When I lived in Austin, I was fortunate to have sat in at the light board in a smoky club when Jimmy Vaughan and The Fabulous Thunderbirds were on stage. The opening show, was a rough new band called Double Trouble. They had as their leader, the guitarist from Paul Ray and the Cobras, Jimmy Vaughan's little brother. Do I even have to tell you what a treat it was? Where has the time gone? Why am I sitting here in my 50s tears streaming down my cheeks, watching PBS in all their glory, begging for pledges and seeing a nearly twenty year old rebroadcast of a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert in Montreaux? Billy Joel Got it right - only the good die young............God I miss Austin...........

Jesus.........I would give a testicle just to see a show of hands by the founding fathers when asked if it was time for another Tea Party. Can you believe what is going on in DC today? The posturing, the cajoling, the lawyering. The only thing I can see coming from the Dem's little "let's rewrite the rules" fest going on today, is a really clear indication of how a dildo dork like George Bush managed to sneak in the back door nearly eight years ago, and somehow managed in the wake of voter apathy and every man for himself economics, look the other way at the polls attitude, get re-elected. We simply have devolved as a nation, to the point of every little part of our political, personal, and even leisure lifestyles, having the dark shadow of litigation awaiting us at every intersection. I think a good old fashioned revolution is in order. Like Willie and Waylon sang, "back to the basics". Much like I have advocated Texas seceding, I think Florida and Michigan, should just be de-annexed. Add Florida to the embargo on Cuba and see how they handle being reunited with their homeland. Should be interesting. At the same time, give Motown, GM, Ford, and Chrysler to Canada.........let them have a taste of the sour part of NAFTA. That should prove interesting when the bubbas head to town looking for a new truck, huh? Buy American indeed.......... As I see it, we are a one party country these days. The Dems, having nothing better to offer than a inexperienced Cosby kid with an Ipana smile and a line of horseshit, and a woman scorned, whose husband made a joke of her by getting blown while being paid to do the job that she now aspires to,(and the red phone likely ringing off the hook on his desk with the CIA reporting an Obama.....er, Osama sighting). Now sneaking up on hot flash city herself, I'd sleep really well, knowing she has the red phone by her bed. Let's just say, they are a pathetic lot, today's Democratic Party, and have a lot of soul searching to do, and ground to make up, if they ever want to be back in a viable two party system of politics.

I have in the not too distant past, so enjoyed the sport of Bush bashing. Like many others, I guess I have just tired of it and looked for another mouse to toy with, or let myself get caught up looking at the upcoming election. Problem there, is that they have been at it campaigning for so long now, that I am now tiring of that as well. And now that Bush is running his “stupid” flag up again, I might as well have a go at him some more. It would be so much easier to ignore the dunce, if he would just keep his mouth shut. How many people can you think of that are so clueless and downright dumb as dirt, yet are actually so smug about it? There is one thing in the news today, that I think is worth mentioning and opining on.  It was today’s Houston Chronicle. A piece on the blistering new book/memoir by former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan. He according to news reports, doesn’t mince words, and is quite forthcoming in his telling of the tale of what really went on in the Oval Office.  I see where current staffers, and a few others that were forced out or bowed out ahead of impending investigations into their own little Bushennaigans, are scrambling, trying to deflect McClellan’s charges, and to portray him as just another disgruntled former employee. In my opinion, I think Scott McClellan will turn out to just be a tiny tip of the iceberg that the Bush “legacy” is going to crash into. Like so many idiots before him, Bush is saying that history will bear out his presidency as a good one. Personally, I feel like the Dixie Chicks did - ashamed the dufus is even able to claim being from Texas. But back to the subject…..I predict that there are going to be many more former and even current staffers coming forward, like roaches coming out when the lights go out, after this Prep Boy Cheerleader idiot finally turns the keys over to the new occupant.  There will be books galore, and any notion this fool has that history will be kind to him, will vanish. Some may do it strictly for the money, but I am here to tell you that most will simply be talking  for the sake of covering their Onassis, if you get my drift. There has just been so much web spinning and tale weaving, and deception, by such a revolving door staff, that the whole thing will crumble. And crumble into such a pathetic pile of lies, that it will make the laughingstock bumbling reputation he already has, look like he was a Rhodes Scholar back  before the boys start to spill the beans. Lord, just let us get to January, please. I don’t see how we could possibly do any worse……unless maybe McSame decides to pick Hillary for a running mate…..

