Any Old Post Will Do
12/02/08 20:45
I haven’t been blogging lately because I’ve been
slogging instead. Through a massive tome on the
website building software Dreamweaver. Funny thing
is, I don’t even know why I’m bothering to learn a
new software. I’m basically happy with the simple
look of my site as it is now, so I’ll probably wind
up spending weeks completely rebuilding my site —
this time from scratch instead of using a RapidWeaver
template I modified — and it won’t look any
different than it does now. An accomplishment that
only my twisted mind can appreciate.
So I took a break from that today and journeyed deep into the intertoobz. Wound up on the wrong side of the tracks where I discovered the very patriotic site Tits for Troops, where we are all invited to post a picture of our boobs/moobs to help boost the morale of our men and women fighting overseas. I plan to do my part. After the missus falls asleep tonight. hee-hee
I’m still trying to come up with a nickname for our president-elect, to use when he fucks up and I want to blog about him. The problem is the right-wing has already called him every name in the book. I’m thinking of just referring to him as “Michelle’s husband” from now on. It’s fitting, since I’m not real sure how he’ll do as president, but there’s no doubt she’s going to be a classy first lady.
Michelle’s husband met with most of the nation’s governors today to talk about a stimulus package aimed at state governments. Of all the trillions of dollars in deficit spending for the various bailouts our government is either carrying out or contemplating, this is the only part I agree with. Virtually every state is badly in need of revenue and job creation, and done correctly, this will accomplish both.
I’ve already heard many good ideas for how to spend the money on our country’s crumbling infrastructure. We need to build and/or repair many of our roads, bridges and schools. We need to completely overhaul the ancient water and sewer systems of most of our oldest cities. We need to modernize our electrical grid to accommodate alternative, renewable power generation sources and greatly increase it’s size in preparation for the coming wave of plug-in hybrid and electric cars. We need to rebuild our decimated railway system, adding more mass transit capabilities in and around our cities and high-speed rail between them. And heck, while we’re at it, let’s make that universal health care thing happen too, like the rest of the civilized world.
As I was writing that list, it occurred to me that we could have (and should have) been doing these things all along, but we’ve been stuck now for going on 30 years in a political atmosphere brought about by a modern conservative ideology based on personal selfishness and American imperialism. Our government has wasted trillions and trillions of dollars on useless military spending attempting to rule the world, while continually hacking away at the revenue base needed to maintain that spending level by cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, convincing the citizenry that paying taxes is somehow un-American. Meanwhile, our country is falling on it’s ass. This is what Reaganomics hath wrought.
So I took a break from that today and journeyed deep into the intertoobz. Wound up on the wrong side of the tracks where I discovered the very patriotic site Tits for Troops, where we are all invited to post a picture of our boobs/moobs to help boost the morale of our men and women fighting overseas. I plan to do my part. After the missus falls asleep tonight. hee-hee
I’m still trying to come up with a nickname for our president-elect, to use when he fucks up and I want to blog about him. The problem is the right-wing has already called him every name in the book. I’m thinking of just referring to him as “Michelle’s husband” from now on. It’s fitting, since I’m not real sure how he’ll do as president, but there’s no doubt she’s going to be a classy first lady.
Michelle’s husband met with most of the nation’s governors today to talk about a stimulus package aimed at state governments. Of all the trillions of dollars in deficit spending for the various bailouts our government is either carrying out or contemplating, this is the only part I agree with. Virtually every state is badly in need of revenue and job creation, and done correctly, this will accomplish both.
I’ve already heard many good ideas for how to spend the money on our country’s crumbling infrastructure. We need to build and/or repair many of our roads, bridges and schools. We need to completely overhaul the ancient water and sewer systems of most of our oldest cities. We need to modernize our electrical grid to accommodate alternative, renewable power generation sources and greatly increase it’s size in preparation for the coming wave of plug-in hybrid and electric cars. We need to rebuild our decimated railway system, adding more mass transit capabilities in and around our cities and high-speed rail between them. And heck, while we’re at it, let’s make that universal health care thing happen too, like the rest of the civilized world.
