MY OWN TWELVE-STEP RECOVERY PROGRAM

My name is Judy, and I'm a newsaholic.

Hi, Judy!

I'm also cross-addicted as a political junkie.

Ooooo.

I guess everybody blames their parents. Mine took four newspapers a day and voted in every election. But I can't really blame them. After all, they stayed Democrats. No, I'm responsible for my own decisions. Like any thing else, it started out small and I thought I had it under control--but then once I started, I couldn't stop. I read a local newspaper, but that didn't give me enough of a fix, so I started reading the Wall Street Journal. From there, there was no stopping me. The "fix" I got from the Journal's conservative editorials wasn't enough, so I started subscribing to the National Review and the Weekly Standard. Then I went on to harder stuff--reading conservative blogs like Powerline and Little Green Footballs.

Aw!

It was the same way with politics. When I moved to the Beautiful Texas Panhandle, I fell in with new friends who enabled my addictions. My county was so Republican that many offices didn't even have a Democrat running on the ballot. If you wanted to have any say in choosing an office holder, you had to vote in the Republican primary. So I took that fatal first step. I registered as a Republican.

Ooooo.

My Daddy warned me (wipes away a tear here), but I wouldn't listen to him. I was getting high on voting for county attorney and sheriff and state representative. I tell you, it was a special feeling! But one step at a time, I slipped farther and farther down that slippery slope. Next thing I knew, I was voting for a Republican congressman and a Republican senator and a Republican governor. There was no stopping me now! Finally I went clear over the edge. I voted for George Bush!

Eeeeew!

TWICE!

Aaaarrgh!

My kids tried to warn me. They tried to intervene. They even subscribed to "Funny Times" for me. But I wouldn't listen. And I ignored the anti-Bush cartoons in "Funny Times" and just read the other stuff. I told my kids they were hopeless squares. I laughed when they voted for John Kerry.

I might have gone on this way forever, but finally I hit bottom. I was so happy when we conservatives got John Roberts on the Supreme Court. We insisted the Senate give him a full hearing and an up-or-down vote, and we shamed the Democrats when they wanted him to furnish documents from his government service.

Then came the Harriet Miers nomination. I knew George Bush had picked a winner. One, a Texan! Two, a fine evangelical Christian lady! Three, a Bush loyalist! But then my old friends the conservatives turned on her. All the things we hated about the Democrats, they started doing! Making fun of her. Criticizing her hairdo. Sneering because she went to SMU instead of an Ivy League school. Whining that being a lawyer wasn't good enough. Calling her a Bush crony. Saying she didn't deserve an up-or-down vote, or--get this!--even a chance to appear before the committee. And they said she had to show them confidential White House documents.

When they finally hounded that poor woman into withdrawing, I had to face the truth. My old heroes like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer and the like were no different from the Democrats! No longer could I get any pleasure from reading the Wall Street Journal or National Review or watching Fox News or reading Powerline. I had to face the truth. REPUBLICANS COULD BE ASSHOLES TOO!

That's when I hit bottom and picked myself up off the floor. I went cold turkey and quit paying any attention to these people. I broke my dependence on the news. I mowed grass and worked in the yard. I cleaned my junk room. I did a project I had been putting off, gathering my Mom's writings and making a book of them. I visited the neighbors. I got a life.

And I like it.

Thanks for sharing, Judy!

SUGGESTED REPLIES FOR RUTH
(NEXT TIME SHE GETS PULLED OVER BY A COP)

1. I can't reach my license unless you hold my beer. (OK in Texas)

2. Sorry, Officer, I didn't realize my radar detector wasn't plugged in.

3. Aren't you the guy from the Village People?

4. Hey, you must've been doin' about 125 mph to keep up with me. Good job!

5. Are You Andy or Barney?

6. I thought you had to be in relatively good physical condition to be a police officer.

7. You're not gonna check the trunk, are you?

8. I pay your salary!

9. Gee, Officer! That's terrific. The last officer only gave me a warning, too!

10. Do you know why you pulled me over? Okay, just so one of us does.

11. I was trying to keep up with traffic. Yes, I know there are no other cars around. That's how far ahead of me they are.

12. When the officer says "Gee, lady....Your eyes look red, have you been drinking?" You might say, "Gee, Officer, your eyes look glazed, have you been eating doughnuts?"

SAME-SEX HEX

Here in the great state of Texas (hats off here; hands over heart) we are fixin' to vote on a whole raft of constitutional amendments. The main one is Proposition 2, which we are told will outlaw same-sex marriage and civil unions by putting into the state constitution a definition of marriage as being only between a man and woman. To wit:

Sec. 32. (a) MARRIAGE in this state shall consist ONLY OF THE UNION OF ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN. (b) THIS STATE or a political subdivision of this state MAY NOT create or RECOGNIZE ANY LEGAL STATUS IDENTICAL or similar TO MARRIAGE.

However, a commentator on the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog claims, "By leaving out key words, legislators are invalidating all marriage! The language is clear: (a) it defines marriage between one man and one woman, and (b) prohibits the recognition of (a), therefore prohibiting marriage between one man and one woman!

