Coyote Mercury

This Blog Has Moved

2006-01-14T06:58:00.000-08:00

As of today, I am blogging at the new Coyote Mercury site. I am leaving this blog up, but have imported all posts and comments into the new blog. Comments are turned off here, but enabled at the new site.

The new URL is: http://www.coyotemercury.com/blog1 for purposes of updating blogrolls.

There is a bloglines subscription button as well for you five who subscribe to this blog.

Thanks and see you at the new blog.

The Pimpin' Post

2006-01-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

Pimp. It's an interesting word that one hears quite often especially around high school students. Of course, they don’t use it to mean "a man who manages women in prostitution, often street prostitution, in order to profit from their earnings"(wikipedia). It’s generally used as a compliment as in: "Mr. Brush is cool. He’s a pimp." There’s no implication here that I might be managing the business of prostitutes. I’m just a cool guy.

Interestingly it can also be used as an adjective as in "Did you see his pimp ride?" or "That ride was pimpin’." Both statements essentially mean that he had a cool car.

The most fascinating use that I’ve heard is when it’s used as an adverb as in: "Did you check out his pimp tite ride?" Here, 'pimp' is the adverb modifying the adjective 'tite' ('tite' of course means really cool. One might even say as cool as a pimp).

Most adjectives can be adverbed just by taking the advice of "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here" and adding an '–ly.' Unfortunately, this approach would turn the adjective ‘pimp’ into potential adverb ‘pimply’. That would never do.

No pimp should ever be pimply. A potentially pimply pimp wouldn’t ever be pimp much less a pimp pimp even if the pimply pimp was pimping pimply and had a pimp tite ride such as a pimpmobile. The pimply pimp probably would receive a pimp-slapping by a real pimpin’ pimp who can pimp properly without being pimply. (One hopes our pimply pimp wouldn't be tied to the pimping post.)

by Professor Truth J Brushefeller

Moving

2006-01-12T03:48:00.000-08:00

Despite the lack of posts this week, I've actually been blogging. I'm in the process of building a new home for this blog. Ever since I first dipped my toe in the waters of the ‘net and began experimenting with building sites, I’ve owned the www.coyotemercury.com domain and have hosted it on Yahoo! I never did much with it and basically forgot about it, using it only as a repository for old stories and such. Recently, though, I learned that Yahoo! had partnered with both Moveable Type and WordPress, the end result being that users can for no extra charge run a blog on Yahoo! using either (or both) platforms.

This sounded good since I was already paying for Yahoo! hosting so I experimented with both, but decided to use WordPress. It’s easy, powerful and intuitive. Moveable Type was cool, but I had WordPress figured out much sooner and was happy with the results. I’m using the Gila theme with a lot of my own modifications in the CSS. I also decided to use WordPress to power the main site and since it has this cool feature that allows you to make static pages it was perfect. I had to make a whole bunch of modifications to the static page layout to develop a look that makes the blog seem to be part of the site rather than everything being parts of the blog.

WordPress also has a feature that allows one to import all posts and comments from Blogger. I’ll do that when I’m finished tweaking my layout and then I’ll start posting there. Until then, I’m still on Blogger, and I'll post something to announce the switch in the coming days.

For updating blogrolls, the new URL will be http://www.coyotemercury.com/blog1

Tagged: blogging

Weekend Hound Report: Football and Other Adventures

2006-01-09T17:55:00.000-08:00

Readers of my previous post will be aware that though the week may begin on a Sunday or a Monday depending on one’s language and location, Monday is never part of the weekend, and yet, a Weekend Hound Report. Just a little temporal paradox to enrich your experience.

The hounds had an interesting week. Some friends came over for the UT game, and as Vince Young charged into the end zone to seal the game, much celebration ensued. Quite terrifying.

The hounds leapt from the sofa and ran into the ~~cave in the back of the house~~ study to hide from the crazed apes who were beating their hands together, screaming and generally whooping it up. Morrison sauntered off into another room with his tail fluffed out like a bottle brush. When the humans settled down, he walked in to check on the dogs. He found Phoebe (the sixty-five pound greyhound) huddled in a corner so he naturally hissed at her, which caused her to tremble and cry in terror until my wife rescued her. Morrison (the seventeen-pound cat) was sent to time out. He must have been pulling for USC.

On Saturday, we went to visit some friends who just bought a house on the north shore of Lake Travis. They invited the hounds so we all cruised out through the hills to Lago Vista. This time it was Daphne's turn to be afraid. She loves our friends when they come to our house. The drive was too much, though, and she spent the evening sleeping and recovering in a corner of the bathroom.

Phoebe loved the whole adventure. This was the first time she’d met these friends and she was very into them. It seems like each day, Phoebe comes out more and more, becoming more adventurous, more of a dog. Daphne is also coming out, but her progress is measured in years.

***

Want to save a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

It Really Is 2006

2006-01-07T05:51:00.000-08:00

I’ve read about the danger posed by bloggers to the interests and bottom lines of major corporations, and it is with that in mind that I must freely and happily retract something I recently posted.

On Tuesday, January 6, 2006 I wrote a post entitled Groundhog Year that suggested a product created through the hard work and dedication of the many workers and executives at a big corporate calendar company might be defective. In fact, I am the defective. I did not realize that the calendar was manufactured in Europe, where the week begins, sensibly enough, on the first day of the week – Monday. Wikipedia explains:

According to ISO 8601, the week begins on a Monday. This agrees with the term weekend for Saturday and Sunday. But this differs from the numerical weekday order used in medieval Latin churches, who numbered the first through sixth days of the week (Sunday through Friday). Similarly, weeks now exist in two varieties. The traditional Sunday-first system is used by some English speakers and much of Latin America, while most of continental Europe uses the ISO order. The ISO 8601 order has the potential for confusion with speakers of Church Latin, Portuguese, and Hebrew as in these languages the names for days from Sunday through Friday are numberings out of synchrony with this standard; "Sunday" is "first day," "Monday" is "second day," etc.

Not being a speaker of Church Latin, Portuguese or Hebrew, I can only blame my American upbringing and tired eyes since I saw the dates, but did not notice the days at the top of the columns, thus I thought the dates were for 2005.

I humbly and freely apologize for any unintentional damage I may have inadvertently caused the global calendar industry. I apologize for careers ruined, jobs lost, and any dips in stock prices that may have occurred as a result of the lack of editorial oversight at Coyote Mercury.

I know now that we bloggers must watch our words carefully and do our collective duty to police ourselves to help protect big defenseless corporations from the outrageous excesses and self-interested machinations of the little guy.

Perhaps posts that have the potential for confusion and combativeness ought not to be written on Tiw’s day.

In all honesty, it’s a great calendar of the ISO 8601 compliant Gregorian variety full of Ernest Shepard’s Winnie-the Pooh illustrations.

Tagged: blogging, general

Playing with Ideas in Sophie's World

2006-01-06T03:58:00.000-08:00

Football elation can’t last forever, so this blog now returns to its usual grey for a post about a book. (Perhaps we’ll try yellow when Lance wins his next Tour de France.)

When I taught high school debate I always wished I had a book to share with my students that would provide a fun and easy introduction to philosophy and that would hold the interest of kids ranging from freshmen to seniors. Apparently, a Norwegian high school philosophy teacher named Jostein Gaarder thought the same thing, so he wrote Sophie's World.

This has been on my bookshelf for several years (so, as my wife points out, I did have it while I was teaching debate) but I’ve only just now found the time to read it, and I loved it! The book tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl who begins receiving cryptic letters in her mailbox. She soon finds herself enrolled in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher.

Gaarder does an excellent job presenting the history of human thought about existence from the early myths to philosophy to modern science in a whimsical and good-natured mystery wherein Sophie’s philosophy lessons become the clues to solving the mysteries in her own life. The story takes strange twists and turns that mirror the thinking of the various philosophers Sophie studies and ultimately each turn provides some kind of contextual example of the ideas Gaarder is trying to illuminate.

It’s clear Gaarder has a specific audience in mind – young people being introduced to philosophy – but I think even one well educated in philosophy would enjoy this simply because Gaarder manages to capture the wonder and thrill of learning for the first time about big ideas that sadly gets beaten out of so many of us. The book is never pedantic, always charming, and provides many jumping off points for thought-games and other mental excursions into the nature of both storytelling and reality itself. Sophie’s World never takes itself too seriously and reminds the reader just how much fun it can be to play with ideas.

Tagged: books, reviews

Bringing It Back to Austin, Baby

2006-01-05T04:57:00.000-08:00

41-38. Still happily blogging in burnt orange today.

I had so much adrenaline going after the game it was hard to go to sleep. Amazing. Wow. Unreal.

Vince Young is such an exciting player to watch - I don't think he ever doubted he was going to pull it off, and of course he did just like he always does. He's even more fun to watch than Applewhite was.

It's been great watching the Horns exorcise their demons this year: top ten teams (Ohio State, Texas Tech), Oklahoma, The Big XII Championship, scares against OSU and A&M. Mack and the coaching staff have done amazing things despite a few mistakes in previous seasons, and Vince Young has led this team as I've never seen any other player do before.

Only nine more months until the next game. Can't wait.

Hook 'em.

Tagged: austin

Hook 'em Horns

2006-01-04T04:09:00.000-08:00

The Austin American-Statesman's Kirk Bohls is predicting Texas 48-44. He says someone has to beat USC someday, why not the Longhorns tonight? Sounds good to me.

This blog is wearing burnt orange today (and hopefully tomorrow) in support of the Texas Longhorns football team.

The CSS code is #CC6633 for anyone who wants to blog in the orange as well.

Hook'em!

Tagged: austin

Groundhog Year

2006-01-03T04:32:00.000-08:00

I glanced up at a new calendar yesterday in order to date a check and saw that it was the 3rd. That's odd, I thought, tomorrow is the third. I checked against another calendar and saw to my surprise that my 2006 calendar has 2005 dates.

I wonder if this means I have unfinished business or an incomplete '05 resolution. Either way, I guess I'm living in the past. At least until I exchange the calendar.

Jazz, Photography, and Playing with Light

2006-01-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

Jazz and photography are probably my two favorite art forms so I was thrilled to receive as a Christmas gift a very cool book from my aunt and uncle: Jazz by Jim Marshall, which is a collection of photographs of great jazz musicians including such giants as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk often captured off-stage in moments when those icons of jazz music were mostly just being themselves, or in some cases, onstage in such a way that you can hear their music coming out of the image, such as with the breathtaking image of Monk that graces the cover or the image of Ray Charles silhouetted on a bass drum. The book has little text and is mostly just beautiful photography and captivating images of some of the most important and influential musicians taken between the 50s and the 80s.

As I enjoyed the book, I couldn't help but think about the Ansel Adams exhibit that I had just seen a few days previously. Something that I read on the display card next to "Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico" stuck in my mind. It mentioned that several prints had been made by Adams and there were variations in the way he had chosen to do it each time, bringing out certain nuances here, obscuring details there.

When I got home, I looked up the section of his book Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs that details "Moonrise." Adams wrote, "The printed image has varied over the years; I have sought more intensity of light and richness of values as time goes on." This fascinated me since I always assumed that he just made one print and that was the image as it would be.

I've spent many hours in darkrooms trying to acheive an ideal print of some particular negative, but I usually threw away the prints that I didn't think were perfect (well, okay, as good as I could do) because it never occurred to me then to have different versions.

Staring at the images in Marshall's book and thinking about the subject matter, I remembered an analogy between photography and music that Adams, who was a classically trained pianist, had made in which he said the negative was like the score and the printing was the performance. This approach to photography goes nicely with the improvisational nature of jazz.

A photographer may spend hours in the field or perhaps just seconds composing a particular image, essentially writing sheet music in light, but the work isn't finished until it's performed. The image is then performed in the darkroom and depending on the filters and settings and quality of the chemicals and paper, the photographer takes the initial composition and improvises with it to create something of the moment. A year later, the same negative and same photographer might produce a very different image. Or perhaps exactly the same one.

I really like this idea that there doesn't have to be one correct version, that there can be many, each existing momentarily like a saxophone solo that changes from night to night, each time sounding new and timely, but also part of something recognizable. And each of those slightly varying solos or images when taken as a whole might tell a fascinating story about the person who made them. It's this active, living-in-the-moment aspect of these two forms that I so enjoy and admire.

All of this makes Jazz a great book for lovers of jazz or photography to get lost in while listening, perhaps, to Monk work the keys.

Tagged: books, music, photography, reviews

Another Weekend Hound Report: One More Hike

2006-01-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

Wanting to start the new year off with a clean slate of sorts, we decided that yesterday would be the day to scatter Zephyr's ashes. She loved hiking with me more than anything else, and I always knew that when she died, I'd take her for one last hike. So off we went to a trail along a nearby river that we've hiked many times.

Yesterday's weather was beautiful, sunny with a slight breeze, probably upper 70s. We walked through the cedar forest until we came to a place where the trail takes a westward bend on a bluff overlooking the river. That's where we left her. It's a beautiful spot and a place where we often stop to rest.

Whenever I think of her, I think of summer hikes along narrow hill country streams where she used to bite the water before drinking, the way she strained the leash to chase after squirrels and rabbits, the way she used to constantly turn around to make sure I was still there on the other end of the leash. I miss all that, but I'm not sad, not anymore. In fact I'm smiling from ear-to-ear as I type this.

It's never easy to lose them, but as someone once told me, it gives us the chance to make new friends such as Phoebe, whose middle name is Grace because she sort of became the saving grace of 2005 when we realized how badly Daphne needed another dog.

***

Want to save a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

The Last Post of 2005

2005-12-31T14:23:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year.

Cheers.

Tagged: general

Weekend Hound Report: Phriendly Phoebe

2005-12-30T13:40:00.000-08:00

The unexpected seems to have occurred. Phoebe, it turns out, is not afraid of people. As mentioned in last week's Very Special Weekend Hound & Cat Report, Phoebe was a mass of tail-wagging excitement for the road trip, and she seemed to really enjoy the company of all the new bipedal apes she met. By my estimate, she was introduced to fifteen new people over the weekend and wasn't afraid of any of them. In fact whenever someone would leave and then return a few hours later, she was thrilled to see them again. When we got her, we were told she was a spook, but she seems to have gotten over that and is now a definite fan of the humans.

On Monday, my mother-in-law followed us back to Austin to hang out with my wife and have her own little vacation for a few days. Phoebe was naturally happy to see her, and greeted her with much tail-wagging and barking each morning. Now, whenever someone comes over, if Phoebe has previously met that person, they get the whole canine welcome routine.

Who'd have thought.

***

Want to save a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Going West with Ansel Adams

2005-12-29T04:55:00.000-08:00

I've always admired Ansel Adams whose crystalline technique and meditative style capture my imagination, so yesterday we finally made it down to the Harry Ransom Center at UT to have a look at the Ansel Adams exhibit that has been running since August and will end on Sunday.

I’ve read several books and spent a great deal of time studying his work, both formally and on my own, and several years ago I got to see a smaller exhibit of his work at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but I was rendered speechless (once again) by seeing his work in person. The images jump off the walls; a few appear three-dimensional, and all invite the viewer to step into the American west.