As I was writing that list, it occurred to me that we could have (and should have) been doing these things all along, but we’ve been stuck now for going on 30 years in a political atmosphere brought about by a modern conservative ideology based on personal selfishness and American imperialism. Our government has wasted trillions and trillions of dollars on useless military spending attempting to rule the world, while continually hacking away at the revenue base needed to maintain that spending level by cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, convincing the citizenry that paying taxes is somehow un-American. Meanwhile, our country is falling on it’s ass. This is what Reaganomics hath wrought.
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Self-Analysis
12/15/08 21:07
In the comments to my last post, Megan pointed out
that I need to post more frequently. Don’t I know it,
but it just seems that lately every post I write is
pure rubbish, unworthy of the check mark in the
little box that would make it upload to the mother
ship and magically appear on the intertoobz. I’m
accumulating quite a collection of these false starts
and near misses now, representing thoughts and ideas
ranging from merely unfinished, through slightly
unhinged, right on into barley-pop-induced wackiness.
When I look back over some of them, even I don’t know what was going on between my ears, but that shouldn’t matter. Back when I first started this blog, I wouldn’t have thought twice about publishing all of those posts. The difference is that back then I didn’t know if anybody was reading my nonsense, and I didn’t care. In my mind, I was alone out here, surfing the toobz, just another guy who reads a lot and thinks a little. I would often refer to my scribbles as compositional masturbation.
But over time, and despite the fact that I publish this site anonymously, the knowledge that there are people out there who do read my stuff, and take it seriously, began to affect the way I wrote. I didn’t even notice it happening, but something I started out doing for fun became a chore. Long story short, this monkey has been spending too much time polishing turds instead of just flinging them out of the cage while they’re still warm. So, I’m going to attempt to go back to doing it like I did before. I’m off in search of my mojo. We’ll see what happens.
When I look back over some of them, even I don’t know what was going on between my ears, but that shouldn’t matter. Back when I first started this blog, I wouldn’t have thought twice about publishing all of those posts. The difference is that back then I didn’t know if anybody was reading my nonsense, and I didn’t care. In my mind, I was alone out here, surfing the toobz, just another guy who reads a lot and thinks a little. I would often refer to my scribbles as compositional masturbation.
But over time, and despite the fact that I publish this site anonymously, the knowledge that there are people out there who do read my stuff, and take it seriously, began to affect the way I wrote. I didn’t even notice it happening, but something I started out doing for fun became a chore. Long story short, this monkey has been spending too much time polishing turds instead of just flinging them out of the cage while they’re still warm. So, I’m going to attempt to go back to doing it like I did before. I’m off in search of my mojo. We’ll see what happens.
Black Box 2007 Monterey County Chardonnay
12/17/08 20:54
Yep. The equivalent of 4 bottles rigged as a
bag-in-a-box-with-a-tapper. Classy. And after a
couple of glasses to get past the pucker factor, it
tastes pretty good, too. It’ll have to do, since I’m
off the beer for a while on account of lately, when I
bend over, my belt buckle has been aggressively
reminding me that my stomach has developed an
underside. Sigh.
So I’ve been entertaining myself in the usual way, getting buzzed up and careening around the intertoobz. I’ve been checking out a lot of new blogs lately. I thought I’d mention a couple tonight. First, there’s abu muqawama, a group blog “dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies as well as counterinsurgency tactics and strategy.” It seems to be a pretty knowledgeable group — both the posters and the commenters — of youngish veterans and active duty military. It’s good stuff, mostly over my head, so I’ve just been lurking. I don’t know enough to even ask a question.
Different story over at Gateway Pundit, a right-winger who apparently resides here in River City. His slogan is “Where Hope Finally Made A Comeback.” That’s deep, innit? He mostly specializes in posting links to other nimrod bloggers (and strangely enough, himself) which purportedly prove the latest right-wing noise-machine talking points to be iron-clad truth. It’s easy pickings in the comments section; the stoopid runs strong and deep. I’ve been making a nuisance of myself over there tonight arguing global warming in the comments to this post. My father used to warn me about arguing with fools, but I just can’t help myself sometimes.
So I’ve been entertaining myself in the usual way, getting buzzed up and careening around the intertoobz. I’ve been checking out a lot of new blogs lately. I thought I’d mention a couple tonight. First, there’s abu muqawama, a group blog “dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies as well as counterinsurgency tactics and strategy.” It seems to be a pretty knowledgeable group — both the posters and the commenters — of youngish veterans and active duty military. It’s good stuff, mostly over my head, so I’ve just been lurking. I don’t know enough to even ask a question.
