Add my name to the list of folks who wish they thought of it first.

Well, listen, anyways, I can’t seem to get some information I need to wrap this up. These things seem to either be ‘locked’ or ‘not available’. I’m sure it’s just some oversight or glitch or something, so if you could you tell me where these things are… … …have them written down here somewhere… oh wait. Sorry about the smears. It was raining out. I’ll just read it to you.

I do have to say I was somewhat surprised not to see the trademark “Oh, and eh…one more little thing.” Well, without that, it’s still all good.

Duffy gets the hat tip.

Denver News, via LGF, via Ace:

Police confirmed Wednesday that they found about a pound of sodium cyanide in a Denver hotel room where the body of a Canadian man was discovered earlier this week.

Police spokesman John White identified the white powder as sodium cyanide, the crystal form of cyanide. Fire officials say they found a bottle containing about a pound of the white powder, or between a pint and a quart by volume.

An expert told the Denver Post that the amount of cyanide is enough to kill hundreds of people.

The medical examiner’s office said it is awaiting test results to determine whether cyanide killed 29-year-old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, of Ottawa, Canada.
:
The upscale Burnsley Hotel is about two miles away from the Pepsi Center, where the DNC will be held from Aug. 25-Aug. 27. However, it is not on the list of hotels where delegates are staying.

The last day of the DNC will be held at Invesco Field at Mile High, which is three miles away from the hotel.

One hopes there is just a crapload of stuff they’ve found out about this gentleman and what his plans might have been, that for some reason is not being released to the public. But y’know, I can’t really think of an awful lot of things you can do with a pound of sodium cyanide. And among the things I can think of that you can do, the knowledge that the convention of a major political party was going to be happening within a handful of miles from that hotel, in just a few weeks, doesn’t eliminate any of them.

But profiling is bad…McCarthyism is bad…guilt-by-association is bad. So I suppose, finding out just who this fellow might’ve known, who he might have contacted before showing up in Denver, etc., all that stuff would be just plain wrong.

We have a cultural sensibility that is custom built and made-to-order for a nation that is not under attack. A nation of veal calves. Just how bad that problem is, I guess I’ll get a good feel for that as I make my efforts to follow up on this story. Hope it doesn’t just mysteriously submerge and trail off…I hope not…I hope, contrary to that, I’m going to see a press conference, just chock full of big meaty juicy facts. The public deserves no less. But how much hope am I really holding? Not much.

As long as it isn’t too “graphic.”

Cassy is back from vacation, and she had one observation to make that made me wince, and then wonder…

…Bourbon Street was a wreck. And not from Katrina. It was just shabby, sleazy-looking. There were piles and piles of garbage and sludge — literal sludge — on the sidewalks, in front of the restaurants and shops, and in the street.

I’m about eighty miles inland from San Francisco, which is a little bit different: It’s famous for the human waste matter piled up in the residential areas.

I’ve thought, more than once, that when a city decays to the point where fecal matter can be found lying in the public thoroughfares…and then decays some more, to the point where said product is eventually expected to be found there…some point-of-no-return has been reached. I don’t really care if I’m alone in thinking that, but I doubt like hell that I am. You just don’t live where there are piles of fresh wet feces, human or otherwise, staring you in the face. C’mon, get with it man…that’s gross.

So the graphic I’d like to see, is a ranking of major U.S. cities somehow lined up according to how entrenched the liberal democrats are in that area. How much stuff they run, how long they’ve been in charge. Boston and SF on the left side, in the middle you have the cities where they just got in day-before-yesteryear, and on the right side you decent heartland areas that are solidly Republican. And then, overlay that with where the human crap is expected to be found lying out in broad daylight, just looking at you like a lost puppy dog. Measure it in casino odds, I guess…five-to-one or whatever that if you go on a three-mile hike on a random trajectory, you’ll find some poo. Or, poo-piles-per-square-mile. That would be the Y axis of the chart, I guess. Just thinkin’ out loud here…