Adams had the uncanny ability to bring the western landscapes to their fullest life in such a way that some of the places he photographed have seemed smaller and more ordinary when I’ve actually visited them. Perhaps the light hasn’t been right for me or the clouds not cooperating. Either way, the captured light on display at the Ransom Center is perfect and provides a wonderful way to visit some of these important American places in a couple of hours.

My favorite stop was Hernandez, New Mexico. I’ve seen (in books and online) and read about "Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico" many times, but seeing it in person was staggering. The level of detail that emerges upon close inspection of that particular image is something I’ll never forget. The little graves illuminated by the sun that set behind him just after taking the image stand out so clearly that with my eyes close to the glass, I felt that I was looking at a picture of graves until I remembered to stand back and take in the whole incredible scene.

With over two hundred images on display there are many other memorable stops in the wild and open spaces revealed in some of his most famous work such as the images of Half Dome, the White House Ruins at Canyon de Chelly (which I once foolishly tried to imitate with no success when I was there a few years ago), and the famous aspens that stand out so brightly against the rest of the forest as if spotlit by a focused sun.

One of my favorite things about seeing his work in person is the opportunity to stare into the shadows and see the detail that exists whether it is sediment layers in uplifted rock or leaves in a darkened forest. These kinds of details can’t be reproduced in books; one must see the images in person.

The exhibit lasts until Sunday and it’s free, so if you’re in Austin and haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s well worth the time to travel the west with the master himself.

Tagged: austin, general, photography

More Arrogance! More Power!

2005-12-28T17:47:00.000-08:00

I’m not an historian so we’re more in brainstorming and questioning mode than anything else here, but some lingering thoughts about The Arrogance of Power (which I posted about yesterday) come to mind. So here we go.

As a proposed solution to the Southeast Asia question, Fulbright advocated a withdrawal from Vietnam that would have allowed the US to better protect its interests elsewhere while demonstrating that it can be magnanimous as only a great nation can be. We’ll never know if his plan for withdrawal from Vietnam would have worked, but it doesn’t seem that cutting our losses in 1966 would have produced a far different outcome.

I’m not convinced that this is the appropriate solution in Iraq, and this is where the Iraq-Vietnam similarities seem to fall apart because to withdraw from Iraq and leave a power vacuum at this point could actually impact our national security in ways that withdrawing from Vietnam in 1966 would not have.

Our conundrum, of course, is that everyone wants Iraq to be free and democratic while Saddam Hussein pays for his hideous crimes. That's a good thing, but the problem for me is that a nation’s first responsibility ought to be to its own people, so I’m inclined to agree with Fulbright that by ensuring that our own house is in order first, we become a stronger force for peace and change in the world.

Fulbright quotes John Quincy Adams saying that, "America should be 'the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all' but 'the champion and vindicator only of her own'" and suggests that this kind of policy is the way to avoid the traps that come with the arrogance of power. Cold as it may sound, a nation’s first duty is to its people and our people were not served by invading Iraq or even Vietnam for that matter.

Invariably, the favorite question comes: What about World War II? Should we have stayed on the sidelines while so many suffered? My answer is at first no, but then it seems like a false comparison because in that case the threat to our freedom and security was real, it was not a unilateral intervention, and we came to the aid of our allies who were fighting for their lives in Europe. In the case of the Pacific, we properly responded to a direct attack.

This leads to another question: Did we intervene in World War II to stop the holocaust? I don’t think we did, in which case it seems inappropriate to say we were justified in intervening to end the holocaust unless you accept that the end result justifies the original argument whatever it might have been. A strange assertion since we can’t know how things will end. I do think that it would have been an acceptable reason to intervene, but how many Americans would have signed up for that? Does this mean that any humanitarian intervention will require lies and misdirection to get Americans to go along and give up our comfortable lives?

Naturally another question arises: How do we decide where we intervene? Intervening for humanitarian reasons in some places while looking the other way in others is very problematic for me. It’s like sparing some people on death row but not everyone.

So do we intervene only when the people being oppressed have oil? Do they have to be of a certain religious or ethnic group? Do we only intervene when we think the oppressors are weak? How should this be calculated and what should we sacrifice in terms of creating the best possible life for our own citizens?

I don’t support an isolationist foreign policy, but I can’t for the life of me see why we have to have a finger in every pie either. It feels like we’re caught in a vicious circle whereby we maintain a forceful presence overseas to protect our liberty, safety, and way of life which are threatened by people who are angry that we maintain a forceful presence overseas.

There has to be a place in the middle there somewhere between endless wars fought on the whims of questionable leadership and total disengagement from the world and its concerns.

Tagged: books, politics

The Arrogance of Power

2005-12-27T18:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve just finished reading The Arrogance of Power by Senator J William Fulbright, which is at once both timely and dated. Written in 1966, it is first and foremost a critique of US foreign policy, especially our involvement in Vietnam. In that regard, it’s an interesting look at a variety of ‘what-might-have-been’ options that have since been rendered moot by history.

Where the book is timely is in Fulbright’s treatment of the conflict inherent in the dual nature of the American character. He describes this dualism along the lines of humanitarian vs. puritanical, which lately seems to have been simplified to the level of team colors - blue vs. red - now that radical Islam has replaced communism as the core threat to the nation. Of course the extremity of the 9/11 attacks is vastly different from anything that preceded our involvement in Vietnam, but when one separates (as I think one should) Iraq from 9/11, we can see Iraq as just the sort of Vietnam-style intervention that Fulbright advises against.

The Iraq-Vietnam parallel emerges when we view our involvement in Iraq as a policy based on a reverse domino theory (if Iraq becomes democratic then other middle eastern countries will follow) instigated by the puritanical impulses in our nature, which want to fight evil, spread the word and save the world, by force if necessary. With this in mind, Fulbright’s book becomes an excellent jumping off point for studying a dangerous tendency in our national character that when combined with extreme power creates a self-destructive arrogance that unchecked can lead to ruin.

Fulbright argues that the puritan mindset carries a tendency to allow fear to guide decision-making when dealing with our enemies. This fear, Fulbright argues, is a major factor in our implementation of short-sighted and self-defeating policies such as intervening in foreign nations when our interests might be better served by not intervening, to take my-way-or-the-highway positions, to break our own laws, to violate our standards of conduct, to intimidate our citizens, and refuse to engage in real thought about the roots of the problems we face. In the sixties, it was fear of communism that led to the above problems; today, it is fear of radical Islam. We have much to be afraid of today, but I agree with Fulbright that we should let reason and our laws dictate our policies.

In this regard, I think Fulbright’s book provides contemporary readers with a useful tool for analyzing the mindset that led to our invasion of Iraq, which I think Fulbright would say was a direct result of the arrogance of power that plants "delusions of grandeur in the minds of otherwise sensible people and otherwise sensible nations," causing them to engage in policies where more is bitten off than can be chewed, followed by an unwillingness to recognize mistakes.

Unfortunately, the answer to the Iraq question will not be found in a forty-year-old book. It will require much debate including questions about why we went in; however, the arrogance of our current leadership has led us to a place where debate has been reduced to with-us or against-us divisions in which a significant number of Americans have bought the line - the myth - that might makes right and that dissent is somehow unpatriotic when in fact it is, as Fulbright correctly asserts, the highest patriotism.

As Fulbright tried to remind Americans in 1966, we can change polices and directions but only if we see clearly the ways in which flawed polices contribute to and exacerbate our problems. Unfortunately too many of us, so hurt by 9/11 and carrying a hope that our service men and women will not have died in vain, are unwilling even to consider the possibility that we aren’t always right in our actions, that sometimes a great nation such as ours can make terrible errors in judgement and do unspeakable damage when driven by fear rather than reason.

Sometimes a great nation must admit and face its errors and then work realistically to correct them rather than continue them. That ability to see reality for what it is rather than what we want it to be is one of the few things that can save a nation from its own sense of greatness, allowing its people to understand that they can live peacefully and play a part in lifting up mankind by not trying to forcefully remake the world in their image. This would take great humility of the kind that Fulbright advocates and that George Bush promised back in 2000 but never delivered.

Perhaps, Fulbright suggests to those readers of the mid-60s, it is time to listen to the humanitarian side of the American character and vigorously question the ideas and policies advocated by our puritanical half. In this regard, I think he is still correct and The Arrogance of Power still very timely.

Tagged: books, politics, reviews

Butthead

2005-12-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

On the way back from Orange today, traffic stopped on US 290 outside Elgin so that the fire department could put out a grass fire that was burning on both sides of the road. I could see the smoke for several miles as I approached and traffic seemed to be moving through it, but then it stopped. The firefighters must have arrived just as I did because there were only a few vehicles between the fire crews and me so I watched them work the fire and was impressed by how quickly they had the blaze under control.

The thing that got me was that while we were sitting there, I watched the moron in front of me flick two cigarette butts out onto the highway while the firefighters were working. I noticed she was reading a newspaper and perhaps didn't notice the flashing lights, smoke whipping across the highway, and firefighters hosing down the results of some other fool's inability to use an ashtry. Maybe she didn't realize why we were all stopped when she casually flicked not one but two butts out her window. I watched them roll around and smoulder on the asphalt. Fortunately they died before the wind caught them and blew them into the dry grass.

When traffic started up again, I passed her. She was smoking, probably looking for a clean stretch of highway to torch.

Tagged: general

Christmas Day: Here's the Tree

2005-12-25T03:39:00.000-08:00

The suspense is over. Here’s the tree that we haven’t put up since 1997:

Much has changed since then. It’s a different world, and yet the same old tree with some of the same ornaments that Zephyr once chewed up. I was upset when she did it, but now that she's gone, it makes me smile to see her teeth marks on them. It’s added a whole layer of happy memories that dangle from the tree along with the ornaments.

And so amongst decorations, with music playing, food digesting, and A Christmas Story repeating endlessly on the tube, I find myself caught up in the bottom-line (no not that bottom line) magic of this time of year that when stripped of its commercialism, its overindulgence, its manufactured angst and hurry, comes to mean, for me anyway, the acting out of a desire for nothing more than simple peace and happiness, which I think is probably what most people really want. Let it be so.

Merry Christmas.

Tagged: general

One Day till Christmas: A Very Special Weekend Hound & Cat Report: Taking the Show on the Road

2005-12-24T03:38:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure it’s that special, but I always wanted to do a Very Special something along the lines of all the Very Special episodes that certain TV shows run this time of year. I also like the fact that the title of this post double categorizes itself. Is this a Days till Christmas post? Is it a Weekend Hound & Cat Report? Is it just a post with an overlong title involving too many colons? Am I rambling too much on this? Probably, so here it is with – oh, what the hell – a colon:

Because there was no room at the ~~inn~~ kennel and not a single ~~shepard watching his flock by night~~ person we know who felt comfortable giving Morrison his insulin injections, he accompanied us on our journey to visit my wife's family in east Texas. He travels pretty well in the car, and considering there were two large greyhounds and one cat, the trip went uneventfully.

Daphne hid under a pile of blankets. Morrison slept mostly in his cat carrier. Phoebe seemed to have had a good time on the road. This was the first time she'd gone farther than the vet, and she was excited about this opportunity to slay the dragon, destroy the One Ring, learn the ways of The Force, and sit in a car for six hours. The excitement lasted about half-way to Houston and then she just curled up and slept through the rest of the drive.

As we progressed down I-10 and into the Golden Triangle, it was nice to see Christmas lights and other decorations on so many buildings and homes despite the FEMA tarps that still cover most of the roofs. East Teaxs still looks "all tore up" but not as bad as the last time we were here, though, I couldn't believe some of the damage in Port Arthur that we hadn't seen last month since we didn't go that way. Port Arthur was the town where Morrison decided the trip was over and began meowing and singing his Blues of the Lonesome Road. Fortunately, by that point we were almost there.

When we arrived, Phoebe was introduced to this side of the family and they all seem to like her, and more importantly she isn't afraid of them. She's exploring, Daphne is hiding, and Morrison is following my father-in-law around. Hopefully they'll all ~~enjoy~~ tolerate the drive home as well as they did the drive here.

Tomorrow...the tree.

Until then, stop off at Ironicus Maximus to find out if greyhounds really are dogs.

***

Want to save a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Two Days till Christmas: Food & Drink

2005-12-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite holiday things is Celestial Seasoning’s seasonal Gingerbread Spice tea. I always forget about it and then Lo! there it appears like angels on high, stacked neatly on supermarket shelves every year around this time. I’m more a coffee drinker than a tea drinker, but I always expand my hot beverage consumption to include this.

The food that for me most signifies Christmas is Mexican food. This comes from my dad’s side of the family, which was based Arizona. The tradition was that when it was your birthday, you got to pick dinner. My aunt was born on Christmas Eve, and apparently she always wanted tacos. Therefore, tacos on Christmas Eve became a Brush family tradition carried on by my dad to his own family, and it's one I aim to keep. So for me, the traditional food of Christmas is tacos, tamales, enchiladas, quesadillas, chile rellenos, and salsa, a menu I find more exciting than the standard turkey, potatoes and stuffing that I do enjoy (immensely) the next day.

Tamales were added to the menu after we moved to Austin (where Tex-Mex on Christmas Eve isn't that uncommon), and are usually supplied by Curra’s or (this year) Rosie’s where Willie Nelson gets his tamales. Sadly, the Balderas Tamale Factory in Round Rock is no more. They made the best hot pork tamales and often commented on how surprising it was to see "a white boy ordering hot pork."

Well, so far we’ve covered food & drink, movies & TV, music, and decorations. Next up, that holiday tradition: travel.

Tagged: general

Three Days till Christmas: Movies & TV

2005-12-22T04:48:00.000-08:00

The first time I saw A Christmas Story was during the summer after my senior year of high school. It was one of those few films that made me laugh until I was crying and gasping for air. This one works whether it’s Christmas or not because it deals with such a timeless theme: kids want stuff.

I still laugh every time I watch it and since it’s in constant rotation around this time of year, it’s hard not to miss. Sometimes I try to just catch the best parts, but that’s like trying to assemble a best of CD by the Beatles. Can’t be done. Although, I think the whole episode concerning Ralphie’s use of the F-word around his dad ("a master who worked in profanity the way other artists might work in clay") is a priceless bit as is the image of Ralphie sitting there with a bar of soap in his mouth while he hears his buddy take a beating for his crime over the phone. So I watch it every year. Several times.

The other ones I never miss are How the Grinch Stole Christmas because, let’s face it, the Grinch is cool. And of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas because we all need to be reminded from time to time about the importance of selecting the ugly tree. Besides, the scene in which Linus explains to Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about is just fine filmmaking.

