Kevin Is A Democrat. The dachshunds are Republicans.

Several years ago, my daughter, The Aggie, took in a Labrador Retriever puppy. 
She named him Kevin. 
As a puppy, Kevin was fine in her dorm room.  As a full-grown beast, he was a disaster. 
She brought him home from Texas A&M to live in Fort Worth.  He'll be in Fort Worth until The Aggie graduates - probably sometime during the Rodham administration. 

It took Kevin about 20 minutes to learn that he could jump the fence in our back yard.  So he lives inside my house. 
Yeah.  I have a Labrador living in my house, because my daughter who wants to be a doctor thought that he would be a good idea. 

Kevin chews things.  Garbage.  Clothes.  So he has to stay in the back bedroom during the day, or any time no one is around. 

Here's how I know Kevin is a Democrat. 

To get Kevin into the back bedroom, all you have to do is get a couple of doggie-treats.  He'll cheerfully give up his freedom and mobility to get the little freebies that go along with his regular dog food and water.  I throw the goodies onto the bed, he follows the goodies onto the bed and eats them, and I shut the door on him for the next 8 hours.  He has nothing to do but wait on manna from heaven.  He believes that food wouldn't exist unless his owners brought it to him.  Here he is in full dependency mode, sitting by the mailbox waiting on his check to arrive:

BTW, if you have 20 minutes to kill, I have an epic Kevin story posted here. 

The dachshunds in my back yard are all Republicans. 
Their goal is to keep the back yard safe. 
Border security. 
Day or night, if they see, hear or smell a squirrel, they're going to raise hell. 

If a someone pushes a baby stroller down the street, they're going to bark.  If someone rides by on a bicyle, they're going to bark.  If a jogger goes by, or god forbid, a cat, they're going to bark.  And bark.  And bark.  Until they die.  Intruder alert.  Intruder alert.  Intruder alert.

 
We've had several car and truck break-ins that they totally missed.  No barking.  No noise.  They were totally useless. 
But the dachshunds still go through the motions of doing their job.  Every 6 months or so, one of them will catch a squirrel, and the captor will carry the carcass around for days, acting like Janet Napolitano, saying "The system worked!  The system worked!"  Then they'll ask for more funding. 

The cats are all Libertarians, of course.  I have no idea where they are or what they do.  None of my business. 

You got served !!

From the greatness of Reason magazine, on how to deal with Nanny State legislators who don't know how to find their way out of a sack, but who believe they know what's best for you to eat:

San Francisco's ban on giving away a free toy with a child's meal containing a certain number of calories, salt, and other particulars is set to kick in tomorrow. McDonald's, the clear target of the ban, had a year to figure out a way to change its business practices. Seems like they used the time wisely, reports the SF Examiner.

The San Francisco ban on providing free toys to entice children to eat unhealthy foods goes into effect Thursday, but McDonald’s plans to comply with the law by charging 10 cents a toy for their Happy Meals and donating the money to the nonprofit Ronald McDonald House.

(Catch that nice bit of editorializing about what's "unhealthy" there?)

And from the SF Weekly:

In any event, it appears the fast food chain's sharpie lawyers have McTopped San Francisco's legislators. Count this city's lawmakers as the latest among the billions and billions served.

Good for McDonald's.  They got around the toy ban by charging a dime for the toy. 

 The Aggie grew up eating McDonald's Happy Meals, and has now upgraded to McDonald's Value Meals (or the WhataBurger equivalent) and she now has the body fat of a mop handle and can do enough pull-ups to qualify for Navy Seal training.  Out of 120 people who tried to make it into the YMCA's lifeguard training program, she's one of 12 who qualified, and one of only 7 who finally passed the class.  (Not that I'm proud or anything....)

There's a lot that's unknown about proper diet and health, but this much is clear:

1) The San Francisco City Council doesn't know jack shit about this topic.  The Federal Government knows even less.  Go here for a personal testimony. 

2) Michelle Obama tried to hop on the Food Nazi Bandwagon last year, releasing some guidelines from her throne for all of us who truly love our children to follow.  Go here for the pics of Barack feeding a hot dog into The Teleprompter's orifice a few days later.

3) When I was in the Literary Retail business, I sold every diet and nutrition book that was brought to market.  The new ones couldn't be kept on the shelf, they sold so quickly.  They had totally different content than the old ones published the year before.  The old ones couldn't be given away, mostly because they were old and had different contents than the new ones that were recently featured and slobbered over by Oprah Winfrey.  The only things these books had in common were dietician authors and a short shelf life. 

