Month: October 2005

Beaumont, Texas A.R. (After Rita)

If you will look to the blogroll, stage right, you will notice I organized my links somewhat. I will add more or take away as the mood strikes me.

I no longer have the link for this blog’s comments. The reason is that I was getting too few comments so I couldn’t see a reason for having a whole separate blog dedicated for that purpose. If you want to comment, you still may e-mail me at the address above the Saline Soldier, and we might just discuss whatever it is that’s got your knickers in a bunch. Or we might not. You just can’t tell about me these days.

Another reason for discontinuing the comments blog is that I am considering doing something with it. Perhaps using it for a serious blog, or as serious as I can get. Great, just what the world needs, eh?

It doesn’t take a hi tech wizard to publish a blog. Any geek, lunatic, or ya-hoo can crank one out. I think I am a shining example of that.

I came relatively late in absorbing all of this technology that engulfs us. I say relatively late because I have known people who started using computers in their 80s. I started in my 30s and am on 50’s doorstep.

Certainly I am not loathe to admit that technocrap befuddles me. I don’t think I have gotten much past speed-dialing and maintaining an address book on my cell phone. I have had to learn more and more about computers as time progressed. But I still am pretty much in the category of techno-ignoramus, not to be confused with Uncle Remus. That is why today was a living hell for me.

I have just acquired a new (refurbished) laptop and a new (refurbished) digital camera. Hey, I’m a starving artist, I can’t afford all that expensive stuff. Combining heap more technodespair on me is the fact that I have a desktop operating system that is compatible with … itself basically. I won’t call any names but its initials are NT 4. I think I am about to change that. But in the meanwhile I had to simultaneously get my laptop and digital camera to, at the very least, introduce themselves to each other. So I spent a lot of time in tech support chat rooms this afternoon.

These people I chatted with online seemed very helpful, but sometimes I thought that maybe they were making up some of the stuff as they were going along. I suppose in their world everyone has the basic technological knowledge of a sixth-grader, which is better than I have.

Technology — like auto mechanics, carpentry, plumbing, all those good skills that would have earned me a decent living more so than writing for newspapers — seems tedious to me. I can removed a motherboard or a carburetor, but damned if I could put them back in the right spot. This brave new world is a little difficult for me sometimes in that respect. So if I happen to ask a dumb question that any sixth grader would know, try to realize where I came from technologically. And have mercy.

President Bush talks to his new Video Army

Anytime President GW goes anywhere it creates quite a to-do. Of course, there are airspace restrictions, buildings have to be checked for bombs and people in the vicinity are screened to ensure they are not wearing attire that criticizes the president.

At the same time, the White House has found crowds of military men and women very receptive to his speeches. And why not? They have to support the commander-in-chief even if he is as loony as a March hare. Remember “Mission Accomplished” or Bush speaking to soldiers at Fort Hood or his speaking to more soldiers at Fort Bragg?

Bearing in mind the tulmult when GW travels and his success in using military personnel for his personal backdrop, the White House has created Bush’s very own Video Army. From now on, Bush will forego making trips to drab military bases or aircraft carriers but can still have a good-looking backdrop of soldiers at his every whim.

When GW speaks about Iraq, he will have his Video Army there to back him up. Harriet Miers? The Video Army is 120 percent behind the commander-in-chief. Social security? Anything the president says the Video Army stands behind.

The video soldiers may also lessen the need for back-breaking detail from senior members of his staff such as Karl Rove. That’s just in case Karl has other commitments in the future.

Off we cast our impatient and uncaring little saying for Cervantes. Whatever else one might say about him, he could turn a phrase and continue to turn phrases. Perhaps it would be inaccurate to call the Don Quixote author a “literary Energizer Bunny” although the bulk of the classic work suggests he kept going and going and going …

I have never been able to finish Don Quixote. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s reader’s block. Perhaps some books are meant to be read and some aren’t. Although, that’s skirting way too far out on the edge of profundity for me. But it seems like every time I try to read the book something distracts me and I will put the book down only to pick it up for a few pages in a couple of years.

My copy of Don Quixote belonged to my maternal grandmother, so I really don’t know when the English version that I possess was actually printed. But even though I have this mental force preventing me from my impossible quest I can, nonetheless, praise the very construction of this book.

Yes my friends my copy is, in the words of The Commodores, built like a “brick … house.” Which as many of you probably know, the song was referring to the saying that a particular woman is “built like a brick s—house.” I really don’t know how the saying is all that flattering to a woman, but maybe I’m not applying my limited geometric skills. Nevertheless, a brick outhouse is no doubt sturdy and the same can be said for my own copy of Don Quixote. There’s no telling how many bugs I’ve slain with it. So even though I can’t bring myself to finish it, its very existence on my bookshelf is of immeasurable worth.

Enough about that. When is the last time you heard Cervantes and The Commodores discussed in the same context? Never?

Mighty, mighty, just letting it all hang out …