The Skyline Newspaper

Cartoon by Jon Smith

Seeking To Get Well Soon, Tomorrow I May Not Be Sick

Steve Lang
News And Publications

Why am I so soft in the middle/when the rest of my life is so hard?" -- Paul Simon

Son Zebu used a comment from a past column to inquire about my health:

"What the &%*'s wrong with you, Stuart?"

Despite recent hospitalization, emergency room care, two ambulance rides, angiograms, electrocardiograms and home recovery, I resisted the temptation to re-run an eight-year-old column. I feared this might place a sense of permanence to my yet-to-be-diagnosed condition.

No, I'm not talking about insanity: I hope I am sufficiently crazy to avoid that.

No, I do not plan to turn extended medical leave into early retirement due to disability. Financially, I could retire tomorrow as long as I did not live past next Wednesday. I have no desire to neither disappoint my creditors nor decrease Lotto Texas ticket sales.

Yes, I heartily support the statement that when one has health, one has just about everything, healthier bank balance included. On the bright side, several weeks of assorted procedures of electric monitoring, nuclear medicating, poking, probing and pricking have thankfully indicated I not only have a heart, but it appears sound.

X-rays of my skull -- as was noted of the late Dizzy Dean -- revealed nothing. However, I continue to orbit a parallel universe and stay in touch with reality as long as permanent residence is not required.

My skin, though, has acquired the many and various hues of some of my loudest ties due to the poking and prodding.

Of all the medical terms, the most universal and easily understood remains, "this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me."

Reference may be made to shots, blood samples, diet, medical bills and/or all of the above.

I still maintain that pain is inevitable, misery an option, and seeking sympathy for suffering should be found only in the dictionary between a common term for manure and a venereal disease.

I anxiously anticipate my return to work. Getting back into harness will relieve some of the burden on my co-workers and dissipate the agony of constant contact with me that Clarissa has endured.

Care-giving remains a valid credential for sainthood. Clarissa made sure I followed medical directives. She curbed any over-zealous and usually bird-brained activity with quick yanks of a short leash. In the midst of my recuperation, she was stricken with the flu, a four-to-five-day ordeal that reinvigorated independence, ie: "you're on your own, dude."

Near the end of her bout, we stared at each other across the dinner table. Ignoring the sweating, coughing, rasping, feverish, exhausted conditions, we raised our glasses in dogged determination:

"To our health," we simultaneously groaned.

Steve Lang now obeys the command "Sit!" more readily than his dog.

A picture is worth a thousand words (but someone else is saying them)

By David Johnson
Skyline Contributor

The Internet has been around for a while, bringing joy, information and porn into our lives (but mainly porn).

For a long time, the Internet was its own world, completely divorced from a person's personal life, and many people took advantage of the opportunity to be anonymous, free from meaningful consequences. Many people still do.

But the advent of high speed Internet connections, cheap digital cameras, and social networking sites brought about a change in what the Internet was and how it worked, especially its consequences as the Internet was made an extension of a person's real, physical life. The divorce ended and the world was remade.

It's a brave new one we live in today, one that requires much cowardice. Drunk pictures of you at a party are no longer the stuff of wallets, clothes drawers, or scrapbooks; they are property of the public.

What you, your friends, or that dude standing in the corner with a camera put on the Internet is effectively no longer your own, and you can do nothing to ensure its protection or prevent its dissemination. With all the resources and threat of legal action behind it, the Recording Industry Association of America can't stop music from spreading. What chance have you?

Photobuckets get hacked, MySpace accounts phished, deleted YouTube videos saved. Sometimes the same username is used at a discussion forum as a social networking site, and others can show your family and friends things you've said and never intended for their eyes to read. And there's almost nothing you can do about it.

Not that this is unfair. Just the opposite, it's completely fair. Complaining about your job in a blog only to have your boss come along and read it is the very definition of accountability. It's not a bad thing for your friends, employers, and family to know the sordid underbelly of your social and sexual life. The things themselves may be quite bad, but so long as they're true, people's lives being more transparent and open to scrutiny isn't a problem.

