Jonesey's Mindslice

Mr Squirrel comes a cropper

2007-03-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

What's that hanging out of my roof? It looks like one of our furry friends is waving at us!

They ARE waving! No, wait. They're dead.

I was out doing a quick look at the underside of the roof yesterday (paper wasp season has begun) and I noticed this furry paw peeking out of the roof join at me. It seems that in his attempt to nest in the roof above my bedroom (the bastard kept me awake with all of his gnawing and heavy metal guitar) he slipped and got his leg caught. Initially, I thought that I might have stumbled upon a sleeping rodent, but no end of poking and prodding with a broom handle would dislodge him. It seems he's stone dead.

So now I'm left with a squirrel corpse on my hands and no ladder to remove it. He won't be scrabbling around in my loft anymore but I didn't want him to be my rickety old house's first victim. What mixed emotions.

Clive James: British vs. American Accents

2007-03-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

From an interesting article on BBC News:

"So one of the secrets of American cultural power is that all Americans understand each other instantly across three million square miles and everybody else in the world who speaks English can understand them too, whereas there are plenty of British people who can't understand their own countrymen across a distance of a hundred yards."

I'd hasten to suggest that "all" American accents are mutually intelligible, but he does have a point.

My bus stop

2007-02-18T22:47:00.000-08:00

Notice anything about this bus stop (apart from the giant orange longhorns)?

Yes, that's correct: I've adopted it. It's not like adopting an animal at the zoo (the stop doesn't need feeding, for example) and only requires me to clean it up once a week and to report any vandalism. This is my half-arsed way of "giving back to the community" and "keeping Austin weird" if 'weird' is free from beer cans and malicious tagging. The council only put the brand new shelter up a few months ago and I see it as my task to keep it clean so that the people who are waiting during the thunderstorms will not have to negotiate an assault course of litter and fag butts to sit down. Incidentally, "fag butts" is a bad phrase to use in the US. Trust me. It's certainly raised an eyebrow or two when I let it slip out by accident.

British Starbucks- filthier than the US?

2007-01-30T15:01:00.000-08:00

In an interesting article from the Guardian, US academic Bryant Simon has surmised that Starbucks in the UK are dirtier than US counterparts. He suggests that it might be due to the fact that American consumers are socially conditioned to clean up after themselves. I'd like to posit a few more theories:

1) A higher level of traffic on tables in the UK. People stay in coffee shops in the UK far shorter amounts of time than in the US, so perhaps grime accumulates due to the increased number of people using coffee shop tables and not "nesting" with laptops as is the case in the US.

2) We Brits are more used to grime and thus less concerned about cleaning up other people's. Go to a train station cafe and you'll know what I mean.

3) The "I paid three pounds for it, so F**ed if I'm cleaning it up" factor... $3 is less to spend, in relative terms in the US so perhaps the feeling isn't as mutual.

4)... coupled with a historic tendency for waitresses to clean things up in even the dingiest of transport cafes.

5) A particularly American obsession with cleanliness. More on this later...

6) Not a reason in itself, but perhaps Americans are just more conscientious. Coming back to the UK and seeing all of the rubbish on trains, etc. does make you wonder...

Loo Cake Explosion

2007-01-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

The most enthusiastic deployment of urinal sanitizers known to man. For the uninitiated amonst you: most public toilets have one or two of the little squares at the bottom of the trough. This was just overkill. Spotted on a recent trip to Dingle, Ireland.

I do love a bit of cake.

The Ice Storm Cometh

2007-01-17T15:48:00.000-08:00

I've been effectively housebound over the past few days due to the ice storm in Texas. "An ice storm in Texas?" you may be thinking. Believe me, so was I when I woke up on Tuesday morning. University was cancelled and the city has basically been shut down since Monday evening. Ice is coating the roads and pavements making travel pretty precarious to say the least. Not to be perturbed, many hardy Austinites have been taking to the roads to show mother nature what's what.

Unsurprisingly, many of these people have now jackknifed into the walls of the freeways.

Like the good citizen I am, I decided to ride out the storm by sitting inside, reading books and munching my way through the house food supply.

As the photographs should make fairly clear, my house has taken quite a battering from the weather producing some wonderful/deadly icicles. I'm not used to icicles as it never gets quite wet or cold enough to get them in Wales (when rain freezes it almost always turns to snow and not ice) so I am finding them quite fascinating when I scurry outside to look at them for the thirty seconds I can tolerate. Everything is covered in a sheet of ice: plants, cars, garden implements, even barbeques.

The crappy plumbing in our house has finally been exposed by the weather. As the overflowing pipe on our shed demonstrates, gutter maintenance is clearly a top priority for our landlord.

I call this one "the widowmaker": it's perched above the backdoor and could turn nasty when the thaw is on...

Doppelgängers

2006-11-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

Here's my American namesake: Andruw Jones of the Atlanta Braves. It's not too common to see people called Andrew Jones, so it's especially exciting to see someone who looks just like me, to boot.

Two Countries, Separated by Religion

2006-11-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

So "Jedi" is now the UK's fourth most popular religion, according to the 2001 census. I remember gleefully putting this down on my census form after a small word-of-mouth campaign around Sheffield University gathered steam. Apparently, 390,000 other people decided the same way.

One observance that arises from this is the difference in attitudes between the church in the UK, plodding along merrily to extinction (or maybe not, in the case of Islam) and the church in the US which while numbers of followers may not be growing, is certainly not tongue-in cheek in its beliefs, as Sam Harris attests:

"Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the Earth, more than half the American population believes that the entire cosmos was created 6,000 years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue."

Jedi or Creationism: the choice is yours.

My Favourite Neologism

2006-11-15T18:25:00.000-08:00

Only ever heard on ESPN and other American Sportscasts:

Winningest –adjective Informal.
1. winning most often: the winningest coach in college basketball.
2. most winning or charming: the winningest smile in town.

Commentators/sportscasters are known for their florid license with the English language, but I do wish people would stop using the word "differential" for "difference": i.e. "The differential between the two teams on the day was that one scored more goals than the other". Honestly.

Things I can't figure out about the US: donuts for breakfast

2006-11-05T19:27:00.001-08:00

One of the most surefire indicators of arriving in another country/culture is the breakfast your are either offered or the breakfast you go out and find. The differences are palpable, from the different styles of jams and the odd brands of cereal all the way through the different styles of white/black puddings served alongside your fried breakfast in Scotland or Ireland right through to being offered local yogurt in Bulgaria, a plate of cold meats in Germany and so on. You know where you are with breakfast, and nothing sorts you out in a wholesome way to tackle the day ahead. Kellogg's should really hire me for my ebullience on the matter.

Anyone who has seen the current state of my gut can attest that I am a breakfast fan, and I'm a fan of the American permutations very much indeed. Breakfast tacos? Bring it on. Pancakes and multifarious syrups? Yeah, I'll have seven. Biscuits and gravy? I would fulfill several unsavory requests to get my grubby hands on a plate of that manna. I'm not normally a big fan of crappy chain restaurants (although they harbor a strange fascination for me) but I'll never say anything against a Denny's, IHOP or Waffle House, provided that they exist in an area where they haven't driven the local joint out of town (ahem). Give me eggs, bacon, Texas toast and hash browns and I will be a happy, bloated man.

Aside from eating bagels with sweet cream cheese of various flavors (which I think I am now just about used to) the American "tradition" of eating donuts (do-nuts; doughnuts: whatever) as a breakfast staple. To take a purely nutritional stand, I think my argument against donuts is a no-brainer- aside from the brief sugar rush gained from eating them donuts are right up there with lard and carbolic acid in the class of foods labelled "hellacious". They're not filling, horribly messy and greasy, and sit on your stomach badly if you consume more than three big ones (Krispy Kreme, as noted before, are satan's private stash). God knows, I love donuts as much as the next person, but I just can't furnish my breakfast plate with coffee and donuts exclusively. I feel like I'm cheating.

Perhaps this is a childhood complex. My parents only ever bought me sugar cereal (i.e. Cocoa Pops/Puffs) when they came in a Kellogg's Variety pack. Damn, those cocoa pops were good. They felt like a reward for all of the bran I had to mix into my cornflakes, or as recompense for not being allowed any sugar on my cornflakes. But I knew all too well that this was a once-in-a-while event, to be cherished and remembered until the next brief window of joy. So, does my vexation stem from this? Is it that donuts seem a little too indulgent? Maybe. In a land of plenty, I've often thrown myself head-first into the smorgasbord of food, drink and shopping in some kind of orgiastic release. Perhaps the breakfast donut represents my British reserve coming to the fore again: one likes to indulge, occasionally, but not to excess- that would be vulgar.

So at the moment, I will shy away from the greasy boxes which occasionally surface at work and pass by the "hot fresh donuts" sign of Krispy Kreme with impunity. That is, unless anyone can convince me otherwise...

