Boasting & Bragging

I find a Texas thing or two a bit perplexing at times. One is the concept of bragging rights or boasting. I see this in that newspaper I've complained about before, but continue to buy and read, that being the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Like today there is an article about American Idol. That is a TV show where boys and girls sing and people call in over and over again in a sort of a fraudulent public vote to determine the winner.

The first winner of American Idol was a Texan. You never see her name in the Star-Telegram without her hometown as a modifier, as in "Burleson's Kelly Clarkson". Today's American Idol article did the usual Kelly Clarkson mention. The headline for the article is "The latest 'Idol' boasts North Texas ties".

The article goes on to give a look at the 4 American Idol top 24 people with a Texas tie, saying "Two contestants in the top 24 cite North Texas cities as their hometowns, another has lived here, and another is married to someone from here".

Okay, so 2 actually live in North Texas towns. In the details the 'one who lived here', basically grew up and lives in Oregon, is now 24 and spent one year in Dallas, Frisco and McKinney. The one who married someone in Texas is an Australian living in LA who married a girl from Fort Worth and has visited here.

Now, how does this boasting thing work? Does someone from north Texas run into someone from south Texas and proceed to brag that north Texas has 4 people on American Idol? And two of those actually live there?

This boast/brag thing seems closely related to another odd pathology I've made note of before, that being the Green With Envy pathology where the Star-Telegram would say this that or the other totally ordinary thing in Fort Worth made towns far and wide green with envy or was the envy of towns far and wide. Strangely, ever since I webpaged examples of this bizarre verbiage from the Star-Telegram I have not seen another incident in that paper of something causing others to be green with envy.

Now back to this bragging about someone being from here thing. The Star-Telegram always does this. Like actor Bill Paxton apparently is from Fort Worth. Any mention of him is always Fort Worth native Bill Paxton. An actress named Betty Buckley is from Fort Worth, so it is always Fort Worth native Betty Buckley. Today there was mention made of Betty's brother, who I'd never heard of, Fort Worth native Norman Buckley, who apparently got an award at some obscure event called the "Eddie" Awards. I guess Fort Worth will now have the bragging rights and likely a city wide celebration because a Fort Worth native won a prestigious "Eddie" Award. Whatever that is. I guess I could look it up.

A country music singer I'd not heard of, Pat Green, moved to Fort Worth, with the Star-Telegram saying this now gave Fort Worth bragging rights regarding what they called the Texas Transient's move to FW, and that this move had Dallas, Lubbock and Waco green with envy. I am not making this up.

I could go on and on with examples of the "native of" verbiage, but won't. If I haven't made a point by now, more examples aren't going to do so.

So, where I used to live I subscribed to 2 newspapers, the Seattle P-I and the Skagit Valley Herald. Seattle has a few celebrities and well known people, as does the Skagit Valley. Burl Ives lived in the Skagit town of Anacortes til he died. I don't recollect ever reading his name in an article with verbiage like Anacortes native Burl Ives. That guy who played Jesus in that Mel Gibson movie, Jim Caviezel, is from the town I lived in, Mount Vernon. I don't recollect either the P-I or the SV Herald ever referencing him as Mount Vernon native, Jim Caviezel. The richest man in the world was born and raised and still lives in the Seattle zone. I don't recollect ever reading him referred to as Washington native Bill Gates, or Seattle native Bill Gates. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain grew up in the Washington coastal town of Hoquium. I don't recollect ever reading Hoquium native Kurt Cobain.

I can think of more examples of well known people living in the Seattle zone than I can think of here in Texas, suffice to say I don't ever recollect reading about any of them where the local papers repeatedly refer to people as being a native of this that or the other place. Let alone the fact of them being from this that or the other place giving that place some sort of bragging rights. Or being something to boast about. That just seems like bad manners. Maybe the Northwest is just a zone with better manners. And a lot of serial killers. But that's another day's blogging.

Disenfranchised in Texas

I've been trying for months to get my voter's registration changed so that I can vote at my new address. At the last election I went down to my local polling place and I was not allowed to vote. On the actual election day you have to vote at the place you are registered. For me that was/is way north of my current location. Previous to the last botched election I'd done early voting. With early voting you can vote anywhere that there is an early voting poll place.

I've had a long history of trouble dealing with various Texas bureaucracies ever since my exile here way back in 1999. First thing I encountered was they insist on seeing your social security card to do just about anything. Now, up in Washington we'd always been told to keep this a secret, even before the problem with identify theft came into being. So, I had to get a social security card. This involved finding my birth certificate which involved asking my mom if she had any proof that I'd been born. She had none so I had to contact my place of birth in Oregon to generate a birth certificate so I could get a social security card so I could get a Texas driver's license and register to vote.

