Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, walks to greet two supporters holding a banner that says "Rednecks for Obama" at a campaign stop in Union, Mo., Wednesday, July 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong).

COPYRIGHT: The Associated Press.

--ER

By Joseph A. Califano Jr.
The Washington Monthly
Originally published October 1999

If there is a prize for the political scam of the 20th century, it should go to the conservatives for propagating as conventional wisdom that the Great Society programs of the 1960s were a misguided and failed social experiment that wasted taxpayers' money. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Read it all.

--ER

Wholly cow. I have hurt my back. About a week ago, at my desk at work, I sneezed so hard I hurt something, apparently reawakening pain I had after a fall on ice when I was 15, and that was 29 years ago.

Can't stand to sit for very long. Can't stand to stand for very long. Can't stay horizontal for very long. Lower back. Just above my belt. A couple of nights ago, in bed, I had a sharp pain down my right leg like lightning.

This morning, the pain had moved up into my left ribcage, where I got a sharp pain whenever I tried to get a deep breath. It's up into my left shoulder, too.

I'm hoping the pain will continue on north. When it's all in my head, I'll shake it off as something I'm just imagining.

In the meantime, it hurts like hell. That's me, Dr. ER, Bailey and Riker who all have back issues. It sucks.

--ER

Election Day here today. I vote at a local fundalicious Baptist church, where one gets to walk past a rack of tracts to get to the polling place.

I honestly don't mind. If I were not a Christian I might. In fact, I suppose it might be against my religion to even vote if I had to do so in a Baptist church.

Today's Primary Election tract: "The Sissy?"

Read "The Sissy?"

--ER

So, my main investment vehicle, besides the house, is a 401(k), which I hardly ever think about. I'm thinking about it just a little right now, but I still have no plans to change my allocations.

I'm 100 percent stocks.

Every time the stock market stumbles, I say, they're havin' another sale! Dollar cost averaging works for me. I don't expect to do anything with my 401(k) but leave it alone for at least 20 more years.

What say y'all? Yer take on the market, the economy, yer own investments and retirement strategy, etc. ...

--ER

Some updates on our Bird, my 22-year-old redheaded redneck stepgal, who is engaged to YankeeBeau, who hails from Massachusetts:

He has secured a teaching gig at a Montessori-type school.

They have decided to get hitched before a justice of the peace, like Dr. ER and I did, have a Jamaica-themed party, then go on to Jamaica for their honeymoon. Good move, since coming up with the dinero to get to Jamaica would've been dificil for many of us.

She went to a Cross Canadian Ragweed concert Friday night and reports that Beau has taken to red dirt music.


Bleh. Hurt my back a week ago. Can barely stand to sit in any chair that is not this recliner. Took a muscle relaxer, four hours ago, and it makes me feel like I've had about four beers. Yuck. All in all, I'd rather have the beers.

--ER

Redneck Eames, showin' off her Daddy ER's plastic St. Adrian, patron saint of meatcutters, butchers and the like!








Redneck Ice-T, lounging on his Daddy ER's official NASCAR racecar driver Kevin Harvick No. 29 blow-up tire hat (with beer can holes).





Kittehs tuckered plumb out from playin' "red dot" with ER (laser pointer, makes 'em krazy kats!)

TGIF, y'all.

--ER

A bone-rattlingly conservative friend of mine told me he broke up with his girlfriend because she was too liberal.

He's libertarian on economics and business, but has about as much patience with moralism and Christian fundamentalism as I do (although he is a Christian).

"How liberal was she?" I asked.

"Canadian Liberal," he said.

"The Lord delivered you, then," I said.

"Absolutely," He did, he said.

I meant it, and he meant it. They would have been miserable in a marriage.

Myself, I never broke up with a gal over politics. In fact, I've only been the one to break up once.

Oh, I know, it was over a trivial thing: She hocked the ring I'd bought her, pawned my stereo, stole my truck and drove it to where she could buy crack, did so, then abandoned my truck on the side of a rough-ass street. She was in recovery, then she was not.

In a few days, when she called me from the vacant office building she'd broken into to hide, I did go and "rescue" her, and I brought her home -- and called her daddy in Houston and told him to come get her and her p.o.s. van.

He did, and I lived happily ever after.

Now, y'all: Tell me about your break-ups. Why did you break up with her? Or with him?

