A little bit about poker and Texas Hold 'em

The newness has worn off, but every once in a while you'll still see a "Poker is bigger than ever!" story on TV or in the paper. These recycled stories usually tell you what you already know, including the fact that journalists love low-hanging fruit, but that doesn't keep them from being mostly true.

I say mostly true because poker, in general, is not bigger than ever. No, what's bigger than ever is a poker variant called Texas Hold 'em, or just hold 'em (by the way, I'm going to assume you are somewhat familiar with the game, and if not, open up a new window and Google it). I'm not going to knock the game because basically I'm a "high tide raises all boats" kind of guy, but the truth is, hold 'em's popularity has brought some unwelcome things with it.

1. The near death of stud, omaha, and draw poker. Good luck finding one of these games in a card room now. The first couple of times I was in Vegas, the stud and omaha tables outnumbered the hold 'em tables, and now you're lucky if the card room even goes through the motion of putting out a sign up sheet for one of them.
2. Luck is a much larger factor in hold 'em than in other games. I don't know of any other game in general, not just hold 'em, where so many amateurs have beaten so many top pros. Don't get me wrong, bad players eventually end up losing, but in the short term, I've seen them do quite well.
3. The idiots you have to play with and their annoying habits. A) Dudes (or chicks) who wear sunglasses while playing. Here's a news flash, there are two kinds of people who wear sunglasses indoors, blind people and assholes. B) The "let me think" guy. Here are your options: throw chips in the center of the table or throw your cards in; unless there's serious money in the pot, taking more than five seconds to decide what to do should result in a beating from the other players. C) The "I know everything about poker" guy. Of course it goes without saying that he knows as much about poker as I know about particle physics. Dollars to donuts, he picked up most of his knowledge from watching it on TV, which means he doesn't know anything about other card games. He also usually has a bulging vein on his forehead from the brain strain he gets by constantly trying to innocuously drop poker jargon and pro players names into casual conversation because it makes him feel more macho to do so. It goes without saying that when he's winning, it's because he's good, and when he's losing, it's because bad cards are coming his way.

Having said all of that, card players are still better off in a world where hold 'em is popular. It used to be that you had to hunt for a casino that had a poker room (some only had a table or two in a corner somewhere, and you had to play with old ladies when the casino got a game up and running), now they all have them, and that's a good thing. Now where are my sunglasses?

Jury duty

Jury duty has become a cliche, and not without good reason. It's like the winning the lottery in reverse every few years when that white envelope from the county courthouse arrives notifying you that you're being ordered to have a long boring day. And you'd damn well better be there when they tell to be there or you face the possibility of a fine, or even run the risk of the deputies coming to pick you up. Who wouldn't resent that?

I'm no different than anyone else in this regard, and when I got that white envelope, I opened and quickly scanned through the part where it talks about exemptions, hoping against hope that I could claim one. No dice. Then I began thinking. I've never been on a jury before, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to be picked for one. The mere thought of playing a part in deciding someones fate became a real rush for me (and a somewhat unwholesome one at that, now that I think about it), and I began looking forward to today's trip to the courthouse.

I could give you the coffeehouse creative writing take on the day, but why stretch it out? The short version is that this holiday week has a less hectic court schedule, so they let a fifth of the 500 people called in for the jury pool go early by late morning and I was one of them. It was nice to have the rest of the day to myself, but as you can gather from my earlier statements, I was a little disappointed.

Having gone this experience again, it's caused me to reflect and ask, why isn't there a better way to do this? No, no. I need to rephrase that. Why isn't it being done a better way?

Yeah, I get it, I know how the system works. Hundreds of people get called for various cases about to be heard, and all but a fraction of the time, the case doesn't even make it to opening arguments because one or both of the lawyers are playing chicken and hopes to get a better bargain from the other side. So, basically, out of 500 or so people, only maybe 50 (if that even) actually hear a case. The result? A normal person's day is wasted. The lawyers, judges, and bailiffs are paid to be there, so they're not out anything.

My solution? The same computer that picks a random group for the general jury pool can do the same thing, but will instead pick smaller groups for specific court cases. A person chosen for jury duty will arrive in the morning outside of the courtroom, where court proceedings will begin immediately, not some big hall to wait for hours in uncomfortable chairs and fathomless boredom. Any plea deal must be made the day before, and posted to a Web site so potential jurors will know they don't have to show up. If a plea is made after that, the side that initiated it pays each member of the jury pool $100, and considering the pool for the average case is 40 or so, I don't think you'd see the same kind of foolishness that you do now.

