Monthly Archives: March 2015

Close Only Counts

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”
—-Traditional

Across and down the street a little ways from our front door the city, a couple of years ago, took a little-used piece of land and built a whole bunch of horseshoe pits there – giving each one a number. The land is still little-used, but once or twice a year a tournament arrives and horseshoe pitchers crowd in and do their thing. Usually portable lighting trailers are brought in and they pitch well into the darkness.

The rest of the year it sits their unused, fenced off, locked up, empty and forlorn. The little sign proclaims “PIT #11” – if anyone other than me ever looks.

Pit 11 Huffhines Park Richardson, Texas

Pit 11
Huffhines Park
Richardson, Texas

What I learned this week, March 20, 2015

Posted on by Bill Chance
Decatur Street, Halloween, 2012

Decatur Street, Halloween, 2012

They’re Weird and Proud: America’s Quirkiest Cities

doreen3

100 Skills Every Man Should Know: The Instructions

Sharknado 3 Gets Premiere Date, Global Release and One Hell of a Title

I haven’t actually seen Sharknado or Sharknado 2 – but I am a big fan. For me, it’s a very good thing that the Sharknado franchise simply exists. I want to know that there are things that are out of the bounds of taste and sanity… that the world is a bigger and more wondrous place that we even imagine.

Plus, that title – Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

Plus Plus – Mark Cuban cast as the President and Ann Coulter as the Vice President. The only thing better would be a subplot involving an illicit passionate affair between the two. We can only wish.

This Quick Trick Can Help When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

Dallas Skyline from the Soda Bar on the roof of the NYLO Southside hotel.

Dallas Skyline from the Soda Bar on the roof of the NYLO Southside hotel.

Getting Density Right

Density is often touted – by myself included – as key to unlocking a more sustainable, liveable, cost efficient future. Getting density right is central to creating communities where it is possible to do a variety of everyday activities within walking distance from home – like visiting a health clinic, buying groceries, or getting your haircut. Walking has implications for our health, our sense of place, our connectedness to our communities, and our need to reduce our environmental footprint.

So all density is good, right? Not so fast.

Trinity River Bottoms (click to enlarge)

Trinity River Bottoms
(click to enlarge)

Art Deco mural from Fair Park in Dallas

Art Deco mural from Fair Park in Dallas

25 Years After Art Heist, Empty Frames Still Hang In Boston’s Gardner Museum

Backyard burger and wiener roasts targeted by EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency has its eyes on pollution from backyard barbecues.

The agency announced that it is funding a University of California project to limit emissions resulting in grease drippings with a special tray to catch them and a “catalytic” filtration system.

The $15,000 project has the “potential for global application,” said the school.

The school said that the technology they will study with the EPA grant is intended to reduce air pollution and cut the health hazards to BBQ “pit masters” from propane-fueled cookers.

Charged with keeping America’s air, water and soil clean, the EPA has been increasingly looking at homeowners, especially their use of pollution emitting tools like lawn mowers.

EPA wants to monitor how long hotel guests spend in the shower.

18 Headphone Brands Ranked from Worst to First

Plastic Bright Colors In the Snow

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!

We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin

Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas

Huffhines Park,
Richardson, Texas

Behold the Reality Beneath

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that was but a single countenance as if held in a mould.

I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was.

I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face in which all things were graven.

I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

face6

It’s A Miracle, A Cosmic Miracle

Posted on by Bill Chance

“They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Bench, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas

Bench, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas

What I learned this week, March 13, 2015

Posted on by Bill Chance
Kindle

Call Me Ishmael

8 books to lift you out of darkness

When Shaka Senghor (Watch: Shaka Senghor: Why your worst deeds don’t define you) was nineteen, he shot and killed a man — and was sentenced to spend the second nineteen years of his life in jail. At first, Senghor sat in his cold cell and rationalized his worst deeds. “In the hood where I come from,” he says, “it’s better to be the shooter than the person getting shot.” Then, Senghor found solace in literature — and his perspective was transformed in prison.

My Xootr Swift bike with picnic supplies loaded in the pannier.

My Xootr Swift bike with picnic supplies loaded in the pannier.

How to Set Up a Serious Folding Commuter Bike : Xootr Blog

I actually rarely commute on my Xootr folding bike – I view it as more of a versatile, fun mode of transport. I took a used Craigslist Giant Mountain bike and outfitted it with racks and fenders – use it as my commuter and light cargo bike.

Commuter Bike with Dallas skyline in the background

Commuter Bike with Dallas skyline in the background. I need to take an updated photo – this one doesn’t have the fenders installed.

Magazine Street, New Orleans

Magazine Street, New Orleans

How Bicycling Brings Business

Bicycle Second Line New Orleans, Louisiana

Bicycle Second Line
New Orleans, Louisiana

Herb Alpert, Whipped Cream

Herb Alpert, Whipped Cream

Herb Alpert’s ‘Whipped Cream Lady’ now 76, living in Longview and looking back

Do I remember the album cover from back in the day? Even though I was only eight when it came out – of course I do.

One bit of useless trivia, Leon Russell (as Russell Bridges, a member of the “Wrecking Crew”) played piano on the album.

5 SXSW Eateries Off the Beaten Path

For my Austin peeps and visitors.

Bike lane on Yale, near my house.

Bike lane on Yale, near my house.

Why bike lanes are battle lines for justice

15 Of the Best Jack Kerouac Quotes

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”—The Dharma Bums

Look At This Tiny Drone [Video]

This would mean the end of privacy, if wind didn’t exist