Feral Hogs

These critters have recently started calling Central Texas home, and I've seen evidence of their presence on my family's JBG Ranch. This is one that was apparently struck by a car about 10 miles from the ranch. Notice the tusks. I've started carrying a pistol when hiking on the ranch.

Jose Padilla Rant

I was getting pretty annoyed with the reporters on NPR pronouncing Jose Padilla's surname as "Pu-DILL-uh." Ordinarily, "Padilla" is pronounced "Pu-dee-ya," kind of like "tortilla." But according to Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2130925/) Jose Padilla (aka Abdullah Al Muhajir) and his family prefer the "Pu-DILL-uh" pronunciation. If that's the case, then this idiot deserves to be held indefinitely as an enemy combatant. He sure as hell won't get a fair trial if there are any Hispanic jurors chosen for his case; they'll be far too annoyed at his stupid insistence on mispronouncing his name. And by the way, if he's gonna mispronounce his last name, why not his first name too? It should be "Joe-sss." Hasta la vista, baby.

Mercedes man

This is one of my favorite Mercedes models. Probably a 1972 or '73 model. The owner lives a mile or two from my house and has about three old Mercedes like this one crammed into his small driveway. I'd try to buy one from him if I had a place to keep it.

Muffler Man

This bellicose dude stands guard at a muffler/tire shop I pass every day on the way to work. On his right hip he wears a six shooter and on his left a sword. Not sure what's in his left hand -- a key ring? In his right hand is a spray can emitting paint. The rust on his belly just showed up in the last few weeks. This shop looks like a good place to get a llanta punchada repaired.

Mexican restrooms

Back to the issue of Mexican toilets. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of my own, but here is a representative photo I found at http://www.tomgoetz.com/honey/honey09.htm The comment accompanying the photo was: "The toilets here were especially disgusting, and like most public toilets in Mexico, there were no toilet seats." The Internet actually contains quite a few references to the lousy bathrooms in Mexico, but I haven't been able to find any interior photos. Next time I'm down there, I'll try to snap a few.

From my mouth to god's ear?

Just down the street from my house is a very large open space/park bordered on one side by a small creek and wooded area where there used to be a railroad track and telephone lines. In the summer, the brush is too dense for exploring, but the last two weekends my kids and I have clambered across the creek and crawled into the underbrush to hunt for "treasures." Yesterday, in addition to about 50 golf balls, we found the items pictured above. A tortoise shell, a hard hat, an old rubber telephone wire insulator, an old Pepsi bottle (probably from the late 1960's), and a model rocket. The model rocket is where it gets a little weird.

My son (21 months old) and I were poking around in the underbrush and hadn't found any treasures other than a few golfballs. I thought for a moment about what we might find and said to my son, "we need to find a model rocket that some kid shot off in the park and lost out here in the brush." Then I thought to myself, "boy, wouldn't it be weird if we actually found one after I said that." Not 30 seconds later, I walked around a tangle of impentrable vines and spied . . . the model rocket shown in the picture above. I'm still not sure what to make of that turn of events.

Scottish pissing wall

My brother and I took a trip to Scotland this summer and were quite intrigued by what we dubbed "the Scottish pissing wall." Many of the public restrooms we visited had this set up, which is basically a wall sheathed in stainless steel and equipped with a water drip system at the top and, of course, a drain at the bottom. A superior and efficient design that requires virtually no aiming skills. Moreover, public restrooms in Scotland are extremely clean and always fully equipped with good toilet paper. The only drawback was that exiting many of the restrooms entailed pulling, as opposed to pushing, open two or even three doors. Ain't no way you're getting out of there without grasping several germ infested door handles, and the one finger method just doesn't work. Still, these bathrooms were far superior to any Mexican bathroom. I won't even try to describe the horrors of a typical public restroom in Mexico. Suffice it to say those folks apparently don't see the need to wipe their arses.

My first cars

From 1980 to 1983 (my high school years) I drove a horrible 1978 Plymouth Horizon like the wood paneled model shown above (we're talkin' 75 horsepower on a good day). I wish I could track it down and set it on fire. One of the things I hated was the placement of the extremely small accelerator pedal, which made it very uncomfortable to use. I finally got so sick of it that I rigged up a Rube Goldberg apparatus enabling me to control the accelerator with my hand by pulling a string -- not very safe. I also installed a switch on the console that allowed me to turn off the license plate light when my friends and I were engaging in teenage hooliganism.

In 1983, my freshman year in college, I bought a red 1979 280zx like the one pictured above for about $5,000. It was a great car, and I drove it until about 1991. On one occasion, I got it up to about 125 mph on a remote stretch of highway near Crawford, Texas. One of my favorite things about the Z was the automatic driver's side window, which went all the way down OR up with the touch of a button. That is common now, but American auto manufacturers refuse to include an automatic up feature, I guess for safety reasons. That's a lame excuse though, because I'm sure the foreign autos with this feature are designed so that the window stops rolling up when a sensor decides that someone's head is about to get squashed.

My childhood cars

These are the two family cars I remember best from my childhood: a 1974 Toyota Corona and a 1968 Mercedes -- I believe it was a model 220. Both cars were white. My dad sold the Mercedes in 1978 for about the same price he paid for it. He kept the car in immaculate condition and never did find out that the ding just below the trunk lid was the unfortunate consequence of my brother's idea that it would be fun to test the car's metallurgical integrity with a BB gun. On another occasion, my mother forgot to put the car in park and it rolled down the street striking a mailbox.

My brother drove the Corona until probably the late 1980's. It was a stickshift with no power steering, which made it pretty hard for me to drive when I sneaked it out a few times before I got my driver's license. This was our first car with an 8 Track Stereo system.