Monthly Archives: October 2009

Friends don’t let friends play hurt

October 30, 2009

Talk about side­lined! Even if the turf on Rebel Field in Evadale, Texas, dries suf­fi­ciently this evening after pound­ing rain­fall, the sta­dium will remain silent from the bus­tle of the grid­iron. That is because the sched­uled bat­tle between the Evadale Rebels and the Chester Yel­low­jack­ets has been can­celed. In fact, the Yel­low­jack­ets’ remain­ing sea­son has been canceled.

Foot­ball ended for Chester on Oct. 23 after what turned out to be their final game, which was against High Island. In that game, seven Yel­low­jacket play­ers suf­fered season-ending injuries, accord­ing to the Beau­mont Enter­prise. With a stu­dent body of 58 attend­ing Chester High School — located in a town of only 256 about 90 miles north­east of Hous­ton — the foot­ball team is com­prised of 20 of the 26 boys who attend classes there. Another stu­dent broke his foot the week before. You do the math.

Yes, the Yel­low­jack­ets could still field a team pro­vided no one got hurt in the last two games. A team with a total squad of 12 also would not pro­vide any rest for the weary. I can’t speak for the six Chester stu­dents who don’t play. Kids have all kinds of rea­sons why they don’t get into orga­nized sports. The clos­est I got was as a var­sity foot­ball and bas­ket­ball equip­ment man­ager. Nev­er­the­less, the coach decided it best to end the sea­son while the school still had some able bod­ies for bas­ket­ball sea­son. That’s a joke, although I real­ize a bad one. The result was that the Yel­low­jack­ets for­feited its final two games.

The abrupt end­ing to the sea­son may have left some kids and fans heart­bro­ken but the coach’s deci­sion was both with­out recourse and smart.

Can­cel­ing was smart because had more play­ers suf­fered inca­pac­i­tat­ing injuries a whole raft of wrath might have been heaped upon the coach and administration’s head like play­ers scram­bling for a goal-line fum­ble. Soci­ety has become less tol­er­ant with the idea of “play­ing hurt.” And with recent hear­ings about foot­ball brain injuries suf­fered by NFL play­ers — the pros also being shown to influ­ence youth foot­ball safety lev­els – the idea of “shak­ing off” an injury seems des­tined for such dis­cred­ited med­ical prac­tices as “bleed­ing” some­one for var­i­ous illnesses.

One must rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between trau­matic brain injury as well as other poten­tially deadly and dis­abled syn­dromes related to con­cus­sions, and the nor­mal bro­ken bones and  dis­lo­ca­tions which are com­mon in high school foot­ball. Even con­cus­sions, or get­ting one’s “bell rung,” are not unusual. Two Chester play­ers report­edly suf­fered con­cus­sions while the rest of the injuries along with a host of bro­ken  bones and dis­lo­ca­tions, accord­ing to Beau­mont TV sta­tion KFDM. The Chester coach called the num­ber of injuries incurred freak accidents.

But even ortho­pe­dic injuries these day in foot­ball at the high school level have been under scrutiny along with head injuries, all wrapped up under the cat­e­gory of sports safety.

A num­ber of fac­tors bring safety to the fore­front of sports in gen­eral such as the size and ath­leti­cism of youth who work­out on weights and some of whom take illicit steroids. Pro­tec­tive sports gear has also improved as has emer­gency med­ical care. Some notable cases, how­ever,  exhibit tragic holes in pro­tec­tion from injuries.

The case of Will Ben­son is a par­tic­u­lar exam­ple of gaps in safety.

Ben­son was a 17-year-old quar­ter­back for St. Stephen’s Epis­co­pal School in Austin who died after suf­fer­ing cere­bral hem­or­rhage dur­ing a game in 2002. Ben­son col­lapsed and was looked at by the team’s trainer and doc­tor but no ambu­lance or emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians were sta­tioned on the scene. Prob­lems with the ambu­lance find­ing and access­ing the patient were rea­sons almost a half-hour elapsed between the time Ben­son col­lapsed and was rolled into emer­gency surgery.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Benson’s dad was able to con­vince Texas leg­is­la­tors that sports safety needed improve­ment and “Will’s Law” was passed among which pro­vi­sions include a require­ment of safety train­ing for coaches and trainers.

