Eight Feet Deep

Over the past week I have been buried in a project that I thought would never end but hopefully my long nightmare is over. With that said, I have had a little time to digest the life sentence that a federal jury in Alexandria, Va., handed Zacarias Moussaoui last week for his part in the 9/11 conspiracy.

It seems the government was disappointed Moussaoui will rot in the federal “Supermax” prison for the rest of his life. Prosecutors wanted the death penalty which means that if Moussaoui had been sentenced to death he would have been given the choice of lethal injection or electrocution (In federal cases, a defendant sentenced to death is executed under the method of the state in which the crime took place. In this case it was Virginia, location of the Pentagon.)

Since there is a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking on the Moussaoui trial’s outcome and because it is Monday morning, I thought I’d throw my in my 1.5 cents.

First of all, there are those of the opinion that the government case was overreaching and flawed. Others such as Dr. Brooks A. Mick of “The Conservative Voice” think the jury’s verdict was part of society’s mollycoddling in general. But still others, as with Goldilocks and the three bowls of porridge, found the sentence was just right.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what is legally sound here or what isn’t. But it seems to me that Moussaoui was portraying himself a winner no matter what the outcome. If he died he would be a martyr. If he gets life, he lives. That is, of course, if you can call how he will likely live the rest of his life, “life.”

Despite the government’s disappointment I also think they stood to win either way. No matter how much blood lust exists over the horrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, some will argue that life without parole is a much worse fate than death.

So no matter how much I loathe the term “win-win” (and believe me, I loathe the term), I cannot think of a better expression for all sides in the Moussaoui case. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?

It isn’t often that I have really — I mean seriously really — strange dreams. But a dream I had last night was on my all-time bizarre list. In my dream, I was walking down a dirt road in the woods much like the one pictured in my post yesterday about attempts to rename East Texas. But these woods were alive and filled with working — women — blondes to be exact. There must have been a hundred or more young, attractive, blond women who were doing various woods-type work with hoes and shovels. They were all dressed the same in blue chambray shirts and denim pants, kind of like the working uniform I wore years ago in the Navy only they looked a hell of a lot better in their uniforms. Now I know what some of you may be thinking — this guy is having a woman prison fantasy dream. But it wasn’t that. I didn’t sense these women were prisoners. Actually, I felt like they were Swedish. Yes, great-looking, blond, Swedish woodswomen. I tell you guys (or gals), if you are going to have a dream, that isn’t a bad one to have.

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I got an e-mail from Shane Allen, the assignment manager at KBTV Channel 4 in Beaumont, yesterday who was replying about my post regarding their weather radar being on the fritz. Shane said that the radar was down because of planned maintenance. I certainly understand that. Sometimes I get down for planned maintenance. Anyway, it was nice of Shane to write and explain to a viewer what was shaking.

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Finally, !Feliz Cinco De Mayo! Today is the day of national celebration in Mexico and in the U.S. among many people with the exception of Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan and the Minutemen. The holiday commemorates the victory of Mexican forces led by Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza over the French expeditionary forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, thus beginning the use of the term “Freedom Fries.”

Stealth thunderstorms invade area under the radar perhaps?

Thunder has been rumbling outside for a good 30 minutes so when I got back to the computer and pulled up my favorite local weather radar (4WarnLive Doppler @ KBTV-Channel 4), I found the above picture. As you can tell, it shows a shower near Houston but no action near where I live to the east in Beaumont. I checked the KFDM-Channel 6 radar and found that we are figuratively swimming in thunderstorms in the area.

I don’t know why I’m not seeing the storms on 4WarnLive, perhaps lightning struck their apparatus or something. An any event, I hope that they get their radar back up and functioning properly soon because KBTV has the best online radar in the area. And I’m not saying that because someone there seems to regularly check my blog, according to my StatCounter information. You don’t think I’d be that much of a kiss up do you? Okay, don’t answer that.

A group of marketers are suggesting to regional officials that the Pineywoods region of East Texas — where I was raised — be “rebranded” to attract more tourism. That notion ranks high upon my list of the stupidest suggestions I have ever heard.

If you buy an old business and start a new one, you might want to change its name. If someone important or influential dies then a school district might change the name of an existing school and name it after the dead guy or gal. On rare occasions, a town will change its name. The change might be temporary to reflect a favorite sports team such as in sports-crazed Texas where the town of Buffalo changed its name to “Blue Star” because the Dallas Cowboys were playing the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl and later temporarily changed its name to “Green Star” for the NHL Dallas Stars.

A more recent example was the town of Clark, Texas, changing its name to “Dish” in order for the town to get free satellite TV. But renaming an entire region? What kind of crack are these people smoking?

The Pineywoods nickname refers to a roughly-defined geographic area that could in reality encompass the eastern third of Texas. More distinctly, it is used to describe the timber-laden (and traditionally timber industry-dependent)region that extends roughly between Nacogdoches and the Big Thicket inside of an area between the Trinity and Sabine rivers (Texas-Louisiana border).

Regions are largely defined by geographical and physiological features such as the Imperial Valley in California, the Mississippi Gulf Coast or the Trans-Pecos region of Texas. Certain cities or city clusters sometimes get nicknames such as the area in which I now live, the Golden Triangle, which is comprised of the geographical threesome of Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange in Texas. There is also the Dallas-Fort Worth “Metroplex,” which is a name that always seemed incongruent to me because of Fort Worth’s history as a cow town.

These marketers can rebrand all they want but I predict that they will fail to get all but a few hucksters to call the Pineywoods by a different name. And that is as it should be. After all, what is East Texas without pine trees and wouldn’t it be just more than a little idiotic to rename the place the “Pineplex?”

One of our area TV stations, KFDM Channel 6, is doing a series on local bloggers. Frankly, I had never heard of any of the three that are being featured. But just because I have never heard of something doesn’t indicate significance or the lack thereof. Nonetheless, I will begin to check these local blogs out more often and even though I’m not totally clear on the point of the series I am glad the local station is giving the topic a look. Blogging is an interesting phenomena. Perhaps the subject gets a little overplayed by the media and definitely provokes an overreaction by media managers. Even though I dabble in a little political discourse here at EFD, my blog is just primarily an exercise to help me write something every day. After all, writing is the way I make my (so-called) living. My mantra: “Write something, even if it’s stupid.”