It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood as Mr. Rogers would say. Many Starbucks stores now boast that they have the best espresso “in the neighborhood.” Applebee’s has a new slogan, “it’s a whole new neighborhood.” Wal*Mart’s smaller-scale “neighborhood” store has arrived on the scene; it is now called “the neighborhood market store.” Not to be out done or left out is Lowe’s who is now advertising that they are our “neighborhood” hardware store.
We have 24 homes on our neighborhood, with something like 32 dogs. Which is very nice each day when the mailman shows up, and we have the added delight of the meter readers appearing thrice monthly, not to mention the occasional stray cat who strolls about the “neighborhood.”
A new recent addition is the careless tossing of old used tires into the street when they no longer can hold air, spray painted messages written in gangland slang (no one can read it but the special police units in town), the Oklahoma Police Department Helicopter patrols have increased so much here lately, we are affectionately referring to them as the “Southside Neighborhood Nite Light.”
A new wrinkle in the landscape is the tossing of old tennis shoes tied together, over the power lines, which I am told indicates that there are drugs in the area (they cannot read the spray painted messages in the concrete on the street?). Boom Boxes and the sharing of ethnic sounds reverberate thru the air ….. Ah springtime in da hood. Saturday night there is the raucous practice of gunshots from moving cars usually commencing around 11PM and continuing throughout the night.
“Cover me Honey, I am gonna change lanes …… “ Yeah, it’s a lovely day in the neighborhood.
Viva Viagra! Catch the new Viagra Commercial as of yet? Pretty catchy tune. I can just see Elvis pounding that one out on the stage of Caesar’s Palace …. Viva Viagra and then of course, “Hunka-Hunka burning love” right afterwards.
Dog-gone it, I cannot help it, but it kind of brings a bit of a tear to my eyes.
North Dakota finds oil … Yes it is true, this week they announced the discovery of another oil rich area, this in oil bearing rock strata in North Dakota that extends all the way into Canada. Something similar to the Austin Chalk formation down in Texas.
Of course, this will either outright denied by the major oil companies or completely debunked as too little or too late, explained away as “too expensive.” It would not surprise me if they claim “it is the wrong color, it is honey like, and we would have to spend millions on it to color it black, like oil is supposed to be!”
There is one I have not heard as of yet.
I find it incredulous that during the recent hearings on big oil in Washington DC that not one Senator had the _____ to ask them …. “Why haven’t you guys built any refineries since 1973?”
Guess that one didn’t cross their collective minds huh.
The Bush administration is planning to move its primary foot-and-mouth research lab to the continental United States (what might be appropriate here is the state of Texas). Foot-and-Mouth, you will recall, is incredibly contagious and has several times led to enormous livestock extermination campaigns to halt the spread of the disease.
Not long ago, an Oklahoma rancher had to exterminate an entire herd of Elk, simply because “they were believed to have the disease” when no actual infections were present.
Yet, believe it or not, one of the top contenders for the research site is Kansas. And, if that’s not enough, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas actually wants the lab built in his state — ‘It will mean jobs,’ he says. If you are sitting down to some chow in Wichita and you notice some foam on the edge of your steak … Pass.
This has to be true; I read it on the Internet.
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