Dick’s First Law of Expectations
For every expectation: a, there is a postulated result: b, that is presumed to produce a known or unknown state: c. However, the realization of that state is instead the known and much dreaded result of xyz$@*%!@*#!
A federal judge in Arizona has struck down some of the most controversial parts of that state’s new law that would require state and local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of those who have been stopped. This is just the first strike in what will likely be several stops in court. Of course, it could end up in the Supreme Court and the law might be totally upheld because of that court’s conservative majority. Remember the “election” of President Bush?
The requirement that a local police officer check the immigration status of someone they have detained for traffic or other reasons makes no sense other than the dislike for one’s skin being a different color. Should this law eventually get the go-ahead, how many Latinos “born in the U.S.A.,” as Mr. Springsteen once sang, will be arrested and go to jail for nothing but being Latino? It doesn’t just threaten those of darken skin shades. Local police officers have different ways of interpreting different laws and sometimes those interpretations are wrong. So ask yourself this: Is the wrongful arrest of your son or daughter or grandchild worth your wrath over those who are here illegally?
That’s something to think about, Jedge.
It seems we may have been bugged.
When I say that, I don’t mean bugged as in spied on by the government. I’m sure that, thanks to George W. Shrub, the government has been spying on us for awhile. Not that they gather any great knowledge other than quotes such as those by my father like: “And a whole flock of bird dogs flew over!”
What does that mean Sean? What is he saying? It has to be something anti-government. After all, didn’t this guy in EFD say his Dad once traveled to Russia?
“Yes, Sean, I know his Dad was in the Merchant Marine but still … ”
Well, I guess we’ll have to let Sean and his fellow Gen-Ys, or whatever the young crowd ruining ruling the world, figure everything out.
We have had some kind of virus in our site. It appears whenever I select a bookmarked version of the site. I have not yet had that problem with just typing in the URL. Anyway, hopefully, my IT guru in Tokyo and I can work on this before I (hopefully) head to North Texas for a week of training on Sunday.
I say hopefully. That explains an absence of a posting yesterday, if you noticed. My day, while not working, was filled with the attempt to rent a car. It would be less expensive for me to rent a car for my trip. Plus, I have a standard shift and a left knee that has likely begun to provide me forever with pain. I got a shot awhile back in my knee and my doctor tells me to wear a brace on it. The shot worked for awhile, the brace is not helping. Ramble. I have to use the clutch with my left foot and leg and knee. In city driving such as I will be facing for a week. That will not be a happy prospect.
My difficulty in renting an automobile stems from burning my credit cards 12 years ago. Nasty things, those credit cards. The debit/bank card held such promise as a replacement. Why Bank of America, that “great” U.S. institution said: “You can use it like a credit card.” And you can use a debit card for just about everything. That is except for renting a car.
Oh you can pay for your car rental with a debit card, you just can’t rent it. Car rental companies want to do perhaps everything except a rectal examination on you before they rent you a car with a debit card and without a credit card. They want to check your credit. That, of course, only makes your credit worse.
The irony in all this is that I actually have a credit card, but I can’t use it except for strict, job-related expenses and that usually means flying to Washington to do so. Oh, and you have to have that credit card as a condition of work, and if you get late paying on it for whatever reason, and it is revoked, you face disciplinary action. Isn’t life just full of wonderful little ironies that make you want to go out and rent a bulldozer to tear down someone’s house? I’m not speaking of anyone in particular and, of course, I’d never be able to rent a bulldozer.
Because I don’t have a freaking credit card!!!
I have been notified of a Trjoan Horse virus when going to this page. If anyone who reads this and experiences such a warning from your anti-virus program, how about letting me know at eightfeetdeep? I think my problem may be narrowed down, hopefully.
Thanks,
Dick
It has taken 30 or 40 years to realize what I should have known all along. The Byrds are among the greatest bands of the 1960s, or rock and roll, or country rock, one could argue. I suppose it has taken such a long time to come to such an epiphany since I came to know The Byrds incrementally through their actual participation with or influence on the Eagles, Poco, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, That is even through so many of their songs have placed themselves in my mind for so many years: “Mr. Spaceman,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “I Will Be Feeling a Whole Lot Better,” et cetera, no relation to Pete Cetera, bass player and vocalist with Chicago and later a solo singer of sorts.
These are just some thoughts as I attempted to embed a journalist video of The Byrds “I Will Be Feeling a Whole Lot Better” onto the blog and got a “Trojan Horse” warning from the lady on my avast antivirus program. Thanks lady. This is the second encounter I have had with a virus on this page. Well, maybe more than that if you consider page views, damn Internet jargon! So, it seems I will have to consult with Paul, my IT wizard in Japan. Maybe I’ll write a song about him. Maybe not.
Friday. What a concept.
