The Eleventy Billionth Blog

The Eleventy Billionth's Happy Good Time Story Hour

I'm wholly unmotivated today, and was so productive this morning that I find myself slac, I mean, pacing myself this afternoon.

Which means you guys get a story.

This one begins late at night, in not Dallas. Everything outside of Dallas is country, you see, for miles. It's like Dallas ends, and suddenly jimson weed and goats line the highway, save for a lonely Ikea. This is true because I'm telling this story.

One night, I was with my two best friends, eating dinner at a restaurant in the back country of Not Dallas. Dinner turned to drinks, because that's what you need to do to fortify yourself. More people we knew appeared at this place, and commenced drinking, too. The place serving the drinks eventually closed, and we were not tired.

"Why don't you come see our donkey?" someone said. Now, this is where the story begins to go awry. Already, we had conceded to sup in the back country of Not Dallas, and now someone is telling us we should travel further into the country to see a donkey.

So we fortified ourselves by going to Whataburger, a restaurant placed haphazardly around Texas by Jesus to make sure people will have plenty of Dr Pepper, bacon double ranch jalapeno cheese burgers and angioplasty. There, we pick up Dr Pepper. Giant ones. Bigger than your head. And taquitos. It was to be my first taquito, but to this day, for reasons I'm about to explain, I have never had a taquito.

We drove down dirt roads into the wilderness to see the donkey. At first, we drive up to a house, and being city folk, we wonder if the donkey is inside. But no. The donkey is in a pasture, a good 40 yards away.

"Is it a nice donkey?" we ask. Our hosts merely laugh. We take our taquitos and commence walking - in heels - across a grassy knoll. My heel caught in what I pray was just a random hole, and not some portal to a hell beast living just beneath the dirt.

I wondered at the dark, and the lack of flashlights.

I should've known it was so we wouldn't see the carcasses of other folk who were lured into the country to see the donkey. After walking several yards toward the donkey area, our hosts began calling for the donkey.

"Jack!"

"Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!"

"Jack! C'mere Jack! Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!"

Suddenly, the bushes parted and the biggest donkey I've ever seen came charging toward us, snorting and braying, teeth bared. The crowd dispersed, save me.

Me, holding the bag of taquitos. Rooted to the spot by the fearsome spectacle of a full-grown, mad as hell donkey charging directly at me. Also because my foot was caught in another hole. I was going to die.

grabbed for the only weapon I had at my disposal. No, not my shoe, because that would've made sense. I reached into that white and orange bag from Whataburger, and I hurled a taquito at the beast. The first one hit him square between the eyes, but didn't even stun him.

The second hit him on the nose, and he paused. Stunned.

My friends are now a good 39.4 yards away and hurrying for the car. I'm staring down a donkey, and praying I have enough taquitos. I pull my foot out of my stuck shoe, and proceed to walk backwards, up down, up down, up down, one foot in my high heel sandal, the other bare.

Jack starts toward me. I hurl another taquito, and walk faster. Up down, up down. I fling another. Pow! Right in the kisser. I get better at my aim, and become a world-class taquito hurler. I'm the Zena Warrior Princess of taquito throwers, vanquishing my ill-tempered foe with six of Whataburger's drunk people foodstuffs.

My hand reaches the bottom of the bag, and I realize I'm out of ammo. I up down, up down backwards the last five yards to the car, and jump in.

Jack headbutts the car and tries to eat the rearview mirror.

But I live.

Weird-Ass News Free-For-All

So I saw this story today, and sometimes, when I read certain news stories, I like to make up dialogue in my head. This particular part of the story:

The descendants of an African chief who was hanged and decapitated by a Dutch general 171 years ago reluctantly accepted the return of his severed head Thursday.

Prompted this dialogue:

"Hi, sorry we killed your granpop. Here's his old moldy head. Are we square now?"

So anyway, I thought we'd have a little fun. Find the most odd story from this week, and post the link and any commentary about the story the comments. DO IT.

Be a Loyal Foot Soldier - Or Else

This may just be my opinion, but nothing says weak and ineffectual leader like surrounding yourself with sycophants. Today, we read in the Dallas Morning News that Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert doled out committee assignments. Freshman councilmen and women received chairman and vice-chairman appointments. Veteran councilwoman Angela Hunt will helm no committees. None. Not at all. Hunt has made it her business to study diligently the issues surrounding the Trinity River. But not only will she not oversee that committee, she's not even serving on it. Yes, Hunt has opposed Leppert's plans for the Trinit River project, as she also does his plans for the convention center hotel. And now, apparently Hunt is being punished for that, and for having the temerity to not rubber stamp what might be detrimental to the city. Now, Leppert makes the normal noises (for him) that he appointed the best people to these committee leadership positions. But a council person who has just taken the oath was given more weight than a veteran with many miles and many hours logged in the study of what is bad and good for Dallas - and that just doesn't pass the smell test. So maybe these people are completely qualified. But really, it more appears that Leppert is sending a message: Be a loyal foot soldier, because that's far more important than what you do for your constituents.

