Read My Lips - the blog

College: I did it my way

Jay Solo read Rachel Lucas "bitch, moan, complain and whine through nine straight paragraphs" about the difficulties of working and going to college and was compelled to tell his story.

Having read both of their stories, I decided I would tell my story:

The year is 1973. The Viet Nam War is just winding down and so is the High School career of your favorite blogger. Having maintained an "A" average all though the first 12 grades, having only gotten less than an "A" in one class, typing, it was expected that yours truly would be the first in his lineage to attend at an institution of higher learning. I graduated 5th in a class of 42. As no one had previously attended college in my family, no one knew what was involved in actually getting into college except that it took money.* As luck, call it bad in this instance, would have it, my father got laid off from the company he had worked for since before I was born. It had something to do with the owner of the business dying and his widow selling off to the highest bidder, who subsequently drove a thriving business into the ground in less than a year.

Anyway, here it is, about a month before graduation and my dad speaks those immortal words to me: "Son, you know that money I had been putting aside for your college education? Well, sorry, but I am going to have to use that to pay the mortgage and the bills until I can figure out how to make a living." You have to understand that my dad was making like $3,000.00 a month, which was big bucks in the early 70s.

Actually, my dad was something else altogether anyway. He had started making his own living printing business cards on a press he had bought from money he had made selling eggs at age 10. By 12, he owned a dump truck and was hauling gravel on a state contract. He had always expected me to follow, at least, in his mold of working for what I wanted and not waiting for someone to hand it to me. He assisted me in learning this lesson by allowing me the privilege of buying my own first car, as well as paying for all my gas, the insurance, etc. I worked evenings, every evening, at the golf course for the final year of my high school education. I graduated, kept that job, and got a factory job buffing faucets for another eight hours each day. My dad found a third, part time job for me, which was basically picking up film at three places and dropping it off at the bus depot. I maintained this pace, getting about 3 hours sleep a night, until early August. With the Fall semester to begin soon, I somehow had not amassed enough in the bank to even get myself a better car. I mean, you could not expect a guy to go to college driving the same old 1966 Plymouth Fury III 4-door, with Earl Scheib paint job, that he had been driving in High School, could you?

Well, I caught one of those ads on TV, you know, about the how they needed a Few Good Men, and stuff like that. They were offering college money if you enlisted, and, more importantly, a goodly sized enlistment bonus I could use to get a better car! Well, I won't tell you the long story about how I signed up for the Marines and ended up in the Army, just take it that it involved sex, deceit, and a generous portion of 18-year-old naivety. On August 7, 1973, yours truly entered the Army. After basic training, I used that enlistement bonus to buy me the one and only new car I ever had. It didn't outlast the 36 months of payments without being totalled . . . twice.

I came out of the Army in August 1977 with 48 months of GI Bill entitlements, and had not one idea what I was going to do with it. I did a bit of checking around. I found out just how much my entitlement offered me: roughly about $342 a month. There were three colleges in my home town: Abilene Christian University (Church of Christ), Hardin-Simmons (Baptist) and McMurray (Methodist). Their tuitions were about 10 times what the State college tuition rates were. I decided I had better go to State college. Where? Well, the closest State college to any relatives of mine was in Arlington, Texas, only about 45 minutes from where my great-grandparents lived. I moved in with them for a few months and began to save money. I worked in the oil fields and cooked at Sonic and spent my off-time seeking a job and place to live in Arlington, Texas. You have to remember, I had just spent 4 years in the Army, and was used to being on my own. I was unable to accomplish everything I needed to do to get enrolled by the Fall of '77, but was firmly entrenched in a graveyard shift convenience store job and my own apartment in the Spring of 1978.

I was now ready to go to college. Of course, all I had ever dreamed of was going to college. I had never thought about what I wanted to study. I just thumbed through the college catalogue. For some reason architecture sounded like something I would enjoy. Well, I spent the first two years in college studying architecture and finding I didn't like it. Well, exactly what I did not like was the way a bunch of dunderheaded wanna be architects who couldn't make a living at it so decided to teach graded some of my designs. Leave it to be said that I blew up in a major way during one of the grading juries and left the university.

After spending a semester or two in the world of factory labor, I decided that I also was not cut out for a life of menial manual labor, so re-enrolled** in pursuit of a BA in Political Science. In 1983, I graduated with a B.A. in Political Science with enough hours in both English and Architecture to qualify as minors. And, more amazingly than not, I still had some hours of entitlement left. Enough so that I continued to receive my little check during all but the last semester of law school.***

That little check usually made sure I had tuition and books, but the full-time job as robber bait paid for the rent , beer, cigarettes, and, if I had enough left over, food. My dad and mom did assist me, once, when I needed some major car repairs. Mostly, though, I really did do it my way.

*I have always thought I likely would have qualified for several academic scholarships, but my family really had no idea about where you found them or how you went about applying for such.**** Our little country school didn't have much in the way of counselors either. Of course, they also did not have much in the way of winning football teams or much of anything else.

**This in itself turned out to be a grand adventure. The VA has some kind of policy about making sure you don't repeat this behavior and make you take an aptitude test to assist you in deciding what it is that you are most capable of doing. When I went in for my results, the lady just looked at them and then looked at me very strangely. Squeamishly, I asked her what my results had suggested. She looked at me, smiled, and said, "They tell me that you will likely succeed at anything you choose to do." I, however, am still awaiting that success. It appears that the only thing I have ever really been successful at is making good grades without any real effort.

***It amazes how often I hear about some of the attorneys who have been practicing for years and years and still are paying off the student loans they used to finance their law school education.

****Al Gore had yet to invent the Internet, so information like that was not easily obtainable by doing a Google search on "college scholarships."

What's good for the goose . . .

It seems that New Jersey is having a real problem with geese in its parks. They don't know what to do with them, can't get rid of them, so are just going to gas them by the hundreds. What I suspect that won't happen is . . . that there will be some nice goose dinners offered free to a bunch of starving homeless people who also live in New Jersey parks.*

attribution: Parkway Rest Stop

*The next thing I will be hearing is that there are no starving homeless people in New Jersey.

Without a conscious thought otherwise

What a day! It started early, it ended late, and it was hectic all the way through. At one time today, I actually had four different clients in my office at the same time while another person was on the phone attempting to make an immediate appointment. I had a hearing scheduled in the afternoon in which I needed to prepare some much needed paperwork, and all these people were demanding my attention. It was not bad enough that I had to arrive early for one couple that could not schedule an appointment during my office hours (it conflicted too greatly with their own busy schedule), but after they finally left, my morning was this endless barrage of people wanting my attention.

Finally lunch arrived, and all I had for the afternoon was that hearing. Of course, I still had to get my papers in order, so I worked though lunch. Just after my secretary returned from her lunch, we start getting calls from the clients involved in the 1:30 hearing. They had actually left town after having been in my office at 9:00 this morning to drop off some forms. Now they were lost and were running late. I went to inform the court. The judge is understanding but says he has a doctor's appointment at 2:00. Great, so I spend the next 30 minutes running between the office and the courthouse in 100 degree heat passing along information to the judge and other attorney regarding the status of my client's arrival. The case is an uncontested matter to prove up heirship. The last call is at 1:40 and the clients are asking for directions. I provide the directions, but know from the description of where they are calling from that there is no way they will arrive prior to 2:00. I requested a reset to tomorrow morning. Thankfully, the Court agreed.

These clients are in from the Carolinas and had specifically requested, more than two months ago, that I get a hearing set on this date because of their vacation schedules. I had been juggling my calendar for over a month to make sure that absolutely nothing interfered with this hearing. Something did: my clients!

Fine! At least I got the other attorney to look over my paperwork. It never hurts to insure that another attorney is not going to throw a monkey wrench into your proceedings. She is representing the unknown heirs, and, of course, there are none. She does, however, have the right to object to the form of my paperwork. Some changes are suggested, so I use my suddenly granted free time to cross every T and dot every I to her specifications. I made just the right amount of copies of each document and everything is in place so that my 9:00 hearing for tomorrow will take all of about five minutes. As I seemed to already have blown what was supposed to be a easy morning tomorrow, I also agreed to schedule two juvenile proceedings presided over by the same judge.

Finally, about 4:00, I was caught up. My secretary is busy finally online taking her Notary test, as I have been asking her do for several weeks. It is quiet and an hour from closing time. Oh, wait, they had told me my car would be ready this afternoon, but no one has called. I call the tranny shop expecting to hear Sorry, we didn't get to it today, maybe tomorrow, but nope: Your car is ready to go, was my answer. All I need to do is show up with $1,120.00 before 5:30.

I had borrowed my friend's truck, but I still had to figure out how to get it and my car back from the neighboring town and then how to return it back to my friend in another neighboring town. The best luck I had all day was finding a neighbor playing eight liners (slot machines that pay in tickets that you can exchange for merchandise that are illegal everywhere in Texas except here) who agreed to ride with me to the neighboring town, then follow me in the truck to return the truck, then ride back with me to our town. Total time: two hours. I asked him how much I owed him for his time. Nada! He would not even let me buy him a six pack of beer. Now I owe him a favor. I can hardly wait to see what is requested when that chip is cashed in. I am tired. I can't think. I am hopeful that no one will mind if I take a break tonight.

Those of you who have not read my treatise on stay at home motherhood, or what I said about James Lileks' wife losing her job, or what I said about Texas justice, please feel free to do so. Those of you who have already read everything I have written . . . I guess that might be Scott . . . well I might be rested up enough to think later. Right now I am without a conscious thought.

Now where did I put that roll of quarters?

Stephen says there are just some things that it does not pay to do it yourself.

1st Lady of the Silver Screen Dies

Already one person who, for years, embodied all that was great about Hollywood died, last week. when Gregory Peck passed away. Now it seems that the greatest actress and classiest lady to have ever been in the movies, having starred in such classic movies as The Philadelphia Story opposite Jimmy Stewart, The African Queen opposite Humphrey Bogart, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner opposite Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier, has left us. Kate Hepburn has died at aged 96. [Fox News Story]

attribution: Jen

Public Announcement: Wizbang

Kevin of Wizbang has a new home. Change your links to: http://wizbangblog.com

Wow, does his new site look snazzy or what?

The New Weblog Showcase Review IV

There actually did not seem to be much interest in entering the Showcase this week. The number of entries was the lowest since I have been doing reviews. I also saw the highest number of bloggers submitting entries at the very last moment with 3. I have been advised that I was a little stricter with my ratings this week than I was last week. That may be so. With less entries, I had more time to pick those nits. As always, those of you who actually appreciate the effort I put into this, give a blurb somewhere!

STOP! GO NO FURTHER! READ! Anyone who is offended by my review of their entry, remember I am merely stating my opinions and they may not necessarily be the opinions of any other single person [on this planet, unless they are from Estonia or Fiji. Additionally, I have been contacted and told that my opinions were officially adopted by an entire alien sub-culture in the Ming Sector and 92% of the species in the Gamma quadrant.]

5.0=exceptional 4.5=excellent; 4.0=great; 3.5=very good; 3.0=good; 2.5=par; 2.0=sub par; 1.5=fair; 1.0=poor; 0.5=tried. ALL RATING IS SUBJECTIVE; Listings within tied ratings are arranged from my most favorite to my least favorite based upon my personal preferences.

5.0~The World Around You: Opposition Makes No Sense ~[BEST OF SHOW]Kristopher put a couple of inanitarians in their place. While this post has more to do with local politics in Alabama, and I generally do not rate entries that are of interest to only a select group of readers, this post does not actually fit into that category. In countering those complaints lodged by his detractors, Kristopher established those actual powers Governor Bob Riley of Alabama does actually have. Such powers are very similar to the general powers held by all executive heads in United States. He provided a well-written response to those who had no understanding of the political machine. Of course, I doubt they will ever see what he had to say. As an example of what is offered on this site, this post was a worthy entry: well written and concise.

5.0~The Chicago Report: Kant Lives ~The only thing I saw to criticize about this posts was one quote which I would like to have seen blockquoted. However, I reflected upon this and felt such did not actually detract from the flow of the prose. The post was extremely well-written and exhibited a good command of vocabulary. I actually had to look up the word hegemon, which did not appear in my dictionary There was, however, an entry for hegemony. I was not using an unabridged dictionary and do not question the existence of the word. Although the post was essentially a discussion of theory based upon a work by Jurgen Habermas, the author, within his prose, provided sufficient reference to such work that an actual reading of the work was unnecessary for an understanding of his commentary. Unlike Matthew, discussed below, Alexander did not propose an impossible solution to a recognized problem, but, instead, stated his agreement with the proposition that the seeds of change are already in place and need to be nurtured. The blog itself appears to be a team blog. I attempted to discover something about Alexander and the other members of the team, but could not locate such. This was the best post visible from those I examined. However, the remaining posts were equally well written. I suspect that the members of the team are all academics. Except that the vocabulary used may be over the heads of the general public, there is very little I could find wrong with this post.

4.5~PrometheusSpeaks: Get a Baby Bib Just Like Dubya Wears! ~[My link goes to post, contest link goes to blog] Right off, the title had me convinced I had another left leaning zealot who was going to mindlessly bash Bush and his administration. I was partially right. I do have to retract the mindlessly part. This post was delightfully humorous. It was so craftfully constructed that it could rival Dave Barry or James Lilieks on one of their best days. I would have gladly given it BEST OF SHOW had Prometheus linked to the actual post.

4.5~o.t.p.: Triteness Studies ~I am not in total agreement with Ron's conclusion:

I can't really think of any subject matter less useful to a college student than this.

I can easily see this type of study to be beneficial for sociology majors. Ron did bring out several good points in a clear and concise manner. This post convinced me to read other entries which I found to be equally well written. This post will be controversial because the subject matter is controversial. However, I do pick the nits. I would have prefer Ron to paraphrase the crux of the article and give me a link. He gave me a link and required that I had to read it to understand his comments. In my opinion, a post should generally stand on its own unless its sole purpose is to urge you to go read something someone else has written. Quote, paraphrase and comment. Close, but no cigar.

4.5~Occasional Subversion: Biotechnology and Hunger ~Not actually titled as such, but the link works. I thought this was a well composed and written posting about an interesting topic. I suppose the only reason I did not give this one top marks is because Matthew did a pretty good job of describing what he felt was the problem but concluded by suggesting impossible solutions:

But if we want to end hunger, we've got to do more than allow our big agricultural businesses to impose their own brands of crops on the world. Instead, we need to help countries develop economies which do not inhibit agriculture and we need to find diplomatic means of dealing with totalitarian governments which impede their citizens' access to food. And we need to stop war, for the costs of reducing conflict in the world are far less than the costs of continuing it. [emphasis supplied]

Maybe I am picking nits more aggressively than last week, but again, this one was only close, but did not ring the bell.

4.5~The Right Christians: Dreams of the Future (3): Without a Future ~I found this posting extremely hard to rate, because I am not a Biblical scholar. I found it ironic that a blog called The Right Christians was attacking the views of the Christian Right. And then there were phrases such as premillenial dispensationalism. Even after I hit the link within such phrase was in, I could not find any means of deciphering the meaning of this phrase. In addition, though again I am not a theologian or Biblical scholar, I had to question the need for those who believe that the coming of the end is near would need to convert Jews and Catholics. I thought the Jews were the chosen people. Wasn't Christianity God's way of allowing the Gentiles to find their way into Heaven? AND are not Catholics Christians? This was a very long well written post. The blog was very nicely designed. However, like the dream blog of two weeks ago and the truck story blog of last week, I feel like this is one you either will really like or in which you will find absolutely no interest. If there had been a glossary provided, I would have given this one a top rating. As I am still confused as to the meaning of premillenial dispensationalism, I am not doing so.

4.5~Web Dawn: Rebirth of the Social Marketplace: Forum View for blogs ~The blog was attractive and the post was blurbing some new feature that looked very interesting, and something most of us would probably like to see, especially on blogs that have a lot of commenting conversations on them. Mark Carey, did link the script used in link in response to one of the comments to this post. Is this part of the post? If the comment had not been made, the response would not have been made. As such, I must subtract such from the rating. In fact, for a super non-techie like me, just seeing the script without any explanation as what to do with such was of no benefit anyway. So, does this post tell us much about the blogger and the blog? I had to actually peruse the other entries to discover if such was true, and I would say it is. This blog seems to be mainly about development of blogging as a social communication tool. This post was about one of the tools developed. However, it was a confusing post and I am not sure this post was an ideal showcase of the blogger's talents or properly identified the theme or subject matter of the blog. As such, I rate it one notch below the top mark.

4.0~Practical Penumbra: Some People are Mean ~Let me start off by saying this is a post I have read previously and to which I have even commented. I read this blog every day. I have told Susie that I love her color combination more than any I have seen. We use the same MT template, and she did a much better job of altering hers than I did with mine. However, Susie, I agree that blockquoting the email did make it look better than the first attempt, but you still needed to reformat the end line returns which would have perfected your formatting of the email. I love what you said, and think you are a great writer who has a terrific sense of humor, however, I am so thrown with those links:

"and, if you are a Palestinian, Buck the Marine." [into which I would have added after Palestinian "you should fear']

and

Ok, I'm done channeling Bill Whittle. [I did not understand the meaning of this, and really hate having to go somewhere else to find out what it might mean]

Susie writes great stuff, and I urge people to read her blog regularly, especially because she points out all the great stuff I write on my blog. This is a great post, but not excellent or exceptional. Sorry Susie, please don't hate me now.

4.0~CavBlog: Bad Advice ~Eugenio is a pretty new blogger but seems to have a pretty good idea of what he is doing already. This is not a bad post, in fact, it is a pretty well written commentary. He needs to use blockquotes to set off the text of articles. I was pretty sure this was not his best post, and looked around at the rest of his stuff. Mostly he comments on the commentary made by others. This one was actually commentary on a news story, and he provided a link to some added information. Eugenio shows great promise and I believe he means what he said in his very first posting:

This is likely only a temporary name for this site (and this is definitely only a temporary format).

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Eugenio. I am almost sure we can expect profound commentary in the future, and hopefully his formatting will improve.

4.0~UltraBlog: Words Ending in "opelessness" ~This is a very late entry. I first read it and I was befuddled as to what point Lewis was trying to make. I thought I was just tired, went to bed and awoke refreshed. I wanted to read it again. It does make some sense if you read it very slowly. I am sure we have all had similar thoughts to those expressed in this posting. I guess I would not go into my theory that our entire universe in actually contained within atomic structure of a cell on the back of a parasite living in the intestinal track of a migratory gypsy moth in a superior reality. I can not quite put my finger on what it is that bothers me about this post: the inanity of the subject matter, the reckless use of compound sentencing, or my lack of comprehension as to the purpose of the titling. I did read some of Lewis' other posts, and this post is fairly consistent with his writing style. It fits in right about here.

3.5~As if Nothing Happened: What are people thinking? ~When I first saw the excerpt posted on the New Weblog Showcase page, I was not enamored because it looked like Rene had entered 3 separate posts. Well, in a way, that did prove proved to be true. However, in actuality, it was also only one post. As is commonly done by most new bloggers, including myself, Rene is placing several posts into one day's entry. As is often the case with new bloggers, a weblog is believed to be about creating one post each day about interesting items from that day. Of course, that does not work well with permalinking and trackbacking. Such essential blogging tools work best if you enter items as individual posts. It is not uncommon for bloggers, including myself, to combine more than one story into the same post, especially if they have a common theme. As such, I determined that this entry was within the rules of fair play for the contest. Regrettably, for the reasons I have discussed, such is not a good blogging method. Additionally, there were portions of the postings that read like they might be quoted materials, but I was unsure. I also thoroughly dislike having to read stories first in order to place the blogger's comments into perspective. Rene writes well and exhibits a very keen sense of humor. I loved this line:

. . . [W]hat else do you do about a 58 year old woman who dances like a flopping fish in a skirt so short you can see something you reeeaaally don't want to[?]

hanging participle and all! Rene has excellent potential, as is exhibited by some of her other writing. She needs to discover blockquoting. Surprisingly to many, there is an actual learning curve to becoming a top notch blogger. This was not the best post and this one could have been done much better. Rene should improve over time.

2.5~Bob's Bits and Bites: Bob's Thoughts ~[This is not the title to the post but the link works.] Bob began blogging yesterday and shares a lot of inane thoughts. However, Bob is an avid collector of tires and would likely hire Michael Jackson to babysit before he would allow Ted Nugent to watch over his kids. What about Bob? This might take some watching to see. So far, Bob has posted twice, two very long lists of mostly utterly inane thoughts. OK, there is a chuckle or two to be found. He tried, the link worked, it was grammatically correct, it was formatted well, there was some funny stuff, just not much. Not that bad for a start but a long way to exceptional.

1.5~OLDCATMAN SPEAKS: Sat. June 21, 2003 [Entry Link=NZB 404 Page MY LINK WORKS!] ~Catman Speaks, but does anyone really want to listen? Another really neophyte blogger who is still needing to get a clue as to what it is all about. First off, do individual posts. Do not put all the things you have to say into one day's post. What is it with your formatting? Are you cutting and pasting from another program? Your lines are extremely ragged. Is that a template from Blogger? I am almost sure the most atrocious Blogger template looked better than that. Several stories were mentioned, and yet not one solitary link. Actually, I did notice a fairly good sense of humor in the post, and I think Catman can evolve into a blogger with some regular following once he gets the hang of blogging. I did actually find a few of his comments to be quite funny. Hang in there Catman. Too bad you wasted your one and only chance of entering the New Weblog Showcase before you were ready to shine. He tried, I found it, and another notch for good measure.

Free time reading material

OK, for all of ya'll that have finished the new Harry Potter book and have some free reading time, I suggest you go to The Brad Christensen Exhibit and read through some of his exchanges with Nigerian email scam artists. I only have been through the first three, mainly because when I had finally gotten through The Senator's Beach Pledge, I had been continually laughing so hard my stomach hurt. I had to give it a rest for awhile.

Oh, of course, if you really have some free time, read this.*

attribution: Ith

UPDATE: "As God is my witness, I swear on stacks of Bibles, Books of Mormon, the Koran, old copies of The Watchtower, L. Ron Hubbard pamphlets and any other available religious materials that Susie liked this one."

*Yes, I know it is my previous post, but it is so long, I was afraid no one would read all the way through it.

Parental Guilt and Stay at Home Moms!

Perusing my blogroll, I spotted a recent update to Kevin's fine blog Wizbang. He was commenting on an Oprah show centered on the marketing of special products to working parents:

Some of the most successful ideas that are promoted on Oprah's show (she does these kinds of episodes fairly often) are ideas that capitalize on the type of parent who has plenty of money, but a lack of time. These parents worry that they are not successfully parenting their children due to work commitments. Their life is a constant balancing act between the necessity to earn money and spend quality time raising their children. These products and services fill a void, real or imagined, in the parents' quest to raise the perfect child.

Kevin suggests that these products may assuage the guilt of the parents, but may be of no actual benefit to the children:

A whole cottage industry has developed around catering to the worries of parents. There is a product or service that you can purchase to address most any perceived problem. I use the word 'perceived' deliberately, since your child will probably be no better off in life if they have a scrapbook or watched a video set to classical music.

But that's not really the point is it? It's all about making the parent feel better…

So, what is the answer? I have always thought that the feminists sold women a baseless ideal when they convinced them that the Donna Reed lifestyle was demeaning. Kevin pointed to this posting by Courtney, in which she discusses her mommy fears. Courtney concludes her post with this statement:

Has the end result of feminism been to make all of us fear our dirty little secret desire to depend on men to support us while we raise the children? I can't even write that without cringing.

Yes, women are afraid to face the fact that they might have been mislead by the feminists. However, in this modern world, Courtney has valid concerns:

I want to have fun, I want to do interesting things, I want to stay up until 3 am reading books and playing on the internet. I don't want to sign over 85% of my day to children who will scream in public, get sick and scare the hell out of me, occasionally annoy me, and have their whole lives depend on me. I want to be selfish!

She additionally points quoted this scary portion of an editorial by Maggie Gallagher:

Logically, staying home almost never makes any sense from the individual perspective. It exposes women to financial risk if marriage should fail. It reduces family income over the long haul (even a few years out of the workforce reduces women's long-term earnings). But then, by any of these measures -- safety, security, autonomy, self-interest -- having a baby makes no sense either. The same longing to participate in the great mystery of creation that drives men and women together, into marriage and baby-making, seems to pull many women from purely market relationships -- whether or not they also work.

Maggie Gallagher concluded her remarks with this statement:

I have nothing against working mothers. I am one. But something in me rejoices to see the deeply countercultural impulse of motherhood rising and winning over mere economic forces. Where will this lead? Not to Mommy Wars between moms who work and those who stay home, I hope, but toward a profound and shared recognition of the importance of mothering and of the husbands that give mothers the gift of choices.

I too have to applaud any movement toward stay-at-home motherhood. Although the economic consequences might seem insurmountable to some, there are actually cost savings associated with one parent being home with the children: decreased commuting costs and parking fees, savings on child care, savings on prepared-at-home meals over the cost of take out (and providing more balanced nutrition, as well), savings on clothing necessary for the workplace vs. clothing appropriate for general daily activities, just to name the easy ones. I have had a continuing conversation with a friend of mine who points to the general overall trend whereas wages have not increased exponentially with growth in the economy as being a consequence of the addition of women into the workforce. It is almost a given fact that women receive less money than men for the same type of work, so that in itself is a clue. In addition, with an increase in the workforce, there is greater competition for the jobs. Such only empowers the employers to seek the cheapest workers, and often, the least qualified workers. With the greater numbers of workers, the rate of unemployment climbs. If the rate of unemployment is actually 7 or 8%, as current numbers suggest, doesn't it make sense that if approximately 25% of the current workers were removed, there would be a greater demand for workers. Candidates for jobs would not only have a better chance of being hired, but could demand higher pay?

