Texas Fiction

Finally Found My Login Info Again

2009-04-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's been a few years since I started and dropped this blog. Good excuse. Lost my login info and never could work through all Google's account protection features before I gave up and went on to something interesting -- like deleting all the spam mail from my email inbox, a much better use of my time.

But, I happened across the old book with passwords and decided to give it a try, see if the old blog was still here. Turns out it was, and all the old postings as well. Once I got in, it gave me an excuse to do something useful -- deleted some of them, thought about deleting them all, may yet if I ever find my way back here. Seems the last time I got excited here was when the Bush administration was screwing up Katrina evacuations. Definitely old news -- I've since been through Rita evacuation and Ike evacuation screwups and still dealing with Ike damage to the house.

But, revisiting past blogs has been a bit liberating. I've waited long enough that I no longer feel compelled to keep doing it. The big issue these days is not whether to blog or not but wether to twitter or not. I'm thinking that I'm going to let that wave of technology pass me by, just like I did with "facebook."

I don't eve like the sound of the words "twitter" and "tweet." Sounds like something birds do. Besides, if I actually had anything worth saying in online print, I'd always be way over my word limit!

Well, that's enough about nothing today. Next time I find my passwords, I'll try to blog about books again. There have, in point of fact, been a few good books by Texas authors that I forgot to mention.

Stuck on supid?

2005-09-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

The last couple of days have provided a show of American military competence that makes us all proud. In an interview today, a soldier on a street responded to a reporter's observation that the troops had made remarkable progress in saving the citizens of New Orleans since arriving on Thursday. "We're not stuck on stupid," he said. Contrast that to the first four days after Katrina and today's government officials' meet-the-press moments where, to a man, they recited the "we never anticipated" mantra.

If we suspend disbelief and accept the "we never anticipated" line as official truth, then we have to believe they never anticipated a situation their own disaster modeling experts told them could and likely would happen. That sounds like "stuck on stupid" to me.

"Get off your asses and do something!"

2005-09-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

Today is a day for real life as reported by the TV news. Yesterday I watched the arrival of the buses as Houston welcomed over 15,000 new Texans. I listened to their stories of anguish and great personal tragedy late into the night, until people were told there was no more room in the inn called Astrodome and then that there still was room for a few more.

Like most Americans not waiting in gasoline lines or struggling for survival on the mean streets of Katrina's Gulf Coast cities and towns, I've spent the last few days watching the horror on television -- CNN's camera views of desperate people needing help and C-Span's coverage of government official press conferences where one official after another got arm cramps from patting himself on the back for the great job he was doing in planning to give help although he hadn't yet gotten around to actually providing tangible help to New Orleans' hungry, thirsty, exhausted residents.

None of yesterday's C-Span stars had the answer to the question reporters were asking. Plenty of "so and so from another agency will answer that," "poor communications," "we never anticipated," "we're stagging," "we didn't know those people were there until today," and "we're coordinating with state and local officials." Lots of excuses. Few real answers.

Planning? Stagging? How about doing? Can't hellicopters drop food and water even if they can't get to the people? Doesn't our government have boats -- little boats for city streets where people are trapped in houses, big boats for canals and river transport to safer locales.

Poor communications? Didn't know people were there? Really? There are military satellite cameras in our skies that can determine the sex of people walking down a street in Iraq and our government officials can't use those satellite cameras to see the multitude of people at the New Orleans Convention Center? Maybe they should use CNN's satellite camera feeds so they'll have the same view as the rest of the world. Maybe they should subcontract the food and water drops to CNN helicopter crews.

Officials were coordinating, people were dying, and now New Orleans is burning. For four days of press conferences, the mantra was, "Help is on the way. It's not time to point fingers." Well, it is time to point fingers, and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did it well when he said: "Get off your asses and let's do something!"

Apparently the Mayor's blunt message stopped the federal government's spin doctors in mid mantra. This morning the troops finally came -- 1200 of them on big trucks plowed through flooded city streets -- and the President showed up a couple of hours later to take credit for making things better. Sick people made it to the airport and were airlifted out.

So there's hope -- hope that the troops will load the trucks they came in on with people, drive them to the New Orleans airport, and fly them out to military bases scheduled for closing or any other kind of government facility with available beds or to any city who can provide them shelter. And do it tomorrow before any more people die.

If the priority is saving lives, it's time to do it!

Relevant links: http://www.redcross.org/, http://www.hurricanehousing.org/,
http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2005/08/help.html, http://www.legalmemorandom.com/ and http://www.lbcobb.com/freespeech.htm.

To blog or not to blog -- that is the question

2005-08-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

"Blogging is where it's at," they say. You know, the "they" who told us that the Internet and cell phones were the key to a 24/7/365 work life but neglected to say that they would be the end of a real life.

Maybe blogging is where it's at, but right now this blog posting screen looks like just another blank screen where I need to write something. The one thing I can say for certain on the subject of Texas fiction is that it's not easy telling fictional Texans from real Texans. In fact, most of the real Texans I know are actually highly fictionalized versions of their true selves, and the fictional Texans I've read about are just like some of the real Texans I know. Life imitating art? Art imitating life? Chicken? Egg?

It's even harder separating Texas tall tales from true tales. But we'll talk about that later. Now, I've got to figure out how this blogger thing works. Guess I'll push the "post" button and see what happens.