http://www.youtube.com/watc... target='_blank'>This link pretty much tells the story. The "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" crap has without a doubt, run out of gas for the guy we elected last round. Whether you voted for him and his henchmen or not, you'll get another shot at making things right in '08. Please, if nothing else, let's learn from our collective mistake, and start NOW at identifying a candidate who has ALL of our best interests in mind, and weeding out those who will serve only their chosen class at the expense of the rest of us and the rest of the world>

Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

How very true.

In movies, there is a script, and a budget, emphasize BUDGET, and note that the budget is in dollars, and that there are no lives in the balance.
Unfortunately, in real life, there are lives in the balance, however not one even remotely related to the moron calling the shots. Even more unfortunate, is the fact that said moron, and those who support him, are pretty much set for life, financially anyway, and he has a blank check to rewrite and rewrite the script for the current war game in a fashion that suits his and Dick's changing needs. Lame duck - lame dick. Unless we see that they are prosecuted, and convicted for the crimes they have committed against the American peolple, they will end up laughing all the way to the lame bank, and there will be plenty more waiting for their turn at the free candy counter.

"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."
Emo Philips

Fifty years ago today, would likely have to be the exact day that my very keen interest in all things weather was born. I was seven. I'm sure there had been approaching northers, with their dark wall clouds and pronounced winds shifting from southeast and warm to calm, then blasting cold out of the northwest, on more than one occasion, that stirred something inside of me. The seemingly annual Valentines Day snows we got there in Orange on the bayou at the edge of the Gulf, probably also contributed to my fascination with the weather, I'd be inclined to say. But......the clincher in my storm chasing soul though, without a doubt was when I knew absolutely zero about hurricanes, and certainly not that one was approaching. Hell, I was likely looking forward to a little League game, and even more so, the fact that school was to be out for the summer in just a couple of days. Weather? Perfect as far as I could tell! Man, it was SUMMER!!!!!

I am sure my mom and dad knew a storm was coming. In fact, later they explained the discrepancy in why we left ijn the middle of the night when our windows blew in, rather than ahead of the storm like you are supposed to. You see on June 26th, 1957, Hurricane Audrey slammed ashore at the mouth of the Sabine River. No exact figure will ever be known, but most estimates are that at the time we were in the peak winds, then the eye of the hurricane, a scant few miles across the river to our east and just east of the eye, around 550 people, including a hundred children, perished. The storm came ashore hours ahead of predictions, and with a wind speed some fifty miles an hour stronger than had been predicted. I will include a couple of links at the end of this, that analyze and detail the cause and effect of Audrey. If you are my age or older, it will be a nostalgic look at a disaster and a tragedy that you may have been a part of. If you are younger, or from inland, with no real grasp of what these storms are about, listen up. Modern technology and forecasting will for the most part, for those with a working knowledge of the weather, the evacuation routes, and your own geographic location, allow you to make an educated guess at whether you are safe staying put or should evacuate from the path of an approaching tropical system. Your house and possessions can be replaced. Look at your kids, parents and friends around you. They can not. Use your head and your past experiences. Heed the advice of the public safety officials. It is much easier to leave and return after a near miss, than to stay too long and find evacuation routes flooded and to helplessly await your fate.
Kinda cold and scary, huh? My uncle was a baptist preacher in Lake Charles who went in to assist with the cleanup and recovery effort at Cameron after Audrey. If you had heard firsthand, his stories of bodies littering the roadsides and marshes of a town where hours before, they were gassing up their cars, playing catch with their sons, or forty two and moon at the pool hall, and walking on the beach with their children, you might feel as I do about how important it is to heed the warnings. That is not to say that I haven't ridden out a few storms, in fact,one just four summers ago, where I had second thoughts about my choice to stay. Okay, that's it - soapbox back under the sink. For a bit more on Audrey fifty years ago, go http://www.wunderground.com... target='_blank'>here and http://www.srh.weather.gov/... target='_blank'>here. An even more valuable link would be to The National Hurricane Center-Tropical Prediction Center. There you will find some great satellite and everyday forecasting products, that might even make your day of fishing, beachcombing, surfing, or deciding whether to wash your car........or load it with your valuables, heirlooms and family photos, and haul *** for Austin, Llano, Del Rio, or New Mexico, less of a guessing game.

P.S. - I can think of at least two or three more days(Sept.11 comes to mind), that you will be reminded of this again.
P.P.S. - or those of you who are new to the area, or who have a short memory, If that isn't convincing enough, contact me.....I have a couple of hours of Claudette videotape I shot from the beach before, during and after the eye of Claudette made it's way up to Victoria...........

