, the unknown, powerless junior Senator from deeply-red Alaska appears to get a case of the vapors at the notion of playing hardball.

Crazy Bridge and OCB

They had a a public hearing - a PUBLIC HEARING!!!! - on the Bridge to CrazyTown!
Man, if i'da known they were gonna
let the Crazy People come talk about the Crazy Bridge, you couldn't
have kept me away. damn.

this story is pretty straight. No mention of the woman, reported on local NPR, who wanted the funds diverted to a subway to Kenia. As the Rabbi Says, "Buy me a token. I'm on the Subway to Dairy Queen!"

If Alaska has an answer to hip hop's late, great Ol' Dirty Bastard (ODB - RIP), it has to be Frank. And just like ODB, the OCB says: Gimme My Money!

Watershed Crazy

A Banner Week For Crazy. Nay, a Watershed in Crazy History. This week, Crazy chokes the air of the 49th state, vibrating through the atmosphere like the Northern Lights after one of those 100-million-mile long solar flares gets loose.
Crazywise, we are off the charts.

Let me start personal, than blow it up to the full Crazy scope.

I’m in Fairbanks this week for one of the capstones of Crazy Air Force training, the Arctic Survival school aka Cool School. In practice, the concept is crazier (Camping in Alaska! In February! Without tents!) than the reality (teens and 20s this week), but classes with 4 hours of daylight per day and ambient temps of negative 50 are not unheard of.
Anyhoo, that’s where I am, which perhaps has been the karmic trigger for the Crazy eruptions, but who can say? I made the roadie up here, driving the 400 miles from Anchorage to Fairbanks, a trip on which I figured I might be able to hunt down some crazy but no – I only had to keep gas in the car. It found me.
Gas station #1 – Just north of anchorage in the Palmer/Wasilla area, which are two suburbs. Only, apparently, there’s a sweet spot on the map between them – so 100 yards east of my gas station was Wasilla sales taxes. 100 West was Palmer sales taxes. Mine was no sales taxes.
A little weak, but just the opening act.
Gas station #2 – in a strip mall in North Pole (Fairbanks suburb, 10 miles from the Cool school and – as the highway sign now says – 2004 State Football Champions), next to a barber’s shop. Big sign on the barber’s window, handpainted – “I Will Be Closed For Surgery” (Dammit! Now we have to go all the way into Fairbanks for Surgery! - Thankee!!!!)

And now, the three damndest things. First, the Big One.
Or, rather, the No Longer Big One.
Destined to be a national story. Just remember's whose Crazy it is.


‘No Problem With Appeal’
As he asked his girlfriend: “I don't Believe it. Do you?” Let me answer for all of us: If it was anywhere else, no. But...


North To Alabama
Call me a screamin' liberal, but you show me a petition to ban King Salmon fishing in Alabama, I’ll sign it.
Let me give this story just a bit more serious discussion than it deserves: I like PETA in the same sense I like the NRA and Jerry Falwell and grooved pavement on freeways. Without them you might just drive straight off into the abyss before you knew you were out of the lines. PETA is nothing if not a group of moral absolutist blind to the holes in their morality, but isn't that the best part of being morally absolut? (as The Enemies List might put it "No Grey Areas, Only Enemies!") So I am never offended or shocked by PETA's antics and I’m often amused.
But I am offended by this story strictly as a consumer of liberal social movements.
I fall pretty firmly in the same corner as (to name a few of my most-abused favorites) the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Greenpeace, even the sorry-ass Democratic National Committee. And here's PETA - not so much 'one of us' but with a long list of common enemies - wasting everybody's time (and money) without even managing to show a clear grasp of the difference between Alaska and Alabama.
PETA picks up some first downs with most people when they stick to industrial cattle farms, animal lab testing and the lunacies of the fur-wearing world. And then they trot out something like this.
I’m fully aware that this is a publicity stunt and nothing more. Indeed, pub stunts are often what many groups on 'my' side are reduced to. But since these things are our only real weapons, I'd appreaciate it if PETA didn't waste one. Because this whole deal is gruesomely ill-concieved, likely only to alienate friends and set back real debate. Is that the goal?
There. I had my say.

If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the skydiver. Genital mutilation and PETA-attacks are good, but for pure Alaska Crazy, you can't beat a paranoid skydiving wack-job defending himself in open court. Except when he's surpised by the verdict.

Like I said, the sky is positively aglow up here.

Matt