The Lone Star State is America’s largest third-world country.

Behold the result of a middle-of-the-night low blood sugar episode. In my glucose-starved delirium I bought a complete set of Greek olive tapenades from Tassos.com and then wasted an hour fantasizing about how many fluffy home-made biscuits will be required to consume the contents of each jar.

I also placed a substantial order yesterday for a variety of Russell Stover’s outstanding sugar-free chocolates, mostly marshmallows, assorted buttercreams, little round caramel thingies and a bag of damn good knockoff York peppermint patties. I’m hoping, of course, that Russell Stover has the good sense to use well-insulated packaging at this time of year or I’ll end up with a carton of expensive brown soup. I wonder which puddle I’d want to eat first.

And now ... some breaking news from the Lone Star State, America’s largest third-world country. Apparently the oil and natural gas boom here has produced some unexpected results. Not only has fracking depleted the state’s dwindling water supply (see yesterday’s post), the oversized vehicles used by energy companies have destroyed our highways. And, since the Einsteins in Austin haven’t appropriated any money for repairs, they’re replacing more than 80 miles of major paved roadways with gravel.

That’s right, people ... GRAVEL ROADS.

On August 19 the Texas Department of Transportation began converting more than 80 miles of paved highways to gravel with a reduced posted speed limit of 30 m.p.h. The funds required for repaving won’t be available until sometime in 2014 providing our elected teabillies in Austin decide to approve a $1 billion appropriation. I won’t hold my breath in the meantime.

Texas is such an embarrassment I want to whack Rick Perry with my cane until he’s unconscious. Except I doubt that anybody would even notice.

This might be an excellent time for an afternoon nap since Sam is on his way to work and I can’t think of anything else to write about. Thank you for reading this!