It's Shiner Bock's Centennial!  Commemerator Beer!  6.7%!  Redesigned labels!  Sweet-ass bottle caps!  Delicious Shiner!

I'm going to quote a couple pages in full from Sam Harris because it displays his genius, humor, salient point, and what can amount from the application of some cleverness:

    I was once walking the streets of Prague late at night and came upon a man and a young woman in the midst of a struggle.  As I drew nearer, it became obvious that the man, who appeared to be both drunk and enraged, was attempting to pull the woman into a car against her will.  She was making a forceful show of resistance, but he had seized her arm with one hand and was threatening to strike her in the face with the other - which he had done at least once, it seemed, before I arrived on the scene.  The rear door of the car was open, and an accomplice had taken a seat behind the wheel.  Several other men were milling about, and from the looks of them, they appeared to approve of the abduction in progress.

    Without knowing how I would proceed, I at once found myself interceding on the woman's behalf.  As my adrenaline rose, and her assailant's attention turned my way, it occurred to me that his English might be terrible or nonexistent.  The mere effort to understand me could be made so costly that it might prove a near-total diversion. The inability to make my intentions clear would also serve to forestall actual conflict.  Had we shared a common language our encounter would have almost certainly come to blows within moments, as I would have thought nothing more clever than to demand that he let the woman go, and he, to save face, would have demanded that I make him.  Since he had at least two friends that I could see (and several fans), my evening would probably have ended very badly. Thus, my goal, as I saw it, was to remain unintelligible, without antagonizing any of the assembled hooligans, long enough for the young woman to get away.

    "Excuse me," I said.  "I seem to have lost my hotel, my lodging, my place of residence, where I lie supine, not prone.  Can you help me? Where is it? Where is it?"

    "Sex?" The man asked with obvious outrage, as though I had declared myself a rival for his prisoner's affections.  It now occurred to me that the woman might be a prostitute, and he an unruly customer.

    "No! Not sex.  I am looking for a specific building.  It has no aluminum sliding or stained glass.  It could be filled with marzipan.  Do you know where it is?  This is an emergency."

    In an instant, the man's face underwent a remarkable transformation, changing from a mask of rage, to a vision of perplexity itself.  While he attempted to decipher my request, I threw a conspiratorial glance at the woman - who, it must be said, seemed rather slow to appreciate that the moment of her emancipation was at hand.

    The man began to discuss my case in fluent Czech with one of his friends.  I continued to rave.  The woman, for her part, glared at me as though I were an idiot.  Then, realizing her opportunity for the first time, like a bird that had long sat within an open cage, she suddenly broke free and fled down the street.  Her erstwhile attacker was too engrossed by his reflections even to notice that she had left.

    Mission accomplished, I at once thanked the group and moved on.

    While my conduct in the above incident seems to meet with the approval of almost everyone, I relate it here because I consider it an example of a moral failure.  First, I was lying, and lying out of fear.  I was not lost, and I needed no assistance of any kind.  I resorted to this tactic because, quite frankly, I was afraid to openly challenge an indeterminate number of drunks to a brawl.  Some may call this wisdom, but it seemed to me to be nothing more than cowardice at the time.  I made no effort to communicate with these men, to appeal to their ethical scruples, however inchoate, or to make any impression upon them whatsoever.  I perceived them not as ends in themselves, as sentient creatures capable of dialogue, appeasement, or instruction, but as a threat in its purest form.  My ethical failure, as I see it, is that I never actually opposed their actions - hence they never received any correction from the world.  They were merely diverted for a time, and to only a single woman's advantage.  The next woman who became the object of their predations will have little cause to thank me.  Even if a frank intercession on the woman's behalf would have guaranteed my own injury, a clear message would have been sent:  not all strangers will stand idly by as you beat and abduct a woman in the street.  The action I took sent no such message. Indeed, I suspect that even the woman herself never knew that I had come to her aid."

Friday night I went to the premiere of The Supernatural Valley of the Sphinx at the Shed Show! Nothing short of stellar.  The folk band consists of lead singer Josh (Cass's older brother), far travelin' lives out of a van extraordinaire mandolin player Casey, the brilliant bluesy Dustin Estes, quick string-pickin' Ryan (whose musical genius is so acute he can play what a tree sounds like, or a cat, or the person sitting next to him, or whatever you throw at him), Matt Simon from Voxtrot, accordian and washtub basin player Laura, and Marie on the harp.  

