Downtown Billings, Montana. The city of racists, I guess?
Oh, Billings, don’t ever change. I suspect this might be a little too local, but we made national news, anyway. A local radio host, Paul Mushaben for Cat Country, KCTR 102.9, posted the following on his blog:
The crowd is so unruly and disrespectful of the facility that it may be time for the MHSA to proceed with an all Indian tourney.
Word is there was more, but the offending post was removed later that day after many, predictable complaints. Mushaben was suspended for his remarks.
… at least for a while. Following protests and an apology from Mushaben, he is now back on the air:
I would like to apologize to those who were offended by my recent blog post. It suggested separation for Native American teams to play in their own tournament at separate facilities. I apologize and regret making those statements.
My intent was to address the unruly behavior at these events and the disrespect of the facilities and to convey that any team, and I mean any team, not willing to acknowledge and obey the rules should not be allowed to participate.
I will continue to pressure the MHSA to stop the unconscionable behavior and destruction of property at our schools and local venues during all high school events by any and all parties. Disrespect and lawlessness should be dealt with swiftly and with consequences for everyone.
Again, I apologize to all who were offended and hurt by this. I also want to thank all of our Cat Country family for your loyal support.
Just another spring in one of the least diverse cities in the nation. Feel free to find your own city on the list and compare notes in the comments below!
I knew it.
And that is Forbes typo, BTW.
It takes a lot of imagination and denial of reality to not be a bigot.
I have been told by a bunch of people that athletic events on the res can be, um, unique.
Unique is a kind word. I appreciate your delicacy.
I think you mean “fucking awesome”, if they’re anything like lacrosse tournaments up here.
I don’t get it.
*Single tear rolls down cheek*
Is there a large Italian-American population in Billings?
And how.
I think it has something to do with firewater and sports in the middle of nowhere.
I was wondering if there was any drinking going on at these events.
Everyone gets pretty worked up in north-eastern Montana about their high school sports. It really is just about all they have.
Montana, what a great state. O, how I love the testicle festival, Missoula in the summer, Lolo, etc.
*Someone mentions anything east of Bozeman*
Montana, what a great half of a state
+1 Flathead Valley
Bozeman police report is the best thing about Bozeman.
False
Dammit, now I want a Nashville-style chicken sandwich with extra pickles… Unf.
damnnnnn.
Dude, it’s so good. Mr. Riven introduced me to it on our way back home after getting married in Missoula.
I don’t travel much, but I’m thinking we might have to take a trip to Bozeman for a weekend just for that damn sandwich.
Now I want one. Maybe a trip to those homophobic chicken peddlers down the street…
The apartment is looking for a ski trip, I keep suggesting Bridger Bowl. Now I have more of a reason.
Let me know if you’re successful in your gambit. If you guys end up being close enough, maybe we could all meet up for some beers.
Will do!
Huh. I’ve never eaten there – it is where Cafe Zydeco used to be.
Interesting! There’s a Cafe Zydeco in Billings, too. It looks like the one in Bozeman is now over on…College Street.
womp womp
East of Bozeman, we refer to Missoula as Missoula, CA…
And the civilized world desperately tries to worm its way into Montana.
Just wait til people find out that ‘abortion’ in Montana means “put the baby out in the wild and let nature take care of it”.
I have a friend who grew up in Kalispell. He was driven away by the infestation of hippies.
(squints… starts to say something like, “Stalingrad, minus the skyline”… decides to try and ‘be more positive’)
Well, it looks like…. parking isn’t a problem, at least.
Lol… Oh, you have no idea. People actually hate coming “downtown”* because they have to pay for parking. And we’re talking about… it would maybe cost you five whole dollars to park in a garage for the entire day.
*thus why I put downtown in heavily sarcastic air quotes.
Is that building in the center there the tallest in Montana?
Do you count antenna towers?
Or grain silos?
Archer: So, grain elevator. Besides a place to blow farmers, what’s the point?
Edie: To store grain, dumbass.
Archer: Yeah, but you elevator it way the hell up there, then—wait, cows don’t go up there to eat it, do they?
Not sure about the entire state, but the Double Tree is the tallest in the city.
Bonus, I work in the Wells Fargo building just behind it.