So, after many months of trying to go through all the hoops I finally was able to apply for a Texas driver's license. The DMV, or whatever they call it here, was a zoo. The computers that you took the written test on were so dilapidated that you could not make out colors. With the test asking you some questions based on colors. But, despite all the obstacles I managed to pass both the written and the driving test.

A couple weeks went by. My new Texas license finally arrived. On a Friday. I was planning to drive up to Washington for Christmas, leaving the next day. So, I was glad to finally have my Texas license. Til I looked at it more closely. As you can see by looking closely at the photo of my license, above, there is a rather glaring mistake.

So, yes, I headed north using a Texas driver's license that said I was a Female. Because of having this I did get one odd benefit. My sister let me attend her all girl Christmas party. But I had to be the greeter and show the girls my I.D. to establish my bonafides as being one of their gender.

When I got back to Texas I went down to the DMV, or whatever they call it here, waited in line, again, showed the lady my new license, asked her if she saw anything wrong. She said ooops. And then she checked the record. She had me lean forward and she whispered to me, "the records out of Austin say you are also African-American. You aren't are you?" I told her as far as I knew I was not either African-American or female, but how can anyone be absolutely 100% certain about such things?

So, now I guess I am in Texas Voter's Limbo. I'm fairly certain I can still do the early voting thing. Unless that has somehow gotten mucked up by me trying to change my polling place. I don't know why they don't have the permanent absentee ballot method that Washington and other states use. That would make it all so much simpler.

Now, if I do get to vote in the March 4 primary, who should I vote for? Barack or Hillary?

Hillary, Dick, Gail & Bill

Last month I read Dick Morris's rebuttal to Hillary Clinton's Living History. The Morris book is called Rewriting History. Basically he goes through Hillary's book bit by bit setting the record straight. Hillary does leave out some significant pieces of her history which Mr. Morris seemingly gleefully details. Things like all the Hillary scandals, everything from Travelgate to how she bungled the Paula Jones problem. And how she hauled off a fortune in gifts just prior to being booted from the White House. Hillary returned some of the loot and paid for some of what she kept.

So when reading the Morris book about Hillary he frequently refers to Gail Sheehy's Hillary's Choice book. So, now I'm reading that one. I'm about 100 pages in. Miss Sheehy so far is causing me to like Hillary more than Mr. Morris did. She is painting quite an interesting picture of Hillary's formative years. The taskmaster dad, the constant drive to be the best she could be, the Republican upbringing that the early 60s and a meeting with Martin Luther King slowly started Hillary on her evolution to becoming a liberal democrat. Her first boyfriend. No, it wasn't Bill.

And speaking of Bill, I had no idea he was such a chunky little butterball when he was a kid.

Etcetera

North Texas has been through a hellacious storm today. Golf Ball size hail pummeled parts of the D/FW Metroplex. Areas that were spared the huge hail got hit with heavy rain and really really loud thunder. As far as I know, right now, no tornadoes were spawned.

So, during the storm I took off to go to Wal-Mart. I needed gas. But the gas station's credit card readers were not functioning, likely a casuality of the lightning. So, I drove on to Wal-Mart on an empty tank. I did my standard call to my mom whenever I get gas, or attempt to get gas. My mom kept me entertained in the Wal-Mart parking lot while I waited for the rain to let up. After what seemed hours, but was likely only minutes, I decided I would need to use my umbrella to get through the downpour and inside Wal-Mart.

I finished with my Wal-Mart foraging and made it back to my vehicle, almost dry. I then decided to call my sister in Phoenix. She lives about 5 miles from my mom and dad. When my sister answered the phone I'd forgotten why I called her. So, we chatted purposelessly while I headed back here. And then my vehicle did that stalling thing that indicates it wants gas. I'd forgotten I'd not gotten gas. I got my sister off the phone and limped into a Shell station. Where I hit the wrong button and got Plus gas at $2.98 a gallon. So, I got a gallon and stopped the hemorrhaging.

We've lost power several times during today's bad weather. The internet connection is off and on. I've got no energy to try and find any sort of pic that might illustrate the horror of today. Let us all just imagine one big oversized lightning bolt crashing down and making a really really loud noise and call it a day.

Waterboarding & Strip Searches

I read somewhere recently that something like 40% of Americans think that waterboarding is an extreme sport and don't quite understand why there would be a fuss about using this extreme sport as a torture device to extract information from suspected terrorists or random taxi drivers erroneously taken into custody.

For those of you among that 40% who think waterboarding is just a day at the beach let me explain that waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent. In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex. Although waterboarding can be performed in ways that leave no lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death. The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.

