The Daily Brief: Military Musings and Thoughts Less Filtered » And Now to Plan B

Sgt. Mom has received news that her Texas books are just not in the kitchen of the publisherati. Which, sadly, isn’t too surprising, given the paucity of what I guess is still called ‘the Western’ in the book biz. Based on my own personal tastes, combined with the bits and pieces that I’ve read from Julia, it’s a crying shame. However, as noted, there is a Plan B. I’d like to ask that you take her up on her generous offer, because if you’re reading this blog, you’re very likely to enjoy the end product when it actually becomes real…which it will, thanks to Plan B.

On a digressive note, I read three books this week — one was a pulp murder thingy that wasn’t worth the $9 I paid for it, and the other two were Patrick O’Brien Jack Aubrey historicals. Those books are 20 years old. Could O’Brien find a publisher today? Do you think his publisher regrets signing him? Tell you what…I’d surely appreciate a 10- or 20-book serial about Texas.

My Way News - Flooded-Out Texans Urged to Leave Again

About 100 people near Marble Falls in central Texas remained stranded for a fourth day. Flood and water damage made roads impassable, said Christa Bromley, a Burnet County Emergency Management spokeswoman. The residents had been notified of the evacuation but chose to stay in their homes near Hamilton Creek.

That’s the reason, honey, right there, that I like keeping a couple of shrink-wrapped cases of water in the garage. As well as the rest of that survival crap that’s a big joke to everyone.

The big news is in North Texas, though, where the Brazos is going berserk upstream from the old ranch. I never thought I’d see the day when Texas had enough rain, but I think this is pretty close to it.

I finished 90% of my deck today, and I did it working in the mud. I just couldn’t take it any more. The remaining 10% is some shingling on the house roof that I want to re-do, and of course, I need four or five days of dry & sun to make sure it cures. If I don’t get it, I’m just gonna nail a 2×4 across the roofline and caulk the heck out of it.

Now, for the smoker. I’ve been saving my pennies for a while now, and I’m pretty sure I’m going for this one from Oklahoma Joe:

Yeah, it’s kind of lame not to build my own, but I don’t have a plasma cutter, a welder, a few ounces of engineering sense, or any oilfield pipe. I personally find it humorous to be considering a Super-Longhorn model from a company called Oklahoma Joe’s. Frankly, I find it proof that anyone can get along if they put their mind to it.

What I imagined when I thought of the iPhoners today

Some have taken to calling it the Jesus Phone. Which, yeah, why not?

Photo via Ace…

1) Binion’s rooms are barely serviceable. I tried the Pauly $20 check-in tip trick on the very young kid at the desk, and he literally asked me what it was for. I explained as graciously as I could, and he proceeded to pocket it and give me a standard bare-bones room.

2) Binion’s snack bars appear to be run as if they are in the cornfields of Iowa: they close around midnight. Despite players walking up and begging them for anything to eat, even a patty that might have fallen between the grill and the dressing table, they still closed. It was very weird, seeing them turn cash money down like that. I always thought the downtown joints catered better to their low-rent customers like me, but I guess times are hard.

3) Much biz was talked with the Pokerati principals in a foo-foo coffee bar at the newest over-priced luxe hotel on the strip. It was a nice joint, and I’m sure the rooms are better than Binion’s, but I’m just not as impressed by acres of marble and oak as I once might have been. No, what was impressive at this joint was the cocktail waitresses, and the nighties costumes they wore. If I’m ever not impressed by that, someone pull out a gun and shoot me. Or hand it to me, and I’ll shoot myself.

4) I only played about 30 minutes of poker, so you get one little bad beat story: I flopped a set of kings, made pot-size bets (hell, overbet the pot one both rounds, trying to scare off the draw-artists), and went down in flames when a dude hit his gutshot wheel. I wasn’t felted, and I wasn’t tilted, but I didn’t have the mental fortitude to deal with that.

