The Neighbor's Porch

Reading blogs is a varied experience. We have our Mommybloggers over here, over there are the political bloggers, off in the other direction are the cat and dog bloggers, photobloggers, etc. A stroll around the blogosphere is like walking around a large neighborhood and sitting on porches, talking with people.

It's a wonderful experience, mostly. There is the problem, especially in political blogging, of people who flat don't know how to act. I am not sure what, exactly, causes people to jump onto a blog and start telling everyone how much smarter they are than everyone else. Now I readily confess, I'm not the smarted guy who ever lived. I am smart enough to recognise accomplishments. I've even managed a few accomplishments of my own, small though they are.

So it bothers me when someone, with no readily available record of accomplishment jumps on a website and tells me that Sarah Palin, for instance, is stupid. Ecuse me, stupid? I've met mayors, I've met governors, I've even met three Presidents. In my travels I've met several business leaders, too.

I have also met many small time journalists and a few big time ones. Here is a clue. Journalists aren't near as smart as they say they are. Television "journalists" are even worse. Television journalists are chosen for looks and the ability to read a script convincingly. They are not required to understand the script. Just to read it.

And yet people whose main source of news is Keith Olbermann go thundering through the blogosphere touting these television bozos. Well, yes, Barbera Walters used to be very pretty, and she still looks all right. And yes, she has that charming lisp and the ability to look interested. Thing is, what has she done? Without producers and make up artists and directors and writers, what has she done? And Walters is one of the better ones.

People jump on the internet regularly to call people who have reached some pretty high pinnacles stupid.

It is also mystifying how people assign fraudulent positions to other people or programs. How many times did we hear that "George Bush is an ultraright winger!" from lefties? So that's why he let Teddy Kennedy write his education bill.

I don't spend much time over at Ann Althouse' place but every time I go there I end up amazed. Ann Althouse voted for Obama. Yet people keep coming there and calling her conservative. What, she missed wearing her "Che" T-shirt on a special day? I almost never agree with Ms. Althouse, politically. but I don't call her things she is not. Ms. Althouse is fairly reliably center-left. Maybe even shading a tad left of that. If I can remember to avoid getting bogged down in her comments, I enjoy visiting. Her porch is always too crowded to get a glass of lemonade, though.

It's not, unfortunately, just lefties guilty of this. Many of us on the right jumped on Governor Dean when he was running for President. No I disagree with Dean on just about everything. If he told me how he ties his shoes I'd stay up nights trying to find a different way. The one thing is never was, though, is stupid. There simply aren't very many stupid people with MD degrees. And then to manage to change directions and learn a totally new profession, politics. And modern politics is difficult.

Oh well, enough. I just wish folks would stop crapping on their neighbor's porches. Another way people crap on other's porches is through inappropriate language. Here is the deal, at least for me. If the site owner cusses a lot, it's okay cussing there in comments. If the site owner avoids heavy cussing, it's probably not a great idea to talk like a Marine right out of boot camp trying to prove he's salty.

Anyhow, here are some pictures, The top one is Princess and Eddie, our Pug that got dognapped, and Princess. We love Bingo and Princess, and grumpy old Ming but we still miss Eddie.

Next up is Princess from before the new back door. The next one down is Bingo. He is just an all around fine figure of a Pug.

The bottom picture is my last culinary masterpiece, my Cottage, or Shepherd Pie. Hey, it could be worse, I could have grandbaby pictures.

Cynthia Yockey And Other New Cyberfriends

I do a lot of semi-aimless clicking through the Intertoobz and I am always finding new (to me) websites.Some I like well enough to keep clicking back to, others I forget while I'm reading them. Some I like so much I wonder why no one has ever told me about them. Then I bemember that I hardly ever tell folks about websites I've found.

One of the new (to me) sites is Cynthia Yockey's. Cynthia is a self-described newly conservative lesbian, turned away from liberalism by the way the Obamabots ran roughshod over Hillary and her supporters.

Actually, from reading her posts I suspect she has been one of many who lived in conservative ways but voted left. For some reason Ms. Yockey thinks it important to have her sexual orientation right up there in the first couple things we know about her, as if she forgets that most of us have trouble enough with our own sex lives without worrying about hers. No one has ever asked my permission to be gay or lesbian so my permission does not seem to be needed. Now I am a conservative. As far as someone's sex life I have a couple of simple requests. Please do not scare the horses. That is rule number one. This is not unlike rule number two: Please do not make our children ask questions for which they are too young to understand the answers.

