We called it A4.

The Marines called it "the Graveyard." The Vietnamese called it "the Hill of Angels" - Con Thien. I spent months in and around this area. Maybe it was my "edge." Maybe not. But I've never forgotten my time there.

First Raven

at Raven's Rage recommends his friend Duncan's website...so I diddly-bop over there and see a podcast title. I'm thinking what the hell is a "podcast"? And I-ain't-got-no-Pod. But maybe I better find out stuff about this new internet gizmo.

So while reading Duncan's entry I'm asking, Where the hell is the podcast? He says podcast is truly here so a podcast must be around somewhere (I hope). I mouseover the entire blog post and find nary a sound bite. Then at last. Very clever, indeed! Embedded in the title. Nice touch.

Another nice touch was the transmission itself. A lot of behind the scenes work went into this. Great sound effects. Smooth commentary. Pleasant bumper music. In short...a winner. Give it a listen.

Apparently Presidential cowboys

aren't popular with the ladies...or...you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time...but very few of the women any of the time. If bombing children and looting the planet isn't sexy then what the hell is?

I miss my war.

I miss the dirt. I miss the guns and smells and fears. I miss the chaos. I miss living life on an edge so razor sharp I've never found it since. And I miss us guys...all of us young, cocky, so damned proud, so damned diabolically good at what we did. I miss living.

Shades apart.

The Gun-TotingLiberal has an interesting take on the creationism debate. I especially like this line:

"If you don’t think the All-Mighty, All-Powerful, God has the ability to take an amoeba and over time, give that amoeba fins, gills, then arms, legs, hands, fingers, an intelligent mind, reasoning power, etc., etc., then you SURELY do NOT believe in the same “God” I do."

I get his basic point as both the evolutionists AND the creationists need to get a grip and realize they are wearing different shades while viewing the same powerful concept. Meanwhile God sits where He is and does what He does, asking us to transcend this petty duality and rivalry.

Here comes one of those strange days:

Normal choices bathed in a gray northwest dullness. Usual culprits... watch news or listen/watch music videos? Blog or surf? Drink beer or drink sake? Stereo on...and off...and on again...too many cd's. Pink Floyd wrong for this moment, Zappa too "out there." Nothing feels right.

...choose to not choose or choose to choose all...

Pool league tonight.

Thank God! Need to let this political crap go for awhile.

League update: They lost. Or, to reverse spin it, we won. Another week and the season is done. Back to serious drinking.

Our founding fathers

never dreamed the most powerful military in the world - ours - would be controlled by civilian power-crazed psychos...probably figured, in their naivete, the civilians would be a moderating influence on the tanks and bunker busters. Well, welcome to the twenty-first century.

I wonder

if Bush and his cronies have considered the possibility that, if they bomb Iran, ninety percent of the Iranian and Syrian populations might cross the Iraqi borders and swarm our troops like locusts?

As I try to sleep tonight I'll comfort myself with the hope these power-mad neo-cons would never touch off a fire storm like that.

If what Scott Ritter says is true...

namely that Bush has already approved plans to prepare our military for an attack on Iran by June and IF John Bolton is confirmed as U.N. ambassador and IF Negroponte is confirmed as National Intelligence Chief...then brace yourselves for a wild summer. The stage is set.

Anti-Iran propaganda will escalate and startling new intelligence, via Negroponte, will be revealed scaring the crap out of most Americans. The U.S. government, via Bolton, will demand harsh U.N. sanctions...or else.

In the short term (and "by this summer" qualifies as short term with insufficient time to draft and train needed ground troops) a devastating "shock awe redux", timed appropriately for Fox news, seems the most likely scenario.

The part I don't get: We can bomb the hell out of the Iranian infrastructure, but how are we going to grab and hold Iranian natural resources WITHOUT ground troops?

To hell with spring. Where's lunch?

I'll never listen to Kenny Chesney again!

Just kidding, of course, but GW Bush has Kenny on his iPod. A bit unsettling that the Prez and I would both like country. Maybe I should switch to classical or he should switch to rap...to keep the political and musical genres properly separate.

How to save time with Firefox:

Use live bookmarks. This feature will show you a list of current entries on a RSS enabled website, saving you the trouble of visiting a site which hasn't been updated since the last time you visited.

A note for Blogexplosion users: The "live bookmark" icon will not appear unless you open a site in its own window.

What would happen if Blogexplosion...

adjusted it's timer to allow two credits only every two minutes? Would that set the Blogexplosion world on its ear or what? What the hell would the clickers do for two friggin entire minutes...perhaps read?

An alternative thought: extra credit for more time spent on a blog (unless the time is idle time)...even more credit for additional pages visited.

...listening to "The Division Bell."

Pondering blogs,

blogging and blogexplosion this morning, I've evolved a fledgling strategy for managing and producing blogs:

1) Keep most posts short...one, maybe two, paragraphs. Readers zip in and zip out. If the latest (as in topmost) post stands out, they'll read a bit...but they will NOT read and read and read...paragraph after paragraph.

2) Accept the 30 second timer. Expect most visitors to keep half a mind on it. See the timer as a challenge. Work with it. Work within it. What can I get across in thirty seconds?

3) Dedicate blogexplosion time to "comments." Half my regular visitors resulted from comments left by me on THEIR sites (with my return URL included). The other half resulted from word of mouth or my email signature.

Oops. Already broke rule one.

Big Bob swearing allegiance to something
(hopefully legal).

Ain't that the pits...

I spent the first twenty years of my life wishing I was twenty-one and I'll spend the next thirty wishing I was twenty again. Not sure which was more fun.

Never take a drunk to a maternity ward

because I might ask questions like: Why put a maternity ward on the top floor...the fourteenth floor? I mean...when you're due, you're DUE and fourteen floors is a long way up when you're due.

Or why do they close the coffee shop on Sunday? People need coffee on Sunday ...especially if they're looking at babies way up on the fourteenth floor. And really especially if they can't have a beer while looking at these babies. A quadruple latte is the least they could do.

Well, I admit my kittie was a bit lame...

but I was busy today. I had to spring a friend from the hospital. She had one of those semi "female" operations. And don't ya know I spent the entire day trying to spring her. Meanwhile I put these cat pics up. Just as place holders. Hell...I thought the little devil (i.e. the cat) was kinda cute. Best I could do.

Anyhow our young lady survived the surgery...and is recuperating just fine...a Percoset every several hours...though I will never ride with someone who doesn't know the way to the hospital ever again. Christ! We almost wound up in England.

Easy does it. So far so good.
Beetlejuice ain't got nuthin' on THIS sucka.


One move and I'm outta here.