5) 30 minutes later, I crawled under the covers and slept eleven straight hours. I don’t know if I was sick or just tired, but there you go. I had hoped to get over to the Rio with Dan and say hi to some of my little web-poker buddies, but I failed. It angers me that I’m no go-getter anymore.

6) However, I did have some nice blackjack runs. Lots of single- and double-deck blackjack downtown, and it’s not that hard to find a table by yourself. I feel better in that kind of situation, so I was able to profit. Enough to pay for the plane ticket. Would have come away a net winner if not for that damn gut wheel, but that’s poker, so no complaints. It’ll come around.

I’m just glad to be back, really. Seems like I’ve done a lot of travelling lately, even though it’s normal for me. I simply have to get the house cleared out in Dallas for the painters and spacklers and so on, and I’ll be up there next week, driving a big old final U-Haul back. This was a big mistake, trying to move over an extended period of time. Should have just pulled the plug and been done with it a month ago.

Headed out in the aye-emm for a couple of days of trying to wrangle reluctant bidness partners cum ever-eager pokerers into defining some targets and making plans to hit them. I love my poker and I certainly love Vegas, but I’m a bidnessman first. I’m staying at the infamous Binion’s, who have a $20 per night room special going on during the WSOP. I will certainly turn some cards, but it’s not Priority One.

My other bidness partners at my normal day job with the New Tiny Bidness don’t believe me. I wonder why.

I’m so GDMFSOBing tired of working in the mud…looking at grass 8″ high…watching my boards warp…wondering if I left the windows down on the truck. It’s probably good to shut down and be indoors and relax a little…but I ain’t relaxed. This is getting to me. I’ve got work to do, and damn little time to do it. I need these weekends of mild physical labor, and I’m getting sick of sitting here & watching it drizzle.

A little less rain might mean I could relax with some shooting or some golfing or some fishing, too. Not that I want to get any kind of serious disengagement going or anything…it would all fall apart if I did that.

Well, no power supply. Left that on the table, like a moron. Got by OK, and just barely OK, with cell-phone email. Kinda liked not having this boring-ass blog hanging over my head. I need to do that more often.

I got to play golf on Friday at the Sandia Resort. The course is gorgeous, and challenging. I highly recommend it to you duffers in the audience. I also found my next driver — the Taylor-Made R7. One of my foursome had one, and I took a few swings with it. Very nice. I’m searching eBay right now for one.

Played some poker, too, and doubled up a $200 buy-in while navigating the local rocks, who took up easily 70% of the table. It was cheapie 1/2NL, but it was live, and nice to get a chance to turn some cards. The problem at that particular casino is that there is no boozing allowed on the floor of the casino, and damn little to be done of it anywhere else. It’s like a gauntlet that must be run to get a cold beer. Being Indians, I guess they know about firewater and all the problems that come with it, but this was seriously mis-managed. Who wants to play all night long with no booze? Enough to build this joint, I guess, but it put a crimp in my enjoyment of the place, not being able to buy a dang beer after 1am.

- Headed to Alburqueurque for a partner confab that will include golf with customers and pokering by myself. This is the closest I will get to a vacation this year, probably.
- Desperately trying to get house on market in Dallas but can’t get contractors to do the touch-up and repairs.
- Helping a partner out with a new server move that’s stuck in the middle while I jet off to NM.
- Working on another new site with same partner that will do some cool 3G-cellular/internet-tubes convergence.

Posting will continue to be light, I’m sure. Every time I sit down to catch my breath, I feel like I’m losing ground, so I don’t do much of that these days.

Cobb’s Top 100 Funkiest Songs Ever In The History of Musical History

Sweet. James Brown shows up at #8 with Payback. This video is a tribute to James by a fan, which is pretty cool:

Look-a here/Don’t do me no durn favor/I don’t know karate/But I know ka-razor

A cool thing to do for your dad would be to get him all these from iTunes or where ever you find them. It’s very likely that your dad was/is funky, whether you know it or not, or believe it or not.

