.

“I dunno,” Juanita starts.  “Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe the Steeple People know where I’m going and plant things along the way to make me stand in awe of what the hell are they thinking.”

Juanita is perplexed.

Returning from Austin this weekend, she encountered —

Click the little one to get the big one.

“That’s a portable cross over there on the left, complete with its own Texas license plate – which we will discuss later – and a pointy board that says ‘Jesus Saves’ pointing at cans.  No kidding, it seems to read Jesus Saves Cans.”

“It’s not every day that you see Cans for Jesus on a major highway, even in the Bible Belt, so I turned around to make sure it said what I thought it said at 70 miles per hour.  Yep.  It said Cans for Jesus.  And as a totally free extra added attraction, there’s a cross on wheels.”

Juanita continued talking as she put Bessie under the hair dryer.   “Being as how I consider myself a fan of Sweet Jesus, things like this fascinate me.  First of all, I dunno if this is a certain fact or not because Jesus doesn’t talk to me a lot in regular English, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when Sweet Jesus comes back, a cross is the last darn thing he’s going to want to see.  I, personally, keep a small stash of gold, frankincense, and myrrh for any unexpected visits from Sweet Jesus.  That seems a far more pleasant welcoming gift.  We Southern women are kinda experts in these welcoming gift things so you might want to trust me on this..”

“And, I don’t think he’s going to be at all that pleased that you got his license plate, Babe.  I mean, really.  A vanity plate is vanity plate, but …. dayum, Honey, that’s Jesus’ plate.  Did you ever think that maybe he might want it?  However, I have to admit that maybe the cross needs a Texas license plate to make the trip to town.”

“Now, I truly appreciate someone trying like the dickens to do outreach with food and clothing for the poor.  That part, as far as I understand, Sweet Jesus would love.  So, I walked around for a minute looking for somebody to take a few dollars.  Nobody was at home.”

“I do not know where they were.  I mean, the cross was parked out front so they couldn’t have gone far.”

And that’s why Juanita loves living in Texas.

.

This morning’s news at the Houston Chronicle.

A fire that destroyed nearly all Harris County’s electronic voting machines Friday has election officials scrambling to re-equip the county for an election in which early voting starts in just 51 days.

Even before the pre-dawn fire was out, County Clerk Beverly Kaufman pledged to hold a “timely election” on Nov. 2 but suggested the county may have to run fewer than its planned 739 Election Day polling stations if it cannot find enough machines.

Because she does not know how many machines will be available for each polling location, Kaufman started appealing almost immediately to voters to cast their ballots early to help avoid long lines on Election Day.

Early voting begins Oct. 18.

“You know,” Juanita suggests, “if their entire stock of pencils had gone up in flames, it wouldn’t cost much to replace them.”

.

I was going to link to Bev’s column this week because she found some interest information about Cynthia Lenton Gary that I thought both my readers would enjoy.

But, I got stopped dead in my tracks because I would have to give ammo to Luther and REdmunds about the typos and/or misspellings in Bev’s newspaper.  (See comments here.) I think it’s fair to say that I worked for her for a decade or two and taught her everything she knows about misspelling.

Bev wrote —

Why I’m mad at Obama….Let me see. First I think I’ll go through all the reasons I’m NOT mad at Obama. I don’t believe he is a Muslin. I do believe he is a citizen of the U.S.

Yeah, she said he’s not a Muslin.

In all fairness, I think that’s probably the one thing nobody has accused him of being.

So, I have decided that what Bev meant is that Obama is not a “man of the cloth.”

Keep the groaning down, please.

Go on over and skip to near the bottom to discover that Cynthia Lenton Gary did not file her campaign finance reports as required by law.  I think she was busy illegally leaving notes to her friends in the mailbox.  That’s a whole lot of work.

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Woo, woo!  Rick Perry is a semi-finalist!

The Fringe 16 is narrowing the list and Rick Perry is carrying the national Fringe Flag right to the Texas State Capitol Building.  (I would say the Governor’s Mansion, but Rick is living in a $10,000 a month taxpayer rented Gov Shack.)

Head on over there and vote for him again now that voting for the finalist has started.  He’s up against Jan Brewer.  It’s hard to make that woman look sane, but Rick is giving it his damnest.

Let’s give him the boost he needs to win.  We won’t even have to worry with a tiara and a sash – Rick’s already got the fringe pants to wear to the Fringe Awards ceremony.

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This was hand printed on a sign hung to the front door of the beauty salon this morning —

New Rule:  You cannot go on Dancing with the Stars and make a fool of yourself and then turn around and whine like a little ninny baby that people think you’re a fool.

It was not Juanita’s handwriting but she agreed that statement needs to be written down somewhere.  The Austin American Statesman came real close themselves.

The poll the defense commissioned asked 400 registered voters their opinions about DeLay and the case.

DeLay’s name recognition in Travis County is almost as high as President Barack Obama’s and former President George W. Bush’s, and his negatives — at 59 percent — are almost as high, the poll found.

Some witnesses, however, suggested that DeLay’s appearance on the ABC TV show “Dancing With the Stars,” might account for such high name recognition.

“I do not see Tom returning the reported $200,000 he made on Dancing with the Stars.  He wanted the money without the bad reviews.  Hollywood Hot Tub Tom wants to have his cake and eat it, too, as his spreading rear end will attest.”

“Ole Tom tried to argue that people didn’t think well of him in Travis County because he redrew the district of popular Congressman Lloyd Doggett, causing Doggett’s district to look like a fajita.  Well, that and the certified fact that Tom may not be the devil, but he’s blood relative,” Juanita explains.  “That devil part might be more of factor in their opinions.”

“Tom’s all mouthing off that he’s going after Ronnie Earle, the District Attorney with the courage to indict him, when this trial is over.  Yeah, and I’d be the Queen of Ohio.  If I lived in Ohio.  And could get elected queen.”

“Tom DeLay,” she grins, “is the only man I know who can strut sitting down, so this show will be worth the price of admission.”

If you want to make reservations to go with us, call the salon at 1-800-BIG-HAIR.