Eight Feet Deep

Being middle-aged now (if you go on the 0-100 scale)you tend to forget some things that might have crossed your path a couple of years ago. In a Hastings music store. In Waco.

It was there one Saturday morning that I heard this peppy, new-wave-sounding band singing how Willie Nelson and NASA and the Bush twins all wanted someone back. The song is called “Ohio” or subtitled (“Come Back to Texas”) by the self-described “punk” or “drunk rock” band originally from Wichita Falls, Texas, called Bowling for Soup. Living in recent years, first in Waco and then in Beaumont, and not a devotee to MTV I heard little about this group. But the other night I was fooling around listening to videos through the Yahoo Video feature and found an MTV live version of Ohio. And I am fully convinced we need to change Ohio to the state song of the Lone Star State.

One reason is, our present state song was probably fine for a lot of old church ladies and Daughters of the Republic of Texas to stand up and sing along. If you can stomach it, I give you a midi version here. I’m sure the lady who wrote it had her heart in the right place. But even people who have their hearts in the right place turn out material that sucks.

Now I give you the Bowling for Soup Live version on MTV that should be our state song. It’s a bit tricky getting to that video as I found out in trying to pass this along to my friend Sally in Massachusetts. But trust me. If you click here and watch the quick commercial you’ve got a better than even chance of hearing it. Be sure to follow the instructions.

It should be the state song if for no other reasons than telling the truth:

“Besides the Mexican food sucks north of here any way.”

That and the Bush twins want you back. Perhaps you can all go drinking together at Chuy’s in Austin and end up on the police blotter. Oh me oh my. I just love Texas.

All day long I’ve had a crick in my neck. This is not to be confused with a creek, which I have a photo of appearing in this post. I don’t know how such sharp pains came to be called cricks although I can see how someone somewhere used a little accent to pronounce “creek” as “crick.” I say “ya’ll” sometimes but I’ve never intentionally called a creek a crick.

It’s rather difficult driving 120 miles round trip as I did today with a crick in my neck. But to look on the bright side, it would have been a much more difficult trip had a creek actually been inside my neck. Which isn’t as strange as it may seem. It rained all the way on the drive up to my brother’s home in Newton and all the way back to Beaumont. Well, I guess it is as strange as it seems.

Oh well. Got to go to the drug store.

As much as I like the utopian concept of a No Shop Day I ventured out on Black Friday to buy a few things. Yes, I even went to the dreaded store that liberals hate — Wal-Mart. Like some of my friends I realize Wal-Mart has its shortcomings in more areas than on which I have time to elaborate. But after looking long and hard I didn’t believe I would be able to find an 18 x 18 x 1 central heat/air filter anywhere else in this city. That is what is wrong with all the high-minded activism against Wal-Mart and the like. They’ve got us over a barrel and until reasonably priced alternatives for all the things we need are fully available in both urban and rural areas at places which present a viable alternative to Wally World, a few people not shopping at Wal-Mart are not going to make all that much difference.

With that said our holiday spirit ugliness certainly seemed to raise its head at a couple of Wal-Marts on Friday. One of those scenes was at the very store where I later shopped in Beaumont, Texas. It seems a hundred or so early-bird shoppers all flocked to the electronics section to buy about a handful of laptop computers on sale and … well you do the math. An off-duty policeman apparently thought things were getting out of hand and he shot off a blast of pepper spray, according to news reports. No one was seriously hurt, but I’m sure someone will sue.

What the hell is wrong with people? Are material goods of such importance that we lose all semblance of civility? I guess so. It’s only just after Thanksgiving. Looks like a long holiday season ahead.

For those of us who live in the U.S. it is sometimes hard to think about what goes on in other parts of the world not dominated by President Bush or Denny Hastert or Jennifer Anniston. Take Botswana for example.

Botswana in southern Africa happens to need rain right now. Bishop Barnabus Lekganyane, who has some 6 million followers in the Zionist Christian Church in southern Africa visited Gaborone, capital of Botswana, last week just to make it rain. Well, Lekganyane had a much wider agenda that included tackling the AIDS epidemic there. But although some rain had been forecast during the past weekend, Lekganyane’s faithful insisted he made it rain, according to Botswana’s Mmegi Online.

“They insist the rains came immediately the ZCC brass band stopped playing on Saturday night at the National Stadium. The rains went on to Sunday and stopped just before the prayers could start. Some followers believed that it would rain after Lekganyane had finished his sermon. But nothing of the sort happened.”

Still, a top Gaborone official proclaimed the rain as a miracle if that is indeed what it was.

“The deputy Gaborone mayor, Ezekiel Dube supported the Master of Ceremony and said at the Saturday rainfall and today’s rainfall ‘has put the debates to an end. Now we know that ZCC led by its Bishop has prayed and their prayers have been answered.'”

Who is to say whether the bishop made it rained or whether some good weather forecasting had taken place? Rain is rain is rain. And apparently they needed the rain.

Of Interior Secretary Gayle Norton. Don’t you think?