Eight Feet Deep

Francisco Franco. Still dead.

I kind of like that SOTU has made the rounds, standing for “State of the Union.” God knows we don’t have nearly enough acronyms in this FUBAR-ed world. I have chosen not to do a post mortem of Bush’s speech from last night. One reason is that I have a doctor’s appointment shortly and I don’t have time to make a well-reasoned, point-by-point treatise of why the SOTU sucked. Another reason is that the SOTU actually delivered what I expected: Zero, zilch, nada, zip, naught, doodley-squat … It’s like the bit Chevy Chase did on “Saturday Night Live” in the “Weekend Update” segment years ago in which, after the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, Chase declared: “This just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” That line has always stuck with me to mean everything is maddeningly status quo. That’s about all I have to say about GW’s misstate of the union address.

“I think I’ll insert here, ‘As your king … ‘Yep. I like the sound of that.”

I certainly will be glad to hear President Bush give his State of the Union address this evening. The reason for my anticipation? It is because he is going to tell us everything is just A-O-K with the state of our union. Yes siree Bob. Er, George. I really need the president to say that everything is groovy and he should say it like it is true. Which, perhaps in his mind, maybe it is. I certainly need to hear that everything is cool because, you know, s**t really isn’t so hot with our union right now. But GW is the man. He says it’s so. It’s so. Right?

Every few days or so I look for freelance writing gigs in the various cities on Craigslist. A couple of jobs caught my eye today. This one from L.A. in particular:

“Short exotic story writer needed.”

Of course, I had no way of knowing by looking at the headline whether they wanted someone who is short in stature to write exotic stories, or someone of any old height to write short, exotic stories. I also couldn’t tell just what they meant by “exotic.” I suppose they mean “porn.” But since I am neither short nor am I very good at writing porn I just skipped that one right on by.

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UPDATE: After looking at the ad caption again, I realize they did want a “Short erotic story writer” instead of “Short exotic story writer.” Okay, then. Why do they want someone who is short writing porn? What kind of freaks are they?
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I also was not sure what was meant by this caption from New York’s Craigslist:

“Clinical ghost writer.”

Perhaps they were wanting someone who writes in a clinical setting, or maybe someone who is dispassionate. A dispassionate ghost writer. So, that raises the question: Do they want someone who writes in a clinical setting about ghosts? Do they want a dispassionate person who writes a story for someone else, as in a ghost writer? Or do they want someone who is a dispassionate person who will write about ghosts in a clinical setting for someone else? Please choose one.

I’m not really sure what either of the ads had in mind. Had I decided to actually take a look at them, then maybe I would know what they were talking about. But, after all, what fun would that be?

Oh, and here is a hint I thought I’d pass along. If you are looking for writing jobs on Craigslist or in other classified ad venues, you might avoid those who are looking for writers if one or more words in the ad are misspelled. This is especially so if it is some new, wonderful magazine that is being published, which can’t afford to pay you right now other than in copies, but it’s a good way to get your name out there and you’ll be famous once the publication takes off, yadda, yadda, yadda.

After some 3,200 miles to and fro’ Detroit and places here and there, big and small, I am home again. Saturday was a pretty long day. We left Muskogee and got to Ross’ home near Dallas just before noon. Then, I set out for the five or so rain-filled hours of driving back to Beaumont in Southeast Texas. Was I tired? Yes. Do I have good sense? No. Otherwise, I would not have gone out late last night with friends to briefly listen to a band at a local club. But I am feeling much better this afternoon although I still wonder what happened to my good sense as it is nowhere to be found.

It was all-in-all a trip devoid of a lot of weirdness which is kind of unusual for flying anywhere by air these days plus driving North-to-South in these US of A. Maybe this lack of strangeness was just because it was such a whirlwind trip that I didn’t have time to observe it.

Two strange sights do stick out in my mind, however. First, I don’t know what is up with Missouri naming their highways with letters. I kept seeing these road signs with just letters. “AW” or “K” or you would see “Route C — 2 miles.” I am sure some perfectly good reason exists why this is so because Missouri folks seem to put a lot of stock in that which is reasonable. Of course, there is John Ashcroft, who was our attorney general as well as a past Missouri governor and U.S. senator.

The second piece o’ weirdness was in — where else? — Oklahoma. Driving down U.S. 69 through one of the Native American countries, just off the turnpike to Tulsa, we saw these big truck trailers sitting on the side of the road going into and out of a little town named Big Cabin, Okla. Painted in incredibly large red letters on the side of the trailers was: “Speed Trap Ahead.” There were several of these trailers on the side of the road.

I looked up the town on Speedtrap.org and found quite a lot about the goings on there. Some subsequent articles I read such as this one fill in the blanks about how the truck stop owner felt the city of Big Cabin was getting the proverbial gold mine while his trucker clientele was getting the shaft. You’ll find in reading the speedtrap page and its comments about Big Cabin or any other speedtrap in the U.S. that one person’s speedtrap is another town’s crusade to save lives by enforcing the speed limits. Sometimes such motives are pure. Other times the motives are pure hogwash (TM? Hogwash — Spoil your swine in luxury.)

It was an interesting trip though. It’s always nice to get out of town for a little while just to see the world from a different perspective, see new sights, et cetera. But it’s also nice to be home, worrying about work I have pending and how I’m going to pay the bills. Yes, that’s really nice. It’s a blast. Sigh …

The end of Day 2 of the EFD big adventure finds us in Muskogee, Okla., USA. Yes, that Muskogee. No Merle Haggard to be found. However, Ross went across the street from the Super 8 to the local Stop-and-Rob and reports the cashier was thoughtful enough to be wearing her best tooth.

We started off in Fort Wayne, Indiana, this morning (again with the EARLY). We stopped off at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis to take a picture of Ross by the silver arch and then went for a drive across Missouri. Ross certainly was enjoying driving his new ‘Vette and had good intentions of driving us back to Texas this evening, but he kind of was discombobulated with his figuring and so here we are in Muskogee. Ross said we made 891 miles today, it certainly seemed like more at times.

Anyway, we should be back in Texas tomorrow unless we find a whole herd of toothless women. Then perhaps we will start a toothless modeling agency. Imagine the toothless look. Young women and old with one tooth, a Marlboro in one hand, a Milwaukee’s Best in the other, struttin’ their stuff down the striped line for a sobriety test telling the troopers to “Kiss my ass!” By God, if we find more of them toothless ol’ gals we might just take Paris by storm.