Is there not a more humane way for Americans to extract information from suspected bad guys than to resort to Gestapo-like tactics that the Nazis would have been comfortable with? Isn't there a drug that can break down a person's defenses and get them telling the truth? It's like we are becoming something that is not what we like to think of as American.

And it's not just the torture of foreign bad guys, it's how we treat our own citizens as well. As in at what point in time did the practice of the strip search become the norm? Here in Texas you can get strip searched when arrested on a 6 year old arrest warrant for a $20 bounced check.

If I as a citizen forced someone to take off their clothes and then probed their body cavities this would be what is known as a crime, I believe it could even be considered rape. And yet it is considered okay when a jail employee orders you to strip and sticks his or her fingers where only your doctor or significant other should do any probing.

Why is an electronic means not used rather than the barbaric strip search? Would it not be easier just to walk a detainee through a security device like airports use? Come to think of it, even going through airport security has turned into sort of a minor strip search, what with having to take off your shoes and belt. My last time flying I wore really baggy comfortable pants and when the belt came off the pants almost did too. I think I was wearing boxers.

Locked & Loaded

A couple nights ago at my local neighborhood Krogers, that's a grocery store for you who live in non-Krogers zones, an armed robber waved his gun and instructed the store's on-duty cop and all the customers in the self-checkout area to lay down on the floor, face down, with their hands behind their back. The robber forced an employee to open a safe. There was 50 dollars inside. Only 50 dollars. It was past midnight. The thief escaped into the night while all the victims ran out the back of the store, calling 911 as they ran. As of today, the armed robber remains at large.

So, last night, about 6, I took off to go to the aforementioned Krogers. And what was on my door but a warning in the form of a piece of paper. We have a Neighborhood Watch System here. The notice said, in part:

"Dear Residents,
This letter is to notify you of criminal activity that has been reported in the immediate area. Two unknown young black males dressed in dark hoodies are approaching people with a black gun & yellow pistol grips demanding wallets, cash, jewelry, cell phones or anything of value. They approach the victims while they are on foot, walking from a car to a breezeway while walking alone. The criminal activity has been reported on Oakland Hills Drive, Ederville Road, Brentwood Stair Road, Boca Raton Blvd. and Pacific Place."

Let's see, I live on Boca Raton, Brentwood Stair Road is where I had a flat tire a couple weeks ago, in a bad neighborhood, Oakland Hills Drive is the road I took to Oakland Hills Park yesterday, I'm looking at Ederville Road from my window.

Basically I am doomed.

So it was quite fortuitous that today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram's sports page had an ad that touted "Cheaper Than Dirt" firearms. Among the guns on sale at the dirt cheap prices are an AK 47 assault rifle and a Thompson 1927A, that's a "Tommy Gun" to you non-gun aficionados, you know a machine gun like gangsters used back in the Prohibition years. With this being an area of the United States where many remnants of Prohibition are still in place I guess it makes sense to be selling "Tommy Guns" to people. At "Dirt Cheap" prices.

I can't wait to get me one.

Rat Dog Dick

Last night after suffering through American Idol I got to the end of Jack Olsen's true crime book, "Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation". This was a very interesting true crime book in that it seemed more like a novel than non-fiction, what with the main character being this femme fatale detective named Fay Faron who runs a detective agency with her dreadlocked dog, Bean, called the Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency. Now, there is a strange personal note here. My eldest sister has 2 dogs, one is called Rosie the Rat Dog and the other is named Bean. But my sister is no femme fatale so the eerie coincidences don't go beyond similar names.

Oh oh. I thought of another similarity between this book and my sister.

This book was about Gypsies taking advantage of elderly people and getting the old folks to put the Gypsies in their wills, or sign over their houses or their investments, like stocks and bonds and properties. Murder was also involved. Now my sister has never taken advantage of anyone, but she did manage to get involved with an elderly person. Or two. And somehow inherited all sorts of things. Cars, houses, property, bonds, cash. I am almost 100% certain my sister is not a Gypsy.

Now that I'm thinking about it I've got another acquaintance who made a minor sideline out of being the last surviving member of her clan and thus inheriting all sorts of things; money, houses, property, bonds, bank accounts, furniture, chickens, cars, cows and who knows what else. Sadly, this acquaintance slowly squandered all her ill-gotten gains, except for the cows, and now survives as a modern day junk collector/peddler. Yikes. That almost sounds like she's a Gypsy. She does sort of dress like a Gypsy, with colorful big skirts and garish jewelry and a fascination for the supernatural.

