Pity the maroons of the world

The January 19 Massachusetts election in which the so-called Kennedy Seat in the Senate was lost to a Republican brought mixed emotions around the country. Democrats were wailing and tearing at their (or somebody’s) breasts and Republicans were rubbing their hands over boiling caldrons of political goo and laughing likes Shakespeare’s witches.

But on the Pay-Back Front, minions were hard at work.

Coming back from lunch on the 20^th, I noted that I had a voice mail from an 888 number. Knowing I had paid my last bill from Patty Lou’s Party Hearty website, I listened to the voicemail with no apprehension at all.

It was Sen. Scott Brown hissownself. He voice-mailed me thanking me for the support of “your senator, John McCain.” The message was paid for by the “Friends of John McCain” group.

My senator?

McCain represents AZ. I live in AR.

And the number the message went to had a California prefix (Internet phone system)

Geographically challenged, are we, Sen. Brown?

Apathy! It's going to be our doom

$990,000,000.

It’s bigger than it looks at first glance: Nine hundred and ninety million dollars.

That’s your money going bye-bye. It’s not coming back unless a whole herd of constituents in every state and every congressional district get wall-eyed mad and demand their elected leaders stop the uncontrolled looting of the U.S. Treasury.

That’s not going to happen, unfortunately. Because the electorate has become sheep for those they elect.

$990,000,000.

That’s the increase that both houses of Congress voted to give themselves for operate their respective offices: $660,000,000 in the House, $430,000,000 in the Senate.

Yikes! What are our public serpents doing? Is "common sense" no longer a commodity in government? Our elected leaders already get millions to run their offices, now they have voted themselves an increase, eight percent in the House and six percent in the Senate. (It’s not that the senators are more frugal, their base stipend is larger, so the percentage adds up to ever more bucks per official.)

Doesn’t anyone care anymore? Have we all become so anesthetized by Gummit Gone Wild! that we just don't care?

If you do care, set up a hue and cry (at the very least, manage a small “hue”) and tell your elected representative and senators what you think of the shameful way they are spending your money.

That’s the whole point, you know: It’s your money. Or have you forgotten that small fact?

Stirring memories

Big Pines Lodge down on Caddo Lake in East Texas burned to the ground recently. The news flooded my brain pan with memories that had been stored away for almost 20 years. It was enough to almost make a grown man cry.

Big Pines Lodge. Great view of the river channel. Incredible catfish served family style. Jalapeno hushpuppies that looked like snake-devils and tasted better than anything offered up the angels. The coldest beer on the planet served in Mason jars. Displays of fishing lures I didn't need but wanted to buy anyway.

You can forget all that and people would have still showed up. To see and be seen. It was impossible to walk in the front door, saunter pass the fishing tackle and pickled eggs and gimme caps and not see a bevy of people you knew.

It could take a while to mush on through the howdys and the hand-shaking. It was not unlike a murder of politicians descending on a busload of voting virgins. Everybody was glad to see everybody.

One favorite memory: A business acquaintance was taken out to Big Pines for a catfish dinner. The man, a competitive weightlifter from New Jersey, politely declined catfish and ordered a steak with a side order of shrimp.

After a beer or three, this man with a neck the size of a Mac truck tire, started mouthing about how he couldn't fathom how anyone could eat "bottom dwellers" like catfish. "Man," he said in his heavy Joisey accent, "catfish are scum-suckers, eating things on the bottom that other fish wouldn't touch."

He simply wouldn't shut up. It was more than embarrassing.

I finally persuaded him to take a single bite of Big Pines catfish. After having a 16-ounce steak and enough shrimp to feed a homecoming crowd, he ate 12 fillets.

Every Christmas for the next several years, I would get about five pounds of uncooked catfish fillets with hushpuppy makings from Big Pines and ship them to New Jersey (with dry ice, of course).

From a former resident and a person who lives for the resurrection of good memories, please rebuild Big Pines.

Don't try and make it bigger, prettier, better. Just use an old snapshot and follow your heart.

Going home

When I have a stressful week at work, I just walk behind our office and stare at a field that I want to believe used to be a cow pasture.

The cow pasture has sour dock growing wild. (I don't think anyone cultivates sour dock.) My grandmother used to chop it up in salads, or get a bunch of them and squeeze the juice onto salads and fresh-picked green beans. It's like lemon juice only it is from a weed. I walk around the cow pasture and cogitate and suck dock juice.

Everybody has their own way of "going back home."

Rush and Dittoheads

I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh.

I listened to him for the same reason I sometimes watch "Whacked Out Videos" or "Cops." But one can take just so many ignorant men in muscle shirts getting drunk and acting out and the women who support their antics. (I'm talking about Rush, not the two TV shows.)