Tagged: general, movies

Four Days till Christmas: Music

2005-12-21T03:24:00.000-08:00

The decorations are up, and now it's time to break out those once per year CDs and listen to some Christmas tunes. We have hundreds of CDs, but only four Christmas ones, so here they are:

Jingle Bell Jazz. It came out of the bargain bin years ago, but it really is good jazz with some cool takes on the classic caroles by Duke, Miles, Brubeck, Herbie Hancock and others.
Yule Be Miserable. This one came as a birthday gift a few years back from some friends who know me well. Click here for a good look at the cover. This is a great drunk and passed out in a bar with Santa blues and jazz collection featuring the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, BB King, and Billie Holiday. I look forward to this one every year.
Merry Christmas from Yo La Tengo. This one came from Yo La Tengo's website a few years ago, but doesn't seem to be available any longer. It's three Santa songs that rock. I love Yo La Tengo, and I'd go to their Hannukah shows if I lived in New York.
A Charlie Brown Christmas by Vince Guaraldi. This one is, for me, the sound of the season.

I always look forward to these CDs each year. I suppose I could listen to them at other times than Christmas, but then they probably wouldn't be as fun as they are when I only listen to them for two weeks at the end of the year. Well, the CDs are playing, the decorations are up. What's next? Christmas TV. Yes!

Tagged: general, music

Five Days till Christmas: Decorating

2005-12-20T17:43:00.000-08:00

In order to celebrate the winter holiday of my choice (Christmas) over the next few days, I'll be posting about Christmas and Christmas-related things that I enjoy, starting with decorations.

We usually keep it very simple because we're lazy about such things, but we eventually get it together and do some work just in time to leave it all up for a week or two. We don't decorate excessively since the cat likes to test his gravitational theories by knocking things off tabletops, and the dogs enjoy chewing the tasty Christmas decor. Yes, simplicity is the way of a Brush Christmas.

The tree has been an interesting issue for us. We haven't had one since 1997 when our first dog ate the forbidden fruit from the lower branches of the tree and developed knowledge of the difference between good-to-chew and bad-to-chew. Instead of a regular artificial tree, we've been using these cool wooden trees:

They're simple, set-up and take-down are a breeze, and - I think - fairly hip in their understated way. This year, however, since we now live in a house with a room from which we can exclude the hounds and cat, we've set up a regular tree.

But you have to wait until Christmas to see it. Ha-ha! I can feel the suspense building already.

Tagged: general

Searching Is the Perfect Gift

2005-12-19T17:39:00.000-08:00

I learned about this over the weekend:

Goodsearch is a search engine that donates a portion of its ad revenue to the charity or school of the user's choice. You simply select your favorite charity on the search page, do your search (which is powered by Yahoo!) and eventually the organization that you selected should receive a check. If your favorite isn't listed, I think you can enter it for them.

I'll be searching on behalf of The Periwinkle Foundation, a nonprofit based at Texas Children's Hospital that provides a free summer camp for childhood cancer patients. I've been involved with Periwinkle for 17 years as a counselor and video producer, and I love having the opportunity to help them out every time I search. Hopefully they will soon need buckets to haul all the cash around.

So give it a whirl. Help out your favorite nonprofit or school and let your search be part of your gift.

Tagged: general, web

Weekend Cat Report: King of the Ottoman

2005-12-18T05:23:00.000-08:00

The greyhounds are taking the week off in order to give Morrison a chance to share some of his adventures. He's a twelve year old black-and-white goodboy who is probably more outgoing and gregarious than either of the dogs. He is also in charge.

Last week, we got an ottoman so as to kick up our feet when watching movies, but Morrison quickly realized that what we had actually purchased was a king-size cat bed. The hounds have attempted to turn it into a greyhound bed, but as much as he likes them and will often sleep next to them, he has had to draw a bright line and make his stand here upon the ottoman. So the dogs have been chased off the ottoman and generally reminded with a good hiss about the workings of the heirarchy around here.

After conquering the ottoman and deciding that the couch is better anyway, we all settled in to watch The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, a thriller in which a group of cruel Catholic school boys set out to poison a beautiful panther with narcotics and then frame it for tearing up their teacher's classroom. The film spends too much time detailing the mundane and trivial lives of the twisted cat-hating altar boys and not enough time focusing on their innocent ("Animals are without sin", we are reminded at one point in the film) victim, the majestic cat. Morrison found himself at the point of tears when the cat succumbed to the drugs, but cheering mightily when the cat's friend came to rescue his buddy and engage the cowardly human in combat. The battle scenes were a bit tame and went by too quickly for Morrison's taste, but he loves movies in which justice is done even when the filmmakers attempt to align the audience's symapthies with the bad guys. Hopefully there will be a sequel that focuses on the panthers attempting to put their lives back together.

Tagged: pets

Monument Valley 1/5

2005-12-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

This photograph was taken in Monument Valley, Arizona in 1996:

Tagged: photography

Monument Valley 2/5

2005-12-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Tagged: photography

Monument Valley 3/5

2005-12-17T08:37:00.000-08:00

Tagged: photography

Monument Valley 4/5

2005-12-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

Tagged: photography

Monument Valley 5/5

2005-12-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

Tagged: photography

A Logic Problem

2005-12-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

I remember nonsense like this from the GRE many years ago:

Cat and Dog 2 are both black and white. Dog 1 and Dog 2 like to play and roughhouse. Cat has diabetes and so must have access to food 24/7. Human 1 and Human 2 are gone for large portions of each day. Dog 1 and Dog 2 love to eat Cat's food. Cat also has arthritis so his food must be on the floor so he doesn't have to jump if he doesn't want to. Dog 2 can jump over gates that Cat 1 can walk through. Dog 1 gets free run of the house, but would eat Cat's food if given half a chance. Dog 2 likes to chew on things she shouldn't. Human 1 and Human 2 should...

a) become veterinarians and work out of the house.
b) keep Cat confined in a single room while gone knowing that he probably doesn't care since he sleeps all day anyway.
c) confine all three separately in different parts of the house.
d) write silly logic problems about it.
e) both a and b
f) both b and d
g) b, c and d
h) a, b and c

We're going with 'g' for now.

Tagged: pets

Blogging and Writing

2005-12-16T03:49:00.000-08:00

I've been blogging a little over two months now, and it seems a good time to stop and take stock of this new world that I've joined. One thing I love about the blogosphere is that it's such a dynamic world. This is a world that is changing constantly, moving alongside the static internet and the offline world with its own rules, ideas, insights, opinion-makers and landscape. I feel like I'm part of a vast library that is being written as I type this. It's a library in which the texts are all connected and alive like neurons in a brain. It's also a library in which the small stories of people's lives unfold alongside the big ones that make history, connecting and interacting in fascinating ways, either through posts or blogrolls. When I think about this, I feel lucky to be a part of it, though still a newcomer.

I also enjoy reading the daily posts on my favorite blogs. I love discovering the treasures and unknown musings of some fantastic writers and unknown thinkers, publishing their insights in this most perfect DIY medium. That do-it-yourself aspect is my favorite part. Anyone can publish and find an audience, albeit in most cases a small one. Filmmakers and musicians have been putting their work out independently for years, now writers can as well.

I love knowing that sometimes something I've written has moved a fellow blogger to comment or respond through email. That's a great feeling. As is looking at the site stats and seeing regular readers, known only as familiar strings of IP address numbers, emerge in places where I don't know anyone. For a writer, finding readers is a profound and moving experience. So to you who tune in regularly, thank you. You make my day.

I learn quite a bit by reading things that I wouldn't have found on the static web. I'm learning about life, about writing, about the internet, about HTML and CSS, about politics, about everything.

And writing everyday, I learn about myself too.

That's the best part: Writing on a daily basis again, even when it's just quick posts has been great for me. I generally haven't done it for years. I tended to set aside large blocks of time - a few hours a week, a summer vacation, a weekend day. But I never maintained that all important constant practice that is so essential. It feels like part of me is waking up again and that's a nice feeling. I find myself more motivated than ever to either submit or self-publish that second novel that's sitting on the hard drive, to get past page one of the third one that's half-written in my head and in notes and outlines in my drawer.

And so, running the risk of laying it on a bit thick, I throw some Thoreau that comes to mind whenever I think about embarking on new adventures such as the beginnings of this blog and the start of new projects: "Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

So there it is. This experiment that I started in part as a way to give myself something to think about other than my dog who passed away a few months ago has gone from being just an experiment to being a regular part of my life, somewhere between a hobby and a way to work on my work.

And now, I promise no more blogging about blogging for awhile.

Tagged: blogging, writing

Cyber-Regionalism

2005-12-15T04:14:00.000-08:00

When I used to teach Fahrenheit 451, the classes always got into interesting discussions about the effects of mass culture on local variety. My students found nothing odd about the fact that one can drive from Miami to Seattle and eat in the same highway restaurants and stay in the same motels, all the while listening to the same music that everyone else is enjoying, and if you look at the other travelers in the other cars, most of them, regardless of where their plates say they're from, will be wearing the same clothes from the same stores. One can get this impression from traveling through airports as well. I've often wondered what, if anything, is lost when our whole country develops this kind of paste-pudding sameness (to paraphrase Bradbury).

Many kids found it comforting. I find it disturbing. I like eating different foods, hearing new music and strange accents, but it seems to be quite difficult to find anything uniquely local anymore except in a few places (such as Austin - "Keep Austin Weird") where concerted efforts are made to hold on to what originally made that place unique. If you want to see what some little one-horse town has that makes it special, you have to look pretty hard. Often you'll find relics of what once made it special, but the place will be closed, the event cancelled, the people dead, senile, or moved away.

But then I start thinking about how many of us find our little niches online. How many CDs by obscure low-fi indie rock bands from random cities do I own? I know people from Chicago who've never heard of The Sea and Cake or Tortoise or Sam Prekop. So I start thinking that perhaps regionalism isn't so much dead as perhaps it's moved. Perhaps we still have our regional variety and local culture, but without material landscape. Instead we have sites that we inhabit and with whose denizens we share common interests and concerns be they movies, books, music, politics, religion, philosophy, whatever. It seems oddly comforting to think that we still have our hometowns despite the fact that they've gone digital.

Tagged: general

The Lyin', the Which? and the War Drove Him on Tour

2005-12-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

Marketing is the best way to get people to shell out bucks for inferior goods. Examples abound of products that are heavily marketed but really not worth the investment: Budweiser (not really beer), McDonalds (not really food), the War in Iraq (not really well-managed). It comes as no surprise then that our first-ever CEO president has been engaged in what is, in essence, a marketing tour to support the War in Iraq. Rather than improving the product (competent civilian administration of the military), Bush has instead chosen the cheaper and easier route, which is to change the public's perception so that we will accept his Plan for Victory in Iraq in the same way that we happily buy substandard food and beverages. It seems to be working.

For the past few years, we've willingly consumed bogus and shifting arguments (WMD? 9/11? Democracy? Which was it?) as to why we needed to go into Iraq, so I'm sure it seems logical to administration strategists that we'll probably go for one more attempt (want fries with that?) to justify this mess and show that this time the administration really does have a plan, a strategy, or even a clue. In the real world where accountability matters, people are regularly fired and replaced for mismanagement and incompetence. It's ironic that our MBA president is so unwilling to make these necessary corrections. Instead, the war just drove him out on a marketing tour.

I guess I'm feeling a bit cynical, but I'm not sure we can market our way to victory. Perhaps I should go buy something to make myself feel better.

Tagged: politics

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

2005-12-14T04:51:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, we went to see the latest big fantasy-based-on-literature blockbuster (a genre for which I'm a sucker): The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It's been a few years since I read the book, but I felt the filmmakers did a nice job bringing this story to the screen, which must have been a tricky task. CS Lewis provided great lengths of potential rope for filmmakers to hang themselves: talking animals, Santa Claus, child actors, unicorns. It's all there, potential landmines to raise the audience cringe factor, and yet they pulled it off. Even Santa. It's sometimes cute, but never cutesy.

There has been much made about the politics and religious subtext of this film, but my advice is put that aside and go for the ride because it's quite a ride. If you want a Gospel allegory or a call to destroy evil, it's there for the taking, but it's not so overt that one feels beaten into submission to a message afterwards. First and foremost, this is well-crafted and lovingly-designed entertainment. The battle scenes are exciting and choreographed in the Peter Jackson/Lord of the Rings style that has become the new standard. The sound production at the very start of the big battle is amazing and must be experienced in a theater.

More importantly, though, Director Andrew Adamson does a nice job bringing out the underlying emotions and conflicts within the hearts of his young characters: Peter's desire to fight for a cause; Susan's logical skepticism; Edmund's need for independence from his siblings; Lucy's adventurousness. There are also moments of humor, fear, sadness and horror such as when Aslan upholds his end of the bargain with the White Witch. You know what happens if you've read the book, but it's still terrifying and heartbreaking.

It's a fun movie that gets the story right. If you have read the book, you won't find anything especially new or insightful here, but it's well-worth a trip to the theater and probably a second viewing when it comes out on DVD. I'll be looking forward to the impending string of sequels.

Tagged: movies, reviews

New Template for Coyote Mercury

2005-12-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

I've been playing. Wanting to take my template tinkering to a new level, and because I enjoy fiddling with things, I decided to change the template for my blog, as I'm sure you've by now noticed. The three column template came from Thur's Templates, and was very easy to set up. It took a few hours to insert all the add-ons and hacks I had in my previous template, but now that it's done, I'm happy.

One cool thing about this is that it's very easy to change the colors since Thur's Templates has this in blue, white, and tan in addition to the grey. You just paste in a new CSS section and - Shazam! - a different color.

If things look out of whack with your browser/monitor combination, please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks.

Tagged: blogging

Weekend Hound Report: Staying Warm

2005-12-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

Sweaters arrived just a day late for The Blizzard of 2005... er... The Ice Storm of 05...no wait...The Day It Got Below 20 and Some Bridges and Overpasses Froze of 2005:

For you non-greyhound people out there, we're not trying to humiliate our pups by dressing them up. They have no body fat to insulate themselves and so really do need sweaters when it gets cold, but even without sweaters, nobody froze. Phoebe (in red) revealed herself to be something of a scientist, carefully scratching, licking, sniffing and nosing every patch of ice on the back porch in an effort to determine the meaning of it all.

Daphne (in blue), who is a little less intellectual, displayed her alter-ego "dangerous greyhound" and kept trying to run full-speed across the icy patio and up the frozen stairs to the glass backdoor. Happily no bones were broken, and some cat litter on the steps helped her keep traction.

When the sweaters arrived, they tried them on and even though the weather had warmed considerably, the dogs seemed to enjoy wearing them. I suppose they know when they look good.

By the way, the sweaters came from Classy Canine, and they're great.

***

Want to save a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

It's My Birthday, I'll Blog If I Want To

2005-12-10T07:41:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday so I decided to list a few of the other, more illustrious, Dec. 10ths courtesy of Born Today:

Emily Dickinson
J Mascis
Kenneth Branagh
William Lloyd Garrison
William Plomer
Dorothy Lamour

and somehow left off that list:

Ernest Shepard, who so beautifully illustrated some of my favorite books: Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, and The Wind in the Willows.

Tagged: general

Party Pooping

2005-12-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

After reading Burnt Orange Report's post concerning speculation that Carole Strayhorn might abandon the Republican party (as she once abandoned the Democratic party) to run for Texas governor as an independent, I half-facetiously commented with this:

I like the idea of someone who has officially rejected both parties considering that joining a party seems to be the first step towards political corruption. Perhaps people who join parties ought to be stripped of their right to run for office. We should still let them vote though, I suppose.

