(Click any pic to enlarge, and just click the “play” button to listen)
I parallel park Homer along a city street just two blocks off McKinney’s downtown square. Alvis and I grab our cameras — similar Nikon DSLR’s — and meander across the road.
As I step onto the opposite sidewalk, I see a dejected clown coming right for me. He is not smoking a cigarette, but he looks like he wants to be. We sidestep Sparkles and stroll along to a street barricaded at one end by a stage.
(Those reading “Shootings” may continue reading in Part Seven)
This Seeburg miniature jukebox sat on the counter of Rinky Tinks, an historic 1950’s ice cream parlor and sandwich shop founded circa 1979. Click the pic to read the song listing.
Weren’t these little guys somehow wired to the actual jukebox, so patrons could choose songs without getting up from their tables? Did anybody reading this witness their use?
Places like this just scream “hamburgers!” I probably should have heeded that advice rather than order grilled chicken, but the hand-scooped Blue Bell ice cream was delicious.
It so happens that Rinky Tinks, located in downtown Granbury, Texas, is for sale by owner. I don’t know how business is year-round, but I can say that on March 14, 2010 it was absolutely packed and had folks lined up out the door for ice cream.
I think only Los Angeles tops Texas cities in terms of urban sprawl. Last week I tried to think of ways I could help reduce my contribution to the problems it causes.
I threw around the idea of riding my bicycle to work.
Besides my healthy fear of pedaling alongside rolling steel boxes of death piloted by the increasingly distracted, there was the small matter of the distance and time involved. Google Maps put the ride at 10.3 miles and 53 minutes.
That isn’t too shabby considering that it takes me nearly half that time to go the 11.2 miles in my car. But, by the time I add in the time it takes me to shower after sweating in the 80-degree pre-dawn Texas temperatures, the bicycle looks even less attractive. Not to mention the various fungi the work showers would introduce to my feet.
If I walked it, I could cut my distance to 9.9 miles, but Google estimates the time at 3 hours, 14 minutes. Under the “hobbies” section, I checked “photography,” and it jacked my time up to 4 hours. Ouch.
I know my commute isn’t very long compared to many around me. Basically, I drive from one suburb to the next, while most keep going into the city. I never even get on the highways. No mixmasters, no high-fives, no HOV lanes.
Compared to where we lived before Texas, however, it’s a killer. It took me maybe four minutes to drive to work, and there I did ride my bicycle in a few times.
Still, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when I feel like saying I’d like to live closer to work.
There’s a great commuter rail system, but the tracks stop about 10 miles shy of where I work and don’t show any signs of extending. Carpooling just wouldn’t work with my unpredictable quitting times and my occasional need to work from home.
So, I’m back to moving as about the only way to commute more responsibly. Until, of course, work decides that telecommuting every day is just fine. I often wonder how many people would leave metro areas if they had that option.
If I show you what’s in my couch, will you show me what’s in yours?
The contents of a couch can tell a lot about a home’s residents. The oldest piece in our living room, our couch has supported us through nine years in four houses. A black mesh covering its underside, however, has become detached along the front edge and hangs loose like the roof liner of an old car. As a result, various items work their way down through the spaces between the cushions or by bouncing up from the floor to rest in the concealed hammock.
Each time I reach under the couch to retrieve one of Benjamin’s toys, I wonder which lump inside that mesh finally will hatch and come out at night to eat us all.
The day after Christmas 2009, I decided to flip the couch and finally end the mystery.
Here’s what I found (photos and conclusion after the jump):
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” – J.D. Salinger, 1974
After publishing The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger certainly lived up to this quote. No hypocrisy there. Now that he has died, questions have popped up about the unpublished writing he has done since his renowned work of fiction first took the literary world by storm.
The quote made me think about why I write. I do it because I enjoy it, but I’m not as pure as Salinger. I enjoy knowing that someone, somewhere, has read my words, and even more so when I hear that they enjoyed them. This goes as far back as the first time I received an “A” on a paper graded by a teacher. Nothing thrilled me more than seeing that letter atop my work.
Perhaps Salinger truly felt no need for such validation. Maybe he had only one great book in him and, as soon as his subsequent publications revealed that, he withdrew and wrote solely for himself. One great work of art is certainly one more than most of us ever produce.
Occasionally I craft a sentence that makes me smile when I read it back. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s well-written. Even less frequently, I relish an entire paragraph. I idolize authors who fill page upon page with such work while telling a compelling story filled with interesting characters.
Salinger kept writing all his life, but socked it away for all the world not to see. Apparently the intrinsic reward was enough for him. For me, putting the words out here, and knowing there are at least a few who will read the next entry, provides needed motivation.
Perhaps many writers would do as Salinger did had they written one book that paid the bills for the rest of their lives. This obviously doesn’t include the likes of Stephen King and Michael Crichton and Nicholas Sparks, who certainly could have stopped writing years ago and still lived quite comfortably. Then there’s Anne Rice, whose religious writing seemingly is trying to make up for a former life of capitalizing on readers’ most lustful desires.
There definitely are writers who have only one book in them. Usually these are the ones that gain critical but not commercial acclaim, and win awards but not spots on the bestseller shelves. They also often are the most thought-provoking and moving works out there.
There are writers who do what the bestsellers do, or what the critically-acclaimed do, but give it away for free. Whether weaving a fascinating tale or making us care about the key players (or both), they put their work out there for anyone to read, and often open it up to comments. Some offer their work for sale in on-demand printed editions, but rarely do they make a living from it.
My favorite example is Cheeseburger Brown (a pseudonym), who cranks out quality prose that keeps readers coming back and forms the basis of a vibrant online community. His day job has slowed him down lately, but core fans have kept interest alive.
