Eight Feet Deep

The most obvious headline of the day comes from Yahoo News referring to a story by Reuters news service:

Prison would prove tough if Jackson convicted

Ya think? The headline is pretty awful. The story, which if you want to spend your time reading you should have the fun of looking it up on Yahoo News yourself, (hey, I can’t do everything for you) is one of those stories in journalism where sow’s ears are spun from a sow’s wiggly little tail. Reporters are awaiting the jury to decide upon poor Michael’s fate. So this writer reached down into the depths of her journalistic tool box and pulled up a jewel about how life could be difficult for the so-called “King of Pop” inside the slammer.

I wish I could say that I cared. I don’t. Whatever the jury decides is something Jackson will have to live with, whether behind bars or not. But I can understand this journalist writing such a story. Because the awful truth behind newspapers is something called the newshole. It’s like a pothole except you have to fill it with whatever material you have handy. It is also possible that this Reuters writer (say that fast 16 times)was given such an assignment by an editor. That is because editors are where the truly bad stories originate.

Editors scream at their minions to “fill that damn newshole” with something, anything. Just as long as the hungry beast gets filled. The result is instant enlightenment. Oh my, Michael Jackson might have it rough if he goes to prison. I did not know that.

I’ve filled the newshole with my share of meaningless drivel so I feel I can sit here and criticize. In fairness, nothing stories come from a variety of circumstances ranging from idiot editors to slow news days. It’s quite common to see this on local television news. Hey, nothing happened, let’s do a story. Make some s*** up! Why? It’s the newshole.

Just remember, as long is there is an empty newshole, no stupid story will go untold.

I have about five cardboard boxes full of stuff that I moved, mostly newspapers from my previous jobs, that remain unpacked. I vowed to one day clip the articles I kept from those papers except for those particular pages I wanted to keep such as the front page when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded. I probably will never get around to clipping them though, realist that I am.

But on the bright side I did manage to throw away a whole lot of crap that I had accumulated over the past 25 years or so. Why I kept every matchbook from everywhere I have ever been is beyond me. I never aspired to be a matchbook collector. Postcards are something different. I’ve been collecting them since I was a kid. Not that I am any kind of big-time collector. It’s just when someone sent me a postcard I would keep it. Or I would go somewhere and see a postcard and buy it. Or I would find a really odd, old one at a flea market and spend a buck on it. But matchbooks, no. I used to pick up matchbooks because I smoked. Now I don’t — smoke or pick up matchbooks.

I am going to make a really big leap right here, from my crap-o-rama to presidential crap-o-rama. When I was working in Waco, one of the big deals was the attempt by Baylor University to get President George W. Bush to locate his presidential library there after he is out of office. It’s a logical wish on Baylor’s part. GW has his place outside of Crawford which is only a 10-minute ride or less by helicopter from Baylor or a 25-minute ride by armored Suburban.

Of course, the Bushes and most notably Laura, have made their intentions known that they will be living in Dallas after they move out of the White House. GW will still keep the ranch, should he find himself feeling sort of insignificant in the middle of the night and just has to go whack some mountain cedar. Their living in Dallas means, however, that his presidential library could go to Southern Methodist University (Laura’s college). Other schools in the running include a daily double for Texas A & M, which has his dad’s library.

These presidential libraries are a wealth of information for serious geeks who study presidents. They also are a tourist attraction. I’ve only been to one — LBJ’s at the University of Texas at Austin. But when you come right down to it, the commodity being sold is crap. And I know there is a lot more crap collected during a four-year or eight-year presidency than my past 25 years of semi-significance.

Waco, and Baylor University, wants your crap Mr. President. So does SMU. So does A & M. It’s historical crap, no doubt about it. I know that going through my years of crap I’ve kept anything related to the U.S. President. That includes a certificate of gratitude that the president sends when a veteran dies. In this case, it was for my dad and it was signed by Bill Clinton. Some may call that ironic. Others may call it a crying shame.

And I’ve kept my press passes for presidential events I covered in Crawford. One such pass almost pisses me off so badly I can hardly bear to look at it. It’s got my name and affiliation written in pen and is all smeared on the page. That’s because the children who run presidential events felt it made perfect sense to keep the press waiting out in a downpour for 30 minutes at Fort Hood while … well I don’t quite know what they were doing. If it was all for security’s sake, I’d be understanding. But we were finally let in and then the Secret Service swept the place for bombs and other assorted items. Chill boy.

So I have my presidential crap as well and I can understand why people think that it’s important. On the other hand, millions of dollars are being spent just to attract the president’s crap to a college campus so the college and town it is located in can make even more millions of dollars. It’s not like GW will be leaving crown jewels. It’s crap. Isn’t that a little warped?

I’ve been in my new apartment for a week and a half. I guess that begs the question: When does it stop being my new apartment and becomes just my apartment? I’ve only today been able to hang a couple of pictures and I’m not entirely sure they will stay in the same place for very long.

I figured I would put the above photo that was taken when I worked as a firefighter, somewhere. At least for now, and I’ve chosen a wall over the dining table in the kitchen. It’s kind of a reminder in my own bizarre way to be careful while cooking in the kitchen. That is because, if I am not mistaken, this house burned down because the old man who owned it left something unattended on the stove.

It has always been an interesting photo to me. It’s not just because I was in the picture. Rather, it is fascinating because it captures something I could not see even though I was much closer to the fire than the photographer.