The writer goes on to note that similar acts in other states stick in the word "other" to make the meaning clear, as in "any OTHER legal status identical or similar to marriage."

This commentator thinks if Prop 2 passes, the state constitution will invalidate ALL marriages--including my own. Grandpa and I will be shacking up!

This sounds like pretty much a stretch to me. It seems plain enough what the act intends. But at the same time, if there is any wiggle room in it, some smartass lawyer will find it and who knows how some judge will rule on it. All for the lack of a little bitty word.

And even if that doesn't happen, the commentators on this blog warn that the law is apt to have a bunch of unintended consequences. Like, for instance, it might well end the grand old Texas institution of common-law marriage. And it might do like a similar law did in Michigan, that defined marriage and said the state would not recognize any other similar status. Then when a live-in boyfriend beat up his old lady and got charged with domestic violence, a judge ruled, "Nope, there can't be any such thing as "domestic violence" any more unless it's in an actual, legal marriage. Charge this boy with a lesser offense! Next case, please."

Prop 2 will probably pass because 90 percent of Texans are dead set against them gays getting married ("God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve") and acting just like us decent folks.

Only thing is, the law may mean we will all be living in sin. Even Baptists.

My Latest Brush With The Law

I am a good, law abiding person. I wear my seat belt, and, um, usually, follow the speed limit. Imagine my surprise when I was pulled over by the police on my way to work this morning. I had just passed two police cars that had some poor guy pulled over on the side of the highway in the next little nowhere town from the little nowhere town that I live in. Like every other time I passed a cop hard at work, I just cruised right by them. I did check out the car to see if someone I knew was getting a ticket, but other than that I didn't pay it any attention.

Then a minute or two later I look in my rear view mirror and see one of the police cars coming up with it's lights on. I thought maybe he was in hot pursuit of a second suspicious driver. Unfortunately, I was right, and the other suspicious driver was me. There have been a rash of cops getting run into while they are working on the side of road in Missouri, so they are starting to enforce a rule that if you pass a cop with somebody pulled over you are supposed to slow down and get as far to the left as you can. News to me.

He just gave me a warning, but he said they are going to start giving tickets for it soon. It seems like a new version of a speed trap to me. I can see it now, two cars tag teaming poor innocent drivers. One cop would pull somebody over, and as soon as somebody passed him going 'too fast' or 'too close' he would radio the other cop and he would pull them over. Then while the second cop was writing out the ticket he would radio the first cop about somebody passing him. They could go back and forth like that all day, alternating between speeding tickets and tickets for driving by while somebody else is getting a ticket.

I don't have a problem with this new driving policy, now that I know about it, but something the cop said just about had me busting up. He said what if the driver that was pulled over was in the Taliban, and decided to pull a gun on the cop who pulled him over? The cop might have to jump out into the highway then. Right. Like the Taliban is really active in Lincoln county. And even if there was another car on the highway, I don't think jumping out into the middle of the highway would really help any. I mean, it would still be basically point blank range, unless he jumped all the way across the highway and hid in the ditch.

EYE WITLESS TESTIMONY

A couple of days ago I had a really narrow escape. About 1:00 in the afternoon I was working in the rose garden at the side of our house when I heard the roar of an engine and the agonized screeching of tires down the street. This is a normally quiet street, running along one side of the house (we're on a corner lot) and carrying only a modest amount of traffic except at certain rush hours--which this wasn't.

I looked up just in time to see a BIG pickup (I later learned it was a Ford 350) making a sharp turn onto this street from a block away, fishtailing wildly and then swerving all over the street and burning rubber like something out of Dukes of Hazzard. It was heading my way, weaving from one side of the road to the other, making an ungodly squall because the driver was gearing 'way down and flooring it at the same time. He ran clear over onto my side of the street (the wrong side for the way he was going; fortunately there was no oncoming traffic) and actually scraped the curb at our next-door neighbors.

I was standing less than 20 feet from the street, and was convinced he was going to jump the curb entirely and run right over me. Did my life flash before my eyes? Did I try to jump out of the way into the rose garden? No, I just stood there like a dummy. I didn't even think to pee my pants. I just stood there with my mouth open.

At the last minute he wrestled the truck back to the other side of the street, laying down lots of black rubber, ran the stop sign at the corner, and roared off into the distance, still weaving and wobbling. And just as he ran the stop sign, here came another truck--a smaller one--in hot pursuit, going fast but not as crazy.

It's hard to describe the sensation I felt. It was just plain weird, almost an out-of-body experience. Not fear so much as sheer astonishment. I felt like some stupid comic-book character, with a balloon over my head saying "What th-?" By the time it all sunk in, the truck was gone and it was all over. Too late to get scared then.

Remember--this all happened in maybe five seconds. It takes longer to read this than it took for it to happen.

What was really interesting to me was how poor my memory was of the whole episode. I knew one truck was big (the first one) and the other was small. I knew one was red and one black, but I couldn't remember which was which. If a cop had asked me to describe the truck, I wouldn't have been able to. I didn't remember what color it was; I had no idea if it was a Ford, a Chevy, a Dodge Ram, or what; I thought the driver was a white guy, but he could have been a Mexican; I never thought to look at the license plate as it went by. I would have had to say, "Gee, Officer, I dunno--it was just BIG!"

