2007-04-07T15:14:00.000-05:00
com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RhgKl9cLKVI/AAAAAAAAAEk/2QvFw_pSis4/s1600-h/Intervention+02.jpg" img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5050798629360183634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.
com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RhgKl9cLKVI/AAAAAAAAAEk/2QvFw_pSis4/s320/Intervention+02.jpg" border="0" / /a br / div strong span style="font-size:130%;" /span /strong /div div strong span style="font-size:130%;color: " I'd Kill For Just A Little Snort Of Wite-Out /span span style="font-size:85%;" ® /span /strong /div br / div strong span style="font-size:85%;" /span /strong /div div Part of my recovery is I am supposed to be honest about my problems, so here we go: I. .
. I am an office supplies addict. I abuse office supplies.
No, not in the way my friend from the FFA in high school abused his favorite pet sheep Fleecy; rather, I have a powerful. . .
em predelection /em for office supply products, and I cannot stop myself once I have started. Me in Manning's is like an alcoholic in a liquor store. I hit Office Depot as hard as a junkie hits Weiss Park.
When I'm flush and ballin' the jack, I load up on Acco prong fasteners, Mead organizers, Day Runner daily planners and every conceivable accessory for them, and every kind of pen and/or writing utensil known to man. I haul it all home, penniless now, and shove it in a closet already full of that kind of stuff. Afterward I feel calm, at peace, and happy with the world.
The only thing I can liken it to is the post-coital high one has after a particularly satisfying encounter with that very special person you've spent your life with and/or just met about 30 minutes ago. And like the joy of sex, the office supply buzz only lasts for so long; pretty soon one feels compelled to start working on satisfying the ol' primal urge again. /div br / div In my case, I had clearly lost control.
I can see that now. Back before my intervention, I rationalized that it was perfectly normal to have six dozen or so unopened 2-packs of the cool Pilot G-2 gel pens, along with 15-20 replacement cartridges. I don't use the printer on my home computer much, so I felt okay letting the bright white copy paper inventory drop down to a meager 15 reams; I compensated for this by buying up every one of the marbled black and white composition books the local Dollar Tree store had on hand.
When I found a deal on those pink erasers one can stick on the end of a No. 2 pencil (I always seem to be out of those when I need one), I bought ten boxes, 1oo erasers to a box. I bet I don't run out now.
/div br / div When I take a prescription to the drug store and am told it will take 15 minutes to fill if I want to wait, I nonchalantly drift over to their understocked supplies section (usually next to the greeting cards) and then fervently look through everything they have on display. I am usually disappointed (and startled) when my name comes booming over the store loudspeaker, waking me from my reverie to say my Rx is ready for pickup. /div br / div Several friends had become more and more distressed at my downward spiral.
I had begun staying home so I could look at all my empty, brand new 3-ring binders by myself. I had begun talking about finding a deal on a copy machine/fax/printer for the house, or one of those machines that prepares reports with about a hundred little holes on the left side of the page, and then inserts a plastic thing that holds it together like a spiral notebook. /div br / div My wife caught me one night after I thought she'd gone to bed.
I'd pulled out a box I keep hidden in the bottom drawer of my desk. The box contains some old onion-skin typing paper and several sets of three-part carbon paper I found one time in a garage sale. There's even one of those old typing eraser pencils with a brush on the other end in there.
I was quietly fondling this stuff, muttering, "Vintage, vintage. . .
" when my wife walked in on me. She said she was leaving me if I didn't get help, and I didn't care. I can always get another wife, but it's not every day one can finger through actual typewriter history.
/div br / div So my family and friends ambushed me one day. My neighbor called and said he'd found an old Underwood typewriter in his attic, and did I want to look at it. When I walked in his house, there were a bunch of my loved ones there, looking all concerned, and some scrawny bald-headed guy I'd never seen before.
His name, he said, was 'Van Der Hooven' or something like that. "I'm just here to help your family and friends. They want to say some things to you, and then you can say what you want, and that's it, OK?
" I'm thinking, yeah, whatever. Now, where is that Underwood? /div br / div So they're all crying and stuff and telling me how worried they are then this Van Pelt dude says, "Will you get help today?
" Now, I ask you, what could I say? I said I would, and now everyone was crying tears of joy, and Van Der Waal says, "There's a plane waiting for you on the tarmac at Beaumont airport (BEX) ready to take you to the 3M Recovery Center up in Minnesota. You'll get good treatment there.
" /div br / div So the next thing you know I'm on my way to Minnesota. I was in this recovery center for 3+ months, working on my 12 steps and going to group therapy every day. Finally they said I was good to go.
That was last week sometime. Now I'm back home, and on the road to recovery. My desk in my home office here is kind of a mess though, since I've been away so long.
A few of those six-pocket organizers would help me straighten things up, and some of those big-ass binder clips. . .
/div
post-4559903043700105470
com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RYhzMDX2MRI/AAAAAAAAAD8/mHyGZg38nj4/s1600-h/HS+Hallway.jpg" img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5010381236350628114" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.
com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RYhzMDX2MRI/AAAAAAAAAD8/mHyGZg38nj4/s320/HS+Hallway.jpg" border="0" / /a br / div span style="font-size:130%;color: " strong Thinking Back On All The Crap I Learned In High School /strong /span br / br / I took a quiz at a a href="http://www.missneworleans.
blogspot.com/" strong friend’s site /strong /a yesterday that was supposed to determine which high school social category I fit into (were I still in high school, of course.) This determination was to be made from evaluating my responses to 50 questions mostly concerned with current pop culture and what my personal choices would be in certain span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" preconceived /span situations.
br / br / It was kind of funny, first of all because I had only a tenuous grasp on most of the cultural references used in the test questions. I knew maybe 75% of the bands, understood some of the category labels, but hardly any of the ‘hip’ jargon. br / br / This was the day of that long-anticipated formal announcement, then: “ em On this day in the Year of the Lord 2006, we pronounce you, Mr.