Because you have to understand where I’m coming from here. I do not like manure lying out where it doesn’t belong. I really don’t. I’m a parent, I’ve put up with past girlfriends and their poorly-trained cats and dogs, and I’ve done my time with misplaced crap. I’m retired. To me, this is like a baseline requirement of any household, county, township or valley that is supposedly ready to have people living in it. Baseline. No paddies. Not unless you handle livestock as part of your daily routine, and then of course only from the livestock. It’s almost like another bullet in the list of attributes any civilized society should have. Kids are toilet-trained early, and until then diapers are changed promptly. If you can’t housebreak a dog, you don’t have one. Poop-be-gone.

So back to the graph of crap out in broad daylight, versus whether the place is managed and run by donks…you know you’d see a defined and distinctive slope. You just know you would.

They’re holding polls on this stuff, you know…and there is negligible support for this whole “everything is pristine, you can’t drill anywhere, we just gotta important barrels from Osama bin Laden until we invent the perfect sunflower oil powered car engine” nonsense.

Negligible…as in…George Bush has a much higher approval rating than that.

Eighty-one percent of us say drill away. The caribou should learn to cope.

I’ve learned, throughout a lifetime, that a lot is made of it when the majority disagrees with me. Here is a case where the majority has smartened up a little.

New Poll: 81% of Americans Support Greater Use of Domestic Energy Resources

In pursuit of the immediate goal of energy security, clear majorities of Americans of every political and ideological stripe advocated the U.S. tap into its voluminous domestic energy resources, including the oil located off its coasts and in Alaska and the coal deep within its grounds. Clean coal was particularly popular and Americans urged the swift building of zero emissions coal plants.

H/T: Fellow Webloggin contributor Absurd Report.

I wonder how many check marks those last two boxes would get.

Judging by the news coverage, I’d guess they’d get all of them. But I doubt it…I really, really doubt it.

The Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately award (BSIHORL) is inspired by events related to Earth Day, and ends up being a two-way tie. It will have to be shared by Debbie Schlussel, who managed to nail down concisely and elegantly exactly how we conduct our observances…

Wealthy celebs who waste energy ad nauseam tell us not to.

Pretty much. This thing we nowadays call “environmentalism” seems to have more to do with maintaining a social-strata lifestyle gap — promoted by those who present themselves as champions of the exact opposite — than anything that tangibly would help what we usually call the “environment.”

It will have to be shared with commenter “Georgia” over at Michelle Malkin’s place, who made her own observations known about Earth Day (commenter #11)…

Moonbat logic: Burn our food and let our fuel sit in the Earth.

Has there ever been a more potent weapon to use against poor hungry people than environmentalism?

Just read it.

Last week I posted a cropped photo from the outdoor adventures I had with my gal down in Monterey, and made the invitation for some of the nobodies who don’t read my blog, which nobody ever reads, to guess what the thing was supposed to be. Well, the response has been overwhelming. A lot of people think I bought her a fur coat. Someone thought it was a porcupine, and one guy was sure I’d somehow pointed a camera down the throat of that thing Jabba the Hutt wanted to throw Luke into…possibly a nod back to a metaphor I had admired earlier.

Well, here ya go.

It’s a stupid squirrel. He was so freakin’ oblivious to the possible danger from the tall two-legged pink things, he let me stick the camera almost in his ear. No, he wasn’t hungry. Looked kind of bored, really. I do have that effect sometimes. But if I wanted to throw a big net over him, there wasn’t anything stopping me. And he thinks he’s some kind of wild animal. What a dumb squirrel.

Looks like out on FARK, it must be “What A Way To Go” day. And so we’ll borrow from that theme over here.

This is just gross. Headline and thread here (not approved by admins, TOTALFARK subscription required for viewing, which you can buy here).