4) I grew up being told to eat my fruit, eat my fruit, eat my fruit.  But that stuff turns to sugar as soon as it is digested.  I don't eat quite as much fruit now.  I feel better.
    
5) All laws, rules and regulations have unintended consequences and create different incentives from the ones intended by the prophets who bring them down from the mountain.  As an example, Happy Meal toys are now cloaked in the righteousness of the Ronald McDonald Houses.  Good work, guys !

Here's the great Jonathan Edwards, doing his 1971 mega-hit "Sunshine".  (I especially like the line "Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life, he don't know what he's askin'.  He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine.") 

One last thing, totally off-topic....Edwards mentions performing this at an anti-war rally.  Are we going to have any more of those rallies, or do we have to elect a Republican president first????

Chilifest 2011

Some blog posts deserve a soundtrack.  In this case, let's use Charlie Robison's "Good Times". 
Just let it play while you read. 



Imagine 45,000 of our children jammed into a South Texas pasture, listening to music, dancing, and drinking beer. 
Lots of beer. 
As long as the next generation can get this creative with transporting their beer, our nation will be saved. 

The event is called "Chilifest", and they've been doing this in Shrum Snook Texas since 1981. 

Lord have mercy, what a party. This year the soundtrack was provided by Rob Baird, The Cody Johnson Band, the sheer incomparable mellowed-out greatness of Smooth Max Stalling, Emory Quinn, Sean McConnell, and the Bandera Texas Demigod and Patron Musical Saint of this website, Charlie Robison.  That was Friday. 

Saturday was the Bart Crow Band, Jason Boland and The Stragglers, Stoney LaRue, the Randy Rogers Band, Wade Bowen, and Dierks Bentley. 

The Aggie tells me that there were some other adults there who weren't police officers.  I didn't see them.  The next-oldest audience member was about half my age. 

This was at The Aggie's apartment on the morning we left for the show.  I'm holding an adolescent hog that they call Fat Kitty. 

The good people at Chilifest will allow you to bring in all the beer and (boxed) wine you want, but have a strict prohibition against anything else.  This was going to be my 11th or 12th time to hear Charlie Robison, and I've never experienced Charlie without Jim Beam.  I'm way too old to start any new habits. 

Some of The Aggie's earliest memories are of me using her like a Bolivian Cocaine Mule, taping drink, food, or Cuban cigars to her so that I could enjoy various events the way God intended.  But since The Aggie is now approaching adulthood, she could be thrown out of Chilifest without me if she got busted with my Jim Beam on her person.  I would be inside the fence, and my bottle would be outside.  That would be tragic.  I had to be responsible for my own supply.  I tucked a bottle into one of the folding chair carrying bags and vowed to get it through the Chilifest checkpoints or die trying.  

The Aggie has a new friend named John who rode to Shrum Snook with us.  He's a handy guy to have around, took me shopping for our supplies of consumables, provided the chairs, etc etc etc.  John has been powerlifting since middle school, and looks like he could whoop a fencepost if necessary. 

John and The Aggie got through the checkpoints first.  They only had some backpacks, I think, as our beer had been loaded onto one of our wagons (see pics above). 

I was carrying three folding chair bags, one of which contained my Precious Treasure, my Pearl Of Great Price, my Living Water.  The Chilifest staffers were looking through everyone's coolers, looking through pockets and backpacks, and in some cases opening up bottled water containers to make sure that they didn't contain Everclear.  I elbowed past some of the female security people with a wild look in my eye, screaming things like "Mary !  John !  Wait a minute !  Peacocks !  We have to find the killswitch to the system !!  Wait on the roots to my timing !!  This can't be the right one !!  Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa !!!!!" 

The female rent-a-cops gave me plenty of room, kinda like they probably did for everybody else who looked stark raving mad.  I was only a few steps away from freedom when one guy who took himself waaaay too seriously stepped in front of me and asked if my chair bags had been searched. 

I craned my neck around as if trying to look into his ear canal and yelled "Searched?  Bags?  Searched?  Mary !!  John !!  Mary !!!!!!   Search !  Search !   I'm gonna be searched over there and I'll meet you back at the car !!  Search !  Where do I remove pants ?? Search??"

The guy waved me through. 

Mission accomplished. 

Inside the campground and concert site, it was like another world.  There were hundreds of Chili cooking teams, each with their own distinctive look, theme, shirts, motives and soundtracks.  

Here's a creative use for a tent:

Every Chili "team" had their own T-shirts.  This one got straight to the point....

Here's a creative use of a quote from one of my all-time favorite books/movies, Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove:

Charlie Sheen references were everywhere.  Bi-winning.  Tiger Blood.  Beer-winning.

