Overkilling Clays
Really, this is just fantastic. Where does one go about renting a tank for such purposes?
"Plenty of room in this hot tub."
Kinky Friedman welcoming Houston Mayor Bill White to the Democrats’ crowded gubernatorial primary race. Say what you want about Texas politics, but at least it’s interesting.
Mud. Lotsa Mud
I’m going to defer to Cormac McCarthy to describe my first lap at the Mellow Classic this weekend. If you haven’t read The Road and don’t plan on seeing a grizzly Vigo Mortenson this week when the movie comes out, the brief synopsis is a boy and his father surviving in post apocalyptic America. In lap one this weekend, there was mud, cold, mud, bleakness, mud, and despair. There was no touching father son interactions (my dad was wisely at home grouting a bathtub) and I was not being chased by a horde of starving cannibals (although the NRC Pedal masher team makes a good substitute), but read the book, or really any of McCarthy’s work and you get the idea.
Lap two was more about me spacing out and trying to figure out a few things.
1. Exactly how bits of mud had made it into certain parts of my shorts that will remain unmentioned for fear of site censorship at various workplaces.
2. Exactly how many miles I was from the cooler or Fireman’s #4 that awaited me in the back of the Hotel Subaru.
4. How many more of the 12-and under group were going to pass me before I finished the fucking race, thereby further crushing my spirit.
5. Thinking on new adjectives to describe the state of my person, as simply muddy wasn’t really cutting it.
Upon finishing lap two, and the race, my chief accomplishments were 
grandly tallied up as not being last, not falling down, and making it back to the car to find the previously-mentioned-sextuplet-of-blessed-golden-elixir.
Riding at Lance’s house is fun though. You get to watch National Champions Race. You get a (peanut butter like mud aside) fantastic course, and of course great spectators. Mellow Johnny’s deserves credit for putting on a helluva an event, even with uncooperative weather.
Also of note – this race was not impossible for some, as Germ pulled second and from what I understand, was just edged out of first by a slippery rock. And to the racers who donated their prize money back tot the LAF foundation – damn classy move.
Russia, proximity of Alaska to, 275
Save yourself some time – a handy index to Palin’s Going Rouge. Looks like ‘Snow Machine’ is mentioned on at least ten pages, which when you put it in the context of a political book, is fairly impressive.
Oh Kay…
The staying in the Senate till you know if you’re going to get the governor gig, I get. It’s a dick move (see what i did there?), but the job market’s tough, and I’m sure losing that sweet Senate health insurance would be a real bummer. What I don’t understand is why anyone in their right-mind would want Dick Cheney’s endorsement, short of trying to get a subcontractor gig on the building of the next Death Star.
I’ve known Kay for many, many years. Most recently we’ve worked together over the last eight years while I was vice president and she was of course the senator from Texas, and part of the Senate Republican leadership.
At least from a PR perspective, I would’ve thought that we would’ve recognized those last eight years of failed foreign policy, draconian economics, and general road to wrack and ruin as not the best thing to reference in an endorsement speech, but hey, maybe that’s why I’m not a Republican.
Social Networking Backfire
“There’s a certain amount of intelligence work involved in kidnapping that Facebook makes easier,” said Roberto Briceno Leon, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence. “Before, what did kidnappers do? They could spend months checking accounts, studying a person’s daily movements in order to be able to plan the kidnapping. That implies an investment. Now, Facebook makes that easier.”
Honestly, it’s surprising this hasn’t been happening more. Internet narcissism has it’s price. Not that it’s really holding anybody back, myself included.
Spirit
This lonely spot on the edge of a crater may be where Spirit ends its adventure on Mars. Sad, but what an awesome road trip for an interstellar golf cart.
Wagon Awesomeness
James May from Top Gear rides with Ken Block in his 380hp Subaru Imprezza wagon for some rally practice. Kind of reminds me of my commute.
Libraries
A boarding-school library in New England has completely eliminated the old stacks and gone digital.
“If I look outside my window,” Tracy says, “and I see my student reading Chaucer under a tree, it is utterly immaterial to me whether they’re doing so by way of a Kindle or by way of a paperback.”
This is interesting to me, not because it’s cutting edge – it actually seems well past due for libraries to make the jump to an electronic format – but because the of the backlash they seem to be getting. Who wouldn’t rather have a giant beautiful old book to carry around? But we’ve entered the century with 6 billion confederates riding around on this tiny rock of ours, and the only way were going to make it to the next century is by educating the hell out of everybody.
That means we need to be pushing out all our information to as many people, as possibly as quickly as possibly. The internet provides that, but libraries need to be the linchpin of the strategy – to promote the database if knowledge, the new methods of research – to teach the next generation the all important task of how to educate themselves. But the format, the easiest cheapest way to disseminate knowledge to the remotest poorest parts of the world is electrically. Monks used to hand-write books and the global knowledge-base was proportionately small. Then came Gutenberg. Now comes something else.
Health Care
I wish I could chalk it up to some grand confluence of life-events that have kept me from writing seriously lately, but I’ve been trapped in some strange nether region between not wanting to crank out pretentious blather and not giving a shit. Too much work at the moment, methinks. Or maybe I’ve just run out of shit to be angry about.
Well hell, we all know that’s not true.
Lets start with Republicans. This week house debate on the health care bill turned to serious issues when R’s, in their 60 second allotted slot, took issue with the size weight and number of sheets of paper used in the bill. An intelligent discussion on the merits of a public option? No we got protests on the weight of the bill. Awesome.
Republicans are making political theater of the bill’s bulk. Rep. Roy Blunt (R. Mo.) said the bill is longer than War and Peace (1,225 pages) and the King James Bible (1,291 pages). Rep. Michael Burgess (R., Texas) stood on top of a copy at a Capitol Hill rally this week to view the crowd. Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.) uses a dolly to wheel it between Capitol Hill meetings.
Then of course, you have the whole thing coming down to a nail-biter of a vote because of, what else – abortion. I’m sorry but how the fuck can our priorities be this out of whack? I believe in a women right to choose, but I’d also like her to get good preventative care over the course of her lifetime? These are the choices we have to make? Could we work gay marriage, don’t-ask, don’t-tell, and maybe whether or not the Yankees pay their players too much into the bill as well?
About 40 moderate House Democrats say they will oppose the bill unless it ensures federal subsidies are not used to pay for abortions. Members who favor abortion rights said they will not allow the bill to exceed current restrictions on using federal money to finance abortions.
Can we please, just for a month or two, pretend like this isn’t one giant campaign and pass a meaningful law? After that we can go back to ethics investigations and congressional page scandals for as long as you guys want. Hell, bring back Ted Stevens just so you can kick him out again, but for the love of god, we really need to pass this thing.
Maybe this is a by-product of me getting most of my news off the internet and The Daily Show, but it seemed to me last year we were poised for grand intellectual debates in our houses of government, new eras of understanding, bi-partisanship, etc. Now we have the Fox News Tea Parties (I’d like to meet the evil genius behind that PR stunt), Town Hall meetings gone horribly wrong and let’s face it, a tone of Bush-era pessimism.
Maybe that’s the root of the lack of inspiration of late – it’s hard to see your hopes so horribly dashed. But at least it gives me something to be pissed about.