Nobody ever reads this blog, of course, but those who might trip across it from time to time would notice we have a way of pointing out stories of depraved violence, specifically targetting anti-death-penalty folks for this information. It is they who are in a position to benefit from this knowledge. It is our position, here at The Blog Nobody Reads, that there is no logical reason to oppose the death penalty.

An important justification for this position is the Doctrine of Erroneous Absolutes. When two assertions are antithetical to one another, such that they both can’t be true — one’s an absolute, the other is not — usually, the one that is an absolute is defeated. If it prevails in discourse it fails in implementation. Now, there are exceptions to this. Think about it; there have to be exceptions to the Doctrine. If there are no exceptions, the Doctrine becomes an absolute, and given it’s nature it becomes an inherent contradiction. So to sum it up, if you say “always” or “never” or “all” or “none,” there isn’t much reason to inspect the other stuff you have to say. It’s usually wrong.

The Anti-Death-Penalty movement has enjoyed, around the world, spectacular success that is based on complete and insubstantiable falsehood: To support the death penalty is an absolute, to oppose it is the essence of moderation. They don’t use the word “moderation,” what they like to use instead is something having to do with “a civilized society.” Nevertheless, moderation is the idea they want to communicate. Let’s not push the button, because you can’t reverse that later. It sounds good. It sounds moderate.

But it’s not moderate, it’s absolute. “Do away with the death penalty” means to never use it. Never, never, no matter what, it is “off the table.” That’s an absolute. On the other hand, when someone like me comes along, and says “let’s keep the death penalty,” people look at us as if we’re the absolutists. That is logically untenable. Absoute would be, let’s kill everybody. Or let’s kill everyone who is arrested. Or let’s kill all the felons. Or anyone who is convicted of murder, kill ’em, without regard to any of the circumstances involved.

And I don’t know of any pro-death-penalty who are pushing anything even remotely similar to that. Support for the death penalty, is the essence of moderation. “Let’s keep it on the books,” as they say, as a tool…just like car insurance, you have it, you hope you never need it, but if it’s needed it will be there. It’s a sensible, moderate position.

And anybody who opposes it, is simply making public policy decisions based on wishful thinking about the human condition. Said wishful thinking is, again, absolute. “There is some good in everybody.” Why, it must be true. I saw it in Return of the Jedi when Darth Vader turned out to be not such a bad dude.

It’s a funny thing about humanity as a whole. As people are inspected across localities, cultures, various living conditions…there is no quicker way to destroy absolutes. Go ahead, just name something that “nobody” does. Then give me a million people or so, which is a tiny fraction of all the people on the planet. A tiny fraction. Let me sift through ’em, and I’ll find a bunch of people who do that thing you think nobody does.

Good in everybody? I wish it were the case.

“Some good in everybody” is not only a delusional absolute, it’s also off-topic. The death penalty doesn’t exist for us to execute people once they’ve been found to contain zero, zilch, nada, butkus, no good whatsoever. That really would be asking for trouble. That really would be investing an excess of power in our lawmakers and executives and judicials. That really would be imposing the flawed decision-making of man, upon the domain of God. It would be wrong.

No, the death penalty exists to protect the innocent from those who are incapable of honoring the implied social contract required for people to live safely among each other. Some people, for whatever reason, simply don’t give a damn. To expect them not to hurt somebody else, is like expecting a ferret to make timely installment payments on a loan and not let any of the checks bounce. They just aren’t wired for it. They’re not built for it. It’s not within their capacity.

So down they go. Moderate position. It doesn’t feel like one, because of course it’s irreversible. But much of what the justice system does, is irreversible. Tossing a guy in jail for a single night is irreversible. So “irreversible” is not absolute. To say “don’t ever do that” — that’s absolute. And it’s wrong. It fails to take into account the incredible diversity of the human condition; and I’m using the “D” word as a bad thing. Some people hurt other people, and can’t stop even if they want to. And a lot of them don’t want to stop.

