Eight Feet Deep

“So that’s what the Fourth Amendment really says? Huh! I guess we’ll have to look into that.”

One aspect of being a news reporter that I liked the least when I worked for newspapers was waiting on phone calls to be returned. There were times when it seemed the entire universe was involved in a conspiracy to prohibit timely return phone calls from coming your way and thus greatly stressing you out and pissing you off.

Well, that hasn’t changed as a freelancer. I have spent the morning waiting on phone calls then waiting some more. I started making calls about 9 a.m. and the first person to return my call did so when I was eating lunch about 11:45 a.m. Then, I decided to go grocery shopping and what’d ya know? I get another call right there in Kroger between the produce and the bottled water and have to do note taking in one of my least favorite environments.

There are times when the returned phone calls all fall into place or even you actually get to talk to someone when you call them. The latter is rare, however. Some of my friends (not mentioning any names!) often don’t even answer my calls.

So I am back from grocery shopping waiting once again. I can’t carry on with the rest of my afternoon until I hear back from this one particular person. Then, perhaps I will have enough information to send the editor of a publication I sometimes work for in order for him to determine if I should proceed with the story. I just got an e-mail a bit ago from a sports editor with whom I went to journalism school and later worked with at a newspaper. He wished me luck on freelancing. He said it scared him to think of having to do that. His words were something like: “I would have to get a mower and start mowing lawns.”

Maybe I am insane. If not, sitting here stressing out about phone calls certainly dosn’t help my sanity any.

A solarized look at the rain out my front door. Or else you’ve just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving low.

It’s stopped raining but nature treated us to quite a rain exposition during the last hour or so.

The rain fell hard, fast and voluminous — like a fluent and freefalling airborne division of water molecules ready to invade hostile territory. “Land Hoooooooooo,” cried Gen. T. Storm “Raindrop” Squall leading his troops in an attack on the terra firma.

Accompanying the rainfall airborne division was the booming artillery of thunder and flashing bolts of lightning from the light brigade … Oh, to hell with the martial references. It rained like hell if hell could rain. It rained cats and dogs and sheep and buffalo and Madonna and Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez and Juan Valdez and A. Martinez and the rain king of the Solvent Republic. It was the Mobil-Exxon-Wal-Mart-Walt Disney-Halliburton-Martha Stewart of rain. It rained like a Saturday night if easy was like a Sunday morning. It was the Sultan of Shower. It was Bo Knows Rain. It rained like like a butterfly that was stung by a bee.

It was wet.

Did we ever figure out what we are going to call our years now that we are well into the 21st century? I think it should be “Ought-Five, Ought-Six, etc.” It is reminiscent of hearing old-timers talk about the early 1900s. But I don’t know if the people who formally establish that kind of thing — probably the government or Hollywood — have put their official stamp on how to refer to our years. “Two-thousand five” sounds like you are counting in a game of hide-and-go-seek. “Twenty-Oh-Five” just doesn’t have the right ring. “Two Zero Zero Five” sounds like you watched way too many Adam-12 episodes. “One-Adam-12 roger.” Aw hell, we’ll get it all figured out … by the time I’m gone.

I realize that we still have 2 1/2 more weeks of 2005. And it is entirely possible something great will happen in my life between now and midnight Jan. 1, 2006. It is entirely possible, though not entirely likely or not even entirely probable. For that reason and that I usually spend my end-of-year writing of dancing on the fat lady’s toes, I thought I would recall a bit of the year that was. Note: Not to put too fine a point on ‘fat’ but for the past 20 years I have poetically danced on the fat lady’s toes right around New Year’s Eve while the Black-eyed peas are cooking. The particular fat lady was this bitch on wheels I used to work for in an apartment complex at the beginning of my slacker days. More on the fat lady’s toes tradition at a later time.

Back to Ought-Five. Sheesh, what a year. I started it out with a full-time job and ended it working for myself. I covered back-to-back Iraqi prisoner abuse trials in January. I got a week’s comp time for it. In that week I climbed Enchanted Rock, drank a couple of beers in Luckenbach, Texas (minus Waylon, Willie and the boys), drank a few more beers with some Cajun guys in a Cameron, La., bar that would be blown away by a hurricane eight months later and hiked in the Big Thicket with my friend Sarah. That was an interesting week.

In April I flew out to Colorado for a week to visit someone I hadn’t seen in 27 years and only recently had begun e-mailing. I returned and after a few days back at work parted ways with my employer. I don’t know if there is a statute of limitations on the confidential agreement I signed. At any rate, I am afraid I won’t be able to divulge the details of my departure anytime soon. That was an interesting couple of weeks.

I stayed with my friend Ross near Dallas for almost a month until renting a place back in Beaumont. Since I’ve been back I’ve had some good times, got hit by Hurricane Rita, turned a half-century young and didn’t burst into flames, have done some work but not nearly enough and am now staring out the window at a stormy December day. It’s been an interesting six or seven months.

Oh, and I’ve been blogging since April. Ought-Five wasn’t bad really. It was a really weird year for me, one of change and transition, a change which I badly needed. Now I’ve got to start making things happen in Ought-Six. But before I get those gears in motion, I think I’ll just watch it rain for a little while.

One may tell when blowhard Bill O’Reilly is lying: his lips are moving. O’Reilly in his manufactured war on Christmas has now lied twice on the air about entities forbidding the use of red and green holiday colors. Click for the latest from Crooks and Liars.

Bloviating Bill also falsely reported the Plano school district just north of Dallas banned the festive colors. The school had to put out this notice to quell the rumors.

Sometimes I think this guy is just all shtick, but I just don’t know. I do know that O’Reilly is a cancer on common sense. I just wonder how many of his TV viewers and radio listeners actually believe him and how many just tune in because they know he’s going to say something absurdly inflammatory? Maybe someone should do a poll.