Nothing much inspiring here today. CNN has made a big drama out of the faux drama that is our countdown to a shuttered government. There isn’t anything I can do about it. All of my federal legislators are hard-core right-wingers. I work tomorrow if my supervisor calls me and tells me to. Talk about a feeling of helplessness. Sigh!
It’s time to travel back to 1976 …
What in the name of Windex is that? Well, it isn’t 1976. Perhaps it is something one might see in the Big Thicket piney woods of Southeast Texas back in the year of our nation’s Bicentennial. That is after a trip to the local cow pasture. You know, cow tipping? Right.
Those streaks are actually from last week. One might still be battered by love bugs while traveling along the roads in the Big Thicket area of Southeast Texas. As the weather cools a bit, the randy bugs will do whatever they do when they aren’t killing themselves while copulating along the highway.
Time to contemplate great matters. Or watch some tube.
My friend Marcie sent me a text message earlier that unfortunately is more enthusiasm than accuracy at the moment.
“Looks like no govt shutdown. Good news for you! We’ll see … ”
That’s okay, Marcie, it’s the thought that counts. For the moment at least.
The latest in the war between the Democrats vs. the GOP vs. Tea Party is a Senate spending bill that restored funding for Obamacare as well as to keep the government running. It’s been sent to the House where it either be accepted or sent where old bills go to die.
Our only words of encouragement are in the form of our regular teleconference agenda that came by email this afternoon, which says nothing shutdown-related. Of course, us part-timers were already given a short phone call from our supervisors late yesterday afternoon telling us we would be told something Monday as to any possible furloughs. The procedure is roughly the same as we had during the last time the Republicans threatened to shut us down. As far as I know, unless there has been any last minute change, we still will be considered non-essential personnel.
I suppose I look at the possibility of going unpaid for however long. If it is a day or maybe two, then I might be okay. Anymore than that and I might have to try a Web-driven telethon.
But I shall not dwell on these things. I just hope the media will have the good sense to stop making a hero out of Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, who now is the most toxic Texan in the Senate. Yes, he’s different. Different in the a**hole way.
Have a great weekend and, in the words of the late, great Bob Marley: “Don’t worry. About a thing. Cause every little thing going to be all right … ”
A neat little ol’ tech blog out of Austin had a very helpful article dated Monday. It was a very informative piece on Apple’s iOS 7 upgrade. And it is one that I wished like hell I had read prior to about 11 a.m. today.
It seems as if I was the last person on planet Earth who discovered Apple blew up the operating system I was using on my iPhone 4. I think it’s 4. It could be “99 And A Half” for all I know. I saw on my iPhone that I needed to do an update on my OS, so I was walking back to my office, ticked off about an encounter I had on the phone earlier with a “client.” I still am, ticked off, that is. Short story, the update took forever. I had to get back to my office where I had plenty of phones to use while mine was being “updated.”
The home screen looked different, way different. I had to sign in with my Apple ID and develop a code to get me inside my telephone. Now when it rings I have to, I don’t know what you call it, rub my screen like a genie and make the “phone” appear. Christ on codeine syrup!
Later this afternoon, I got to playing around with the “voice memo” app. It recorded okay, and I erased the messages I had made. But I get a goofy screen now with a buttons and some lines for writing. You push the button and nothing happens. You rub the bottom of the screen and your “control panel” appears. Oh great. Plus, it leaves a red banner across the iPhone screen to remind me I am recording, even though I am not.
I talked with a Verizon techno-gal who was about as helpful as Edward Scissorhand in a bouncy house full of 4-year-olds.
So, I decided to look on my own and found this great techie page from Austin. Home of the Armadillo — waaaay back when. And damned if I didn’t find out too late. Like right now and for supper.
Web surfing can be quite a learning experience provided one does not take every sentence as fact. Likewise, surfing the WWW provides sort of a spontaneity that I like as a writer. This is exceptionally true since I hardly ever write under deadline these days. It was just a few moments before deciding upon what subject, or person in my case, I would write. And Ta-DA! It is Hoyt Axton.
My selection of singer, songwriter and actor, the late Hoyt Axton, came some 30 minutes after reading about Canadian musicians. Let me make it clear, Hoyt Axton was not a Canadian. He was in the U.S. Navy, which has nothing to do with Canadian musicians except for the fact I remember one stormy day on the Pacific hearing the sea chanty-like “High And Dry” recorded by Canadian folk-king Gordon Lightfoot. Okay time for me to focus.
Hoyt Axton. U.S. Navy in the early 60s. From hoytsmusic.com. Hope I don’t get sued for using this, but great site if your looking for Hoyt Axton info.
Axton was born in Oklahoma. That fact likely had some kind of unconscious guidance in my clicking on Axton’s Wikipedia page. You see, I had intended starting my post about musicians from the Great North with something like: “Well, I never been Winnipeg, but I kind of like the Guess Who … ” That paraphrases one of many popular Axton songs which were recorded by other artists. In this case, “Never Been to Spain,” released in 1971 by Three Dog Night.
In reality, I’ve never been to Red Deer, Terrace or a Medicine Hat, places in western Canada mentioned by the popular rock group The Guess Who from Winnipeg, in the song “Running Back to Saskatoon.” I’ve never been to Winnipeg or Saskatoon either. Nor anywhere in Canada for that matter. Okay, I’ve strayed off track here again, damn it.
