Tag: Odessa American

It’s hard to run into a rich person these days

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The other day I was at a bar with a friend, sipping longnecks at the end of an otherwise empty table, conversating lazily about this, that and nothing really.

I know what you’re thinking. No, it wasn’t the Crawl On Inn, and no, I didn’t see Bubba®. This isn’t that kind of column.

Anyway, about halfway through the first beer, some feller gripping a bottle of Coors Light moseyed up, stood right next to our table and started talking to us. Never seen him before in our lives, but there he was, joining in our conversating without any invitation. He was pretty far ahead of us, and slurring a bit, so that may explain why he didn’t mind intruding, and why a few minutes later, without any prompting, he didn’t mind pulling up a stool.

And we didn’t mind, either, because the drinks in our hands were the last we paid for ourselves that night.

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How one goes to heaven, not how the heavens — or biology — go

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The Texas Board of Education made its ruling on the science curriculum last week. Evolution supporters won a battle in removing the phrase “strengths and weaknesses,” but lost the broader conflict as more doubts of evolution, and even the Big Bang, were inserted.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Chairman Don McLeroy is a dentist who believes the Earth is several thousand years old. Which is fine for him to believe personally, just not when his beliefs put millions of students at an educational disadvantage in virtually every science I can think of, except, possibly, dentistry.

The difficulty of this debate has never been especially clear to me, from either side. From the side of science, it’s fairly obvious why evolution is taught and not alternatives: rebuttals are long, and time is short.

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People have a lot in common with all sorts of rural animals

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A friend of mine, a cowboy in the rancher-philosopher mold, once passed along some equine-related knowledge to me.

“The thing you have to remember about horses,” he said, “is they aren’t as smart as they think they are, but they’re smarter than you think they are.”

I reminded him I was much more city slicker than good ol’ boy and didn’t really run into horses that often. He assured me it was just as applicable to jackasses. I thanked him, and as with all of his advice, I’ve remembered it and done my best to keep it in mind through all my dealings and relations.

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You love a thing because of, not in spite of, its shortcomings

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I have a friend who works at a local television station. We argue occasionally about whose mistakes are more embarrassing, and I guess by extension, whose job is more important.

“Look,” she says, “I understand you have deadlines, and I’m sure that’s very stressful, but the stuff we do is live. We’ve got to do our jobs correctly to the second because if we don’t, it’ll mess everything up, and everyone will notice. And unlike newspapers, we actually have an audience.”

And she has a good point. Television news certainly has to have a greater sense of urgency because it’s immediate and it’s a performance as much as anything (though I’d like to point out comparing our circulation to any local station’s ratings doesn’t work in their favor).

But I still disagree.

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There’s something to be said for leaving a bit to the imagination

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In his suicide note, rocker Kurt Cobain, quoting Neil Young, said “it’s better to burn out than fade away.” I imagine it’s nice to catch alight at all. I’d rather almost anything but fizzle out, but then whoever lived up to expectations?

I’ve always hated the 19th century Romantic poet John Keats. If he isn’t it, he’s at least in the conversation of greatest English poets. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and “The Eve of St. Agnes” are really good stuff, by any measure, and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” gave us one of the handful of all time wonderful poetic lines: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth and all ye need know.” He died at 25 and has haunted high school students and their exams ever since.

Twenty-five! And famous forever. How could you not hate him?

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For all those who doubt, God is real — and Spanish

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The other day, I heard a pastor preach about how uniquely divinely blessed America was, and I wondered if he was right.

As I see it, no group of people has been more fortunate than the Spanish.

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The image is less revolting than what it’s describing, I swear

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Lately everyone has been reading in the newspaper about how newspapers are dying. Or maybe everyone is reading about it online, which is the problem.

But other than people employed by newspapers, who really cares, or should? They had a good 300-year run in this country. Why be greedy and push for more?

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On Valentine’s Day, love and restraining orders were in the air

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I had to work all evening on Valentine’s Day, which is just as well because I didn’t have a date to take anywhere anyway.

Misery loves company, so I should have been comforted at work knowing my coworkers were the same as I, either loveless or kept from love.

One of them in particular, seemed to be taking the whole night pretty rough, and Jay, we’ll call him that, subjected the rest of us to about eight solid hours of whining, sniveling and muffled sobbing. Finally to shut him up, I said that after work we’d both go to a bar and drink until we forgot what today was. He reluctantly agreed and told me I’d be driving.

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There are worse things than being the world’s biggest celebrity

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During last autumn’s presidential campaign, John McCain ran ads calling Barack Obama the “biggest celebrity in the world” and meant it as an insult – which coming from a senator who’d hosted “Saturday Night Live” and from a ticket that eventually included Sarah Palin, was a bit hypocritical.

But largely accurate. Already Obama seems to have appeared on “Entertainment Tonight” more than Bush 43 ever did; we care about the present Obama’s wife bought and the outfits his daughters wore, even how his daughter reacted when she met other celebrities. We didn’t know FDR was crippled, but we know Obama drives to the left to get to the basket.

Secret Service agents with orders to shoot-to-kill are the only thing keeping paparazzi away.

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The weekend’s most important sport event didn’t involve a bowl

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I spend a lot of time putting together these weekly columns. Days, sometimes weeks of walking to and from lunch, kicking rocks down the street. Hours scribbling in various notebooks, then a night getting all of them together and typed into a computer file.

There’s a lot of writing, a little praying and great weeping and gnashing of teeth involved before I finally fall asleep sobbing and wake up to remember it still isn’t finished, and I’ve got to stay at work until it at least looks like it is.

So in the middle of all of this, writing a column about politicians and celebrity, I noticed the Australian Open final was about to start, (1) Rafael Nadal vs. (2) Roger Federer. I’m not a tennis fan in any way whatsoever. The sport bores me, especially when it doesn’t involve women I can objectify.

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