Prescott Arizona is totally awsome

It's easy to forget about how cool Prescott is when I'm in amazing Arcata. But wowee this town is pretty rad. I got hooked up with an excellent 10 speed bike for free the first day I was back in town. I can ride it to the hardware store, the fabric store, and all of the restaurants and bars. The grocery stores have unlocked dumpsters full of produce and sammiches. My friends are...well...friendly. No one is on much of a schedule and there's lots of chill time hanging out, working on crafts or cooking meals together. Food Not Bombs is alive and kicking, despite the past two weeks' scuffles with the police (we don't have a permit to gather in the park). Thanks again and again to The Catalyst Infoshop just for being there and renting me so many great books, feeding me, and hanging out. Prescott College finally replaced the deceased "freebox" with a student-run thrift store that has the best stuff. A great companion to the DAV thriftstore - all clothing 25 cents or less if you're in good with Sam - and the St. Vincent de Paul higher quality stuff for a little more dough. Sundance's now has a fab 80's dance night, the DJ is a good fellow and arranges bartab prizes for best dressed (let the non-burners compete with me and my friends' costume collections!) and obscure movies played all night. Plus you can drive les than 2 hours to Phoenix to rave on the weekends. The college hosts a year-round produce CSA and the downtown neighborhoods are packed with permaculture enthusiasts experimenting within blocks of the touristy downtown. And then there's my wierdo friends building large wind-sculptures, rediculous artcars, and pshycedelic "spaces" at the metal shop down the street. And rent is cheap. And there's people walking around downtown dressed like cowboys in the wild west. It's the home of the oldest rodeo. Damn this place is totally awsome. Two thumbs up!

William Morva is an Asshole

That's what the shirts said. I've still got one but I don't wear it much because it says "Asshole" on it. I don't actually like to offend strangers, unlike Will.

I've known him since high school, we're the same age, and I was there to watch him change. Help was offered by loads of close friends but he was so goddamn antisocial that he managed to push away all but a few, and most of those remaining contributed to his crimes. He started off with this big idea that you can wake people up to new ideas by pushing them to their limits. He liked to confront people with extreme criticism, racist jokes, and barrage of conspiracy theory. But instead of realizing some dreamed up new order, they turned their backs to him. Will's way was just too fuckin mean. Health problems prohibited him from gaining any sort of employment whatsoever, he refused help from any government institution that could have provided him with financial/medical support, and he alienated himself from his peers. By the time I graduated college, he acted like his pitiful state (living in the woods, no friends, etc) was the fault of our society and he martyred himself to the extreme. He never wore shoes and strangers were always asking him about it. It wasn't a cute quirk, it was a way to get pity and attention from new people. Two close friends were taken advantage of when they offered their homes as a safe space, one was ultimately put out of school by his financial contributions to Will's lazy ass and constant catering to his demands for car rides to and fro. Will stole expensive wine from one of these homes because the friend claimed to be an anarchist and Will thought it would teach him a lesson. He redied himself for the revolution by jumping around corners of another residence, pointing guns at friends. Actually, he'd been obsessed with the idea of taking violent action against the police and talked about it constantly. He acted like the cops were faceless enemies instead of Blacksburg residents. Will coerced another friend into getting him a cellphone on the friend's credit card, lacking one of his own, and then ran up over $300 downloading extras, all the while bragging about living free from material possessions. The friend had to pay the bill when Will was arrested - his family was unable to assist and Will had not accumulated the promised funds. Will also bragged loudly and often in a local coffee shop that he was robbing vet offices for special K to sell for profit. Oh, and he made me drive him to Christiansburg in my car to try and buy the shotgun that he would use later that week in an attempted armed robbery that landed him in prison. They wouldn't sell him the gun on his expired ID and I let him out on the side of the road when he was freaking out in the back of my car, kicking the seats at thrashing about, angry that he needed the gun "tonight". The next day, an idiot friend of mine bought Will the gun in his name and also ended up in jail as an accessory to a felony crime. Whew.

Why am I writing all this now? On the eve of Thanksgiving? I guess his name mustof come up today and i start thinking about how he would only eat meat so he surely loves Thanksgiving but hell he's only eating prison food tomorrow. And I don't fucking care. My heart is cold to his condition. How mean must he have been to turn me off so strongly? How many chances did I give him and how many times did I help him only to have him act like an asshole to me? All the time. Spreading gossip and lies between friends. Stealing. Most of the people that "liked" him only liked the way he made himself a spectacle and they thought it was a little bit endearing. Now they want to praise his peculrarities and boast they knew him before it happened. For all his hard work to make people hate him, I don't think his message even came across. Nothing changed and there was another more gruesome killing in the same town several months after his capture, now known as the Virginia Tech Massacre, the largest and most senseless school shooting in history.

My message is this -
You can't change the world. The only life you have is your own, the only choice you have is your own. No punk-fad protest party, no suicide letter, no destruction of corporate art is going to fix the human condition. You could die trying - and millions of people do. Wasted lives. Violence and vandalism only breed more of the same. Someone recently told me "be the change you wish to see in the world". Share your gifts, participate in life, and for chrissake don't get overwhelmed by the problems when the answer is already in your hands.

background and opinions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morva
www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/79080
people.tribe.net/aer3/blog...b9afa3ac1e