Reading Tara Bozick's article today on oystering, and one she did a few days ago on the shrimping industry, have given me pause to think about both situations from a couple of different perspectives. I could bemoan the high price of oysters this season, or point to the fact that a lot of city people I know think of shrimp as "ocean roaches" and wouldn't touch an oyster with a stick and gloves on. Others I know might choke down oysters on the half shell because it's "cool" (cooler yet when you are a little tanked I s'pose), or pay $15.00 for a half dozen little maggot sized shrimp in a cocktail dish with a slice of lemon and a sprig of some kind of weed lying on the plate. I for one view seafood a bit differently. You see, I could eat flounder, bay shrimp, and oysters, three meals a day (and in fact have), and never think twice about it. I showed my bay rat side, I am fairly certain, the first time I walked into a restaurant, and saw a menu that offered up shrimp with six or a dozen as a meal........ Where I come from, a shrimp, oyster, or fish dinner or a combination of all three, consisted of an enormous platter, piled as high with seafood as gravity would allow.......and maybe just to make it an official "meal", a few soaked overnight and cooked for hours, pinto beans and a salad. We'd eat until we couldn't hold another shrimp, go collapse on the couch in front of a ballgame, and go back at halftime for a few more. The platter would sit out most of the day for those who desired a snack, and the leftovers would find their way into a Tupperware container in the fridge, and inevitably, I'd grab a cold handful of whatever was there for breakfast, or to put on some bread and take for my lunch. Oh, and don't even talk to me tartar sauce.......that's for city wusses. Okay, maybe I'll eat it if there's nothing else, as I am a city boy these days. But if you want a treat, I'll be glad to let you try my homemade cocktail sauce, just don't ask me what's in it......Six shrimp, indeed! That's an appetizer.

So, now for the other perspective. As a ten year old kid, I got my Social Security card. (you weren't born with one in your hand as a tracking device back in those days). The only reason I got it, was so I could get a job.......heading shrimp. Turned out that was a short lived, tedious little career move, that was soon replaced by a deckhand job on my old neighbor's shrimpboat. In 1960, there were a multitude of shrimpers in my hometown. Most were in old shrimping families, who'd done it for generations. There was always a few newbies trying their hand at it, and a few Union Carbiders, shiftworkers in operations, that had the money for a boat and ran it when they could, or paid a local to run it when they were at the plant. Those boats were always easy to spot, as the winches, rigging, deck cleats, and such were always really nice and shiny stainless steel..........straight from the plant to their boat. If you found one of those guys in the Carbide, DuPont, or Alcoa, welding shop fabricating something like that on company time, and asked him what he was working on, he'd likely tell you a "guv'ment job"(by the people, for the people). In those days, you couldn't find an empty slip between six in the evening and four in the morning. there wers shrimpboats as far as you could see, and old timers sitting on the decks with their net needles, mending their nets, or taking a link or two out of the jump chain or just washing down the deck for the morning exodus of boats out of the harbor. When I wasn't on one of those boats, I remember my mornings before sunrise,  a kid in a big old wicker chair on the screened in front porch on the bayfront, smelling the diesel exhaust, watching all the red and green running lights and white mast lights, in single file fashion running out the cut to where they started their dragging and lying on the CB radios about what they were catching. Those memories, along with the old shrimpers rusted out cars running from Griffee's store to the boat docks, with a couple of bags of rock salt up on the trunk or hood, are really all but gone now. It is a sad sight, going down to the harbor these days. Most of the slips are empty nowadays. There are a few boats left.......and half of those sit idle during the season, because the were repossessed by the bank, or because it costs more for fuel than they could hope to earn, trying to compete with imported and farm raised shrimp prices. It is just a fact of life I guess, seeing that culture just wither away and die. I still remember a song my mama used to sing to me to put me to sleep......"shrimpboats are a comin', their sails are in sight, shrimpboats are a comin, there'll be dancin' tonight"............ Folks, the boats have just about set sail for the last time. You need to go down on a summer night and do it soon.......they are almost gone.

Guess I should be happy that I got to be a part of it, and experience it for myself. My kids and your kids will only know what we tell them of it.

 

.......that's my story. i swear to God, and I'm stickin' to it! I'm not talking about native Americans. No sir.....these are Calcutta Comanches I am battling. No rifles and tomahawks and bows and arrows here. We are using computers and high powered networks. Actually, what I am doing is simply pissing and moaning about sending work overseas and some of the pitfalls that come with it. Yeah, I know the price of oil is high, but so is the price of refining it. My job is in the middle of the refining part - helping to design and build new refineries. I am not convinced that we are doing it in the most cost effecient way sometimes. So much is made of cost savings to so many companies, due to shipping work to India and places abroad. That might look good on paper somehow, but I wonder sometimes. Seems I recall that Enron stock looked pretty good for a long time too.