Notes to self:
1. sell convertible
2. stay away from windows
3. have wife or kids go to mailbox and meet the UPS, DHL and FedEx guys at door
Don't you know the guy is saying under his breath...."thanks a lot, thanks a heluva lot Queen Mum & Mr. Blair". Bush's boys probably put her up to it. It reeks of their "smokescreen, create a diversion from the real story" style. Geez, am I ever glad the Baptists and Catholics I am prone to chide on from time to time, aren't as into lopping off the heads and limbs of those who take exception to them thinking that theirs is the ONLY way and amassing wads of cash and sheeplike flocks to spread the word. My own "note to self" probably should be to not **** off the ones on their knees facing Mecca and kissing the ground (or something on it). Guess maybe it's time I at least read "The Satanic Verses" and see if I can figure out why those folks have their panties in such a wad over the book.....I'd add a link or two here, but I think instead, I'll just direct you to Google the book title ("Satanic Verses" silly, not Quran, not Bible, not Torah). Wikipedia is informative on the subject. Another interesting link is to "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Understanding Islam" by Yahiya J. Emerick((think the J stands for Jose or Jehovah?) That site has the complete 351 page book on it, but chapter 28 offers an interesting bit of insight on the Shah/American CIA kingdom and it's role in thoroughly pissing off the burka and dish rag clad masses of the Shia, offended by the Shah and his "western excess" style......
Oh, happy Saturday, I'm off to Galveston for some board shopping and bicycling on the seawall.

Yeah right. These days if I hang eleven, the "I", after the Roman numeral "X", will more likely be my nose, rather than the appendage I would like you to envision....... I'll be the first to admit that I am not sixteen anymore(someone remember I said this and prod me to blog on "Maxiderm" soon).
In my bio, I (likely) subconsciously omitted my " surfer" phase, prior to the hippie boat driver "can't wait to move to Austin, where a friend with weed was a friend indeed" era. Fact is, I was a "Little Deuce Coupe, Surfin' Safari, I Get Around Deadman's Curve, Kiss my *** Eric von Zipper" surfer(well, a Texas, Port A., skipping school to sneak off to Mustang surfer wannabe anyway), well before I ditched Jan & Dean, Dick Dale, and The Beach Boys, for Strawberry Fields and "In The Garden of Eden"- oops,......I mean "In a Gaddadavida" baby.
Okay, lets cut to the chase here. Over the last few months, I am finding myself drawn more and more, back to the bay, dunes and the surf.......and to strengthen that attraction, my oldest son has also latched on to surfing as a "new passion". Given the down to Earth, primal rush of harnessing the power and flow of one of nature's thrill rides, and it's being there like a fruit on the vine in my back yard........well maybe it's time to take a page from my past and have another look. Uncle Buba and Uncle David seem to think so.............

I rear ended a car a few days ago.......

The driver got out of the other car, and he was a DWARF!

He was pissed! He looked up at me and said "I am NOT Happy!"

I puzzled over this for a moment, then replied, let me guess…………..”Grumpy”?

And that's not counting the innocent flood victims in the panhandle. I was glancing at the national briefs this morning(boxers are Wednesday)in the Chronicle, and a couple caught my eye. One was of an 11 year old boy in the Utah mountains, out camping on a Father's Day trip, who was dragged from his tent and eaten by a black bear. To quote "authorities said that it was probably the same bear that was harrassing another group of campers in the SAME SPOT before dawn the same day".........duh! Communicate people! Next story down was about a 9 year old at a summer camp standing outside a Boy Scout HEALTH LODGE to have his HEALTH records reviewed, who was crushed by a falling 13ft totem pole........ Now while one might attempt to conjure up some story about an ancient Shawnee or Susquehannock curse on the white man, I am more inclined to think someone who thought his masterpiece carving was cool beyond words, might have neglected to mention that it needed to be sunk into the earth a few feet or securely fastened to a foundation. Both stories, while very sad indeed, were obviously preventable. In the first one, I just think dad was a bit too Hanna Barbera/Jellystone out of touch with reality.......
I only lived briefly in the Rockies, but I figured out rather quickly from talking to the locals that given the right circumstances, that local camping included more critters than the possums and horned toads and roadrunners down here, and that there might even be a few that would eat me or my offspring, if given a chance.........
I think I'll just stick to the Gulf Coast and the Kathobs and Chupacabras and bunny rabbits and Armadillos(yes I capitalized that one - only because there isn't a halo in my punctuation keys)......and I'll save my trips to the mountains for when Yogi and BooBoo are safely hibernating well away from the black diamond runs!