New Photos Added... took me all fecking Sunday last week

2006-10-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

Huzzah! I spent nearly all weekend putting photographs on my Flickr page. I now have most of my images from my road trips, mini-breaks and weekend jaunts across the US up on there, as well as my photos of the 2004 anarchist protest in Edinburgh and some random photos of Austin and Norman, OK. Adding tags and giving each photograph a name is a complete bitch, so I cut my losses and am still in the process of adding information to them.

Please validate my simple, sad existence by looking at them. Some of these were nearlty framed and hung in a coffee shop in town (with hopefully attached price tags), but I was too late with it all (really).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71372261@N00/sets/

Postcards from "The Edge"

2006-10-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a great take on Carrie Fisher's 1990 film/book "Postcards from the Edge": fictional postcards from U2's The Edge to his mum. Link through the title...

Isn't it about time for U2 to decide to collectively expire?

The lack of Turn Signals/Indicators and other maladies

2006-10-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

From Married to the Sea. Couldn't be truer in Texas, where I have now taken to shouting like a tramp at drivers who neglect to use them. I think I am becoming a little too irate about this.

Signs of Autumn/Fall

2006-10-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

Monarch butterflies are perilously wafting themselves over the cars on Guadalupe Street; the football season is nearly halfway over; I can walk into University without juicy rings of perspiration under my arms. No more days where I'm perilously close to sunstroke, no more embarrassing burnt red faces after playing footy and sweating all of the suncream off, and wall-to-wall TV sports with yelping sportscasters jumping over themselves with glee at the latest college football upset. Yes, it seems like Fall is truly arriving in Austin and it's the best time of the year.

Naturally, in a place as far south as Austin, autumn has taken its time coming. I'm fairly sure that this past weekend (temperatures hovering b/w 75 and 80 Fahrenheit) is a false dawn, but soon and for a few weeks, things will be glorious weather-wise and bountiful candy-wise.

Halloween is celebrated in the US with aplomb. Even the local charity shops are at it with costumes, pumpkin-based paraphernalia and various skeleton bric-a-brac imported from China and made (one can only assume) by some very bemused factory workers.

The smorgasbord of plastic aside, mid-October is always presents a bit of a quandary: a quandary in the form of small, ubiquitous honey/sugar flavoured pieces of heaven. Even typing the words fills me with sublime joy and dread: the giver and destroyer of life; Candy Corn.

I can't place where I first tasted this manna, although chances are my sometime American neighbours in North Wales had a good deal to with it. I was instantly hooked. The small, sugary, melt-in-your mouth stuff made me convulse with pleasure and made me want to ooze into a chair and imagine Bacchanalian women feeding the candy kernels to me like grapes. I used to get bags imported from the US as a teenager and whenever it came through the door I would practically vacuum the stuff up (often finishing the entire bag in a day).

When I arrived to live in the US, I was extremely disappointed to discover that candy corn ranks just above dirt and a little below rice paper on the "exciting/desirable sweets" list. My propensity for the stuff was scoffed at, and still is. I suppose, (for the British folks) it's like having a severe (and possibly psychotic) love for Parma Violets or Flying Saucers. They're sweets loved to distraction by a select few saddos who may or may not have a mild personality disorder.

I have no shame about my candy corn addiction. Something inside of me still leaps for a momentary second of joy when I happen to spy some at a cash register or at the supermarket. Candy corn is the de facto Halloween candy in the US, due (in part at least ) to it's Halloween-friendly colouring. Nowadays, though, trick-or-treaters are likely to look at you with contempt if you try and offer any to them. We're now in an age where snack-size stuff in wrappers and evermore elaborate chocolate concoctions are the bottom-dollar for your average eight-year old on the prowl on the 31st of October. Last year, of course, the ungrateful little swine- sorry, endearing little scamps- left off with all of the aforementioned "good candy" and looked at me implacably with enormous eyes when confronted with an obliterated Halloween candy bowl containing candy corn and other odds-and-ends as if to say, baffled, "What?" Woe betide anyone who mistakenly gives these tomorrow people anything fruit based. I'd fear a riot.

So despite its continuing and tenacious grip on the shelves of Target and Wal-Mart, there's inevitably an enormous surplus of candy corn come November 1st. Perhaps some children do eat the stuff year-round, but the bargain bins in said superstores would indicate that these few people are a hardy and wayward bunch. I've been "off the sauce" for a couple of weeks now (I find candy corn as addictive as, say, heroin- or what I believe heroin to be like) but I know that in a few days time either I or my housemate (who shares my obsession) will break down, throw cold turkey to the wind, and buy a big pack. After Halloween, the situation will worsen. Initially buoyed by the 99c bags of "Holiday Mix" (complete with candy-corn pumpkins- hellz yeah) we will plummet into paroxysms of indigestion and unpredictable sugar highs. I wish I could say it isn't worth it, but for the sweet semi-crunch of the first "kernel", there's not much I wouldn't do.

God Bless Pizza

2006-09-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

More photographic gems from the trip: this one in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Back in my day, pizza boxes had a crappy graphic of a gondolier on them, none of this patriotic stuff. Perhaps that was just North Wales, though.

It was a very good pizza (delivered by a sweaty, out-of breath 16 year-old in a hellacious thunderstorm) it must be said, despite the loud graphic. I think that I am attempting something of a Lynndie pose here, but I don't think it came off.

Lonely Roads in Big Bend

2006-09-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Taken on a recent trip to Big Bend National Park in West Texas. There was nobody there. Nobody. It was 6pm and the park was technically shut, but we had to drive through the park "illegally" to get to the other side. About ten miles in, the sky turned grey and miniature tornadoes started whipping up amongst fierce thunderstorms. It's another planet out there.

University of Texas: Number one party school in the USA

2006-08-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

We're number one... the Princeton Review has finally given UT its dues. Big props to those people who put in their time at the Hole in the Wall, Lovejoys and the Crown and Anchor pubs to name just a few. The result probably isn't that surprising after a national championship season, but all publicity is good publicity. The regents are secretly smiling, I'm sure.

Keeping it Rhyl

2006-08-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed it, that wonderful town but fifteen minutes away from my home in Colwyn Bay has received a write-up on the BBC News website.

Could "Keeping it Rhyl" be a contender for the best headline of the year?

124 year-old town spotted in central Texas!

2006-08-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. I didn't believe it either. Visit Elgin, TX and you'll see, as I did, that there are things that are 124 years old. Going downtown was like stepping back into a land before time, rodeos and barbecue. It's funny to see people proud of a short history that people back home would probably scoff at. Growing up within spitting distance of a castle built in the 1200s pretty much desensitises you to "history". Still, I don't see as much civic pride and local boosterism in the UK as I do in the US, which is much to small towns like Elgin's credit.

Elgin was chosen a few years back to be Dr. Phil's "ordinary American town" whose problems he would solve by steaming in and rustling the locals' feathers. For those of you in the UK unfamiliar with Dr. Phil, here's his guffawing vissog:

This smarmy Oklahoman buffoon used to be Oprah's psychologist, but his "kick-ass and take names" approach to solving problems in people's personal lives (mainly telling them to pull themselves together and get their life straight in a patronising and infantile tone) earned him his own show. Thankfully, the inhabitants of Elgin decided that they weren't, as a whole, socially dysfunctional and told him so. One-nil to them.

Here's a Dr. Phil soundboard for both the initiated and the curious: if only I could find a way to make one of these sounds my answerphone message:

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/drphil2.html

Abandoned and Waning Buildings of Happy Hollow & Medicine Park, Oklahoma

2006-07-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

These are some photographs I took back in April on the way out of the resort community of Medicine Park in Southwestern Oklahoma. The town is barely surviving but is somehow clinging to life thanks to a couple of interesting restaurants and some craft shops. It also seems to be a big biker hangout, or it was when I was there.

The road out of town is testament to a place that has seen better days. From the look of some of these buildings, it appears that the late 1970s/80s was its heyday.

Ever wanted to see a live rattler? Well, you can in Happy Hollow. This snake-handling cum-general store set-up was far and away the most popular place in town, as the still-operational cars to the side of the sign attest.

Les and Dora's Country Cookin' is a wonderfully dilapidated place. I really wanted to go inside and explore the beer garden (now more of a beer jungle) but alas, I didn't.

The "Chain" garage is across from Les and Dora's but has more of a veneer of life. Dusty junk was piled high in the windows and there was nary a soul to be seen around the place.

Judy's was actually open when we went by, but I had visions of going in and having a whole cream pie foisted on me by the buxom Judy who I imagine runs the place.

Possibly my favourite building in the whole town. "Merry Circle" is a great name for a general store. One can only speculate what went on there in its heyday.