I have to admit that I read about Will Benson’s tragic case for the first time today. I sup­pose I have become some­what numb fol­low­ing news of kids dying from sports injuries. What shocks me most is that in 45 years of watch­ing high school foot­ball I can’t remem­ber see­ing  a game that did not have an ambu­lance stand­ing by. This was even the case back in the day when EMTs — which I was cer­ti­fied as for 10 years — was just another unknown acronym and funeral homes usu­ally oper­ated the ambu­lances. This is even in the small­est of East Texas towns in which I grew up.

The machismo of the still over­whelm­ingly male sport of foot­ball has long dic­tated tough­ness as a rite of pas­sage. One must decide whether such con­cepts are all they’re made out to be. But as was empha­sized in the macho pro­fes­sion of fire­fight­ing in which I was involved some five years one can’t help some­one in need if you are unable to show up. Trans­la­tion: Don’t drive like a bat out of hell and all crazy en route to an emergency.

If the log­i­cal exten­sion is taken for foot­ball, you can’t play if you’re hurt really bad. That can be taken for what it’s worth if logic can be applied amongst the emo­tional world of football.

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R-word at end — Time for Elephant people to bitch

October 29, 2009

  My friend, who works for one of those huge, huge cor­po­ra­tions which I won’t name, called last night to sing Happy Birth­day to me. It’s cer­tainly the thought that counts.

  He said the busi­ness he works for was doing very well and I think he even mum­bled some­thing like “the reces­sion is over.” I say mum­bled, I was hav­ing dif­fi­culty hear­ing because I am unfor­tu­nate enough to have a two-year T-Mobile contract.

  Lo and behold, today I see signs of the reces­sion hav­ing ended. The Asso­ci­ated Press online hed:

 “Econ­omy grows in 3Q, sig­nals end of recession”

 Though described as “slug­gish” it is heart­en­ing to see the end of some­thing some thought might be a repeat of the dreaded “Great Depres­sion,” or per­haps an ever greater Great.

 Thank good­ness that didn’t happen.

 If you remem­ber back toward the end of the (sigh) Bush admin­is­tra­tion some of the efforts that were taken to stem the tide of this fis­cal dis­as­ter began with con­sul­ta­tion between the incom­ing and out­go­ing admin­is­tra­tions. So, if this all turns South, it’s Bush’s fault — it is any­way because it started under his tenure.

 You can bet no mat­ter what part the Obama admin­is­tra­tion played in the recov­ery, shaky as it remains, no praise will come from the Repub­li­cans. That is because they say no to every­thing. They praise noth­ing Democratic. Like one of my long ago coun­try pals said as well long ago: “You’d bitch if you had a loaf of bread under each arm.”

 Well, it seems we’ve got more than a half a loaf, so let the GOP bitch­ing begin.

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Here’s to a relatively happy birthday

October 28, 2009

 It’s my 54th birth­day. I started to take the day off. But that would be a cop-out. Who uses words like “cop-out” any­more? I mean besides me? Why not cop-in?

 For some rea­son 54 sounds old-er, as opposed to 53. Maybe that is because it is, but only slightly. If you were born at 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 27, 1955 and some­one else was born at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 28, 1955, that wouldn’t really be older by much. But if you were born 11:59 p.m. on Octo­ber 27, 1955, and some­one else was born at 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1956, that still would only be older by one numeral, even if you were a cou­ple of months older.

 Ages seem incog­itable some­times while at other times they appear so insignificant.

 A 100-year-old man chases down a 15-year-old thug of a purse snatcher and beats the teen silly. That’s unbe­lie­ve­able. A 45-year-old kicks a 54-yard field goal in a pro foot­ball game. A 28-year-old kicker misses a 20-yard kick in the same game. So what?

 Prob­a­bly the most sign­f­i­cant aspect of age as far as I have expe­ri­enced it is in terms of times past and the mem­o­ries that lie therein. Those mem­o­ries extend from remem­ber­ing my family’s first TV set, to a seem­ingly end­less parade of DBs (dead bod­ies) I wish I hadn’t seen, to watch­ing the sun set out at sea to see­ing the sun rise from sit­ting on top of my roof out on the farm.

 The most dis­agree­able part of my aging is pain, although it has been around as a con­stant com­pan­ion now since my early 30s. You can kill the pain for awhile, but it always comes back some­where else ready to strike again at other loca­tions on your body.