J.D. Salinger’s stance on privacy certainly would have prevented him from using such online tools had they been available in his day. As one who writes “just for myself and my own pleasure,” he would have eschewed such self-publication.
In many more ways than one, I’m no J.D. Salinger.
As I turned the screws for the wall-mounted Ikea CD racks, purchased at least a year ago to get our collection out of the closet, I listened to my iPod shuffle (2nd generation, bought as a refurb), loaded mostly with music that I do not own on CD.
Once the three racks were soundly mounted on the wall studs, I took stock of the artists’ names on the CD spines: 10,000 Maniacs, Indigo Girls, Pearl Jam, Prince, Extreme, Big Audio Dynamite, Sarah McLachlan, Erasure, Yaz, King’s X, The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Lightning Seeds, PM Dawn, and many more.
Notice a pattern there?
As one who brings his lunch to work, I rarely get out of the office until quitting time. When the weather’s right, however, I can be found wandering away from work. I have made a few discoveries along the way.
I saw this on a walk back from my mechanic’s garage, the same day that I captured WAW Five. It made me wonder how many other countries so revere their flag that they carefully document how to display it, care for it, and dispose of it. The Veterans of Foreign Wars no doubt could teach all of us a lot about respect for country.
Nikon D50
Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5 – 5.6G AF-S ED DX
f/8
1/3200 sec
Aperture Priority
Spot Metering
(Note: If you are looking for the meaning of “GITRDUN,” then please see the bottom of this post)
A level of personal expression is about to be taken away from citizens of Kansas, and from it I get a funny topic to share on the last day of 2009.
I have to admit I understand the cops’ point on this one.
I wondered when I lived in Kansas (the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college) how so many people in that small town got such cool vanity plate phrases.
Turns out that, until recently, the state of Kansas allowed duplicate vanity plates as long as they were in different counties. This became quite a headache, according to authorities, and they finally put a stop to it.
More newsworthy to me were the following plates and the number of duplicates of each:
Top 10 personalized plates in Kansas
Plate ….. Number
HUSKERS ….. 53
JAYHAWK ….. 43
GITRDUN ….. 38
CHIEFS ….. 37
2FAST4U ….. 36
SPOILED ….. 35
SOONERS ….. 34
BLESSED ….. 34
MYTOY ….. 33
REDNECK ….. 32
I found out about this when Yahoo! News popped up a story about a man whose plate was being taken away after 30 years of using it to honor his father. It’s sad, but in this case I think “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few… or the one,” as Spock said.
Source:
http://www.kansas.com/news/story/1116664.html
For those who have found this site while searching for “GITRDUN,” here is the answer. It is a mash-up of the phrase “git ‘er done,” which means, “get her done,” which means, “get it done.” It was made popular in recent years by Larry the Cable Guy, in his stand-up act. He typically yells it out after saying something he thinks is funny or is a particularly good point.
The Internet is making more people feel like Charlie Brown than ever before. Or maybe it’s just me.
Remember when Charlie would go to his mailbox hoping to find a letter, only to be disappointed by an empty box?
It happens to me when I check my Gmail, then my Yahoo! Mail, and then my FaceBook, and then my Twitter. I’m setting myself up just like that world-renowned blockhead.
At least I don’t have to go all the way outside to check. And, because they aren’t limited to delivery once a day, I can be disappointed several times a day, or, heck, several times an hour!
Do I check only after I have written something that requires or suggests a reply? No. Does that change my hope that I might see a number in parentheses beside my Inbox indicating there is something new? No.
Notification of comments on my blog posts go to Gmail. Alerts to activity on FaceBook go to Yahoo!, what I like to call my “online forms” account. Apparently I felt I could trust my blog (run by me) more than I could FB.
Since switching from our minitower PC to a used laptop I bought from Alvis, I rarely use my home e-mail account. That’s mostly because I don’t remember the password for AT&T’s outgoing mail server. At least I’m sparing myself a little disappointment there.
In fact, I just now checked it, and all but about four of the 140 new e-mails are from me. I use that account to forward myself links that I receive but can’t view at work. Only an old friend from high school and a few folks who are mistaking me for a realtor use that one.
I tell myself that it is not a letdown if I receive nothing new, but I’m sure on some level the fruitless checking is pecking away at me.
If Charlie Brown had this many mailboxes, message boards, and social networking sites, and could check them as many times a day as he wanted, would he go insane? How often do you check?
I moved to the Dallas metro area a little more than four years ago. Driving past the behemoth high school football stadiums and listening to horror stories of seven-year-olds suffering broken bones during practice reminds me just how important football is to sports fans in this state. With the undefeated TCU Horned Frogs hailing from just down the road in Forth Worth, and the currently maligned Dallas Cowboys located even closer, it’s difficult to go a day without hearing the sport mentioned.
It should come as no surprise, then, when I hear that Republican Representative Joe Barton, of Texas, is sponsoring a bill to change how the college football champion is crowned. The bill’s co-sponsor is Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush, and part of their argument is that teams like the aforementioned TCU do not get a fair shot at the title.
Really? We’re going to ask our elected officials to spend time on this?
Although the bill passed a House subcommittee on Wednesday with bipartisan support, it “still faces steep odds,” according to the Associated Press report.
That’s a relief.
But, still, it’s sad that it took meddling in college football’s business to bring the political parties together. Rep. John Barrow, D-Georgia, said it best in that same AP article, “With all due respect, I really think we have more important things to spend our time on.”
Here’s hoping that the House subcommittee is the last group to pass this bill.
(set to auto-publish at 8 a.m. CT)
