Newscoma

Holy CRAP!

I just realized it’s almost Thanksgiving, that this year is almost over and I still dress badly.

Hold me.

There are a few things about Hoots that make me smile. On Friday, I met up with  Realtor Mom, The Engineer, The Grad Student (who soon will no longer be a grad student but a Grad) and KK for awhile where we laughed and joked around about life in general.

Then I saw Dirk Diggler, who is still going to take me to see the dog grave and who tells stories better than anyone.Please encourage Dirk to get a camera because he needs one to take the various sundry things that he only sees.  I want to write about the time he met Grandpa Jones (which is hysterical and sweet) but I don’t want to bork it up because it is so good.

I am proud to also announce that Squirrel Queen has covered her last football game of Aught Nine and will be taking a few days off to rest her weary bones.

All of these things have had me thinking about connections. The Internet is great but one-on-one conversations about various things are really nifty. Without these  social outings, I couldn’t tell you about Mr. Jimmy or describe the rolled eyes from people I know when I talk about taking pictures of toys in bars.

I talked to Vibinc yesterday, who is in Miami on the road, and I think he’s more than ready to come home. I have had jobs where I traveled before and personally I like them, but I also don’t know what it’s like to be on the road for weeks on end either. If you are in Memphis, let me tell you something. A debate between Adrienne Pakis-Gillon and Brian Kelsey would be a good thing. As Democrats, do we really want this thing to go down without a fight? I say no.

I’m on the road next week myself. I actually need to be as I have felt a bit geographically challenged myself. And for those of you that have been interested in the Rural Broadband story below, I’ll keep updating you on what I’m learning if you are interested.

No real words of wisdom (when do I ever have those) but that life is as groovy as we allow it to be.

One last thing, if you blog, go look at faintgraylines‘ picture. It is pretty accurate, don’t you think.

I haven’t really done an AAP lately mainly due to the fact that I meet some very interesting people and it’s hard to know where to start.

I think today I might hit up one of my bromances to go and find the picture of the dog that was buried with his master that has on glasses. Why, you may ask? Because it’s just one of those things I need to do where I don’t feel like I’m going nuts. I love Hoots but there are times that I feel very geographically challenged. It’s part of it, you know, but it’s not like I can just pack up the PT and head to parts unknown.

If you were wondering what I’ve been doing lately other than avoiding all the news coverage of Carrie Prejean (who had replaced Jon and Kate for annoying me during my television news time), I’ve been studying up on broadband access to rural counties.

Guys, if you don’t live in your very own Hoots, it might not make a difference. As I do live in a Hoots, it’s extremely important to understand how this is a big deal to those of us here. I went to a meeting last week sponsored by the Businator and listened to some very important developments (and how communities need to be working together) in bringing access to places that may not have it. This is a multi-level affair. One, manufacturing booms are over and have been in west Tennessee for more than 40 years. We have too much offshore (and we even discussed sending our technical intellectual property over seas. Dumb, America, very dumb to just save a little dough.) That’s changing though. I’ll get into that later.

The thing is that the best way to bring an area up by their bootstraps is to look into new ideas and see where they will be in 20 years, not in 20 days. We are a society that thinks short-term a lot of times. If we can look at the positives we have, cultivate entrepreneurship (and not beat people down with negatives or statements like “That’ll never work here”) then we might be able to find new possibilities.

Continue reading →

I occasionally walk into political discussions I want no part of. Usually this is due to the yelling and screaming, but the most infuriating part is when both parties in said “discussion” are saying the same thing.

Invariably, I’ll get the question “What do you think?”

Here’s what I think, cornholios. If you are yelling and screaming at each other, you aren’t listening to the other person. You are giving a monologue to an unwilling audience, who wants his/her’s time at center stage. And you don’t care what I think, quite frankly, you just want me to back you up. Ain’t going to happen in situations like this.  I’ll just take to a chair across the room and contemplate why I own no puppets and why catfish sort of freak me out. Important things like that.

You might find out, if you take one minute out to give the other person a chance to make their position that you have more in common than you thought.

Lou Dobbs has left CNN “to pursue other opportunities,” apparently unaware that standing on street corners yelling about big government and foreigners is kind of a crowded field.

The Shoebox Blog

As I have told you before, Squirrel Queen hates teaching me about nature. I know very little about the outdoorsy life and yet she thwarts my every attempt to learn more.

An average conversation usually begins with me asking what particular animal is lying “asleep” on the side of the road.

Me: What animal is that?

SQ: It’s a dinosaur.

Me: No, really what is it?

SQ: I’m sorry. It’s a penguin.

As you can see, there are issues.

SQ grew up on a farm. My grandfather had a couple of farms, but we never really went out there. I liked to name his cows back in the day after every character on Gilligan’s Island. He had black cows but if you ask me what kind of cows they were, I would come up blank. I know they were just cows although he did have one ginger-colored cow that Homer, the sister, and I named imaginatively Ginger.

He also had chickens, which to this day freak me out. Not as bad as my irrational fear of catfish, but they tended to peck at you. Why did they peck at us? I do not know except that they did and they became my mortal enemy.