Most everyone, including a large percentage of liberals were discomfited by OwlGore and his shoving his tongue down below Tipper's tonsils at the '00 Dem Convention, after all. I, for one, miss the way things were when I was a boy. We had a lot of "old bachelors" sharing houses. We had spinsters sharing houses and apartments to "save money". No one went around peeping through keyholes after bedtime.

But anyhow I don't go to Cynthia's website because of her orientation. I have not dug around in her archives enough to know her education level, I do know she is well educated, either from going to school before educators became products of the modern system or through the University of the Public Library, my old school. Whichever, she's pretty sharp. She doesn't post nearly enough but I find myself going to her site a few times a day, anyway. Mainly because of her blogroll. Actually, she has a regular blogroll but, even better, she has this whole passel of blogs with the latest four blog entries of each listed. So I can run down this long list of blogs and see which ones have something new in seconds. That's so cool, I don't know how she does it not understanding very much about these machines that connect us to the Internet, I'm just glad she does it.

I could disagree with everything she writes, I'd still visit for that. Of course I don't disagree. Oh, and before I move on to the next couple of new, to me, websites, someday soon I want to explore the reasons so many people live conservative lives but vote left.

Another new to me website is The Other McCain. This is the site of Robert Stacy McCain. Everyone who has ever been online has probably been going there for years and just haven't told me because I'm not cool like that. Anyhow, Stacy is a Washington, DC area reporter who knows just about everybody who knows anything. He also has a great blogroll and has a co-blogger named Smitty who is just about as sharp.

Between Stacy and Cynthia I've been introduced to still another blogger, Suzanne Logan. Her blog is worth reading, if only for the title, Insert Clever S. Logan Here. Suzanne is a professional writer and it shows on her blog.

The last new, to me, blog I'm going to mention is An Autographed letter Signed (by Afrocity). Afrocity is a (surprise!) Black writer from the Chicago area. I am not quite sure why I think she is fairly young, maybe it's just that everyone seems fairly young from here. She was raised in a single parent home, fed by food stamps and eneded up conservative. You'd have to ask her if, after struggling to avoid the pitfalls and actually getting through high school, and beyond, if condescending liberals turned her conservative.

Anyhow, the next time I'm willing to struggle with my blogroll, those are all going up. If you have known about these blogs forever, why haven't you told me. If you haven't, google them and check them out. They're all worth a few minutes, or longer, a day.

Update: I mentioned that I don't fully understand Ms. Yockey (and many other people) desire to put their sexual orientation right out in front, after all, we'd eventually figure it out. If anyone finds it necessary to explain it, please do not use much psychological jargon. And please remember also that I do not need to fully understand everything. I do not fully understand gravity (grabity in lolspeak). I understand it enough to know that I bust my hiney every time I try to walk on the ceiling. That's enough for me, I was not in a line of work where I needed to know more than that.

Awful News

I may not be the last person to know because there are those who live in caves but I'm pretty late. I have an E-pal in the Pittsburgh area, Oddybobo who lost her sister in a motorcycle accident. I am so late noticing this because of my slow internet connection, she puts so many pictures on her blog that I don't get there very often, only on weekends when there isn't much news.

On the 21st day of May Joyce and her friend were killed instantly, leaving her small son. After a several year fight with cancer it had returned. That's the only thing that makes the death of a thirty year old mother even slightly bearable, she was spared some weeks or months of agony. What makes it harder, though, is she hadn't time to say goodbye.

Oddy writes of her having to stuff her grief while taking care of those who needed it. I hope by now she has managed to let it out. I also hope that the praters of this unrepentant sinner for Joyce and for her son, and Oddy and family will help a tiny bit.

Although Oddy stuffed her grief the mountain cedar must be bad today for my eyes are watery.

Naturally, I Forgot The Camera.

So I got up this morning and called Tammi on the Cell phone, she was almost to Texas, just passing through Shreveport, LA. I told her to call here when she blew through the Tyler area and I'd meet her at the side of the road and we'd have lunch.

