Havre Daily News
Montana Woman

For permission to publish my weekly/monthly column, View from the North 40, or to reproduce any website content, written or graphic, contact:
Pam Burke (that's me) at pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com, or (406) 265-7338.

So all of a sudden we have winter again, complete with multiple power outages. Huh? But, but, but, I'm still caught with my pants down! No one sent me a memo that we were going to have winter this year. And who'd've thunk it'd last, like, months.

Coleman fuel on the front door step --- Coleman lantern sitting empty in the house.

Candles in the cupboard --- now, where was it that I moved the holders when I mucked through the recesses in the house last time ... ?

Second sleeping bag for zipping together extra, emergency bedding insulation ... in the camper --- high winds and snow between me and thee.

Battery operated radio? --- Donated by my generous husband to Salvation Army. Radio? We don't need no stinkin' radio.

Oil lantern --- Oh, hey, we got that right! It's half full of oil --- Oh, hey, but the wick hangs only one-third of way into the reservoir. Guess it was half empty after all.

And I'm fully empty-headed at: pam@viewfromthenorth40.com

It's not that the day was horrible, it's just that it started at 3 a.m. with a bad dream. And it's not that the dream was a nightmare, it's just that it was BAD. Y'know, the kind that makes you wake up and think negative thoughts and this starts a series of dark thoughts like a stream of soul-sucking consciousness that you can't waylay even though you tell yourself it was just a dream and you're really, really tired.

Then the only thing you can possibly do to break the cycle is get up. Then eventually you have to go to work and be all with-it enough to proofread even though work is total chaos for everyone that morning because the dream must've infected everyone.

It's not that the morning was hell --- I've lived there before so I know whereof I speak --- it's just that I hope this isn't a "Groundhog Day" kind of day. I don't want to have to relive it.

Thank you very much for the day. I will be even more thankful when we've moved on to the next one.

May the dreams be sweeter there at pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

The dedicated staff here at Pamville News are passionate about keeping Readers informed about the most important local, national and international news. In pursuit of this goal, we have uncovered a scandalous plot from the heartland of Montana.

The Harlowton, Mont., newspaper, The Times-Clarion, this week published an article on behalf of the town museum requesting that locals bring their prom dresses in for a display in a new exhibit.

In what seemed like a slip of the automatic spelling-corrector, the article asks for --- in bold letters --- porn dresses instead.

Meanwhile, halfway around the world in Moscow, Russia, computer hackers tapped into an electronic billboard and displayed a two-minute pornographic video for late-night drivers along a busy highway.

All of this just two short weeks away from the sixth anniversary of the infamous Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson Super Bowl XXXVIII "wardrobe malfunction" which offered an up-close and personal view of Jackson's breasts during the half-time show.

Coincidence? I think not.

This is an obvious ploy by the Times-Clarion editor to use sexual content, international connections and a ride on the coattails of the famous Super Bowl name to increase newspaper circulation in these tough economic times when many newspapers are faltering.

If you are as sickened by this cheap publicity ploy as we are, feel free to go read my heartwarming column about how being married to a one-armed guy can get you killed.

This is Pamville News where our motto is: "If the truth fits, tear the tags off and wear it out of the store."

Godspeed at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

Random points of interest:

I did the stupid Jane Fonda "weight training" workout the other day, then had to sit in a hard chair at a function for a few hours. Since then I've been getting a randomly relocating catch in my mid-back. Stupid Jane.

The weather has been warm for about a week and I've been able to work with my horses. In fact, I took Jilly and Xena to the indoor arena at the local fairgrounds on separate days. They both were remarkably well behaved, especially considering neither of them gets off the farm much.

I was listening to the radio news this morning on the way to work, and they aired a sound bite of a reporter interviewing a woman who had just been pulled from the wreckage after several days of being buried alive. The reporter asked, "How was it down there?" Are you kidding me, jackass? She was dining on caviar and champagne, rockin' the block with the house band, and saving her energy to kick your ignorant butt for asking such a stupid question. How was it down there? Oiy.

We went to "Avatar" at the theater last night and watched "District 9" at home last weekend. Hmmm. Similar theme: Mankind's humanity, or lack there of, is revealed when it's put to the test by contact with an alien race and its culture. Two very different treatments. "Avatar" was, of course, visually stunning, but "District 9" had the better plot and character execution as well as an interesting story-telling device that very much set and carried the mood of the movie. I will own both.

