Special and Ordinary

It takes 13-14 hours to drive from St. Louis to Austin. Excluding the first 6 when I discovered I'd downloaded the wrong software, I have spent a total of 20 hours listening to Donald Rumsfeld's Known and Unknown, narrated by him, truly.

I'm not even done yet. I'm on chapter 26 of chapter-god-knows-how-many. As of chapter 26, he's only just begun to describe W. Bush's presidency.

I will discuss this in full at a later date. The biggest benefit of “reading” this memoir is to compare Rummy's account with what I already knew from the media. I always “knew” the media distorted events to create a swallowable story that could be consumed in 2-3 minutes, but in my laziness, I push this aside as I take my daily headline stroll across various news sites.

Let me clarify: By “distort,” I do not mean “falsify.” I mean “leave out details that don't contribute to the main impression the writer is trying to convey.” I don't agree with Rumsfeld's perception of certain key events, but it is nice to be reminded that backstory and details are always kept out of national reports in order to create pretty news bites and entertaining caricatures.

As consumers of media, we have shown organizations like the AP, Yahoo! News, and CNN that we prefer summaries to explanations. Have you seen articles that are broken up into two pages? (That's not because they ran out of room.) How often do you click on page two? Web sites track clicking habits and modify their content to accommodate such. Given the presence of two-page articles, I would assume that most people DON'T click to the next page. Half of an article is enough for them (and if they're like me, they skimmed that half).

Blame what you want on Twitter and text messages and technology that warps our ability to think deeply. My concern is with people's understanding of their government, as presented by mainstream media on an hourly basis. News is a narrative. It's an event wrapped up in a story, crafted for easy consumption. Any time a news article references a character that has been written about before, it tries to reference that character's reputation. Take Sarah Palin. She has been quoted many times lamenting media objectivity. This is worth lamenting. Forget the caricature that has been created in lieu of Palin's humanity (whether she brought it on herself or not); forget her lack of grace during interviews; forget her poor thinking habits. The media is not objective. It references knowledge that was distorted from the beginning. The news is not interested in objectivity: It's interested in gaining viewership and mouse clicks.

The news isn't "liberal" or "conservative." It's a machine that shows violent car crashes because people like to look and quotes Jon Stewart because people like to laugh. It talks about Michelle Obama's dresses. It talks about celebrities' life events as though it's news.

But this is not a reason to feel helpless! (It's hard not to feel helpless.) It takes effort to be wholly informed, and it involves sifting through less-popular, less-sexy news sites like BuzzFlash (along with other news sites that don't wear its progressiveness on its sleeve). What I like about BuzzFlash are the links at the bottom to countless other news sites—go ahead, scroll all the way down. Always hold corporate-backed news sources at arm's length, ESPECIALLY when it comes to politics, and ORDINARILY with every topic.

I want to know what's going on in the world because what goes on does affect me...eventually.

Porch Garden

Do please step into the garden of my porch...







Pepper blooms:




Tomato blooms:

With your keen eye, you may have noticed the mint looking a little wimpy. As do the hot banana pepper plants. This is because they've outgrown their home! They will soon be re-potted. So far, this has been the only good outcome of all the rain.

It's nice to grow plants, but it feels sort of hands-off for me. I didn't grow them from seed; just put the little sprouts into plastic pots with my new garden gloves. Despite a few drinks from my new plastic watering can and the two instances I've taken the plants inside due to hail, Sun and Rain have taken care of the important things.

I have allowed them to do what they do: Grow.

Sounds very I know.

In truth, I'm going to mutilate them piece by piece, stealing their fruits just as they are ripe. These plants have no idea what kind of thievery that will fall down upon them! They are helpless -- they are rooted!

They are trapped...in...

Windows

towards the end of may

we noticed how dusty all the wood was.

with circadian rhythm on the stereo

we took out rags, dusting our way out the door

and forgot to come back inside.

Hailing in Austin

For Austinites, I know this downpour is welcome and appreciated. I was in a yoga class on Tuesday evening when there was thunder and lightning, and everyone in the room gasped and cried out. The teacher said, "There is nothing better than some rain and Radiohead."

Yes, "Karma Police" was on the teacher's iPod that second.

Yes, 100% of the students were white.

After the class was over, the woman who was next to me (who chatted me up before the class began) said, "We hardly have rain in Austin. That's why everyone was so happy when it thundered." I nodded and smiled.

