A Public Health Worker in SXSW Court

I always figured if I was ever asked to serve as a SXSW panelist, it would be for something having to do with music. So imagine my surprise when good ol' public health got me into SXSW Interactive for the first time.

On Sunday morning, I was on a panel to discuss the use of social media to eliminate health disparities among minority populations. Although my program's forays into social media for HIV/STD prevention have been limited and inconclusive at best, I felt like I was at least able to convey the (ahem) challenges one must face when attempting to implement something new and not especially predicable at a government agency. That doesn't mean you can't change things in a bureaucracy, but it does mean you'd better take a mighty long view of things if you don't want to lose your head. It was great to hear that experience reaffirmed by several others while learning about their work.

Aside from going slightly over my allotted time (next time I do a panel presentation, I'm going to have a timer right in front of me), my only regret about SXSW Interactive has been not getting to fully immerse myself in it due to time-sensitive projects at work, gearing up for SXSW Music, Kate's busy schedule, tax preparation and wanting to see my son for a couple of hours over the weekend. There's a lot of potential synergy between emerging technologies and public health in everything from disease management to patient advocacy to data management. Here's hoping SXSW Interactive's embrace of health continues in coming years.

Cloud Nothings "Should've Been"

I'm a sucker for heart-on-sleeve collegiate pop records like this one from Cleveland's Cloud Nothings, who'll be in Austin next week for SXSW. That goes double when it's accompanied by an infectiously cute-and-clever video I can easily appropriate for STD prevention work in my day job. This one is rife with choices and consequences. The rest of Cloud Nothings' self-titled debut is also pretty good if you like this sort of thing.

Tight Trousers On a Wire Fence

Between proposed state austerity measures and the recent drying up of a steady freelance writing gig, my economic prospects for 2011 are increasingly bearish.

Maybe things have turned the corner, but the spoils of "recovery" will accrue largely to the investor class while people who work for a living will be asked to work harder for less.

Could things be worse? Absolutely. Will they get so bad that this looks good by comparison? I sure hope not.

Welcome to the Texas Century. Now step into those tight trousers and get up on that wire fence, boy.

Put This On: LBJ Buys Pants from Put This On on Vimeo.

Just About a Mile from Texarkana

I’m in Texarkana, Tex. tonight. Texarkana is one of those towns that gets sung about a lot because it makes for a nice rhyme, as Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Cotton Fields," Crazy Elephant's "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" and Jerry Reed's "Eastbound and Down" can attest.

One thing that doesn't rhyme with Texarkana is syphilis. The Ark-La-Tex region has some of the higher syphilis rates in the country, so I'm here for a meeting with public health folks from the tri-state area to discuss coordination of prevention and messaging efforts across state lines.

I would’ve preferred to meet in Hot Springs, Ark. for the spring-fed baths or Shreveport, La. for the casino buffets, but our leash ends where Texas does. As far as I can tell, the primary extracurricular activity in Texarkana would be to have a photo taken on State Line Ave. with half my girth in Texas and the other in Arkansas. Having already done that in several obnoxious iterations over the years, I’m content to hit the hotel treadmill and watch the Cowboys try to soak up some Texas Rangers mojo on Monday Night Football.

Yup, just another crazy night of road-hogging in the name of public health.

Embassy Unsweet

If you’re traveling to Dallas for business or pleasure anytime soon, do yourself a favor and stay the hell away from the Embassy Suites Dallas Market Center. I have stayed at this sub-par facility four times this year for my job. Yesterday, I checked out for what I fervently hope is the last time ever.

I am not a man of high standards when it comes to lodging. I thumb through those green discount motel guides you pick up in the foyer at Denny’s with the same tenacity a hedge fund trader pores over Investor’s Business Daily. I have stayed quite happily in off-brand motels and well-worn motor courts all across this dying empire. But I do believe in good value and that is where the Embassy Suites Dallas Market Center eats it.

Shoddily built during the mid-Eighties boom cycle, this Embassy Suites has endured several cosmetic renovations since, but none have addressed the fundamental problem of the building’s proximity to the Stemmons Freeway. Subsequently, the early morning rush hour was an unwelcome wake-up call in every one of the rooms I stayed in.

Now throw in archaic CRT TVs, middling reception of local channels and beige carpet stained with the unspeakable remnants of numerous after-prom parties. These are not things you can look past when you’re dropping $117 a night plus the obligatory Tom Hicks sports arena tax.

According to an alarming number of consumer reviews, the hotel’s parking lot is a hotbed of car theft. The hotel’s response to this is to have a crossing arm at the lot entrance that opens for anyone and everyone who drives up to it along with prominent signage to let you know you’re parking at your own risk.

