Taking a little break for LIFE

Well, I realized that I hadn't been here for a couple of weeks and thought I needed to put something up.  As you may or may not know, I got married for the first time two weeks ago today at the tender age of 54.

I am deeply fortunate to have Susan, who puts up with me and my foibles and seems to understand me very well, which is a good thing.  I have been paying attention to things going on in Tennessee (thank you Daily Buzz, if you aren't a subscriber for free, for heaven's sakes, SIGN UP, will ya?)  but due to my wedded bliss, I haven't gotten worked up enough to write.

Something I noticed is that Mike Carpenter announced on Facebook today that he is going to work for the Plough Foundation; last I knew, he was working for Mayor Wharton.  He will do a great job at Plough, he is a Republican who works with Democrats, even if he doesn't agree with us very much.  Because he would work with us on the County Commission, he is a pariah in his own party.  Sad.  Mike Ritz, who would criticize Carpenter for doing that, now has taken that same path of bipartisanship on his own, to the point that some in his own party tried to recall him, with no success.

Any way, the Grizz are in the Western Conference Finals for the first time ever, it's BBQ Fest weekend and life is good.  I'll be back in a couple of weeks or so with more news, go enjoy what's left of May!

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's been a week..

Well, there are things going on everywhere, and I have been following Twitter and Al-Jazeera English and Ross' ongoing coverage of the MCS battle and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A BLIZZARD OVER 1/2 OF THE COUNTRY, AND IT IS WORSE THAN 1967 IN CHICAGO!!!!!!!!!!!

I remember the 1967 blizzard that hit Northern Illinois, and if this is worse than 1967, it's pretty damn bad.  And tonight, it even scared the hell out of Jim Cantore on The Weather Channel with THUNDERSNOW!!!!!!

So, too much is happening too quickly for me to issue any kind of trenchant commentary.  Hell, I don't even care who wins the Super Bowl; I like the Montreal Alouettes!  Oh, wait, wrong trophy.

I heard tonight that the recently-re-elected TNDP Chair, Chip Forrester, has not hired a communications director yet.  Really, Chip?  With all the batshit crazy coming out of the legislature?  The Republicans are running on pure id these days, with 140 years of rage and payback backed up in their systems.  So, a Communications Director would be a good thing, wouldn't it?  One would think.  (UPDATE: I have been informed this morning that the process has been going on and should be over soon.  GOOD.)

Well, at least Spring Training is at hand, opening in less than two weeks with pitchers and catchers reporting.  I hope I get there, I am ready for outdoor sports that do not involve snow or ice.

At some point, I hope to get back to regular blogging, as I have a long story to tell you, but I don't yet know how it ends; that will decide what I can say, if anything.  I am fine, don't panic, but someday we will talk about it.

OK, back to the TV, I want to see Cantore scream like a little girl again...

My Larry King-style Post

No, I'm not wearing suspenders, but remember those crazy, stream-of-consciousness columns the old Brooklynite used to write for USA TODAY?  Well, I am going to write one of my own today. Why?  BECAUSE, THAT'S WHY!

So whyizzit that there are public officials in this town that want to disenfranchise and disempower our own residents from deciding what we should do with our OWN school system? And No, I'm not just talking to Reverend Whalum, either....

I, for one, back Jay Cutler and don't think he "tapped out", as that great tackler of years past, Deion Sanders, put it the other day.  His style is not like others, but he got a team that had no business being in the NFC Championship game, despite being sacked more than any other QB in the NFL.

So why are Rep. Glen Casada and Sen, Bill Ketron wasting the TGA's time with an unconstitutional bill to prohibit unions in Tennessee from making political contributions?  That will last in court about as quickly as my cat Zippy's breakfast when I give it to him each morning. It shows how little some Republicans care about actual governance.  I wonder how long it will take Speaker Harwell to wish she had a chair and whip for her OWN caucus?

While I wish NashvilleNewscoma had been MemphisNewscoma, the good result is that she is back writing regularly, and better than ever.  I seriously wish I had her writing ability.

So Senator Stacey Campfield hates babies?  Well, not all of them, just SOME of them, it seems.  You know, he CAN be a decent person, but once he is on a legislative body, it seems like his non-nice side takes over.  What a shame.

