Sunday, July 17, 2011

The mark of. . . .


This is kind of like being the only kid in your school named Phuc, only worser.

As in bang, bang, shoot, shoot, messing-with-Mexican-drug-cartels, holy-crap-I-might-end-up-dead bad.

As in "Just call me Judy. Please?"

Reuters has the sign-o'-the-times story, right here:

A Texas state senator's beloved signature symbol will be reluctantly stripped from her campaign vehicle and rally signs this weekend after police in her border town warned it could draw unwelcome attention from Mexican drug cartels.

Veteran Democratic Sen. Judith Zaffirini is known by her friends, loved ones and constituents simply as "Z."

But authorities told her sister recently that the symbol, which translates in Spanish to "zeta," could cause the truck to be mistaken for vehicles belonging to the deadly "Zeta" cartel, based on the Texas-Mexico border.

Zaffirini told Reuters on Saturday she was grateful for the warning, but found it "disappointing" and "mind-boggling."

"Sadly, we will remove the 'Z' from our campaign vehicle and will not use it at rallies or other public places," she said.

Late last month, police in downtown Laredo pulled over Zaffirini's sister, Josie Pappas. The officer pointed to three bumper stickers on the pick-up's back window.

The stickers, bearing the word "Zaffirini," were applied in a big "Z" formation on the glass of the blue Ford F-150 truck.

Pappas told Reuters the officer asked her if she had noticed "cars full of men passing me by and staring back" at her car recently.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Harry Chapin, 1942-1981


Harry Chapin's been gone 30 years today.

Even after all these years, that's a damned hard pill to swallow. I wish to associate myself with these remarks in the
Chicago Sun-Times:

To mark the anniversary, I listened to “Greatest Stories Live ” again. It holds up well. Though I skipped, as I always do, the final song, “The Shortest Story,” an excruciating dirge for a baby starving to death in Africa. The thing about Chapin is, some of his music is indeed hard to take; if you think the hits are downers, you should hear the more obscure stuff, like “Burning Herself.”

But that doesn’t make it bad. He was a man who deeply cared about matters most ignore. When he died in his little Volkswagen Rabbit, it could have been an irony lifted from his songs: Chapin was on his way to do another free show — half his concerts were for charity. No wonder hip folk despised him: He lived the life that they only paid lip service to, pinning on a ribbon and calling themselves bighearted while Chapin gave away half his income.

The music stands up. His music is less dated than some of Bruce Springsteen’s, because it was never current to begin with. Anyway, listening to his song “Circle,” watching the morning sun reflect off Metra cars in the train yard heading downtown Friday, I thought Chapin didn’t really die at 38. Harry Chapin lives on, as much as any artist can.


Friday, July 15, 2011

3 Chords & the Truth: Kicking back


It's too dang hot.

It's too dang steamy.

I think on 3 Chords & the Truth this week, we'll take it too dang easy. Well, not too dang easy. I mean . . . you know.

It's just that it's summer, and that means it's time to kick back some. Enjoy life. Take things at a more leisurely pace.

Avoid heatstroke.


I MEAN . . . you know what I mean.

Right?

Anyway, taking it just easy enough to avoid hospitalization in this wicked July weather while being just industrious enough not to suck is the rather reasonable goal of this week's edition of the Big Show. I hope this is a goal with which you can get fully on board.

The music's still good even when you're kicking back. Better, actually. Because you're kicking back.

Circular reasoning 'R' us. Because it's summer, and it's hot -- no reason to bust a gut. Or fry your brain.

YOU KNOW what I mean.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

That coulda been AL-QAIDA lemonade!


In Georgia, the law's the law. And you have to be "consecutive" in enforcing the law.

If you're one of Midway's finest, that means you have to consecutively work the steps of policing an unheard-of burg in the wilds of Carter Country.

First . . . be an idiot.


Being a bully, you can work on when you run across a lemonade stand run by three little "girlses."


UNFORTUNATELY, a Savannah TV station thought it was sufficient to do only a news story on Barney Fife Gone Wild (and in drag):
The girls had only been opened [sic] for one day before Midway’s police chief and another officer cruised by and saw the stand.

“They told us to shut it down [and we didn't know why],” 10-year-old Skylar Roberts said.

“We had told them, we understand you guys are young, but still, you’re breaking the law, and we can’t let you do it anymore. The law is the law, and we have to be consistent with how we enforce the laws,” Midway Police Chief Kelly Morningstar said.

