Once again, I wrote something halfway coherent and ended up at a dead-end street.
I hate when I do that.
Too late to do anything about it today.
I ache. I am tired.
Happy weekend.
Of “cold fronts,” lovebugs and sanity
The hint of a declining summer — I hesitate in using the word “fall” for describing early September weather in Southeast Texan — has produced a bit of excitement. It is not the type of excitement that makes one go naked and running down the avenue screaming. Nonetheless, several people I encountered today expressed enthusiasm for the “cool” Canadian air that is forecast for the beginning of a new week. Lows in the 60s and high temperatures in the mid-80s are enough for even the most petulant Southeast Texan to “turn that frown upside down.” Jeez, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to use that term, that hokey, bromidic saying that I also despise.
Being September the hope of generally cooler temps sometime by November isn’t all that fills the air around the southeastern corner of Texas. And I think I can speak for most who live in or are visiting this area when I say that of what I speak is not the least bit a cause for elation. I give you the lovebug or as we like to say around here: “Thuh luuuv-buggg.”
Earlier this afternoon I was waiting in the grocery store aisle to buy some cooking spray. Yes, I use it most of the time to cook something in a pan. No, I need not explain. A lady was examining the various cooking sprays — used to there was only Pam, lovely young thing — and she asked: “Is this the kind you use on your car for lovebugs?” She went on to explain that if you spray it on your car the love bugs will come right off when washing it. I had never heard that, or if I did, I don’t remember it.
Perusing the Internet, where you get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth including half-truths and non-truths, a number of sites attest to the abilities of cooking spray — to spray on a pan before cooking. Yes, it seems from several quick looks online that Pam, or other cooking sprays, can help facilitate lovebug removal when washing your car. Unfortunately, it also can fry you up a mess of baked Plecia nearctica. Had I known this, I would have thrown myself down on the grocery store deck and would have prevented that lady from continuing about her business until she promised to only apply Pam for its intended uses.
Or not.
The late John A. Jackman, a professor and entemologist at Texas A & M University, said perhaps the sanest way to deal with the amorous insects was, well, to deal with them:
“There is no easy solution to lovebug problems. It may be necessary to learn to cope with lovebugs with a variety of methods for a few weeks each year.”
Sane is as sane does, especially when it is your own sanity.
Someone stole my radio antenna perhaps to smoke drugs but the issue isn’t black and white
My truck radio antenna was stolen about a week ago. I was riding along, expecting to hear some noise on the radio and sure enough, noise is all I heard. A static-like hissing noise. I happened to look out the windshield and said: “Holy s**t, my antenna’s gone.”
Looking at where my antenna once stood I noticed that the base of the structure was gone. I looked closer and could see the little grooves where it appears the mast could be screwed in, or perhaps in this case, out.
I originally thought: “WTF?” I have an 11-year-old Toyota Tacoma. It’s not in the best of shape. Toyotas — This is the fifth Toyota I’ve owned over the past 37 years — have a habit of its engines outliving by years its interiors. The plastic on my steering wheel is all sun-rippled and has a crack I am patching with duct tape until I buy a cover for the wheel. I’m waiting for it to get cooler before I tackle a couple of maintenance issues. I don’t drive the truck very far these days as I have a car furnished for my part-time job. Money and heat are the two things holding me back with my vehicle issues. Like Pa Kettle used to say: “Yeah, I’m gonna fix that one of these days.”
The point is, what kind of low-life would steal a car antenna off a weathered automobile produced during the last century with more than 160,000 miles? Well, one answer that was suggested to me was meth heads.
I pulled up in the complex parking lot Monday and saw a black gentleman cooking on a little barbecue pit behind his behemoth pickup truck. We are not supposed to cook on outside grills, I suppose George Foreman’s grills inside are okay, where I live along with hundreds of other rules. And yes, it does matter in this case the race of the fellow who was surreptitiously barbecuing.
We exchanged greetings as I took another look at where my antenna once stood so proudly on the front fender of my sunfire red pearl Tacoma and exclaimed to no one in particular: “I don’t understand why someone would steal my damn antenna.”
The covert cook asked a couple of questions and then proclaimed: “Meth heads.”
He didn’t know so much about down here in Southeast Texas but back in Missouri, the secret chef said, “People steal car antennas to smoke meth or that stuff you can buy in the convenience stores.” I couldn’t imagine how exactly someone would use a car antenna to smoke drugs. I do remember in the 70s how, let’s just say people I knew, would find all kinds of inventive ways to smoke pot. A pipe from a beer can, for example. Or perhaps using a tennis ball can for a bong. Then there was Old Faithful — so I am told now! — using aluminum foil to fashion a pipe. But a car antenna to smoke meth? Well, I knew people who free-based cocaine and smoked various drugs from a pipe. This was years ago and if they could afford some of these drugs, cocaine for instance, they usually could afford a pipe.
People nowadays have all kinds of different ways of smoking different drugs. Some of these substances seem to warrant quite a bit of caution compared to the days of old, sitting around listening to Led Zepplin while puffing a peace pipe. Take this forum on “fent for example,” which actually exhorts its meth-addled readers to find an “old school” car radio antenna and “snatch that mother****** right off … ” Scumbag! Fent, short for Fentanyl, is a powerful pain killer supposedly “100 times stronger than morphine.”
I have no idea what, if anything, the person who stole my antenna was smoking. I was at the front desk here last week when our manager told a young guy he had to leave because he’d been seen smoking bath salts. “I didn’t know it was illegal,” was the guy’s answer. Yeah, well I kind of doubt he doubted it was against the law too.
