Previews of coming attractions.
September 18th, 2026Travel notes: Springfield, MO.
September 18th, 2026Mike the Musicologist and I were in the middle of a used bookstore in Springfield, Missouri, browsing the shelves. MtM came up to me and said “Let’s go.” in that tone of voice. You know the one I’m talking about: not mean, not angry, but that tone of voice that tells you “Some s–t has gone down and we need to leave right now.”
He told me in the parking lot as we were heading to the car. It was in a Signal group chat we both belong to, but I hadn’t been looking at my phone. It seems to me like we spent a couple of hours (but it may not have been that long) in the cafe at a Barnes and Noble making calls to other people and trying to figure out next steps.
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We had dinner with Lawrence and some other mutual friends of ours and Andrew’s on Monday night, the night we got back to Austin. I remember thinking to myself, “If ever there was an appropriate time for the ‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’ joke, this would be it.” Then Lawrence walked in and made that joke.
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I’ve been running flat out for the past couple of days. I got up Tuesday morning, after a short sleep, to find out that I had to deal with an Internet outage (that Spectrum didn’t fix until Wednesday morning) and also with our trash. I paid someone to deal with the trash so I didn’t have to deal with it when I got back. They failed. Enough said.
So this is really my first chance to catch up and explain myself and my adventures last week. Of course, it has taken me a few days to write this.
Quotes of the day.
September 17th, 2026“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
–Sir Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
While I was trying to find that quote, I ran across another Pratchett quote:
“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”
—Reaper Man
Obit watch: September 16, 2026.
September 16th, 2026Annie Dillard, author. (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
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I have several of her books, but haven’t really dipped into them. I feel like I need to be in the right place and right frame of mind for this kind of work. But I do find this quote (from For the Time Being) quite striking:
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time– or even knew selflessness or courage or literature– but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
While we were driving home on Monday, Mike mentioned a headline on his phone about the death of a “legendary” designer, and asked if any designer was truly “legendary”.
Bob Mackie. Even I have heard of Bob Mackie. Among his credits: Carol Burnett’s curtain dress.
Jay Maisel, photographer.
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The “On Taking Pictures” podcast devoted much of an episode to Mr. Maisel. I think he was also featured prominently in the OTP drinking game, but I seem to have lost my copy of that.
Peter Max, 1960s “counterculture” artist.
His simple graphic images, brightly colored and infectiously happy, lent themselves to a long list of licensed commercial products, from sheets and glassware and shower curtains to airplanes and, on one occasion, a stamp for the Postal Service.
Incorporating Art Nouveau, Op Art and psychedelic motifs, Mr. Max’s designs offered instant visual gratification and a cheery endorsement of the generational politics of love, joy and universal consciousness. His “panopticon” images repeated visual elements in tight formation, producing a kaleidoscope effect that recalled Easter mandalas.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas! (#162 and #163 in a series)
September 16th, 2026By way of Lawrence: the city of Fulshear, Texas fired their chief of police, Kenny Seymour. (Fulshear is a suburb of Houston.)
Why?
It seems like he was in a relationship with a police captain. Sleeping with your subordinates is generally what we call “bad”.
Could be worse, though. The city of Trinidad, Texas (which looks to be roughly between Corsicana and Athens) had their license to have a police department revoked.
Everyone who has a license from TCOLE has to “separate” from the department.
I prefer to use local or semi-local sources when I can, but the NYPost has a longer article. Part of this seems to be related to the arrest of Jennifer Combs. Ms. Combs made a post on Facebook “alleging that bacteria in Trinidad’s water pipes had hospitalized residents”. She was arrested for “felony false alarm or report”.
The police also arrested another person:
The police chief, Charles Gregory, resigned in June.
After his resignation, the judge who approved Combs’ search warrant wrote a scathing letter questioning “the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of information” two Trinidad officers had presented to him and Gregory’s leadership.
The Henderson County District Attorney’s Office announced in August it would stop taking cases from the department following the state’s investigation.
Separately, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found issues with Trinidad’s water supply — the very concern Combs had raised — which city officials have since promised to address.
There were some other issues.
According to another story, the department had five full-time and “several” part-time officers. The population of Trinidad was 860 in 2020.
Your NFL loser update: week 1, 2026.
September 15th, 2026NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
New England
Cleveland
Houston
Indianapolis
Tennessee
Denver
Chargers
Washington
Dallas
Green Bay
Carolina
New Orleans
Tampa Bay
Atlanta
Rams
Remember, it is just the first week of the season. There’s still plenty of time to panic.
Obit watch: September 13th, 2026.
September 13th, 2026Friend of the blog, and a close personal friend of mine before there was a blog, Andrew Wimsatt, was murdered on Labor Day. His death was the one I referenced in a post earlier this week.
I’m still on the road (Mike the Musicologist and I head home tomorrow) but that’s only part of the reason I haven’t been able to put anything up before now. The other part of the reason is that this is sad and awful and emotionally devastating. I haven’t really been able to put words to it. I’ve had people die on me – we all have – but I’ve never had someone close to me murdered.