It looks like a clipping error in a game. “Welp two buildings are occupying the same tile, can’t seem to select either of them to delete it. Them’s the breaks”
It’s not that bad. This is the abortion the NCR turned the Museum of Nature into.
When are they going to finish building it?
According to wiki it’s the First Interstate Center.
Billings looks like a proper Canadian city. Get some signs in French and you’re in.
Or, we can repeal that anti-anglophone law and ban french from soviet canukistan.
Yes, because screaming “Stop being French!” has had a wonderful track record of success in this country.
The French language served its purpose. Now it needs to die.
Quebec French isn’t French French. It’s peasant French that evolved independently over hundreds of years.
It’s still a form of French that needs to fade away now that the Norman contributions to English have been completed.
You are clearly unfamiliar with the gloriously rant-driving nature of French swearing.
If there’s one thing Quebec French does right, it’s swearing.
You’ll be disappointed to know that the parking meters will accept Canadian coins…but won’t give you any time on the meter for them. Lol.
That’s bullshit, it should give you at least 7/10 the time American coins give you (currently).
Huh. When I travelled to a different country, I made a point of using the local currency to pay for goods and services.
Stay out of Afghanistan, UCS…..they prefer Dollars American.
The Afghan Afghani is the currency of Afghanistan.
I can see why.
It’s not uncommon to see Canadian nickels, quarters, dimes, etc. in the general circulation. Most places will take them without a second thought because meh. So it was just novel to me that a parking meter wouldn’t.
Not loonies or toonies, though. No one wants those goofy ass coins.
See, I’m the reverse, I never understand why you’d want such a small amount in bill form.
Don’t worry, my preference for English-speaking western cultures will keep me well away from there. One of these years I might visit the Antipodes, and that would be about as close as I’d get.
Because it’s lighter, and they stay sorted without additional effort. Coinage is messy and cumbersome.
BECAUSE OUR BILLS ARE WORTH SOMETHING!!!!
And toting loose change around in normal pants pockets deforms them, and rapidly wears out the linings of the pockets.
Because it’s lighter, and they stay sorted without additional effort.
*Insert asshole foreigner comment about Americans being fat and lazy here*
Coinage is messy and cumbersome.
It also helps to prevent those dicks who want to pay for everything in individual bills. Coinage is easy if you have a functioning wallet.
BECAUSE OUR BILLS ARE WORTH SOMETHING!!!!
Debt and whatever the Federal Reserve says?
Oh yes, it’s much less polite to hand a trio of $1 bills peeled off the outside of the fold than to pick through a change purse for $2.73, what was I thinking?
Tossing three coins down isn’t anymore difficult, I’m talking about ridiculous count outs.
Also, your money’s ugly.
Finding those three coins – a year and a half of sifting unsorted denominations.
Maybe if you didn’t pass the whole ’round peg, square hole’ test in kindergarten.
Giving you the most charitable reading of your comments (rather than point and laugh at you), I’m going to guess you’re presuming the existance of additional hardware to keep coins sorted – one of the listed advantages of bills being that a folded stack thereof does not require anything else beyond the standard issue pocket to stay in the order they’ve been put in.
Giving you a less charitable reading, you’ve run out of actual points because coins are the inferior form for everyday use.
I’m more poking fun because you’re making coinage out to be some complicated process when it’s not.
It’s a discussion of relative merits.
Coins have only one – durability. Though since they spend most of their time in jars waiting to be rolled up and returned to the bank, that just means we have more fifty-plus-year old coins than bills running around (upto whenever they last removed precious metals from the composition so the older coins got yanked from circulation)
Occasionally, I’ll carry just under a fist-full of quarters in my pocket, but usually I empty my pockets of all US coinage every night. Other coins are just shrapnel that I won’t use during my working day.
Debt and whatever the Federal Reserve says?
Apparently the money changers of the world say “more than the Canadian fiat money”
I’m just enjoying this because it seems UnCivilServant might very well be a bigger curmudgeon than I am and that’s impressive.
Why make ’em tall when you gots the space to make ’em wide?
If the wife wasn’t so averse to the cold I would consider becoming your neighbor.
