The whole “fiscal cliff” bullshit just about makes me too disgusted to write anything. So, I will share some articles with you, my friends. Weed ’em and reap!
This talks about political blame! Whoo-hoo!
What falling off the fiscal cliff means. It means we are f**ked!
Undermining our national unity even. The government will get your puppies!
I am just lying about your puppies. But you might have to choose between the expensive dog food for your puppy or potted meat and bread for you.
There is an old saying down here in Texas. Some say it is a “tired” and “worn out” saying. Nonetheless it goes like this:
“If you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait five minutes and it will change.” I don’t know who first said that or of where the person spoke. It doesn’t really matter. What no one has said, or at least to me, today, is “Just because a saying is trite doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” Well, hell!
Christmas Day 2012 in Texas sure offered up a heapin’ helpin’ of some radically differing weather. Where I live, the rain came down pretty bountifully and I could hear the thunder as well as I could see the trees a’ whipping to and fro. Apparently some parts of the “Golden Triangle” where I live got really pounded. For instance, this store in a strip shopping center in Vidor, about 8 miles east of Beaumont:
This is the result of so-called “straight-line winds.” That is not a tornado but it can hit with the force of a hurricane gust and do just about as much damage.
I took a trip to the Jack Brooks Federal Building in Beaumont to check my mail and stuff. Lo and behold, the building had been without power since around noon on Christmas Day.
But even with the damage from wind, there was more crazy weather in store for rest of Texas like this dust storm causing I-27 north of Lubbock to be shut down for awhile. Next thing you know we’ll be like the Okies of old, throwing every belonging on a flatbed pickup truck and heading to Californie!
The there were those “lucky” North Texas folks around Denton and the D-FW Metroplex who were snowed upon with that magical “White Christmas Snow” which freezes everything in time and is immediately followed by none other than Bing Crosby crooning: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the one I used to know. Come on sing-along-Bing, you knew White Christmas snows? Personally? I’ve never experienced one of those magical White Christmas Snows but I would bet you dollars to a white-frosted doughnut that the snow is just like the rest of the snows. Sometimes it gets-a-deep, sometimes it gets-a-dusting.
I don’t know if that is the complete Texas weather picture on Christmas Day 2012. I suppose out in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert some freezing cow pies may have rained down. Or perhaps even the proverbial cats and dogs fell down with the animals no doubt colder ‘n hell and most assuredly pissed off having to make an entrance in such an abrupt manner.
That’s Texas for you. Old Santy and his reindeer really have to keep on their toes in the Lone Star State. If the weather won’t get you, the guns will.
Christmas Eve and today, Christmas, were both days off for me. I will probably have to work more hours than scheduled in the remaining days of this week but it is just as well. I’m sure I can use them.
Whatever meaning Christmas has for you, religious, secular, time off, time with your family, it is a day to wish others the best. So that is what I am doing on this day.
Best wishes. Merry Christmas. Oh and it’s back to work tomorrow.
It’s not the end of the world, at least not yet, and President Obama has given me Monday off in addition to Tuesday. So that is, at least, some good news.
I wrote a little here on this blog until the battery on my MiFi went dead. Then I spent the next hour and a half talking to Verizon techs who will gladly send me a battery with a 90-day warranty for $10 or a new battery for $40. Well, I finally figured out I could get four batteries in a year for that one new battery. Of course, it will likely cause lost hours to get it, just as it did today.
Upon finally figuring out how to set up a wireless network with my iPhone, I am back on the old Internets. However, about half of my post had vanished. I had written today about the irresponsibility of the GOP Congress in pushing us over the “fiscal cliff” and how the Texas lawmakers and Gov. Good Hair must be ecstatic about the NRA’s big announcement today. By golly, ol’ Wayne LaPierre LePew of the NRA wants more guns in the schools. I think back in the good ol’ days of the Cold War they called that MAD, that stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out. Oh Pierre LaPew also thinks we need to get rid of violent TV, movies and music.That’s the kind of macho folks we got running out state into the ground. As for LaPierre, that’s about the stupidest thing that I ever heard and certainly the most tactless flow of words I’ve heard from a lobbyist, what with those little kids getting buried every day this week up in Connecticut. Sir, have you no shame? I guess not.
Once again, I am not against guns. I just have a super dislike for stupidity. Meanwhile, the world is still as it is: Full of beauty and hope and a good number of stupid people in high places.
It’s been a chilly one today, especially with that north wind gusting. Before I left for work this morning my lights went out. After I got to work I saw on the Entergy Texas Web site that about 1,000 customers in my vicinity were out of power. I guess I have to remind people who don’t know me that I live on the Upper Texas Coast. This isn’t New England or Cut Bank, Mont. The temp was about 45 when I left for work with the wind blowing for a pretty good chill.
But the cold itself isn’t the worst of this ordeal. I got the ol’ achy-breaky joint syndrome. I suffer from arthritis, all over, and it seems to pour out of every one of my joints. Some folks don’t believe that the weather affects your body. Well, actually, it does.
Maybe if I just bundled up and went out and faced down the demon it wouldn’t be so bad. I’m not a cold-weather guy, but living in the city for so long I forget just how refreshing it can be out in the countryside at night. Looking up at those endless stars while watching your breath float away for a few seconds before it finally escapes is not magic but it seems so if you clear your mind of all those worthwhile scientific notions you didn’t come out in to the woods to enjoy.
It used to seem like magic, listening to the pines rustle like you were alone with the world, even though you might’ve got your best girlfriend to come along. Just remembering those endless East Texas pine forests make me want to hum that old Cole Porter tune, later recorded and made a hit by my favorite cowboy, Roy Rogers …
“Oh give me land, give me land under starry skies above/Don’t fence me in/Let me ride through the wide open country that I love/Don’t fence me in …
“I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences/And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses/And I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences/Don’t fence me in.”
Picture it out there: Just you, or you and your gal, or you and your gal and your horse, or you and your horse, or just your gal and your horse … Wait a minute now. Don’t fence me in.
