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Year: 2006

I Do the Devil’s Work

May 1, 2006 • • 2 Comments

I love it when politicians say stupid things. I guess that makes me a perpetually happy man.

While reading Paul Burka’s latest Texas Monthly Article “The Tax Man. Yeah, the Tax Man” (no link, subscription required) I came across a quote I’d read a few years back, but that Burka resurfaced for our amusement. Said Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball):

Where did this idea come from that everyone deserves free education…[I think she also mentioned children’s healthcare, but Burka ellipsed it out]…? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It came straight out of the pit of Hell.

I bet you had no idea.

I sure didn’t, but then I suppose I’ve always believed that democracy can’t function without an educated populace. Of course, educated voters would probably not continue to elect the kind of incompetents we currently have ruining running our state.

Well, I suppose I should get back to planning for tomorrow’s black masses… er, I mean classes.

(By the way isn’t the Dark Lord Voldemort’s real name Tom Riddle? I’m just saying.)

Weekend Hound Blogging: Nigel George

April 30, 2006 • • 9 Comments

This week we remember Nigel “Bubba” George, my parents’ dog, who after a long and happy life went off on Friday to chase after the great tennis ball in the sky. My parents’ dogs have always outlived their expected lifespans and Nigel, who was a big guy, was no exception.

Nigel

Nigel was a lover of opera. He enjoyed standing by the stereo speakers, waiting for the tenors to start singing and then he would howl sing along. He liked hiking, but had to be carried across creeks so his feet would stay dry. His favorite game was ball. And don’t forget Nigel’s cameo appearance in this blog a few months ago…

Nigel and the Bone Box

Dogs and cats really become part of the family and so it’s hard to see them go, but it’s good to remember that he was happy and always up to something to make people laugh. Take care, Bubba, and here’s hoping your feet stay dry.

(Not the) Same As It Ever Was

April 29, 2006 • • 1 Comment

At long last, the Talking Heads have gotten into the business of remastering their albums. CD technology changed sometime in the late ’90s which is why old CDs such as all the Talking Heads CDs I bought in the ’80s sound so flat compared to newer CDs.

I’ve picked up remastered CDs by numerous jazz artists as well as a few rock bands that I especially like. Buying a remastered CD is like discovering a favorite album for the first time all over again. It’s one of the few times when you can truly relive the experience of discovering something new and wonderful.

Remastered CDs are always worth the money for any artist whose music is especially dense or that involves complex interplay between musicians because the biggest difference between remastered CDs and the originals is the separation of the instruments. John Coltrane claimed that you couldn’t tell if music was good or not until you’d listened to a record once for each instrument and followed just that instrument all the way through. A well done remastered CD makes that possible, opening windows into musicians’ playing and style that had previously remained difficult to penetrate.

Today, while running errands and listening to the remastered version of American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, I decided to stop in and buy the remastered Workingman’s Dead. I got to the store and there on the shelf was what I had waited for, lo these many years: remastered Talking Heads CDs.

They were all there: ’77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, Remain in Light, Speaking in Tongues, Little Creatures, True Stories, Naked… Oh, embarrassment of riches!

What to do? I looked closer and saw that not only were all the albums remastered, but they included alternate takes and unfinished experiments. The CDs are all dual-discs meaning that they have a DVD side with videos and the original albums remastered in DVD 5.1 Dolby Surround. Holy crap, I would have to discipline myself and only purchase one. There was no choice. It would have to be Remain in Light.

Continue reading(Not the) Same As It Ever Was

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

April 28, 2006 • • Leave a comment

Well, no, not mine…

From the time I first read the dense and lovely Autumn of the Patriarch I have been amazed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. More than any other writer, his work takes me to a place that is as real as my own street and as distant as another’s dreams. Reading Garcia Marquez is more than picking up a book. To read Garcia Marquez is to enter another world, a parrallel dimension in which myths and magic are as real as a South American traffic jam. The worlds he creates feel modern and yet ancient like old film reels and sepia-toned photographs depicting events that happened only yesterday.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is my favorite novel. My favorite short story is his “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” I’ve read many of his other stories and novellas all of which created a huge mountain of expectation for his latest, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, which I finally got around to reading.

Memories is slim book, simple and elegant in language, that relates the tale of an old man who on his ninetieth birthday arranges a gift for himself: a night of wild love with a teenage virgin. Arrangements are made at the local brothel and when the night arrives he finds that the girl has been drugged to ease her nerves and as he watches her sleep, he falls in love.

Each day, Rosa Cabarcas, the madam, demands that he show up and take what he has paid for, but each night the narrator falls more deeply in love with the sleeping beauty, afraid to touch her, afraid to wake her and content to be in love for the first time in his life.

Like much of Marquez’ work, the novel has a languid, dreamlike feel that works perfectly in this tale of a romantic’s dream of love that might finally be acknowledged as real. We follow the narrator through his ninetieth year as he comes to realize that there is much life left in him, that age is but a state of mind, so long as there is love.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores does not rely heavily on the kind of carnival magic atmosphere that has characterized so much of Marquez’ magical realism style, but the magic is still there, lingering after the tents have been folded up and put away and the carnival has moved on to the next town leaving a few stragglers on the shore of some Columbian sea. It’s a work suffused with the kind of quiet magic that one might feel when falling in love for the first time in ninety years.

