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When automobiles age

 Most certainly do I wish that I had been born mechanically inclined. I envy those folks who shrug their shoulders or even express a little glee when something needs fixing on their automobile.

 I drive a 10-year-old Toyota pickup. While such pickups are very rugged and tend to hold up over time and mileage, they do have problems every once in a while. I don’t know what 10 years is in automobile age, or specifically, small truck years, but I would guess it to be the equivalent of being 50 years old in human years. If that is the case, then I am breaking down physically much faster than my Tacoma. Two spinal surgeries, I would think might be a human equivalent of a couple of Tacoma transmission replacements. I have had the former but, knock on wood, not the latter.

 Today’s problem is seemingly minor, I hope. The hardest thing has been trying to determine just what the hell the part is that has failed. Basically, it is what makes — or in my case doesn’t make — my passenger-side door close. Looking online I have found various terms which might describe it. Oh well, I’ll figure it out in awhile or ask my neighbor, who is a mechanic.

 The latest problem points to the fact that I need a newer, if not new, vehicle. The problem is paying for it. The cash for clunkers program will be no help. I just ran my information through and found that my truck was supposed to get 21 mpg. It might still, I don’t know. But eventually I will have to get a new truck or, God forbid, car. Maybe some auto dealer will see this and want to work out a trade for advertising. Hey, I’m game though I will not hold my breath.

 In the meantime, I will have to determine just what the part is called that needs my immediate attention and get it shipped here post haste. I have a feeling driving around holding my door shut will quickly lose its quirky appeal.

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The Black August of 2009

Black August. Perhaps some day the folks who were once proud to call themselves Republicans will look back on that month — August 2009 — painfully and remember it as the month that that the once Grand Old Party went down in flames.

It all started out so well. Party operatives who helped gin up faux outrage over voting problems in Florida which resulted in Bush v. Gore were really getting little old ladies and Joe Sixpack riled up over the Obama health care plan. The media, lovers of conflict more than life  itself, were eating it up. Local TV reporters would run over their own grandmothers to catch a town hall meeting held by a local congressperson, just hoping for soundbites by those feigning anger, some of whom consumed Medicare while screaming against government-run health care.

Even some polls were saying the American public was, for awhile, not all on board with insurance reform if a public option was to be part of the system.

But as the month waned and late summer drifted into its last few weeks, the Republicans saw their well-oiled machinery come apart at the seams when their opposition was smacked down by the “Big B.” Yes, backlash.

It didn’t take much to turn the public against the anti-reformers. A couple of Democratic congressmen got roughed up at their townhall meetings. Other rallies got out of hand. Some punches were thrown, some signs batted about, a couple of women, children and their pets were hurt.

The backlash grew and grew. The next midterm election saw an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. State assemblies which once were governed by solid GOP majorities fell. The following year saw rancorous state Republican conventions throughout the country. The conflict between the extreme right and moderate wings of the party became so intense, that the party finally splintered.

Today, most Republicans see little hope that their once loved party will ever regain its stature as a national party. Perhaps there would be one GOP today instead of several little parties that are unable to generate voter interest had things been differently way back when. During that dark, black August so long ago.

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Beware the government in their helicopters

 The government is coming in their helicopters to my area and perhaps to an area near you, that is if you live on the Texas coast. But they’re white helicopters and not black ones.

 Our state’s environmental agency says folks will notice white helicopters hovering over pipelines, oil production and other industrial facilities in the vicinity of several coastal metro areas of Texas next week.

 The helicopters will be flying over the Beaumont-Port Arthur, Houston-Galveston-Brazoria and Corpus Christi areas measuring volatile organic compounds and other hydrocarbon particles that are too tiny to be seen by the eyeball, says the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the agency formerly known as the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, TNRCC, or “Train Wreck.”

 VOCs are compounds that can be found in gasoline or other industrial chemicals. They can combine with nitrogen oxide, light winds and sunlight to form ozone which can burn through your head and scramble your brains like cooking an egg on a Texas sidewalk in August. Not really. It’s the ground level ozone — think smog — that they are talking about.