--ER

I love my state. Friend of mine wonders how anyone can be proud of where they're from -- since none of us chose to be born and raised where we were born and raised.

Because of the people, that's why.

Oklahoma has more than its share of ignorant rednecks. But, as y'all know, it has erudite rednecks, too. I'm not the only one. :-) And Oklahoma was multicultural before there WAS such a word.

Facing the prospect of moving for the past year and a half made me crazy, especially since the oil patch is revived and Oklahoma City is rockin' in a way it never has before.

Still might have to move, temporarily, but not for the foreseeable future, and not forever.

I had cause to hear "Oklahoma Rising," our state centennial song from last year, this morning. I LOVE the song, the way it starts out especially. Here's a slide show to go with it, and it ain't bad either.



--ER-

OK, I admit it. I don't actually work for a living. I write about people who work for a living, and I edit stories about people who work for a living, and I assign and guide stories about people who work for a living.

But today I feel like I worked.

Red-pen proofed 40 pages of a book, 2 1/2 hours this morning, on a freelance editing deal that just fell plumb out of the sky. It'll amount to about a $500 deal, for about 12 hours of work, I think. Not bad. But it was work!

Went to work-work in time for a stressful hourlong meeting. Then answered phone messages. Then had my computer on just long enough to bang out a 20-minute story (that'd be 20 minutes). Turned that puppy off, slapped down the lid on the laptop, stuffed it in my briefcase, grabbed a video camera and hauled ass out of work back to the house, where I'd forgotten and left my still camera: 10 miles north to the house, then 15 miles south to downtown OKC, through construction zones both ways.

Got to the thing I was going to just in time; whipped out the video camera, shot some b-roll, did an interview, shot some close-ups. Used the still camera some. Then whupped out the notebook and watched a 90-minute presentation. Left 5 minutes early.

Drove 15 miles home and stumbled through the house, by way of a bottle of Cuervo and some fixings and my humidor, and into the back yard, where I read quite a bit on a book I'm reviewing (one of those in the sidebar to the left), and then just now plodded back into the house out of the heat (hitting 100 here this week) and turned on the Texas Rangers game and fixed another highball margarita, and came here to update the world.

Long-ass day. But the good kind of long-ass.

Store-bought pulled pork beckons.

--ER

(P.S. "Saving Grace," on last night, just keeps gettin' gooder and gooder. They're gonna keep getting into the Murrah Building bombing until this series becomes one that people never forget.)

King Moonracer, the king of the Isle of Misfits.

Jesus.

King Moonracer, a winged lion who acts as the island's ruler. King Moonracer is responsible for flying around the world each night in search of unwanted toys.

And in the picture, I say he only looks pertubed because of the perceived threat to the denizens of the isle.

Discuss.

--ER

(Hey, in July, Dr. ER and I always start thinking of Christmas, in self defense, since 100-degree weather hits and hits hard on the Southron Plains.)

1. This is a great editorial cartoon.

(click here to view)

Chip Bok Akron Beacon-Journal Jul 16, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

2. I don't know how one can survive and thrive in the rough-and-tumble politics of the Southside of Chicago and be considered an "elite." But if Barack Obama doesn't lighten the hell up, he's gonna lose lots of people. Holding your head high and being on a high horse are two very different things.

3. My candidate for president has gotten where he is by embracing certain aspects of his multicultural experience and background while not ignoring others. He needs to reassess what he's apparently let his handlers let him become lately.

He can do that by starting to laugh at himself again! Kathleen Parker is dead-on right. Read her column, "Laugh, Obama, Laugh."

Here's a good start: The other day, I saw a clip of Obama at his former church, clapping and groovin' to the music, and, I swear to God, I thought of Steve Martin in "The Jerk," on the porch with his adoptive family, trying to keep rhythm. Both Steve and Barack, as y'all know, were "born a poor black child."



Laugh, Obama, laugh! You have my vote. I'd like to return to you my personal admiration.

--ER

Let's just say it's a good thing this joint, the Mercury Lounge in Tulsa, is 100 miles away. It is exactly the kind of place I see in my mind when Toby Keith sings "I Love This Bar" -- ALL kinds in the booths and on the barstools. All kinds, all stripes, all ages. Great place.




On the other hand, the Blue Note Lounge in Oklahoma City is supposed to be vurra simular. ... Hmmm.