A factiod that interested me but is unlikely to interest anyone else

2006-07-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

In the US, gout is called "goiters".

As close as I got to Mount Carmel, Waco

2006-06-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

Getting to the site of the site of the 1995 massacre/mass suicide of the Branch Davidians in Waco is an interesting journey in a number of ways. Firstly, you have to navigate Waco, an eerily odd (yet not simply weird) town which is a ghost town in the centre and looks like it went to seed in the seventies on the outskirts. Next, you have to find the place, ten miles out of Waco down windy and poorly signposted roads. David Koresh certainly knew where to hide out in relative peace. In case you're ever around that part of the world, this is the intersection you're looking for.

Rather like Bush's ranch, the counryside around Mount Carmel is quite pleasant. Ashamedly, the only thing I can think to compare it to right now is Jenny's childhood home in Forrest Gump (the bit where they hide in the cornfields to escape from her Dad...), but I should stop that train of thought straight away. To get to the buildings and the driveway, one has to navigate potholed dirt roads- the picture shows the approach. Pretty nondescript. On arriving at the site, we were greeted by a smiling woman sitting outside the complex gurning at us and brandishing some sort of Branch Davidian literature (the church is alive and well) the experience of which doesn't make you want to stop and chat. She had clearly been sitting in the sun all day and was also clearly loopy- not a good combination. So we blazed by, hoping to catch some glimpse or feel for the madness that went down over ten years ago. Perhaps next time I'll pluck up the courage to get beyond the mad old bat and do some exploring on my own.

Seeing my buddy George at his ranch in Crawford, TX

2006-06-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from last week's trip to Crawford, TX- the home of President Bush's ranch (dubbed "The Western White House). Crawford has a population of around 700, so there wasn't a whole lot to see. The countryside surrounding it was beautiful: rolling, open hills punctuated by ranches and fields of corn. It's easy to see why Dubya chose the location. Well, that and it was a bloody big ranch in the vicinity of Waco and Austin...

Needless to say, the residents of Crawford are particularly proud of their adopted resident. There are plenty of signs to remind you that you're in Bush country.

Possibly the most "patriotic" gas station in the world. No, seriously- it was stuffed full of memerobilia and overtures to the flag.

One of three souveneir shops in the town. I particularly like the way the woman has been excluded from "supporting the troops".

A quirky little barber shop on the main drag. It's charming to think that one of George's associates hasn't bulldozed this and planted a Wal-Mart/Best Buy in its place. We can but hope... :-)

Bush's ranch is about seven miles from the centre of town. You have to drive through windy ranch roads, and you know you're getting close when you start to see these signs advising you (well, telling you) not to stop, wait or do anything else untoward. Oooh-err.

This was as close as we got to the ranch. If you enlarge the picture, you can just about see the entrance gate (w/ guard post) and the crash/anti-tank barrier. At this point, if we had ventured any further, our asses would most definitely have been capped. As we were leaving, a black SUV was leaving the ranch- one can only speculate who was in it...

Two idiots driving to Mongolia

2006-06-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

My good friend Jim and his friend Andy are doing the mongol rally in July- they're driving a 1 litre car from London to Mongolia, all in the name of charity. If you fancy sponsoring them in their wacky endeavour, visit their website where you can find many more details about the adventure.

http://www.thecannonballhun.com/

Personally, I think they'll get as far as Dover before the car packs in, but we can hope!

US Soccer Player Ratings= ouch, a small football aside.

2006-06-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

Damn. ESPN really went for the jugular in their player ratings for the US vs. Czech Rep. match. The US commentators were very disappointed by the US performance, especially as the US team had been hyped continually for about a month. Oh, well. FIFA world rankings are useless, as this game demonstrated. Does anyone really belive that the US has the fifth best team in the world?

As the US has such a tight ranking system for sports, especially college sports (which usually always goes to form: i.e. a team ranked 10th would cream a team ranked 23rd) some commentators find it hard to equate the gulf in quality with this. The US CONCAF region (North America, Central America and the Carribean) hardly puts up much resistance to a good US team and consequently the rankings become skewed.

Nevertheless, the wounded pride of the commentators/critics seems to be obscuring the fact that the US lost to a good side and didn't play *too* badly. Some of the reactions of TV pundts directly attacked the players for a lack of motivation, as if they were insulting the US directly with their performance.

There's no friendly 5s and 6s that normally denote a poor performance in the UK...

>>>

One can expect some major changes to the lineup for the next match, but they'll only be successful if they're accompanied by a change in attitude as well.

Player Ratings:

Kasey Keller, 4 - He waited eight years for this? Granted, there wasn't a thing he could have done about any of the goals, but the fact that he picked the ball out of his net three times has got to leave a bitter taste.

Steve Cherundolo, 3.5 - Arena said afterwards that his substitution of Cherundolo was tactical, but given Cherundolo's poor distribution out of the back, it was a switch that the head coach didn't have to sweat over.

Eddie Pope, 4 - There were worse performances on Monday, but Pope didn't cover himself in glory, either. It was telling that every time Pope was matched up against Koller, he was badly out-muscled. It was not the kind of performance that the U.S was looking for.

Oguchi Onyewu, 5 - One of the few players who showed up. One could quibble with his positioning on the first goal, as well as being caught square on the last one, but he not only won most of the head balls that were sent his way, but he came out on top in some key challenges on the ground as well.

Eddie Lewis, 3.5 - Another player whose passing was just shocking at times and he must bear some of the responsibility for the first goal, in which Zdenek Grygera was left wide open on his side, and ultimately crossed the ball for Koller's goal. He'll likely retain his place because there really isn't anyone else.

DaMarcus Beasley, 3 - Right midfield was where American attacks went to die. If he starts against Italy, it will be a major upset.

Pablo Mastroeni, 3.5 - When he wasn't slipping on the turf, he was a step slow to pressure the ball, and he didn't seem to win any of the second balls that the U.S. needed in order to have a chance.

Claudio Reyna, 5.5 - This guy just seems snake-bit when it comes to scoring goals in World Cups, as he hit the post just like he did back in '98. Reyna was one of the few players who at least wanted the ball, but was probably guilty of playing too deep. He'll need to get closer to goal against the Italians.

Bobby Convey, 4.5 - His runs didn't always come off, and his crossing was subpar, but Convey was one of the only players in the attacking half to play with any courage. He certainly showed better than some of his more experienced teammates.

Landon Donovan, 4 - Had some bright moments in the first half, including his setup of Reyna's ill-fated shot, but he faded badly in the second. Four years after a sparkling World Cup debut, it appears that Donovan's game hasn't progressed enough to have an impact at the highest level.

Brian McBride, 3.5 - McBride was starved of service, but struggled with his passing and hold-up play as well. He often seemed to be operating on an island, and he will need to either fix his spacing with Donovan, or be paired with more of an out-and-out forward.

Subs:

John O'Brien, 5 - If O'Brien has a pulse prior to the next match against Italy, then he'll start in Mastroeni's place. He delivered a solid performance, and even got in some good tackles as well.

Eddie Johnson, 6 - The only forward to be truly dangerous, as he just missed with a left-footed effort in the 70th minute and had another effort blocked just a minute later. Johnson certainly showed that he wasn't overawed in his World Cup debut, as he was active throughout.

>>>

Yikes! Some of these are a little acerbic to say the least.

The Holy City of the Wichitas

2006-06-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

Back in April, I visited the Wichita Mountains Wlidlife Refuge in Southwestern Oklahoma. Contained within the sprawling acreage is the Holy City of the Wichitas, a minature replica of the holy land purpose-built in 1936 for the purpose of staging a passion play every easter. As the sign indicates, it's the longest-running passion play in the US, staged in a place that's equally creepy and fascinating.

This is the sign which greets you at the entrance. It's at this point that visitors start to hear the odd, if not unpleasant hammond-organ tunes which are piped around the place via tiny speakers. It's clear that little work has been done to the place since the 1970s and the music is the perfect accompaniment to the buildings, decor and ambiance which appear to have been preserved in formaldehyde since then.

This area was cordoned off, more's the pity. The chariot used in the reenaction of Jesus' death is visible in the top left corner.

The Last Supper Rug (or should that be "tapestry") in the lighting/sound control room.

The aforementioned control room in all its glory. Classic.

Golgotha, recreated.

These small votives built into stone are placed all around the city, some in better repair than the others.

Signs and graffiti inside a chapel.

Moses as a boy in a crazy plaster diorama tucked away at the back of the set. Note the deflated hands. All of the mannequins are in poor repair and can only be seen behing iron railings.

Another small child with defective hands: possibly Moses. It's a wonder someone hasn't repaired these statues, especially as if I find them disquieting, small children probably find them terrifying.

Are you researching me? Eh? Then who the hell else are you researching?