This seems loopy — the Coen brothers doing Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men?

Ugh…Woody Harrelson. Hopefully, not much of him…that guy isn’t very good. Like all adaptations, I fear for the visuals screwing up my imagination. Well, it ain’t like I’ll be lining up at the Cineplex to see it, so I’ve got a couple of years till it hits the satellite, probably.

Minnesota and all. Anyhoo, the Top Ten of the Top 100 Country Songs, 2007 Edition is up:

9. Portland, Oregon, Loretta Lynn
Greatness lies in the ability to distance yourself from your autobiography, while embracing it to feed your art. If you and a band member get drunk on Sloe Gin Fizz and have fun to the point that your husband gets jealous and pulls a gun on you in the hotel room while your band mate hides in the shower, you should wait about 30 years, and then record a song that you wrote about the experience with a weirdo from Detroit and 4 or 5 junkies from Memphis. Make it an up-tempo number, and give it the feel of a fun night with a minor disturbance at the end. Don’t let anyone know you’re a 70 year old lady either. This song is an 11 on a 10 scale.

I’d only heard snippets of this, so I went and checked out YouTube. Here it is:

Everybody talks about Jack White and Loretta Lynn, but let me tell you, the star of that song is the dude playing pedal steel.

Jack’s explanation of El Listo:

As you read this list, keep in mind my central belief that everything coming out of Nashville in the past 30 years is the product of a process designed to deliver a type of music to radio programmers so that they can then deliver a narrow demographic to advertisers and solidify their revenues. It’s their P1 demographic, and they guard it jealously. Which is really a shame, because there are few cities full of musical talent like Nashville, Tennessee. The problem is that those with the talent are in the background, playing instruments and providing vocals to peacocks and peahens, who flash into the spotlight, make obscene amounts of money, and then spend the next few decades of their lives getting rehab and going through plastic surgery until they’re almost unrecognizable. The whole thing is absolutely fucked, and it’s the fault of men like Mick Anselmo and Gregg Swedberg. I offer this list simply as a counterpoint to this runaway train of ignorance and falsehood.

I love that man. Wish he wrote more. Wish more people cared about American music like he does. Oh, well.

Lawyers. All of this over a pair of pants:

“These are not my pants,” Pearson recalled telling Chung when she handed him a pair of gray pants with cuffs. “I have in my adult life, with one exception, never worn pants with cuffs.”

“And she said, ‘These are your pants.’ ”

Pearson paused. He struggled to breathe deeply. He could not continue. Pearson blurted a request for a break, stood up, turned around and walked out of the courtroom, tears dripping from his full and reddened eyes

This freak of nature is a JUDGE. America is fucked fifty ways to Sunday when this kind of thing goes on and the instigator is still holding a j-o-b. In an unfucked America, this dipstick would walk into his local bar, restaurant, liquor store, whatever, and everybody who could see him would say “These are your pants” while laughing maniacally. His barber would say, “Say, there, Roy…I think these are your pants.” His mama would go, “Roy, you know these are your pants…quit being a fool.” and then whip his ass with a switch for being a public fool and bringing shame on the family.

Personally, I’m going to start saying “These are not my pants” anytime I get caught out in a dumb lie. If I had any money, I’d take a little hand-held camera all over America and have random schmoes re-enact Roy’s courtroom weeping, and I’d be at Cannes, drinking Shiner with a Kra-Zee straw out of the belly-button out of a nekkid Italian super-model on a 300 foot yacht.

For what it’s worth, if Marc Fisher doesn’t win a Pulitzer for this column, he’s been wronged. Should probably sue if he don’t. I mean to tell you, that’s Royko-level goodness there, kids. It deserves a place in history.

…I’m going to be a grandfather again. I was only lightly armored against being a grampaw the first time around, and here comes #2, barely a year later. I’ll need a name here to suggest to Mini-Me for rapid rejection. It should be one I can use for the rest of El Kid’s life — Jonah is going to be Nathan, Jr. to me as long as I’m walking the earth. The difficult part is I don’t know if we’re talking bull or cow, so I reckon I should have one of each.