Thinking about it a day later, I like the idea even more.

It seems to me that someone who has officially quit both parties isn't as likely to be told what to do by outside interests. I've always felt that people who believe that one party is more or less corrupt than the other are only kidding themselves. The basic problem is that once politicians get entangled in a party, their loyalties shift from their constituents to the party they rely upon for coin. This seems, more often than not, the root of a number of political problems that we see today ranging from the crooked financial dealing being exposed in congress to Bush family cronyism to actions that hover in the gray world between political revenge and treason.

I have no problem when people say that they are liberal, conservative, libertarian (with a lowercase l), moderate, whatever. I am deeply suspicious, though, of anyone who says he or she is a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or anything with a capital letter. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who joins a party is a crook or a traitor, but I do think that people who run as a member of a party have taken the first step on that road.

A local example. In 2003, the Texas GOP, under the influence of Tom DeLay, launched an apparently crooked mid-decade redistricting effort that split my home county of Travis into three districts in an effort to eliminate Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat. Incidentally, this is why DeLay now believes he can't get a fair trial in Austin. Doggett kept his seat, but the effort managed to add several GOP congress-stooges to the US House, all of whom, naturally, owe everything to DeLay and the GOP machine that put them there and very little to the people who actually voted for them.

The most appalling thing, though, was the behavior of several members of the Texas House who went against the interests of their Travis county constituents and voted to spilt Travis County into three congressional districts in such a way that the city of Austin now has no US Congressional representative to call its own. I engaged in a thoughtful and interesting email discussion with my local house member, and the bottom line for him was that he had to stand with his "friends" (Tom DeLay) who had helped elect him. In the 2004 elections, the voters of Travis County wisely threw this guy out.

However, to say that corruption is a Republican problem is a fool's paradise. This is why I won't join a party, and will even support a competent candidate who is loyal to his or her constituents over a disloyal or incompetent one, regardless of either hypothetical politician's party affiliation. I usually vote towards the left and since I live in the real world, I find I usually support Democrats over independents. I hate it, but there it is. Joining a party makes one an enabler, so when voting for either party, I'm hurting the state or the country. Of course, voting for independents seems to help Republicans, which in these times hurts us more. The best situation would be the total and simultaneous collapse of both parties, but that doesn't seem likely.

Ultimately, I don't know who I'll support for Texas Governor except that it won't be Rick Perry. I will also sit out the 2006 primaries so that I can sign Kinky Friedman's petition to be added to the ballot as an independent. At least he's trying. If Strayhorn decides to prove just how tough a grandma she is by going indy, that's even better.

Tagged: politics, texas

Del.icio.usly Tagging My Blog

2005-12-08T03:23:00.000-08:00

After continuing to experiment with categories for organizing blog posts, I broke down and started a del.icio.us account and began to experiment with tags. It didn't take long to get hooked. Then I went back to freshblog's Blogger Hacks and read up on categories using del.icio.us and various other methods. I experimented with this (which was cool but apparently doesn't get picked up by Technorati) and read several other hacks, but ultimately decided I liked the ease of using this method, which relies on this bookmarklet to generate the del.icio.us and Technorati code for my tags.

I then tagged all my old posts (which only took an hour) and will continue tagging in the future. When I get a chance, I'll install the del.icio.us tagroll or some other such tool in the sidebar to make it even easier to navigate.

Though I like the fact that the manual method doesn't rely on an outside service and maintains a consistent feel to using the site, this is so much easier and doesn't require constant re-publishing of old posts. I still wish Blogger would develop a system for internal categories, but for now I will tag. I'll keep the categories link up and may continue to use categories for some of my posts.

In the meantime my tags are here.

Tagged: blogging

Enjoying Arctic Air

2005-12-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

Coming from New England it's hard not to smile when everyone freaks out about the occasional ice storms. I know that most people who aren't used to driving in icy conditions can have problems, and it's been seventeen years since I lived in Rhode Island so I'm sort of one of those people now, but I just don't dread these kinds of fronts. In fact, I love them.

Right now, the sky is a dark, hard gray and the trees are swaying gently back and forth. It's nice to go outside for a few minutes and remember how much I wish for days like this when it's 108 degrees in September. Given the choice between heat and cold, I prefer cold, but my brother makes a good case to the contrary when he points out that one never has to shovel hundreds of pounds of heat out of the driveway. Still, I'll enjoy the cold while it lasts.

So I take it all in. The air - damp and cold - rattles my lungs a bit; the wind bites and stings. At first it doesn't feel too cold, and I wonder what the big deal is (The University of Texas closed at 2:00) but then it works its way in, and I start to really feel it. I love staying out past that point, just starting to shiver, before going in for my coat. I wish it would actually snow or at least ice over enough to shut the city down for a day or two, but that's a bit too much to ask. By Friday I'll probably be wearing shorts again.

Tagged: austin, general

Looking Up

2005-12-06T18:14:00.000-08:00

Last night, I got my telescope out for the first time in years and set it up in the driveway, which gave me a nice view of the Moon slipping below the roof of the house. Low in the sky and in its waxing crescent phase, the Moon looked beautiful to the naked eye. Through the 'scope I just about got lost in the impact craters and mountains thrown into starkest relief by the sun's light raking across its surface. I could have stared at it for hours, slowly tracking the telescope along the terminator, studying each mountain, each crater.

When it finally fell below the roof, I turned the 'scope around to the east to try for a glimpse of the Pleiades, but a street light ruined the view so I'll have to wait until later in the winter (or the night) to catch a better view when it clears the glare. I didn't try for Mars for the same reason, but perhaps if I go to the backyard, I might be able to see it over the house, which might block the accursed light.

Tagged: space, general

The Sky

2005-12-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

We're getting one of those leaden-sky cold fronts that comes through every now and again. Looking out the window, I see that the sky now displays a vaguely striped pattern. The light is very cold, very blue, and finally wintry looking. The trees hardly move, and I can't see a single bird. I love being outside on days like this when everything seems quiet and just waiting.

Tagged: general

Hell's Belles Salute Austin

2005-12-06T03:37:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, we went to see Hell's Belles, the Seattle-based all female AC/DC tribute band, play Stubb's. As mentioned in a previous post, my cousin, Lisa (Malcolm Young) Brisbois, is in this band and that's what brought us to the show. Now I know my cousin is in this band, so I may be biased, but I'm also not that into AC/DC so I think it balances out.

In a way, not being familiar with much other than AC/DC's most well-known songs allowed me to appreciate the band in their own right. Had it not been for such crowd-pleasers as "Highway to Hell," "You Shook Me All Night Long," "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," and "Big Balls," I probably wouldn't have known that they were covering AC/DC. But it didn't matter. Hell's Belles just absolutely rocked. I love seeing shows when I know very little of a band's music and still walk away having totally enjoyed the set. This was one such evening.

One of the things that contributes (emphasis on tribute) to the band's show is what comes across as a real love for AC/DC. This is not a parody or a deconstruction act; this is truly a tribute to the energy, excitement and fun of AC/DC's music, and seeing that legendary band's testosterone-heavy swagger performed with such enthusiasm and love for the material by a group of highly talented women is wickedly subversive in its own right, which is exactly what hard rock should be.

Lead guitarist Adrian (Angus Young) Conner and Singer Jamie (Brian Johnson/Bon Scott) Nova maintained an all-out intensity throughout the evening that had everyone on both levels of Stubb's indoor venue rocking, dancing, and having a great time. This was a show where everyone was into the music and having fun. Even the woman who fell and busted her ass while doing what appeared to be an I-used-to-be-a-stripper routine for her husband came up smiling and kept on rocking.

This was one of the most energetic, all-out rockin' shows I've seen in a long time, and I do hope they come back. In the meantime, Conner - who is based in Austin - has a band called Adrian and the Sickness that is surely worth checking out when they play around here.

Tagged: austin, music, reviews, shows

My Interview on The Armadillo Podcast Is Up

2005-12-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

Episode 12 of The Armadillo Podcast has been posted. You can hear Steven Phenix interview me about living in Austin, writing novels, and Kinky Friedman's gubernatorial campaign. Check it out.

Tagged: austin, writing

Weekend Hound Report: A Whole New Daphne

2005-12-03T06:51:00.000-08:00

Since we lost Zephyr, Daphne has been going through changes, but the most pronounced have been in the month since Phoebe came along and Daphne realized that it was up to her to seize the mantle of canine leadership.

For the past three years, Daphne has been generally afraid to go anywhere in the house apart from the living room, our bedroom, and the study, which she only discovered back in June. Shortly after Phoebe came, Daphne started to develop an interest in the kitchen and the mysterious goings-on in there. At first we thought it was cute (look, she's being brave), but then last week as Rachel was making some peanut butter sandwiches, Daphne rose up on her hind legs, planted her front paws on the kitchen island, and took a piece of bread out of Rachel's hand. This was so unexpected that after Rachel regained the power of speech, she could only laugh.

I prefer a dog that doesn't steal food off the counter, at least not while we're watching, but at the same time, I was kind of proud of big Daph because it's so seldom that she asserts herself. I don't know what kind of abuse or neglect she suffered at the hands of the monsters who owned her (she was a black-market greyhound, which means she was owned by people who were engaged either in a) illegal racing, b) illegal rabbit hunting, or c) illegal dog-fighting) before she was saved by a greyhound rescue group, but after three years, we're thrilled to see her coming out of her shell and becoming more of a dog.

Of course that means now she may have to learn some manners.

In other hound news, my parents' dog Nigel (who isn't a greyhound, but we don't hold that against him) wanted to ensure that no ants would be attracted by stray crumbs:

***

Want to save a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Highway to the Rose Bowl and to Hell

2005-12-02T15:35:00.000-08:00

I'm looking forward to tomorrow as it will be a day of football and live music. After the Longhorns sew up their bid to play in the Rose Bowl for the national title, Hell's Belles, the Seattle-based all-female AC/DC tribute band, will be playing a free show at Stubb's, which is especially exciting for me because my cousin, Lisa Brisbois, is in this band. I haven't seen her since 1982 when we were kids, so not only do I get to catch up with my cousin and show off how cool Austin is, but I am about to rock. Salute me! Or come and salute yourself.

Tagged: austin, music

In the Beginning Nothing Exploded

2005-12-02T04:34:00.000-08:00

It's a curious fact of the human species that we demand answers even when the evidence seems to say: Don't bother. Our species has such faith in the idea of a higher purpose or power that throughout history every culture has looked up to the sun and stars and believed they saw some reason behind their mysterious paths through the heavens. Ancient cultures, and some modern ones, knew beyond doubt why they existed and could articulate it in their stories, but we are not so lucky. The universe unfolds regardless of our existence.

Our 21st century creation story (not a myth, mind you), our Big Bang, with its eternally expanding and cooling universe completely cuts us out of the deal. In the overall cosmic scheme of things, it appears that our existence is purposeless.

And yet, here we are with our deep need to see purpose in everything. We resist imagining that we're nothing more than animals like the squirrels eating at the feeder in the backyard, and so we continue to probe the mysteries, searching for meaning and reason.

Billions of years from now our sun will expand, consuming our planet, and then die, leaving no trace that we were here with all our scientists and philosophers, artists and writers and, okay, bloggers. If their works and wisdom freeze out of existence along with all artifact and memory of our planet's life, human and otherwise, one comes to a disturbing question: What was the point?

Granted, these are things that are not scheduled to occur for billions of years, and even one billion years is beyond the capability of most of us to truly comprehend, but when the entire universe becomes nothing more than an invisible wasteland of frozen rock and gas clouds, it's hard to accept that anything will have mattered. Without some measure of immortality whether it be our children, our deeds, or our works, how can we convince ourselves that our lives are worth the atoms and molecules with which we are born?

I suppose that what prevents us from giving in to a purely short-term outlook is the fact that our creation story, which as with any good creation story, hints towards a destruction story, effectively pushes our collective demise into the recesses of a future so distant that we cannot perceive it as real.

We have plenty of time to continue that timeless debate between Huck and Jim about whether the stars were "made or just happened," and I can't help but wonder if that debate - that journey - is somehow the point.

Tagged: space, general

Sucked into Lost

2005-12-01T17:47:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago we started watching Lost (season one) on DVD. I was nervous at first because I try hard not to get sucked in to new TV shows. I only watch a few on a regular basis and as much as I might like a particular show (Seinfeld, King of the Hill, Queer as Folk), I'm always glad to see it go. I guess it's like I get that time back rather than having to schedule a block of TV watching into my life. The best way to watch a show is after it's been canceled as I learned when a friend loaned us Freaks and Geeks on DVD. The series was fantastic, and more importantly, safely cancelled.

So we started watching Lost, knowing that one day we'd catch up and ourselves become trapped on the island. Still, we recklessly blazed through season one (like Locke through the jungle), sometimes putting away three or four episodes in an evening (the way Charlie once put away heroin), and then the first part of season two that we had hoarded (like Sawyer stashing supplies in his tent) on our DVR. It was kind of like watching a very cool movie that didn't end, and now I'm hooked (like Jack pushing that damn button that doesn't do anything). As of last weekend, we're caught up so now it's no longer like a movie. It's TV, albeit very good TV.

Later we'll be watching last night's episode on DVR, but we will have to wait a WHOLE WEEK before we can find out what happens. And what if next week is a rerun? It could be weeks before we find out what happens! We've been spoiled by DVD and a backlog of DVR. For all our new technology, I still can't escape watching regular TV programs. Oh well. I guess there are worse fates (okay last one - like Hurley winning a cursed lottery) than this.

Tagged: general

Pepys' Diary

2005-12-01T04:15:00.000-08:00

I've recently finished "reading" a second audiobook as a distraction from rush hour traffic. The tape-tome loaned to me by my parents was Pepys' Diary, by Samuel Pepys (read by Kenneth Branagh).

For the most part, Pepys briskly chronicles the ordinary day-to-day events of his life as a Royal Navy administrator in seventeenth century London, and the events are as ordinary as one might expect:

Up and I to the office by water, then home to my wife for dinner, back to the office until dark, and then home and so to bed.

Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Listening to this, my mind drifted in and out as his ordinary experiences intermingled with mine, the exception being his description of The Great Fire of London (1666), which commands the listener's undivided attention as Pepys laments the destruction and describes his efforts to save his home and property.

Apart from the fire and his business dealings, much of the drama comes from the fact that Pepys was a man with an eye for the ladies. Amusingly, he tends to veer off into a strange Spanglish (with perhaps a bit of French thrown in) whenever he describes his extramarital affairs. I don't know if this is an unwillingness to openly acknowledge what he was doing, since he seemed to feel somewhat guilty about it (at times) or simply a code to prevent his wife from reading it if she should find his diary. Perhaps both.

He discontinued his diary in mid-1669 out of concern for his failing eyesight, but it seems a great source of information for anyone interested in English life during this period. I'm not sure I would have picked this up and read it in book form, but it made for fascinating listening and would probably be a good read (in the traditional sense) as well.