Does this mean that women are unqualified to be in the workforce? No, I think women have proved to be capable of accomplishing any task that does not require superior physical effort, and there are few that can even compete for those jobs. But I do think that mothers need to rethink their priorities and to mold their hours around the needs of their children more than around their careers and need for additional income. Courtney described her mother:

Mom stayed at home with us until we were in school regularly. Even when she did go back to work, she worked near or in our schools, and was always home when we got there.

I remember my own mother doing likewise, at least until I, the oldest, was mature enough to stand in loco parentis during the period after school ended and the parents returned from work. Women can be mothers but men cannot. While we are capable of being good parents, we can never be mothers. We are, however, suited to hard work and making money. We have never had any aspirations to do otherwise, despite the feminists changing of the gender roles.

However, I am also mindful of the alarming social trend of young motherhood, where young girls mate with some good looking man who has no feelings for them and very poor future prospects. Just to point out an example, I was eating in a restaurant yesterday and there was a 17 year old girl who was talking about buying a car. I advised her how to best get something reliable without paying an arm and a leg. As the conversation progressed, I learned that she was sharing an apartment with her boyfriend who worked as a mechanic in his father's garage bringing home $250.00 a week. She told me she had just graduated High School and had received over $900.00 from people as graduation gifts, and yet had less than $100 left because she had paid the rent and bought a new rear end for his truck. I was thinking to myself, and yes, next year she will be pregnant and this good for nothing boy will be the father.

Our ancestors were so much smarter when it came to choosing mates. People didn't move in together until they were married, and no one got married until they had been engaged, and no one got engaged unless the parents approved of the suitor, and no parents approved of a suitor who did not have the means to financially support a family. One thing the feminists are right about is that to most men, women are nothing but sex objects. What is so very very sad is that this is not the fault of the men. We men are dogs who are ruled by our lust for succulent female flesh. We freely admit to it. What is so sad is that so many women have allowed themselves to become and to be used as sex objects. Our society is sex crazed. Our society is warped.

I just love well done satire

Bill at Bloviating Inanities characterizes the Congressional Democrats' latest behavior as a bit childish. I don't want to ruin it by pasting bits of his fine work for display on this site, so go read it for yourself. And while you are there, be sure to check the post entitled PERSONALS. I tracked it back to Smoking Gun, and that dude is for real. It is a frightening thought to imagine people like that exist in our world, and for some reason, I do not think Bill's made up personal ad is too far off the mark.

Uh, Bill, are you the very first inanitarian to come out of the closet?

Attritbution: Susie

Dammit, Life goes on!

Well, I finally got around to reading James Lileks' June 26 column. This is the one where he is discussing the fact that his wife just lost her job and the changes it has made to his life.*

I have all the sympathy in the world for him and his family's situation. However, what is it that makes people so dependent upon a dual income that their world crashes when one of those incomes suddenly disappears? People use the double income to buy bigger houses than they actually need, to get bigger and more expensive cars than their needs require, and to buy extravagant purchases. People have forgotten how to live simply.

I do not have a mortgage or a child, and due to tragedy, I also do not have a wife. Of course, when my wife was alive, we made do on my income. Her job was to upkeep the home, care for me, and to entertain friends and clients. She did have activities outside the home, but they didn't generate income. They were volunteer efforts which benefitted our community. Her job was as important as mine. She was from a very prominent family and knew that a man's success often depended upon the woman who stood behind him. It was what she did that allowed me the freedom to do my job with panache. You would be surprised at the success you can have when you exhibit the ability to entertain selected clients without substantial advance planning. My wife could throw a party at home with an hour's advance notice. If something was needed, she knew where to find it. She maintained my wardrobe and chose my clothes, and people often commented upon my appearance. Our life was a marriage. It was not a financial partnership where we were each expected or required to generate an income so as to pony up our share of the monthly bills. Of course, there were the good times and the bad times. There were times when my income dropped. Such occurs when you are self employed. I have always had the uncanny ability to live within my means, no matter what they might be, and my wife, may she rest in peace, never complained when there was a need for immediate belt tightening.

When James said:

[A]nyone need a lawyer?

was he making an admission that he actually understands the prime missive of the legal profession: you never need a job, you need a client?

It appears that James' wife had been representing the United States government and was, until recently, representing the government of the State of Minnesota. Maybe it is time for her to change the focus of her practice. Instead of representing the government, maybe she can represent the people persecuted by the government for awhile. I am acquainted with at least a hundred or so former prosecutors who now defend criminals.

Ms. Lileks, you are a professional. Buck up and act like one.** Get down to the local courthouse and start asking around about court appointments.

*Just consider the changes that occur to a person's life when their spouse dies. I have lived through these changes, and talk about hitting a brick wall!

**I have to be mindful that I am responding to James' feelings about this situation, and it may actually be that Mrs. Lileks, being the professional that she is, is not as concerned about this matter as is he.

Got DIRT?

As I have previously stated, sometimes my Aunt, someone I have loved greatly all my life sends me barrages of forwarded emails at times. Today was one of those days. Of course, some of them are those stupid email hoaxes that go around all the time, and both me and my sister will send her a link telling her such is a hoax. I get jokes, religious messages and such also. Most of them I have already seen, but every once in awhile, I find a pearl. I thought this one was worth sharing:

God is sitting in heaven when a scientist prays to Him: "God, we don't need you anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing - in other words, we can now do what you did in the beginning."

"Oh, is that so? Tell Me..." replies God.

"Well," says the scientist, "we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of you and breath life into it, thus creating man."

"Well, that's very interesting...show Me."

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil into the shape of a man.

"No, no, no..." interrupts God, "Get your own dirt."

It was a great day in Texas today for justice

Tony over at I am Always Right points to a story about a disturbing individual who lured a suicidal woman to Texas so he could murder her while having sex, but who was apprehended before actually committing the murder and asks is it illegal to think about killing someone? Tony concluded with this statement:

I'm not saying the guy doesn't need help, I'm saying that I don't actually see where the guy actually did anything wrong.

I responded to him in his comments and had this to say:

Tony, according to the information in the story, it is hard to tell whether she set him up or he instigated the ordeal. While she might have been contemplating suicide, most of us would attempt to help her find assistance to save her life. Instead, it seems like he urged her to go forward with her plan to die, but he wanted to do the killing. He was not charged with murder, he was charged with attempted murder. That charge requires more than just thinking about committing the deed, it requires some act in preparation of doing the deed. In this case, he had already purchased the flowers he planned on using during the killing and the device to use in the killing. Now, of course, the lady could have been a law enforcement plant to catch these types of predators, but he was a predator, prowling around for suicidal women to kill during sex. I am one of those attorneys who read your blog, and I am from Texas. This defendant may have been smart to take the probation deal because it is difficult to determine what a jury might do with this set of facts. It is not illegal to think about murdering someone, but it is illegal to do any little thing in furtherance of actually committing the murder.

It is sometimes hard to understand what constitutes a crime, and sometimes it is only after you are caught that you find that you have actually committed one. I recently represented a young man who had burglarized a church, and he freely admitted he had done so, but could not understand why he had another, higher level, charge for engaging in organized criminal activity. He had committed this crime with two other young men, and they had formulated the plan to burglarize the church and to trade the stuff they stole for drugs and then to split up the drugs. To commit a crime in combination with one or more other people with the intent to share in the proceeds constitutes the crime of engaging in organized criminal activity. He didn't know that.

Tony also reported that Chante Mallard had received 50 years for the murder of the man she hit and let die laying in her windshield. I had gotten a CNN blurb in my email that said she got 60. She was sentenced to 50 years for the murder and 10 for destruction of evidence. Texas judges rarely stack sentences, so 50 years is correct. Now, what does that sentence mean? It means, most likely, [there may be some factors that I am not completely aware of that might make this a false statement] that she will have to serve a minimum of 25 years before she is eligible to be considered for parole.

There was definitely some confusion, even among the journalists covering the story as to the sentence. When I initially accessed Tony's link to ABC News version of a story penned by Associated Press reporter, Angela K. Brown, the headline to the story read:

Life Sentence Avoided
But Former Nurse's Aide Gets a Total of 60 Years for Windshield Slaying

I linked to it again, forgetting I still had the story up in another window, to determine where Tony had gotten the 50 years when the headline had proclaimed 60 years. It was not more than 5 minutes between the time I launched the first window and the second window, but the headline in the second window had already been changed to

Life Sentence Avoided
But Former Nurse's Aide Gets 50 Years for Windshield Slaying.

I had argued on Jen Speaks, whose server space Tony shares, that I might have argued against a murder conviction had I represented Ms. Mallard. I said this in my comments to the story she ran about the case:

Is the case [bing being] shown on Court TV? I live only 30 minutes from FW and it is all over the news here, but did not realize it was being televised all over the Nation. I agree, she should have done something to assist the man. I am not sure whether he jumped in front of her, so maybe that part was not her fault, but she should have gotten some medical assistance for the man. The only thing that comes to mind, however, is either she was too intoxicated and was afraid of being arrested for DWI (stupid) or if he had survived he would have testified that she ran off the road and hit him, which would have also gotten her arrested. This woman must have rocks in her head for she was so stupid, because if either one of the above was true, she would not have been sent to prison [for life] for either act. Even if he died after she hit him and took him to the hospital or someplace else, and she was drunk or intoxicated, it would not be a murder case, only a manslaughter case, in which the maximum punishment is less than life in prison. What a ding bat. She deserves whatever the jury gives her. Of course, it is not a Capital case. However, if I was her attorney, I would be working toward getting the jury to convict her of manslaughter, because actually I think she had no intent to kill the man, only is guilty of reckless indifference which is different than knowing and intent. [I edited my remarks in this rendition as shown]

Our Constitutions, both the US version and the Texas version, mandate adequate assistance of counsel for people charged with crimes. I am often called up to provide such counsel for people who commit crimes. Does that mean I like people who commit crimes? No, or at least not all of them. There are some who I represent who I feel have bonafide excuses for their transgressions, like mental defects or mental incapacity. I do not always agree with what is criminal as many of you who have read my opinions about drugs are aware. And often, I spend time with these individuals, and get to know them, feel their humanity and shame. A lot of my clients, and the majority of people charged with crimes, are young people who made stupid mistakes. I often have compassion for their predicament and how their families are also victimized by the punishment they receive for their crimes.

As a defense attorney, what I always hope for is a reasonable prosecutor who will listen to what I have to say about my client and attempt to work with me to formulate a punishment that will benefit both society, my client and his family [who are members of society]. In my area, this is very difficult. Our felony prosecutor seldom has any compassion for my clients or their families. However, he has been in office for an extremely long period of time, so he must be doing what the voters want him to do. He continues to be re-elected.

What irks me the most is juries who fail to listen to all of the evidence and use their common sense to find the truth. Too often, I feel they did not even listen to anything, as if they had made up their minds before the case even started. To me, that is a complete miscarriage of justice.

In both of the above cases, however, I am convinced justice was served. The demented killer of suicidal women pled guilty and the judge set rules so as to stop him for repeating his actions. The jury in Ms. Mallard's case came back with something less than life, so they at least considered Ms. Mallard's utter stupidity. All in all, even from a defense attorney's point of view, it looked like a good day for justice in Texas today.

Oh, just to add a final point. I am running for County Attorney next year, and if elected, I will be the prosecutor, at least for the misdemeanor offenses committed in my county. Attorneys are trained to always be able to work both sides of any case. Having been a defense attorney for a number of years ought to assist me in being a very good prosecutor, just as being a prosecutor for a number of years usually prepares one to be a great criminal defense attorney.

Update: Ken at CrimLaw had this to say:

The main defense was that "murder has to be an act not an omission." Therefore, since she did not intend to hit and kill him she was not responsible for murder. Intellectually that argument has some merit but there is no way a jury buys it. Of course, it's not like the defense attorney had much else to work with and it will provide him with a valid appealable issue.

I did not address the appellate possibilities of the conviction, but this argument is much like my stance in that she did not knowingly and intentionally kill the man, but only displayed reckless indifference to his medical condition, which in turn, resulted in his death. Knowing our Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, it is unlikely this one will be overturned within the state system, and will likely make it to the U.S. Supreme Court at some point in the future. However, it is very likely Ms. Mallard will remain behind bars unless and until her conviction is reversed.

I am blinded by my own brilliance

I have seen several bloggers, most notably our buddy* over at Tiny Little Lies, who are culling through their posts and creating "BEST OF" displays, sites, and whatnot. I like this idea, and thought about doing the same thing, but I seem to have a problem with such. These posts are like my children, they are all bright, intelligent, and funny. I can't seem to find any of them to be better than the others. Well, actually, I sometimes think the best ones are the ones to which absolutely no one comments. I know they are being read, so figure either people are laughing too hard to want to comment or are so in agreement with what was said that they have nothing to add.

*He posts under the name 'the Small of Dari Alexander's Back,' but that confuses the heck out of me. I would love to just refer to him as 'Tiny,' most especially since that picture on his blog reminds me of my old pinball playing college buddy of the same nickname.

Odds and ends, but mostly just odd

Well, I am without a car, despite the fact I own four. My '93 Towncar is in the transmission shop, my '89 'stang 5.0 ragtop is sitting on blocks, my '93 Merc Topaz is still out on loan, and my '72 'stang is still sitting in the field behind my brother's house, with the drive shaft in the trunk, one busted window, and likely a few rattlesnakes and birds housed in various places inside. Thankfully I have a friend or two who might be cajoled into chauffering me around until I get my ride back, that is, unless this one person who is not home right now is willing to let me borrow this one certain Nissan pickup that has just been sitting in her driveway since her husband passed away several months ago. I used to date her daughter and I have remained very good friends with the whole family. I just hate* not having a car, especially in the hot Texcas summer. Of course, my doctor** did advise me to get more exercise. Maybe this is good karma.

Something I failed to remember about the seminar. I was out on one break in the second class citizen's area*** talking to some fellow outcasts, one being an especially attractive female of the basic type and age I currently am seeking. I was animatedly discussing my disgust with insurance companies when she smiled at me and said, "You really ought to go into drama." Of course, upon my further investigation I found that she was married.**** I long ago determined that if I had a chance to get into showbiz, I want to take over the role of Ernest. I have already decided I am much too tall and my ears too small to ever play Ross Perot. I also have thought about trying stand up, but I cannot seem to come up with a good 20 minutes of original material.*****

*Although I feel that it is wrong to hate people, I am not impervious to feeling hatred for personally disastrous situations.

**It was actually the P.A.

***This is the area outside any building where the smokers congregate.

****The good ones always seem to be pulled off the shelf before I find the store.

*****George Burns and George Carlin have already used up all the good material.

Well, I went and did it

I keep seeing everyone posting their results from taking the test at politicalcompass.org. I really do not like such tests, because there are not enough choices for me to provide an accurate picture of where I stand on certain issues. But, be that as it may, here is how I came out:

In actuality, I think it is a pretty good representation of where I am.* I try to stay pretty close to the center. According to the chart they had of all the central political figures around the globe, I am almost exactly in the same spot on the political compass as Canadian Prime Minister, JEAN CHRÉTIEN. I really don't know much about Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. I do not follow Canadian politics as closely as I follow Mexican politics. Living in Texas will do that to you, I guess. I just hope no one expects me to start speaking French.

*I somehow suspect that I am nowhere near where U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft lies on the political compass. If I had to guess, I would guess he lies just off the chart near the upper right hand corner.

I take the credit!

Over at Setting the World to Rights, they seem to have some problem about the use of the term, idiotarian, and believe we need to replace the term with something different. I hereby coin the term to replace idiotarian as inanitarian based upon the word inane, which means "lacking significance, meaning or point." Please credit me for such coinage! ;)

UPDATE: I just found that AstreaEdge has a greatly well written, as usual, post about the type of people to which my coinage word, inanitarian, should refer.

It seems to be catching

Well, as you might have guessed from the amount of posting and times on the entries, I have had no luck getting to sleep tonight. I also noticed that Deb and Scott have also reported having trouble sleeping.

Now surely this has nothing to do with Glenn going on vacation, does it? Oh, Jay Solo has offered to take up the slack for Glenn's absence. So if you find yourself having run through all of the great humorous prose on my site, and just feel the need to look for someplace to start finding other great posts to read, you know where to start your search now while your regular source is gone.

This idea I formulated long ago

Stephen Green of Vodka Pundit has devised a plan to end racism. Thanks Stephen for reminding me that I actually had formulated a similar idea back in the 80's* during my third year of college. I was working in a convenience store in the middle of the projects, as the Federally funded low-cost housing area was called. I was just standing there looking at one of the area residents: the most nubile Nubian princess with silky smooth skin the color of chocolate and the most brilliant green eyes.** All I could think of was how much better the world would be if we just began mating with each other, and instead of a world divided by black and white, we would have a cohesive world filled with one race of gray*** people.

However, I now understand why we developed different skin tones in different areas of the world: reflection or absorption of the sun's rays depending on the level of the sunlight received in a certain area. If area populations remain static for another 20,000 years, I suspect we will all evolve to have similar skin tones**** anyway.

attribution: Jay Solo

*That is the 1980's. I might be old, but I am not that damn old.

**The young lady was about 15 and I was 23, so all I did was look at her and admire her beauty. My thoughts, I wisely kept to myself.

***Could it be that the race of often described aliens that many believe to have visited the Earth often referred to as "the Grays" had developed through similar means on a far distant planet?

****If the supposed depletion of the ozone layer does continue and more and more deadly ultraviolet rays continue to pelt us on a daily basis, it is likely that skin coloration will become an evolutionary basis for determining those who survive and those who perish.

There is a definite need for warning labels

Studies have concluded that exposure to Weird Al Yankovic's lyrics may may contribute to the development of the strangest ideas.

And although I never would have dreamed of such, I now believe that there might be a reason to place warning labels on babies, also.

Quick Draw McGraw is out tonight!

I went to the store a few minutes ago to refill my cup with Dublin Dr. Pepper when some guy comes in and asks, "What are the cheapest cigarettes you have?" Before the luscious beautiful clerk whom I refer to as Princess could say Mainstreet, I quipped, The butts in the ashtray.*

*There actually was a time when I was much younger and poorer that I was not too proud to pull some long butts out of an ashtray. Of course, that was before AIDS, SARS and Monkey Pox*.

**You never know when some prarie dog might have been hanging around, smoking.

Personal definitions

Ith has developed a one word definition for herself: Merry. When I describe myself in the comments to that post, she decided a one word definition for me would be: Regal. I can live with that! It was very much better than the one I thought would best fit me: Putz.

The Florida Lemonade Queen hits the Big Apple

So, did any of ya'll catch Letterman last night? I am not a really big Letterman fan, but I was watching the news and saw he was going to have Avigayil Wardein on. In case you are not really familiar with that name, she is the 6 year old girl whose lemonade stand in Naples, Florida was shut down by the police after her neighbor complained she was breaking the law by selling lemonade without a permit. Although I never said anything about the story on my blog, mainly because everyone else in the Blogosphere had already done so, I was interested in seeing what she had to say about the ordeal. I think she was a bit scared and overwhelmed about being on the show, because it seemed like Letterman had to ask her leading questions just to get any information out of her. The best parts of the interview where when he held up a picture of the stand and there she was with two other people and Letterman asked her if the other two were her friends, she said "No, just one of them is." When he asked her why her lemonade stand was shutdown by the police, she said, "The crabby lady next door called the police." I am thinking someone had put that word in her mouth at some time before. Then David showed her a picture of her handing a glass of lemonade to a policeman in a car and there was a dog in the picture. He asked her if that was her dog. She said, "No, that is [I forget the name], we just go get him to play with sometimes." Letterman then asked if he was a good dog, and she indignantly said, "It's a girl." When he began to ask her about the incident, he asked her if she knew she needed a permit, and she said, "Yes." Letterman immediately ended the interview with the words, "No further questions, Your Honor."

Here is the local newspaper's story about her trip, with links their previous stories about the ordeal.

I did attempt to do my best to provide notice as soon as I found that she was going to appear on the show: I emailed Glenn Reynolds about it. I think he had already gone to bed or just did not have any interest in putting it up on InstaPundit. I just could not think of any other way to get it to as many members of the Blogosphere.

Looked through the barrel of apples for the shiniest one

My Kiwi friend Cherry sends me jokes all the time, especially on Friday.* I thought of all the ones I received today, this one was the best one:

I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about 5 minutes and when I came out there was a motorcycle cop writing a parking ticket. So I went up to him and said, 'Come on buddy, how about giving a guy a break?'

He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. So I called him a pencil necked nazi. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having bald tires!!

So I called him a horse's behind. He finished the second ticket and put it on the car with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket!!

This went on for about 20 minutes, the more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote. But I didn't care…

My car was parked around the corner...

Thanks for sharing, Cherry!

A bit of this and a little of that!

I will be attending a seminar for the next two days, so blogging will be light.

Although I am trying not to be concerned with my links and my status in the Blogosphere Ecosystem, I may or may not have attained the status of Large Mammal this morning. Hmmm, I may not be an elephant or a hippo, but being a Tiger seems to suit me just fine!

UPDATE: Well, my car's transmission started acting up sitting in rush hour traffic this morning while I was driving through Dallas, so I decided to register just for today. I saw no reason to take a chance of breaking down tomorrow morning. The seminar was pretty boring, but then I find that is true about most of them. Most of the topics were the same as those in previously attended seminars. After lunch I started feeling nauseous.* I decided to leave a bit early, come home and have my my transmission seviced at the oil change business. They advised me as my car has over 150,000 miles, it was advisable to it have it checked at a transmission shop. As I already scheduled tomorrow off, I guess I will be going out tomorrow morning to have my transmission checked out. But for now, I am here. I just thought I would let everyone know!

*I have to look up the spelling of this word every time.

A day late but still have my shoes on

I really don't want this to be a rag, but I been ravin's so much, I wanted any different category for once. Where was I yesterday? Oh yeah, I was on the other end of the phone of a tech call from some dizzy gal who couldn't figure out the simplest problem with her computer. Now I just wonder who that could have been?

Welll, actually I am not a computer tech, and I have had the exact same experience, although I figured it out on my own after 20 minutes of trying everything else and then commenced to beating my head on the wall for several minutes cursing my own stupidity. This story reminded me of that old story that was floating around on the Internet when I got online about 10 years ago and I still see from time to time. It was probably made up. You know the one. It is about the woman who called about her computer screen being blank during a time when the electricity to the building had been shut off. Lee Ann, shake it off, gal, and send me some of the those biscuits. I would ask for your shoes, but I am not one of those weird perverts that gets off on sniffing women's shoes.

Now, underwear . . . that is a different scenario, altogether.

Bowing down to a job well done

The new Carnival of the Vanities is up and, boy, did A Single Guy In The South, Adam, do a fantastic job of hosting this week's event. As always there are lots of great stories, and this week I was a bit higher than at the next to the bottom of the list. Of course, you already read my entry, didn't you? If for no other reason, go have a look, because Adam did a bang up job with the 60 entries in this week's Carnival!

I suppose I will have to sit out this week's contest as it is being hosted by Amish Tech Support and I think I am still persona non grata in Laurence's view of the Blogosphere Ecosystem. I really did want to enter this one, because I thought it shows some of my unique sense of humor, my ability to be indignant about the issues, and my ability to make use of an adequate number of highly useful and enjoyable footnotes, [tongue-in-cheek] a widely recognized indication of a thoroughly dynamic blogger [/tongue-in-cheek].

How come I was too slow on the draw?

It seems that our favorite Cracker Barrel Philosopher has deemed the newly passed law legalizing prostitution in New Zealand as The Safe Sheep Act. That would have probably been something I would have come up with . . . sometime next week . . . after a lot of thought.

Yes, I am flagrantly avoiding the doghouse

Today is Susie's 2 month blogging anniversary and I know she would never forgive* me if I failed to mention such.

*Of course, she may not be speaking to me in the future anyway after she reads my review of her entry in the New Weblog Showcase.**

**Be sure to vote for Susie's entry in the New Weblog Showcase!

Still no notice by Glenn Reynolds,

but I have received a comment from someone much more famous:

Why are we all sitting here discussing someones personal life? Leave him alone, and maybe everyone else will. Poor guy. Who cares if he's bankrupt, it's none of our business!!

Posted by: Elvis at June 25, 2003 02:45 PM

Comment made to that same Michael Jackson post which seems to be rated very high on Google if you run the words Michael Jackson bankrupt.

I have some news!

I think it is good news, but there may be some among the Blogosphere who may feel it is bad news that I am going to live. I awoke this morning hoping to see that big bump above my right eyebrow had subsided or, at least, had finally come to a head. It had changed . . . for the worse. It had swollen in size to the point where it was forcing the corner of my right eye closed. The voices in my head kicked in:

OK, stop pussyfooting around*, Tiger, that is your eye** and maybe your eyesight. Get Ye to the Doctor, ASAP!***

OK, so I had court, this morning. Thankfully all I did was submit my pay sheet on the one case set today because the DA dismissed the case. He had called me just before close of business yesterday to inform me of such. I was in and out of Court in less than 5 minutes. I immediately ran to the doctor's office. I could see the doctor sometime later this afternoon, but I could get in to see the P.A. right away. I like P.A.s much better than doctors anyway and the insurance pays the bill, whomever I see. I was already convinced it was only some infection due to the pimple I tried to pop Sunday evening. A P.A. is sufficiently capable of prescribing antibiotics. I get to take two of these huge horse choking pills twice a day for 10 days.

Prior to seeing the P.A., the nurse weighed me: 196, with my boots on. I was immensely pleased, I am still within 10 pounds of 200, where I have been for almost the last 15 years. My blood pressure was 150/80 which the nurse said was good. I know they just changed the blood pressure levels for where high blood pressure is indicated. The last time I had given blood I had been told me I was getting very near the high blood pressure mark. I decided it might be advisable to ask the P.A. about that also. She suggested I start on what she called the starter medication: the medication generally prescribed for people at risk for high blood pressure the first time. Also, of course, I have to watch my cholesterol and sodium and I have to exercise. Thankfully, I did not have my cigarettes in my pocket and she had not seen me previously. Most likely, on my chart, she saw where I had been prescribed whatever that stop smoking drug the doctors are pushing now. She said nothing about my smoking. I am not blind to it being a problem, I just dislike doctors telling me to stop. I know I need to stop. I will stop as soon as someone devises an inpatient program where they keep you doped up for years until you have absolutely no more craving for nicotine. I am eager to trade my nicotine addiction for an addiction to a better drug.

