4-20-2005 Mommy, are those scary people from Wilkes-Barre?


I have not heard anything tonight from you that is going to lessen the police department impact on the borough budget-- Forty Fort Council Prez Andy Tuzinski

We take you to Forty Fort Online.

Despite being a Wilkes-Barre native all these years, as a teenager, I spend more than my fair share of time in Forty Fort as I had numerous friends and coworkers that lived in that sleepy little borough. While my mom was stacking things against the doors before marching off to bed here in the city, folks in Forty Fort went to the mall without bothering to lock their front doors. There was a time when I thought that I wanted to live in such a place, where folks had no need for chain-link fences separating their properties.

So when I read that Forty Fort was seriously considering deleting their entire police department in these much more dangerous times, I was a bit dismayed and hoping that it was all a ploy to force the cops to make some salary and benefit concessions. Despite the fact that our neighbors think Wilkes-Barre is crime central, the crimes associated with drugs and such are already occuring in even the smallest of the local communities. Basically, the druggies are slowly but surely fanning out and claiming new territories. All the more reason that all those involved in Forty Fort borough should do whatever it takes to keep it's police force in place. And this morning I ran into this line in the Leader:

Because of present and future economic considerations council has made the decision to eliminate the police department at the end of the contract term,” council President Andy Tuzinski said.

If that doesn't smack of RUTRO!, I am clueless as to how to break that secret west side code. I'm fairly certain it's not some variation on pig Latin. And I can't find my Dick Tracy decoder ring. Drat! So what's he trying to say? They made the decision to eliminate the police department? Like...no more cops?

Now, if I'm a Forty Fort cop after hearing that rather definative statement, I'm swallowing a wee bit harder and wondering if Cuzzin' Hoby can really get me that job in the kitchen at Chase prison. And I'm also figuring that wage freezes and insurance co-pays are right around the next corner. So what did the police department's union rep have to say to all of that jazz?

Nice, smooth streets are better than a police officer showing up to your house in two to three minutes?” asked Joe Mangan, the police department’s union representative.

Mangan asked for $1,500 yearly raises for the officers, additional holidays, increased clothing allowances, higher pay for later shifts and bonus for officers who achieve advanced degrees.

He asked for raises, holidays, allowances, shift differentials and bonuses. And I saw his picture in the newspaper. He did that with a straight face, no less. I have no dog in that buck hunt, but I was about as flummoxed as one hopeless dork could possibly be after the union rep drew a rather deep line in the culm.

And this was the response he got as reported by the Leader:

I have not heard anything tonight from you that is going to lessen the police department impact on the borough budget,” Tuzinski said as Mangan concluded.

I have exactly the same amount of experience being a union rep as Tom McGroarty has being successful. But if I may, I'd have to advise the union rep that his timing was almost as stupifying as were his dizzying demands. The council prez says you're already too expensive as things currently stand, and you say you want more?

Whatever. It don't matter to me.

Those state troopers will do a fine job of responding to calls in Forty Fort from whatever far-flung place they happen to be patrolling at at any given time.

Jeez 'o' Pete!


Lets' explore some of the latest offerings from the horror that anonymityville is.

Here's one from the forum page:

Public Square Saga -- Suburban Life is Great, 09:06:14 04/20/05 Wed [1]

I have to laugh at your observations from Public Square about the degenerates that hibernate there where this "W-B Revolution" is supposed to take place in the next year with all this development.

Do you really think people are going to flock downtown and have to deal with all these bused-in drug dealers, teen wannabe thugs, and toothless losers working a shopping cart like an Audi TT on the Autobahn?

Sure, your going to see a couple of new buildings, something the valley hasn't seen in ages. But those down-on-their-luck types are going nowhere. What is Leighton going to do, Martz them to Moon Lake for weekend retreats.

You may be energized by the thought of a seeing a movie within a bike ride, but those who would ultimately make downtown thrive will be heading to Moosic like they always have to avoid any trouble with those same degenerates you had to deal with. And your trouble came in the daylight.

