Hail, hail. 

Stormy weather

A strong storm blew through Austin a couple nights ago, complete with hail and tornadoes to the east, although thankfully, we only saw the hail here at the apartment. That was bad enough, as it shattered the window over our kitchen sink and came on with such a roar we were afraid our cars were being dented. It subsided in about half an hour to a little sprinkling of rain, and that was it. Today, it's cold but beautiful.

I was living in Bedford when the tornado tore through downtown Fort Worth a few years ago and almost brought down a skyscraper or two. It's pretty rare that tornadoes hit downtowns, but it does happen occasionally. With the continuing deterioration of the atmosphere and global warming, violent storms will likely become more common and more deadly in the next century. Scientists say it's only a matter of time before a hurricane hits New Orleans, which lies below sea level, and that may well be the end of that city.

Needless to say, the Bush administration has at various times chosen to a) pretend the problem doesn't exist, b) do nothing to try to mitigate the problem, and c) try to prevent others from taking steps to mitigate the problem.

Choosing endings

Everybody's talking about Terri Schiavo. I don't feel qualified to argue about whether or not her husband should be allowed to remove her feeding tube. Like so many issues, science is changing what we know about the subject on a fairly regular basis, and in the meantime we're left to make decisions with the information we have. She may have some brain function, she may not. If she does, we don't know the nature of it.

The most thought-provoking idea I've heard this week on the subject is that living wills can be justifiably ignored, due to the fact that a person in a vegetative or unresponsive state may think differently (if capable of thought) after an accident than he or she did when the will was signed. This isn't exactly germane in this case, since there was no living will. But to what extent do our past decisions govern our future? How much should we allow them to?

If I decided today to sign a living will and ten years down the road I was injured and subject to its terms, what if I changed my mind and couldn't let anyone know? My past decision would have an influence (not the only one) on my future. In the same way, when a singer signs a recording contract or people get married, they are making binding decisions that will affect their future lives. The difference is in the ability to break those contracts. When a marriage ends, there is pain but also opportunity to recover.

In Terri Schiavo's case, we'll never know what she wants, if she still has the capacity to want anything at all. If she had, as Tom DeLay put it, "specifically written instructions in her hand, with her signature", we still wouldn't know what she wants now that she's faced with her current existence. All we can do is put our trust in others to do what they think is right, and show them enough of ourselves for them to make that judgment for us. Just another reason to choose carefully who you share this existence with.

Catching my breath

Whew. What an exhilarating ride. South by Southwest is quite an event. I did some filming, saw some music, hung out with Maggie Walters and a friend named Mark at the Crowne Plaza's top-floor bar, taped Roky Erickson, Caroline Wonderland, Michelle Shocked and others at Threadgills, and generally just had a blast. I even managed to get Maggie's preliminary dvd done. Plus, I got through my first week of work at the new job unscathed. I'm ready for some quiet time. A little bit, anyway.

Keeping busy

Still here, and still very busy. I attended a panel on venture capitalists and angel investors at the South by Southwest Interactive show. I was hoping they'd be giving out bags of free goodies at the tradeshow, but alas, there was none. They did have some pretty fancy video game terminals though, and they were conducting two-camera interviews inside a plastic box, with speakers so people outside could hear what was being said. I didn't recognize the woman being interviewed.

I'm trying to knock out Maggie Walters Local Live appearance so I can hand her a copy at her show tomorrow night, but I don't know if I'll make it. Every time I hear her name on the radio I smile. As my roommate Phil often says, "You're going to be famous."

Ducks are just wrong. 

Content filters are the new networks

Slate's got a new article rounding up what blogs are talking about every day. That's one thing I expect to see more of shortly. With the explosion of material from nearly every quarter showing up in the blogosphere, there's definitely a need for filters of one kind or another. Blogrings based on location are another example.

It reminds me of stuff I read about independent film in the last five years. Now that the price of entry is so low for decent digital video equipment, the number of people making their own low- or no-budget movies and shorts means it's that much more difficult to find the good stuff. Sites like Triggerstreet.com and Heavy.com jumped in to take that role.