By a city ordinance, the girls must have a business license, peddler’s permit, and food permit to set up shop, even on residential property. The permits cost $50 a day and a total of $180 per year. City officials said it’s their job to keep everyone safe and healthy, and there can be no exceptions to the rules.

“We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with, so we acted accordingly by city ordinance,” Chief Morningstar said.

“It’s almost like they don’t have anything better to do. I’m going to let it go. I’m trying to teach them good. I don’t think if I keep on, it’ll teach them a good thing,” Amy Roberts said.
NO, DOING a story on this and letting it go is neither good television nor good citizenship. What's required here is the Full Gomer.
STEP 1: Get copies of the municipal code and the state criminal code. And a lawyer.

STEP 2: You, the lawyer, your cameraman and the assembled volumes of The Law
(which is The Law, you know) stake out Chief Ditzo and her Keystone Crusaders.

STEP 3: Wait for them to violate something. Keep the camera running.

STEP 4: Once the violation has occurred and been duly videotaped, you, the lawyer, the assembled volumes of the state and municipal codes and the cameraman pile out of your stakeout location --
camera running -- yelling "Citizen's arrest! Citizen's arrest!"
MAKE SURE you go step-by-step in this, and don't try to do all this stuff concurrently. That wouldn't work.

Because you have to be consecutive in enforcing the law.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Not this Bing, that one


You know you're getting old when . . .

Your first thought, when hearing the name of Kate Hudson's and Matthew Bellamy's new baby is "They named the kid after Bing Crosby?" while Mashable's first thought is "They named the kid after a search engine?"

But what I really want to know is how Hudson got hooked up with one of the Bellamy Brothers. Aren't those guys waaaaaaay too old for her?

I guess the May-September couple just let their love flow, and nature took its course. It happens.


Muse?

Muse about what?

Vacuum tubes and lost worlds

I am leaving Mississippi in the evening rain
These Delta towns wear satin gowns
in a high beamed frame
Loretta Lynn guides my hands through the radio
Where would I be in times like these
without the songs Loretta wrote?

When you can't find a friend, you've still got the radio
When you can't find a friend, you've still got the radio
Radio . . . listen to the radio
Radio . . . listen to the radio
-- Nanci Griffith

You can't spell 'bum' without 'B' and 'M'


See! I told you Ray Nagin
was full of it! Enough said.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Picture of the day


If you knock on the door, and you're in a vacuum, does it make a sound?

Well, inside the space station, it does. Unless, of course, the airlock has been bled of air. Then . . . no.

Assuming the vibration doesn't travel past the airlock. If it did . . . probably.

Unless, of course, nobody was in a position to hear it. In that case, does it still make a sound?

Audio at 11. Or not.

Reporting from space . . . well, not actually from space . . . more like the voiceover booth at the end of the hall . . . well, not exactly at the end of the hall, more like just before you get to the end of the hall . . . Hank Kimball, Eyewitness News.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Loving money to death


Congressional Republicans -- now using the "debt ceiling" to play chicken with Götterdämmerung -- are traitors.

What remains to be seen is traitorous to whom and what -- swords or plowshares. Or, perhaps, both . . . all of us being much dependent on each.

That, I think, is the most likely scenario in this whole debt-ceiling imbroglio. Congressional Republicans, the frothing-at-the-mouth tea partiers as well as the GOP presidential candidates, are traitors to the nation as a whole. Unfortunately, we are not thus far treating them as such.

Watch Gwen Ifill's
PBS Newshour interview (above) with Jay Powell of the Bipartisan Policy Center. In it, the former George H.W. Bush appointee explains what happens starting Aug. 3 if the debt ceiling is not raised.

IN SHORT, President Obama is right. Social Security recipients likely will be you-know-what out of luck as federal spending, in the span of one day, will have to be slashed by 50 percent.

Given that level of budgetary carnage, what are you going to cut?
Swords or plowshares? The military (now busy with three conflicts) and the Justice Department . . . or Social Security payments, food stamps and welfare?

ERRRNNNNNNNNNT!


We have a winner! Sorry, Grandma . . . it ain't you. Or that hungry child over there.

This is what the GOP and the tea party are playing with. This looming human carnage illuminates their treachery.

If humanity isn't your thing, however, consider the economic consequences of vaporizing that much gross domestic product. What do you think that will do to the markets?

