Is Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison just having hot flashes or does someone need to adjust her Premarin? Yesterday, when asked by a Dallas radio interviewer when she would be "coming out," Hutchison said (and yes, this is a quote):

"I’m going to announce in August. Formal announcement I am in. Then the actual leaving of the Senate will be sometime – October/November – that-- in that time frame."

Hours later in Washington, Hutchison tried to Jazzercise out of her comments, further proving that the sky is, in fact, not blue in DC. "I was really trying to say to [Governor Rick Perry] he could step back here," Hutchison said, "and he's really trying to hang on too long and maybe he'll rethink," implying that she thinks Perry should just drop out of the race.

Really, Kay? That's like saying you think Lance Armstrong should retire. After everyone in the state of Texas had a nice, long, cynical laugh about that pipe dream, they started speculating as to what Hutchison really meant. Which is really hard, because even Hutchison doesn't know what Hutchison meant.

The Hutchison campaign is acting bipolar, when it acts at all. Earlier this week, they found themselves in another "Can you read that back to me again?" moment when, after assuring reporters that rumors of a staff shakeup were untrue, rumors of a staff shakeup turned out to be...true.

From the Statesman's Jason Embry's First Reading:

"What isn’t clear is why Klingler told Selby in early July that there was no shakeup in place, since Wiley told the campaign in early June that he could no longer serve as campaign manager."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Governor Perry isn't doing much better when it comes to consistency. After turning down $555 million in federal stimulus money that would have gone to Texas's unemployment system, he's now decided to borrow some money. Two billion dollars. From the federal government. To go to the unemployment system. How he plans on justifying this move with the wild-eyed savages that he calls a "base," I don't know. What exactly are they steeping in those tea bags?

And, candidates? Can I bring up something a little awkward? This is a fun little quote from 2004, in which Kay Bailey Hutchison is being interviewed on CNN about Democratic nominee for President, John Kerry:

It's unbelievable that someone could be so wishy-washy and flip-flop so many times, and then ask to lead our country with clarity and vision.

Et tu, Ms. Kay?

A few months ago, I decided that I wasn't really ready to be courted by snowbird Democrat Tom Schieffer. But after reading Burnt Orange Report's starry-eyed writeup on their meeting with him, I decided to Google the guy like a blind date.

Now, the first thing a girl is always after is a good picture of the potential suitor -- one that really sums up the qualities that you might find attractive that you can send to your friends and, giddy, ask "What do you think?"

Well, friends: What do you think?

An article in the New York Times about the dangers of cell phone use while driving says that when we talk on the phone in our car, we see an image of what we're talking about instead of the road ahead. A red light turns into a pair of cowboy boots we just got on sale that we're telling our friend about, or a car comes out of nowhere because you were envisioning your Caribbean cruise that you're talking about on the phone with your travel agent.

A better metaphor couldn't exist for the way I'm feeling about the world in general these days.

I don't exempt myself from this metaphor. I'm too ashamed and distracted to count how many times I've glanced up from my Blackberry, tearing myself away from something fleetingly important, and said "...What?"

Even I annoy the shit out of myself.

One part celebsession, one part gossipmania, one part over-teched, it all came to a twittering head for me when I found out, almost two hundred and twenty times in one 24-hour period, that the Beastie Boys had canceled their ACL appearance, our beloved Barton Springs would be might be in a few months is closing for repairs, and that Austin really would love to get some rain.

My head feels absolutely full of useless trivia relating to nothing and everything. There's so much more I'd like to know, but I hardly have the energy to look it up, let alone read more than 140 characters worth of anything. Deleting emails has become manual labor.

I look up from my Blackberry and I see the scenery fading into the background: red lights, health care hypocrisy, women veterans not getting enough qualified health care at VA hospitals, slaves in Haiti, war crimes in Burma, torture in Gitmo, misuse of TARP funds.

I never even hit the brakes anymore.

Ed. Note: For an added interactive bonus for having read to the end of this post, play the NYT driving while texting game. There are some interesting statistics at the end.

No, I'm not the Snow Queen. Snow Queen is a vodka from Kazakhstan I discovered this weekend. One word: Yum. It's so sweet and so good that I didn't want to put a lime in my usual vodka soda with lime.

