Kiss my bezoar; No more bees for me

After at least 10 years of spelling and misspelling,I am now officially retired from the spelling bee.
I did my last one on Wednesday.
I will not be Brett Favre and come back and try to win the big one.
I will not be Ted Buss and go back and forth from retirement to unretirement.

My worst finish was dead last. (Keep reading).
My best finish was a second place. (Thanks, Susan).

The Wichita Adult Literacy Council has the bee as a fundraiser every year. They say that one out of ever four people in our area can't read well enough to read a prescription bottle.
I'm not sure I really believe that.
I don't know one single illiterate person.

My bee days are over.
It all officially came to an end on the fifth round Wednesday when my two partners, Susan Knowles and Jessica Langdon, and I screwed up "Bezoar."
Can't remember exactly how we misspelled it, but we did and were punished severely by having to sit there on the front row while the 10 remaining teams fought it out for the championship.

Bezoar?
What in the hell in a bezoar?
Can I phone a friend?

"Hey, Joe Brown, how do you spell bezoar?"
"Yeah, it probably does start with a B."

The regular dictionary definition for bezoar is: "any of various calculi found chiefly in the gastrointestinal organs and formerly believed to possess magical properties"
One medical dictionary calls it "a ball of swallowed foreign material (usually hair or fiber) that collects in the stomach and fails to pass through the intestines."

A magical hairball?
My spelling bee career came to an end because I could not spell a word meaning hairball?

Oh well.
The end was better than the start when Susan and I spelled out and wrote down "Insomnia" in the first round and our good buddy Joe B. misread it.
How the hell can you misread I-n-s-o-m-n-i-a?
I know Joe Brown is not among the 25 percent that cant' read a pill bottle.
Maybe old Joe just had one of those bezoars in his belly that day.

Posted by Nick Gholson at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One year ago, we elected Obama; Did we get it right?

Exactly one year ago today, this great country elected Barack Obama our president.
Nothing against John McCain -- he's a good man.
And nothing against Sarah Palin, whoever she is.
In fact, for many people like me, we didn't cast our vote for Obama.
I really don't know much about him either.

It's just that he had a "D" beside his name instead of an "R."
Having George W. Bush as our leader for eight years was long enough.
Bush is a Republican.
We didn't want another Republican.

So, even though Fox News' "fair and unbalanced" reporting has tried to tear down Obama and everything he stands for, I am still happy with the way I voted on Nov. 4, 2008.
I might be a little blue dot in a big red state, but that's OK with me.

Am I completely happy with Obama?
No.
He talks a good game, but right now I have to honestly admit the thing I most admire about him is he's not George W. Bush.

I would like to have a president who ---

1, Ends all war. Leave the fighting to MMA and IFL.
(Somebody in Dallas suggested I take a short cut on the George Bush Turnpike and I told them "No, thanks, I might wind up in Iraq.")

2. Balances our budget. No more bailouts, please.

3. Explores and finds an alternative energy source. We have been talking about this since Jimmy Carter.

4. Stays out of other countries' business. We have enough problems of our own.

If Obama and a Democratic Congress can't get any of that done, I just might vote for somebody else come Nov. 6, 2012.
Heck, who knows, I might run myself.

Posted by Nick Gholson at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)