And the nation's cost of borrowing.

And yours and mine, too.

And maybe even your job --
assuming you still have one.

IF AMERICA is a faltering empire on life support (and it is), I fear we have just hired the ghost of Jack Kevorkian as a primary-care physician. See, politicians are there to give us exactly what we want or, failing that, convince us what their benefactors want is what we do, too.

But America is built upon love of money as much as love of freedom. As much as we love our money, we hate our taxes, and Republicans have made their modern-day name on promising us more money, fewer taxes and a free lunch, too.

We so love what reality now conspires to deny us behind our façade of bread and circuses.
O! We are Fortune's fools.
With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!

O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

Mr. S***, meet Mr. Fan


The Republicans say they just want to bring the American people "smaller government."

They have succeeded beyond their wildest tea-party fever dreams.

What we have now is ungovernment. It's like The Uncola, only it will really f*** you up. Read on and weep for your country -- what remains of it, for however long -- and yourselves.

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.

The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.
Six months ago, how many Republicans would have believed: 1) that the Obama White House would have backed a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years; 2) that the president would agree to link the debt limit to spending cuts; and 3) that Obama would put Medicare and Social Security on the table? The Tea Party and deficit hawks like Jim DeMint would have won the argument when it comes to debt, and they would have achieved something -- especially on Medicare and Social Security -- they’d probably never get under a Republican president, unless he or she had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. But Republicans walked away from the deal, because they wouldn’t give up the one thing that Democrats were asking for in return: any increases in tax hikes for the rich.

-- First Read blog,
NBC News

Simply '70s: Because I'm a geek


Because I'm a geek, here's a look inside a radio station.

In Detroit.

In 1970.

Because I'm a geek, I miss stuff like radio in Detroit in 1970. And because I'm old, I remember radio in 1970 pretty well.



ALSO because I'm a geek, I liked it when television news featured, uh . . . news.

And because I'm a geek, I liked it when you could distinguish, back in 1970, the network news from the network soaps.



AND BECAUSE I'm a really big geek, I like to watch stuff like this on
YouTube.

Some people see a guy getting all worked up over an old cassette recorder, and their weirdo alarm goes off. Geek that I am, I'm thinking "Why does this guy have all the fun and not me?"

It's not an old, never-unboxed radio-cassette deck. It's a time capsule from 1970 -- and you get to play with it because it was built much better than anything you'll find in 2011.

Now, if it could pull in radio stations from 1970, you really might have something there.

Says the geek.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

'You know Boots, cher? B-O-O-T-H-S'


Take a vehicle full of Cajuns in south Louisiana. Add beer. Season with a dash of camcorder. Add some more beer.

Then, cher, to pass you a good time, press the OnStar button.

Watch hilarity ensue.

These people were messin' with the OnStar man. I, however, know people who would do this for true with the OnStar man.

I mean, dem OnStar man got him a satemalite and all dat stuff. He damn well oughta be able to fine Barry an' dem's truck pullin' dem pop 'em up camper.

Dat's why you pay cash money for dat satemalite ting every mont.

Saturday, July 09, 2011

You can always go . . . downtown

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city . . .

Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?

The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles . . .
forget all your cares and go
Downtown, things'll be great when you're
Downtown, no finer place for sure,
Downtown, everything's waiting for you . . .

Downtown

Friday, July 08, 2011

Hail Atlantis!

Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist, the magician,
And the other so-called Gods of our legends,
Though Gods they were.
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind,
Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new . . .
Hail Atlantis!

Way up above the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be . . .

Way up above the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be . . .
-- Apologies to Donovan

Thursday, July 07, 2011

3 Chords & the Truth: Have a nice show


So far, it's been a crappy week.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to my happy place on this episode of the
Big Show. Musically, my happy place -- oddly enough -- is my elementary and junior-high years.

Oddly, because elementary school and junior high were adolescent hell for me. Hated elementary school. Hated junior high. Hated what was a difficult existence at home.

Hated it, hated it, hated it. It's my happy place. This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, it's all about the happy place.

With a little popular insurrection thrown in as teenage drama.

BEFORE YOU call the men with the nets and white coats, let me explain. It's my musical happy place because then, my happiness was on the radio. The Top-40, No. 1, pick-hit, blowtorch, adolescent-escape-pod, AM-by-God radio of the 1970s.