To put things straight here, I work daily with counterparts in New Dehli. Some of the nicest, and smartest folks I have ever known. that's not the problem. I have spent three days meticulously loading a database with plant related information. Today for the third morning in a row, I have sat down to find my work hosed by overnight file transfers from guess where? Likely a network glitch. Not my job, but it sure is frustrating doing the same job over day after day. I don't know how much those guys get paid......I do know that I and the techno mercenaries that I work with do not come cheap though. Somehow, that has to factor into the price of what gas ultimately costs at the pump. Not to worry though.....I did what any good cowboy would do - I called in the cavalry........and besides, it will pay the same to do it the fourth time as it did the first time to do it.........and if I have to do it again, it will be at time and a half.

I think I see them changing the numbers on the pumps across the street again........

Was in Seadrift last weekend, for my dad’s 87^th annual birthday party, and massive cholesterol intake ritual. Pretty much everything that comes out of the bay was served…..all of it fried, save for the cake and the beer. I noticed the bayfront park was full of canoes, kayaks and a couple of craft that really defied categorization. All were numbered, and the folks were all just sitting around telling river stories (if past experience is any indication, about one in four were true). In a way, it brought back some memories, but in another way, this just is not the same race it once was. You see, back in the really early days of the Texas Water Safari, I actually had a lapse in judgement(as testosterone filled teenage boys are wont to do) and paid the entry fee and tackled that race twice. Well, tackled it once……in’69. Tried it in ’68 too, but that was just a learning experience, and the dam at Luling, proved to be our undoing that year. Maybe I should backtrack here just a bit, and try to clarify. What the Texas Water Safari has evolved into, only faintly resembles what it was in the sixties when it started. It once had (and maybe still does), the moniker of “The Worlds Toughest Boat Race”, and anyone that attempted it during its first ten years of existence, will no doubt, attest to that description as ringing very true. In addition to the three hundred river miles, there were miles of monstrous log jams between Bloomington and Victoria to negotiate around, and the race did not end at Seadrift. Back in those days, there was just a layover there, until all the boats that qualified made it to the coast, then a series of daylight only sprints across several bays to a finish line in either Corpus Christi, Freeport, or Port Lavaca. I have been down that river several times, and I made it past the log jams and across the bays to finish – once. I dare to guess that though the race is still no doubt quite a feat of endurance, that few of the contestants racing in the modern day version of the Water Safari, would have even finished the original course. And to expand on that, neither could I, without some serious training and preparation, even dream of finishing the current course from San Marcos to Seadrift.

 

A little history here. On the subject of the aforementioned log jams, word I got was that those log jams on the river were man made during the Civil War (is that not an oxymoron? Way I see it, there's civil, and there's war). They were put there to put an end to the Union gunboats coming upriver and getting close enough to shell the crap out of what was a much smaller Victoria at the time. Folks had enough of it and just went down west of Bloomington and chopped down about five miles of trees in the bottomland and felled them into the river. If anyone has any info on or links to share with me on this, I would love to see them. For a very basic look at the history of the Texas Water Safari, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... . Otherwise, just Google it. There is a lot of fascinating information on the race, its history, and stories of survival, snakes, alligators, rapids, dangerous portages, Texas summer sun, stinging/biting critters, hallucinations fueled by hunger and exhaustion. At age 19, I lost twenty pounds during the race, over an eight day period, when it crossed Hynes, San Antonio, Espiritu Santo, Matagorda, and Lavaca bays. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t recommend it as a weight loss program…………

Read Mike's blog a bit ago, and was inspired to test April's guidelines and expand on it just a bit..........so to Mike: Patience, young Jedi.........this is the home team. I went to tonight's game and stayed long enough to see my son's school (Katy Elem.) choir on the field doing the National Anthem. Was I ever proud. Zach said he got a high five from Hunter Pence as they filed off the fireld. Subsequently I assessed my comp seats and decided that having left my parachute and oxygen bottle at home, I would be better off going back there for a  FSNH front row seat. Yeah, the boys are fun to watch again. Buckle up - there are a lot of ups and downs to come between now and October. I love baseball!

Right up front, let me say that my day job is designing electrical systems, for refineries such as Formosa, though I have never worked on that plant. In addition, I have no firsthand knowledge of Formosa's operations, only what I have read. What I say is only my opinion, based on thirty years of being in and out of these plants, and present in the Union Carbide Seadrift plant at the time of a fatality in an explosion. I do know the culture of plants and refineries.

