Eight Feet Deep

Well, it looks as if I just missed the two naked ladies who were supposed to shower at the intersection of busy Main and Crockett streets in downtown Beaumont. It’s right there by our daily newspaper though so if their editors don’t wring their hands too much as to prevent pointing to a reporter and photographer to hit the street then perhaps I may read about it. No doubt the local TV stations will be there, the pervs.

Actually, it’s all one big PETA stunt. Per their new release:

“Beaumont, Texas — Naked behind a banner that reads, “1 lb. of Meat Equals 6 Months of Showers,” two PETA beauties will shower together in a busy Beaumont location to let consumers know that the best thing that they can do for the environment is to go vegetarian.

“U.N. scientists have determined that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, SUVs, trucks, and planes in the world combined. Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering climate change than switching from a standard car to a Toyota Prius.

“It’s impossible to ‘go green’ without going vegetarian,” says PETA beauty Colleen Higgins. “Just by changing their diets, concerned people can help protect the Earth, their own health, and countless animals.”

It makes me wonder if “PETA beauty” is Ms. Higgins’ actual business title.

“What do you do for a living?”

“Oh I’m a vegan PETA beauty.”

“Uh-huh.”

Well, it’s a free country up to a point. I am for green as much as the next non-right-wing-wing-nut. But I like meat, pork, lamb, venison, bison, fish, poultry and veggies and assorted other tasties. So if Ms. Higgins wants to shower in the middle of downtown Beaumont, Texas, I’ll support her right to do so. But she will take my hamburger when she pries it from my cold, dead, artery-hardened hands.

This morning I was somewhat braced for whatever kind of misery one might expect from a body part in protest to some assault or another. The reason is my orthopedic doctor gave me a steroid shot in the area of my arthritic thumb yesterday. The needle was quite long and menacing-looking but for whatever reason, I never felt the stick nor did I ever feel the injection or the medicine’s sting.

Such occurrences are rare for me. Pretty much when I am stuck with anything it hurts to some degree or another. I have had tons of shots and IVs, have been cut open with scalpels and even had a chunk of hip bone lifted from that nether region and clamped together with a little titanium plate in my cervical spine. So when something sticks me or cuts me or produces some type of assault on my person I feel it and I know how it feels. But not the doc’s shot.

The doctor’s reaction when I told him it didn’t hurt a bit was that he had done this quite a lot of times so he has become good at doing it. But I was still waiting for a punchline — as in waking up this morning and feeling as my hand had been punched by Dwayne “The Man Formerly Known as The Rock” Johnson.

My precedent for this delayed pain syndrome emanates from my days in Navy boot camp. We bored little sailors-to-be all played this masochistic game in which a training company in front of us would give us the heads-up on some of the horrors which were on our horizon. We’d get even by scaring the hell out of the company junior to us. We were a little vague on the concept of karma back then. An instance of this sick little game surrounded an anticipated immunization.

Now we got shots, shots and more shots in boot camp. But this one particular shot, I can’t even remember what it was for, was said to be a doozy. The guys ahead of us in training said it was given with this big square needle right in the center of one’s butt. The toughest men in the companies were said to be reduced to whimpering, sniveling little babies from the pain it induced.

Much of the scare stories which we heard from our upper classmen were bulls**t. But there tended to be some truth into this story only it was a time-released truth.

When it came our time for the shot we all went in weary but trying not to be afraid. The first relief came when I noticed that, while very long, the needle wasn’t square. I was given the shot and beside feeling a little stick felt no unusual discomfort. Our senior students had gotten us again! Well, not quite.

The next morning came reveille and as I jumped up out of bed I immediately went down to the floor in agony. My ass felt like it had been impaled with a railroad spike. As we were able to finally move around, march to breakfast, march back and do some exercise, the pain finally eased. The old square-needle shot did hurt, it just didn’t hurt when it was administered.

So I was expecting something similar this morning in the area of my cortisone injection when I got out of bed. But no, it was just fine. The only thing which was extremely annoying was the fact I was awakened at 6 a.m., about two hours earlier than I had intended to awaken, by a neighbor whom I didn’t know. She explained her apartment was having plumbing problems and asked if she could use my bathroom. I finally just raised my hands, including the one which was clearly pain-free, and said: “First door on your right.”

The other day I said I didn’t want to hear any more in the media about swimming champ Michael Phelps being pictured on an English tabloid cover sucking a bong that allegedly contains marijuana. But for the great quote in this story we at EFD will make an exception.

The Detroit Free Press sports column by Mike Brudenell details the hubub surrounding the photo and how even a good ol’ boy sheriff in South Carolina — where they photo was taken — is looking at arresting Phelps despite the fact that he is shown smoking a bong and the swimming champ may well have smoked up the evidence.