Retails for about $25 for a small (750 mL) bottle and is forty percent alcohol by volume.

So you don't really need a whole lot.

Or maybe you do.

Plus with a name like Snow Queen, how could I not love it?


Also, it's Monday and it's time for another Texas Progressive Alliance blog roundup.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is sick of cronies running our cities our state and our country!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson on more GOP shenanigans - Republicans, hypocrisy, the stimulus, and more Carter "nuttiness".

Off the Kuff notes that as Texas' unemployment rate continues to rise, we are now in the position of having to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to fulfill our unemployment insurance obligations. Heckuva job, Governor Perry!

John Coby at Bay Area Houston has posted a A How to Guide for Illegal Immigrants to Vote in Texas Elections.

Xanthippas takes on more disability-as-diversity nonsense. Also, on a side note, our blog Three Wise Men's 5th anniversary is this coming Tuesday. We'll be putting up a special post in commemoration.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at how the NTTA will be raising rates because volume is down. So much for supply and demand theory.

This week, an old author returns to McBlogger with a true story about dogs. Completely unrelated to politics and nothing but funny.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted a video of him reciting the words the 1848 Shaker hymn Simple Gifts as a ship passes behind him on Galveston Island. Coming up this week at Texas Liberal will be a video shot at the San Jacinto battlefield.

Upon the arrival of Fashion Week in Austin, Mean Rachel wants to know "Does this city make my butt look hot?"

Citizen Sarah at Texas Vox expresses disappointment, to say the least, that the Public Utility Commission denied Sylvester Turner's petition to protect our most vulnerable from dangerous summer heat.

Teddy at the fourth estate, will be able to survive the economic recession and into the new digital age. Left of College Station also reviews the week in headlines.

The Texas Tribune, a new media project headed up by soon-to-be-former Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith, is an idea that shows lots of promise. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has more details about it.

Just as during the campaign, malicious emails are being sent, especially to the elderly. One paticularly nasty one is entitled: SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS. Over at TexasKaos, lightseeker takes on piece of electronic hit mail and offers some ideas on fighting back in his diary, Healthcare Scare Mail and what You Can Do To Help.

Stumbled across this write up from LA Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa about their Summer Night Lights (or its pop culture connotation, SNL) program, aimed at keeping gang violence and crime down during the summer months when it's commonly on the rise.

The concept is so simple, one of those "Why didn't they think of that sooner?" kinds of things: keep the lights on longer - literally - at the city's gang reduction zones and parks, extending the hours and having "recreational, educational and artistic activities" planned. At-risk youth were also hired to help create the programs -- money going toward people who are willing to work, for a good cause. Last summer, the program's first year, the city saw a 17% drop in violent gang related crime and 86% reduction in gang related homicides. It was the safest summer in more than three decades.

How's that for results?

This year, the program was doubled from 8 to 16 parks, and the city's mayor has pledged to get it running in 50 parks by the end of his second term.

A key sentence from the Villaraigosa's write up on the program's success:

The goal was not to try and change the identity of local gang members, but rather to change their behavior during the summer and encourage them to participate in the positive activities at the parks.

It's refreshing to see people at a city level starting to acknowledge what most pacifists have been saying all along: you cannot fight violence with violence. Patrolling around in cop cars looking for crime is a defensive, reactive way of doing business with gangs. The same could be said for our current war on terrorism. Torturing, humiliating and holding captive our suspected "terrorists" merely creates more terrorists. It doesn't address any sort of problem, except for perhaps gaining intelligence.

Intelligence, it seems, that we wouldn't need if everyone in Afghansitan and Iraq had reliable water, electricity and commerce. What if we kept the lights on a little longer, rather than blacking out to keep curfews, making everyone miserable? What if the same proactive, forward thinking was applied to our military strategy? Sure, I probably wouldn't be picnicking in Kabul anytime soon, but pouring billions of dollars into useful sources of education, recreation and artistic pursuits might just have changed things for some people.

But, on second thought, who am I kidding. The best way to keep violence down is to dump bombs on people and oppress them. That always seems to work. They should start giving it a shot in Los Angeles.

