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.
by James Brush
Author: James Brush
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
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 my wife 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 her hand. This was so unexpected that after my wife 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:
[saveagrey]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here’s a headline from cbsnews.com that I couldn’t ignore if I wanted to:
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.
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.
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.
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.)