I had just assumed that everyone cried out because their brains weren't quiet enough. This was probably due to teacher's iPod playing popular hits by bands like Radiohead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol. On Tuesday it was Fleetwood Mac.

The instructor said, "Relax, breathe, it's just Fleetwood Mac, relax." (Like she's giving us a Fleetwood Mac inoculation!) The first time I heard FM was in a Red Lobster in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I do not want to remember the taste of cheddar bay biscuits while in Chaturanga. How can your mind attain quiet when it's singing along with the hits of the late 70s?

To anticipate your next question, Why do you keep going back then, I will answer: To save money and hassle. This is a walk-in studio where I can pay for one class of my choosing without having to register or sign a contract. For this convenience, I make sacrifices. I am learning new poses, but my goal of "inner quiet" hasn't been met.

At the end of last night's class, which was rife with housebeats and distracting vocals, I overheard one attendant complimenting the instructor on his choice of music. That's when it hit me: These people aren't interested in yoga! They're interested in toning their glutes and thighs while appearing cool. If it was 1988, they'd be doing this instead:

Or maybe life is just that tranquil in Austin. They have too much tranquility, so a little popular noise is peachy. Maybe they all have jobs working with perfectly pleasant people and they have no motivation to zero in on some kind of mental quiet: They're already there.

Or maybe no one pays attention to the music. I can't not pay attention to it (it's my curse) but maybe Interpol and Radiohead have officially made the transition to musical wallpaper. Maybe, due to the large population of young professionals (and within that, a large population of liberal arts graduates) this music is part of their identity, so it is as commonplace as a tattoo sleeve. Part of the norm, to be acknowledged and then ignored.

"What kind of aesthetic did you notice in Austin?"

"There was a lot of Radioteque wallpaper, like spinning plates, but more like, everything was in its right place."

Or maybe everyone had the same thought I did: Turn off the fucking iPod and let us be. But I doubt it.

Grackles

A large group of Grackles is referred to as a “plague.”

I don’t disagree. As I sat at the café in the above photo, I was told they were brought in to control the mosquito population, but some quick research proves that statement to be inaccurate—they eat bugs that can harm plants, but they also eat plants. One web site recounts how some people tried to scare off a plague of Grackles that had possessed a tree: They set off fireworks under a metal trashcan directly under its branches, hoping the noise would make them fly away. The Grackles just moved to a different tree.

The plague convinced those in the local ivory tower—University of Texas in Austin—to resort to violence in a fashion becoming of Texans: they bought shotguns to scare them off. Didn’t work though.

The plague of Grackles is the only drawback of the city of Austin, and for a visitor, it’s more humorous than annoying. Sure, their nests can spread a nice respiratory disease and the uric acid from their droppings can corrode stone and metal, but…they have such unity!

I've spent some time trying to make lazy analogies from Grackles to colonialism, Grackles to religion, etc....but that is too easy, and it'd be doing a disservice to the birds. So I leave it at this: Austin, if the apocalypse ever arrives, at least you can eat the Grackles.

Commodity Correction

(That is the headline on CNBC at the moment, brought to you by a business reporter who has silver-gilded lettering on his business card)

I have learned two important lessons over the past few days:
1. GPS outshines online maps & directions
2. Hotels like to tout “going green” as code for “cutting corners.”

Considering you can see the detail of the stone on my front porch on Google Earth, I assumed “the powers that be” at Google could give me accurate directions from St. Louis to Austin, Texas. After all, Interstate 35 has been around since 1959. Significant traffic increases have to take place before an “Exit 242” is divided into “Exit 242A,” “Exit 242B,” “Exit 242C,” etc. This kind of growth takes time. I guess it’s naïve to think Google would be just as interested in keeping its maps as current as its street views. Instead, I ended up wasting paper (and at least 30 minutes) painstakingly writing down directions, taking care to specify if the highway is also known as US-107 or Frontage Road, Blvd or Business Route, and then taking the wrong exit. Could have saved paper if I had used the GPS from the beginning. Could have been more GREEN.

In the two budget inns I’ve stayed at so far, there are full-color glossy informational cards touting their greenness because they don’t change the sheets or towels every day unless you ask them to. I know this because I read over the card as I drank the coffee I’d recently released from its plastic sleeve, freshly poured into my paper cup, getting ready to eat my continental cereal in a Styrofoam bowl with plastic spoon.

What I didn’t save was coffee as it dribbled down the carafe because of its haphazard design (and my lack of grace):

But now that I have this petty bitching out of the way, I can focus my energy on the beauty of Austin…