My favorite:

If these pics have a 1930's Oklahoma Dust Bowl quality to them, it's because 45,000 people can stomp up a lot of dust. 

Since our first wagonload was nothing but beer, John, The Aggie and I made a trip back to the car to get sleeping bags, food, and other necessities.  The Aggie, who has inheritied her father's sense of ridiculousness, got John to pull her in the wagon back to the car. 

A couple of the rent-a-cops looked at John and said "Boy, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of misery."

True.  So true. 

Here's what the stage setup looked like:

I don't know who this is. 

I was wearing one of these John Jay Myers produced T-shirts.....

....which got me into some interesting conversations with a lot of the Aggie students.  They're overwhelmingly Republican, and can't quite get past the Libertarian insistence on getting the government out of people's bedrooms, medicine cabinets and personal lives.  When I pointed out that most of them were underage, yet drinking like fish, it helped make my point.  Maybe.  I eventually went back to our camp and changed shirts, just so I could be "old guy having a great time" instead of "old guy who is a political conversation piece". 

When I got to the camp, The Aggie had already gotten a tattoo.  Lordy, I'm so proud. 

I made it back to the stage, this time wearing something generic, in plenty of time for Charlie Robison.  He has a new band that rocks a little harder than the previous Enablers.  He sounded great and the crowd was loving every minute of it.  (If you've made it this far, it's probably time to play the Charlie Robison Youtube again up top.  Hit play, and get back to me.)

In fact, Charlie went over too well.  It got so crazy that they had to shut down Charlie's set about 2/3rds of the way through.  Bummer. 

The next day, we took one of our couches up to the stage area.  From left to right, that's John, Jordan and Tyler. 

Here's the look of the place in daylight. 

Jordan, John, The Aggie and Chris the cook. 

Four young ladies that I didn't know, but who were very friendly. 

I had a wonderful, wonderful time at this thing.  Can't thank The Aggie enough for inviting me, especially since fathers were such a rarity at the campsites.  Shrum Snook is a nice place, and the Aggie kids are incredibly polite, looked after me, made sure I didn't lose my Blackberry down in the craziness near the stage.  Well, MOST of the Aggie kids were polite and respectful....

I wasn't passed out.  I was just resting my eyes and brain for a while. 

Great weekend.  Good times.  I love my big girl so very, very much. 

Here's Charlie Robison's classic song "Photograph"

Mama Tried

From Reason magazine's "Daily Brickbats" feature.  I don't recommend going there very often, because you'll spend the rest of your day praying for the damnation of the human race. 

In Canada, Shirley Anderson abandoned her son Ken when he was just 15. Over the next 31 years, he says the only times he spoke to her was when she called asking for money. Now, Shirley, 71 is suing Ken and four of his siblings under British Columbia law that requires children to support dependent parents. A court has already awarded her a payment of $10 a month from each child, but she is now seeking $300 to $350 a month from each of them.

Here's The Calgary Herald:

When Ken Anderson was just 15, his mother, Shirley, made it clear: She didn't want him anymore.
Ken's father, a long-haul trucker, had been transferred from Osoyoos, B.C., to the province's Kootenay region. Although their marriage was rocky, Shirley followed, taking second-youngest son Darryl with her.

Ken was left behind. He had plenty of time to think about it as he wiped bug splatter off car windshields and pumped gas at the local station to make a buck. He says he can't even remember how many couches he slept on, or how he kept himself going. He just knows he never got to go to a prom, finish high school or even think about college.

The way he sees it, he never really had a mother.

On Aug. 3 and 4, Ken, now 46, will face off in B.C. Supreme Court against the woman who gave birth to him.

Now there's a family that puts the funk back in dysfunctional. 
The Whited Mama has made it very clear to her children that they will inherit little or nothing.  Whenever she reads of someone "dying penniless", she sees it as a case of perfect timing. 
We've made it clear to The Whited Mama that if she gets to feeble to take care of herself, she can stay in an extra bedroom with 5 dachshunds, a yellow lab, and whatever reptiles The Aggie has brought in. 
So far, she claims to be healthy. 


Here's Mighty Merle Haggard doing "Mama Tried":

Dream Big ! !

The Aggie has always taken pride in doing things that others say are impossible, but this stunt took it to a new level.  This is from the Downtown Fort Worth YMCA, where she has worked as a lifeguard all summer:

The Aggie Is NOT amused. I repeat, The Aggie is NOT amused.

I have a bathroom full of these things.
Dachshund puppies. Go here to see pics as newborns, go here for a week later.
They go into the bathtub when we're cleaning the bathroom floor, and they go onto the bathroom floor (yeah, they GO there) when we're cleaning the bathtub.