 What age seems most of all to me is rel­a­tive. It’s hard to put your fin­ger on some aspects of age. Over the week­end my old high school friends were still talk­ing about the insignifica of our lives 35 years ago and it all seemed as fresh as a daisy. I just remem­bered a lit­tle while ago that it was four years ago and not five that I went to Austin for the Texas Book Fair. It was my 50th birth­day. Duh!

I don’t know if that rel­a­tiv­ity will fade away as more years come and go. I sure hope it doesn’t.

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World series winner? The Texans.

October 27, 2009

 Who will I be root­ing for when the World Series opens tomor­row evening in the “House that Stein­bren­ner Built?”

 The answer is: the Hous­ton Texans.

 That’s right I am talk­ing  about the Hous­ton NFL team that won its first back-to-back game in the franchise’s seven-year his­tory with their tri­umph Sun­day over the San Fran­cisco 49ers. The Tex­ans are no New Orleans. (I never thought I’d ever say any team is “no New Orleans.”) But if they keep things upright they might just have a play­off spot to advance in lit­tle baby steps as part of their toddler-esque existence.

 But what about the Series? Who cares.

 I sup­pose if you are a Phillies fan or Yan­kees fan you would care. But I am neither. Oh, I have had my days of Yan­kee worship, during the times of Mickey Man­tle and Roger Maris. The Yan­kees have had some incred­i­ble tal­ent in their his­tory. As of late, most of that star power is cour­tesy of ginor­mous bucks. That’s noth­ing against Alex Rodriguez, who I saw play as a Ranger, or Rivera or Jeter.

 The Phillies have also had some fan­tas­tic cat­tle in the pen over the years as well: Carl­ton, Schmidt, Sand­berg and Rose, the lat­ter in between stints with the Reds and his bookie.

 Had the Cal­i­for­nia, Ana­heim, Los Ange­les Angels been able to pull off the AL crown I might be watch­ing the series start­ing tomor­row. But the pos­si­bil­ity of the Yan­kees win­ning their 27th world cham­pi­onship just seems a bit too much, no mat­ter how great their wealthy team may be.

 I wish as well I could say that I am too excited to watch the series due to the Astros hir­ing new man­ager, Red Sox bench coach Brad Mills, today. But I don’t know who he is or much about him other than he played a few sea­sons for the Expos and had the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being Nolan Ryan’s 3,509th strike­out vic­tim, thus mak­ing Ryan in 1983 the all-time K leader in the major leagues.

 But Mills don’t field and Mills don’t hit. So we faith­ful who keep get­ting our hopes dashed like Char­lie Brown and his elu­sive foot­ball kick will just have to wait and see how goes the ‘Stros. In the mean­time, we have the Tex­ans. Will they break our hearts as well?

 Not as long as Bud Adams stays the hell away.

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Pilot error doesn’t help when comfort zone is lacking

October 26, 2009

 This week­end at a high school reunion I found myself attempt­ing to encour­age an old friend who is a reluc­tant flyer. Patti said she would like to take a long flight to south­ern Europe but was uncom­fort­able with the idea of fly­ing such a long dura­tion. She noted that she didn’t even like to get to get up for a trip to the rest room while flying.

 While such a notion might sound silly to most who fly, it cer­tainly strikes a famil­iar chord within my recent mem­ory. I too was once a reluc­tant flyer. It was 25 years between the time I took my first air­line flight — from Hous­ton to Chicago en route to Navy boot camp — and the next one.

 The rea­son for that next flight in 1999, which was from Waco to St. Louis via Hous­ton, was to spend a week with an old friend and for­mer girl­friend. This friend had racked up the fre­quent flyer mileage in her work and she paid for my flight that way, so I fig­ured I should “man up” and take the trip.

 A tele­vi­sion show on one of the Dis­cov­ery or His­tory channel-type net­works ended up largely help­ing me to even­tu­ally con­quer my flight reluc­tance. The show went step-by-step through the inves­ti­ga­tion of a plane crash that killed a num­ber of pas­sen­gers and crew though not all. The fact that more and more peo­ple — in most instances that is — seem to sur­vive air­line crashes was encour­ag­ing although not com­pletely con­vinc­ing. But what gave me more com­fort through under­stand­ing was that this acci­dent stud­ied on the TV show and most oth­ers crashes are even­tu­ally found to occur as a cul­mi­na­tion of a set of inter­re­lated cir­cum­stances that hap­pened prior to the accident.

