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Year: 2005

Posting a Short Story

October 29, 2005 • • Leave a comment

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.

More Fun with LibraryThing

October 28, 2005 • • Leave a comment

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.

Hound Update

October 27, 2005 • • Leave a comment

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.

LibraryThing

October 26, 2005 • • 2 Comments

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.

Phoebe, Still a Puppy

October 26, 2005 • • Leave a comment

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.

Maybe I’ll Get that PhD…

October 25, 2005 • • Leave a comment

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.

We Be the Master Now

October 24, 2005 • • Leave a comment

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.

New Hound in Town

October 23, 2005 • • 5 Comments

Phoebe 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 seeMorrisonms 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.

Dream Ships

October 22, 2005 • • Leave a comment

(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?”

Big Ugly Billboards

October 20, 2005 • • 1 Comment

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.