A Seedy Dive Bar in Cyberspace By MIKE ROSELLE

We here at Lowbagger have two missions. There is a Planet. It is in a hand basket, and it is going straight to hell. We do not know what a hand basket is, or how the Planet got into it. There are other web sites that claim to know more about this then we do. Ultimately, we all agree that something must be done, yet we can’t agree on how to do it. And we don’t always get along that well when we work together and often cannot get funding for it. It is hard work. We do it because we have to.

So here at Lowbagger, we just want to provide a nice seedy dive bar were everybody can share a beer, or if they have been cut off, some hot coffee, and talk about how they are dealing with this hand basket thing. I know that bars are not cool to some people. Some bars won’t even let us in. But trust me, I have been all over the world, and everywhere I met with people fighting to save the planet. Almost all of these meetings broke up sooner or later, and then we would go to a bar. If they didn’t have bars, then you usually sat behind a grass hut under a tree with a bunch of people and had to drink what ever they gave you. Sometimes this would not be a good idea, and sometimes it wouldn’t even be beer that you were drinking. You may even find yourself naked as a jaybird, urinating on a frightened chicken, but that’s a story for later. And it wasn't me it was Randy Hayes.

The other thing we try to do here at Lowbagger is to document some of the great stories that our old people are passing down. That way, we can prove that we have already heard them a few dozen times. This is not a nostalgia site. Going forward means learning from the hard country we have covered together, and separately. But the important thing is to keep going forward. We have work to do, and when we are done, we sometimes have money to spend in a bar. We go even if we don’t have money and hope someone will buy us a beer. We here at Lowbagger will never buy you a beer, especially if you live in Eugene, but we will print your stories if Josh likes them. Even if we don’t run your stuff we still don’t want to hear those stories again. Some of them will be retired.

I do not believe in the “Old Days”, especially when people refer to them as good. There has never been a good time to live on this planet, unless you are not rich, and that usually means you are destroying the planet. Things are bad, and most of us have been saying so for quite a long time. However, we do kick some ass on occasion, and things would be much worse if we hadn’t. Today every thing is pretty much the same, except we have computers and this thing Josh calls the internet. We want to use it for good instead of evil, and we want to look good doing it. We have standards. You cannot write like a Lowbagger if you are not a Lowbagger. If you are a Poser, Josh will know. That’s his job.

So if you think we must have better things to do than to post this run-of-the-mill blog, you are right. But Josh and I want to have some fun when we are done working. If your stuff doesn’t get posted, don’t blame me. He rejects a lot of my best stuff too. He is a hard editor to get a semi colon, parenthesis or a pack of raving comas by. Don’t even mention the apostrophes.

As an elder, or “Old Dude” as they call me down at the East end of Charlie’s, I have a right to tell stories. But only down at the East end of Charlie’s. On the West end, I am definitely not an old dude. Those old dudes have better stories than I do, but don’t know what a computer is. The twenty-something’s at the East end of the bar will let me stand there only if I do not talk to them. When I do, they usually walk away. That’s why you will find me in the middle of the bar with no one to talk to. Or, I might go over to the Iron Horse to hang out with the river guides. They will talk to just about anybody, but you can’t believe a word they say, especially when it comes to rivers. You might think this means I have no life, but we here at Lowbagger will prove that you don’t have to have a life to have a website.

The “Old Dude” was spotted on the East end of Charlie’s the other night using the phrase “Young people!” to get the attention of a bunch of people he didn’t know.