Anyway, one of the things Slate linked to as a common topic yesterday is homosexual duck necrophilia. First, yuck. But I just had to put up the above picture. I don't know if it adds anything to the conversation, but there it is. Discuss.

Opportunity

So I'm taking a new job soon. It looks pretty cool, doing some of the same stuff I did in Dallas, so I'm reasonably certain I'll be good at it. It's informal dress, a friendly staff, and I'm told no micro-managing. We get a free massage every other week. The jobs that are hardest to get are the easiest ones to take.

Work is such a major part of most Americans' lives. It's one of the reasons we've been so successful economically for so long, but I can't help but think we would be capable of living lives just as full and just as well off with a 35-hour work week, or even a 30-hour work week. It would probably mean a net increase in standard of living across the board, and maybe people wouldn't have so many heart attacks.

What would we do with all that extra time?, I hear some ask. Friends, family, learning, blogging, working a second job, the list is endless. Whatever we want (although more TV would not be on my list). That's what I wish for: the choice.

Phil approaches the tacoritos with caution. 

Workin' hard, hardly workin'

I've been mad busy the last few days preparing for and shooting the Staple! event here in town. Comics creators from all over the country showed up for signings, two panel discussions, and individual interviews during the event. Radio Mike was helping out, along with my roommate Phil, who got several compliments for his excellent running of the soundboard. Watch the Staple! website for clips in the next few weeks.

Some of the guests included Shannon Wheeler, Rafael Navarro (who seemed like the happiest, most affable guy I've ever met), and Scott Kurtz, who along with Lea Hernandez really had them rolling during the web comics panel. When it's this much fun, it hardly seems like work.

I was so worn out after we finally unloaded most of the equipment and got home that I abandoned plans to attend the afterparty, and since we had each only had a turkey sandwich in the past 11 hours, we made a favorite Mexican dish called tacoritos and chowed down, then went to bed early. You've got to be careful how much of that Mexican food you eat in one sitting, though, because it will wake you up. Oof.

Road Rules

I was getting on I-35 yesterday just north of Ben White. There's a stop light right before the on-ramp with a left-turn-only lane, and two lanes that go straight. There's some construction you have to get through to reach that point, but it's clear from some ways off that the left turn lane does not give you the option to go straight.

A white pickup truck came up past me in the left lane, while I was waiting in the correct lane to go through the intersection and then get on I-35. You can literally see when the guy realizes he needs to get over because he's not turning left - he suddenly slows down a hundred yards before the light. This is a common sight, and in fact I did it once myself at this very light. Nobody's perfect, and he could expect to be let in if he put his right turn signal on and waited. But no.

This guy speeds up again, puts his signal on, and continues to drive all the way up to the light. This struck me as total asshole behavior. He expected to be let in at the front of the line, and as anybody who's been through elementary school knows, cutting in at the front of the line is worse than cutting into the middle. Those people at the front have probably been waiting at this particular light longer than the ones in the middle, since not everybody gets through in one light change, and they could be forgiven for having less tolerance for cutters. I can imagine a road rage incident coming out of this kind of thing, when the white pickup then guns it once the light turns green to get ahead of the lane to his right.

Traffic in general feels more dangerous here in Texas than anywhere else I've lived, partly due to the poor road design, but jeez. Show some common courtesy. People do appreciate it, and it doesn't cost you anything.

Notes from the Road - Reflections

So ends the final chapter of my travel journal. Looking back on it a year later, I wouldn't have done it any differently. I got a lot of great material out of it, I had a great time, I got to see many places I'd never seen, and visit with many people I rarely see. It was worth every penny. I highly recommend everyone do something like this if they possibly can. Get out there and see more of the world we live in! We only have so much time to do it.

Notes from the Road - Day 31

2/29/04 10:30pm Bedford, TX

As I write this, the Academy Awards are on TV, another event watched by millions of people that echoes the Super Bowl, which just about kicked off my journey. The time between them is bridged in my mind by one of the most memorable experiences I expect to have in my life.

