Category: Orphans

Apparently a controversy has been spewing across the sports world over the benching of Washington Redskins quarterback Donovan McNabb. This was two weeks ago, by the way.

I say “apparently” because I have not followed, nor do I care to follow the entire controversy that perhaps now is moot. I say “moot” because McNabb said he and Redskins coach Mike Shanahan put the issue behind them. Also, McNabb has signed a contract for $9 billion million plus change (just s**ting you) and was back on the field just in time for the Redskins to, in the words of some rural Texas high school coach, be “beat like a rented mule” last night by McNabb’s former Philadelphia Eagles (I s**t you not.)

That was fun to write. It was long too. I know. I did that on purpose porpoise.

McNabb is not really my point. No? What is pray tell?

Lying. Lying is my point. This has to do with a lie or series of lies Shanahan allegedly perpetrated regarding McNabb’s  benching.

Out of all this soap-opera-ish nightmare of epic proportions (lie) comes a truth.

The truth I detected today came from ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd. I listen to his show when I am out driving in the mornings going to and fro. He can be annoying but he is entertaining and today made one of the most profound statements I have ever heard coming out of a sports talk-type guy.

Cowherd said of Shanahan, of course he lied. Everybody lies. Your kids lie. You lie to your kids. You lie to your wife. You lie to the IRS. You lie to your neighbor. You even lie to yourself. Cowherd didn’t say all that, I just made some of it up, but that was the gist of his thought line. That wasn’t what was so profound though.

Imagine a UFO with aliens landing on Earth. Would the government lie to the public about that? Probably. Cowherd said the reasoning was that there are “too many low-hanging fruit” living among us and they would not be able to handle the truth. He cites the people who e-mail him every day with just incredibly out-there missives. We all know the people of whom he speaks. You might even be one of them. I paraphrase but that is basically what this sports talk radio guy said and I love it. I just love it.

Low-hanging fruit. You can just see a big, yellow diamond-shaped sign with representations of bananas and grapes hanging from a tree all the way to  the ground. “Beware Low-Hanging Fruit,” being the text equivalent. Perhaps some kind of space ship bearing such a sign, could be sent up in the Exosphere over each pole to warn travelers from outer space. Okay, there are probably holes in my idea — like holes in the ozone layer  — but it is the thought that counts.

A California dude created a big hoo hah when his video of being patted down prior to flying commercially became “viral.“ No, the video didn’t cause a virus on the Internet nor did it cause a dangerous disease to be let loose among the public. Viral in this case is one of those words that probably never imagined it would have the meaning it has these days of a widely exposed video on the Internet.

Nevertheless, I am not going to spend a lot of time today pontificating on this subject  — Relieved?? Why you a**hole!!! — because I want to provide a couple of links where you (I am talking to YOU the reader) can read about this guy who didn’t want his “junk” touched while being patted down pre-flight by a Transportation Security Administration officer. The debate he has touched off is the oft-repeated one of privacy versus security and a lot of folks are weighing in on the matter, including airline pilots.

Me, I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether full body scanning or having a  pat-down search need be a prerequisite to flying commercially. My stubborn civil libertarian streak leans toward no, but I don’t know if circumstances have come to the point where such intrusiveness is needed. I have been searched before. Quite a few times in fact, for different reasons, and I have yet to like it when done by one of the male species.

Read the story or stories, however many I decide to link, and watch the video. That is, do so if you want to be informed. If you want to be a total dolt-headed ignoramus, that is your choice as an American. What a great country!

Reading the 2009 John Grisham novel, “The Associates,” rang a bell as to how employers sometime prepare, or don’t prepare, their new hires for the job.

The Grisham novel tells how a young, hotshot law school graduate finds himself blackmailed into a joining a huge law firm so that the attorney can sneak secrets out from litigation involving two of the world’s top defense contractors. Attorney Kyle McAvoy spends a week at his new firm lost in mind-numbing classes on subjects ranging from their computer programs to a specially-made BlackBerry-like device the attorneys must have on and with them at all times.

When I started serious jobs after college I usually found any type of detailed or formal training lacking when it came to various procedures or any other pieces of information that made my life easier or better adapted to the job at hand.

