September 2009 - Page 4 of 5

September 10, 2009

Boycott South Carolina until Wilson's gone

Poor Lord Boustany. The cardiovascular surgeon and congressman from Lafayette, La., was supposed to have his big moment in the spotlight last evening by delivering the Republican opposition speech to President Obama’s address before Congress. Instead Boustany, who once tried to buy a fake title as an English Lord, was upstaged by a GOP colleague from South Carolina who decided to scream in those hallowed halls of Congress that the President was a liar.

Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst came when Obama said that illegal immigrants would not benefit from the proposed health care reform, despite hysteria spread by the president’s opposition. Wilson quickly sent a private apology to the president after the speech via chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, an apology accepted by Obama.

The outburst was “spontaneous,” Wilson told the media. But it is difficult to believe the South Carolinian was sincere since he later said he was called by GOP leadership and asked to apologize. Wilson later bragged to reporters that he had only received one “negative” call and a number of positive ones from constituents regarding his actions.

It likewise is hard to believe that Wilson’s actions were spontaneous. Here is a 62-year-old attorney who served almost 30 years as an Army staff judge advocate in the Army National Guard, who has been in politics for almost 30 years and in Congress since 2001. Yet a man with such a public profile for such a long time all of a sudden yells at the President of the United States during a joint session of Congress and before millions on television, calling the president a liar?

As a personal note, I was in a situation once that was not in millions of the public’s eyes as Wilson’s moment, but had I lost control like the congressman I surely would have made the news, been fired from my job and probably vilified even more than Wilson.

I once covered an event along with four other reporters which was a rather intimate setting with President George W. Bush and his family. Afterwards, the president gave an impromptu “press conference” with the media who had been waiting outside. This was during the run-up to the Iraq war and the answers to the questions I heard from Bush sounded, to me, like total bulls**t.

No real news was made that day and as such occasions are usually that way, I was nothing more than a poorly-dressed stenographer. My story was essentially what Bush said that day. Certainly nothing slanted.

But I think back to that day and what would have happened had I acted on my impulses to shout out at George W. that he was “full of s**t.” I have to bet that it would have made some news. Probably because of the day it was, it might have even led the news. I am certain that I would have been fired, and rightly so. And being a reporter, I would have been hated more than normal by all the nut wings who hate reporters anyway and who try to find a link between the liberals and the media. I am no longer employed full-time by the media, so be it.

I have done some pretty impulsive things in my life. But even I had the self-control that day to not make a total ass out of myself. So why couldn’t Joe Wilson control himself? Methinks he knew what he was doing.

My wish is that his congressional colleagues will censure him. I also want his fellow South Carolinians to pressure his kind and their idiot governor to leave government. I suggest that those offended by Wilson’s actions — be they from South Carolina or elsewhere — boycott anything South Carolina.

Thinking of vacationing in Charleston or their beaches? Don’t go. Instead, go to the state’s official tourism site www.discoversouthcarolina.com and tell them: “I tell you what. You urge your fellow South Carolinians to call on Joe Wilson to resign and I will promote tourism in S.C., but until then, I will ask everyone I know and anyone I don’t to stay away from your state.”

South Carolina has a lot of popular colleges and universities. I bet some might even be attracted to scholars and athletes. But would you want to go to college or send your kids to school in a state that elects morons like Joe Wilson or Gov. Mark Sanford to office? Thinking about The Citadel, Clemson, Furman, South Carolina State, University of South Carolina, Webster or other great S.C. schools? Tell those schools you aren’t going, or your children won’t go until Joe Wilson goes.

If you see the “Made in South Carolina” label, find the company and tell them, sorry, no can do until you make Joe Wilson leave office.

My call for a boycott probably won’t do much. But if I influence just one person I will have considered my efforts a success.

Joe Wilson must go. The jerk.

September 9, 2009

A rainy day in Texas but not too tightened up as of yet

It’s been a long, hot summer in Texas. Why, you might ask, isn’t it supposed to be?

