901 Gale

Thought for the day...

A Jury of your peers. Have you ever really stopped to think about that? Those four words make me shudder and thank God that I've never been subjected to the process of being judged by a jury of my peers. Why? you ask... Well, think about what it takes to get called for jury duty. Some states, it's being registered to vote, some it's having a drivers license. Neither one takes much thought or intelligence. Voting - flip a coin, mark a black line, pull a level, poke a chad. You don't have to know anything about any of the candidates. You don't even have to know how to read! Driving - If you're like most folks who grew up in this state, you were driving a tractor, lawn mower, backhoe, or Pops old pickup truck long before you were even close to the age in which you needed to make it legal. Driving, at least in Oklahoma, is right up there with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Now with those things being used to create a pool of candidates from which to create a jury, often times mixed in with the regular hard working, honest people are some mouth-breathers with a very low Tooth to Tatoo Ratio.

Somewhere, at this very moment, some poor guy's having the rest of his life determined by the following 12 individuals:
Floyd, who sure hopes he can get in just one more job before the INS comes and deports all of his roofing crew.
William Robert Brubaker (a.ka. Billy Bob) is thinking "if we can stall just about 20 more minutes, that Baliff guy will come take our order for dinner; Free Pizza!
Mary Ann, hasn't met anyone associated with this trial before in her life, but according to her that prosecutor is just plain mean.
Tenisha, who has stated more than once, "Just look in his eyes. You know he done it!"
Greg - "I'm going to miss my tee time for this jerk!"
Stephan - "Hurry up and let's hang him! Or not. I don't really care as long as I don't miss Survivor."
Shelly - "My boyfriend's going to be going out with Lula Mae if I'm not there when he calls."
Leo - "If he was smarter, he wouldn't have gotten caught. I didn't get caught when I did what he did. Hey, did I feed the cat this morning?"
Amy keeps breaking down crying and asking "Oh why is this so hard?"
Renaldo - "I wonder if my brother made it through customs with the shipment?"
Raymond - "Dad lets me drive on the driveway. Of course, I'm an excellent driver. Yeah, definitely an excellent driver"
Skip - "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ"

Now, I don't know about you, but the thought of that little scenario playing out for real, is enough to make me walk the straightest, narrowest path I can find.

AH yes... The sweet smell of friendship... Or did I forget to put on deodorant? I took the liberty of linking to your site. That's pretty cool! Looks like you've been busy. On a blogger related note, your site is prime for integrating blogger into it. This is the News portion my buddy's family site; Blogger completely and seemlessly integrated into it. Way cool and way easy to use. Be sure to check out the links on the side. TaskForce Grub Monkey is what a bunch of us use to avoid email tag to get together for our Friday lunch. It's a blog world afterall seems to be petering out, but you get the idea... I'll post more later on this evening before turing in...

Later

As the long awaited rains fell to the dry Oklahoma earth a friend from the past sprouts from the soil....
Hello! Hello! Hello!
Thank you for the nice words from ferrets around the world. Been a couple of days since last we spoke. Look forward to playing catch-up. Oh, speaking of the "widow-maker" Brent left that big desk behind in Houston.... we shall never see it again!
Hated moving that thing. This Blogger gig is pretty cool.... here is a little insight on how I have been spebding the last few years -
www.torula.com

In a way, I feel like I owe an apology. Not sure to who or what for, but, here goes... But just how does eight years go by like that? One day, you're at the big metal desk sitting in what used to be a dining room, banking a rubber ball into the corner of the room for an hour straight and then BOOM, eight years go by and the big metal desk (with the other big metal desk right next to it) is parked cozily in my home, in a room officially known as the office. ...Oh yeah, the apology.... A-hem...

Sorry.

Oh, to who and for what? Ummm... I hereby apologize to the the creator of all that is good and right and fun for forgetting that hours can be killed by bouncing a rubber ball off of one corner of the room and for forgetting that you can say "Ka-mut-ma-ma" to certain people and they will know exactly what you mean; for forgetting that, to some people, the name Emil (God rest his beady little soul) will always conjure up images of a ferrett attacking a Garfield doll and dragging it (and anything else not nailed down) behind the TV, or trying to anyway...

SO, that said, what's up fellas?

I'll be posting stuff to this now and then, with the same odd thoughts I've had all my life. Please drop in and sit a while and feel free to drop off a thought or two while you're at it. Here's mine for the day...

Back in 1996 I came close to crying when my Mom bought a new car. Yeah, that's right I wanted to cry. Mom's aren't supposed to drive around in what's basically a Four Door Corvette when you're tooling around in a little foreign puddle jumper... Dads in a hot rod? That would be OK, cause we know he'll stomp down on it every now and then... Well, today on the way to work, I had that same old feeling again. I passed a lady who had to be pushing 75 (years of age, not MPH). This quaint little old lady was driving in a brand spanking new Mercury Marauder, and I passed her in the same little foreign puddle jumper. Just doesn't seem right to me.... Darn near brought a tear to my eye...

Oh yeah, one last tidbit of info to all interested parties. The Stub Tail Possum won't be joining us for the rest of his life...