I am outta here for a couple of weeks.  If you need me, I will be in the Ozark mountains breathing invisible air.

I generally never mention when I’m on vacation because I don’t want somebody to come break into my house.  This time is different because Marsha, the retired parole officer, and her big ole dog are coming to housesit and keep Truman company.  Seriously, Marsha will take you down and then call her dog for dinner.  Marsha don’t take crap off nobody.  I’m scared to death of her.

So, I’ve asked a few friends to keep the ball rolling.  I will check in very now and then and post a free-for-all every day in case something big breaks and you wanna talk about it with the cool kids and internet’s wittiest commenters.

I’ll post when I have an internet connection.

Y’all behave, ya hear?

Let’s go to New York.

Hunter #1 is in his stand looking for something to shoot.

Hunter #2 bagged his deer and was hauling it off on a little cart.

Hunter #1 saw this and … yes, he did.

The first hunter saw the deer moving, thought it was alive, fired and struck the first hunter in the hand and buttocks. The injured hunter was taken to Danbury Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

I wonder if they had a little cart for Hunter #2?

In the butt?  You had to shoot him in the butt?

Thanks to Rick for the heads up.

Texas elected itself a brand spankin’ new Attorney General – who needs a spankin’.

First off, he’s probably facing felony criminal charges and is likely to be indicted while he’s a sitting attorney general.  He has already been fined by the Texas State Securities Board for hanky-panky.

And now, come to find out, he’s got sticky fingers.

A Dallas lawyer name Joe Joplin went through a metal detector at the Collin county courthouse.  He was in a hurry.

A few hours later, he realized he’d left a tray of three pens at the metal detector. One was a gift from his wife — a $1,000 Montblanc.

He says he’s not really into fancy pens but it was a special gift from his wife so he went to hunt it down.

“It came back like a Kodak moment. I knew I’d put it in a separate bin and that second plate didn’t come out,” Joplin recalled in a recent interview.

He rushed to the security entrance and the pen was gone. Joplin talked to the sheriff’s deputies, who told him that shortly after Joplin went through, another man picked up a tray of pens on top of the machine.

The deputies didn’t recall the other man.  Joplin asked to see the video of the security camera but the deputies said they couldn’t help.

Joplin, frustrated and a bit frightened of telling his wife, wrote to an old friend, “just to vent.” The boyhood pal was Collin County Sheriff Terry Box.

In an Aug. 14, 2013, email, Joplin recounted the details. “The loss of my pen is my responsibility,” he wrote, but he also thought a lost and found procedure might be instituted.

Sheriff Box did better than that.  He ordered up the video tape.

That’s when the sheriff recognized State Senator and soon-to-be Texas attorney general Ken Paxton take one of the three pens out of the basket and put it in his pocket.

“It looked like he took a pen and put it in his pocket out of the tray,” Box said.

He asked a deputy to call Paxton and see whether he had it. He looked. He did. A day or so later, Paxton gave the pricey rollerball pen to a deputy to return to Joplin, the sheriff said.

So Paxton walked around for a year with a $1,000 pen in his pocket and never noticed?  Really?  Did he think the Montblanc Fairy left it under his pillow?  I don’t know about you but I don’t keep up with pens very long – unless, of course, it was a $1,000 pen.

Paxton’s spokesman says it was “a simple mistake.”  Yeah.

I’m gonna suggest that when he takes office, we put a chain on all the office supplies.  No telling how much this guy could cost us in staplers and laptops that he mistakenly takes home.

Thanks to Tim for the heads up.

In Texas we often say “Thank God for Mississippi!” because Mississippi is all that stands between Texas being deadbutt last in education, health care, and most people not living in a trailer park singing Dixie on the front porch.

So, it comes as no surprise that Mississippi has something called the Magnolia State Heritage Campaign with the intent of making Christianity the state’s “official religion.”

But, that’s not all.  No, sireeee. They even want to change the flag and the the mascots of the state schools.

Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.

Here’s a ballot initiative they want passed.

The State of Mississippi hereby acknowledges the fact of her identity as a principally Christian and quintessentially Southern state, in terms of the majority of her population, character, culture, history, and heritage, from 1817 to the present; accordingly, the Holy Bible is acknowledged as a foremost source of her founding principles, inspiration, and virtues; and, accordingly, prayer is acknowledged as a respected, meaningful, and valuable custom of her citizens. The acknowledgments hereby secured shall not be construed to transgress either the national or the state Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Honey, just because you say it’s doesn’t violate the First Amendment doesn’t make it so.  I mean, you can say that fire is not hot, but I still wouldn’t sit on stove if I were you.

They also want to make English the official language and …

Whenever the national anthem is played in a public venue or at a public event in Mississippi, either “Dixie” or “Go, Mississippi” shall be played immediately thereafter.

Go, Mississippi?  Where are they going besides backward?

Honey, when a war you lost is your crowning glory, it’s time to pack it up.

Thanks to Beth for the heads up.

Okay, so you know how Rick Perry is all Guns A’blazing Law and Damn Order?

Well, he just did a 180 turn that would be the envy of a stunt pilot.

He gets indicted.  The first thing he does is lawyer-up.  He jumped on his right to silence faster than a six-legged jackrabbit.  He refuses to talk unless his lawyer says he can.  Okay, so why didn’t we think of this six years ago, or at least before his “Duh” moment.  It would have been cool to have a lawyer standing behind him whispering the right answer in his ear.

The next thing he does is to hire a bunch of writ twits.  He’s got the biggest legal team since OJ got out of the white Bronco.

Then he asks his legal team to get him off on a technicality.  You know, that thing Republicans holler about all the time.  Perry’s lawyers wanted to get him off based on whether or not the special prosecutor was properly sworn in.  If that ain’t the silliest damn thing.

So, they go to court yesterday.

Senior Judge Bert Richardson on Tuesday denied Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to get the criminal indictment against him thrown out on technical grounds.

The Perry lawyers said special prosecutor Michael McCrum’s oath of office should have been signed by him. It instead was signed by Richardson, who is overseeing the case.

Wait!  When did this case become about signatures?  This case is about Rick Perry extorting another duly elected public official.

So the judge says, “No.”

They have a whole list of other technicalities they want the judge to consider.  So, it kinda hard to believe them when they say they want to go to trial and get a not guilty verdict.  It sounds to me like they are trying to run up legal fees and make Rick Perry look like a bigger hypocrite than he already is.

This is gonna be a fun one to watch.

Look, I know they will pass in January but somebody has to stand up now and say HELL NO!

Not on our watch.