--ER

(Pix by ER's cell phone, at the Mercury Lounge.)

Gone to Tulsa to see the Turnpike Troubadours! Adios! -- ER

View Larger Map

OK, this is too bizarre.

I found out from reading my home county paper that a man well-known to my family -- and for whom I worked while in and just out of high school, had died.

Read the obit. Notice the pall bearers and honorary pall bearers. I count myself among the honorary pall bearers, as an expat member of the "farming community of the Arkansas River basin."

How nice. And odd, yet nice, to read about it in the paper.

"Hey, Dr. ER," I said, "I'm an honorary pall bearer!"

"Do what?" she said, so I explained.

I do accept the honor. The man was a good man, although he had his eccentricities -- who amongst us doesn't? Those of us who hail from the Arkansas River basin seem to have more than most people. We're rednecks, OK? And we're not ashamed or embarrased about it.

The deceased, local lore goes, chased repo men off his humble place with firearms once, at least, when they came to take back a tractor or tractors and-or some other equipment when he got in some financial trouble. He kept farming.

The deceased started building a truck stop along the state highway that cuts through the bottoms once in the '70s, maybe even in the late '60s. He ran out of money, or credit, or both, and the barely started structure, weed-choked and betreed, stands to this day (unless somebody has knocked it down in the past year or so).

My best friend in high school worked for him in the fields. I picked an inside job, working for him as a retail petroleum distribution engineer (worked at the fuel desk) at a truck stop-restaurant he opened later in my home town.

Once in the wee hours, with the restaurant closed and no customers to be seen, I locked the cash register and went to the other end of the building to play Space Invaders, as I recall. When the machine beat me, I threw the keyring of keys against a wall, where they ricocheted and slid across the floor and under the locked door to his office. Oh, s--t.

Had no choice but to call him and get him out of bed, and he had to come to the truck stop quick to unlock his office to retrieve the keys; the cash register was locked, but the fuel pumps were not, and if someone had fueled, I couldn't have taken their money, or check, unless it was exact, of course.

He showed up puzzled and half asleep, but not angry. That was about the time I got the reputation among the handful of truck stop owners and managers I worked for of being one who could "tear up an anvil with a puff ball."

Mem'ries ...

Now, go back and look again at the honorary pall bearers -- and this is the real reason I thought I'd blog about this. See that name, "Jerry Whitworth"? Does it ring a bell? It might, if you're around your mid 40s at least and were paying attention to the news in the last throes of the Cold War in the mid '80s.

You might recall the John Walker Jr. spy case. You might, but probably do not, recall the name Jerry Whitworth.

I did not, and do not, know Whitworth. But he was characterized as a "troubled and reluctant spy." Having been troubled and reluctant in the doing of questionable deeds myself on occasion, I will not judge the man. Of course, if he did the things he did he deserved what he got.

I'll spare you the details, but he was caught and convicted, and he had my home town -- and the "farming community of the Arkansas River basin" in the national and international news quite a bit, right up until the day in 1986 when he was sentenced to a gozillion years in the federal pen, where he remains, in Atwater, Calif.

Such is the company I recently kept on the obit page. All I'm saying is it's kind of weird.

--ER

Gasp! The ER's are losing TWO Starbucks!

Dr. ER is VNFSL -- venti non-fat, one-Splenda latte.

I'm quad venti mocha.

One survivor in our town -- over by the college. Of course. Thank God.

Here's the Starbucks Death List.

--ER

Man! Busy today!

Summer reruns! A two-fer!

The Parable of the Lost Weinie Dog, from July 17, 2007.

A short brief on the proper and effective placement of personal pronouns in a classic country-and-western song, from July 18, 2007.

Does time fly, or what?

--ER

***UPDATED***
Rinehart in the news. But 'member: Y'all (probably) read it here first. I wish Focus on Everything But the Family would rush to his defense.

--ER

***END UPDATE***

I am so proud.

Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart's campaign comic book, starring Satan, an angel and those pesky gays, among others.

You know, keeping this maroon on the Oklahoma County Board of Commissioners, actually, might be the safest thing the good people of Oklahoma County could do. I mean, he's sort of corralled right now. Imagine if he got loose!

And got elected to a *real* office.

Makes Jack Chick look rational and moderate.

