Austin shelter animals need your help this Saturday!!!

Posted on May 11, 2012 by wellsdc

Tomorrow, Austin Animal Center is hosting its first annual Pet Extravaganza at the new shelter site in east Austin:

Austin Animal Center will host a first annual Pet Extravaganza event from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 12, 2012. The Center is located in Central East Austin at 7201 Levander Loop at Highway 183 and Airport Boulevard.

The event will be a fun filled day for pet owners and their families and will include a wide range of local vendors providing information on dog training, agility demonstrations, various pet resources, children’s entertainment including Josesito the Clown and his balloon animals, music, food vendors, and much more.

The event is free and open to the public. For those without a pet this event will be a great opportunity to take a walk through the animal shelter and meet a new life-long friend.

“This event will provide information and educate the community on responsible pet ownership,” said Kimberly Hart, Animal Services Office Outreach and Education coordinator. “Also we’d like to invite all members of the community to visit us at our new location and see what the shelter is doing to create a more humane community for all pets in the city.”

For more information check www.austinanimalcenter.org or call 3-1-1 or visit www.facebook.com/austinanimalservices for daily animal updates. The Austin Animal Center is open daily 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

I’ll be there with Friends of Austin Animal Center, so come see us!

The shelter is packed right now because of an unusually high number of animals coming in. Actually, they’re over capacity, which puts the city’s no kill goal at risk:

For the past few months, City of Austin Animal Services has experienced an unseasonal influx of animal intakes at the City shelter, maxing out capacity at both of its locations.

As of May 2, approximately 885 animals were either in shelters or foster homes, representing approximately 30 percent more than shelter capacity.

Compared to the same time last year, the shelter has taken in 150 more kittens and 200 more dogs. Animal Services operates the main Animal Center at 7201 Levander Loop and the overflow Town Lake Animal Center at 1156 W. Cesar Chavez St.

Traditionally, springtime brings in more kittens to the City shelter, but this year the Animal Center has taken in over a hundred more kittens than last year, with more than 600 of those being too young to thrive on their own. As of today, May 2, the Austin Animal Center has about 200 cats available for adoption.

Austin remains the largest no kill city in the country, but we need everyone’s support to stay that way. So head down to the shelter tomorrow, or today, or Sunday (you get the idea). Maybe your best friend is waiting for you there.

Shame on you, North Carolina (among others)

Posted on May 10, 2012 by wellsdc

I know many people from the state of North Carolina, and I know them all to be kind, decent, caring, generous people. I’m not sure how many of them still live there, if any, but I’m sorry if they have to live among that kind of bigotry. Of course, it’s not like Texas is much better.

A representative of the principle supporter of the amendment had this to say:

Tami Fitzgerald, chairwoman of Votes for Marriage NC, the main group behind the amendment, said: “We are not anti-gay, we are pro-marriage. The whole point is you don’t rewrite the nature of God’s design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults.”

Apparently, however, she does get to marginalize an entire group of people who have done her no wrong, based on the demands of her group of adults (emphasis added because I’m furious). Not only that, but this amendment may have much a much farther-reaching impact than people seem to realize. It could affect more than just those icky gay people (that’s how I imagine Tami Fitzgerald phrasing it, anyway). I have no words for the supporters of this amendment that don’t include “rectums” and “rusty pitchforks,” so I shall turn to the words of friends and people whom I admire. Continue reading →

If you can’t be bothered to vote, I can’t be bothered to care about your opinions

Posted on May 10, 2012 by wellsdc

City elections are Saturday. Here’s a story about why you should give a shit.

Seven years ago, a tiny percentage of Austin’s voting population voted to ban smoking in bars located within the city limits. Leading up to the election, bar owners split over the proposed ban, and some warned of dire consequences if it did pass. By the end of May 7, 2005, around 5% of the city’s registered voters had weighed in on the question, approving the ban 52% to 48%.

As I recall, there was wailing, gnashing of teeth, and cries that this would destroy the downtown scene once and for all, as people deprived of their right to smoke would simply go elsewhere. I spent an afternoon at Crown and Anchor Pub about a week after the election listening to someone make these dire predictions, only to learn that he hadn’t voted. I had two responses to the people warning of the sky falling, one of which holds true today.