Inca F. Peru, officially old and out of it. /em After a short speech and some Q A, there will be coffee and donuts available in the lobby.
Thank you.” br / br / I tried to give truthful answers, though some of the questions were pretty vague or span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" couldn /span ’t really be answered in the relative scale format provided. Anyway, the results were tabulated and it was concluded that I am (or would be) 52% Jock, 42% span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Stoner /span , and 40% span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Emo /span Kid.
br / br / Obviously the percentages span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" weren /span ’t meant to total 100, as I had originally assumed. I guess what they mean is around 50% of me is a mixture of Jock, span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Stoner /span , and span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Emo /span Kid (I have some other smaller percentages in me, too; in categories like Hot, Loner, Prep, Geek-Nerd, and Punk. In short, I appear to be a cultural mutt.
Also, I apparently have zero traits common to two other categories – Ghetto and Goth.) br / br / The rest of me is left up to my own determination, I suppose. br / br / ********** br / br / The first thing that occurred to me is that high school span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" doesn /span ’t appear to have changed a whole lot since I attended, back in the late 1970’s.
Determining categories to put others in, and figuring out where you had been placed, was of paramount concern. In that sense, things are almost exactly like they were 30 years ago, and probably 60 years ago, too. br / br / The labels have changed names here and there, and there appear to be more specialized sub-categories now, but really, from what I can tell the basic definitions and parameters are still in place.
br / br / We had Jocks, too, and span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Jockettes /span , who were girls who played sports and/or who dated jocks. We also had Wannabes, both boys and girls who wanted to be Jocks/ span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Jockettes /span really bad, but span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" couldn /span ’t make it; so instead they hung around the fringes of the Jock world, as athletic trainers, hangers-on, and all-purpose sycophants. br / br / In my school the drug consumers were called Jellies, short for span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Jellyheads /span .
The modern equivalent would be span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Stoners /span , and we may have used that term as well. But there is a subtle difference, I think. At the time I was in high school, most everyone in my class got high at least sometimes.
Whether one was a credentialed span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Jellyhead /span or not was determined by frequency of use and visible devotion to the practice. If you only smoked occasionally, at a party when someone passed over a joint (think Bill Clinton), you really span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" didn /span ’t qualify for span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" drughead /span status. On the other hand, if you carried your weed with you at all times, kept a bong on the floor in your back seat, manicured your lid on top of your desk in the back of your English class during third period, drew marijuana leaves all over your cardboard book covers, etc.
, (think Cheech Chong) you were likely a member in good standing of the Jellyhead club. br / br / The rough 1970s equivalent for a Geek-Nerd was a Brain. I say roughly because I sense today’s Geek-Nerd designation is as much a critique of one’s social life (or lack thereof) as it is of one’s relative intelligence; whereas Brains were the kids who were obviously so intelligent that we span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" couldn /span ’t even think of anything derogatory to call them.
Of course, Brains were often Geeks and Nerds socially, too; but not necessarily always. I had one friend who was of exceptional intelligence, far beyond what would be regarded as simply really smart. But he was also a starter on the football team, and drank beer and smoked weed with the best of them.
I used to wonder sometimes when we were partying, since my friend was exponentially more intelligent than I was, did that mean when we were drinking and getting high that he was destroying exponentially more brain cells than I was? If so, I doubt it hurt him too much. He had plenty to spare.
br / br / By the way, if you were really span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" aggravated /span at a Brain and wanted to take a shot at him, you called him "Slide Rule." That's right, Slide Rule. That was considered to be "dropping the big one" on somebody, as these things went.
br / br / The most universally despised category was the Straights, also called the Goodies, or (worst of all) the Narcs. No one wanted to be in this category. It was really a catch-all for Brains who knew they were Brains and were snooty about it; for Jocks who recited the company line their coaches fed them and/or were members of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes; and also for Student Council participants, determined virgins of both sexes, and people who wouldn't get high with you.
br / br / There were a few others I’ span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" ve /span forgot by now, I am sure, and some subcategories I left out intentionally so as not to make things more confusing than they already are (Goat Ropers a/k/a Shit Kickers, for one; these were specifically children of the well-off who decided to get back to their roots, or somebody's roots, and dip Skoal and join the FFA and sign up for Industrial Arts classes.) But I think I got most of them. Today’s Jocks and span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Stoners /span match up almost directly with their 1970s antecedents, and the Geek-Nerds are a rough match for the Brains of yesteryear.
Today’s Preps were yesterday’s Straights, basically. However, that still leaves us with today’s Hot, Loners, span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Emo /span Kids, Punks, Ghettos, and Goths. br / br / The Punk, Ghetto and Goth kids would have been Jellies in the 1970s.
The Jelly Heads as a category had ambiguous boundaries, and just about anyone who got high and was a little off otherwise got that designation. "Hot" is a pornography term that has crept into the culture since I was in school; at any rate, I don’t remember any strict categorization based on looks only. We did have Loners, of course, but I guess we span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" did no /span t put them into a separate category.