Now having said that, I should add the separate issue of “reasonable doubt” is a significant issue. Some people oppose the death penalty because they insist, under threat of such a sentence, all doubt is reasonable and there must always be some. I think this point is somewhat more logical, although it doesn’t hold much sway with me because it’s simply unworkable. The threshold for “reasonableness” is a static thing; the ramifications of the prosecution overcoming it, don’t change where it is. Maybe we’d all feel good if such a thing were so, but that doesn’t make it so.

And where would that put us? A speeding ticket is one or two hundred bucks — so nevermind that the radar gun lacked the proper certification or that the arresting officer has a history of perjury. The penalty is light, so the burden of proof is negligible. On the other hand, if the death penalty makes a demand of proof that can never be satisfied, then penalties that are only a little bit lighter, must make demands of proof that almost can never be satisfied. Armed robbery with a deadly weapon, with priors? Gee, that could involve twenty years; maybe more. Better make it real hard to lock the guy up, even if you know he really did it. Why not? It’s the same logic. Once you’ve wasted two decades of his life, you can never give it back. Better just turn him loose.

And that would hold for all the really bad stuff. The violent stuff. Are those the people we want to turn loose, while the innocents who gee, maybe, just might have jaywalked, are unjustly fined?

Well…without commenting further on my reservations about this “reasonable doubt” defense, I’d recommend what’s above just as something to chew on. For our anti-death-penalty types.

While they read about this…

A former jail guard testified Thursday about how a husband and wife were killed by being tied to an anchor aboard their yacht and dumped into the ocean.

Alonso Machain said he was on a boat belonging to Thomas and Jackie Hawks when they were killed in late 2004. He said he watched as they were overpowered by two men, bound by duct tape, tied to an anchor and thrown overboard off Southern California.

Machain, 23, testified Wednesday for more than two hours in the trial of Jennifer Deleon, who is charged with two counts of murder and special-circumstance allegations of committing multiple murders for financial gain.

Machain has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and acknowledged he hopes for leniency in exchange for his testimony.
:
Moments before they were killed, Machain said, Jackie Hawks pleaded with her captors to release them.

“She said they just had a new grandchild and she just wanted to see him,” Machain said.

The bodies of the Hawkses, of Prescott, Ariz., have not been found.

I know, I know. People say all kinds of crazy shit in exchange for leniency. It just makes sense that they will, and the “wanna see my grandchild” bit reeks of a tidbit that might have been cooked up to sway emotions.

What’s disturbing is, when you think about it, there really aren’t too many ways to get rid of a couple of human bodies to make sure they are never found. Yeah you can think of a few based on the movies. But easy logistics are involved in only one method of which I know, when there’s a boat involved.

Doesn’t exactly stand out as one of the better ways to go, huh?

ATTENTION LEATHERNECKS:

I cannot fully explain the doctrines under which the 110th Congress was just elected. It seems to me, and I know of no hard evidence to directly contradict this, that our last elections were conducted under the following auspices:

The Jean-Luc Picard paradigm is all-knowing. When two factions or forces aligned with different or oppositional interests face off, one of them malevolent, one not, the malevolent entity will yield to the cognitions and values of it’s counterpart. In short, the warrior will follow the superior example of the peacemaker. Always. You can end war forever…simply by making a unilateral decision not to fight it.

Such a doctrine must necessarily declare the United States Marines, ultimately, to be useless.

Well, you’re not useless. We owe our lives and our freedoms to the United States fighting forces, and especially, to you.

Happy birthday.

How does this all square with our new make-love-not-war Congress? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the fuckheads who voted them in. Or…stayed home, to allow it to happen.

Real Americans stand behind you, with a support that is, in the words of Commandant M. W. Hagee, “unconditional and firm” (PDF). We understand your mission is a necessary one, and we are thankful you are there to see it through to the end. And be back for the next one. Happy 231st!