Meanwhile, back at the weather --- I got to do one of my favorite things this afternoon: civil engineering to get the runoff from melted snow flowing and/or flowing in the right direction. It was me having a lot of good clean fun in my muck boots sloshing around in the water, slush, mud and soupy horse poop, trying to be catty enough not to slip on the remaining ice or get blown over by our fierce chinook winds. This is the kind of good time a girl dreams of having when the weather is below zero.

Tomorrow, I'm putting this week's newspaper column online. Because it's so good? Because I can. My blogless, my rules.

It's good to be me at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

The whole meet the new boss thing was a bust. No, I didn't do anything asinine, what a thing to think about me. Hurts my feelers. For the first part of the morning, he was busy with the owners who came to town for the momentous occasion, and then he was with advertising until noon so he didn't get to editorial until the afternoon when I wasn't there.

You know what that means? Tomorrow I have to fly solo introducing myself to him --- a golden foot-in-mouth opportunity if I ever heard of one.

But I think we bonded because his desk is about 15' from mine, and he had the blinds pulled up giving him a grand view of what was going on in the editorial department --- which was usually me, front row center trying not to move my lips and sound the words out loud while reading; eating; and typing like a 10-year-old. He didn't fire me, so already he must value me as an asset to the paper. That's right, yay me.

After work I am all about the weather thing at home these days. It was 12 above when I got up, warmed to and held at mid-20s until the afternoon. When I went out to work Xena, at 4 p.m. it was 28 degrees and by the time I got done and back to the house at 5:30 p.m. it was 40 and at 9:30 p.m. (as I write this) it's 45 degrees with a strong chinook wind. Let 'er blow.

I could feel the warm air flirting around the pasture while I worked with Xena, but the big blow nicely held off until I got back to the house.

Xena has earned a new nickname: Xena Warrior Cheerleader. Seriously, she's pretty, and she has the moves to groove ya, but she isn't the brightest bulb in the box. She did some nice and brave things today like, oh, pay attention most of the time, that's always a good thing. She also didn't get spooky though I asked her to do things like, several times, cross an irrigation ditch that was drifted in with snow so she didn't know what she was getting into.

But she just won't get out of her head some of her responses that she feels are appropriate to situations or requests --- no matter how many times or ways I try to get her to understand that, no, she's w.r.o.n.g. El Wrongo. Wrongalonga ding dong. You know, the other not right.

Repetition is the key to training. So I try to do those difficult-for-her things over and over to repeat the repetition repeatedly.

Then I retest at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

I just remembered that I'll have a new boss in the morning. crap. Our publisher retired at the end of the year and now the new guy is supposed to be here in the morning, and I can't believe I remembered tonight ... I'll never get any sleep now.

You're just going to have to picture me writhing in agony/horror/small-child, half-hearted whiny fit. Honestly, I don't like meeting new people anyway because I'm all stupid and stuff. And I really, really don't like having new people coming in and, y' know, changing things that affect my life. Like work.

Blaaah! I don't wanna a new boss! What if he's icky and makes us not joke and gets all up in our beeswax every moment of the day. What if "No f-bomb, inappropriate humor or back-chatting Day" lasts longer than about the first 5 minutes of tomorrow? What if it's every day?

He's from California. Does he own a winter coat? Does he even know Montana isn't a province of Canada?

Fit to be tied: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

We are warm. Warm? What am I saying?! We are better than that ... we're toasty hot hot hot at a whopping 40 degrees. Yessiree, that's 40 degrees above zero. Thank you, I know, we're so proud of our little chunk of the Northern Hemisphere.

To celebrate warm ... I have pictures of cold. I know that's so contrary, really, but hey, I don't mind looking at them when I know I can survive longer than five minutes outside without a parka and inslulated coveralls.

This is the favorite view south one ice-cold and foggy afternoon.

This is the same view the next morning. Don't like the weather in Montana, wait five minutes.

In fact, Saturday the weather went from 3 degrees to 40 degrees in 5 minutes.