If forced to choose, I guess the Loners would have been Jelly Heads, too, probably further designated by a sub-category like Freaks, a/k/a Weirdos. That meant freaky and/or weird in a vaguely positive sense, by the way. br / br / The oddest category I came across in today’s parlance was span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Emo /span Kids.
Initially I had no idea what that was, even though I am apparently 40% one. Checking online at the a href="http://www.urbandictionary.
com/define.php?term=emo+kid" strong Urban Dictionary /strong /a confused me even more.
I finally decided the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Emo /span Kids category is the 2000s version of a catch-all designation, since apparently no one agrees on a general definition. I gather one predominant span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Emo /span Kid trait is what we used to call being “laid back.” Someone who was laid back was universally admired for not getting too worked up about anything, for not being overly concerned with outward appearances, and for not slavishly following trends.
br / br / Someone who was laid back was always “cool”; and knowing someone who was cool and being cool oneself was the coolest thing of all. As I am sure it still is. br / br / span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Emo /span Kids, huh?
/div
post-2909226707607417071
com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RZk4DVlsj3I/AAAAAAAAAEU/Zmmx1kmPZiQ/s1600-h/galveston+1.jpg" img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5015101290039775090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.
com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RZk4DVlsj3I/AAAAAAAAAEU/Zmmx1kmPZiQ/s320/galveston+1.jpg" border="0" / /a br / div span style="font-size:130%;color: " strong Ocean Magic /strong /span br / br / Ocean Magic was the name of a surf shop in Galveston I patronized several years ago. It is long gone by now.
The shop was located on 61st Street, right next to the salt-water lagoon (actually the head of span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Offat's /span Bayou) where one could rent a jet ski and haul ass at ridiculous speeds around a relatively small body of water along with about 100 other fools doing the same thing. Did I mention that practically all of us were in some state of intoxication while doing this? Well, practically all of us were in some state of intoxication while doing this; and getting disintegrated in a collision on a careening jet ski is just one of those youthful "near misses" I experienced which didn't seem to have any real impact on me back then, at least as far as changing my behavior patterns went.
When I think about those several almost-tragedies now, I tend to shudder a bit. br / br / Along with Sunrise, a shop located in a small strip center on Seawall Blvd., Ocean Magic was the focal point in Galveston for myself and a few friends who fancied ourselves as surfers back then.
We were a small band, my surfing friends and I, and an optimistic one, too - being a surfing enthusiast on this section of the upper Texas Gulf Coast is something akin to being a golfing devotee in northern Alaska, or Iceland. Those guys chop a semblance of a golf course out of the glacial ice and then go out and play a "round" in sub-zero temperatures. In a region where a wide and shallow continental shelf prevents waves of any real size from forming along the Bolivar Peninsula and on the beaches of Galveston Island, one has to buy a short board and be optimistic, or maybe just really span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" suggestible /span (or gullible) to style oneself as a surfer in these parts.
br / br / By the way, don't quote me on that continental shelf thing; because as I think back, I realize the person who related that bit of information to me was a guy named span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Stoney /span , and he mentioned it in the haze of a fragrant smoke of some sort, one night while we were all gathered at another friend's house to party and watch the movie em a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077235/" Big Wednesday /a /em .
I accepted this little tidbit of knowledge and have believed it unequivocally true ever since, as much as if it had been told to me by one of my geology professors. It occurs to me now that perhaps I should check the veracity of it a bit further; but I don't have the time, and anyway, who cares? The point is, we mostly get very small waves here, three to four feet at best.
If any at all. br / br / This is where Sunrise and Ocean Magic came in. Nowadays if you want to check the surf, you just go online and pull up any one of a href="http://www.
galveston.com/webcams/" several span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" web cams /span /a set up along the beach, and check for yourself. Back then, you had to call the surf shops to find out.
Most people called Sunrise, since it was right on the beach. Whoever was working in the store that day would literally put you on hold, step out the front door of the shop and check the surf, then come back on the line and give you a report. I'll bet that guy got 50 calls a day, at least.
When you live in an area that rarely gets span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" surfable /span ( em sic /em ) waves, you have to check daily. If the surf em is /em good for some reason, then you call in sick to work, ditch your classes, whatever. Can't miss the good waves, man.
br / br / Ocean Magic was about 1/2 mile off the beach, and got the wave reports second-hand; oddly though, I often found their reports more accurate than those from Sunrise. Maybe because they got less calls daily due to their location, and were less harried. br / br / It is true that some of the best waves occurred when there was a tropical storm or even a hurricane somewhere out in the Gulf of Mexico.
And the best waves happened when the storm was bearing down on an area somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, if the storm was threatening enough, the Bolivar Peninsula would be ordered to evacuate, and the DPS would barricade Highway 146 between Winnie and High Island, and wouldn't let anyone heading em for /em the beaches through. And that was the only way to get through, as everyone knew.
/div br / div One time a friend of mine and I were really determined. We turned east off of 146 in span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Stowell /span , about a mile before the blockade, and went down an unnamed but paved road for a bit. Then we turned south on a em span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" caliche /span /em road, and then after awhile kind of southwest on a shell road.
By then I had no idea where we were, really; it was open marshland all around, and we passed small groups of span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" pump jacks /span periodically. My friend was driving his span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Torino /span over these bumpy-ass roads like we were in a Land Rover, but at least he seemed to know where we were going. I found out later that he didn't - he was just following some inner instinct, an internal homing device aimed at the beach and the big waves, as accurate as any carrier pigeon's orientation to true north.
br / br / Anyway, I did sense we were tacking in a southward direction generally, and after several more wild turns down increasingly less-developed tracks and paths, we ended up on a sand road heading due south. The sand was pretty thick and I feared we might get stuck and for all I knew we might die out there in the middle of nowhere. Years later, a biologist or some oilfield workers would come across this severely rusted-out Ford span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" Torino /span with two skeletons in the front seat, and a couple of bleached-out surfboards attached to the racks on the roof.
