"Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."
-Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Tonight's speech in front of gray shouldered West Point cadets was a stark, stuffy contrast to the speeches in which Obama has most moved me -- from a misty shoreline in Austin in February of 2007 to a wide-open stadium in Denver with confetti dripping from the skies -- but it wasn't that kind of speech. If Obama's speech was a horse, a judge would have called it "workmanlike." It got the job done, with little emotion or thrill, in a manner that was both tidy and flat. Despite all of this, sometimes in a field of distracting showboats, those horses actually win.

No one trusts the Afghanistan government. And the war that President Obama has supported since its inception -- yes, this war -- has until now escaped the attention it deserves from not only our nation but from our past administration. We've broken more than one item at Pottery Barn this past decade and continue to be paying for the damage in lives and money, despite the fact that our nation is currently short on both. This isn't and never has been Pearl Harbor and alluding to it isn't going to make anyone feel any differently.

Which leads me to the question: Why now? Obama could let us continue to flounder around in Afghanistan, blame the terrorists' evasiveness on the caves and crossing into Pakistan, and we could spend years upon years doing more of the same. The terrible timing of committing more money and troops to a war that seems so futile makes me think -- despite my utter dislike of the plan -- that it might actually work.

I use the word "work" loosely, like many people use the term "paradigm," having no idea how to define it. I don't know what would "work" at this point in Afghanistan but I do know that while Obama has always supported the Afghanistan war, he's also a bit of a control freak and a perfectionist. If he didn't think this was a battle worth fighting, and worth fighting now, then I'd like to believe -- and I think that I still have enough faith in him to do so -- that he's right.

After the speech, Texas blogger Steve Southwell, who writes Who's Playin', tweeted that his oldest son was motivated to write a letter to Obama. When I asked what his son's take on it was, Southwell replied that his son wants Obama to "'bring them home' and 'fix this war'." But despite these desires, Southwell continued to say that his son "says he wants to fly a bomber when he grows up, but not in a war."

Gently, I'd remind his son that you can't have bombers without wars. And to Americans frustrated with the situation in Afghanistan, but unhappy with the President's decision tonight, I'd remind them that we can't have peace until we've ended the wars we started.

Longtime Austin radio station (now owned by Emmis Communications) KGSR, or as we call it in my family K-Geezer, has moved from 107.1 to 93.3 FM, citing a desire for additional signal strength to reach wider audiences in the Austin area.

I didn't find out about this switch while listening to the radio. I didn't first see it on TV either. By the time a friend and fellow listener told me, I already knew. I saw it on Twitter. And I know, it's not any shock that I spend a good part of my day with an eye on some form of a Twitter stream or another.

But I was a little caught off guard when I drove by a billboard last night on South Lamar advertising their annual compilation CD, KGSR Broadcast Volume 17. They go on sale every year around Christmas and are snapped up by local music fans. On the billboard, no doubt slapped up before the channel debacle, the logo still says 107.1 FM. Whether it's too expensive to change or they just haven't gotten around to doing it yet is unknown to me.

But it's odd, really, to see such a physical representation of how print advertising is a dying and expensive breed of communicating to an audience. For free, KGSR can reach thousands of listeners, a captive audience that has nothing better to do than "reset their preset." Meanwhile, their billboard sits vulture-like looking down over the city, serving as a tombstone to a mode of advertising that has seen its day.

I'm headed to the Gulf for the long weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving. Our annual trek to Port Aransas has been my favorite tradition since we invented it in 2006. I plan on doing lots of sitting, sleeping, eating, beach-walking, ocean-gazing and fiddling (on a fiddle). I'm also bringing my laptop so I might try to do some writing.

Happy Thanksgiving. When I'm at the beach, I reflect on what I'm grateful for this year. What are you grateful for?

While you ponder that, feel free to read some of the highlights below and enjoy some pictures from Thanksgivings the past few years.

