I got a call about a week before this years Art Car Parade from Sarah, a good friend from TRF. We used to work together at the Sea Devil, one of the taverns there. She was going to be working at the beer concession there, and they needed more help.

I've always loved the Art Car Parade, though I'd only seen it a time or two before. One of the main reasons is that it's a grass-roots, "run-what-you brung" kinda art show - there are no juries, no high-falutin' art-degree constipated poobahs deciding who gets to play in the sandbox - it's completely open to anyone that wants to cobble together a funky ride. Artistic freedom uncut.

So, I jumped on the chance like a chicken on a june bug, and after a quick call to ensure she could get her shift covered, CG did too. Since they still needed a few more folks to round out the crew, we got out our little black books, called some of our friends in the business, and got the rest of the openings filled.

We had a blast, and made some good moolah.

They were much better organized than most festival-type affairs, the crowd was enthusiastic, and the weather was good, though it was cloudy, and the light was a bit dull for the best photography, as you will see. The lady in charge of the vendors was as nice as she could be. She had known us from TRF, as she was the vendor co-ordinator there a few years back, and was happy to see a crew of experienced high-volume servers that could get the beer across the bar, and the money in the drawer, in an accurate and rapid fashion.

The best thing was that during the early part of the day, while the parade was actually going on, the beertending was fairly slow. One or two people could easily handle it. So most of us took off to watch the parade.

Hoping that such would be the case, I had loaded up with batteries and memory cards for the digital, and spent most of the parade shooting it. You can see the results in the following pages. I've divided them into groups.

First, Art Cars, the assemblage of wild and wacky contraptions that one can tell at one time had descended from mundane four-wheeled automobiles. It is by far the largest group, and is broken into several pages.

Next are the Art Bikes, which seem to have two-wheeled ancestors, some with, some without, a means to motivate them other than human muscle.

Finally, there is the gallery of the eclectic, the odd, the witty, and the bizarre people that paraded or attended the same, whom I have dubbed the Art Folk.

Finally, really finally, (I guess that last paragraph was, in fact, the penultimate one) for those of you that are interested in digital photography, and/or image editing, I added a page of technical notes relating the various hoops I jumped to get the pics in somewhat presentable fashion.

Disclaimer: I have made up all the names for the vehicles in the pics. Any resemblance to the name that the creators gave them is purely incidental, and attibutable to my poorly developed extrasensory abilities.

All pics will pop up in a new window, and you'll need to have javascript enabled in your browser.

Enjoy.

The Art Cars 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 The Art Bikes The Art Folk Technical Notes

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The news here is reporting that three thugs attempted a home invasion today.

They must have forgotten that Texas is not one of those states that discourages the personal ownership of firearms for self-defense.

The home owner shot and killed two of them. Score one for the prevention of crime at it's source, though of course the headlines were several points smaller than they would have been had the guy mistakenly shot his pizza delivery guy.

Despite my own experience in trying to teach pigs to sing, I on ocassion get ensnared in a discussion about gun control. So, in order that I might in the future just offer a shortcut to a page, rather than laboriously type out more messages, I thought I'd get at least one entry here on gun control.

Then, like those guys in that old bar joke that have told each other the same chesnuts over and over so many times they've numbered them all to save time in the retelling, I can just say, "Ho Hum, been there, squashed that. See 2002-05-05, and get back to me OK?" I'm just going to give titles to the various arguments that they trot out, (there's like only five or six, and I've heard them all a zillion times before) and add to this entry as needed. Pretty soon it'll be done, and I'll never have to waste another keystoke on this again.

Today's lesson:

"What Would Jesus Do?"

In the other end of this conversational teeter-totter today, I was presented this argument, with the proponent making the case that Good Xians should be unwilling to kill another human being.

I don't find the argument too convincing, for a few reasons...

First, if one wants to chug the Bible straight, Jesus did use violence, when he grabbed some whips and scourged the pigeon vendors out of the temple. I think the record shows that he was not averse to the use of violence to pursue his aims. If you don't want to accept the Biblical record on this, then the entire WWJD argument falls apart.

Second, the doctrine of Just War has long since reconciled the Xian faith to the use of force. They pretty much had to, as it was necessary to their survival. Without some sort of armed and armored Defenders of the Faith, the culture that nourished Xianity would have long since become extinct in the light of pressure from the Islamic world, if nothing else.

The was Something Else, of course, that being the presence of pagan warlords that were perfectly willing to convert to the faith, so long as they didn't have to relinquish their martial ways.

Poof!

Transition made, complete with silver-tongued shamans ready to supply the needed doctrinal explanations, with that huge rubber-paged tome that is the Bible providing the scriptual foundation for just about any behavior, which it still does to this day.

It was easy for them, as nobody really read the Bible back in those times, except the shamans, and they hadn't really even settled which of the various available manuscripts belonged in the True Word of God (and still don't agree), so they could have been quoting the Epic of Gilgamesh, for all the newly converted knew.

In a skinny instant, Xianity morphed from the religion of the downtrodden, and the enslaved, (emphasizing eventual justice, and reward for suffering, in the hereafter) to the religion of the conqueror, where victory in battle, wealth, and temporal power, meant that god Was On Your Side, and a sign of god's favor due to your obedience to, and congruence with, His Plan, a belief that the Episcopelians, and victorious high school football coaches immediately following the State Championship still hold, to listen to them speak.

Lo and behold, I have digressed... weren't we talking about self-defense as regards gun control?

Passive resistance works not at all on criminals - it has sometimes worked on governments with strong legal systems and a tradition of protection of individual civil rights. The Romans didn't seem to be horribly affected by it, and in fact pretty much settled the Jew's hash for them a few decades later when the legions effectively killed off the Jewish nation, and scattered the survivors across the Mediterranean in slave chains.

To be fair, looking at the history of that war, it doesn't seem there were too many Jews actively pursuing a course of passive resistance, so this might not the best example to use. Other than, ostensibly, Jesus, already back in heaven and smiling down on his Chosen Ones as they clinked around the Empire in their collars and chains, emptying chamberpots and tilling the fields, when not serving as targets of opportunity in main events at the Flavian.

I imagine it's a lot easier to give up your life for your fellow man, when you know you're just gonna snooze in a borrowed tomb for three days, and then reunite with your father in Etenal Bliss. Or does he still feel pain every time we sin? The nuns were never too clear about hat. Sometimes one, sometimes the other...

The Maccabees were more terrorists, err...asassins err... freedom fighters, than anything else. Though, it's been my experience that pacifists don't read much history, or they wouldn't be pacifists, so maybe you can get away with that argument if you need to use it on the street or at a cocktail party.

Finally, a question for you any pacifists out there in cyberpsace - should the passengers of Flight 93 meekly accepted their fate, knowing that to do so would have most likely meant that, besides themselves, hundreds more would die when that flight reached it's destination, or was it morally superior to take arms against that sea of troubles and by opposing end it? (apologies to the Bard)

That's not a rhetorical question. If you feel that non-violence is always the answer, and that killing someone else is never the higher ethical thing to do, please dissect this instance, and explain to me how and why their actions were not moral.

Pacifists are like hothouse orchids in the winter - they can only thrive in a protected environment. Ironically, they owe their continued abilty to express these impractical, idealistic notions to the very folks they oppose.

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These pics were all shot Friday, May 3, 2002, at the Crawfish Festival in Spring, Texas. They've been resized and compressed for bandwidth reasons. I have the original large hi-res archived. If you'd like them, please drop me an email.

Feel free to use them, if you like. I've no real way or interest in enforcing this request, but I'd appreciate it if you'd link or somehow credit me for the pics. Enjoy!

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