Lawrence has put up a series of posts rounding up the knows, the known unknowns, and a lot of tributes from Andrew’s friends, which I will send you in the direction of for now while I try to wrap my mind around this:
My Friend Was Murdered On Labor Day
Updates On The Murder Of Andrew Wimsatt
Remembering Andrew Wimsatt: “The Coolest Dude Ever”
The one thing I will add, which I have not seen anyone else mention, is: Andrew never forgot a kindness rendered to him. A few years ago, I drove him to a surgical appointment and waited for him to get out of durance vile. He reminded me of that multiple times over the years, always with gratitude. (And he drove me to appointments, too. As a matter of fact, he drove me to get 9,000 miles of hose shoved up my behinder region just a couple of weeks ago. And he didn’t want to accept lunch or dinner as payment: I had to force it on him.)
I think Andrew would have enjoyed the things I’ve picked up while I’m on the road. I wish he were still here to see them.
I will probably have more to write after I get home.
Loser update update.
September 13th, 2026The start of the NFL season sort of snuck up on me while I was out of town.
The loser update will return sometime on Tuesday (should be back by then) to allow for the results of the Monday night games.
Obit watch.
September 8th, 2026Still on the road, but I want to get a quick post up now.
I just found out that one of my close friends was murdered yesterday.
I don’t have a lot of details. There have some press reports, but they don’t name the victim. Law enforcement is still carrying out the notification of the family, as far as I know.
Once I have more details, I’ll post a full obit here and at the SDC blog.
Road trip!
September 7th, 2026Traveling once again. Blogging will be intermittent until September 14th or possibly later.
TMI Bagatelle. (#148)
September 4th, 2026Inspired by “Hey Borepatch – Nice Gleason score!” and a recent medical report, which states:
The Boston Bowel Prep Scale score total is 9.
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A Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS) score of 9 is the highest possible score, meaning your colon was completely clean and provided an ideal view during your procedure.
Remember that test they gave you in school? “I AM THE BEST AT FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS!”.
(I brought this up with several of the nurses, right before they shot me full of Michael Jackson juice, and they all remembered it, too.)
(Also, folks: get yourself checked out. Dave Barry would approve, but I don’t think he’s sending out those certificates any longer.)
Quel fromage!
September 2nd, 2026Previously on WCD:
Guess what? I was wrong, WRONG, wrongity-wrong!
The NBA on Wednesday announced severe punishments for the LA Clippers — including the loss of five future first-round picks and a fine of $30 million — for violating salary cap circumvention rules when they signed star Kawhi Leonard in 2022.
In a statement, the NBA said a near-yearlong investigation “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules.”
There are some other penalties, too. The one that jumps out at me:
Owner Steve Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year.
Obit watch: September 1, 2026.
September 1st, 2026Roger Beasley, prominent Austin automotive dealer.
Wendell Berry, agrarian writer. NYT (share link, may require registration or an email address or something). I’ve never read any of his books, but he published articles in the old “Country Journal” back when my people subscribed to it. I thought he was an interesting guy, but frankly kind of a crank.
Not quite an obit, but:
Quotes of the day.
August 31st, 2026Yes, more than one.
“Ferret people, we are a lot,” said Michele Paulhus, who drove her ferrets from Massachusetts to the show in Columbus, Ohio. “You kind of have to be because they are freakish little animals.”
“But I don’t think we’re as bad as the reptile people,” said her friend Skyla Fay.
Wait, wait. It’s not legal to lock a 2-year-old or a teenager in a cage? Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?
Obit watch: August 30, 2026.
August 30th, 2026Borepatch put up an excellent obit for Dolly Parton, much better than anything I’ve written or could write. I strongly, strongly encourage you to go over and read it.
(I’d never heard the “my aunt had a sofa just like it” story before. And it made me laugh. Hard.)
The NYT has a nice obit for Azriel Blackman (may require registration or an email address or something).
Mr. Blackman is another one of those people who wasn’t necessarily famous, but who the paper of record does a good job of covering.
He was an airline mechanic for American Airlines. He worked for them for 80 years.
No, that’s not a typo. Eighty years. Eight. Zero.
The first aircraft he worked on was the amphibious Sikorsky flying boat. He serviced more than a dozen kinds of planes over the next eight decades, including the Douglas DC-3, the Convair CV-240, the Lockheed Constellation, the Boeing 377 and the McDonnell Douglas MD-80.
After enlisting in the Army, he served in the Korean War, repairing helicopters for Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. Following his discharge in 1952, he returned to American at LaGuardia, then moved as a crew chief to New York International Airport, better known as Idlewild Airport, in 1960, three years before it was renamed for President Kennedy.
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In 2012, American honored Mr. Blackman’s tenure by flying him around New York City in a restored, propeller-driven DC-3, part of the airline’s fleet that carried passengers between the mid-1930s and the late 1940s. He sat in the cockpit as it flew along the Hudson River, over Central Park and past the former site of Aviation High.
“He was taken aback by all of that,” his son said. “He didn’t really know how to accept praise of that magnitude. In his mind, he didn’t feel he had done anything extraordinary. He loved going to work. He considered the people he worked with family, and it was enjoyment to him. That was his real reward.”
He was 100 when he passed.