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WE DON'T COMB CHICKENS HERE - WE COOK 'EM!

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Monday, July 04, 2005

The Cook and Inquisitor Has Left The Building!


NOTE: If you've already visited the new site, you may need to refresh your browser on arrival to view the new furnishings.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

The New Doublewide...

The new site is now in place but headaches still abound.

So until I get enough schooling to make it look and feel right, will continue to make home here, at blogspot.

New site: www.sincityq.com

We have company coming in for an extended visit so won't be doing a lot of writing again until maybe Monday... probably Tuesday.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Bang, Bang... You're Alive Again!

We here on the free side of the Little Muddy often light a firecracker just to hear the noise. But sometimes we do it for a holiday event and the 4th of July is one of those you can sit on your back porch and watch your neighbors put on a show.

And sometimes, we even have fun too...

Now, I ain’t gonna go into laws and why popping fireworks is a criminal offense in that imprisoned state to the East... or why folks here do it as regular as they buy a 12-pack of Chek soda. But because we can, we often do and that raises the question of… sleep deprivation.

During the 24 hours that both preceded and followed the year 2000 New Year celebration, the air was thick with the smell of burnt gunpowder. So thick in fact that my Mom lost a dog that eventually turned up in Chambers County with a cold beer in one paw and a Bic lighter in the other. No, don't ask.

It was one wild night but my recollection of it is not nearly as smokey. Because we had just moved from a regular life and into a small trailer, I was a bit tired. We had hauled everything we owned at the time in the back of an old GMC Safari van. We used the youngest to sit on the inside end of the sofa so when we negotiated the obligatory humps of Auburn Road, we didn’t deposit the same in front of someone’s driveway. She followed safety procedures and tied herself to the variously dispersed seatbelt mountings using bungee cords. Outside, it was somewhere in the area of 30 degrees and with the back doors open and the sofa hanging out about 4 feet, there was no shortage of fresh air. By the way, her memory is just as fresh as the air that night and she says it was closer to 20...

Anyway, after we finally got the day’s moving done and decided to settle in for some beer and the regular falling of the New York Balls at Madison Square Garden, we noticed that we had company... of a sort. You see, after both of us had moved away from failed marriages and spouses that probably deserved far less than our previous homesteads, we had no real idea of how to start our lives over again. Between us, we had been married for nearly 30 years... just not to each other. We both came from places where we owned our own land and our neighbors weren't close enough to know the difference between a person using the john and a car without a good muffler. This was different.

It started with a few pops... then a loud bang and then... all hell erupted. I thought for sure that our new home was in labor and about to give birth to a Black Cat. One detonation that was particularly close caused my bottle of room temperature Champaign to explode prematurely. We ran outside and sat in amazement as this otherwise quiet, blue-collar setting was transformed into a firey display that would have made the most avid arsonist weep with envy!

We spent that evening unable to sleep so... we did what most any other healthy couple would have done and made the most of it.

The next morning, the ground was covered in litter from the show but not to worry. The people who produced the entertainment had also produced younguns, and they were out picking up the fallen remains. By lunch, it was completely cleaned up.

So far as I am aware, no one was injured... not even a broken eardrum. And as for us? We slept all New Year’s Day... with a smile on our face.

Epilogue: We have long since moved from that little park and have a piece of dirt, and a home, of our own again. But that first night on New Year's Eve 1999/2000 is always good for a grin and a few shared memories.

Friday, July 01, 2005

Journalistic PC... or Pc

Has anyone else noticed how the media is moving more and more to a sort of print-minimalism? I’m not sure why this trend has taken hold but it basically takes acronyms like NASA and AFLAC and reduces them to Nasa and Aflac. I think there is some kind of journalistic Pc (political correctness) going on that is essentially taking these acronyms and turning them into words. Well, words they are not, sorry. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration and AFLAC means American Family Life Assurance Company.

The more disturbing possibilities looming on the horizon include making USA into Usa or just US into just Us. How about the CIA and FBI into the Cia and Fbi?

I have to wonder if there isn’t some adolescent 13 year-old making the rules in the media these days anyway, so this just reinforces the feeling that they’ve lost a portion of their playing deck.

Here are some more potential victims: VW into Vw. GMC into Gmc, which makes your truck a little less impressive, no? ASAP becomes Asap and not nearly as soon as before. COD slides easily into Cod… having a fish delivered, postage due? And speaking of delivery, what about UPS slimming down to Ups? (Sounds too much like ‘oops’ to me!)

Oh, and then there are POTUS and SCOTUS. We all know what they mean, right? They evolve into Potus and Scotus… almost like a mess of obscene body parts that can be boiled down into a toxic potion and then plied upon some unsuspecting Disney character…

Witch (whispering in a witchy voice): "I will take a pinch Potus and 1/3 cup of Scotus to poison the apple before I give it to that goody two-shoes, Snow White, and those seven horrid little perverts!"

Talk about slippery slopes!

Ummm... Your attention please...

Sometimes, things you thought you had so perfectly planned turn out to be less than perfect and then you have to admit that your perfection was imperfect. But not me! No siree! The plan was perfect… and is… almost… to a point.




It ain’t funny!

Anyway, the move to the new domain is in a holding pattern for about 48/72 hours so until then, I’m gonna use this perfectly good blogspace by adding posts to keep my fingers from becoming bored and getting into mischief.