WHERE I'M CALLING FROM, PART 3. I continue to like this "Texas" I find myself in. I haven't forgotten, however, that it's politically... retrograde. Our Governor calls Obama and health care "socialist" as casually as you or I might call Williamsburg "over," and loves to cheer the folks at home with talk of seceding from the Union. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss David Paterson.

And Perry isn't even the worst of the lot: There was some kind of bizarre Gathering of the Nuts last weekend at Tyler, where the purty roses come from, with Perry, Glenn Fucking Beck, and State Rep Leo Berman, who called Obama "God's punishment on us." No word in local press reports as to whether a cross was burned at the event, though maybe that happens too frequently thereabouts to merit notice.

Perry is a graduate of Texas A&M, and I note with interest this reminiscence from a speech he gave at the 2005 Muster:

We toted my footlocker up to the dorm, and then dad went outside and pulled George [Shriever] under a tree and delivered a message: “Make a man out of him.” It’s too bad dad felt compelled to say that, because my fish hole ended up being next door to George Shriever and Roger Matson. At any hour of the night, George would not knock loudly on the wall, my signal to come running. Sometimes he needed his brass shined or his sink cleaned or his bed made. Often, he just wanted me to sing him to sleep. But whatever George wanted, I did. I was his fish.

Well, I suppose old Yalies sound just as strange talking about their homoerotic rituals, too.

Here in Aggieland there's an alt-paper called the Maroon Weekly; I guess it's the local equivalent of the Voice. Instead of Tom Robbins or Wayne Barrett, though, here's what we had in this week's editorial section:

This past week, Obama took the first major step towards banning guns from all United States citizens...

Yes, you read that correctly. We will be subject to gun laws not created and voted on by our congress.

International laws that were adamantly opposed by the Bush administration, who preferred to use national gun control legislation. International laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as billionaire businessman George Soros...

This nonsense, straight out of the emails your grandma has been sending you (and proven bullshit), is what the weekly whee-funtime paper thinks the kids will go for. They're probably right. Though there's a big college here, we don't have the traditional pinko collegetown thing going on. Most of the local entertainment district's storefronts are distressed and art-directed to look like Old West saloons and whatnot; the big dance club, Daisy Dukes (!), looks like a grainery. When the kids go out, they dress like they're going to appear in a Ke$ha video. It's like an alternate America where beatniks and hippies never existed, and youth style went straight from Elvis to backwards baseball caps.

I can live with that, though. No place is cool enough for me; my Voice readers may recall that I was constantly complaining about the nanny state New York had become when I lived there. Griping's just one of the privileges of citizenship. Admittedly Texas is part of a larger and more destructive madness that will eventually consume and destroy this once-proud nation, but that probably won't happen till after I'm blessedly dead. Everybody wins -- me, and the howling feral children that will inherit this blackened continent.

In the meantime there's so much that is not political to enjoy. A couple of weekends back I went to visit a friend in San Antonio, which was serendipitously having its annual Fiesta (we took in the River Parade). I just got a taste but it was nice: The Riverwalk is much prettier than the pictures let on; I took a long walk down down South Flores and saw some of the gentrifying shabby-chic; El Mercado was like San Gennaro with Mexicans, and the Norteño, like all the music here, was splendid. Part of the fun of just scratching the surface is knowing there's still so much more left to dig.