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Coyote Mercury Posts

“He Ain’t Kinky. He’s My Governor.”

November 15, 2005 • • Leave a comment

At least that’s what the bumper sticker on a truck cruising I-10 outside Beaumont said.

I was surprised to see that Kinky’s campaign to be the first independent governor of Texas since Sam Houston had reached outside the Austin area. I know he’s been all over the state campaigning, but I assumed it was only in Austin and perhaps the Hill Country that anyone would have heard much about him.

Kinky has been asking, “How hard can it be?” for nearly a year now, and based on Governor Perry’s half-assed performance, I can only assume that it’s not that hard. Come and Take it! has a nice piece on why he has an uphill battle (assuming he can get on the ballot, which is a chore in and of itself), but provides hope that someone will have the backbone, honesty, and wit to serve up the public humiliation that Rick Perry so richly deserves.

This post is provoked by finally listening to an audiobook that my dad loaned me over the summer. The book is Kinky’s The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A “Walk” in Austin and so far (about half a CD in) it’s an amusing, irreverent, and fairly accurate picture of the Austin that was (from the days of founder President Mirabeau B. Lamar through Willie, Stevie, and on towards Dell), is, and will be as told by someone who loves this town deeply (and unfortunately read by someone who does not pronounce words like ‘Guadalupe,’ ‘San Jacinto,’ ‘Burnet,’ or ‘Waylon’ – as in Jennings – like he’s spent much time here).

So to make a rambling post shorter, I was driving on Mopac yesterday, crossing the river and listening to the Kinkster spin the tale of Austin’s founding and the tensions between Lamar and Sam Houston over whether or not this beautiful settlement on the river in the heart of Comanche country should be the capital of the republic, and I decided that Kinky is far more deserving of life in the governor’s mansion than Perry or whatever poor sacrificial lamb the feckless Texas Democrats throw out there. Kinky understands the Texan love of big stories, big myths and big talk that gets Texas politicians elected, but he also seems to get the fact that we live in the modern world and we have very real, very big problems that the Republicans have shown they have no interest in or ability to solve.

I don’t know if Kinky can solve them, but at least he seems honest about trying when he talks about them. And he’s funny. And listening to his book, he reminds me all over again why I love Austin.

As his campaign materials ask, “Why the Hell not?”

Visiting Orange a Month After Rita

November 14, 2005 • • 1 Comment

We had to drop everything last week and head off to Orange, TX for a funeral. My wife’s aunt passed away peacefully after many years of suffering and that brought us back to her hometown on the Texas-Louisiana border. This was my first post-Rita trip to Orange.

It’s been a little over a month, and the place still looks like a war zone: trees uprooted or still standing but snapped in two, twisted piles of metal torn from who knows where, buildings ripped apart, FEMA tarps on nearly every roof, crooked signs and street lights, many businesses still closed. And all this after a month and a half. Everyday, there were trucks lumbering along the roads randomly picking up the sawed remains of the forests and trees people once had in their yards that are now piled high in front of their houses.

One of the most striking things about the hurricane’s aftermath was how bright everything appeared. My wife had noticed this a week prior when she’d come to visit her aunt in the hospital, and it was, I think, both the most startling and most subtle aspect of the damage. The dense, dark forests of the Piney Woods were so thinnned throughout the town that there seemed an over-abundance of sunlight. Orange is supposed to be dark and a little mysterious, but it seemed so bright, the forests so thin, that some of its swampy bayou mystery was lost.

Driving around town was odd as we were constantly rubber-necking to view the damage while my wife pointed out buildings and homes that despite growing up there, she’d never seen because of the thick trees that had always hidden them from the road.

The sound of chainsaws is constant, and there’s plenty of work to do, but people seem to be taking it in stride. At the visitation, I watched one old guy walk over to a friend, shake hands and say with a straight face, “Need some fire wood?” It was obviously a well-worn joke down there, but they both laughed anyway.