And they would probably wonder, "What the hell were these guys thinking?" br / br / That is what I was wondering. Then all of the sudden we plowed over a small rise and saw the ocean spread out wide before us, rows of 5-6 foot waves crashing on the empty sandy beach in succession.
We had somehow ended up on a desolate stretch of Highway 87 between High Island and Sabine Pass, about 5 miles east of the intersection with Highway 146. /div br / div We surfed those waves for several hours that day, exhilarated. There is nothing, nothing else like being on top of a wave.
I get my rocks off on 4-footers; I cannot imagine what those big wave surfers - the guys who ride waves as tall as a four-story building - must feel. br / br / Well, I can em imagine /em . But I will never know.
/div
post-7839312307899783825
com/blogger2/5862/752764348559372/1600/flood.jpg" img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.
com/blogger2/5862/752764348559372/320/flood.jpg" border="0" / /a br / div align="left" span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:85%;" THE LINE OF THUNDERSTORMS ALONG THE COLD FRONT WILL CONTINUE TO END FROM NORTHWEST TO SOUTHEAST THIS MORNING. HOWEVER.
..FLOODING WILL BE SLOW TO RECEDE THIS MORNING IN AREAS THAT RECEIVED THE GREATEST RAINFALL.
GREATER THAN SIX INCHES OF RAINFALL HAS FALLEN ACROSS AREAS BETWEEN I-10 AND US 190 OVER SOUTHEAST TEXAS AND SOUTHERN LOUISIANA...
WITH THE HEAVIEST STRIP OF 10 TO 14 INCHES OF RAINFALL EXTENDING FROM BUNA AND DEWEYVILLE TEXAS...
br / /span em /em /div div align="center" em --- National Weather Service statement br / October 27, 2006 4:49 a.m. CDT br / /em br / /div div align="left" strong span style="font-family:arial;color: " First of all, I am glad not to live in Deweyville.
Or anywhere in Newton County, for that matter, but that’s another story. br / br / Deweyville is a small town of around 2,000 people, right on the lower Sabine River and next to Beauregard Parish in SW Louisiana. Also on the edge of a huge lowland river marsh called Black Swamp.
The area has received 14 inches of rainfall the last two days, and is under water. Getting from one place to another is problematical at best, and the area schools have been closed all week. Gov.
Rick Perry has declared nine SE Texas counties disaster areas due to flooding from the recent rain, including Newton and Orange Counties (Deweyville is located near the southern border of Newton County and northern border of Orange County.) br / br / The weather has let up, in fact it is gorgeous today, but Deweyville will be under water for awhile. It sucks living on the lower end of a flooding river system, especially if you are on low ground to begin with (Deweyville and several other small towns in that area on both sides of the border are located in what is essentially the Sabine River flood plain.
) The rain stops after a front comes through, and the weather is beautiful; but the water keeps rising anyway, as all the flood water from upstream comes through. I have a friend who works for the Sabine River Authority, and he says once Toledo Bend Reservoir is at a certain level, they have to open up the dam gates and let up to 300 cubic feet per second of water through, no matter what. Not good if you are about 100 miles below the dam and under water already.
br / br / Deweyville is on Highway 12, a fairly busy state highway on the way to Starks, LA. A lot of truckers with oversized and/or overweight loads come through, thus avoiding heavier traffic on Interstate 10 (and the scales in Louisiana, just across the border.) So Deweyville has a decent enough trucker’s café there.
. . by ‘decent’ I mean basic meat and potatoes entrees with a reasonable starch and grease content, and pies for dessert.
The town is 98% white. There’s a high school, and a new one to be built reportedly, once the tax money starts flowing from a couple of power plants being constructed on the river there. A medical clinic, a convenience store or two, couple of churches, a small post office, and that’s about it.
South is Orange, a much bigger town, west is Buna ( em byoo’ nuh /em ), a slightly larger town, and north is the wilds of Newton County, including the Devil’s Pocket, a section of undeveloped river bottom noted for supposedly being struck by a meteorite in the early 1800’s; for primitive-by-21st-century-standards living conditions; for residents hunting deer with dogs (and setting fire to the forests around their homes as a form of protest when state fish game authorities cracked down on this long illegal practice); and for the belief by some locals that one of Bigfoot’s southern relatives resides around there. br / br / All of this is under water at the moment. The weather should be clear through the weekend, followed by more rain the first part of next week.
If I wrote country songs, I could probably come up with a good one about living in Deweyville. br / __________________________________________ br / br / I am not a country songwriter, alas, and the world is better for it. I do like the rain, though, and always have.
I don’t really know why. I suppose it is a good thing I have spent a good deal of my time in an area that averages 50-60 inches a year. Rain is supposed to be depressing, but someone like me would be much more depressed in a semi-arid environment.
br / br / I can afford to be a bit blasé about it all, because my area of the West End has recently had its infrastructure upgraded, including the installation of a huge 8’ storm drain em under /em the existing drainage ditch that runs through the neighborhood. That ditch used to jump its banks regularly, but I haven’t seen it full since the revisions. There are giant drains at the bottom of it into the storm drain underneath.
