I once had a celly at FCI Memphis who everyone jokingly referred to as McGuyver. An ex-military nut, Carl Slick was quite a talented dude. His special area of expertise was explosives. As a matter of fact, he was doing time for blowing up his attorney’s office with an IED (improvised explosive device). Bottom line? Piss Carl off and he was blowing your ass up. That’s just the way it was. Ever see the old movie, “The Hills Have Eyes”? Well, Carl reminded me of the bald headed guy in that movie. Weird as fuckin’ hell! When Carl walked across the prison compound, everyone stopped dead in their tracks and stared. Tall and lanky with pale white skin, he looked like some­thing out of a horror flick. Yet his prison uniform was starched and his boots were shined just like they were when he was in the Army. Carl would walk to the shower in full dress uniform and emerge from the shower the same way. Some compared him to a zombie, but truthfully, other than being a bit eccentric, Carl was actually a pretty good dude. He minded his own business and did his own time. He told on no one and he hated cops and rats. Carl was a convict. And over time, we became pretty good friends.

One day Carl came in from the Communications Office where he worked and said “Hey Trip! Check this out.” Standing on the rail in front of our second tier cell, Carl and I watched one of the TV’s on the floor below. Casually pointing down at the Spanish TV where all the Mexicans were watching “Caliente” Carl whispered, “Watch this.” That’s when he tipped his Taster’s Choice coffee mug up to his mouth as if he were taking a drink and pressed a button mounted in the handle. Suddenly the TV station changed to B.E.T. You see, no inmate was allowed to turn the channels on the TV. Only the prison guard could change stations using the remote control kept in the officer’s station. So, when the station suddenly changed, everyone started looking around to see who had the remote. When they realized the cop was no where to be found, one of the guys hunted him down and asked him to put the TV back on UNIVISION. Back in the cell Carl showed me what he’d done.

“I took an old remote control from Communications and mounted the eye in the bottom of my cup. Then, I put the channel changer, on and off button and the volume control in the handle. Now we can change the channels on any of the TV’s any time we want. All we gotta do is be within frequency range.” Examining the cup, it looked like any other commissary bought coffee cup to me. Moving to the bottom floor, we approached the black TV room where 25 or so men were watching the Boston Celtics play the L.A. Lakers. Standing directly out­side the TV room looking through the glass, Carl once again tipped his cup as if to take a drink. And, “blip!” Instead of watching Shaquille O’Neal slam a basket then hang off the rim like a monkey from a tree, all the Memphis blacks were watching “Little House on the Prairie”. Talk about some mad mother fuckers! “Who got da remote?” was all I could hear them say. Laughing to ourselves, Carl and I walked away. “We can’t tell anyone about this Carl,” I said. “Because if we do, someone will snitch and we’ll both go to the hole.” Nodding to one another, we agreed to keep the remote control cup a secret.

Later that weekend Carl was standing in front of the TV room pulling his antics when a West Memphis inmate saw what he’d done. Little Red, as they called him, ran straight to the Lieutenant’s office and told. Ten minutes later the cops came to our cell and took the remote control cup right out of Carl’s hand. Carl went to the hole but was released the next day. “I gotta get even with that rat bastard Trip. I know Red was the one that told on me. The officer who walked me to SHU told me so.” “Yeah Carl,” I replied. “I know it was him too. Because after you went to lockup, I watched Red as he stood around with all his gangbanger friends laughing and saying shit like, ‘Cracker won’t be changin’ da TV any mo’!’ I knew that little fucker was a snitch anyway.” For the rest of the weekend, Carl stood on the rail in front of our cell deciding what to do. Not once did he look Red’s way letting him know he knew. Finally he’d made up his mind. “I got him Trip. I got his funky rat ass! Just watch and see what I do!”

