Category: Orphans

A former rock and roll cellist was killed in Devon, England, when a 1,300-pound round bale of hay tumbled down a hill and stuck his van, causing it to collide with another van.

That is a pretty odd sentence when you think about it. First of all, how many rock and roll cellists could you name? Also, how many times do you hear of round bales of hay causing fatal auto collisions? Yet this, definitely, “freak” accident happened Friday to 62-year-old former Electric Light Orchestra member Mike Edwards.

One hears occasionally of an 18-wheeler losing its load and falling on to an automobile that is behind it. Not too long ago a woman was killed near where I live when some object came off a truck and hurled through her window while she driving on Interstate 10. Deer also frequently strike motor vehicles during the autumn “rut.” Thus, some freak accidents are not as random as they might seem.

But this would definitely qualify as a freak accident.

The ability to predict and prevent some unexplained event from happening is something human beings have been trying to tweak since, well, there have been human beings.

Right now it is raining, figuratively speaking, cats and dogs outside due to outer fringes of Tropical Storm Hermine. The storm’s “center” was located about 65 miles southwest of Austin last time I checked.  Austin is 210 miles away as the crow flies. It is thundering and weather forecasters said tornadoes were not out of the question for our area today. All of that is not totally unexpected.

When weather forecasters say there is a percentage of precipitation in an area they are talking about “the probability that precipitation will be reported at a certain location during a specified period of time,” according to the official National Weather Service definition.

Thankfully, weather experts can get within general areas in which a hurricane may make landfall when the storm is still a ways out in the sea. They cannot predict a pinpoint location with any real accuracy, though, until the storm is closer to hitting the beach. Scientists are still trying to better forecast when a tornado is going to strike.

Likewise, it is fun and at times financially fruitful when you make predictions on the weekly college or professional football games. But even though many who bet on and predict games may have advanced knowledge of the teams and players, it is all still a crapshoot.

Many pundits are forecasting that likely the Republicans will retake control of the U.S. House after the November elections. Many polls are showing more and more that the needed 39 or 40 GOP seats needed can be won. Pundits and so-called “political experts” also have history on their side.

It is a day after Labor Day though, and that is when many other experts and  historians say that the campaigns for November really begin. Surely, there are a lot of television ads and silliness that will be heaped upon the American voters between now and that time. Anything can happen which might change voters’ minds one way or the other.

What we call in these parts a “round bale” causing the death of who some have described as an “obscure” rock and roller  should remind us of how fickle is fate and the future.

Predict away. Though keep in mind that things do not always turn out as we expect.

Today I start with the headline and see where matters find themselves at the end. Why not, it’s Labor Day weekend, for me at least.

Why the headline reads: “Stop making sense” is  because that is the sentiment I want to express to Gov. Haley Barbour, R, Miss. Bringing up the parenthetical rear of the hed is as it is, I suppose, “stop making sense” used as a pun when used with “talking heads.” I’m talking about the term as in the nickname for today’s pundits. However, “Stop Making Sense” is also the name of a concert album from 1984 featuring the new wave group Talking Heads. And yes, I’ve been a fan of David Byrne and the rest since I heard those life-altering lines: “You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack/You may find yourself in a different part of the World/You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile/You may find yourself with a beautiful wife in a beautiful house/You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? — from “Once in a Lifetime.”

Of course, I heard these lines when the song was first released, which was a few years before the movie. I just want to get that straight so some of my friends won’t ask: “You mean you never heard “Once in a Lifetime” before “Stop Making Sense?” Why of course I did. You were there, don’t you remember? And you—and you—and you—and you were there. Maybe your little dog too!

If you wish, you may veer off from this discussion completely and listen to the Talking Heads for awhile. Or perhaps put “The Wizard of Oz” in the video and play Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” I will understand.

Or else, you can stay here and see why I would like the potential GOP presidential candidate to stop making sense.