School might be hell and everything absolutely all wrong at home, but the radio always was all right. In Baton Rouge -- where I grew up -- the Big 91,
WLCS, was more than all right.

IN OMAHA, that distinction went to the Mighty 1290,
KOIL.

We start out 3 Chords & the Truth with a middle-age tip o' the hat to those days and those stations . . . and Barry White, who channeled our pubescent thoughts --
only cooler.

Baby.

OF COURSE, WLCS in Baton Rouge, the Mighty 1290 in Omaha, blowtorch Top-40 radio and my youth are all long gone. Of course, I'd like to have them all back -- especially after, as I said, a crappy week.

But the music remains. And I have this here show. We'll make do so that, maybe, you can find your happy place, too.

We're all in this life together, you know.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

'Kill! Kiilll! Kiiilllll!'


Too bad there's not a Group W bench for governors.

And it's too bad you can't send them there for disrespecting constitutional governance.

I know Nebraska's "pro-life" chief execute-ive, "Lethal" Dave Heineman, thinks it's too bad the statehouse isn't the Army induction center in Alice's Restaurant, and that the U.S. Constitution doesn't hand out gold stars for political bloodlust.


BUT THERE he is, and there we are, and the Lincoln Journal-Star is there to report on the latest unseemly spectacle put on by a guy who's against abortion for all the white, er right, babies but fairly enthusiastic about the Grim Reaper otherwise:
Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday he is more determined than ever that the state execute the men on Nebraska's death row.

Heineman made the comment in a conference call with reporters after being asked about the state's difficulty in obtaining one of the three drugs called for in Nebraska's lethal injection protocol.

"At the end of the day, we need to find a way to carry out the death sentences that are appropriate for these first-degree murderers," he said.

The Department of Correctional Services has had trouble finding a supply of sodium thiopental, which has been in short supply since last year, when the only U.S. manufacturer, Hospira Inc., said it was ending production because of death-penalty opposition overseas.

(snip)

Meanwhile, an attorney for Carey Dean Moore plans to ask for Moore's death sentence to be vacated because he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment by being allowed to believe he might be executed, even though prison officials knew the drug they bought earlier could not be used.

"I find it frustrating, and it makes me more than a bit angry that we are worried about the cruel and unusual punishment regarding these criminals who ... were involved in first-degree murders," Heineman said.

He said he strongly supports the death penalty.

"I haven't heard them express any remorse for their victims or their families. It's not going to bring back their son or daughter, their mom or dad," Heineman said. "So no, I'm more determined than ever" to make sure the executions are carried out.
IN OTHER WORDS, "Kill! Kiilll! Kiiilllll!"

I would say "Lord, have mercy!" at this point, but I think we're done with that. The Good Lord is, I am fairly certain, in the process of letting us have exactly what we want. Good and hard, as H.L. Mencken once said.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

It takes a thief?


They don't make charismatic religious luminaries like they used to.

And even back in the day, especially in the Catholic universe, the record was spotty. For every Bishop Fulton Sheen, you also had a Father Charles Coughlin.

It's only gotten worse from there. Today, we have an entire order established by a dead, now-discredited pervert. We have bishops complicit in covering up child sexual abuse by priests.

We have a church in which the historical practice of Catholicism has become foreign to actual Catholics. And we have many "orthodox" Catholics so desperate for authenticity, authority and moral teaching that they latch on to the craziest things -- and people.

The list of such recent -- and, frankly, cultish -- figures is a long one, starting with the Rev. Marcial Maciel, serial abuser, personality-cult figure and founder of the Legion of Christ and its lay organization, Regnum Christi. Among them are "rock-star priests" like Father Ken Roberts, Father Thomas Euteneuer . . . and now Father John Corapi.

All have "fallen" amid sex scandals. All have diehard followers who, in some cases even years later, are sure "they" framed their man because he "told it like it is."

The desperation and confusion of the faithful amid the collapse of catechesis, practice and authority within Catholicism reminds me of the wayward penguin recently discovered in New Zealand. It had lost its bearings, swam far from its Antarctic home and was found eating wet sand, thinking it snow.

Catholics now are "liberal" or "conservative," warring factions rallying behind "orthodox" or "progressive" gurus and sure that God is on their side. Never do they wonder whether they are on God's.


And they follow their guru, like lemmings, to the edge of the abyss. Some jump. Others beg their guru not to leave them, because such dynamism is so hard to come by that the Kingdom of Heaven may not survive its loss. That may be an overstatement -- but not much of one.