I realized a few days ago that in the whirlwind that has been the last six months or so, I never wrote about my trip to Las Vegas back in February. And since I really did want to write about it, here goes nothing:


Longtime readers will know two things -- that in November 2006 I became obsessed with a piano bar called the Ivory Cat and that this led to my learning how to play the piano over the last two years. I used to go to "the IC" all the time with a great group of friends. Over that time, we started to compare Billy Joel, whose piano-based songs were simultaneously joyous and nostalgic, to a strange ebony and ivory deity. I discussed this quite often with "C-voss," my Colorado-born friend who had grown up playing the piano and was often my partner in crime at the IC. Whenever we were in a bind, we'd reference "Well, Billy Joel will guide us," or "I'm sure Billy Joel has a plan for you." And sometimes when I start playing the first few notes of "And So It Goes," my favorite song of his that I struggled to learn for nearly a year, I think he does.

By the end of last year, Cvoss had since moved back to Denver -- which came in handy when the DNC rolled around, as it would not have been possible for me to go had she not let me stay with her and carted me around for four days. She would have done it anyway, but I was glad to repay her when I snuck her a coveted Invesco pass for the big speech.

In December of last year, Cvoss called me and announced that no matter what happened in 2009, I would have a date for Valentine's Day. I think it went something like this:

Me: Alright, where are we going on our date?
Cvoss: Las Vegas.
Me: Haha! Okay!
Cvoss: To see Billy Joel --
Me: WHAT?!
Cvoss: --Who is playing, one night only, at the MGM Grand!
Me: Let's get tickets!
Cvoss: I just clicked "buy!"

The funny thing about this conversation is that we'd had it, in reverse, only six months earlier, when I found out on a Thursday that Billy Joel would be playing at the New Orleans Jazz Fest that Saturday. That trip resulted in Cvoss and I getting a ride from a guy named Michael Jackson, not the dead one, and us getting drenched in Katrina Part II.

Some people might have been deterred by this type of NOLA experience. But we found it to be incredible and were happy for more. And we figured that no matter what, this time we'd be indoors.

So flash forward to Friday, February 13th of this year. I booked a connecting flight in Denver, where I met up with Cvoss at the airport and we got delayed for two hours. There might have been drinking involved.


Upon arrival in Vegas, we made our way, sleepily, to the MGM Grand where we'd decided to stay in hopes of running into Billy Joel. Saturday, Valentine's Day, was the day of the concert. We reserved our energy for the evening: saw a little bit of Vegas, had a nice early dinner, and then went about getting dressed up. Yes, we knew our seats were probably in the very back of the auditorium, but we didn't care. We put on our finest silk dresses and heels. Trotting excitedly to the "Garden Arena," we barely noticed the casino fracas around us.

We were on a mission.

After we excitedly got through the entry gates, Cvoss and I perused some merch and then started walking to our seats. Then we had second thoughts and decided to go back and buy the t-shirts we both wanted. They are t-shirts with a big heart that is made to look like a piano and say "Billy Joel" on the edge. We both bought one. Then, carrying our bags of merch and walking around in our jewels, we stopped at the concession stand to get some water.

As the concession vendor handed me a bottle of Dasanai, he took the cap off and said "You're not allowed to have a cap for it."

"Huh?" I asked, indignant.
"Yeah, they don't allow caps on bottles here. It's the artist's request."
"The artist's request?" I scoffed. "Well," and I looked at Cvoss, "I'll just have to talk to the artist about that."

Cvoss and I took my capless water bottle, our two bags with t-shirts in them, and our dignity and started trying to find our seats in earnest. As we climbed up the stairs, higher and higher, we eagerly looked for where our numbered seats would be. Then, suddenly, from the darkness behind us:

"You're not sitting here."

I almost didn't hear him. Cvoss turned around, always ready for a fight. "What?"

"You're not sitting here." It was an unassuming guy wearing a windbreaker golf shirt and jean shorts. He didn't look like any of the ushers at the MGM that we had been walking past.

"What do you mean?"

He suddenly was handing Cvoss two tickets and I was hearing him say "You're sitting down there. Go to that usher and he'll tell you where to go."

Before we could ask questions, he turned to walk back down a set of stairs. "What? What?" Cvoss and I were both after him. "What is this?!"

He turned around once more and said: "Courtesy of the artist."

Then he was gone.