Near Meteor Crater

November 13, 2005 • • 1 Comment

I took this photo near Meteor Crater, Arizona in March of 1992:

These old cars are about a quarter of a mile from the service road that connects I-40 to Metoer Crater. I’ve been there several times, and I find that the cars are as engaging as the crater itself so I always try to photograph them. This is my favorite one.

A few days after one trip out there in 1995, while browsing the CDs at Waterloo Records, I found that the cars had also served as cover art for Lee Ranaldo’s excellent East Jesus album.

“I’m Against It!”

November 8, 2005 • • Leave a comment

Today is election day in Texas. We have no bastards to throw out… well actually we have many, but not the opportunity to do so for still another year. Today it’s just a series of propositions to amend the constitution, the most controversial of which is prop two, which will re-ban gay marriage.

So off to the polls we went this morning with Groucho Marx’s voice singing in my head:

“I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it!”

Surprisingly, my precinct was not using those cool little electronic voting machines that turn all votes cast into votes for the incumbent so I had to actually use a chisel to carve my vote into the stone tablet, but considering the backwards nature of the thinking that went into prop two, it seemed somehow appropriate.

I then affixed my little ‘I Voted’ sticker to my shirt and went outside whistling along with Groucho, thinking, “Well, I voted against it, but next time I think I’ll vote against the other pronouns,” as I ashed an imaginary cigar on the sidewalk.

So Young. So Pimpin’.

November 5, 2005 • • 2 Comments

I had dinner with my parents this evening and went home with a box of old stuff, mostly clothing from my childhood.

So, here it is. My old bowling shirt from when I was in a bowling league at Subic Bay Naval Base in The Philippines.

It was the early ’80s.


I was probably in fourth grade.


We were “The Four Aces.”

We were pimpin’.

Of Ghosts, Goblins, and Animal Emergency

November 4, 2005 • • 4 Comments

Monday – Halloween: Daphne hid from the vicious trick-or-treaters who kept coming to the door and continued her tradition of guarding the couch in the study. Phoebe, experiencing her first Halloween away from a racetrack, followed me to the door eveytime the bell rang and peeked out with great curiosity at all the costumed kids.

Wednesday: We learned something interesting about greyhounds that we had known, but never really thought about: their skin, which is paper thin, tears very easily. This can be problematic since these are big strong dogs. I came home Wednesday to find that they’d been playing (as they’ve started doing lately). I was home for about twenty minutes with Phoebe whining, whining, whining the whole time while Daphne hid in the study. As it turns out Daphne had been nipped on the scruff of the neck, and her skin had torn. (Perhaps the whines were her version of ‘Timmy fell into the-I mean-I accidentally bit Daphne.’) So I took her to animal emergency, a place with which I am way too familiar.

One of the vets glanced up from a boxer whose ear was bleeding all over the floor, and asked, “Greyhound tear?” without doing much more than noticing the greyhound standing in front of her.

“What?”

“You know, when they play,” the receptionist offered, “their skin’s thin so it tears.”

I nodded. Daphne shivered. “This is our first time with this. How do people prevent it?”

The receptionist shrugged. “I think they just let us sew them back up.”

So sew they did. The vet had to put Daphne under and extend the wound so that he could put a drain in. When I picked her up Thursday morning it looked like her head had been sewn back on, but it’s not as bad as it looks. Of course she looks like Frankenstein’s hound. This was sadly too late for Halloween by a few days.

Thursday: When I got Daphne home, Phoebe followed her around, crying and crying and licking her face. I suppose this is the canine version of abject apology and prostrating oneself in guilt.

All was well when my wife got home and both dogs barked. Phoebe, it turns out is a barker, but Daphne, like most greys does not bark except when she’s in a very good mood. This was bark number seven in five years and a good sign coming from a hound with a drainage tube in her neck.

Friday: We separated them on Thursday while we were gone and will continue to do so while Daphne heals and maybe for a little while beyond so as to avoid anymore roughhousing.

There seem to be no hard feelings. When I got home today they were excited to be reunited, followed each other around, and clearly wanted to play. Now they’re curled up together on the couch.