I admired the versatility in songs Axton wrote. I suppose he came by that honestly since his mother, Mae Boren Axton, was known as “The Queen Mother of Nashville.” She co-wrote the initial Elvis Presley hit “Heartbreak Hotel.” Other of hit songs by Hoyt Axton included tales of his own struggle with cocaine addiction. It took quite awhile for me to grasp that Hoyt Axton wrote the anti-drug hard rock songs “The Pusher” and “Snow Blind Friend,” both recorded by Steppenwolf. Axton also penned the lighter but still anti-coke “The No-No Song,” which he recorded but was made famous by solo ex-Beatle Ringo Starr.
Though anti-cocaine, Axton apparently took up pot at some time. He and his wife were arrested with a little more than a pound of reefer at his home in Montana. His wife supposedly later chalked up the drug usage as a means to help control stress and pain Axton suffered after a stroke in 1995. They were, according to his Wikipedia site, fined and given deferred sentences.
The identity of Hoyt Axton may have also been uneasily grasped because his early songs were of the folk genre. He wrote “Greenback Dollar,” for example, which was a hit for the Kingston Trio. Acting, as well, came early in his career. Axton often played a folksy-type character in TV shows ranging from Bonanza and WKRP in Cincinatti. He also had big screen credits, among them the 1984 horror-comedy film “Gremlins.”
Axton sang in a distinguishing baritone-bass voice which were easily noted in his few hit records. Those songs included “Bony Fingers,” the Top-40 country duet with Linda Ronstadt “When The Morning Comes” and my favorite “Della and the Dealer” (and a dog named Jake and a cat named Kalamazoo.)
He died in 1998 at the young age of 61 after never fully recovering from his stroke.
Oh, he also wrote “Joy To The World” likewise made famous by Three Dog Night. Just to bring something a bit less heavy to the end. Although, in reality, Hoyt Axton brought plenty of joy to the world in his music and other artistic endeavors.
Like Axton in life and song — again “Never Been To Spain — I have been to Oklahoma. I’d also like to see Spain someday and definitely would like to visit Canada. I hear they have some good musicians up there.
When one envisions a train wreck it is likely two locomotives barreling down the tracks at each other as was the case during the late 19th century stunt known as the “Crash at Crush.”
George Crush was a railroad passenger agent who had the lofty idea of bringing thousands of people from across Texas to watch two locomotives crash into each other at top speed. The Missouri, Katy and Texas Railroad, for whom Crush was employed, thought it an acceptable idea and four miles of track were built for the 1896 spectacle that was to be staged some 15 miles north of Waco. Some might ask, “Where else?” when something spectacularly weird or tragic takes place. Waco is definitely a news-rich environment at times.
Some 80,000 people gathered on the big day for a helping of food, fun and good ol’ Texas politickin’ at the event dubbed the “Crash at Crush.” The two old locomotives gathered heads of steam that would make the “Little Train That Could” envious and the collision, of course, resulted in a grand display of physics. Unfortunately, hot, flying, debris from the train crash rained down on the visitors. The stunt killed three and seriously injured six. The event was captured in song by Texas ragtime artist Scott Joplin’s “Great Crush Collision.” The M-K-T railway, which eventually merged into Union Pacific, was called “The Katy” for the letters “K-T.” Coincidentally, the blues standard “She Caught the Katy (And Left Me A Mule To Ride)” was recorded by the great modern blues artist Taj Mahal. I can just imagine how hellish it must have been to traverse those few Central Texas prairie roads on a mule.
So you have a train wreck, what else do you have?
Well, I can see those two old locomotives now, rushing and crushing into big and small parcels of shrapnel seemingly falling from the heavens as the crowd stands mesmerized. Thus, we have the concept: “Watching a train wreck happen, in slow motion, and unable to do anything about it.”
A veritable frenzy engulfs the great and mighty Ted Cruz by the national media. He is different and more exciting than those stuffy old numbers of the treasury and the stuffed shirts of Capitol Hill. Cruz, in his own right a media and Tea Party darling, is also alienating members of his own party. Another “Man Bites Dog” in the eyes of the 24/7 cable era.
The media has done a fair job of predicting the monetary costs that would arise if Cruz succeeds in his machinations to both shut down the government and stop funding of Obamacare There is likewise the enormous harm to citizens that Cruz and his anarchists could do with shuttering the federal government . The media talks of that some.
But not a word is said of the hundreds of thousands of lives that could be colossally damaged if a government shutdown happens. I am talking of government employees. I can give you thousands upon thousands of harmful results that could befall the government worker in the event of another federal shuttering. Even the military would feel the harm, although the troops themselves would still be protecting us. Thousands of bills may go unpaid. Who knows the numbers of unpaid mortgage or rents the closed federal government might spring. Missed car payments and electric bills. Will there be street people who carry a GS-7 rank? If a shutdown happens and lasts only a day or two, there is no guarantee the workers will get that back pay. Long-term, some government employees might collect unemployment. But it isn’t a ssgiven, as that is handled from state-to-state.
No one is talking about these human costs. Maybe the media is doing that in Washington. I don’t know. I’m lucky if i can read the Washington Post twice a week online. No one is talking so here I am.
This runaway train needs to stop. We don’t need a Crash at Crush in Congress.