Now I understand how eye witnesses can see a murder and then come up with a dozen different descriptions of the gunman. And I understand now how my brother in Oklahoma City could describe the guy who robbed him once at gunpoint as "a big 7-foot-tall black guy with a .357-magnum" and then when the cops caught him, it turned out to be a 5-foot 6-inch skinny little dude with a .22. It has been a humbling experience. I will no longer denigrate these eye witnesses.

Oh, yeah--the rest of the story. I thought I would never know why the guy was driving so crazy or what finally happened to him. But the next day, right there on the front page of the newspaper was a big story about this, along with a picture of the truck all smashed up. The driver was high on drugs (probably meth), had stolen the truck, then had hit a car with it and kept going. This was the point at which he came roaring past me, with a witness to that wreck chasing him. When he disappeared from my view, he raced another mile or two through city streets, terrorizing other drivers and sideswiping a few cars, a street light, and a concrete abutment under I-40. He finally wrecked the truck in the parking lot of a new Wendy's, almost running down some landscape workers in the process. He jumped out of the truck and tried to run away, but they wrestled him to the ground and tied him up with a garden hose. The cops came and put him in jail, where he sits charged with everything in the book.

Oh, yes. In the picture in the paper, the truck was red. I knew it all along.

He's Doing It Again

There is a radio station in St. Louis, KSHE 95. A really great station, a historic rock and roll station that is as old as rock and roll itself. They used to run a TV commercial where a little kid runs to his mother saying "Momma, Momma, he's going it again." His mom says "He's going it again? Doing WHAT again?" The commercial cuts to them opening a door and seeing the kid's dad jumping around, playing air guitar and acting like a tard. Why that was supposed to make anybody want to listen to KSHE is beyond me.

Anyway, it's deja vu all over again. But first, a little more background information. We sold my car. It was starting to have mechanical problems, so we got rid of it. Actually, we sold it to our mechanic. Anyway, since we still have three cars we used the money to buy a wood stove. When our neighbor's house caught on fire we bought a gas stove with the insurance money we got because our siding got melted. It's the American way, isn't it? But even though it seemed to make more sense to get the gas stove than to get a fireplace or wood stove, I always thought deep down a real stove would be better. Now I know I was right.

We bought an Ashley wood stove and put it down in the basement. Oh my god. I love warm floors. It wouldn't be the same if we had bought it instead of the gas stove, because we would have probably put it where the gas stove is, and the floor would still be cold, even if the fire was going full blast.

So back to the deja vu. We were down in the basement checking out the wood stove when I heard water running. I could see water running down from the ceiling right in the middle of the basement. It wasn't near the kitchen, or either bathroom. Not under the aquarium or any sort of water containing vessel of any kind. Keith walked over and checked it out and said the water was warm. I knew it. Buddy strikes again. I went upstairs and he was laying on the floor in the kitchen just like nothing happened. I walked in the hall and there was a great big puddle right in the middle of the hall.

Buddy, oh Buddy, what are we going to do with you. Once was a fluke, twice is a coincidence, third time is going to be suspicious.

Two Reviews, Both Stinkers

Well, I wasted my time reading two books that looked promising, but both of them let me down. Thankfully, they were library books, so all I wasted was my time, not my money. I have a new rating system I want to try out. Since this is the Daily Cud, I decided the scoring has to be bovine related. I decided to go with an udder theme, going from one to four teats for ordinary books, but the really great books get a full udder. I think both of these books are just one teeters.

The first stink bomb was called The Wizard's Ward by Deborah Hale. It looked good, a fantasy book with wizards and an orphan who turns out to be a princess. I read the reviews on the back, and the author sounded good. This was her first fantasy book. I should have read that part more closely. Her previous books were all romances. So this was a romance fantasy book. A lot of heaving bosoms and lustful looks. It wouldn't have been too bad, but the very end of the book, when the orphaned princess realizes that the lovable scoundrel who had been her guard and companion is really her destined king, or prince I guess, instead of just leaving it there like a normal fantasy book, it had to end with a big sex scene. Not what I was expecting, or wanting.

The other book, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco, had more promise. I really expected it to be a good book because the two books by Umberto Eco I read, The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, were both good books. Especially Foucault's Pendulum, one of the best books ever written as far as I can tell, right next to The Lord of the Rings. It's like The Davincci Code, but better. If the Davincci Code was a candy bar, Foucault's Pendulum is a chocolate cake, with chocolate icing and sprinkles.

This book, on the other hand, is a piece of shit, not worth the time it took to read, but maybe worth the time it would take to burn it to little bitty ashes. It is about a man that has amnesia who goes back to his childhood home to go through all his old school work and comics and whatever was laying around to try and regain his memory. I would have probably liked it more if it wasn't about a 60 year old man in Italy. If it was about, say, a 40 year old woman in Missouri I would have probably liked it a whole lot more. As it is, all I can say is save your brain cells for something better. Read the back of a cereal box, or the labels in your coats. You'll thank me later.