A joke for readers of westerns ...

The Star-Telegram has a list of the best restaurants in the Fort Worth Stockyards and includes a place called the "Lonesome Dove Bistro."

I dunno. I understand the food is delicious, but I hear the wait staff is surly and the chef keeps killing everyone's favorite dishes off the menu.

Hah!!!

When they figure out how to deep fry it, I'm in ...

Wife just sent me this story summation with the greeting, "And I immediately thought of you."

CHOCOLATE-BACON
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Here are three little words that might give the staunchest snacker pause: Chocolate-covered bacon. It sounds so wrong. But it tastes just right, says Joseph Marini III, who sells the bacon bonbons at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk seaside amusement park. “It’s not just for breakfast any more,” he says with a grin ...

No, I didn't watch the Olympic opening thing

I don't plan on watching much, period. But, who knows -- maybe if I happen to be flipping channels and can spend 10 seconds watching a race ...

I tire of the media saturation-type coverage of this track meet/one-world love in. I read today that BMX racing is now a medal event. Am I supposed to root for our adult kid-bike riders to beat the Russian adult kid-bike riders?

"Go! Pop a wheelie with more attitude! Flip on your handlebars better! Show those former commies and now-thugocracists!"

I don't care. I have no plans to care. The most enjoyment I've gotten from the Olympics so far is watching the posts on the Drudge Report about how things have occasionally teetered toward disaster for China.

And the only thing I noticed in coverage this morning was this photo, and how our first lady is way hotter than China's.

Otherwise, I got football practices to keep track of.

Big 12 mascots: Best to worst

Since football has been on my mind: I've read every list ESPN has come up with: Best players, best clutch players, most hated schools, most intense rivalries, etc.

So, with an attempt to judge without prejudice, here's a list from the blogging staff on the best and worst Big 12 mascots we'll be seeing this year, listed in order from best to not-so-hot. The criteria: Appropriateness, originality, fame and coolness.

1. UT's BEVO

Keep in mind, I'm talking solely about the mascot, not a school or obnoxious fans or their unfair access to more money than everyone else. I'm talking about a bovine.

And what a great bovine it is: A breed that's a major part of Texas history, a distinctive color, majestic horns, and -- appropriate for Austin -- he's drugged out of his mind at every game. (At least according to rumor. Makes sense, a frantic longhorn at a football game could do some seriously bad things.)

He's also tied into the school's image so much that he brings out a sense of hatred from the opponents. You talk to UT haters (a big group of people). They hate UT players, the coach, Chris Simms (forever), and they really, really hate the hoofed, grass-eating mammal that represents the orange and white. That's pretty cool, all things considered.

2. A&M's Reveille

I'm not one to get excited about all 867 of Texas A&M's traditions -- "Oh, so you reverse the fork and knife after a tie. Wow. You've got spirit, yes you do."

But the way that the school has made its mascot such an integral part of campus life is something to envy. The traditions behind the dog are both amusing and cool: A corps member has to give up his bed if that's where Reveille wants to sleep; the dog goes to class -- and the lecture is canceled if she barks twice. And the mascots that pass away are given full military funerals and buried at Kyle Field.

She's not at the top of the list because, when you think Aggie football traditions, you're just as likely to think about male yell leaders, that swaying thing or the corps in general.

I'm also partial to dogs. Which you should be if you have a soul.

3. Tech's Masked Rider

Attack my impartiality, but seeing a black horse at full gallop storming onto the field is an awesome sight.

Besides, he's my mascot and I love him.

TCU's SuperFrog

Sorry, just reliving some Southwest Conference memories.

4. Nebraska's Herbie Husker

Hey, you grow corn. And you are white as the pure-driven snow. Might as well celebrate it.

5. OU's Sooner Schooner

A little team of miniature horses pulls a miniature wagon onto the field. Adorable.

6. Colorado's Ralphie

He was higher on the list until the thought struck me: "Wait a minute ... just how many buffaloes roam the Rockies, anyway?"

