“Mess” and “Texas”
14 Comments Published April 22nd, 2010 in National and International Issues, Stories and Essays.Why do these words go together so well?
Many years ago, when my wife was still willing to get on airplanes, I used to go to Europe every chance I got. Back then, I also liked to wear boots and western shirts. (We weren’t veggies yet.) That was before people in Europe started dressing that way too, so I made a special effort to pack my most western clothes and wear them over there, just to stand out a little. My idea was to give people over there a reason to talk to me. It worked like a shot! I always had a great time.
One of the earliest trips was to Ireland for an IFIPS Conference – International Federation of Information Processing Societies – in Dublin. IFIPS arranged a “shopping night” at the biggest department store just for us. They had wine and cheese and even a few good deals. Anyway, I was wandering around eating the free food. I stopped to ask a store clerk a question but before I could, she said …
“Are you from Texas?”
In a flash of inspiration, I replied,
“Why shucks no, Ma’am. I’m from the real West. The onliest thing folks from Texas know about cows is that one end is horny and they ain’t right sure which end it is.”
She laughed so hard that I eventually got tired of waiting and found another clerk. It set the pattern for the next two weeks. It seems that a lot of people in Ireland would ask that same question. With practice, the answer would just roll right out automatically. It always worked!
Near the end of the trip, we pulled into a parking lot and another car just happened to park next to us at about the same time. When the people in the other car got out, they asked ‘the question’: “Are you from Texas?” The answer came out in a polished performance. But then they said, “We are from Texas.”
Ah, well. Win some and lose some.
Anyway, I have this great idea about how to improve their slogan.
“Don’t mess with Texas. They’re messed up enough already!”
And they can have their idiot back too.
Them’s fightin’ words if spoken to the wrong folks! I guess you’ll find out if anyone from Texas reads your blog.
Don’t know why you, Dan, are upset with Texas right now (don’t know what prompted this blog). But I am upset with Texas because of what they are going to put into the minds of the next several generations of our children – which is our future – via what they are doing to school textbooks. This is positively frightening!
“The Texas Textbook Controversy and the Failing American Consensus”
By MICHAEL PRESTON
(text of article replaced by link to the actual article)
Carleen!!!
You actually know people from Texas who can read????
Well, Peggy, you’ve run afoul of one of my few rules. Not only is it against the copyright laws to reproduce complete articles, but it’s bad netiquette too. So I looked up a link to the article and changed your message.
The artidle really is excellent, however, and I encourage everyone to read it. Even people from Texas (who are educated somewhere else so that they can actually read).
As to what prompted me to write this …
One of the news pages I follow had a big illustration of somebody holding up a tshirt with that slogan on it. Look up “Parochialism” at Wikipedia.
Well, I did look up parochialism in Wikipedia. And yep, that’s them!
Dan,
September 1975, Exercise Flintlock originating out of Patch Barracks near Stuttgart, Germany. Scenario was my partner and I had been shot down over “enemy” territory and goal of exercise was to rescue us and return us to friendly territory.
Long story short . . . one of the safe houses (a native German family’s home; Manny & Ursula) we stayed at for several days had a basement right out of a saloon in an old western. As I learned they were completely bonkers over all things western/cowboy, etc. Apparently many Germans were likewise struck with the fascination of western life and lore.
Go figure.
That was about the time I was in Ireland. It really was a great way to break the ice.
But more recently, and given the way Bush treated the rest of the world, “cowboy” has taken on a far different image.
http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgerag.swf
That’s wierd, Manou!
Manou’s link takes you to this continuous Flash animation of the Villiage Idiot of Texas falling like a rag doll (That’s why the name has “rag” in it I guess.) forever.
It actually makes me feel just a little creepy to watch. But I believe the idiot Bush is responsible for a generation of misery and untold deaths around the world in many, many ways:
–> Opening the regulation flood gates so investment banks could steal billions around the world.
–> Injecting America into one war that didn’t have to happen and failing in the war against the people who actually did attack us.
–> Polarizing his own country with his “for us or against us” attacks. When I write stuff like this, I’m only following his own “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” Biblical style.
To celebrate the end of the Bush era, I listed my own “Top Ten Evils of Bush”
Even though Manou’s link gives me the creeps, I have to admit that Bush deserves it. And America deserves it for having elected him. Twice.
Dan,
Did you try placing your cursor on The Idiot and then holding down your left-click mouse button and moving your mouse around willy-nilly? If not, try it. I am pretty sure you will experience infinitely more joy in being able to control the crashing and bashing of The Idiot rather than simply watching him cascade through the bubbly-like rocks under his own haphazard inertia.
You forget, I’m a programmer. I don’t get any joy in seeing things ‘crash’ on a computer even if they do look like Bush.
I am very sorry Dan.
Thanks to America to have elected Obama. But give him some time to have his ideas concretized
Regarding Texas’ new text books, check out –
http://www.gocomics.com/lacucaracha/2010/04/25/
Nice cartoons, RP, but I just can’t laugh about things that frighten me. And what the Texas Textbook Commission is doing to the history of our nation taught to all of our future generations is criminal, in my estimation, and does frighten me because I feel, and I am, completely impotent to have any effect on the situation.