Overall, an interesting window into life in seventeenth century London juxtaposed by life in twenty-first century Texas crawling slowly along outside my car windows. And so I home, and to bed.

Tagged: books, reviews

File Under: Ouch

2005-11-30T16:10:00.000-08:00

Here's a headline from cbsnews.com that I couldn't ignore if I wanted to:

Fat Buttocks Need Longer Needles

Yes, I suppose they do, but(t) I wonder if there is a standard buttock-size-to-needle-length ratio or would a patient need to negotiate that with his doctor?

Sounds like there should be something included in the Patients' Bill of Rights.

Tagged: web

Checking Out the Checkout

2005-11-30T05:02:00.000-08:00

firedoglake has this, which made me think about checking out at the grocery store. It's gotten very depressing these days.

Standing around waiting for my turn, I find myself glancing at the magazines available. I see things about space aliens, celebrities I've never heard of falling in and out of love and marriage, ways to look better this winter, recipes for weight loss and diabetes management, the low-down on upcoming plot lines for soap operas, and suggestions for teens who want to get a great date for the prom (start wooing that high school hunk now!)

Okay, what should I expect, right? I'm in a supermarket. Still, one would think that there would be something - anything - examining the fact that our president lied to bring us into a war, that the party that controls our government is plagued by corruption and influence peddling, that we are facing an imminent oil crisis, that our lands are being raped for profit as never before, that the administration is full of incompetents and traitors, that anyone who expresses honest (and, yes it's patriotic!) dissent is labeled a supporter of terrorists, or that our congress would like nothing more than to take away what little we do for our poorest citizens.

Just one article? I'm not even asking for a cover feature.

I understand the market (not the supermarket) decides what goes in the magazines that fill the checkout racks. They're filled with what people want, and it seems that what we want is nothing more than to pretend that this ain't happening, to utterly divorce ourselves from reality and live in a fantasy land of soap operas and chocolate pie.

Kind of like Dubya.

Tagged: politics

Finally Feels Like November

2005-11-29T05:46:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about Austin is the weather between late November and the end of the year. The torture of October Allergies (for me) is over, making it a pleasure to be outdoors again during the best time of year for it, and the first real cold fronts begin to arrive like the one that came in yesterday and caused me to break out my coat. I probably didn't need it, but I have to justify the space it takes up in my closet on the few days of the year on which I can do so.

Even rush traffic isn't so bad when the city sparkles in the crisp air like it did last night and again this morning. It's the time of year when I remember I have a telescope (which will be on the agenda for this evening) and find that it's actually worth setting up in the yard as the stars just seem to jump out of the sky.

It's hard to believe that only two weeks ago, I was standing in my front yard, amid fallen leaves staring at the pumpkins on the porch while wearing shorts and sandals wondering if it would ever cool off. Now that it has, I'll be sure to enjoy it. Summer is afterall only a little over a month away.

Tagged: austin

Upcoming Interview on The Armadillo Podcast

2005-11-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

The Armadillo Podcast has another post about me. In an upcoming episode of the podcast, I'll be talking with Steven Phenix about writing and living in Austin. Check back there or here for more. (While there, be sure to listen to the other interviews with interesting Austinites.)

Tagged: austin, writing

Weekend Hound Report: Strategies for Walking

2005-11-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

With a large tip of the cyber hat to Ironicus Maximus whose Friday Hound Blogging is one of my favorite traditions, and in the interests of being organized, I now commence with a regular feature: The Weekend Hound (or Cat or Hounds and Cat) Report, wherein the adventures of my furry friends will be related. If it seems odd to start a weekend feature on a Monday, then you're probably more organized than me.

Phoebe and Daphne took their first walk together yesterday. Phoebe loves the idea of walks, but when the paw hits the pavement it really freaks her out (as described here). Daphne, on the other hand, is terrified and runs away when anything even resembling a leash begins to jingle. Sometimes, however, she is tricked by the large bipedal apes with whom she lives and as happened yesterday found herself out in public. Rachel took Phoebe, I took Daphne, and we strolled down the street with each hound demonstrating her own approach to facing a dangerous world:

Daphne, who walks quickly knowing that it will be over soon, bases her strategy on the fact that if she walks fast They will not be able to get her.

Phoebe believes They can only see movement and so walks painfully slowly in the hopes that she will be mistaken for a large black and white rock.

When together, Phoebe likes to stay close to Daphne and so will actually pick up the pace. Last night's walk, took only half the time that a normal walk with Phoebe alone takes, though we covered the same distance. I have resigned myself to the fact that Daphne will never like walks, but I think Phoebe will really enjoy them as she comes out of her shell as evidenced by the fact that she always wants to go.

***

Want to save a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

A Dying Language

2005-11-27T05:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Austin American-Statesman ran this story:

NuSrvc2OffrGr8Litr8trOnYrFon
Loose translation: Get classic literature in text-message form

Ouch. Dot Mobile is selling its service as a new way for students to ~~cheat~~ ~~avoid reading~~ prepare for tests without having to dirty their fingers with Cliffs Notes. The service will initially provide plot summaries and important quotes from the likes of Shakespeare, Austen, and Golding without all the extra words, sentences and subtlety that only confuse students anyway.

Eventually Dot Mobile intends to offer the complete works of Shakespeare and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. CNN also had a story on this including an excerpt from Milton's Paradise Lost which begins with, "devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war." The various authors can be heard spinning in their graves.

Initially, I was saddened because I knew that the effect of this would not just be another way for students of literature to avoid reading it, but would also continue the ongoing destruction of the English language, but then in the section of the article offering interpretations, I saw and reflected on the advice Nick remembers receiving from his father in the opening of The Great Gatsby:

WenevaUFeelLykDissinNe1,
jstMembaDatAlDaPpinDaWrldHvntHdDaVantgsUvAd

I read this several times over and remembered that hez rite cuz itz lyk hez sain we all gotta b open n shit cuz who r we 2 judge.

Tagged: books

River Out of Eden

2005-11-26T06:16:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, catching up on my Discover magazines, I read an interesting article about a Sir Richard Dawkins, described in the magazine as "Darwin's Rottweiler." Among other things, the article praised Dawkins' gift for writing for the nonscientist as well as his adamant stance concerning the truth of evolution.

Hmmm, I thought, I'd sure like to read something by Dawkins. When I got home that night, my bookshelf served up one of its many gifts: River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins. There's nothing like having a bunch of books I've never read, but I digress.

True to Discover's word, Dawkins' writing is erudite and imaginative. The book is short (161 pages) and accomplishes its lofty goal of explaining the workings of evolution and natural selection at the genetic level. This being a popular science book, Dawkins relies on arm-chair logic to make many of his points, and he does so with wit, all the while conveying a sense of wonder at the natural world, whether he is describing the behavior of bees or the evolutionary functions of the eye.

I've read and heard ID proponents try to argue that the eye is too complex a thing not to have been designed by an intelligence, but Dawkins counters nicely:

Thus the creationist's question-"What is the use of half an eye?" - is a lightweight question, a doodle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 percent better than 49 percent of an eye, which is already better than 48 percent, and the difference is significant.

From there he details a variety of eye-types in the fish, insect, and mammal worlds, all of which represent "eyes" that we might consider half an eye or less, from eyes that do nothing more than track movement or show a difference between light and dark to eyes as complex as birds' eyes. Ultimately, he argues that an eye (or any other aspect of a creature's biology) will be only just good enough for the purpose it is intended to serve.

Throughout the book, Dawkins defends the truth of evolution with a seeming twinkle in his eye and smile on his face. Dawkins clearly relishes sharing his love of the natural world as much as he enjoys shooting down anti-scientific positions making this a surprisingly fun book (unless, I suppose, you're dead-set against evolution). The most memorable aspect of the book, though, is his discussion of ancestry, a poignant reminder that we are all related, all cousins.

River Out of Eden is an engaging book that provides a wonderfully lucid counter to the unscientific claims of the (embarrassingly antiscientific) Intelligent Design movement. It's also a good book just to remind us of the many wonders of the natural world.

Tagged: books, reviews

Reading the Paper

2005-11-25T05:03:00.000-08:00

She was sick of all the lies in the mainstream media...

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T09:10:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

It's so simple: family, friends, food, football. I love that there's barely any commercial aspect to it. I love that it's a secular holiday that people of any faith and any political stripe can appreciate. I love that so many businesses aren't open on the Friday after Thanksgiving (retail being the exception, but I prefer to avoid that nightmare altogether). Thanksgiving is the one day of the year set aside to just chill. Unless, of course, you're cooking, but then that's what the next day is for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Tagged: general

Hacking Blogger for Fun

2005-11-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

This post is mainly a shout out (link) to those sites I've found useful when tinkering with my blog's code. Lately, I find myself succumbing to a strange addiction: seeking out Blogger hacks just to read them and try them out for fun, sometimes incorporating them and sometimes not, often fixing what ain't broke. Overall a great way to learn about HTML and CSS, about which I knew nothing prior to starting this blog.

One thing I wanted to find (because Blogger doesn't yet offer it) is a categories method for archiving posts. I found Blogger Hacks - The Series on Freshblog, which had many a suggestion, and after experimenting with several methods involving services such as del.icio.us and Technorati, I went with the manual method described on theatre of noise primarily because I like the simplicity of it.

The randomly changing images of greyhounds and a cat that appear beneath my profile come from a small alteration and change in the placement of the javascript code provided by immeria. I also used the code in its intact form for the randomized blog description.

The other Blogger drawback is lack of a trackback system. After some tinkering I figured out how to get Haloscan's trackback feature without the comments since I like Blogger's comments. Making the trackback link look like part of Blogger involved playing a bit with the CSS tags and learning how that works. It's probably not that big a deal, but it made me happy to figure out the logic of it on my own.

Tagged: blogging

Appearing on The Armadillo Podcast

2005-11-22T04:41:00.000-08:00

I'll be appearing on an upcoming episode of The Armadillo Podcast, which describes itself as a:

Weekly podcast of ostentatious interviews of Austinites famous and infamous, known and unknown, with the sole intent to convince my good friend Galia, an Israeli woman living way out in California, to move and live with us here in the land of the weird and the home of the armadillo.

I am honored to be representing Austinites unknown in Steven Phenix's valiant effort to convince Galia to move to Austin. It should be posted on Friday so check back there (or here) for more info.

Tagged: austin, writing

A Morning Run

2005-11-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just have to stop running and look around. This morning, jogging under a crisp November sky, I couldn't help but stare up at the stars shimmering brightly overhead. Jogging in a southwesterly direction, I had ample time to become engrossed with Sirius and Orion, my winter favorites.

This morning, the stars virtually popped out of the clear black in a way that makes me feel humble and lucky and aware all at once. It's ironic that we so often miss these things that are so immense and jaw-droppingly awesome without really paying attention to what we're actually looking at.

I remember from university astronomy classes many years ago that in the case of Orion, I was looking at a place where stars are forming. It's hard for me to imagine anything more profound than that considering that the totality of everything we know and are exists only because one particular star formed.

Wanting a closer look and a chance to really see what I was seeing, I checked out some Hubble images courtesy of NASA's GRIN Library and found these (which you can click for more learned info from NASA):

Just knowing what's out there even though it isn't visible stirs the imagination. It's as thrilling as looking up in the direction of Cygnus X-1 on a summer evening and knowing there' s a black hole there even though you can't see it. Just knowing it's there, all there, all happening indifferent to our presence, is a pretty amazing - and strangely uplifting - thought.

Tagged: space, general

Getting Along Famously

2005-11-20T15:31:00.000-08:00

Phoebe and Daphne...

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Slow Greyhound

2005-11-20T05:31:00.000-08:00

When I take Phoebe for walks, I notice that she gets freaked out whenever we try to turn around, cross the street, go off the sidewalk into the woods, or do anything other than walk straight ahead.

If we go in a giant circle, finally coming back around to the house, she's usually fine. If I try to coax her into crossing a street or turning around, it takes a great deal of persuasion. I can't help but wonder if this is the result of prior training. She was a racer (not exactly retired, more like fired), and I'm beginning to suspect that the idea of turning around or running off the track, in this case the sidewalk, is anathema to her. She just can't bring herself to do it.

So we walk along the sidewalk track each day, so slowly that passersby must think she's the slowest greyhound in the world, which may be why she didn't last in the racing world.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

(Always) Rediscovering Daydream Nation

2005-11-18T15:22:00.000-08:00

Ever since I first read about Sonic Youth's album Sister back in 1987, I've loved this band despite never having heard them. Granted, I never could find Sister at any of the record stores (either of them) in Newport, RI, but I knew they were my favorite band.

I finally heard them a year later when their follow-up, Daydream Nation, arrived. I had moved to Austin by then and was able to locate what would become my favorite album ever. Period.

I've tried to explain to many people for many years why I love this noisy, spacey album so much, why it's my desert island disc. But then love of a particular work of art is a lot like loving a person: you just can't always explain it.

I suppose when I heard it, it was so at odds with everything else that was floating around out there, so unexpected, and so stimulating that I couldn't stop listening to it. Literally. I think I listened to "Teenage Riot" five times before letting the tape (yes, a tape) advance to "Silver Rocket," which was the track that sealed the deal. I still love the way the song descends into that insane pit of boiling feedback and white noise to finally be rescued by a drum roll that rises out of nowhere, growing louder and louder, organizing the chaos back into music and then, suddenly, the band is back, tight as ever, from wherever they had gone. Amazing.

I never tire of listening to the intro and outro to "'Cross the Breeze" and Kim Gordon's lyric:

I took a look into the hate,
It made me feel very up to date

Or Lee in "Hey Joni":

She's a beautiful metal jukebox,
A sailboat explosion,
The snap of electric whipcrack

So cool. So hip. So unlike anything I'd ever heard before. This is one of the few, if not the only, bands from my high school years that I still follow, and Daydream Nation is why. In 1989, it seemed like everything that was worth knowing about popular music had been distilled, destroyed, and rebuilt in this album that still sounds like a punk rock Dark Side of the Moon.

Sparking this post, I ran across two exciting treats in store (or should I say in stores soon):

Continuum will be publishing a 33 1/3 Series book about Daydream Nation

Billboard has this (discovered by way of Kofi's hat) which mentions that the band is looking into doing an expanded release of Daydream Nation as they did with Goo and Dirty. It also mentions several other releases to look forward to in the meantime.

I finally found Sister in 1994 when it was re-released on CD by Geffen. It was as good as I knew it would be and inspired an interest (obsession and grad school project) in Philip K. Dick's writing, but alas, that is a post for another day.

Tagged: music, reviews

Call Me a Dork, but...

2005-11-18T04:25:00.000-08:00

The following are links to some interesting Harry Potter related commentary and analysis:

This is a pretty thorough and convincing analysis of Snape's background and why he is, despite murdering Dumbledore, still working for Dumbledore's cause.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy" is the abstract (I can't seem to access the whole article, but the abstract is still worth a read) to a law review article about the Ministry of Magic.

