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The following list of rules apply to each person as they enter Texas.
Know them and learn them.

1. Pull your droopy pants up. You look like an idiot.

2. Let's get this straight, it's called a 'gravel road'. I drive a pickup truck because I need to. No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.

3. We have pigs, cattle, and oil wells -- that's what they smell like to you. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don't like it? I-20 and I-10 go east and west, I-35 goes north and south. Pick one.

4. So you have a sixty-thousand dollar car. We're real impressed. We have quarter-million dollar cotton strippers that we drive three weeks a year.

5. So every person in every pickup waves. It's called being friendly. Try to understand the concept.

6. We all started hunting and fishing when we were nine years old. Yeah, we saw "Bambi," too. We got over it.

7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of doves are coming in, we will shoot it out of your hand. You better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time.

8. Yeah, we eat catfish, and crawdads. You really want sushi and caviar? It's available at the corner bait shop.

9. The "Opener" refers to the first day of deer season. It's a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.

10. Any references to "corn fed" when talking about our women will get you jack-slapped, by our women.

11. We open doors for women. That applies to everyone regardless of age.

12. No, there's no "Vegetarian Special" on the menu. Order steak. Order it rare. Or, you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the two pounds of ham and turkey.

13. When we fill out a table there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices -- salt, pepper, and hot sauce.

14. You bring "Coke" into my house it better be brown, wet, served over ice and plenty of it! You bring "Hooch" into my house it better have 4 legs, a tail, and have a nose for quail, dove, duck, teal, or pheasant. You bring Mary Jane" to my house she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.

15. Yeah, we have sweet tea. It comes in a glass with two packets of sugar, some lemon, and a long spoon.

16. High School Football is as important here as the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.

17. Yeah, we have golf courses. Don't hit into the water hazards -- it spooks the fish.

18. Colleges? Try Texas Tech (this originally said Texas A&M, but I had to change it cause we all know who won the game this weekend!). They come outta there with an education and a love for God and Country, and they still wave at passing motorists when they come home for the holidays.

19. We have more Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force than any other state, so, "Don't Mess With Texas". If you do it will get your caboose kicked by the best!

20. Texas is the only state in the Union that has the Contitutional right to maintain its own navy and army and can and does legally fly it's flag at the same
height as the "Stars and Stripes."

21. Our military is only used as a back up. Per capita, each man, woman, and child owns at least two firearms and has taken a NRA Certified Shooter Education Course.

22. Also, remember what Governor Sam Houston once said:

"Texas can make it without the United States, but the United States can't make it without Texas."

"The Ant & The Grasshopper"

CLASSIC VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit, the Frog, appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house, where the news stations film the group singing "We Shall Overcome."

Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share".

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary Clinton gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once-peaceful neighborhood.

"Just a thought to ponder."