2006-06-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Bobby De Niro just donated a good chunk of his film memorablia (documents and props, etc.) to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Sweet. Looks like graduate work has just become a lot more interesting.

Jesus did not have wheels

2006-06-07T20:03:00.000-07:00

"One of those moments" ocurred last week when driving through the small town of Bastrop,TX. We'd stopped to photograph this music shop:

And ended up discovering this cross beside it:

It's not every day that you come across a replica of the cross designed for easy transportation and safety at night. I'm sure Jesus would have appreciated the many safety features and handy inscription made in marker pen:

This is the type of cross people wheel around college campuses proclaiming, believe it or not, that "Jesus is Lord",scaring sorority girls and driving most people as far from Jesus as humanly possible. This practice has always puzzled me, and stumbling upon this relic confuses me even more. What's this doing here? Why the wheels? Whatever were they thinking with the reflectors? Perhaps we'll never know.

Brief Respite

2006-04-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

Alas, the sands of time are slipping away in relation to the end of the semester, and I have some major work to be getting on with... I'll try and keep the updates coming, but bear with me through this customary period of strife and stress. I'll be back on the ball sometime soon.

Some relief from the Fred Phelps Group

2006-04-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

Those crazy uber-fundamentalis wack-jobs are at it again. The Fred Phelps group have been picketing the funerals of dead soldiers with placards declaring how the dead soldier will "burn in hell", and all because America is tolerating homosexuality. This time states are legislating against them: see this from the NY Times.

I first encountered these idiots when I went on an exploratory foray to a Billy Graham crusade in New York:

Not the nicest bunch of folk, especially as they were shouting obscenities at children. (Interestingly, the group is rather "incestuous": see the Fred Phelps Wikipedia article.

In the middle of all this brouhaha, I was pointed to this picture of a Phelps protest gone awry (first spotted in Lawrence, KS):

Hahahaha. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Here's to Phelps continuing to dig his own grave with his protests.

From McSweeney's....

2006-04-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

Socially Awkward
Situations During
Which It Would Be
Acceptable to Mess
With Texas.

BY BENJAMIN SUMLIN

- - - -

Texas shows up to the party already drunk with the girlfriend nobody likes.

Texas partied too late, asks to copy homework.

Texas asks if it would be "cool to hook up with your ex."

Texas has a habit of spending more time than needed in the bathroom.

Texas bogarts the remote just before Lost.

Texas demonstrates little respect for "personal space."

Texas finds and eats the little snack cakes you've been hiding in the back of the pantry.

Texas needs you to cover rent "just until I get back on my feet, man, I swear."

Texas brings up an anecdote about his recent colonoscopy.

To round of the "Trip to the Hill Country" series

2006-04-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

Is it the Italian riviera? No, it's a lake near Llano in the Texas Hill

Local flora: bluebonnets on one side, cacti on the other.

A pair of women's panties hanging in a tree. There's no real reason I took this photograph...

More fun sculptures

2006-04-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Who'd have thought that the tiny town of Burnet could offer so much quality diversion? Here's some pictures of junk art I spotted on a short sojourn around the place.

This sculpture was named "Junkasaurus Wrecks".

And this is a sagrado cactus made out of an old telgraph pole. Quality.

Laundromats are the shiznit

2006-04-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

I love the way that the South West air/climate/mentality tends towards the fossilization of dilapidated places. This beautful launderette was spotted just around the corner from a modern Exxon gas station in Burnet, TX.

Yuppies off the East Side

2006-04-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

This sticker popped up recently on the stop sign outside my house. Now I feel bad about being a yuppie, even though I technically earn a wage that's under the poverty line. Yeeha!

It's Texas Truck Month... Again

2006-04-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

Pick-up trucks are pretty ubiquitous in Texas, despite the fact that the vast majority of these are never used for any function remotely related to off-roading, towing or transporting quad bikes/ATVs out to the country for rugged, manly fun. (To give you an example, I once heard a spoiled frat-boy whine as his friends loaded a bookcase into the back of his uber-shiny super-heavy duty Ford for "Scratching the truck bed!"). Farbeit from me to comment further on any misguided notions of "manliness"...

Trucks are, therefore, big business here, and there are several ploys that the auto manufacturers will use to make you fork ouy $40,000 for a new one on 15% credit. One of these is making special "Texas Edition" trucks. These, to all intents and purposes, are exactly the same as other generic 49-state editions (The Oregon Edition appears not to have emerged as yet) but for a badge on the back that says "Texas Edition" or even better "Lone Star Edition". Or, as the jingle goes, "Bigger in Texas, Better in a Dodge".

Coupled with this cunning strategy is the all-powerful lure of Truck Month, a month of special discounts on trucks. "That settles it", you say, dropping your Special K as you rush off to your nearest Ford dealer before the 31st comes rolling around. But wait, for it is always truck month in Texas. When Dodge Truck Month ends, Toyota Truck Month rolls around, and so forth. Brazenly so. Without a care for precedent. Honestly.

The perpetuation of this strategy would appear to indicate its success, and God only knows how. Are families busy investing every month in a different truck? Is this some kind of carpool? Judging by the amount of trucks on the roads, someone is laughing somewhere.

For everyone else who hates James Blunt

2006-04-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

Talentless ass-wipe? Over-hyped squaddie wank? You decide. Yes, Blunt has made it across the atlantic and he's busy filling everyone's heads with aural excrement as we speak. Here's a laudable reaction to his middle-of-the-road pap.

28 Day Slater

2006-04-06T20:18:00.000-07:00

If you're like me and you count Saved By The Bell as one of the seminal components of your youth, check out this excellently executed parody.

Signs 'o the times

2006-04-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

Make fences, not war

2006-04-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

American pragmatism can be an odd beast. This house ("Kelley's Ranch") was spotted on a small road to Inks Lake State park in the Texas hill country. The gates are constructed with two large unexploded (but hopefully decomissioned) bombs.

Other unexploded ordnance was scattered around the lawn, and I think the owner was making some kind of display of these also. I'd like to think that using bombs for art finds its equivalent in melting guns down to make swings.

In the absence of having anything else to say

2006-03-30T18:16:00.000-08:00

... here's a photo of the giant rabbit at the local Peter Pan putt-putt course. Terrifying or intriguing: the choice is yours.

As a follow-up

2006-03-27T18:34:00.000-08:00

The UTexas website has an interesting story about billboards in minority communites here.

What a pity that they're advertising a very loaded version of reproductive health. Stories like this remind me why I'm just a little bit cynical.

Anti-Abortion By the Backdoor

2006-03-26T18:08:00.000-08:00

This is one of the billboards near my house. I wonder what the confidential "assistance" would be... hmmm. I hope that the rest of the rabid anti-abortion movement goes the same way as this poster's sad, frayed edges.

Nature Always Wins

2006-03-25T12:07:00.000-08:00

At the risk of getting a little too flowery, here's a picture of some blooms sprouting on the pavement outside my house.

Spring is in full swing, and it seems that my neigbour's (welcome) campaign against unruly grass has failed to disturb this little patch of pink. He can occasionally be seen piloting his ride-on lawnmower around the neigborhood, and woe betide any crabgrass that sits in his way. He does our lawn and the little patch of communal grass before the kerb also. I first discovered that he did this a few months ago the morning after a large night-out. As I wandered onto the porch in my boxer shorts, thick headed and pondering the bottom of my pint of water , he glided by at 5mph with an expression of soporifric pleasure and a brief acknowledgement of my presence. It was as if he was putting the world in order, teaching the wily strands of Kentucky Blue a salutory lesson in power dynamics. Everything in its place, or almost, as the photo below demonstrates:

A small degree of natural anarchy, maybe, but not an unwelcome one. I can take such displays of unruliness any day.

Crazy Doppelganger Action

2006-03-22T15:49:00.000-08:00

Earlier today, I was browsing one of the technical writing books that the Writing Center holds. Often a fun enterprise, you may snidely quip. Yes- indeed it is, especially when you find that you're thanked in the acknowledgments without even knowing you were involved in the making of a book.

"Andrew Jones", thanked in The Longman Guide to the Web, works at the University of California Davis. You can check out his website by clicking on the title of the post. He is rather scarily into Beat Generation poets and poetry in general, rather like I purport to be. We can't have any more Andrew Jones' in academia, I tell you.

Bit of Cricket, Bit of Bush

2006-03-09T12:27:00.000-08:00

I played softball for the first time in my life last night and, perhaps predictably, was shite at it. Initial practice runs indicated that I might be quite talented at hitting the ball, but upon stepping up to the plate I got a little over-zealous and started swinging at everything. The American Studies team eventually won 11-10 after a tense finish. I think I'm hooked.

Part of my problem with hitting the ball is a tendency to want to move my feet to attack it- something I get from having played cricket for a few years. Looks like I am in illustrious company with my cricketing skills as the personage in the above picture demonstrates. George and I may have much to teach each other yet.