After I left the doctor's office, I went across the street to the pharmacy to get my prescriptions filled. I have something to rant about. You know, you hear these stories in the news about this and that. I had heard the cries and concerns about prescription drugs, but I was not really abreast of the problem. I pay an arm and a leg for health insurance,*** and the last time I had to get any prescriptions filled, I paid $5.00 for each medication. Well, we recently changed carriers. I got all kinds of information, but who reads all that crap. It is a bunch of gobblety-gook written by a bunch of paralegals for attorneys making far more than I and understanding it doesn't change anything anyway. Those are the rules, they suck, and you are stuck. Insurance companies control everything.**** I learned this fact a few years back.

Well, they changed the rules for prescriptions. I had to pay $5.00 for one of them and $25.00 for the other. I said something to the pharmacist and he said that $25.00 was only my co-pay. The antibiotics were $100.00. Now wait? $100.00 for penicillin?***** Surely in the last 50 years they have perfected growing mold on bread to the point where they can produce it cheaply? No wonder people are up in arms about the price of prescription drugs. $100 for a drug and it doesn't even make you high? I am thoroughly convinced that the War on Drugs is putting the wrong drug dealers in prison. These pharmaceutical companies are the real criminals.

*Where in the heck did this word originate, anyway? All Webster's says is it originated in 1903.

**OK, the thought of how sexy I would look with a nifty black pirate patch over one eye did run through my mind a couple of times before I dismissed it.

***I actually ran into one of my clients on the street right before going to court: a veterinarian. I asked for his advice and he told me it looked like some type of infection and that I should go see a doctor. I ask his medical advice often. I figure veterinarians are much smarter than doctors. They treat more species than just one, and aren't we just another species of animal anyway?

****They recently raised their rates, so in addition to an arm and a leg, I am now also paying 3 toes on my remaining foot and my left butt cheek.

*****Let me see, they control the doctors, the hospitals, the legislatures and the courts. I could rant for days on insurance companies. I detest them.

******It is not actually penicillin, it is Augmentin. I am sure that generic penicillin would have worked wondrously, and from my understanding generic penicillin can be purchased for about $8.00 cash (no co-pay involved). So what is it about Augmentin that makes it so much more expensive than regular old penicillin? I am placing my bet on that GlaxoSmithKline is attempting to recoup some of the large payoffs they pay to the doctors to prescribe it. After all, the insurance companies have cut way into the income brackets of the doctors by curtailing the actual medical assistance they can provide to their patients, so those poor doctors have to find new ways of generating income, don't they?

I am expecting a severe cold snap in the netherworld

The Texas Rangers won a game. That is right, I said they WON! Oh, could we only hope this is the start of that group coming together at last.

Yes, it is true, there is something new

After my last post, I got a bug* in my brain that said "Hey, you, you know what? You need a logo for your blog." Dang that bug, I had to work for 2 hours to do what he said so I could get him out of my brain.

*Actually, I have this big sore lump just above my right eyebrow which is

1. A big pimple;
2. A boil;
3. A ingrown hair; or
4. A bug bite I got while sleeping.

Now hopefully it is No. 1 and will come to a head really soon, or even No. 2, though I have only had one in my life before. I am pretty sure it is not No. 3, because otherwise I would have seen some sign of such while imspecting it in the mirror about a million times since I discovered it two days ago. I am very hopeful it is not No. 4, because the only kind of bug that would make something grow that big is a Brown Recluse spider. I just shudder thinking of that last one. The worst thing you could get bitten by in Texas is a Brown Recluse.

Maybe Gallup should do a poll

Rachel Lucas, in her post entitled "Hi, I'm Dictator Gephardt" asked:

Am I being naive by thinking that a hell of a lot of black people think Al Sharpton is an unmitigated idiot and that his idea of who the "right blacks" are is about as in touch with real black people as his hairdo?

I am just wondering how to answer her question. It seems to be a question that a good scientific poll* could resolve.

*Is there such a thing, or is it just an urban myth?

Let me peer into my crystal ball

Let me look into the future and see what A Sassy Lawyer in Philippine Suburbia might be saying about my blog:

June 25, 2003

Blogging through a dial-up connection

I was browsing through some blogs when I came across Tiger: Raggin' & Rantin' (subtitled tied to the world solely by a low-band connection through a third-world phone company, one man simply seeks the truth). The guy appears to live in Texas so the subtitle must be a pun or some kind of metaphor. He was also complaining about the summer heat and the cost of electricity. Very Third World indeed, almost...

Hmm, definitely not a pun, so I will go with metaphor. So what do I win?

However, speaking of my low-band connection through a third-world phone company, it seems to have disconnected one two three four five six seven eight nine times already as I have attempted to post this entry. There are some nights it is ridiculously hard to blog.

What am I to do with all of this flattery?

Well, didn't they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Well it does seem that my reviewing of blogs is catching on. So impressed by my efforts in reviewing the Top 10 blogs in the blogosphere Ecosystem, Kevin Aylward has reviewed the Pond Scum.

And, talking about skimming the cream off of the top, it seems our favorite non obscure early 20th century poet, James "Joyce" Joyner has done a fabulous job of paraphrasing my TOP DAWG Review. If you are too lazy to read all of my finely written prose, go read the shorthand version.

The intricacies of addition and subtraction

Lately I have been mulling over my blogroll. It seems that some of the blogs there do not seem to be updating, at least when I am reading. I find that I am reading some blogs much more than others. I find that some are actually more enjoyable to read than others. I added IMAO yesterday because I was reading it more often than about 75% of the blogs currently on my blogroll and this morning I added wordfetish because I read a lot of different entries and found each and every post to be a most delightful bit of prose.

I am finding it more and more difficult to add blogs to my blogroll. As I have mentioned previously, my blogroll is my reading list.* However, I am contemplating an effort to trim it down, so that I will have space for more of those blogs that I really enjoy reading.

*It is entirely possible that I might create a second blogroll, however, and move those that are not regular reads into it. I think it involves a financial investment, but I might be able to find an extra dollar or two to do this sometime in the future.

I am going to the dogs

Well, electricity around here is really high, especially in the hot Texas summer when either you can spend half your pay cooling your house or you find some other way of cooling off. I bought two fans today at Walmart and have both of them blowing on me. Despite the fact I am nearly naked, I am still steadily leaking waste fluids from my pores. I have been watching my dogs out the window, who, despite being covered with hair,* seem to be staying quite cool. I have decided that I am going to go outside and kick them out of that large hole they have dug in the middle of my yard. Then I can be free to lay in the middle of it with my tongue hanging out. It does seem to be working for them and it uses absolutely no electricity.

*Actually, Duke, my weeniewolf, has had a very severe case of demadex [sp?] mange for several years that seems to defy any attempt at treatment and he has hardly any hair.

What is a guy to do?

Susie is raggin' me because I have posted about her wonderful, humorous site, but then she has not been working to find me a wife or asking people to link to me, or even asking people to come download my music,* has she?

And every time I go to her site, Susie says we should see what Frank is saying, so I keep doing so. I guess I should blogroll him, huh? Of course, this is not the same Frank who regularly comments on my site, because I can't talk him into blogging.

*Oops, wait a minute! I don't have any music for anyone to download.

Nice guys really do finish last

Well it seems that AstreaEdge has gotten the attention of InstaPundit and despite all the great things I said about Glenn Reynolds, I still have not received a mention.

Oh well, it could not have happened to a nicer guy gal person

Shall we blame it on Al?

Well, having another of those days where I cannot seem to connect to about half the sites on the Internet. So, if Al Gore really invented the Internet, should he take the blame for all the problems we have? Heck maybe we should file a class action suit against him for all the SPAM we get. Or hold him responsible for the bad blind dates we find when we join those Internet dating sites. And, of course, everytime you see some thing on mine or someone else's blog that just makes you blow steam out of your ears, isn't that the fault of Al Gore? Without the invention of the Internet, none of these little petty problems that seem to plague our lives would have been possible.*

*This is all tongue-in-cheek folks, so all of you chad counters out there who believe Al Gore should be running our country, please do not slam me with nasty comments. Otherwise, I will have to edit them and make you look like the jackasses** you are.

**Is not the symbol of the Democratic Party a jackass? It sure looks like one to me. However, should I be wrong, I hope I have not offended anyone.

Punny Pondering

I can sit around and my mind just wanders to the most inane things, such as I was wondering if you were sitting around in cotton, using your wits, picking at nits, would that make you a cotton pickin' nit wit? I told you it was pretty inane.

If I was a bear I would just hibernate

Wow, getting onto this reviewing kick has flat worn me out. I could use a long nap. Oh, wait, I forgot that I am still working on that manuscript . . .

Well maybe later.

The TOP DAWG Review

Well, the voting is in and my meager readership wants me to go forward with critiquing the upper echelon in the Blogosphere Ecosystem. James JoyceJoyner recommended I tread lightly, but I have to tell the truth. I say Why Not? What harm can it do? Should I fear reprisals? Why? Anyone who is so egotistical that they can be or are damaged by my opinions needs serious psychiatric help. So, here are my opinions:

For the purposes of this review, I will dispense with any rating of the blogs, as they are all exceptional blogs, except that I am not sure all actually qualify as blogs. However, the current status should speak for itself. It is a given that they are all held in high esteem by many. I will cover them in the order that they currently appear in the Higher Beings hierarchy:

InstaPundit: ~It appears that everyone knows InstaPundit is the baby of Glenn Reynolds. This blog sits high atop the Blogosphere Ecosystem because everyone has it on their blogroll and it is updated quite often. Is Glenn Reynolds the grand daddy of blogging? I check the archives for InstaPundit and the earliest entry I could find was dated August 8, 2001. However, as I have lately been reviewing a lot of new bloggers, it is obvious from this post and the ones that follow, that Glenn had been blogging in some form for some period previously. There was no mention of having transitioned from some other site. It is fair to say that Glenn attempts to keep a keen eye on the pulse of the news and of what is going on in the Blogosphere. However, like most of us, he seems to limit himself to a select group of sources. Most of what appears on InstaPundit are dry lead ins to stories on news sites and other bloggers' commentaries. But Glenn has established the format for what most people think blogging is about. I actually correlate InstaPundit with FARK, but on a different level. If I am looking for a directory of the current political news, I can go to InstaPundit for clues on where to look, just as if I want to find the stories about the inane, ridiculous or humorous events that have occurred around the world, I can go to FARK. The one comment that I think is fair to say about InstaPundit is that if you are looking for something thought provoking, engaging or enjoyable to read, you will usually not find it there, but you can start there to find it. Glenn can write, however, just probably has too much else to do to put that much effort into his blog currently. There are no comment functions, so interaction is not available.

Daily Kos / Political State Report: ~This blog is maintained by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga. First post Sunday | May 26, 2002. As a first time visitor, needing to do so in order to do this review, I found the site to be somewhat confusing. It took me a little time and thought to understand that there is an open thread posted every morning just to allow rampant commenting. And there appears to be plenty of comments made to every post. It is evident that: 1. This blog leans left; 2. It has a massive readership; and 3. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga puts a lot of time and thought into what appears on his blog. It is attractive and content driven. Too dry and left for my tastes. Commenting allowed.

Eschaton (Atrios): ~Well, actually this appears to be a team blog by Atrios, Lambert, Leah and Tresy, though it could be possible that it is actually the blog of one person with a multiple personality disorder. It is almost incredulous to believe that the 3rd highest ranking blog in the Blogosphere Ecosystem is hosted on blog*spot. Earliest post located: Thursday, April 18, 2002 and appears to been the beginning point. Although most of the stories are leaning toward the left, there is interspersed a smattering of bits of daily trivia. I read quite a few of the entries, and even those I did not totally agree with, I found to be well written and logical. I found more humor in the writing in this blog than in either InstaPundit or The Daily Kos. A nice site and a nice read, though likely more so of you who are leaning a bit more to the left side of things. Commenting allowed.

The Volokh Conspiracy: ~This blog has actually been on my blogroll almost from the beginning. It is a team blog written by Eugene Volokh, Jacob Levy, Orin Kerr and others. Earliest post found: Wednesday, April 10, 2002, but either had some previous blogging experience or took off running from the start. There is a variance of topics, mostly law related and all written primarily by academics. There is not much humor to be found, but the writing is almost always concise and logical. However, I do often find much of it to be uninteresting. This is one I check almost every time I see an update notification, however, because if it is a topic I am interested in, I especially like to see what the members of the Volokh Conspiracy have to say on the subject. No commenting functions on this site.

Andrew Sullivan: ~Another blog I have read for the first time in order to do this review. Earliest located entry: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 but either hit the ground running or there was some prior blogging or other experience. Although I rarely like light on dark, the contrast with the white on dark blue is easier on the eyes than the normal white on black. There was a good mix of posting styles, some just Glenn Reynold's type lead ins to links, and some nice commentaries. Although I read or scanned most of the entries on the main page, it was not entirely evident where Andrew Sullivan sits on the political compass. The main focus on the blog seems to be centered on homosexual issues. Andrew appears to be a person who has a logical mind. I really liked the style and feel of this blog, but again, there were no commenting functions, so feedback is unavailable.

James Lileks: ~[The Bleat] I do not actually consider James Lileks to be a blogger or this site to be a blog. Earliest entry found: 02/07/97 and from the older entries, it appears that James had indeed begun this effort as a blogger. It is now more like a daily humorist column, in my opinion. That is not to say that it is not worthy of reading on a regular basis, because it is definitely that. It is easy to understand why this is a popular site, because the writing is indeed humorous and enjoyable to read. I have only lately discovered this daily column and added it to my blogroll. I just cannot classify it as a blog. No commenting, but then most would just be praiseworthy pats on the back anyway.

Joshua Marshall: ~[Talking Points Memo] Another blog I am reading for the first time doing this review. Earliest entry found: November 13th, 2000 a reading of which indicates he was at least familiar with blogging. Authored by Joshua Micah Marshall this blog is filled with mostly long commentaries on political issues from the Democratic point of view. The writing is exceptional, the blog is nicely designed and the arguments are logically supported, even if I disagree with some of the author's opinions. No comment functions.

Little Green Footballs: ~I had previously visited this blog without blogrolling it. Earliest entry found: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 but there was an indication that there were a couple of months previous posting on Blogger [and that there was a link to such posts which I was unable to locate]. Authored by Charles Johnson. The current postings all seem to be centered on current foreign affairs issues, terrorism, and the Middle-East Peace Process. Most are straight forward news items, interspersed with Charles Johnson's commentary and humorous observations. Comments are enabled.

USS Clueless: Another blog I had previously visited without blogrolling. Earliest entry found: Stardate 20010313.1150 which translates into March 13, 2001 at 11:50 by my belief. I am not sure why I did not blogroll it the first time I checked it. Authored by Steven Den Beste, suspected Trekkie. It may have been that the top story of the day just turned me off. From reading/scanning [sorry, I could not read the whole review of the first Harry Potter movie, etc.] it appears to be a fairly neutral commentary and observation about various things, mostly centered on entertainment. The writing was good and the author's sense of humor shined through in many places. I might actually have to give this a few more reads in the future, once I find I have more spare reading time. No comments available.

CalPundit: ~I have some past connection with this blog, I believe from linking to something on the site at some past point. Earliest entry found: Thursday, August 22, 2002, but either had prior experience or hit the ground running. Authored by Kevin Drum. Kevin is definitely a California liberal, but the posts are well written and the opinions are logically presented. He presents a humble side and the topics vary from political to technical to pictures of cats. Both commenting and trackbacking are available.

Amazingly, every one of these blogs, or sites, in the case of James Lileks, is popular for good reason. The writing is great and the opinions presented are easy to comprehend. What is surprising, other than a couple of members of the Eschaton team, [and although not mentioned previously, there is a female as part of the Volokh Conspiracy,] all of the top blogs are predominately authored by white males. What is also readily apparent is that all of them have been blogging for a long period, so that is a key indicator to us newby bloggers that building a good following does take time.

Do we know all that much about each other?

Prometheus 6 mentioned in one of his comments to my review of his posting on the The New Weblog Showcase Review III that in my commentary about what he has posted about, it might be important to point out that people of one race do not know much about people of another race. Instead of responding to such in the comments on that post, I thought I would do so more publicly by posting about such. I do agree that I know less about how it feels to be Black, Hispanic, Indigenous American, Asian, female, disabled, homosexual, Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, or anything else, than I know how it is to be a 48-year-old Caucasian widowed, orphaned, childless male. What I do know is that each of those mentioned above are all humans, and I do know how it feels to be a human. I also have no idea how my neighbor, who is also a Caucasian male about my age feels either. What I do believe is that we should have tolerance for almost every other human on the Earth, though I believe there are exceptions for people who are selfish, take advantage of others, have no compassion for anyone, commit crimes and such. I try not to categorize anyone other than being human. Those who put themselves into categories are as big of a problem as those who categorize people.

Racism and intolerance of others seem to be an adult problem. When I was a kid, I played with Tommy, Billy and Hector and they were my friends. I never thought of Tommy and Billy as my Black friends or Hector as my Spanish friend. They were just my friends as much as Joe and Sam, who had skin more like mine. I actually became more attuned to racial conflicts when I went into the Army and was put into a large barracks with a lot of other young men, of all races and religions, and sexual orientations. My first indication of strife was when some of the Blacks became very intolerant toward me because they did not like the type of music I played on my stereo. I was not really all that crazy about listening to Al Green either or to some of what the other White guys played on their radios and stereos, but I figured anyone was free to listen to whatever they wanted. It really surprised me that the only ones who showed any intolerance for my tastes were Black. Luckily, I found that intolerance for Whites by Blacks was limited to a very small percentage of the Blacks with whom I became acquainted. In my profession, I have had as many dealings with Blacks as I have with Whites, being I was a criminal defense attorney in Dallas, Texas. I have applauded the proliferation of non-comic relief Black characters on sitcoms and dramatic television shows and in the movies. No, I do not know how it feels to be Black, but I never will know that, just as I will never know how it feels to be female. But I do know how to treat my fellow humans with respect, and I treat all of them with respect until they prove to me that they deserve none.

My Rules of Life can be found here.

The Hulk can't quite bring down the house

OK, as I mentioned earlier, I went to go see The Hulk. It seems that Marvel Comics has seen a resurgence of interest in its characters, starting with X-Men, then Spider-Man, followed by Daredevil, then a sequel to X-Men, and now we get to The Hulk. Right off, let me say that The Hulk was never among my favorites when I was a really an avid comic reader in my youth. As such, I was less enthralled with seeing this movie than I was when Spider-Man, my favorite comic character of all, premiered.

That being said, this movie had more of a comic feel to it than any of the other movies, what with several panels being shown at the same time during some scenes. This is much like you would see if you were reading a comic. Of course, I have seen some blog posting where people commented that they thought The Hulk resembled Shrek. Yes, he does resemble Shrek, or actually Shrek resembles The Hulk. The Hulk was around a long time before Shrek ever appeared. The easiest thing to say is that if you were a big fan of The Hulk comics, you will definitely love this movie, in my opinion. As for me, it was entertaining, but it was not something I would want to see over and over again like I do with Spider-Man.

My lack of enthusiasm does not have so much to do with the movie as it does with the character. The Hulk is the embodiment of uncontrollable rage, nothing more, nothing less. His alter ego, Bruce Banner, is a tragic character, much like the person David Naughton played, David Kessler, in An American Werewolf in London.** Bruce Banner is not any happier about transforming into The Hulk than David Kessler was about transforming into a werewolf. What The Hulk does is to mostly mindlessly smash everything in his way. I say mostly mindlessly because sometimes it seems like he has some idea of what he is doing, especially if he is defending himself from attacks. You really cannot cheer for The Hulk because he is not heroic except when it comes to Betty Ross. Somewhere deep inside of himself, The Hulk does feel the love that Bruce Banner has for her and will protect her from harm.

As I said, if you were or are a really big fan of The Hulk, you will love this movie. The computer graphics were well done [as seems to be the case in almost every movie where computer graphics are involved now], and the feel of the movie embodied the same feeling you got from reading the comics, only bigger and better. If you were not, you may want to wait for the video to come out. There was actually a pretty large crowd in the theatre, and a lot of people brought small kids. I did not sense a lot of enthusiasm from the crowd as we left, but did hear a few remarks from some parents telling people waiting about how their small children were frightened in some parts of the movie. I do not recommend taking small children to this one.

One last point: I liked the casting in this one much better than I did in Daredevil and Spider-Man.***

Now, when are we going to get to see Iron Man or The Silver Surfer on the Silver Screen? Of course, I would really like to see a good movie about The Fantastic Four, but Roger Corman still owns the movie rights to those characters. I actually have a copy of the low-budget movie he made and never released just to retain those movie rights. For a low budget movie, it is really not all that bad. Of course, you can quickly tell one thing he saved money on: lighting.

[UPDATE: According to Ian, Roger Corman no longer owns the rights to The Fantastic Four.]

[Update II: It seems without my knowing so, my wish is being granted.]

*Yes, I am mindful that Blade was also a Marvel Comic character as is The Punisher, but they are Johnnie Come Latelies as far as I am concerned because they were not part of the Marvel stable of characters when I was 10 years old and lived in the world of comics.

**An American Werewolf in London is among one of my favorite movies, ironically, but mainly because it was more about the effects on David Kessler about the situation than what happened while he was a werewolf. An American Werewolf in Paris just did not have the same emotional feel to it as the original.

***Ben Affleck was not Matt Murdock and I liked neither Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane nor Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin, though thought Tobey McGuire was a great selection for Peter Parker.

Comtemplations of future endeavors

As I have been rating the newest bloggers on the Blogosphere Ecosystem and have gotten pretty used to critiquing blogs, I was wondering if there was any interest among you other bloggers in the Blogosphere Ecosystem to see how I would critique the 10 blogs currently in the Higher Beings level.

In the meantime, as I am downloading the 84MB zip file containing all the songs composed by Pixy Misa and so my bandwidth until such is completed is shot to Hell. I think I will mosey over into the town 20 miles away which does have a movie theatre* and catch a showing of the movie made about that loveable green behemoth,** The Hulk.

*I usually rail at the way those Brits misspell English words, as if they invented it or something, but for some reason I have always loved this spelling better than our American version.

**Speaking of words, you really have to love when you can find a way to use a word like behemoth in a sentence, don't you?

Link whore no more?

Well, I was in the midst of a dizzying climb up the Blogosphere Ecosystem where I had quickly climbed through the ranks to the level of Marauding Marsupial on June 9, 2003. Since that date, I have seen my links stay + or - 5 daily within the same area and am still in the same level.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with such status, as I am agreeable this is probably not the best blog* in the Blogosphere Ecosystem and is far from the worst. I have likely found my proper place in the scheme of things.

According to Blogshares, however, the current value of this blog is $33,483.51. Maybe it is time for me to sell my shares and move on to another endeavor?

*I truthfully make this admission despite the severe and nasty blow it gives to my fragile ego.

Don't you just hate when they ask the trick questions?

I was checking to see what wonderful SPAM I received overnight on my hotmail account when I saw this banner* displayed at the top of the page:

I immediately wondered what you won if you could actually answer the question posed correctly. Can any of you correctly answer the question posed?

*I compressed and smoothed it at 50% just to make the file size smaller, so it is a bit fuzzier than it actually appeared when shown on the site.

The New Weblog Showcase Review III

Well after spending almost every free moment over the last couple of days reading every entry in this week's New Weblog Showcase, I have finally completed the reviews. I found a surprising number of the posts drew very high marks this week. I am unsure if it is because some of them were getting a second chance and had learned what it is that impresses me or that I am getting to be a kinder gentler reviewer. What I do know is that what I believe is a developing carpal tunnel syndrome did not assist me all that much in this endeavor, so those of you who actually appreciate the effort I put into this, trying to insure that each and every one of you got at least one vote, feel free to link to this post, to my blog or to add me to your blogroll.

STOP! GO NO FURTHER! READ! Anyone who is offended by my review of their entry, remember I am merely stating my opinions and they may not necessarily be the opinions of any other single person [on this planet, unless they are from Estonia. Additionally, I have been contacted and told that my opinions were officially adopted by an entire alien sub-culture in the Ming Sector and 90% of the species in the Gamma quadrant.]

5.0=exceptional 4.5=excellent; 4.0=great; 3.5=very good; 3.0=good; 2.5=par; 2.0=sub par; 1.5=fair; 1.0=poor; 0.5=tried. ALL RATING IS SUBJECTIVE; Listings within tied ratings are arranged from my most favorite to my least favorite based upon my personal preferences.

5.0~An Unsealed Room: Cherry-Picking in the Golan Heights ~BEST OF SHOW! I was all set to not like this post. From the title I could tell it had something to do with Israel, and almost every time I see a post where anything about Israel is involved, it is from a zealot on one side or the other smashing the other side. Not this time! For the first time in my reviewing all the posts submitted to the New Weblog Showcase, I find that current top vote getter in the contest is also one that I think is among the very best posts in the week's contest. This was a most delightful look at Israel and living in Israel.

5.0~archy: Why do they support this man? ~John makes quite a few claims with regard to the damage the current administration is doing to its own power base. Though not much substantiation was shown for the assertions made, most of the assertions are widely believed by many. I particularly have seen far more evidence than I need to see to substantiate the claims made about the actions of Ashcroft. The writing was superb and the arguments sound. Good showcase of talents and where he stands on the political compass.

5.0~Where We're Bound: Scale of Democracy ~Danny Denny muses about the loss of democracy and whether our current form of government is actually designed to represent the people. He asks some important questions and says maybe we need a major social shift. Although he described his blog as

A lefty geek talks politics, macintosh, and community media

the lefty must be talking about which hand he uses to throw a baseball, because Danny Denny is Libertarian, whether he knows it or not. Well written and thought provoking. [UPDATE: In the comments, Denny denies being Libertarian and claims he is closer to an anarchist or what murray bookchin calls a communalist. as i get older i find that i tend to avoid labeling myself at all.]