I accept that it’s not the hotel’s fault that this area of Dallas is a den of thievery, but their ham-brained approach to addressing the problem is a waste of everyone’s time and money. This logic model carries over to the lobby restrooms, which have auto-flush toilets with lids that prevent the auto-flush sensors from knowing when it’s time to flush.

Then there’s the hotel’s management, which managed to bump half of our meeting delegation on two of the four times we stayed there this year. The first time was due to a plumbing issue, which wasn’t entirely their fault, but this week’s massive bump was never adequately explained to us.

Instead of stepping up, they tried to pass the entirety of blame off on our event planners – a cowardly move that indicated they were more interested in finger-pointing and ass coverage than trying to make things right for their guests. This is a hallmark of a business that simply doesn’t care, so why should you?

No love, no gloves

Think long and hard before buying Isotoner gloves or Totes umbrellas this holiday season. I used to think Isotoners made a nice stocking stuffer gift, but after reading this story from CNN's Campbell Brown about how Totes/Isotoner fired a temp worker/new mother at their Cincinnati warehouse for taking “unauthorized” breaks to pump breast milk in the crapper, they can eat the bird.

Marshall, Marshall, Marshall!

Greetings from behind the Pine Curtain. I'm in Bill Moyers' hometown of Marshall, Texas getting ready for a tri-state summit tomorrow to discuss ways of addressing syphilis in the Ark-La-Tex region.

There's no easy way to get to Marshall from Austin. We didn't get on the road until 3pm and the drive took about five and a half hours. We had middling Tex-Mex at a place called The Jalapeño Tree and had to join a "club" to drink beer. I'll have to add "Jalapeño Tree Club" to my résumé when I get home tomorrow night.

State proposes suburban creep

The much-maligned state office ghetto between the Capitol and UT may not be long for this world.

The state is looking at moving 9,000 of its employees from downtown Austin to a new, improved ghetto to be constructed somewhere off Texas 130 in eastern Travis County. Texas Facilities Commission executive director Edward Johnson envisions "a new company town" sprawling over 250-300 acres on a site to be determined. The former state offices would presumably be replaced with more mixed-use totems to the well-heeled god of Live-Work-Play.

I find it unsettling that we've reached a point where downtown Austin is too gentrified to house anyone in state government beyond ribbon-cutters and their immediate underlings, but subdivisions to the east and north are teeming with state workers because owning a home anywhere near central Austin and raising kids on state salaries is an increasingly unaffordable proposition. Those folks would likely welcome the shorter commute and our local tax districts would undoubtedly welcome the prime real estate to their rolls.

The proposed new complex might be nominally better than much of what passes for state office space now. State Sen. Kirk Watson says this is "an opportunity to do it right," suggesting that the campus could include worker-friendly amenities such as access to public transport and childcare. Having spent nearly all of my adult life in state buildings, I think the key word here is "opportunity."

In a state that battles Louisiana and Mississippi in a race to see how many of its citizens can be left wanting for health insurance, it isn't hard to imagine a public complex of this scale devolving into a low-bid nightmare that makes Boston's Government Center look like the architecture of promise. Even better, our government center would be next to a tollway through suburban nowhere, a setting that is unlikely to engender livability, authentic culture or even a vague sense of place.

If it were left up to me, I'd prefer to stay in a shitty old building near stuff that at least lets me know I'm still in Austin.

Weekend to weekend

I haven’t had much time to post this week. The ol’ state job has been busier than normal with an HIV prevention social marketing campaign set to launch in Dallas on December 1.

On the writing front, I’ve been working on some pre-Fun Fun Fun Fest coverage, including an invigorating conversation with Dead Milkmen vocalist Rodney Anonymous last weekend. We discussed virtually everything under the sun except for his band’s much-anticipated one-off reunion gig at the Fest. Despite their limited practicality, my favorite interviews tend to be the ones that meander down a winding road of free-flowing tangents.

Kate and I took advantage of last weekend’s perfect weather by doing some long-overdue yard maintenance and taking a drive out to Pedernales Falls State Park. You can view photographic evidence of the latter here.

We’re off to the Long Center tonight because Kate scored some free tickets to Ballet Austin's season opener. I think this will be the first ballet performance I’ve ever attended that is not “The Nutcracker.” Maybe that's something I should be ashamed of, but I'm sure I'm not the only non-"Nutcracker" ballet virgin out there.

Not so hot Lanta

Greetings from Atlanta. I'm here for the 2nd Annual National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media. It's been a pretty good conference so far. The sessions are engaging and I've actually managed to do some worthwhile networking without feeling phony about it.

The conference is taking place at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in downtown Atlanta. It's a big improvement over last year's conference at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's global communications center named for Sen. Tom Harkin, who I assume brought home quite a bit of pork if they named it for him while he's still alive and eating solid food. The Harkin facility itself was one of the nicest, most well-appointed government buildings I've ever set foot in, but they housed us at a Marriott next to IH-85 in the middle of suburban nowheresville. There were no sidewalks to walk on and no place to walk to.