But while the story gives the opinion of one columnist who describes his as a “swimming family” and the impact this revelation that Phelps is human after all has on his kids’ hero worship, it also give clear perspective about what this saga is really about. The words I found so delightful and apt in the Free Press article come from Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University and opinions editor at www.forbes.com. Said Varadarajan:

“In the hierarchy of life forms on this, our earth, the British tabloid journalist lies somewhere between the hagfish and the dung beetle: However, a story Sunday in the News of the World (proprietor: Keith Rupert Murdoch) has made me scratch my chin and wonder whether we are,in fact, being a tad unkind to the dung beetle.

“The paper’s great coup was to lay its grubby, Little-England hands on a photograph of (Michael) Phelps with his mouth pressed firmly into a glass pipe, or ‘bong.’ The story’s pseudo-declamatory opening line (a tabloid art form, in itself) was: ‘This is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.’ Given that Michael Phelps’ career would have remained blissfully undestroyed had the paper chosen not to publish the photograph, one has to marvel at the amoral audacity of the News of the World: in purporting to ‘report’ on the potential harm to Phelps’ image and career from having smoked cannabis, the newspaper was, in fact, ‘perpetrating’ that very harm.”

Oh sure, everyone can rationalize their actions even Uncle Joe Stalin and the Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz. But knocking down a giant who did nothing more egregious than smoke pot yet whose deeds during the Olympics gave hope and inspiration to millions worldwicde is something weasels do and do so well.

Everyone needs to get over the tabloid picture. It is what it is. And Michael, go and sin no more or at least be damn discrete about it.

Tom Daschle dropped out. Nancy Killefer dropped out. Bill Richardson dropped out. Timothy Geithner stayed, but many wondered if he would drop out. All these presidential political appointee nominations made by Barack Obama have made for a rocky start by young No. 44. I imagine some of the right-wing noise and hate machine are doing a little Hitler jig over the problems which have arisen early in Obama’s administration.

But the road to presidential tenure is littered with the names of nominees — from both Republican and Democratic parties — who faltered because of some skeleton in the closet. Some were early nominees such as Zoe Baird. Others were well on in the administration such as Douglas Ginsburg.

Disheartening as it may be for Obama supporters, the failed nominees who are exposed for their human frailties which are rightfully trumpeted by an alert media are nothing new. Such problems will continue to exist as long as human beings commit indiscretions in their past that they would rather not bring up but eventually emerge as the proverbial chicken coming home to roost. Such early stumbling, of course, is not good for 44 because he campaigned for a more ethical government.(His applications for political appointees convinced me at first glance that I didn’t want to unearth any possible can of worms from my past that I may have conveniently forgotten.) But so it goes.

What is heartening is that the folks we are talking about who dropped out, did so before taking office. I feel Bill Richardson is a very interesting and very astute politician, but I don’t know what all is in his past. If it turns out he is a crook, which I hopefully doubt, then it will be good rather than bad that he dropped out rather than he was busted for something ill while serving as the head of a major U.S. government department.

If one thinks about all the stinkers presidents have picked in our short time as a nation then we should feel ecstatic that a few bad apples were picked and thrown out into the great political s**t pile. Think of these names: Burr and Agnew, both picked by presidents as running mates. What about “Heck of a Job Brownie,”, the whole Watergate saga, A. Mitchell Palmer, Albert Fall, Donald Rumsfeld, and, of course, Alberto “VO5” Gonzales?”

It would have been better for the fledgling Obama administration if the mostly tax problems which dogged his appointees, due to whatever human shortfalls were caused by politicians who probably paid their price with a black hole for a legacy, happened. But they happened. Even better, they never had the chance to screw up once in office had they reached office and had they screwed up.

What is even better, no less than the president of the United States with less than a month into his administration, took responsibility for his having “messed up.” How refreshing is that? The buck stops here.

One would hope 44 doesn’t make a ship load more of major mistakes during however long he ultimately spends in that big white house across from Lafayette Park in “The District.” But friends and neighbors, I would bet you a dollar to a doughnut or, adjusted for inflation, $20 to a doughnut, that Obama will make another mistake during his first term.

Let us just hope that mistake isn’t that serious and let us hope he continues to be a man and admits to his mistakes, much unlike his predecessor.

Frankly, I am tired of reading, seeing and hearing stories about:

Rush Limbaugh

Sarah Palin

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich talking about Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin

Michael Phelps smoking pot

JessicaBritneyBrangeliaJenJLoAmyWinehouseParisHilton’shoohahAnycelebrity’slatestarrestFindingaratheadinacanofvegetables

So there.