Whatever......I was the only one stirring around here until near noon. I put my bike shoes on and then pulled them off twice before the rain broke long enough for me to take a stab at a ride. I made it about halfway to the trailhead before the bottom dropped out once again. Oh well, my back is aching from something I did last night anyway........either the yard work, or my kidneys on a sit down strike. For the dia de los "old man", this was a low key one. I celebrated it by thanking the powers that be for my two beautiful boys, then as an afterthought, asking for a second wind, to be available on demand as the teen/driving/"the old man don't know ****" years kick in.....I'm certainly going to need all the strength and spiritual guidance I can summon up about that time, I suspect. But as for this day, we all scurried about, doing rainy day tasks, and in the afternoon, we pulled out some photos of when the boys were toddlers, and when my old dog who has maybe a few days left at most,was a lightning fast pup, resorting to knocking me off my bicycle, when she saw she was about to be bested in a race, and we all reminisced and had a good chuckle or two. All in all, a mellow Dad's day. And to bring it to a close, one of my favorite movies of all time is on....."Somewhere In Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, in arguably their best performances. I love any story dealing with time travel. Couple that with a really good love story, and.......well get out the Kleenex......Happy Fathers' Day to all you dads!
Oh yeah, and my hometown baseball team won again too.....and I found the remote........life is.....something........

It was only worn on Sundays and by a guy that can't tell time.......
Pretty silly if you ask me. You take a hand picked and screened crowd, drape 'em in stars and stripes, give 'em "Bush & Dick - They Go Together" pins to wear, and one of them still pickpockets the Prez. That's why they call it the SECRET Servive.........

Yeah right, pervert. If you Googled "tranny" and ended up here, you are in for a disappointment. If you're old like me, or maybe a mechanic, you'd know that there's another "original" workingman's definition for that term.
The girl and I were out on one of our rare dinner dates tonight, sans kids. She had to swing by the WalMart on the way, as she had forgotten a bag when she checked out earlier today, and wanted to get her goods. Between you and me, unless that bag was full of fishing reels, watches or jewelry, I'd have written it off to "not paying attention" and just learned my lesson. Anyway, in her haste(she was driving), she wanted to "just pull over here in the striped area" and run in while I waited. I informed her that that wasn't right, and would likely **** off plenty of folks watching me parked there with the A/C running and that she probably was in for more of an ordeal inside than she expected. I was right. I hopped behind the wheel, circled once, and as luck would have it, got the prime front door legit parking slot, right next to the yellow hatched area she wanted me to sit idling in, while waiting for her.
THE PLOT THICKENS.......
There was a small import pickup parked there in the striped area (where the handicapped spots sre supposed to offload), wheels turned hard over to one side, big as Jake, like the rules didn't apply to him(her). At first, I parked legally, but right against his bumper, so he(she) would have to consciously back up to get out of his(her) illicit parking spot. I thought "that'll fix him(her). Well, after about fifteen minutes of patiently waiting while my sweet bride was no doubt, being dragged bleeding, through the gears of the WalMart customer service machine, I began to see the vehicle I'd cornered in a different light. It was dirty, maybe even broken, I surmised. I had recently dropped a cool wad of cash, roughly equivalent to what I could get a couple of 9'-6" cherry surfboards, an ocean kayak, or a rag outboard for, on a new transmission for the Suburban I was sitting in. Then I remembered of times past, times when I was driving heaps that had no reverse gear, and I was forced to find a parking spot that I could get out of by driving only forward. A little shame wave washed over me, as I realized what a hardened pr**** of a city boy I was acting like, hemming him(her) in like that.........Then my cell rang, and it was Jones(the girl)wanting to know where I was and why I wasn't at the door retrieving her as I'd promised. About the same time, I noticed the factory satellite radio antenna on the small pickup, and that the inspection sticker was not due to expire before I reach retirement age - in otherwords, a new truck. Probably just some pr****(prickette) who'd been off-roading and in a hurry, who didn't figure the parking rules applied to them.......... Hey, if yer gonna jump, for God's sake jump to conclusions!

.......will probably be Tango Fuentes, a strapping, handsome young L.A. County Sheriff's Department deputy or jailer, and hopefully someone who has logged on to The Superficial, X-17, or TMZ and knows that he might want to take steps to avoid becoming a poster boy cop for Valtrex.......Yeah, I know - way tacky. Whatever...... I would say that I am sick of hearing about this, but I do see a silver lining to this cloud over this little rich girl. You see, she may just be the catalyst, or the last straw in a society that turns a blind eye, when it comes to celebrities and their rubbing the rest of our noses in it when they get caught with their pecker out and are given a pass or a slap on the wrist. Finally, the online world who knows within fifteen minutes after Bush farts, that he had broccoli and oysters for dinner, is getting a chance to have a say in what is justice and what is preferrential treatment. I'm on board with that. And as for Paris.......they need those cells and beds for folks much more deserving of them in my view. Don't tell her I said that. She needs maybe one more night in the medical ward, and maybe one more in with the general population part of the L.A. County lockup. Then she needs to be unceremoniously and unannounced released at about 3AM onto the sidewalk outside the jail. The fear of God instilled in her, and her record, probation, and the WORD spread throughout Brentwood, Beverly hills, and to the spoiled celebrities who thought they were above the law.......well, it might just be a step in the right direction.