The artist. We made our way down to the usher at the next tier of seats. He looked at our tickets and looked at us and said "Keep going." We walked down some more. That usher looked at the tickets and said "Oh yes, let me show you."

He (or she?) walked us all the way down to the next level and walked along a railing with us. They pointed at the next person at the bottom of the stairs, standing at the floor level in the back. "Go down there."

My ankles were weak, I remember that, and I kept saying "Cvoss. Cvoss. Cvoss." I was trying not to spill water all over myself with my capless bottle, and not fall down in my four inch heels, as we clamored down the bleacher-like stairs. We got to the next usher and he said "Alright - see that guy way up there standing by the stage? Go up to him and show him these."

"Cvoss. Cvoss. Cvoss."
"Mean Rachel." Cvoss calls me Mean Rachel. Old habits die hard.

We hot-footed it up to the front and showed the usher. He smiled really big and said "Someone must love you. Let me show you where your seats are."

He walked us out to the second row of folding chairs in front of the stage, dead center -#9 and #10. "There you go. Enjoy the show."

Cvoss and I stared at our seats like we'd just been led over a rainbow to a pot of gold. "Are you guys okay?"

I think at that point we burst into tears and hugged each other. This photo was soon taken.

We sat there for what seemed like forever and never, calling everyone we knew and texting everyone we didn't know well enough to call.
And then - there he was.

For the record, he opened with "Angry Young Man."
Then, almost unbelieveably, he turned to the audience. The video below is him talking about "those of you who think you got these great seats." You will hear me in the background saying "We'll die happy!"

After the seventh or so song, we were magically allowed to go up to the stage. Much closer now, Billy was rocking the mic and singing Innocent Man. He came by and shook the audience's hands, including both of mine. This is the picture that resulted.
It was by far the most unbelievable time. To top it all off, I managed to swindle the set list from the piano that was on stage. I now have it framed above my own piano, in a shadowbox with my original ticket and the ticket we were given for free. We reflected later that we never expected retribution for our New Orleans fiasco, because we'd had such a great time there, too. But I guess sometimes you can't really tell how good you've got it until you see where you once were.

Thank you Billy Joel!

Editors note: This post is really best if you have this playing in the background as you read it.



Karl Rove, Monopoly-man-gone-evil, was seen leaving the building Sen. (don't write blogs while drinking) Lt Gov. David Dewhurst lives in today near Austin's Capitol building. He drove a black Range Rover with the new Texas license plates, which is almost as hideous as Karl Rove's soul.

Most curious: he took with him a lot of boxes.


I'll leave you to speculate for yourselves as to what was in those boxes.

As for me, I'm guessing it was the result of a bad breakup with the Dew.

...Don't answer that. But, really: Austin now has a Fashion Week. Break out your rompers and gladiator sandals, ladies! Oh, wait, you wear those all day, every day, everywhere. For a city that's only used to seeing tents when they're set up for farmer's markets and music fests, not runways and sample sales, this ought to be interesting. What's next, Fleet Week?

Personally, I don't think Austin needs to adopt any more fashion trends. Those emo guys who stroll around SoCo wearing chucks and skinny jeans, whose only give is in the butthighs (yes, it's a word), just gross me out. Between the heat and their hair grease, they look like they're about to spontaneously combust. And for women - layers?

Tell me please, how can you have fashion week in a city that never has use for this season's favorite accessory, the summer scarf? I envy those East and West Coasters and their gauzy weather that makes draping another layer over themselves an actual possibility this time of year. I'm too busy making sure every article of clothing I'm wearing covers just enough to keep me from getting charged with prostitution, while still allowing a humid breeze to work its way through for an occasional thrill.

I dunno. The thought of a bunch of people melting outside the Long Center on Sunday's Austin Fashion Awards just doesn't appeal to me. It seems like way too much effort to get dressed up. Hell, it's so hot it's too much effort to even think about getting dressed up.

So, Austin fashionistas, enjoy your fashion week and your fabric fetish. When JCrew starts manufacturing the summer bra, I'll be the first in line.

Today remembers a day when Americans declared their independence in order to form, eventually, a more perfect union -- because they believed that independence grants us all certain unalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

When it comes down to it, that's all anyone ever really needs.

May you find your yours.

As for me, I'll be going to Marathon for the second time - the first being when this picture was taken, back in January.

