Bottlecaps

Fort Hood

So, let's get this straight:

A 39-year-old devout Muslim, who is an Army major, who is a psychiatrist specializing in wartime stress, walks into a crowded spot in Fort Hood, pulls out two handguns, and — because, perhaps as the New York Times suggested, he had been taunted about his faith — shoots indiscriminately, killing 12 people and wounding 31. AND … the Army lets us believe that he is dead for some six hours, then has a news conference and says, "oh, no, he's alive."

Does not the stampede of unlikelihoods strike you as a little odd?

Let's review.

Looming large over everything is the fact that the guy is a Muslim. This makes this whole event just a little less likely in my mind, but it raises the unfortunate factor by an enormous degree. Prejudice will multiply a thousand-fold. This will fuel hatred and racism for decades to come. This is gonna really, really fuck things up. Mark my words, it's gonna be bad.

So, the shooter was not a mentally questionable uneducated 19-year-old private from a broken home with an anger management problem and a gun fixation. No, he was a middle-aged major with a doctorate. How many guys fitting that description do you hear of going batshit? It happens, but not often.

Not just any doctorate, but a psychiatrist. How many psychiatrists have you heard of "snapping"? It happens, I guess. But not often.

And this psychiatrist, according to our newspaper, had "advanced shooting training." Which is what? That suggests he got more time on the range than your ordinary Army psychiatrist (whom, I would assume, gets the minimum amount of training). If this guy did get extra training, then why?

Which leads us to the guns. When asked about how one man could do such damage (12 dead, 31 wounded), with just two handguns, the general in charge replied that "one of them was a semi-automatic." To which I would have replied (had I been there), "You mean one WASN'T?"

Your typical semi-auto pistol will have a magazine with 15 rounds. We're going to assume that the guy was shooting based on his military training, which would mean a two-handed grip on the pistol. Which meant that he was primarily using one weapon. He certainly would have needed both hands to reload.

Even if the guy only used one shot per victim (which is extraordinarily unlikely), that's still 43 shots, meaning he probably had to reload at least twice. How does a middle-aged Army psychiatrist manage to pull this off by himself?

And what's with the Army leading us to believe he's dead for quite some time, then saying he wasn't? They called it a mix-up at the hospital, but I find it hard to believe that they could lose track of someone accused of blowing the hell out of a bunch of soldiers in the middle of Fort Hood. 

I'm not a conspiracy theory type of guy. But I do have a certain affection for the truth. Maybe it all happened this way, but damn, it just seems unlikely.

Guns, tools and scars

This past weekend, Austin had the Texas Testosterone Festival.

And I don't know whether it was the festival itself, or the headline in today's sports section proclaiming it as an event for "real men" or maybe just a sense of shifting ground, but I have to speak out.

Let's look at some of their featured events:

A live Q&A with a UFC fighter. A fantasy football mock draft. Video game tournaments. Poker tournaments. And, of course, a bikini contest.

True, this is all guy-oriented stuff. But let's not confuse that with being "manly."

Video games and fantasy football are not manly. Now, I haven't played video games since Time Pilot was in its heyday, but I've been a fantasy football player since 1994. Still, I wouldn't dare to assert that fantasy football is gonna put me in the same league with the Marlboro Man or anything. In fact, I admit it is rather geeky, although also fun.

If you want to call something "manly" it needs to be something that you could picture a real man doing, rather than an overcaffeinated teenager. Something that'll give you scars if you screw it up. Something that involves tools or explosions or sweat.

Let's review:

Playing football is manly. Digging a ditch is manly. Chainsaws are manly. Racing motorcycles is manly. Hunting grizzly bear is manly (though, let me stress, you don't have to kill things to be manly. Shooting beer cans is manly, too.)

Spending hours comparing NFL player statistics, guzzling Mountain Dew while pretending to shoot aliens on a computer screen, pretending to be James Bond while you sit on your butt and play cards for hours a time, watching in awe as a UFC fighter talks smack, thinking that you are so cool that you can rate women who are many, many more times attractive than you are … well, these are guy things, sure. And, progressively more creepy, I admit.

But let's not start thinking these things are "manly."

It's a changing world, I know. But let's at least let Clint Eastwood die before we start dishonoring his memory.

