Month: March 2008

Lunch today was a homemade ham sandwich and a bag of Funyuns while sitting in the truck at Riverfront Park. I had planned to get out and sit at a picnic table for a more expansive view of the Neches River in downtown Beaumont, Texas, but Jack FM was playing Blondie’s “Rapture” upon pulling up and I just couldn’t tear myself away.

Wikipedia has an interesting article about the 1981 hit which incorporated a little of several music genres including rap. It remains today probably the only song with any amount of rap music that I truly like. As is always the case with Wikipedia, I caution the reader as to the article’s veracity.

Speaking of Jack FM, almost six months have passed since the “iPod shuffle” station hit the airwaves in Houston. I have to say that I like it for the most part. One gets to hear a lot of songs that would not be heard on your run-of-the-mill rock station these days such as Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” or the B-52’s “Rock Lobster.” Of course, you will hear crap played on Jack but crap — as music goes — reigns supreme on the radio these days just as the music format’s counterpart talk radio does the same. Actually, talk radio would win a crap-off with music radio. But, hey, that’s just me talking.

My posts of the last couple of weeks have been short and/or somewhat goofier than usual. It being Friday, I thought I’d share what’s going on with EFD.

First and foremost affecting my output is money. I am currently without an aircard for my laptop and have no Internet access where I live, so I must use computers catch-as-catch-can at the library or at the Internet cafe until I can afford to get a new wireless plan.

My laptop itself is literally hanging on by a thread. A few pieces of structure came loose from where my monitor meets the rest of the machine. The computer still works but I am afraid to mess with it very much for fear of a catastrophic failure. And in order to attempt a way of shoring up the machine I will likely need money to give to my local computer mechanic.

The money situation is always precarious but more so these days. That is because I am in one of my most severe slow periods at work. This has to do with the workload and sometimes the workload is little to more little because of the nature of how my work is scheduled. My job, which is a part-time federal job, averages about 26 hours per week but seldom do I work the same number of hours per week so it can be quite challenging to survive financially. This is especially true in these times of economic insanity.

The computer situation — influenced greatly by the economic and fiscal situation — also impacts my other job as a freelance writer and thus means extra income is basically non-existent at the moment.

So that’s it in a nutshell. I’m just a po’ boy who is a couple of buns short of a sandwich. Things will not likely improve until I work more hours and get an infusion of cash, such as the economic stimulus the IRS said it will begin to send in May. In the meantime, you can still click the button above my blog roll if you see fit to contribute via Pay Pal. Have a great weekend, mine will be a very inexpensive one.

This could make you give up drinking vodka forever. Strange isn’t the word I would use to describe this story. It reminds me of the old W.C. Fields routine:

“In this pocket I have a bottle of snakebite medicine,” he says, pulling out some liquor. “In the other pocket I have a small snake.”

Hillary Clinton said she misspoke about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia. What she meant to say was that she drove through an artillery barrage and a hail of small arms fire from local tribesemen in Somalia while attempting to rescue downed Army Rangers who were depicted in “Black Hawk Down.”

“Oh, and I almost forgot about my discovery of the integrated circuit,” Clinton added.

Many questions fill heads of wiser men than me, myself and/or I. But alas, I seek an answer to only one question albeit such an interrogatory which puzzles those with or without wisdom, men and women, rich and poor. That question is: What’s for dinner? Yes, our society stands at a great crossroads and the fate of the world as we know it may ultimately hang upon our thoughts and actions. But we still have to eat. Eat what? That is the question.