Category: Random Stuff

In order to avoid a traffic jam on I-35 last weekend, I made my way to Parmer by way of old McNeil Road in Round Rock. I don’t find myself around there often, but I’ve known McNeil for the past eighteen years. It’s a long straight stretch that with very little traffic tempts any car to ignore the posted 45mph. There is a quarry (which I’ve photographed on a few occasions), a small general store/post office of the sort one finds in small towns, and not much else.

As I was cruising along, I saw a gigantic traffic interchange in the middle of what was once open land. Old McNeil runs under this behemoth and continues along its merry way past the quarry and towards the new version of McNeil that is sort of an extension of Howard Lane.

Driving toward the new – and as yet unopened – interchange, I was struck by the fact that I had no idea what highways the interchange had been built to connect, and yet they come from three directions and meet in the sky above McNeil. I’m pretty familiar with north Austin, but what were these strange roads and whither do they go?

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the ongoing festival of road construction in north Austin for quite some time. Interchanges and new roads are springing up everywhere, and rather than research the issue at TxDot, I find it more fun to figure it out on my own. It’s like a mystery written in concrete or a game that you only play at those odd times when you’re transiting across the playing field on the way to somewhere else.

The McNeil interchange is a piece that I haven’t quite figured out yet. It appears that the highways leaving the mysterious interchange might connect 620, I-35, and possibly Mopac, all of which are undergoing extensive remodeling. Of course none of these highways have ever traversed McNeil. Perhaps one of the two new highways: TX-130 and TX-45 is involved, and when these roads open they will lead to this interchange, thus solving this piece of the puzzle.

I guess when all the construction is complete and all the new roads open, we’ll have to learn our collective way around north Austin all over again, which should provide a few weeks of missed turns and bad driving just to add to the sport.

UPDATE: An alert reader who knows every road in the area (that’s you, Dad) sent an email that explains the workings of the mysterious overpass in the sky. Those of you who enjoy mystery as a part of your drive should not read any further or you’ll find out that this is where all the roads go:

The interchange at McNeil connects the Mopac extension (toll) with SH 45 (toll) which runs from 183 and 620 (Lakeline area) to Tx 130 (toll) in Pflugerville near where you guys used to live via the new interchange at I35 and La Frontera. In addition, at 620/183 it will link to 183A (toll) which is the bypass around Cedar Park and Leander. TX 130 runs from north of Georgetown (near Walburg) to Seguin (eventually).

So there you have it.

Everywhere I’ve gone in the blogosphere this week, I find that everyone is weighing in on the Muhammed cartoon images that have sparked violent protests throughout the world. There isn’t much for me to say on this except: free speech – good, violence in the name of religion – bad, insulting people’s religions and beliefs – bad. I know that reads a lot like the assessment at Cosmic Variance, where there is some good commentary as well as interesting links on this subject, but what else is there to say?

Not much.

There is of course much to learn. I’ve been reading a series of excellent posts by Gypsy Scholar in which he discusses the issues surrounding the depiction of Muhammed. This is all very enlightening, to say the least. Dr. Hodges effectively refutes the notion that Islam does not allow renderings of the prophet and provides several examples of images of the prophet that came from Muslim artists.

There is also an excellent series at Perspectives of a Nomad that discusses some of the larger issues within Islamic society and its relationship with western society. Scottage makes the argument that we may be seeing the emergence of some new players on the world scene who are instigating this appalling violence. Afterall, as Gypsy Scholar points out, these images had been published in Egypt months ago.

One hopes that we can find ways to live peacefully together, since (I think, I hope) that is what most of us humans want. And what most religions appear to teach. Of course this really is more about the cancer of fundamentalism that can infect any religion.

So there it is, a gypsy and a nomad with lots of very thorough, interesting, and thought provoking writing on this subject that only now seems to be hitting the consciousness of the nonblogging American mainstream. I can’t help but wonder what those whose first inkling of this was yesterday’s cnn.com headline that said something to the effect of “Bush urges end to cartoon violence.” I agree. Bugs Bunny has been getting away with murder for years. Let’s give poor Mr. Fudd a break.

Last night, we saw Kathy Griffin’s sold-out show at The Paramount. It’s been quite a while since I’ve gone to see a stand-up comedy show, and I’d forgotten how fun it is to spend an evening laughing.

I’ve caught bits and pieces of her routine on TV and seen part of My Life on the D-List, and I’ve always liked her. She has a wonderfully breathless I’ve-just-got-to-tell-you-this kind of delivery that draws the crowd into her show by creating the impression of a friend sharing wild secrets and gossip. Her act focuses on ripping certain celebrities whom she often then meets leading to situations in which she has to deal with having put her foot into her mouth. I don’t watch much TV so I sometimes didn’t know who she was talking about (Clay Aiken? Lindsay Lohan?) but the jokes still worked and her delivery – sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes ridiculously assertive – is great fun. It’s not all celeb-bashing, though. There’s plenty of good pissed-off liberal political commentary and family stories that are completely over-the-top.

My favorite aspect of the show was her willingness to share the kind of embarrasing moments that we’d all just as soon forget. Her stories are wild and – true or not doesn’t matter – had me laughing the next morning while making breakfast.

Overall a great show, probably one of the funniest I’ve seen.