Great, great post. Something that 140 characters just couldn't have said. Maybe you can still write, after all.

This was the start of my response which initially started as a comment to my friend in Boston, rooroo, on her post titled "on writing." Go read it. Then, if you care to, read the rest of what became my comment.

I've often felt exactly the way she feels. As an elementary schooler, I wrote masses and masses of creative fiction -- horse stories, mainly, but I occasionally dabbled in ten-page intros to random fictional stories about weathermen, gymnasts and all sorts of things I was way under qualified (at age nine) to be writing about. At eleven, I wrote something that is still my favorite fiction I've ever written, centering around a Nassau Beach (nevermind the fact that I've never been there) seagull named Fredwick (I didn't know it was spelled Frederick).

I wrote, left-handed, sitting on my twin bed blanketed with sheets of notebook paper, using whatever pen I could find on my bedside table. My mom used to refer to me as her "ink stained wretch," the sole of my left hand always smeared with evidence of my afternoon hobby. I cataloged my writing in baskets and boxes, the curly fringe from my notebooks littering my bedroom floor. I loved to write and it was never difficult to do so. Physically, mentally and creatively, I was at my writing peak with Full House, Black Beauty and Trumpet of the Swans as my muse.

The change happened when I was tasked with writing an analysis of an excerpt from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. It was required for entry into my new middle school's honors "Language Arts" class. I remember staring at the question and thinking "This isn't asking me to write anything." Where was the standardized test question on how to cook a spaghetti dinner on the moon? Where was the prompt of a dragon holding a toaster that I had been weaned on in elementary school? Analysis, I decided then, isn't writing. As I read the speech, I imagined the look of the crowd, maybe a boy on his father's shoulders, and a story that could be told from his eyes about the movement. Or a basset hound who heard the speech and went on to befriend an orange tabby cat. Wild thoughts crashed together in my mind -- later I would call it my "imagination." But I pushed those tangents aside and struggled through my first analysis.

I remember getting my schedule for middle school classes on Back to School Day. There it was: Language Arts - R. We wondered what the "R" meant -- my sister pointed out that hers had an "H" next to it, clearly Honors. My mom marched my schedule over to a counselor, who explained that "R" meant "Regular." At that point, it might have well said "Remedial." I was embarrassed and ashamed -- me, the family writer, the ink stained wretch, hadn't made the grade. My analysis wasn't up to par.

I don't remember writing much of anything in middle school, creative or otherwise. But boy did I write in high school. AP essay after AP essay, I became an analysis machine. My handwriting looked like Arial Narrow 11-point font and I used roller-ball pens to keep my hands clean. I wrote on college-ruled paper because I liked how it made me write smaller, and I knew how many words I could fit on one side of the page. I still have everything I ever wrote in high school, all filed according to semester and teacher. One particular coup, when I was taking junior and senior English concurrently, was a piece entitled "Their Eyes Were Watching Gatsby," tying themes from The Great Gatsby, which I was analyzing for my junior class, to Their Eyes Were Watching God, my senior assignment.

Those pieces are some of the best analysis I'll ever write. They're probably also the most useless.

With the exception of this blog, whose only purpose is as my own one-woman reality show, I never write for fun anymore. I don't even think I have paper in my desk at home. The last time I tried to write, my hand got tired after the third sentence. Where was my keyboard? I couldn't remember how to spell "suppose" and there was no red squiggly line to help me out. But, most troubling, I couldn't think of a single story to tell. I could come up with an engaging introductory sentence, some ironic themes, and even a few metaphors. What then? Where did my imagination go?

We lose our hobbies, I think, when we get too good at them. Too trained and groomed and prodded, they become caricatures of what they were, Jon Benet-style faces that are scarily perfect. I used to have twenty six t-shirts with horses on them and seventy two plastic horses. Then, one day, I was able to name you every bone in the lower half of a horse's leg, point out the exact angle in the hoof that causes a horse to founder, and explain how they die because evolution never taught them to vomit. Wispy manes and velvet muzzles gave way to back injuries and frustrations. Somewhere went both writing and horses, and so I went: a horse-crazy, ink-stained wretch turned occasional blogger, a stiff spine and a critical eye, always looking for a limp or a lump.