Comments

1
Suggestion.

Take LINK light rail to Columbia City station, arriving around 12:30 am.

Bring a camera.

Do a photo essay on anyone wearing a black and red jacket.

If they ask, tell them, "it's an urban thing".
2
One of the Retardicans running to be Gov. of Montana posted on his Facebook how friendly Montanans are and how the big city folks (think it was New York he was complaining about specifically) are rude mean and generally assholes.

Montana, great place to die, both mentally, and physically.
3
You always know how to cheer me up, Cato.
4
@2: the shooter was actually from Washington.
5
Yeah, he was from Olympia.
6
@4:

So the Governor of MT claims his state is really friendly, after a guy from WA shoots a guy from W VA, outside a town less than 10 miles from ND and maybe 50 miles from the Canadian border.

And your point is?
7
@ 6, it's like how everyone says the Northwest is full of polite people but then you meet them on Slog.
8
Eastern Montana can be rough at times (especially in the far northeast), but with the oil boom in North Dakota, it has become somewhat like the Wild West. A lot of crooks are getting jobs with the oil fields and then letting their aggression out on random people.

You have small farming towns where someone stealing a cow would be big news now having to deal with their populations tripling overnight, thousands of people sleeping in tents and campers, prostitution and drug rings, and random acts of violence. It is starting to get scary over there.
9
On another note, why did I ever think that I would be able to watch the documentary "How Seattle Invented The Future" on public tv...the first time I have watched pbs in more than a year.

It started great, but then it launched into the fundraising drive and its been 10 minutes of commemorative cocktail napkins ever since!
10
Whew! For a second there I was afraid it was John Waters.
11
John Waters would never shoot anyone, and he is not from Olympia.
12
@10, he finished his cross-country hitchhike a couple weeks ago. He's going to use it as a springboard for a book just like the poor murder victim wanted to. Apparently it's a thing.
13
(and @11, you win Loudest Whoosh of the Week.)
14
Olympia ftw!
15
Gus - He's not a murder victim, just an attempted murder victim; he was hit in the arm and will be okay.

And, um, yeah. Not feeling too proud of my adopted hometown right about now.
16
I wonder what the sequel will be titled?
17
A stranger is just a friend you've never met!
18
@17

"A stranger is just a friend you haven't shot!"

fixed that for you
19
@8, it's ironic, considering that far northeastern Montana (Sheridan County, two over from where this shooting took place) was once a hotbed of Communism -- one of the few places in the country where almost every elected official was a member of the Communist Party, back in the 20s and 30s. Commies are a bit thin on the ground out there today -- actually anyone to the left of John Birch is.
20
@16
If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Wing Him.
Zen and the Aim of Motorcycle Maniacs.
The Bullet Whisperer.
and for NW flair...
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Target.
21
@15, thank you - it says something about my jadedness that I decided the magnitude of the fuss meant it couldn't be a mere wounding, no matter that I did read the damn article too....
22
@1 You're boring and stupid. Fuck off.
23
I was recently re-reading David Sedaris' wonderful collection Naked, which features a couple wonderful takes on hitchhiking. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't read it (or read it recently. I'd completely forgotten how much it rules. Wonderful!)
25
Of course there was a reason - cows were out of season!
26
This was near the Bakken oil patch. Guy who did it was not from the area. Yes, crime in the area has surged but it is unfair to say it is rural crime. It is because people have been drawn to the area by oil jobs. This is hardly normal rural living. It is an unnatural society built by the companies with people that are only there temporarily committing crimes.
27
My SIL is from out there, and my brother calls it "Montucky". Gives me a little bit of NW pride in that our crazies have a subconscious sense of irony.
28
@8 and @26-- it's not really oil workers per se who are the troublemakers. They're generally skilled or semi-skilled and they really have to keep their noses clean to keep their jobs. The instigators in the high-profile crimes out here have been basically transients who are trying to cash in on higher paying service jobs-- for instance the Wal-Mart in Williston starts at $13/hr-- although the lack of housing basically means there's a lot of well paid homeless people living in their cars.

However, it is wrong that the crime rate has skyrocketed since the boom. The violent crime and violent death rates in eastern Montana and western ND have always been astronomical for as small as the population is, and remain so in places unaffected by the boom. In the boomtowns, the populations have gone way up, but my some estimates the violent crime rate and things like dui fatalities and suicides have actually gone down quite a lot. There's more of the
29
Oops, stupid phone. ... There's more deaths and crimes numerically because of the population growth, but the actual rate has gone down. The locals who claim they had idyllic little towns before the boom are guilty of wishful thinking.
30
I'm shocked to learn that someone from WA with a criminal record for violence has a gun.
31
It was all a hoax!!! Even though this thread is dead, I feel compelled to post the link: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/0…

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