Where this "W-B Revolution" is supposed to take place???

I'm not really sure as to whether you're asking a totally fair question, or if you're actually rooting against such a revolution taking place and ultimately being successful? To suggest that "a couple of new buildings" is all that is in store for Wilkes-Barre is a gross, no, a perverted understatement of the multitude of things soon to arrive.

There's obviously no doubt that Wilkes-Barre has fallen mightily and has a long, long way to go before anyone will bestow any credit upon it, or any of it's leaders. But in all honesty, some of you folks sound as if you wouldn't know what the hell to hack on if Wilkes-Barre actually rebounded in a big way. Wilkes-Barre's all good now? Darn it! Now what could I call SAYSO about?

Do you really think people are going to flock downtown and have to deal with all these bused-in drug dealers, teen wannabe thugs, and toothless losers...

Ummmmm...why, sure I do. Ever since I dropped out of grade school and my step-daddy run over my head with the John Deere, I believe most anything so long as it's not near as tough as one of those dag flammin' Rubik's cubes.

Actually, the useless wonders run roughshod over the place on the weekends. During the week, the horse cops roll on through there often enough to keep the slackers widely dispersed. Plus, on weekends, the office workers and whatnot are off for the weekend leaving the place somewhat abandoned. It's a ghost town over the weekends. If the Monday through Friday regular crowd was exposed to what I see on most weekends, they'd be on the cell to 911 right quick. And who could blame them?

As for myself, I wouldn't bother the copper dudes over what happened to us this weekend. Besides, I tried to convey just how satisfying a bit of juvenile revenge can feel when perpetrated upon those who so richly deserve it. If I called the cops, those losers would have looked back at me after being forced to disperse and seen only what they perceived to be a frightened, old white guy. And they'd snicker all the way to the next bench, or wherever it is that scumbags go to when the cops read 'em the riot act. And no scumbag is ever going to get his jollies due to anything I said or did. The way I handled things, they probably ended up about as frustrated as we do knowing that they are still breathing.

What is Leighton going to do, Martz them to Moon Lake for weekend retreats.

Nah. From what we've heard, they've already got too many useless folks wasting away up there. Nah. I remember something about beat cops. And horse cops. And bike cops cruising the parking garages soon to be built. (Two buildings?) Yup. The new mayor correctly believes that we need to increase our police precense in the downtown area well before the good times finally roll. Oh, and he has ten more of them (platoon strength?) training at a faraway police barracks, soon to hit the streets running. Your attempts at sarcasm are appreciated. They really are. But they are off base to a large degree. What is Leighton going to do... He's going to do his very best and no less. And for that he gets his sack snipped?

You may be energized by the thought of a seeing a movie within a bike ride, but those who would ultimately make downtown thrive will be heading to Moosic like they always have to avoid any trouble with those same degenerates you had to deal with. And your trouble came in the daylight.

It's true that my incident came during the daylight hours, but I ride through there after dark when I feel like it. I'm not afraid. This is my town and no one is going to stop me from enjoying whatever the heck I want, when I want. Therein lies the starkest, the 'plain as your face' difference of the many differences between myself and the increasingly mobile suburbanites. I'm not afraid. And they are. Why do you think they ran away from the cities in the first place? Why do you think they all secretly wish to have a gate erected at both ends of their bucolic hideaways? They can't deal with the world as it is, so they destroyed the forests and the farmlands in an attempt to run away from those colored folks, those less educated folks and anyone else it is that has them practically pissing in their designer jogging clothes.

Don't give me any jive about driving to Moosic. It can't all be a Donna Reed La-la Land no matter where the heck you go. What might happen to the suburbanites if they dare wander into downtown Wilkes-Barre after dark? Will they be crying all the way home in the Decadence-R-Us SUV after seeing with their very own eyes what they mistakenly thought to be a hooker? Will a rather large black man simply glance in their general direction and get their hearts all a flutterin'? If some crumbum asks 'em for a quarter, are they gonna break into a full sprint screaming RAPE! at the tops of their lungs? Sh*t, man. It's not like the upwardly mobile movers and shakers of the county that so frequently wander into the Kirby after dark are all bringing along extended-length vans filled with bodyguards. Let's not get f**king hysterical here, okay?