This morning I managed to be on time for breakfast at 8:00am, and it was a delicious, traditional New Mexico breakfast of spicy sausage, eggs, and salsa, with coffee and orange juice. Scott, Steve, and Linda joined Ruth and Carl in sending me off on my last day on the road. This particular road is one I’ve taken before, and one I’m sure I’ll see again soon. (Author’s note: Three weeks later, my parents and I drove it to attend Steve and Linda’s wedding.)

I started off heading east on highway 60, but when I got to highway 41 I decided to use it to reach I-40 faster. The speed limits on those two-lane roads are actually comparable to the interstate, but I still feel like I make better time on the interstate. We’d seen a little snow in Mountainair overnight, and it looked like the rest of eastern New Mexico had as well. Most of the way to Texas, there was a thin layer of white on the ground broken frequently by juniper and saltbush. The wind was blowing steady and strong, and followed me all the way home. In New Mexico, this meant currents of snow blew across the highway, sometimes in a thin stream, sometimes for the length of a football field, but never more than a dusting that was quickly whirled and dissipated by the speeding tires of the hundreds of semis going both directions. I saw one jack-knifed in the median.

Shortly after crossing the border into Texas, the temperature started to rise, the snow disappeared, and it became a beautiful day. The sun was shining and the clouds hung randomly in the sky like pieces of white cotton candy pinned to a blue background. I went through Amarillo again, the only city I saw twice, but didn’t even slow down. It seemed like a more developed place than it had the first time, but I guess I just didn’t notice. I’ll have to see Palo Duro Canyon another time, but at least it’s not far away. (Author’s note: My parents and I stopped and saw it on our way back from the wedding three weeks later. It was quite impressive. We saw a flock of wild turkeys and some deer on the canyon floor.)

The car’s outdoor thermometer was reading in the lower 60’s, but even with the wind it was warm enough to crack my window for some fresh air. At least twice today, that meant smelling a dead skunk not far away. I crossed one almost completely dry creek bed, harboring only a few inches of muddy red water that looked for all the world like the blood of the earth oozing out of a shallow gash. Instead of snow, I started to see motes of dust blowing over the road, only higher and harder, with more depth and obscurity. I thought once I was about to encounter a dust storm, but I passed through it in just a few seconds.

Eventually, just like yesterday, the clouds rolled in to hide the sunset at my back. It’s a straight shot down highway 287 from Amarillo to Fort Worth with nothing but fields of pale grasses on both sides as far as the eye can see, punctuated by the occasional small town or group of cows grazing together, white, black, and brown. I stopped in Chillicothe to look for the historical marker indicated by the familiar brown sign on the side of the road, but couldn’t find any sign of it. The town itself looks like a wreck from the highway, all abandoned buildings leaning at odd angles, windowless, with the wood turning a dull grey, but once you turn down one of the side roads there are some nice houses, a modern school, and a baseball field.

I pulled into the apartment complex about 7:40pm local time, making it about a 9½ hour drive, one of my longer days without a break to examine the surroundings anywhere, but it’s time to wrap this one up, label the pictures and file it away in memory for many happy returns. I hope I’ve learned a few things along the way, but one thing I suspected from previous travels overseas proved just as true here in the continental U.S.: people everywhere are more alike than they are different. They are almost uniformly honest, decent, and generous, even travelers in a strange place, far from friends and family. They have respect for the people they’re sharing their home territory with and each other, but they’re not afraid to take a risk when the circumstances make the rewards worth it. I didn’t witness a single act of violence in the past month, whether I was staying in a posh casino or a seedy red light district, but I did witness and receive many acts of kindness. I attribute this to the inherent morality exhibited by all but a few, regardless of race, color, or creed. It’s easy to make new friends anywhere if you’re not afraid. I’m going to endeavor to do this at every opportunity in the future, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. The world is a big place, and sometimes we need all the help we can get. If we move forward together, we have a greater chance of making our dreams come true.

P.S. In case you’re interested, here are a few numbers:

Total miles driven: 7,061

Total rolls of film: 20

Total pictures that came out: 500

Total money spent: $3,111.32