Don LaRose, or, Why I Avoid Leaving Indianapolis City Limits

Some of you may have heard the story of an Arkansas preacher kidnapped in 1975 by satanists by the name of Don LaRose. Then he disappeared again in 1980 from Hammond, IN. There is even a website that explains his "amazing story" (on every page). This is an excerpt from Benton County Daily Record online:

"Lee Roy Floyd was a member of the Hammond Baptist Church's Deacon Board for 45 years and knew LaRose. A reporter with the Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper interviewed Floyd on Tuesday.

"The night before he disappeared, he was speaking to a group in the church, and in the middle of his sermon he stopped talking and looked at the back of the room," Floyd said. "No one else who turned around saw anything, but LaRose later claimed he had seen one of the Satanists through a window outside.

"And the next day he left. He was gone," Floyd said."

I'll be the first to admit that ultimately this is the story of some flim-flam man that used the Word to lure in women and keep his sociopathic mind engaged for few decades. Big whoop. Just another in a long line of PT Barnum-types falling all over themselves to prove suckers are born every minute. But there is a darker side to all this.

I never leave Marion County unless I am forced to. Even then, I prefer it to be on a jet plane. 'Why?' you ask. Simple: "they" get you as soon as you leave the city. Between the satan-worshippers, preachers as John-Wayne-Gacy-type ringleaders, tweaking meth heads, Klansman, serial-killers picking up drifters along the highway, and alien abductions, there is no reason to leave. Ever. Even the most rational of my concerns is I don't leave because of the tornadoes. I would like to think living downtown cuts out a lot of problems. The skyscrapers provide man-made mountains that break up the wind shear that would otherwise whip into a tornado that would flatten my house. Thanks Chase Tower!

I really avoid leaving downtown all together. I know my neighbors, I know my downtown district cops, and the homeless folks that might want to rip me off know I don't have anything worth stealing and will only give them food if they ask me for a handout. So a few of them do crack or drink too much. Response time in my 'hood: 3 minutes.

Sylvia Likens couldn't happen in my neighborhood. Put your tractor beam on that, Martians.

(s)election

Greg Ballard, [insert patriotic rah-rah bs here], just got elected mayor of Indianapolis. In addition, the people of Indianapolis chose to hand back the city-council to smug, good-ol-boy Republicans. Which is better, I have to guess, in the wisdom of the crowd, than smug, good-ol-boy Democrats.

It concerns me that people in this town are so shallow. We tried to analyze what gives this town such a bad "vibe." Empirically, it is this shallowness.

In Hollywood/LA, they make whole feature-length films about the shallowness. And to that I say, "Well, at least it's glamourous."

Here, the shallowness is different. From a very early age, it seems like everyone gets divided very quickly into their little pigeonholes: you're korean/black/white/white trash/of some ethnic decent--over there. you're catholic/protestant/jewish--you stay in that corner. colts fans--over there. army--yeah we got a spot for you here. get back: you support the navy--find another spot. Of course, this applies to Republicans/Democrats too.

This works out great for the do-nothings we keep hiring to run the joint. Whip everyone into a froth about Bart Peterson for raising taxes. He's a Democrat, so he can't be trusted with fiscal matters. Get in your hole and start cheering for the winning team!

To which I say: the dude dragged this city kicking and screaming into the 19th century. He finally had the balls to say the sewers haven't been updated in 100 years, we can't afford the luxury of 9 seperate governments running Indy, three police departments, and by the way, you can't discriminate against gay people and veterans in housing or employment. He got a nice new stadium built, the canal expanded, and put seed money with neighborhood development corporations to slowly bring back burnt-out downtown neighborhoods. But whoops, had to raise taxes. Too bad he used the state's antiquated and unequal methods for doing so.

So here come the Republicans to save us. They won't raise taxes (until they do). They won't put any money into the arts. They won't keep civilization going by protecting the homos from smiling discrimination. Oh happy day! I hope I get some trickle down monies from the republican-connected businessman's paradise/cultural gulag we're about to become. Again.

Because that's the long and short of it, isn't it? Government isn't about the people it tries to protect and give enough freedom and opportunity to live a decent life. It's about how much power you can wrest away from an opponent, how much money you can drain out of a tax base to make more money for your team, and think you are morally superior because you go to church every Sunday.

And as for allowing anyone near the government's money, the Republicans that run the state have an awesome ability for reading spreadsheets: the tax assessment the state proscribes is what brought down Peterson, and when Gov. Mitch Daniels was the Budget Director at the White House, he said the Iraq War would cost like, $2 billion, tops. Don't even get me started about how he walked away from the IPL workers retirement meltdown smelling like a rose.