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Coyote Mercury Posts

Burning Down the House

January 18, 2006 • • 4 Comments

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.

This Must Be the Place

January 17, 2006 • • 8 Comments

I went back into teaching today.

Towards the end of last school year, I decided to leave the district I’d been with for the previous six years mainly because of a commute that due to a move had grown considerably longer than when I had started. Once the decision to leave that district was made, I decided to leave the profession altogether. There were a number of reasons, but mainly I was feeling burned out. Besides, I had never intended to teach forever. Teaching was my second career. After growing tired of the ups and downs of freelancing in the film business, I had wanted to do something ‘useful for a while’ as I told people who thought I’d lost my mind back when I was working through an alternative certification program.

Last summer, I decided that since I was going to be looking for another job why not look outside of public education? I spent the summer interviewing and searching and finally found a job as a project manager at a small company. It sounded exciting – a combination of marketing, IT and communications. The job was okay, but it didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. The commute was horrendous, I got home very late each evening and while there was no grading to do, I had little time for writing, a problem that was growing increasingly difficult since there is another novel just bursting to be written. So back I went to the calculus of career in which I always conclude that what I do all day must be personally fulfilling and give me time to write.

The thing about teaching is that I know I’m really good at it. I can reach the kids who hate school (just as I hated it until I got to college) and I can push them past the level of ‘minimum skills’ that Texas requires, showing them that they can read and write and – most importantly – think better than they ever thought they could. Not teaching felt like I was wasting part of myself.

A few weeks ago, I started looking and found a mid-year opening at an alternative school. It’s a boot camp environment for kids who are on their last chance. In some cases the next step could be prison. This is exciting to me. When I got the job last week, I happily packed up my office and quit. Today was my first day at my new school. I loved it. It felt right. When I resigned from my old teaching position everyone tried to convince me that teaching was my calling and that I shouldn’t leave the profession.

I’m glad I did, but I’m thrilled to be back where I think I probably belong. I’ve had many jobs, a few professions and careers, but only teaching has ever made me want to get up and go to work for someone else.

Weekend Hound Blogging: Greyhound Daylight Time

January 15, 2006 • • 2 Comments

Initially, I didn’t have much to say and was just going to post a picture, but that didn’t feel like a Weekend Hound Report, so instead of sitting at the computer wishing for something to blog about, which seems to be very dangerous, I decided to just change the name from ‘Report’ to ‘Blogging,’ thus freeing myself from the tryranny of the word ‘report’ and opening the way to just put up a cute picture. Then I thought of something to write, but I went ahead and left ‘Blogging’ up to keep the pressure down and thus it is that we now have Weekend Hound (or Cat) Blogging:

I’ve heard that greyhounds have very accurate internal clocks due to the regimented life they live in the concentration camps… er… kennels at the tracks. You know, early to bed, early to rise makes a hound faster and smarter and postpones his demise. Well, since Phoebe is a retired fired racer, I’ve been watching since she came to us for evidence of this internal clock. Well, it started going off this week. 4:30 am. Usually, I get up at 5:30 and Phoebe follows me out of the bedroom and joins me for breakfast and a trip to the backyard (for her, not me).

This week, however, every morning at 4:30am we hear the squeek-squeek-squeek of a squeeky chew toy growing louder and louder as it begs for mercy. After that comes the beating of her weedwhacker tail against the wall until finally she starts running laps around the room. The room is small – at least for a speeding greyhound – so bouncing off the walls is more like it.

Every morning this week.

4:30am.

It’s apparent that Phoebe’s internal clock ticks just fine, but somewhere in that pointy little canine head it seems that a switch has been made in which the internal clock has skipped ahead an hour. A friend suggested that she has perhaps switched to greyhound daylight time.

Or perhaps it’s just youth. She turned two in November, which is pretty much adult for most dogs, but according to my copy of Retired Racing Greyhounds for Dummies, (She came with the book, can you believe it? Adopt a dog and get a book. What’s not to love?) greys mature more slowly:

Because greyhounds don’t mature until they are about three years of age, a two-year-old retired racer may still be very much a puppy and quite full of himself. He may need more exercise and supervision than a dog who is just a few months or a year older.