Anyway, Fay Faron and her Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency finally got the police to put an end to the Gypsie's reign of elder abuse. Incidentally, these Gypsie's were from the same branch of the Gypsy Mafia tree as the ones portrayed in the movie King of the Gypsies.

Fay Faron was so appalled by the lack of protection of the elderly from predators that she formed another agency called Elder Angels tasked with investigating financial crimes against the elderly.

Missives from the Bubba Brigade

For some unfathomable to me reason, Texans have somehow gotten a national reputation as a state full of ignorant Bubbas with heads full of nonsense. The current president does not help dispel this unfortunate myth. Nor does the way Hollywood often portrays Texans in movies and television. When you live in Texas you learn that while there may be a lot of ignorant Bubbas, likely reflecting the low high school graduation and college graduation rates as compared to the more advanced states, you also meet and hear of many many non-Bubba, non-ignorant Texans.

Reading the letters to the editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram each morning gives one a good reflection of the broad spectrum of the thinking, or lack of, of Texans. Sometimes the letters can make you cringe, usually those are of a religious bend, spouting pure unadulterated ignorance that makes one wonder why the paper prints their silly nonsense.

On Sunday there were several letters regarding an issue in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district where one totally Bubba family was protesting the fact that an elementary school was offering a Spanish class. The Bubbas felt that the school was pushing an agenda where the United States is to be taken over by Mexican culture and language.

Many people objected to these particular Bubba's strident position, some comparing them to those who blocked school house doors in Alabama back in the 60s.

And then today came a letter from one of the many enlightened Texans (unfortunately I don't believe their numbers are yet a majority) in which the letter writer put the issue in proper perspective.

I'll copy the enlightened letter to the editor below, with no further commentary.

---

A Sunday letter (“Clash of words about Spanish”) said: “It’s inconceivable to me that some in this country are pushing an agenda for us to be taken over by Mexican culture and language.”

Maybe we should remember that Texas was first taken away from the Mexican culture during the Texas Revolution. In reality, Mexican culture was taken over by American culture, which is part of what caused the Texas Revolution in the first place.

The same letter writer asked: “Why aren’t we promoting our native tongue while encouraging the proper speaking and spelling of it?” Texans should be speaking an Apache or Comanche dialect because those people are the true natives of this land.

I, too, used to think that “if you come to America, learn to speak English.” But then I realized that America gives all people freedom, including the freedom to speak a language of their choice.

— David Falksen, Fort Worth

The Soviet State of Texas

It might seem to be the most absurd thing imaginable to suggest that the Great Republic of Texas has anything in common with the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. However, when one sees Texas up close and personal one sees many similarities between the USSR & Texas.

For example, in the old Soviet Union two of their major cities were named for two of the USSR's founding fathers, one named Leningrad, the other Stalingrad. In Texas two of the major cities are also named after founding fathers, one being the capital of Austin. The other being Houston.

In the Soviet Union huge statues were erected to honor Joesph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin. In Texas, one of the largest free standing statues in the world was erected to honor Sam Houston.

In the Soviet Union the death penalty was used frequently. Texas, by far, leads the United States in number of executions.

In the Soviet Union you could get thrown into the Gulag for the most minor of crimes. In Texas so-called justice is meted out in equally harsh terms. A personal example. Last month a friend of mine, down in Corpus Christi, was stopped for a minor moving violation. The cop ran her name and came up with a warrant for her arrest. She was handcuffed and thrown in the back of the cop car and brought to a jail where she was stip searched and booked. Her crime? Six years prior, at a Krogers Grocery, she had written a check for $20 on a now long closed account. Unknown to her, the check bounced. Apparently Krogers took the case to court and got a judgement, unbeknownst to the victim. The $20 check, via fines and interest, had ballooned to almost $500. Luckily for my friend she had family who could help her, including a sister who is a lawyer and a judge in Houston. She was out of the Texas Gulag in 3 days.

Texas has this rather antiquated, very corrupt, system that is responsible for many of the Texas crimes against humanity, that being the Justice of the Peace system. These 'judges' are not trained in the law. They are elected. They are often incompetent. Example. Dallas has a mass transit train called DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit). DART employs pseudo-police officers to maintain order on the trains and the train stations. The locals calls these pseudo cops the DART Gestapo. A Fort Worth reporter was in Dallas covering a DART story several years ago. He stood at a street crossing waiting for the 'walk' sign to turn on. Beside him were two DART cops. He waited and waited for the apparently broken light to change. It never did. Finally the cops walked away. When they were several hundred feet down the road the reporter made a run for it and crossed the street. The cops then chased after him, stopped him, accused him of breaking the law as soon as their backs were turned. They gave him a ticket with a large fine. The reporter tried to get his day in court via the Justice of the Peace that handled that jurisdiction. After try after try of appearing in person to get the matter settled, he gave up. Years later he is still battling this.