Trust me, Wilkes-Barre ain't nearly as bad as the local media makes it out to be. And if the folks too completely afraid to taste a bit of reality instead of hiding out out thereabouts a ways can't suck it up and deal with people that don't look like them, talk like them, or measure up to their racist standards, then so be it. As for me, I'm not afraid of anyone, packing or not. That's not some sort of male ego trip. That's just the way it is. And if I wanna hang out on Public Square with my amazing grandson, no one, no matter what stereotypes easily apply to them are going to scare me away.

Suburban life is great? Okay. I imagine. That is, it is for the folks not able to deal with anyone other than the folks that crawled out of the same Creepy Crawler mold filled with the lilly white goo.

What the suburbanites can't know is that when the scurfballs realize they can't instill fear, they eventually move on. And the escapees from reality couldn't possibly learn that painfully simple lesson without first having a plastic surgeon create a pair of balls for them.

Gee whizzo, I hope the deer don't eat the last of the transplanted shrubberies while the suburbanites are busily visiting the real world on CNN. They wouldn't want any of those Latinos coming out to replace them, would they?

Mommy, are those scary people from Wilkes-Barre?

Yes, dear. Hurry! Get your sisters and run to the sub-basement panic room!!!


How 'bout a letter to the people at the Voice?

W-B mayor should bring back clutter cleanup

04/20/2005

Editor:

Wilkes-Barre City used to hold a spring "clutter cleanup." Why doesn't Mayor Tom Leighton hold them now? People in my neighborhood could use one. I believe the city could afford a cleanup every now and then.

If Mayor Leighton wants to be a good mayor, he should listen to the residents' demands. Maybe former Mayor Tom McGroarty wasn't such a bad mayor after all. Although many people didn't agree with some things he did, he did a better job of handling the residents' requests than Mayor Leighton does.

Christopher Mattey
Wilkes-Barre

Why the hell not? Let's listen to the "residents' demands." They hate reading about $10.4 million tax anticipation notes, but they sure as heck love demanding that the city spend tons of money on a whim. Yeah. I want a firehouse and I want it now!!! Mayor Tom, one of the inmates wants to run the asylum only because he can't figure out how to get rid of his old beta unit and a rusted hulk of a used washing machine.

Now spring into action and spend copious amounts of overtime!

And a bit of SAYSO always does wonders for our intelligence:

Don’t we have enough prophylactic devices in the Susquehanna River, that Paul Kanjorski wants to use a giant prophylactic device to create a giant cesspool. Please, we don’t need Kanjorski dam.

Condoms
Condoms
Condoms on the river

Well...not nearly as many as there are on top of the central garage.

The fact that Mayor Leighton can get the parking meters certified so rapidly shows me that he cares more about the bottom line, the almighty dollar, more than he cares about the citizens of Wilkes-Barre city. And why I say that is because, as a citizen and a neighbor here, in Miners Mills, the neighborhood in general has been complaining about the condition of a park for the past year and a half, the dirty, filthy condition that it is in. And nothing has been done to clean it up. ( 04/19/2005 03:01 AM EDT)

Imagine that. A mayor that pays attention to the bottom line? That's a revolutionary concept that the folks too completely lazy to clean their own neighborhood park will never be able to wrap their simple minds around. Maybe they should consider moving to a gated community populated by nothing more than frightened white people.


Let's lighten things up, shall we?

From the e-mail inbox The Cowboy and The Yuppie

A cowboy was herding his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored.

He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry, and after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi- tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a consultant." says the cowboy. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew; to a question I never asked; and you don't know anything about my business."

"Now give me back my DOG."

You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew; to a question I never asked; and you don't know anything about my business.

So, what was it that we're supposed to do about the county prison and Valley Crest again?

Funnin' on y'all sure is good fun.

Nite