Continuing scatalogical discourse

2006-03-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'm becoming adept at preempting Slate.com. Automatic Toilet flushers are now the subject of a columnist's ire:

http://www.slate.com/id/2137256/nav/tap1/

Naturally, the writer puts it far more eloquently (and bluntly) than I could.

Crawfish Boil!

2006-03-05T09:20:00.000-08:00

My housemate had a crawfish boil yesterday in honor of his 25th birthday. Here's the "before" shot- cleaning out the goo and ick from the crawfish(for those of you who don't know, a crawfish is a small, lobster-like freshwater crustacean).

The crawfish are put live into a gigantic pot with various spices and vegetables and boiled for about 15 minutes. All the food is then transferred to a big table covered in foil, and everyone chows down together.

Et voila! The meat is in the tail and a simple twist/crack action will yield a small amount. The corn seemed to have absorbed the majority of the spices, so while it was delicious at the time of eating, I fear the after-effects in more ways than one...

Dydd Dewi Sant/Texas Independence Day

2006-03-02T08:45:00.000-08:00

In honour of both St. David's day (yesterday) and Texas Independence day (today), here's a floral tribute to both nations. I'm all about beautifying the blog.

I feel a little crass imperialist pap coming on

2006-02-27T15:38:00.000-08:00

Axe deodorant, the U.S. equivalent of boys school changing rooms favourite "Lynx" has launched a new advertising campaign.

Now, this would not be news in itself (well, perhaps not for 99.9% of the population happy with their current deodorant/shower gel choices) but for the fact that their advertisements surround several "types" of people who can potentially ruin your chances of kissing a woman (if you're a man who happens to wear Axe) i.e. ruining your "game". One of these is the British accent guy, with the customary ubiquitous crooked teeth, a bizarre U.S. stereotype rather akin to thinking that all Americans have horse teeth like Jerry Hall.

It's nice to be thought of as a gamekiller...

Woo-woo: Ricin found on Texas campus

2006-02-26T22:24:00.000-08:00

Is it me, or are random acts of "terrorism" following me around every U.S. institution I go to?

Things keep getting stranger.

Two Countries United by Postage Conventions

2006-02-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

Despite trade hostilities and bemusement on the part of the Daily Mirror, Britain and the U.S. are still enjoying a very special relationship.

How can I tell this? Well, we both issued stamps with the Very Hugry Caterpillar and Maisy at the same time. Proof positive that our mutual fascination with each other endures...

Woo woo! Well done Slate.com!

2006-02-22T11:51:00.000-08:00

Check out Slate's slating of the cult of blonde newscasters... I knew I was on the right track...

http://www.slate.com/id/2136418/nav/tap1/

Success, of sorts

2006-02-18T20:27:00.000-08:00

After standing in line for an hour and handing over $5, I am now the proud owner of a preliminary application for a driver's permit. This is not a license, but once I pass the written test and the driver's test (administered on a closed course at the DPS, no less) I will be awarded a license. Yes, it's all this much fun.

(The lady at the DPS had a kick-ass shrine to Elvis at her desk. My favourite 'piece' in the ensemble was a relief of cut-out GI Elvises attached to her pencil holder and 'laminated' with sticky tape. Why this woman's talents are wasted in government bureacracy is beyond me.)

2006: A Driving Odyssey

2006-02-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

The TX state legislature has had a change of mind, and it looks like I am free to embark on my voyage of discovery into the vehicular unknown...

After phoning the DPS (department of public safety) yesterday, I have discovered that I need to do the following to get my license:

1- Go to the DPS office in North Austin, stand in line for about an hour while filling in numerous forms, taking aptitude tests and generally numbing my brain while squiting to watch "Judge Juy" on a snowy TV screen perched in the far corner of the room.

2- Read and review the 100 page Texas "Yellow Book" guide to driving and road rules, half of which will patronize me and half of which will perplex
me.

3- Schedule a written test and pass it.

4- Schedule four 90 minute driving lessons and a test for $325 all-in, and hopefully pass the test.

5- Send my ID card off to be magically transformed into a driver's license.

6- Puchase a car with $1000, purchase insurance for the same amout and purchase a ton of University of Texas stickers to go on the back window.

What could be simpler?

I am about to tackle step one... report to follow.

2006-02-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

The discovery of a personal inscription on the inside flap of a secondhand book ("To Dad- Happy 50th Birthday, love Joanie", etc.) is often an interesting juncture. Naturally, I wonder what necessitated/prompted the recipient to give the gift away after the obvious personal investment of the giver. I wonder also (perhaps more frequently) about how many of the books that I have written personal messages in will appear on dusty bookshelves sooner or later.

Anyone else perplexed by the cartoon outrage?

2006-02-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

Pipe down, everybody...

Dammit, Texas state legislature!

2006-02-15T09:02:00.000-08:00

Argh- here I was all ready to take a driving test buy a car and gain a wondrous slice of the "independence" and "mobility" that people in the US seem to enjoy and disaster may have struck.

The TX legislature has ruled that as of 10th Feb, driver's licences can only be issued to people holding some kind of ridiculous offficial photo documentation issued by the Department of Homeland security. Passports and visa stamps, it would seem, no longer cut the mustard.

I do, however, own a TX state ID which was issued in September, but I'm unsure as to whether this will be upgradable or whether I will have to endure many more hoops to jump through in the next few months... seems as though God is telling me that I will never be able to pilot a lump of steel around the country.

I heart bureacracy.

Separated at Birth...

2006-02-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

The Scion XB- which I see more and more... and Postman Pat's ride.

I weep at the standard of local news reportage in Austin

2006-02-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

I don't have the (dubious) luxury of watching a whole lot of TV in between books, sleep and eating badly, but when I do I often find myself surfing between news broadcasts which, as far as I can tell, take up a fair bit of room in the schedules.

I've made my dislike for US local news known before, but one recent episode really got my goat.

The person in the picture is KEYE's news anchor, Judy Maggio. A stalwart of Austin news coverage, she heads up the nightly news team with a couple of co-anchors. All well and good. But... Judy recently made the news when her house burned down in a house fire. A tragic and devastating situation for anyone, no doubt, and it's reassuring to know that no-one was killed in the blaze.

Again, this would have been all fine if it was reported in the right way- as a segment on the news for one day's coverage. Naturally, this didn't happen. What happened instead, and may also be happening still, is that viewers are treated to a weepy monologue from Judy which appeared frequently in ad-breaks and at the end of news segments. Just comes on the TV to tell the (no doubt) horrible story of her house burning down and to exhort the communities in prose that ranges on the most teeth grindingly irksome hyperbole, to go out and thank the firefighters and thanks for all the prayers, etc.

This would be OK but for the fact that the whole thing gets repeated ALL THE DAMN time. The show of blatant self-importance is truly nauseating. One assumes that Judy has reported on many, many house fires in the past (probably involving poor or brown people) and never given the stories a whiff of a repeat broadcast. Bearing in mind that $400,000 damage was sustained to the house, we can safely assume that Judy and her husband had home insurance- I wonder how many other people whose houses burn down regularly can't aford it? Do they appear regularly on TV? No- probably because they're not news anchors, and probably because no-one cares. When it's the pretty blonde reporter, we are supposed to be overcome by the magnitude of her loss- so much so that we should endure countless reminders of it.

Odd happenings at 2318

2006-02-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

This truck recently appeared out of the blue, directly adjacent to the back of my house. I think it's from the 1950s/60s: any positive identification welcomed.

Although the truck itself is rusty, dilapidated and barely still together (it is missing an engine and truckbed) I quite like it sitting there, especially as I walked past it for two weeks before even noticing it. (It can hardly be characterised as a stealthy deployment) I'm unsure whether it has been dumped or whether someone is working on it as a project, but good luck to them if it's the latter.

As some of my graduate work has centered on junk, abandoned buildings and other urban effluvia, I will see it as a daily reminder to keep picking up the books to try and rationalise my attraction to such objects, and a reminder to get a damn driving license at the earliest opportunity.

American Studies bumph

2006-02-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

My American Studies cohort at the University of Texas now has a blog!

If you're interested, check out http://neverendingjeremiad.blogspot.com

Skype Me! And all that...

2006-02-05T11:39:00.000-08:00

I have finally got my ass together, bought a microphone and am now fully operational on Skype.

Skype, for those of you not in the know, is a web-based voice-call program. Put simply, you can talk to people for free instead of paying extortionate phone bills. Totally free... therefore, no shitty excuses about the cost of calling. You need a broadband connection, and the sound quality through this is excellent. Download at: http://www.skype.com

My username is jonesey_cymru - you may give me a bell to break up my morose days working at home.