Good on Andy Meek at the Daily News for pointing out the anti-transparency legislation introduced in the State legislature.  If we are going to ofter public monies as pot-sweeteners to private companies in order to draw them here, it is NOT proprietary information to know how much we are giving up and how much we will get back in the process.  This is ANTI-SUNSHINE.

Consistency, thy name is NOT Grizzlies.  They have been all over the lot, and look like they will be a .500 team this year.  Right now, with the Tigers being still too young to make a run into the NCAAs, the Grizz could OWN this town if they could get in the playoffs and win a couple of games, much less an entire series.  We still need more players.

Oh, and Spring Training is three weeks from today.  That ALWAYS makes me feel better, safe in the knowledge that winter does indeed, always turn to spring. However, MLB, the Civil Rights Game is in Atlanta, eh?  If you wouldn't have charged $50 for a ticket, you might have done better here at AutoZone Park.  Just sayin'...

I can't help but notice that, since Chip Forrester's re-election, the trolls attacking him have disappeared from Post Politics.  I presume that is a good thing.  Still waiting to hear what he and the State ExecCom have planned for the coming year.  Oh, wait. it's not Friday yet, is it?
:-)

By the way, Shelby Democrats, it appears that for once I will get to attend party re-organization caucuses this year.  The 2007 and 2009 were scheduled the same weekend as the North Texas Irish Festival, so I have had to miss them.  IIRC, caucuses are scheduled for March 26; if that's off, hopefully someone will correct me in the comments.

Love Chik-Fil-A's food?  So do I.  However, I'm giving up what Dabney refers to as "Jesus Chicken" because they have homophobic policies.  Simply, they give money to people and groups whose policies hurt  others.  Do they have the right to do so?  Sure, just as I have the right not to patronize them for doing so.  Bye bye Jesus Chicken!  Besides, why not EAT LOCAL instead?

And how about some props for Lindsey for making the Flyer's 20<30 issue? You should be reading her blog if you aren't; she is to the point and just a great read.

Ok, if you are a liberal reader of this blog and you live in Shelby County, why have I not seen you at DRINKING LIBERALLY? Every Wednesday night from 7-10 in the back room at RP Billiards at 525 South Highland, we are there.  They have a new kitchen menu and the best bartender I know, Scotty James, taking care of you.  Join us!

Enough for now, later on down the road!

This is not about politics, it's about me...

No, I'm not going anywhere, just a little tale of making a pilgrimage.  If you're not interested, go and watch the pretty badgers dance.

After having written about Weiner a few days ago, I realized that I had not been there in several years.  In fact, I've been there only once since we buried Dad seven years ago.  So, with a day off, I headed out for Weiner after breakfast.  Thanks to I-55 & what will be I-555 (US 63), I got there right after 12 noon, and drove around the town, winding up, of course, at my parents and grandparents' graves.

(Remember, you can always skip out; if you don't like badgers, here are some nice llamas.)

After visiting the graveyard, I drove around the town and it confirmed that little has changed in the 40 years since I moved away.  It remains the only town from which I moved that I cried about when I left; I never imagined that I would ever leave there.  Oops.

The downtown is little to nothing on the west side of the Cotton Belt tracks, as it has been since the late 70s; people either shop for groceries at Fowler's, or drive 20 miles to Jonesboro, as we did when I was a child.   After a while, I left and went to Jonesboro.

After a stop or two to get a magazine (football, people, FOOTBALL), I left to come home.  I stopped in Trumann to look at the house that had belonged to my family from 1973 until I sold it in 2005; the people who live there now had taken down the fences and chopped down the trees my grandfather had planted shortly after moving in.  Somehow, I didn't bother me; I drove on after a short pause.

I think of all I had in Arkansas that is now gone; yet it just brings home the fact that Memphis is and will be my home, it's where I have put down roots.

In the long run, that is a much-needed comfort.

A Command Decision has been made!

Since we are in a NEW ERA OF GOOD FEELING with the ascent of Van Turner to the SCDP Chairmanship, I have made a decision: if ANONYMOUS commenting is good enough for Kleinheider and Woods, it's good enough for me.