And you don't like that plan, I'll see you in court.

Who should go to college?

The genius of the American education system (and yes, you read that correctly) is that it doesn't just give second chances; it gives third and fourth chances as well. This especially pertains to higher education. I don't know of any big or mid-sized country that allows its students so many many opportunities to screw up on as grand a scale as many times as this one does.

Having said that, however, I think it's time we start being a little bit smarter about the whole thing.

For starters, let me address the subsidy issue. Yes, it's important, and I know that no college student pays 100% percent of their own tuition. Even students attending a private university are party subsidized by the government. But the thing is, the government wastes money by the trainload anyway, so I don't think it's the most important issue in this argument.

No, the most important factor here is the way this de facto policy encourages students who don't have the maturity or intelligence for college to waste a large chunk of their youth in what will ultimately be a waste of their time. For the record, I fell into the former category (although mom would say it's really the other one). It doesn't necessarily make me right, but it does give me a personal perspective on this issue.

What's the harm, though? If someone wants to go to college, let them, and if they fail, they move on with their life. In the case of a wasted semester or even two, there's minimal to little harm. But how many people, especially at smaller colleges, keep going back year after year and never get anywhere? That's not life, that's suspended animation. Except in this case, you don't come out of the glass case the same age you were when you went in, when you finally do wake up, you find that years were sucked out of you.

There's this popular conception in TV and movies that college is fun for everybody, and if your a focused student or have someone to pay your bills and give you spending money, it is.

There are, however, thousands upon thousands of students, who despite lacking a firm direction in life or any aptitude at all, are currently enrolled in colleges across the U.S. I'd say the vast majority of these people aren't able to get someone else to pay the tab, so they get loans and work crappy jobs -- crappier than they normally would be because they need something that will work around classes -- to be able to go to college just because parents, counselors, teachers, and others said they should.

The thing is, what are they left with after they flunk out, or finally get wise and give up? They don't have any real job skills, because they took a job at a restaurant or at a grocery store in order to get the flexible hours that they needed to attend classes. They don't have any of the concrete benefits of a college education because anything short of a diploma is as good as never having went. They also don't have as much of their life left, and it's going to take them that much longer to get to where they would have been if they hadn't listened to bad advice.

It would be cruel to deny someone an opportunity to raise them self up, but there comes a time when it's cruel not to tell them they're playing the wrong game.

The Golden Age and quality

The Golden Age for pulp magazines occurred 75 years ago in the 1930s, and although I don't have the stats to back it up, probably for general interest fiction magazines as well. I can only guess at a number (and I'm too lazy to look it up, but rest assured, it's close), but back then, there were around a hundred fiction magazines being sold at drugstores and newsstands all over the US. In fact, back then, damn near every magazine had at least one short story between its covers.

(This is an incredibly broad subject, so I'll probably return to different aspects of it at a later date, so don't fret if I omit something.)

Here's something else that'll shock you if you know anything at all about the modern market for short stories; the guys who wrote the stories for these magazines were mostly professional writers. So how is that shocking? It's shocking because there is not one pro short story writer left in this country. Not one! And how can there be when stories sold to the few fiction magazines left only fetch a token payment, or up to $500 or so if you're lucky?

So who are the authors for these publications? They're mostly hobbyists and a few novelists who are slumming because it's good PR. Don't get me wrong, good stories still occasionally get published, but I don't have one doubt that they'd be ten times better if there actually was a chance that the people clacking on their keyboards could realistically turn pro one day.

It's not going to happen and they know it. The worst thing about a situation like this is that it tends to drive people with talent to other endeavors while the hacks, who never seem to get tired of churning out reams of crappy prose, keep at it and have just enough success to keep them from quitting. A look at what happened to the poets will show this to be true. Before about 1920 (or thereabouts), a talented poet could make a living writing poetry. It was a slow process, but at some point, the only poets left (and I use the term loosely) were fatuous gasbags who were only able to label themselves as such because they had cushy jobs as professors.

What I'm getting at is that I believe that we as Americans are missing out on something important here. Obviously, we'll never get back to the way it was in the 30s; television, the Internet, and urban life in general have seen to that, it's just that I think it could be better.

So I have to wonder where the big companies and media moguls fit in this. Not one of the privately owned fiction mags has anything resembling deep pockets, and the university sponsored ones are a complete lost cause, but why can't a really rich guy (or company) in this era of the really rich kick out ten or twenty million bucks and get something going? There are a thousand individuals and companies in this country for whom that would be pocket change.

