Month: June 2008

With this being the season for graduations, I look back wistfully at my own college commencement exercises at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, (Mascot: Lumberjacks)in May 1984 where the late U.S. Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, asked the assembled crowd what was to be a haunting rhetorical question for the ages: “Where are my trousers?”

No, actually I don’t even remember what Tower said that morning. I think he said something about Communism and indicated that it was bad. But I figure if that was really what he said and I actually got the context of his message right then he did much better at imparting knowledge than more than a couple of my professors.

Comedian Don Novello, known for his portrayal as Father Guido Sarducci during the golden era of Saturday Night Live, has a well-known comedy routine known as “The Five-Minute University” with his comedic thesis being that everything one learned in college can be reduced to five minutes. (Example: Economics? Supply and Demand.)

Fr. Sarducci’s hyperbolic observations aside, certain members of the human race do indeed expect much to come out of much more when there really is much less. “By God, your A) Mother & Dad B) Government C)Prison System (Pick one) is/are paying tens of thousands of dollars/Euros/pesos to put you through four years of college (or more)and so you are expected to give us four years (or more) of knowledge.”

Right. Like you really would want to listen to someone who absorbed every single word spoken to them by some windbag professor or gleaned from some august text sold for $56.50 retail at the university center bookstore and can be resold at the end of the semester for $1.62.

One must never forget, however, that a higher education is more than a sum of its parts. It is part of the sum. Or some of the part. Or something.

So as I rapidly dissemble as a means of escaping that which one might mistake for meaning, I bid you a good day and a bright future grads and future grads as well, both young and old. You deserve it. Remember to always brush after each meal. Walk facing traffic and not directly in front of it. And please remember, all aspirins are alike.

Were it not for the fact that sky-high gasoline prices are aggravating, then hearing the varying explanation and/or justification each day would be a laugh riot.

It would seem the price of oil would be a simple enough culprit for analysts to blame but the reasoning for why gasoline is at $4.009 per gallon goes way beyond any reason if you are to believe half the people interviewed in the news. And, just by the way, I don’t believe about half or more of what I hear about the rationalization for higher gasoline.

I have to give my local daily newspaper, the Beaumont Enterprise, credit for this article. They just quote those who are being affected by the steep prices rather than to let us cut through all the caca de vaca as to why the cost is so high.

What is really sad — especially of those who live on the Gulf Coast — is that we will have to worry both about hurricanes striking us this summer as well as the even greater gas spikes the storms inevitably will bring if a hurricane approaches even 5,000 miles away from an offshore drilling rig.

So what or who is really behind the gasoline prices besides the high cost of oil, speculators, excessive demand and short refining capacity? Here are a few of my guesses:

***Bill and Hillary Clinton, at least that is what the GOPs will claim along with blaming our black Irish presumptive Dem nominee Barack O’Bama.

***MobileExxon

***The Hair Club for Men

***Global Warming

***The Sicilians

***Godzilla

***El Nino

***La Nina

***Iran

***Iraq

***The Late Saddam Hussein

***Flipper

***Britney Spears

***Charlie Sheen

***Spam (Hormel)

***Spam (Computer)

***Gallagher

***Noxema

***Free Willy

And we could go on and on from here. Make up your own list. And feel free to put your name and mine up there. There is plenty of blame to go around, at least if you listen to the experts. It is enough to give one gas.

WebMD notes today that “Samonella Tomato Warning Expanded.” In addition to that being interesting if not disturbing news if you eat tomatoes, the headline would, as Dave Barry might point out, be a great name for a rock band. “Tainted Tomatoes,” part of another WebMD hed also would be a good rock band name.

Bizarre band names have become so commonplace that no one, except maybe Dave Barry, muses over them these days. I thought about that yesterday watching some documentary about Bellingham, Washington’s own Death Cab for Cutie. (I am typing this in the public library so if a blank appears before Cab it will mean the computer’s nanny censoring system has just kept that bad old word from appearing that means that state which is the opposite of life. Get it? If that word appears never mind!)

Now I don’t know very much about Cutie’s Cab other than via this explanation on Wikipedia which says the band takes its name from a song on a 1967 album by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, which is a right interesting name in its self. But at least this explanation appears to indicate some type of meaning behind the name where some bands in days past apparently lacked meaning such as Strawberry Alarm Clock but not so as with Captain Beefhart.

Oh well, it is just good to know I can sit here at the computer in the library and completely waste an hour thinking about our wonderful culture. Kudos to Cutie for an intriguing name.

It’s a steamy Friday afternoon in Beaumont, Texas. Steamy it is because of little late Spring showers followed by Summer-like temperatures. It’s a downside to the “sub-tropical” life. But when it gets too steamy I just think about places like Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, you know, the “M” states, during January. I mean the very being of those states in January when it’s freezing-ass cold. I did not mean that those are only “M” states during January. That would be truly stupid.

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People have a tendency on Friday afternoons around here to get out and drive on busy streets like 11th Street and Calder Avenue and Phelan Boulevard. And they tend to drive slow and with great stupidity.

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I don’t give a rat’s ass if Hillary and Barack meet in private at Diane Feinstein’s house or at John McCain’s or at Dick Cheyney’s. Stupid is as stupid does. Isn’t that a stupid thing to say?

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Okay, I see things are rapidly getting negatively stupid so I am going to stick a fork in it for the weekend. Stick a fork into what, you may ask? That is fine. Go ahead and ask. I never promised you an answer, or a rose garden for that matter.

I just got back from McFaddin Beach and decided to check my e-mail. The beach was a nice respite from my city, where it seems you can’t walk down the street at night any longer without being stopped and questioned by the cops. It was funny how they let hordes of street people hang out yet threaten to take me to jail for walking while facing traffic in the wrong direction. I think some of these kids wearing police uniforms need to watch something other than “Cops.” And to think, I was even wearing a shirt.