5.0~A Blog of His Own: The French Method ~I remembered the title to the blog and recalled it had not drawn very high marks in my review of its last submission to the contest. Upon reviewing my remarks, I saw I had said this:

This guy needs to get his feet wet. I think he has some great potential at becoming a pretty good blogger, but he seems a bit too new at the game to me.

I am unsure if my words in that review were of any concern when Aaron decided to make this post his entry into this week's contest, but it was a great post. It reminded me of this set of audiotapes I got from Walmart with a lot of old radio episodes of "The Shadow," which included the original advertisements. One of the sponsors on several of the episodes was a salt company that gave away $100 watches for the best ideas submitted suggesting ways to use their salt. It surprised me how many of the ideas had to do with using the salt poured into kerosene to clean stuff. Aaron's delightful post was another example of what changes have occurred over the years.

5.0~suburban blight: Rock and Roll ~Kelley is a great story teller and takes us back all the way back to 1989 [when I was already a lawyer, Kelley] when she was young and in a rock and roll band. I noticed DaGoddess had posted the sole comment when I viewed this post. A great story teller in her own right, this recognition should be doubly appreciated by Kelley. Thanks for making me really feel old!

5.0~geographica: Time for a new map of China ~Very well written post about something that will definitely be changing the face of the world. I was not aware of this situation, and thought Mapchic did a good job of delivering the information. Seeing this post made we want to see what else was offered on the blog. This was definitely the best post from those I saw, and it is pretty fair to say that Mapchic is still finding her niche in the Blogosphere. She shows great promise.

5.0~Hi. I'm Black!: Bret Boone on Steroids? ~Glenn presents an interesting viewpoint on steroid use in professional baseball using Brett Boone's last year's statistics to use as evidence to prove his claim that Brett Boone was using steroids to enhance his physical abilities. The argument was solid, but in my opinion, the evidence was not enough to prove his claim. Still, Glenn has great writing skill and is very logical. I was glad he had another chance to enter the contest since, in his first try, he entered too late to garner many votes.

5.0~Across, Beyond, Through: The Prodigal Father ~Revsparker proves once again with this entry that he is a very thought provoking writer. I feel that this post will not draw many links, as it is again filled with a lot of personal insight, but the prose is very well written. As I have previously reviewed an entry from this blogger, I can forecast some consistency in what to expect.

5.0~Obnoxious Fumes : More on Moore ~I thought this was a great post. It references where the blogger got his idea, made his point with passion and that is it. From looking at the masthead on the blog, this is the type of post I would have expected to see. I was unsure who Moore was until the end where if found the reference I needed. As such, I was left with no unanswered questions.

5.0~truck808: rex sits idle ~Much like the blog dealing with dreams from last week, this blog will either interest you or it won't. Robert, or maybe it is robert, has the same dislike for using the CAP key as e.e. cummings of poetry fame, but the writing was great on this post. Will rex every move? One is left wondering. According to the blog description:

robert posts a photo of a truck every day at 8:08pm and shares a story inspired by that truck

I believe he will. I suspect there are a lot of trucks, so robert has a lot of stories left to tell.

5.0~Grammar.police: Lone Star Wars ~A post written about the war between the Republicans and the Democrats in Texas, regarding congressional redistricting, written as if it was a lead-in to another Star Wars movie. Very novel. Great post. According to Kriston, the Republicans are the evil villains, in case you wanted to know.

5.0~Backcountry Conservative: Orrin Hatch: "I write the songs" ~Jeff begins by saying:

The one angle I haven't seen mentioned about the Orrin Hatch story regarding file-sharing is that Hatch would tend to do whatever the recording industry wanted him to do because of his personal ties to the music industry.

I agree that I had not seen anyone suggest or argue that angle before. Interesting post, well written.

4.5~Political News and Analysis: Patriotism Toward Gov't Opposed by Founding Fathers [contest link/broken]~Oh, but for having provided the correct link to the post in the entry form and having used blockquoting to set off those quotes, I would have lovingly given this post BEST OF SHOW honors. Again, a fantastic posting gets demoted on technical merit. It happens. This guy talks like a Libertarian, or at least the selected quotes do.

4.5~Happy Furry Puppy Story Time: Austin Smoking Ban: Consistency is the Green Goblin of Something or Other ~Norbizness has again shown his unique writing style and sense of humor. He added some words that are not actually in the title on the blog into the titling for the contest, but the link works. I wanted to give this posting top marks, but I got thrown with this:

One of my college friends, an ardent objectivist (but also nature boy) at the time, had to reconcile his feelings concerned [ed. Did you mean "concerning"?] the sell-off of Yosemite to Disney with his deep affection for "Atlas Shrugged".

Is this for real? Where is the link? I have not heard that the US was peddling our National Parks? Good stuff here. Regular reading is suggested.

4.5~Collinization: Find Joy In My Suffering! ~OK, I thought this was deserving of the top score, except the first installment was what John had submitted the first time he entered the contest. As such, I felt it only fair to the other entrants to drop him a peg for having done so. However, he added plenty of additional information so that I am able to conclude he has not cheated by doing so. The previously submitted part is actually a necessary explanation to the cause for his horrible ordeal. Also, John is on blog*spot and is not using individual archiving so you have to scroll to get to this post from the link in the entry submission. If John can only continue to get hurt and describe to us the ordeals he goes through in receiving his injuries and then being treated for such, I think we will be coming back to his blog regularly. He shows a very great sense of humor, is very descriptive, and I find his writing to be delightful reading. I suspect that John has the potential to be a best selling author.

4.5~A Frolic of My Own: A day in Washington ~Not the title, but the link works. A day in Washington seemed like an appropriate title, however, as this was basically just a journal entry about what happens in the blogger's life. I checked out the rest of the blog, and that is pretty much what the blog is about, just blurbs about what is happening in the blogger's life. Good writing, although I did leave with some unanswered questions, such as what in the heck is SAIS? But as a showcase of what the blogger has to offer, this was a good post to enter.

4.5~Prometheus 6: Racism or Why They Don't Understand Us ~I actually had a hard time trying to peg where this one fit on the rating scale. I loved the test, I loved what the author had to say, but it really did not have as much to do with racism or why we do not understand them or they understand us, depending on which side of the fence you stand on, as it did about what I am always saying: "Truth is relevant to perception." People see and hear what they want to see and hear, and all of us are very often programmed to see and hear things a certain way by how we grew up. I think this author agrees, and attempts to convince people not to do so. I am just not sure it is possible. I finally decided it was not among the very best posts in this week's contest, but was really close. I checked out several of the other posts on the blog, and the writing is consistently good.

4.5~RyCam.net: Flag Day ~But for the fact that I wanted to take my red pencil out and mark up all the grammatical and spelling mistakes I found, I would have likely made this one BEST OF SHOW! On the titled day, Ryan used the occasion to talk about the flag and how, in his opinion, what it actually stood for was being taken away. Most apropos posting about Flag Day of any I saw on such day in the Blogosphere. Nicely designed blog, though it did take me some time to locate the link to the current page. I suspect this will be a good blog to read on a regular basis, but if I have not said this before, this is the written word, so edit people!

4.5~Metajournalism: Prison Privatization ~This seems like a great blog to read on a regular basis. The post, in itself, was not all that bad, and using a 4 year old story as your reference is not even that bad, but if you are going to dredge up something that is not on the front page of newspapers right now, put more passion into posting about it. I found the story to be a little dry, as if someone was reporting old news and not as if someone was very indignant about the matter. [I did bookmark the last link, however, as I, personally, am interested in reading more about those statistics]

4.0~Musings From The Imperial Senate: Corporate Welfare ~Again, another blogger who needs to edit for grammatical mistakes and typos. Although I was able to discern the general gist of DarthVOB's opinion, it was a bit circular and oblique. Translating great thoughts into written form takes effort and editing. Sometimes hitting the post key is not the last step. Reading what you posted to make sure it makes sense is also part of the game, or at least I believe so.

4.0~Dog of Flanders: You may have read this before: A guide to the successful showcase entry ~Actually, I thought the pointers were quite good. Although this might be a post that will garner a lot of votes, I do not think this kind of post would compel people to see what else they might find on the blog. [Just as these reviews seem to draw people to this blog, but seldom does anyone read much more than the review.] In my opinion, the contest is really more about building readership than collecting links. The dog lost another notch for tiling a large graphic on the background. Such is very distractive. There are several very nice graphics displayed on the right column. A solid background would assist the reader and make the other graphics show up better.

4.0~Cyber :: Ecology: Nasa to spark war with Mars ~or not actually titled as such, but the title used is close enough to assist you in finding it. The link actually works, or did when I went to the site. Serona used some unique humor to draw attention to this post, but actually might have been chastised by one of the heroes of this post, Sandy Moondust, who is described as one who enjoys "correcting grammar." To tell you the truth, I do not mind colloquial spelling, and am not all that sure how to spell "come on" in the colloquial manner. Try as I might, I cannot seem to say it where is would come out as "common." The topic is cute and the post was humorous. However, as I am always pickin' nits, I think this one is a couple of nits from being among the top.

4.0~Not Geniuses: White Wine or Kool-Aid, Mr. Sanger? ~Sorry, but found nothing outstanding to set this post apart from the type of items I routinely find reading blogs. A gentle dissing of a reporter who gently dissed the President. yada, yada. However, I did like the blog design. From what I saw from the postings on the current page, I think this blog would be a good regular read . As I have previously stated, the contest is a SHOWCASE. I expect the best among current postings to be submitted.

4.0~Little Miss Attila: The Mob Squad [entry link - blog home] ~Entry link is to the blog, mine is to the post. When I saw this entry, the first thing I thought of was I wonder if someone calls her "Hunny." OK, sorry about that, I know it was quite punny, and probably not all that funny. I just am not too enthused when the link does not take me to the post and I have to look for it. However, I thought the post was very humorous and fairly well written.

4.0~Brian Flemming's Weblog: Bill Gates to die in New York: Thoughts on the DV revolution ~My first thoughts about this post is what does DV stand for? I suspect it is Digital Video, but it was never made apparent from the reading of this one post. Secondly, I wondered if the point being made could have possibly been said in much fewer words than were used. Thirdly, I wondered if the scenario discussed by Brian was the only alternative, because about halfway through this post I envisioned a cable network completely dedicated to independent, low budget films. What could provide a better showcase to a wide audience than a cable network? His idea was a throwback to the beginnings of the motion picture industry or devising a scheme similar to play productions. As someone who written, directed, starred, edited, and produced my own 20 minute personal pity party movie in a completely self executable Flash player, I have also wondered how to get an audience for my production. Fewer words Brian! You almost lost me about half the way through, seriously!

3.5~The Blog Herald: Blog Herald attacks France again! ~Oh but I could have scored this posting higher. The composition and formatting of this post made it hard to read. Again, an example of a blogger who thinks once the post key is pressed there is no need to worry about what you posted. So many typos and poorly constructed sentences. The topic, had it been better presented, was very interesting.

3.5~The Tears of Things: If I Had Curated The Arizona Biennial '03 ~It is very rare that I do not read all the way through any posts entered in the contest, but I lost interest pretty fast on this one. Regrettably, it is very hard to critique art effectively for readers without showing it, unless you are talking to people who are very familiar with that to which you are referring. I had no idea what or who most of the people discussed were. I am pretty sure that no one outside the Phoenix area cared anything about what was shown in the Arizona Biennial '03. I thought the blogger had great writing skill and definitely showed great intelligence, but from the blog description and this post, I cannot imagine it developing a large readership.

3.5~Tainted Law: Rational Basis ~This post was very close to getting the minimum score, as the first time I hit the link on the contest page, I got a 403 saying I did not have permission to access the post. Then I tried to find it on the blog, running several different phrases from the excerpt on the contest page and was coming up empty. I could find no link to archives on the page. However, as I was checking out another archive link to see if maybe there was something wrong with the URL, the link to the post finally went to the post. Cool! I am almost sure the blogger had a very valid point to make with regard to the way the U. S. Supreme Court reviews cases involving state laws. However, I had a hard time trying to understand exactly what the blogger was trying to say. Was this post over my head? I very well doubt it. As a practicing attorney for more than 15 years, I have read my share of legal opinions, some better written and more understandable than others. Mental concepts are sometimes hard to put into written form, but a good attorney has to know how to do so. If this had been a brief submitted to me and I was on the bench, I would probably have been asking the attorney a lot of questions so as to get some idea what his argument was about. Maybe I was just missing the headnotes.

3.5~Screaming Bean: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 ~Let me see, soon to be a 2L in law school, married and aged 28. I think I was about 33 when I was married and had just finished my first year of Law School, but that was a few years back. I hope Beanie's future fares better than mine did over his next 15 years. Two good things I would like to say about Beanie: He correctly titled his entry and is on blogger and blog*spot with his own design. I actually love spontaneous road trips and thought I was going to hear about a delightful trip. The post did not relate much of interest about the trip except for his buying a Yale Law School T-shirt to wear while attending Cornell Law School. I was not very impressed with this post, and my attempt to find anything of general interest on the blog failed. This is probably a nice blog for friends and family, but I suspect not of much interest to the rest of the Blogosphere at this time.

3.0~MercuryX23's Fantabulous Blog: WMS [contest link - broken] ~Other than not knowing how to put the proper URL into the box where you submit your entry, Mercury has a voice. He/she speaks, and runs sentences on and on and on. Of course, what he/she is actually saying other than proving to be another of the zealots on the left who see nothing good about the other side of the political spectrum, I saw little of merit to this posting. The writing was atrocious and the arguments were without substantiation. This post was just inane castration of the current administration. Zealots bore me, especially ones that cannot support their stances with logic.

2.5~Properwinston: Properwinston [contest link -broken] ~The entry link is dead, so this entry will likely get no votes, except maybe mine. My link will get you close, but you still need to scroll down to Friday, June 13, 2003. I like the bloggers style, especially the letter style endings. However, I found the prose to be confusing in places. I liked the topic and the viewpoint expressed and believe such shows Grant has a keen sense of logic. I think Grant has the makings of a good blogger, but needs to edit his postings a bit more closely.

2.0~Diversions: Treasure of Nimrud ~Renee is a truly new blogger, having only made a few posts so far. Regrettably, Renee needs to develop her blogging skills. Most of this post appeared to have been cut and pasted from the linked stories, without any embellishment, commentary or the use of blockquoting. The topic was intriguing, and I for one do not want Renee to give up on blogging. I see she has found her niche, and there are probably not many bloggers who want to keep us informed about antiquities and such. A blog is your forum and voice. You need to put some of your personality and writing into it. The archiving seems to be set on monthly, so you have to scroll down the page to find this post. Renee, if you read this, do not be offended by my comments. Blogging does not come with instructions. Most of us have little idea what we are doing when we start, and by knowing what it is that you want to share with the world, you are a step ahead of some of us that have been doing it for a much longer period of time. My suggestion: read other blogs, see what other people write and how they present topics. There is a lot of variety. If I wanted to see only what National Geographic had written on a topic, I have National Geographic bookmarked already. If I come to your blog, I want to see what you have to say on the topic. That is not to say you cannot or should not quote portions of stories from other sources, but add something, some comment about what that story means to you, and establish some indications about what part of your posts are yours and what parts come from somewhere else.

0.5~Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian: Widespread "involuntary euthanasia" in Belgium ~Where is it? The link provided does not take you to the entered post. I tried on two different occasions to find this post. I could not locate it. Of course, the blog is on blog*spot, so maybe it disappeared. With nothing to review, there is nothing I can say about it. I thought about commenting on one of the other posts, but the one excerpted was the one entered. I even tried a search using several of the phrases from the excerpt through three weeks of archives in an attempt to locate the post.

Why are there no delightful [or boring*] new quips?

Because I am busy working on the New Weblog Showcase Review III.

*I have found that my posting is considered to be boring by some. There is just no account for taste, is there?

I'm tellin' my momma!

Some people really take blogging a bit too seriously. I am not going to point any fingers, though. I guess I gave up on getting really upset about what other people said and felt about me a long time ago. It took away too much of the time I could use to contemplate my own destruction.

Where I was, and other matters

Yesterday afternoon, I had a couple of very urgent matters that had to be taken care of in another jurisdiction. Yesterday morning, I made arrangements for a friend of mine to cover what I thought was my only matter on the afternoon docket. Well, unbeknownst to me, another of my clients also came up on that same docket. Supposedly, this exchange took place:

Court: "Walt, will you be handling Disney for Tiger?"

Walt: "I will be glad to do so, your honor, but in this case maybe we ought to refer to him as Tigger."

I understand that there was several off the cuff remarks made afterward about what Winnie the Pooh and I might have been up to yesterday.

So, after I returned from Court this morning, I stopped to share this story with my friend who owns the store behind which I live. His 6 year old daughter, Cheyene, hearing everyone laugh at my story, decided to tell me a joke she had just read off the wrapper of a piece of Laffy Taffy: "What do you call a cold pup standing on a rabbit?"

I was trying to think of something on a hare/hair, and could not come up with an answer. She delighted in telling me it was a chilly dog on a bunny. Quite funny and punny, I thought, this chilly dog on a bunny.

She then began to tell me several cross the road jokes that she was making up on the fly, but one of these was actually quite humorous: Why did the rabbit cross the road? To get to the hair salon.*

*She had actually used the term hair shop.

OK People! What am I missing out on?

Wow. I am unsure what is going on, but I feel I am missing out on something big. No one is blogging and when the best thing I could find on TV was "Blind Date,"* I can only guess that there is a big party over at Paul Jané's** house. I decided it was a good night to churn out a few pages of my manuscript. Hopefully the insomnia I have had all week will subside tonight and I will get a good night's rest. However, for some reason, I feel that I will just end up sleeping all weekend like last weekend.

*Actually the best thing on was 28 Days but I have seen it so recently that I remember everything about the movie.

**Paul said he is gone for the weekend actually. I just figured I owed him a couple of links for having offended him with some unfair remarks I made.

A little bit country, a whole lotta kissin' going on

I was listening to my favorite radio station this morning and the DJ was talking about Willie Nelson. He said in the early sixties, Willie was living in Nashville writing songs for $50.00 a week. He came up with one called "Hello Walls" and ran into Faron Young in an establishment that catered to entertainers across from the Ryman Auditorium, which used to host The Grand Ole Opry, and in an attempt to boost his income, offered to sell the rights to the song to Faron for $500.00. Faron refused, but said he would loan Willie $500.00 and would record the song, and was pretty sure Willie would be able to pay him back out of the Royalties. Well, Faron Young's rendition of Willie's "Hello Walls" shot up to No. 1 on the country charts on June 19, 1961 and remained there for 7 weeks. Willie's first royalty check was $3,000.00 and he immediately went into that establishment across from the Ryman Auditorium and found Faron Young. Upon doing so, without any warning, he kissed Faron right on the lips. Faron said it was the most passionate kiss he ever received.*

*I was unable to substantiate the truth of this story nor to locate the page which my search engine indicated made some mention that Willie might not have ever paid back the $500 to Faron.

Happy Juneteenth!

Yes, it is Juneteenth. What is Juneteenth? Juneteenth is the celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation finally being officially announced in Texas. On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, Union General Granger declared:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, becomes that between employer and hired laborer.

Aussie Meyer, a resident of Galveston says that there is no historical marker with regard to such event in Galveston. [full story]

From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond. JUNETEENTH WORLD WIDE CELEBRATION

Am I flat going outta my mind?

Whew, what a day! I am beat. Sorry to intrude with something maybe a bit silly, but I am almost sure that when I checked my email earlier, I had a news flash that they had caught the #4 man on the deck of Iraqi's Most Wanted from CNN.* Am I mistaken about this? I read several blogs in the last few minutes and had not seen this mentioned on any of them. What is it, doesn't anyone care about that deck of cards anymore? Is everyone already tired of waiting for them to get the full deck or what? Seems to me #4 is higher than anyone but Saddam, Uday and Qusay. Oh well, I am so tired, maybe I just dreamed it all anyway. Or, I am so tired, someone has reported this and I just missed it.

UPDATE: Either this is not news, or no one is talking about it. But here is the story. This is the Ace of Diamonds, the first of the Aces who has been captured.**

*CNN Breaking News: -- Coalition captures Gen. Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's personal secretary and number four on list of most wanted Iraqis, Pentagon sources say. 6/18/2003 9:32 AM

**Did I actually scoop InstaPundit?

Yikes, I might have psychic potential

I just got this strange premonition that someone in the Blogosphere Ecosystem has just read an opinion written by another person in the Blogosphere Ecosystem or some commentary or editorial by some reporter that they think is so idiotic that they are very busily composing a very nasty post in reply to such opinion. I wonder if there could be any truth to this premonition?

You might have to scroll a bit

to find the listing for my entry in this week's Carnival of the Vanities, hosted by Real Women Online. Of course, if you are reading this, you surely have already read my entry, haven't you?

I should be blogging with my left hand

Hey, what are ya to do when a friend says this about a blog that you really like and you find they have posted a link to one of the funniest things you have seen in a long time? You blogroll LeeAnn even though she is on blog*spot.

How do you know when you have spent too much time blogging?

Your hand hurts, or at least mine does. It seems my mouse pad callous is especially sensitive tonight.*

*It is probably bad karma from what I said about Paul Jane' earlier.

Mindless musings for their own sake

Jared, over at The Thinklings posted some nominations for some celebrity awards he created. I really am not sure I could have put all that much thought into creating such. However, Jared:

Do you really think Tim Robbins is a great filmmaker?

attribution: Jen

Well, I will be a monkey's uncle

All this time, I thought Sasha was a gal person of the female persuasion. I guess a picture is worth a thousand assumptions.

The return of the prodigal Ith

Woohoo! Ith is back. I don't know about you, but I just could not read Paul Jane'. It was like reading Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh: dry and humorless.

I am just not that kind of guy

Even if it was absolutely true, there are just some things you would not see me saying in my blog. I couldn't put up with the amount of trolls that would bring.

Also, I am almost sure I could have said this without bringing lesbians into the conversation at all.

Putting 2 and 2 together

Glenn Reynolds reports* that there are 20,000 weblogs by Iranians now. I suppose that explains who took all those computers during the looting of Baghdad.

*Actually, as usual, Glenn just reported which blogger really dug up that story.

Wing-Wang-Walla-Walla-Bing-Bang*

OK folks, here is something interesting. First off, let me say, even the worst scripted movie could have something great that could be said about it. Well, here is this FLASH video that the Democratic National Committee has produced which has the most bizarre assinine story line of any bit of partisan clap trap I have seen in awhile, but . . .

attribution: Balloon Juice

*No, the title didn't really have anything to do with this post, but I been itching to use that one, and was not sure if there ever was going to be a perfect post to fit it. Live with it!

as someone who has actually done a bit of FLASH animation, I thought the actual production was a fabulous job.

Until the whole herd moves, some get lost in the shuffle

Wow, I just found Practical Penumbra has defected from blog*spot. Seems there is a lot of that going on. I wonder if Dean had anything to do with it?

By the way, please be sure to modify your bookmarks so that you won't be the fool I was and be missing out on the hijinks over at PP!

OK, OK so it ain't much of a rant, but it's all I got!

I forgot, there was something I wanted to rant about a bit that happened to me today. This is probably gonna be about as silly as Zoom, Zoom, but here it is:

Today I had some professional business in the neighboring county seat city, Cleburne, and, just before lunch, had finally gotten the most urgent office matters done so that I could break away and get the deed done.* If I planned it right, I could get there just at lunch time, eat my lunch and be at my appointment just as they were returning from lunch. All the way over there, I had been thinking of this Texas Toast sandwich Sonic makes with a scrambled egg patty, cheese and bacon, and, with an extra order of bacon [+$0/50].** So I made Sonic my destination. All morning, and all the way there, I had been drinking Dr. Pepper. Well, just as I rolled into Sonic, my bladder hit the top of the dam, and was pushing the spillway to open so as to release the pressure. I ordered, then got out to see if there was a way into the restroom. It is inside in the back, and sometimes you have to get an employee to tell someone on the inside to open the back door so you can get in. One carhop said she would try just as another came with my order. I told her why I was out of the car, and she simply dismissed my plea for help with "We don't have any public restrooms." Do what? I know Sonic doesn't officially have public restrooms. I used to work at a Sonic many, many years ago. I had never ever seen any previous employee not offer to at least act like they tried to get the back door opened so I could go in and drain my bodily waste. I was flat miserable, and she didn't get a tip. I scarfed down my sandwich and order of tater tots like the Tiger I am. Hurriedly, I drove to a location that did have a public restroom. Sheesh, people, you are a public facility. That entails having a public restroom!***

*Get your mind out of the gutter! I had to go visit some clients in the jail, OK?

**Yeah, I know I am cruising for a hearth attack. My doctor tells me that. But I have already decided that I don't have much hope to live forever, so I might as well prepare to die like every paternal ancestor from whom I got all my physical body genes. If I didn't learn anything from the death of a spouse from complications of anorexia at age 33, it is that no matter what you eat, you have a good chance of surviving longer than if you don't eat.

***If it wasn't so damn offensive to certain segments of the society, this situation would not even be a problem. Being a male, I am fitted with outdoor equipment, so a tree or fire hydrant works.

A slew of maybes, or maybe just a tad short of a slew

Maybe I need to get some new blogs on the blogroll, because I am not finding any of my regular reads that much interesting today? Maybe I am just worn out because I now have 11 pages of the rewrite done and closed the first chapter? Maybe I just have Alura's plight clogging up all my synapses? Maybe I should just call it an early night and catch up on the sleep I did not seem to get much of last night?