First, this is Austin, Texas, the “Live Music Capital of the World.” Where else are people going to go? San Marcos, where the bars closed at midnight? Round Rock, where the, uh…..well, nothing interesting ever happens in Round Rock. Are smokers going to skip the bars and clubs and just listen to a Bob Schneider CD while chain-smoking in the living room? I seriously doubted it at the time, and the fact that downtown Austin has sprouted multiple high-rises since 2005 seems to support my position that downtown Austin would be just fine.

Second, roughly five percent of the voting population actually voted in that election. I don’t know what percentage of the voting population subsequently whined about the outcome, but I know it was large. If you opposed the ban, yet didn’t vote, shut up. Just shut your pitiful fucking mouth. The ordinance passed by 2,420 votes, according to one crazy libertarian blogger. That’s more than the capacity of Antone’s, sure, but that certainly represents but a fraction of Austin’s smoking population circa 2005.

For my part, I’m glad the ordinance passed. I think people ought to be able to do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt other people. Smoking bans tread close to the edge of what “hurts” people, in terms of secondhand smoke, but note that the ban didn’t exactly lift the floodgates of nanny-stateism all over the city. Continue reading →

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself”

Posted on May 10, 2012 by wellsdc

I only ever read one book by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are. The man deserves a permanent place in the pantheon of literary giants just for the term “wild rumpus,” as far as I am concerned. As you may know, Maurice Sendak died earlier this week. I remember his book well from childhood. I’d like to read it again, but I can’t find my copy.

Sendak’s death has brought much expression of support and admiration for the man, along with some admissions of confusion over the book. I remember that Where the Wild Things Are was a different kind of book. This was not the shiny happy playtime childhood that I usually saw on PBS. Max was an unhappy child, and this story looked into some dark places in a child’s mind. He found a place where he could be happy, and be at peace, in a sense. Despite that, Max decided to come home. That is the real gift of this book: the message that it is okay for a child to be angry, or unhappy, or scared. Max is an imperfect child in an imperfect world, just like any of us.

He was a fascinating man, too, with quite a few opinions, as Stephen Colbert learned:

The Colbert Report

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Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1

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He had a committed relationship with another man for fifty years, whom he was never allowed to marry. He originally conceived Where the Wild Things Are as Where the Wild Horses Are, but he found that he couldn’t draw horses, so they became “wild things.” Also, according to that video, “wild rumpus” might have actually meant sex after all.

Also, I realize that the title of this post is from a D.H. Lawrence poem. It just fits here.

Thanks for your book. It got me through what seemed like some rough patches of childhood.

The Godless Hordes Descend Upon San Antonio. With a Billboard.

Posted on May 9, 2012 by wellsdc

My home town of San Antonio has a new billboard that’s sure to anger people who make it their business to always be angry. The billboard was placed by the San Antonio Coalition of Reason, part of the United Coalition of Reason:

“Don’t believe in God? Join the club.”

These words, superimposed over an image of a Texas sunrise, are now up on a 14 x 48 foot digital billboard located on the west side of I-10 at North Crossroads Blvd. The billboard is visible to traffic heading south, whether continuing on the Interstate just past I-410, taking the off ramp to the Wonderland of the Americas Mall or taking the on ramp south when leaving the mall.

The ad will remain up through the Memorial Day weekend, a span that includes Mother’s Day. It was placed by the San Antonio Coalition of Reason (San Antonio CoR) with $5,000 in funding from the United Coalition of Reason (UnitedCoR). The billboard campaign marks the public launch of San Antonio CoR, an alliance of six established non-theistic groups in Central Texas. The groups are Atheist Families of San Antonio, Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, Humanists of San Antonio, San Antonio Atheists Group, San Antonio Skeptics and Texas Hill Country Freethinkers.

The message seems to be simple, along the lines of “If you are not a person of faith in a supernatural being or beings, you are not doomed to ostracism and ridicule after all.” At least, that’s the message that someone who lives in as religious a city as San Antonio yet does not share that belief might get. Some billboards put up by atheist groups have been profoundly ill-advised and downright stupid, but this one seems rather muted. There is no exhortation to leave a particular faith, nor even encouragement to consider doing so per se. It just lets people know that they are not alone. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Game of Thrones: I’ve been going about this all wrong, and I’m sorry

Posted on May 9, 2012 by wellsdc

This makes up for any shortcomings this show might ever have. Ever.

