Southpaw Jones

Please take a moment to vote for Southpaw Jones as Best Songwriter in The Austin Chronicle Music Poll, http://www.austinchronicle.com/feedback/musicpoll/07/. You don’t have to live in Austin to vote, and you don’t have to believe he deserves it.

Coffee-fueled Thoughts

• I guess I only need one book about The Sopranos in my home.

• If Republicans nominate John McCain, I’ll feel a lot better about them and about my country. He was a bloody POW in Vietnam! He’s been an active senator! He can speak using complex sentences! He is the real deal. I disagree with him on many, many things, but were I on that side of things, he would be my undisputed champion.

• Cotton is great, but isn’t Coffee the true “fabric of our lives”? The touch! The feel! The teeth-staining immortality!

• Dear Grover, if I had to choose between Near and Far, I would pick Far. Please stay Far away from me. You give me the creeps.

• Someone asked me about my favorite philosopher this week, and dang it, I couldn’t name one! I just don’t have that personal relationship with a single dusty thinker, except Jesus, I guess, and he was more hippie-punk than a philosopher.

It’s pretty embarrassing for someone with a philosophy minor, so I’ve thought about it, and I guess I have to say René Descartes comes closest to my fave. I mean, “cogito, ergo sum” is some pretty wild stuff, and I’m a big fan of doubting like he was. I could doubt all day long if someone would pay me to do so. I’ve always been attracted to dissenters and critics. “Doubt it out,” that’s what I always (never) say.

Is it cynical to question the corporate owned media coverage of wars and elections? Does it take a bitter attitude to think that “reality” programming is more fake that scripted fare? Well, this guy Descartes took all that dark thinking a few steps further. His first philosophical step was as follows: “I don’t believe any of this reality! Let’s start from scratch.”

No house, no sunlight, no ground, no sound, no food, no friends, no family, no body, no heat, no nothing! My senses fool me constantly, so trust them I shan’t! Descartes ended up with nothing but black nothingness. Then, from nothing, something:

“Hello?”

“…”

“Hello? Anyone?”

“Yes? Who’s there?”

“I’m not sure! Who are you?”

“Let me think about it. Um, I just got finished dumping everything I ever knew…”

“Oh, that was me! I’m the one who dumped everything! Now all I’ve got is this blackness and doubt.”

“So you must be Me, then! We’re the only one in this abyss. I doubted everything I could, but there’s still something here!”

“Yes, the doubting! I’m doubting, you’re doubting…”

“We’re doubting!”

“You certainly can’t have doubt without a doubter!”

“No, I should think not. I’m flat out giddy with certainty!”

“Me, too!”

“So where do we go from here, Me?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it, You?”

“Let’s not talk aloud like this in public. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

And that, my friends, is the birth of Modern Philosophy. Happy gawl durn Friday!

as reported in The New York Times

BEAR HUNT UP STATE
Bruin Finally Shot After Killing Two Hunting Dogs.

One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

I just know she’s going to rule against us! Look at her in that silly black robe up there. We’ve got to change her mind! Is there any way to make this…

Highlight here for answer: [judge budge]


Animated Musicians

Humor: The ability to laugh at any mistake you survive.
Jerry Tucker

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2008
10:00 PM
Spike Gillespie’s Dick-E-Oke
Alamo Drafthouse Ritz
320 E 6th Street
Austin, TX 78701
512.476.1320
www.originalalamo.com
It’s a multimedia blowout party of all things dick, dickish, and dickified. Our good friend and yours, writer Spike Gillespie, presents Dick-E-Oke, including performances by cast members of The Dick Monologues, everyone’s favorite perverted boy band, Cedar Fever.
________________________________________________________________

EVERY DANG THURSDAY
with Matt the Electrician
8:00 PM
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
AUSTIN, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://www.flipnotics.com