In another incident a man and his 10 year old son were accosted by the DART Gestapo (aka DART KGB) over some minor infraction. When the victim objected the Gestapo tasered the man. In front of his 10 year old son. The man was hauled away by the cops, leaving the 10 year old to fend for himself. The victim spent 10 days in the Dallas Gulag, unable to post bail.

A 15 year old boy was shot dead by the DART Gestapo when he jumped out from some bushes and said boo. The boy was unarmed.

You can read all about the DART Gestapo here.

Another shocking example of corrupt Texas justice occurs in a county on the fringe of the D/FW Metroplex, that being Johnson County. Ten percent of Johnson County's population has spent time in one of the county's jails. If you want to be horrified at how badly justice can be perverted in Texas read this shocking article about a couple good citizen's nightmarish ordeal when faced with the law in Johnson County. This story is not for the squeamish. And you will likely be quite ashamed that this occurred in the United States. With very little local outrage. But then again, how much protesting did the citizens of the Soviet Union do? Very little, lest they get thrown into the Gulag. Texans don't do a lot of protesting either. I don't know if this is due to fear of the Texas Gulag or just plain old-fashioned ignorance of the sad situations that occur here.

Another example of how similar the State of Texas is to the Soviet Union is the Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal. In the USSR when the government needed land for one of their fool projects the proliteriat had no rights. The Soviets would just take their land. In the State of Texas the eminent domain laws have been perverted in ways the rest of the United States does not allow. In Texas you can get the corrupt local government to use eminent domain to condemn houses when a Shopping Mall wants to expand its parking lot. This happened just 5 miles north of me at the Northeast Mall. 5 miles east of my location the Dallas Cowboys and the city of Arlington conspired to pervert the concept of eminent domain in order to steal dozens of houses, dozens of businesses and dozens of apartment complexes, uprooting well over 1000 people in a violation of basic human rights that would have done the old Soviet Union proud.

In the United States one of the basic tenents of our basic rights is the right to be left alone. I think that is what annoys me more than anything about the perversion of the law that occured in Arlington so that a private business could build a stadium. One day you are happy in the house you built on the land you worked hard to buy. The next day you are told you must leave. And will be paid full market value for your property. And you have no say in whether you want to sell or not.

None of this stuff should occur in America, land of the free, where human rights are to be protected, revered and cherished. Not ignored, violated and scorned. Texas really needs to follow the lead of the USSR and overthrow the current dictatorship and establish a democratic republic where basic human rights are protected by the state, rather than violated by the state.

If I suddenly cease posting you can assume I have had a knock on my door and the Texas Gestapo/KGB has me in custody for speaking out against the state. Let's just hope they don't take me to Johnson County. Or Dallas.

Early Morning Warbling

In the wee wee hours of the morning, sometime around 3am, something which sounded like a bird began making an otherworldly noise, a rhythmic, pulsing series of melodic tones that repeated without variance over and over and over again. After about 20 minutes of this unwanted alarm clock the melody suddenly changed to a sort of downbeat sound as if signaling the end of the song. And then silence. After about a minute of quiet it started up again from the beginning. The warbling was so not bird-like I began to consider getting out of bed and going in search of the source. But I didn't.

I remember decades ago, up in Washington, in the Skagit Valley, near the town of Sedro Woolley, on a hill named Hoogdal, a strange noise started up at night that sounded metallic and otherworldly. Locals were certain it was a UFO. Media from around the country descended on Hoogdal, not unlike what happened in Stephenville, Texas a month ago with the sighting of a supposed UFO. Eventually government investigators were able to determine, or the cover-up decided to say, that the Hoogdal Otherwordly Noise was caused by an Owl. It became known as the Hoogdal Owl.

So, back to my Texas Hoogdal Owl UFO Sound. As the second round of warbling progressed, the sound gradually faded. Whatever was making the sound, hovering UFO, or bird, was slowly moving away. Eventually the sound faded to silence and I faded back to sleep.

But, I ended up getting up early and I was in the mood for an early morning walk. So I got up and made my morning coffee, skipped my usual morning paper read, filled a thermos and drove to Oakland Lake Park (that is Oakland Lake you see in the photo above). It is a short distance from my abode. The early morning light had the birds all chirping and fellow early birds out walking. Very pleasant. None of the birds were making the noise that I heard in the middle of the night.

So, in regards to explaining what it was that seranaded me in the middle of the night, I lean towards the hovering UFO theory. That, or it was an Owl. A Fort Worth Owl. Not a Hoogdal Owl.