It's my hamburger! Back off!

Do you like sushi? Do you read Bon Appetit? Do you know which fork to use first? Have you ever commented on the spices in a meal beyond "Hey, pass the salt"?

Then stay away from the hamburgers. Hey, look, I don't go to your five-star restaurants and dip your herb-encrusted salmon in queso. You don't need to go into my burger joints and dream up things like goat cheese or avocados for the hamburgers.

Texas Monthly came out with its list of "Top 50" hamburgers this month. And I am opposed. Oh, sure, they made a show out of including, say, the "Snuffy Burger" from the Chicken Oil Company in College Station, but you can tell that the foodies were more excited about the fanciest "burgers" from the swankiest joints.

Why does this annoy me? Well, we all know how it turned out with beer, right? Used to be guys went out to the "bar" and they had some "beer" and they watched some sports and talked about women and then went home. Some guys preferred different beer than other guys, but unless some dickhead ordered a Zima, nobody got too worked up about it.

But now, now, you go into a bar with 50 damn taps on the wall and twice that many blowhards talking about "hops" and "notes" and "acidity" and, God help us, "Belgium." Jesus, go sniff some wine or something. Used to be that I went to crappy dives because I liked the atmosphere. Now I go to crappy dives to escape the pretentiousness.*

Well, we don't need that happening to the hamburger. It's a new rule in Mr. Bottlecaps' world: The only people allowed to judge hamburgers are fat guys in bib overalls. And they are allowed to give one of two grades: "It was good." Or, "It wasn't all that good, but I ate it anyway."

So, you foodies, go munch on a truffle, debate a steak, burn your tongue on a scallop. But leave the burgers to us regular folks, OK?

(* And God help you hipsters I find in my crappy dive drinking Lone Star because it's "ironic." I will kick your ass right through your faux-stained jeans.)

How did he get here?

So I was at work the other day, serving as chief of the Metro section — a job that I cannot seem to convince my boss that I am not suited for — when I went to read the roundup of briefs that runs every day on Page B2.

One of these briefs was about how two brothers, ages 19 and 20, had (allegedly) raped a 14-year-old. Terrible stuff, but what I deal with on a daily basis working for a newspaper. Journalism! Yay! Are you desensitized yet?

We had a mug shot of one of the brothers — let's call him Rigoberto Ramirez — running with the brief, but no picture of the other one — let's call him Oliver Ramirez.

Now I knew that we had the mug shot of Rigoberto because he had been arrested already. Oliver was still on the loose, so we wouldn't have his picture.

But I had to check to make sure. That's my job. So I went to our archive and searched the photos for "Oliver Ramirez." (I just made up these names, but the kid did have a less-common name.)

What turned up was a picture of smiling little boy, maybe 8 years old, participating in a school science project.

Same name, same area of town, the photo was taken 11 years ago … so the ages matched up.

It was the same kid, I'm sure. A cute little 8-year-old boy in 1998. A 19-year-old wanted for rape and on the run in 2009.

I shared my discovery with a few coworkers, but really I felt more of a sadness than I was letting on.

Given that I have a little boy, I'm more than just a little interested in how to keep him from going from Point A to Point F.

Now I know that little Oliver could have been raised in circumstances that didn't show in that photo. I know he could have gone through and been changed by tragic events. I know that he could have been born a little off — maybe that smile meant he was thinking of setting fire to cats or something else terrible.

But it's sad to think, and pretty scary, that maybe Oliver was a kid who really had a chance … and he went the other way instead.

And you ask yourself, "what can I do to keep my kid on the right path?"

I guess it's just an uncertainty that's part of being a parent.

Technology

I've been on a clearing-out-junk spree, either throwing it away or trying to sell it on eBay. We're even having a garage sale in a couple weeks if you want to come buy some of our junk.

(In fact, yesterday, I sold about 400 old bottlecaps to some woman for $20 in the parking lot of Cabela's. They were about half old Lone Star and half old Bud Light caps dating back from my 1999-2001 tour of duty in San Angelo. It's weird to think that the cap of some Lone Star Beer I drank a decade ago in West Texas is now going to be an objet d'art for a retarded kid in Austin.)