Some of the more reasonable among the Bush-bashing leftists…just some…will start to regret the thumpin’ with this news item. Trust me on this one, it’s the first chunk of ice to melt off the shelf.

Bolton’s days at U.N. are likely numbered
By Anne Plummer Flaherty
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — John Bolton’s prospects for winning Senate approval to stay on as U.N. ambassador essentially died Thursday as Democrats and a pivotal Republican said they would continue to oppose his nomination.

On Thursday, the White House resubmitted Bolton’s nomination to the Senate, where the appointment has languished for more than a year.

President Bush appointed him to the job temporarily in August 2005 while Congress was in recess, an appointment that will expire when the Congress adjourns, no later than January.

Bush could not make a second recess appointment of Bolton for the same job, though there was some speculation that the administration might try to keep the ambassador at the U.N. in some fashion.

Okay, I understand what the typical left-winger’s reaction to this is going to be: Good riddance. Yelling at subordinates, wants to take floors off the U.N., bushy eyebrows, blah blah blah.

Well if not Bolton, then who?

Don’t forget, this “unpopular war in Iraq” was authorized by the United Nations. They authorized it…Bush and the coalition followed through. To object to the follow-through without objecting to the authorization is illogical — and to object to the authorization, and hope for more of it, while excoriating anyone who follows through subsequently “just like we did in that disaster over in Iraq,” would be patently absurd. To say the U.N. needs reform, is to state a decidedly reasonable and middle-of-the-road viewpoint. Hell, it’s to stand guilty of stating the obvious.

I fully expect this is simple and straightforward enough that even the most slobbery, rabid lefty will have to surrender the argument or, maybe a bit more likely, simply change the subject. You want a change of course? John Bolton was the change of course, where it would have done the most good. To get rid of him may make some Hollywood actors happy, but it’s a pronounced nod toward the status quo. Meaningless paperwork passed by the U.N.S.C. condemning this and renouncing that and deploring some other silly damn thing…while nobody responds in the language spoken by those who justify the U.N.’s existence, with menacing and thuggish behavior in the international arena.

Maybe some leftists like that. But the point is, it’s not uncharted territory, not even close. The Blair Witch is coming after us and we’re walking in circles. We’ve been here many, many times before. When’s this “change of course” start?

I really like this metaphor from, of all people, John Stewart. One of my gloating liberal Democrat co-workers turned me on to it, and a quick Google search netted me only this blogger comment. Nothing further.

Maybe in the next couple days I’ll be able to find video. I expect if I could find it in context, I’d like it even more.

I think Jon Stewart said, “The democrats quietly walk backwards out of the room as their older brother gets yelled at for burning down the garage”

I have to hand it to the left-wingers, or at least the ones with whom I work. It’s like a little bit of victory has temporarily reacquainted them with reality. Just to put it to the test, I actually began a sentence with “I think Rush Limbaugh was right when he said…” and wouldja believe it? They all agreed. Or arrived at a consensus…you know, in the way blue-staters do. Whoever speaks first speaks for the group, and anyone who disagrees just shuts up. So as near as I could tell, they all agreed — with Rush.

I think the observation was that Republicans win elections when they act like Republicans, and lose them when they start this bullcrap of “reaching across the aisle,” etc.

A month ago I had passed out a citation for best sentence and, by implication, made a resolution to keep on doing it. I have a lot of habits; some are good, some are bad. This strikes me as one of my better ones. It has not escaped my notice that when I take on a new habit, the more it has to do with absorbing lessons from others, the more likely I am to look back on the habit and regard it as a good one.

Today I am confronted with a philosophical question. Or a set of philosophical questions. Ethical dilemmas, you might say.

Is it alright for me to recognize a “best sentence” because it arouses me to — not think deeply, but — to chuckle?

What if it’s not in the best of taste?

What if it’s in downright poor taste?

What if it makes me cringe? And giggle at the same time?