All of this empties into a brand new retention pond excavated behind the demolished Wal-Mart on Highway 69. It used to be that after a moderate downpour, I would drive home through waters halfway up the doors of my F-150 in my neighborhood. Now, even after the deluge yesterday, I encountered nothing more daunting than a few large puddles formed along the curbs.
Drainage District 6, gotta love those guys. br / br / By the way, most of the national coverage of the flooding takes the angle that here are these poor people, still recovering from Hurricane Rita, now being hit by floods. Never mind that most of the area has basically been recovered from Rita for awhile, or that floods are normal here, especially along the Sabine and Neches River bottoms.
I guess Rita is the only point of reference to this area most people around the country have. br / br / Nice to know. It used to be cancer-causing petrochemical pollutants.
br / __________________________________________ br / br / Some favorite ‘rain’ songs, off of the top of my head: br / br / “When The Levee Breaks” – Led Zep br / “Rain” – Uriah Heep br / “Riders On The Storm” – The Doors br / “Texas Flood”, “Couldn’t Stand The Weather” – SRV br / “Gimme Shelter” – Rolling Stones br / “Water In The Sky” – Phish /span /strong /div div align="left" strong span style="font-family:arial;color: " "Sure Got Cold After The Rain Fell" - Z Z Top /span /strong /div div align="left" strong span style="font-family:arial;color: " “Down In The Flood” – Bob Dylan /span /strong /div
post-1728047445794921253
com/x/blogger2/5862/752764348559372/1600/935318/Munch_Scream.jpg" img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.
com/x/blogger2/5862/752764348559372/320/695685/Munch_Scream.jpg" border="0" / /a br / strong span style="font-size:130%;color: " Slamming the door, once and for all, on “closure” /span /strong br / br / I saw it again last night, on some show called em Missing Person /em on one of the Discovery span style="font-size:85%;" © /span channels. Some kid in Arizona got kicked out of a drug treatment center and, high on methamphetamine, wandered several miles out into the desert.
His family was distraught, but hopeful. The search and rescue team finally found him four days later, bruised and battered and riddled with frostbite (the desert out there can get pretty cold at night.) And very dead.
In his delirium he had discarded his clothing, and ended up dying of exposure. br / br / But sure enough, when they found him, one of the search and rescue guys said, “Well, at least this will give his family some closure.” br / br / Look, I’ve never lost someone that close to me in such a horrific way, and certainly not a child, but is knowing the person is dead more comforting than not knowing?
Okay, probably so. Does having that person’s physical body to look at and then put in the ground ease one’s pain more so than never finding them at all? Well, almost surely.
But what has any of this to do with closure? br / br / ‘Closure’ appears to be one of those buzzwords seemingly everyone uses but no one can really define. I don’t know when it came into popular usage, exactly, or where it came from.
I woke up one day and – crap – it was out there everywhere. What does ‘closure’ mean, exactly? The implication is the that family and friends of the dead person can now shut the door on their rawest grief, and begin to move on.
Is that what happens? Or is finding the body just another in a set of awful facts one has to process in the hopes of eventually being able to live, with some sense of equanimity, with the death of their loved one, and the facts surrounding it? br / br / I am all for relief from grief, especially from death, and I am not prepared to argue the validity or value of some kind of closure-type thing in these sorts of instances.
But ‘closure’ is used in all kinds of situations that shouldn’t be as traumatic as losing someone close. I have heard of people who need closure in every situation from losing a pet to breaking up with one’s “significant other” (another cutesy word/phrase that mildly pisses me off) to failing to draw to an inside straight with a lot of money invested a big pot to losing one’s favorite ball-point pen last Friday. br / br / I hope I am not the only one to think this is mostly crazy.
For one thing, closure – if there even is such a thing – is not something one can dial up and use, whenever necessary. As I understand it, closure or something like it is pretty elusive. And I think someone who would need it to recover from any of life’s everyday indignities, or “little deaths”, as I like to call them (anything from a broken relationship to your favorite team losing the big game or series, roughly), probably has some psychological issues they need to be dealing with before they even worry about resolving things through closure.
br / br / For most of us, most times, I suspect rather than ‘closure’, about the best we can hope for is for our wounds to scab up and eventually cover with scar tissue. The emotional trauma is not really gone, it’s just been just patched up and moved aside so one can resume functioning in a more or less normal manner. For one example, it is hard for me to imagine anyone ever putting a traumatic romantic breakup completely behind them.
I know personally if you talked to me about, oh, I don’t know – let’s say Janet, the girl who dumped me for another guy back in 7th grade, it probably wouldn’t be too hard for me to churn up some of the pain from that episode still, even 30+ years later. And let’s not even bring up some of the subsequent disasters from high school and college and young bachelorhood. br / br / I distinctly remember one particularly pathetic episode from when I was about 21.
I had fallen in love with the wrong girl again, and when we split up I was typically traumatized. So my solution, and I remember reasoning my way to this very deliberately, was to purchase a half gallon of Jack Daniels Black Label, and every evening after work I would mix myself drinks of JD and water on ice and drink them while listening to The Who’s em Quadrophenia /em LP turned up really loud (“Love, Reign O’er Me” used to just em kill /em me, every time) and writing sloppy, bad poetry; while my roommate would be there looking on as if I were hopeless. br / br / But you know what?
It worked, in a manner of speaking. After about a week of this self-abuse and wallowing in self-pity, the fever broke, so to speak, and I was able to pick myself up and fling myself back into the social milieu, as it were. br / br / This solution sprang at least partly I am sure from a personal belief I think I have always had – that the only way to deal with trouble is not to run and/or hide from it, but rather to jump into it and immerse oneself in it completely.