Among the crap in the man room I was clearing out is all our old VHS tapes — including some blank ones. I had a stack of a dozen of them, unlabeled, so I sat in there last night and ran them through the old VHS recorder to make sure there was nothing of value on them before I threw them out.

And it struck me how incredibly clunky this technology is compared to DVDs and DVRs. I mean, you have this black box, essentially, with no idea what is on it (if it's not labeled) and … well, you all remember VHS tapes.

(But I'm going to save one, so I can see the sheer look of disbelief on the boy's face when I explain to him that this used to the height of technology.)

I know I am a nostalgist of the first order, and I know I call myself a Luddite in this blog, but I've come to realize that I'm not exactly against technology. I'm just a late adopter. It was 1998 before I got a CD player. It was 2002 before I got a cell phone. DVD and DVR came after that.

I might resist the newest technology, but ultimately I give in just like everyone else. I might wax poetic about how I used to stop at pay phones in podunk towns when I'd driven long enough to work up the nerve to call a girl up and ask for a date … but … now I'm annoyed when I can't reach someone on the cell phone on the first try.

I will probably join the iPod masses at last this Christmas season. I don't care to have a smart phone, but I'm sure I will eventually.

Only occasionally do I join in with the rest of the world: I jumped in the blog thing while everyone was still doing it. I snatched up the first vinyl record-to-MP3 technology. I was in on the Chuck Norris facts before it got lame, somehow..

All this leads to me to wonder, should I reconsider my stand? Revise my approach? Should I join in a little faster? My next job, whatever that will be, I'm sure will require me to be at least semi-current with the technology. I doubt my print experience will mean very much unless I can convince someone that I can apply that experience to Web sites and Twitter and whatever's next.

Should I join Facebook? I've been considering it. Should I Tweet? Even if I secretly think it is confoundingly useless, if not downright dumb? Should I get, God save us all, an iPhone?

It's a weird and wireless world out there. I don't like it much. But maybe for my career's sake and to at least delay the boy thinking I'm an unbelievable dinosaur doofus … maybe I should fake it a little bit.

Besides, I can always retreat to the man room and listen to my vinyl records if it gets to be too much.

Guns

Sorry, no Foto Friday blog today — we've gotten a little off-schedule here in Far South Austin. I don't have any fresh pictures. But I do have a lot to say. Two things in particular rise above the maelstrom going on in my head.

Fortunately for you, Rick Perry, I despise talking about politics. I've only really done it once on this blog and, because I have readers and friends on both sides of the line, I don't really want to do it again. Maybe if I'm still mad on Monday, we'll dive in.

No, today I want to talk about guns.

Those of you who just know me as a journalist (and therefore, OBVIOUSLY, a left-wing-loving pinko commie) might think I am against guns, for gun control and in favor of government surveillance of every child who has ever pointed his finger at somebody and said "Bang!"

That's not true. In fact, I like guns. I only have one right now, a side-by-side .12-gauge with a heft that's just right for a lumberjack.

It is true, I'm not much of a hunter. I have killed a deer, though it'll likely be my first and last. I have taken down a few doves. I shot a wasp with a BB gun once, how's that for shootin'?

Really, I prefer to hunt beer cans. They make a satisfying "plink!" when you hit them, you can shoot 'em more than once (unless you're trying out the shotgun), and there's no hides, hair or feathers.

In fact, I'm kinda on a gun kick right now. Shannon was worried about this until I assured her that I was not going to go out and buy one or two or eight. No, I've been looking at gun safes because Bullworker said it was about time for him to pass down some of the family guns to me.

His shoulders won't allow him to shoot them, so they're moving down the family line. The gun safe is both to keep them out of the hands of the boy and to keep them from being stolen if someone breaks into the house.

There's no assault weapons or guns of considerable value in the bunch. For the most part, their value is sentimental and their nature is strictly utilitarian.

So, in the not-too-distant future, there could several times more guns than people in my house. This makes me a NRA-supporting, Charlton Heston-loving, mirrored shades-wearing, conspiracy-believing, take-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands type of guy, right?

Again, that's not true. You see, the gun question just isn't a black-or-white issue as the NRA or the anti-NRA (I can't think of who that is right now) would have you believe.

It's true that the founding fathers wrote into the Constitution the right to keep and bear arms. But the Constitution was written for an agrarian nation that was a patriarchal society. At that time, guns were tools for people who needed them and gun use and safety was taught and enforced by a male figure who was taught by his father before him.