 A special infrared camera on the helicopters can take images of the compounds as well as look through your clothes, so be sure you are wearing (lead-filled) underwear next week if you are out gallavanting on a pipeline somewhere around China — that’s China, Texas. Actually, I just made up the part about the camera looking through one’s clothes. I’m not sure if the infrared cameras can do that.

 This public service message is brought to you by the Texas Gulf Coast Council on Lead Underwear and Ground Level Ozone Pollution Control where our motto is: “We aren’t sure what one has to do with the other, but we are willing to entertain your theories.”

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Don't tweet as I say and don't tweet as I do

The Marine Corps has issued orders for its folks to stay clear of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  CNN reports that the Marines apparently are worried that a slip of a lip might sink a ship which would mean Marines would have to swim from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Never mind that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has his own Twitter feed. He had 4,551 followers as of this afternoon. The latest feed says:

“Obviously we need to find right balance between security and transparency. We are working on that. But am I still going to tweet? You bet.”

RHIP ?(Rank hath its privileges). YBYA (You bet your ass).

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The last word on beer summits with limited puns

Well, thankfully the so-called “Beer Summit” is over and no one got hammered or started slugging it out on the White House lawn.

It being the summer and all I just suppose there isn’t much to talk about except how hot it is and speculating on whether or not the Beer Summit did any good after all the talk about the circumstances leading up to said summit.

Not surprisingly beer companies started raising hell when the White House revealed what everyone would drink. I think Henry Louis Gates Jr. had originally ordered the Jamaican Red Stripe but after the American brewers started their own brouhaha he chose as Samuel Adams. I think since he was one of the guests of honor he should have been given whatever he wanted for Pete’s sake. I mean, this is the White House!

I must admit I would find myself troubled to attend a White House beer summit these days because there are just too many beers to choose from. Although I attended many a beer summit in my younger days — mostly during the Navy and in college — I don’t drink beer much these days. And I suppose it is irony for me to complain about having too many beer choices.

There were times in college but mostly in the Navy when I was perpetually poor that the choice of beer had to do with the price. I am mostly talking about drinking in bars. Thanks to the humanizing policies instituted by our prior Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt, we could buy cans of beer for 35 cents from soft drink machines in the barracks, or BEQ (Bachelor Enlisted Quarters) as they were called.

I didn’t buy a lot of beer from the vending machines. I suppose that it had to do with the selection — probably Schlitz or some such. (As one of my favorite Texas singers, Robert Earl Keen, recalls: “Schlitz beer. I haven’t had that since elementary school.”)

Since I worked most of the time during college I didn’t worry so much about price although most of my college friends did. I do remember that day during my last semester — the one semester I felt like a real college student — my friend Warren and I rejoiced over the switch to Busch being the draft served during happy hour at our real one and only bar in Nacogdoches, the Crossroads.

I digress but these days I just get astonished when I walk by a beer selection in a store or liquor store and see all the choices. Talk about making your eyes glaze over.  You got your Santa’s Butt, Fat Tire, Arrogant Bastard, Drink Till You Puke On Your Shoes, Who Stole My Good Sense? and other great brands. (I made up the last two but the others are real.)

It is kind of amazing to me that some people stick to one brand of beer all of their life. Looking back on the days of my beer summiting I tend to characterize a favorite brand in conjunction with a place or time from that era. I think of Miller ponies at Jim’s Lounge in Gulfport, San Miguel or Olympia in the Philippines, Swan beer in Perth, Western Australia, Coors when you couldn’t get it east of Colorado, Coors Light in El Paso when a bartender told me you couldn’t get lighter than Coors and Busch at the Busch 4th of July shootoffs.

But now it’s decisions, decisions. Oh well, to each his own. Buuuurrrrppppp! In case you didn’t know, that was a burp from going through that long list.