I speak of the Texas Water Safari, the "World's Toughest Boat Race", which started today and will end Sunday and Monday in Seadrift. As far as the "world's toughest.....", I certainly have no quarrel with that one. You see I entered the race in '68 & as if that wasn't enough punishment, again in '69, when my partner, Jimmy Trimble and I, by the grace of God and sheer teenage grit and strength, finished the damn thing, somehow. I understand that the competition has morphed somewhat, adding classes, sponsorship, and new rules. I'm not sure how that impacts the race, but I will tol' you one dam ting - any man or woman who even attempts that trip with serious thoughts of finishing, has my utmost respect. Forget who comes in first. I know firsthand that the ratio of starters versus those who even make it the first hundred miles, let alone ever see salt water, is a wide one. My hat's off to those paddlers and rowers who are getting sunburned, blistered, stung, snakebit and just plain worn to a frazzle as I sit back on my day off complaining about yard work and typing this on a break with a cold Ozarka within reach.
I am however, seriously thinking about heading down to Seadrift for the end of Shrimpfest, and maybe painting my old number on the aluminum canoe I keep down there, and trying to find out a close estimate of when the lead team is due at the finish line........Can you imagine the look on the faces of those waiting, when a grizzled old mountain man, accompanied by two blonde tanned Norwegian kids, come in, paddles flashing, fresh as daisies, after a mile long sprint down the bayfront, just seconds ahead of the first team that left San Marcos two days earlier?

Neither can I.......I reckon those guys would be in somewhat of a foul mood, getting upstaged by an old guy clinging to a sense of the bizzare. Maybe the boys and I will just wait on the seawall, and clap as they cross the finish line.....A note here. I have recently been in communication with my first love, after thirty some odd years. We reconnected through her father having passed away and my noting that, and offering my condolences. In one of our correspondences, she remarked in a comment directed at my wife, how she and friends had sat on the Guadalupe as my partner and I passed in our canoe, and they sang "Michael Row The Boat Ashore". She allowed as how she didn't think I was amused by their serenade. Truth is Rebecca, at that point, I had rowed two hundred miles without sleep or anything substantial to eat. You guys could have been a marching band playing the national anthem, and we wouldn't have noticed unless you were holding out a glass of iced tea and even as much as a baloney sandwich for us..........

I will link you now to http://bigshottexas.blogspo... target='_blank'>Big Shot Bob In Texas Please scroll down to the John Fogerty YouTube clip and give it a listen. Watch and listen to the presentation. It is powerful and poignant. Then replay it and pick each of the icons in the bottom of the frame.........
Peace.Now.

(Exit|Only) ......."Exit" tattooed on the left butt cheek and "Only!" on the right.... That's what Scooter Libby should have done, if W doesn't pardon him. It breaks my heart that Cheney, who likely gave Libby his orders in the first place, is getting off scott free here, but what would you expect of a person who can shoot someone in the face, and have the VICTIM be the one who apologizes? It will be the ultimate slap in the face in this whole Iraq war story, given it's being waged on the basis of lies, manufactured intelligence, a personal vendetta and pure greed, if Dipstick blatantly pardons a figure convicted of trying to expose his lies and conspiracy to manufacture a reason to feed our kids to Muslim extremists.......

Word comes from Channel 13, that Marvin Zindler had his right hand severed during an on site rat and roach report in a local bakery. Seems he reached into a sheet of cookie dough for a taste, just as the cookie slicer was about to do it's deed. To make a long story short, the title and lyrics to Marvin's theme song will now be: "I'm In The Slice Machine". Rumor from insiders at the station is that they'll try to lure Ed brandon out of retirement, or reassign Deborah Wrigley, to be Marvin's "right hand man"......at least until the next time Marvin goes in to get reupholstered, and they have some left over turkey neck to fashion a new hand out of.
Seems to me that if Marvin was going to sample the wares at a place where he was snooping around for a story, Miss Mona's place over in LaGrange would have served him much better........

After a couple of friends/readers brought up the fact that I withdrew a post, I figured maybe an explanation was in order...... You see, I guess I forgot to consider that everyone has their problems and that my whiney assed airing of my own.........oh well. I looked at the piece after the fact, and decided it was just too pissy and whining in tone and just yanked it. Sometimes what sounds okay at midnight, as told to the dog, just doesn't fly in the light of day. I didn't figure it would do me any good to b**** - at least about personal things, but rather just to work on them........ My wife and I had to alter our schedules and carpool for a couple of days......that actually was a good experience for us. At a time when we each are so consumed with our own daily routine that we didn't take time to talk to one another, the commute for a couple of days together was a nice experience. Sooooo.......I'll strive to try to keep it to storytelling, humorous, if irreverent, or if whiney in nature, aimed at my favorite whipping boy, the commander-in-chimp and his puppetmasters.