It is 72 degrees here and the sun is shining. My wife is sitting in the enclosed garage (official smoking area) wrapped in a blanket and has a small space heater blowing on her. I doubt she could take a Montana winter.
72 degrees is T-Shirt and AC weather.
She is 5′ even and 97 lbs. She gets cold when I am sweating.
She could probably handle it–if you had an attached garage and she didn’t have far to go to work.
Our thermostat is usually set to about 72… and I’ve been known to languish on the sofa in the evenings with a blanket, a robe, and slippers.
I’ll be in my bunk….
Hahahah! It sounds much more glamorous than the reality, I promise you.
When you get to my age, the prospect of a pair of comely slippers can make all the difference.
Languish? I don’t picture you weak nor feeble.
I always take womens’ claims to be “small but fierce” with a pinch of salt, up to the point where they kick me in the jewels, punch me in the solar plexus and follow up with an inner reap that puts me on the ground.
I was thinking more in a “lost vigor/vitality” sort of way.
Like… an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Once I hit the sofa after dinner, it’s really only a matter of time until I’m horizontal on said sofa, and then finally asleep before “bed time” at 10.
Needs more giant statues.
“Too local” isn’t a restriction on the types of stories we cover here, unlike at some other sites.
^This.
Well it really depends on how local.
The town where my father’s family lives, Cave-In-Rock, IL, on particularly slow days has notices in the local paper about who went across the river into Kentucky to shop at the “big” mall that weekend.
I’d read that story.
Sounds like Capitol City and Springfield.
The best part was the Gathering of the Juggalos occured there at the local state park for like five years. You should have heard the stories. This is a town of a few hundred people who are all extremely parochial, Church of Christ folks, hosting this thing to try and bring in some money to the area (they’re surrounded by the Shawnee National Forest, and the Ohio River, so they can never expand).
I don’t know why the Gathering moved on eventually, but it was a wild few years, to hear them tell it.
Faygo shortages.
When the end comes I know
They’ll say just a juggalo
As life goes on
Without me
As opposed to the Church Not of Christ.
Howdy fellow Illinoisian! *runs screaming from Gojira*
Oh…father’s family. *still runs screaming*
I was born in Harrisburg & lived there until I was three, then my immediate family fled to Paducah, an hour away in Kentucky. My whole family still lives scattered from Harrisburg up to St. Louis, though.
I’m 20 minutes from StL.
MADISON COUNTY?!?!?!
Cool – the closest family I have is an aunt in Belleville.
I still root for the Cards & Blues.
Yes, the land of lawsuits. *eyes Swiss*
I used to go down there all the time when I was National Trial Counsel for a small manufacturer….asbestos suits in Madison County….sigh.
Sorry for your loss.
Fortunately, the Swiss offer me a better deal….steady hours and all the rösti I can eat.
And Nazi gold…
asbestos suits
+1 set of flame retardant underwear
Did they save at least 25%? If not, GTFO!
Elizabethtown not good enough fer ya?!
/Remembers 2011 Floods
HA, I spit on pathetic Elizabethtown. Or I would, if it didn’t pass by in 5 seconds as I drove through it. They don’t even have a ferry, which at least Cave-In-Rock has!
Cave-In-Rock? What is this, the Flintstones? Did you use a baby mammoth for a vacuum cleaner?
E-Town. More like Pee-Town. WOW
I’m interested in “diverse” in relation to segregated.
Ie I see that Denver is ranked 24th for diversity, but in my experience living there and in its environs, it was extremely segregated. To my recollection of living there in the 90s, you wouldn’t see a black person unless you went to east denver/Aurora.
Anywhere else was either all white or predominantly Mexican.
In my current east coast city and hood, it’s almost limitless how many different nationalities I come across everyday, and yet my city isn’t mentioned.
It’s still segregated here.
Ranking ‘diversity’ is so eugenics. Fricken bull shit.
My city is practically a Klan rally:
The racial makeup of the city was 95.4% White, 1.1% African American, 0.1% Native American, 1.5% Asian, 0.2% from other races, and 1.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.5% of the population.
2.7% visible minorities in my current city, but there’s a lot of French. So I guess that makes it Vichy France?
+1 Free Zone
How are you supposed to maintain “Diversity” for the future if people get all socially mixed up and the outgroup is no longer melanin-dependant?
