Flying Non-Stop

Thank heaven our Governor GoodHair has finally simplified all the air travel issues plaguing us in North Texas. Governor Rick Perry sat next to San Antonio megachurch evangelist preacher, Reverend John Hagee, on a red-carpet red-state stage on the Sunday before Election Day. "If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God almighty through the authority of Christ and his blood, I'm going to say this very plainly, you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket," Mr. Hagee said during a service interspersed with religious and patriotic videos. Perry said afterwards he didn't hear anything he would take exception to.

It's unclear if the Governor sat at the left hand or the right hand of the inerrant Rev. Hagee. It's also unclear if those of us going to hell in a handbasket can use the overhead carry-on bins, or have to check our luggage. Yes, I know, you can't take it with you, but the luggage restrictions for the unbaptized and unsaved are as blurry as the fine print on the repeal of the Wright Amendment! Here we got all excited about flying out of Love Field on Southwest Airlines with one-stop ticketing. Now we don't even get to wander the halls of the purgatory motel looking for the ice machine to fill up our plastic bucket.

What will be the color-coded terrorist threat level for passengers winding their way through the maze of ropes at the security checks at DFW Airport? Seems like folks destined to burn in hell forever should get to take moisturizing shampoo and conditioner, aloe vera lotion, chapstick, and lots of bottled water. Will seating be Southwest Airline cattle-call style or assigned?

Whenever I think of Texas Governor Rick Perry, weighty issues like salvation, border patrol, or school accountability are not on my mind. Instead I ponder his hair and wonder if it is fake anything or real Dynel.

Dy·nel (dī-nĕl') is a registered trademark product from Union Carbide, a copolymer of vinyl chloride and acrylonitrile employed in making fire-resistant, insect-resistant, easily dyed textile fiber. The Dynel advertising slogan ("It's not fake anything. It's real Dynel") is just one of the memorable slogans created by Jane Trahey in the 1960's. Ms. Trahey was best known for Blackglama's "What Becomes a Legend Most?" campaign, and for Danskin Inc.'s "Danskins Are Not Just for Dancing."


With the travel destination and mode determined, it is alway wise for the tourist to pick up a phrase book of the local idioms:

Hell

O.E. hel, helle "nether world, abode of the dead, infernal regions," from P.Gmc. *khaljo (cf. O.Fris. helle, O.N. hel, Ger. Hölle, Goth. halja "hell") "the underworld," lit. "concealed place," from PIE *kel- "to cover, conceal, save" (see cell). The Eng. word may be in part from O.N. Hel (from P.Gmc. *khalija "one who covers up or hides something"), in Norse mythology Loki's daughter, who rules over the evil dead in Niflheim, the lowest of all worlds (nifl "mist"), a death aspect of the three-fold goddess. Transfer of a pagan concept and word to a Christian idiom, used in the K.J.V. for O.T. Heb. Sheol, N.T. Gk. Hades, Gehenna. Used figuratively for "any bad experience" since at least 1374. As an expression of disgust, etc., first recorded 1678. Hell-bent is from 1835. Hell-raiser is from 1914 (to raise hell is from 1896); hellacious is 1930s college slang. Expression Hell in a handbasket is c.1941, perhaps a revision of earlier heaven in a handbasket (c.1913), with a sense of "easy passage" to whichever destination. Expression hell of a _____ is attested from 1776. Hell or high water is apparently a variation of between the devil and the deep blue sea. To wish someone would go to hell is in Shakespeare (1596). Snowball's chance in hell "no chance" is from 1931; till hell freezes over "never" is from 1919. To ride hell for leather is from 1889, originally with reference to riding on horseback. Hell on wheels is from 1843. Online Etymology Dictionary

Doppler Mama

First order of business this morning was folding up all the plastic drop cloths covering our computers at work. They hadn't been needed. Our area received not one single solitary drop of rain from Hurricane Rita. My son in Indiana saw more Rita rain than we did.

Second order of business is kicking the Weather Channel habit. For the last month I've spent way more time in front of the tv than normal, mostly looking at reporters wearing hooded raingear and standing knee deep in dark, oily liquid.
It never occurred to me while perusing the Occupational Outlook Handbook in the early Seventies that live disaster reporting would be a growth occupation.

I look at these soggy cub reporters saying, "I can barely see my hand in front of my face," and, "we've been unable to verify the reports of a downed street light in the next block," and wonder what special qualifications they have. Do they just show up for the job with a willingness to have buckets of cold liquid dumped down their neck like a football coach?

I grew up with Barbie dolls and Dare Wright's books about the Lonely Doll. For better or worse, these still influence me.


Houses, hotels, pets, automobiles, and ships were all caught up in the disaster.

This is not a comment on the Halliburton subsidiaries' lucrative contracts to clean up after Katrina, even though it is "Monopoly".

Who is this chicken? Is he here for a photo op?


Back to you.

Salon product

Got my hair cut by an actual stylist today, with shampoo, goops for this and sprays for that, blow-drying, curling iron, and more spray. Was swirled around in the chair for, voila, the New Me with extra body. Holy moly! It's the Pillsbury Doughgirl in a Raquel Welch wig! All I need is a lavendar pique dress and matching scalloped jacket with pearlescent buttons to play the mother of the groom in a sitcom wedding.

Usually I go to the JiffyChop for the fourteen dollar/four minute haircut. The cutesy motto taped onto the chopper's mirror reads, "Mom doesn't let me play with power tools at home." Occasionally, one of those cuts goes way wrong. I had to grow my hair out a few weeks extra, then let someone try to start me fresh along the meditative path to the true coiffure.