This is gonna take some deep thinkin'

I do not have time to fully read this right now, but scanned enough of it to know it is something I do want to read. If you want to read some excellent political philosophying, read LT SMASH : Four Icons. You can bet I will, at some future point. If you don't have time to read it right now, go there and bookmark it. It is BEST OF SHOW quality!

attribution: Dean

It sounds like a plan

Well, I could not pass on telling you to all see Yeti's marvelous plan on stopping all the trolls who made nasty posts on your comments, especially since he attributed this post of mine for giving him the idea to tell us about it.

The evolution of immaculate creation

I was out visiting with Scott [and returning his chair] where I talked his ear off. Anyway, one of the topics of conversation came around to this book I have been working on. I actually have finished the book, kind of. I have what 187 pages of text that tells the complete story, but I am very anal about my writing. I have said that many times before.

This story revolves around several characters that have been rolling around in my head for quite some time. In fact, the whole episode began with my having a two word phrase pop into my head: "Alien Attitudes." It is copyrighted. I loved the phrase, it just sang! So what do I do with it. I had imagined how well it would sound as a clothing line. How I would love to see the words Alien Attitudes across T-shirts and down pants legs, so as to push all that Tommy crap off the streets.

I was still mulling what I could use that phrase for when I got a brilliant idea. I was just getting into graphic creation and had been thinking of trying to do a comic strip, so I decided to do one called, yep, you guessed it, Alien Attitudes. I did do the comic strip for 6 months, and it was viewable by anyone who linked to it on the Internet. There may even be a link or two on one of the lists of viewable online comics, but the site is gone. It had been hosted on a friend's server, which he had graciously hooked up through the T-1 line provided to his home by his employer. Well, we all know the IT industry crashed. He lost his job, and the T-1, and there went my site. However, since I teased you a bit, I will do something I rarely do, and display a graphic on the pages of this blog. I am using this one because I thought it was one of my best artistic efforts. It is at 66% of the original posted size, so it is hard to read everything.

Regrettably, I am about as anal about my art as I am about my writing, so I decided I was not a good enough artist to make that strip as successful as I had hoped and quit. However, I had actually put about six months effort into developing the characters and the story line, and it would not leave my brain. I actually had people writing to me, asking when I would resume the strip because they were interested in the story. So, this set of characters swum in my head and swum in my head and I had no idea what to do with them.

One day, I decided it would be much much easier to tell the story than to draw the story. I will just write a book. And I did, over about 24 hours. I churned out 100 or so pages, then I could not figure out where to go. I had no ending. I put the book aside. That was summer before last. A year passed. and one day last spring, the ending hit me. Not only did the ending hit me, but a completely new story came with it. So, another three days, and I had the book completely rewritten. I edited, and I edited, and still I did not think it was worthy of competing with "Harry Potter."* I do hold myself to high standards, you see.

Well, I just told Scott the story, and he thinks I have something. I have given a lot of consideration to this book. The story is sound, but the details are insufficent to paint the necessary images. I need to begin it again. I plan on doing so, so if my blogging gets a bit slow, that might be what I am doing.

OK, here is a bit of background. Alura is the central character to my stories. My Harry Potter, so to speak. My very first incarnation of Alura was as an advanced male pleasure doll into which some nerd installed a Furby chip who would be wearing a different set of shoes in each new days' episode. That character turned out to be very shallow and she morphed in the middle of the strip to become the young lady who was displayed above. Read the extended entries to the first four paragraphs to see the beginning of this character development for the third incarnation of Alien Attitudes: The Universe meets Alura.

*I actually had several people read the manuscript and had not a single negative remark made about it. But they were all acquaintances of mine, so I was still suspect of its worth for lack of any professional assessment.

PS. Any of you out there who are in the book business, I need a publisher and may need an agent and an illustrator.

Father Stephens was speaking, but Alura did not listen. Paps had not been much of a church-going man, and Alura seldom had gone places where Paps did not accompany her. As the words droned on, mixing with the sound of the dancing leaves being gently tickled by the breeze, Alura's thoughts were of her future.

Since almost from her birth, Paps had been her guide and almost constant companion. She could not remember a time when he was not with her, or could not have been there within a few minutes. Now he was in a box resting on two boards lain across an open grave. Despite her utter sense of loss and hopelessness, Alura could not cry. Paps would not have wanted her to cry. Paps had thought crying was a sign of weakness. "Face your obstacles head on," he had said, "and don't cry and whine about it, just get the job done!"

But they had never talked about what Alura was to do if Paps was killed. They had just never talked about it. They had only recently begun talking about her future at all. Alura wanted to go into the Marines, she had told Paps. After all, Paps had been a Marine, and so had her father. Her father and mother had met on a Marine Base. Alura felt a strong connection to the Marines. Paps had not seemed enthused, which had troubled her. Instead of quickly agreeing with her decision, he had just sat in silence.

"There is still time for that," he had begun, after several minutes in thought. "I was thinking you probably need to go to college first. You are very smart, and smart Marines are officers. Think on college a bit, then we will discuss it." That conversation ended, and that future discussion never took place. Paps fell off the cabin the next morning, while repairing a leak, and died. Now they were putting him in the ground. Paps was dead, and Alura was lost and alone.

Now listen up!

Pixy Misa says ya'll should be reading my New Weblog Showcase Review II!

Finally, a peaceful resolution to the conflict

I had not had a reason to report on the Hatfields and the McCoys since the two posts I did in April, but it seems they are a news item again.

They have signed a truce:

Descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families gathered Saturday in Pikeville to sign the truce, making a largely symbolic and official end to a feud that had claimed at least a dozen lives from the two mountain families. [full story]

attribution: C. G. Hill [dustbury]

And just when we thought Chirac was a fine fellow after all

Cracker Barrel Philosopher says not only is Chirac a "weasel," he is also a stupid money stealing fraud. He attributes Pave France for pointing the way.

Oh my, what to say about this? Hmmm, on second thought, I am not really all that concerned for Chirac or the French people from which he stole money.

It's Father's Day

Wow, here it is Father's Day! Sadly, my dad has passed and I am not yet a father. So for all of you who have some reason to celebrate this day:

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

The Devolution begins

For the very first time since I have been a part of the Blogosphere Ecosystem I have seen my number of links decrease. Although I remain a possum scurrying to keep from being sucked back down to existence as a wharf rat or worse, I dropped 9 links overnight. I had already suspected this would occur.*

However, I was pleasantly surprise to find I actually was getting as many hits as my counter** shows I have gotten since I installed it. Now I am just wondering how many hits I would have on that counter if I had had it from the beginning.

*I can only surmise as to how many more readers I could draw if I could only get some mention by InstaPundit. Oh well, one is free to formulate pipedreams, are they not?

**I was over at DaGoddess and liked the way her counter looked so much better than the one I was using that I changed mine to Site Meter.

This is unbelievable

Remember the post I wrote about Michael Jackson on May 24? I had already remarked on May 30th that it seemed to be drawing a lot of comments. Well, I have discovered 3 new comments were made to that May 24th post just today. I ran the string: "Michael Jackson Bankrupt" through Google and that post came up second on the list. I tried it with just "Michael Jackson," but didn't draw a link on the first page. It is so strange that a little reference I made to a post on dustbury is becoming my claim to fame. Of course, I did say that Michael Jackson is an idiot, but I never figured that for major news.

The New Weblog Showcase Review II

I was pondering whether to repeat my efforts in reviewing all of the entries in this week's New Weblog Showcase, especially as last week's effort took a considerable amount of my time for three days. However, the author of the blog, I know this is probably bad for me, had to go and mention that it was primarily due to my comments in last week's review that she decided to enter into this week's contest. Also, I noticed that the number of entries for this week were greatly reduced from the 38 that were a part of last week's contest. So, following 15 disconnections, 1.5 hours of reading, 2 hours of writing, and 2.5 hours of review and editing, here are the reviews:

STOP! GO NO FURTHER! READ! Anyone who is offended by my review of their entry, remember I am merely stating my opinions and they may not necessarily be the opinions of any other single person [on this planet, as I have been contacted and told that my opinions were officially adopted by an entire alien sub-culture in the Ming Sector and most of the species in the Gamma quadrant.]

5.0 is top, 0.5 is bottom: ALL RATING IS SUBJECTIVE; Listing is important, as I positioned the posts from the best on top down to worst on bottom within tied ratings based upon my personal preference of one post over another.

5.0~Transparent Eye: Dreaming of a Chirac Assassination ~OK, this one gets BEST OF SHOW, despite one noted grammatical mistake. Since it is the purpose of the contest to present a recent post that makes people inclined to read your blog, this post did the best job of hitting the mark. It is a dream, vividly described, but then most of the posts in this blog are dreams, vividly described. Strange, ephemeral and original, this post will either intrigue you to read more or it won't. [I am just not too sure what it means to be "an accessory after the fast." ;) ]

5.0~Catallarchy: Calpundit's knowledge problem ~Upon viewing the title, I was almost sure this was going to be a fisking. In a way, it was, but not really. It was Brian W. Doss's attempt to point out what he saw as the flaws in Kevin Drum's argument on economic philosophy. Pretty dry stuff, unless you are into such. I am unaware of Brian's resume', but suspect he is an academic, and will rise rapidly in the Blogosphere Ecosystem. I am still not sure that I understand everything about what was written, but I have not read Hayek or Mises, and it is doubtful I will, at least not until I retire or something.

5.0~Let's Run The Numbers: Administration Seeks Overhaul of Federal Workforce ~This blogger begins a long thoughtful diatribe with a laundry list of Presidential actions that he believes show a pattern, then follows with an in-depth analysis of further activity along this line. The argument was well organized, and Jim was forthcoming about how he was in line to be personally affected. Although his line was taut, he did give a bit when logic dictated the necessity of such:

Yes, the bureaucracy can be a straightjacket, and some people are drawing paychecks without doing enough work to justify their existence.

Of course, as I mentioned when I stated my previous support for Ross Perot, I think the bureaucracy is too fat and needs some trimming, but I have to agree with Jim that there may need to be a little bit more thinking about the manner in which it is done. I am not sure, however, that the administration is not on the right track. While this latter portion may not have anything to actually do with my review of Jim's post, it is included to show that these reviews are not dependent upon my agreement with the bloggers' viewpoints as much as the effectiveness of their message.

4.5~Tales from a Yeti Suit: The Three Goddesses ~Almost immediately, I can see this guy bolted from blog*spot and Blogger by looking at the first title and second title and first two words of the post. I went through that titling ordeal when I imported my blogger archives into MT. This was a delightfully well-written descriptive anecdote about one night in the blogger's life. I wanted so badly to give it BEST OF SHOW, but regrettably, the template is horrible [Yeti: have a look at it in low resolution] and light text on dark background, while stylish, causes excessive eyestrain. I hate to see such fantastic content dragged down a peg by technical merit. I do expect to see this blogger emerge as a shining star in the Blogosphere Ecosystem in the near future.

4.5~Kuboid: Today's Theme: Architecture ~Those of you that read last week's reviews will remember that posts which are of interest only to a limited group of readers do not rate the very top mark, even, in this case, when the subject is one that I personally find particularly interesting. If I had been grading on design, however, this would have been BEST OF SHOW as this is the best designed page I have seen in a long while [although AstreaEdge is still my very favorite blog designer]. I thought it particularly humorous when glloyd opined that Prince Charles displayed "a worryingly autocratic tendency . . . ." I mean, he is after all, Prince Charles. Does not that position entitle one to have autocratic tendencies? [When you get ready to make that trip to Brasilia, give me a shout. I would love to see that myself, but if you ever get in my neck of the woods, I would be more than happy to show you my favorite design: the Kimbell Art Museum, designed by Louis Kahn.]

4.5~vision : on: Egad ~To tell you the truth, I was not really sure what Stu was talking about, but found this to be very interesting all the same. It was well written and although the humor escaped me personally, I could recognize the effort. I also viewed some of the other posts and there are some interesting items, but of all the posts on this page, this was the best one. That is what you should submit to a Showcase, your best piece of material. Lamest title I have ever seen!

4.5~this is probably bad for me: Grown Up Passion ~Horrible design: dark text on a dark background and displaying the entire URL on linkage is very distractive. The prose, however, was well composed and easily allowed one to assess where the blogger rests on the political compass. There was enough passion expressed in this post for two posts! Is this another voice for the far left?

4.0~The SchoolHouse Review: How NOT to diversify ~I see something from a blog called the SchoolHouse Review that I wanted so badly to print out, to mark up badly with my red pencil and hand back to a student who shows great promise as a writer, once they learn the basic tenets of proper punctuation. Of course, I suppose I had not been paying proper attention to this issue because I actually thought the sentiment about Jayson Blair was that it was "a tale of deceit by a young man who got a taste of the big time and a failure by those in charge to notice it," and was not aware that anyone viewed such as a failure of diversity. The viewpoints expressed, however, outside of the context of having anything to do with Jayson Blair, are very valid!

4.0~Brian's Study Breaks: Afghan Nation-Building ~This blogger is on blog*spot and supplies no titles, so it was difficult to determine if I was reading the entered post. Thankfully, he does know how to archive with Blogger. Brian puts forth some great points about the problems with actually building a unified nation in Afghanistan, however, the prose is a bit haphazard and hard to follow. Another thing that I felt was lacking was any references to whom some of the people/entities were. In addition, the opening blurb related to a different topic for discussion and the update appeared to also be related to something other than nation building in Afghanistan. Brian showed he has keen analytical abilities, but it may be the shortage of the time he has between studying that requires him to rush his composition.

4.0~Judicious Asininity: Smoking Saves Lives ~Errrrrgh! That design. Actually, I was not too impressed with this post, although it does seem to be doing well in the current voting. It was not the subject matter that disturbed me, but the majority of Romulus' post was a lengthy 5 paragraph blockquote from someone else's comments, followed by one paragraph of this blogger's thoughts. I wanted more from Romulus. However, from looking at the other recent posts in the blog, it appears that Romulus is still attempting to find his blogging niche. He has discovered the essence of becoming a popular blogger, however: impressive blogroll and a prolific linkage. But for his one and only chance at entering the Showcase, he should have picked a post with more of his writing and less of someone else's.

3.5~The SmarterCop: BUSH IS A GENIUS ~On blog*spot but knows how to archive [and Blogger's archiving was working], however I did not find any substantiation in the post for the statement made in the title. While I saw nothing substantially wrong with this post, I also saw nothing to make it stand out from the mundane type of stuff that fills most of the space in the Blogosphere. This being a Showcase, I want to see someone show their stuff, so to speak. This blogger shows great potential, however, and may be the only pro-Bush blogger in this week's Showcase.

3.5~idols of the marketplace: A Mapquest for Peace ~Upon first view, I had great hopes for this post, despite the lame title. Although residing on blog*spot, the permalink did take me to the correct post and the template was attractive. The commentary displayed sufficient linkage to show the blogger had done his homework. However Walter's punctuation was haphazard and there were quite a number of spelling errors. The blogger showed a decided left bias to his commentary.

3.0~Facilitating Paradox: God-Name = God Substance [entry link] ~A late-comer to the contest, this one is on blog*spot and is using weekly archiving so you will have to scroll to find it. I read this post a couple of times attempting to discover exactly what point David was attempting to make. Was it about whether there was one Hindu God or more than one? Was it about David's relgious choices? Or, was the whole point, as what I devined from the final sentence, that David would agree to whatever your opinion about God was if you were to meet? Like I said, I was really confused.

2.5~A Layman's Opinion: n/a ~My link will actually get you closer than the link on the New Weblog Showcase will. I had to hunt for this one. Thankfully, upon reading some of the rest of the blog, Joseph has discovered how to title posts. The writing was somewhat convoluted but readable. The issue discussed was very personal to Brian and his wife, and was likely a good post to have submitted in the contest. Abortion is always a touchy subject, but Brian's provided the viewpoint of someone who understands the personal issues behind having to have made the decision to abort a child. I wish, in all good conscience, I could have given this post higher marks. Hopefully Brian's blogging and writing skills will improve over time.

The Blogosphere is a strange place

I am not sure what this is. I just said it is a rant. I just took a look at The Metal Wings of Destiny and found AstreaEdge's latest post to be a well-written commentary* on the petty feuding that seems to be so common in the Blogosphere and seems to be freely publicized by those blogs which AstreaEdge described as "role models for those of us new to the world of blogging."

I too marvel that so many in the Blogosphere find it worthwhile to make notations of every petty battle that occurs between bloggers. If it is an intellectual debate, fine! Spread the news! But when it involves whining, name calling and irrational activities, why waste the bandwidth? If I want to read about something in which I have no interest, I will wait for the next edition of the Weekly World News.

However, what I found really ironic about AstreaEdge's posting was that when I read it, there was already one comment: from the only blogger with whom I have had a feud, albeit, very small.

*If you are not yet reading this blog, you should be.

publicizing my thoughts: "I wonder if it would be alright to ask AstreaEdge for some pointers on how to jazz up my template?"

Soaping up Jesus* in three Johns

I am thankful to Jen for pointing out this delightful post by Bryan McAnally.

I eyed a new "Sport Scent" by Irish Spring. "I like sports," I thought to myself. This, in my male logic, was reason enough to jump off my Mountain Stream fidelity and take my daily body perfumed scent in a completely different direction. Kelli looked with a skeptic's eye, perhaps remembering all too well what a "sporty guy" really smells like, but acquiesed nonetheless.

Hey folks, this is just a teaser, you really have to go see why I entitled this post as I did.

*Excuse me should I have mentioned the name of my Mexican neighbor in vain.

Damn, ya'll stop messin' with Texas already!

Dang you Scott, I wanted to quit postin' for a spell and do some blog readin' and right away I come across your post on Willie. Did not you and I both discuss his limitations at your little shin-dig last week, and we both concluded that while he is not the best musician, Willie Nelson is probably the greatest entertainer to ever mount a stage?

What is the deal with GUN CONTROL?

Unlearned Hand pointed me to this position paper by he ACLU on Gun Control. I was enthralled to find that I and the ACLU share the same opinion when it comes to the Second Amendment "Right to Bear Arms":

If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms. Yet few, if any, would argue that the Second Amendment gives individuals the unlimited right to own any weapons they please.

It has always been my opinion that the last effective review of how the Second Amendment "Right to Bear Arms" applied in modern times was the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, and we all know how that turned out. The real historical reasoning behind the enactment of the Second Amendment was a result of the kingly English tradition of armed soldiers commandeering the homes of private citizens. As no one* would believe that our neighbors have the right to possess such weapons are would be necessary to repel an invasion by out own government, any argument that we have a RIGHT to possess any weapon have been entirely superseded by the advancement of technology.

However, I am mindful, despite all the contentions that militias are no longer necessary, that a citizenry who is armed can easily become a guerrilla force should their country be invaded by outside forces.** To be in a position to defend one's country should be a RIGHT. I would argue that having an assault weapon or surface-to-air missile would be highly beneficial should one need to repel an invading force. So where do we draw the line?

In Colonial days, armies fought with cannon, muskets, bayonets, swords and lances. In the early days of the Nation, there were no regulations which forbid anyone from owning a cannon, a musket, a bayonet, a sword, or a lance. Until the 20th Century, except in some townships where the local Sheriff dictated, one was not disallowed to carry a weapon. Parts of the Nation were still wild and predatory, and many people hunted for survival. However, technology boomed near the beginning of the 20th Century and by the end of the Great War (WWI), there were weapons that had been developed that some wished had not been even imagined. There are far too many such weapons now. It is only fair to select those weapons that we wish to have in the possession of our citizenry and those we do not.

However, other than being easily concealed, for militia purposes, rifles are far superior to handguns. I, personally, am of the opinion that the security of the Nation would be better protected if we allowed the possession of assault weapons and banned the possession of handguns.

I am thoroughly satisfied to leave the entire issue of GUN CONTROL safely in the capable hands of the National Rifle Association. I may not always agree with their stance, but I am glad they are there.

*I know there is always at least one crack pot who will be contrary to public opinion, so "no one," in this context, means "no one with any sense."

**I never knew how true it was, but my dad used to tell me that the Swiss men were all militarily trained and were issued a rifle which they kept in the closet. They had no standing Army, but their entire adult population could become an Army at any time. I also still remember the movie, Red Dawn, in which the young adults of one town effectively countered an invading Soviet force.

My oh my, what can I say?

OK, so did anyone notice anything different? Well, before anyone calls me on it, I know I said here that I did not intend to ever get a counter. I actually did not intend to ever get a counter, but I changed my mind. Despite being able to monitor my comments, trackbacks, and how many blogs in the Blogosphere Ecosystem have linked to me, I was continuously curious as to how many people checked out my site, without leaving a comment, not linking to any of my posts or not even linking to my site. I apologize for my deceipt deceit, but it was unintentional. I just did not realize the level of concern I would develop with regard to the success of my blogging efforts.

Sosa vs. The Corked Bat

Thanks to this update, I found this post which I had missed from June 06, 2003 in which Steven of PoliBlog discussed the varying nuances of whether Sammy Sosa or anyone else ever actually got any real assistance by using a corked bat anyway. I found it to be very thoughtful and interesting read.

There really is NOWHERE like TEXAS

My friend and frequent commentor, Frank, has reminded me that Texas has its own Pledge:

The pledge of allegiance to the state flag is, "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and indivisible."

And I do pledge allegiance to thee: oh Great State of Texas!

I bought The Alamo at Walmart the other day, and really did enjoy watching it again. It still makes my chest swell in pride to know that I am a citizen of a place where 182 men knowingly sacrificed their lives defending a building of no strategic value other than having been occupied and defended by such men, fully aware that they had no chance to win or survive, but believing such sacrifice was necessary for Texas. Their action kept Santa Anna and the Mexican Army occupied for 13 days while General Sam Houston built and trained an army that later confronted and gloriously defeated the Mexicans and lauched the birth of a nation, a people and a way of life.

In a documetary that was a part of the DVD's special features, there was a mention that John Wayne, who produced, directed and starred in the movie, had thought about shooting the movie in Mexico, but the Daughters of the Republic of Texas had told him that if the movie was shot in Mexico, the movie would never be shown in Texas. I have not heard any further news about whether Disney/Buena Vista is still planning on changing our history, but if they do, I am hopeful the Daughters of the Republic keep it from playing in Texas. If you are interested in some of the controversy going on about this movie, just read IMDb :: Boards :: Alamo, The (2003)

It is a different world we live in now

AstreaEdge has a great post about the trend in which video games are becoming more like interactive movies, with more observation than actual playing activity. As one who has had a lifelong tendency to put a quarter after quarter* into a slot for some interactive entertainment**, I have noticed that video games do not have as much fascination for me as they once did. I spent many an hour playing Donkey Kong Jr. and Hogan's Alley, then I got a Nintendo, the original and played Super Mario Bros. and most especially Tetris. Most games, other than puzzle solving games such as Blix or Acno's Energizer, are beyond my current level of abilities. I really have not invested too heavily into gaming software for my computer. Despite three weeks of effort in learning how to manipulate the controls, I still cannot swing across any obstacles on the rope in Tomb Raider. I feel like the world of electronic gaming has passed me by.

How I long for the days when the best games had four legs, bells, lights, flippers, and part of playing the game was actually bumping the machine. The one thing that got lost when video games replaced pinball machines is the free games. With video games, the big prize is getting to put your name/initials up for everyone to see and to try to beat. To me, that does not compare to racking up so many free games that you and your college friends could play the same machine for free for over 4 years. Ah, Xenon was our favorite. We all knew how to flip that ball wherever we needed it to go, over and over and over. Click! There's another free game. Oh heck, Tiny, I am late for Geology, take over.

*During the grand old days of my Donkey Kong Jr. addiction, I actually began to refer to quarters as "monkey donuts."

**Yeah, I know what you are thinking, but I have not been hanging around XXX Adult Bookstores in a loose overcoat.

Let's move into the 21st Century already!

It seems that hydrogen cell technology may not be the enviromentalist's dream after all.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology published a report today in the journal Science saying that if hydrogen replaced fossil fuels to run everything from cars to power plants, large amounts of hydrogen would drift into the stratosphere as a result of leakage and indirectly cause increased depletion of the ozone*. [full story]

I still think this technology is viable. I do agree, however, that "hydrogen's impact on ozone destruction should be considered when gauging the potential environmental downside of a hydrogen-fuel economy." Note that they did not say the emissions** from using such technology would be effecting the environment. I am sure it would not take too much thought to figure out how to refuel the cells without allowing the hydrogen to escape into the atmosphere or to put enough safeguards in place to detect any leakage in the supply lines.

attribution: Jaboobie

*I often wondered when I lived in Dallas and we regularly had "Ozone Alert" days, where they cut the public transportation fares in half to get people to ride the train or bus on such days due to the amount of ozone hanging over the city, how could we have an ozone layer problem when there seemed to be so much extra ozone hanging around. I just did not know why, if it was near the top of the atmosphere (which should mean it was lighter than any other element in the atmosphere), that the ozone hung near the ground instead of floating up and filling up any holes that everyone was always worrying about in the ozone layer. Of course, I am sure some scientist could easily explain this to my satisfaction, but it sure did and still does boggle my mind why it was and still is such a problem.

**From the report I saw about GM's hydrogen cell vehicles, it seems the only by-product or emission from the vehicle is pure water.

Could you please just "play nice?"

Remember when I mentioned

As I have said, if you read enough of a person's writing, you begin to develop a feel for who they are. The Blogosphere mirrors the realm of the human experience. There are the givers and the takers. There are the pompous and the humble. There are the agitators and the peacemakers.

I do believe that Greyhawk [Mudville Gazette] may have discovered one of the agitators.

I was very please to see that I was mentioned several times in this post.

A sign of the times

I was just reading my May issue* of The American Legion magazine, and, as usual, my very favorite part is the last page where the jokes are. I was almost shocked and alarmed when the first entry, blockquoted, in larger than average type, proclaimed this statement:

"We would rather do business with 1,000 al-Qaida terrorists than a single American."

Unbelievable, I thought. This was in The American Legion magazine, but then my eye caught the attribution:

Sign at a funeral home in Philadelphia

*It appears it either came a bit late, or I had finally removed enough mail from the unread, not that important, mail tray to have finally uncovered it.