Well…I guess I’ll leave that to the philosophers. As a TOTALFARK subscriber, I must confess, I have never, never, not ever, submitted a headline quite as, aw, sheesh. I’m not sure what the adjective is. I’m not even sure if I want to make it a positive adjective. Anyway…it deserves a bookmarking.

Not saying I approve…I just think it deserves a bookmarking. That’s all. C’mon, lighten up.

I expect I’ll be referring back to this bizarre little phenomenon in the years ahead, although I wish it were not so.

This article purports to present to me a diverse sampling of worldwide viewpoints about the midterm elections yesterday. It’s supposed to present that. What Ahmed thinks over here, what Vijay thinks over there, what Franz and Elisabeth and Pierre think over there. That’s supposed to be the point. And it actually delivers…halfway…and it leaves something else out. In that sense, it is a microcosm of all the commentary on this election I’ve been hearing today. All of it.

Echoing the sentiment of many in Muslim countries, Indonesian lawmaker Ahmad Sumargono hoped that the results would prompt a reassessment of American policies in Iraq and elsewhere.

“I am optimistic that American people have now realized the mistakes made by Bush in foreign policy. We hope this leads to significant changes, especially toward the Middle East,” he said.

Do you think — for one second — Sumargono went on to expound on the stuff that you’d want, y’know, upon which you’d logically wish for him to expound? Like…what mistakes are those? What changes are those supposed to be?

Well, if the person shoving a microphone into the face of Ahmad Sumargono got all uppity and bumptious about this, asking hard-hitting questions, insisting on meaningful answers…the ensuing exchange didn’t make it in to print.

The whole article reads like that. “I think this means President Bush’s butt cheeks got handed to him on a platter — YAY!!!” So-and-so says it, such-and-such says it, lather, rinse, repeat. But what is to be changed now? For what are they hoping? Nobody tries to address that. First word, last word, every word in between.

And I just think that’s odd. “What changes are going to come about?” seems to me an important question. “What changes do you hope to see coming about?” strikes me as a question to which I would like some answers. I’d like to know who’s out there, watching our elections. I’d like to know who’s in here, voting, and what changes they want.

Regardless of your political leanings, I think you’d agree there’s an awful lot riding on this.

Strange that nobody’s answering it. We’ve got a lot of people who just plain hate Republicans, and have waited six years for this to happen. If I was them, I’d feel cheated if the elected leaders went this long without bellying-up to the bar talking about why, in their minds, I bothered to put them in.

So now you can start to see my point. It’s really weird they’re not seizing the opportunity specifying it. And it’s even stranger, nobody anywhere is insisting on it.

Okay, donks. You’re in charge now. Show us how that “fiscal discipline” stuff works.

Let’s regroup in two years and count how many terrorists have been killed because of our wonderful, “respected around the world” Democratic Congress. Hopefully, records will have been broken. I hope that. I really do hope for it.

The Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet was in official use until 1956. It’s the one that starts out “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog” and if you’re watching a World War II era movie, they should be using that one. Which most of them are.

It’s been replaced by the NATO Phonetic Alphabet which starts out “Alfa Bravo Charlie Delta,” and nowadays military folks will snicker at you if you’re reading something over the phone with the letter “A” and you use the phonetic “Able.” That isn’t correct anymore.

Both phonetic alphabets pronounce the number 9 as “niner.” That sounds cool in any decade. I’m so glad my license plate number has two niners in it. Almost makes me wish I got pulled over more often.

This is a big deal out here. The morning Deputy Mitchell gave the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty, I was driving my son back to his Mom’s place. I heard the first announcement about “officer down” right after I drove within just a few miles of where it happened. Kinda freaky.

Anyway, this story is the last I’ve seen of it. I dunno what kind of DNA they’re talking about. Don’t know if I wanna know. Don’t know if the whole thing is a bluff. But I hope they catch this depraved sonofabitch and I hope public-square executions are somehow allowable again when they administer the justice he so richly deserves.