Well, yes and no. If you start looking at numbers like averages and means and the hypotenuse of the pituitary then you start getting your eyes all glazed over after becoming confused to the point that you just want to go back to bed.

But there it is. Today has been one of those days when it’s nice to go back to bed. At least it seems like the typical early September day in Jefferson County, Texas (home to Spindletop and the modern oil bidness, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Harry James, Johnny and Edgar Winter, and last but certainly not least, Jason’s Deli.) It’s been cloudy, rainy and a bit on the humid side. Of course, humid is Beaumont’s middle name. Yes, I kid you not. Beaumont’s whole name is Beaumont Humid, Texas, Sr., with a Junior to be named for a Trey at a later date.

It will only get wetter too, or so says the Bureau of Weather, also known as the “Bureau of Whether.” I am just joking. I have a lot of respect for the weather bureau and NOAA. Do you find some humor in the fact that the organization which controls the National Weather Service is called “Noah” as in “Hell, I don’t Noah, you build the ark.”

And did you know there was a “Noah’s Ark Water Park?”

“Rising in the Heart of the Wisconsin Drells, The Waterpark Capital of the World.” Check it out for yourself. Maybe you will even discover what the Wisconsin Drells are. Perhaps they are related to Archie Bell and the Drells . Archie Bell and the Drells hail a mere 90 miles away from me in Houston, Texas. I would not have known that fact had Archie not mentioned it in the intro to their hit “Tighten Up.”

“Hi everybody/I’m Archie Bell of the Drells/From Houston, Texas/We dont only sing/but we dance/Just as good as we walk … “

Then Archie and the band began tightening up everything from their drums to their bass to their guitar to their organ (or perhaps their organs) to the point that everything is pretty well tightened up. And just as tight as things can possibly be, someone from maintenance comes along, whips out his socket set and proceeds to untighten everything until there is nothing but a large mess of the untightened strewn from Houston to just the other side of Cut and Shoot. And yes, that is a real city in Texas.

At some point in time, we hope that the meaning behind the lyrics concerning Archie and Drells singing and dancing “as good as we walk” will be revealed. I must point out here that perhaps it would not have been as funkified, but I think “or even better” at the end of “as good as we walk” would have been an appropriate aside. It might have been funnier. But then, we are dealing with my sense of humor here. : ” :

Anyway, it looks like rain for the next few days. Maybe even some flooding. But that’s just normal for early September in Beaumont, Texas. So I plan to stay high and dry. Well, dry at least. I plan to tighten up too. But not so much that my friends wouldn’t recognize me.

September 8, 2009

Where are all the socialist kids?

It has been, how long, five hours? Still no reports are forthcoming that hordes of little children from the mostly white enclaves of Lumberton, Vidor or Bridge City in my area of Southeast Texas are taking to the streets dressed in Mao-style peasant garb complete with red commie stars.

Likewise, I’ve not heard from other parts of these United States of thousands of red and yellow, black and white, they are precioius in His sight children marching with clinched fists extended toward the heavens shouting their praise for Barack.

What? It couldn’t possibly be that President Obama’s speech to the nation’s school children has not touched off the so-feared socialist indoctrination the right-wing tried so hard to suggest would happen. Oh my. Perhaps it will be something covert.

Little boys cutting their hair short and wearing polo shirts like their savior Barack and little girls dressed like Sasha and Malia are probably in their dens right now plotting the coup of the children.

Teens, instead of playing ball, drinking some illicit beers and smoking cigarettes are meeting inside libraries trying with all their might to ignite the socialist will for their hero, the great Barack Hussein, o mighty socialist ruler!

Silly? Hell yes it’s silly. Like Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs said the other day: “It’s the silly season.” It was a thought echoed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The furor, Duncan said, is “just silly.” Silliness is the right’s forte and it has been spread like wildfire via a cable news cabal full of folks who are too f**king lazy to go out and report real news with meaning. No, they want drama. Drama is all important.

Let the hairy-armed, Joe the Plumbers wearing wife-beaters, tell the story with their ignorance. Screaming and crying: “We want our country back!” makes for more dramatic shots than pointy-headed Democratic smart guys and gals sitting around doing the policy wonk thing.