Beware of black cats

I just noticed today is Friday the 13th.

Update: According to my non-blogging friend Frank, who is always on top of such things, not only is it the 13th, but the moon will be officialy FULL at 12:01 am tonight, and right now we have another raging thunderstorm going on. Yep, this could be one humdinger of a day around here. I understand there were even a couple of major wrecks around town today. I was not a witness, so I do not know if the weather, the moon, or just bad luck was involved in either or both of them.

My kingdom for a quote or two

Well, my kingdom is a pathetic mire of radioactive sludge filled with unemployed laborers, sick dogs, and a couple of rabid monkeys, but I would gladly exchange it all for one or two of those quotes everyone else seems to have from people telling them how much they enjoy reading their blogs or what a great writer they are or how they made them spew Dew all over their monitor when they read their witty reparte'.

And if you are not up to that, how about suggesting which one of my mediocre posts from this week you think would really be appreciated by the readership of those who actually pay any attention to what was posted in the weekly Carnival of the Vanities. For some reason, I seemed to have a good hit with last week's entry, but this week's entry did not appear to be very popular. Maybe I need someone else to make the decision for me this week.

As for me, as I am still trying to figure out what I could actually say on the Theory of Devolution [oh, and I am so thankful to AstreaEdge for planting that suggestion into my psyche -- arrrrrgh! it won't go away and it is eating at my brain], I suppose I will ponder my dilemma for awhile, quietly, while facing the corner in my padded cell.

The frailties of being human

Yesterday was one of those days when everything I did seemed to result in injuring myself in some way. I had early court, so I awoke a bit earlier than is my norm, and I nicked myself shaving. Now I have been shaving for many years, and although I shave with disposable razors without any type of lubricating cream, I have likely nicked myself only three or four times in my entire shaving lifetime. I attributed the latest nick immediately to needing a fresh razor for my next shave.

My next stop was the store where I stop for my morning cup of Dublin* Dr. Pepper. I dropped my money on the floor as I attempted to remove it from my pocket and bumped my head on the counter coming up.

Off to court: 20 minute drive and thankfully no problems. I actually had no problems at court, either, unless you count the fact that the elevator was out so I had to climb stairs to reach the proper level and spent about 10 minutes.trying to catch my breath.

After court, I went to Staples to pick up a few office supplies. This was when I went through the exercise of testing several chairs in order to select my new home office chair. What I did not previously disclose was that the absolute first one I sat in had fallen over completely onto the floor with me in it when I was checking to see how far back I could lean. I felt a really sharp pain inside of my right knee. When I left the store after paying for my purchases, I was limping badly. I felt a tightening in my back when I put the chair in the trunk.

I then went to lunch, and was almost immediately knocked into the wall by this very large obese young lady who did not watch where she was going in her hurriedness to catch up to her departing friends.

I returned to the office, unloaded the supplies and my secretary asked if we could rearrange her workstation so that she could have a more comfortable keyboarding position from which to work. I remembered I had this fold down computer table in the storage closet that would easily replace a portion of her work area and could be used to provide a keyboarding station. Well, it slipped from my fingers as we carried it to her office and it fell across the top of my right foot.

Later, after we finally closed up for the day, I went home and took the chair out of the trunk of my car and carried it into the house. Thankfully, though my back was still tight, I did no further damage. I opened the box just inside the door and used the large expanse in the middle of the living room to assemble the chair. Although the box said use no knives, I did use the little Swiss Army knife I have to slice through the tape sealing the box, and then again to cut through some of the tape binding plastic bags over several of the parts. How and why I was still holding my little knife, still open, in my hand when I began putting the pieces of the chair together, I do not know. However, I was still holding it and I ended up stabbing myself in the inside of my left forearm. Luckily it was a small shallow cut, but it bled like I had sliced into a major artery.

I was not actually feeling like Captain Klutz yesterday. However, I am positive I finally found sufficient evidence to prove that our pathetically frail human bodies can sometimes be their own worst enemy.

*Dublin Dr. Pepper is produced by the Dr. Pepper Bottling Plant in Dublin, Texas which uses the original recipe, including the use of Imperial Pure Cane Sugar instead of corn syrup as is commonly used by every other bottler in the US.

Telephones can actually be a real bother

I hate telemarketers and seldom take the time to hear anything they have to say. I am almost sure I would have even less patience than LeeAnn [the cheese stands alone] if I got a wrong number call from some idiot wanting to buy a dog.*

*I actually have two, neither which are for sale, but either which I would have gladly let this idiot examine close up. One bites ankles, the other chews metal hubcaps for the fun of it.**

**She used to be a junkyard dog, but got fired for eating too much of the junk.***

***Not really, though the little one, a former dachshund previously promoted to weeniewolf, has been known to bite his share of ankles, the big one just looks mean, being half Pit Bull and half German Shepherd, and is so attention starved she easily scares away Jehovah Witnesses with her regular display of antics used to coax someone into actually petting her.

Blogosphere: Community of Great Minds

I have been playing around on this Blogosphere for a few months and have noticed a few things. The very foremost and primary situation that I notice is the same item I have noticed in almost every other communicational medium I have been a part of since I have been connected to the Internet: miscommunication.

Over these past few days, I have already offended someone who misread the meaning of my post, and was surprised at the way someone else reported the content of my post. Miscommunication seems endemic to written communication in this age. Written communication was almost a lost art, as telephones usurped letter writing as the means of contact over distance. With the advent of the Internet, written communication reclaimed its place as the foremost form of communication, but on a scale heretofore unimagined. Any of us, with just a few keystrokes, can publish anything while instantly giving access to millions of others to what they have just produced.

Some are better writers than others. Some are more able to find the perfect wording to convey thoughts, ideas, facts and emotions. It is this last factor that eludes some, however, and it is from that fact, primarily, that most miscommunication results. In our face-to-face communication, we hear the words accompanied by body language and tonal inflection. Neither body language nor varied intonation is apparent in purely written form, so unless the words are sufficient to denote the emotion or emoticons are emplaced, a sentence could be seen by one reader as serious, while another might understand it is sarcastic or facetious.

I am not reading a lot of blogs. I have limited my current reading list to the blogs currently on my blogroll. I do regularly read these blogs, and by doing so, have begun to distinguish between the relative personalities of many. There are so many great minds in the Blogosphere. There are so many varying viewpoints. While the Ph.ds and Professors have garnered the most prestige from their blogging efforts, not all of these are the best communicators. Some of these are on my list, but they are not usually among those I most enjoy reading.

Effective written communication is an art. It is time consuming. "Write like Hemingway, not like Steinbeck," I remember teachers berating. I wanted to write like Uncle Remus. There is always, however, the perfect way to convey your message with the intent you want it to have. It seems to come so easily to some. To those like me, there are immense pauses in train of thought, as we feebly attempt to divine from among the cobwebbed archives of our stored vocabulary that perfect word to convey our intent.

I personally fail in this endeavor often. I often reread my posts, sometimes several days after publication, and see something that could be phrased somewhat better, and change it. That is me, continually striving for perfection.*

As I have said, if you read enough of a person's writing, you begin to develop a feel for who they are. The Blogosphere mirrors the realm of the human experience. There are the givers and the takers. There are the pompous and the humble. There are the agitators and the peacemakers.

No matter what your take is on any issue, I never have a quarrel with allowing you your right to speak your mind. As an attorney, the biggest part of my life is dedicated to fully understanding both sides of any issue, despite which side I choose or am bound by my professional ethics to advocate. It is not your stance on the issue, people, that makes a difference. It is the manner in which you convey the argument that supports your stance. Fanatical diatribe is useless for any purpose other than to agitate and aggravate. What a waste of beautiful words.

One thing the Internet has done, it has allowed the idiots to display their idiocy. I do not know how many times I have to repeat this phrase: Truth is relevant to perception. No one tells the truth, they only tell what they believe to be the truth after their perceptions have tempered it with the flair of their personality. The truth is seldom known by anyone.

I suppose what really plagues me about this Blogosphere is that with all the great minds out there, why do some of them not use theirs?

*I make no claim of perfection, but do believe that the continual quest for perfection is the key to a fulfilling life.

Woohooo! I survived

Well, the thunderstorm passed and the roof is still on my house and as far as I can tell, except for blowing a few of the developing pecans off of my pecan tree, there was no real damage. Well, except the electricity shut off a couple of more times after I went to bed and my alarm clock did not go off as scheduled. Now it looks like I might be running a bit late today. Thankfully, I am almost sure I did not have anything truly crucial that had to be done early this morning.

I did notice that I had slipped somewhat in the standings on the Blogosphere Ecosystem even though I have exactly the same number of links as yesterday. I hopefully have not hit the apex of my upward movement, but I am mindful that a lot of the links point to specific posts and at some point those linked posts will fall off of the index page and the link will disappear. As there does not seem to be a great amount of linking to my recent postings*, I suspect that I will see my blog falling back down toward the bottom. And just when I was almost ready to be a part of the TOP 250 Blog in the Blogosphere Ecosystem.

*I especially thought this post and this post would have gotten a bit more attention than they have.

Here we go again - 2nd attempt

As I was busily trying to read through the 60 some-odd blog entires in the Carnival of the Vanities for this week, the electricity flashed off. I attempted to pen this post previously and it flashed off again. It seems we are getting another one of those massive thunderstorms that have seemed to plague us recently, though neither I nor anyone else around here is complaining about the rain. However, it does play havoc on the blogging. As such, I invite you, too, to spend some time reading the excellent entries in the Carnival of the Vanities. I especially thought the ones in Part III were all great reads.

As for me, I think I am going to shut this thing down, unplug it and the phone line, and too bad it is against the law to go play naked in the rain, because I am hot and sweaty. I guess I could go put on my bathing suit.

After three years, I finally did it!

Yes, unbelievably, I bought a new chair for my home office. I have had three chairs in 20 years in my home office. I sit here, in front of the computer, for approximately 3 hours on a daily average. All three previous home office chairs were brought home from my business office because they had needed to be replaced for some reason or another. The last one I actually had for only three years. That little screw thingy with the large plastic handle that held the back onto the seat was missing. I brought it home to replace my prior chair which was regularly causing me fall straight over backwards when I leaned back. Some thing-a-ma-jig in the seat swivel had finally broken. It had been my plan to find a replacement for the missing screw thingy on the new chair, but despite a fairly diligent search, I never found anything that quite matched that thread pattern. I eventually rigged a method to prop the back up to where it supported my lower back ... until everything slipped out of place or the back fell off. Thankfully I never fell onto the seat back because that metal piece that slid into the slot in the bottom of the chair had sharp edges and would likely have severely ripped into my skin. I would often be so attentive to my computer activities, I would never notice the chair back had slipped until I had a very severe ache in the small of my back.

This chair is brand new. I sat in several different chairs at Staples until I found one I liked. It has a mesh back, so it breathes. I especially liked that. The seat is also very confortable but I am not sure I like the placement of the armrests. It seems like they were placed differently when I tested the chair in the store. At least I can lean back without fear of tipping over or having the back of the chair fall off.

There were a bunch of 'em this time

Overtaken by Events has taken on the enormous job of doing this week's Carnival of the Vanities. It was well organized, the 60-some-odd posts having been sorted and group in different categories. Of course, I was a little disappointed to see my post grouped with WMD's and described solely as:

*** wonders about retroactive war justification.

I had thought my post was a bit deeper than that, as I was actually questioning whether the opposing sides are spinning stories just to justify their stance in a stupid partisan-sided argument about whether the war was justified. Maybe I did a poor job of getting my point across.

Way too cool for cheap sunglasses

It seems that Tim Blair has found a story about the new statue to replace the Saddam statue torn down on this day.

OH, so much HATRED in the world!

It seems that some Russian* has studied how different ethnic Europeans feel about their neighboring country citizens. I thought it was interesting, but I am just not too sure how much reliance the data should receive since the method of research was described as:

pouring beer into the throats of selected Europeans and letting them rant.

But then again, I suppose most people's opinions depend a great deal on gossip they hear while sitting in bars.

attribution: Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony who acknowledged JREF Forums.

*I assumed it was a Russian since the site described itself as "Moscow based Alternative Newspaper," but the attribution was never disclosed.

What? Not me!

norbizness is wondering why the Blogosphere is not buzzing about this speech. Jeez, like I want to comment on that Bush bashing claptrap?

I guarantee you that there has probably not been a President in the Whitehouse since my birth who didn't have his nose buried so far up special interest butts that he could actually find his own head if needed. Those that do not like an administration or the policies of one party always find some claptrap to whine about so they get in the news. Nothing new! Only the stupidest fucks rare outsiders find themselves publicly admired for what they do in Washington.

Our country seems to be mostly a bunch of blind sheep led around by the wolves' hand-picked shepherds. There is always more to the picture than you will ever know. The shit bureaucratic paperwork is piled so high, no one ever gets to the bottom.

Oops, I found something interesting

I was surfing, and found this post on Right Wing News about the rankings of all the top blogs. Well of course, I was not among them,* but I was unaware of sites like Alexa so I check to see what that site was all about. It actually appeared to be a directory like Yahoo!, but there was a link on the side that said Top 500 on the Web, so I figure I will go look at what are the top 500 sites on the web. Not any real surprises in the English language sites with Yahoo! topping the list, followed by MSN.com, followed by Google and so on. What was interesting was that there was also a list for the top Reference oriented sites. MapQuest led, but the second one was something called Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I had never heard of this site. It seems that they keep archives of websites, and even have several dates to choose from, having kept up when such sites were updated. I immediately checked out the functions and keyed in the URL for my old abandoned domain. Sure enough, it showed what used to exist there. OK, this is too cool. My first website was on geocities and it was a massive undertaking. I somehow had neglected to do any updating on the site** for such a sufficient time that Yahoo!/geocities assumed I had abandoned the site and all the files stored there appeared to be deleted. I wonder if they archived that site. Thankfully I did remember that long URL from HELL and keyed it in, and viola!, I was staring at a site that I thought I would never see again. I might be spending time over the next few days retrieving some of my prior writing. I have already gotten a short humor piece I had penned during my time on that site and you can check it out in the extended entry.

*I do expect to be someday

**The last copyright date was 1998. I think the last time I was able to access the site successfully was in 2000, but do not remember making any changes after 1998.

UPDATE: Regrettably, with over 100 pages on that site and on xoom.com (extinct, I believe) most of the really long, controversial topic commentaries cannot be found. That was what I wanted. About the only thing worth salvaging was my Rules of Life:

The Rules of Life

I live life by certain rules:

• the 10 Commandments should be strictly obeyed


• Jesus was a great role model and should be emulated


• the "golden rule" makes sense and should be followed


• do not be selfish, if at all possible


• take only what you deserve, not what you can get


• hate*** no one for that over which they had no control (who their parents were)


• live life as if it were an adventure (roll with the flow!)


• treat all people with the respect they deserve, and


• determine a person's intentions before feeling hurt by their acts or words

***I have actually strengthened this rule to do not hate anyone. This is particularly hard to do, but hatred is such a vile emotion.

The Saga of the Infamous Dweezle

"A dweezle? " you may ask. "What the heck is a dweezle?" Well, my friend, dweezles exist in this world by the millions. They are rarely seen however, and seldom without some embarrassment to those who see them, except to those who possess one. They get used to seeing them, well the one they possess, but for some reason even those people are embarrassed if they see someone else's. A dweezle is a brainless creature, truly so. It possesses no senses other than the sense of touch, being sightless, deaf, and having no sense of smell or taste. They feed directly from their environment, and their mouth is the only orafice they possess. They intake nothing through their mouths, however, but use this to spit or vomit or spew fluids from within themselves.

Although I suspect that the dweezle I possess had been around for several years, I only became very familiar with it after the age of 12 or so. I found that if I petted him (and I only suspect it is a "he" not knowing if these things possess a "sex" or not) that he became very excited and would stand up, swell up with pride at the attention. Of course, too much attention would agitate him, I suppose, for sometimes he would just puke all himself and me. And, really, I should have suspected such action, for I noticed he started to drool as soon as I started to caress him.

I have yet to determine what makes a dweezle tick. Since I only have intimate contact with the one in my possession, so I can only assume that they are all similar to mine. Most of the time, the dweezle sits comfortably out of sight, but goes everywhere I do, never gets far from me. He even goes so far as to take a shower with me, and that leaves me with the job of drying him off, and luckily, this seldom excites him anymore.

What seems to bring him the greatest pleasure is seeking shelter in warm, moist places, usually caverns. Whenever he has an opportunity, and gosh, seemed like he never missed one if available when I was younger and had not yet learned to control him, he will scurry in and out of any warm, moist (and he seems disinclined to enter caverns that are not warm and moist?) as fast as he can until he just throws up his guts. Then he seems to lose interest in the game and is ready to rest again. Hmmm, funny creatures, these dweezles, or at least the one I have.

Oh well, I hope that you have enjoyed this tale, though I suppose you may already know about dweezles. I find that most often they are owned by males, though a few males who own them believe they are not male. I also understand that it is difficult to sever a dweezle from his owner, but I have heard that it has been done. The dweezle, however dies from the removal from his environment, unless reattached very soon after the separation. Oh, lastly, I chose not to put a picture of a dweezle on this page, for some might think it is offensive. Like I told you, many are embarrassed at the sight of one!

When will the burgers be ready?

Jaboobie analogizes the nature of intelligence gathering.

And, in another post using an analogy, McGehee wonders if the right questions are not asked, sometimes.

Open your eyes, silly!

I notice that not many people are finding The Metal Wings of Destiny. Too bad! AstreaEdge's latest post gives one a unique view.

All you need in a woman is a young, firm body, big hooters and luscious thighs....

Sometimes I just wonder ... or is that wander?

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION! Repeat after me: WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. Just what are WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION? Has anyone yet defined just exactly what is a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION?

Granted, I am sure nuclear devices are WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. I am certain that biological and chemical agents can be WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, but then again surely a key-chain sized can of mace is not.

How many people does a weapon have to kill to be a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION? I suppose the question is actually what is mass destruction. "Destruction" is defined as "1. the state or fact of being destroyed or 2. the action or process of destroying something."* One is the effect and one is the cause. But it does not limit the destruction to human life, exclude it, or require it. Destruction can apply to life, to property or to life and property. "Mass" is defined as "massive quantity or effect."* "Massive" is defined as "impressively large."* So the result of the weapon's use must be an impressively large amount of destruction to life, property or both.

But what constitutes a weapon? Under Texas law, for something to be classified as a "club" which is an unlawful weapon to possess, it requires that the object be "designed, manufactured or adapted for use as a weapon." This is to insure that objects such as baseball bats or broomsticks could not be included under the general definition of what constitutes a "club." As there are many objects that could cause an impressively large amount of destruction to life, property or both, some which are designed, manufactured or adapted for use as a weapon and those that are not, it seems only fair to limit the term weapons in our scenario to items designed, manufactured or adapted for use as a weapon.

Now let's determine what is an impressively large amount of destruction. Does it need to be capable of killing over 100 people, over 1000 people, or over 10,000 people? Does it need to destroy one house, one city block, or ten city blocks? Just where do we draw the line that says this is mass destruction and that is not mass destruction? It takes one surface-to-air missile to take down a jetliner and kill 300+ people. Is that mass destruction? The surface-to-air missile is definitely a weapon. But every country in the world has those.** Would killing 300+ people without destroying any property, could that be classified as mass destruction? Grape KoolAid laced with a trace of rat poison can do that. Is Grape KoolAid laced with poison a weapon? It is easy to believe so.

What is adapted for use as a weapon? I mean commercial airliners are not normally considered weapons, but two such planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11/01. That action destroyed several large buildings and destroyed thousands of lives, some lost, some devasted by such loss. Is that not adaption of something that would not normally be considered a weapon into a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION?

I am just thinking of Little Johnny with his slingshot, who shoots at a flying bird hitting it and causing it to fly dizzily off and into one of the jet engines of a 747 on take-off causing it to go off-course and lose power and crash, fully fueled into a stadium filled with screaming fans at a Dixie Chicks*** concert. He bought his weapon of mass destruction at the local convenience store, for a buck.****

I really think there are too many questions unanswered to begin pointing fingers over whether or whether not there are ever any WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ever found in Iraq. I would be more interested in knowing where Saddam is. I do bet he knows where they are.

*These may not have been the only possible definitions but I perceived them to be the most relevant definitions to this discussion.

**I admit that there may actually be some countries that do not possess any surface-to-air missiles, like Monaco or the Vatican, so there.

***It could have been Madonna or Britney Spears, I couldn't see clearly through the fog.

****It was made in FRANCE*****

*****I added that because I thought it was funny

Is it me?

I don't know. I have not found anything all that interesting tonight. I did take this short quiz on MSN that by my truthfully answering such and honestly grading such concluded I am likely depressed. I actually did not need to take the test to know that. Hell, I am alone, childless and not really happy about it. I have reasons to feel depressed every so often, but am surely not going to some doctor so he can tell me to put aside my dreams to attain happiness or dope me up with some pills that make a zombie out of me. I am not crazy about the introduce into my system of substances that cause me to lose full control of my mental functions. I am not about to allow some doctor to tell me that life sucks. I know it does, sometimes. It does have its good days and its bad days. Tomorrow could be one of the good days. You never know until it gets here.

UPDATE: Read a lot of other things people are writing and still the news seems pretty dead. I saw some things about someone having a drive to raise $80,000 and that there is going to be another contest between two blogs to see how many links they can get. It seems PWA is again part of the contest, but this time I think Jay Solo is not. As for me, I think I will call this night done, and go find something to read: something that is not on the internet, something mindless, something that does not cause me to think too deeply.

UPDATE SQUARED: Aha, found the trick. PBS was showing Ken Burns "Jazz." Nothing gets your spirits up more than some deep bluesy jazz. I could haved used another hour or so of that, so guess I is time to rotate my CDs. Maybe it was listening to all those "broken heart" country songs that dampened my spirits all day. Yada yada!*

*I just could not remember if I had footnoted any of my messages today, and didn't want to disappoint all of my footnote fans.

Again? Are those servers down or is it the Internet?

I was attempting to read a few blogs while I had some free time, but I was unable to connect with The Truth Laid Bear, The Volokh Conspiracy, Ravenwood's Universe, or Little Tiny Lies.

Is it Monday already?

I just cannot seem to wipe the sleep from my eyes. I hate mornings! I especially hate Monday mornings.

The electricity went off sometime Saturday night and I never did reset the clocks yesterday. I might have overslept badly this morning, but thankfully the VFD (Volunteer Fire Department) came to my rescue. I live two doors from the VFD and they have gotten an early morning call. As the ambulances rolled out of the bay, my dog began to howl. I suppose she wishes she was a Dalmation and could ride along.

The final tally in the New Weblog Showcase shows my entry to have come up in 3rd place with 11 votes. I would not have even bet on my blog to SHOW before the race begun. I am so very thankful for your support.

The rate of my evolution in the Blogosphere Ecosystem is dizzying. Yesterday, I was a lowly wharf rat dodging owls and awoke this morning to find myself a possum.

It is Monday morning. I wish I could crawl back in my bed and play possum for a few hours. I only wish I could!

IN OTHER NEWS: Still no mention of my blog by Glenn Reynolds.

It takes all kinds of people to make a world

Glenn, the voice behind Hi! I'm Black, says if you think the world will ever be free of poverty, you are dreaming.

Everyone wants to win the lottery right? If everyone hit the lotto tommorrow [sic] and won 10 million dollars, inflation would rise, and our coveted millions wouldn't be worth nearly what it would be if only 1 person had won.

And there is that thing about the law of the jungle: that eternal struggle against adversity that proves your ability to survive.

Could there be any better candidate for President than Judge James P. Gray?*

Is there any doubt that Trigg is a Libertarian?

*I think we would have a better chance of getting a Constitutional Amendment Guaranteeing the Right for Everyone to Ingest Mind Altering Substances and Trafficking Freely in Such Substances Without the Interference of the Federal Government before we would of seeing a Libertarian President in the White House.

I was gonna ask what he was smokin', but figured it was none of my friggin' business anyway.

You make the call!

I coudn't figure out if Ravenwood was baiting for trolling "womyn" or trolling whatever-you-call-people-from-Illinois* or trolling death penalty opponents.

*In Texas, we just call 'em Yankees, like we do everyone who lives north of the Red River.**

**I do often wonder how many people can figure out when I am being facetious and when I am being serious.

It's good to be King

James over at Parkway Rest Stop describes the day he spent sitting above Glenn Reynolds at the top of the Blogosphere Ecosystem.

I remember that day vividly, I even remember* posting about it.

*Can you believe that was all the way back on June 3rd?

I agree, but he still couldn't run the Texas Rangers

The only thing I didn't like about PoliBlog's Bush's Method-Politics Sans Conviction? was that I felt it necessary to read this Neal Gabler commentary:

From the moment of his disputed election in 2000, President Bush has been dramatically reversing the traditional relationship between politics and policy. In his administration, politics seem less a means to policy than policy is a means to politics. Its goal is not to further the conservative revolution as advertised. The presidency's real goal is to disable the Democratic opposition, once and for all.

and Kevin Drum's [CalPundit] concurrence:

He's [Bush] a furious political animal who is uninterested in compromise and whose main goal is to defeat his enemies, not advance a cause. Ideology is actually secondary, and is useful mainly as a way to batter his political opposites.

to fully understand the reasons for his retort.

Before you read the article, I provide following to give you the gist of Steven's position:

On balance, while Bush is not an ideologue, he is a man of conviction, who does fight, often quite ferociously, to do what he thinks is the right thing to do policy-wise. And no, I don't think that his main overriding goal is simply to damage the Democrats (they are doing a good job of that by themselves, quite frankly).

While I have lived in Texas for most of 48 years now, I was here when Bush was President of the Texas Ranger's and when he was Governor. He did a better job as Governor.

And Democrat or Republican, the Nation has never been in better hands than when Texans are in power: Sam Rayburn, Jim Wright, LBJ, and almost Perot. Although most of the rest of the US does not realize it, the pulse of Texas is the lifeblood of the Nation. Remember the Alamo, dammit. All Texans do! Texans don't surrender, ever! Texas is not a place, it is a way of life.