With our trigger-happy video games and YouTube videos and so many young boys raised without a father figure, is the Second Amendment relevant to our urban society? Well, yes in some ways. But there's no question that all this bears a closer examination.

I don't think guns should be outlawed by any means. (And, if they are, you guys never saw this blog. I don't have any guns. What are you talking about?)

But I don't agree with the NRA that we have a right to whatever firearms we want. Assault weapons? Sorry. Those have no viable use for civilians. I'm just not buying it.

(And don't give me that militia crap about protecting yourself from the government. They can send a bomb down your chimney from an unmanned aircraft being piloted from across the continent. Your AR-15 is not going to do you any good. You'd be better off learning how to hack computer systems.)

All I'm saying is that this does bear closer examination. This does bear some discussion. I'm kind of running out of time on this blog, damn it I never really got to my point. But the idea that there's a clear-cut answer and everyone else is dead wrong and if you don't like it, we're gonna secede from the union is, face it, pretty un-American.

And, oh yeah, do I think we need to expand the concealed carry laws? Do Texans have a right to take their guns (almost) everywhere?

No. Not because I don't like guns. Not because I don't want to have a gun.

It's just that — and don't take this too personally — I don't trust you with guns.

An open letter to the people of San Angelo

People of San Angelo,

You might have missed this newspaper story:

CORPUS CHRISTI — The Caller-Times announced a reorganization Thursday that will make it the regional copy editing and page design center for four Texas newspapers. The reorganization included layoffs for 19 Caller-Times employees.

The regional center will house the copy editing and design for the Caller-Times, the Wichita Falls Times-Record News, the Abilene Reporter-News and the San Angelo Standard Times, all owned by E.W. Scripps Co. The copy editing and page design desk center is responsible for the final editing, headlines and visual appearance of the newspapers. The center will be staffed by members from all four newspapers.

“This consolidated desk creates a regional hub here in Corpus Christi,” President and Publisher Patrick Birmingham said. “As we look to find efficient ways to produce the newspaper, this was an idea we felt would help us achieve efficiencies and give us another way to continue putting as many resources as possible into generating local news content.”

You might have missed it because it did not run in the Standard-Times.

What is happening here is that the copy desk at the Standard-Times is, in effect, being shut down before the end of the summer.

If you are not familiar with the copy desk, you are not alone. These men and women are the "proofreaders." They are the people who edit what the reporters write, place stories on the page and write headlines and photo captions. It is a near-invisible job — they work nights and they work weekends. They don't see the public like the reporters do, they are instead fixed to their desks, only sometimes venturing out to Fuentes for a dinner run or to Blaine's Pub after work.

But they provide a crucial service. They are the last line of defense against mistakes. They keep watch over the news wires and scramble to make adjustments when news happens. And, as you can imagine, when you are looking for mistakes in stories about San Angelo and the Concho Valley or you are looking for ways to better inform San Angelo and the Concho Valley … well, it's pretty important to know about San Angelo and the Concho Valley.

Now Scripps Howard is outsourcing this job to Corpus Christi, 6 hours away. (Same goes for Abilene and Wichita Falls — which is about as close to Corpus as it is to Omaha.)

The Corpus Christi story talks big about journalism and local news and efficiency, but it's about the money, of course. Scripps continues to sacrifice everything to save another dime, never mind that they are doing ever more harm to the newspaper they are trying to get people to buy and to advertise in. Go ahead and ask why they ran the story in the Caller-Times, but haven't mentioned it in the Standard-Times.

By this summer, the men and women editing and designing your newspaper will not live in the Concho Valley. They won't be eating at Fuentes or shopping downtown. They won't know Beauregard Avenue from Sherwood Way.

How important is it that a local copy editor work on local stories? You might notice that the Corpus Christi story above spells the name of your newspaper wrong. They left out the hyphen in "Standard-Times." A small detail, yes, but you would expect them, at least, to get the name of the paper right. Small details can turn into big errors.

Imagine that the person editing that local story won't know to keep spellcheck from turning "Eola" into "Ebola." That person also won't know it's of particular interest to San Angelo when a story about Los Lonely Boys comes across the wire.