If it does not do one in, one comes out better on the other side of it. But the problem with trying to drink away trouble is, first of all, there is a lot of ancillary damage. You can kill millions of useful brain cells just for starters, trying to get at the ones that make you feel socially inadequate and like a complete loser.
Also, temporary alcoholism causes one’s friends to look on with pity and/or derision or worse, and of course contributes nothing toward getting to a real solution, such as another woman, for instance. br / br / Also, whatever the problem is usually comes back, eventually. The old Southern adage that ‘the blues don’t swim, but they float’ applies here.
You can try to drown your troubles, but just when you think you are in the clear, up they pop again. I used to think of my busted up relationships as dinosaurs out in California during the Cretaceous Period. Yep, that’s right.
Dinosaurs. See, they got pushed or fell into these tar pits out there around west L.A.
, near Hollywood maybe, and then they were gone forever, surely. Except eons later, the bones starting coming back up to the surface. .
. br / br / The problem with walking away from emotional trauma and just letting chemicals and eventually time scar over the wound and leave a cicatrix on the heart and mind is that the trauma is still basically unresolved, and will come back to haunt one eventually; usually several years on and when least expected. That is the opposite of what closure is, I am fairly certain.
br / br / But while these common, everyday things we speak of are painful, they are not nearly as profoundly painful as what the family on em Missing Person /em were going through. Whatever they need to ease that pain and make sense of what caused it, I am all for it. As I am all for not trivializing dealing with real pain by using the same catchy word or phrase or concept ascribed to dealing with it as a prescription for dealing with every possible adverse situation, from the mildly significant to the trivial.
br / br / “Closure” should be the etymological equivalent of medicinal morphine, to be used in only the most gravely painful situations. The rest of the time, I am sorry to say, you will just have to figure a way to muddle along with the rest of us.
000-06:00
jpg" img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5004671624180063218" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RXQqU4i62_I/AAAAAAAAAAM/lr8yU5oPws0/s320/larry_king.
jpg" border="0" / /a br / div span style="font-size:130%;" strong p span style="color: " I'm Not Sick, But I'm Not Well /span /strong /span /p /div div /div div /div div strong /strong /div div em p p Below please find my Larry King™ style column, fashioned after the infamous blurb-o-fest the CNN celebrity nitwit used to publish in his column every week in USA Today. /em /p /div div em /em /div div em p This is actually a rather slapdash and poorly constructed creation meant to make up entirely for the last two weeks of non-productivity in this space, which can be attributed either to A.) a serious and deeply reflective reconsideration of faith and family and values during the Thanksgiving holiday just past, or B.
) a whole lot of serious dicking off on my part. Take your pick. /em /p /div div em /em /div div em p One thing is for sure; it is time to back up the semi with the big order from Ellipsis 'R' Us loaded on it, because I'll need it now, for sure.
/em /p /div div em /em /div div em /em /div div p ********** /p /div div /div div /div div p You know the commonly-accepted urban myth that the meat of a turkey contains some natural sedative, a sort of generic Quaalude™ which renders one laggard and soporific all Thanksgiving afternoon, unable to do anything much except take one or two or fifteen naps and watch some pointless NFL football game with one eye open and one shut? Well, in scientific terms, Bullshit. Turkey meat is lighter than most, and is actually considered 'heart-healthy', remember?
Now, let's think; what else does one eat only on Thanksgiving which might also possess sedative qualities? Here's a hint: A big pile of crumbled-up, starch-laden cornbread, moistened with fatty turkey juice and gravy, and often fortified with the ground-up organ meat from the otherwise nutritionally beneficial almost national symbol (instead of the bald eagle, had Ben Franklin had his way.) That's right.
Why accuse turkey of inducing somnolence when we have the aptly named "stuffing" as an obvious suspect? I'm telling you, the dignified em Meleagris gallopavo /em , a cousin of the pheasant after all, has been slandered all these years. .
. /p /div div /div div p Want to know why emu is considered an even healthier alternative meat than turkey? I don't know, either; but it might have to do with the fact that when the market for emu meat totally collapsed 20 years ago, all the farmers in the area who had invested thousands in set up costs and breeding pairs, thinking they were about to strike it rich, suddenly couldn't give their emus away; and rather than continue paying for the birds' feed and upkeep, they just let them loose indiscriminately all over the wilds of East Texas.
So now to eat an emu, if you can even find one, you have to chase it for miles first, through swamp and/or forest and across open range. Now em that's /em heart healthy. .
. /p /div div /div div p Speaking of oddly-configured feral fauna, did anyone notice in the bustle of the holidays that CNN dingbat a href="http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Nancy_grace" strong Nancy Grace /strong /a was recently sued by the family of Melissa Duckett for wrongful death? Grace is the wild-eyed, Georgia-drawling, former prosecutor turned pundit with the oddly-shaped, vaguely Picasso-esque head who appears nightly on CNN Headline News, her primary function apparently being to beat some insignificant-in-the-overall-scope-of-things true crime story to death; and the sleazier the better, too. The Duckett case is a good example: As best I can tell, an infant was kidnapped from his home in Florida while his 20-year-old mother partied in the next room.
After suspecting everyone in the extended family and eventually most of south Florida, police scrutiny eventually fell on the mother herself. This was where Nancy Grace jumped in. She flogged the story every night for months, while meanwhile all hell was breaking loose in Iraq, the U.