Fierce!
If it’s giant statues you want, at least have one from Montana.
It is 72 degrees here and the sun is shining.
I have an inch or so of fresh wet snow, and low-flying clouds. Visibility about fifty yards.
Am I the only one who gets annoyed whenever they read or hear bull shit apologies?
Sorry to say, I agree with you.
Are you saying you think Rufus is the only one who gets annoyed by that?
I guess my sarcasm flew under the radar?
You should really apologize for that.
No, and I’m very sorry to hear that you feel that way
I liked it. It was a pretty good ‘sorry, not sorry’.
A Canadian who doesn’t like sorey…eh?
If you’re going to mock us, at least use eh right. It’s not randomly thrown at the end of any sentence, it’s only for questions and receiving confirmation of something.
See what I mean, eh?
Sorey.
That statue is in Butte.
That is a pretty cool statue.
If Jersey City is supposed to be the apex of Diversity in this country, i’d think most people would consider “Diversity” to be some form of malignant cancer
Rankings like that (which seem to be everywhere) often do nothing except expose the inherent flaws in that approach to index-weighted ranking. It pretends to be ‘more scientific’ by strictly defining itself by some limited set of variables, but of course ends up overlooking 95% of what actually matters in context.
Like the fact that Jersey City is really just a small hub of NYC where some corporate HQs relocated, and that its “residential culture” is almost non-existent. Yes, people of many languages and skin-colors live there. So what? Its not like they dance in the streets and sing some “Its a Small World After All” all day. I think your average neighborhood in brooklyn is 100X more “cultural” (and even then, ‘not very’*). People have actually lived there for 3 or more generations, and its not just some pit stop between ‘fresh off the boat’ and ‘running some convenience store somewhere else’.
*I think one of the interesting features of ‘people of very different cultures’ living in close proximity is actually how much they sometimes manage to NOT actually share that culture all that much with the people around them. My little nook in North Williamsburg, sat at the intersection of large Puerto Rican, Polish, Italian, and Satmar-Hasidic Jewish communities. And what was hilarious is that each of those groups seemed to have hardly ever spoken to one-another in 50 years. You sometimes got the impression of crossing a border between one county + another merely by crossing the street. Aside from the ‘authenticity’ of the restaurants, its not like a 3rd party (read: white hipster) really got any particular ‘culture-sharing’ simply by living among them. I spent 14 years there and i don’t think i learned any Polish words other than the few i already knew. I did learn that Dominicans and Puerto Ricans really don’t like each other. And the Satmar never spoke to anyone except each other.
Basically, i think the prime benefits of ‘diversity’ are mostly oversold. there are certainly some, which is that you become far more accustomed to the idea of a pluralistic world, where multiple people can live very different lives side by side without infringing on each other’s brand of crazy…. but as for genuine ‘sharing’ between those cultures? beyond the food – which is always great – and maybe some slang-terminology you might pick up…. there’s not much to it.
Good, because otherwise it would be cultural appropriation.
I think the most common example of cultural-appropriation in NYC has been “Puerto Ricans calling each other the N-word with a frequency 10X greater than that of blacks”
Where are your footnotes? You’re no Eddie.
“”Where are your footnotes? “”
“I gotch yer footnotes right here”!! (makes gesture which suggests a foot about to be put in someone’s ass)
Ah, the classic New York citation method.
Hmmmm… an update to the usual “extended middle finger” citation method?
Boston.
ends up overlooking 95% of what actually matters in context.
Quoth the Iron Law:
Meaning comes from context.
Funny, I didn’t read your post until now, and JC was what I was talking about. I must have missed it’s mention in the link.
To add, you don’t seem to know much about JC. It existed before the post 9/11 influx of hipsters and yuppies.
Yes, I agree that just because there are diverse groups of people living in close proximity, that doesn’t mean they intermingle all that much. That’s just humans being humans.
Personally, I’ve always ended up mixing with various ethnicities, cultures and social and economic levels. Probably cause I’m a mutt and never fit into any box in those regards
Humor on the radio is dead. It died when Don Imus apologized.
