Day: May 20, 2024

by Travis Mateer

About a month ago a pawn shop owner who I first started chatting with as the Homeless Outreach Coordinator of the Poverello Center told me frankly why the price he could offer me for a firearm I was looking to sell would be much lower than a direct-sale would be, and that’s the canary part of the story.

“Everyone is selling,” he said to me, “and no one is buying”. Shit.

If you don’t think years of financial fuckery have squeezed people to points of desperation, which sometimes leads to hilarious and creative ingenuity, then you haven’t heard of the woman found living in a sign on top of a box store. I’m not kidding.

From the link:

Contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store made a startling discovery: a 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.

“She was homeless,” said Brennon Warren, an officer with the Midland police department. “It’s a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign.”

The woman, whose name was not released, told police she had a job elsewhere but had been living inside the Family Fare sign for roughly a year, Warren said. She was found on 23 April.

I got this story from James of Media Monarchy, along with another story made into a documentary about some artists who lived inside a mall for FOUR YEARS, how inspiring is that!

After listening to James and James (Corbett) do their weekly thing, I thought they might appreciate how a trashy environment here in Zoom Town allowed my TAAAAAZ to organically evolve, so I’ll be sending a link to this post featuring the impressive time-line of links below, starting with police ticketing Ryan Tollefson for trash removal, and ending with a celebratory declaration of my adaptive methodologies.

Before the links, I’ll tease for tomorrow’s post, where I’ll feature some of the objects I’ll be trying find buyers for.

Antique ballot box? With glass panels and working key? Yep, a rarity AND a hilarity! So tune in tomorrow for what could be YOUR opportunity, and if you’re a media muckraker with the first name James, I hope the link to this post doesn’t end up in your spam collector! Here are the links:

Missoula Police Priorities Are Making Vigilantism Inevitable (March 12th, 2024)

On Why Missoula Officials Should Be Apologizing To MDOT And ALL Montana Taxpayers (March 14th, 2024)

Filing My Butthurt Ryan Tollefson Report So I Can Move On To The Larger Trash Opportunity (March 17th, 2024)

The Fight For Narrative Control Continues (March 18th, 2024)

The Political Cost To Prosecute Ryan Tollefson Will Be Steep, So Why Not Pay Me Instead? (March 21st, 2024)

Urban Camps And A Broken Criminal Justice System Are Skipping Hand In Hand Toward Armageddon (March 22nd, 2024)

Fundraising The RIGHT Way And The Wrong Way (March 24th, 2024)

This Trash Alchemist Doesn’t Need $138,000 To Produce Amazing Feats Of Trash Alchemy! (March 26th, 2024)

Will My Urban Camp Trash Removal Team Get The Clearance To Do The Work? (March 28th, 2024)

We Gonna Do This The Easy Way Or The Hard Way? (March 29th, 2024)

Campus Free Speech Butthurt Report: The Future May Be Retarded (April 2nd, 2024)

Are You Ready To Play My Urban Camp Trash Game, Missoula? (April 3rd, 2024)

Game On! (April 3rd, 2024)

Eclipse Day In Zoom Town (April 8th, 2024)

Goodbye Homeless Sex Swing! (April 9th, 2024)

Declaring My TAAAAAZ (Trash Alchemist’s Awesome And Amazing Autonomous Zone) (April 11th, 2024)

The Long And Winding Road To My Autonomous Zone (April 12th, 2024)

My TAAAAAZ Relocation Plan? (April 12th, 2024)

My TAAAAAZ Is Now A Trash Truck On The Prowl (April 14th, 2024)

Delayed Posting Due To This Journalist Being In Jail (April 16th, 2024)

Today Is Earth Narrative Control Day! (April 22nd, 2024)

Watching The Supreme Court’s Homeless Policy Showdown With Oregon (April 23rd, 2024)

How About A Little Street Theater? (April 26th, 2024)

On Being Inclusive With A “Houseless” Guy For The Urban Camping Working Group Charade (May 1st, 2024)

If Wasting Time Was The Goal, Then Missoula’s Urban Camping Working Group Was A GREAT Success! (May 2nd, 2024)

My Urban Car-Camping Idea…TAAAAAZ 2.0? (May 3rd, 2024)

Come Fight The White Lion Blight With The Trash Alchemist! (May 5th, 2024)

The Right Kind Of Pride For The Times? (May 6th, 2024)

A Rant (Not Mine) And A Song (May 7th, 2024)

TAAAAAZ Suffers First Crime Of Theft! (May 7th, 2024)