S. appeared to undergo a fundamental political change in the mid-term elections, and Tom and Katie gave birth to a daughter, goddammit. I'm telling you, if during that period an alien mothership or even Jesus Christ Himself suddenly appeared on the south lawn of the White House, Nancy Grace would have lead her show that evening with another obscure angle on the "Trenton Duckett Story".
What she finally did do was get Melinda Duckett, Trenton's mother, on camera and then proceeded to do a pretty hardcore ambush interview, broadcast nationwide in early September. The next day, Ms. Duckett committed suicide by 12-gauge, and then her family filed suit against Ms.
Grace, for causing the girl considerable stress which led directly to her subsequent suicide. I don't know the merits of it, but I think I'll find this lawsuit more compelling than the case that ultimately caused it, and hope that if nothing else it will cause Ms. Grace to squirm a little - in a moral sense, I mean.
But I doubt it. . .
/p /div div /div div p Over the holiday I saw the A E special regarding the pilgrims who settled the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts and started the whole Thanksgiving thing in the first place, or at least inspired it. Two things I found most interesting were 1.) many of the myths one associates with that group's crossing of the Atlantic and subsequent settlement in New England are largely based in fact; and 2.
) Squanto (Tisquantum), one of the native Americans who was friendly with and aided the Pilgrims early on had spent close to fifteen years in Europe prior to the Pilgrim's arrival in Massachusetts. I knew he had been kidnapped by an earlier expedition and could speak English, but I had not realized how extensive his travels abroad had been. It must have been startling, or it would have been to me at any rate, to land in this 'wild' place after such a long and treacherous voyage, now fearing among other things the 'savage' inhabitants thereof; only to have one of them march up to you one day in full regalia and begin discoursing in the King's English (with a 'Bah-sten' accent, perhaps?
) My only beef (so to speak) with Squanto is he missed his opportunity to alter history; when instructing the Pilgrims in planting corn, he should have buried the turkey in the hole with the seed corn for fertilizer, and saved the fish for the feast. Just think, for all these years instead of a bland turkey with cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce for dinner, we could have been having a crabmeat-stuffed broiled flounder, with french fries and hush puppies, tartar sauce on the side. Dammit.
/p /div
post-7957396890685097754
blogger.com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RYbO_jX2MPI/AAAAAAAAADk/50zHR6Pb2GI/s1600-h/Winter+scene.jpg" img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5009919226718597362" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.
blogger.com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RYbO_jX2MPI/AAAAAAAAADk/50zHR6Pb2GI/s320/Winter+scene.jpg" border="0" / /a br / div span style="font-size:130%;color: " strong Scrooging A Little In The Home Stretch /strong /span br / br / I am sorry to say I am just not a very Christmas-sy person.
/div br / div There, I said it. br / br / I don't have any objections to Christmas on religious or cultural grounds; in fact, I don't really have any objections to Christmas at all. And I think the water-heads supposedly trying to "outlaw" Christmas because it offends their tender secular sensibilities should direct their energy and social consciences somewhere else, perhaps at something of more practical concern, like world hunger or class divisions or economic disparity or burning rain forests.
/div br / div Or they can go fuck themselves, too. I really don't care which. /div br / div My disaffection with the holiday season is not based on anti-commercial sentiments, either.
I don't have any problem with the "commercialization" of Christmas - in fact I think it may inadvertently help reinforce some basic values we might not otherwise think about too often on our own. People go out shopping this time of year and fight mind-numbing gridlock on the roads and packed strip centers and malls and yet still seem to be basically in good cheer; because it really is better to give than receive, and even more so if one has to make some sacrifices in order to give just the right thing. The overcrowded stores also promote social interaction on a level some of us might not seek out otherwise.
It does not matter how aloof one is, one cannot stand in line at Best Buy for two-and-a-half hours and not get to know one's neighbors a little bit, no matter who they are or what they look like; even if only to commiserate about the consistently shitty customer service one finds practically everywhere nowadays. And while tangled up traffic can also promote road rage, it offers multiple opportunities to do something nice for a stranger, by letting him or her cut in line, by yielding that parking spot you have been eyeing for five minutes to someone else and parking instead a half a block further away, or just by holding open a door for someone loaded down with bags and packages. At the very least, one can drop some change in the Salvation Army bucket out front and have a brief sense of good feeling wash over.
/div br / div While the crassness of the commercial aspects may be a turnoff, it remains that there is no other time of year loaded with so many opportunities to do the right thing, and to be compelled to. If one cannot feel good about oneself and one’s fellow man at Christmas time, then I am not sure one can ever feel good any of that stuff anytime at all. /div br / div I feel good about it.
It is just that there are some celebrated cultural touchstones regarding Christmas I feel like I must have missed out on somehow. /div br / div I don't like Christmas music much, for one thing. Some people I know get almost rapturous in late November or early December when they break out the Christmas music for the first time, digging out some Mannheim Steamroller CDs, a Pat Boone cassette or two, and way in the back of the cabinet there, a scratchy old Harry Belafonte LP that has a great version of "Little Drummer Boy" on it.
Too bad about Harry, I think he may be going senile from what I've heard. He always had a great voice, though. /div br / div Personally, I am indifferent to almost all of the traditional yuletide musical fare.
There are some non-traditional songs I like all right. John Prine's "Christmas in Prison" comes to mind, or maybe the concert version of Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven and the E-Streeters doing "Merry Christmas, Baby." At a holiday get-together once, I was asked what my favorite Christmas song was, and I blurted out Leon Russell's "Stranger in a Strange Land".