I once lived for Friday to arrive. That is when I worked, roughly, five days a week. My record on such a schedule was rather spotty up until the last 20 years or so. That is, if you don’t include those four years I spent in college, during which time I mostly worked full time at a rate of 24 hours on and 48 hours off, which was a 56-hour work week. Now there was a concept!
These days, I no longer work full time. Well, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. When I do it is usually more than a 48-hour work week. I had no illusions that working as a writer was going to be easy and, sure enough, it hasn’t been easy. In fact, I tell people these days that my part-time job “supports my writing habit.” I’m not lying much when I say that.
Still, I remember Fridays. My friends Robbie, Judy, sometimes Tonya, Brenda, Delia, Rick, Beth or whomever. Mostly Robbie, Judy and I — the Yellow Dogs. Long story. We’d go one place or the other for a margarita. Sometimes Judy’s artist husband would meet us and he and I would design water towers for small cities which looked like a large margarita glass, except it would be leaning. Like Pisa. Those were good times. Sometimes we didn’t even wait for Friday. Sometimes it would be a Yellow Dog Day — a day I’d describe as comparable to a day you’re sitting back watching the evening news and see your name as a camera pans down a lawsuit. Yikes!
I’m such a ham. I wasn’t going to write about much and already look what you’ve done.
Okay, I will do some good for a change on this blog instead of writing about politics or the weather or the craziness that passes for life. I will promote my old buddy Jonathan’s gig in which his trio, the Jonathan Sanson Trio will be recording a new, live CD. Jonathan just sent me an e-mail about it, albeit a mass e-mail, that’s what you do when you are a famous recording star in Fort Worth. Right, old buddy? Just busting your chops. I was going to buy some chops for dinner, but I didn’t. So right now, I’ve got no other chops to bust. So you’re it, pal!
The Jonathan Sanson Trio, featuring Dan Tcheco on drums, Chris Carfa on bass and Jonathan on piano and vocals will be recording Sunday, July 25, at Eddie V’s Lounge in Fort Worth. Too bad they couldn’t wait a week, since I will be heading for Denton exactly one week later. Hey, can’t you guys postpone everything for one week, just for me? Yeah, and pigs make scheduled flights between IAH and DFW!
I have heard some of the group’s recordings and I look forward to hearing them live some day. Jonathan and I are old high school chums who lived across our family’s field from each other. Later, we hung out during our military days, he in the Air Force and me a Navy squid.
Jonathan says that everyone attending will get a free copy of the CD the group is to record. The CD will come out, hopefully JS said, in September. The great piano man also reminds everyone of the happy happy hour prices, if you like that sort of thing.
If you mention you heard about this on Eight Feet Deep, Jonathan might buy you a drink or he might garrote you with a piano wire. That’s his call. So if you are in what my friends from that area call “The Metro Mess” during that time, check it out.
This all happens:
6–10 p.m.
Sunday, July 25
EV Museum Place
3100 West 7th Street
Fort Worth, TX 76107
Once again it is time not to panic, not to fret, not to stick your head in the sand, not to freak out. But just look and listen if you live along the Gulf Coast. Tropical Depression 3 may soon become Tropical Storm Bonnie, or not. It may even become Hurricane Bonnie, or not. All of this is not to be confused with Hurricane Bonnie that hit North Carolina in August 1998, inflicting more than $1 billion in damage, if you believe Wikpedia.
Now a lot of the weather forecasters, including the most always careful National Hurricane Center, do not have a lot of high expectations for what is now called TD 3. That’s a good thing, Martha. There is all that oil there in the Central Gulf floating around that the national media seems transfixed upon. Okay, that is a low blow. I too am concerned about the oil and the attempt to permanently stop the leak and get the mega mess cleaned up. It just seems the national media never really shows the concern that they should for the not so sexy spots on the map. That is, they don’t pay attention to it until a hurricane comes and gives a good shot for an anchor to do a “Dan Rather” and perform the now highly-cliched exercise of standing in a wind that is potent enough to knock one down.
The five-day “Cone of Doom” lays out a tremendously uncertain path for a storm of a magnificently conjectural terminations.
Hey, there are people out there in places other than New Orleans! Cameron, La., was obliterated 53 years ago. The National Weather Service in Lake Charles now puts the total deaths at 500. The unknown toll has teetered between 300–500 for years. Audrey came in with a 12-foot storm surge on the town some three feet above sea level with winds gusts estimated at 150 mph.
Some 50 years later, Hurricane Rita socked the little town and parish seat of Cameron once again with a storm surge of around 12 feet and with 100-mph winds in tow. The death toll has always been screwy with Rita but one report said one person died in Cameron. Nevertheless, from one who visited not long afterward, little stood there after Rita other than the Cameron Parish Courthouse.
