Tuesday, May 27, 2008
 | Rohan on Crack In which I wake up in another part of North Dakota. We are lodging in a nice hotel in the small town of Beulah. This place is also predominantly taupe in color – so much so that anything green ends up in a museum. Beulah has a population of about 3,500. From what we've seen, most businesses close at around 4:00. There is some sort of discount store, called "Pamida" (sounds like a horrible name a Mormon or Catholic family gave their 16th baby girl). Pamida isn't a horrible store, and I'm glad it is within walking distance of the hotel, but it is a store than can only aspire to be as great as a K-Mart. Target it will never be. However, and I noted this immediately – Pamida doesn't force its customers to speak and read Spanish, like that awful Mal-Wart. Pamida's restroom didn't smell like Mal-Wart's, and we all know that THOSE restrooms smell like toilets in a nekked bar in Juarez. Juarez, which is a border city that will soon be the world headquarters of Mal-Wart because Bentonville is getting too expensive for the cheap bahsturds at W-M. But I digress. We are working out of a small courthouse in Stanton, in Mercer County. There is evidently a close connection between this area and Indian guide, Sacajawea. I've noted for the record that North Dakotans misspell her name, "Sakakawea." She was a guide and translator for Lewis and Clark, and she also invented the $1 gold coin, which flopped almost as badly as the Susan B. Anthony quarter in 1979. Yes, I know it was a $1 coin, but it was the size of a quarter and Ms. Anthony looked like Abraham Lincoln in drag. Americans don't do dollar coins, and we aren't giving up our pennies, either. Obama wants to "study" the latter issue. Obama wants to do a great many silly things. This part of North Dakota, while only around 75 miles north of Dickinson (where there is an Arby's and a Burger King), looks surprisingly different – aside from the missing Arby's and Burger King. It isn't as flat, but there is more of a rugged beauty to the landscape. That sounds brochure-cheesy, but I can't think of another way to put it. It's pretty, but it shouldn't be. When I look out the large bay window of my hotel room, there is a splendid view of the rolling hills to the west. There is a sign off in the distance that reads, "ruggedly beautiful." Well, not really, but it'd make sense. I need to see more of the place. There is a bunch of historical stuff around here. We were mean to the Indians and whatnot. The hotel is nice, fairly new, and comfortable, but most rooms lack the requisite fridge and microwave, to which we were spoiled at the hotel in Dickinson. Tragically, we don't have our "Good Times Soup Parties" in the afternoon, because this hotel does not believe in soup, or something. Probably a Mennonite thing. All I know is we don't get soup after work. I hit the clerk up about it today, and she looked at me like I was some kind of a nut who couldn't spell Sakakawea. Change is change, and I rarely adapt to or overcome it. We've had a couple of good meals, but I am still amazed at the propensity of North Dakotans to bathe everything in gravy. Most restaurants have good old fat white people food on the menu. Lots of chicken fried chicken (with gravy), roast beast of some kind (with gravy), steak (with gravy), and shrimp (with gravy). French fries are considered a salad. Tonight, Susan, who is one of my new best friends and helped me find some stuff in the courthouse for David Kelly, ordered a Mexican plate, and it included tater tots. Tater tots and enchiladas. I'm not kidding. David Kelly and I had our trademark French dip, which…was not as good as Arby's French dip, so that isn't much of a compliment. People, toast the bread, or at least don't serve it already soggy. Let me au jus it, if you don't mind. Mine was served with two sides, potato chips and French fries. And a fake pickle. There are many reasons why I am now so grotesquely fat that even my mal-wart sweat pants are tight. It's not because running and walking are verboten. We don't get RFD-TV, or "Imus in the Morning" at this hotel, which tells me one thing: hideous Cox Communications must own the local provider. Cox hates Imus, almost as much as Cox hates its customers, and since the subscribers want RFD-TV so they can watch Imus, Cocks won't offer it. Oh, they would if they could figure a way to call it a "premium" channel and charge us for it. Or, if RFD was a Spanish speaking channel, or if they sold weiner pills on there, Cox would offer it in HD, simulcast in Tagalog. I hate Cox Cable, and I look forward to the day Direct-TV and Dish satellite dishes are tackily attached to every home in America, and cocky Cox has gone the way of the Beta video player. In the interim, Cox can shove its spokescartoon up its arse. You know what I'm sayin'. That felt good. No newspapers to speak of up here, but even the lowliest sales circular contains more news and useful information than Oklahoma's statewide newspaper – the only publication in all the world that isn't worth 50 cents. That isn't much of a compliment either. I do what I always do: I read the New York Times and the Washington Post online. Unlike the Oklahoman, those papers don't charge me if I want to read an article published a few months ago. Whoever told the publishers of the Oklahoman that people would actually pay to read archived material wuz a-lyin'. Cox must own it now. And that felt good. I'm thinking mean things about Obama, but I'm not going to go off on him tonight, or even comment on something Rep. Pat Schroeder said the other day about the sexism and racism of the campaign. She said at Clinton rallies there'd been such witty signs as, "Iron my Shirt." Raw, nekked sexism. She noted the media would be positively apoplectic if someone held a sign with this request for Obama: "Shine my Shoes." Raw, nekked racism. I suppose that is racist in some states, but anyone who says anything that isn't positively worshipful about Obama is now, and forever shall be, a racist. Senator McCain unfavorably commented on Obama's secret plan to award Obama bin Laden the Presidential Medal of Freedom if he'll please stop murdering folks. Why there were paroxysms of weeping, wailing, whining and gnashing of teeth out of the Obama campaign. Political posturing and racism, to be sure. And so, from North Dakota, which looks a lot like I suppose Rohan might look on crack, I am, RPH, Esq., N.V. ©Randall P. Hodge, Esquire, and Morningwood Enterprises, LLC |
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