Asteroid Headed for Austin?

November 4, 2005 • • 1 Comment

It seems a likely scenario. We’re too far from the coast for a hurricane, and tornado season is still a few months away, so that pretty much leaves asteriods as the only remaining tool with which God can punish the Klan when they rally in Austin in support of proposition two on Saturday. The Supreme Deity apparently used a similar tactic in New Orleans to thwart a gay pride rally, and since God currently seems to be in an it’s-time-I-teach-these-little-bastards-a-lesson mode it would be wise to prepare for the worst.

There is debate raging about the best way for Austinites to deal with the odious intrusion of the Klan – moon them as was done when they came here in 1993, or ignore them and go about our lives as Mayor Will Wynn would prefer. Considering the cosmic wrath that could very well come down on the Klan and take out a bunch of well-intentioned mooners as collateral damage, I’m surprised an evacuation order isn’t being considered.

I assume, though, that preparations are being made and talking points written to apply that last little bit of spin to the impending tragedy in the runup to Nov. 8:

“God Krushes Klan, Says No to Prop Two”

against the nut jobs who will say:

“God Annihilates Deviant Mooning Perverts, Supports Prop Two”

Personally, I’ll be ignoring the Klan. I’ve seen plenty of morons; I don’t need to see them play dress up. Besides, my mind is made up on this issue.

I’ll probably just watch the Longhorns use the Baylor Bears to demonstrate the terrible effects of an asteroid impact.

Places I’ve Been

November 4, 2005 • • Leave a comment

Since I was a kid, I’ve loved maps, so I was excited when I stumbled upon Nathan’s Updates from Seoul, which led me to world66, a very cool site for anyone who loves the magic of staring at maps, remembering places visited and highways traveled, and the lure of faraway places yet to be seen.

So here’s my world map, most of which is the result of growing up in a Navy family. I didn’t count layovers in airports.

create your own visited country map

As an adult, the only trips abroad I’ve managed are Canada and Mexico. But I have traveled quite a bit in the states, usually by car, which is my preferred method especially when the drive invloves days of desert travel. Here’s my map of the states:

create your own personalized map of the USA

And, of course Europe, just because this site lets you do Europe:

create your personalized map of europe

You can also make a Canada map, but since mine would only include Quebec, I decided not to do that one.

What fun!

I’m So Proud

November 3, 2005 • • Leave a comment

Lots to be proud of in Texas especially when one considers the constitutional amendments being put to a vote, particularly proposition two. While at a loss for how to pay for adequate public education in Texas and lacking either leadership or the will to consider the problem seriously, the lege did find the time to give ‘we the people’ the opportunity to exercise our collective predjudices and vote to make gay marriage illegal.

Of course gay marriage is already illegal in Texas, but the new amendment will make it really illegal. After all, denying marriage to a group of people is only just a way to protect marriage in much the same way that denying liberties to some groups of people protects liberty. Right? Something like that… Anyway, the Texas Constitution already has more than four hundred amendments, so why not try to push it up to an even 500?

Seriously, though, both the far-right conservatives and the KKK (scheduled to rally in Austin on Nov. 5), seem to agree that re-banning gay marriage in Texas will help protect marriage. And perhaps there really is a threat out there. We can’t take chances on this because gay marriage could pose a threat to everything the KKK supports “decent family values.” And looking beyond the concerns of the Klan, I keep hearing and reading that it will be beneficial for some Texas families and their children to know that other loving families will be denied this legal status.

When the subject of protecting marriage in Texas comes up, however, it’s interesting to note that in Texas, marriage can be entered into at the age of 16, or at even younger ages if a judge approves it. This was not uncommon among my high school students (I’m talking underclassmen here) when I was a teacher. With the bar this low (as a bar must be at an early-teen bachelor party), it’s important to remember that if you hear a Texan talk about defending marriage for his children, he might really mean it.

One can only hope that when the ballots are counted next week, Texans will break with the Klan and vote down this ugly constitutional amendment.

I ain’t holdin’ my breath.