7. KU's Big Jay

A version of a "JayHawk", which requires a wikipedia search to define -- a cross between a sparrow hawk, a blue jay and an abolitionist. Admirable. Pretty well-known. But nothing that gets me going.

8. Baylor's Judge

The first of the generic mascots that could represent any school in any state in the country. That's a big gripe of mine -- surely you can come up with something original? Otherwise, the bear pit is nice, and Baylor really takes good care of them.

9. OSU's Pistol Pete

I suppose he's appropriate to Oklahoma, but he's also appropriate to just about every great plains school in the country. A mascot is something that should pop into your head the moment you think about a team. With Oklahoma State, I can only think "I'm a man! I'm 40!" Maybe they could get Pistol Pete to yell that at kickoff ...

10. KSU's Willie the Wildcat

Pretty much a toss-up at the bottom of the list. Two cat mascots that I wouldn't recognize if I walked by them on the street -- and that's with them wearing the big fluffy cat suits. I'm sure that wildcats at least exist in Kansas.

11. Mizzou's Truman the Tiger

Generic, not native to Missouri, or this hemisphere, and makes me think about cereal.

Hmmm ... forgot Iowa State.

Eh, who cares?

The joyous season

(Play for mood)



That's right, college football practice begins.

It's like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, only with 350-pound sweaty guys slapping each other on the butt.

A combination of incredibly hot weather and life being in a state of flux really has me looking forward to the return of football. It also helps that the Raiders of Red are up in the rankings. I've even succumbed to the ultimate of sports geekery -- watching football simulations on XBox using the no-player option. And the game is from 2002. (Fight Kingsbury! Fight!)

So deck the halls with your lame, 20-year-old football decor and pretend that things won't be going horribly wrong by the middle of October.

Texas Monthly is weird

Thumbing through the July edition at the barber's shop:

• TM has apparently started a series on where Texans worship. The July edition prints a positive profile of a mega-baptist church in Abilene. I suppose the purpose is to draw more religious types in. The odd bit is that the profile was immediately followed by:
• A sentimental look-back at the pornflick Debbie Does Dallas by Star-Telegram critic Chris Kelly. (The lead: "How do you capture XXX-rated lightning in a bottle?") Kelly argues that the movie has heavily influenced today's cinema, and just coming from the church article, I'm a little too slack-jawed to comment.
• This is followed by An Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy: Please Go Away by one Don Graham. Apparently McCarthy, who wrote The Road and No Country for Old Men has embraced his celebrity, thereby lowering his status on the cool-o-meter. Graham pleads for McCarthy to crawl back under a rock.
• We then get to the main piece, a glorification of the Texas Cowboy by western writer Elmer Kelton. I've read several of his novels, but I find this story a little to sweet to get past the first page.
• At the end of the magazine, Kinky Friedman writes his own love letter, a non-sarcastic thanks to Bill O'Reilly. Seriously.

Strange. They've mapped out the id of Texas.

Nerd/Copy editor humor

Yeah, nerd/copy editor does dovetail nicely.

Anyway, from Caren:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

Massive wind power project slated for West Texas

I reported on the subject a bit (a small bit), when I was in Abilene. The primary complaint I heard about wind energy then was that West Texas did not have the power lines to take the electrics to the I-35 corridor.

The idea here is to change that (from AP):

"In what experts say is the biggest investment in the clean and renewable energy in U.S. history, utility officials in the Lone Star State gave preliminary approval Thursday to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from gusty West Texas to urban areas like Dallas."

I guess this is what T. Boone Pickens has been blabbing about on his radio ads here in D/FW.

The idea causes me mixed feelings. I'm doubtful of wind energy: It's not affordable without a tax break, takes up a lot of space and kills lots of little birds. (Still better than ethanol, which is driving up food costs and killing lots of little African children.)

On the other hand, something that can bring back Fluvanna can't be all that bad.

Netflix recommendation: The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Whoa. I just watched a documentary on this guy from the Austin music underground and am blown away by the story.

I know nothing substantial about music. I'm not going to pretend that I can be any judge as to the songs Daniel Johnston wrote (is writing). His voice is a screechy high-pitched awful and he doesn't play his instruments so much as bang on them. It's like modern art -- best when translated by someone who knows what they are talking about.