Howdy from Luckenbach, TX

2006-01-31T21:49:00.000-08:00

This delightful pic is of a recent trip to Luckenbach, TX- a town with a population of three and home to the small inn that Waylon Jennings made famous in a 1977 song. There was live music going on when we arrived and I enjoyed singing along to a spontaneous acoustic version of "Wheel of Fire" while sipping on a Lone Star in the January sun. Which was nice.

Abercrombie & Fitch- coming to a city centre near you

2006-01-25T13:32:00.001-08:00

Here's a great article from Salon about the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, the Uber Preppy American clothing company. A&F will be opening stores in the UK soon- scary stuff.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/01/24/jeffries/

Incidentally, Mike Jeffries (pictured above) is 61. That age again: 61.

61.

Colleague's Broadcast on NPR

2006-01-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

A guy I work with produced an hour-long special on "This American Life" in December (a well-regarded national us radio show for all those in the UK), which is quite an achievement I believe. His piece talks about a Pastor of a large church in Tulsa, OK who stopped believing in hell and the strange repercussions of this change in doctrine. Follow the link below to listen to it:

http://www.thislife.org/

It's episode 304 (under the 05 section) by Russ Cobb entitled "Heretics", and is available for free in RealAudio. Well worth an hour of your time.

Cheers for soiling my good name

2006-01-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

Buggers! I just came across the following story on BoingBoing. I am now a right-wing idiot, it would seem...

Nutjob offers $100 bounty to UCLA students who wiretap lefty profs

A radical right-wing group has compiled a black-list of progressive UCLA professors and it is offering a bounty of $100 to students who record their lectures; the group intends to use these lectures "expose" the professors as "radicals." The Bruin Alumni Association posted the offer of the bounty to its website; its finances reportedly come primarily from a $22,000 gift ~~from~~ to its founder, Andrew Jones. The move has spooked many of the group's advisors, three of whom have resigned in disgust. One of the resigners is hardly a stranger to extremist politics: former Republican congressman James Rogan was one of the ringleaders of the Clinton impeachment circus, but even he doesn't have the stomach for this.

Jones told Reuters that he is out to "restore an atmosphere of respectful political discourse on campus" and says his efforts are aimed at academics who proselytize students from either side of the ideological spectrum, conservative or liberal.
"We are concerned solely with indoctrination, one-sided presentation of ideological controversies and unprofessional classroom behavior," Jones said on his Web site.
Jones' site describes his campaign as "dedicated to exposing UCLA's most radical professors" and his list of the university's "worst of the worst" singles out only professors he says hold left-wing views.

Whoops, Redux

2006-01-18T20:18:00.000-08:00

In all the excitement of getting started with the new semester, I failed to mention that the University of Texas football team won the national championship on the 4th Jan.

I'll leave you on edge with this tantalising titbit and let you ponder the joys and repercussions of one of the best games of college football ever... ooh it was a good one. Oooh it feels good to have kicked the University of Southern California Trojans into next week... more to come.

Christmas in America

2006-01-16T08:40:00.000-08:00

Even though I spent Christmas in the US, a little taste of home was supplied in the form of Cadbury's Finger biscuits.

These small and unassuming biscuits are the apex of my Christmas experience with the family, and probably the best food I eat when I get to spend Christmas with the olds. It is tradition in the Jones family houshold to consume at least one box of fingers each but 2pm and spend the rest of the day wishing that you hadn't. (To say that this is the highlight of my Christmas in Wales would be an understatement. I have to turn my Christmas experience into some form of performance art at some point...)

Imagine my delight when I found a two-pack of Fingers in the "international grocery section" of the supermarket in Norman, OK. Like Marmite and PG Tips, Fingers occupy that special niche of Brit foods that the rest of the world can't figure out why the hell we're so obsessed with.

I have no idea why the version of Fingers exported to the US are called "Finger" as opposed to "Fingers". Perhaps the thought of nibbling on several chocolate covered felanges is a little overwhelming for our transatlantic bretheren.

Creme eggs are also steadily making their way over to the US,. Naturally, I will be extolling the joys of Creme Eggs with chips to any Americans who will listen and not lose their lunch over the prospect.

Whoops

2006-01-16T08:36:00.000-08:00

Unfortunate sign placement. Spotted in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Paucity of Updates

2005-12-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

My semester is finally over, and as the last few weeks were so hectic I am enjoying a large period of respite where I am aiming to do the sum total of nothing aside from reading some books and perhaps going out for a few walks. I am turning middle-aged rather too rapidly.

Updates will be sporadic in the next few weeks as I will be away from the computer for a while, and will resume around January time. Check back often- that little counter is the source of endless enchantment for me...

Salut!

Ode to a cashier

2005-12-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

No need for futher introduction - go to the following website, watch the video and bask in the glory:

http://www.thewendysguy.com

Who would have thought that the campus Wendys could be the source of such entertainment- he blew me away the first time I saw his fingers flash across the till. The fastest fingers in the West. A UT institution. A legend.

"Embedded in America"

2005-12-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

Classic- check out the cover of the Onion's new anthology. Awesome. I think they've captured the mood very well.

In a similar vein...

2005-11-29T17:04:00.000-08:00

A chunk of masonry fell from the Supreme Court in Washington yesterday, and some experts are blaming bird droppings.

As Supreme Court crumbles, I am sure there are several French post-structuralist thinkers rubbing their hands with glee over such a neat metaphor. If Baudrillard uses this, I'm suing... :-)

It's that time again...

2005-11-29T15:09:00.000-08:00

As a retort to my previous statements about Americans not being able to appreciate toilet humor, I present today's Daily Teaxan headline concerning a story about a student from Texas A&M university's arrest for throwing horse manure onto the UT marching band before saturday's football game:

"A&M poo-passer paying price"

and the tagline:

"Aggie Corps cavalryman faces fines for impulsive fecal fling"

(Translation for the Brits: "Student of Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College who is also an army cadet faces fines..." etc.)

A fun coda to an incident that was possibly less than pleasant. The manure was hot off the press, so to speak.

The Skewed Past and Present

2005-11-28T18:03:00.000-08:00

It's not hard to remind yourself of British colonization and immigration when you're in America. There's the langauge for one, but by far the most common impressions that the settlers left on the landscape of the U.S. was in the nomenclature of towns and villages. Washington in Lincolnshire provides the name for Washington D.C. (if obiquely), New York, worlds away from its predecessor, Elgin, TX doesn't resemble its Scottish analogue too well and Bryn Mawr, Illinois may not replicate Welsh towns especially well, but the point was perhaps not to replicate the old landscapes but to improve upon them- hence the "new" prefix that denotes both renewal and a new start.

English place names, in particular, are often used to connote "old world" class and refinement in quite odd ways. Rather like designating something "American" or "American-style" can be oddly employed to infuse a spark of excitement and pizazz to shabby parts of Britain (a la Phoenix Nights), Americans often unintendly create humor when employing names of random British towns. While I was researching a paper on fences in the U.S., I came across a company in Colorado offering a type of house called the "Bradford", which is illustrated above. Anyone who has visited Bradford, Yorkshire may have to do a double-take. I challenge anyone to go to Bradford and find a house that even remotely resembles that. Actually, I challenge anyone to find a house that white in Bradford, full stop.

There's probably a Bradford on the East coast which serves as a model for this house, but it made me chuckle- rather like Birmingham, Alabama always conjures up images in my mind of the bullring and Jasper Carrot...

Study Abroad and Experience a New Culture/Beer

2005-11-27T15:12:00.000-08:00

So it would seem that the US government is attempting to get more US students to study abroad. Applause all around- this move should be commended. If nothing else, study abroad teaches students that there are other countries out there, even if these countries don't have acceptable plumbing and are bereft of Wendys' beyond major metropolitan areas.

The American students that I have met in my time at university in the UK and US fill me with both hope and dread. They are often the most dilligent, intelligent and intellectually curious students around. Call it protestant work ethic or whatever you will, but American university curricula in the better universities do tend to produce smiling, apple-pie-faced graduates ready to hit the job market with a spring in their step. An encounter with an American honor-roll student who has done it all is rather like encountering fresh-faced backpacking couples from Norway, Canada or New Zealand. The genuine niceness is somewhat nauseating- it's just so unfair. American graduates do have the advantage of not living in the licentious beer-soaked world of the British university (an approach to education that I wholeheartedly espouse for those of legal age), and thus don't come out hopelessly addicted to Reef strawpedos.

One thing which is frequently amusing to the rest of the world is the supposed parochialism of Americans, especially Americans who think that going Senor Frog's in Cozumel is "travelling". It's a criticism that I'd levy at most Europeans, too, though, to a degree. As the Onion article below indicates, most people on their semester of study abroad barricade themselves in with other students from the same country and drink the cheapest brew they can find their hands on. I suppose that the converse to this is the students who attempt to throw themselves headlong into the local culture and end up being a little off -key. I am reminded of the man from Arkansas who claimed to be Scottish, claimed that he "had a castle" in Scotland and made a big, annoying song and dance about a) buying a kilt in "his clan's tartan" and b) getting drunk on two shots of whiskey. Wrong, wrong wrong.

