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Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Bowl of candy by the door, check. Six pack of Red Hook ESB in the reefer, check. The Big Lebowski in the DVD player. Check. Red contact lenses for the dog. Check. Bring it, Halloween.

I’m still suffering from a tremendous headache this morning, and it has nothing to do with the Red Hook. Both Rusty and Speaker designed costumes out of cardboard boxes this year, and they required several cans of spray paint. Or as we used to call it in the sign biz, the Norweigian Airbrush.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

A quick look at today’s BBC website exposed me to two words I’d never seen before. “Freesheet” and “broadbloid” were used to describe types of newspapers. I don’t know if it’s a British thing, like boiled lunchmeat, or if it’s a snarky modern trend, typified by Stephen Colbert and his coining of words like “truthiness” and “wikiality,” but the need for more words is evident.

Thanks to the Web, invented words now enter the lexicon with lightning speed. I consider these words part of a new argot called Internetymology. See how easy it is? I just made that up!

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

It’s getting harder to bend my children to my will. Mostly because I woke up one day recently and discovered that my two little kids had disappeared, and were replaced by moody, largely unresponsive, hormone-addled adults. Well, not adults, really, somewhere in between. If they were frogs, they would be tadpoles with legs.

One clear indication that my subservient little charges have gone over the wall, if only in their own heads, is the way they’ll respond to any request or demand from myself or Barb. They used to say “okay.” Now they say “I know.”

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

How many kids have to die? How many family pets have to be savagely attacked? How many people have to have their limbs chewed off or their faces gnawed to mush before we say enough already with the pit bulls?

After a recent pit bull attack in Austin, police are telling homeowners that they can protect themselves and their pets against pit bull attacks by installing a double layer fence, which will be harder for the pits to chew through. Oh, and don’t forget to provide your pets an escape route for when the pit bulls come for them. A few days before an attack where four pit bulls chewed through a fence in order to get to the pair of scared-shitless blue healers in a backyard, a pack of the killer dogs were seen trotting through the neighborhood, one with a dead poodle hanging from its mouth. Nice doggie.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

In a liberal oasis like Missoula, the question “What is a hippie?” should be as easy to answer as “Got yer elk yet?” Missoula’s always been known, especially to other, more conservative parts of the state, i.e., everywhere else, as Montana’s hippie enclave, a granola gathering ground for unemployed longhairs and sandal-clad stoners who reek of patchouli and bong water.

But it’s not so easy, especially viewed through the lens of history and socio-political significance, to come up with a pat answer. “What Is a Hippie?” was the title of an entertaining, free-wheeling panel discussion on the U of M campus last night, where 40 people gathered to see if they could put a definitive classification on that not-so-elusive critter, groovius microbus.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

My idea of culture usually involves a couch, a large bag of Cheetos, cold beer, and a viewing of “Animal House,” possibly followed by a documentary on the history of the cement mixer. I’m a guy. We have simple needs. We’re like bears with furniture. If it weren’t for my wife exposing me to a broad variety of local performances and exhibitions, I’d probably just hang around the house most weekends, exposing myself. To lowbrow culture.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Ich bin ein Californian. Seriously. Although my ancestors carved out a gnarly little pioneer home in Western Montana five generations ago, I was born in the city of Orange, five miles from Disneyland. I don’t remember much about that day, but it has been decades since I spent any significant time in Southern California.

So when I flew down there last week for a couple of days of research for my novel, I was prepared to be slapped full across the face with the big suntanned hand of culture shock. And then cursed and insulted in Spanish

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The Unabomber. The Montana Militia. The Freemen standoff. Hardin prison nut jobs. Hank Williams, Jr. It seems every couple of years my beloved state of Montana produces some embarrassing development that results in national headlines leading the rest of the country into thinking that we’re just a grizzly-infested outpost that contains nothing but paranoid psychopathic hillbillies. “Montana is crazy,” says the rest of the country. “We should give that state back to Canada.”

Our latest black eye is the Montana GOP’s attempt to outlaw homosexuality. In their sweaty obsession with pressing their bloodshot eyes up against the keyholes of Montana’s bedroom doors, the Republican party has been trying to make “homosexual acts” illegal since 1997. I can’t help but wonder if these “acts” include having an uncanny knack for selecting a club playlist, or displaying fabulous taste in general.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Just before school starts, summer gets one last huzzah by way of the county fair. This year, enticed by TV commercials that boasted “the greenest lawn in Western Montana,” we spent a day at the Sanders County Fair in Plains, an hour and a half northwest of Missoula. Our first stop was a funhouse, the one that starts with a little hall of mirrors, then goes up a set of stairs to a couple of distorted funhouse mirrors. It ends with a spiral slide, and I made the mistake of lifting up my sneakers so I could go a little faster. My foot caught the side of the building, and I spun around backwards. After receiving a few friction burns on my elbows and shoulder, I crashed off the end upside down and backward, crushing my sunglasses underneath me. My carnival experience was not starting out well. It was about to get worse. Much worse.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

I’m abandoning Facebook. Or rather, my engagement in Facebook. Like most people, I spend some time scrolling through my FB page each day, waiting for anything truly interesting or useful to show up. It never does. It’s all shallow, self-indulgent, existential fragments of nothingness. And then I’m angry that I’ve wasted another half hour, with nothing to show for it but disappointment and guilt over losing time that could have spent doing something more productive, like, say, scraping the gunk out from under my toenails.

Here are some of the reasons that Facebook sucks:

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