All I could see that day was fire. Red, hot, searing, ass-burning, fire. I remember it was a hot day. Ron Eddings, who was keeping tabs on the pumper, had to spray Nathan and me down with another hose as we were fighting this fire. I guess it’s an odd choice of words, “fighting,” because we were extinguishing the fire. There really was nothing left to fight.

Hardy Meredith, with whom I later worked at the same newspaper, took this shot for the paper. I realized after the photo was published the next day that you could see the outline of the house in the fire. I guess that maybe it’s not a big deal but it is all a matter at how you view your objective. When this massive hunk of pine was burning in front of me, that is all that was before me. It wasn’t a house anymore, it was a big fire. But seeing the outline of the home gives more of a perspective as something that is on fire rather than just fire itself.

Does it make a difference? Not really. We probably could have safely let it just burn once we quickly determined that we were only going to save the slab. But strange job that firefighting is, we couldn’t do that. So Nathan, who was my lieutenant, had the bright idea that we should use a so-called “blitz” hose line on it. It was a hose 2 1/2 inches in diameter which carried considerably more power than the 1 1/2-inch hoses with which we normally fought house fires. I was all for using the blitz line. I guess it was a macho thing. But as you can probably tell in the photo, it wasn’t an easy task maneuvering that hose.

It was an interesting experience and as was the case with many fires it was one from which I learned something. The photo isn’t a bad reminder of just how easily something can go straight to hell. Whether it stays on my kitchen wall, well, we’ll see.

Okay, here is a weird dream I have for you.

Last night I dreamed I was drunk and called up my old girlfriend Vicki. You know the one. Vicki “It’s not you it’s me. On second thought it is you.” That Vicki. I couldn’t make sense of the call. That is the one aspect of the dream that does make sense, of course. I was drunk in the dream.

I do remember from being drunk and calling Vicki in my dream that she did not seemed too pleased by my call. Huh. Imagine that. I was chastised not only by Vicki but by Doc. Vicki is married to a doctor now, but it was not that doc. It was my friend Doc, who is a college professor. I wondered what he was doing there. But even though I don’t know for sure if Vicki and my friend Doc know each other it is an entirely plausible scenario. Not only is it plausible, I would even say it is likely Doc and Vicki know each other because we once ran in similar circles. Also,they both live in a pretty small town.

What is really strange is that when I woke up, I wondered if I had actually made that call. I kind of had to shake the cobwebs loose inside my brain to realize that I had not been drunk last night. And although I am not particularly predisposed to sleepwalking or such activity, I wasn’t sure if I had made a call in my sleep. I checked both phones later and fortunately neither indicated I had dialed a peculiar number in that area code.

Who knows the reasons for dreams such as they are. Maybe I’m cracking under pressure. Or maybe it was the power of suggestion. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at a party listening to several young women who were talking about their “reaching out” on the phone during times of drunkenness when they were in college. It had only been a few years ago for most of these particular women.

I won’t sit here and say that I’ve never called up an ex-girlfriend when I have had a drink or three. I’ve also had ex-girlfriends and friends, both male and female, call me up at ungodly hours after they’ve been drinking heavily. While certainly an annoying practice, you must admit it makes sense.

Getting shit-faced is at its best a social activity. When you are removed from people and are inebriated it can be lonely. It’s pretty simple actually.

I have had dreams about being drunk before. I’ve also had dreams about calling people on the telephone before. But never the two together. Jeez. I sure hope I don’t dream about having a hangover. Or even worse, I would hate to dream that I have a head-banging hangover and have a loud phone ringing at the same time. That would really suck.

Anurag Kashyap knew how to spell “appoggiatura” and lucky for him. Correctly spelling the musical term, describing an embellishing note usually written in smaller size, meant winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday.

It was no doubt a tense contest, at least until 14-year-old Katherine Seymour of Huntingtown, Md., was uncertain of the word “incunabula” and asked: “And how do you spell that?” Good one. She’ll probably be president someday. Incunabula, by the way, refers to books printed prior to 1501. The date is an arbitrary one and has nothing to do with development of printing processes, according to some quick reading I did just to find out what the word really meant.

The spelling bee is a big deal these days. I even saw it once on ESPN. Okay, if you can call poker a sport, I suppose you could make the stretch to spelling bees. I have to wonder though just how much fun these high-octane contests are for kids. Kids already have enough pressure and this is like the Super Bowl for young brainiacs.

I remember having spelling contests in Mrs. Willie Mae Humphrey’s second grade class at Newton (Texas)Elementary. I usually would win or would be a finalist. I thought it was great fun. Probably I thought so because I was good at it. At least I was then. But I no longer kin spellll. I don’t know why that’s so. It would seem you would increase your spelling ability after having to spell for almost 50 years, not to mention that I have spent almost the past two decades writing for a living. But it seems like my sense of spell has waxed and waned. Along with my memory. Along with my memory. Along …

What I do remember about Mrs. Humphrey’s class was that rainy afternoon on Nov. 22, 1963, when Mr. Jones, the principal, announced over the intercom that President Kennedy had been killed and that they were letting school out early. I didn’t live very far from school like other kids and I began to walk home in the rain. But my dad showed up just after I had crossed the street from the school. I guess he figured they would let the kids out early for such an event. Or maybe he heard Mr. Jones ring the bell.

We had this huge old bell, kind of like the Liberty Bell except not cracked, that was located in a grassy strip between the two elementary school wings. Mr. Jones would come out at 3 o’clock each day and bang the heck out of that bell three times with a hammer. I remember that you could hear it from where I lived, when I wasn’t in school. That’s kind of quaint when you think about it.

I guess you could say it was like an incunabulum, just not as rare.