They've been fun, but it's now time for these guys to go. (All are now spoken for, BTW.)
This one was recently adopted by a Fort Worth couple. Mom works at TCU, and Dad does some kind of computer work near Dallas. Dad is a University Of Texas graduate, and is a diehard UT fan. Guess what they're naming their new puppy?

Colt.

Yeah, Colt.

The Aggie is NOT amused.

Robert Earl Keen at Billy Bob's

The Aggie talked me into taking her to Billy Bob's tonight to hear Texas A&M alum Robert Earl Keen.
I didn't require a lot of persuading. Great show.
The band was the same as you'll see here, minus the banjo:



Rich Brotherton, the guy playing the guitar solo at the 1:20 mark, probably isn't human. Or he's made a deal with Satan.

I think The Aggie turned down two different cowboys who wanted to dance. She claims that she shot one of them down because he had on a University Of Texas shirt.

I could've listened to REK all night. Great, great show. Go hear him if you ever get a chance.

The End Of Chicken Stacking In California

My Aggie daughter came home from College Station this past weekend, and she was outraged.

Unlike most large packs of academics, the A&M tribe seems to be somewhere off to the right of Barry Goldwater.

(A friend of mine sent me a press release today about A&M's Young Conservatives losing their faculty advisor....He was rumored to have an Obama sign in his yard. In the same link, check out the Young Conservatives' response to the "demonization" of the despicable William Ayers. The demonization of William Ayers, in my opinion, is like the demonization of Timothy McVeigh....just because the bastard failed to kill a couple of hundred people doesn't get him off the hook.)

Anyway, back to my point.... My Aggie's Animal Science professor had gotten the students worked up over California voters passing Proposition 2, a ballot initiative that regulates the minimum amount of space in which farm animals can be confined.

(Proposition 2 shouldn't be confused with Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is the California ballot initiative that regulates the type of marriage arrangements within which two people can be confined.)

Some obvious abuses have already been identified and partially eliminated in the cattle, swine, and of course the infamous veal calf industry. But my little Aggie was still angry, saying that the government had gone too far this time. She was under the impression that stackable A-frame chicken cages would be slowly outlawed in the course of a 5-year phase out.

Well, dang it, any professor who works Anti-Big Government rants into his VooDoo Arts Of Animal Healing lectures should have my full support. (She was bothered enough about it to demand that I go online and write something about governmental over-reach in California's stackable chicken industry.)

This is a PDF of the request for a ballot proposal.

Here's the Oakland Tribune.

Here's the L.A. Times.

Here's the San Francisco Chronicle.

And here's the always helpful Wikipedia, which claims that actress Alicia Silverstone supported the proposition. The L.A. Times and the San Francisco Chronicle opposed it. Alicia Silverstone, star of "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed", prevailed in the voting.

Here's what the thing amounted to: Cattle were lumped into the same category as poulty, mostly for emotional reasons. (Voters don't give a rip about chickens.) But California doesn't have a significant Cattle industry. California, until election day, had a huge poultry/egg industry.

The passage of Proposition 2 basically ends the industry in that state. California's Chicken Stackers are going to relocate elsewhere in the next 5 years.

(I've tried for two minutes to think of a closing sentence with the phrase "flew the coop", but I've failed. Be grateful.)

Damon's iPod, Part 4

An open letter to my daughter at Texas A&M:

Dear Mary,

Remember how I used to sing a harmony part to whatever song was on the radio or CD player? And you used to beg me not to, because you said it didn't sound good? And you would beg me to pull the truck over to the side of the road so you could get out and walk, instead of listening to me sing the harmony parts to songs by Tom Petty, or Willie Nelson, or (God Help Us All) Journey?

Damon and I have been singing harmony parts for 6 days now, through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, and now we're on the return trip.

I now understand that singing harmony parts in a crowded vehicle can only be enjoyed by the person doing the singing.

Damon sings harmony PERFECTLY to the music on his iPod.

Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for doing that when you were a little girl, and to anyone else who has had to listen to me sing non-existent harmony parts to recorded music, regardless of the circumstances.

It's 1:00 a.m., and we're somewhere north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I'm ready to be home. I'm very sleepy, and little things inside this Ford F-250 are starting to bother me.

-The Daddy

She's Gone

Just a few days ago, we brought our baby daughter home from the hospital. It couldn't have been more than a couple of weeks ago.

I looked up, and she's turned eighteen.

She left for Texas A&M University's orientation/indoctrination/brainwashing "fish camp" around 5:30 this morning.