I wondered if perhaps she needs a bit more exercise. So I took her for an especially long walk on Saturday night, but it only helped a little bit. She started working over the squeeky toy at 4:37. Better, but we still need to adjust that clock.

[saveagrey]

Welcome to the New Coyote Mercury

January 14, 2006 • • 3 Comments

Thanks for coming. I’ll be blogging here from now on. There are still some things on this site that may be a bit buggy, but I’m working on those. If you notice anything that looks weird or doesn’t work right, please comment and let me know. Once the various kinks are worked out, I’ll resume regular blogging.

Don’t forget to update your blogrolls!

The Pimpin’ Post

January 12, 2006 • • 1 Comment

Pimp. It’s an interesting word that one hears quite often especially around high school students. Of course, they don’t use it to mean “a man who manages women in prostitution, often street prostitution, in order to profit from their earnings”(wikipedia). It’s generally used as a compliment as in: “Mr. Brush is cool. He’s a pimp.” There’s no implication here that I might be managing the business of prostitutes. I’m just a cool guy.

Interestingly it can also be used as an adjective as in “Did you see his pimp ride?” or “That ride was pimpin’.” Both statements essentially mean that he had a cool car.

The most fascinating use that I’ve heard is when it’s used as an adverb as in: “Did you check out his pimp tite ride?” Here, ‘pimp’ is the adverb modifying the adjective ‘tite’ (‘tite’ of course means really cool. One might even say as cool as a pimp).

Most adjectives can be adverbed just by taking the advice of “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here” and adding an ‘-ly.’ Unfortunately, this approach would turn the adjective ‘pimp’ into potential adverb ‘pimply’. That would never do.

No pimp should ever be pimply. A potentially pimply pimp wouldn’t ever be pimp much less a pimp pimp even if the pimply pimp was pimping pimply and had a pimp tite ride such as a pimpmobile. The pimply pimp probably would receive a pimp-slapping by a real pimpin’ pimp who can pimp properly without being pimply. (One hopes our pimply pimp wouldn’t be tied to the pimping post.)

by Professor Truth J Brushefeller

Building a New Blog

January 11, 2006 • • 2 Comments

As you can probably see if you’ve stumbled upon this site I’m in the site building process. My blog, Coyote Mercury, has been hosted on Blogger, but ever since I first dipped my toe in the waters of the ‘net and began experimenting with building sites, I’ve owned the www.coyotemercury.com domain and have hosted it on Yahoo! I never did much with it and basically forgot about it, using it only as a repository for old stories and such. Recently, though, I learned that Yahoo! had partnered with both Moveable Type and WordPress, the end result being that users can for no extra charge run a blog on Yahoo! using either (or both) platforms.

This sounded good since I was already paying for Yahoo! hosting so I experimented with both, but decided to use WordPress. It’s easy, powerful and intuitive. Moveable Type was cool, but I had WordPress figured out much sooner and was happy with the results. I’m using the Gila theme with a lot of my own modifications in the CSS. I also decided to use WordPress to power the main site and since it has this cool feature that allows you to make static pages it was perfect. I had to make a whole bunch of modifications to the static page layout to develop a look that makes the blog seem to be part of the site rather than everything being parts of the blog.

WordPress also has a feature that allows one to import all posts and comments from Blogger. I’ll do that when I’m finished tweaking my layout and then I’ll start posting here. Until then, I’m still on Blogger.

Weekend Hound Report: Football and Other Adventuresmorr

January 9, 2006 • • 2 Comments

Readers of my previous post will be aware that though the week may begin on a Sunday or a Monday depending on one’s language and location, Monday is never part of the weekend, and yet, a Weekend Hound Report. Just a little temporal paradox to enrich your experience.

The hounds had an interesting week. Some friends came over for the UT game, and as Vince Young charged into the end zone to seal the game, much celebration ensued. Quite terrifying.

The hounds leapt from the sofa and ran into the cave in the back of the house study to hide from the crazed apes who were beating their hands together, screaming and generally whooping it up. Morrison sauntered off into another room with his tail fluffed out like a bottle brush. When the humans settled down, he walked in to check on the dogs. He found Phoebe (the sixty-five pound greyhound) huddled in a corner so he naturally hissed at her, which caused her to tremble and cry in terror until my wife rescued her. Morrison (the seventeen-pound cat) was sent to time out. He must have been pulling for USC.