The first thing Carl did was sneak into Red’s cell while everyone went to the chow hall for fried bird. From his pocket he took a bag full of Corning brand fiberglass insulation he’d also stolen from the Communications building and rubbed it in every pair of government issue underwear Red owned. That night after taking his shower, we watched and laughed as Red kept scratching his balls. Pretty soon Red got up to take another shower. And of course, it didn’t do a bit of good. Taking his clothes to the laundry room Red started doing a load of wash. From the top tier, Carl watched to see which dryer Red was about to use. Soon as Red put his clothes in the dryer and left the room, Carl walked down to the laundry asking me to watch for the law. Carl took a black magic marker from his pocket, took off the lid and pulled out the wick. Then, he threw the wick in the dryer with all of Red’s clothes. By the time Red came back to retrieve his clothes, everything he owned had black marks on them including his store bought sweats and the dew-rag he wore on his nappy ass head. Yeah, fuck Carl over and he’s going to get even. That’s just the way it was.

The next day Red looked at the call-out sheet and saw he had an appointment at Psych. What on earth could they want he wondered to himself knowing he wasn’t a nutcase at all. Apparently, someone had submitted a request to staff member form in Red’s name saying he felt suicidal and was thinking about taking his own life. Moments after entering Psychology, Red was escorted to SHU in cuffs and put in a rubber room wearing a straight jacket and dress. It probably didn’t help matters that his clothes were all striped like a Zebra and he constantly kept scratching his balls. So you see everyone, karma can truly be a mother fucker. Even to someone doing time in the pen. Never underestimate the craft­iness of a convict nor a person vowing to get revenge. Once off of suicide watch, Red got tortured some more. Carl stuffed a summer sausage in the finger of a rubber glove, put it and a bottle of lotion under Red’s pillow, then left a note to one of Red’s friends saying Red was a fag. He liked to have never heard the last of that one. Vengeance be mine sayeth the Carl! Vengeance be mine! I’m Trip. Better Days!

Each morning when I wake up here in federal prison, I feel just like Ozzy says, “I’m going out the rails on a crazy train!” Yeah, the men who live and work here are some straight-up nutcases for real! Sometimes I find it hard to believe I’m even in a loony bin like this. I surely don’t belong here. My mom and dad didn’t raise me to be in an insane asylum or as the BOP prefers to call it, Federal Prison. In my book, the terms are the same. How dare that senile old bastard of a District Court Judge exile me away to do time with a bunch of crazy people! Wish that prick had to spend a few days in my shoes. Then maybe he’d be a bit more caring and sensitive when sentencing a man to a million years behind bars for a little of nothing. I think every judge and prosecutor should have to spend at least three months in the joint before he’s ever allowed to give a man a single day behind bars. Know what I’m saying? Perhaps the time would fit the crime a little more appropriately.

Here at FCI Big Spring, I live in an open dormitory type environment. Each morning I wake up in a hot room full of maniacs snoring, farting and stinkin’ up the place. I walk to the bathroom and the acrid smell of urine overpowers me. The homosexual we all call Psycho is standing in front of one of the toilets savoring the aroma of another man’s feces. “The sweet smell of love,” he announces out loud. He briefly looks my way and I fake a swing at him and flip him the bird. In my opinion, he’s a sick and twisted freak of nature standing there waiting on his make believe faggot lover to meet him on stall 2. Then, in walks the inmate I call the Boxer. Extremely dain bramaged from one too many blows to the cranium, he’s totally lost in this world away from a world. He brushes his teeth in the toilet, what few teeth he still has left, pisses half in the urinal and half on the floor. Then idly wanders back to his bunk -to sit and pick his nose and play with his dick until the prison guard yells, “Chow!”

I know I’ve talked about some of these weirdoes before. And for those of you who have read all of my past blogs, I apologize. It’s just that I can’t ever seem to get used to these frickin’ dumbasses! A couple of the strangest of these yo-yo’s did get out of prison recently - only to be replaced by nuttier and more ignorant assholes of course. Sometimes I wonder why our government even goes through the trouble to lock these fruit loops up. They need to be in mental institutions. Not in federal prison doing time. Like the oddball I call the Mad Bomber. Apparently this guy decided he was going to blow up some huge propane tank out in California somewhere and kill a bunch of nearby religious nuts. Wearing dirty socks on his hands for gloves, his pants pockets constantly turned inside out and his government issue brogans on the wrong feet, you’d never know this guy could do calculus and trig. Fun to talk to on occa­sion. But most of the time he’s so far out in left field I can’t even under­stand what he’s saying. One wheel stuck in the mud for real!

