A David Johnson, of many.
I went to a wedding the other day in South Texas.
If this sounds like a retread of a previous article, you’re obviously a good and loyal reader of my column, and God bless you.
Continue reading “Thankfully for my car, there’s no more sisters”
The other day I was out with some friends enjoying good conversation at a laid-back bar that provided some very competitive drink specials.
To give you the sort of scene, one of the people criticized Jack Kerouac and I told him to finish his whiskey and step outside, and when he said Allen Ginsberg was a hack, his girlfriend almost slapped him.
Continue reading “It needs to be okay again to like liking things”
I thank Mr. Matt Jones for returning this space to me, and hope to use it as well as he did a week ago.
For those who don’t know, Mr. Jones comes to the Odessa American after putting in his time at the Daily Texan, the University of Texas’ own student-run publication that is about as prestigious as a college paper can get.
Of course, the other day cartoonist Stephanie Eisner got her paper in a lot of trouble when she drew a cartoon satirizing the situation of Mr. Jones’ column last week. Or more appropriately, it satirized the media’s coverage of that situation.
Continue reading “Masses rabble over UT’s editorial cartoon”
The other day, the Portland Trailblazers finally cut their center Greg Oden.
The 2007 No. 1 overall draft pick played 88 games in his career thus far, a phrase likely two words too long.
In four seasons, he only played part of two games while his legs and feet suffered seemingly every possible injury as soon as he stepped on the court.
Oden’s name will forever be a byword for bad decisions and failure in professional drafts, next to Ryan Leaf and Sam Bowie. “Busts.” Stupid picks that spectacularly didn’t work out for their teams.
Of course, in both of those examples, it’s not just who was selected but who wasn’t.
It’s a common part of Texas lore that the 20th century began not New Year’s Day 1901 as it did for the rest of the country but 10 days later and at a specific location: Spindletop.
In West Texas, the 20th century didn’t arrive for another two decades.
The Texas oil boom transformed the world and what it could be, and it took the Lone Star State from a poor, agriculture-centered and in many ways backwards corner of the United States to the giant of industry, technology, energy and politics that it’s known for today.
While in East Texas the transformation meant a swift movement from farms to cities, the impact on West Texas was even more stark: it meant there could be cities at all.
Areas unable to support a few dozen cattle during some dry years were suddenly home to thousands of mostly single young men working furiously to build rigs, drill holes, construct facilities to store any oil they got and then pipelines to transport it to somewhere less remotely situated. It needed people to keep all of these things happening when something broke down, and it needed more people to feed and house all of these.
This pattern of boom towns springing up next to the latest big find continued unabated until the oil industry facilitated its own transformation and made it possible for all of American society to do what had been impossible just decades before.
William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
In West Texas, such a thing is no more obvious than around the oilfields and sometimes individual wells now receiving second or third looks as motivated by the upticking price per barrel.
Though left to the bear the steady beat of sun, wind and weather, much related to the old-and-new-again drilling areas surrounding us still lays where it was left from times passed, a natural museum of drilling history.
Continue reading “The dirt around us is full of litter and relics”
The other day, I was arguing with a friend about education and whether college specifically was any use. “It’s really just the next bubble,” I said, repeating an argument a mutual friend had made to me before.
“First the Internet bubble, then the housing bubble, now the college degree bubble. We’ve been told for years it’s an automatic way to make more money, but it’s getting more expensive to buy in now and there’s less of a reward. At some point, people won’t be able to pay off their college debt anymore. That’s when the bubble bursts.”
The other day I finally lost my front license plate for good.
I know, I thought it was tragic, too.
It had been hanging on very bravely for about a year and a half after surviving an intimate, low-speed interaction with the end of a guardrail in October 2010. (I was dodging a house on a two-lane highway; it’s not really important.)
Continue reading “It’s nice that some things fail and can’t be fixed”
The other day, I got into my head that this week, I’d write a column about the new federal health care guidelines that would require employers to cover birth control without any extra fees as part of plans.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had a problem with this and said it was an infringement of their religious freedoms, and then it became a great big huge national issue you’ve probably heard at least a little something about.
Continue reading “Romans 13:1 is terribly difficult teaching to accept”
The other day the New York Giants and New England Patriots won their respective NFL conferences, leading to a vague and simultaneous sense of déjà vu and malaise for the majority of the country outside of the Northeast.
Actually, most of the Boston area is probably feeling that, too, because they still have the sting of the Super Bowl following the 2007 season when the Patriots started with 18 consecutive wins only to finish with one Giant loss. Continue reading “Football is a numbers game, and not just because of gambling”
ADJ 