Reverend Charles Johnson, the interim minister at Broadway Baptist Church, recently told us that grief is another way of saying "something ended too soon". I didn't fully agree with that statement until now.

I think we've done a good job with her. She's polite to her elders, loves animals, has a great sense of humor, knows what she's doing on a guitar, and if you ask her about politics, she consistently says she's a libertarian. People like being around her.

When I went away to college, all of my friends from my hometown drove back home at the first weekend opportunity. They were visibly homesick. Not me.

At that time, I'd had enough of Mississippi rice fields, tractors, and the flat landscape between Drew and Merigold Mississippi. When all of my friends were leaving school to go back home, I gave a friend of mine two bags of dirty laundry and a flat tire to drop off at our farm, and asked him to pick it up on the return trip.

I recognized the same look in my baby girl's eyes this morning. She was ready to be gone. Ready to fly.

Dear Daughter....

The Future Aggie graduated from Paschal High School in Fort Worth last night.
At the party afterwards, a friend of mine recommended this recent column by Leonard Pitts of The Orlando Sentinel. Mr. Pitts has a daughter the same age.
Good stuff.

I'm also saving it here, just in case the Sentinel takes it down.

Thank God for iPod

I've spent the last few weeks with my daughter and her music.

We recently spent one evening together in my wife's car, which has no CD player. My kid frantically scanned from station to station, trying to hear just three songs. I could be getting these three titles wrong, but I'm close: "I Lack Drankin' Tea on The Front Porch" by Kenny Chesney, "This Is My Fake British Accent" by Reliant K, and "I Love You Even if You're Fat" from the "Shampoo" soundtrack.

The radio was in perpetual scan unless one of those three songs was playing. Three seconds of music....click....three seconds of guitar intro.....click.....three seconds of some kid from Kentucky whining like The Sex Pistols on Estrogen....ahhh, that's Reliant K, singing with their Fake British Accents. We listened to that song until it ended.

Then....click....click.....click....click....click....

I endured this all night.

I grew up in a radio deprived area of Mississippi, where there were only two decent AM stations that could be pulled in from Memphis. If WHBQ was rolling commercials, you listened to WMPS and vice-versa. FM was a static wasteland.

My daughter, on the other hand, had a stupendous number of radio choices, but only those three songs were given their three minutes of glory each, then.....click.

A few days later we went someplace in my pickup, which has a CD player. My kid spends most of her waking hours downloading CD's. Most of them legal, but she also acquires more bootleg stuff than Junior Johnson.

Between her music and mine, we probably have more than 20,000 songs on disc at our house. She got in the truck with three CD's. I could be getting her CD titles wrong, but I'm close: "I Lack Drankin' Tea on The Front Porch, and Other Hits" by Kenny Chesney, "British Wannabees, Accent Envy and other Hits" by Reliant K, and the "Shampoo" soundtrack, featuring "I Love You, Even if You're Fat".

She put in the Kenny Chesney CD first. We heard the guitar intro to song #1, then....click....fiddle intro to song #2....click....Banjo intro to song #3.....click....Intro to "I Lack Drankin' Tea"....

Her hand instinctively reached for the click button, but she subconsciously realized that it's ok to listen to a complete song if it's one of The Holy Trinity.

We got to listen to an actual song for three minutes....then, piano intro to song #5....click....click....click...until we clicked to the end of the CD, started over, clicked through the first three filler songs and listened to "I Lack Drankin' Tea" again.

I complained until she ejected Kenny Chesney, put in Reliant K, then clicked through some filler songs on that CD until she found "This Is My Fake British Accent".

We listened joyfully for three minutes until the song ended.

Then, Electric guitar intro....click....drum solo intro....click....an imitation of a Liverpool Dockworker singing like Princess Di....click....

I almost pulled the truck over. "Why can't we listen to a whole CD, just one time?"
"This is the only song on here that I like."
"How do you know???? When you've never heard anything but the first four beats of any of them????"
"Just drive, Dad," she said....click....."Ok....Did you see 'Shampoo'?"

Tonight, we went to the mall in her SUV.

Her SUV has an iPod-compatible sound system that is the envy of the rest of the world. Her iPod will hold a jillion songs, videos, messages, ringtones, and birdcalls. There's room on that thing for the complete works, including their false starts and time spent tuning up, of every composer and songwriter who has ever lived.

When we got in the car and backed out of the driveway, I was looking forward to hearing the music she had chosen to put on her iPod, rather than what programmers had chosen to put on her radio stations, or record executives had chosen to put on her CD's.

It wasn't meant to be.

Click...click....click...."And yer biscuits never scorch, Yeah, I lack drankin' tea on the front porch...."