METRO COLUMNISTS

Since we're staking so much on the future of the convention business in these parts, it might be worth noting that some cities worry they're on a secret government blacklist for being too much fun.

The Orlando Sentinel reported this week on a persistent belief that government agencies are so hypersensitive to accusations of partyin' on the taxpayer dime that they're circulating a do-not-book list of cities deemed insufficiently dull for conventions.

You're gonna be shocked, but Dallas isn't on it.

You green-livin' Dallas radicals with a Prius out front and chickens in the back have nothing on the devoted hipsters of Austin, where the city has just given official sanction for an outdoor "composting toilet" inside its limits.

Members of an ecological-activist commune called the Rhizome Collective spent four years negotiating with the city to not have traditional flush toilets. Instead, they have won an okay for a two-stall shed housing the composting latrines. Instead of flushing, users dump a scoop of sawdust down the hole when they're done.

It's viewed as an invigorating victory, since the collective was recently evicted from its long-held home in an eastside warehouse due to uncorrected code violations. Its members have relocated to a donated tract in the city's Montopolis neighborhood.

The outhouse project was headed up by a "humanure" proponent who described himself to the Austin American-Statesman as "an itenerant carpenter and puppeteer."

OK, here's the question du jour: Are you green enough to give up indoor plumbing?

Let's dub it The Swat Heard (and seen) 'Round the World.

I'm sure all the political hounds are rushing to determine if Barack Obama is the first sitting president (pun intended) to kill a fly on national television.

I think the president deliberately was sending a message, perhaps to North Korea, maybe the Taliban, and PETA better watch its step, too.

Seriously, can you believe that PETA, which actually does some noble work when it's focused and not distracted by petty stuff such as this, is making hay out of this. I overheard one of my colleagues correctly pointing out that this only serves to diminish PETA's considerable voice when it speaks out on more urgent and hefty matters. She's right.

PETA's vice president for policy, Bruce Friedrich, says the organization wishes the president had set a better example by brushing the fly away. "We support compassion for the even the smallest animals. We support giving insects the benefit of the doubt," Friedrich says.

Mr. Friedrich apparently hasn't had much experience with flies. I grew up in rural East Texas; not bragging, it's just the truth. And I can tell you right now that if you give flies the benefit of the doubt, they'll do more than mess up your interview, they'll pull up a chair at the kitchen table come supper time.

The only fly in the ointment in all of this is PETA's opportunistic, over-the-top reaction.

My colleague, Tawnell Hobbs, is asking whether folks think a school should be named after Callejo, the civil rights activist who came under fire for pointing out that Barack Obama would have an uphill climb to be president because of his skin color. She just said it the wrong way.

"Obama simply has a problem that he happens to be black," Callejo, a Hillary Clinton supporter, told KTVT (Channel 11).

The Clinton campaign distanced itself from Callejo and denounced the remarks. Fine, that's politics.

But look, let's use some common sense here: I don't think anybody's life ought to be permanently colored over one remark. So unless Ron Price and other critics can point to other examples of Callejo taking cheapshots at black folks or exhibiting a racist attitude, I certainly don't think that's enough to keep her out of the school-name lottery.

What Price is unwittingly doing, unfortunately, is cementing a wedge between Hispanics and blacks in this town and what he should be doing, pardon the cliche, is constructing a stronger bridge, one that can withstand a 100-year flood and a lame, misguided comment or two.

That Gary Gluckman is quite the low-cost salesman.

Among a handful of state-licensed retailers of salvaged and surplus food and drugs, he runs the Grocery Clearance Center, offering stuff that, well, none of the top stores want; you know, items that be past their prime, out of date or, better yet, simply overstocked, discontinued, mislabeled, misshipped or damaged.

I'm glad this stuff isn't going to waste and that Gluckman's savvy enough to butter his own bread while stocking customers' pantries with money-saving deals.

Not sure if I'm ready to dispatch my wife to the store yet. She's having a ball now clipping coupons and keeping me informed of how much money she's saving. Yesterday, she called to tell me she spent slightly more than $70 and saved more than $90 at our top-tier grocery store. At a second store, she spent about $20 and saved $30-plus. Some quick math reveals that she brought home about $210 worth of goods, spent about $90 and, thus, saved about 57 percent (or to look at it another way: she spent 42.8 percent of the advertised prices of her collective bought goods.)

Now that's shopping, honey.

"[D]rivers will soon be paying more, much more, to drive on NTTA toll roads," warns colleague Michael Lindenberger in his report today on the North Texas Tollway Authority's efforts to service its elephantine contract debt in the face of lower-than-anticipated traffic volume.

My regular daily commute includes a short stretch of SH 121 that costs me 45 cents each way. If that 90-cents-per-day became, say, $2,00 or $2.50, I might consider another route.

What's your cutoff point? Where do you draw the line between cost and convenience?

Told you yesterday about the bird I found while taking a morning stroll with my kids. My wife, Shannon, spread word through our rapacious neighborhood grapevine but, alas, no one had claimed the parakeet by day's end.