Six o’clock arrives and all the delusional psychopaths, dressed in their khaki uniforms and Chinese made prison boots, amble toward the chow hall for a bowl of runny Malt-O-Meal. The whackos from Sunset 4 are smiling ear-to-ear as they drop food on the fronts of their shirts and spill their powdered milk on the floor. Some of the nuts skip breakfast altogether and head straight to the pill line for their thorazine or prolixin. Others can’t wait to get to the kitchen so they can play in or wear their over-easy eggs. One Silly Billy tries to sneak his sausage patty out to put under his pillow but gets caught. He knows it’s against the rules to take food out of the inmate dining hall but he tries it every day anyway. And, he always gets caught and sometimes ends up in the hole if he goes off on the guard calling him all kinds of dickeads and ho’s. He might even end up naked in four-point restraints on suicide watch. You just never can tell. So many nitwits in this place. Somehow, it never ceases to amaze me. Crazy folks running rampant everywhere! Are there really that many on the outside world? I don’t remember life being so full of mentally challenged men or women for that matter.

Here’s something I bet none of you normal folks on the outside ever heard of. We have what you call phantom shower shitters here at this insti­tution. Nasty mf’ers that like to defecate in the place where we few sane prisoners have to wash our ass everyday. Nothing like walking in a shower stall to find do-do in the floor. Okay, TMT? (too much information)’. Let’s just say when those particular jerk offs get caught doing “shit” like that, they really get their asses kicked and bad! And nine times out of ten, prison staff won’t do anything about it. No punishment for the men who take matters into their own hands. It takes all kinds I guess. I just can’t wait to get out of this shithole and back home where I can at least have the piece of mind to know I can walk in the bathroom in the morning without having to step in a pile of crap. No more breakin’ the law for me. No siree Bob!

“All aboard! Ha! ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Yeah, the crazy train! Dumb-fucks all around me that don’t even know how to tie their own fuckin’ shoes. It makes me wonder how some of them were even smart enough to get put in the pen in the first place or how many where just thrown here because there was no place else in the real world for them. Just goes to show you, our government will lock up anyone and everyone they can to make a buck. Because let’s face it. Prisons are big business. Our United States Justice Department will do everything in their power to cram these places full of human bodies as fast as they can just so they’ll all have a job. Maybe I’ll stick a note on the wall requesting the Phantom Shower Shitter go to D.C. when he gets out and take a dump in the Supreme Court Justices’ sink and see how they like it! In closing, just wanted to let everyone know that I’m not only doing time in federal prison. I’m serving my sentence in a madhouse with a bunch of water head incest babies that don’t know the difference in their asses and a hole in the ground! Judgment on these men sounds harsh, but they don’t belong here. Someone is liable to mame them or worse, and sadly, the person being stupid won’t even realize what he’s done is wrong. What are the judges out there thinking? What do you all think? Any experiences you’d like to share with me to help save my own sanity? I’m Tripper! Better Days!

Side Note: Mental Illness is no joke. If you or someone you know are suffering and need help, please contact your local hospital or health care professional. An alliance for the mentally ill is a group called NAMI

Some major shit went down here at FCI Big Spring a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t want to talk about it for a while. But now that the smoke’s finally cleared, it’s probably safe to tell you guys what happened. You see, there’s a lot of gang activity in federal prison. The Paisa and Aztecas are sworn enemies. Texas Syndicate can’t be housed with Serangos. And the Washington D.C. blacks don’t get along with anybody. Not even their so-called brothers. Therefore, the B.O.P. takes special care not to house certain specific groups of assholes on the same prison yard. FCI Big Spring is ran by the Paizas. Paizas, for those of you who don’t know, are Mexicans from south of ..the U.S. border. Dangerous little mother fuckers they are, they’ll gang up and ratpack you in a New York second. For the most part, I don’t have any problem with them. Yet the Azteca guys from south Texas near El Paso do. About a month ago, an Aztec gangbanger hit the yard. Everyone thought he rode with West Texas. He didn’t. And soon as someone figured out who he was, they busted him out and he damn near got killed.