There's no prescription for a successful study abroad year, but I suppose that balance is the key. It's easy to hang around with people from the same country as yourself and necessary to a degree. It's also hard to interact with people from that country who have established friendship groups if you don't speak the language. One thing that I would always cheesily reccommend is an open mind. Don't go seeking THE Italy experience that looks like the itinery of a coach tour.

Oh, did I mention that it's a damn good thing that more Americans go and see the world that their country impacts so greatly? Ouch..!

Anyway, for the official view and the "real" view see below:

"Lincoln Commission report calls for sending one million students abroad annually by 2016-2017"
November 17, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A special commission appointed by Congress and President George W. Bush has called for boosting the number of American undergraduates who study abroad to one million annually by the year 2017, saying such a move is critical in furthering U.S. interests globally.

The findings of the bi-partisan Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program included a report on study abroad students in college and university programs in the United States. The report’s comparison for 2003-04 showed The University of Texas at Austin ranked fourth in the nation with 8,790 students participating in study abroad programs. Other leading universities were California with 18,919, New York with 14,625 and Pennsylvania with 12,723.

“I fully support the vision of the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program to send a million American students to study abroad in the next ten years,” said Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, president of The University of Texas at Austin. “This should be a major educational priority for the nation. Giving our young people more direct experience in other countries is the best way to improve their cultural competence and to show America’s brightest face to the world.”

"Semester Abroad Spent Drinking With Other American Students"
The Onion February 13, 2002

SEVILLE, SPAIN—Jon Blevins, an Indiana University junior studying in Seville, has spent nearly all of his semester abroad drinking with other American college students.

Blevins (center) drinks at a Seville cafe with a pair of exotic new friends from the University of Miami.
"Seville is incredible," said Blevins, 19, finishing off a Cruzcampo beer at Capote Bar. "There are all these amazing cathedrals and statues and art museums. Hopefully, at some point, I'll get a chance to see some of it."

The Postal Service

2005-11-26T17:22:00.000-08:00

I feel a Bill Bryson moment coming on...

Perhaps it's just the postmen in North Wales (or Sheffield, or Glasgow for that matter) but I've never had a friendly mail carrier. That's not to say that all of the people who deliver my mail have been actively hostile or angry, but they don't seem to be as cheery as mailmen in the US (I am pretty sure that I wouldn't be cheery if I had to get up at five and lug a bag full of Kays catalogues down large driveways when it was pissing it down outside, either). My mailman in Austin is always cheery and he even knocks on the door when I have a package on the porch.

The Royal Mail may be efficient, fast and possibly the best mail service in the world (ooh, bias), but the US mail comes pretty close and offers many options that the Royal Mail doesn't, aside from chatty mailmen who wear pith helmets as part of their uniform. It's the small things, really. You can leave outgoing mail outside on your mailbox (attached with a peg or what have you) and the mailman will collect it and deliver it for you. No hope of this in Britain unless you catch your postman when he delivers the mail.

Another adjustment that I had to make in the first few weeks was the change from letterboxes to mailboxes. When a delivery occurs in the US, I have to go and collect my mail from my mailbox outside. Parcels and packages are left outside on the porch, so no annoying trips to the depot like in Britain. This took some getting used to, especially as I naively assume that as parcels are left outside that someone will see my $4.00 copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the bubble mailer, be consumed by an unquenchable lust, and swipe it, running away giddily with a cackle. Britons are pretty sticky-fingered: I doubt that a parcel in broad view on a porch would last too long without being squirreled away in a greenhouse, carport or behind some flowerpots. Bloody students.

Much as I hate the royals, it is a pretty good thing that all of the post in Britain becomes the Queen's while it's in transit. I seems to ensure efficient delivery, and I'm sure Liz wouldn't mind if I turned up at the gates of Buckingham Palace to enquire as to the whereabouts of my Robertson's Jam Golly badges.

Fighting at the gates of Wal-Mart

2005-11-25T20:07:00.000-08:00

I forget who said it (but I do remember Alaistair Cooke quoting it), but it's still possible for tourists/foreigners in the US to perform the simple magic trick of turning on the US news and watching their country disappear. ABC's "World New Tonight", for example, is often comedically free of any coverage outside the US at all. Naturally, a country the size of the US generates more than enough news to keep it going, and the local news coverage beats anything of the sort in in Britain. That said, I often find myself pining for something like Channel Four news or the BBC. The debate on US news channels has a tendency to lapse into the banal and sycophantic. I never thought I'd lust after Paxman and Jon Snow, but at times...

The banality of some US news has begun to get to me. Quite frankly, I am surprised that there wasn't an armed uprising somewhere against the networks after Katrina. The news stations reported fairly well for a few days, but then began to broadcast "cat stuck up a tree" type stories about missing pets and brave celebrities who escaped the flooding. Naturally, it's necessary to have a broad range of material, but the degree to which the networks attempted (for whatever reason) to sugar-coat the news stories a few weeks in.

Perhaps one of the worst moments in the coverage I saw involved a reporter on the scene in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath.

Reporter: So, you say you've lost you're wife?
Man (visibly distressed): Yeah, yeah- she's gone, just gone- swept away
Reporter: You didn't see where she went?
Man: No- she was swept away. She's gone, she's gone.
Reporter: How does that make you feel?

The pretty blonde reporter who looked like she'd just stepped out of a Sears catalogue juxtaposed with the dishevelled and soaking African-American was pretty indicative of a few overprivileged responses to Katrina, which ranged from the "why didn't they leave the city?" group to the "they did it to themselves" crowd and Barbara Bush's priceless comments in the Houston Superdome.

Anyway, as it appears to be the done thing, I shall now round things off with a nice human-interest story. The Friday after thanksgiving is typically the biggest shoppping day in the US- rather like the January sales in the UK- and and has naturally produced some news-worthy items about the scarcity of X-Box 360s, for example. Wal-Mart stores opened up at 5am today, and have apparently been the subject of remarkable scrums. The concept of a sale at Wal-Mart, where everything costs bugger all anyway, must have induced a red-mist in Michigan and Florida amongst others. Customers have been trampled, fights have broken out and people have been robbed at gunpoint for their consoles. What are people buying? $997 plasma screen and LCD tvs... Is this the logical progression of our consumer society? Laugh or cry, the choice is yours.

Remembering the Alamo

2005-11-20T19:01:00.000-08:00

Here I am at "the shrine"- I visited the Alamo on Saturday as a field trip with one of my classes. I must admit, I had the two classic reactions, namely:

"It's smaller than I thought."

and

"There's no basement at the Alamo."

It was interesting to learn that a Welshman died defending the Alamo: inside the church building, there are flags of all the countries/states of the defenders. It's a nice touch, and indicates the polyglot nature (if not mindset) of the Texians/Tejanos who died. Not surprisingly, very little is mentioned about Santa Anna's army, who are cast as overwhelming agressors.

Ripley's "Believe it or not!" museums are also becoming rather annoying in their ubiquity- there's one right across the street from the building. Whatever your thoughts on the Alamo, we can do without these repositories of tack right next to historic sites.

Spot-On Single Stars

2005-11-15T15:24:00.000-08:00

In my less active moments, I often feel the odd urge to surf Amazon.com and look up reviews for books that I enjoy/dislike and see what the rest of the world thinks. This can yield some frustrations (dumb idiots pontificating about crap they don't know about) but can often be a particularly humorous or scary diversion (see "The Bible" and "The Koran" for some mirth-making and also some depressing comments).

In particular, this review of Hemingway struck me as being one of the more succinct and salient I've read in a long time. I like most Hemingway, but I just can't abide Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises). Why the hell it was called Fiesta, I don't know. It must be like naming large bouncers "Tiny"...

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Author: Ernest Hemingway

“Here’s the first half of the book: ‘We had dinner and a few drinks. We went to a cafe and talked and had some drinks. We ate dinner and had a few drinks. Dinner. Drinks. More dinner. More drinks. We took a cab here (or there) in Paris and had some drinks, and maybe we danced and flirted and talked sh*t about somebody. More dinner. More drinks. I love you, I hate you, maybe you should come up to my room, no you can’t’… I flipped through the second half of the book a day or two later and saw the words ‘dinner’ and ‘drinks’ on nearly every page and figured it wasn’t worth the risk.”

