Author: Dick

So much angst I have. On the one hand I really have no desire to see the new “Dukes of Hazzard” movie. But on the other hand if it is a monstrous stinker then it just might be worth the price of a movie ticket. You know, it’s kind of like rubber-necking at a car wreck. You don’t want to do it. You just got to do it.

Our local daily The Beaumont Enterprise , has an online poll asking who is the better Daisy Duke, Catherine Bach or Jessica Simpson? It is showing this weird image that morphs back-and-forth between the old Daisy and the new. It’s really kind of creepy. So far the vote is 73-27 for the original article, Catherine Bach. I wholeheartedly agree.

Hey, it may be a stupid show but that doesn’t detract from Catherine Bach looking, as Billy Crystal’s Fernando would say, “mahvelous.”

It is a bit disconcerting to be traveling down a one way street only to find another automobile headed right at you. That happened to me this afternoon on the way back from the grocery store.

There I was, minding my own business, driving down the two-lane street and HELLO! here comes a green SUV driven by a fellow who has decided to rewrite his own traffic rules. Those rules say travel the way the sign tells you to jerk face. But oh no, I am so important that I can go whichever damn way I desire.

Actually, the guy wasn’t going very fast and he got off the road without incident. My guess is that he was lost. I have been in that same situation before and it is just as upsetting knowing you are going the wrong way. It may even be a little more unnerving because you realize that you screwed up and I don’t think a lot of people like to admit they have screwed up. I can’t say for certain that absolutely no one likes to acknowledge they’ve done something stupid because you see so many people doing dumb acts of which they are sometimes proud.

I was kind of nonchalant at one time about crossing one way streets. The building in Waco where I used to work was located on a four-lane, one way street. I got so used to looking for traffic coming toward downtown and hardly ever looked in the opposite direction. That changed one evening when, yet another SUV going the wrong way, was bearing down on me. What is it with SUVs going the wrong way? I think there should be a study on SUVs going the wrong way in traffic. Perhaps I should apply for some of those millions of dollars handed out by Congress just for those kind of things.

In other words: “Oink, oink please pass the pork!”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur was using a figure of speech when he said: “Old soldiers never die.” But the Pentagon literally wants some old soldiers in their midst. The Defense Department has asked Congress to boost the enlistment age from 35 to 42. Since I am knock, knock, knockin’ on 50’s door right now, I am not in any position to call someone who is 42 years young, old. But 42 is around the age many military people retire and it seems kind of high end to start a new career as a soldier.

Because of the military’s reliance on the National Guard in Iraq, it isn’t uncommon to see those in their 50s being called up. My brother told me about a classmate of his who was being recalled to duty in the Guard and sent to Iraq. My brother is 62!

I don’t know how I feel about this proposal. I’m sure a good many people could hack basic training and going to war at 42. I would not have been one of them, but I paid my military dues as a younger man. What I do know is the Pentagon’s request shows the fix the military is finding itself in with recruitment challenges against the backdrop of the situation in Iraq.

And I kind of cringed when I heard it was Dr. David Chu asking the House Armed Services Committee to raise the age. Chu is the Under Secretary of Defense for personnel matters who made the astonishing statement to The Wall Street Journal in January that the amount of money going toward benefits for military retirees and veterans was “hurtful” to the nation’s defense. I guess it’s okay with Chu, and the administration for that matter, for youngsters and the middle-aged to go off and risk getting killed in war just as long as the government doesn’t have to pay for those soldiers’ retirement. It is just mind-boggling.

Someone once said that the Army isn’t black or white. It’s green. Well, it may be gray too, along with the other services.

Okay, I do admit sending the occasional fan e-mail. Most times the person I am writing doesn’t write back. Not so with Stephan Pastis, creator of my favorite comic strip, “Pearls Before Swine” that is linked on my blogroll.

Stephan is a former attorney who was able to syndicate his very funny and thought-provoking strip. To be quite frank, I was thinking of giving up reading the comics altogether until I came across Pearls. I see a lot of myself in both the Pig and Rat, the strip’s two main and diametrically opposed characters.

In an e-mail today, Stephan asked if I knew anyone who read the “Star-Telegram” in Fort Worth and if so, would I ask them to write the editors to request Pearls be included in their comics. So I ask all of you who might read the Startlegram to help a brother out. Write the editors and say you grew up reading the Star-Telegram and that it helps you breathe more easily and slows down your heart rate from a dangerous to an acceptable rhythm. Then, tell them you want “Pearls Before Swine” in their comics.

The world needs more of the Rat and Pig, not to mention the Zeeba neighbas.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have bragged about the air quality improving in my city. For the last two days we have been under what is called here an “Ozone Action Day.” These are forecasts for ground level ozone, or smog, that are above a threshold for what is healthy.

The latest data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (formerly TNRCC or ‘Train Wreck’) gives the Beaumont-Port Arthur area a “moderate” air quality rating which is in between what is good and pollution levels that can cause health problems for certain people. Yet, I believe I have experienced some discomfort from the smog during the past two days.

My eyes have had that itchy feeling although not nearly as bad as the misery I experienced during mountain cedar fever season when I lived in Central Texas. A little Visine every now and then fixes me up in dealing with the summertime smog. That wasn’t the case with that toxic mountain cedar a.k.a. ashe juniper. I took prescription Clarinex and used special allergy eye drops, and my eyes still itched quite spectacularly. I never knew allergies could be so bad.

It is kind of hazy out. That is just something you come to expect here during this time of year. As that sage Rosanne Rosannadanna said: “It’s always something.”