Suddenly one evening, they called an institution lockdown. That just meant everyone had to return to their housing units for a body check and count without unwarranted delay. Rumors travel fast among convicts. Soon as men started coming in off the yard we knew what went down. One minute there were about fifty Mexicans under a pavilion next to the soccer field. The next minute there was only one, and he wasn’t standing any more. He was lying in a puddle of his own blood with a broken back and caved in skull. I know this because about fifteen wetbacks got rolled up that night. After staff came around and made us all pull off our shirts so they could check us for injuries and fucked up knuckles. Shortly after that we saw an ambulance out front carting the assaultee off to the local hospital. Yeah, steel toed boots can really do damage to a man’s cranium. We stayed locked down all night until the cops got everyone rolled up, taken to the hole and all their property inventoried and packed. Next morning, it was back to normal operations.

They say this old boy was suspected as an Azteca gang member the day he got off the bus. Yet when questioned by the Paizanos and other gang boys, he claimed to be a West Texan from Odessa. Most of the convicts believed him. But something seemed fishy to others. His tattoos were wrong. No one from the area really knew him either. And eventually I guess someone figured out he wasn’t who he said he was. When shit like these planned assaults go down, the assaultee usually doesn’t know about it. Yet all the perpetrators do. They knew old boy was going out on the recreation yard for the evening. They might even had a secret or double agent set him up. All I know is, I saw a lot of suited and booted Mexicans going out to the yard that night. And by 7:00 pm, everyone was all locked down and the Aztec Warrior was in the Big Spring hospital in a coma. Damn the bad luck dude. The way I see it, the guy shouldn’t have lied. He should have admitted he was an Aztec day one and checked in. If he would have came clean and done that, he’d probably still be okay today. The same rules don’t apply inside here. It’s about survival of the fittest, and while checking in isn’t too much fun, I don’t suppose a coma is either.

One of the Correctional Officers here told me the guy was in the hospital and the doctors were giving him regular injections to keep him paralyzed from the neck down. That way he couldn’t feel the pain or mess something up if he moved. They were waiting for some of the swelling to go down in his brain so they could try and fix his back, and the rest of the shit that was wrong with him. Last I heard, he was still breathing but shit wasn’t looking good for the home team. I guess the B.O.P. finally broke down and contacted his family. Normally, prison staff won’t notify family members until an inmate is, or damn near is, DEAD! Their fear being … if they do, someone might come to the hospital, overpower the guards, and try to break their family member out. Stupid ass shit if you ask me. I mean with this guy? He’s obviously not going to jump up, rip the IV out of his arm and run off. The dude’s damn near a vege­table for Christ’s sakes! Here’s something else the normal everyday Joe doesn’t know. They leave the cuffs and leg-irons on a prisoner even after he’s dead! Standard Bureau of Prisons procedure, or so they say. Humiliating to the family if you ask me and unreasonable. As I said, the same rules do not apply inside these walls. It’s a jungle in here, and if you don’t know the law of the land very well, then you may very well be taken out like Mr. Coma.

I’ve seen a lot of violence in these places. Everything from a guy getting a hole knocked in the side of his skull the exact shape and size of a combination lock. To an inmate who had his head caved in with a horseshoe. The latter of the two also having his throat cut ear-to-ear and buried in a pauper’s graveyard outside the fence at FCI El Reno no less. I tell ya, these Mexicans are some straight up crazy ass fools. I use to think the blacks were bad inside these places. Hell, they look like a bunch of first grade pansies compared to these south of the border ‘bangers when it comes to splitting somebody’s head! I saw firsthand what these Paizanos can do back in December of ‘07.(See previous blog titled, “No Mo’ Cho’ Mo’s”)
They’re as ruthless and dangerous as the day is long. At any rate, just wanted to give everyone a little insight on the latest in reference to what goes on in shithole joints like these. Things are not always cool, calm and collective as prison staff wants the public to believe. Fortunately, there hasn’t been a Hispanic on White incident at FCI Big Spring since late ‘04. In closing, know this, there are no more fair fights in prison. Only beat downs! I’m Tripper. Better Days !