I love this place in spite of its coldness: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

The White Trash Estate was the coldest spot in the nation Wednesday night. 36.8 degrees below zero. As in 68.8 degrees below the point at which water freezes along with other fluids, such as blood. Seems significant. I would've bloglessed about it, but my wi-fi whatchacallit on the hill was frozen. That was prohibitive.

But to make matters even more drama queen, John had to take his dad to a doctor's appointment out of town so I drove the pickup to work. The engine went belly up. Yes, the Pamville pickup, royal White Trash wheels, the horse trailer mobilizer, pretty well dead-o-rama.

I got about to the edge of town and smelled "something hot," but the smell dissipated so I figured it must've been one of the vehicles now around me. Poor bastard. Steam was so thick in town from all the commuters and furnaces that it looked like town was fogged in.

Someone's vehicle smelled a wee-bit like antifreeze, poor bastard. Good thing we kept the pickup in the heated shop last night. Is that a wisp of steam from under my hood? Is my pickup making a funny whining noise at this stop light? Crap! I'm the poor bastard!

I figured I was as close to getting parked at work as I was to getting into the outside lane for parking along the street, so I went on the work and called John who was trying to get everything together to get out of town. This is what he wanted to hear, but he figured out wheels for me.

We left my poor pickup stranded in the cold, all alone, in town last night. 'Fraid it'll be the same tonight. Poor bastard, he ain't no town boy.

It's like being thrown in the hoosegow with no one to come bail you out.

The other thing I wanted to blog about is that I turned my column in yesterday and was dying to find out today if the boss was going to run it all --- some of the lines skirted the edges of propriety. Kind of like me in living color.

He did. Sometimes I have to laugh more about what they let me get away with than about what I've actually written.

The column was all about how a good subhead to an article title/headline will save people from having to read all the boring facts in the article --- the premise being just an excuse to write one-liner comebacks to an assortment of headlines that could easily be misinterpreted.

My editor left in every word of my column that included these:

"Cops leave ransom note for pot plants --- marijuana growing suspect calls police, is arrested" (abcnews.com)
--- Lawyer claims client called wrong number to order takeout food for munchies, dude

"Men know it when aroused, women may not" (msnbc.com)
--- Male anatomy points to explanation

"Sin City heats up for annual gadget show" (abcnews.com)
--- (Ewwww, no subhead, just cover your kids' eyes and move along)

"Bozeman might lift ban on rotating barber poles" (Bozeman Daily Chronicle)
--- City Council still sitting, spinning on decision

"Bozeman might lift ban on rotating barber poles" (Bozeman Daily Chronicle)
--- Council OKs stripper poles in unanimous decision

And my personal favorite of the racey ones:

"Controversial mammogram guidelines rebutted" (msnbc.com)
--- Doctors, cancer survivors suggest guidelines be reboobed instead

Hoping for a heatwave at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

John asked me today when the last time it was the temps got above freezing. I said, "Yesterday." Then we exchanged the concentrated blank looks of "uummm." I broke first --- appropriately so. "Oh, yeah. It was above zero not freezing." More blank looks. Nope, neither of us could remember the last time we had temps above 32 degrees.

I've been pondering the question, and all I can remember is that it miraculously hit 54 degrees without the wind blowing one day in December ... or November.

I am crabby. Or at least I was crabby because I woke at 5 a.m. and decided to get up at 5:30 a.m. to exercise (shut up, I know what you're thinking, don't say it), but the DVD player wasn't talking to the TV. Apparently they had a set to while the rest of us were sleeping because they were all BFF last night. So fine, I decided to get on the computer.

The internet wasn't working (and we now know it's because the temp was -13 degrees, sans windchill factor, and the freakin' wi-fi shuts down in sub-zero temps. As. A. Manufacturing. Feature. Probably from some tropically located, beach-front company whose engineers have never even seen a standard operating deep freeze because every day they just pass through the open-air markets selling fresh meats and vegetables on their way home to pick fresh fruits off lush trees growing their backyards.

Did I mention that I was crabby?

Yeah, after all this funliness, I then decided to figure out how to make a simple form with my new-to-me spreadsheet program. I was sitting at the computer with nothing cyberspacey to do.

