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Not a creek, a CRICK


All day long I’ve had a crick in my neck. This is not to be confused with a creek, which I have a photo of appearing in this post. I don’t know how such sharp pains came to be called cricks although I can see how someone somewhere used a little accent to pronounce “creek” as “crick.” I say “ya’ll” sometimes but I’ve never intentionally called a creek a crick.

It’s rather difficult driving 120 miles round trip as I did today with a crick in my neck. But to look on the bright side, it would have been a much more difficult trip had a creek actually been inside my neck. Which isn’t as strange as it may seem. It rained all the way on the drive up to my brother’s home in Newton and all the way back to Beaumont. Well, I guess it is as strange as it seems.

Oh well. Got to go to the drug store.

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Ah, the warmth of the season


As much as I like the utopian concept of a No Shop Day I ventured out on Black Friday to buy a few things. Yes, I even went to the dreaded store that liberals hate — Wal-Mart. Like some of my friends I realize Wal-Mart has its shortcomings in more areas than on which I have time to elaborate. But after looking long and hard I didn’t believe I would be able to find an 18 x 18 x 1 central heat/air filter anywhere else in this city. That is what is wrong with all the high-minded activism against Wal-Mart and the like. They’ve got us over a barrel and until reasonably priced alternatives for all the things we need are fully available in both urban and rural areas at places which present a viable alternative to Wally World, a few people not shopping at Wal-Mart are not going to make all that much difference.

With that said our holiday spirit ugliness certainly seemed to raise its head at a couple of Wal-Marts on Friday. One of those scenes was at the very store where I later shopped in Beaumont, Texas. It seems a hundred or so early-bird shoppers all flocked to the electronics section to buy about a handful of laptop computers on sale and … well you do the math. An off-duty policeman apparently thought things were getting out of hand and he shot off a blast of pepper spray, according to news reports. No one was seriously hurt, but I’m sure someone will sue.

What the hell is wrong with people? Are material goods of such importance that we lose all semblance of civility? I guess so. It’s only just after Thanksgiving. Looks like a long holiday season ahead.

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Did Bishop Lekganyane bring the rain?


For those of us who live in the U.S. it is sometimes hard to think about what goes on in other parts of the world not dominated by President Bush or Denny Hastert or Jennifer Anniston. Take Botswana for example.

Botswana in southern Africa happens to need rain right now. Bishop Barnabus Lekganyane, who has some 6 million followers in the Zionist Christian Church in southern Africa visited Gaborone, capital of Botswana, last week just to make it rain. Well, Lekganyane had a much wider agenda that included tackling the AIDS epidemic there. But although some rain had been forecast during the past weekend, Lekganyane’s faithful insisted he made it rain, according to Botswana’s Mmegi Online.

“They insist the rains came immediately the ZCC brass band stopped playing on Saturday night at the National Stadium. The rains went on to Sunday and stopped just before the prayers could start. Some followers believed that it would rain after Lekganyane had finished his sermon. But nothing of the sort happened.”

Still, a top Gaborone official proclaimed the rain as a miracle if that is indeed what it was.

“The deputy Gaborone mayor, Ezekiel Dube supported the Master of Ceremony and said at the Saturday rainfall and today’s rainfall ‘has put the debates to an end. Now we know that ZCC led by its Bishop has prayed and their prayers have been answered.'”

Who is to say whether the bishop made it rained or whether some good weather forecasting had taken place? Rain is rain is rain. And apparently they needed the rain.