(At this point, I have no idea if this post will contain spoilers.)

I’ve been kind of a douche about this show, and for that I apologize. See, I have been watching this show with rapt attention, but also with my ass puckered up over its various divergences from the books, as if I could somehow control a scripted television show’s faithfulness to its source material through the sheer power of my sphincter.

Since last April, I have felt a compulsive need to compare the two media, in a very hipsteresque effort to prove my bona fides as an early-adopting Game of Thrones fan. I have little doubt that I have annoyed some people. When someone asks me where they are taking Arya and Gendry, all they really want to know is that it’s called Harrenhal, and it’s a big castle people think is haunted. They do not necessarily need to know why people think it is haunted, or that Harren completed it right before the invasion of Aegon the Conqueror, or any of the other random bits of trivia I could pull from my puckered behind.

I can thank Christina H. at Cracked, whose article “6 Common Movie Arguments That Are Always Wrong” addresses the common trope among fanboys that “it all makes sense if you read the comics.” Substitute “series of books” for “comics” and “television show” for “movie” and her analysis is spot-on:

The thing is, you shouldn’t have to do homework or required reading before seeing a movie in order to understand it. Movies are a story in a roughly two-hour package, and they have to use those two hours to let you know who’s who, what’s going on and why you should care. Even James Bond movies usually spend the first sequence showing you how good he is at killing people and how he always gets a free woman to sleep with afterward, for the two audience members unfamiliar with how James Bond works.

You’re supposed to relax and let the movie take you on a ride into its world. Movies are sold as an escape, not as another source of obligation. Can you imagine being asked to go see the latest Harry Potter movie and having to tell your friends, “Oh, I can’t. I’ve been trying really hard to cram for it, but I’ve still got 10 chapters to read. I’ve just been so busy this week …” and them shaking their heads in disappointment at you? Or watching Star Wars Episode II knowing you’ve not only wasted the two and a half hours watching the actual movie but the two weeks of studying the comics in preparation for it?
I can understand wanting to get further into the universe of some movie if you really enjoyed it, or being able to get more tidbits about your favorite character from additional stories, but it should be optional. You shouldn’t have to stare bewildered at some character exploding for no apparent reason as a penalty for not doing your homework.

Several people asked me, during the lead-up to “Game of Thrones” season 1, if I thought they should read the books before trying to watch the show. Of course, I think everyone should read the books because they are awesome, but consider this: a television show that requires you to read a 700+ page book in order to understand its first season would be a fucking terrible television show. Continue reading →

The effective application of sarcasm

Posted on May 8, 2012 by wellsdc

Funny or Die keeps on making incisively savage political satire, and this is yet another great one:

Republicans, Get In My Vagina! from Kate Beckinsale

Even if it is profoundly uncomfortable. (h/t Bon Tindle at ZvtS)

In a truly just universe, Judy Greer would be a huge star by now.

Getting right to the point with social media (or, It all comes down to smut in the end)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by wellsdc

I don’t get Pinterest. I think I have made that pretty abudantly clear in recent months. I have a few “boards,” to which I will “pin” things from time to time (my board entitled “Food porn“) is far more popular than it probably deserves to be, considering the level of inattention give to it. I never, however, browse through other people’s pins the way I might scroll through my Facebook news feed or my Tumblr dashboard. It’s just not my thing.

Don’t get me wrong; I think Pinterest is a brilliant idea, and it has been wildly successful. It just doesn’t necessarily appeal to my particular sensibilities. Maybe it’s because I’m a dude, although I doubt it is as sociologically significant as that (for me, anyway.) Whether or not by design, Pinterest primarily appeals to women, possibly a first for the internet. Of course, this being the world in which we live, someone has to ask how to make a service like Pinterest more appealing to the sausage-bearing crowd. And because it is the internet, it eventually comes back to the question of how many X’s we can post. Perhaps not surprisingly, these two questions overlap.

To review the state of what I will artfully call Smut in Social Media:

Facebook won’t allow anything over an “R” rating.
Twitter might let you get away with a little “X” now and then.
LinkedIn has no idea what you are talking about right now.
Tumblr saw your three X’s and raised them to a level of perversity heretofore unimagined. Seriously, you are never more than 2-3 mouse clicks away from an animated GIF of activities that Porn Valley might not even know exist.