Have I ever told you, my dear Readers, how much I hate learning new programs? Totally crabby at this point. Irrevocably crabby after I gave up on the spreadsheet and looked at the time --- of which there was not enough (time, that is) to take a shower (before work, that is). Cussing didn't help. I tried. Not one effin' thing turned the clock backward.

I suffered through work. Co-workers suffered through my tude and my unbathed self.

Got home to a finally functioning internet and an email from a friend in Nebraska who is in the midst of another winter storm and preparing her home and livestock for another power outage --- the last one being a three-dayer over Christmas.

So now I'm here shuttin' my festering pie hole on the crabby-talk. High of -8 today? No big deal. Party a minute here in my winter wonderous land.

Truly. Even though it's -18 at 4:30 p.m., and I need to post this before the sun drops below the wi-fi tower.

Slap happy at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

It's found poetry day again in the Land of Pam. But doesn't "found poetry" sound too boring? Yeah, like, I was just downloading some email, and I totally, like, found this poem disguised as a spam-gram. It was, like, just sittin' there, like it was waiting for me to take it in and rearrange the lines.

Seriously, it should have a more classical poetry name: an heroic spamlet, or instead of sonnet a spammet, or from haiku to spamu.

Nope, they're not working for me either. Go ahead and call it free verse or open form poetry. Whatever. I'll get over it.

--------

Dear Customer,

We have been waiting
for you
to contact us

for your Confirmed Package
that is

registered with us for shipping to your residential location.
We
had thought that

your sender gave you our contact details.

It may interest you to know
that

a letter is also added to your package.
We understand that

the content of your package itself
is

a Bank Draft
worth of $800,000.00 USD.

The package
is

registered with us
for mailing by your colleague, and

your colleague explained
that

he is from the United States
but he is here
in Nigeria
for a three (3)months

Surveying Project as he works
with a consultant firm

in Nigeria
West Africa,
We are

sending you this email because your package
is

been registered on a Special
Order.

What you have to do now,
is

to contact our Delivery Department for immediate dispatch of your package
to your residential address.
Note that

as soon as our Delivery Team confirms your information,
it will take (48 hours) for your package to arrive

it is designated destination.

For your information, the VAT & Shipping charges as well as Insurance fees have been
paid by your colleague before

your package was registered.
Note that the payment
that is

made on the Insurance, Premium & Clearance Certificates, are to certify
that

the Bank Draft is not a Drug Affiliated Fund (DAF)
neither is it funds

to sponsor Terrorism in your country. This will help you

avoid any form of query from the Monetary Authority of your country. However,

you will have to pay a sum of $156USD (United States Dollars) to the FedEx Delivery Department being

full payment for the Security Keeping Fee of the FedEx company
as stated in our privacy terms & condition page. Also

be informed that your colleague wished to pay for the Security Keeping charges,
but we do not accept such payment
considering the facts
that

all items & packages that is registered with us
have a time limitation

and we cannot accept payment not knowing
when

you will be picking up the package or even responding to us. So we cannot
take the risk
to have accepted such payment in case of demurrage.

Kindly note that your colleague did not leave us

with any further information. We hope
that

you respond to us as soon as possible because if you fail to respond to us before
the expiry date of your package, we may refer the package to the British Commission
for Welfare.

Kindly contact the delivery department
(FedEx Delivery Post) with the details
given
below:

FedEx Delivery

---------

Maybe we should call it George at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

I swear to the gods of winter, ice cream and any stiff drink on the rocks that someone changed the meteorologist hiring guidelines to include: "Must be a crack smoking incompetent, or have equivalent experience in Homeland Security threat detection."

Evidence just from the past few days: Thursday prediction --- 30 percent chance of snow after 11 p.m. Thursday actual --- snow started at noon, heavy snow by 2 p.m., snow all night. Friday --- high of 15 degrees, 20 mph chinook winds at midnight. Friday actual --- a momentary high of 1 above, absolute calm at midnight, still calm and sub-zero as I write this at 9 a.m.

Today we're to see a high of 36 degrees above ... . Well, I guess those crackheads have until midnight for that to be right.

On an unrelated note, if you're sick of all the lists of Top 10 whatevers, who died and best/worst whosits cataloging the past decade. Here's an article about a woman getting through life named Marijuana Pepsi. And if you can get through the article without laughing, you're reading the wrong blog(less) here.

