Children today are barraged with messages about going green, about sustainability, about saving the environment. But if you are a parent, you still probably spend a lot of time walking around the house switching off lights. [Read more →]
Thank you, Mr President. You put the case fairly and well although if you really want to impress you might find an audience a bit more seasoned and a bit less willing to roll over and have their tummies rubbed. You have split your hand and doubled down on Green Alternative Energy so you must be holding at least twenty. Now it’s time to turn all the cards. I hope the White House searchbots have been comprehensive and found the odd moments when I Hoped to Believe in the Change you have promised but on the big question of how we power our modern world, yes, I have been a detractor. Your well documented expertise in engineering and physics should have given me caution but let my indictment show that I have also been fair, once in a while. Once in a very great while. [Read more →]
10. It’s so cold, you have trouble jump-starting your penguin
9. It’s so cold, you’re shivering like Rick Santorum at a Gay Pride parade
8. It’s so cold, when Wall Street investors jumping off buildings hit the sidewalk, they shatter into a million tiny pieces
7. It’s so cold, Osama bin Laden actually saw a snowball where he is
6. It’s so cold, Michele Bachmann’s husband is staying in the closet – for the coats
5. It’s so cold, nobody’s calling the fire department when their house catches on fire
4. It’s so cold, when police tell a robber to freeze, it’s redundant
3. It’s so cold, five rednecks have frozen off their truck nuts
2. It’s so cold, Anthony Weiner is Tweeting pictures of his mukluks
1. It’s so cold, you’re teeth won’t stop chattering – and they’re still in the glass
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Here, in Texas, we have an annual influx of ‘snowbirds’ … large masses of gente norteña fleeing the winter weather ‘up north’ to enjoy a season of clear skies and milder temperatures ‘down south.’ It’s a long and time-honored tradition … for many years, my great-grand-aunt and uncle made their own annual migration from Leisuretown, New Jersey down to the sun and surf of Florida. And it’s also a tremendous economic boon to parts of Texas that enjoy an annual influx of cash in return for all things leisure – goods, services, opportunities, you name it.
Not all snowbirds travel to Texas by R.V. … and it is THEY who provide US an opportunity, a chance to observe something not-often-seen in these parts of the U.S. Here’s a shot I took of two extraordinary snowbirds in Llano County, Texas, this past week. Regular visitors in the process of raising a brood of future snowbirds.
There is a nasty little radio spot airing nationally. It promotes “green” appliances and goods generally; swirly bulbs, “efficient” washers… that sort of thing although the specifics are tactically muddied. The ad pitches to a curiously young demographic. We’ve all met “Timmy”. Like Dickens’ Tiny Tim, Timmy is infectiously cute and contrived to pull at your major arteries. Timmy wants to go to the State Fair! Well, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t know there was such a thing as a State Fair but the announcer, whose relation to Timmy is unexplored, asks him breathlessly, “Do you want to go to the State Fair?” Of course he does! Sorry, you can’t. You see, Timmy, your parents are NOT using green, energy efficient doo-dads but the old busted bulbs and machinery, causing them to spend more on utilities and draining their pockets of the gas and ticket money necessary. If only your folks had bought the new, government approved and promoted doohickeys they would have been able to take you there for candy floss and teacup rides, whatever those are. If they get on board today then you can go to next year’s fair. “But I want to go NOW!” Radio Timmy coaches Timmies across the land in whinery to cajole mums and pops into replacing their eight-for-a-dollar earth-warming heat globes with pigtail bulbs at $8 dollars or more a pop. Needless to say, this public service message was paid for by Your Federal Family which draws its budget from you. [Read more →]
I just finished reading High Desert Barbecue, a novel by When Falls the Coliseum‘s own J.D. Tuccille. It’s a fun and very fast read (many of his chapters are only a couple of pages long). In the novel, wildly and humorously incompetent radical eco-terrorists face off against Rollo, a mountain man; Scott, a business writer with an anarchist attitude and a way with guns; and Scott’s girlfriend Lani, a schoolteacher who’s no pushover. The trio, along with Scott’s heroic dog, Champ, has stumbled on the ludicrous efforts of the eco-terrorists, who, in cahoots with local authorities, argue among themselves in absurdly rendered dialogue as they try to burn down the forest in order to drive the people away and let nature reign. A violent showdown in the canyon ensues.
The nature, hiking, and firearms scenes are authentically described, full of rich details that bring the setting and story to life. It’s a yarn, for sure — the plot escalates and there’s a good bit of silliness and quite a few funny lines of dialogue and description. Given the political extremes the characters represent, there are, as might be expected, moments of political commentary and conversation from a generally libertarian viewpoint, some blatant, but Tuccille does not preach and doesn’t let politics interfere with the advancing action. His breezy tone and brisk pacing carry the reader along a novel that combines action and satire the whole way through.
I will refresh your memory of this crappy movie without refreshing my own. The Julia Roberts character is a young law clerk who has stumbled on a terrible secret while fulfilling an academic exercise. A Supreme Court Justice has been assassinated. Why? America can only theorize as this fictional jurist was a solid conservative on a panel pretty evenly split and certain to be quickly replaced with another. Now, if he were the swing vote, everyone could understand why he was offed. Whatever the next case coming up, the culprit is whichever party stands to gain from this unexcused absence. QED. How the setting for these events, ostensibly America in the 90s, became a place where political murder was as routine as in Rome, or even on Romulus, we are not informed. But the baddies are off after a galloping Julia who has discovered that corporate Black Hats were about to do something mean, like drill a nasty hole into the ground and release the black goo within upon the surface world. And the only thing that could stop them, in court anyhow, was the status of a certain indigenous pelican as an endangered species. The late judge, certified Rightwing wanker though he was, apparently had a soft spot for sea-birds or birds altogether. He threatened an upset decision favoring the pelican so he had to die, naturally. Never asked is whether the claims of the pelican to nest and feed undisturbed were clearly superior to our claim to the oil beneath? Also never considered is whether it was quite clear that the oil drilling would be a serious, or indeed even a NOTICEABLE encumbrance to the joyous, omnivorous life of the pelican? [Read more →]
Last week, my friend Sandy sent me an email:
“Dan, do you want to come with me to Bastrop? I’m going to shoot some pictures of the ruins.”
Sandy is a photographer who documents disasters, and since Bastrop just suffered the most destructive wildfire in Texas history- a raging inferno laid waste to 1,600 houses and 34,000 acres of land – he was keen to record the aftermath for posterity. As for me, I had never witnessed the effects of Biblical hellfire before, so I was curious. I agreed to go. [Read more →]