Labels: Angela Hunt, Dallas City Council, Tom Leppert

What Say You?

So the DA in Kauffman County allegedly got caught driving while intoxicated. Now the GOP wants him to resign. But I give you two stories to compare. This one was posted at 11:32 a.m. This one was posted at 12:48 p.m. Now, I'm not calling it just yet, but the last one is kinda well, hmm. I mean, no discernable quotes, fewer defining facts... Is it just a case of two reporters calling at the same time, or is it cribbing?

Labels: Things that make you go hmm, whisky tango foxtrot

Something Still Isn't Jibing

Not quite 20 days have passed since the TABC and the Fort Worth police department conducted a joint raid on the Rainbow Lounge, a newly-opened gay bar, on June 28. The raid sent one man to the hospital with a life-threatening brain injury, and left a community divided over whether the incident was a case of police brutality and homophobia, or just a routine bar check gone very, very bad. But so far, all that's really happened is a circular firing squad between the TABC and the Fort Worth PD. The police have quit going on these raids with the TABC, and both point the finger at the other - when they're not busy pointing it at apparently lascivious gay people. Because, as we all know, gay people are so gay they have lost all common sense, and will indeed grope policemen as they enter a bar. At least, that's what this police report would like you to believe. But then you have eyewitness accounts told to the Dallas Voice - eyewitness reports that differ quite a bit from the police report. And just when all of this comes out - the police report was published today - the Voice publishes this scoop: TABC Administrator Alan Steen admits his officers breached policy, and the raid was botched. Steen minces no words, either: "If our guys would have followed the damn policy, we wouldn’t even have been there. … We have these conversations all the time, and we don’t participate in those kinds of inspections when there’s not probable cause or reasonable suspicion or some public safety matter to be inspected.” So what was the impetus for the raid? Two other bars were scheduled to be checked that night - one with numerous violations. According to Steen, the raid on the Rainbow Lounge was conducted after one person had been arrested for public intoxication three days earlier. The Rainbow Lounge - at the time of the raid - had only been open a little more than a week, hardly enough time to actually become a nuisance to anyone. If, by the TABC's own admission, there wasn't actual probable cause for the June 28th raid, was the impetus homophobia on the part of a group of TABC agents and the Fort Worth PD? While none of us can look into the hearts of those agents and officers, I think we can all say with a certain amount of certainty that the timing of the incident couldn't have been more insensitive, since it was also the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 1969.

Why Mark Davis Can't Read

OK. Maybe I don't know why he can't. I mean, I'm assuming he had the same standardized tests I did, the ones that - in addition to determining if you can do basic math - score your ability to find the meaning of a passage by looking at its context. And Lord help us, someone passed him, even with his rudimentary reading comprehension skills. Then they gave him a microphone, and a keyboard connected to computer, and someone decided to give him a stage in both two facets of media. To that someone or someones, my ball peen hammer would like to meet you. Today, Davis devoted an entire column to Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comments. He's against them, or whatever. He is pretty sure Sotomayor is going to show way too much empathy or something and then it'll be all vaya con caca rio with the whole Constitution. Because she's a wise Latina. To that, I say, hmpfh. I'll take a wise Latina any day over a buffoon Caucasian. But you see, Davis just took that one little line - just like virtually every other suddenly afflicted white rich guy of GOP descent out there has - and turned it into an entire movement. Suddenly, there's much hand wringing. "Surely this 'wise Latina' comment means she hates the whites, right? No? Well, can we say that's what it means?" I imagine the strategy sessions in Wingnut Village go. I have this incredibly nerdy hobby called research. When Sotomayor was nominated, I started reading everything reputably published about her that I could get my browser and/or hands on. When the New York Times published the complete transcript of the speech where "wise Latina" originated, I read it. Davis, apparently, did not. The speech was made for the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001. It was part of a symposium entitled, "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation." So wow, whodathunk it? She'd talk about being a Latina in the judicial system. So out of left field, that is. I'll pause while you wrap your head around that. If anything, this is a speech about opportunities in the judiciary for a certain minority. It's about the opportunities that existed then, and the ones she hoped would occur in the future. No doubt that day, she inspired many Latino and Latina students to pursue a similar career path. And that, of course, would bring diversity to the judiciary, something nearly everyone except - to ironically borrow a phrase from Bill O'Reilly - a few pinheads. But let's look at context. Yes, she did say:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

But she followed up with this:

I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

Hardly racist. So what did she mean by "wise Latina?" For that, we need to look at the culture. As Carolina Miranda pointed out in her excellent piece in Time, the wise Latina traditionally is a woman everyone turns to for advice. She is the vast and acknowledged storehouse of information and knowledge. She is wise. Isn't that what we want in a judge? Someone wise? Someone who is a vast repository of Constitutional knowledge? Someone who, weighing what she knows to be true points of law, can objectively advise? As Miranda pointed out in her piece, Sotomayor was trying to convey that "her breadth of experience navigating different worlds might lead her to have greater wisdom on certain topics than her white male counterparts. " And, as Miranda also pointed out, Samuel Alito said much the same thing:

"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender."

