the tindog coffeehouse

I got the newest issue of Texas Monthly in the mail a few days ago and haven’t stopped salivating since. Why? Because it’s the barbecue issue, with their rundown of the 50 best barbecue joints in the state. (Between this list and their list of the 63 tacos you must eat before you die, I’ve got my work cut out for me.)

Topping their list is a place called Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, a small town about 50 miles east of Austin. These guys are only open on Saturdays from 8:00am to whenever the meat runs out, which is usually around noon. Now that’s what you call serious devotion! (I’ve never had barbecue at 8:00 in the morning, but I bet it’s good. Heck, it’s probably the best breakfast you’ll ever have.)

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I love the title of this Radar article: “Facebook an Agent of Communist Propaganda?”

It seems someone created a Facebook profile of Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao (as a propaganda tool?) following the recent earthquakes there, and dang if the guy doesn’t already have over 16,000 friends supporters and climbing. (I guess when you’re PM of a country of 1.3 billion people, you’re bound to know a few of them.)

Interestingly, “Grandpa Wen’s” profile includes the following applications:

• “What kind of Commie are you?” quiz
• “I brake for Mao” bumper sticker
• A link to his blog: “Made in China… sucker!”
• And of course Scrabulous

We also learn that his interests include reading, cross-stiching, and oppressing the masses, and that his favorite TV show is Sex and the City. Who knew?

Napoleon Dynamite: Well, nobody’s going to go out with me!
Pedro: Have you asked anybody yet?
Napoleon Dynamite: No, but who would? I don’t even have any good skills.
Pedro: What do you mean?
Napoleon Dynamite: You know, like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills… Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.

Esquire has come up with a list of 75 skills every man should master. OK, I’ll bite. How do I measure up?

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The Texas attorney general’s office has created a parenting curriculum for high school students which will become mandatory throughout the state beginning in the fall.

State officials say the goal is twofold: They want to teach teenage parents their legal rights and they want to show other students the difficulties of being a parent in hopes that they’ll wait to have children.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. In one sense, I guess it’s good if the goal is to discourage teens from getting pregnant or to provide resources to teens who already have kids so they can be better parents. On the other hand, is this really the responsibility of the schools?

Should public schools be responsible for teaching parenting courses or sex education or “life-skill” courses such as money management? Ideally, that sort of stuff should be taught at home, right? Isn’t that still the job of a parent? Of course, that’s the problem: the parents aren’t teaching these things to their children; they expect the schools to do it for them.

And this is what we get as a result. For better or worse.

Can a bunch of psychiatrists agree on what is considered “normal” sexual behavior and what is “abnormal”? And can we trust their conclusions?

The American Psychiatric Association is setting out to update their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a guide used by psychiatrists and psychologists to help diagnose mental health disorders, and of course one of the most controversial sections is the area related to sex.

So what is considered normal and what isn’t? Is erectile dysfunction or low sex drive normal? Are they biological/medical conditions or mental health disorders? What about sadomasochism or pedophilia or transgenderism? What about homosexuality? Where do you draw the line?

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Facebook is rolling out some pretty significant design changes to its profile pages beginning in June, breaking the single-page 2-column profile down into multiple tabs.

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