IRONICALLY ENOUGH, it was Corapi who gave us the best explanation of our current sad state of affairs, both literal and figurative. The priest -- whose now-former religious order today adjudged him guilty of various transgressions, sexual and otherwise -- hypocritically, it now seems, "told it like it is" in an interview with Legatus magazine.

Maybe
"it takes a thief," so to speak.

When enough Catholics become true to their calling, a great power will be unleashed. The reason we have this mess, in my estimation, is because the vast majority of Catholics have not lived their faith. We have a billion Catholics on the face of the earth. If they knew their faith, lived their faith, loved their faith, I assure you that the world would be a very different place.

The United States, the situation would be profoundly different if we had 60-70 million Catholics truly living their faith. But, of course, as many as 80% don’t even go to Mass on Sunday — and that’s a precept! So we have a long way to go. But it has to be kind of grassroots, one person at a time. That is why the Church has always encouraged personal holiness, because that is where the reform is going to come from.

(snip)

I’ve been a harsh critic of ourselves, meaning the Church leadership — priests, bishops and theologians. I don’t think we’ve done a particularly good job in my lifetime. We’ve had great popes; the top of the hierarchy has always been fantastic. But we’ve had a serious problem with “middle management.” There has been a significant problem with bishops and priests. Although, it’s better now than it was 20 years ago. However, the vast majority of Catholics aren’t even going to Church, so we shouldn’t wonder that the Church has been losing its influence on an increasingly secularized society.

You have to ask yourself why people have drifted away. I’m sure there are a lot of societal reasons. We don’t have control over those reasons, but we have control over the reasons inside the Church. You can start with the top. There is an old saying: “The fish stinks from the head down.” Lousy leadership is a disaster.

I once asked an old Carmelite nun why we have a crisis of leadership inside the Church as well as in the secular order. She never batted an eye. She had been a nun for over 60 years and a prioress for decades. She said, “That’s easy. Punishment for sin.” Why do we have bad leadership? Punishment for sin. It’s very biblical. You go back to the Old Testament and you see that leadership was removed from the people of God, the chosen people, because of infidelity to the covenant. They cried out to God because they had no priest, prophet or king. Why not? Because they were unfaithful.

One can recall what happened during the tenure of Pope Paul VI, when he came out with his landmark and prophetic encyclical Humane Vitae. Significant numbers of bishops, priests, theologians and others rejected it. They absolutely rejected it. The majority of Canadian bishops signed the infamous Winnipeg Statement that just categorically rejected Humane Vitae. That kind of rebellion is catastrophic. Paul VI was prophetic with that encyclical and much of what he warned about has come to pass.
WHO KNEW that Father Corapi might be conducting field research on infidelity and the lack of personal holiness as he spoke?

Meantime, it's the rest of us who note yet another scandal by yet another proclaimer of the gospel, then get back to our field research on the ongoing "catastrophic" effects of the ongoing Catholic "crisis of leadership" and the rebellion of those who presume to fill the vacuum.

Hot boudin, cold cush cush. . . .


Any damn questions?

I didn't think so.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

Before, during, after


Here's the scene before Omaha's annual Independence Day fireworks show Saturday night at TD Ameritrade Park.

And here's what it looked like during the show.

Yep, still going.

Yep, still going. It's a big, big show.

And we all go home afterward. Happy
Fourth of July weekend, America.

Saturday, July 02, 2011

And now a word from our sponsor. . . .


OK, so I've pretty much been addicted to BTN's "Nebraska Days" coverage marking the Huskers' entrance into the Big Ten Conference.

The warm glow of exceptionally pure Husker crack bathes my brain as I nod off in front of the HDTV, and I keep seeing this commercial from Omaha's own food and agribusiness conglomerate, ConAgra. If I've seen it once, I've seen it 20 times.

And I cannot get enough of it. It is my new favorite TV ad.

It just strikes me as pitch-perfect in depicting the life of college students and the parents who love them.
Particularly the dad. Dad is awesome.

I ALSO love it when Mom surveys the mass if comatose young-adult humanity crashed before her in the "student residence," then asks "Are they dead?"

"That one's breathing," Dad reports back.


Perfect. Just perfect. More, please.
"That's your son."

"That's our son."

"Don't remind me."
IS IT just me, or is anybody else really craving some Manwich right now?