 Although no offi­cial report has yet been pro­duced by NTSB, it is likely that this A-to-B-to-C-to-D cause and effect — in reverse if you’d like to think of it that way — had to hap­pen for every­thing to go right so Capt. Sully Sul­len­berger could land his US Air­ways Flight 1549 safely into New York’s Hud­son River.

 Since 9/11/01 and the fol­low­ing month in which an Amer­i­can Air­lines Air­bus A300 jumbo jet crashed in the Rock­away sec­tion of Queens, New York, the U.S. saw one of the low­est num­bers of com­mer­cial air fatal­i­ties in recent years. No com­mer­cial car­rier deaths were reported in 2007 and 2008.

 So both lower num­bers of air­line crashes both in the U.S. and world­wide remains pos­i­tive news enough that it might con­vince my friend Patti to fly across the ocean. Of course, tak­ing an Ata­van some­time dur­ing the flight might do a world of good as well.

But then you have the inevitable fatal crash such as the Col­gan Air com­muter inci­dent in Buf­falo ear­lier this year. And just this week, a cou­ple of pilots of a North­west Air­lines Air­bus A320 who were said to be argu­ing over air­line pol­icy over­shoot their des­ti­na­tion by, only, 150 or so miles.

"Hey wait a minute! That doesn't look like Minnesota. I think we missed a turn."

“Hey wait a minute! That doesn’t look like Min­nesota. I think we missed a turn.”

 Well, per­haps the crash in Buf­falo that killed 50 peo­ple includ­ing one per­son in a house couldn’t be helped. It cer­tainly wouldn’t be a sur­prise to learn that it could be helped though. But the inci­dent in which the pilots on the North­west flight — per­haps both pilots bear­ing the name Bozo, but just spec­u­lat­ing — thank­fully didn’t hurt or kill any­one but it seems more and more likely that their error could have been prevented.

Such inci­dents not only give more ammu­ni­tion to reluc­tant fly­ers but it also doesn’t instill con­fi­dence into the one-time reluc­tant fly­ers like myself or even the plain ol’ flyers.

 In wake of the “heated argu­ment” excuse, there has also been spec­u­la­tion that the pilots of the “missed the exit” flight might have fallen asleep or per­haps had even been “UI.” You know,  “DUI” or “BUI” or “FUI?” How­ever, The Wall Street Jour­nal reported today that the pilots of that air­craft claim they had chat­ted with a flight atten­dant and then pulled out their lap­top to dis­cuss their work schedules.

 “Hey, we landed the damn thing. What more do you want?”

 The good news is that they didn’t over­shoot the run­way, they just over­shot the air­port. But one can hardly call that good news either.

 For all the Ches­ley Sul­len­berg­ers and all the other sharp and super-competent pilots and air crew out there remains some with both their heads in the clouds as well as up their asses.

 These guys got their plane, crew and pas­sen­gers safely home. But their miss­ing the air­port the first time is a seri­ously bad reflec­tion on the Amer­i­can com­mer­cial air indus­try. Hope­fully the pilots of that North­west­ern will have time to think about their trans­gres­sions dur­ing a long vacation.

 Oh and as for my con­quer­ing my reluc­tance to fly, it didn’t hap­pen on the flight to St. Louis and it cer­tainly didn’t take place on the way back. We flew back into Waco on a “puddle-jumper” on a windy spring day. As our wings bounced on approach we took a very quick drop that would put car­ni­val rides to shame. The col­lege girl sit­ting next to me might have won­dered if my grip on the seat in front of her was going to break the head­rest into.

 But I even­tu­ally became more com­fort­able with fly­ing. Not totally — some­thing as huge as air­planes fly­ing still seem some­what unnat­ural to me — but with enough com­fort to sit back and look at how small the world looks below.

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Ignorance (in) the law — particularly in this case — is no excuse

October 23, 2009

Here is the kind of ver­dict that leaves me com­pletely flummoxed.

A jury today here in Beau­mont, of the Texas vari­ety, sen­tenced sus­pended state trooper Jonathan Bar­nett to six months in jail and fined him $10,000 for run­ning a fam­ily busi­ness that oper­ates ille­gal gam­ing machines. Doc­u­ments listed Bar­nett, 32, as pres­i­dent of a family-owned nov­elty machine com­pany raided by author­i­ties in 2007. The machines owned and leased by the com­pany included so-called “eight-liners.” These are essen­tially slot machines which busi­nesses award win­ning cus­tomers who play with cash.