Dustin played some of his very best afterwards, including "Heroin" and "Atheist, Anti-Social Socialist."  He also wrote the Cheatin' Heart Trilogy, a trio of songs about murder, alcohol, and getting stoned. His music is dark.

Some one hundred people showed up to watch a few bands play out of a twenty by twenty foot shed that sits in the backyard of Cass's parent's property off 38 and 1/2 St., including the Whites themselves! Needless to say, most people were outside.  I met some guys who went to Cedar Park that knew me but I didn't know them.  The mutual relationship was Justin Carey.  Handles of Old Crow circulated throughout the crowd and facilitated inebriation.  Towards the end of the show everyone was dancing in the shed.  Just before the last set was over the APD (Austin Police Dept.) showed up.  They came into the shed, informed Josh that they were "sorry" but the show could only continue accoustically.  They were sorry because upon arrival they had listened to the music from afar for some time before coming into the shed - and they thought it was really good. One officer asked Josh if they'd be playing later in the night, cuz his shift was over in 30 minutes. Ryan, who is twenty years old, offered one of the cops a beer.

A regular occurrence on my runs are people who roar past me in their vehicles with excessive speed.  Only a handful of times have I caught back up to them - results always bad.  The motorcycle incidents were the worst.  Yesterday a couple of rice burners burned by me.  About fifteen minutes later I come up on these same vehicles parked on the side of the road.  Great, I think.  The people alongside look at me approach with that guilty, embarrassed, pitiful look on their face that has been the exact same look in every such incident. There were three of these rice burners.  Where is the other one?  I slow down to a slight trot.  Ah, there it is, ten feet into the woods lodged amongst those trees.  Great.

"What road is this?" I am asked by a woman on a phone.

"Lime Creek," I respond.

An Asian guy alongside the treeborne car looks at me and says, "Something ran out in the road.  Is there a lot of wildlife out here?"

"Yes there is a lot of wildlife out here," I say.  But my tone conveys a message more like, "Right, this wreck has everything to do with the wildlife out here and nothing at all to do with the fact that you were roaring 65 miles an hour around that 35 mile an hour downhill curve."

I walk closer to the car and then stop.  I'm about to ask if there is someone inside.  But I already know the answer to that question. Then I'm about to ask if there is anything I can do to help.  I look at them, their concern, their numbers, their cellphones.  No, there is nothing that I can do here to help.  And I don't want to know the state of this guy.  The state of the car is enough information.  So I turn and without saying anything more I start up again, left only with a feeling of anger at people and the irritability that comes from having to stop during a long run.

Ever since my close friend was killed in a car wreck I've harbored a loathing for automobiles.  I've paid more attention to them.  It is surely one of the most dangerous things we do, drive automobiles. Yes, putting human beings, who for this purpose most definitively ALL have Attention Deficit Disorder, in the operation of hurling tons of metal is one of the most dangerous things we face.  But that's not what bothers me; of course we won't stop driving cars.  What bothers me is that few people acknowledge the danger.  Everybody takes it for granted until someone you know gets hurt.  What bothers me is that few people respect the danger of driving cars.  What bothers me is not that it IS Russian roulette, but that few people act like or even know they are playing.

Perhaps the only thing to be taken away from this is that there is no substitute for personal experience.

An intensely amusing game is the dartboard game Killer.  What fascinates me so about this game is the direct analogy to struggle and strategy found in power politics.  The game is simple enough: players are assigned an initial number and must hit that number six times, one time for each letter in Killer.  Each player has three shots per round.  Once a player has spelled Killer they become a Killer and are thus able to shoot at other players' numbers.  A hit on another player's number results in a loss of one of their letters.  Once a player is hit without any letters, he/she must regain a letter back on the next round of shooting or he/she is out.

Tim, Tony, Dar Dar, and I played a game last week at a pub in Austin. First we all employed the balance of power strategy, that is, going after the player who appeared to be in the lead.  Reasonably, one must take pains to assure that the powerful does not become more powerful, lest you should inevitably be crushed.  However, this balance stalemated, and it became apparent that as soon as one became the top Killer everyone would go after him and he would soon lose power, in an endless cycle.  Finally, the Machiavellian strategy was pursued.  One player decided to kick another player while he was down.  He was soon out.  After that the rest fell rather quickly.  I do believe that Machiavelli would have been proud.

