TOBY PETZOLD

It’s a real disgrace that a man was beaten to death in my town on Tuesday by a group of savages —and that the whole world knows about it.

Nice shit sandwich to hand our new chief of police.

The particulars are coming out in dribs and drabs. Some of it is even the truth.

The city government here is very obviously worried about the political fallout from this murder and are keeping as quiet about it as possible —which is impossible— but why won’t the local news stations describe the suspects for us? I watched KXAN’s 10 o’ clock broadcast tonight and I didn’t hear a description. They obviously know: the cops, the EMS, the witnesses, the local media. Why won’t someone in our local media describe the murderers to us? Don’t they want the public’s help in tracking these murderers down?

ESPN’s reporting that Ricky Williams has failed his piss test and cannot apply for reinstatement to the NFL until September.

I used to just shake my head a little and make a distracted expression when I’d hear about Williams’ seemingly deliberate inability to not smoke until it occurred to me —just now— that there’s nothing “seeming” about it: it is a deliberate refusal to not smoke.

It would be a good thing if this were widely used as a point of interest in the ongoing [debate] over the almost-incredible stupidity of the war on drugs and on marihuana, in particular, but some people have an interest in pretending that world-class athletes are somehow adversely affected by their use of marihuana. It isn’t true, though. Except, of course, as a legal and, therefore, professional matter. Otherwise, it is self-evidently stupid to suggest that these huge and powerful professional athletes are harming themselves with the recreational use of a plant.

Yeah, well. I know the sports community may speak to it, but it’s just going to be company man bullshit. 

It was actually sleeting a while ago. An extremely little bit, but still!

*blank stare*

I have no idea. Don’t look at me. I already mothballed my beloved afghan.

I dunno. Does Anna Nicole Smith qualify as a grande dame of Texas?

I’m sorry for her friends and loved ones, I suppose, but I only knew the woman as a sex object. It never occurred to me to want to know about her personally. I’m sorry if that sounds cold.

Smith isn’t to be likened to Marilyn Monroe, either. She seems to me, at least physically, to be more like Jayne Mansfield, whom I think was a vastly more principled person. The documentaries and interviews I’ve seen of Mansfield made me much more interested in her as a person than I ever was in Smith.

My favorite memories of Anna Nicole Smith, if I can say such a thing, were of coming across her Guess? jeans magazine ads. Man! She really was a beautiful young woman. Positively bonerific.

And then, of course, Playboy. She was never a particular favorite of mine, but she was pretty amazing as far as silicone goes.

Oh, well. What a weird, short life.

I called up a member of my family on my way home just then and was told that Molly Ivins has passed on.

I am sorry to hear it.

Ivins was a great wit, a distinct voice, and more informed about Texas and national politics than the next hundred bozos with a word processor combined, whatever her politics. Most importantly to me, she was a true ideological hero (do they say heroine anymore?) to my Momma.

I extend my condolences to Molly’s loved ones and to the keepers of the great liberal tradition of this greatest of American states.

Why is the quality of the video feed of Governor Perry’s inauguration so bad? It sucks on every channel.

No matter. I can still see Sydney Perry well enough. She’s bored with the old man’s speech. So am I.

Damn! That girl needs a good, long spanking.

It’s only a small percentage of the precincts reporting, but damn! Chris Bell, Democratic nominee for the Governorship of Texas, is only seven points behind the incumbent Rick Perry?! Wow. I am surprised.

I got in a while ago, turned on the TV, and there’s some politician telling me that “we need to put politics aside” and just “get results.”

I’d say that any politician who would actually say something like that in public ought to have his license revoked.

It is through the medium of “politics” that participants in representative government actually get those “results.” In countries where the medium of government is sectarian slaughter and kidnapping and terrorism, the results don’t come too easily or pretty.

Politicians ought to spend more time not being goddamned liars and self-interested moneygrubbers. They ought to have enough respect for the electorate to say “Yeah, I’m a politician —and I’m going to argue and reason with other people just like me as to why this thing or that should go down this way or the other.”

What this moron on my TV probably meant to say is that he disapproves of partisanship as an end in itself. Yeah, okay. Because if we’re just going to vote en bloc as partisans and not give any consideration to what’s right or what our consciences tell us, then there’s really no particular reason why any one politician’s position should mean anything. They can just go ahead and sign over their potential as leaders of men to some smaller group of such result-getting morons and have done with it.

I went to a local grocery store during my lunch hour today where, out in the parking lot, was one of those portables for early voters to do their duty. And I did mine.

I think I probably left half the ballot blank because it’s a bunch of one-horse races or a race where it’s a Republican versus a libertarian or some other hopeless combination that I neither know nor care about.

But I made sure to lodge my protest in the form of a vote for Kinky Friedman for the Governorship of Texas. I can only hope he outpolls “Grandma” Strayhorn, whose TV ads have driven me to drink. I know Perry is going to win it big, but I hope it’s only a plurality.

I did not vote for Dewhurst. But, for the first time ever, I did vote for Lloyd Doggett to be my Congressman again. I usually don’t like his politics, but the guy is a humper and knows his constituency, whatever the boundaries might be. Good luck to him.

I also made sure to vote for Dana DeBeauvoir. She is Travis County’s County Clerk and I have had a huge crush on her forever. She is also very nice and funny whenever I have had the pleasure of working for her on election nights. That’s something I’d like to get back into one of these days.

As for the bond issues, I voted no on five of the seven or whatever it was. Forget a new library. This town’s plenty wired up as it is. Let the hippies and the homeless go read Plato down at the Goodwill thrift shop and leave the information society to its own devices.

That was one hell of a game between UT and Nebraska! A quality win in one of the toughest venues in all of college football. Go stick that in your computer, poll-smokers.

Why won’t my guys be allowed to play for the National Championship? For one thing, the Eastern Establishment’s sports media machine won’t allow it. They’d rather promote clown-assed nonsense like West Virginia or Louisville.

In other news, the Irish are struggling at home against the Bruins. Gotta love that!