And no, I don’t like racism. But race- and sex-based humor have been around forever to the detriment of nobody. In fact, I’d say they’ve probably been a positive substitute for real racism, sexism or homophobia for at least a half century.
Don’t punch down!
This is what I have to put up with.
The proper response to anyone who says things like “punching down” is “fuck off and grow up”
I am going to be adding a “nice” comment in the IJ about what I think of punching down.
Wait, I thought punching down had something to do with midgets.
So now I don’t even have that anymore?
Well that depends. Are you under 5′?
No, but Banjos is.
So she could knock a midget out and it’d be ok, but if I do so it’s “punching down”? What if I get on my knees?
This SJW shit is confusing as hell.
Is it a black midget? If so I’m pretty sure she’s still punching down, I’d have to check the intersectionality matrix.
Little people is the preferred nomenclature, please.
See that’s bullshit. Doesn’t that lump midgets, dwarves, children and pygmies all under the same umbrella when they have vastly different things going on? I mean hell, I’m not trying to make fun of all of them at the same time yet calling them all “little people” makes me seem like a dick for making fun of kids when I don’t intend to.
Will everyone here do me a favor and watch THE BIG LEBOWSKI already so you will get 65% of my comments?
Also, pedantically speaking, Little people actually only refers to dwarves.
Why would anyone NOT want to be called a dwarf? When I think of a dwarf I think of a squat, muscular dude with a huge ax, an epic beard, and a crude scottish accent. It’s like getting mad for calling someone a viking… I just don’t understand.
What about oompa-loompas, you fascists!
It’s sad to see the rise of identity politics for this very reason, Sloopy.
You can’t joke about race or sex anymore without pissing someone off. While I’m not sure that this particular guy was just joshing around, you’re definitely right in that regard.
Movies and tv shows used to be filled with race-, sex- and sexuality-based humor. And nobody flipped their shit when it happened. Because they heard those same jokes from their friends and family.
But now the only group that can be mocked is the one the mocker is a part of, be it a woman, a gay person or a racial minority. Of course it’s still perfectly acceptable for one of those groups to make fun of a straight, white male. Because, you know, we have had it so good for so long (which is relatively accurate) and because we can’t dance. And Asian woman drivers. I still think they’re ok for anybody to make fun of. At least they should be.
You mean like this?
I was watching Blazing Saddles with my gf the other day and I remarked “Could you imagine if this movie came out today?” We both agreed that Mel Brooks would have been run out on a rail on opening weekend.
“You can’t joke about race or sex anymore without pissing someone off.”
I thought that was the point.
sloopy, I think that telling race and sex-based humor is often a way that people, to coin a phrase, “check their privilege”. Its a way of acknowledging and marginalizing bigoted impulses. Too many people miss that the butt of the joke is often the bigotry itself, not the poor downtrodden [insert topic of joke here].
Jokes are inherently exaggerations, usually. By exaggerating bigotry, its made to look ridiculous. I would say that race and sex based jokes are, to coin another phrase, “doing God’s work in some of the toughest neighborhoods”.
Um, I think those phrases have already been coined, Dean. But good point nonetheless.
A guy I watch on the tubes named Yahtzee made a very poignant observation once. He said “A society in which one culture makes fun of another and everyone laughs is a truly tolerant and homogenized society.” That may not be the exact quote but it’s very close.
Okay found the full quote after an exhausting 3.5 minute google search:
I do enjoy his video game reviews, if we’re talking about the same Yahtzee
Most likely we are.
Looks like a fag and his shit’s all retarded.
I wonder how safe a radio host is on Sirius. Much better than terrestrial radio I’m sure but by how much?
Stern seems to be doing ok. As do the others that have migrated there solely to be shock jocks.
I’m sure not worrying about FCC fines helps, but being able to sell to a national audience in a fragmented listener market without having to worry about pissing off advertisers in 100 different marketplaces is the big draw to SiriusXM.
Glibertarians is theSIrius of websites! Who wants to be Imus! Nappy headed hoe…. awesome.
Rufus, are you drunk?
Anthony Cumia got shafted by an incident because he took to Twitter, but it’s amazing the shit he was able to get away with both on and off the air for years before they finally found a pretext to sack him.
