Eight Feet Deep

As I get “on up in years” as some say it is interesting how looking back at certain events through the spectrum of time differ so much with respect to perspective. In other words, certain things 30 years ago sometimes seem like they weren’t all that long ago while something that happened 10 years ago feels as though it took place way, way back. It is such an odd sensation.

This thought came to me this morning as I got a Christmas card from my friend Elva in Australia. It will be 30 years on Christmas Day that I had the honor of sharing a holiday dinner with Elva, her son Mark and her mother. I was 22 years old then and, while it was not the first Christmas I had spent away from home after three years in the Navy, it was the first Christmas dinner I ever had with those who were not family members.

Inviting a total stranger, especially one from a foreign land, to Christmas dinner may itself seem foreign to most people. I think it would have been even more bizarre to have a total stranger in the U.S. invite me to a holiday dinner during those times because that was during the immediate post-Vietnam days when folks didn’t share the appreciation for their military personnel that they seem to do these days. But it was much different in Australia, at least back then.

While our ship visited Australia the locals would call a special “Dial-a-Sailor” line that was published in the newspapers and invite the American sailors to various types of outings. I ended up at the Tinson’s home on Christmas after meeting Mark at a party the night before. He was a nice young lad who had just graduated from high school and he told me his mom had thought about having a sailor over for dinner so he asked if I would like to come over the next day for Christmas lunch. I agreed, he asked his mother and since that time I have exchanged Christmas greetings on and off with Elva over the many years.
Just how hospitable this Australian mother was took place after lunch. Mark and I talked about going down to the beach to hunt for Sheilas (girls). Because of the laws there, Mark had graduated from high school but was not old enough to drive a car. So Elva let me drive their Australian Ford station wagon. It was the first time that I had driven a car with steering on the right-hand side so it was kind of different but it was a great gesture nonetheless. It would have been one of those magical Christmas Days had Mark and I scored some ladies. But the memory was great enough as it was.

It was a simpler time back then in Australia even though the country was as modern in every respect than the U.S. Crime wasn’t a worry at all then and the Australian government even encouraged us to hitchhike. I unfortunately don’t know what the country is like today with the exception of what I have read and reports from a few people who have spent time there in recent years. That whole experience now feels like it was only yesterday even though the socio-historical aspects of that time in Australia seemed as if I was living an entirely different decade than the 1970s. It was kind of like how I imagined the 1950s although I imagine those were some meaner times in the U.S. back then.

It was a long time ago now. But it doesn’t feel like it. It felt then as if we had somehow been living in different times. But we weren’t. It’s odd but it makes for a great memory.

Is the 2008 presidential election over with yet? It seems like it should be. And it seems like 2004 never ended. I am really burned out on the presidential races, a point which I feel like it should be December 2008 if were not it is December 2007. You get my drift? Neither do I.

I don’t care what Mike Huckabee thinks about Mormonism. I don’t care what Mitt Romney thinks about anything including polygamy. I don’t care if Hillary is making a big issue out Obama smoking giant reefers as a younger man (which Mr. Hillary also did as a young man but swears he didn’t inhale). That is quite different from the many I knew from that age who never exhaled. And I have never really cared what Oprah thought about anything. I never cared much in the past and now I care not one whit. And by the way, how many Euros can you get for one Whit?

But I do wonder something. Why don’t politicians have songs written about them that they use in their campaign commercials anymore? Remember “Nixon’s the One?” And even though I can’t recall if he even was elected or whatever the hell happened to him, almost 45 years later I wake up in the middle of the night singing: “Waggoner Carr for attorney general, Waggoner Carr for attorney general …” Waggoner Carr ran for Texas Attorney General sometime in the mid 1960s. I would look it up on the Internet to see if he was elected, but I am way too burned out to do that, not to mention it would make me look as though I cared about something and God knows we can’t have that happening.

So if I am this burned out at the present moment I wonder how I will feel by the time the REAL election rolls around next November? I don’t want to even think about it. I think I need a nap, I sure hope I don’t wake up singing “Nixon’s the One!”

Indulge me a few moments, if you will, for a cynicism frenzy. The Mitchell report today blew the lid off Major League Baseball. Perhaps this tell-all about steroid use in the bigs will change the face of baseball as we know it. Maybe it won’t. Maybe I should just say: Who gives a rat’s ass whether one or all of the great names of a once-great game use steroids to make them hit home runs and their testicles shrink? What does it matter that chemical cheating is prevalent in baseball or any other sport or past-time? I mean, really, think about it.

Cheating is cutting corners, doing things the easy way. Although one might dispute that, considering the negative effects of steroid overuse, is necessarily helping an athlete get an advantage the easy way.

But cutting corners has become the great, American past-time. Big mega-corporate f**ks cut corners all the time. Look at China. They be cutting corners big time. Our CIA cuts corners while interrogating prisoners. It might not be so much that it’s the easy way to get accurate intelligence from terrorist by making the prisoners feel like they are drowning or other torture means while shot in the gut like one of the suspected terrorists whose videotaped interrogation was conveniently “lost.” Probably these “detainees” were tortured just because those big, bad CIA tough-guy, badasses could torture them. Besides, what’s cutting corners or cheating after terrorists fly planes into your buildings?

So I am not sitting here wagging my finger too much at those multi-millionaire baseball players who want to screw their bodies and brains up with steroids. It would be better if we didn’t have baseball who use chemicals to make them hit more long balls or run faster. It would be better if companies didn’t cut corners which make their products less safe just to make more money. It would be better if our country could be the principled nation among nations that didn’t torture its prisoners for whatever excuse those zealots come up with as a means to an end. But we can’t be unscrewed can we? Nothing from nothing means nothing. All aspirin’s alike. Don’t worry be happy. Have a nice day and leave the driving to us.

Cynical? Me? Surely you jest!

Today I had to work on my part-time job at a couple of outlets in the mall. And guess what? I didn’t think once about someone going all what some folks around these parts call “hay-war” and getting shot. It seems more likely that would happen back around where I live. Especially since the local constabulary doesn’t break any speed records getting to where I live when something happens there. I called 9-1-1 last night because some loud-ass sisters were getting into it and I couldn’t abide by having bullets invade my living spaces. It was all way over with by the times our boys in blue got there. I really don’t think our local Five-Oh gives a s**t about us there at the motel. I could be wrong. But I don’t think so.

Perino: Can you say “dumb as a box of rocks?”

It should be reassuring to know that the woman who speaks for the person whom some say is the most powerful man in the world is just a mere mortal. But then we find out that spokeswoman, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, is a bit too mortal. Or one might even say is dumb as a box of rocks.

Truly, I would be willing to give Blondie the benefit of the doubt. But, I just can’t do it in this case. I think that the White House Press Secretary should know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was all about, regardless that it occurred a decade before she was born. Giving her a pass because it happened before she was around would be like excusing me from knowing the United States won the civil war it fought with the Southern, Confederate States of America because, after all, it happened some 90 years before I was born.

No, there is just no excuse for Dana Perino not knowing about the time the U.S. was as close to nuclear war as it had ever been.

In all reality, I am sure Perino has got something going for her other than being telegenic. She reminds me of a newspaper reporter I once worked with. He was young and had recently received a master’s degree, something you don’t come across that very often in a newsroom. But I could only shake my head when he admitted that until recently he had never heard of the Beatles. Actually, it made me want to slap him repeatedly. I didn’t slap him, of course.

I hope that the welfare of our nation doesn’t ever have to depend solely on the likes of Dana Perino because if that happens, we will truly be in deep doo, unless of course a pretty face is what’s required to save us.