Those shows are visual train wrecks. Rush is a verbal train wreck and is no longer entertaining; he's the radio equivalent of Jerry Springer after ingesting a handful of uppers.

Rush, for some reason, now thinks he's the savior of all conservatives. His ranting and constant griping and verbal skewering of anything Democrat, is no longer entertaining. He's boring and tedious.

He was ranting recently about "savior worship" of President Obama and how it made him literally ill to watch people fawn over the new president.

"Fawning" is much better than getting sick to one's stomach over a commander in chief's actions.

With Bush in office, indigestion and IBS were commonplace.

With Obama, it's "May I have a tiny bit of hope, if you please?"

Sounds better than "Pass the Imodium."

What do you want from life?

If I could fly from birth to death on the feathery wings
of contentment and could go through life with cares being
smothered by laughter, with worries being chokes into
submission by tranquility, with everyday miracles
replacing everyday chores, with friends always standing firm,
and with foes going out of their way not to get in my way . . . .

If I could only spend all my days
surrounded by good books, good, cheap wine,
sunlight, starlight, the right amount of rain at the right time . . . .

If I could but experience that for a single lifetime,
God, what a dull, dull world it would be.

Wisdom

Wisdom is the ability to do dumb things
and get away with it by succeeding.

Success is the end result of doing
dumb things in a wise manner.

Being dumb is the ability to screw up a good thing
even when aided by success and wisdom.

The aura thing

Have you ever wondered why some people can potty-train wild squirrels, while other people create mental chaos and extreme unease in animals from a block away?

Somebody ought to do a paper on it. Who, me? No way! I'm too busy aggravating the dog down the block.

Blogging can be dangerous

When my spousal unit presented me with a "blog" for Christmas, she didn't tell me blogging could be dangerous.

A popular Chinese blogger had just finished a reading -- bloggers read their offerings? -- and a member of the audience got up and stabbed the guy numerous times.

theworldaccordingtogeorgesmith is suspended until further notice.

Sorry, but safety first is my motto.

Blogging
should not
include the possibility
of getting stabbed with
sharp objects, shot with pellets
made from lead or
incurring bodily
harm at
all.

Might as well laugh

For some strange reason there are people who are still blaming Bill Clinton for the mess this country is experiencing in the Year of our Lord 2009. They hate the man with the passion of a rabid ferret.

And, for some strange reason there are people who can not get over the fact that George Bush is no longer president. Beating him up incessantly about his foibles and assorted faux pas and left-behind examples of Dubyaspeak isn't doing a thing to get the country out of the mess it's in.

American heroes, presidents and major political figures, have always had their time in the spotlight examined closely. Some quotes from history serve as a reminder that these men and women were just common folks like us.

As John Hancock shouted to a friend after the British was made aware of the signing of theU.S. Declaration of Independence, "I didn't do anything wrong. They made me sign the durn thing! It was all of them against me!"

As Mahatma Ghandi once said to a British commander for losing control over India, "Get over it!"

As Abraham Lincoln said one day during a walk around the White House with little, short, round whatzername, "People are blaming me for things I have not done yet are not praising me for the good deeds. Wow, what a bummer! Wanna go to the theater?"

As Herbert Hoover exclaimed as he exited the White House: "What? Me worry?"

As Franklin Roosevelt said as he left the White House for the last time:




Clinton made mistakes. All presidents do. As he said was heard to say in a stage whisper upon leaving the White House, "Except for the fat girl deal and lying under oath part, everything pretty much went okay, don't you think?"

Bush made mistakes, too. The fact that he made more than most living human beings (not to mention presidents) and didn't seem to understand that the presidency is like inertia: Things at rest stay at rest until a force is applied onup it and things in motion tend to stay in motion until ....

When asked to sum up his presidency, Bush was quoted as saying, "Overall, except for the terrorists deal and the wars and the baseball steroids deal and and mispronouncing 'nu-clur' and all that, it was ... oh, yeah, and, you know, the economic thing goes in there too ... a pretty good jig."

No one is going to change the Clinton-haters minds about the former two-term president.

Same with Bush. Even if the nation goes further in the economic toilet that we have to call in Suisse RotoRooter, Barack Obama will take the immediate heat because he has the political "hammer." Bush is gone ... Obama has the helm.

A random thought: Think about how easy it would have been for Bill post-presidency if he had just been slick enough to stick Bush with the fat girl fallout.

Arguing with a woman

1) Arguing with a woman gets the same result as whistling up a dead mule's ass.

2) It's not that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. It's just that men are stupid.