Bar­nett, a trooper since 2001, tes­ti­fied that he began phas­ing out his over­sight of the com­pany to his mother after becom­ing a high­way patrol offi­cer. He also denied know­ing the machines had been used for gam­bling. Jurors found Bar­nett guilty of engag­ing in orga­nized crim­i­nal activ­ity. Due to the gam­bling charges involved in the alleged activ­ity, Bar­nett could have been sen­tenced to a max­i­mum of two years in prison, accord­ing to local media reports.

So why am I flum­moxed at this ver­dict, you might ask? He was found guilty. He was a state trooper he should have known bet­ter. Right and right. Thus is the rea­son for my bewil­dered state.

Was this man stu­pid, arro­gant, greedy or all the above?

Local and state law enforce­ment, includ­ing Barnett’s soon to be for­mer employer the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safety, con­tin­u­ally make local head­lines with bust of eight-liner arcades across the state. State laws in the mid-1990s pro­vided the so-called “fuzzy ani­mal” excep­tion which allows a machine to pay out a non-cash prize for a play of $5 value or 10 times the cost of play, whichever is less.  Most cash prizes awarded ille­gally are done on the sly, which often neces­si­tates under­cover police oper­a­tions to bust the eight-liner oper­a­tors and owners.

In short, a Texan can’t walk down the street with­out being hit on the head by media reports of proud local law enforcers show­ing off the gam­bling machines they busted and money seized in the raids. Since I have seen cops of all stripe gam­bling ille­gally in all man­ners per­haps short of slot machines, and have even gam­bled with cops before, I don’t believe their fer­vor for bust­ing eight-liners is rooted in reli­gion or moral repug­nance. Per­haps it has some­thing to do with the money seized in the raids that go to the var­i­ous police agen­cies. Could that be it? Surely not.

What irri­tates me the most about the Bar­nett case is the blem­ish he causes for the agency that employed him. In gen­eral terms, I have had more respect for the Texas High­way Patrol than any other law enforce­ment agency. Maybe he is just a bad apple or an igno­ra­mus. He is not the only one I have seen in the DPS nor will he be the last. But the fact is eight-liner gam­bling is a very high-profile offense, though hardly the stuff of Baby Face Nel­son, and this now con­victed and sen­tenced for­mer state trooper should have steered clear of his fam­ily ties to the “nov­elty” gam­ing busi­ness when he decided to don the gray suit and cow­boy hat of the DPS.

I also feel that some­day “real” slot machines will be tum­bling their fruit in cer­tain sec­tors of the Lone Star State. That is, if the money bagged folks who want gam­bling in Texas can out­spend and out­wit those who already oper­ate casi­nos in neigh­bor­ing states.  When that hap­pens, and I believe it will, the eight-liners will be a relic of times past. Then, peo­ple like for­mer trooper Bar­nett will be con­victed felons despite the dimin­ished nature of the crime.

Talk about your dumb crimes. This one rates way on up there.

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Much too long a short day

October 22, 2009

A short day seems to go on and on and on.

Lines seem way longer than long.

Is the guy spend­ing 15 min­utes in line at the drive-through teller an idiot? Is the drive-through teller an idiot? Are they both idiots?

Every red light in the city com­mands me to stop. What bulls**t!

The “bum-BA-bum-BA-bum” of the earsch­plit­ten bass speak­ers tucked under some cool’s trunk rat­tle inside my ears through my brain.

My head hurts. My neck hurts. My feet hurt. My butt hurts. My brain hurts.

Time for a rest. Time to stop mov­ing for awhile before it all hap­pens again.

Life. Open up a can of it. Then put the top back on the thing.

A lit­tle goes a long, long way on much too long a short day.

If that ain’t right I’ll kiss your ass. Or at least I won’t and say I didn’t.

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Can I interest you in a proposition?

October 21, 2009
Texas has one of the longest state con­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try. One might expect that in a state so large and ram­bling where all is sup­pos­edly “big­ger” or so goes the old saw. The cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion is rooted in end­ing Recon­struc­tion in the state and thus requires each time a child is born in Texas the doc­u­ment must be altered in order to allow that new­born cit­i­zen­ship. Weird huh? Well, that is cer­tainly an exag­ger­a­tion but the con­sti­tu­tion has been amended by vot­ers almost 460 times. A fresh new batch of 11 amend­ments await vot­ers’ pas­sage dur­ing the Nov. 3 gen­eral elec­tion. Early vot­ing is already under way for those propositions.