Yesterday Swung From Homeless To Hollywood (May 10th, 2024)

If You Have A Problem With Something Just Make It Disappear! (May 12th, 2024)

Why Does A Roaring Kitty Strike Fear In The Hearts Of The Globalist Psychopath Class? (May 14th, 2024)

A New Harm Reduction Program Offering Cloud 9 Big Sky Highs? (May 15th, 2024)

On Teaching Missoula PD An Important Lesson (May 16th, 2024)

You Cannot Thwart The Amazing Methodologies Of The Trash Alchemist! (May 17th, 2024)

If you appreciate the 36 posts I’ve published since March 12th about my unique and evolving approach to handling trash in Zoom Town, then please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or, keep an eye out locally for some garage sale signs soon.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

The high point for Montana Democrats last year appeared to be finding some beta males to “protect” the bench Zooey Zephyr was relegated to after the culture war smoke cleared from equally pathetic Montana Republican antics. Housing? Property taxes? A clean environment? No, it was the Zooey Zephyr show ALL session, and this year Montana Democrats will pay the price.

A group of Helena professionals who work in tech made their way to the Capitol on Tuesday to join a revolving crew of people protecting the bench where Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, has been representing her constituents.

“I don’t do well with bullying, and I decided instead of just kind of staying at home and fuming about this, that I was going to come in and at the very least, just tell Zooey that I support her and admire her bravery,” said Kurt Fehlig, one of three people holding down the bench around noon Tuesday.

“We’re keeping the bench for Zooey. So we can’t move,” said Tom Snell.

A party of the people supporting my liberty and pursuit of happiness? Um, are we just going to gloss over the fact that four years ago a pandemic of fear turned a majority of citizens who identify as liberal into a terrifying collective of mindless snitches frothing at the mouth when people like me said NO to the insane tactics of coercion designed to convince me to take medical injections I didn’t agree with?

The revisionism coming from pieces of shit like the Cuomo brothers SHOULD be proof enough that the “party of the people” is now desperately scrambling to rebrand their collective insanity into something more palatable for their shrinking constituency. Is it going to work?

Because Democrats rely on people with a truncated sense of recent history, and because our media is no help when it comes to historical context, we get stories like this one from the Missoula Current (run by a former Democrat spokesperson) about the AG race in Montana. From the link:

Earlier this week, the Daily Montanan reported that at an event last Saturday, an audio recording obtained by the news organization appeared to capture Knudsen calling Montana’s campaign finance laws “ridiculous” and saying that he asked a friend to run against him in the partisan primary as a way to raise more money.

Logan Olson, a Republican who appears on the ballot, is also the Daniels County Attorney. Olson appears to have done little in the way of campaigning. Prior to the complaints being filed, the COPP said recruiting a candidate to run under false premises could be a campaign violation.

Why do I find this complaint so pathetic and also a bit funny? It goes back many years, to a time when the Montana blogosphere had more going on than a lone blogger (me) keeping the lights on; bloggers like “Pogie”, for example, penned “Intelligent Discontent” before rebranding it to sound more like conventional media, then fleeing the entire state for Hawaii and shuttering the site for good.

Before trying to influence Montana voters with his condescending style, Don “Pogie” Pogreba helped out Governor Brian Schweitzer with a performative candidacy for Governor that, per Montana state law, allowed our Governor to keep his political donations AFTER the primary, which is what Austin Knudsen is now being accused of.

Here’s an article showing how little money Pogreba raised, raising the question of whether or not he was ever a serious candidate in the first place. From the link (emphasis mine):

Candidates challenging Schweitzer and Brown in Montana’s June 3 primary election have not raised much campaign money, according to campaign-finance reports.

Through May 17, Schweitzer had raised nearly $1.4 million to Brown’s $352,328.

Democratic challenger Don Pogreba of Helena had raised $2,210. Democrat Bill Fischer did not submit a financial report to the state political practices commissioner. Republican Larry H. Steele of Great Falls raised $2,043.

If Montana Democrats want some REAL firepower to figuratively aim at Austin, there’s plenty available, but they won’t use it because it’s TOO DANGEROUS to some of their own political creatures, like Missoula’s former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott. Are you beginning to see why I find Democrats MUCH MORE odious than Montana Republicans?

If you appreciate my bipartisan disdain for party politics in Montana, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). You won’t find many writers like me using insider experiences with a hyper-local focus and zero-fuck approach to sharing what I know about what’s happening in our Zoom Town.

Thanks for reading!