Stuff scattered in the back seat

These are officially the last words I'll write about the baseball strike.

What exactly is our beef with Iraq? What have they done since 1991 to piss me off? Somebody please help me with this.

Re my mid-career crisis: Next time somebody asks me, "What do you want to do?", I'm going to jack-slap them. I don't think I even know how to jack-slap somebody, or what that even means. But I'll give it my best shot. That said: Thanks for asking, anyway. It makes me feel better to know somebody cares.

Happy birthday to the site that was the inspiration for all this. (You decide whether that's a good thing.) Confidential to Otis: You're finding your voice, man. Be ready to let it take you somewhere, when the time is right. Thanks for sending me back out in search of mine. And, just, thanks.

My writing was just interrupted by hearing the first notes of one of my favorite songs of all time: "My Hometown," by Charlie Robison. The notes were coming from the speakers of my television, of all things. Just saw the video to that song for the first time. Now that's what Texas looks like. Anybody who thinks Texas is wretched excess or big hair or dusty desolation or anything they saw on "Dallas," well, yeah, it's all that too. But the ancestral home is a big enough place to have stuff that sucks that much and still be wonderful.

Speaking of "that's what Texas looks like": We're still waiting on the Major Lifestyle Change alluded to earlier in this space. Part of the Major Lifestyle Change involves an attempt to sell our house in the driest real estate market in North Texas since the early '90s.

Said market is likely going to get more parched: another Large Telecom Company for whom so many of my neighbors work just announced 7,000 more layoffs. The severance packages from this company's March layoffs begin running out in September. I suspect "For Sale" signs are going to be going up like those ugly mushrooms that sprout in the backyard after it rains.