And then, there is, how shall I put this? There is this 800-pound g*****a in the room about which no one is saying a word.

Many didn’t want their kids to watch Obama’s speech today because they held deep-seated beliefs that the federal government needs to be out of their schools. No matter that tons of federal bucks help keep their schools up and running. Others didn’t want their kids to get “brainwashed” by the socialism being warned about by the right-wing noise machine. And if either reasons one or two didn’t do the trick, we still have that 800-pound g*****a in the room.

Yes, some people don’t want their kids being spoken to by a black man, or at least a black president. Maybe it would be okay if the kids heard a speech from Michael Jordan, or Shaq, or Bill Cosby, or even Collin Powell. You know, they all be the “hired help.” But it just won’t do to let their kids hear from some black man who dares holds himself up as the president. Why, he wasn’t even born in the USA was he?

You think I am imagining something? You think I have “black guilt?” Not one iota. I am sorry many blacks were enslaved many, many, many years before I was born, some of whom were sold into slavery by their own people. I am sorry but not wracked with guilt.

I talked with an old college friend yesterday who was raised in an affluent and very white part of a large American city. We got to talking about this silliness surrounding the Obama speech and without hearing my views, he said that the silliness stems from people not wanting their kids to hear a speech from a black president. Bingo!

Where is all the talk about a new day and hope and perhaps a new dialogue on race that the cable pundits and reporters (except from Fox) gushed about when Obama was elected? Now those same cable wise men and women seem to salivate when they can find any fault with BHO, not to mention an angry crowd of men in wifebeaters whose big-haired wives are ruining their painted faces, Tammy Baker style, by crying for a lost America that either was never lost to begin with or at the very least was lost by Mrs. Heavy Hair.

If you want to know the truth, I haven’t been as scared at what might happen in this country since 1968.

During that year of Tet, riots, assassinations, the world going topsy-turvy and not to mention being 12-turning-13 years old, there was plenty to freak about. The last eight years of George W., 9/11, the no weapons of mass destruction invasion of Iraq and a war in Afghanistan, were unsettling enough. The right wing was angry. Hell, they’re always pissed about something.

And it was not unexpected they would get pissed when the Democrats took over, led by a black man.

But the right wing wing nuts have become even nuttier. It seems that since they can’t get their way, right away, the old George W. “My Way or the Highway Style,” then they will just throw tantrum after tantrum and show how infantile and unsteady they are.

I don’t know about you, but that scares the ever-loving hell out of me.

September 7, 2009

Genetic knuckle-busting 101

Somewhere a reason or hundreds exist why some people are more mechanically inclined than others.

Immersing myself into social sciences during college quickly affirmed what I already knew about many aspects of life including the fact that no two people can truly agree on one big truth. Is the reason for X nature and Y nurture or is life really like a bowl of chocolates?

No matter what I choose as a reason why is why I know that I will be wrong in someone’s eyes. So who cares? I spend three paragraphs talking about relativity and relatively nothing, but what the hey, there are worse ways to kill a Labor Day afternoon.

My theory is called “The Busted Knuckle Gene Theory of Mechanical Inclination.” Man, woman and child inherit their ability to ably perform mechanical tasks. Some do so better than others, but most all wind up with a busted knuckle at some time in life.

At the start of this Labor Day weekend I had two mechanical problems with my 1998 Toyota Tacoma. Problem one was the door latch. Yes, that same pesky door latch which gave me problems more than a month ago. Problem number two was that my truck all of a sudden started running like s**t. I’m sure there are more technically-descriptive terms but I think my description hits the engine on the head.

My friend Rick, from Nacogdoches, decided to come to Beaumont and spend a night, and he promised to help with my door. It would be pointless and in the case of the “vehicle running like s**t syndrome,” somewhat embarrassing, to detail what all Rick did or didn’t do to get my truck up and running with the door closing much better than before. Nevertheless, the mission was accomplished a lot cheaper what with buying Rick dinner at Acapulco than had I taken my truck to a shop.

