Eight Feet Deep

My fair city has gotten itself a new minor league basketball team.

It isn’t hard for me to restrain myself from great jubilation over the news. First of all, basketball just doesn’t do it for me and by “it” I mean anything. It was fun to play pickup games until I broke my pinkie during the first week of fire academy. I sort of had a vague interest when the Rockets made the NBA championships during the OJ Days. And women’s college basketball can be semi-entertaining to me. But needless to say, if pro basketball doesn’t thrill me the American Basketball Association just doesn’t have a chance with me.

The problem is that our county built this big entertainment complex out on Interstate 10 some years back with an arena and outside amphitheater — just the thing in our subtropical Augusts with 90-plus heat and similar numbers for humidity. And since that time they have been trying to get people to come to it. You know, build it and they will …

First they obtained a minor league hockey team. That was even more out of place in Beaumont, Texas, than minor league basketball. But minor league hockey has flourished in some small markets where the owners aggressively pursued a fan base. But the Texas Wildcatters didn’t make it. As for the semi-pro arena football team, the Drillers (get the oilfield connection), I don’t know how successful they’ve been. I kind of like the idea of arena-style football. It features a lot of passing like 6-man football but I don’t like the idea of that kind of football being indoors.

So we have the Southeast Texas Mustangs as our new minor league team. Here in the land of Friday Night Lights where high school ball is king and in a year or two from now the local Lamar University Cardinals will once again play collegiate ball. All I got to say to the Mustangs is lotsa luck!

Hello again. Back at the public library computer also known as the computer N*zi. I don’t know if the program that nannifies this system will let me say the word N*zi. Well, I just published and saw that it doesn’t let me use the entire word, all that is left when one types the name of Adolf’s old party is a big blank chunk. It isn’t surprising. I’ve seen a lot more benign words get zapped. The latest, or rather, one of the latest annoyances is that the system will not let me read my Yahoo mail. My inbox undoubtedly has some word in one of the message subjects that the program finds offensive so I just get this “Cannot find server” message. Blah, blah, blah. And then the system is not letting me read local news outlets. Once again, just can’t find that old server. It’s more like, it doesn’t want to find it. I don’t know why that is. They (the city) really needs to get a grip. I’ve had a long, tiresome, not always enjoyable day today so the last thing I need to do here before starting the weekend is to melt down from some idiotic do-good computer system. F**k it. Happy weekend.

No, Led Zepplin will not — as unamazing as it seems — be coming to my town. But a zepplin will. This is something I certainly would love to know more about. Surely the 246-foot airship is not inflated and riding inside a ship. So is it in a crate (or barrel?)How big is an uninflated airship? How will they lay it out and air it up before they fly it to our regional airport? Why did they send the ship to Beaumont on the Gulf of Mexico rather than put it on a ship going through the Big Ditch toward El A? So many questions. So many, many questions. Oh the humanity!

The above wanted poster from the Texas Democratic Party struck me as funny yet poignant.

Sadly, Rove has and continues to thumb his nose and the rest of his girth to the law and more importantly to the citizens who fell for his crapola. The point of the ad is that the Texas Democrats want money and if I had it to spare I might give them some. Unfortunately, I must spend my money this week on the relatively unimportant items such as food and gasoline.

But it really is a good ad. I am glad someone can find some humor in the otherwise infuriating and depressing subject of Karl Rove.

Georgian soldiers await their turn to fire the Soviet PKM medium machine gun during the live fire training conducted by U.S. Marines in 2003.< U.S.M.C. photo by: 1st Lt. Justin M. Colvin

The proverbial fit has hit the shan in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

An invasion by neighboring Russia over the break-away Georgian province of South Ossetia has even the latter nation’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, running for cover.

Russian forces apparently are doing more than, in the words of Russian Defense Ministry Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn ” … protect(ing)its peacekeepers and the residents of South Ossetia … ” One must wonder, however, how messed up is it that Russia’s military has a rank called “Colonel-General?” Just a bit o’ levity. A very little bit.

Georgia, the Republic and not the state from which Peanut Jimmy Carter hails, has become good buddies with the U.S. and wants to join NATO but apparently Russia replies with a big, fat “Nyet,” which interestingly enough isn’t a contraction for “not yet.”

But chances the U.S. will come riding to Georgia’s rescue are about as likely as pigs flying and firing air-to-surface missiles. About all the U.S. can do, specifically its president and other politicians, is to get out their hats and promptly eat them because otherwise things could get very uckedfay were the U.S. to foolishly try something militarily at this time.

One must also look at this current conflict with some context. Both sides probably share some blame for the situation and, although Russia is the perpetual Boris Badenov in the soap opera of world relationships, Georgia is hardly the true, blue beacon of democracy that it seems is being portrayed.

Nonetheless, all the damage and loss of life is not a good way to start the week or even the month. Hopefully the two sides will be able to knock it off sooner than later, for the sake of all.