As was the case with Rita, the 1,200-some odd residents of Cameron had long ago learned when a hurricane is coming, there is no reason under the sun you can’t see to stick around. So when Ike once again flattened Cameron in 2008 with massive 22-feet tidal surges, folks got out of its way.
Cameron is only one town. There were many others in the path of Rita and Ike and Gustav and Katrina and on and on. I just picked Cameron because I visited it for a vacation day less than a year after Rita slammed it. I sat around on a rainy, cold afternoon at some bar in the tiny downtown Cameron — impressed that it had more than one bar — that disappeared after Rita, listening that afternoon, laughing and drinking some beers with a bunch of aging Cajun men and later with a dazzling Acadian lady who was probably the best looking woman in Cameron. Then, I visited that same place a year later for a story I was writing and saw very little I knew that remained of this pleasant little place I had once visited other than the big, old courthouse which seemed to be perched up on a hill, if you can call three or four feet a hill.
TD 3 may not be much more than it now is. It may be a tropical storm, which is what a lot of the models seem to predict. It seems headed for the middle Louisiana coast, although some models put the center of the storm landing around Cameron or Sabine Pass, Texas. The latter of which is about 45 miles north of where I live.
But as I have said and have said again, now with experience, tropical weather flare-ups seldom go where they are supposed to go. They also sometime do what they aren’t supposed to do. I say that not to scare anyone, nor to make it look as if I am smack dab in the middle of danger, like I have been before with a couple of these storms. I am just saying what I am just saying. It’s hurricane season, ya’ll. Time to keep heads up. Crank up the old The Clash CD and fixate on “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” and dance around until you have a plan in case things start getting nasty.
Does that sound like a plan?
It seems that a travesty of the size of the latest so-called “viral video” could not have happened. A heavily edited video of a speech that made Shirley Sherrod, a black U.S. Agriculture official in Georgia, look as if she had purposely discriminated against a white farmer. This got her fired by Obama administration officials who are racially sensitive. Sherrod was instantly made a pariah by Fox News, who ran with the story either before they knew the entire contents of the video or purposely jumped on the story because they seem constantly on the look out for high profile blacks who can embarrass Obama.
Here is how that warm ray of Fox sunshine Bill O’Reilly played the story:
O’REILLY: Well, that is simply unacceptable and Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately. The federal government cannot have skin color deciding any assistance.
This was on Tuesday, a full 24 hours after the story initially aired on Fox. Bull O’Really insisted that since some sanity — albeit limited — existed on other news outlets and the story was slow to surface elsewhere than Fox, the liberal media was obviously afraid to hurt Obama. This after the so-called “mainstream media” was slow to jump on other stories involving blacks with alleged ties to Obama such as those in ACORN and the New Black Panthers.
O’REILLY: In the big picture scheme, this is a small story. Every administration in history has had employees do dumb things. Ms. Sherrod made a mistake and is paying for it.
But what about the American media? Why the news blackout when things become unpleasant for the Obama administration?
The simple answer is bias. The establishment press tilts left and is reluctant to do damage to a very liberal president. I think that is absolutely true. There is no other reason to spike stories that bring millions of viewers to the Fox News Channel.
You’d think the other TV news operations would want to attract that large audience as well. Apparently, they don’t.
Well, Bull O’Really you’d think those operations would also want to get the story right, but all didn’t. Now it turns out that the story as reported by Fox was maddeningly wrong. And now Fox is all looking like their complicity didn’t exist.
I can’t give the great synopsis of all that is wrong with the Shirley Sherrod story that is examined by St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans. A wonderful read.
Lindsay Lohan is going to jail. But for how long? That is the big question floating around in the media today for all to see.
Too bad the big question isn’t: Who is Lindsay Lohan?
I might have seen her in a movie. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I did once. I think she played this juvenile delinquent-type character. Perhaps it was an autobiopic.
The truth is that I don’t watch a lot of movies until they make it to television. And that doesn’t take all that long these days does it? I would never knowingly watch a movie just because it starred Lindsay Lohan. I wouldn’t even watch a movie just because it starred anyone, not even Clint Eastwood, not even John Wayne, rest his soul, not even Salma Hayek. Well, I could make exceptions.
I know Lohan is a big star and she is even more famous because she is infamous. She keeps screwing up. She comes to court late on her sentencing date and on the date she is to report to jail. In other words, she is a twit. Either she is a twit or she is just really messed up on “substances,” or both she is a twit messed up on substances. Got to be one or the other, plus maybe she thinks it is good PR. Who said that even bad PR is good PR? Was that what was said? I don’t know.
A helicopter followed Lindsay Lohan all the way to jail this morning just to see if a photograph could be snapped of her in handcuffs, wearing no underpants. No luck there.