Back to the black man who told me about what stolen antennas were used for, he had indicated that is what folks back in Missouri did with the antennas they stole. Here in Beaumont, Texas, he wasn’t for sure.
“Especially the black folks down here,” he said, twirling his index finger around next to his temple to indicate the well-known sign for the crazies. “Those people are strange.”
I found that a very odd statement although many of the rednecks who comment on the local newspaper’s Web site would agree. They would agree that all blacks are strange. And worse. Right now, we are on the verge of some serious racial problems in Beaumont. It’s a long story. Much of it has to do with the city having become majority black due to white flight to the suburbs. The most recent ignition point has been the local school superintendent, a black man who just recently retired who was the highest paid such school official in Texas. Instances of financial mismanagement was uncovered and the former superintendent and some of his supporters have been very arrogant, almost as if they were untouchable especially when the district’s electrician was given a lenient plea-bargain after his first trial for bilking the district out of more than $4 million ended in a hung jury.
The angriest whites spew their hate in the comment section of the local paper’s stories and a blog that seems to delight stirring the pot in true Hearst — the paper’s owners — fashion.
So I don’t believe I was just whistlin’ Dixie when I told the black covert cook that, if indeed some of the black folks down in these parts seem a little crazy, he must have not seen many of the white folks.
In the meantime, looks like I am going to fashion a clothes hanger into an antenna if I want to hear my truck radio again. I hope no one, black or white, steals it.
Labor Day’s gone: Let the games begin
The presidential elections are supposed to run in earnest after Labor Day or after the conventions, whichever comes first. They run nonstop 24/7/365/ad infinitum. Maybe the Birthers have it right, in one part of their lunacy, presidential candidates seem to run for office once they are out of the womb. Sorry, that’s just my hyperbole. But some people do seem like they are running for public office at least during high school.
Most polls have the two candidates for president neck and neck. It seems rather odd that, for all the media gush Congressman Ryan got during the Republican condition, the GOP candidates received very little bounce in the polls. It remains to be seen if Obama-ClintonBiden will. Wow, that would at least bring a little excitement to the Dem side of the race, not that I think it would be a good idea. And I mean Hillary although Bill as Obama’s No. 2 would blow some minds. Such a notion has been discussed many times before concerning other candidates including Al Gore. It may or may not be constitutional but would certainly be open to much litigation and if it wound up in the Supreme Court with today’s justices — speaking of Gore — one could only guess what might happen.
Thinking back at least to the 2004 election, I can remember discussing with colleagues while eating newsroom election night pizza or perhaps afterwards how skewed could the polls be these days with the proliferation of cell phones. A study in 2010 showed more than one-quarter of Americans use cell phones as their only telephone. That was up from about 13.5 percent three years before. Let’s just speculate for a moment that the given rate would grow at the same extent over the same time period, then nearly a third of Americans might choose cell not landline for their main phone. That is just speculating though and you know what they say about speculating. No, in fact I don’t know what “they” say about speculating and furthermore I have no idea who “they” are. Know what I mean, Vern?
I am just saying that I don’t know how the statisticians compensate for the cell phone factor. I am sure they have some formula they pop in there. People who work with stats all the time are wont to do that. You ought to try it some time. I am talking about working with numbers folks. You could easily lose your freaking mind in very short order. Trust me. I am not a statistician. Nor am I an economist. And I play neither on TV.
The question has to surface though. Just how accurate are “all or nothing” polls about presidential races these days? Most of the polls in 2008 were fairly close with the exception of a couple such as Gallup and Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby. Pollsters can call cell phones but there are various factors that make such a prospect challenging. For instance, the pollster has to consider that the respondents can be charged for air time.
The brains will figure it all out. After all, pollsters have such a sterling record on being right, especially when it comes to presidential elections.
Black president=black helicopters?– Paul Ryan. Faster than Al Gore. Slower than J. Edwards and Sarah Palin.
Yes, the Democratic National Convention is this week and I probably will watch some of the speeches. Specifically, I intend to listen to President Obama accept his nomination. What we expect is that he will lay out his socialist agenda since there aren’t any rich Democrats to object. He also will speak of how he plans to help out certain aircraft producers such as Sikorsky — it’s got a Ukrainian name of course and its founder was born in the Russian Empire, where else? — the producer of the Black Hawk. While the Black Hawk has long been the modern military’s work horse helo it also has long been used in clandestine missions for agencies such as Customs and Border Protection and the DEA. The black choppers from a black president, of course, will pave the way for the great takeover of the United States by the United Nations. After a second term begins for our first Kenyan-Kansan president Obama will send for the different nations to start patrolling the streets to finally make that “New World Order” — most recently associated with former President George H.W. Bush — come true. This will be reminiscent of the days under President Sonofabush when airmen from 13 different NATO nations flew patrols above the United States after 9/11. Among those nations were those sneaky Canadians and our former foe from two world wars, the Jerrys, who were scouting out the best places for a Führerbunker during their AWACS flights over Lubbock County, Texas.
Ah yes, Obama, that Kenyan-Hawaiian-Indonesian-Hawaiian — Wherevermerican– is a clever one!
But let’s get back to reality a minute. Last week U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president, made news for his super-duper marathon time. He said it was “Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.” Not so fast Mr. Veep Nominee. “El mentiroso es capturado antes que el lisiado,” or something like the Spanish proverb,”The liar is sooner caught than the cripple.” Es decir, if Ryan ever finds himself cripple he’ll be in S**t City.
What is really sad about Ryan’s little white boast, bald-face lie is that he actually had a slower marathon time than former Democratic VP candidate John Edwards, but was also bested two seconds by SARAH PALIN! OMG!!!!