What's more, my proposal doesn't have to be a money losing proposition. In a nation of 300 million, I find it hard to believe that the top selling fiction mag has a circulation of only 300,00, and the top science fiction magazine does about 70,000. It won't necessarily rake in the bucks, but with enough seed money, a staff committed to quality could take it a long way.

So, if you're a rich dude and this idea appeals to you, my emails at the top right of the page.

Hypocrisy, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett

For a large part of my adolescence and adulthood, I considered the atrocities of the masses in the French and Russian revolutions to be nothing short of mindless, misguided villainy. Now, as I've gotten a little older, I'm not so sure.

In both of those cases, the aristocracy and their hangers-on overplayed their hand, which is to say that they didn't stop at merely screwing over the vast majority of their subjects (every ruling class does that), they wanted to screw them over, rub their noses in it, and, to top it off, they had to like it. As Orwell would later write in 1984 (paraphrased), it's not enough that they obey their oppressors, they have to love them too.

Most historians don't believe that Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake," but as Dan Rather would later say, even if the facts of the story are wrong, it's still true.

All of this brings me to the Marie Antoinettes of the modern age: Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. In the past few years, these two guys have shot past Saturn with a kind of superhuman, bombastic audacity that even Bill Clinton couldn't pull off on his best day.

In case you've been living under a rock, or are clinically retarded, these two guys are the richest men in the world. There's nothing in and of itself wrong with that. Where they've gone wrong is that they think it's OK for them to dodge taxes, but for the rest of us who are formed of the mere common clay, we should be more than happy to contribute more than we do now (I'm speaking in the general "we," I've got doodly squat for dough).

How come I didn't read about it, you say? The answer is you did, except that it was reported as the magnificent duo forming a huge mega foundation that will distribute their excess wealth to "needy causes," which are ones they deem worthy of their money. This means these guys get to spend their money in any way they see fit, and when they die, Uncle Sam won't be able to get a dime, and keep in mind that all the while, these two super nerds were/are advocating a reinstatement of the old government estate (death, if you are a fiscal conservative) tax to previous levels (around 50%).

If congress gets to choose how other inheritances are spent, theirs should be included. Even if the rate was 50%, they'd still have another 50 billion to spend, which will buy a hell of a lot of ego stroking and smug superiority.

How far does one's head have to be up their posterior not to recognize that the fact that you got in on the ground floor of modern computer software or are good at investing does not impart the wisdom of Solomon. And frankly, how far do our heads have to be up our posteriors to let them get away with it.

DWIs, marijuana, and overkill

I lost my sympathy for Paris Hilton. Not that there was much there to begin with, but when she resorted to having her quack psychiatrist make a bogus diagnosis to get her out of jail early, what little there was evaporated. Apparently, irregardless of what little sense it makes, if you do the crime, you do the time, which in her case is the full 45-day sentence.

My question is: Where's the crime?

Sure, I know, something about a parole violation on a DUI charge or something like that. But still, where's the CRIME? Murder, armed robbery, and embezzlement are all crimes. What she did is worse than a traffic ticket, but is still pretty piss ant and is definitely not a crime.

It's easy to not have sympathy for Paris Hilton, but what about all of these other people who are caught in our current national pastime to sticking to misdemeanor offenders? I am all for law and order, but I don't think for one second that treating slightly tipsy drivers or those who have a piddling amount of dope like criminals make our county any safer. What it does is give criminal records to many decent people, bail bondsmen more business, and fill jails when the space could be put to better use.

I don't do drugs myself, and the fact of the matter is I feel that there are few types of people who are more annoying than the very stoned, but how is someone puffing on a doobie a threat to others or himself? So how is it justified that if a person is unlucky enough to be caught in the act by a cop, he's looking at night in jail, fines that are way out of line, and a criminal record he'll carry around for the rest of his life (records also can never really be expunged).

If you're under 50, statistics say that you've probably smoked pot at some point -- maybe many points -- in your life. So how would it be different if, say, you were busted for smoking weed when you were at college? Would you still have gotten your original post-graduation job? Maybe. With some occupations it'll never come back to haunt you, but in others it will, with law enforcement, military, and medical professions leading the group. So you say that potheads shouldn't be in those professions? Sure, I'll give you that, they shouldn't. But what if those people who were caught are like you probably were. They just did it a couple of times, and unlike you, were unlucky enough to get caught. How does not getting caught make you any better morally?