So Mark Davis, I know research is arduous and not as fun as say, speaking out of your posterior, but remember this: Do do the latter, you have to show everyone your butt.

Labels: Mark Davis, Sonia Sotomayor, Wise Latina

Someone Apparently...

wants Michael Davis fixed (courtesy the Dallas Morning News' new fixiedoohickeydeelybopper).

How Long, Exactly, Can You Shield a Child?

Today, Rod Dreher blogs that - as moving as little Paris Katherine Jackson's heartfelt speech about her father was - perhaps it would've been better to shield the child and her brothers from the spectacle that was Michael Jackson's memorial service. As usual, Rod fails to look at the context to get the main point. In this instance, perhaps, sure, if you just look at that one piece of the afternoon, you might feel that way. But you have to look at other parts. What I took away from that memorial service was that this little girl was aware of what people said about her father. She wanted to defend him. I saw her jump up - she was one of the first, in fact - to applaud Al Sharpton's comments about her father not being strange, for instance. By many accounts, Jackson tried to shield his children from much of the mockery made of him. But I remember being an 11-year-old girl. I knew when my parents were fighting over the phone. I knew when the child support check was late. My mother rarely told me, but you can intuit a lot. I think she knew how the world saw her father. Whether the realization came over the past few days, after his death, or much earlier as paparazzi trailed them when Michael Jackson took her and her brothers out and about, she knew that part of the world saw him as a beloved entertainer, and another part saw him as something freakish to be mocked. I saw no coercion from the family - if that was the case, you'd think Jackson's oldest child would have been asked to speak, or even all the children. Instead, I saw a bright, grief-stricken, articulate child who wanted to humanize her father. It was a gut reaction that reminded everyone watching that they may have lost an entertainer, but she lost her daddy. And she certainly deserved to tell us that.

Labels: Michael Jackson, Rod Dreher

Seriously?

So, Sunday is the only day we get the Dallas Morning News now. We used to get it every day, but then when they quit responding to our stop paper requests on vacations, we canceled the subscription. We got an offer for Sunday only, and decided to give it a whirl again. It's an easy whirl, given that the paper is so light and I only allow myself to read the first three graphs of any Rod Dreher or Steve Blow column. But imagine my - no, wait, a little background is an order here. Just a few short years ago, I was responsible for not only cleaning the newspaper bathroom, but also writing all major stories and designing the paper - laying it out, as it's called in newsroom vernacular. So reading the print version of TDMN is not just an exercise in frustration because of some of the writing (btw, Elizabeth Souder rocked that T. Boone Pickens story Sunday), but also because of the design. So imagine my dismay to page through the paper to find this gem - a black and white photo of fireworks. May I just ask how many layers of boneheadedness did that have to go through before it landed in my yard. I can see being an overworked copy editor and it not registering. But doesn't this page go through at least two more layers before it makes it to the press? At some point, shouldn't someone have said, "You know, this is a great photo, but a black and white picture of fireworks is really kinda stupid?" And then it also dawned on me - we can expect more of this. Through mismanagement - which led to decimating the newsroom and overworking people who were already overworked anyway - there is literally nobody there to say, "Guys, we can't put a freakin' black and white picture of fireworks in the paper." So while I thoroughly intended to mock Dallas' Only Daily for this, all I can really muster is a slow head shake, and going to find a black mourning band for my sleeve. Because really, while this may seem small to many, it's one of many symptoms that this patient is very, very ill. This photo is one of many death rattles over the past year, and management has given every indication they've signed a DNR. Let's sit shiva for the Dallas Morning News, and try to figure out how we're going to accurately tell the story of Dallas in years to come without it.

Labels: The Dallas Morning News

Things That Make Me Want to Hit Myself About the Head With Hammers

Fair warning, this'll probably be the first in a series. As a rule, I'm a fairly content individual, but there are a few things that actually do make me want to hit things, or hit myself with things. This week? It's been the commenters on the DMN. Specifically, the slackjawed mouthbreathers who turned this story about the Gay Rights march in Oaklawn into a discussion rife with homophobia, and completely filled with jawdroppingly awesome untruths. The conversation veered - and stayed - on gay marriage. More than one person insisted the law in Texas didn't ban it, and that there was a lot of fuss about nothing. A simple Google search could've cleared that astounding misconception up, but since the poster couldn't even spell discriminatory correctly, I'm assuming there were challenges that precluded such an experiment with the truth. But really, I do not get this debate about gay marriage. The government (and I'm veering dangerously into Trey Garrison territory here) has no business being in the marriage business. Marriage is a religious ceremony. Government (if I'm recalling my constitutional knowledge correctly and completely forgetting the past eight years) isn't supposed to be engaged in religion. The simple solution? The government gets out of the marriage business, and begins offering civil unions to everyone, for legal purposes. You get your civil union at a courthouse, and then it's up to you - and a church - to hash out any marriage ceremony you might want. The answer seems so simple that there's probably something I'm missing. If I'm not, why hasn't it happened?

Labels: blog comments, Dallas Morning News, gay marriage