some fun with election night

Election is a busy night for those in the media, but there is no excuse to not have fun amid the craziness.
What I did is what others surely did and that is play a music game.
I took Barack Obama and substituted his name with certain songs. I know, it is cheesy, but it made the night pass quickly,
A few of the winners:
* "Keep on Barackin in the free world."
* "Barack, Barack, Barackin on Heaven's door."
* "Barack the boat, don't Barack the boat baby. Barack the boat, don't tip the boat over."
* "Barack-n-roll, hoochie coo."
* "Barack it."
* "We will, we will Barack you."
* "I love Barack and Roll."
* "Barack me Amadeus."
* "I am a Barack."
* "For those about to Barack, we salute you."
* "Barack lobster."
* "Barack the Casbah."
The list goes on and on, but I will spare you the details. You can come up with your own. It is fun.
And remember, Barack out with your cocks out!

do not worry about me, it was just a phone call

So I have rambled incessantly over the weeks and months -- especially since I became the Editorial Page Editor and started producing daily opinion/editorial pieces for my daily -- about how everyone seems to thrive off phoning or writing me to let me know I live in a blood red state. Each concerned citizen feels the need to either convince me of the error of my ways or attempt to convert me or, most often it seems, just wants to let me know the extent of their vocab skills.
The last occurs maybe 60 percent of the work week, the middle from every other drone -- or readers, as they so wish they were -- and the first, each and every person.
It does not go unappreciated or unnoticed. With each instance, a certain glow is provided to my day. Every time it happens, it makes me happy to be alive.
Mind you, I am wrong, even when what I write is an agreeable piece with said concerned citizen. There is a certain, as it was said to me Tuesday afternoon, subconscious, between-the-lines way in which I write, it seems. Never straight-forward and to the point, just my attempt to lead the sheep astray.
The four-letter words, the venom, the hate spewed forth by these mouth-breathers, brings a smile to my face. As my friend, Kevin, told me when I took this job, "When your voicemail is running over and your inbox crammed full, you know you have done your job when you are being attacked on all sides."
It did not take long for me to understand exactly what he meant by that.
I am a little more than two months into this job. Before that I was privy to this knowledge from the former Editorial-Opinion Writer/Editorial Page Editor and I got different, while hateful all the same, input from readers/subscribers as a former Sports Editor (hey it was all that was available -- sports -- when I first applied out of college). I took the job, because I needed the job, and rather quickly moved up the newsroom's food chain into management. But I never wanted to stay in sports long and when I was approached about transferring to the dark side of news, I leaped. I hurled myself in my current direction because of several reasons.
First, I have wanted to try my hand at opinion/editorial almost as long as I have wanted to work in print journalism (specifically, since I was about 12 or 13 years old).
Second, it was the best avenue for future advancement -- I was not moving up directly from my Sports Editor desk.
Third, the hours are much better. In sports, it is a seven-day-a-week gig. For us being an a.m. paper, it also meant working from about 2 or 3 p.m. to anywhere from midnight to 2 or 3 a.m. Seven-days-a-week, 10 hours a *night* will burn your light out rapidly. Now, I work Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The new hours allow me to actually have a life, letting me spend that life with my 4-year-old son. I have witnessed more in his life -- every other weekend -- the last three or so months than I had in the previous three-plus years combined. I truly do believe that.
For those three primary reasons, I allow myself to be attacked -- not in a physical nature, so far. ... I am subjected to violent phone conversations; twisted, violent e-mails; and bi-polar, schizophrenic letters delivered by the postal service. I do all of this, not with dread or fear, but most times with a smile on my face. Ninety-nine percent of these kind souls do not realize the sad insanity in which they spew. The contradictions and preschool logic have moved me to tears before. Not because I am frightened or properly put in my place, but because I am laughing so hard, my tummy hurts.
So as I sit here at my home computer, researching future edits, I look forward to Wednesday.
I just wonder how many four-letter words and names I will be called? The funny thing is with it being Wednesday, some of these kind folks will attend their house of worship.
Where I live, it seems, red state equals the opposite of family values and compassion. It equals hypocrisy.

i just don't understand

OK, so there is this story that circulated from our Montgomery correspondent in today's edition that has me scratching my head.
In the copy, our correspondent scribes about how the government, or more precisely the Federal Emergency Manangement Agency, has not paid the state for damages which occured during the Hurricane Gustav evacuation.
It appears FEMA owes the state two-year college system something like $2.25 million for damages to shelters (also known as gymnasiums to the community college basketball teams) and for things like methadone for smack addicts.
When all of this was going on, I had a friend, a close friend, who ran one of the shelters. I went there a couple of times.
I DID NOT SEE METHADONE!
I mean, seriously, the state was just handing junkies sustinance to keep them from jonesing and withdrawing in the middle of the shelter?
This shit just had my jaw on the floor.
I had heard about the rapes, assaults, robberies, thefts at Wal-Mart, vandalism, etc., but no one told me about the 24-hour methadone clinic our state was running at your local junior college.
You can read the more tame version of this and more on our Web site or in the daily edition, but I had to post here. After all, they won't let me write about methadone and I did type *shit* earlier.
Go figure, FEMA owes the state two-plus million dollars for running a methadone clinic for five days.
Wow, and to think, I figured it would be no fun and nothing to do. Who knew I could have gotten high?
Thanks FEMA and thanks Alabama.