A local copy editor would know that a story talking about a southbound lane on Koenigheim Street had a problem, they would know that it's a one-way, northbound street. A copy editor in Corpus Christi? Not a clue.

It's true, I'm not an impartial observer. I was a copy editor in San Angelo from 1993-1996 and turned down opportunities at much larger newspapers to come back and be news editor, in charge of the copy desk, from 1999 until 2002. During that later time frame I also wrote about music for the S-T.

My career and my personal life sent me to Austin, but there's no doubt that I loved San Angelo and I loved working for the Standard-Times. In Corpus? At first, there might be an emphasis to do right by San Angelo, Abilene and Wichita Falls. But after a little staff turnover and after the attention from the Scripps bigwigs dies down, trust me, the people in Corpus aren't going to care at all about some little town 6 hours away. They are going to view it as the junior varsity, so to speak. Working on San Angelo stories is going to be a chore that they are going to resent doing.

The executives might tell a more encouraging story. The publishers and top editors might promise otherwise. But I know better. This move will be a huge loss for the people of San Angelo. It's the penultimate step to not even having a newspaper anymore. Only a handful of reporters, sportswriters and columnists stand between what's left and the end of what was once the pride of West Texas.

It's a damn shame. And I thought you ought to know the truth.

Dave Thomas

The No. 1 reason I hate this economic bust …

… is that it prevents me from griping about my job.

Before yesterday, but especially since I've heard that the San Antonio Express-News has axed 75 positions in their newsroom, I've held to the following mantra: Be thankful you have a job, be thankful you have a job, be thankful you have a job, be thankful you have a job, be thankful you have a job …

This has gone on for at least 6 months, and the San Antonio thing is the scariest reminder yet. That's not some huge metro paper off in L.A. or Detroit of which I know nothing. That's the next paper up the line (or, geographically, down the line) and it's home to at least a half-dozen people I know.

I'm hoping the economy recovers quickly. For one thing, it's creating a premature death among newspapers. People still WANT newspapers. They lined up by the hundreds when Obama won the election. They wanted to hold it in their hands.

(When the Internet first took off in the mid-'90s, the Houston Chronicle — fearing, I suppose, the immediate extinction of newspapers — launched this huge campaign, "Touch the news that touches you." And I think they hammered it, just knocked it out of the park.)

People still want newspapers, perhaps not the same newspaper as existed in the 1990s or 1970s, but they want 'em. The problem is that, without advertisers, the profits are vanishing.

(I've long despised that newspapers, at least those run by public-owned corporations, would reduce the quality of their own product in order to squeeze out MORE profits, another damn nickel for their shareholders — Scripps Howard, you can eat shit and die — without any thought to the long term.)

But this isn't about more profit. This is about losing money. And nobody's going to do that just for the sake of such an antiquated notion of journalism for the public good.

So the newspapers are dying. I believe their demise was already coming, but this is premature. This is the fellow who learns he has 20 years to live, then getting hit by a bus on the way home.

So what am I going to do? I was never going to spend my career on the copy desk. No way. For one thing, when my son starts going to elementary school, well, I guess I would be able to drive him to school … but really, with the way my schedule is now, I would only get to interact with him on the weekends. And that's not parenting, that's visitation.

No, I'm going to work days. I'm going to go to football games and Scout meetings and PTA suppers.

So, move to a day job with the paper, right? Well, at one time it was easy to hope that someday they would see my multiple skills and move me to a nice job where I could do the most good. These days, however, it's easy to fear that they'll never move me to another job, but instead just pile on more jobs that I don't want to do in addition to the two or three I already have.

The days of inventing good jobs for good workers is over where I'm at. Particularly, because it seems that I'm not one of the star-bellied sneetches.

So, what do I do next? For a long time, I thought I was going to follow the example of my most-respected journalism professor, Bob Rogers. He was a professional journalist until he turned 40. And then he decided to teach. I honor him because he didn't live in a world of studies and research and conjecture. He lived in the real world of deadlines and trade-offs and knowing you had to make the sacrifices necessary to get the job done.

But a lot of self-examination later and I've realized that I wouldn't be happy as a teacher.

So, what next? And when?

And, in this economy, how?

It's a lot to think about.