By contrast, CNN Center is right next to the world's largest aquarium and a museum dedicated to Coca-Cola. CNN Center is a tourist attraction in and of itself, but I wish I'd been around back in 1976 when it housed the short-lived World of Sid & Marty Krofft indoor amusement park. I was always fascinated with the building when they showed Kaptain Kool and the Kongs perform in the atrium on The Krofft Supershow, which aired Saturday mornings on ABC. Now the whole thing is a mall food court where Nancy Grace's voice and likeness nauseates from multiple giant screen TVs.

This area of town was hammered by a tornado in March and a lot of damage is still visible. There's duct tape on my hotel room window and many windows at the adjacent Georgia World Congress Center remain boarded up. I think this is the first time I've ever slept in a building with semi-fresh twister damage, which is very exciting.

Perhaps the nicest thing about being in Atlanta is the fact that it only got up to 82 degrees here today. Even with a steady rain falling, I happily strolled about the surprisingly depopulated city earlier this evening without even breaking a sweat.

Me and Dr. E

Look who's been hanging out with former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders! I forced our conference photographer to snap this snot on Monday when Dr. Elders visited us as part of Trojan Condoms' "Evolve" campaign bus tour to promote sexual health.

As some of you will recall, Elders became a political lightning rod at a 1994 U.N. HIV conference when she was asked if masturbation should be promoted among young people as a less risky alternative to sex. "I think that it is part of human sexuality," Elders said, "and perhaps it should be taught."

In the ridiculous furor that followed, Elders was fired by President Clinton (male version) - who would've been much better off had he heeded her words.

Conference time

This week is Texas HIV/STD Conference week. Every two years, the program I work for puts together a four-day conference for HIV/STD workers from around the state. Although my own role in preparing for the conference is diminished from years past, it still dominates my schedule when it comes around.

Aside from providing everyone with disease statistics and prevention strategies, the conference is a chance to catch up with familiar faces and recharge the 'ol batteries to avoid burnout.

Many of the prevention counselors, disease intervention specialists and direct care providers who show up at our conference year after year are unsung heroes in my mind. Despite limited resources and a hostile political environment, they manage to reach the "unreachable" on a daily basis.

The least we can do is throw 'em a good conference.

Running Up to Dallas

I'm in Dallas for the next few days to observe focus groups for an social marketing project. After getting off to a very late start, I managed to make the 190-mile trek in under three hours. That's my personal best, kids.

The place where we're doing focus groups is an aging, vaguely futuristic office complex at 8700 N. Stemmons Fwy. just south of Regal Row. As I pulled up to the building, I got the distinct sense I'd seen this place before despite never having been there. The Seventies-era, atrium-style lobby with water features also looked familiar. It seemed like it would've been a premium place to office 35 years ago, but now the first floor is occupied by a branch of Family and Protective Services. Having social service agencies move in is usually a sure sign of going downmarket.

After the focus groups ended late this evening, I signed on to my nearby hotel's free wi-fi and started doing a little useless research as I'm wont to do whenever I need to be doing something else like finishing a job or going to sleep. As it turns out, the building in question was used as a location in the dystopic 1976 sci-fi romp, Logan's Run.

Fortunately, I remembered not to tell anyone I'm well over 30.

Talk of the Walk

Almost every morning, I leave my desk and go for a walk. I can make it around the periphery of the state hospital campus – 1.7 miles – in about 20 minutes.

I don’t ask permission and I don’t tell people what I’m doing, but just about everyone at work knows I walk by now. While some of my work is important, very little of it will suffer by having to sit on my desk for an extra 20 minutes while I stroll about the old asylum grounds as Austinites have been doing since before the Civil War.

If I were a manager, I would hold walking meetings with my staff. Why sit in a conference room when you can be up and about in the great outdoors? I’m sure this would take a few people aback, but at least it would be better than summoning folks to the crapper like LBJ.

Then again, part of why I walk is to clear my mind. If someone offered me an additional $10,000 a year for a job where I couldn’t walk every morning, I’d turn it down. That’s how important walking is to me.

If I don’t get enough walking in during the day, I can’t sleep at night. When I don’t sleep, my ability to cope and handle stress goes straight to hell. Without the benefit of my morning walks, I can easily imagine winding up at the other end of the state hospital campus where they don’t let you leave at 5pm.

The Storm Before the Storm

Although the SXSW Music Festival won't be kicking off for another few weeks, it's already started for me in the form of pre-SXSW coverage for the Chron.

As much as I enjoy getting to write about music, it's always a juggling act to handle the onslaught of SXSW-related writing assignments justice without grossly neglecting my duties to the people of Texas. I'm very thankful the people gave me a day off today so I could knock out a profile of local punk rock mayhem artists the Krum Bums.

