Author: Dick

I wanted to clarify something about what I posted previously on there being no guarantee I would post your comments. The primary reason was because I think it is sleazy for someone to write into your blog, says it looks cool and then say: “check out my commercial Web site for mortgage loans!, etc.”

Also, I have no problem with instant comments from my friends or other thoughtful people after reading something I write. That said, I have become very disturbed these days with the knee-jerk commentary that the Internet has spawn. You see it most markedly in places such as on the Yahoo news pages. The comments are a steady stream of barely literate individuals who react more because of what propaganda they have been fed from one side of the political spectrum or the other than of any intellectual analysis of an argument.

As much as I think people who write letters to the editors of newspapers are sometimes assholes, (hey I’ve written letters too, so I guess that makes me one) I feel it gives a little time and distance in order to properly frame and reason a response to an opinion. I’m sorry, I just don’t think “you suck” makes a very compelling argument. Hey, I’m guilty as the rest. But someone has to make a stand.

It has been a full week since I have introduced a comment blog and I have yet to have anyone e-mail me their comments. I suppose it is much easier to post an anonymous comment like in the past. The thing is, the ones who left comments were mainly the regulars and mainly my friends. Anyone who leaves a comment via my e-mail address above the saline soldier may request anonymity and I don’t see any reason why not to honor that request. I am not going to guarantee your comment will get on the page. That is just the way it is. You ought to check out the comment page anyway because someone posted some strange photos. — Thomas Jefferson

Texas legislators adjourned their second special session today sine die. That’s Europekingnese for “drop dead.”

How many millions did the legislature spend on these two special sessions? $4 million? More? Certainly not less. Gov. Rick “Pompadour” Perry called the Lege back twice after the 2005 regular session and they responded by passing no laws related to the main reasons for those sessions. That would be bills to change the ways public schools are financed along with a tax bill (raising taxes or lowering taxes — it’s all in the eye of the beholder).

But by jiminy they did manage to pass a telecommunications bill favorable to SBC Communications and other companies such as Verizon during this special session. And why shouldn’t the Lege pass such a bill? Good ol’ Andrew Wheat and the others at the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, based in Austin, gives this analysis of the telecommunication lobby’s bountiful givings to Texas lawmakers:

“Lobby records filed by the end of this year’s regular session tag SBC as Austin’s leading lobby force by far. Its army of 123 lobbyists—who reported up to $6.8 million in SBC fees—gave this giant well over twice the lobby clout of runner-up TXU (TXU paid 47 lobbyists $2.7 million.) Verizon, the next-largest beneficiary of the new telecommunications bill, paid 38 lobbyists another $1.8 million. As such, SBC and Verizon lobbyists outnumbered the 150-member Texas House.”

And what will we get in return for it? Well, SBC and the proponents of the telecom bill promise us the moon, stars, the outer rings of Saturn, and may throw in a new toaster oven. But what we really will get, I predict, is what is known in Costa Rica as “squat.”

The bill, which Gov. Hairball has yet to sign, paves the way for phone companies to compete with traditional cable TV companies. The worst of both worlds. SBC and Verizon are planning to spend a gazillion dollars for technology known as IPTV or Internet Protocol Television. It is billed as the next generation of technology that can provide video and Internet service to consumers through upgraded fiber optic telephone lines. A recent “USA Today” article about SBC’s quest for an IPTV kingdom explains a few bugs have to be worked out:

“IPTV works fine in the lab, where conditions are pristine. But throw IPTV into a live, working network with millions of paying customers, and all bets are off. Indeed, nobody knows how IPTV will behave once it is “scaled,” or rolled out, to millions of paying customers. One of the largest IPTV installations in the world is in China, and that one has only about 500,000 customers.”Scaling is clearly an issue,” says Jeff Weber, an SBC vice president in charge of IPTV. “And anybody who tells you otherwise isn’t just dumb — they’re lying.”

Hey, it’s only money.

It may be just as well that the Texas Lege did not pass any kind of tax reform because what had been proposed didn’t look like it was the kind of reform that benefits me. And after all, when you are talking about tax reform, who is more important than No. 1, eh?

I just wish the legislature hadn’t spent so damned much of the taxpayer’s money to do nothing. Of course, I’m sure SBC doesn’t see it that way.

The heat index outside is only 99 degrees so I don’t feel too stupid about what I am about to do. I am going to make chili. Yeah, you heard me, the state dish of Texas.

I don’t know what it is. I just had a busy day and had to buy something for dinner so I decided to buy the makings for a bowl of chili. Of course, it shall not cook for as long as I would like. No worry, I bet I still eat it.

Chili was the first food that I ever cooked that was better than my momma’s. It pains me to say that and I sure as hell never told my mother when she was alive that I made chili better than her. I made my first pot years ago when I worked as a firefighter. It was a freezing-ass January day, sleeting some as I recall. And we got called out on a house fire that afternoon just as I had begun cooking it. The house, a shotgun shack and thankfully not the one I was living in at the time, was a goner when we pulled up. When I got back to the station, I fired up the stove again and let the pot o’ chili cook some more. It was mighty fine.

I thought my chili was pretty good then and still do. My friends and I used to try to best each other on chili which led to an annual series of parties during my college years and just afterwards. These were weekend-long affairs with multiple kegs of beer. It was a wonder any chili was cooked at all and that we didn’t either set anything on fire or shoot someone. Let me just say a couch that I was getting rid of once and ended up on the bonfire one night of the chili cookoff proved not to be a very secure object to hide behind. That is because it was shot, really shot, to hell by all manner of gunfire. Drunk college kids with guns and chili. Nowhere but Texas.

This will be a more peaceful occasion making this bowl of red, or so I hope. Yeah, it’s crazy making it in this weather. But it will be most righteous, for sure.

Simplicity can surely not be overrated. Whether that is what rapper P. Diddy is thinking, who knows? E!Online News reports the notorious rapper Sean Combs, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, a.k.a. P. Diddy, has decided to shorten his name to just “Diddy.”

“I felt like the ‘P’ was getting between me and my fans and now we’re closer,” Diddy told E!Online. “During concerts, half the crowd is saying ‘P. Diddy’–half the crowd is chanting ‘Diddy’–now everybody can just chant ‘Diddy.’ ”

Ah so, it was an identity crisis! Of course, there always is the possibility that he really didn’t like being called “P.” I can’t say as I blame him.

I can empathize with the fact people don’t know how to address him. I felt the same way about the late rapper Old Dirty Bastard. I always felt fortunate that I never had to interview him because I didn’t know whether I should address him as “Mr. Bastard,” “Mr. Dirty Bastard,” “Mr. Old Dirty Bastard,” “Old,” “Dirty,” “Bastard,” or “ODB.”

The artist formerly known as Sean Combs has apparently decided that he is sufficiently famous (and pretentious) that he can be known by one name and one name only, such as Prince or Madonna or Cher or Liberace or Lucifer. I congratulate Diddy on his new name. I bet it saves like a nanosecond of time to write your name on an envelope.

Could it be in the offing that he might eventually shorten his moniker even more, say to “Did,” or even “dy?” Stay tuned. And breathe.