The above sentiment goes double for DWIs/DUIs. Back in the 80s, state governments started increasing the severity of DWI offenses in response to groups like MADD who rightly lobbied against the fact that many profoundly drunk drivers who injured or killed people mostly got off with a few years probation instead of hard time. The problem is that the people MADD and others are concerned about are on one side of the spectrum, while the rest of us are at the other (and I do mean us, if you drink, you've driven over the legal limit, it's that simple).

The system should come down like a ton of bricks on drivers who are so blitzed they are seeing double, driving all over the road, and stained with their own puke, but what's served by coming down that hard on people at the other end? A case in point is Pete Coors, chairman of Coors Brewing, who, as it turns out, was busted last year for DWI. The cop spotted him not quite stop at a stop sign. Nothing dangerous, it's something we all do. Anyway, long story short, there was nothing Coors was doing that would have hurt anyone (the stop sign was a block from his house), but the cop followed him and Coors blew a breathalyzer reading of slightly over 0.08. He gets taken to the station and had to go through the legal system.

How is that fair to him? Or more importantly, to you or me in the event it ever happens to us (he's rich and can afford Ivy League trained lawyers)? My take is this: If you can walk a straight line, touch your nose, and do the rest, you're not drunk. I'm not saying you should get off completely, but the current system is ridiculous.

And besides, with cops not wasting their time on minor things like these, they can concentrate on those idiots who fire guns into the air on New Year's and the Fourth. How many times have you heard about one of those guys being arrested?

Another musing on civility, decency, and your fellow man

I don't have facts or figures to back this up, but rest assured, I'm 100% confident in saying that in the history of the world since the invention of the automobile, no one has ever taken up two spots without knowing it. And notice I didn't say "since the invention of parking lot stripes" because I do not believe that a person can park eight feet from another car without knowing they are eight feet from another car, stripes or no stripes.

Every time you see that (or do it, you creep), you are witnessing a bit of sociopathy in action. It's not a question of knowing that they are inconveniencing someone else, it's that they don't care. In their everyday life, they probably abide by the rules like the rest of us do, but not because they believe in the underlying ethics or morality of them, they just don't want to deal with the consequences of breaking the big ones. Taking up two spots is worry free. Just try to think back to last time you keyed a car for that, if you ever did.

Unfortunately, the world is full of people who are rude to waiters, receptionists, and janitors; who steal from the lunchroom refrigerator, the supply room, or your desk; bosses who expect extra time from you and not them, who short your check, and who make promises they have no intention of keeping; and the list goes on.

Not all of it rises to the level of outright criminal behavior, but it is certainly stuff that sleazy people feel that they can get away with. The reason they feel that way is because we let them do it.

What I suggest is that we call them on it. Not everybody, mind you, just the people in our immediate sphere of influence. If all of us got together and modified the behavior of just one jerk, the world would be so much more livable. And think of how much fun it would be to punch your mother-in-law in the face for taking up two parking spots.

Ahh, the drive-in, we hardly knew ye

There's something magical about being in the exact right place at the exact right time. We, as humans, describe this phenomenon as being everything from a noteworthy coincidence to evidence of God's handiwork. I'm not sure which of those two to ascribe it to, but those are the kind of moments that lit the spark to my life-long love of the drive-in.

Back in the 80s, there were more drive-ins than there are now (although the institution as a whole was well on its way to the lingering death that's happening to it today). Occasionally, you would be driving by one and have a clear view of the screen when whatever B movie they were playing had its obligatory nude scene. Nudity, along with other types of sleaziness have permeated our modern culture, so you might think "so what?". But back then, it was a different era, and to a 12 year old boy without cable, any glimpse of boobity was FREAKING AWESOME!

Unlike a lot of other people, I have no fond memories of sitting in the family car in pajamas with mom and dad watching movies in all of their outdoor glory. The fact is, I never actually saw a movie at one until I was about 20 or so, and when I did go that first time, it was with an evenly mixed group of males and females and about two cases of beer. The crush I had on the blond I was with fizzled shortly thereafter that night, but I am, however, still deeply in love with beer.

Over the years, I saw movies at several different drive-ins, and I always enjoyed the unique atmosphere that they provided; half of the cars usually had families in them and the other half had couples on dates, so there was always a weird mix of family values and sinfulness occurring in the same area.

But alas, everything changes and sometimes it just goes away (the Mission 4, San Antonio's last drive-in, was recently vandalized to the point where repair costs will likely see it shut down). Like large sailing ships, live theater, and cowboys, the drive-in will never vanish entirely, but the time in which it was an active part of culture is gone forever. And that's a shame.