Oh my, cover your eyes

Skinny Dipping - By Al Batt
Hartland, Minn. (Freeborn County) at The Country Today - Yarns of Yesteryear 1

I don't want to spoil your enjoyment by excerpting any of the parts. You will like it, I promise!

attribution: Cracker Barrel Philosopher

Question #1: What do you think about surveys?

And this exceptional response was given by: Jane Galt.

A lot more more great stuff there I had missed.

Now for an entirely different look

Andrea Harris [Too Much To Dream] via Jeff Jarvis [BuzzMachine] discovered this first post of a new Iraqi blogger. It appears that language and culture may be the biggest problem in Iraq.

I am a "dirty rat" and other matters

Well, I have once again evolved in the Blogosphere Ecosystem. Yesterday, I was a lowly owl hunting for field mice, and in a twist of fate, today, I am a wharf rat dodging owls.

There might be some among my regular readers who have noticed the change to my tagline. I had an epiphany that such was probably a more truthful statement than my previous tagline given the trend my blogging efforts have taken.

As always, I enjoy being a part of the Blogosphere Ecosystem because NZB does a great job with that operation, and the system displays those blogs that have linked to yours.* I found that The American Mind, a very fine blog, had linked** to a story of mine. I have blogrolled this exceptional blog.

On The American Mind, there is a story that should be very alarming to those of you in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, and appalling to those of you who are not.

The home where a state agency placed sexual predator Billy Lee Morford this week stands less than 100 feet from a shelter licensed by the same state agency to house children who have been sexually abused or battered.

Full story by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

*I sometimes get linkage information from the trackbacks also, but I am still not up to speed on why I seem to send trackback information to MT bloggers but to no one else. I could understand that blog*spot users have no trackback capabilities, but what do I do to trackback to those others?

**I am suspecting that The American Mind found my link on a comment to this post on Jay Solo, which would go to show that what I said in that comment has some validity.

Next time . . . get a dog!

Reading blogoSFERICS, I ran across this Washington Post Story.

At least 19 people in three Midwestern states have contracted a disease related to smallpox, marking the first outbreak of the life-threatening illness in the United States, federal heath officials said yesterday.

It appears they contracted the disease from their pet prairie dogs, who might have been exposed to the African monkey pox virus by being in close proximity to Gambian giant rats during possession by the exotic pet dealer.

While much about the monkeypox virus is unclear, it does not seem to be as deadly as smallpox. Authorities estimate that monkeypox has a mortality rate of between 1 percent and 10 percent, compared with a mortality rate of about 30 percent for smallpox.

blogoSFERICS attributed the Drudge Report for the find.

BEST BLOG OF SHOW IS:

The body of this post has been moved to extended entries. 6/12/03

As NZ has made it a requirement that all entrants into the New Blog Showcase Popularity Contest this second week are required to link 3 of the competing blogs. I entered this post, and please feel free to vote for it. often, linking it to every entry on your blog. I decided to vote for everyone's blog! But there is a price! I get to tell you and the world just what I thought about your entry. I am honest and can be brutal. The date and time of this post were purposely done to insure you indeed GET YOUR VOTE.

STOP! GO NO FURTHER! READ! Anyone who is offended by my review of their entry, feel free to review my entry. I personally rate it 3.5. I am merely stating my opinions and they may not necessarily be the opinions of any other single person [on this planet, as I have been contacted and told that my opinions were officially adopted by an entire alien sub-culture in the Ming Sector.]

5.0 is top, 0.5 is bottom: ALL RATING IS SUBJECTIVE; Listing is important, as I the best on top down to worst on bottom within tied ratings based upon my personal preference of one post over another.

5.0~Folkbum's Rambles and Rants: The Democrats' Summer Softball League ~Could it be? Is a Leftie going to be Best of Show? I was so set against reading this post as I felt the title was leading into some zealotist attack on one side or the other. What I found was a delightful analogy which gave me more insight into the Democratic Presidential Candidates than I have foretold received. VERY WELL DONE! [There was at least one misspelling, however, so don't get a big head.]

5.0~Reason of Voice: The Clinton Wars ~This guy hooked me with the first sentence:

Full disclosure: I'm one of those who thought Clinton a god.

I am thinking, thought, not thinks, so here is going to be a person who decided his god was not all that great. Nope, it did not pan out that way. It was a book review, with some nicely written personal interludes about how the author felt about the former President and the book. I detest Clinton, mainly because I detested his moral values more than his political stance, but found this post to be entertaining. I also know that I have no need to buy this book. Although this guy leans way too far to the left for me, I believe he at least presents a rational argument for his side on issues. I will blogroll it and check it from time to time just to keep a pulse on the other side's take on the issues.

5.0~The Tough Democrat: How to be tough ~The writer makes a good argument for his/her (or her/his) point of view, interspersed with links that do not detract from the reading, but do offer points for further research and opinion about portions of the argument. There is a bit of a bias leaning left, but with the blog name, I was not surprised. The post was well-written, interesting and informative. It showcased the blogger's writing talents with a sprinkling of partisanship.

5.0~Signal + Noise: Finding a use for all that Evian~ Just when I thought I was getting tired and cranky, someone proves me wrong. It look me a few sentences to adjust to the writing style, but the ideas are pretty profound. It's on blog*spot, but the archives work. It gets blogrolled.

4.5~The Talent Show: Why these tax cuts suck ~I was torn whether this one should be 5.0 or 4.5, but did not think it as good as the ones who are at 5.0. The argument was persuasive, and substantiated. The title informed you of the leaning so nothing was surprising. The writing was crisp and easy to follow. Too Left for my blogroll though. [In case anyone wonders, there are actually those that are Too Right for my blogroll.]

4.5~Happy Furry Puppy Story Time: The Administration as Legion of Doom Characters ~I had already pegged this post to be included in new idea to start doing a Best of the Week listing (that I may or may not do, now that I have undertaken this task), so I already had read and liked it before I saw it listed in the Showcase entries. I have always been an avid comic reader and fan, so I feel norbizness hit a home run with this post.

4.5~Mudville Gazette: SACRED WORDS ~This is getting a late review, because the author noted such on his blog. I thought it had been one of those I had previously reviewed, then lost, then overlooked when redoing the review. [The randomizing of links, doing such on two different systems, and the continual addition of new blogs did make it hard to keep up with the ones I had reviewed and the ones I hadn't.] Upon the revelation, I took the opportunity to look at the post again, and I had looked at it previously. It is long, and my power went off while I was reading it. I had never reviewed it. This was a post written by one of out servicemen which provided that unique perspective about this war. I wanted so badly to place this one among the very top, but I could not, in good conscience, place it in the 5.0 rating. I felt there was a lack of smoothness in the flow of prose and manner of presentation. Like genius and madness, there is a fine line between exceptional and excellent.

4.5~Hi! I'm Black: Shell Vacations Club & Their God Damn Salesmen!!!!!!!! ~A latecomer to the contest. I was a bit alarmed when I read the Blog title expecting some racial diatribe about victimization and was pleasantly surprised. Except for the DAILY DOSE lists to stories which point to stories regarding racism and black issues, the general tone of most of the posting are such that race issues are not of any concern. Having read the entry post prior to the remainder of the blog, I was mindful that the blog title might be soley informational. I personally did not think it mattered, as I thought this was a delightfully well written tale about being kidnapped by time-share salesmenpeople. Been there, done that, got the steak knives to prove it. I really liked what I saw in this blog.

4.5~Sanity's Edge: Top Ten Reasons to Read My Blog ~although these 10 reasons lists seem to be popular in so many blogs, usually they are take only a couple of seconds to read completely through, and if done right, can be pretty humorous. This one was. But, more importantly, it caused me to look at some of the other things the blogger had posted Is this not what you hope to accomplish with a good entry into this showcase? I found that I liked the writing style and the topics of many of the posts. I blogrolled it.

4.5~Across, Beyond, Through: May 26, 2003 ~The title will disclose part of the reason this one did not rate higher. this is truly a new blogger who posts one post a day, and includes several subjects in the same post. And he is on blog*spot so no permalinks. You will have to scroll for this one. But the author does a great job of providing insight into something very intimate about himself and invites us to do likewise. I loved this passage:

We don't really grow in our religious minds or our spirits until we become willing to admit that whatever God may be, it's something bigger than us, bigger than our minds or hearts can grasp, bigger than our particular tradition can hold, bigger even than our questions.

I found the other posts to be interesting also, and hope this author finds his way off of blog*spot and Blogger soon.

4.5~Technically Speaking: Mosquito Extermination on a global scale ~A short insightful post on a topic that almost everyone might find interest in. And a nice graphic included. If I was not so busy rating these blogs in the contest, this post would be a good lead-in for my comments about wolves. I also checked out the rest of the blog, and while I might not be interested in every post, I saw there were several that I would find worth reading. As such, I blogrolled the site.

4.5~RandomActOfKindness: Drug Czar Gets Political ~Primarily a reporting piece on an issue that I find very disturbing. The author interspersed just enough of his commentary to allow the reader to understand his leanings. I just expected a bit more passion. The permalink takes you to the top of the page and you have to scroll to find the posting. His Libertarian leanings get him blogrolled.

4.5~Give It Back: Let It Rant ~Lest anyone think I am rating these posts due to my political leanings, let me say right off this guy is leaning way too far LEFT for my liking. BUT, despite the fact he began the post with

I'm not much of a writer . . .

the writer does a pretty nice job of getting the message across. I think the post was well composed, easy to read and follow, and although I personally probably will not blogroll this blog, as I doubt I would read it much, I think this message will bring him a lot of readers from those that believe the government should be about entitlements for those who cannot take care of themselves and their families. I did think the title was a bit lame.

4.5~Collinization: Life tells me, 'Grab your ankles!' ~It's on blog*spot and it is a post about his personal situation. Mostly, especially when they are much younger than I, I have very little interest in reading about the goings on in the daily lives of people, but I found this post to be very humorous, and wanted to see how the rest of the blog looked. I liked it. I think I will blogroll it. I even emailed him and told him how to get comments on his blog, because he asked, and because after the day he had that is described in the entry post, I felt like doing something nice for him.

4.5~General Glut's Globblog: The wheels of overproduction just keep on spinning ~Decidedly leaning one way, but I could not be sure exactly which way his political compass pointed by reading the entry. The blog seems to be primarily about world economics. However, the entry was another one of those that held my interest even though I had no real interest in the subject matter. Good writing style.

4.5~AlphaPatriot: Mideast Peace ~Well written piece that used links extensively as support for data given in the story, which did not necessarily require reading in order to follow the contentions of the author.

4.0~Britblog: Wimbledon~Newsy site for British expariates. Way too graphically loaded for someone with my 2.4K connection. Nice writing style. But the link doesn't go to the post, or even the page the post is on. You have to search for it.

4.0~I Protest: Weapons of mass retraction ~I found this post to be disappointing, as the purpose of the blog was blurbed to be:

Civil rights, politics, human rights, feminism, psychology and other stuff.

So why the same old diatribe leaning on the curently most divisive issue in the Blogosphere? There [was] were a few "quotes" I thought had insufficient references, and* one link that pointed to my needing to read it for a fuller understanding of the readers point. You showed you could effectively excerpt, so excerpt the portion of that page that supports your position. [I personally try currently to limit my "like this" links to bloggers, so that I do not deprive them of readers on their sites by displaying their great talent on mine.] *Frank, in the comments, questioned my observation that he had made insufficient references to quotes and upon review, I was of the opinion that I had been mistaken on that point, and hereby retract such. My apologies, Frank.

4.0~giant city: pill peeves ~If you only knew how close this entry came to being a lot higher up the ladder [though this is not actually a shabby score]: the author did such a fine job of selling me the point, that by the time I had read down to the excerpted portion displayed on NZB's contest page, I saw no need to go further. Overkilled the point. Really hard to fault someone for giving too much of a good thing. But I also wanted to rate them fairly by my personal subjective procedure: I call 'em as I see 'em!

4.0~Mrs. PseudoPsalms: Israel ~Regrettably this blog is on blog*spot and either Anna does not archive often or, most likely, Blogger archiving in on the fritz again [the main reason I personally abandoned Blogger], but I doubt as such that it will do very well in the voting. Too bad. Although I question the logic and her knowledge of the history about the area, her opinion was concise and easy to follow. She excerpted small portions of the articles to lead in to the comments she wanted to make. Look for it, it is the last posting on the entries for May 30th. Again, this post made me eager to read some of the other entries, which is what I think the purpose of the contest actually is. I found the May 28th posting entitled "Presidents" to have be one of the best ones now showing on the page, but it will like fall off before you read this. Anna, get off of blog*spot.

4.0~Cyber :: Ecology: If You Only Knew: Mad Cow Disease, Beef, and Getting in Touch With Your Food ~Although I did not find the general vein of content in this blog to be all that interesting, it has nothing to do with the writing skill or style of the blogger. It is just my choice of what I find interesting and what I do not find interesting. However, the post selected for entry in the Showcase even I found to be of interest. The blogger was very conscious of what sources she used for her story. I did not like the varying styles and sizes of text used in the post, and am still deciding if I like the short warning excerpt used or not. I am not sure I would have read it based upon that excerpt had I not already decided to read all of the entries.

4.0~BusinessPundit: Porn Goes Mainstream ~Very good article review. I did wonder who Hirsch was, but figured if I was really interested, I could read the story. If your goal is to be the Glenn Reynolds of the business news, you show great potential. The story does sound fascinating, so I might have to use this link later to get back to your link to that. Does that make sense?

4.0~Sgt Hook: Duty, Honor, Country... ~I am saddened that I could not, in all good conscious, rate this posting higher. I am a member of the American Legion, went out sick as a dog on Memorial Day to put flags up at our local cemetaries in recognition of our fallen Veterans. I was deeply saddened that two people with whom the author had become acquainted had fallen in the line of duty. But the author chopped this piece up into a history of the day interspersed with portions of anecdotal memories. The topic was superb, the sentiment was utterly apparent, but the organization was attrocious.

4.0~Wizbang: Smart Growth In Loudoun County, VA (Or How To Piss Off All Of The People All Of The Time) - Part II ~Kevin posted a really nice comment and asked that I not be too harsh. Kevin, I just cannot pull my punches. This post droned on and on with details of little interest to those not immediately affected by the situation to end with this statement:

So when the Smart Growth bandwagon arrives in your area think hard before jumping on.

It would have taken far fewer words to make that statement. Great writing, horrible subject for a Showcase entry, TMI! I love your blog, however! It was already blogrolled.

4.0~Rkayn knowledge: Eleanor Clift is a big fat liar ~This entry had one of the longest excerpts in the contest. When I initially tried to access the link, I found the blog was on blog*spot and that the permalink didn't work. Maybe there was a reason for putting what appeared to be the entire text of the post into the entry submission excerpt box. My review of the excerpt was

Of course, as I have no idea who Eleanor Clift is, I am not thoroughly concerned about the fact that she is a liar. I am always interested in who is getting appointed to Federal benchess, so I intially assumed that I would find something in this story of interest. I, regretfully, found that I did not.

and I scored it 1.0. However, I checked the blog and it was the most recent post in the blog. The excerpt was actually a poor example of the content, but reading the entry in the entirety, I found the entry to be thoughtful, fairly well-written, and informative. I adjusted the score greatly. I would have excerpted this bit:

What does the make-up of the circuit courts have to do with "judicial independence"? Would having them all equally split between Republican nominated judges and Democratic judges mean that they are "independent" in any meaningful way? This split has nothing to do with "judicial independence" at all, they are simply a function of who has been getting elected President.

I did notice that this blog had archives dating to 10/6/2002 and thought the cut-off date of the contest was Mar 11 2003 however, as I also noted that there was a major break in the archives between 1/05/03 and 5/01/03 I suspect there may have been consequences that would allow for some relaxation of the general rule for sake of the spirit underlying the showcase. I was hopeful that one of the early May entries would disclose the reason behind this gap, but was unable to access any of those posts.

4.0~GrahamLester.com: A Nonbeliever's Defense of Religion ~If the object of an effective blog post is to hold someone's interest in reading about a subject that they were not all that interested in, this post does the trick. However, hoping to find more insightful opinions about subjects, I did peruse the rest of the blog, which has little of the same type of fare to offer. However, to say this, it looks like this is the only purely non-blogging software blog I have ever seen. UPDATE: I thought he did a much better job on this piece.

4.0~Whiskey Bar: What a Tangled Web We Weave . . . ~I didn't like this all that much, but restrained myself from burying it way down in the ratings. I did put my bias aside, however, remembering this contest was about drawing readership. This post should draw the left in like flies to a lightbulb. Pure partisanship. I did not read all the way to the bottom because I got tired of scrolling down and looking to the right. That display setup was an irritating exercise in frustration.

3.5~FreeSpeech: Bob Herbert forges forward with his class warfare ~Wizbang + Rkayn knowledge = 3.5 ~That's about all I can say, not interesting and way too long to hold my attention. Maybe I was just tired, and wanted something with a bit of humor interspersed.

3.5~Page Three: Seat Belts ~I thought the title was a misnomer, to a degree. It was essentially prior restraint on free speech, and the author just led you to read InstaPundit. Not a great post to intice people to read you, by forcing them to read InstaPundit to understand the context of your post. Also, there are actually links to most case opinons, if you only search for them. I guess I would have to, since you did not do it for me, even though you suggested I read some cases. At least the blog*spot archives worked, but you still have to scroll, but not far. Megan, you are a good writer, so do not have fears about writing passionately about how you feel about things. I think you have great potential to create a blog I would love to read regularly, but not yet.

3.5~Serenity's Journal: 100 Proof ~Just to show that even those I agree with 100% do not draw the highest rating. This was a decent post, but this subject is so common right now, one side says this, the other side says that. I am not saying that one shouldn't have their say, but that it might not have been the best post to enter into the Showcase. Another thing, although it did not enter into the rating, but I found to be amusing was that the purpose of the blog was listed as:

Covering current events with a libertarian/conservative viewpoint. And other musings.

and within this post, the author referred in what seemed to be a derogatory nature to "clouds of pot smoke." I was almost sure that anyone with Libertarian leanings would not have done so.

3.5~Along the Way: Reloaded Thoughts ~I absolutely love this:

As I trudge through life, one day at a time, every once in a while a thought pops to mind.

The title threw me, as I expected it to be a introspection discussion, and was not ready for a movie review for a movie that I have yet to see. If I was a "nice guy," I would award 0.5 just because he said nice things about me on his blog. But I will just stay inclinated that I received those comments because I deserved it. The blog was interesting, though. Mostly seemed to either be family stuff or technical stuff way over my head. [Kenneth (I hope), you need to link your archive pages to your home page.]

3.5~Silver Rights: Some logs and a bottle of wine ~It appears that there has been some problem with blog*spots linkage [no surprise there] but I had previously applied my review to Silver Rights: No sympathy for the devil: Biracial white supremacist deserves his fate, which I prasied as a very well written piece talking about a very sensitive issue, racism, without any pointing fingers. The writing was crisp and I thought the template matched the tone of the writing superbly. However, I was not quite so impressed with this post. The writer expouses a belief in an injustice basing such on the unsubstantiated evidence of what one person said he observed and what another said he had done. While my own observations note that there is often a disparity in the way that class affects the way people are treated for the same transgressions, to proclaim the existence of such require far more substantiation that the writer was able to provide.

3.0~A Blog of His Own: Damn It! Just Knock It Off! ~This guy needs to get his feet wet. I think he has some great potential at becoming a pretty good blogger, but he seems a bit too new at the game to me. The entry post was all right, it gave the person's viewpoint, but I had to actually access the link to get a clear understanding of the context of the post. Aaron, get off of blog*spot, because you are not going to lodge any votes: your permalinks don't work. [link is to blog, the post is among the June 3rd entires]

3.0~Brainysmurf: Partying — east vs. west ~Can you say disppointed. When I read the first three paragraphs, I was entranced with the subject, thinking I was going to get some insight about something really interesting. I just did not quite pan out up to my expectations. Thinking maybe I would find better fare somewhere else on the blog, I checked it out, but really found it to be of very little interest to me. However, if you are leaning a bit to the left side, it might be more to your liking.

3.0~David E's Fablog: Fait Divers: An Unmarried Pixie ~I was never really sure what the author's point was in this story. At first, I thought the issue was the fact that the media tended not to reference the sexual orientation of certain people when writing about them, but then it seemed to migrate to a minimalist fisking of the story, excerpted immensely, and had more to do with the long term investigation of Copeland as a communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era. David, blockquotes work better than italicizing to set off things your are quoting from your own comments. I had a really difficult time doing so.

2.5~DANEgerus weblog: Gary Hart fisked ~grasp--->SPLAT! Missed me Gary! So did this fisking of his stupid commentary. I found both to be pretty inane. If this is the best the person could offer as an entry, I was not too inclined to see what else I could find on his blog. Realize, however, this is my opinion, and some of you might really like this post.

2.5~Mac-a-ro-nies: Blogospherics: Anger in the blogosphere ~This entry is currently #1 in the voting. Are there really all that many people impressed with this post? I mean it was mainly about the stuff other people were putting on their blogs, and not the good stuff, just the petty bickering and "I am gonna take my ball and go home whining." I am surprised at the votes and not overly impressed with the entry.

2.5~Yet another weird SF fan: Libertarianism and SF Fandom ~Maybe the hype on the contest page caused me to expect something better, but I was really deflated reading this piece. I am both Libertarian and a SF fan, but where was all of this supposed data coming from? Surely, the author does not deign to speak for me without some substantiation? I did read a bit of the rest of the blog just to see if there was a better indication of the writer's skill at which to point. I didn't find it. At least he does know how to correctly archive on Blogger, or is it just because this post was made over two weeks ago? I sense a kindred spirit here, but we cannot seem to communicate to one another.

2.0~Just an Ordinary Guy: College Adventures ~

I'm just an ordinary guy, posting my ordinary thoughts...

about stuff they teach in college that the didn't even have when I was in college. Not interested. But still a more worthwhile blog than Rant Dude and a better post than Hawken Blog. I am sure your friends will love your posts. Most of the rest of us probably won't.

1.5~World War Bush: A Heightened State of Paranoia? ~I saw all I needed to see on the contest page:

Anti-war, anti-Bush rantings

Too Far Left and too fanatic ... actually, I do not like fanatics on either side of the fence. I didn't even look. But . . . v

1.0~RantDude's Ravings: Zoom Zoom The Hell Out of Here ~The only one of "the lost posts" that I did not need to go back and read in order to remember my prior review. It was an inane little rant about a non-issue by someone who does not seem to post but about once a week. Why enter the contest to draw readership if you have nothing to offer? And yet, it was still better than that v down there.

0.5~Hawken Blog: Vote for me even if linking to my specific posts doesn't work ~It is on blog*spot, you have to scroll to look for it, and "Vote for me even if linking to my specific posts doesn't work" is not the title to the post. I scrolled up and down that page so many times looking for this post, that if this was the was the best well written message pass along, it had already lost 2.5 points. What is the message? Whining about the fact that you can't play in the contest because you are on blog*spot. zzzzzznt! No, you get .05 for playing. I might check this one again, after he leaves blog*spot. The scanning gave me some indication that he is a blogger. [Now I have to raise up ZOOM, ZOOM which used to occupy this slot on the list.]

Posted by Tiger at 12:00 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

OUCH! It hurts us all in the end

Tony does make a solid argument about swapping music files on the Internet. It is worth reading.

Someone's been here

It seems that Jaboobie has done tiptoed through the Blogosphere and stopped for a visit. I liked what he said:

***: Raggin' & Rantin': multiple updating gone wild, bad jokes, and responsible parents.

However, I seem to be eternally always near the bottom of the alphabet. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Aardvark: Raggin' & Rantin'.

But then I would have to eat ants. Red meat is so much better.

Here is what The Laughing Wolf had to say about why he added me to his blogroll:

I replaced the Bunny with a ***, specifically ***: Raggin' & Rantin'. This is a new blog for me, but the Gaggle liked it and he has posted a time or two on my blog. What I have read of this blog has been good, so it is added. [emphasis shamely supplied]

Can we truly believe everything we hear?

It is believed that the babies were buried alive.

This is from May 4, 2003 story in Kurdish Media speaking about a mass grave found in Kirkuk. I have not yet been able to substantiate this story, although I do not currently doubt the truth* of it. Although such is alarming, I only bring it up because I saw this reaction:

So, who's still angry that we went to war with Iraq and its despicable regime?

I don't care if they never find a WoMD within the confines of that country. This is evidence enough that Saddam was the biggest Weapon of Mass Destruction of all.

at A Small Victory. As that is a popular and widely read blog,** this story is speading and I can envision a groundswell of like-minded people raising one voice, chanting: "Enough is enough. Saddam killed babies!" As the masses begin to unify in applauding the liberation of Iraq from such a godless*** despot, the media and the bloggers can get back to talking about regular stuff, like who killed Laci Peterson or whether Jayson Blair is journalistically qualified to write for the Weekly World News.

*It is not as if it was published by the New York Times or the Weekly World News.

**This is an inference I made upon observing the number of comments to each post on the blog.

***I am not a theological scholar by any means, but understand that the Christian and Jewish God is the same as the Islamic Allah. This Supreme Entity would, in my opinion, have smote Saddam down with His Own Hand, had He not already given up on such practice.

[I entered this one in this week's Carnival of Vanities hosted by Overtaken by Events]

However . . . just what if, there is absolutely no truth to the story at all, and that it is the biggest spin yet part of the war effort.

Why I read other people's blogs

If I had not gone over to read Dustbury I would never have found michele's perverse interlude with her computer's hardware.*

*Now surely that qualifies as a pundit?