A guide giv­ing a var­ied view of the pro­posed amend­ments has been fur­nished by the ever-informative lib­eral blog, the Burnt Orange Report. One may take a look-see for all 11 props. But here are a few I wish to cuss (actu­ally, no) and discuss:

Props–Props or No Props?

  • Propo­si­tion 4 — Estab­lish­ing a National Research Uni­ver­sity Fund

WHAT: This would help pro­vide fund­ing for new poten­tial “Tier 1″ uni­ver­si­ties in Texas in addi­tion to the present two, Uni­ver­sity of Texas and Texas A & M Uni­ver­sity. VERDICT: Unde­cided. I still need to answer a few ques­tions before sup­port­ing this. I would like to see more top research uni­ver­si­ties in Texas but I also want some of the smaller state schools such as the one from which I grad­u­ated to remain viable.

  • Propo­si­tion 8 — Allow­ing the State to Con­tribute Resources to Vet­er­ans Hospitals

WHAT: This would put into the con­sti­tu­tion the author­ity for the state and local part­ners to join the VA in estab­lish­ing new vet­er­ans hos­pi­tals. VERDICT: For. I am cyn­i­cal about the moti­va­tion for this becom­ing an amend­ment since I have seen at ground level how invested local com­mu­ni­ties as well as state and national politi­cians are in attain­ing and keep­ing VA med­ical facil­i­ties. VA hos­pi­tals, even out­pa­tient clin­ics are a wel­come item for any city and not just for the vet­er­ans who need and use them. Like other gov­ern­ment facil­i­ties they fur­nish jobs and income to the places in which they are built. That is not a bad thing. But these med­ical cen­ters should be num­ber one about the vet­eran in action and not just in words (a.k.a. dol­lars and cents). Nonethe­less, there are largely-populated areas of Texas such as in the Rio Grande Val­ley and Cor­pus Christi which are in need of VA inpa­tient facil­i­ties. This is why I sup­port the prop.

  • Propo­si­tion 9 — Estab­lish­ing the Right to Use and to Access Pub­lic Beaches

WHAT: This pro­posed amend­ment would allow an unre­stricted right for access­ing pub­lic beaches in Texas. This would also let the state to pro­tect beaches and its ease­ments from encroach­ment even if storms or ero­sion causes the beach to shift under houses or busi­nesses. VERDICT: For. The beaches and their approaches belong to the pub­lic and should remain that way.

  • Propo­si­tion 11 — Restrict­ing the Use of Emi­nent Domain for Tak­ing Prop­erty for Pub­lic Projects

WHAT: This propo­si­tion, if approved, would by con­sti­tu­tional edict pro­hibit pri­vate prop­erty to be taken by emi­nent domain laws for eco­nomic devel­op­ment means or enhanc­ing tax rev­enues. VERDICT: For. There are loop­holes in this prop which I hope will even­tu­ally be addressed but I think it is a good start. A two-thirds vote by the Leg­is­la­ture would be required for grant­ing the power of emi­nent domain. This amend­ment won’t stop emi­nent domain abuse, such as was seen in build­ing George W. Bush’s Texas Rangers Ball Park at Arling­ton or Jerry Jones’ Cow­boys Sta­dium in the same city. Those mon­u­ments to com­merce had a lot of pub­lic sup­port, of course. But per­haps Prop 11 can some­what cur­tail the abuse.

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Tired? Turn to the obit page.

October 20, 2009

Three mat­ters both­ered me this morn­ing when I trav­eled to the Hous­ton VA hos­pi­tal for an EMG, nerve test, on my feet and legs. Noth­ing that was a bother had any­thing directly to do with the test.

First I woke at 4:50  a.m. I did so to catch the shut­tle van from the local out­pa­tient clinic to the hos­pi­tal. As it turned out — my being the fill­ing between almost 500 pounds of vet­eran sand­wich in the van ride — my own drive to Hous­ton with morn­ing rush hour traf­fic and all might have turned out to have been more pleas­ant had I dri­ven my truck instead. So the hour at which I awoke, the uncom­fort­able ride to the hos­pi­tal and deal­ing with some of the VA’s most accom­plished bureau­cratic assh**es while try­ing to work out another mat­ter com­pletely were what made my day much less than perfect.

