The crime of hate

If you haven't looked at Slate lately, you probably should read this article by Dahlia Lithwick on hate crimes legislation, including Montana's.

My own take:

1. There are rational arguments that laws against hate crimes cause more problems than they solve.

2. Getting rid of Montana's hate crimes legislation probably won't happen, at least not this session.

3. If we're going to have hate crimes legislation, which we apparently are, then gays should be in the protected group.

New kid on the block

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but it's pretty impressive and a little scary. Just take a gander at the "about us" section.

Out of commission

For some reason, I have been having a hard time posting. Not that I have had much to say. But I did, of course, have to repeat Hunter S. Thompson's famous quote about journalism. When I borrowed a newspaper buddy's well worn copy of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," the book always automatically and instantly fell open to this passage:

The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

Big winner

More great news: I just won 800,000 Euros from the El Gordos Sweepstakes Lottery Intl. I knew my luck had to turn one of these days. Maybe I'll hang onto this one for a while and see how the dollar holds up against the Euro.

My winnings

Hah! I just won another 500,000 Euros in the Prime Lottery International SP. How often can lightning strike in the same place? As soon as the check shows up, I'm quitting this stinking racket.

Fine whine

Helena graphic artist Marty Lord apparently gets credit for this. The label reads: "Made from hand-picked prevaricated gripes from our Missoula Vineyard and a blend of sour grapes with a bouquet of fresh defecation of a male bovine from our Belgrade Vindictive.

"The Balyeat brothers are a festuring [sic] cyst on the right buttock of an otherwise fine and gentlemanly Session."
 

Art project

This is kind of cool: A website that tracks progress on a bighorn sheep art project for the Billings Depot Bighorn Magic project.

Whirling

To keep up with the latest on whirling disease, go here.

Nuclear Montana

Scary, if true. But I don't see a shred of supporting evidence in the story.

On the web

Here's another new Montana "web paper" (isn't that an oxymoron?). Warning: The link comes through the MT-GOP Ebrief, which should give you some notion of its political leanings. Second warning: The creator of the "paper" isn't identified.

Sssh!

Just won 250,000 Euros in the lottery. And I didn't even enter! Eat your hearts out.

Dang it! They told me to keep it quiet for now. Don't tell anybody, OK?

Buffalo Brian

I was in Helena on Friday and heard Gov. Schweitzer defend the cancellation of the buffalo hunt. He said Montana's has had three governors since the last hunt, and would probably have three more before the next hunt if this one had gone forward. In short, he argued, the hunt was too small to solve any bison problems and too unsporting (he referred to buffalo as a "refrigerator with horns") to avoid controversy.

But apparently buffalo hunts don't cause controversy everywhere.

Lesson learned

One thing I have learned by reading blogs: The list of people who are worth reading every day is extremely short.

Cheap shot

In this week's Editor's Notebook, I take cheap shots at Lee Enterprises and The Billings Gazette. I honestly don't know what comes over me.

A.J. Liebling

I liked this quote from Michael Young:

Writing about the press' efforts to comment on the death of Stalin—an event about which no journalist had any actual information—A.J. Liebling described three types of journalists: the reporter, "who writes about what he sees"; the interpretive reporter who "writes what he sees and what he construes to be its meaning"; and, in Liebling's most venomous description, the "expert, who writes what he construes to be the meaning of what he hasn't seen."

Semi-famous

So now your humble blog host is being quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In case you missed it, the full column is here.

UPDATE: Hmm. The link above seems to require registration. But I found it without registering by entering "Nick Coleman David Crisp" into Google. Also, more here from an unsympathetic source.

Congrats in order

Evelyn Pyburn, editor of the Big Sky Business Journal, reflects on surviving 23 years as a small publication in the Billings market. "It's amazing," she writes. As someone who has survived seven years in the same racket, I can only nod my head.

Big time at the dance

We went to see the Bruce Wood Dance Company at the Alberta Bair last night. It wasn't something I would have paid for, but The Outpost sponsors a couple of shows a year at the Bair, so we occasionally get free tickets. I wasn't too thrilled about going: cold weather, can't dance, behind at the office (as always), feeling glum because of an in-office confrontation on Friday that was both historic and epic in sweep -- the sort of six-guns-blazing showdown that gets talked about for years and leaves scars that never heal. But I thought, what the heck, looking at nubile young female dancers for a couple of hours can't be bad for this frigid heart of mine. So we went anyway, and are damn glad we did.

It was a heck of a show, played out in three parts. The first was modernistic, to music by Philip Glass, and was greeted fairly tepidly by the audience. But I found myself digging it, and not just because of the skimpy outfits. The second was "Follow Me," a tribute to the infantry that you can read about here. Corby Skinner told me beforehand that it made him cry. I'm made of sterner stuff but could see his point. It's hard to describe what it was like, and I don't get paid enough for this to try, but it was indeed moving, sad, tragic -- military combat stripped to its essence, beyond patriotism, beyond uniforms, beyond weapons and marching bands -- just suffering, and friendship and enduring.

The last part, a series of dances to music by Lyle Lovett, was just sheer fun. The crowd loved it, and I suspect the dancers did, too. It must be inwardly satisfying for those Texas artistes to get up on stage and show off country-style moves that the cowboys at Billy Bob's have never even dreamed about. This brought the second of two standing ovations, and we headed for home, still cold but not nearly so glum.

Feds in the classroom

What really bugs me about this whole discussion is the utter acquiesence to the notion that the feds have every right to tell us how to run our schools. Where are the brave conservatives who will stand up and tell the federal government to mind its own business?

Riotland

Anthony Killebrew notes that a new issue of Riotland Comics, his Billings-based e-zine, has been posted.