Yesterday afternoon as I was coming up the hill at the end of my run, I noticed that Mrs. Next Door Neighbor and her daughter were walking away from my front door pulling a wagon. On Saturday I had seen them unloading boxes from a van outside their house and now these same boxes appeared to be in the back of the wagon. They noticed me approaching and stopped on the sidewalk by my house. I then realized that despite the calculations of the mood scientists, yesterday was not to be the worst day of the year. In fact, it was one of the best. It occurs on different days for each of us, making it something of a moveable feast, but yesterday – for me, anyway – was Girl Scout Cookie Day.

I’ll buy anything from a kid just to get the little urchins off the street and back to their XBoxes, but I usually only get a small something unless the kid goes beyond staring at the ground mumbling, “I’m…. selling… for sch…” at which point I just ask to see the catalog. If the kid actually pitches something and really tries to sell it… well, I’m a sucker, which is why I have a pantry full of wax-tasting candy, caramel popcorn, and excessively strong candles.

The exception is Girl Scouts. They need money. I need cookies. It’s perfect. The cookies sell themselves. I always splurge, and at three bones per box, that’s a lot of cookie. This year there are even two new flavors: Reduced Fat Cartwheels (“cinnamon oatmeal bites”) and Thanks-A-Lot (“crunchy fudge-coated treats that say thank you on them in five languages.”) Next Door Neighbor’s daughter proudly pitched the new items. How could I resist?

I haven’t tried the new ones yet since I had to immediately sample the Thin Mints. I’m happy to report that this year’s vintage is exceptionally good. They are suitable for aging a few days in the freezer and perfectly compliment a sparkling clementine Izze.

According to an article in today’s Austin American-Statesman (which requires a subscription so no link) entitled, “In mood science, today = bluest of 2006” today is supposed to be a gloomy day based on the calculations of one Cliff Arnall, a health psychologist at Cardiff University in Wales. He uses the following formula to calculate the year’s “emotional low point”:

1/8W + (D-d)3/8 x TQ/M x NA

The variables are weather (W), debt (D), monthly salary (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failure to quit a bad habit (Q), low motivation levels (M) and the need to take action (NA).

I’m not a mathematician, and I’m not sure how to assign the variables, but I tried to work it anyway.

It’s beautiful today in central Texas and even 1/8 of that is still a pretty fine day. I got lost on failure to quit a bad habit. Are we measuring minutes or years? If I just quit a bad habit or never failed to quit a bad habit, then does Q=0? If so that could throw the whole equation out of whack. We could wind up with gloominess essentially being 1/8W + 0. As stated earlier 1/8 of a beautiful day ain’t bad. I also realize you’d need to make a major adjustment for the southern hemisphere since large swaths of the planet could be enjoying a perfect summer day.

Basically then it seems that if you quit a bad habit on a reasonably nice day (or in the southern hemisphere), you’ll have no call to worry about your debts, income, motivation or the fact that Christmas was a month ago.

Fortunately for me, I had a non-melancholy Monday and was able to maintain all of my bad habits.

Last weekend we spent a lot of time watching movies, and all of them turned out to be very good. There’s nothing like a long weekend catching up on Netflix and DVR recordings. It’s even better when you don’t regret the time spent watching what you watched.

On Friday, my wife came home with frozen White Castle hamburgers and onion rings, and we watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie this funny. It’s a good-natured stoner buddies on the road movie that was perfect for a Friday night. It didn’t seem appealing when I saw the trailer last year, but it had me laughing. And, man, those burgers are good, even frozen.

On Saturday we watched The Buena Vista Social Club, a documentary about Ry Cooder bringing a large ensemble of brilliant and largely forgotten cuban musicians back to the studio and then on tour. Ruben Gonzales hadn’t played a piano in over ten years and most of the musicians had faded into obscurity, but the music they created together is nothing short of magic. I’ll need to buy the CD.

Next came Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a fascinating film about Chuck Barris, the creator of The Newlywed Game, The Dating Game, and The Gong Show, who according to his journals on which the movie was based also worked as a CIA assassin. After that came The Yes Men, a documentary about a group of guys who built a fake website satirizing the World Trade Organization. Occasionally, people would email thinking they were the real WTO and ask them to come speak. They oblige. The results are hysterical.

The most interesting film was Less than Zero. I’d read the book a few years back, but somehow missed the movie when it came out in the late ’80s. The movie, of course, is nowhere near as good as the book, but seeing it today just made me sad. Not because of the subject matter (rich kids gone bad) but because of the way Robert Downey Jr’s fine performance as the doomed Julian so perfectly foreshadowed the trajectory his life would take. He became that character – so hopeless and desperate to clean up his act, but never able to do so. Occasionally, while flipping through channels, I’ve seen bios that focus on his persistent drug problem, but I never paid much attention until seeing this particular example of life imitating art.

Driving along the highways around here, one can’t help but notice the big signs reminding motorists of the extreme fire danger throughout the state. There hasn’t been any significant rain, it’s unseasonably hot and very windy. What surprised me though was the wording on the electronic signs along Mopac and I-35 in Austin:

Arson/Burn Ban in Effect

Does this mean that under normal conditions there is no ban on arson? If so, it’s a bit disappointing to know that all those times I wanted to burn down someone’s house, torch a restaurant for providing lousy service, or just ignite a large swath of woodland to keep warm, my hand was stayed by the belief that arson was always banned. Silly me. I can’t wait until it rains again.

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.