Author: Dick

World-famous chicken hawks: (l to r)Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Bill O’Reilly.

Being bored, really, really bored, a few nights ago, I switched the channel to Bill O’Reilly’s TV show. I can take him for maybe five minutes at the most. On this particular show he was browbeating his guest, an Iraq War veteran who spent nine years in the military. This guy belonged to some organization that is trying to get military recruiters off school campuses or something of the like.

Perhaps it is the Navy veteran in me that makes me think that kids should have access to recruiters in order to make their own decisions about their lives, or deaths in some instances. The armed forces isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But it can be beneficial for those who join and want to make it a rewarding experience. Unfortunately, those who do sign up may have to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or whomever we are fighting this week and face the possibility they might come home in a box.

Also being a veteran, I feel people have every right to protest whatever they like. And if someone protests the war in Iraq, which I also think was a gigantic mistake, they have every right. I would say that especially someone who had served in that war has more than earned their right to protest.

So it was infuriating to hear O’Reilly who is really good at bullying and not letting anyone whose view is different get across their point. Perhaps I should not feel this way, but it is very irksome to hear those partisans who are the biggest cheerleaders for our involvement in Iraq and never served a day in uniform say how much they support the troops yet dismisses those veterans who protest the war as pond scum. Chicken hawk-ism is the epitome of condescension. It is reminiscent of “Ol’ Massa” looking out for his chattel.

Make no mistake about it, I do not think that everyone who supports the war and have not served in the military is a chicken hawk just as I feel everyone has the right to disagree and protest those matters that so drive them. But I do feel that those who have served their country have earned a little respect and not a little “pat on the head and away now.”

Okay. That’s my rant for the week.

To indicate the kind of week I had, here is the fortune from a fortune cookie today at Gen. Wok’s:

“We aim to please. You aim too please.”

If you live in places such as Southeast Texas during months called “summer,” then you should get down on your knees and thank Willis Carrier.

Everyone hears names of companies such as Ford, Sears, Carrier, Citibank and may or may not know that these corporations were named after real people. James Citibank, for instance, was the son of a Cherokee chieftain named Chief Citibank. People say he got the best interest rates on his loans of anyone they had ever known.

Be that as it may, Willis Carrier is a.k.a. “The Father of Cool,” as he invented the first modern day air conditioner. This was one of those inventions that just didn’t come from nowhere and end up in your living room, such as the Frisbee or the Pet Rock. But Carrier is why we now sweat our arses off when we step outside into the August heat in places such as Texas.

Air conditioning does sort of make it difficult for many to sustain hot temperatures. Those who grew up without air conditioning, as I did, know A/C is both blessing and curse. But on days like today when a little rain comes along and then the 90-degree heat and sunshine knocks the wind out of you, then you truly can give thanks to Willis Carrier.

I think we should have a holiday for him, don’t you think? Perhaps it should be in August and everyone should do things indoors, such as drink a lot of that cold, green beverage with the Mexican name (I am in the public library again and the name of this drink is censored) on the rocks, no salt.

Absent-mindedness can be most disconcerting when one finds himself or herself in the early portions of being middle aged. Thoughts of a dementia onset immediately surface and all of a sudden a person finds one more facet of life over which to wring their hands.

Yesterday I experienced one of those incidents where my head had less clarity for what the situation warranted. And the result had me concerned with just where I had left said head.

Inside a Wal-Mart, I walked into the men’s room while thinking about the tasks which were ahead of me once I was finished in the john. The fact that the room had no urinals seemed odd to me but other than that, I thought little of it.

Just after I shut the door of a stall, I heard the voice of one woman and then a second.

In a split second I thought that the first female voice was perhaps that of a janitor but I was certainly nonplussed by the second voice. Within the span of another second, it hit me. Yes, I was in the ladies’ room.

“Oh Lord, I’m in the wrong place,” I cried out, half terrified with the other half chuckling as I vacated the “powder room.”

Luckily this was amusing to the women, one of whom loudly proclaimed: “I won’t tell,” as I exited.

After finishing my bodily chore in the adjacent room, I could still hear those women cackling like hens. I’m glad they got a laugh at my expense.

It was funny though.

Well, here it is August on the upper Texas coast and still no hurricanes have struck (thankfully). As is the case along the middle Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina, some people here haven’t fully recovered from Hurricane Rita which blew in almost two years ago. Drive around the area and you will still see FEMA trailers, although not as many nowadays. One might even see the blue tarps covering roofs that seemed to be everywhere after Rita.

Just today the Colorado State University hurricane prediction team including noted meteorologist Dr. William Gray, revised their forecast downward a bit.

Certainly I don’t want to go through another hurricane after Rita and I know most folks probably feel that way. But it would be just too freakish if no storms appear this season after last year’s deadly quiet hurricane period. A lack of hurricanes would surely upset the balance of nature somehow. But who knows with this global warming, which some people doggedly deny just as those who insisted the world is flat.

We’ll see what happens — from a safe distance I hope.