2006
Beachcombing
Lucky Shots

2007
A Memory at Every Port

2008
Shameless Confession Regarding Thanksgiving

Tom Schieffer will announce he's dropping out of the Governor's race today in a press conference at 3 PM in Austin, sources say.

To put it bluntly, I was never much of a fan. It seems Christmas, for me, is coming a month early!

Now, an important question: I've had a bet going since August with another blogger that anyone would win the primary over Schieffer, including Kinky. Does Schieffer dropping out mean I won or does it void the contest entirely? I have a Sullivan's steak dinner riding on this.

Update:
Bill White is now going to run for Texas Governor. Texas Monthly recently had a plush piece on him and Ross Ramsey at the Tribune brings a good perspective this afternoon about what makes White a serious contender.

Things are getting interesting and perhaps a bit less dismal for Democrats in 2010. I was really looking forward to taking a nice long nap after the primary but sounds like the times may be a-changin' after all. I can't complain.

Over the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to take improv comedy classes at a local theater called The New Movement. Set in an old, triangular building off of 11th in East Austin, the theater is the baby of Chris Trew and Tami Nelson, two talented and funny people who say "y'all" a lot.

Improv kind of goes against everything I'm used to - I'm a planner and a thinker, so the idea of standing on a stage without a plan is not only frightening but a little like breathing underwater to me. It took a few times on stage for me to realize the simple fact that it really is improv and you really can't plan for it. You might have a hilarious script in your head about an alcoholic woman yelling at her husband who's cooking sausage but when you start saying the part of an alcoholic woman, the other person on stage starts playing the part of a safari guide on a zebra hunt.

Needless to say, you have to adapt.

But what I found most rewarding about improv was the insight it gave me to others and, strangely, how to work with them. At work I operate in an insular bubble, with my own ideas about how I want something done and how it should be done. It's led to struggles oftentimes of my own making because rather than delegate, I end up just doing what I want done myself. Improv teaches you -- forces you, really -- to take your ego and your preconceived notions about what might be funny out of the equation. You are just there to talk and make motions with your hands. You let the others around you do the work and, when you really let go of the control, that's what becomes funny.

One attitude that I've taken with me from the classes was a sincere respect for those around me that I don't think I had before. The mantra was "Your teammates are the smartest people in the room" is something that can be applicable to nearly everything in life: work, relationships, family. Once you've accepted this belief (it's a little like having faith in God, hold the jihad) it's amazing how easy it becomes to see the strengths in others around you.

And for a girl who spends most of her time in a cynical funk about the world, that acceptance is pretty damn funny.

Isn't it a great time to be a Texas Democrat's hair?

Tom Schieffer has got to be considering his exit strategy to the Crawford ranch right about now. Hank Gilbert got into the race and ruined all his fun. Schieffer's also being upstaged by not one but two men who sound like they belong on Dancing With the Stars instead of a campaign for Governor of Texas. "Humorist Kinky Friedman and hair magnate Farouk Shami" is how the Ft. Worth Star Telegram described them in a story today about how they didn't attend a candidate forum last night. Why bother? It's not like they're running for office or anything!

[Pause for laughter; applause.]

Now, I can't blame Schieffer for not wanting to spend any of his own money on a campaign against someone who's garnering headlines like "Kinky Friedman’s Pet Parade Has Hungry Armadillo, Gassy Horses." But "hair magnate" Farouk Shami brings a whole level of Sham-wow! to the podium. It's the stuff of little Texas rodeo queens' dreams: a handsome Palestinian, who scraped together millions by selling handheld griddles guaranteed to tame your mane, takes on Governor Good Hair, shifting the debate from health care and home foreclosures to hair products and humidity control.