Today at Parkside Elementary a 9 yr old student came up to me during class with a confident, bright, animated, toothy grin on his smallish face.  He said:

"You look like the guy from Dukes of Hazzard."

"Oh yea?" said I.

"Yea."

"Have you seen Dukes of Hazzard?" he queried.

"I've seen the movie, not the TV show...are you talking about the TV show?"

".....Yea, the TV show."

"What's your name?"

"Adam."

"All right Adam, let's work on the spelling assignment."

"I like you."

"All right, Adam....sweet."

At recess we continued our conversation because Adam did not want to play tag, he "wanted to talk to me instead."

"Do you like the Dukes of Hazzard?"

"Yea."

"Have you seen Batman?"

"I have seen Batman."

"Do you like Batman?"

"I like Batman a lot."

"I like Batman, too," he says.

"What was that stuff he drank?"

"I do not know."

"Do you like Ironman?"

"I like Ironman."

"Me, too."

"Have you been to Port Aransas?"

"A long time ago."

"At Port Aransas I went with my family into a store and there was a Dukes of Hazzard T-shirt in the store....it had the General Lee on it."

"That's awesome."

"I want that car," he says.

"That would be cool....if you really want it maybe one day you'll get it."

"Seven years until I can drive."

This remark makes me laugh.  At the end of the day Adam draws my attention to the backside of his binder where he proudly displays the orange General Lee.

I did a fartlek (Swedish for speedplay) today.  It was hot and difficult, but I was fairly strong.  I do need to stop smoking cigarettes or my running will surely suffer eventually.  When I do fartleks I do four minutes slow, four hard, three slow, three hard.  That fourteen minute segment is one set. My short fartlek is four sets, my longer five. Today was the first five set fartlek; I'll prolly do four more before the Austin, weekly.  I think I prolly ran around 5:15-5:30 for the hards, but I don't know for sure.  I just run as hard as I think I'll be able to hold out.  I prolly got around ten-eleven miles.  It's difficult.

The weather here in Austin in January is difficult and erratic.  A few days ago it was 38 on my run. Today it was 78.  Allergies are bad, and it's very very very dry.

On a road out to the lake (Lime Creek) that I often run I pass an intimidating Mastiff enclosed in a fenced off area, just before the initial downward slope towards the water.  He (gotta be a he) always barks ferociously at me.  I always give him the "you're in there I'm out here" look as I run by. Today I passed him as usual but some fifteen seconds later I heard him quickly coming up on me from behind. Somehow he had gotten out, this was a first. The aggressive approach of a dog is more audibly daunting because there are twice as many feet.  I've always been scared of dogs.  Not exactly sure why.  When I was five visiting family on the Missouri farm my dad let out of a cage a small puppy in the backyard.  He bolted straight for me and I bolted as well.  Puppy chased me clear across the farm.  I was terrified.  My dad was bowled over with laughter.  I think dogs can sense when you are afraid of them.  Anyway, the mastiff approached, quickly and barking ferociously.  First I was surprised, but then I just looked at him plainly in the eyes.  He slowed down and turned around.  I was victorious.

Five straight bowl victories!! Downed Michigan, USC, Iowa, Arizona State, Ohio State.  Storied.

Obama is a Longhorn fan.  See above.

When you throw up, are you expelling part of yourself?  Or are you merely eschewing impersonal contents held in your personal and selfful stomach receptacle?  That is the question that went through my mind around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, as I dizzily stared at my own contents in question in Tim's parental's foyer bathroom toilet.  Was that a part of myself floating around in there?Where/when does something become a part of you?

Interestingly, a person's self is only a convenient idea.  There is no essence or concrete substance that makes a person that person. Every carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, etc. atom that made up your body a year ago has been replaced by different ones, albeit identical copies. The same with your cells, organs, etc., your whole body.  Thus your year ago body has been dispersed into the universe, with some of it in Thailand, some in space, some in today's Arnold Schwarzeneggar, some of it bottled in new Jack Daniels to be consumed by excessively indulgent drinkers and deposited again into toilets.