That brought some vacant stares. Listen to the lyrics sometime, is all I can say. /div br / div I got bummed out one time when I realized one of my neighborhood friends had a grandmother who drove a Chevrolet, so he could authentically sing the "Jingle Bells" parody we all thought was so comical at the time, the one with the line about "oh what fun it is to ride in grandma's Chevrolet.
" My grandma drove a Buick, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't work that in. What the hell rhymes with Buick? br / br / In addition, I don't have strong nostalgic feelings for Christmases past as some seem to.
I have good memories, but part of my problem has to do with growing up with not much extended family around. Other than an aunt, uncle and cousins in Dickinson, who we did celebrate with – that’s one part of Christmas I do remember fondly - the nearest people in my mom's huge family were in and around Pittsburgh, and my dad did not have much of a family left by the time my siblings and I came along. So the concept of huge Norman Rockwell-ish extended family get-togethers, sitting around the groaning board eating goose and brandied plums and bread pudding and such at Christmas-time does not resonate much with me.
/div br / div We did have a couple of holly trees in the backyard of the first house I lived in while growing up; but it never occurred to any of us to cut some boughs off of one and ‘deck the hall’ with it - our house was nice but fairly modest, a 'starter home' it used to be called, and we only had one hall, anyway. /div br / div Another impediment to connecting with the Christmas atmosphere was growing up in a sub-tropical climate. I have seen snow at Christmas exactly once - a few years back - and I am sure my cousins in Pennsylvania would have laughed at it, as it was mostly just a dusting.
In fact, it was often warm and humid enough around Christmas to wear shorts and a T-shirt outdoors. When I was 13 or 14 we had a warm front come through off the Gulf of Mexico right before Christmas, and in the course of getting the house and grounds looking nice for company (an obsession of my mother's) I actually had to go out and mow the yard, because the St. Augustine was still growing like it was late July.
I remember pushing this heavy old self-propelled Sears mower that didn't self-propel around the yard, sweating my ass off, all the while singing to myself, "Mow the yard and trim the hedges/Fa la la la la, la la la la". /div br / div So there you have it, the confessions of one Southeast Texas grinch-like individual. br / br / “ em When the baby looks around him /em br / em It's such a sight to see /em br / em He shares a simple secret /em br / em With the wise man /em ” br / br / ********** /div br / div Well, okay, not really.
Christmas Eve is my birthday for one thing, and I like that all right. And I will get to see my brother and sister-in-law and their kids, nieces and nephews I don't get to see as often as I like. Plus, I didn't ask for many things, but a couple of the things I did ask for are pretty cool, so if I get any of them.
. . You know, this Christmas could turn out to be a good one.
Maybe that is why I have been walking around the last couple of days humming that "do you hear what I hear?" song that is playing in my head. br / br / After all the hassle and hustle and bustle, for a brief moment on Christmas morning there is usually a sort of lull; a quiet time between giving and receiving gifts in the living room around the tree, and moving on to the dining room to chow down with the family.
And in that quiet time it is possible that some - dare I say? - em divine /em knowledge may possibly be bestowed upon one, and all the things having to do with Christmas, the secular and the religious, the ridiculous and the sublime, are all put in order in one’s mind for a moment. br / br / It is just possible in the brief quietude to hear a faint voice, singing about what it all really means, and why it still matters as much as it does.
/div br / div ” em And the baby looks around him br / And shares his bed of hay /em br / em With the burro in the palace of the king” /em br / br / em He's a stranger in a strange land /em br / em Tell me why. . .
/em “ /div br / div ********** /div br / div And so it is Christmas, John Lennon once sang. No, the war ain't over, but I am going to try and celebrate anyway, and be thankful for what I can. Merry Christmas to everyone, the indifferent and the disaffected and the haters included.
And Peace on Earth, too. Maybe one day. /div
000-06:00
jpg" img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5009655348222898386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RYXe_zX2MNI/AAAAAAAAADM/rftvhl9frDc/s320/Mitt+Romney.
jpg" border="0" / /a br / div align="center" a href="http://theheretik.typepad.com/" span style="font-size:78%;" from The Heretik /span /a /div br / span style="font-size:130%;color: " Campaign 2006, Part 1: Talkin' Out The Side Of Your Neck /span br / br / I saw an interview with Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney last night on FOX News.
Apparently Romney, who is a lame duck in Massachusetts, is about to announce that he will be running for President in 2008. At this point one should assume he will be just one of many, many candidates to throw their hat in the ring in the time leading up to the election itself. br / br / Romney has an interesting biography.
His father was George Romney, former governor of Michigan and CEO of American Motors in Detroit. For anyone too young to remember, long-defunct American Motors gave us legitimate 1970's muscle cars like the Javelin and AMX, as well as some of the worst looking and running vehicles in the history of the combustion engine; like the AMC Gremlin, or the awesomely designed AMC Pacer. a href="http://bp2.
blogger.com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RYW2fTX2MLI/AAAAAAAAACk/JvAkOkWTXFE/s1600-h/AMC+Pacer+coupe.jpg" img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5009610809412038834" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://bp2.
blogger.com/_xeS20mqi5R4/RYW2fTX2MLI/AAAAAAAAACk/JvAkOkWTXFE/s320/AMC+Pacer+coupe.jpg" border="0" / /a br / br / A side view really doesn't do the Pacer justice, except to emphasize just how low to the ground it was.
A man of average height standing next to one would find the top of the roof coming up to midway between his belt and his chest.
News RSS