--ER

Eames perusing some of her daddy ER's research materials on the Plains Indian wars in the months immediately after Custer and his men were massacreeed at the Little Big Horn.








Ice-T boning up on the Reformation and early-modern European history.


--ER

Bird's request!

Adopt Roosevelt!

Adopt Ryder!

Adopt Dempsey!

--ER

Something heavy: Pickens Plan.

Something light:



--ER

Had to run to the house and get in a different pair.

And in an unrelated development, I've decided to get back on the treadmill and resume Jared's Subway diet. I'm still 18 pounds lighter than at my peak, but I'm 10 pounds heavier than at my low (modern).

That is all.

--ER

Poor critter keeps frowing up! In fact, she has frowed up in every room of the house now. :-(

--ER

Once in awhile, I bump into a brick wall of wide-eyed ignorance while wanderin' around way out left, and it knocks me back to center. It usually happens just when I get to the end of my choke-chain.

I mean, my stake is in the ground just left of center, and I wear a common-sense choke-chain. It lets me go way out to the left in my thinking, and it lets me go way over into conservative territory, too, but not to the wide-eyed ignorant right-wing extreme.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

Yesterday, I was in a group with some people, one of whom held up a book and gushed that it explained that there is never, never, ever, EVER a just war. Not ever. And I thought, there's one of those brick walls! And, CHOKE!

The Allies in World War II were just. It was just for this country to go after the Taliban for 9/11.

What's happened there, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, since is a travesty. Others we should have gone after, and did not -- that's another question.

But the first cause in Afghanistan was, in fact, just.

Then, I heard a preacher, a recovering chicken-fried Southern Baptist like myself, explain something about forgiveness that now seems so obvious that I wonder how I could live to be 44 and not think of it, or hear it said so plainly, before.

When somebody wrongs you, you cannot forgive them unless they want to be forgiven, the preacher said.

Forgiveness, he said, is a relationship that fosters healing -- not ignoring harm someone has done to you, not laughing it off, not "getting over it."

I struggle from time to time with what to do about the harm others have done me. Some of it, I've just laughed off, some I've ignored, and some I've just gotten over with time.

Now, though, I think I can just let go of some pain and anger I've borne at the hands of others -- rather than continue to occasionally agonize over the fact that while Jesus said we are to forgive people "70 times 7" (that is, as many times as we are harmed), I haven't been able to forgive some people even once.

Well, the ones I'm required to forgive have never sought my forgiveness. Myself, I've systematically "made amends" using the "12 Steps" (way back when I was living with a recovering, then not recovering, addict-alcoholic. I know it's hard).

In the meantime, all I have to do is be ready to forgive. And that, with God's grace, I think I can muster. And those who've hurt me who are long gone -- either dead or now far removed from my life -- I think I can let go. We'll see.

Just war. Peace. Personal harm at the hands of others. Forgiveness. They're related.

--ER

Barack Obama's Plan for Iraq.

Yes, we can.

--ER

Could. Not. Help. My. Self.

This is why I just try to stay the heck away from Amazon. But noooooo. Somebody had to mention "The Shack," by William P. Young, so I went to investigate.

Click, click. I bought it.

And, like a kid in a candy store, a drunk in a liquor store, or, well, me at Barnes & Noble, I could not get out without:

"The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm," Robert F. Bruner.

"Indian Territory,: A frontier photographic record," (pdf; scroll down a few pages for a review) William S. Prettyman.


And ...

"The physical legacy: Buildings of Oklahoma county, 1889 to 1931," Bob L. Blackburn.

Groan. Get me a bibliophilia "desire chip," stat!

:-)

--ER

*****FINAL UPDATE***

"Woo," he said, adding, "Hoo!" It's 3:55 p.m. Sunday, and: --30--.

To wit: 25 pages, 9,475 words, counting footnotes.

That's on the book chapter. I'll work on the article proof tomorrow night.

--ER

*****END FINAL UPDATE*****

***UPDATED AGAIN***
I *know* y'all are just on the edge of your seats! LOL. It's 10:55 p.m., and I'm down to 30 pages, but just realized I need to add at least three new pages! Baby killin' continues after church tomorrow!!

***END UPDATE AGAIN***

***UPDATED***

Woo hoo! At 6:30 p.m., I've got 100-plus pages from three different pieces crammed, reduced, rewritten and sloughed into 38 pages, for the book chapter. The goal is 25. Got to start killin' babies now. On paper with a red pen, since it has come up a cloud and I reckon I need to shut down this 'puter.