If you see a cop today, metro, county, state or anything else…thank him. Maybe that’s a little awkward if he’s handing you a ticket, but think about it for a second or two. He walks up to car windows for a living, hour-to-hour, day-to-day. He really doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he approaches a window…EACH window. All day, all week, all year. Could you do his job? Would you want to? Think about that.

Okay, it’s Election Day and whatever effect Kerry’s “botched joke” will have on things, has played out.

But this remix is still really funny. Heh heh heh…he apologized, right before he didn’t.

You ought to know by now, any time I see fit to send you to Miss Cellania, it’s always good. Click the first link on her page, go get a cup of coffee, come back after the 70+ megs have loaded and be prepared to be scaaaaaaaaaared……………

Yeah, it’s leftover Halloween stuff. My fault, not hers. Hey being scared is fun, right?

So, not that I care, since nobody reads this blog anyway. But among the nobodies who don’t come by to actually read it, what do you think of the new look?

We’re still in a state of transition. Much thanks to Terry for offering this platform on Webloggin, and to Phil for pointing out some of the obvious bugs that I could have seen for myself, but was a little too distracted to do so. We have a few places we can go from here. We can…get the frame content and the archive content ready for “prime time,” meaning all cleaned up so that advertising can be done. That way we can keep using Webloggin’s servers and pay (kinda sorta) for what we’re taking up. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. All the other projects hither and yon, both on the computer and off — I’m not sure how to word what’s coming next. I think they’re breeding. Every time I turn around, there are more of them. Running a few loads of dishes seems to be pushing my limits lately.

Nobody is coming by to magically do this stuff for me. Something’s wrong with the way I’m doing my wishing.

At this point you can stick in the tired old “pardon the slow posting on the blog lately, folks” meme. Whatever you choose to pick up and paste in, will fit nicely. Real life has been beckoning. The Honey and I went on a drive and she re-introduced me to that big place out there with the fresh air and the big blue thing up above with that bright yellow ball in it. Hey, just for fun, what’s that off to the left?

So what other alternatives do we have. We will probably be moving to another domain, and from there continue to be part of the Webloggin’ crew, exchanging pointers and traffic. That has turned out to be a win-win. We’re certainly going to keep running on WordPress, although I’m going to be sluggish in climbing onto the “bash Blogger” bandwagon. Hey, trust me, I know how frustrating it is when Blogger’s having one of it’s little episodes. I’m the guy on the other end, actually writing this stuff. But the deal is, it’s free. You get what you pay for.

Of course, WordPress is free too. And zowee. It’s every bit as sweet as everybody was saying. Dashboard’s just as nice as I knew it would be.

So when I update the sidebar next time, I want to be sure and include this guy. I thought this was especially priceless:

As a very young man I silently swore to pursue a life that someday would be worthy of a biography. Boy, was that naive. For one thing, many biographies aren’t even worthy of being read!

Yeah, ain’t that the truth. That’s the cool thing about blogs, they’re written — mostly — by people who aren’t worthy of a biography, and just say stuff. Each blog by itself…is a guy just saying stuff. Altogether, they’re a raucous din of ordinary people saying stuff; but now and then, someone will say something worth repeating. This is in contrast to the traditional guy-who-says-stuff, which would be someone worthy of a biography, whose every word we’re supposed to honor in some way. The traditional figure has the glaring weakness that comes up when he says stupid stuff, which is nevertheless thought to be worthy of attention, as contrasted with the blogger who says stupid stuff, who is simply ignored.

So bloggers are better. Not because of the way we treat them when they bring us things worth reading…but because of the way we treat them when they bring us things that are not. Somehow, in the 21st century we’re just beginning to figure out how to ignore people who say stupid stuff, and pay attention to them again when they say worthy stuff. We’re just starting to translate that elementary and vital concept into action. Fifty years after color TV, Eighty years after air conditioning, 110 years after the car, 130 years after the phone. Kinda sad.