You know what this means, though? I’m definitely gonna have to buy a house for them down here in South Texas. I’m aleady semi-crazy about being away from Nathan, Jr., and another one wandering around loose is just too much for me to bear. I can’t trust their raising to Mom and Dad. That’s crazy talk. A kid needs a nutso grampaw…it worked out great for me.

It also means, being purely selfish here for a moment…more guns to buy that I can pass on! Wheeeee!

Someone please give this carpetbagger a book deal. I mean, lookie here — I’m a native Texan, and I’ve read dang near everything that passed before me about Sam Houston, but I’ve never seen anyone compare and contrast my home state’s favorite son to America’s favorite son. Again, lookie here — Sam Houston stamped this state hard, and it still echoes down to dorks like me who think this sounds like a perfectly wonderful way to live a life:

Born in 1793, Houston was just barely old enough to have served actively in the War of 1812. He seems on that account to have been representative of an earlier generation than that of Lincoln, a generation only a half-step removed from the founding fathers. He came to the notice of Andrew Jackson, and thereafter spent much of his life when not strolling up and down the corridors of power, loitering meaningfully in the vicinity. He served variously in the Army or state militia of Tennessee, as an Indian agent, in Congress and as elected governor of Tennessee. He was married three times, was an absolutely legendary drunk and lived with the Cherokee tribe for a number of years on at least two occasions. He was brave, impulsive and addicted to flamboyant gestures and attire, being talked with great difficulty out of wearing a green velvet suit to one of his inaugurations as the President of independent Texas.

Much, much more at the link. Sgt. Mom is doing a great job, and I swear, her proposed book would sell like $3 1-lb. chicken-frieds to Texans. Surely some moron in the trade can see this.

Or is regional fiction just deader than a doornail? Beats me…I hope not…I still love my Zane Grey memories, my Elmer Keeton memories, my McMurtry memories. I hope that’s still around for my grandkids. They deserve it.

All 3 of my non-geek readers are hating this phone talk, but since I’m involved in a project with phone-ish stuff, that’s just gonna have to be put up with.

Here, you will find me praising AAPL and the iPhone, if what is suggested here by Om Malik is really true.

GigaOM 5 ways iPhone will change the wireless biz «

A true web applications platform for the mobile

“We have been trying to come up with a solution to expand the capabilities of the iPhone so developers can write great apps for it, but keep the iPhone secure,” he said. “… And we’ve come up with a very innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices… it’s all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone. And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone, and these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services.” (Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC via Engadget.)

Charles Ying thinks that Apple just reinvented the mobile applications platform. “This isn’t mobile Flash, mobile Java, or even the mobile Web. It’s the real Web, the real deal,” he writes. (True web should also mean 3G and not pokey EDGE connections that the device currently offers, one major Achilles heel of this device.) The ease, with which developers can develop and deploy apps on both web and the phones, will put pressure on other companies (and OS vendors) to play catch-up or lose developer attention.

Note, though, that Om says the EDGE network is a “major Achilles heel.” A couple of readers have pooh-poohed that idea when I presented it, so I’m glad that a certified Web Genius agrees with me.

However, there’s no technical reason that true web apps can’t run on a phone. One aesthetic reason that it will be troublesome is screen real estate, even though a good coder can manage that. I just wonder how many good coders will bother. You have to take positive, proactive steps to be (smart)phone-friendly, and the payoff for taking those steps, so near as I can determine right now, is naught but good will. Good will is nice and all, but it doesn’t feed the bulldog.

That doesn’t have anything to do with Apple or anybody else, really. I don’t even want to get into the dang carriers, which treat their customers the same way AT&T treated their customers pre-DOJ-breakup. More value is locked up inside a Verizon or a Sprint than 99% of us are aware. It maketh me crazed, it do.