ASL Library contains a series of links (including the one listed above) to more law-oriented articles about the world of Harry Potter.

Anyways, I still have Potter on the brain and will until I see Goblet of Fire.

As an antidote, I think I'll be reading a nice short work of nonfiction next: River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins.

Tagged: web, books

A New View

2005-11-17T04:26:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like seeing familiar sights anew to make a person appreciate what he takes for granted. Just one tiny shift in point-of-view makes the familiar seem so unexpectedly exciting. I love those moments when, as David Byrne once put it, you suddenly notice the color of white paper, and I was treated to one yesterday.

Being a North Austinite, I rarely find myself needing to go from East-bound 71/Ben White/290/Whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now to I-35 North, so I'd never driven the new (to me anyway) overpass that connects the two highways. Nevertheless, yesterday, I was ascending the overpass thinking, Man, I am up here!, and as the roadway bent northward, a stunning view of the city that I'd never before seen rolled into view. The overpass is high enough that you can look down on St. Edward's University, which is usually hidden, and clearly see the main building dominating the foreground, and in the background, the downtown skyline rises up from the trees in a way that the buildings all seem to huddle together making them seem somehow taller and the city denser than it appears from some of its other views.

The crisp wintry air that (finally!) arrived the other day just made it appear all the more inviting.

White paper never looked so white.

Tagged: austin

Ok, JK, How Long for Number Seven?

2005-11-16T04:49:00.000-08:00

Be advised, not pissed: If you haven't read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but wish to do so, you might not want to read this as it contains spoilers.

I finally finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last week. I've been on a Potter streak lately, and now I am finally caught up. This book wasn't the kind of page-turner that Order of the Phoenix was with all its intensity and downward-spiraling chaos, but it easily kept my attention for the pieces of the past that Harry discovers with the aid of the great wizard Dumbledore. Their trips into the pensieve to witness the past and learn the story of how Tom Riddle became Voldemort paved the way for Book Seven in which Harry will have to face Lord Voldemort and either destroy him or be destroyed.

Half-Blood Prince jogs along at a relatively slow pace as most of the big action in the book takes place in the past. The present Hogwarts story concerns the love lives of Harry, Ron, and Hermione and their awkward efforts to find romance and do a little snogging. Much of the book is quieter than the previous books, but it is by no means boring. Rowling does a fantastic job of keeping tension seething just beneath the surface through news of the world outside the school and Harry's growing paranoia, which contrasts sharply with the relatively peaceful year at Hogwarts following two incredibly tumultuous ones. The peace, of course, is all on the surface. All of the characters are terribly afraid and unable to articulate their fears, which set everyone on edge, ready to jump down each other's throats at only slight provocations. Throw teenage hormones into the mix, and Rowling has created a pretty tense atmosphere.

Throughout the novel, Rowling does an excellent job humanizing the insufferable bully Draco Malfoy. One even begins to pity him the dark and mysterious task about which he is obviously conflicted and yet trapped into. At the novel's beginning, the unpleasant Professor Snape (still apparently working as a double agent spying on Voldemort's Death Eaters for Dumbledore) is forced to make the Unbreakable Vow to finish whatever task Malfoy has been set if he is unable to accomplish it. I assumed it would be to kill Harry. How Snape would get around the Vow was one of the things that kept the book exciting. Of course we learn the plot was to murder Dumbledore and when Malfoy can't do it, Snape does thus proving that all along Harry was right about Snape's lack of commitment to Dumbledore's cause. Or does it?

I had a suspicion that Dumbledore wouldn't make it through the book considering that someone had died in each of the previous two books with the importance of the death escalating each time. With Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, killed off in the last book, who could be more important to Harry than Dumbledore? I also knew that ultimately Harry would have to face Voldemort utterly alone, but I still couldn't believe Dumbldore died, nor that Snape was the one to kill him. Like Dumbledore I had always believed Snape, bastard that he is, was not working for Voldemort, and I still wonder about that.

Dumbledore knows Malfoy won't kill him. Can't kill him. Doesn't have it in him. Dumbledore has also demonstrated time and again that he will do whatever he needs to do, offer any sacrifice to destroy Voldemort as was seen when he made Harry force him to drink the poison that would reveal Voldemort's Horcrux. I can't help but wonder if Dumbledore knew that Snape had to make the Unbreakable Vow to keep his cover. Knew that Snape would have to kill him if Malfoy couldn't. Then at the scene of Dumbledore's death, as Malfoy has the opportunity to kill a weakened and trapped Dumbledore, Dumbledore works on him, stalls him, because Dumbledore believes that there is good yet in Malfoy, that Malfoy, though a bully, isn't a murderer. It is as if Dumbledore has, as Harry did, seen Malfoy in the bathroom crying, agonizing over his terrible mission. When Snape arrives, he kills Dumbledore as Dumbledore knows he must, thereby preserving Malfoy's innocence (barely) and Snape's cover, which of course could prove invaluable to Harry, though Harry doesn't know it.

It would be just like Albus Dumbledore to sacrifice his life to save one student (Malfoy) from evil and set in motion a chain of events that will help Harry destroy Voldemort. It would also be just like Dumbledore (and Rowling) for none of this to be revealed until the end of Book Seven.

As I mentioned in my previous Potter post, I am still constantly amazed by the way in which Rowling grows her characters through adolescence and into young adulthood. By the end of this book, though he is more passive than in previous books, Harry has seen too much, fought too hard, lost too much to really be thought of as a boy-wizard anymore.

When in the last chapter Harry defiantly proclaims to the Minister of Magic that he is still "Dumbledore's man, through and through," the operative word has suddenly become 'man.' Book Seven will be the story of Harry finally confronting his destiny.

These books are great fun and much more engaging than I ever imagined they would be, and now I'm left pacing around the room thinking, "How long do we have to wait, Ms. Rowling?"

Tagged: books, reviews

My Own Psychedelic Picnic

2005-11-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

I've just finished listening to the audiobook version of Kinky Friedman's The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A "Walk" in Austin, enjoyable especially because of Kinky's profound love of this city that he clearly relishes sharing with the reader (ok, listener), making one happy to be an Austinite.

At one point, Kinky names his twelve favorite Austin restaurants and that, of course got me hungry. So for what it's worth, in no particular order and in honor of the Kinkster, my top twelve:

Kim Phung - tofu lemongrass vermicelli...mmmm
Castle Hill Cafe - the menu always changes, what's not to like?
Chuy's - rellenos made with Hatch green chiles (nature's most perfect food) rather than the more typical poblano
Vivo's - micheladas
Guero's - the South Congress vibe, the enchiladas
Las Manitas - mas enchiladas
Thai Passion - the hottest tofu noodle dish I've ever had
The Clay Pit - ok so the service was bad last time, but what a curry
Hut's - whether a veggie burger, buffalo burger, or somewhere in between it's always the Wolfman Jack
Katz's - never closes, there's always parking, and has the best bloody mary, what else is needed?
Thundercloud - of course
The Salt Lick - for the sides and suasage and the guy playing old outlaw country tunes on the porch

So there it is. Right now, but likely to change tomorrow, my top twelve Austin comfort food establishments, and I'm already wondering how I forgot Mongolian BBQ, Dirty's, Kerbey Lane, The Magnolia Cafe, Thai Noodle Bowl, Etc., The Texas Chili Parlor... oh my cup runneth over! What an embarrassment of riches we have here.

Tagged: books, reviews, austin

Hound of Adventure

2005-11-15T16:53:00.000-08:00

Everytime I go to the front door, Phoebe follows. When I go out to get the paper or to the mailbox, she peers out the front window. It's obvious she wants to walk, so I've started taking her. She does well, but usually about a quarter of a mile from the house in any direction, she just stops. I suppose her fear takes over at that point and then she becomes Frozen Dog, forcing me to coax her along one step at a time until we get back to the house, usually in twice the amount of time (if we're lucky) it took to get to the turnaround point.

Then the next time I go to the front door, she wants to go for another walk.

I've gotten in the habit of walking her to the mailbox or to the end of the driveway to get the paper, but since it's only fifty feet or so, it seems mean, though I don't think she minds. It's clear this dog has a sense of adventure, but for now, I think she only wants short adentures where she can't get in over her head as she does when we get a quarter mile from the house.

Car rides are also proving to be great fun, and when we get out of the car she's fine until we've reached just about the point where it's time to go back. It reminds me of Tigger taking Roo to the top of the tree and then not knowing how to get back down. Tiggers don't climb down. Phoebes don't walk back to where they started.

Still, we've progressed a long way from the first walk when I had to carry her (all sixty pounds) nearly a quarter mile back to our driveway after a dry leaf skittering across the sidewalk had induced temporary paralysis of the legs.

Maybe Daphne is the smart one; she runs and hides when I get the leashes out.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

"He Ain't Kinky. He's My Governor."

2005-11-15T04:16:00.000-08:00

At least that's what the bumper sticker on a truck cruising I-10 outside Beaumont said.

I was surprised to see that Kinky's campaign to be the first independent governor of Texas since Sam Houston had reached outside the Austin area. I know he's been all over the state campaigning, but I assumed it was only in Austin and perhaps the Hill Country that anyone would have heard much about him.

Kinky has been asking, "How hard can it be?" for nearly a year now, and based on Governor Perry's half-assed performance, I can only assume that it's not that hard. Come and Take it! has a nice piece on why he has an uphill battle (assuming he can get on the ballot, which is a chore in and of itself), but provides hope that someone will have the backbone, honesty, and wit to serve up the public humiliation that Rick Perry so richly deserves.

This post is provoked by finally listening to an audiobook that my dad loaned me over the summer. The book is Kinky's The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A "Walk" in Austin and so far (about half a CD in) it's an amusing, irreverent, and fairly accurate picture of the Austin that was (from the days of founder President Mirabeau B. Lamar through Willie, Stevie, and on towards Dell), is, and will be as told by someone who loves this town deeply (and unfortunately read by someone who does not pronounce words like 'Guadalupe,' 'San Jacinto,' 'Burnet,' or 'Waylon' - as in Jennings - like he's spent much time here).

So to make a rambling post shorter, I was driving on Mopac yesterday, crossing the river and listening to the Kinkster spin the tale of Austin's founding and the tensions between Lamar and Sam Houston over whether or not this beautiful settlement on the river in the heart of Comanche country should be the capital of the republic, and I decided that Kinky is far more deserving of life in the governor's mansion than Perry or whatever poor sacrificial lamb the feckless Texas Democrats throw out there. Kinky understands the Texan love of big stories, big myths and big talk that gets Texas politicians elected, but he also seems to get the fact that we live in the modern world and we have very real, very big problems that the Republicans have shown they have no interest in or ability to solve.

I don't know if Kinky can solve them, but at least he seems honest about trying when he talks about them. And he's funny. And listening to his book, he reminds me all over again why I love Austin.

As his campaign materials ask, "Why the Hell not?"

Tagged: politics, books, austin, texas

Visiting Orange a Month After Rita

2005-11-14T05:19:00.000-08:00

We had to drop everything last week and head off to Orange, TX for a funeral. My wife's aunt passed away peacefully after many years of suffering and that brought us back to her hometown on the Texas-Louisiana border. This was my first post-Rita trip to Orange.

It's been a little over a month, and the place still looks like a war zone: trees uprooted or still standing but snapped in two, twisted piles of metal torn from who knows where, buildings ripped apart, FEMA tarps on nearly every roof, crooked signs and street lights, many businesses still closed. And all this after a month and a half. Everyday, there were trucks lumbering along the roads randomly picking up the sawed remains of the forests and trees people once had in their yards that are now piled high in front of their houses.

One of the most striking things about the hurricane's aftermath was how bright everything appeared. Rachel had noticed this a week prior when she'd come to visit her aunt in the hospital, and it was, I think, both the most startling and most subtle aspect of the damage. The dense, dark forests of the Piney Woods were so thinnned throughout the town that there seemed an over-abundance of sunlight. Orange is supposed to be dark and a little mysterious, but it seemed so bright, the forests so thin, that some of its swampy bayou mystery was lost.

Driving around town was odd as we were constantly rubber-necking to view the damage while Rachel pointed out buildings and homes that despite growing up there, she'd never seen because of the thick trees that had always hidden them from the road.

The sound of chainsaws is constant, and there's plenty of work to do, but people seem to be taking it in stride. At the visitation, I watched one old guy walk over to a friend, shake hands and say with a straight face, "Need some fire wood?" It was obviously a well-worn joke down there, but they both laughed anyway.

Tagged: texas

Near Meteor Crater

2005-11-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

I took this photo near Meteor Crater, Arizona in March of 1992:

These old cars are about a quarter of a mile from the service road that connects I-40 to Metoer Crater. I've been there several times, and I find that the cars are as engaging as the crater itself so I always try to photograph them. This is my favorite one.

A few days after one trip out there in 1995, while browsing the CDs at Waterloo Records, I found that the cars had also served as cover art for Lee Ranaldo's excellent East Jesus album.

Tagged: photography

"I'm Against It!"

2005-11-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

Today is election day in Texas. We have no bastards to throw out... well actually we have many, but not the opportunity to do so for still another year. Today it's just a series of propositions to amend the constitution, the most controversial of which is prop two, which will re-ban gay marriage.

So off to the polls we went this morning with Groucho Marx's voice singing in my head:

"I don't know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it!"

Surprisingly, my precinct was not using those cool little electronic voting machines that turn all votes cast into votes for the incumbent so I had to actually use a chisel to carve my vote into the stone tablet, but considering the backwards nature of the thinking that went into prop two, it seemed somehow appropriate.

I then affixed my little 'I Voted' sticker to my shirt and went outside whistling along with Groucho, thinking, "Well, I voted against it, but next time I think I'll vote against the other pronouns," as I ashed an imaginary cigar on the sidewalk.

Tagged: politics, texas, austin

So Young. So Pimpin'.

2005-11-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

I had dinner with my parents this evening and went home with a box of old stuff, mostly clothing from my childhood.

So, here it is. My old bowling shirt from when I was in a bowling league at Subic Bay Naval Base in The Philippines.

It was the early '80s.

I was probably in fourth grade.

We were "The Four Aces."

We were pimpin'.

Tagged: general

Of Ghosts, Goblins, and Animal Emergency

2005-11-04T21:50:00.000-08:00

Monday - Halloween: Daphne hid from the vicious trick-or-treaters who kept coming to the door and continued her tradition of guarding the couch in the study. Phoebe, experiencing her first Halloween away from a racetrack, followed me to the door eveytime the bell rang and peeked out with great curiosity at all the costumed kids.

Wednesday: We learned something interesting about greyhounds that we had known, but never really thought about: their skin, which is paper thin, tears very easily. This can be problematic since these are big strong dogs. I came home Wednesday to find that they'd been playing (as they've started doing lately). I was home for about twenty minutes with Phoebe whining, whining, whining the whole time while Daphne hid in the study. As it turns out Daphne had been nipped on the scruff of the neck, and her skin had torn. (Perhaps the whines were her version of 'Timmy fell into the-I mean-I accidentally bit Daphne.') So I took her to animal emergency, a place with which I am way too familiar.