The Showdown Part II

"I'm still mad about the Slow Bar / I guess that's just the way things are. / Something good comes along ... and it's gone
Kind of like the Phoenix Radio / we used to listen and where did it go? / It went off of the air so that more Sheryl Crow could come on"
— Todd Snider, "East Nashville Skyline"

Only have 30 minutes for this blog, so I'll be quicker. Why do I care that some old bar that I can hardly go to anymore is gone? Because I liked to know it was there. I liked to know that if I was having a bad week, I could get a babysitter, Shannon and I could go and it would be like old times.

Besides, any place that you invest that much of your personal history in, it's kind of hard to watch it go. Kinda like it takes a piece of you with it, you know?

All this came up again sometime last month when Shannon and I were driving back from North-Central Austin and drove by the old Showdown and ... what the ... aw hell ... it's a Little Woodrow's now?

Little Woodrow's, in case you didn't know, is a semi-chain bar. I mean, it's not Dave & Busters, but it did start in Houston, spread to Austin and now has three? four? locations in Austin. It's not an inherently offensive place — it doesn't have a schtick. It does serve both regular beer and microbrews. It's pretty much just a semi-corporate bar.

Of course, I'm not talking about the location at the former Showdown location … I don't know if I could bring myself to go in there. Thinking it was possible that Little Woodrow's had something to do with the Showdown losing their lease, I was wondering if I should not only boycott that location, but boycott all Little Woodrow's locations … including, gulp, the only bar in Far South Austin that is non-smoking and has draft beer.

One Sunday night, when there was nothing good on TV, and I'd had a few beers, I e-mailed my group of Austin friends and asked their advice.

Bret made it pretty simple: "Shit Dave, don't go to chain bars. I'd drink beer at an Applebees before I'd go to a chain bar."

Bill was less strident: "As far as bar chains go, Little Woodrows isn't too bad, but there must be another option. You would think some place in Austin would carry on with the Happy Minutes tradition at least."

But I got a few longer answers from the rest of 'em. Lee had this to say (edited down a bit)

When Fox & Hound replaced Waterloo, I swore I'd never set foot in there except to take a shit on their floor, and I held held to that vow. (No, I never took a shit on their floor.) Of course, keeping to that vow was made easier after Moira Muldoon, the Statesman's bar reviewer, wrote that the F&H was "awful. Horrible. I'd rather give up this column than be forced to go back there."

I was also tempted to never set foot in my neighborhood Auto Zone after it displaced Henry's Bar & Grill (a placed you would have loved possibly even more than Showdown, Dave), but James Henry gave us all permission to patronize them, so I relented.

However, I was never in your pinch. There are plenty of good bar options up here in North Central.

I'd just say trust your gut. If drinking at the Little Woodrow's puts such a bad taste in your mouth that it spoils the beer, then that pretty much answers the question.

But if you're capable of having a good time there, then don't torture yourself. And just accept the fact that change happens in the business world. I miss Liberty Lunch and Henry's, and if I were 10 or 15 years older, I'm sure I'd still pine for the Armadillo.

Ah, I knew Lee would understand. He reminded me that Showdown, historic as it was, replaced the watershed punk club Raul's — which I was aware of.

Bob Noxious, as it turns out, was the voice of reason (how the hell did that happen?). Here's some of what he said:

I'm probably not the right guy to ask since I'm just not that nostalgic.  Yeah, I wish the Showdown was still there, but things change and in Austin I can always find a different enjoyable place to hoist a beer.  I just don't have the intestinal fortitude for boycotting bars.  I'm just getting too old to make that much of a commitment.  If people want to go and drink beer somewhere, then I'll go.  I may give my opinion, but hell really it's all about convenience to me, and Showdown was never convenient except when I was in College.

I think in the end, if I boycotted every place that had been something better in Austin, I'd be a teetotaler.

I think Crosby Stills and Nash wrote a song about it.  "If you can't be with the beer you want, love the one in your hand"...oh wait that was Bill.

And of course that's the inherent problem, right at the beginning. Bob might not be nostalgic, but I'm pretty much defined by my nostalgia.

And then there was Michelle, who said that Little Woodrow's might have had a hand in the closing of the Showdown, but … "A lot of Showdown regulars are going to Little Woodrow's. They started
going back the first day Little Woodrow's opened. (Some even hung out in the garden after Showdown closed.  I guess they didn't know what to do with their selves.)"

