The UnTexan

CARTER-IZED

Barack Obama was elected to the presidency and handed the congressional power by an unhappy nation. He hasn't used either very well so far. Given the problems he has had with his picks for Secretary of Commerce and other posts, the man has surrounded himself with idiots who need to get out their dictionaries and find the meaning of "vetting" and start vetting. He needs to fix that. Then he wasted lots of time trying to be a conciliatory team player with his stimulus package. Winners don't have to be so conciliatory. He wants to be the Un-Bush, but that will never be enough. He has to become the Obama. He needs to take as his mantra "fucka buncha Republicans" and get on with the business at hand. Otherwise he is going to find himself - as my wife said - as neutralized and ineffective as Jimmy Carter (a nice man who should not have been president). I don't want Obama to become another nice man who should not have been president. I don't want my president Carter-ized. I want him to measure up.

It doesn't take much to be the Un-Bush. Condi knows just how much it took to measure up in W's White House and sends her love.

BUDDY, RITCHIE, THAT OTHER GUY, DEATH, LOVE, MISERY, DESPAIR

An adolescent boy is a more-or-less harmless nuisance; but an adolescent man can leave the landscape of his life littered with those who never saw him coming but sure were glad when he went away.

I was that guy.

February 3. It's the day when I like to pause and thank Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens for their part in messing up my life. It wasn't their fault. They just happened to be singing and dying when it started to happen. I was 14 years old when Buddy and Ritchie and Big Bopper (I will always think of him as that other guy) died in that Iowa cornfield on Feb. 3, 1959. I was just entering adolescence, a mucky place where I would live, wallow and flounder until I was around 40 years old and finally worked up the courage to crawl out onto dry ground, save myself and get on with life among other adults. Of course Buddy died when he was 22 and Ritchie when he was 17, but, while I might have fostered romantic boyish visions of death and glory, I didn't. They kept on singing and I kept listening. The day they died, I was a 9th grader at Lindley Junior High School in love with my misery in the way most 14-year-olds are. I was a boy all full of hormones, music and romantic notions and with no relief in sight. I thought I was looking for love, but love and relief are easy for a boy that age to confuse (no matter how old he is). Buddy and Ritchie (and eventually a bunch of others) sang about my love and misery. That is what I heard them singing. Or at least that is what I wanted to hear them singing. Buddy, Ritchie, music, death, love, misery and despair. The plane crash simply added to the romance of it all. It's a boy's life, but it's no way for a man to live. It took me a long time to learn the difference between love and relief. Longer than most. But I feel much better now.