Shannon had called a bird sanctuary, which was more than willing to take Flora; but once the bird was surrendered, we couldn't get it back. So last evening, just before dusk, we went door to door on our street to see if any neighbors near where Flora (my wife came up with that cute name!) was discovered had lost a pet.

Not a positive chirp from anyone. But one neighbor, Sandy, happens to own a canary, which means she had bird seeds in the house! And an extra bird cage!

Sandy readily agreed to take Flora, maybe forever, but at least until more folks had time to respond to the grapevine missive. No word on how our other neighbor, Elaine, who got pecked on the finger after picking Flora up off the ground, is doing. From afar, I saw her walking one of her dogs this morning as I headed out for work, so I'm sure she's fine.

Thanks, neighbors.

Only New York drivers are ruder, angrier and more aggressive than we-all here in Dallas-Fort Worth. So says a new survey commissioned by a national auto club, which claims D/FW is the next-to-the worst metro area for road rage - marginally better than NYC, but worse than fellow runners-up Detroit, Atlanta, and Minneapolis.

"Road rage" was defined as angry or agressive driving; survey respondents cited such common triggers as speeders, texters, tailgaters, cutters-off of other motorists, and "selfish drivers who think they own the road." In other words, bad driving breeds road rage which breeds bad driving.

Lighten up, you guys. Nobody wants to spend eternity underneath a stone that says "Shot dead after shooting the finger at a complete stranger."

The Help, Kathryn Stockett:

Skimpy civil rights-era plot, but characters, voices are marvelous.

When the mercury gooses the century mark, it's ice hat time. This is my unglamorous habit of wearing one of those gel-filled freezer packs tied around my head when it's really, really hot. I do not (usually) wear it out of the house.

Now I find that there is actually a mass-produced Chinese Ice Hat on the market, looking for distributors the world over. It's hard to determine exactly what the Chinese Ice Hat does, but the peculiar translation gives the description a lyrical eccentricity:

Have a good one cool to solve the heat, clear brain refresh oneself on function, and have antiultraviolet functions also, in scorching a summer bring people ice-cold impression, can be rated as " little air conditioner with oneself."

Ah, clear brain refresh oneself. I feel cooler just thinking about it.

One of my favorite joys is taking my kids for a walk each morning. During our stroll this morning, while we were chatting it up with a neighbor walking her two dogs, I spotted a bird on the ground. No big deal. We see Cardinals, Blue Jays, Mockingbirds and Robins on our trek virtually every day.

But this feathered interloper was different. Turned out to be what we think is a parakeet. My neighbor, brave soul that she is, picked up the bird while I clutched the leashes of her two dogs in one arm and held my son Judah in the other. My daughter Selah inched toward the bird, too, trying to get a closer look.

The bird, which my wife already has named "Flora," immediately bit my neighbor on the finger, drawing blood. I offered to take it home to see if we could tap into our vast neighborhood network and find the owner. My wife Shannon is in charge of that project today, and she's already sent me two missives, including this update before lunch:

I decided to see if I could win over Flora. So I talked gently and dangled a cherry in front of her. She hopped up on my hand, crawled up my arm and snuggled at my neck as she ate the cherry. She sat on my arm as I cleaned out her cage then happily went back in to perch on her water bowl. :-)

It's a sweet little bird, and we certainly hope we can reconnect it with its owner.

This story in Sunday's paper caught my eye, and took me back almost 40 years:

Mesquite ISD to allow facial hair for male faculty members

I was a senior at Mesquite High and a staff writer on the school newspaper in 1971. I had the idea to do a story on what had become known as "Senior Skip Day" -- a day late in the year designated for seniors to skip classes.

So I sauntered into the assistant principal's office and asked for stats on the number of seniors who had skipped. First, the principal said, that's not the kind of story the school newspaper should be doing. Second, he asked me what was on my upper lip. It was supposed to be a mustache, but all I could grow back then was peach fuzz. Didn't matter.

He directed me to the office bathroom, provided me with a dull razor and made me shave in front of him. Actually, it was sort of a proud moment, an act of defiance, a badge of courage.

Fast-forward to 2009: Glad to see Mesquite schools are still worried about the important stuff.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of devoted sports fandom is the upheaval of having a favorate player or coach abruptly traded or fired.

Yeah, it's all part of the game, so there wasn't anything unusually insensitive or brutal about the whirlwind replacement of the Dallas Stars head coach of seven years, Dave Tippett. It was rumored all day Wednesday and formally announced on Thursday that Tip was out and Marc Crawford, who has coached the Kings, Canucks, and Avalanche, is in. New GM Joe Nieuwendyk (a favorite former player whose abrupt trade to New Jersey during the '01-02 season was just as disconcerting) is taking charge with a bang.

For you unfortunate souls still without electricity after Thursday's storms, maybe you can get some tips from someone who's been there.

Education reporter Holly Hacker makes an interesting observation -- the juxtaposition of two headlines on our 1A this morning:

"DISD to borrow $100M"

"Clements giving a record $100M to UT Southwestern"

I'll ask before DISD Supt. Mike Hinojosa does. Got another spare million, Bill?

According to the World Health Organization, which raised the alert level for influenza A (H1N1) to its highest warning (Phase 6), it's officially the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century.