Perhaps one problem I had is that in my two previous jobs — the Navy and five years as a firefighter — an abundance of training was provided to help one sort out where to go or what to do in the case of A, B or C.

Later I noticed that pretty much every job I had as a journalist started out with a guessing games as to locating everything from paper clips to the various forms required for leave or travel reimbursement. How funny, I thought, and not in a “ha ha” way that the biggest obstacle in my job in the field of communication was itself the lack of communication.

Eventually I discovered that to obtain the tools of the trade it was every man, or woman, for themselves. If someone left or was about to leave, you would ask or just take a tape dispenser or a pair of scissors or a better desk, saying, “You won’t be needing that anymore.” A friend and co-worker at a paper for which I once labored wrote a touching column upon my departure and included a line in which Beth said I was laughing and saying: “I’m not gone yet and they are already dividing up my empire.” But we had learned and Beth was more or less my protege so by that time she was grabbing what goodies I did not appear to be leaving behind.

Although I don’t work, per se, in the communication business full time any more I still see the lack of giving workers the information need to do their jobs. This is especially true in my part-time job, where the people who are most likely to have the answers are full-time and often do not see your needs as a part-timer quite as clearly. There are plenty of Web sites and manuals from where I can gather all the rules and regulations but there is no time to extensively study them during work time. Then, you are not allowed to work on your time off which is what boning up by using the work computer would be considered. Catch-22? At least.

Surely some good can emerge when you are left alone to find things for one’s self. I would like to think this is why these jobs I had left no master plan for finding the things and information you need to know to do your job. I think the major reason was, however, work for many people runs at such a high speed today that those little snippets of information the boss intended to provide the new hire just slipped the Big Guy’s mind. Or else the boss said: “Let the new guy find it like I had to find it when I was the new guy.”

It would definitely interest me to see a study, if one has been done, of those organizations that prepare new employees to a T as opposed to those that make the new guy fend for themselves. Just thinking about the subject, one can imagine writing up the positives on one side and the negatives on the other and delivering a pretty good list.

Why is this important? In the grand scheme of things, I don’t suppose it is. Ruminating over this will not make your laundry whiter, will not cure erectile dysfunction and likely not put you on the hot list for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is just something to think about. We’re always in need of something to think about. So here this something is, for what it’s worth.  At least a search isn’t necessary to find it.

It would take considerable space to say just how much I enjoyed my long “double-nickle” birthday in Galveston, hanging out with some great, extremely fun people whom it is so  complicated to explain how we got together that I just will not do so. So, I will leave that alone as it is.

Nonetheless, it was encouraging cruising through the Bolivar Peninsula and taking the ferry over to the island. This was my first visit back to the peninsula and island since Hurricane Ike came and did considerable damage to the area. It just about wiped much on Bolivar off the map.

But seeing the newer, higher-elevated houses “shoosting up in the sky,” as Mrs. Douglass used to say on “Green Acres,” made me feel somewhat more hopeful for Crystal Beach and other resort areas. I was sorry to see some old friends’ beach house not there anymore. A lot of memories for their family and for me are gone. I did see a mobile home built quite a ways up on stilts. A lack of deed restrictions there must have been at work.

Galveston has its blank spots around town but it seems to be bouncing back.

All in all, it was great to be at the beach. The condos  on the East Beach of Galveston where we stayed were very nice. This is the time of year to visit a resort there. The atmosphere and the weather couldn’t have been much better.

I was disappointed that more eating places were not yet built back on Bolivar but I found a very nice little place on the way home, one built around a trailer called the Fanta Sea Grill which is in sight of Rollover Pass — also still there because of local folks who know an honorable venue when they sea one even though the state wants to destroy it . They have some “gourmet burgers” at greasy spoon prices. The burgers are cooked to perfection and the home fries are hot. Of course, there is much more on which to munch at the Fanta Sea.  There is a little shed where customers can dine under and miss the thunder-boomers that pop up quite regularly in these parts. Best of all, Warren and Pam Adams who run the place, seem as nice as can be and will make sure you don’t go away hungry.

I recommend it if you are rolling along on Bolivar  Peninsula. Be sure to call first because to find out the hours they are open because they aren’t open every day.

Fanta Sea Grill

1950 Hwy. 87

Gilchrist, Tx 77617

409-286-2160