If you're like me, the only bit of his work you're familiar with is a piece of his art that became kinda well-known for some reason or other.

Still, the story of a young, creative guy who seems to be making the scene and then goes dangerously bonkers is told well in this movie from 2005. I put it on my movie queue as a random choice.

I'll add it was much better than the film on Townes Van Zandt, which made me want to give up independent documentaries on not-so-well-known-musicians-who-eventually-lose-it.

Le Burger Time

Heh. New York Times does a piece on how hamburgers are now big in exclusive Paris restaurants.

"It is a startling turnaround in a country where a chef once sued McDonald’s for $2.7 million in damages over a poster that suggested he was dreaming of a Big Mac. Hamburgers were everything that French dining is not: informal, messy, fast and foreign."

This is good news. Me and Meredith had talked about a trip to a French restaurant for the upcoming anniversary. Now we can go to Whataburger.

It's interesting. The French have added their ideas to the burger -- odd spices, super-expensive meat. One chef sells his at $56 a pop.

I'll at least give them credit for trying. I tried several burgers in England, and they were universally terrible. It's like they were made as a statement of what they thought of American culture.

Football on the horizon

I divide my summer into two halves: That which happens before the Fourth of July, and that which happens before football season starts. This has been a fun offseason for Texas Tech fans, as we're getting more hype -- Ranked 8 by some!! Two Heisman candidates!! -- then we've ever gotten before.

This is the fun part. The season? Well, most Tech fans are Irish in a way, because every story we tell breaks your heart.

But there's always a chance.

Anyway, you can tell the anticipation for the year is growing.

Exhibit A: This blog post by Dallas Morning News' Tim MacMahon from a couple of weeks back. MacMahon says he's tired of seeing Aggies and Raiders go after each other, and states flat out that Tech now has the better football program.

The following comments section has about 138 posts. People start arguing over which school has made the bigger sacrifice to the nation, for crying out loud.

And keep in mind: This is a debate over who's the SECOND-best team in the state.

Oh good Lord

"The schedule we keep is demanding, but it's definitely an amazing experience," said Kevin during a recent conference call from Paris.

Quote is from the Star-Telegram article on the Jonas brothers, which also included the comment that they get cheesed because people compare them to other boy bands.

Eh, it's a waste of time to spit venom at teenage boys who will unfortunately be setting the fashion standard for the poor unfortunates younger then them.

"Daddy! Can I please have the gray wool vest and pink plaid scarf! All the cool dudes are wearing them!"

These things won't ever die. My sister had Shawn Cassidy 8-tracks, posters, and always watched the Hardy Boys. I just wonder when it started. I know the '50s were full of this junk. Did my Grandmother collect tokens emblazoned in the 1910s with some young pretty boy in a cowboy hat who sang saccharine-sweet love songs on his banjo?

How far back does this go?

Happy Fourth, and notes

And enjoy the day. Meredith's working, so it's me and Sam in bachelor's paradise. I'm thinking burgers are in my near future.

It's been an interesting summer leading up to this point. Meredith survived a job cut, I survived the beginning of my return to school. Sam has learned to pick up and eat even the tiniest bits of debris we leave around the house.

We took him for his 9-month-checkup on Monday and got the "Yep, still normal" OK from his pediatrician. He's ahead of the game in a lot of things, behind in a few. His height/weight percentile's are a little wierd: he's taller than 70 percent of kids his age, and weighs less than 90 percent of them.

Tall and skinny doesn't exactly run through the Segrist family, so Sam can thank Mama. I no longer say "amen" at the end of his bedtime prayers, I start chanting "Six feet tall! Six feet tall!"

Running wild
The doctor says Sam may be walking in a couple of months. That'll add some wrinkles. He's crawling all over everything and getting into everything, as it is.

I just want him to stop licking the toilet. We keep the bathroom door shut, but anytime I open it, he's running towards the porcelin like Emmitt Smith to daylight.