So, I'm torn. Should I boycott the Little Woodrow's down by my house, just on general principle? Should I give up on making angry stands and just roll with the flow like Lee and Bob? (My Austin friends are, on average, 5 years older than me. Is this what's going to happen to me when I pass 40?) Should I be like some of the real Showdown regulars and go to the new bar at that location?

Or does it really matter, since I don't get out much anyway?

I don't know. Cast your vote/comment. Right now, I'll take what advice I can get.

Politics (it's like two four-letter words)

During the summer I talked with my grandmother, who has had some health problems, but is hanging in there ...

We were talking about Obama, and she said, among other things, "Buck NEVER voted Republican. Because they were for people with money. But I don't know what he would do this year."

Buck was my grandfather, who died when I was four. I don't know what he would do, either, but I'm certain he would not have voted for Barack Hussein Obama.

I almost never talk, much less blog, about politics. The reason is simple: My wife and my Austin friends here are true-blue Democrats; my parents, my sister, my older friends are just as Republican.

(Especially Bullworker, who describes himself as "somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.")

And, here I am in the middle. As independent as the day is long. I can call myself a maverick, I guess, since I do know how the term originated, what it means and ... I believe, uh, hope that it will outlast McCain.

I can't talk politics without arguing with somebody I like. And I'm far too cynical about the process to think it's worth making somebody mad over.

But, here in the aftermath of one of our most historic elections, I'll give it a shot.

I believe in moderation. I believe things even themselves out over time. I believe that after 8 years of Republicans in power, it was inevitable that the Democrats would swing back. I believe that after 4 years of Democrats in power, there's a fair chance of a GOP victory, and if there's 8 years of Democrats in power, there's a certain chance of GOP victory.

I believe this country needs die-hard conservatives and die-hard liberals. If you don't have one or the other, we're not America. I believe you have to have musicians to sing about how killing our enemies is wrong. And I believe you have to have Marines to kill them.

(The enemies, not the musicians.)

I believe that Obama in power won't be as bad as Bullworker thinks, or as good as my most liberal friends think. I believe any politician is still a politician, that power corrupts and that nobody can survive the 24-hour news circus without revealing something he (or she) doesn't want anybody to know.

I'm pro-environment and have been long before I ever heard of Gore (who may have done more harm than good by politicizing an issue that already had Republicans, the money people, stacked against it).

I'm pro-free health care, because it's a damn good idea. And if you call it socialist, so what? LOOK at the economy right now. You tell me that free and unfettered capitalism has been a raging success. If you can, I'll bet you work for Exxon.

I don't trust big business, I don't like the stock market, I don't like censorship, I don't like any mix of religion and politics, I don't think Iraq had anything to do with Sept. 11 and I don't understand how anyone could think we could occupy a foreign land for half a dozen years, try to change a culture that's thousands of years older than ours, and wonder why they keep fighting back?

But, I'm pro-military, pro-defense, pro-personal responsibility. I have traditional values (but I don't care what anybody else does). I believe in hunting, watching things blow up, red meat and you can have my guns when you pry them from my cold dead fingers.

I like cheap beer. I like Aggies. I like old Western movies (or, really, most any movie where people shoot each other).

I think elitism may nearly be as hateful as racism — prejudice is not limited to racists, rednecks and Republicans.

I like "The Fightin' Side of Me" and "We Can't Make it Here."

I think if more people were like me, there'd be more discussion of the issues and less focus on how much we hate the other party. (But, damn it, all the good bars would be crowded.)

I can call Obama voters and McCain voters friends.

Of course, now it's time to see if Obama can lead as well as he can campaign. If he's as good in the Oval Office as he is on the podium. I hope so. I've even heard that he might do something as remarkable as give Cabinet positions to people who are qualified, regardless of party loyalty.

That would be astounding. That would be some real change.

I opened this bog by mentioning my grandfather.

I can picture the day, maybe four years from now, when his great-grandson comes home from kindergarten, maybe after learning about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, looks up at me and says "You mean we didn't always have a black president?"

That's change, too. I'm not sure it could have happened any faster than that.

But, it was always gonna happen.

Let's go.