Interview with Joe Bob Briggs

This is taken from an email interview I did with Joe Bob Briggs about a drive-in story I was going to do, but got killed for various reasons (including the fact that Joe Bob, bless his heart, sent me the answers three months after I sent him the questions). So, rather than letting it go to waste, here it is, in all its unedited glory.


1. What is the allure of the drive-in? What makes it so different from other movie venues?

It's outside! Like God intended. I'm surprised I have to explain this to you. You watch the movie in the privacy of your own vehicle, where you can do any disgusting thing you want without intervention from the professional scolds who run this country. It's no accident that the decline of the drive-in coincides with the rise of Victorian morality.

2. What accounted for the drive-in’s post WWII rise in popularity and its subsequent decline in the 1960’s and 1970’s?

After World War II, everything in America was about the car. There weren't just drive-in movies, there were drive-in banks, drive-in restaurants, drive-in everything. People started spending more and more time in their car, and at that time it wasn't considered a burden. To some extent, using the car was still thought of as a lark. The cars were also much larger. One reason the drive-in declined in the seventies is that people started buying little Japanese rice rockets, cars so tiny that you couldn't really sit through a two-hour movie when you were folded into one. Then there was the rise of the multi-plex, which really took off in the early seventies. But the main reason for the decline was rising real estate values. The drive-in was always built on the edge of the city, where the urban and the rural meet. That made it prime land for expansion. Most of the drive-ins in the eighties were closed and sold to Wal-Marts.

3. How did drive-in’s come to be associated with Roger Corman type films?

The major studios discriminated against drive-ins and for many years refused to give them major releases. So the independent producers like Corman rushed in to supply them. Also, even when the drive-in *did* score a major release, they would need a second or a third feature. Many of the Corman-type films were sold as "flat fee" second features. You would pay $50 a night for the film.

4. Can you name a couple of what you believe are the all-time great drive-movies and a couple of recent ones that might fit into that mold?

Probably the two greatest ones of all time are Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Recent titles would include The Grudge, the Saw series, etc.

5. What is the difference between “A” movies and “B” movies? What makes a “B” movie great?

The three essentials are the three B's: Blood, Breasts and Beasts. Everything else is gravy.

6. How did the advent of direct-to-video movies affect the drive-in?

There's no question that the old audience for the drive-in second feature is the same audience that went for direct-to-video exploitation fare big time. There was about a five-year period when you could put out anything on video and people would rent it.

7. Any favorite snack stand food, or do you bring your own? Also, what’s your take smuggling beer or other alcohol in with you to drink while you watch the movie?

Alcohol is essential! Hot dogs are standard. Nachos are that added amenity that shows the drive-in owner is a purist.

8. How does the drive-in rank as a dating venue?

If you have a big car, no place better. Tinted windows are essential, however.

9. Is there any chance that you’ll have a new show anytime soon?

Yes, an excellent chance. I'm involved with the new Redrum network, devoted to horror, thriller and suspense movies and tv shows, and I'll definitely have a show on there.

10. Interviewee’s choice…anything on the subject you feel is important that I haven’t asked about.

The drive-in will never die!

Midgets on mini bikes

A few months ago my roommate, Brian, walked into the house we share with my older brother and his older brother (we're a thirty something version of Animal House, except with bigger bellies, less sex, but roughly the same amount of beer), and asked, "When was the last time you saw a midget riding a mini bike?"

I put my game of Halo on pause, stared at him and thought a) what?, and b) what's the joke? So I waited for him to continue with a punchline or go on with the story.

"Dude, there's a midget riding a mini bike outside," he said.

OK, I thought, this I have to see. I open the front door and sure enough, a midget on a mini bike is riding up and down the street. Better still, it wasn't even really an mini bike. It's what is called a pocket bike, which are even smaller than mini bikes and are designed to look like full-size race bikes.

In and of itself, a midget on a mini bike doesn't make a great story, but it does illustrate the hollowness of political correctness. PC orthodoxy tells us that we're bad people for finding humor in the fact that we saw a grown man (ouch! pardon the pun), who happens to be three feet tall, riding the only motorcycle he is physically capable of riding. After all, who would think it's funny to laugh at a guy in a wheelchair?

Both are instances of people dealing with the limitations placed on them by the powers that be, and yet, we find one to be funny and one not to be. I don't know whether that's a product of our culture or if it's hard wired into humanity. Don't get me wrong, there is such a thing as civility and politeness, so I wouldn't think about laughing at the guy to his face, but I do believe that we lose something when we deny something that's intrinsic to us.

The point is, I don't think it makes us bad people to notice, and even find humor in the differences and oddities that abound in humanity.