Algebra done with
Summer school is over. I'm skipping the second term for several reasons, but mainly because I'm investigating what I want to do next. There's about 843 different alternative certification programs, and none of them do things the same way.

At first I was looking at UT-Arlington, then I discovered that, to qualify, I'd have to take about 2-3 years of math classes. Then I heard about an online program I-teach, which moves pretty fast. Most recently I hear that Texas Woman's University offers certification with a master's degree so you can start at the better pay levels.

No idea. I'll be making a few phone calls.

Sorry, honey
I had to ask a really strange, disturbing question this morning.

"Did I hit you last night or was that part of the dream?"

All I remember is I was standing in a room and marshmellow cream began pouring in through this tube, and it was vitally important that I stop it. I reached for it suddenly, and then heard Meredith: "Ow! You hit me! You hit me!"

I apologized, several times -- mainly because I wasn't sure if I had fallen back asleep and had only apologized in my dream.

She's OK. The fact that she now has bump makes me queasy.

I can only figure that it had something to do with my tiredness, stress levels working out in sleep. It's been a rough opening of summer and we're both exhausted. The studying has taken a lot of hours and Meredith has had to lose a lot of sleep to pick up the slack I left with Sam. I'm happy we have a few months to put some things back in order.

Just hope I don't become one of those freaks who have to be tied down when they sleep that you see on Discovery Channel documentaries.

Some pictures for Grandma ...

Hmmmmm ...

• Jeremy C. learns Oklahoma is bringing back John Blake.
• Erfort finally sees one Pirates loss too many.
• Todd W. hears about the Sears Craftsman 99-percent-off sale, one day too late.
• Dave T. reads that Willie's next album will be techno.
• David J. gets a call from his mother -- she a found a long lost note for him from "Eva something or other."
• John W. learns that Wierd Al Yankovic has retired.
• Scott M. loses his eBay fight for the Wookie lunchbox with light sabre-shaped thermos.
• Kyle S. discovers he was supposed to use a special glossy sub at 1200 DPI, for cryin' out loud.
• Tom R. learns that Paramount's next iteration of the series will be "Star Trek Follies: Hyperspace High Jinks!"

*Yes, it's old. But my brain works mostly in slow motion.

My wife, blogger

And for a professional publication and everything.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram debuted the "Mom2Mom" social networking site today. (Actual address www.mom2momdfw.com.)

The paper has been talking about and planning this baby for months, so it's good to see it go live. Meredith is blogging under "Mer" and notes something or other about a recent skin disorder she's had.

I'm not going to guess if it's good or bad that I didn't notice.

She doesn't have her pictures up, yet. We were fine with them, tho I'd note that they were taken during Sam's usual naptime, and he definitely doesn't seem to be at his normal level of energy.

Also, they were taken three months ago, just in case you were worried that our kid has suddenly stopped developing.

Cowboy cooking notes

Son-of-a-bitch is the "most infamous*" of dishes from the chuckwagon era, consisting mainly of the cow parts you're never going to see at a steakhouse: the heart, brains, tongue, kidney, marrow-guts, etc., according to Robb Walsh's "The Texas Cowboy Cookbook."

Chuck wagon cook Cliff Teinart has his own recipe for son-of-a-bitch, and also knows some of the less offensive names of the dish: son-of-a-gun, SOB, gentleman from Odessa.

Gentleman from Odessa?

"Because, anywhere else, a gentleman from Odessa would be called a son-of-a-bitch," Teinert said.

*I don't see it beating calf fries, but we all have our opinions.

Speaking of newspapers

Meredith survived the latest round of cuts at McClatchy and the bleeding seems to have stopped for the time being. Of course those who survived feel horrible about all the friends they've lost and now get to work with a permanent ax over their heads.

Here's the latest good news on newspapers, from AP:

"Half a dozen newspapers said they would slash payrolls, one said it would outsource all its printing, and Tribune Co., one of the biggest publishers in the country, said it might sell its iconic headquarters tower in Chicago and the building that houses the Los Angeles Times.

The increasingly rapid and broad decline in the newspaper business in recent months has surprised even the most pessimistic financial analysts, many of whom say it's too hard to tell how far the slump will go.

