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In 2019, I wrote a couple of columns about late night telephone debates with my gentleman friend over his use of the words piddling, dilly dallying and frittering. I really do try to avoid constant critiquing of his use of the English language but he knows me too well. He laughs it off and says, “You just can’t help yourself;” however, his most recent mispronunciation, when said aloud, is worse than hearing Rihanna’s fingernails scrape across a blackboard. The word? “Sammich!”
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Friends, readers, and colleagues I must start this piece with a bit of a confession to make. I am not obsessed, but I do have an unusual affinity for Dixon Ticonderoga pencils. I’m not sure where or when this started, but as a writer I can tell you that they truly are the best in the world. I have at least a dozen or so at strategic locations around my house in case I get a spark of inspiration to write something. I keep some in my car, in my truck, in my desk, and in other locations as well. I probably have a couple hundred of them that I can put my hands on at any time. Why this particular writing instrument, you might ask? It just works for me, I guess. The smell of a just-sharpened pencil takes me back to elementary school, I suppose. I also have a professional grade pencil sharpener that produces a very very sharp point. So, enough about me, let’s dive into the history of this wonderful piece of engineering.
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Since I’ve been known to reference the 1973 dystopian thriller “Soylent Green” in some of my Facebook posts, I feel obligated to announce, “It’s here!” Well, not in the sense of Charlton Heston’s last line, “Green is people” but that it takes place in 2022. This year marks the 49th anniversary of that guilt inducing movie about pollution, over population, euthanasia and depleted resources.
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What passes for knowledge these days is a funny thing, a moving target. With the advent of Al Gore’s interweb, anyone can quickly pass themselves off as an expert on just about any topic. Since 2006, the word “google” has been in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a verb. Hence, “I’ll just google it” was born.
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In this era of the 24-hour news cycle, “breaking news” becomes old news pretty fast but that doesn’t mean it’s forgotten. Personally, and professionally, I’m having trouble getting past the Austin American Statesman (AAS) releasing the video footage of the Uvalde school shooting before the victim’s families were allowed to relive the worse day of their lives in a private setting.
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It was an honor to participate in the reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Grimes County courthouse steps July 1. I appreciate Brent Cahill, the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and Elections Administrator Lucy Ybarra for making it happen.
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If, to you, the question “Are you a real cowboy” evokes a response of “That depends on what you think a real cowboy is,” then you are likely a fan of the movie Urban Cowboy. I mention this because Mickey Gilley passed away a few weeks back. Hearing that sad news brought forth a flood of memories for me of Gilley’s Club in Pasadena. I played drums there several times in the late 1970s with a c/w group I belonged to. While I never met Mickey Gilley, I did meet his musicians, each of whom was a monster player.
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According to a 2019 Smithsonian magazine article, screenwriter and television producer Rod Serling of “The Twilight Zone” fame, borrowed the term Twilight Zone from the U.S. military. Apparently, it refers to the moment a plane comes down and cannot view the horizon. The article went on to state that the anthology “spoke to his mission for the show: to be able to tell bold stories about the human conditions on screen by obscuring the view somehow.”
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