Oh yeah, later the midget tied a rope to the bike and towed his full-sized friend up and down the street while he sat in an office chair. I don't care how PC you are, that is definitely funny.

Working hard, or hardly working?

The reason actors make $ 20 million per movie is so that God can remind the rest of us that life isn't fair.

Sure, some make more and some make less, but rest assured, if you actually know the name of any TV or movie actor, they make a million or more per year. And you know what, there's nothing wrong with it.

Say what you will about about Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, or whoever, but these guys at least had the guts to pack their stuff (Hollywood actor pun partly intended) and move to Hollywood and go for that one in a million shot (actually, if you don't consider grossly untalented actors, I'm more inclined to believe it's more of a one in 10,000 chance or so, but that expression doesn't have as much punch; and your guess is as good as mine if you want to recalculate to include the grossly untalented).

The thing is, unless Bruce Willis slashed your tires on the day you were scheduled to audition for the McClain part in Die Hard, his success has no tangible impact on your life. None! Just because Bruce has an Italian villa, an Italian sportscar, and an Italian supermodel girlfriend, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's depriving you of any of those things (I stopped for a minute before I finished this sentence to cry a little bit).

Of course it's easy to be philosophical about the fortunes of people so far removed from yourself, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there is that little pinch (occaisionally, it's a punch) that you get when Parade magazine does its yearly "What people earn" issue, or when you bump into an idiot you knew from high school who outearns your yearly salary by the cost of a Kentucky Derby contender.

I could go on forever about this, but I'll keep it short. Here's the point; if you strike it extremely lucky in life, good for you, but remember to shut the hell up. I, and I'm sure most others, don't want to hear about how you got where you are because of hard work. If you're reasonably successfull and under 30, and almost definitely if you are under 40, you got what you have because you caught a lucky break of some sort (and if after reading that, you just thought "that applies to everyone but me;" you are an asshole).

So here's the wrap up: if you have nothing, it's not because other people have something; and if you have something, enjoy it, and leave the sermons about hard work to your grandmother.

Hey and you should believe this because I'm speaking from the moral high ground. I don't have crapola, but I don't work hard either.

My modest school zone/parking lot proposal

The route from my house to the mall takes me past a school, and yesterday as I was making the drive shortly after the school let out, I thought about a friend from my early teenage years.

You see, I grew up in a small town, and for the most part, if you were between the ages of 11 and 15 and wanted to go somewhere (the arcade, the library, or a friend's house, etc.), you rode your bicycle.

Don't take this as me bragging, but at the age of 12 or 13, I had a fair amount of understanding as to how the world works. I especially understood that in the event of an automobile-bicycle collision, the automobile is always going to win, and I also understood that with Mexico only being a few miles away, a large number of drivers were both a) uninsured, and b) disinclined to phone the authorities for help in the event that they hit you. My friend "Tim" never understood that (and no, the story doesn't end that way).

It's at least understood, if not required by law, that bicyclists should ride within about three feet from the edge of the road and obey posted traffic signs. And I'll reemphasize my point here, you shouldn't follow these rules because they're polite or because you might get a ticket; you should follow them because if a guy driving a car hits you, you'll be the only one to feel it.

None of that ever made any sense to Tim. He didn't care about the law, common courtesy, and it never quite sunk into his head that someone either had to have money or insurance in order for you to sue them. I can distinctly remember five or six times when he ran a stop sign or was riding in the middle of the street and a car had to screech to a halt in order to avoid killing him, and dozens of other more minor incidents where there was a strong potential for him to be hurt.

The thing is, he wasn't dumb. As far as IQ went, he was probably a little above average. Like the father on That 70s Show would say, he was a dumb ass; someone who lets their immaturity or self-centeredness override their intelligence and common sense in order to do something stupid.

Tim and I quit being friends around the age of 16, but it was a small town, so word of his various misadventures would get back to me to fairly regularly (his arrest during spring break for shoplifting a can of bean dip was a good one). This steady stream of idiotic activity would culminate when he was about 22 or 23 and instantly elevate him from mere ne'er do well legendary local dumb ass.

I'll spare you the long version of the story and just bottom line it for you. Tim got into a heated argument with a cholo. The cholo pulls a knife, Tim pulls a gun. That ends the fight, right? Not exactly. The fight ends when Tim shoots himself in the leg. Having heard multiple explanations, even one from an eyewitness, as to how it happened, for the life of me, I still can't understand how it happened.