it's all make believe

i figured something out this weekend -- nothing is real. or at least as real as i used to think things were.
i burned the oil all weekend and, well, it was way worth it.
it's kinda like the song "firecracker" -- i don't want to go on forever, i just want to burn up hot and bright. let me be your firecracker. let me be your baby tonight.
it all started about 6 p.m. friday and it just now ended (and it's 2:15 a.m. monday morning).
i have not put in a weekend like this in quite a while, but i have been to and viewed a lot of places this weekend and i stared into a lot of eyes and heard a lot of voices, while they in turn heard mine. but it still comes back to nothing being real. i mean, i went a million miles an hour for three straight days in four different counties, birmingham, and other municipalities, and it is all a blur. unreal.
maybe work will be grounded this morning. oh shite, that is in five hours.
nite!

i walk to you, only you

i walked to you in the still night.
you in soft slumber, so tenderly sweet
with innocent inspiration.
but i awoke too soon
to find the screen in my hopes
are not equivalent to the realities of dream,
not like the prayers of times long past.
your arms reached out
and i reached in to find
my heart beats still
and you steward my love,
but the reception
along the way
waned.
and i drifted to dreams
yet again
with wants to outlandish
to speak.
i hope you know
i will always love you.
i hope you will share
my dream again,
on a night when minds
crave change
on a night where your arms
are my goal.
i'm walking to your door,
will the light
be on
to welcome me in?
i knock and I hope
the rapping
wakes us all
so we can fall
asleep again
in the warmth
of our embrace....

A Google-ly cure for a drunken heart

Jessica Mintz, an Associated Press Technology Writer, wrote an interesting story Tuesday, which I noticed on the general news wire.
She began the piece:

“Here’s the scenario: It’s Friday night, and what began as an innocent happy-hour margarita morphed into a few pitchers. After all, those tacos were salty.
“Bidding friends adieu, you jump in a cab, head home and decide a quick e-mail check is in order. And there it is: a message from your ex. Or your boss. Or that friend you’re secretly mad at.
“If you are the kind of person who types tipsy and regrets it in the morning, Google’s ‘Mail Goggles,’ a new test-phase feature in the free Gmail service, might save you some angst.”

What Mintz is writing about is a program by Google, which will ask you a few easy math problems. The “Mail Goggles” require you to answer these problems in a short amount of time before you can send your e-mail, to whoever it might be going to.
If you answer correctly, the program assumes you are logical enough to know what you are typing, eliminating the “drunk e-mail syndrome,” which is a technological advance from my younger days of “drunk calling.”
I have done that quite a few times in my life and, I assume, you have done the same. But before the Internet there were no safeguards from saying something stupid while inebriated. So there have been several people in my life who have had to endure the drunken ramblings of an idiot (I act like this does not still happen, when we all know we still do it and probably always will).
Well, Google can save those of use who prefer typing e-mails over talking on the phone. A little change of your Gmail settings and — poof! — you have “Mail Goggles.”
As I type this, I am saddened I did not read this story by Ms. Mintz last week. It might have saved one of you from hearing your phone ring on end Saturday night.
Although “Mail Goggles” would not prevent “drunk texting,” it would keep intoxicated romantics, like me, from sending you War and Peace-like e-mails.
Too bad this program does not return the same affection presented in an e-mail.
That, too, will come soon enough from those wacky Google folks. Who knows? In time, those Google people might grant me enough money to buy what we want to hear. It could happen. Twenty years ago when I was “drunk calling” you, what average person would have imagined we would have “Mail Goggles” or even the Internet.
So give it time. What else do I have?

Nothing ever changes in the hood

I went out last night, thinking that the different scenery would change the pattern of thought in my tired brain. It did not happen and I have only one person to blame for that — me.
The night of social drinking and a feeble attempt at connection only exasperated my emotions and feelings.
At 1 a.m. I continued my broken promises to someone I care about deeply.
After that, I just went home to sleep. But that too was a feeble attempt.
I tossed and turned, thinking about the night. I wondered if others were doing the same, but I knew, deep down, that they were soundly sleeping.
My dreams are not the same as others. My goals are not shared.
I often throw darts at the board, hoping someday, just one will stick. It is futile and hopeless, but the hopeless romantic in me chooses to be blind to obvious truth.
I attempt to spark some hope so often that I miss the fire all around me.
It will probably continue, although I am getting better at keeping my mouth shut.
But that, too, makes me wonder if opening my mouth would make things different? Would throwing it all out there make a change?
I resign myself to the belief that it would not. Most likely, it would make things worse.
Like I have written before, if someone wants something, they will go and get it. But too often, I try to hand it to them and, in turn, create unnecessary pain for myself.
I tell myself, this has got to stop. But I continue on. Maybe I am into the self-torture thing? Maybe I like the pain and hurt when I cannot be with the one I love?
But if the one I love does not want to be with me, why push it? Why make things worse? Because I love her, plain and simple.
I always will.
I, again, tell myself that I will not say anything, I will not push the issue.
But tomorrow is Monday and it is the start of a new week.
I wonder what it will bring? What new revelations will come with it?
Probably more of the same — another week of me trying and another week of me hurting myself.
Hopefully, the cycle will end one day. Hopefully, I will learn my lesson.
But as long as the chance is there, I will not rest on what I had. I will press on toward the future. No matter what that day will hold.
I hope it will hold us together, but if it does not, it will not change what I hope to be and strive to be.
I just hope she is listening….