Mike Church lost his show, but I’d wager it was a ratings thing. He was however getting more and more religion oriented on a political channel, and at the end he was starting to push some weird positions, geocentrism, being the one I remember best.
How the hell does he square astronomy with geocentrism? I mean, I get it when the Flat Earth people just plain make up bullshit, but the movement of the planets and stars across the sky is hard to question.
Wasn’t it something like “Those stars are just drunk”?
Couldn’t the universe be geocentric and astronomy be valid?
What I mean is, can’t any particular point be the center of the universe from either a philosophical point of view or on a long enough timeline?
Or is he talking a geocentric solar system vs a geocentric universe?
I looked into it a bit at the time and I gathered that you can square the two but you have to have some planets/system doing some seriously odd orbits. I was also surprised at how much debate there is on the issue.
Observation of the movement of the planets in comparison to the moon, its phases, and the sun basically means that geocentrism makes zero sense, unless the planets are orbiting the earth in really odd stop-turn orbits “because Jesus/whomever”.
Geocentric universe itself is just an odd concept because it still needs to run on a heliocentric model due to the aforementioned astronomy problem. The more interesting question is how the hell you define what the ‘center’ of the universe is if you can’t define its limits. Geocentric galaxy is just plain odd.
*Geocentric universe. Geocentric galaxy is just a waste of time.
Ok, but on a long enough timeline won’t every body end up in the same place again? And won’t the earth be at the center of that from the observer’ POV? Therefore…geocentric.
Again, when you can’t even define what the limits of the universe are, you can’t define a ‘center’ and geocentrism has a pretty specific historical scientific definition.
but on a long enough timeline won’t every body end up in the same place again
Same problem as above, don’t have the specific limits, if there are any, of the universe to determine whether you end up in the ‘same place’ again. If you factor in the orbit of the earth, the orbit of the sun around the galactic core, and the galaxy’s movement itself the chances of ‘being in the same place’ are astronomically small even on a ‘non-universal spanning’ scale.
won’t the earth be at the center of that from the observer’ POV?
Only if you’re present on the earth and entirely unwilling to contextualize anything beyond your limited perspective. Which is a product of observer bias, not reality.
I loved the old Opie & Anthony show. They used to do long bits making fun of fake apologies people made to keep their jobs – including their own fake apologies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkcIsVZ6nrc&t=4s
You’re pretty safe when no one hears you, so they should have complete job security.
+1 NAPPY HEADED HOs
OT
WaPo fact checker tackles suppressors and Hearing Protection Act. doesn’t fuck it all up.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/03/20/are-firearms-with-a-silencer-quiet/?utm_term=.c4ed4e1c0503
Glenn Kessler isn’t a total retard. That’s probably why.
Suppressors, by defusing the noise of a weapon, may make it more difficult to locate the source of a sound, which is why they often are used by military snipers.
Ahhh… no. A suppressor negatively affects velocity and accuracy. Snipers use distance and position to effect security. Some operators use suppressors for close fighting but that statement is just wrong.
emphasis mine …
You are obviously unfamiliar with the documentary series featuring Matt Damon. Borne something or other.
OT: Soccer Star Accidentally Thanks Both His Wife and His Girlfriend in TV Interview
http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2017/03/20/soccer-star-accidentally-thanks-both-his-wife-and-his-girlfriend-in-tv-interview/
Meh, he’s a sports star.. if he’s only got one side chick I’d say he’s behind the curve.
That always reminds me of that toast given by Jack Aubrey in “Master and Commander”
Interestingly, I never realized until I went looking, that the first line of that toast was actually a real, traditional toast in the Royal Navy, and it had been followed with the second line until 2013 when it was effectively outlawed by the Admiralty because … you guessed it … of the number of women offices on vessels.
Grr. officers, not gendered work-cubicles.
Geez, the Admiralty needs to get with the times. I’d bet a lot of the women officers in the navy have wives and/or sweethearts.
ALL the nice girls love a surface-nautical-person.
If they really got with the times, they’d reconsider that whole “run, sodomy and the lash” prohibition.
Makes serving in the Navy sound like hella fun.
(I’m really hating this keyboard. rum)
I think it works either way.
Depends if STEVE SMITH managed to pass his 1LT exam.