Tim never faced any real consequences for his actions until the day a 9mm slug bit into his femur. Tim, and more importantly, the people who were on the receiving end of Tim's idiotic behavior, would have had a better life had he gotten his cosmic comeuppance a decade earlier.

OK, so what does all of this have to do with the mall and schools at dismissal time? If you've driven by either of these places recently, you've probably noticed the behavior of the people at these places is similar to Tim's (except these are mostly pedestrians). What I suggest is that we help these unfortunate souls become better people, and by helping them, we'll be helping ourselves as well.

My modest proposal can be summed up in two words: keep going.

Here's the beauty of the plan. The 20-30 mph you're normally driving at when going past a school or in parking lot isn't fast enough to kill most people, but it's more than fast enough to teach a lesson to sullen teenagers or the odd, middle-aged doofus who think the rules of polite society doesn't apply to him. What's more, the six months they'll spend sitting with an ankle to crotch cast on their leg will give them plenty of time to reflect of the fact that they're not the center of the universe.

More polite people means fewer angry drivers, which in turn means more people with lower blood pressure, and that means more people will have longer, happier lives.

So let's all pitch in and make the world a better place! Just be sure to keep a copy of this to show the judge when he asks you about the plan.
courtesy

Where have all the teachers gone?

Ahh ... it's late April in Texas. The rain has come, the wildflowers are in bloom, and for those of you who don't know, school districts all across the state are having job fairs so that they can hire soon to be ex-teachers.

Yeah, it's cynical, but it's also true. Trust me about this, I'm an ex-teacher. Oh, and if something about pay just popped into your head, you're most probably off base.

The thing is, unless you teach at a private school or in a really small town, you probably do OK as far as dollars go. Here in San Antonio, the starting pay for the average teacher is around $40,000. That's not yacht in the Caribbean money, but when you figure that you only work 187 days a year, it's not bad.

Seeing as how there are many different aspects to this topic it would be easy to write an overly long post, so in the interest of pithiness, I'm going to keep it short and just say a few words about a couple of things the first-year teacher will be hit in the face with.

When people are people are planning a teaching career, they tend to naively think that most their time as a teacher will be spent teaching. Poor fools. They won't be a week into the job when they discover that they're spending a lot (and I mean a pick-up truck full) of time on discipline issues and on BS classroom activities that are designed to keep students relatively quiet and relatively well behaved.

Believe me when I say that as a teacher, your ability to communicate complex ideas or lessons in an easily understandable form to students ranks a distant second to your ability to keep students quiet and in their seats.

Another thing that makes new teachers become former teachers is that they have responsibility without authority. In case you can't quite grasp this concept, this is the same thing as playing poker and only being able to bluff. If another player calls your bluff, you lose a stack of chips; if the other player knows that ALL you do is bluff, you lose all of your chips.

The bottom line is, if the kids ever find out you're bluffing, you're in for pure hell the rest of the year, and the sad part is, they almost always find out that new teachers are bluffing.

So who wants to work at a job where you don't do what you were trained to do, and where 11 and 12 year-olds can run roughshod over you? The sad fact of the matter is next to no one, that's who.

Is the political correctness half empty or half full?

I have mixed feelings about this.

News from the last issue of San Antonio College's student newspaper, The Ranger, has a story about the college's search for another mascot to "augment" (they don't want to catch hell from those on the other side of the issue, so he's not being replaced) their existing mascot, the Ranger.

The Ranger has been the school mascot for about 80 years, and the culprit is the insensitivity or perceived insensitivity embodied by the mascot, which makes this similar to the NCAA's gripe about team names or mascots with American Indian names or iconography. The difference though, is that you shouldn't feel bad about seeing 80 years of tradition step out of the spotlight, because there never really was a tradition to begin with. San Antonio College has had a barely there or nonexistent college athletic program for decades, and in fact, prior to this story, most students there couldn't have told you what the mascot was to begin with (and I should know, I went to school there).

It's mostly a just compromise to only "augment" and not replace the Ranger, but there is still a large amount of unseemly oiliness to the decision. If the Ranger is racist and offensive to hispanics (that's what the those in favor allege), then replace him, if he isn't, leave him alone.

I suspect a big factor in this wishy-washy decision was that if they did replace the mascot, they'd also have to rename the school newspaper, which is a brand name in college publications in the state, and consistently ranks pretty high among non daily college newspapers in the state.

While the decision was good politics on the part of the administration, I wish a decision had been made one way or the other. The ensuing controversy would have ensured a good old fashioned fight, and then maybe some of the more rabid "rangers were/are a racist organization" types could be shown to be the fools they are.