A few months back, when San Angelo's Perry Flippin went out with a cannon shot at the industry, I reacted kinda strongly in some instances, but I realized that I never made a point.

Here it is -- The newspaper industry is doomed because:

1. Newsroom executives (they used to be called editors) have grown increasingly elitist and separated from their readers.
2. The heads of corporate newspaper chains have grown increasingly elitist and separated from everyone.
3. Neither of these things matters because it's impossible to compete with the technology that everyone under 85 knows how to use. And the people who use that technology can, and usually do, find about 1,000 distractions before they decide to check out whatever happened with that Eritrea thing.

All that being said, I don't think that the local news will just go up in smoke. We'll have some kind of news service in the future. It's vigor and health remains to be seen.

Otherwise, me and the wife will continue to watch the state of the industry with an eye on a lifeboat.

From the aforementioned report:

In fact, the industry group that compiles and releases ad revenue figures, the Newspaper Association of America, this month stopped putting out quarterly press releases with the numbers, though it quietly updated them on its Web site.

NAA spokeswoman Sheila Owens said in an e-mailed statement that the organization will now put out press releases only with full-year data "to keep the market focused on the longer-term industry transition from print to a multiplatform medium."

Translation: "Turn out the lights, the party's over ..."

Edumacation

First off, as soon as I let people know I'm going to get a teacher's certification, a few things pop up in the news.

My Mom-in-law told me about a story in the Dallas Morning News. There's a fight brewing between the alternative certification schools and the traditional colleges. The first story I read mentioned that (gasp) your child's teacher may not have had more than a C-average in college and may have never stepped into a classroom until this year started.

And this is different from what might happen with a teacher from a traditional college how? Anyway, the traditional colleges are lobbying the state to pass new rules to make it more difficult to certify teachers, inner city and rural schools are planning to fight it, blah blah blah.

Here's the latest story, seems that colleges made the state do an audit.

It's just your usual turf battle and has nothing to do with providing a better education.

Todd also sent me this story on the shortage of math teachers, and noted that I seemed to be going for "low hanging fruit."

While saying "duh", I'd also add that I picked math because I enjoy it, and going that course will give me a lot more options as to where I can teach and a tad bit more money.

James Snipe mountain lion, for real

This thing has been a lot of fun. I've watched the hoax move from West Texas to East Texas to Alabama to North Carolina, getting hits and comments along the way. This site hasn't seen this much traffic since I wrote a few comments and posted a few pictures of that bikini model/anchorwoman for that reality show in Tyler.

I wonder what happened with her? Eh, too bored to Google.

Anyway, I first got a note that the mountain lion thing was for real about a week ago, followed by more notes and a comment. You'll have to excuse my laziness for not getting around until now to posting the truth, but, at the time, remembering that the actuarial amount is equal to the principal times e to the rate(time) exponential seemed more important.

I was directed to Snopes.com, where I found this:

The large mountain lion shown in the photographs ... was hit by a Ford F350 truck on Highway 64 in Northern Arizona ... in November of 2007.

So the pictures are real, it's just the story that was altered as it moved around. After looking at the different versions, I think we can all blame the cheeseheads.

My wife, writer

The Star-Telegram just published a little "traveling with your baby" guide put together by my wife.

It was kind of interesting seeing the backstory behind this publication: First my wife pitched the story, and was recieved with total indifference. Then she did the story on her own in hopes of putting it on a blog. Then they said, well, sure, we'll run it. Then they asked her to do more stories. Etc.

Anyone's who has ever worked for a newspaper is either rolling their eyes or nodding their head at this point.

Two other things:

• The process described above took two months, so Sam is no longer 7 months old as indicated.
• And, Meredith gave the staff a perfectly decent picture of Sam sitting in his car seat surrounded by luggage. Instead, the staff used a picture of a baby sitting in front of fabric blocks who otherwise doesn't seem to be traveling, and an illustration of a family in a car, with the baby in the middle of mom and dad and inches away from an open cup of hot coffee. I'm rolling my eyes again.

Anyway, congrats darlin'.