All of this is to say that new entries may be a little slow in coming over the next several days unless Rupert Murdoch decides he wants to start paying me for this shite.

Tale of the Fleeting Taco

This past Tuesday I was taking my regular mental health walk around the periphery of the Austin State Hospital campus when I spied a discarded beverage cup game piece from Taco Bell near the corner of 45th and Lamar. The game piece read, "Free Crunchy Beef Taco."

I was moving at a decent clip, so I kept walking another two or three feet before my brain clicked to the fact that I'd walked right past a free taco. At that point I came to a dead halt, turned around and returned to pick up the game piece. I quickly scanned the small print until I came to the words, "expires 11/13/2007." What had been a free crunchy beef taco one week ago was now useless garbage.

I don't have a word that approximates the noise that accompanied this realization, but I think it sounded a bit like Charlie Brown's "Aaarraugh!"

Whatever the noise was, it attracted the attention of a woman idling in the left turn lane with her window rolled down. We made eye contact and it was clear she took me for less than sane. I thought about showing her my ID badge to prove I was merely a cheap state worker and not a furloughed mental patient, but she'd already driven away.

The World's Saddest Cubicle?

Wired has posted a photo gallery of the winning entries in its saddest cubicles contest.

Not surprisingly, the “winner” is in the employ of a public institution. Pictured is the workspace of David Gunnells, an IT guy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Although his cube is smaller and more despressingly-lit than my own, I too use filing cabinets to surround my government job box. I like it that way. The fewer people who can see what I’m doing (or not doing), the happier I am.

What really sets the winning cube apart is its proximity to both a microwave oven and a toilet. Thankfully, I’m far enough away from both to avoid the stench of buttered popcorn commingled with morning coffee shit.

Tap My Thumbcasts, Baby

Do you know what a “thumbcast” is?

Well, I didn’t either until recently. Thumbcasts are simply text messages that are broadcast to people’s mobile phones. Although my fat thumbs are not nimble enough to text at the rate of your average American youth, I am now generating thumbcasts as an independent media correspondent (or “freelancer,” if you will) for 80108 Media, a Boston-based company that sends mobile messages about local goings-on to subscribers in several markets around the country, including Austin.

Each 80108 correspondent gets a channel. Mine is called “Austin Out There.” I cover everything from shows to food to sales on building supplies. I try to focus on under-the-radar items that are free or relatively cheap so you’ll have more beer money. You can check out my most recent thumbcasts online here.

Take a look and please consider subscribing to get my messages sent straight to your phone if you have a supported carrier with unlimited text messaging. It’s a free service and you stand to save a nice chunk of change following my tips. Most importantly, the home office will reward me handsomely if I generate enough subscriptions.

Jeez, I feel like one of those elementary school kids selling Ranger Rick subscriptions to raise money for a new jungle gym.

Keep America Rolling, Suckers!

As the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. drifts closer to Third World proportions with each passing year, at least American plebeians can do their part to uphold the virtues of extravagance by working harder for not much more money, buying more crap and watching more rich people on TV.

Quoth Heather Haverilesky in today’s Salon:

It's been obvious for years that Veblen's standard of pecuniary decency -- the minimum amount of conspicuous consumption one must maintain to be considered acceptable -- keeps inching higher and higher in this country, until Americans consider themselves struggling unless they're taking luxury spa vacations or redecorating that unbearably tacky half-bath. These notions aren't formed out of thin air, though. As a scan across the dial this fall makes clear, the TV doesn't just celebrate the supreme excitement and importance of money, it presents a lavish lifestyle as the norm, while casting average Americans as its money-grubbing guinea pigs, poised to stab each other in the back in the pursuit of the material wealth it taught them to covet in the first place.

A Hunka Hunka Burnin' Leave

The State of Texas, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that its loyal and faithful servants may only carry forward a certain amount of annual leave each year.

Although the number of hours increases with longevity, if you don't take leave often enough, you'll wind up having your excess annual leave convert to sick leave at the end of the state's fiscal year (August 31). This is like flushing money down the bog because you can't cash out sick leave if you quit the state.

It just so happens I entered this month with over 50 hours of excess annual leave, so now I'm trying to burn it off by staying home on Fridays. Unfortunately, this burn-off coincides with what is turning out to be a rather busy month at work. I still have to maintain radio contact with the office and even if I didn't, my current wave of writing assignments is making off-days just as busy as workdays.

I know I'm lucky to have decent leave benefits (at least for this stingy country), but I sure hate being forced to use or lose time. I suppose I could've planned a nice vacation, but it wouldn't have been much fun without Kate along. I feel like I'm squandering time I'll look back and wish I had in a few years.

On the plus side, at least I don't have to get dressed or shower in the morning unless I choose to do so for my own edification. And what's a little ripeness between me, myself and I?