There's some truth to what they're saying (but can you tell me what 19th century law enforcement agency has a sparkling record in regards to race?), but the fact of the matter is that these people exaggerate, cite out of context, and even lie outright about the past to attack the culture of people in the present.

Only this time, we fought back. Oh, I guess we didn't. Like I said, I have mixed feelings about this.

Alec Baldwin and pigs

I'm sure that practically everyone has heard that actor Alec Baldwin is taking flak for calling his 11 year old kid a pig by now for missing a scheduled phone call from him. If you haven't, this account is as good as any.

Alec Baldwin is a good actor and a goofy person (he publicly announced he would move to France if Bush won, but don't feel bad if you don't remember him saying that, neither did he), and sure, what he said sounds bad, but what parent hasn't lost it with their kid?

Let me tell you. It's the parent whose kid is running wild in the grocery store, the restaurant, the airplane, etc. forcing nearby adults to try and remember whether the state they're in has a mandatory death penalty for killing a child.

Kids don't misbehave because they don't know right from wrong. They do it because bad behavior tends to be much more fun than good behavior, and if a kid knows he has an idiot parent who isn't going to call a spade a spade when it comes to right and wrong (and they do know, regardless of their age), he's going to do what's most fun every time.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't take a phone call from Alec Baldwin either, but I'm not his 11 year old daughter. This overreaction by the media to a mostly normal response is just too much.

Is there an editor in the house?

Don't get me wrong, I like the Express-News, the newspaper here in San Antonio, but for the life of me, I don't know what goes through their collective heads sometimes. Do they read everything they print? I'm kind of hoping they don't because thinking about the alternative makes me sad.

The latest item to make me shake my head and sigh is today's lead editorial which says that guns from the U.S. are "fueling the drug wars in Mexico."

Isn't that statement a little strong? I mean, wouldn't money, corruption, or lack of a strong, honest government be more likely candidates for "fueling the drug wars?" Yes, the cartels get most of their guns from North of the border, but if they didn't get them here, they'd get them somewhere else. Do the Iraqi insurgents in the Middle East, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the rebels in the Congo, or the extremists in the Philippines get there guns from the United States? No, they don't. The cartels get most of their guns from us because it's more convenient to get them here. If the supply on this side of the river dried up, they'd get them someplace else.

But if it was just that, I wouldn't have bothered with this post.

The best (worst) part is when Eduardo Medina Mora, the Mexican attorney general is quoted (by the AP, according to the editorial) as saying "it's truly absurd that a person can get together 50 to 100 high-powered arms, grenade launchers, fragmentation grenades and can transport this cargo into our country."

What?! Even Mora didn't know that it's illegal for Americans to possess grenade launchers or fragmentation grenades, you can bet the editor and the person who proofed the piece did. And if they didn't, they have no business working for a newspaper, except as delivery boys. Nowhere in the piece does it state that that is flat out wrong. If the cartels do have those weapons, it proves my first point.

Mistakes happen at newspapers, especially at deadline. This, however, was an evergreen piece without a news peg, so there shouldn't have been a rush to print this.

The blame game

The blame game is the sport of choice in the media in the wake of the atrocity at Virginia Tech. Was it guns? Gun-free zones? Ebay? Failure to enforce federal gun laws? Fuzzy language in federal gun laws?

My feeling, and I suspect the feeling of most people, is that 99 percent of the blame falls on the shoulders of the crazy bastard who did the shooting, and raging against anything other than the shooter has the effect of shifting the responsibility away from where it should be.

However, having said that, I ran across Peggy Noonan's latest column that documents the lack of common sense of university officials and their failure to simply do their jobs regarding the warning signs this guy was showing. She wrote:

The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus
counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill" was due to the lack of a government "safety net."

The inaction or bad decisions of those at the bottom of the ladder tend to affect only themselves and maybe one or two others. When those at the top make the same error, many are affected and they usually get away clean because there is always a person or entity above them to shift the blame to. And we let them get away with it.

Numero Uno

Here it it is, the first post. If I was a ship, I'd be breaking a bottle of champagne over my head.

Initially, I was turned off by blogs because they all seemed to written by narcissists who write bad poetry, make a show of every mood change that comes over them, and seem to have a pathological need to convince you that tofu really is pretty good.

The last year has taught me that some blogs are as good as pro stuff and that if someone wants to write about whatever strikes their fancy, they either need to own a newspaper/magazine, be a Pulitzer Prize winner, or have a blog.

This is all new to me, so I'm making it up as I go along, however I can say that the plan is to post at least three times a week and hopefully more, work permitting.