When you tell your best friend a secret, you're accepting the risk they'll eventually tell someone else. Why wouldn't you expect the same from millions of complete strangers?

As I said earlier, the Internet has brought us many things, but as fans of Broadway know, it's actually for one thing.

The Internet is for porn, and while there's already more of it out there than any person could consume in one lifespan, the law of diminishing returns applies to eroticism as well. Increasingly people (and by "people" I mean "men") have to look for even more depraved material to get the same effect. But depravity exhausts itself and arousal plateaus, no matter how many more midgets, donkeys, or bodily fluids you add to the scenario. Instead of depravity, there's a desire for innocence. Instead of paid performers, doing something for a living, there's a preference for amateur normal people.

If you're wondering what all of this has to do with the previous topic of accountability, here it is: that naked picture of yourself in the bathroom mirror you took with your cell phone is on the Internet, or soon will be.

How did they get it? Maybe someone got into your image hosting account because of a glitch or you didn't protect it with a password, maybe the person you sent the picture to decided to send it to someone else (like after a break-up). Maybe you lost your phone or set it down too long and someone sent the picture to their own cell phone. But now they, and the whole internet, have it.

You probably think by "you" I mean only "women". Ha. It's true, women consume much less porn than men. But here's a newsflash: there are gay guys on the Internet, as well (apparently just not in Iran). They have pictures of you with your boxers down on their computers, saving them for perpetuity because they have needs, too.

These same pictures can be sent to everyone in your top 8 (or whatever the number is), posted on your school's online forum, or affect you in ways you don't even realize, years down the road. Remember, this is all for regular people. The horror stories for public figures would take too long to recount.

It's a brave new world, all right, but we have to live in it and either be very careful and afraid, or have nothing to hide.

TABC Symposium

Nurse John Hughes
Guest Columnist

The first few days of November saw four members of SRSU's Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Coalition headed to Austin for the Sixth Texas College and University Symposium.

Representing Sul Ross were Jessie Gonzales, Ermila Alvarado, Lieutenant Drew Powell and myself.

The Texas Alcoholic and Beverage Commission (TABC), which brings together statewide institutions of higher education to address college underage age and binge drinking, host this event annually. The TABC is responsible for enforcing Texas drinking laws. They work closely with campus and community police to help citizens comply. In addition to enforcement, the TABC supports campaigns that increase public awareness about the adverse physical and mental health affects of alcohol intoxication.

The symposium highlighted various strategies for combating illegal and abusive alcohol consumption. These different approaches seemed to be driven by the institution's enrolled population, physical location, scholastic mission, and student organizations. There was consensus that long held perceptions about college party life helped to propagate a culture of poor choices regarding alcohol usage.

Of the presenters, one university's task force was developed in response to several alcohol related student deaths. This was followed by a faith-based institution's prohibitive policies on alcohol.

Regardless of which Lone Star campus students tread, a number of facts are worth remembering. The decision to partake of brew or spirits can be challenging for young adults seeking social acceptance among their peers.
Individuals 18 years old and under will reach the legal drinking age soon enough. When they do, they should avoid the potentially deadly 21 drinks in one setting. To learn more about this mindless practice, go to www.brad21.org.

Students who can purchase alcoholic beverages legally are reminded that providing alcohol to underage persons is unlawful and subject to severe penalty. True friends honor abstinence and the law. Drinking responsibly is more than the fine print at the bottom of a liquor advertisement, it's respect for self and others.

Re: Texas statistics

I read your "State" of Texas article and all of its statistics and am trying to figure out the point in taking up the space to print this type "article." The stats are quite alarming when first viewed. Then, as a college educated man (in the 27% group-SR '72) I thought I would peruse over the stats and see which ones were skewed a bit and there are many.

There were several stats in the "poverty" area that are questionable. There are argumentative differences between living "in" poverty as opposed to earning a living "below" the poverty line. I will also state that living below the poverty line in the United States or Texas is a tad bit different than living in poverty in, let's say, Somalia where the annual income is $600. Or just take Africa as a whole. There's 54 countries in Africa (learned that at Sul Ross while taking African Gov't) with 40 of them having an average income BELOW $5,400 with at least HALF of them below $1,500 a year. The people in Somalis wonder where their next piece of bread will come from while our "poor people" here wonder why they only have basic cable and not HBO.

