Ah, I am running late today. I zipped in from work, enjoying a few minutes to relax and listen to the noise news on TV. I shouldn’t say that. It’s just some of the news I see on television is, unfortunately, noise especially when it comes to local news. I don’t want to get in it right now. That’s because I am hungry and have to cook something up quickly since this is one of the few nights I care to watch television. New shows on NCIS, NCIS LA and Sons of Anarchy. See military cops, cops and intelligence types and a biker soap opera. I watch well-balanced TV do I not? Tomorrow night, full-contact debate, feats of strength and street rules two-on-two hoops between the Mormon King and the Black Irish O’Bama. Wouldn’t that be fun?
A few words before I eat
Off to a brutal week, but surprised when I looked online at my personnel file. I was promoted. No one said a word. It’s just you look up in your damned online file and woo hoo!
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I am trying to write a review of a CD in which I “invested.” It’s not that I will get any money from it, but I got the CD pre-release and it is a good one.
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Romney vs. Obama. Or Obama vs. Romney. Don’t either one of you go putting anything up in “lock boxes.” I remember camping in the Angelina National Forest, 12 years ago, listening to Gore vs. Bush on the radio during their last debate. Maybe the older folks got something from listening to debates on the radio, but I didn’t. However, it was just one week after quitting smoking and I was having no problem. Now, almost 12 years later, I am still tobacco free I am happy to say. Sometimes I miss smoking. Sometimes I even dream of it. But the pleasure I get from being smoke and tobacco free far, far, far, outweighs the minute pleasure I received from smoking, chewing or dipping.
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The Texans knocked the Titans in the dirt yesterday, which, I suppose, is somewhere below the artificial grass and concrete below Reliant Stadium. Of course, I’m happy. The Texans are still the only undefeated AFC team. And they beat the team that was stolen from Houston by that snake of a man called “Bud.”
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I am getting hungry, so I need to go.
Real college legends and other tales to see the week out
Hello out there! Tommy can you hear me? That’s from The Who’s ground-breaking rock opera, “Tommy.” You, know, ” … the deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.” That came out when I was in high school, or my between junior high and high school. Sometime back when I was a “yewt.” What’s a “yewt,” you might ask? That is, if you are the late actor Fred Gwynne. Sorry you have to watch “My Cousin VInny” if you don’t know.
The song Tommy reminds me of a guy I knew in college named Tommy who purported to be a deaf guy. The problem was, according to my friends who knew him better than I did, he really wasn’t deaf. He was one of those living college legends I guess every institution has. I knew several of those legends.
One such guy had parents who were paying his way to college and who bought a condo in which he resided. This guy didn’t work. He also didn’t go to class — for several years. We remained friends until he broke into the mobile home I lived in — climbed through the living room window while I slept — and stole my crappy TV and radio. I called the cops later that morning when I was at work and while I spoke to the cops, it came to me, SOB (we’ll use that as his name). It just popped in my head SOB was the type of person who would do that as a joke. It wasn’t that funny to me. It wasn’t because the TV or radio were of any great value. The problem as I saw it was that I used to sleep with a loaded .410 shotgun in the bedroom. I might have shot the SOB. I came up with what turned out to be a kind of cruel joke on him.
I called SOB and got his brother on the phone. I asked bro if SOB had stolen my stuff. He said “yeah.” I told him to tell SOB to meet me after work. I met the psycho, who gave me back my stuff. I told him I spoke with the police, who told me I should tell my friend to get some psychological help, that whoever did something like that had real emotional problems. I made the SOB cry. College kid. I know, that was mean.
This week I ended up working about 30 hours. I got home at 8 p.m. last night and 4:30 this afternoon. Only 30 hours and it seems like I work full-time. That is neither here nor somewhere else. Time for a sandwich.
A one-day to and from riding the ‘dog’
Top o’ the morning to you! That’s right, morning. Well, speaking of blowing it, I blew it in that I wrote my post on the bus from Beaumont to Houston this morning and forgot to publish it. My memory is shot. Speaking of shot, I am passing by Minute Maid Park in Houston as I write this. Shot being the word because the Houston Astros are about to play its last game as a National League team. Let’s hope the Lastros get a little better next year in its debut season as an American League product, like losses only in the double digits.
Incredible how I made it to this bus. I finished my appointment at the VA in time to take a jam-packed bus to a stop near the Houston Metro Rail line. Then I rode to the Downtown Transit Center, just a couple of blocks from Greyhound. My ticket was for a 6:05 p.m. bus that supposedly gets back to “Beaumont-Vidor” around 8 o’clock. More on Vidor in a moment. But I made it just as the gate locked on the 4 o’clock bus that allegedly arrives at 5:30 p.m. That’s not going to happen with all the stop-n-go with the bus heading toward I-10 at the beginning of rush hour. Hopefully, I will be back a bit earlier than I had planned.