Anonymous commenting STAYS.

The floor is now open for innuendo and hearsay!

OK, so I'm almost back to normal

I'm not sure if it was something I ate, or EVERYTHING that I ate, but I have been down for the weekend.  There was no Feel Good Friday here because I didn't, but it shall return this week.

Now then, we have had much happen in the last few days in my absence.  I don't feel like I know enough to comment about the Mumbai situation; to be honest, I have avoided the news reports, because we have enough to worry about here at home.

We have to hope that Congress has the cojones NOT to let Bush, Cheney & company complete their unmitigated looting of the US treasury before January 20; fortunately, the new, more Democratic Congress takes over January 3 and we can finally begin triage.

On other subjects, I really felt bad for Phillip Fulmer last night on his final game at UT, even though, as usual, I pulled against them.  He has given the majority of his life to that school, and they gave him the boot (albeit probably into a job somewhere in the Athletic Department) any way.  

In his place, they hire a guy whose only head coaching experience was surviving Al Davis for a little over a year.  (Bill Callahan, anyone?) Let's see how THAT works out for them.  Given that they are in a division where they are the ONLY non-bowl eligible school, they could be in for tough sledding for a while.

The Tigers are 6-6 and headed for a bowl, feel the excitement? Nah, me neither.  This is a team that should be 9-3 if they had been better conditioned earlier in the year, and their probable reward is their 3rd visit to the New Orleans Bowl in 6 years.  

Either they will face an excellent Troy squad, or they will get a rematch with the ASU Red Wolves, a thought which should cause the UM athletic department's blood to run cold.  While A-State will sell their allotment in a hurry (the last time they went to the New Orleans Bowl was in 2005, after Katrina, played in LAFAYETTE!), I suspect getting Tiger football fans to shell out $$$ for a trip to New Orleans to see a rematch with ASU will be a very difficult sell.  

Ah, remember the days when Tiger fans dreamed of getting to a bowl, ANY bowl?

Well, I apologize for the dearth of writing of late, we're trying to get back into it, more later!

My own AAP*

Annoying Autobiographical Pause, as our beloved Newcoma calls them, except hers are never annoying, and inevitably enlightening. I can only hope that this can come close to her gifts.

Some guy I never heard of hanged himself last week, and I am saddened because I never heard of him. He appears to have touched the lives of many with his writings, which I never got to because A) I didn't know who he was, and B) it was on paper, which I have abandoned in a fit of ADHD.

I write here, and read this wonderful yet confounding contraption called the computer and the associated intertubes, but when I get home I'm too tired to read a real book, which my friends torment me about on a consistent basis. Yet, it seems I am never too tired for these intertubes and the hyper-connection to the world which it provides.

Want to know when the last time I sat down to read a book cover-to-cover? It was several years ago, when I was in the hospital due to a cellulitis flare-up, and I read Richard Ben Cramer's magnificent bio of Joe DiMaggio, THE HERO'S LIFE. I truly enjoyed it, but I was only able to devote the time to do so because I couldn't freaking move without tremendous pain.

While I read 150-200 blog posts a day, thanks to Bloglines (Holt, this is YOUR fault! :), it seems I can't slow myself down enough to read a book and get lost in it, the way I could until a few years ago. It's not that I don't find things interesting, it's that if it takes more that a minute or three to digest, I blow right past it. I have, it seems, become too damned efficient for my own good.

Does this mean I am stopping these posts of rambling and crotchedy-ness for some time of contemplation? Well, not in the short term, there's too much going on.

However, if America doesn't commit suicide by electing a possibly dying John McCain and his Manchurian Governor, Sarah Palin, I may post a little more infrequently after November. Only time will tell.

As always, thanks for your readership, comments and support.

HEY! Wanna watch Pat Buchanan's head explode???

From the Jed Report via Al Giordano at The Field, let's watch the fun as Nixon's old speechwriter figures out that Obama is going to be the next President!

My Larry King impersonation

Well, we're in the middle of PEAK out here and our document system is fried, so I can't do any letters for my customers.

That means I'm doing a version of the old USA TODAY column that Larry King used to do, who knows what the hell I'll say next.