Oh! Looky what I found while lookin' for something else: Famous Bugle Calls. Very cool. I'd never knowingly heard most of 'em, not even Boots and Saddles, which is what Libbie Custer called her biography of her famous husband, George.

***END UPDATE***

When it comes to crastinating, I've become a real pro.
A month ago, a perfessor of my acquaintance at one big regional research university, out here, who is working with another perfessor at another big regional research university, back east, invited me to submit an article for consideration as a book chapter for a book they're puttin' together.

I met the one perfessor at a conference where I persented a paper. She remembered me when this book deal came up. I was honored to be asked. I am not an academic. I am not a grad student. I do travel at the very edges of academic circles. But I am a practicing journalist (I hope to get it right some day), a mere ink-stained wretch (now with video!)

The research topic is right up my neck of the historical woods: the American Indian press. (Pictured: Alex Posey, turn-of-the-19th-century Creek journalist and poet).

That was a month ago. It's due Tuesday. I figger I better get started.

She wants 15 to 25 pages, Turabian. It's a matter of takin' about 100 pages of stuff I've already written for various and sundry projects, and rewritin' and crammin' and sloughin off a bunch of it to get it down to size.

What finally got me off my backside was this:

Yesterday, the editor of a history journal that is fixing to publish one of my articles, havin' to do with Indians and the Plains Wars and the press, e-mailed me a galley proof, with some marginalia, and she wants it back next week with a few fixes. (Pictured: He Dog, Lakota, a chief during the Plains Wars 1876-1877.)

My work is cut is out. Coffee's on. Western Channel is on, volume low, for inspiration. Wish me well and adios. I can't come up till both are in hand.

--ER

This is what I get for Googling the above:

The Southern Oklahoma Cosmic Trigger Contest.

It's got noodling. It's got cult teen masturbation (read this! it's hilarious!). It's got The Flaming Lips.

I really should get to know The Flaming Lips' music. I cross Flaming Lips Alley every time I go to the cigar bar, and I walk down Flaming Lips Alley every time I go to a baseball game.

EL is a big fan. Maybe he can recommend a good CD to start?

Happy Friday, y'all!

--ER

Do I know how to have fun, or whut?

Saturday after next, K.Kat, old buddy, and I will be hangin' out at Tulsa's Mercury Lounge, where a kinfolk of his from our stompin' grounds will be playin' with a band, Turnpike Troubadours.

Check 'em out!

But THIS Saturday -- hoo hoo! -- I think I'm draggin' the lovely Dr. ER with me to Pauls Valley for the annual Okie Noodling Tournament, at Bob's Pig Shop.

Check out pix from last year's noodling tourney.

Fried catfish. Noodling. Rednecks to let. What's not to like?

--ER

Back to work for real tomorrow. Sigh. Some last glimpses of how I spent my summer vacation!

Pix by phone:

Oklahoma Redhawks vs. Albuquerque Isotopes, today.

Relaxing on the patio, the other day.

Bailey and Riker!

ER's Bacon-Adjacent Scallops (shouldn't have cut the bacon in half).

A Rob Roy, close-up.

Still life, at the grill. (Dr. ER said for me to say that poor Riker does not have the mange; he is losing his undercoat).

--ER

Clem McSpadden, a big Oklahoman whose name I can't remember not knowing, has died.

Clem McSpadden in his prime.

In tribute, "Legacy of the Rodeo Man" by Baxter Black.

(Photo of Black Jack.)

--ER

!!!!!UPDATED AGAIN!!!!! IT IS STILL ALIVE! LOL! AFTER 10 WEEKS! 400-PLUS COMMENTS! LESS THAN 2 PERCENT FLUFF! -- ER

ORIGINALLY POSTED FRIDAY, MAY 23: This is a great thread. Moved it up because it is not only alive, but thriving, and was falling off the screen way down there. And I've probably just jinxed it. -- ER

UPDATED!!! ORIGINALLY TITLED "Lee, Jonathan and Billy's flat in ERland"

First, to repeat ...

xxxxxx

I thought I'd give the ER Roadhouse resident UK atheists their own place. It's to the left, at the top of my blog roll.