Rick, a nurse by trade who has been on a business sabbatical of sorts lately, was also a mechanic at one time. We talked about this mechanical inclination thing although we never arrived at any one particular reason why there are those who are, those who aren’t and those like myself who do but shouldn’t get near a wrench.

My Dad was mechanically-inclined. I don’t know why he never taught me mechanical stuff. I guess part of it was my own lack of interest. He did give me a tool box with the basic tools one might need when I bought my first car. I suppose he figured I would sink or swim. I have pretty much been sinking all along when it comes to mechanical abilities though I have yet to drown. I suppose that is one bright light.

“Baby you can drive my car … “

Rick reminded me during his visit of something I hadn’t thought of in years. Actually, I hadn’t thought of it since he and I talked about it almost 30 years ago. What he told me translates into a corollary of my genetic theory – of which I have yet to nor will I make a case for in this sitting – that would be the perception factor.

In the span of five years – 1974 to 1979 to be exact – I experienced the failure of my cars to start. Both situations were the same and the solution to the problems were identical. There also were identical factors involving young ladies that I will not get into because I see no relevancy in these two cases.

Situation No. 1. I was visiting a Navy buddy at Naval Air Station Meridian, Miss., where I had graduated from “A School” a month before. I was leaving the Enlisted Club for a Hojo in downtown during a heavy rainstorm. My 1972 Pinto (yes, do you want to make an issue over it?) wouldn’t start.

Someone, I can’t remember if it was my friend Burt or some random fellow squid or perhaps even a jarhead, pulled out a can of that wondrous substance known as “WD-40.” The person took off my distributor cap, sprayed inside it, and my car started right up.

In 1979, something similar happened with my 1979 Toyota Corolla. The scenario was similar. It had rained like hell and my car wouldn’t start. A buddy from work came over to where I was staying the night and sprayed under my distributor cap with WD-40. The car started right up.

Perhaps I had been told in 1974 but had forgotten the old “WD-40 Trick.” Spraying under the distributor cap after it had been soaked by rain helped dry up the moisture or some such. Maybe it was magic. Anyway it worked and I always remembered that trick ever after.

Rick reminded me of when I passed along that knowledge to someone and I thus was perceived as either mechanically-inclined or a mechanical genius, both kind of strong terms, and both very erroneous in my case.

Along the time of the 1979 incident I lived in a small apartment complex. Two guys lived upstairs from me. One guy named Dave owned a small, older model Japanese pickup.

One morning I was going somewhere and I saw Dave outside trying to start his pickup. He was having a difficult time of it. I can’t remember if I tried to jump-start his truck. I am pretty sure I had jumper cables as I believe I have always had a set of jumper cables since my first car was a Pinto. Even the new cars I bought, which back about this time my Toyota Corolla was new, always had jumper cables tucked about somewhere.

It wasn’t a very long time until I had remembered it came a very heavy rain the night before. I thought, well, let’s see if WD-40 will work. Sure enough, it did work. Dave was amazed and from that time on until he moved, each time he had a mechanical problem I would be the first with whom he would consult. Yes, he would come ask me, the mechanical idiot, what was wrong with his truck.

I was kind of amazed Rick had remembered that story. I joked by saying: “I’m glad to have someone around who can help replace the parts of my memory that have gone missing.”

So, people get their mechanical abilities from somewhere, perhaps genetically while some of that ability lies in the perceptions of those around us. It’s all a pretty interesting psychosocial-genetic windstorm, perhaps mixed in with a touch of reverse nihilism and a smidgen of esoteric caninism dogma, perhaps even dogpa. Know one can really know.

Some like getting their knuckles busted and some do not. I fall into that latter group. But, I do like the outcome of mechanical work, especially when I don’t have to spend money on a mechanic to perform it. Sorry if that rubs you professional knuckle busters the wrong way – which would be, what, lefty loosie? But spending less money is a great way to spend Labor Day, at least in my opinion.

Happy Labor Day to all.