You might call the blogger the “Anti-Cronkite.” Not that we pay some kind of penalty for our stupid stuff that Cronkite escaped when he uttered his…but at least we’re properly ignored.

Back to the subject at hand: Anchoress has a few thoughts worth pondering on what exactly a blogroll is. She, and several other bloggers, have what I have come to perceive as kind of an “umbral” blogroll. It’s a list of resources she actually reads on a regular basis, and she feels she’s falling behind if she starts to neglect any one of them. She still has quite a few. I see a lot of other bloggers have a similar philosphy about adding other blogs to the roll.

Then again, many other bloggers have a criteria more like mine, where we maintain “penumbral” blogrolls. If you said something interesting, or simply showed promise that you might say something interesting and I wanted to bookmark you somehow, in you go. The notion that, by listing certain blogs, I’m implying “hey this guy says some really good stuff you should go read it” and you can get properly peeved at me if you so peruse, and end up disappointed…I’m just not buying into that. It’s not necessarily an endorsement. I just see the blogosphere as 99% static, and maybe, a lot more than 99%. I want to keep track of that 1%. Whether my “bandwidth” for overseeing what I’ve staked out has been exhausted, long before I’ve surveyed a hundredth of that 1% — I don’t care. I’m not really claiming responsibility for it, the way I see it. It’s just something I think is worth another look, and I’ll give it that look when I get time, and you’re welcome to take a peek yourself if you choose to do so.

So my blogroll is a lengthy thing. I use “metals” to keep it all straight, just like the Olympic games. There’s a reason for that. If you meet two athletes and one of the won a gold “medal” and the other one won a bronze, you would feel very highly honored. There’s a lot of stuff going on there, though. One one level, you would feel equally honored to have met either one of them. The honor that has been bestowed upon the bronze athlete, is just as great as that bestowed on the gold athlete. They are on par, because when you think about the staggering number of other athletes that have trained all their lives, and never win any “metal” at all, either one of those two encounters would make you feel very fortunate. It is only on a rather arcane level that the “gold” athlete’s surplus achievements are worth additional attention. And yet, on some level, they are.

I have an informal policy of linking to people who link to me, although I’d be setting myself up for failure if I were to pledge 100% follow-through on that. That is supposed to be the intention. Folks who put out things worth reading, maybe have an interesting way of phrasing things, might catch things I’m going to miss during my frequent lazy spells. That’s worth a bronze. Some of those resources, like Anchoress herself, have extremely high visibility in the blogosphere and are considered “major” players. Others are just plain old folks like me, whistling in the wilderness, but I like what they’ve had to say. Now if you’ve done something to indicate a very frequent checking-back is a worthy thing to do, and I’m pretty sure I won’t have the time to look at you as often as I should be doing, you might be worth a silver. Examples of this include the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, IMAO, and News Blog Central which has a group of people contributing content, including me.

If you are a household name that even non-blog-people might recognize, such as Pajamas Media, Malkin and Little Green Footballs, you might get a gold medal.

And if I have had to take special steps to not look at your blog, like I’m curing some unhealthy addiction or something, that is worth a platinum. There are only two platinum blogs on my roll, and that is FARK and Neal Boortz. A lot of times left-wingers say interesting things, make good points, link to me. It is a surprisingly frequent occurrence that when they link to me, they do so non-sarcastically and are genuinely nice about it, as is the case with Alan and the Dreamer, and a lot of them like NYC Educator and Rude Pundit have some interesting facts worth pondering, and/or creative ways of wording things, and are worth perusing. They get a liberal hippy turqoise gemstone.

Don’t be mean, I consider some of them to be friends.

Note to self, Alan has moved, change the sidebar to point to his new address.

All for now. Time to jump in the shower and go vote.

Update: Want to be sure and get this guy.