Juat this once, I'll give all three of 'em the bloglight right here: !! ER's Resident UK Atheists.

But, remember they're there. They're quite the hoots.

Cheerio and all that! :-)

xxxxxx

Ah, but then, a word from the Lord came. Or a brain fart. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.

I propose we lump all non-nelievers, athiests, scientism adherents (different than scientists) into one pool and judge them. That's what they seem to do with all theists, deists, Christians, Muslims and anyone else who dares have a faith tradition.

RESOLVED: Atheism is a threat to society, all societies, and atheists need to be exposed for that.

Now, I'm not talking about people who haven't made their minds up, or who aren't sure they've heard the call of God, or are agnostic even. There, are, despite EL's objections, Christian agnostics -- otherwise known as honest Christians who honestly doubt and whgo are honest about it.

I'm talking about "evangelist" atheists, those as fundamentalist as any religios fundamentalist, and I think, after having engaged them sone, that these guys fit that.

Of course, I really don't want them wiped from the face of the earth, and I don't think they want all Christians, Muslims, Hindus and what-have-you wiped out, either. But I'm pretty sure they would prefer that Christianity, Islam et al., be done away with.

Fair enough. I feel the same way about atheism.

I'll start (and maybe finish, who knows? My obsessions are not all y'alls', I know):

"Settle it therefiore in your mind, as a maxim never to be effaced or forgotten, that atheism is an inhuman, bloody, ferocious, system, equally hostile to every useful restraint and to every virtuous affection; that leaving nothing above us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken tenderness, it wages war with heaven and earth: its first object is to dethrone God, its next to dethrone man."

-- the Rev. Robert Hall, in "Modern Infidelity Considered, with Respect to its Influence on Society: in a Sermon," preached in Cambridge, Mass., in The Works of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M., Vol. 1 (New York: J&J Harper, 1832.)

Y'all next. G'head, g'head! Try it. Feels good to me, actually.

--ER

So, maybe three times a year, Dr. ER goes with me to church. She's not opposed to it or anything; she's just been traveling so much, or recovering from a trip, that she seldom does anything before about noon on any given Sunday.

But yesterday, the planets aligned just right and she went with me -- and had to leave the service quick, she and several others, because it was so hot in the sanctuary they couldn't stand it. She like to swooned. The person whose job is to turn on the AC didn't show, and no one noticed until too late. Hey, it's July in Oklahoma. Dr. ER went to the Baby Car and sat under cold air for 45 minutes.

Yesterday was a Communion Sunday. I couldn't stand that she had to leave, so I snuck a bit of the bread into my shirt pocket and brought it home. Last night, I popped open a bottle of red zin, and put a drop or two into a medicine cup (Dr. ER is a teetotaler) and presented it to her and she took Communion.

Pretty redneck way to do it. But I thought it was kind of cool, in any case.

Etc. No. 1: Ice-T went to the vet this morning. Hairball. Constipation. Bloody poop. No big deal. 'Nuff said.

Etc. No. 2: My big brudder is in the hospital in Arkansas. Hairball. Constipation -- oh, wait. Sorry. ... He is having some tummy trouble. Long story. Ongoing. No terribly big deal, I don't think -- but he IS sick and doesn't feel well at all. Prayers, vibes, karma, etc., por favor.

Etc. No. 3: Work is trying to sneak up on me! Technically, I'm off until Wednesday. But I worked an hour this morning, and there is a can't-miss meeting this afternoon, can't miss because I did miss a couple of editions of this meeting the week before I took off. Whatever. I'm charging 'em for the time.

Etc. No. 4: Dr. ER talked me into buying a bar for the house. Well, I mean she nudged me to go ahead and buy it. We've been keeping our eyes peeled for the perfect one for months. Found it. At Lorec Ranch. It's a rustic look, a la ER. When I get it set up, I'll post a pic or three. In the meantime, here's an image of it from teh Internets. :-)

--ER

The Oklahoma Official Rock Song Advisory Panel has been formed and is accepting nominations at Oklahoma Rock Song.

Now think "Oklahoma" and "rock song." What comes to mind? Can anything else come immediately to mind?

Three Dog Night. "Never Been to Spain."

Great sound. Real rock, circa 1971. Song about pretty much nothin'. Written by Hoyt Axton, an Oklahoman. And the Oklahoma mention is genuine, too -- not sappy or reverential. (And this ain't a terrible home-made video, either.)