Thinking about things other than large essays

2005-11-13T21:46:00.000-08:00

Can a U-Haul truck be beautiful? These ubiquitous trailers pepper the highways and byways of the US with people dragging, towing, cajoling and heaving these behind trucks across the nature. There's something aesthetically pleasing (perhaps not beautiful) in seeing them all stacked up in a line, especially as they tend to be crammed together in a line (the Kantian "mathematical sublime"). Perhaps someone should study where they're going, where they've been- rather like an American Studies trainspotting. Crowbar in a bit about social context and wider ideas of cultural relevance, and you're there... :-)

It's something I've been battling with lately. Can the painfully ordinary be beautiful, and if so, what do we gain or lose?

I think I need a beer and some bedtime.

Museum Antics

2005-11-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

A picture from the Toy and Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley, OK. The action figures you see before you are all from one man's collection- some 7,000 or so. Someone suggested to him that he "open a museum". This he duly did- it has been open a month, and if you ever happen to be in Pauls Valley, you have to give it a whirl...

Belated Halloween Fun

2005-11-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

After buying a pumpkin over a week ago and not having the time to carve it in time for the 31st, I decided to take an hour out of my schedule to engage in this very American pastime. Seeing as I hadn't done anything like this before (I am about as practical as a chocolate fireguard) and as the task was a good way to avoid doing work, I set to carving Bruce the pumpkin with uncommon zeal.

Before going into the carving, I held two beliefs about the nature of pumpkins: that they contained easily scoop-outable goo and that they would be a breeze to carve. Neither turn out to be true. Rather than yielding pumkin-pie esque batter from the inside, Bruce's guts were distinctly stringy and rather musty. They also had a habit of getting everywhere when I really didn't want them to. I had also thought that once the top was off removing the innnards would be a cinch. Two ice-cream scoops, two bowls of crap and one throbbling and swollen forearm later, the task was laid to rest. God only knows how kids endure this. I guess the answer is that they don't- their parents do.

The results of my labour still impressed me, but when I have children I am definitely raising them to believe that Halloween is a satanic holiday. It will save me a whole lot of work later on.

It Lives! (sort of)

2005-11-06T07:05:00.000-08:00

Behold the pyrotechnics! I think I missed out on this as a child: there's something really satisfying about seeing your handiwork ablaze from the other side of the street.

Spot the difference

2005-11-03T14:45:00.000-08:00

Here's some Halloween fun. You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between my halloween costume...

...

2005-11-03T14:44:00.000-08:00

... and Mack Brown, the Texas football coach

Hardcore Pawn

2005-11-01T22:28:00.000-08:00

Whoaaaaa... killer. Spotted on a weekend jaunt to Pauls Valley, Oklahoma.

Stranger than Fiction

2005-10-31T20:35:00.000-08:00

From BBC News Online... Waco is having a hard time of it lately.

Texas preacher killed by baptism

A pastor was electrocuted during a baptism in Waco, Texas, after grabbing a microphone while partially submerged.
Rev Kyle Lake, 33, was standing in a small pool used for baptisms at the University Baptist Church when he was electrocuted on Sunday morning.

Rev Lake reached out to adjust a nearby microphone, which produced an electric shock, said church pastor Ben Dudley.

Rev Lake, who had a wife and three children, had been at the church for nine years.

Confusion

He was taken by ambulance to a local medical centre where he was pronounced dead.

The woman being baptised apparently had not stepped into the water, Mr Dudley told the Waco Tribune-Herald. She was taken to the hospital as a precaution, but was not seriously injured, he said.

"At first, there was definitely confusion just because everyone was trying to figure out what was going on," Mr Dudley said. "Everyone just immediately started praying."

At a remembrance attended by about 1,000 people on Sunday night, Mr Dudley said the congregation would move forward as a church.

"I don't know how, when, why, where or what's going to happen, but we will continue as a church in the community because that is what Kyle would have wanted," he said.

How about some more photos of signs?

2005-10-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

My bike ride on Sunday took me around the highways and byways of central Austin. My continuing fascination with signs continues: here's the 60s-era neon sign of the Austin Music Hall, a downtown music venue. It was heartening to see several big empty cans of beer in paper bags outside the club which some people had hastily disposed of before going in. It reminded me of drinking cartons of wine/bottles of beer before going to clubs in my first year of university... memories...

They Don't Make Them Like They Used To

2005-10-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

... and this one from east Austin.

I am off to Oklahoma for the weekend, so regular blogging will resume after I have embarrassed myself again during a Halloween party.

Parochial Churches vs. Mega-Churches

2005-10-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

This church is just down the road from me, calling itself a "primitive" Baptist church. This is a very neat contrast with the mega-churches that are going up everywhere at the moment. There's a lot more love in these smaller buildings, I find.

Incidentally, my bike tyre popped for the fourth time on Sunday. Needless to say, I went pyrotechnic with rage, threw my toys out of my pram, and

Quality Halloween Stuff

2005-10-23T18:24:00.000-07:00

People are going a little crazy for Halloween here, which is nice to see, in a way. It's better than all of those stories about "satanic holidays" and all of that guff. Here's a good example of a house in east Austin, aglow in the morning light and replete with tacky-but-charming regalia. Just wonderful.

That's a little unfair...

2005-10-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

Gah- what the hell else can we do in the park??

Humorous Interlude

2005-10-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

Hee hee hee...

More exciting academic crap

2005-10-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

The American Association of Geographers made this week's Pesud's Corner in Private Eye... academia is getting so exciting

>>>>

The Politics of Public Washroom Space

This session aims to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to address the politics of public washroom spaces. Scholarly investigation of public washrooms is relatively rare, despite the fact that these spaces have become highly politicised in recent years. Activists have critiqued the regulation of public washrooms with growing frequency and effect, and have made new demands of and for their production and regulation. Anti-poverty and homelessness activists are lobbying for increased access to spaces for basic acts of social reproduction, queer and transgendered activists are demanding alternatives to the strict binary gendering of these public spaces while (dis)ability activists are calling for ‘public’ spaces to reflect the range of embodied abilities of the body politic [continues]

Call for papers, annual general meeting of the American Association of Geographers

Beer Pong and other distractions

2005-10-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Looks like "beer pong" is becoming a little bit of a "problem" on US campuses... it's even made the NY Times. Click on the title for the link.

I think it's because Americans can't take their beer, but that would be a very controversial statement.

More on this later. I have a crapload of reading to do: 900 pages, in fact. Sometimes, don't you wish you were me?

Dang It

2005-10-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

In a desperate attempt to lose my one-pack, I am trying to take up cycling again. God, it would seem, has other plans for me. I had two flat tyres (tires) right after each other a few weeks ago and was so dispirited that I didn't fix my bike for another two weeks. The most galling thing about the punctures is that they weren't even spectacular. I wouldn't have minded having to limp home with my broken bike had I been performing gnarly jumps or traversing some trecharous terrain. As it happens, I was cycling to the library and the gym respectively. Bugger.

In order to banish these ghosts, I took to the trails on Sunday and had a fantastic, fun-packed ride of high adventure, pushing my bike and my body to the limits. This was, at least, how it would have been in my head. The reality was slightly different. Within five minutes of riding down a very large hill in east Austin, while sailing merrily throigh the bad part of town, my rear tyre decided to perform the spectacular blow out I had hoped for, completing the trilogy of misfortune and leaving me laughing by the side of the road (I was soon apprehensive about 'breaking down in the ghetto'). The fates, God, Krishna or whoever must have shares in the company which produces the extra-thick innertubes. That, or I am just hated by whichever deity you believe in... :-(

Fun with bottles

2005-10-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

I live on the fringe of East Austin, the historically black and hispanic area of the city. (Most U.S. cities tend to have rather ropey East sides- is there a reason for this?) My area borders 26th st, and the really poor areas begin around 22nd. The term "poor", I must stress, is relative. The poorer neighbourhoods of Austin are nothing like East St. Louis, for example. Many of the lower-income areas of Austin have a residual charm to them, much like most of Austin. It's a hippie town and I guess this bleeds into everything eventually. What I have seen often, and I understand as a phenomenon, is the use of bottles, cans and other receptacles in decorating and even building homes. Doubtless, people have myriad reasons for their art, but perhaps intentions are less important for the casual observer. Many people appear to "just do" these types of things, and that is their impulsion.

The picture above is a house owned by "the Honorables" in East Austin. I'm going to try and take some more photos of it soon- it's fabulous.

A really interesting and fun site is Grandma Prisbrey's bottle village- click on the title of the post for the link. "Grandma" Prisbrey was an outsider artist who spent most of her life constructing a village made of glass bottles and various other unconventional items. It's quite a sight, I am told.

Bizarre Signage

2005-10-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

I've no idea what a militaria show involves, but as this photo is taken in Fort Worth, I assume that it's a whole lot of people showing off their tanks, rifles and army uniforms of days of yore. It's a nice contrast to the happy-go-lucky Will Rogers and his theatre. Oh, well.