One of the vets glanced up from a boxer whose ear was bleeding all over the floor, and asked, "Greyhound tear?" without doing much more than noticing the greyhound standing in front of her.

"What?"

"You know, when they play," the receptionist offered, "their skin's thin so it tears."

I nodded. Daphne shivered. "This is our first time with this. How do people prevent it?"

The receptionist shrugged. "I think they just let us sew them back up."

So sew they did. The vet had to put Daphne under and extend the wound so that he could put a drain in. When I picked her up Thursday morning it looked like her head had been sewn back on, but it's not as bad as it looks. Of course she looks like Frankenstein's hound. This was sadly too late for Halloween by a few days.

Thursday: When I got Daphne home, Phoebe followed her around, crying and crying and licking her face. I suppose this is the canine version of abject apology and prostrating oneself in guilt.

All was well when Rachel got home and both dogs barked. Phoebe, it turns out is a barker, but Daphne, like most greys does not bark except when she's in a very good mood. This was bark number seven in five years and a good sign coming from a hound with a drainage tube in her neck.

Friday: We separated them on Thursday while we were gone and will continue to do so while Daphne heals and maybe for a little while beyond so as to avoid anymore roughhousing.

There seem to be no hard feelings. When I got home today they were excited to be reunited, followed each other around, and clearly wanted to play. Now they're curled up together on the couch.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Very Funny Stuff

2005-11-04T19:49:00.000-08:00

Epic of a backyard Genius is hysterical. Check it out.

Tagged: web

Asteroid Headed for Austin?

2005-11-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

It seems a likely scenario. We're too far from the coast for a hurricane, and tornado season is still a few months away, so that pretty much leaves asteriods as the only remaining tool with which God can punish the Klan when they rally in Austin in support of proposition two on Saturday. The Supreme Deity apparently used a similar tactic in New Orleans to thwart a gay pride rally, and since God currently seems to be in an it's-time-I-teach-these-little-bastards-a-lesson mode it would be wise to prepare for the worst.

There is debate raging about the best way for Austinites to deal with the odious intrusion of the Klan - moon them as was done when they came here in 1993, or ignore them and go about our lives as Mayor Will Wynn would prefer. Considering the cosmic wrath that could very well come down on the Klan and take out a bunch of well-intentioned mooners as collateral damage, I'm surprised an evacuation order isn't being considered.

I assume, though, that preparations are being made and talking points written to apply that last little bit of spin to the impending tragedy in the runup to Nov. 8:

"God Krushes Klan, Says No to Prop Two"

against the nut jobs who will say:

"God Annihilates Deviant Mooning Perverts, Supports Prop Two"

Personally, I'll be ignoring the Klan. I've seen plenty of morons; I don't need to see them play dress up. Besides, my mind is made up on this issue.

I'll probably just watch the Longhorns use the Baylor Bears to demonstrate the terrible effects of an asteroid impact.

Tagged: politics, austin

Places I've Been

2005-11-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

Since I was a kid, I've loved maps, so I was excited when I stumbled upon Nathan's Updates from Seoul, which led me to world66, a very cool site for anyone who loves the magic of staring at maps, remembering places visited and highways traveled, and the lure of faraway places yet to be seen.

So here's my world map, most of which is the result of growing up in a Navy family. I didn't count layovers in airports.

create your own visited country map

As an adult, the only trips abroad I've managed are Canada and Mexico. But I have traveled quite a bit in the states, usually by car, which is my preferred method especially when the drive invloves days of desert travel. Here's my map of the states:

create your own personalized map of the USA

And, of course Europe, just because this site lets you do Europe:

create your personalized map of europe

You can also make a Canada map, but since mine would only include Quebec, I decided not to do that one.

What fun!

Tagged: web, general

I'm So Proud

2005-11-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

Lots to be proud of in Texas especially when one considers the constitutional amendments being put to a vote, particularly proposition two. While at a loss for how to pay for adequate public education in Texas and lacking either leadership or the will to consider the problem seriously, the Jackass Festival did find the time to give 'we the people' the opportunity to exercise our collective predjudices and vote to make gay marriage illegal.

Of course gay marriage is already illegal in Texas, but the new amendment will make it really illegal. After all, denying marriage to a group of people is only just a way to protect marriage in much the same way that denying liberties to some groups of people protects liberty. Right? Something like that... Anyway, the Texas Constitution already has more than four hundred amendments, so why not try to push it up to an even 500?

Seriously, though, both the far-right conservatives and the KKK (scheduled to rally in Austin on Nov. 5), seem to agree that re-banning gay marriage in Texas will help protect marriage. And perhaps there really is a threat out there. We can't take chances on this because gay marriage could pose a threat to ~~everything the KKK supports~~ "decent family values." And looking beyond the concerns of the Klan, I keep hearing and reading that it will be beneficial for some Texas families and their children to know that other loving families will be denied this legal status.

When the subject of protecting marriage in Texas comes up, however, it's interesting to note that in Texas, marriage can be entered into at the age of 16, or at even younger ages if a judge approves it. This was not uncommon among my high school students (I'm talking underclassmen here) when I was a teacher. With the bar this low (as a bar must be at an early-teen bachelor party), it's important to remember that if you hear a Texan talk about defending marriage for his children, he might really mean it.

One can only hope that when the ballots are counted next week, Texans will break with the Klan and vote down this ugly constitutional amendment.

I ain't holdin' my breath.

Tagged: politics, texas

Calexico at Stubbs

2005-11-01T03:44:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon Calexico at the 2004 ACL Fest and standing under the sweltering heat of that day, I was immediately enthralled with their ability to create a sonic landscape that sounds the way the southwestern deserts look. Listening to them that day, I heard traces of country, mariachi, western swing, surf rock, spaghetti western soundtracks, electronic experimentation, jazzy improv, well-controlled guitar noise, and acoustic folk produced by a large group of musicians many of whom were multi-instrumentalists. And an upright bass, a welcome change of pace outside the jazz world. The music was big and lonely and utterly captivating. By the end of the month, my wife and I had collected all of their CDs, and ever since then they've been in constant rotation on the stereo and in the cars, especially The Black Light and Feast of Wire.

Last spring, we went to see them when they were opening for Ozomatli and Los Lonely Boys at The Back Yard. Sadly that was a bust for us, since due to horrible traffic and a parking fiasco, we only caught the last two songs of their set. What we heard from the parking lot was great, and Ozomatli turned out to be an interesting show (we left before Los Lonely Boys) so it wasn't a total loss.

Finally, last Sunday night, we made it to see a (sort of) Calexico show at Stubbs BBQ. I say "sort of" only because the headline portion of the show was Calexico with Iron & Wine supporting their recent collaboration. Calexico came on after a quick set by Edith Frost and started out a bit too folk-y for our tastes. This is a band that is capable of substantial musical exploration, but the incarnation that started was to me the least interesting version of Calexico. It works for me on CD, but when I see live music, I want to see a band stretch out a bit, as I know Calexico can.

As the set progressed, my allergies began to get the better of me (as they do every time I am foolish enough to stand around outdoors in October) and disappointment began to set in. About halfway through the set though (at "Alone Again Or"), things changed. Charlie Sexton joined them on stage and they began to play more like the Calexico that I love...mariachi horns, Spanish rhythms, the hints of surf rock, the country twang, all creating that impression that when someone opens the first country bar on the moon, it will be a regular gig for Calexico.

The remainder of their set was well worth the price of admission and exactly what I was hoping to hear. We left before Iron & Wine and the joint set primarily because of a combination of allergies and what I'll call end-of-daylight-savings-time exhaustion that on a Sunday night was more powerful than a desire for more music. Of course, I did pick up two of their tour-only CDs, Scraping, and The Book and the Canal. So far, I've listened to most of the former, and only the first few tracks of the latter. Overall, I'm pleased, but I'm still waiting for an actual Calexico (as the headliner and primary draw) show. Not during October, please.

Tagged: austin, music, reviews, shows

Phoebe at the Vet

2005-10-30T02:09:00.000-08:00

A hound update, of course. Phoebe made her first visit to the vet yesterday. She seemed to enjoy the ride in the car more than I thought she would. Daphne went along for the ride and stayed low in the back of the car in case there were enemies about. The vet looked Phoebe over inside and out and found no problems. She's a prefectly healthy dog.

After the vet, she discovered the study, a room she hadn't been in yet, and I had to ask her not to eat one of my books, but she didn't seem to mind when I traded her a nylabone for the book. She's still following Daphne around, still unsure about the humans, but very very curious.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Posting a Short Story

2005-10-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've gotten some email from people who've been reading my short stories since I started this blog (thanks, by the way), and so I figured I'd go ahead and post another one.

They're hosted on the main Coyote Mercury site in the library section. Most of the stories are a few years old and were once included in an online literary magazine called TheSoundofWhat?, which is now, sadly, defunct.

Anyways, here's the latest old story: "This Thing of Darkness," a South Austin tale concerning a giant fungus and some neighbors who fight.

Incidentally, all of the stories can be found in the Selections from the Hard Drive section of the sidebar. Enjoy, and thanks again for reading.

Tagged: writng

More Fun with LibraryThing

2005-10-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

I seem to be blogging about books and dogs more than anything else, but since the title of this blog is taken from a dog in my book, I guess it fits. I clearly spend too much time thinking about books though, but I guess I wouldn't read and write them if I didn't love them. Of course, when thinking about books I often find myself looking for new ones to read and that's where LibraryThing once again proves its usefulness: book suggestions.

When I click on the suggestions button, it goes through and compares my libarary to others with similar libraries and lists 61 (why 61 I don't know...maybe it thinks I don't have time for more) books that I don't have, but apparently should. Some I already have, some I've read, some I'm interested in. I struck out the ones that I either own, once owned, or have borrowed and read, or some combination of the three. Surprisingly, many of these are books that I have been wanting to read...

1. Ulysses by James Joyce
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. ~~A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Popular Classics) by James Joyce~~
4. The Mayor of Casterbridge (Penguin Classics) by Thomas Hardy
5. Tess of the Durbervilles by Thomas Hardy
6. Sister Carrie (Oxford World's Classics) by Theodore Dreiser
7. Shirley (Wordsworth Collection) by Charlotte Bronte
8. Oliver Twist (Penguin Popular Classics) by Charles Dickens
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. The Handmaid's Tale : A Novel by Margaret Atwood
11. A Journal of the Plague Year : Being Observations or Memorials of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, As Well (Penguin Clas by Daniel Defoe
12. Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster
13. Great expectations by Charles Dickens
14. The Mill On The Floss by George Eliot
15. Postcards by Annie Proulx
16. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
17. ~~The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : Revised Edition (Penguin Classics) by Mark Twain~~
18. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
19. Mansfield Park (Penguin Popular Classics) by Jane Austen
20. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
21. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
22. ~~Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley~~
23. Romola (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot
24. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
25. The Vicar of Wakefield (Penguin English Library) by Oliver Goldsmith
26. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
27. The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin
28. The Left Hand of Darkness (Remembering Tomorrow) by Ursula K. Le Guin
29. Ender's game by Orson Scott Card
30. The waste land and other poems by T. S. Eliot
31. The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Popular Classics) by Henry James
32. A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1) by Ursula K. Le Guin
33. Possession : A Romance (Vintage International) by A.S. Byatt
34. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
35. The English patient : a novel by Michael Ondaatje
36. Literary theory : an introduction by Terry Eagleton
37. The jungle by Upton Sinclair
38. The World According to Garp by John Irving
39. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values by Robert M. Pirsig
40. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
41. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
42. A passage to India by E. M. Forster
43. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
44. Orlando: A Biography (Penguin Popular Classics) by Virginia Woolf
45. ~~MLA handbook for writers of research papers by Joseph Gibaldi~~
46. ~~Le Morte D'Arthur, Vol 1 by Thomas, Sir Malory~~
47. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
48. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
49. ~~The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien~~
50. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
51. Far from the Madding Crowd (Signet Classics (Paperback)) by Thomas Hardy
52. Daniel Deronda (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot
53. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
54. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
55. Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) by Choderlos De Laclos
56. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
57. A room with a view by E. M. Forster
58. ~~Othello (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare~~
59. Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classic) by W. Somerset Maugham
60. Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story by John Berendt
61. ~~A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving~~

Feel free to offer other reading suggestions in the comments section. I'm pretty open in my tastes.

Tagged: books, web

Hound Update

2005-10-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

Okay so Phoebe seems to have adjusted to the idea that the humans will be gone for the better part of each day. I am happy to report a lack of destruction for the past two days, and she seems genuinely excited to see us when we get home. She even barked at me when I walked in (a very high-pitched bark that sounds odd coming from a dog of her size), which was startling since greyhounds aren't known for barking. She apparently learned the skill from a doberman in her foster home.

She's still shy when we approach; obviously she's not used to being treated well by people, but then mistreatment is the life to which most racing greyhounds are accustomed. I love the dogs and watching them run together in the backyard is great fun, because they truly love to run, but the greyhound racing business just turns my stomach. I can't imagine mistreating these beautiful animals. Dogs are great. People suck.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

LibraryThing

2005-10-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, I stumbled upon LibraryThing, a very cool site/web-based book cataloging application, which is still in its beta phase but developing new features on what seems to be a daily basis. It's become a near obsession. Who knew how much fun pulling books off the shelves and entering ISBN numbers could be? I don't generally go out seeking massive data-entry projects, but this is a pleasure. Perhaps because it gives me the opportunity to pick up my books and look at them and think to myself things like:

"I really need to read this one."

"Wow, I forgot how cool this book is."

"Why the hell do I have this book?!?"

Over the years, I've gotten rid of probably as many books as I own since I frequently vacillate between wanting to own every book I read (and keep them even when I know I'll never read them again) and wanting to own fewer possessions. Sometimes I think I'd like to have a giant room filled with books on all subjects, and at other times I think it would be cool to have all my books digitized and only have a small stack of DVD-ROMs.

I suppose it comes down to the question of a book's worth. Is it the content? Is it the object? Or is it both? I would like to think it's mainly the content, but then a house without books would seem such a lonely place.

That's really the coolest thing about Library Thing: As I enter books, I feel like I'm visting old friends.

Tagged: books, web

Phoebe, Still a Puppy

2005-10-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

Phoebe seems to be adjusting well to her new life. She has discovered the couch and even wags her tail when we come near her, but she is still afraid to look at us. She comes to the door to greet us, but runs away when we notice her. She watches us constantly and with great interest. It seems she wants to like us, but is still afraid of people.

Yesterday was her first day at home without the humans, and she had great fun tearing up some paper, eating some blinds, and stuffing her leash under the couch cushions. It looked like the work of two dogs, so I suspect Daphne also participated since she has a record of paper shredding. For now, we'll call Daphne an unindicted co-conspirator.

Phoebe does posess the greyhound quality of being a packrat, collecting bones and fluffy toys and taking them back to decorate her place. Yesterday, in addition to pieces of paper and the blinds, she managed to collect every dog toy in the house and bring them back to her place.