Don't panic. The story points out that WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl noted that Phase 6 "doesn't mean anything concerning severity" but has to do with "geographic spread."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it already has been acting as though a pandemic had taken root here, so it won't change its cautious approach. The CDC says the swine flu has infected more than 13,000 people in all 50 states and caused at least 27 deaths.

Not literally, of course. But he's still trying to figure out where he'll land in a few months, when the fall semester begins. I bumped into Mayo at a forum last month and was intrigued by his interest in motivational speaking. What he'd really like to do, he said, is start a nonprofit foundation which would afford him the chance to speak all over the place.

But he's also been keeping an eye out for other coaching opportunities. And, who knows, maybe the DISD will surprise him by extending another gig to him -- beyond the teaching duties he'd assume if he returns to Skyline next year. It's hard for me to see him going back there, to be honest. We'll see.

Meanwhile, the principal who ousted Mayo has tapped a replacement, Roosevelt High's Stanford Hill.

It's short-sighted, and often deceptive to make straight-up comparisons of sentences assessed for comparable offenses in separate cases. The perps, victims, and circumstances are all different.

But on a cursory reading, I am at a loss to understand how this guy gets probation in the same state where this guy gets 100 years.

I'm just back from a walk. My husband considered this a demented impulse, but I wanted the heady thrill of hurling myself into the teeth of the storm etc. It was more akin to chasing the tail of the storm, but afforded an opportunity to wear my keen Gore-tex rain jacket.

Trees and fences down all around our FloMo neighborhood. Debris all over - what appeared to be a space helmet rested in the middle of a nearby schoolyard. On closer examination, it was the dome-shaped top of a hinge-lidded trash can.

A family, gathered at their kitchen window, saw me staring into their exposed back yard through a blown-down back fence; it felt like they had caught me trying to peek between the curtains. A few houses down, a man looked disconsolately at a mini-river rushing across his back yard and drowning the flower beds. His agitated dog yelped and ran in circles.

Violent weather is less exciting if you have to clean up after it.

My wife had a BIG birthday yesterday, and I got to enjoy most of it with her.

I won't say how big, I'll let Shannon tell you that herself -- in a new blog -- A Year to the Life I Want -- that was, in part, inspired by her birthday and her ongoing conversations with a good friend from Arkansas.

I just got my first glimpse, and I must say that I'm intrigued by this little journey that Shannon's undertaking, especially since she's tugging our 6-month-old and our 2 1/2-year-old along with her.

But seriously, this is a question that we all should ask ourselves from time to time: Am I living the life I want? (Are you? If not, what are you going to do about it -- now?)

Wendy's, according to Zagat's 2009 survey, has been named the top fast-food chain.

I don't know, I tried a Wendy's burger for the first time in years recently. Wasn't impressed. Give me a McDonald's Quarter Pounder any day.

But, hey, that's just me. My wife, inexplicably, loves Arby's.

Which brings us to this question: If you have to indulge, what's your favorite fast food?

Well this is boring. Have we ever had two consecutive days when the Dow was up or down less than 2 points? Yesterday's average was up 1.36 points. Today, it dropped a whopping 1.43 points.

I'm longing for the good old days (last week?) of 100- and 200-point swings.

A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and other Adventures in Early America, by Tony Horwitz

Hundred-plus years skipped over in history class, hilariously told.

Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey

Thorough, compelling, and heartbreaking - even for a non-Cheever fan.

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

Quirky, engagingly written stories unevenly assembled in novel form.

Dallas resident and fabled chain-restaurant emperor Norman Brinker, who died early today at 78, almost certainly affected your life, no matter who you are.

He helped shape or outright invented the restaurant chains that have occupied the landscape of our lives - Chili's, Jack in the Box, Burger King, Bennigan's. When I was in high school, a date at Steak & Ale was as swanky as a ride in a limo. Scoff all you like at mass-consumption chain restaurants, Brinker had more influence on American leisure dining habits than all the chefs in the Michelin Guide put together.

A poor farm boy from New Mexico, Brinker said in an 2004 interview with a restaurant industry magazine that he never worked in food service until his mid-20s, when one of his college professors introduced him to the owner of the five-unit Jack in the Box chain.

"In Roswell, all my friends worked, but the only ones who worked in restaurants were the ones who were too dumb to work in service stations," he told Restaurants and Institutions. "So I had never, ever thought about restaurants at all."

Apart from drumming up book sales for Cindy Sheehan, there doesn't seem to be much of a point to Monday's antiwar protest that targeted the private Preston Hollow residence of GWB, who is no longer the president and doesn't call the foreign-policy shots anymore.

It looked less like a spontaneous outpouring of civil indignation than a shambling collection of people who pine for the exciting bygone days when cops martyred the righteous with tear gas and fire hoses, instead of standing by with benign bemusement to keep the traffic moving.

I'd have more respect for targeted policy recommendations about what to do now - or even for a peaceable protest that did not, as Monday's did, include crackpots carrying signs with the contemptible message "Expose the 9/11 cover-up."

It's a free country. Good sense and civility are optional.