The EMG itself, per­formed by a friendly doc with a heavy Latino accent wasn’t really much of a prob­lem at all con­sid­er­ing I would get my legs or feet shocked from time-to-time. The shocks weren’t like get­ting shocked when one grabs hold of a live wire. Believe me. Been there done that — ow, ow s**t!!!

Mostly it was the early morn­ing rise that got to me. Even though I some­how man­aged to sleep most of the way back from Hous­ton sit­ting upright in the van, I still feel halfway dead. As such, it is most appro­pri­ate that I pay trib­ute here to a great man whose obit­u­ary I noticed today.

Many may not rec­og­nize the name Vic Mizzy right off, unless you watched the run­ning gag with the tele­vi­sion cred­its which opened the 1960s TV com­edy “Green Acres.”  Mizzy, who died in Los Ange­les Sat­ur­day at 93, wrote the theme for Eddie Albert-Eva Gabor farce. The Gabor char­ac­ter would make some bizarre com­ment about the open­ing cred­its which would fea­ture Mizzy or other crew’s names, some­thing one would hardly if ever see on any other TV show or movie.

But it was prob­a­bly another of Mizzy’s TV songs which is more widely known, how­ever, that being the theme of the “Addams Fam­ily,” com­plete with the song’s fin­ger snaps.

True, Mizzy may not have cured can­cer or polio, or have won a Nobel Prize (no com­ment please). But some of his songs help us remem­ber some of the zani­est TV pro­gram­ming that aired dur­ing a time that cried out for hilar­ity, the 1960s. Those themes remain catchy and appeal­ing today.

Snap, snap. Keep Man­hat­tan just give me that countryside …

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Back from vaca and waiting to see what we shall see

October 19, 2009

 It was nice to have a week off from work and the every­day rou­tine. I man­aged to travel to Ten­nessee, Mis­souri and Arkansas last week although the lat­ter was actu­ally the spot in which I spent time. I flew into Mem­phis and crossed into Mis­souri a week ago Sun­day while my friend searched for a gas sta­tion to her liking.

 Get­ting out of town, away from work, see­ing one of my best friends, fly­ing some­where and look­ing at the world from miles above all  are worth­while pur­suits though not all are always rest­ful. Return­ing to work from vaca­tion  like­wise isn’t all that as well, espe­cially when a hec­tic week stares back at you.

 The work week isn’t so hec­tic. It’s the get­ting up how­ever early tomor­row to catch the shut­tle by 5:30–6 a.m. from the local VA clinic to the Hous­ton VA hos­pi­tal. Yes, I could drive, but I don’t like to deal with morn­ing traf­fic when I don’t have to do so. I am going to the DeBakey hos­pi­tal for an elec­tromyo­gram, a.k.a. an EMG. That is a test that “mea­sures the elec­tri­cal activ­ity of mus­cles at rest and dur­ing con­trac­tion. Nerve con­duc­tion stud­ies mea­sure how well and how fast the nerves can send elec­tri­cal sig­nals,” accord­ing to WebMD. EMGs and nerve con­duc­tion stud­ies are used for test­ing var­i­ous con­di­tions includ­ing carpal tun­nel syn­drome, neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­eases, her­ni­ated discs and neu­ropathies. In my case, it is the latter.

 For the past six months my feet have felt at times as if my toes were grow­ing out of my shoes. Plus, I get numb toes or toes that ache to the light­est of touch or just a throb­bing pain as if some­one was nail­ing my feet to the floor. Hope­fully, the VA peo­ple will find out what is caus­ing this through their stud­ies. I already take Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug that is also used for con­di­tions such as neu­ropathies and fibromyal­gia. I have had mixed suc­cess with the drugs so far.

 To cap off an oth­er­wise hec­tic week, I plan on attend­ing a 35-year high school reunion this week­end. The reunion or reunions, actu­ally, are not one solid event it seems but one get together fol­lowed by another. It’s no offi­cial, orga­nized thing, which quite pos­si­bly will make it more fun than dread.

  So here I am back, not quite ready to take on the evil world of the ultra-ultra-ultra con­ser­v­a­tives or to take the left-left-left wing to task nor am I ready to dive into what the pres­i­dent I voted for is doing. But as I stated above, that doesn’t mean I am just sit­ting on my arse and play­ing that old famil­iar tune.

 I am back and as far as the week ahead and how it goes, we shall see what we shall see.

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