Barbour, unlike most of his Republican counterparts from their dark corners in their fetal positions who are shaking 8.0 on the Richter Scale due to the “Tea Party Terrors,” has what I feel is a pretty sensible position on immigration.

Chris Good at TheAtlantic.com writes a really interesting piece on Barbour and how he faces thrashing from fellow GOP candidates in the early primaries all because this former Republican National Committee chairman talks straight. At least on immigration matters.

Barbour shares a point of view with me that following the hurricanes of 2005 on the Gulf Coast, no one seemed to be complaining about Spanish-speaking folks when they wanted their roofs shingled — yesterday. Not exactly how he put it — of course the wonderful coastal portion of his state was destroyed by Katrina and my area was wrecked by Rita — but close.

A reality that should be slapped in the face of all Americans who are “tough” on immigration emanates from Barbour, saying that it is foolish to think we can jail or deport 10-14 million people. The math just somehow doesn’t work. What would we do with the nearly five million inmates of mostly American citizenship locked up in our own jails and prisons?

I do question Barbour’s contention as to how more immigrants who graduate in professional fields should be given citizenship. His analogy is that all Indians with Ph.D.s who graduate from Stanford should get citizenship so they will start businesses and employ workers here rather than going home and starting a business. That sounds simplistic and perhaps Barbour meant it to be, but I think it needs a lot of work.

*Refers to an incident at the University of Houston in the late 1960s when then Texas-Gov. Preston Smith was confronted by an angry mob that was chanting: “Free Lee Otis. Free Lee Otis.” The “Lee Otis” to whom they referred was Lee Otis Johnson, a black activist with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Johnson had been sentenced to prison for 30 years for giving one joint of pot to a Houston undercover officer. Smith thought the crowd was shouting “frijoles” and he told a reporter that he didn’t know what they all had against “Mexican beans.” Johnson was released  after serving four years in prison. I don’t know why this came up. It just did.

How people do business these days simply amazes me.

You have large hospital corporations that purport to be steeped in religion — after all, they have “St.” in their name — who either treat you like a can of tainted ham or else they are so incompetent they don’t know what companies are subcontracting their business. Of course, hospitals use so many subs that it’s kind of understandable. You have the ER doctor company, the radiology company, the company that gives you shots, the specialists, the anesthesiologists, the podiatrists and, of course, the proctologists in case some patient just finally has enough and he launches a size 12 Red Wing up somebody’s anal cavity. “Look ma, no cavities!”

Then you have the telecoms. Satan has either developed a special place in Hell for them or else they are Satan. Not being religious in a traditional sense, I’m not sure.

Also, there is a close line between medicine today and the telecom industry. That would be the fact that both have some workers that are not trained in English nearly as proficiently as those who hire them believe. Please, you know me. I’m don’t have an ethnocentric bone in my body. Well maybe my ulna has something against Canary Islander but I’ve been trying to work that out.

When I hear good ol’ Americans complain about people whom they can’t understand because of their language background, I don’t completely tune them out. When you have a  job in which communication can be a matter of life and death, you would like for them to be somewhere on the same page. If you don’t like people speaking a language you don’t understand because you think they are making fun of you — they probably are — you are just paranoid.

I’ve heard good ol’ boys who need a translator as well. Thank goodness dispensing fishing bait doesn’t require critical language skills. And, I know this will stir up people, but the DEA is looking for translators who speak Ebonics. No s**t.  I think that is crazy.

Pardon us, please, as we are suffering from a bad case of HSDL-LSUL. That is to say, high-speed download, low-speed upload. In other words, my Internet speed is running slower than a snail pulling a 50-pound barbell uphill.

This affliction started gradually and has hit full-tilt over the last week. It is difficult to send e-mails, much less photos or upload a You Tube short-short.