I’ve known people who have gone to jail. Real people. People who aren’t famous and who are just like you and me. I’ve known people who’ve gone to prison. We all know someone who is going through something that some of these famous people we’ve never heard of, sometimes go through, and more. Some of these non-famous people have much more interesting stories than Lindsay Lohan. But most aren’t as famous or as rich or as rich and about to be has-beens if they don’t quit snorting coke or shooting up or whatever it is they are doing to f**k up.
These real people aren’t followed by helicopters. For that, I am grateful. Some people I know might just take a pot shot at “Chopper Dave,” who after all is only doing his job.
The rich and famous are followed and make the news because they are rich and famous. The “common” folks just love to see the big fall far. The real people also like to live vicariously through the Lindsay Lohans of the World. Oh, they cuss them and call them idiots, but like slowing down to watch a car wreck, the real people want to know what the beautiful people are doing every minute of the day.
Too bad the real people don’t realize just how fascinating they are. Who in the World knows what goes on in the minds of the not rich and obscure.
You go to the lake house for a week and do the normal lake house routine. You fix things. You have a beer. Then you have another. It’s good that you fixed things.
In the morning, you get the boat all ready and you take off for a round of fishing. You come home, your luck was worse than poor. You take a nap. You get up. The wife has the ribeyes all thawed and you are ready to fire up the old grill. You eat. You sit out on the porch and enjoy the lake sounds, the loud outboard motors, the drunks next door, the loud music from across the lake. It’s time for bed. So much for the first full day. But what about tomorrow?
Well, if the lake where your home is located is Cedar Creek Lake, some 60 miles southeast of Dallas, then you might think of going to catch a performance of the Seven Points City Council. It seems there are always fireworks there, perhaps you might see someone get arrested there or even shot.
Seven Points is a town of 1,334, according to the 2009 U.S. Census estimate. It’s grown somewhat over the years with Cedar Creek, a reservoir built on the Trinity River, being a fishing and recreation haven for both East Texans and those from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It also seems to have a history of the worst that comes out of small town politics.
A political donnybrook of epic proportions, proportionally speaking, erupted in 1997 when then-Mayor Marian Hill was removed from office by the city council for a number of zoning law violations and some matters over purchasing a pager and copying machine. Hill had divorced earlier that year. Keep that in the back of your mind.
Not long after she was removed from office, Hill was prosecuted for a number of the zoning law violations, something that had never or rarely had been done in that town. Hill later claimed in a lawsuit that her ex-husband, the town’s police chief, zoning official and some other city council members had cooked up a scheme to “run her out of town,” according to an ultimate ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Read it and good luck following it.
I remember reading about all of this and my thoughts returned to Cedar Creek Lake this weekend. A group of my college friends and I got together at some friends’ place near Fort Worth. One of this group of friends had access to a lake house when we were in college, as his parents owned the very pleasant getaway. When one or more of this group of friends or I were there we would generally be the ones making noise, fueled usually by keg beers or playing “quarters” with what kind of “bear in a bottle” that was handy.
This afternoon I decided to look at some newspaper Web sites of towns in the Cedar Creek area and I came across a story in the Cedar Creek Pilot that made me think I was just reading a continuation of the Marian Hill story in some form or fashion.
The extremely thorough and often hilarious news story written by the Pilot’s Art Lawler told of the hijinks of the now former mayor in which the ex official engaged in a tirade in the city council chambers after a quorum for their meeting failed. The failing quorum, caused by three members missing, seems to be a serial occurance there since this made the fourth-straight failed meeting since a new mayor was elected.
Now, just as it takes a program to know the players in the Marian Hill story, one likewise needs to be “read into” this affair before trying to figure just who hates whom and why. The so-called “shouting match” at the council was allegedly at the behest of former mayor Gerald Taylor, after his reported political enemy Mayor Joe Dobbs canceled the meeting.
Taylor was arrested in December 2009 on charges he cashed personal checks using municipal court funds. The city judge, Monica Corker, had been arrested the month before on charges she helped Taylor cash the checks.
As for the source of animosity between Taylor and Dobbs, I’m not sure. Dobbs is openly gay and he says that Taylor and others have a vendetta against him. Dobbs was also fire chief and demoted Taylor from assistant fire chief to firefighter after ethical concerns, he said in an article on the Dallas Voice Web site, the DF-W area’s leading gay-lesbian newspaper. Taylor reportedly responded to Dobbs with a rather colorful homophobic epithet.
Dobbs say some in Seven Points are “playing games with him,” the article, written by David Webb, said. While that remains a distinct possibility just because of the way certain people are wired, it also is possible that Dobbs is just a player himself in what seems to be continual political theater at Seven Points. It seems a little bit like old time soap opera fare. Watch and then tune back in sometime 20 years later and you catch up but everything seems pretty much the same. That is a lot like the way it is in Seven Points. The more things change, the more they the remain the same old thing.