When I let Phoebe out, she likes to run around the backyard and once even rooed and then barked at the neighbor's lab. She's almost two and now that she's off the track, she is probably beginning her real puppyhood, which means lots of exploring, testing the chewability of various objects around the house, and continuing to follow Daphne around like...well, like a puppy. A very large puppy.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Maybe I'll Get that PhD...

2005-10-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've recently learned that I am a sucker as are all of us who have spent hours, thousands of dollars, and even the Best Years of Our Lives toiling towards degrees at institutions of higher learning. We were conned by the marketing cabal known as Big Education into believing that their product, "higher learning", is the only form of education.

Who knew that life experience could be converted into the degree of your choice at such fine institutions as Belford University and Rochville University? For a modest fee, the enterprising student can even give his GPA a boost. Why did I spend all those evenings worrying about studying? (Oh, misspent youth!)

Of course these institutions are accredited, Rochville by both the prestigious UCOEA and the lesser-known BOUA, both of whom seem to share the same web designer.

If academic qualification isn't your thing (not everyone was cut out for school after all), a career in the ministry could be very rewarding. Just visit the Universal Life Church to become an ordained minister.

I think few people will ever again say that the Rev. Dr. James Brush, MA, MFA, MBA, MLIS, MEd, JD, PhD is not both a gentleman and a scholar and fully qualified for any position in the Bush Administration.

Tagged: web, general

We Be the Master Now

2005-10-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

When we got our first dog, Zephyr, she was a self-feeder who ate only when she felt like it, usually every other day. When we got Daphne, Zephyr began eating every time there was food around, and Daphne knew that she was not to eat until Zephyr had eaten all of her food and whatever of Daphne's she could steal while we (the food police) weren't watching. Daphne, until yesterday, was never terribly interested in food one way or the other, which made it easy for Zephyr to help herself to Daphne's dinner.

When Phoebe came on the scene, however, Daphne suddenly started eating her own food and then investigating Phoebe's. We never thought Daphne would ever exhibit any alpha behavior, but recently she was heard mumbling something along the lines of, "We has the precious, and we be the master now." Zephyr would be proud.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

New Hound in Town

2005-10-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

This is Greyhound Phoebe. She came to us yesterday from Greyhound Pets of America - Central Texas, and has spent the past 24 hours relaxing on her place by the back door and observing our habits. She is a spook, which means that she is afraid of many things, particularly people. She does not seem to be afraid of Daphne (see the picture beneath my profile) or Morrison.

Phoebe will be two on November 8. We haven't weighed her yet, but she appears to be about 65 pounds. She is a racer who was forced into early retirement after twice being defeated at a racetrack in Corpus Christi. Her racing name was "Rayna Ann Walker" but for the past six weeks in foster care, has been called "Geena." She is a sweet girl who loves to eat. She likes chewing on fluffy toys and seems to enjoy exploring the backyard.

She was fostered with several cats and appears to be as ambivalent towards them as Morrison is to her as can be seen in this photo (although he does try to get on her place).
Daphne is marginally interested but mainly when they're outside. In the next few days, she will probably begin exploring and interacting a bit more, and I'll keep you posted.

Tagged: greyhounds, pets

Dream Ships

2005-10-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

(an old poem...)

The broken ships lay torn under black cliffs
Nailed to shore by Sea’s relentless hammer
Dead Gull silhouette floats in glowing phosphor
Blown about by Gale’s unending power

Water shudders under Sky’s turbulent embrace
Gray battles Grey at Horizon’s obscured line
No life on the Shore of Ghosts, no life here
Except me, the phantom-dreaming me

I stand alone and watch this scene buried in dark night
My breath the only life among the wrecks
Trembling under waves, my feet give way
The deck shakes, rocks—I try to look around

Feet carry me across upended planks
A funeral shroud of sailcloth clings to Mast’s broken arm
No recent death appears in this ancient scene
Everything here has always existed before me

I ask, “Why bring me here? Does this pertain to me?”
From Childhood’s nighttime terrors to Adulthood’s fever dreams
I’ve walked these planks all my life, a thousand times,
Asking only, “Where am I? What does this mean?”

Tagged: writing

Big Ugly Billboards

2005-10-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

Driving around Austin, it's easy to notice that Mopac is relatively pleasant even when it's choked with traffic, while driving I-35 is nearly unbearable even when traffic is light. Mopac is pretty in part because it is mostly free of billboards, and I think this lack of aggressive signage makes for a more relaxing overall drive. You don't feel like anyone is shouting at you on Mopac.

The disruption of this visual silence is for me why billboards are inherently tacky and always mar what would be an otherwise more pleasant landscape, even in the heart of a city. Cute little messages from "God" or "Billboard" don't help either. In a way, though, billboards become a kind of totem of the divine as it appears in a highly materialistic society such as ours: we look to them on high for guidance as they shine brightly in the heavens, but when compared with a highway devoid of billboards (that increasingly can only exist in the imagination) they are revealed (and reveal commercialism) to be empty substitutes for the divine or trees or anything else of real worth as Fitzgerald so aptly implied in The Great Gatsby.

This comes to mind as over the past few weeks, I've noticed a billboard spring to life in a neighborhood near my own. It towers over the landscape calling attention to itself, and though it is currently blank since the owners are in a dispute with a local home owners association over it, it is an eyesore and a sad reminder of how little aesthetics are valued when there is coin to be made.

I am pleased to learn that a group of local homeowners is trying to fight The Man on this one and even have the help of at least one county official.

Tagged: austin, politics

Beer, Mass Culture and God

2005-10-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

"Beer is proof that God loves us."
-Benjamin Franklin

Beer. It's really very simple. Hops, barley malt, water, yeast. You can add some grains or any number of other things to create unique flavors, but the essence of beer is simple. Yeast eat sugar, producing two basic by-products: alcohol and carbon dioxide. Beer, or more broadly put fermented sugar water, is one of the oldest creations of the human race. Nearly every civilization from the Egyptians to the Aztecs to the English have brewed beer. One can travel the world over (or visit a good well-stocked pub) and sample beers from different cultures and climates, each with its own unique taste and character. Australia's hearty lagers can be just the thing after a hard day in the sun, while Mexico's lagers go with a nice easy day at the beach. The British stouts warm a winter evening and the Caribbean's milk stouts offer a touch of sweetness after a spicy meal. Germany's famous bocks and hefe-wiezzens should be savored for their rich complexity, as might a fine wine.

There are two basic styles of beer: lager and ale. Lagers tend to be lighter in body and have a cleaner flavor. They are cold fermented at lower temperatures and are usually light in color. Ales, fermented at room temperature and occasionally served at room temperature, have a much more complex flavor and range in color from light amber to black. Both are excellent styles and a matter of personal preference analogous to the differences between red and white wine. I personally prefer English ales to any other style. There is a third beer style, unfortunately. This is the swill produced by the major American breweries. You know who they are. Their beer is a perverse replica of the pilsner style of lager originating in eastern Europe in much the same way that Frankenstein's monster was a twisted version of a human being.

Too often, when offered a beer, I am treated to a flavorless concoction consisting of slightly metallic tasting carbonated water mixed with alcohol. The sad truth is that this is not beer. This is an alcohol delivery device, not a fine drink to be savored and appreciated for its flavor or character. Perhaps, a handful of hops was held near the wort while it boiled and dissolved sugars, but certainly no hops were lovingly thrown into the mix. Prior to 1920 and prohibition, American beer was just as interesting and unique as the beer of any other country. We had variety and regional flavor. During prohibition, only the larger breweries survived by shifting production to non-alcoholic products. In 1933, prohibition ended and the major breweries proceeded to market a lighter style of beer that would appeal to both women and men. Over the years, beer came to mean a watery beverage, often brewed with rice or corn, that carried alcohol into the body without carrying flavor across the tongue. This is franken-beer made by corporations that love profit more than beer. I have spoken with many people who say they don't like beer, but have only ever sampled the twisted products of these breweries. I was one of them until I tasted a true beer, a certain Irish stout that looks like coffee. I then realized that I had never previously tried beer; I had only tried franken-beer.

The mass market ad campaigns have taught many people too well that beer with flavor is bad or as one brewery put it, "skunky." To combat skunkiness, this brewery put born on dates on all of its bottles. But when is a beer born? Is it born when the hops are thrown into the boiling wort as my religious friends might say, or do we take the more secular view that a beer is born when the bottle leaves the brewery? I say that too often American beer is in fact stillborn, or perhaps is not even born at all, no more deserving of the language of birth than a machine. Beer is born when there is love. Love for originality and uniqueness. Not love of money.

Referring back to Ben Franklin's quote and thinking of the popularity of American macro-brews, one cannot help but wonder if perhaps God no longer loves us. Perhaps we are being punished for following the trendy ads rather than our taste buds. I believe that this phenomenon, which occurs in other industries (think hamburger chains), is the end result of mass culture. Are we doomed to a steady diet of blandness and nothing?

Tagged: general

Killing Pablo

2005-10-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a review I posted one night in 2003 while playing with amazon.

After reading Mark Bowden's Blackhawk Down, I wanted more of Mark Bowden's gritty, exciting style. My only qualm with that book was the lack of sociopolitical background. Killing Pablo delivers that in spades. This book goes beyond the excitement of the chase and delves into the cultural forces that allow men like Pablo Escobar to exist in the first place. It is not a pretty picture, and it raises many questions for those of us living comfortable lives in the United States. What is our responsibility for keeping the world 'safe' and how much of the world's ills are of our own creation?

This book causes one to really ponder the moral implications of our government's actions, and at its heart is the timeless question of when does one act and when does one hold still. By the end of the book, I agreed that Escobar had to be killed, but I was left asking that ancient and uneasy question: Do the ends justify the means?

Powerful, well-written, significant. I couldn't put this one down. By the end of reading it, my house was a wreck, and I had a stack of work that I was behind on simply because I couldn't stop reading, even though the book's cover gives away the ending. I had to know how it came to that.

Tagged: books, reviews

Empires of Time

2005-10-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a review I posted one night in 2003 while playing with amazon.

Anthony Aveni's Empires of Time is a fascinating portrait of the rhythms and roles of time-keeping in a variety of cultures including the Aztec, Inca, Maya, and ancient Chinese. This is a thrilling exploration of a topic we all too often don't bother to consder.

Tagged: books, reviews

A Walk in the Woods

2005-10-18T20:46:00.001-07:00

Note: This is a review I posted one night in 2003 while playing with amazon.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson is quite possibly the funniest book I have ever read. Bryson's opening chapters covering his fear of bears had me laughing so hard, that I actually cried. A must read for not just a great laugh, but an impassioned exploration of our country's natural wonders.

When I read it, I often found myself moved to hit the local trails for my own walks in the woods.

Tagged: books, reviews

A Natural State

2005-10-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a review I posted one night in 2003 while playing with amazon.

Stephen Harrigan's A Natural State, a collection of essays originating in Texas Monthly does an exceptional job of taking the reader through the natural wonders of Texas, from the beaches to the deserts, and finally to the Hill Country's Enchanted Rock.

By the end of the book, I had no other choice than to hop in my own car and hit the Texas highways and rediscover this natural state for myself.

Tagged: books, reviews

Valis

2005-10-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a review I posted one night in 2003 while playing with amazon.

Philip K. Dick's Valis is at once sublime and unsettling. From the schizophrenic changes from third to first person point of view ("I am writing this in the third person to gain much-needed objectivity", the narrator reminds himself as much as the reader) through the brilliant "Tractates: Cryptica Scriptura" that comprise the appendix, we see a work that goes beyond mere science fiction and attempts to wrestle with the insane story of life itself.

This is a novel that seeks no less than the ultimate answers to life's biggest questions. Philip Dick in attempting to make sense of his own life gives us a work that is at once thrilling, empassioned, beautiful, funny, and sad.

This is truly one of the greatest (and least appreciated) works of American literature. I can't say it gave me all the answers, but it raised many questions and new ideas as well as inspiring me in my own writing. Isn't that what great literature is about? Thank you, PKD, wherever you are.

Tagged: books, reviews

Thousands of Pages of Potter and Loving It

2005-10-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

I've been putting away one Harry Potter book per film release for the past few years and enjoying each book more than the last. About a month ago, in anticipation of the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I began reading the mammoth tome that describes Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts. What immediately struck me was the substantially darker tone and the transformation of Dumbledore into a character less like Santa Claus and more like Gandalf. The book was well-done and thankfully (relatively) free of Quidditch. The book, of course, ends dark and the next book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (because this time I couldn't wait another year or more) picks up right where it left off - Harry's situation progressing from bad to worse.

I sped through the fifth book enjoying more than anything else the way Rowling grows her characters. The series opens dealing with kids, but by the end of Order of the Phoenix, Harry and company are on the fast road to adulthood, firmly believing they are already there, but still making the kind of rash and impulsive decisions that we all make as teenagers. Of course, none of us have the kinds of problems that Harry has nor the means of solving them. Still this provides a layer of depth to Rowling's writing that I was not at all expecting when I picked up the first book and read it over the course of several hours on a Thanksgiving afternoon. She does a fine job turning Harry into a confused, angry, and possibly dangerous young man who wants nothing more than to be normal but who must shoulder a burden far beyond what anyone would want a kid to have to handle.

It is not just Harry's maturation process that makes the series so interesting to me, however, but rather his relationships with and discoveries about the older wizards who seem increasingly human the older Harry gets. This is a natural phenomenon that kids experience as they grow older and their parents, teachers and other adults around them lose some of their grandeur, and once again Rowling handles it well. Especially fine is her portrayal of Severus Snape, the spooky potions professor we all love to hate. This guy clearly despises Harry and never misses an opportunity to viciously run him down, and yet just as Harry and his friends, time and again know he's surely evil, he does something that saves Harry's neck and yet still finds time to sneer at Harry just as cruelly as before.

Rowling's ability to undercut expectations is, for me, a large part of why these books are so fun. The early books are enchanting, mysterious, yet rather predictable. They all end with Dumbledore patiently explaining The Moral of the Story to Harry and what he should have learned, but as Harry and his friends grow up, the universe in which they live expands, becoming increasingly complicated, nuanced, and more dangerous to the point that not even Dumbledore can adequately explain everything to Harry other than Dumbledore's own mistakes and failures. Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Mrs. Weasely, Hagrid, Harry's dead father, all of the adults to whom he has looked up through his life in the wizarding world emerge tarnished, slightly smaller, yet infinitely more human. And of course none of them are able to provide all of the advice and answers to the big questions that Harry so desperately wants and needs. Rowling's ability to capture this painful aspect of growing up so poignantly and believably is, more than anything else, why I immediately began reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as soon as I finished book five.

Tagged: books, reviews

Switching Crooks

2005-10-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

October is often a bleak month starting with OU's annual defeat of UT. Then it gets worse, usually culminating in Republicans winning a bunch of elections. I've been more optimistic, though, since UT beat OU. Now the Astros are in the playoffs. Delay has been indicted. The Bush administration is floundering as it awaits - hopefully - indictments. People are finally waking up to Republican corruption. Could this be the end of evil?!? Could we see a bright new dawn of Democratic corruption? One can only hope...

Tagged: politics