Two Hundred Posts of Solitude

April 27, 2006 • • 2 Comments

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover blogging…

I’ve heard that bloggers are supposed to commemorate their 100th posts (here’s mine), but I failed to do so. However, I noticed that the next post posted would be my 200th, and so I moved it to 201 so that I could post about posting, celebrate this momentuous nonoccasion, and lampoon a favorite writer whose latest book will be the subject my my 201st post.

Off I go now to celebrate this milestone and drown all sorrows by closing every bar and watering hole between here and… well, and the refrigerator.

Terrible Days

April 26, 2006 • • 4 Comments

When I arrived to work yesterday, I learned that two of my coworkers had been killed in a car accident on Monday night. It was on the front page of the Austin American Statesman today. One was the campus secretary who made the whole place run and who did so much to help me get settled in when I started there. The other was an English teacher, a favorite among the kids and a woman who made everyone feel welcome. There is so much pain in that building, such a palpable feeling of loss.

Both women were people who truly made the new guy (me) feel welcome. They helped me get settled into the routine there which is so different from a normal school. It’s hard to fathom how you can just say ‘see-ya tomorrow’ on the way out the door only to find that that’s it. It’s a terrible thing to lose one person in such a small tight knit faculty, but two at once is just… well, there aren’t words. Everyone is so rattled at work, just hanging on. I can’t imagine what the two families are going through.

Until yesterday I had been teaching mostly GED prep courses, but because my certification is in English, my GED classes were given to other teachers and I’ve taken over the English teacher’s classes. I had no idea what the kids would be like, but they all wanted to carry on what they were doing in her classes so I will now need to read and get caught up on My Side of the Mountain, The Count of Monte Cristo, and To Kill a Mockingbird. I just told them I couldn’t be who she was and that I wouldn’t try, but that we’d muddle through together. Then I taught them a bit of poetry writing. Most of them liked that and things went as well as could be expected.

Hell’s Belles at Antone’s

April 24, 2006 • • 3 Comments

On Saturday we caught the Seattle-based all female AC/DC tribute band Hell’s Belles at Antone’s. My cousin is one of the Belles so not only was it a great show, but it was a chance to sit around and catch up before the set.

The last time we saw them was great, but I really liked seeing them at Antone’s (instead of Stubb’s) because the layout puts everyone close to the stage, which is a must with this band since they work so hard to engage and energize the audience.

There’s nothing more infectious and flat out fun than watching a band that appears to be enjoying themselves on stage, and I think that that party-all-nite excitement that they bring to their shows is as important as the music, which as I’ve written before is simply incredible.

The last time we saw them, I didn’t know much of AC/DC’s material, except for the big songs, but I still loved it. This time around I was more familiar with the songs (mainly through the Hell’s Belles We Salute You CD) and so enjoyed it even more. They wrapped up way past my bedtime, but it still seemed early which is exactly what a high energy rock show should do.

Uhhh, Like Housekeeping and Stuff

April 22, 2006 • • 2 Comments

One of the many fun things about blogging is tinkering with the blog and in the process learning a bit about how web sites work. I haven’t been writing the past few days; instead, I’ve been playing with my code (uh-huh-huh…Shut up, Beavis that’s not what I meant) in an effort to create a separate archives page so as to clean up the left sidebar by placing a single link in the navigation section. Anyways, that’s where the archives and categories are for all you scholars doing research on my blog.

The coolest thing about the archives page is the live calendar plug-in that uses AJAX so that the whole page doesn’t have to reload when you move to another month.

Now that my left sidebar is cleaned up, and I’ve learned how to make static pages that use WordPress’s php tags, I’m debating making a links page for my blogroll and then reconfiguring to a two column fixed layout. I like fluid design (which is what I have now) because I like how it fills a monitor and gives users the option of resizing the browser to create a comfortable column width for reading, but with a fixed layout I could control the layout of posts, which would be nice when using pictures.

Oh, what to do. Perhaps I just miss playing with my code (uh-huh huh…damn it, Beavis, don’t make me kick your ass!) since I haven’t made any changes to the look of Coyote Mercury since January, but then I do find a very clean minimalist site somewhat appealing. Change for the sake of change? Yup, that’s me.

Ok, I’m off to rearrange the house…

The Old Jamestown Bridge

April 19, 2006 • • Leave a comment

I recently posted an old piece I had written about crossing the Newport Bridge, which spans the Narragansett Bay between Conanicut and Aquidneck Islands in Rhode Island, but I did not mention, except in passing, another bridge: the old Jamestown Bridge that once connected Conanicut with the mainland.

Perhaps it was fear that held me back.

Crossing the Jamestown Bridge was terrifying for me when I was a kid. I was small so perhaps the bridge really wasn’t as fearsome as I remember, but it was narrow and it was high and it was steep.

Mainly, though, it was loud.

I remember the sound of wheels rumbling over the steel grating while wind tore through the spans and shook the car, rattling teeth and nerves.

The noise resulted from the fact that the main span of the bridge was nothing more than open steel grating which meant that you could look down and see the blue of the bay directly beneath the tires. Add the bumpiness and the terrible noise to that vertiginous view and it felt like you’d be lucky to make it across alive.

This morning, I saw a picture in the Austin American-Statesman of a bridge exploding. At first glance it appeared to be festooned with flowers. I read the caption to see that it was none other than the old Jamestown Bridge, replaced by a more stable bridge in 1992 and since designated a navigational hazard by the Coast Guard, that was sent to the bottom of Narragansett Bay yesterday morning.

So long, old nemesis.