Different story over at Gateway Pundit, a right-winger who apparently resides here in River City. His slogan is “Where Hope Finally Made A Comeback.” That’s deep, innit? He mostly specializes in posting links to other nimrod bloggers (and strangely enough, himself) which purportedly prove the latest right-wing noise-machine talking points to be iron-clad truth. It’s easy pickings in the comments section; the stoopid runs strong and deep. I’ve been making a nuisance of myself over there tonight arguing global warming in the comments to this post. My father used to warn me about arguing with fools, but I just can’t help myself sometimes.
Bit Of A Ramble
12/30/08 21:09
I have long thought that a good measure of a man is
his willingness to admit his own ignorance. Since I
come from a particular strain of Southern American
male for which that is an exceedingly difficult task
(we share genes with the Missouri mule), one of my
rules of personal growth is to avoid forming opinions
based on scant knowledge. Failure to follow this rule
inevitably results in my inner mule turning the most
weakly supported ideas into the most
strongly held. Embarrassed pride ensues.
I found myself at just such a disadvantage recently on a cold, winter evening spent drinking a bottle of wine in a transmission shop. (How did I come to be partying at a transmission shop, you ask? Hey, I get around. I know people.) Anyway, a lively conversation with someone far more knowledgeable than myself in the financial realm devolved into a debate about the causes of the auto industry crisis. She blamed the United Auto Workers and held that the only solution was bankruptcy and breaking the union. I blamed corporate mismanagement/malfeasance for having not funded all along the pension obligations now breaking the backs of the American auto industry.
I support unions because I believe they are largely responsible for the existence of middle class America. Despite the numerous examples of corruption, greed and wretched excess found in many unions, and despite the fact that only about 8% of wage earners in the US are now unionized, I am certain this country is better off for having had them. And though my inner mule held it’s own in the conversation, I was acutely aware that I had very little factual data from which to draw in pursuing my line of reasoning. I was, as my father would have said, talking out my ass.
So it was off to the library, where literally the first book I saw on the New Books display was While America Aged by Roger Lowenstein. Talk about timely. The book is subtitled How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis. It’s good stuff. I’m only a third of the way through, but I’m going to go ahead and recommend it. I have finished reading the section on General Motors and was happy to see that my Cabernet-inspired argument in the tranny shop was really quite sound. As was my opponent’s. It turns out there have been plenty of bad decisions made on both sides of the auto industry bargaining table, going back more than fifty years. It is truly a sad history to look back upon. I’m now convinced that bankruptcy is the only viable option for GM, but breaking the union? Still not so much.
I found myself at just such a disadvantage recently on a cold, winter evening spent drinking a bottle of wine in a transmission shop. (How did I come to be partying at a transmission shop, you ask? Hey, I get around. I know people.) Anyway, a lively conversation with someone far more knowledgeable than myself in the financial realm devolved into a debate about the causes of the auto industry crisis. She blamed the United Auto Workers and held that the only solution was bankruptcy and breaking the union. I blamed corporate mismanagement/malfeasance for having not funded all along the pension obligations now breaking the backs of the American auto industry.
I support unions because I believe they are largely responsible for the existence of middle class America. Despite the numerous examples of corruption, greed and wretched excess found in many unions, and despite the fact that only about 8% of wage earners in the US are now unionized, I am certain this country is better off for having had them. And though my inner mule held it’s own in the conversation, I was acutely aware that I had very little factual data from which to draw in pursuing my line of reasoning. I was, as my father would have said, talking out my ass.
So it was off to the library, where literally the first book I saw on the New Books display was While America Aged by Roger Lowenstein. Talk about timely. The book is subtitled How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis. It’s good stuff. I’m only a third of the way through, but I’m going to go ahead and recommend it. I have finished reading the section on General Motors and was happy to see that my Cabernet-inspired argument in the tranny shop was really quite sound. As was my opponent’s. It turns out there have been plenty of bad decisions made on both sides of the auto industry bargaining table, going back more than fifty years. It is truly a sad history to look back upon. I’m now convinced that bankruptcy is the only viable option for GM, but breaking the union? Still not so much.