Next comes under the heading of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Take the following categories:

• Percentage of women who visit the dentist yearly, women's voter turnout, % of age 18+ women who get pap smears, all leading categories in the nation. They should've added a new category, % of irresponsible Women. Come on girls, you could knock this out in one day. Just make Election Day the SAME day you see the dentist AND your OBGYN and you only miss one day of work.
• Percentage of Children Immunized....Parents where are you?
• Percentage of adults 25+ with college degrees (26%) By the way, that's the national average and Texas ranks 2nd as having the MOST college graduates (in numbers).
• Currently 5% of workers make $6.15 an hour. That means 95% make more than that. I'm wondering, of those 5%, how many are in school?
• 17.6% of the people in Texas DO NOT live in poverty. They EARN under the described poverty level. There is a difference. (See African Gov't notes above)
• Texas ranks VERY high (1st (white), 5th (black), 9th (hispanic) when education is compared to "similar" families.
• Over the last ten years, the population of Texas students who lack English fluency has grown by 48 percent ( Texas Education Agency ). Hmm. Wonder what's causing that?

You can eliminate all those stats in that article and hone in on the failing of the Texas education system, and the tolerance of allowing illegal immigration. Look at that last stat....48% lack English fluency. Tell your next friendly illegal immigrant, "Bud, you'll not get a good paying job if you can't speak English, it's as simple as that." Want proof?

Let's look at the counties that border Mexico. (I'm just the messenger).These counties (with two exceptions; Brewster & Terrell) experience an unemployment rate TWICE the national average with Maverick, Starr, Zavala and Presidio counties all weighing in at over 10%. Poverty level? The national average is just above 16% the Texas border counties average....28%. Yep, more than 75% ABOVE the national average. The same goes for High School and Higher Education graduation rates, the numbers plummet when dealing with border counties.

Midland County has 80% High School graduates (167 miles from Alpine), Starr county has 34.9%, Maverick 40% and Presidio 44% and none even approach HALF the national average of College graduates (26%). Why eliminate Brewster and Terrell counties....Oh Yeah, Institution of Higher Learning; Sul Ross State University. Brewster, sports a 79% H.S. graduation rate and a 27% college graduate rate.

Education is the key. Keep changing your signs to Spanish, keep teaching kids Spanish and not teach the Latino kids English and YOU are contributing, no, INSISTING on a life of mediocrity and sustained poverty. Don't believe me? Steve Murdoch, the official Texas state demographer states on the www.investintexasschools.org web site that if Texas continues on its current path that within in the next 30 years the GREAT STATE of TEXAS will have a:

• 40% increase in the poverty rate
• 50% increase in people on welfare
• 54.3% increase in prison population
• $6.3 billion increase in elementary-secondary costs
• $840 million increase in higher education costs

Yeah, but everybody'll be able to speak Spanish. I don't care if Texas is first in Tornado deaths or floods. What is it Congressman Uresti is going to about that? You need to either run or buy a boat. Problem solved.

Many of the statistics that you see on that skewed list are solvable by insisting people a) learn to speak English and b) get an education. The more education you get the better job you'll have. The better job you have the more pay you get. Neat, huh?

If I move to Italy do you believe more opportunities for employment would open up if I SPOKE THE NATIVE LANGUAGE? I believe so. Besides, I've been to Italy and they don't have PRESS ONE FOR ITALIAN, PRESS TWO FOR ENGLISH.

Now you advised to contact one of the listed representatives. It seems to me that if they've been in Congress allowing these stats to pile up then you would want to contact them to tell them you wouldn't be voting for them again unless they stop trying to pass these "gimme, gimme" programs and start fixing the education system. Oh yeah, let the government fix the problem, they're so good at fixing everything else. Better jump in yourself..........soon.

Randy Wilson, Class of '72