Whyizzit that I get pissed at Hillary, but get pissed when Goopers attack her as well? I still want Edwards to win.....Speaking of Edwards, hats off to David Holt, who is putting his time and money where his heart is, in Burlington, IA on the ground for John Edwards. Holt rocks, and any Edwards folks in town should thank him when he gets back.

In the state, tomorrow, I want you all to go show some love for our beloved Newscoma, who is starting the Bigfoot Fund for lonely sasquatches in NW Tennessee; it also helps her in the fight to find zombies! She deserves whatever you care to give, I will be in for $7.95 at least! In all seriousness, she has been a stalwart for the good on this side of the state, not to mention having a truly entertaining blog.

Say, you ever think that maybe Arthur Blank may have lied to Bobby Petrino about the situation with the Falcons when he hired him? Like maybe he told him that the Vick situation was under control and that he was just the guy to make Vick the all-around QB the Falcons had been waiting to see? I can hear it now, "Don't worry, Bobby, the players will LOVE you and the FBI is just trying to get Vick to roll on his friends, it won't be a problem!" Under THAT scenario, doesn't Petrino's escape to Fayetteville seem more sensible? I thought so.

Speaking of Larry King, I first heard him on the radio in 1980 and thought he was an 80-year-old guy humped over a microphone THEN, how has he lasted so long? OY. Partially on that subject, if you are a Don Rickles fan, you have to catch Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, which is on HBO this month, it's a great capture of his career and how wickedly gifted he is at needling and insulting people why making you laugh like hell. HE's 81, for heaven's sakes.....

I think the Mitchell Report is mostly hearsay, but I have to admit I am gleeful that Roger Clemens has been accused of being injected with PEDs while with the Yankees. He's still a Hall of Famer, as is the man you love to hate, Barry Bonds, but I grow tired of Bonds being the scapegoat for an institution-wide problem. MLB, the media, and everyone else turned a blind eye when all this started, and they want to blame it all on Bonds because he is a spoiled, selfish (and, did I mention, BLACK) pain in the ass. It's not the whole story, but race has a part of this, doncha know.......

If you see Bill O'Reilly, tell him I said HAPPY HOLIDAYS! BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

The older I get, the more temperature-sensitive I become, and I'm getting tired of the roller-coaster ride the weather has taken recently. I either want it to go to 70 and stay there, or drop to 20 and have a blizzard. No, a real humdinger, like the winter of '67 in Chicago and the Midwest, when we were buried under two feet of snow. Oh, I would like that WITHOUT an ice storm, please!

While I'm at it, how about some applause for Lauren, who keeps me sane, and has put up with a great deal from me this week, more than she should have, for which I am grateful. We share the January 5 birthday, and yes, I'm really seven years OLDER than she is, though I like to tease her otherwise.

I know he's working on his novel, for which we wait with bated breath, but I (and many others) have missed The Freedonian's musings, he rarely misses when he writes and provides a great perspective on Mid-South life and politics. If his novel is as good as his blog (which I expect) who knows how long we'll have him here.

Who out there still watches local news on 3, 5, 13 or 24/30? I try to, but other than 3 at 10, it's just awful. No one seems to understand that Whitehaven is NOT South Memphis, and vice versa, or know where anything is in general. Note, Anna Marie Hartman at 5 is still terrific, though.

While he has gotten on my nerves in the past, send some thoughts and prayers to Stuart Scott at ESPN; he is battling cancer while back on the air at the World Wide Leader. Keep fightin' dawg.....

Anyone else think that Mike Huckabee is the man to beat on the Gooper side? I do, he scares the hell out of me. The evangelicals will STAY HOME if it's not the Huckster, or vote for whoever turns out to be the Constitution Party nominee.

Loved Bill Giannini's comment on the blog the other day; like anyone's going to beat him in the GOP primary. I'll enjoy eating that Republican pizza, dude, but I'm still for Cheyenne.....

OK, that's it for now, remember to watch the football Tigers take on Howard Schnellenberger's Florida Atlantic Owls in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl tomorrow night on ESPN at 7 o'clock. It's the final game for Martin Hankins, Joe Doss and the rest of the senior class, GO TIGERS!