September 4, 2009

Silence, noise and never too many burritos

Blogger’s note: This is an experiment in Trans-Pacific writing between Dick in Texas and Paul in Tokyo. I think Paul’s contributions were before a 4.8 earthquake struck. Nonetheless, if things are shaky, blame them on Paul.

Everybody’s talking at me
I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Only the echoes of my mind — Fred Neil

In a tent, Archie Bunker is noiselessly chewing out Festus Hagan. Marshal Dillion strides into the scene, both thumbs in his gun belt, and everyone seems relieved. Jump cut to a loud feminine hygiene commercial: Marsha is evangelical about her pads. Fight, flight, or freeze?

I bolt for the door, and scramble into my clunker. I do not care where I go, as long as I can wrap myself in some semblance of solitude … wrap myself into … a burrito. Hank Williams Sr., is on the radio at the Super Duper Mart. “Take These Chains From My Heart” is, at least, subdued, though there would be no guarantees were I to snag a threesome of 40-ounce Bulls.

Standing in front of the frozen burritos, I can’t help think of the character in “Escape Route,” one of the three shorts in Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery,” who begged to escape into a painting of a solitary man fishing in a small boat in the middle of a lake.

The Super Duper Mart is devoid of art. So, what the hell. Get me into the burrito. Get me into the burrito.

Still, noise is information and it occasionally offers context. Without noise made by announcers, who would have known that an odd but nasty-looking block executed by geezer Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre was both dangerous and illegal enough to possibly warrant a fine from the league.

Houston Texans cornerback Eugene Wilson certainly didn’t need someone to tell him what happened. He just wished someone could have told him why it happened.

“What was up with that?” he asked the Associated Press after the game. “Seriously, what was up with that?”

Seriously.

Sometimes there is no noise and we have to wait for Paul Harvey moments to get the rest of the story. It took a decade for us to hear that Pirates hurler Doc Ellis pitched a no-no against the Padres on June 12, 1970 while tripping on LSD.

Ellis was considered then somewhat of a wild man. However, stand Doc up against the likes of Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress, or Ron Artest, and Doc starts to look positively like a motivational speaker. The most famous acid trip in baseball history was, Ellis later said, an oversight. He was getting high with his friends in Los Angeles when his girlfriend reminded him he had to pitch. Ellis thought he was off that night, one of the world’s greatest understatements.

Ellis said:

“I was zeroed in on the (catcher’s) glove, but I didn’t hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate.”

John Milton wrote:

Come, and trip it as ye go,
On the light fantastick toe.
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;

Richard Milhous Nixon admitted:

“I don’t know a lot about politics, but I know a lot about baseball.”

Jimi Hendrix sang:

“Lord knows I’m a Voodoo child, baby.”

Wikipedia says:

“Noise can block, distort, change or interfere with the meaning of a message in both human and electronic communication.”

The morning is bright and busy and clear. Click. Funny dotcom commercials. There has to be a shirt in the closet that’s not too wrinkled. Click. This is CNN. What’s on today’s agenda at work? Click. A small plane just hit the World Trade Center. Click. An airliner just flew into the towers. I have to go to work. Freeze. There’s a senseless cacophony of noise to interpret. Click. More than 300 FDNY firefighters are dead. Click. A jet hit the Pentagon. Click. A commercial airliner has crashed in Pennsylvania.

Click. “Be advised. I see midway up World Trade Center Tower, heavy black smoke coming out,” says a radio transmission from a firefighter to FDNY dispatch 9/11/01.

My editor tells me to go up to the Bush Ranch gate — outside the president’s ranch between Waco and Austin — and get comments. The last time the president had been seen he was reading “The Pet Goat” to school kids in Florida. Now the editor wants me to ask for comments from nervous Texas highway troopers and deputies who never signed up to protect the president’s ranch, whether he was there or not.

What is up with that? Seriously, what is up with that?

Click. “You have help on the way,” a FDNY dispatcher tells a trapped firefighter in World Trade Center Tower 1. “There is help on the way.” Click. Click. And more clicks.

What day is this? I haven’t heard an airplane all day. It is way too silent. The world is wrapped in quiet like a convenience store frozen burrito waiting to be microwaved.