One card short of a full deck

I started this blog on April 4, 2003 after I run across an article about how bloggers had caused the downfall of Trent Lott. I became a member of the Blogosphere Ecosystem on my birthday, April 26, 2003, and got the first blog to link back to mine on May 1, 2003. On June 1, 2003, I had amassed a total of 19 links from other blogs. On my last check, ***: Raggin' & Rantin' had passed the half century mark and the links are currently sitting at 51.

Watch out InstaPundit, but here I come!

I want to thank all of you fine bloggers who think my blog is worthy of mention and of being placed in your blogroll, and to all of those, bloggers and non-bloggers alike, who take the time to read my thoughts and opinions.

It is YOUR baby

It is nice to hear someone else saying things like this:

Repeat after me everybody: it is the responsibility of the parents to raise their child that they chose to bring into the world, it is the responsibility of the parents to raise their child that they chose to bring into the world, it is the responsibility of the parents.... Hopefully you get the point. And I don't want to hear any bullshit about the state having "compelling interests to protect the physical and emotional health of its children and assist parents as guardians of their children's well-being." (my emphasis)

You could not guess at the lead-in that brought out this tirade. Wanna bet? Go see. AstreaEdge @ The Metal Wings of Destiny

One final thought or two bad jokes

I was just fixing to leave and noticed I was still walking around with this disposable lighter that has not given a flame for two days. What is it about those things that always make me think, surely it has one more flame in there, and will give it right when I need it? You just can't force yourself to throw it away! You know that feeling, don't you?

What? You don't smoke?

Well, I often wish I didn't either, but the doctor told me to lose weight so I have been spending my lunch money on cigarettes.*

*Now if that line doesn't get me some trackbacks, I am going to quit my day job and become a prospector.**

**I have actually heard that there have been some sizeable aluminum finds in several of the dumpsters around town.

I need a LIFE!

Everyone seems to be busy this Friday evening . . . except Glenn and Lesley.* I checked my blogroll and these were the only people who showed to have updated.

*and me, of course, but I am thinking of going out -- to this!

Oppress, Suppress, Repress, make your selection please

"This confirms all our fears about the RAVE Act," said Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance, which spearheaded opposition to the bill, succeeding in blocking it last year. "This isn't about drug parties or raves, it's about having a club to hold over people's heads, whether its hemp festivals, circuit parties, dances, whatever. The RAVE Act is being used to suppress political speech. This is exactly what Sen. Biden said would not happen, and now it's happening," he told DRCNet.

The story is here, but Don at Anger Management excerpted the whole story here, and, InstaPundit* led the way.

*Don remarked that this was the first notice of his blog on InstaPundit. I have yet to see anything about my blog there. Glenn Reynolds must hate me.**

**I actually doubt Glenn Reynolds has enough concern about me to amount to hatred.

Yoda says: Not CSI it is

Always keeping a diligent eye on the news regarding the lack of justice in our criminal justice system, TalkLeft has found this news story about William Thompson.

Although cases of innocent people falsely convicted by bad DNA evidence are rare, Thompson sees ambiguous results, sloppy lab work or overstated findings in a quarter of the cases he examines.

Nigerian emails are a hoax

It seems that someone has actually gone to the trouble to investigate to insure that, in fact, these messages are nothing more than a scam to bilk non-geniuses out of a lot of cash.*

attribution: Graham Lester

*This is satire, and may not be appropriate for those easily offended by poking fun at Christianity or third-world denizens. I took it in the vein of humor in which it was offered.

At what age does senility set in?

I am getting addle-pated. I heard something on the radio news at noon that I was itching so badly to rant about, and now I cannot even remember what it was about. Even the voices in my head seem to have no memories of the event.

Ah, it is all so clear now

Tim Dunlop over at the Road to Surfdom has penned a little ditty, ala Theodore Giesel, to explain all the WMD news to the younger set.

John Dean should know about Presidential misconduct

And he states:

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

However, he, like so many other rational voices, says

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions.

Read the full commentary.

Give me time, you will make it

I have not been as fastidious as usual in reading all those blogs on my blogroll nor in adding several others I have found over these last few days. I apologize for this. Be patient. However, if you wrote something really fantastic, or have a blog that you really think I would like, feel free to provide me a link in a comment to this posting. I promise to check it regularly, while I spend my time reviewing those Showcase entries.

Computers are so fantastic

Computers have revolutionized the world. Never before have people from so many countries been able to talk to people from other countries without interference from their governments. The world is shrinking as we all are more able to see that just because someone lives in this country or that, they are human, are interested in the same things we are interested in, though some of them are just unable to acquire what they want as easily as others.

It is amazing that I have one piece of equipment that I can use to play music, to find music, to make art, to find art, the report news, to read news, to write what I want and to easily publish it for everyone's benefit.

This computer is amazing, the programs that I can get and what they can do sometimes boggle me. But what I cannot understand is why I cannot get a good operating system, compatible with all the fine programs available, that I do not have to reinstall every six months. Bill Gates, if you are going to control the software market, please, please, please, make your damn software work without having to be continually updated to fix bugs, without eating bits of itself so that it becomes corrupted over use, and does not require so much code to run. It can be done. I bet you that if you would agree to open source your OS, within a year, there will be several free market programmers who have stabilized it to the point where I do not have to end up losing 6 months worth of saved emails because I have to reformat and reinstall your crappy software.

Even the cheapest computer is a fine piece of equipment. I know, I have 4 different models of e-machines*. I have been computing since 1980, and have seen the OS develop from stable DOS to the buggiest OS ever crated, Win MX. I have two MX machines, and I seem to spend more time trying to get programs to work under the OS than they do with either my '95 or my '98 boxes. If it was possible to run every piece of software I have on it, I would switch to LINUX in heartbeat.

*I think of e-machines as the disposable razors of the computer industry. They are cheap, work problem free for awhile, begins developing snags, you throw it in the trash and go get another one, with the newest chip and bigger hard drive.

This is really good stuff!

I wish he would become a real blogger or something, because when he gives up on limericks and starts giving us quality prose like this, Graham Lester can do a fine job of presenting his message. This posting held me spellbound! Good job Lester!*

We cannot ride every train that has "Justice" or "Democracy" or "World Peace" painted on the boxcars. Not because we don't believe in these ideals, but because we do.

*This is the first listing in this week's Carnival of the Vanities. I only hope the rest of the reading is half as good.

It is a nice way of saying it!

LeeAnn does a nice job of saying "If you don't like what I write in my blog, piss off."

He likes it! He really likes it!

Carnival of the Vanities is up. Why am I just getting around to getting this up? I caught my review a lot earlier, I have been simply gushing from the glowing remarks:

***, in his first submission to the Carnival, rants about something that I agree with. I just haven't felt the urge to rant about myself, because it seems as obvious to me as water is to a fish. He does a wonderful job with it, too, so pay him a visit, and maybe he'll keep coming back.

I couldn't have written it better myself. And, I know from doing the Showcase review that reading all those posts and reporting your take is not an easy job. Let's give drumwaster his due for doing a fantastic job as host of this week's review. And check out all those other great posts submitted. It should be an fine selection of reading material.

Whew, maybe the job is just too big!

That ^, yes that up there, is taking more time that I seem to find. Of course, it does not help that somehow some of it disappeared between 3:00pm and 6:00pm. I will never figure that one out, though I did get to wondering how much space was remaining on my server, and deleted my old website. I had already safely saved it all to CD, and I am not utilizing any of the files, so it was a safe delete, I hope.* What is making the job so very, very difficult is that there seem to be two new entries entered for each review I do. Close the door already! I just need to take some time reading some of my normal blogs. I know they are reading mine, and probably wondering where the usual stuff is. The tally is not held until Sunday, so normally I would have a goodly amount of free time Saturday to complete the task, however, this weekend is The Fat Guy's Block Party as well as my Fossil Rim Docent Meeting being held on Saturday. I just hope I get them all done, because reviewed, good or bad, counts as a vote. Me, this is the ugly.**

*As I was saying that to myself in my head as I typed, I was hearing that Possum Lodge Prayer: "I am a man, but I can change, if I have to, I think."

**Ugly seems to be me to all the girls who do not seem ugly to me.***

***That likely makes far less sense than I intended.

Another fine Texas blog

Thanks to my good friend Scott*, The Fat Guy, I found a great Texas blog which I think just moved from blog*spot. Texans are smart people, you know, and not many of 'em are gonna put up with all that blog*spot crap for long! Anyway, the blog is The Brazos de Dios Cantina. I am not real sure what part of Texas the lady is from, but I live purty durn close to the Brazos, so she might be close, or she could be a mite further away*, as the Brazos ain't a real short river, not like the Paluxy.

*Speaking of Scott, I have been too busy to check what he has had to say these last few days, but I really like what he said in this post, especially the italicized part in the obtuse update.

**I git to talkin' 'bout Texas, sum-times my accent shows up

I like it! I like it much better!

Jen's new blog is so much better than the one she had on blog*spot! If you have not done so, be sure to change your linkage on your blogroll.

Who pulled the plug? My hard work has gone down the drain

I had done some pretty extensive posting on the June 8 review of all the entries competing in the Showcase and for some reason about half of it has completely disappeared. I have no idea how I could have saved something to have it disappear like that? Surely if someone had hacked me, I would have seen more damage than that?

So several hours work gets flushed. THAT SUCKS! I searched all the files on my computer, just hoping maybe there was a cached version of the eariler incarnation on this computer some place. What really sucks is that I had actually been copying every new review just before saving it, because I had already lost one review on an earlier save when my connection died during the save. So I was not taking any chances. But the whole thing had been adequately saved on my server with several of the now missing posts completely intact, so where are those reviews? Now I have to do them all over, again. But you can bet I will be copying the entire post before each save from this point on.

Thankfully, all the top rated entries' reviews are still there.

Update on the happenings in the Blogosphere

I noticed a few things as I surfed a bit around the Blogosphere.

I see that TLB has finally moved among the ranks of the Higher Beings, knocking Volokh Conspiracy out. I guess all his hard work in keeping up with the Blogosphere movements and all of this New Blog Showcase stuff finally paid off.

I had seen WylieBlog on so many blogrolls that I thought I would visit and check it out. It seems the last post was made on May 15, 2003. There was no indication of why, so I am hopeful everything is going all right with Wylie.

Jay Solo said he may not be posting much today. It is good to see he has a life away from blogging, although it seems the reason his is going to be away is to go get some computer parts. I am not absolutely sure that he has not latched onto my idea but as he hinted somewhat that he had read my post about the fact that he still has overlooked blogrolling me,* I am making a reasonable inference that he saw what I was doing.

*Despite his acknowledgment of seeing my comment about him not having yet blogrolled me, I see he still has not done so, but did link to my blog and to my Showcase entry. I therefore kindly repaid both of those links.

News Flash!

I just got a news bulletin in my email from CNN that Martha Stewart has been indicted. I heard something on the local news last night that she had already made some statement about what she was going to do if she was indicted. I didn't hear the story so do not know what she stated, and to tell you the truth, I do not really care much about this situation anyway. If she is guilty, I suspect that justice will be done. Now if I was being paid big bucks to defend her, that would be a different story. Do not expect me to be following this story too closely, but I posted this thinking maybe I could be the first blogger to report such.

I am so sleepy right now

What a day it has been so far. Actually, the day started really early. About midnight last night, the electricity went off as I was reading one of the really long posting in the Showcase for this week. It seems the thunderstorm finally hit town that we were watching for all night last night. I had an early appointment to meet a client so that we could go to Ft. Worth this morning to get the judge to set aside a warrant for her after she and I missed her court date on May 29th. I was never notified of such, and although she had gotten her notice, did not inform me of such, and was in the middle final tests. She is 17 and is an Honor Society student in High School. I will not tell you what stupid thing she did that landed her in court.

Anyway, as it was about time for me to go to bed anyway, I reset all the clocks, which did not take long. As I said, it was almost right at midnight, so they were flashing at midnight, and all I had to do was put 10 minutes to get them right. I guess I had finished setting every clock when all of sudden the electricity flashed off one more time. OK, so how many times is this going to happen. Yeah, so now I was worried that I was going to oversleep, so no way was I ever going to do so now. So, for the second time this week, I have gone all night without sleeping.

Anyway, after the 75 minute to Ft. Worth, it took about 15 minutes to explain to the judge why we both missed the court date. He actually was very patient, and very nice once he discovered why I had not gotten the notice. It seems that when I very first got my law license and was still working at my former job as the dock manager at an air freight company at DFW Airport, I had assisted one of my co-workers to change his name back to the name his family used prior to immigrating to the US. Ft. Worth put me into their computer system. When I sent them notice that I was representing my current client, I was already in their system and they did not check the address on my letter against the information in their system and they had been sending notices to an apartment I lived in over 15 years ago. The judge quickly recalled the warrant and said that I should get the notice for the next court date. My client was so relieved. The local sheriff department had already picked up on the warrant and went by her house last night. Thankfully her mother was really close to few of the deputies and was able to explain that she had already been in touch with me, and that we were going up to Ft. Worth this morning to take care of the situation. As it was, they actually followed her this morning to make sure she met with me as she has told them. I suspect that if they found out such was untrue, my client would be in the notClark County Jail. As it is now, she is still free on bond.

I am glad that we were successful, but now I am really sleepy.

No entry for today?

Yes, I am going to make an entry for today. I was so busy all day, I did not have time to read anyone's stuff today, so any of you regular readers who wrote a fantastic post today, as I read almost all of your blogs daily, please leave a link to it in a comment to this post so that I will not miss it.

Anyway, when I did finally get time to post, after close of business hours, although I have a lot of other things I could have done business wise, I decided I had better see how the showcase was going this week and get my entry in. Gosh, someone already had almost as many blogs linking to their entry as I have linking to my whole blog already. I guess I am not even going to be in contention this week.

However, as you can likely see if you read the post up above, already dated for June 8, 2003*, I decided, since, as part of the entry rules for this week's contest, you have to link to 3 other entries in the contest, to critique all the other entries. Can you believe I already spent 5 hours on what is posted in that entry? I am hitting hard, so I suppose some people's feeling will be hurt, and that is not my intention. I just believe telling the truth.

On another note, I noticed I got 5 more links to my blog since I last checked my standing in the Blogosphere Ecosystem, and I moved up fast from being a Gecko to now losing my legs again and being a green, yellow-bellied grass snake. I might bite, but it won't kill ya!

On yet another note, it seems that someone besides InstaPundit is finally on the top of the Blogosphere, but the new leader, showing to have 19,022** links to his site from other blogs in the Ecosystem, James at Parkway Rest Stop says there is "No Way!" and he has emailed NZ about it.

Although I had to go to her site and make a comment to cajole her to do so, maripat thanked me for the kind words*** I said about her in this post and said she blogrolled me. As Jay Solo**** has not done so, I suppose, even though I just gave her a link, I will give maripat one more.*****

Now, the last item on what is going to be the only post for today,****** I am looking for a bit of help from some of you higher technical knowledged bloggers. There are two things I have seen in some blogs that I would like to do with mine. The first thing I would like to know is: How do you get the extended remarks to open up in the same page with the original post? The second: What do I do to put that check box where you can choose to have all the links open up in a new window?

*If she was still alive, my mother would have been turning 68 on June 8, 2003. I do wish she was, because I miss her so much.

**Are there even that many blogs in existence currently?

***She did not point to the specific thing, but I am pretty sure it was because I stated that she owned all of *** Woods' CDs.

****I am unsure why I got slighted on Jay Solo's blogroll, but I think it is important to support the one who returns your favor.

*****It seems that maripat has discovered that like herself, there are a lot of people who were adopted blogging now.

******I am tired, also, so am not going to do my regular job of checking my spelling and grammar on this one tonight. Of course, I am not going to say that such will not happen in the future, because as anal as I am about my spelling mistakes and my grammar, I have been known to correcting entries I made way in the past if I happen to find a mistake, or figure out a better way to compose a sentence, or think of a better word that one I used, or think of something to add to make it more interesting, funny or more correct. And people wonder why I have 3 books almost completed but none published.

A lull has accosted the Blogosphere

Not much happening tonight in the blogosphere, it seems. I suppose everyone must be busy doing something important. I wonder if everyone is watching this? Well, if any of you are bored, keep reading. Feel free to comment. If anything is really interesting, please comment about it on your site and track it back to mine. I have not slept for almost 48 hours, and think it is about time I tried to get a few winks.

I am attempting to break the Guinness World record

for blogging the longest period of time without having such blog ever being mentioned by Glenn Reynolds.*

*Does anyone know what the current record is?

Surely not!

The Associated Press, courtesy of USA Today believes that The Weekly World News* might have been less than thorough about substantiating a story about an alien baby being found in Casper, Wyoming.**

attribution: OK, I admit it, I was bored and went FARKin'

*The reporters of The Weekly World News have announced that they are so very ashamed of ethics displayed by those New York Times reporters who have so lately been in the news, save Jayson Blair, whose writing style and superior journalist expertise shines more brightly in the journalistic galaxy than Glenn Reynolds' InstaPundit youknowwhat shines in the Blogosphere Ecosystem.***

**And the AP might have done a better job of substantiating that such Weekly World News story actually existed by providing a link to such story.

***You likely will not find this announcement in the Weekly World News or in any other publication as I just made the whole thing up for humorous purposes.

Cool, I think I started a trend

It seems that multiple footnoting is catching on.

And the winner is . . .

TLB has announced the winner of the first New Weblog Showcase.*

*It wasn't me. Somehow the one link to my entry in this contest disappeared before the contest ended. I have absolutely no idea why. Maybe whoever had linked me changed their mind, or the post that linked me fell of the front page into their archives. Anyway, I am going to enter this post for this week's contest, and would appreciate all of you linking to it so that I might do a much better showing this week than coming in tied for last place.

I am looking forward to some SPAM

I just can not wait until someone SPAMS me about this product. Maybe I can trade two of my X-10 cameras and a whole bottle of those magic penis enlargement tablets to be the first one my block to have my own set of the future items made from this discovery.*

attribution: Plum Crazy

*I seriously would like to try out some gloves and boots to see if I could climb the walls in my house and just walk across the ceiling a few times. I would really like to fly like Superman, but I suspect that I will be able to climb the walls sooner than being able to fly faster than a bullet across the sky.

Honorable mentions

I often find entries in blogs or on news sites that I find interesting and worth commenting upon, but somehow never get around to doing so. However, I found these items of interest. Maybe you will also:

Balloon Juice: I Don't Get It - May 30, 2003

I Am Always Right: Following Stolen Of The 'Net Somewhere - May 28, 2003

NYT: Fatal Attack After Raid Is Ruled a Homicide - May 28, 2003 attribution: TalkLeft

TalkLeft: Polygraphs Found Worthless in Screening Out Spys - May 27, 2003

AP via FindLaw: Most Drivers Admit They're Road Risks - May 27, 2003

What is all this mess?

Beginning with:

There sure seems to be a lot of whining and moaning these last few days about popularity contests and links and who's purer than someone else because they don't care if anyone links them.

maripat* begins her list of the reasons of why she blogs with:

10. For the fun of it (i.e. The Great Rat Race)

I suppose this post assists her in her efforts. Now I guess I had better go visit Jay Solo, because I know he has me blogrolled.**

*I understand she has every one of *** Woods' CDs in her collection.

**I did visit, and found that, although I am shown to have made 5 references to Jay Solo's site, my site is not on the extensive array of links comprising his blogroll. I am not quite sure how to feel about that!

It takes an ending for a new beginning

Thanks to Ith, I located* this post on The Laughing Wolf.** It is a humorous and well-written piece about his take on death and funerals. I recommend you read it.

It made me reflect upon my own thoughts on the subject. I cannot convince myself that I have not shared some of these thoughts before, but alas, so what! If I have, I am sure they bear repeating.

Both of my parents passed recently. My mother had requested to be cremated and to have her ashes scattered somewhere remote in the Rockies. After she died, my father suggested that we scatter her ashes over her grandparent's graves. They had been the pillar of her life, as well as the nexus between all of my closely connected relatives. My sister, brother and I agreed. When my father died the next year, it was his request to have the same thing done: cremation and his ashes scattered over the same graves. I have stated that should anyone be able to find my body, I want the same disposition.*** Of course, I have also said that they can sell my body for medical research, chop it up and feed it to the lions at the zoo, and that most hopefully, they won't find enough of it to be buried. Some part of me so repulsed at the thought of taking up any portion of the earth as storage for my rotting remains. Whatever ceremony they have is up to the participants. I will not be in attendance.

*Ith's post about this site mentioned Loreena McKennitt****. I did not recognize the name so decided to visit the site to see what was so great about Loreena McKennitt. It was not immediately apparent from reading the posts where that reference came from, so I used the site search engine on the site to locate this post. Now, didn't you really enjoy that?

**This site would have merited a blogrolling on the writing alone, but as I am a naturalist, with a special interest in wolves, the name of this blog rates a special compensation. I suppose this footnote is it.

***As I have previously mentioned, I am widowed***** and childless. Should that status change in the future, many thoughts about certain matters could be altered.

****I still do not know who Loreena McKennitt is, other than she is a musical entertainer. I am not an audiophile, so if it isn't ZZ Top, the Beatles, or Tanya Tucker, there is very little associated with music that interests me. I like what I like, but I do not know who sings it, what the song is called, what supposed genre it comes from, or whether it is new or is from 1940.

*****I was offered a crypt space to share with my departed wife outside the steps of her parent's church in Carlsbad, NM. As I was not yet 40 at the time, I assumed I would have another opportunity at life. I declined the opportunity. As such, her remains were placed in second half of a crypt containing the ashes of her good friend who had died in a car wreck. They were both called Betsy, and they had both died as young women. The friend died at 29; My wife had just turned 33.

Oh no, say it ain't so, Joe! *

It seems that SCO Group, formerly Caldera International, is suing IBM and threatening to sue many others for infringement upon its Unix patent. It seems that the Linux software that IBM is loading on servers contains code which SCO claims was lifted straight from Unix. SCO claims similar suits may be taken against many entities, including Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle. Linux software development could be severely hampered. I wonder if we can get The Smoking Gun to initiate an investigation to locate Bill Gates stock holdings in SCO?

attribution: I Am Always Right

*I reserve the right to reuse this title in the future. Although this was an alarming revelation, I fear some other offering in the future may better fit the disappointment associated with the phrase.

The US and the war against marijuana use

TalkLeft pointed to and excellently excerpted portions of this story by Eric Schlosser of the New York Times* which detailed the worldwide movement toward the decriminalization of marijuana use and the history of the US laws and political agenda during the terms of the last few Presidents to continue the ban on the substance.

The portion that was actually most interesting was the part that stated that at one time, one state made it mandatory for every household to grow marijuana.

Oddly enough, the first American law about marijuana, passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1619, required every household to grow it. Hemp was considered a valuable commodity.**

It never ceases to amaze me that with all of the things that the government should be concerned with, that they continue to put so much effort into keeping people from using something that God put on the planet. It is not like anyone has to do anything other than to pick a few leaves off of a plant, dry it out a bit, roll it up in a piece of paper or put it in a pipe or bong, to make use of the substance. One thing that the story did not point out was that our own Declaration of Independence was originally written on paper made out of such plant.

And there are some who wonder if our politicians are all idiots. With regard to this single issue they all seem to be.

*Despite the fact that many of the reporters working for The NY Times have been under the microscope for their shoddy reporting, using underlings to write their pieces or chopping out parts of quoting excerpts to align with their point of view, I have heard no indication that Eric Schlosser has been mentioned for not being less than stellar in his journalist efforts.

**I felt that it was necessary to add the part about hemp being a value commodity to provide an accurate context for the preceding sentence, so that I could not be accused of Dowdism Dowdarism*** Dowdlerism.****

***As I might be originating a new term, I decided to make is something with a bit better ring to it.

****I failed in reference to the previous note, as McGehee of blogoSFERICS came up with a much better term. [see comments]

There is an easy answer to the future continuation of this problem

I heard one of those charitable institution commercials yesterday that began by stating:

One of every six children in the US lives in poverty.*

I have no doubt at the truth of such statement. It is alarming and sad that we have so many underprivileged children living within our borders. But I have the distinct feeling that it is very rare that any of those impoverished children are the only child in their family. This immediately points to the real cause of this problem. People who cannot afford to support their children should not continue to have more children.

*OK, OK, I admit that this may not be exactly what was stated. It is what I remember being stated.

Blogosphere evolution

No, I didn't create this post to tell how I finally moved far enough up the evolutionary ladder to finally have legs. I am glad to be a Gecko (as I decline to be a Newt).

Actually, I want to rave about the new star of the blogging world. Having joined the blogging world just one week ago, norbizness has already drawn an honorable mention from TLB.* I read every post on this new blog, and found the writing to be fresh and funny. Also, norbizness is an Austin resident, so the addition of another great Texas blogger can do nothing but improve the Blogosphere. I am gladly blogrolling him for these reasons, but would like have done so for no other reason than having seen written:

Glenn Reynolds a fucktard.**

Regrettably, tied to Blogger and Blog*Spot, who knows if any of the permalinks will ever be working.

As long as I am writing about great Texas bloggers, my own homey The Fat Guy has recognized my existence and even invited me to the "notClark Co. Blogger Bash" next weekend, requesting that I bring along some fried chickens. It does sound like a plan, but Scott, isn't the Texas Music Nation Celebration 2003 scheduled for next weekend?

One last item: Steven at PoliBlog graciously acknowledged my having blogrolled his site. I am hopeful that he will take some time in the future to read some of my commentary and repay the favor. If his postulate about being mentioned by a major (or at least mid-level) blogger increasing your readership has any basis in truth, the above reference to my being mentioned (although not by name) by The Fat Guy ought to give me a boost up the evolutionary ladder.

*Despite my regular readership and commentary on TLB, I do not recall NZBear having ever mentioned my existence (other than allowing me to play in his Blogoshpere Ecosystem or posting my entry to the The New Weblog Showcase), and surely not in the "Bite-Sized Truth" column.

**I keep having this perverse idea about attempting to get all the bloggers to delink InstaPundit for one 24 hour period. It is not that I really have anything against Glenn Reynolds, but it is sometimes fun to scheme about ways to topple the high and mighty.