Then I dressed in something easy to spot, one of my bright red "bib" shirts and my big Mexican style cowboy hats. Then when she called I got in the car and drove down to the highway 34 exit, with a fast stop at a pawn shop to buy an adjustable wrench. I had loaded Bingo in the car and off we went.

I hadn't been at the exit even five minutes when up drove Tammi. We scurried over to the big Outlet Mall just south of the freeway and Tammi parked right by the small Police substation and we drove to a little down home cafe there in Terrell, Pop's Fried Chicken and cafeteria. By the time we got there Bingo and Tammi were best friends forever.

We ate and talked. Yes, Tammi did let me get a few words in. All too soon it was time for her to continue on. We got back in the car and Bingo assumed his spot on her lap and we drove back to the outlet mall. When last seen Tammi was advancing on the Old Navy outlet store with a brilliant blue light flaming in her eyes and warehouse work clothes on her mind. I rolled my window down and hollered YEE-HAW, knowing nobody in that store had a chance.

The I drove home, Bingo missed Tammi.

Update: I parked the car right next to a raised concrete slab so I could hug Tammi without getting an eye full of something that ought not be in a married man's face. I forget to tell her that old Groucho Marx line: "Take me to your ladder, lady. I'll see your leader later."

Harvey's Blogiverseray Present!

Blogfather Harvey, the Bad Example of the Blogosphere, had his fifth blogiversary yesterday and I had no present for him. You see, my grandchildren will someday see these archives, sort of a living history of these times so I can't put up his preferred boobage gift. This time though he also asked for something disturbing.

So, what would disturb Harvey? A picture of Ted Kennedy in a swimsuit? Um, he said disturbing, not horrifying. A comlete set of John McCain speeches? No, he said disturbing, not soporific. Think, Peter, think! What would disturb Harv? Then it came to us! What would disturb Harv more than anything?

Harvey's Blogiversary present is here! Arriving at 11:55 AM, CDT June 22, 2008, Karson Andrew XXXX, nine pounds even and twenty inches long, to our daughter Stephanie and son in law, Dean. Their third son, our tenth grandchild and ninth grandson. Mother and son both healthy and well.

I shall post pics when Linda Lou brings the camera home. She is up there, I am dogsitting and watching racing. It is too hot to leave Pugs in the yard all day so I am excused from hanging around the hospital. Well that plus it's hard to shave left handed and I look like a close up of a fat man's butt.

So, Happy Blogiversary, Harv. Oh, the diaper is ready to change so get started.

I hope this is disturbing enough. Forgive me for not doing links and everything, this isn't easy hunting and pecking with only the left hand.

New Blog!

My big sister finally started a blog of her own. The blog is called Nothing Much. So far all she has is the traditional sucky first post. Somebody needs to get over there and explain to her that SHE got the brains in the family, I only got the cute little butt.
As usual, I can't seem to make the link work, the addy is Califnotes.blogspot.com.

Candles and Bullet Lube

I was going through a few websites looking at the recipes and supplies for my next year's supply of bullet lube for my black powder cartridges and it occurred to me that all I would have to add would be wicks and scent and I could be making candles, too. Lord knows we throw away enough jars that I would never have to buy those.

The question is could I make a few candles for small presents and home use without becoming an aged, patchouli-stinking hippie?

To make bullet lube I add a few ingredients to beeswax, this year I will also experiment with soy wax. To find these things I look at candle supply companies. It seems that the very best candles are made from beeswax and soy wax. Now Linda Lou loves Lilacs and they do not grow down here. Every year she wants me to take her up to Topeka during Lilac season, we hardly ever make it although we may make it more often now that we are retired. So, why not buy some Lilac scented oil and some wicks when I make my next bullet lube material purchase? Then I can think of other scents if this works. Hmm. Do they make a black powder smoke scent? That would be the perfect gift for Contagion.

New Blog!

Well, my pal Army Wife, Toddler Mom has a new kid, a blog-daughter. It's a good thing AWTM lives in Arkansas because this virtual daughter is already in her twenties.
Anyhow you can find KD over at her blog, The Life Of The Wife.

While we wait for his return we might all take turns worrying and praying so that KD can maybe take a two minute break every once in a while.