--ER

Vacation mini trip No. 5: Oklahoma RedHawks game tonight. Dr. ER will stay home and watch the NASCAR race tonight. I am Jonesing for a baseball game. Of all time for me to take a week off -- not games locally all week, until now!



We'd planned to go see the Tulsa Drillers, AA Colorado Rockies team in Tulsa -- I've never been! -- and to go to the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks (never been there either! We even got a room reserved and I bought the tickets online, But I think we wore ourselves out yesterday.


Plus, I hate to miss church, expecially when people are joining, and a bunch are joining in the morning.

Gettin' old sucks.

Oh, I think we're gonna go to the Lorec Ranch store this afternoon, after I beat back the yard, water the tamaters, etc.

These pix suck, but to have been taken with a dang cell phone, they ain't bad.

--ER

Vacation mini trip No. 4: a couple of miles away to the local parade, which is a real firecracker! Then I hauled Dr. ER back here to the house and I went and availed myself of free hotdogs, chips and cold water at a nearby Baptist church (not the one I vote at).

Then I went to get some legs and thighs of the yardbird for the grill later. Head Country previously acquired. Tonight the plan is to go a few miles away to the biggest fireworks shootin' in these parts.

Yep. Anita Bryant, Oklahoma native, was the grand marshal. Ironic that, on a day to celebrate liberty.

So, what're y'all doin' today in the name of freedom?

Random pix from the parade (click to make 'em bigger):

















--ER

A little E:

Now, I had done research there, and I had presented papers there, and I had sorta darted in and out of the museum parts, and-but Dr. ER had done none of these things, so today we spent the afternoon at the still-new Oklahoma History Center.

It is Smithsonian affiliated, and it is Smithsonian quality.

As a night-time historian of prestatehood Oklahoma and many of the Indian tribes relocated to Indian Territory, and an armchair buff of post-statehood Oklahoma history, and because I visit every major history museum I can, and many minor ones, I can tell you it is a great, great act of history that has been committed on Laird Avenue just off of NW 23rd St.

Bravo, y'all!


A little R:

Supper tonight: Mogan David Concorn Grape "Wine" in some kind of art deco-type drinkin' glass that's just a click or three shy of a snuff glass; and Oscar Meyer weinies diced and cooked into to some sauerkraut. Oh, and cornbread out of a store-boughten packet.


A little more E: Supper, while watchin' the 1954 "Sabrina" with Audrey Hepburn, hot babe of historic proportions, so to speak.

--ER

Danged if I don't seem to have caught up on some angst-deprived sleep, myself. In bed before 10 last night, up around 9 this morning. Wow.

Of course, even with a 3mg melatonin on top of a couple of pressed-ham sandwiches on top of a few adult beverages, there is no sleeping straight through the night, not with the middle-of-the-night cat games that now take place around and on the bed.

Eames acts just like Ice-T did when he was her age: "Fighting" my feet under the covers, waking me up. Skulking from the foot of the bed up betwixt me and Dr. ER.

And I've even caught the little bitch sneakin' up on me to try to steal my breath!

What fun. We are not cat people. We keep repeating it. We are not cat people. Join in now. We are not cat people. WE ARE NOT CAT PEOPLE.

Sigh. Proof, this is, that anybody can be livin' more or less respectable lives one minute and wake up one day on the wrong side of the cat tracks. :-)

We love our cats. God gave us cats. We are not cat people!

--ER

Sound of Earth.

Sounds like hell to me.

--ER

Perfect timing! Turns out that Wednesdays in summertime are Wayback Wednesdays at the Oklahoma City Zoo. That means 75 cents to get in (regular $7), and 75-cent hotdogs, Cokes and popcorn.

So I got up early and while Dr. ER was snoozing I drove down and hung out with the animules and about a gozillion kids.



I shot a few pix with my real camera but nothing to write home about. Besides that, this peahen and her three chicks, not part of the zoo, were a real highlight. They were just hanging out outside the entry. I was not feeding them popcorn, your honor. I did, as usual, however, drop a few kernels.




Photos by cell phone: still life in the Baby Car on the way; peahen and chicks; chick gettin' after popcorn; my own self on the way back to the house.




--ER

P.S. It killed me that I couldn't get a good pic of the Somali wild ass!