Eight Feet Deep

 It is the begin­ning of five days off. My Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day if you will.

 In days past I would be thrilled to have five days off for Thanks­giv­ing. These days I am not so thrilled. Happy? Yes. Thrilled? No. The rea­son is sim­ple: Money. Or a lack thereof. Pay­day is some­time between Sat­ur­day and next Mon­day.  Pay­day actu­ally is a week from Thurs­day but since I have direct deposit, my money usu­ally shows up on the Sat­ur­day before. Or the Mon­day. It’s like magic. Bad magic.

 I don’t know if this is an item falling under the “some­thing to be thank­ful for” list, but it is some­what of a relief for those of us whose gov­ern­ment work (part-time in my case) car­ries us into some sort of a reg­u­lar set­ting out­side of the office.

 Author­i­ties in Ken­tucky have finally ruled the death of part-time Cen­sus worker  Bill Spark­man as a sui­cide. Spark­man, as you might remem­ber, was found dead in the woods nude and with a rope around his neck. The words “Fed” had been writ­ten in pen on his chest and his gov­ern­ment ID was taped to his neck. His hands had been bound with duct tape. Police have deter­mined Spark­man staged his death to appear as a homi­cide in order that his fam­ily could col­lect his insur­ance policies.

 We will have to take the Ken­tucky author­i­ties’ word for it that it was indeed a self-inflicted death. I guess if other gov­ern­ment work­ers turn up with bizarre deaths then per­haps law enforce­ment folks will want to take yet another look at this death as well.

 Some of our promi­nent loud-mouth right-wing nuts got all bent out of shape when peo­ple started point­ing fin­gers at them for Sparkman’s death. I can see that. But there are plenty of peo­ple with ani­mos­ity toward the gov­ern­ment out there. Hell, the gov­ern­ment pisses me off some­times. But not to the point that some folks are enraged. Remem­ber, Tim McVeigh didn’t start anti-government domes­tic ter­ror­ism just as Osama bin Laden didn’t start jihadist terror.

 My advice to Cen­sus and other gov­ern­ment field work­ers is the same advice I give myself. Be aware of your sur­round­ings. Leave your­self an escape route. Trust your instincts. If a place and peo­ple make you uncom­fort­able for some rea­son, avoid that place. Go back and talk to a supe­rior about it or a co-worker. And be as nice as you can be … to your web-footed friends because that duck might be somebody’s mother.

 Sec­ond in the “thank­ful for” cat­e­gory: The Texans-Titans game last night. Being a Tex­ans fan, I’m glad as heck that game is over. Two games in a row almost Mr. Per­fect kicker Kris Brown missed a field goal that could have put the Tex­ans into over­time. The first time was with unde­feated Indianapolis.

 But goat times two that Brown might be, he didn’t lose either game alone. Titans quar­ter­back and for­mer Texas QB sen­sa­tion Vince Young did some fancy foot­work that made the Tex­ans defen­sive line look as if they had come only to watch the game. It’s good for the Titans they had Young  going for them because they didn’t have much else. Although, the Tex­ans could have done much bet­ter. They could have been sit­ting in the play­off cat­bird seat, what­ever that is. Oh well, 5–5 once again. That’s even-Steven. Be thank­ful for that at least.