My truck is parked in Rose City. That is a freeway truck stop spot on I-10 just across the Orange County line headed toward Louisiana. That is where the Beaumont Greyhound station is now located, having moved several months ago from its long-time stretch downtown on Magnolia Street. It is considered by Greyhound as the “Beaumont-Vidor” bus station now although its closer to downtown Beaumont than Vidor. I guess downtown “revitalization” is like the weather. People do a lot of talking about it but do nothing. The bus station is but one piece of downtown moved out into the nether lands. First Baptist Church, which takes up a whole city block between Calder and Broadway avenues, is being moved out to the West End. It makes me wonder if the great work the church does for our less fortunate brothers and sisters will be continued once it moves out into the land of milk and honey. I hope so, one never knows when one is going to need that help one day.
Traveling by bus isn’t quite the adventure it was during the days of my youth. I guess that’s a good thing, for me. Why the bus even has electrical outlets and WiFi. And the WiFi works.
Bus stations are certainly fewer and farther in between nowadays. Why I can remember in the old days — time to roll your eyes boys and girls — when every little mud hole and town that was big enough for a city limit sign had a bus station. Of course, there were more bus companies than just Greyhound back then as well. Let’s consider my trip today to the VA hospital in Houston.
The bus route from Beaumont to Houston — a straight shot west on Interstate 10 — now travels to Port Arthur on U.S. 69/96/287 where it stops at some Latino bodega on Gulfway Drive a.k.a. State Highway 87. The bus then picks up Texas 73 to Winnie, which is not named after Winnie the Pooh, or at least I don’t believe that is the case. The route jumps back on I-10 and makes another stop at a convenience store on the north side of the interstate in Baytown before heading downtown to the Houston bus station.
On the bus I’m now riding it is “an express” to Rose City as this puppy’s major destination is New Orleans and, perhaps even Miami, or Cuba.
We just now passed a traffic SNAFU that held us up for awhile. It looks as if three Army trucks were somehow involved. It looked more like a breakdown than an accident. One certainly hopes so. It is already 5:30 and we are at least 30 or so miles from Beaumont. If I make it back by the time I intended to depart Houston I will feel lucky indeed. I really better quit while I’m ahead now. Or as one of my old hippie friends used to say: “Better quit while I’m a head.”
The refs really blew it. Not the real refs though.
It seems as if I was the only person in the country who didn’t see the controversial last play of the Monday Night Football. But that’s okay because fallout was in no short supply from the Seattle Seahawks win over Green Bay that maybe shouldn’t have been.
Here is a fairly simple explanation of what happened from an Associated Press piece published by The Washington Post. Except it really was not all that elementary my dear Watson, especially when explained by the likes of Sports Illustrated’s Peter King. Oh, and just to be perfectly perspicuous, that is NOT Peter King the Republican congressman from New York whom Reuter’s magnificent media writer Jack Shafer once referred to as “an exploding carbuncle masquerading as a member of Congress.”
If you somehow managed to miss the root of this controversy — so all-encompassing that even the President “tweeted” about it — it stems from a labor-management issue as us left-leaning, Red fellow travelers like to call it. Those of the evil rich NFL Owner Class locked out the regular referees and apparently replaced them with just about anyone who has worn a zebra-striped shirt. That is not so far from the mark if the statement by Mitch Mortaza is true. He is the founder and president of the Lingerie Football League. Yes, there is a LFL although I’ve yet to see a game and will probably need a condition of hyper insomnia before I ever watch such a spectacle. Nonetheless, Mortaza says some of the current NFL substitute referees had worked for the lingerie league but were allegedly let go because they didn’t make the cut. I have to wonder if the refs in that league also wear lingerie? I really don’t want to know the answer though.
Blown calls happen all the time in the NFL and even the most seasoned “Zebras” are not immune from making one. The fact is, however, that these are substitute refs, “scabs” in the language of the older hard-line union members, whose train wreck of a call may have brought this whole debacle to a head. Oh, and speaking of millions, it was reported today that some $300 million in bets on the game changed hands. I don’t really want to repeat myself, but do you know what I could do with $300-freaking-million? People are pissing away $300 million that hinged on one incompetent call while who know how many others, myself among them, live week-to-week. What a world, huh Bubba?
Such are the type of calamities that make the conspiracy nuts who already think professional or even college games are fixed wonder if the “fix” was really in on this Monday night madness. So many amazing games with stunning turnarounds have been showcased on Monday night games that it is a target-rich environment for the conspiratorially-inclined.
And so, to paraphrase the immortal words of the ever-amazing Vice President Joe Biden, this was “a big f***ing deal.” It was answered by the NFL by a confusing statement that basically said: “Yeah, the call sucked but so what?” So there we have it. Another football game. Another blown call.