Big weekend in **Adrift

This is our big-deal weekend here – Shrimpfest Friday & Saturday, followed by the Water Safari boats coming in late Sunday. Shrimpfest seemed a little repressed and smaller, maybe because a lot of the usual food vendors may have gone down the coast to bigger and more lucrative pickings in Rockport. It was still fun. The beauty above was the winner of the Miss Bayrat contest, usually good for a grin or two. My wife caught the shot before the contest. There was only one other contestant, but there is no doubt that this lovely could have swept a much larger field, given such attention to dress and makeup. Shrimpfest is always fun. A piratical pair from Houston joined us, the principal pirate being a qualified local. He found many, many old acquaintances to chat with. The first mate of the pirate crew held up with her usual dignified restraint. Music played until late, and I had a couple of you-kids-get-off-my-lawn moments with all the traffic and people parking on our street.

PoMo goo

If you occasionally have the misfortune to read anything current of academic writing in the squishier fields, you will – or at least I will – shake your head at the ornate, obfuscatory density of it all. Try this:

1. Smith and Lyotardist narrative In the works of Smith, a predominant concept is the concept of postconceptual culture. But Foucault’s model of capitalist nationalism suggests that language may be used to marginalize the proletariat, but only if the premise of postdeconstructivist dematerialism is invalid; if that is not the case, narrativity has significance. The main theme of the works of Smith is the role of the participant as poet. Sontag uses the term ‘neocultural discourse’ to denote a self-supporting totality. Thus, the subject is contextualised into a postdeconstructivist dematerialism that includes art as a paradox. An abundance of narratives concerning Lyotardist narrative may be found. But Lyotard promotes the use of predialectic textual theory to challenge hierarchy.

But, wait … the whole thing is a shuck. Thing is, it reads like stuff that is published and taken seriously. The excerpt is taken from an entry in a site you'll find here, The Postmodernism Generator. Go there and snicker at the PoMos. A note at the bottom pages refers to a fine joke, a bogus article by a physics professor – that's a real field – that was accepted by a cultural-criticism journal. Those people are so annoying and grotesque.

And peace comes dropping slow ...

Well, Rancho San Fulano de Buffalo isn't exactly the Lake Isle of Innisfree, but it is generally peaceful in a chaotic and busy way. I've been here for a week and a half and mostly have accomplished the needful, to the point that I now get a few hours every day to sit very still in a lawn chair [loaned by a friend; i forgot to bring my own] and read while I listen to the robins and bobwhite quail and meadowlarks and even, blessedly, a couple of mockers who hang around the manor house [a FEMA trailer] to keep in touch with a homeboy. The meadowlark is the state bird of Kansas and a fine choice it was. As a new guy in a hamlet of fewer than 300 souls, I am the object of considerable curiosity to locals. They drive by slowly, eyeballing me, or stop and debrief me if they have some plausible pretext. Then they tell me their life stories. I don't think I so much represent a possible sympathetic ear as a fresh ear. Their stories are often sad; this part of the world is very poor and scuffles are the ordinary mode of employment -- cutting firewood [how many fireplaces can there be?], scrapping, doing pick-up jobs. Disability is the second-place employer. People look sound, but I guess inside they are unable to work. Another reaction is a fierce dedication to work, a frightening sense of industry. Sooner or later, you will hear the get-'er-done catchword. I mostly like the people, but they are of a different tribe from my own, maybe a bit less into kidding as a choice for communication.

Faraway places with strange-sounding names

We are in Okieabad, where we observed the spring rites followed by our people on the first Saturday in May. Despite close attention to the sacred writings - The Daily Racing Form - I failed completely to understand the signs and portents, especially the one that indicated I'll Have Another was due to win the Derby. Herself, in a nice lick of scriptural interpretation, hit a $66 ticket and was obliged to buy dinner. Them's the rules at our house. And that is where fortune smiled on us. She found some restaurant-review site that included a complaint about having to drive the 25 miles to Okarche to get fried chicken and what the food was like there. So, we nailed down the location of the place, Eischen's, a huge country-town beer joint and a valuable cultural experience. You want fried chicken, you order a fried chicken, thirteen bucks. No other choice, unless you want two chickens. No coffee, no tea ... beer, soda pop, and water. Principal side, okra, a massive tub for $6. There's some other stuff, a couple of sandwiches, Frito pie, like that, but that's mostly peripheral. The chicken comes with a little basket of light bread, pickles sweet and dill, and slices of onion. They bring you six or eight big sheets of paper, and that's the dishes. It's the kind of chicken that reminds you why fried chicken was our great celebratory meal when we were kids. It's a long way from KFC. So, if you ever find yourself in OKC, drive out to Okarche and eat fried chicken and salve the pains of life. Who cares if Daddy Nose Best finished up the track? Some things are more important. Tomorrow, herself will take the Amtrak back to Austin [a deal for 40 bucks], and I will press on to El Rancho San Fulano for a time of contemplation and reading. No, wait, further noddling around reveals that Guy Fieri, who does a food show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, has visited Easchen's. The publicity appears to have done no damage to the integrity of the food.

Breakfast of champions

Dewberry cobbler … what do the pore folks have for breakfast?

Back again

I've been busy for the last week on a little gig, pick up some cigar money. I come back to the world and find nothing but more horrors. For instance, a sorry bill that just slid through. Excerpt:

Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for "cybersecurity" or "national security" purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA. Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government's power.

Go and read the whole thing here and gag. The 4th Amendment to the Constitution has been effectively negated by the bogus War on Terror. And a story on the TSA vermin:

The grandmother of a 4-year-old girl who became hysterical during a security screening at a Kansas airport said Wednesday that the child was forced to undergo a pat-down after hugging her, with security agents yelling and calling the crying girl an uncooperative suspect.

Read all of that one here. Some happy day, those who have worked for the TSA will be spat upon in the streets. They are as slimy a lot as we've had in this country for a long time. Makes you hate to fly. The world's unhappiest sight is a moron with a badge and a clipboard. And, as long as I'm on this tear:

The perfect googoo headline

I get a couple of lefty newsfeeds. They often have stuff on certain financial happenings that are less likely to show up in the big press. I read them wearing the same skeptical spectacles I wear for everything I read, right or left [or, in an old adage of the trade, 'If your mother says she loves you, check it out']. A headline on one story today tickled me unreasonably:
Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming People Among First, Most Affected by War on Terror's Biometrics Craze
Now that's the occasion for alarm in Austin and sheer panic in San Francisco. There's a joke about a make-believe NY Times headline:
World to end Wednesday, women, minorities to suffer most
NB: That's a joke, but it rings true to the Times' grotesquely slanted reporting.
In the middle of all the Titanic centennial hooha, I recall a joke at the Vicad [or maybe it was a real Advocate headline]:
Titanic sinks; no Victorians hurt
Was amused by the big front-page story in the Vicad this morning, a hard-hitting, scrappy, courageous exposé on a honkytonk's dress code. I mean really, people. It'll probably win an award.