(Please note that I use the word “smut” in a purely descriptive sense.) Continue reading →

Finland will rock your face off, then kick your ass

Posted on May 2, 2012 by wellsdc

About twenty years ago I spent roughly 24 hours in Finland. Thanks to jet lag, I spent around fourteen of those hours sleeping. What time I did manage to spend conscious, I remember it being quite enjoyable. I mostly remember blondes and a total lack of any sunset.

I also have a poser-ish affinity for European metal bands, many of which hail from the Scandinavian region. I was therefore thrilled to learn that, according to a probably less-than-scientifically rigorous study, Finland has the most metal bands per capita of any country in the world.

It might be worth taking a look at the country, tucked away as it is so tidily up there, kind of out of the way. As it turns out (and I sort of already knew this, but damn), the Finns are kind of, well, epic bad-asses.

History

First off, the Finns didn’t half-ass their prehistory. According to Wikipedia, “prehistoric Finland” persisted all the way up to 1150 CE. While the Normans were conquering England and the Western Roman Empire was celebrating its seventh century of no longer existing, Finland was doing its own thing in such a bad-ass way, no one even bothered to write it down (which is what I assume “prehistoric” means.) People have actually lived there for at least ten thousand years, but as for what was going on before 1150, I guess we just shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it.

From 1150 until 1809, Finland was ruled by the Swedes, who as we all know, can slay dragons with the sheer power of rock.

Yngwie Malmsteen's "Triology" album [Fair use]

I think the Swedish National Anthem was chosen from this album

Sweden and Russia fought a war, apparently over Finland, between 1808 and 1809, which Russia won. Finland became a “Grand Duchy” under the rule of the Tsar. That lasted about a century, until the Finns told Russia to piss off near the end of World War I, when Russia really had bigger things to worry about anyway. Finland fought a civil warbetween communists and not-communists, which the not-communists won. Here’s where it gets interesting. Continue reading →

Today in the Whiniverse

Posted on May 1, 2012 by wellsdc

People are mean on Twitter. That’s pretty much a fact of life at this point. It goes all ways (I’m not so daft as to think there are really only two sides to any given issue, however much we are meant to think that.) It is usually quite amusing to watch the parade of tu quoque responses whenever someone tries to call someone else out on hateful or violent rhetoric on Twitter. Sometimes, though, it gets downright hilarious. Like when a Breitbartian gets dinged on Twitter regulations and whines about it.

From Rick Moran at the inaptly-named American Thinker:

There’s a budding war in the Twitterverse as liberals are evidently carrying out organized attacks on conservative Twitter users by reporting their tweets as “spam,” thus triggering an automated block on their accounts.

Apparently, a threshold has to be crossed as far as the number of tweets for the system to kick in, as well as the number of spam reports in order to ban the user so not all conservative Twitter activists are vulnerable. But several high profile conservatives have had their accounts blocked and trying to get them reinstated is proving to be a difficult matter.

***

A tidal wave of Tweets from conservative activists are trying to keep pace with the organized attack on free speech from the left

[Emphasis added]. I bolded “evidently” because he didn’t cite any evidence. I bolded the bit about “free speech” because once again that term is being abused. Is the government trying to shut down these Tweeters? If not, shut up about free speech until you learn what that actually means. (Here’s a hint: my telling you to “shut up” does not infringe your free speech rights at all. If you don’t understand why, then I am amazed you don’t injure yourself with your spoon every morning at breakfast.)

Golly, an organized campaign of liberals to prevent people from Tweeting? I’m surprised he didn’t link it directly to the White House, since our incompetent, do-nothing Executive Branch is full of evil genius masterminds. Speculate much? Continue reading →

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Author Archives: wellsdc

Austin shelter animals need your help this Saturday!!!

Shame on you, North Carolina (among others)

If you can’t be bothered to vote, I can’t be bothered to care about your opinions

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself”

The Godless Hordes Descend Upon San Antonio. With a Billboard.

Thoughts on Game of Thrones: I’ve been going about this all wrong, and I’m sorry

The effective application of sarcasm

Finland will rock your face off, then kick your ass