I know we all have more important things in this state to discuss that don't involve frizz and follicles. As a Democrat, and more importantly, as a Texan, I get that. But as a girl with a long history of hair issues that have been less than Democratic, I'm thrilled to see Mr. Shami bringing the plight of untamed tresses to statewide attention. Millions of Texas women, young and old, struggle with their hair every day. And, for many years, I was one of them. As the daughter of a hardworking woman with multiple cow-licks and a self-made man with a tangle of curls, I've always walked the line of having sort of straight, sort of curly hair. And you know what? It's never been Just. Right.

That was until I bought a CHI iron, produced and distributed by Farouk Systems. It changed my life. Suddenly my curly hair fell straight and, more importantly, stayed straight for 8-10 hours no matter what the weather. It brought me a new level of hope and -- I like to think -- a commitment to maintaining our state's hair quality.

Let me set the record straight: I did pay $200 for it at one point in 2005, which will no doubt be exposed on Mr. Shami's TEC report. However, this does not mean I endorse Mr. Shami for Governor -- but I am proud to stand before you today and say: Two true blue thumbs up on his fantastic line of hair care!

Fellow Democrats, this is our time. No, not our time to have a serious Democratic candidate for Governor. That would be too much to ask for. But it is our time to cast aside our stale Paul Mitchell products and our low-wattage blow-driers. It is our time for good hair.

Because if we're going to lose in 2010, and as of now, we're going to lose big, then we might as well look good doing it.

Thank you and may God Bless Texas!

Today I fell in love with a blog. I wandered onto the blog through an online petition and couldn't stop reading. Her writing was witty. Her posts were intriguing. Her layout was fun and inviting. Her blog was…last updated in January 2009?

How could this happen? This smart, funny DC-based gal called herself a social media junkie but her blog was a graveyard of social media conventions past. Maybe she joined the Peace Corps, I thought. Maybe she had to stop writing because she's running for office. Maybe she's in the hospital in a coma. Then I clicked over to her Twitter page. She was definitely not in a coma or in the Peace Corps. She's just been twittering. A lot. Like, every hour.

My initial instinct was to send her a snarky @ reply on Twitter telling her she needed to get back to blogging more. But then I realized that I was, frighteningly, becoming That Girl.

My blog is dying.

Twitter's just easier. There's a definite advantage to being able to write in short spurts whenever you feel the impulse. As a kid, I wrote pages and pages of scrawling print about horses and families of twelve who go on cruises. Never mind the fact that I didn't have a horse and my mom would sooner catch on fire than take us on a family cruise, my creativity poured out of me. I wrote all the time, everywhere -- much like I do now. It was just more than 140 characters at a time back then.

I signed up for Twitter fairly early on, when only one or two of my friends were on it and I, like most others who have been out of their house within the last five years, took one look at the fail-whale-ridden site and quickly left the page. But since the mass adoption of Twitter, which for me was early 2009, I've noticed a sharp drop-off in the amount of content I'm producing on my blog. I tweet in the morning carpool (when I'm not driving of course), when I'm in a bar, when I'm at dinner, when I'm at work and when I'm not doing anything. And I've started to notice - all of this twittering has got me chattering more and blogging less.

Sure, I'll bang out a long thoughtful post every once in a while, when its raining outside or I've been drinking too much wine. But all the little nuggets that I used to drop onto my blog over the last four years -- a video, a random musing of a few sentences, a shout-out to a friend having an art show or a candidate having a fundraiser -- have been sheared down into tiny, bite-sized tweets that oftentimes are merely a regurgitation of someone else's self promotion or discovery (that's a 140+ way of saying that I'm not afraid to RT). I went through a phase in 2007 where I took a camera everywhere and posted lengthy blogs with photos of people I met who I gave my blog address out to in hopes they would leave a comment or start reading my blog more regularly. Now I use my phone to snap a TwitPic and assume they'll figure out how to find me through Google. My style and even my social dialogue has completely changed.

Tomorrow night, I'm going to a tweetup. I probably will tweet the whole time I’m there ("OMG, just met @fillintheblank!") but I doubt I'll blog about it. After all, this post gets me off the hook for a few more days.