If you want to read the article complete with commentary from the natural hallucinogenic crowd, you can read it at the Shroomery compliments of a Google search for the article.

And by all means, if you can't get enough of names like Mike Rotch, Acne Fountain and Stud Duck, hie thee to this site for lists of more good words gone bad as names.

As the Pamville contribution to the name fame: I've personally met Thunder Storm. Plus, Richard Zinn is listed in the local phone book --- just think about it for a moment. But if you don't get it, e-mail me.

I can explain everything at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com

Have a happy new year. We say that over and over in some form or another this time of year.

Happy new year to you guys. It's a nice change from "see ya." More sincere than "I'll call, and we'll get together." More tactful than "I gotta go. I need to be some place more important than the grocery aisle yacking with you like we're at a social club."

But do we really have a clue what we're saying?

I hope you have a happy new year. Oh, really. Define happy. Happy by whose standards? By what measure?

It's not like someone can say "Oh, you have 30 percent body fat, but 67.2 percent total life happiness. That's a good ratio." Or "This person contains 587 ounces of happiness in liquid or solid form." Or "She's 5-feet 8-inches tall and 3 feet of that is pure happiness."

Turns out that scientists are very interested in what makes us happy, so they actually can measure happiness in various ways.

They know happiness lives the majority of its life in the brain's left prefrontal lobe, which is a little gem of white matter tucked in behind your big blob of frontal-lobe --- the part of the brain that keeps your forehead from collapsing.

If you happen to be hooked up to an industrial quality Acme electro-happy scan-o-matic while scientists show you pictures of puppies, warm beaches and stacks of money, your left prefrontal lobe happy-center lights up like neon at an all-night poker parlor.

Scientists also can test your blood for natural happy-chemical stuff. The less you have of the stress hormone cortisol the better off you are. On the other hand, more is better when measuring the amount of the body's natural opiate, endorphins --- the "runner's high" chemical, that is probably an additive in chocolate and caffeine because, wow, those two foods make me feel gooood.

In simpler, less electrode-and-needle friendly forms of testing, scientists also have loads of different questionnaires that measure such things as: whether you are top notch, 1-to-10 scale happy; you somewhat agree; you're moderately unhappy; you would consider a life do-over if one were offered; or happiness is not applicable in this instance.

Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gets in on the happy-data action. They calculated data collected for four years from more than 1 million people across the U.S. and compiled a ranking of states by the happiness-factor of each state's residents.

The list starts with Louisiana (polled pre-Hurricane Katrina), then Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee and Arizona --- all states known for their sunshine, good food and/or good music by the way.

Yes, their conclusion seems a little obvious, but, of course, they're the CDC, not some fly-by-night pack of social cheerleaders. They didn't just ask, "Are you happy? Check yes or no," so people could say, "Uh, yeah, I'm sittin' here rockin' the FM, catchin' some warm rays on the beach, drinkin' a margarita --- let me think for a sec ... duh! Yes, I'm totally happy, dude."

The CDC also asked about quality of life indicators like climate, crime rates, air quality and schools as well as availability of public land, commuting time and local taxes. Good job, CDC.

Turns out that there's a dark horse in the top 10 sunshiney happy-states --- Montana.

I know, right? My state. Montana --- home of the meat-locker winters, the all-day drive to get anywhere and the everyday economy that's so bad we hardly notice a worldwide recession --- is filled (in a rural 1.5 persons per square mile way) with people lacking the good sense to know any better way of living. Seems we pretty well love our quality of life.

As a scientific side dish complimenting the CDC's findings, a new study in the journal "Personal Relationships" reveals that attractive physical appearance really does buy happiness, not just a rich spouse.

However, this is true only in large cities.

Turns out that people living in rural areas are happier if they are useful. Pretty is as pretty does in the country, folks. Not only that, people --- even hyper-self-conscious female people --- living in the country are happier if they are a little bit chubby.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

How good is it to be me? A hefty, Montana chick who knows her way around a corral and a kitchen. Suh-weet.

Let me be the first to say it: Happy new year to every Montanan built big enough to get some real work done. According to researchers, we are the measure of happiness, the happy-standard of achievement for the entire country.

All the rest of you have the best 2010 you possibly can at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40(dot)com