On Saturday, we went to visit some friends who just bought a house on the north shore of Lake Travis. They invited the hounds so we all cruised out through the hills to Lago Vista. This time it was Daphne’s turn to be afraid. She loves our friends when they come to our house. The drive was too much, though, and she spent the evening sleeping and recovering in a corner of the bathroom.

Phoebe loved the whole adventure. This was the first time she’d met these friends and she was very into them. It seems like each day, Phoebe comes out more and more, becoming more adventurous, more of a dog. Daphne is also coming out, but her progress is measured in years.

[saveagrey]

It Really Is 2006

January 7, 2006 • • 2 Comments

I’ve read about the danger posed by bloggers to the interests and bottom lines of major corporations, and it is with that in mind that I must freely and happily retract something I recently posted.

On Tuesday, January 6, 2006 I wrote a post entitled Groundhog Year that suggested a product created through the hard work and dedication of the many workers and executives at a big corporate calendar company might be defective. In fact, I am the defective. I did not realize that the calendar was manufactured in Europe, where the week begins, sensibly enough, on the first day of the week – Monday. Wikipedia explains:

According to ISO 8601, the week begins on a Monday. This agrees with the term weekend for Saturday and Sunday. But this differs from the numerical weekday order used in medieval Latin churches, who numbered the first through sixth days of the week (Sunday through Friday). Similarly, weeks now exist in two varieties. The traditional Sunday-first system is used by some English speakers and much of Latin America, while most of continental Europe uses the ISO order. The ISO 8601 order has the potential for confusion with speakers of Church Latin, Portuguese, and Hebrew as in these languages the names for days from Sunday through Friday are numberings out of synchrony with this standard; “Sunday” is “first day,” “Monday” is “second day,” etc.

Not being a speaker of Church Latin, Portuguese or Hebrew, I can only blame my American upbringing and tired eyes since I saw the dates, but did not notice the days at the top of the columns, thus I thought the dates were for 2005.

I humbly and freely apologize for any unintentional damage I may have inadvertently caused the global calendar industry. I apologize for careers ruined, jobs lost, and any dips in stock prices that may have occurred as a result of the lack of editorial oversight at Coyote Mercury.

I know now that we bloggers must watch our words carefully and do our collective duty to police ourselves to help protect big defenseless corporations from the outrageous excesses and self-interested machinations of the little guy.

Perhaps posts that have the potential for confusion and combativeness ought not to be written on Tiw’s day.

In all honesty, it’s a great calendar of the ISO 8601 compliant Gregorian variety full of Ernest Shepard’s Winnie-the Pooh illustrations.

Playing with Ideas in Sophie’s World

January 6, 2006 • • 3 Comments

Football elation can’t last forever, so this blog now returns to its usual grey for a post about a book. (Perhaps we’ll try yellow when Lance wins his next Tour de France.)

When I taught high school debate I always wished I had a book to share with my students that would provide a fun and easy introduction to philosophy and that would hold the interest of kids ranging from freshmen to seniors. Apparently, a Norwegian high school philosophy teacher named Jostein Gaarder thought the same thing, so he wrote Sophie’s World.

This has been on my bookshelf for several years (so, as my wife points out, I did have it while I was teaching debate) but I’ve only just now found the time to read it, and I loved it! The book tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl who begins receiving cryptic letters in her mailbox. She soon finds herself enrolled in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher.

Gaarder does an excellent job presenting the history of human thought about existence from the early myths to philosophy to modern science in a whimsical and good-natured mystery wherein Sophie’s philosophy lessons become the clues to solving the mysteries in her own life. The story takes strange twists and turns that mirror the thinking of the various philosophers Sophie studies and ultimately each turn provides some kind of contextual example of the ideas Gaarder is trying to illuminate.

It’s clear Gaarder has a specific audience in mind – young people being introduced to philosophy – but I think even one well educated in philosophy would enjoy this simply because Gaarder manages to capture the wonder and thrill of learning for the first time about big ideas that sadly gets beaten out of so many of us. The book is never pedantic, always charming, and provides many jumping off points for thought-games and other mental excursions into the nature of both storytelling and reality itself. Sophie’s World never takes itself too seriously and reminds the reader just how much fun it can be to play with ideas.