Bang, bang

Bang, bang: Buzz had a couple of items to blather about this week. One was about Texas game wardens busting North Texas fishmongers and restaurants for illegally selling game fish. Eh, whatever. We had something else about whether that Woodall-Rogers park the city is thinking about will extend to Ray Hunt's new headquarters. Of course it will. Yawn.

Then Vice President Dick Cheney shot a man and not--surprise, surprise--just to watch him die. Ohboyohboyohboy. Plus, Buzz's birthday was this week. Thanks, God, for the nifty gift! So, aaaanyway, even though Buzz is suppose to crack wise about local stuff, and even though every conceivable joke has probably already been made, we're going to treat ourselves to a few Cheney jibes. Buzz has studiously avoided any comedy programs, so if we're repeating something you've heard, well, great minds think alike. (So do small ones.) Here goes:

In fairness to Cheney, we understand last weekend's shooting of lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting trip at a South Texas ranch was the first time Cheney ever unintentionally shot a man. Those other four times on that private island off Costa Rica don't count. He paid the owner good money to hunt those hoboes. (Bud-a-bump-bump.)

Fortunately, Whittington was hit with birdshot, so he's recovering. His more serious injury was windburn from the ride into Corpus Christi, tied to the front fender of the veep's limousine. Cheney, of course, didn't mean to shoot Whittington. He thought the man who strayed into his line of fire was one of the servants. (Bud-a-bump-bump.)

There's probably no truth to the rumor that since the weekend the National Security Agency and CIA have found evidence tying Whittington, a prominent Austin lawyer, to Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Probably. (Bud-a-bump-bump.)

Cheney aides deny that the veep found the whole incident "exhilarating" or that he now wishes he had blown off those "other priorities" and served in the military in Vietnam, where he could have wasted some Charlies. (Bud-a-bump-bump.)

One silver lining in all this is that the accident pointed up the need for better medical facilities in deep South Texas. Halliburton has already been awarded a no-bid $1.2 billion contract to build a four-bed minor-emergency clinic outside Sarita. --Patrick Williams