There is a beaver dam behind SQ’s mom’s house and I have demanded to go see it for upwards of 13 years now. She refuses to take me. I have never seen a dam before nor have I ever seen a beaver except for those rare occasions that they are “asleep” on the side of the road, which doesn’t count. Of course, the first time I saw an authentic, bonafide capybara at the Memphis Zoo, I sort of freaked out. I like capybaras but I did feel like I was in some sort of alternate universe the first time I saw one of those bad boys wandering around. I don’t think I would freak out if I saw a beaver unless it was holding a catfish.

Then there would be trouble.

There is no moral to the story here other than SQ refuses to share her animal knowledge with me.

I love it when my friends here in Hoots start groovy new blogs.

Stephen Fry was on Craig Ferguson last week and talked about Tennessee.

I love them both. Stephen Fry is going around America seeing very odd things. I think the Body Farm in East Tennessee applies. He’s wonderful about his experience.

From My Confined Space

When I take a couple of days without blogging and leave you with a gif of a monkey drying off a cat, I just have to tell you, I get out of sorts.

I was without my computer this weekend and I’m waiting, thanks to advice from Jon at The Oblivion Bar, for my new Blackberry which went on the fritz, so this morning has been a loving montage of me looking at roughly 350 emails, thousands of RSS feeds and a Mucinex cocktail (you can ask my Memphis peeps about my lovely cough this weekend) that has made me want to crawl back into bed with Mabel and a bourbon.

Did I mention that I don’t drink bourbon?

Let’s look around the blogosphere, shall we?

1. Lane Kiffin as coach of the year? I like him, quite frankly, because he has some huge cojones.
2. BarCamp Memphis is next weekend. Here’s what they are going to be talking about.
3. My new favorite term may be Dudeblogging.
4. Ron Hogan hates this movie.
5. And from the must read files, DaisyFae writes a letter to her 16-year-old self.
   

Going to have Mucinex hallucinations now. I’m hoping for talking flamingos that secretly give me the numbers to the lotto this weekend in which I win.

Over the weekend, during my weekend in Memphis, I met Adrienne Pakis-Gillon who is the democratic candidate running against Brian Kelsey in District 31.  It was a casual introduction where we talked briefly about the state of politics in the state and I found her to be very passionate and vibrant.

After our conversation, and I realize that I can only speak for myself, I found myself pondering why we democrats here in the state haven’t been pushing her candidacy more.  I take responsibility for my own actions here as I haven’t written about her either. She is a life-long democrat and having talked to her, the things that she spoke of gave me pause because she isn’t getting mired down in wedge issues (something Kelsey thrives on) and instead discussed practical solutions to issues affecting her district and the state as a whole.

Remember, not only will she be representing her district, she’ll be voting on legislation that would impact the entire state. And let’s review briefly how Kelsey has been, which has had shades of moving up the political ladder as his main objective.

Let’s take the time machine back, campers, to January when Kelsey was what Kleinheider called the “stuntbaby” and where Jeff Woods reported this as well:

First, Rep. Mike Turner accused Kelsey of making a nervous wreck out of Rep. Susan Lynn by filing an ethics complaint against House Speaker Kent Williams based on his supposed sexual harassment of her.

“Susan Lynn is in the hospital [Wednesday], and in my opinion, I think Brian Kelsey put her in there and I think his behavior is terrible,” Turner told Channel 2. “I think it’s sour grapes.”

Now, Turner and House Democratic leader Gary Odom say Kelsey offered to lay off Williams in exchange for a committee  chairmanship.

In those posts, there is a statement from Kelsey on what he was thinking back in the first days of the last legislative session here in Tennessee.  You can see a time-line here of what happened.

Now, we could talk about Kelsey all day long, but I return back to the issue at hand. As democrats, we need every seat we can get right now. We are looking at redistricting, our state has 10.5 percent unemployment and we need folks in Nashville who can see the big picture and not get mired in wedge issues for personal gain. Kelsey did that this year and I think he will do it again.

We just don’t need to shrug and say “whatever.” The democratic party in this state has done that for far too long. We may not agree on everything, but the one thing is we need to be is united when it comes to not disenfranchising good candidates who would be representing all of our interests in Nashville, no matter where we live. Pakis-Gillon needs voices and bloggers can help with that.

We can support her campaign by talking about her. Kelsey doesn’t need to be just handed a senate seat without a fight. As democrats, I think we need to talking about this race and we need to be lending our voice to Pakis-Gillon.

Although many of us can’t vote in this race, we can still put a flashlight on Memphis right now. We don’t need to be complacent at this point.

You can read more about Adrienne Pakis-Gillon and you can also join her Facebook. Just check into what she’s about and maybe write about it.

I’m headed to Memphis later today after I go to a meeting regarding broadband access in rural areas here in Tennessee. I’m sort of bummed that my cell phone is borked right now. It won’t recharge and I don’t have time to spend a gajillion hours at Verizon, which is what happens when you go to cell phone stores.  Why, because they want to kill your souls. Or at least they do mine.

Things you need to know:

1. I want to write this book about Mike Turner. Umm, ghost write, I mean.
2. If you are from Hoots, I’m looking for a p/t job for the Christmas season as the children in my life sort of want presents. And Homer the sister told me that beer and cigarettes for middle school students is frowned upon.
3. This is wonderful.
4. For Squirrel Queen. SQ, you must go here now.
5. Crap!

So, I may be off the grid for a bit. Be nice to each other, share your toys appropriately and, most importantly, don’t be a douche.