I believe initially it was mentioned by another blogger, that the cause was a transformer exploding. That in itself is really no big deal, unless you are standing really close to it. It only contains so much oil and should be designed with a pit to contain a breach and the subsequent fire at that location. On a more serious note, the process equipment that the substation fed by that xfmr provides power to, is where the danger lies. It appears from the crap that got flared off, that the system of redundant power and orderly shutdown, and back-up systems all did their job. Otherwise, we'd be counting bodies today. That is why in my business, safety and for lack of a better word, emergency plans are part of the design. That said, we are talking about a really nasty plant here, rife with problems, violations and a just don't give a damn attitude. This is Formosa Plastics. They can put little token wetlands projects around to pacify the natives, and talk a good game all they want. The truth is, that one day a big part of Point Comfort will very likely be a site of death and destruction and there will be a crater there. Formosa almost certainly, has that figured into their business plan. Once they get the bill, they will pay the fines, fill the crater, cover the personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits, and rebuild on the same spot. We will pay more for milk containers, laundry baskets at Sams and plastic Star Wars action figures, as Formosa adjusts to cover their losses. Life will go on. That is the way it works.

You know folks, this site has seen some changes hasn't it? I have been around for some of the more drastic ones......starting back when just a handful of people wrote here, with stories, ideas, and commentary. All were pretty sincere about their work, and fairly civil and faithful in both the nature and frequency of their posts. As the NEWVICAD emerged with this Myspace version of the "blogs", a few dropped off, and the most notable member was actually forced off. Whatever. The ensuing melee among "writers", "bloggers", folks trying to sell their goods for profit, and others who would force their religious views on the rest of us, along with a few nut cases and dildoes, has been some kind of circus, now hasn't it. Some days it's tolerable. Others, it is actually good. Yet others it just borders on absurd, it seems. Bottom line, is that we all get a few hours on the page, if we are lucky, and if we write something that stirs folks, we'll get an attaboy, or maybe chastised for our views. The only time it doesn't seem worth even posting something, because it will disappear in about an hour or less, is a time like now. A time when a couple of locals get into a rapid fire pissing match in front of God and everybody, and they don't have sense enough to know when to quit, or care that they are defeating their purpose. They are too busy slinging angry mud back and forth as fast as they can type (assuming they can all type). Some of 'em may just be a hunt'n pecker. This ain't the place for it.

So I am getting my thrills today, ragging on Billary and the Dems..... Should not come as a surprise after a few painful years of doing it to the Neocons. The disappointing part to me, is that after nearly eight pathetic, years of all hat, no cattle, look at me, I'm the President, idiot boy at the helm, the very best the Dems can come up with is the two left standing now.  Single moms in Minnesota are having the heat turned off because they can't pay the fuel bill. Folks are liretally losing their jobs, because they can't afford the price of gasoline to get to work, or because the price of diesel makes it cost more to do their job than they can earn from going to work. I am not talking of the homeless here, or the afflicted. I speak of regular folks, desperate and bewildered about how it got this way after how good it was after World War II. We have just become an elitist society, with a decadently wealthy upper crust, a tragically poverty stricken bottom of the barrel, and a bewildered lot in the middle trying to maintain, being swatted down by those at the top who only want more, more more, and trying not to slip under and fall to the bottom.

In the eyes of the common man, and in the eyes of the rest of the world this society we live in is looking worse every day. No matter what happens this election day. That is not going to change. Not until some wholesale changes in the business model of our country are effected, and the distribution of wealth is back to a much less disproportionate state. I think that we are beyond being able to fix that with elections. Folks, get ready for food wars, fuel wars, and revolution here on our soil. Which side are you going to be on? All that is left to see, is where the battle lines will be drawn.

If I am Bill Clinton, and seeing the inevitable about to overtake Hillary.........I am thinking "road trip". If he thought he had it bad during those "I did not have sex with that woman........" hearings, and the subsequent first sitting prez to have his DNA matched with that on an evening gown to prove differently, I have news for him. The jig is up, and the other shoe is about to drop. If I were him, I believe I would consider kicking off a speaking tour - like somewhere in the southern hemisphere. He could call it the "Hell hath no fury...... '08" South American  tour

Let's see, a lawyer/very publicly jilted former first ballbuster, running against a skinny black lawyer who's all talk, and lacks any notable experience (and, whose middle name is Hussein). Now, after we decide between these two......let's run 'em up against a moderately conservative, true war hero, married to a pretty blonde who owns a beer distributorship. And we wonder why the rest of the world holds us in such disregard..........Personally, I think they should just default the Presidential part of the election to McSame, and take all of the money in the war chests of the candidates, and use it to subsidise gasoline prices. And yes, I do consider myself somewhat guardedly liberal......... but let's be realistic here, McCain could die and still get more votes than the other two combined. Call it a race with no good choices......or at least no good choices left in the race.