Unfortunately, cures for computer woes are hardly 100 percent unless you decide to chunk yours out a four-story window. After the expected fighting with my computer company, Dell, and my wireless broadband provider, Verizon, I am making scant progress. I will be receiving, hopefully, a replacement USB modem tomorrow from Verizon. It will be my, what, fifth in two years? I haven’t even had the chance to get to the wireless problem with Dell because of a keyboard problem that they will only repair if I ship my laptop in or if they send me the parts and I replace the keyboard myself. Neither will happen.

If the USB doesn’t fix it, I suppose the next step is reinstalling Windows 7, which I really don’t want to do. After all, I received the computer with the system already installed. I just hope sometime soon my broadband is back to some sense of normalcy so I can enjoy it until something else goes wrong with my computer, broadband or both. Hey, I’m a glass is half-full kind of guy. I’m optimistic that within six months I will have another problem to deal with in my never-ending war with technology.

Old soldiers never die. At least the ones in the comic strips don’t.

It wasn’t all that unusual to find 60-year-old guys in the Army at the precipice of the Iraq War with America in a simultaneous fight in Afghanistan. Times were hard and as former Defense Secretary and chief Bush administrator wisenheimer Don Rumsfeld once famously told a soldier: “You go to war with the army you have … ”

Even so, the fact that the comic strip “Beetle Bailey” turns 60 this weekend you would be looking at a 78-80-year-old private if his true age was laid bare. And Sgt. 1st Class Orville Snorkle, probably 100 and Gen. Halftrack, why he’d be might be in the “World’s Oldest Man” category.

Bailey was introduced as an indolent college student named “Spider” when he enlisted in 1951 and he not only remained in the Army but did so continually as a private whose main purpose in life is laziness when he isn’t getting his ass kicked by Sarge. The latter, one  must say, doesn’t do bad at near 100.

Of course, comic strip characters never age — although perhaps some have — and most never die. What is even more remarkable is the fact that the characters many times live on longer than their creator. It’s a rather neat trick when you think about it.

The strip, “Beetle Bailey,” itself slowly kept up with the times. Although the civilian secretary Miss Buxley to this day remains a sex object, she has neatly tread the waters between remaining a beauty and having a firm hold on her inner “hear me roar-ness.”

Then the turmoil from the Civil Rights struggle which found itself alive with riots and fires on board Navy aircraft carriers during the waning days of the Vietnam Era was reflected with a somewhat PC afro-coiffed lieutenant named Flap. He was later followed by an Asian Cpl. Yo and eventually Spec. Gizmo, a token “geek” whose arrival came as part of a contest sponsored by Dell Computers, the money raised going toward the Fisher House Foundation. That organization provides housing for relatives of veterans and military personnel in hospitals.

The U.S. military remains the nation’s societal microcosm and “Beetle Bailey” — for all its warts and flaws — has long been a mirror held up to the armed forces. It is because of those warts and flaws, and the fact that it is one of those fun house mirrors being hoisted, that “Beetle” has remained a great American treasure.

Sure Beetle is lazy. If you go out with your buddies drinking and chasing skirts every night for 60 years, you’d be searching for a napping space yourself. Sarge would probably have Beetle and his pals polishing rocks or vacuuming the parking lot around Camp Swampy if they weren’t all out trying to hide from the sometime ridiculously mindless jobs the military expects performed by its non-  “bullet catchers,” as a Army reserve officer I know recently called those in combat. When you get down to it, Beetle represents those service members who are more tired than lazy. Although one who proudly was named “Laziest” in his high school, I know when someone is genuinely lazy and Beetle is one lazy soldier.

Much of the real military isn’t portrayed in “Beetle” and who would want it? We get enough death and dying and the young men and women you see minus limbs or who await their PTSD “group” at the VA. Sure humor could come from all that — gallows humor — but much of society doesn’t understand that type of funny although those who do generally use or have used it for a coping mechanism.

Great comic strips show a part of our world that many of us have trouble expressing. “Beetle Bailey” makes everything so simple. So I wish Beetle a happy birthday and many more. Oh, and have a good nap.