It has been something of an eventful year here at Blogonomicon.  I'll make my usual post of the top ten referrers for the month tomorrow sometime, but tonight I feel like just going over some other blog-related stuff.  Although the blog is offline due to bandwidth restrictions, I can still post to it and the posts will show up as soon as the blog comes back online.

This blog began at Blogspot (original called The Complete Waste of Time Weblog) and was pretty much useless and unknown until about March 2004, when I got a bug up my *** about something related to the Second Amendment and decided I would use the blog to start posting on matters related to RKBA, self defense, concealed carry, and guns in general.  Inspired by reading several other such blogs, I became a gunblogger, and changed the name to what it is now.

About a month later I started seeing referrals.  The first person ever to link to one of my posts was Lest Darkness Fall.  It was exciting and just a little scary at the same time.  Someone had noticed me.  I wasn't in total and complete obscurity anymore.

Traffic continued to grow and eventually I began submitting to the Carnival of Cordite, which really brought in previously unseen bursts of traffic.  My own blogroll continued to grow as I discovered more and more interesting sites.  I did a couple of humorous guest-posts at Samantha Burns and traffic kept going up.

In February of this year, I decided I had had enough of Blogspot and started looking for a new service.  I tried out a few and didn't like any of them for various nit-picky reasons, until I landed at Eponym.

After a couple of months, I began showing up regularly on Eponym's top ten list and it sent my traffic to crazy heights.  I had Eponym take me off the list intentionally because I considered all this traffic to be sort of empty and random.  People would click just because I was on a high-traffic list, load the page, suck up some bandwidth, and disappear.

But still, I wanted more traffic that was more deliberate so I joined a few blogrolls and this turned out to create a pretty even balance between good traffic and empty traffic.

I continued to use both Sitemeter and Statcounter to follow my web stats, but Eponym also has their own in-house stat system which I began to use as well.  I now had exact counts of exactly which pages and which graphics were being searched for and viewed the most.  I also had exact counts of who was referring to me and why.  It wasn't long before I decided I needed to actually pay for this service.  In the beginning I would have never guessed that I'd ever pay for a blog service.

Tomorrow I'll probably include a list of the most highly-trafficked posts for 2006, but for now there's one I'll mention in particular, which I have previously referred to on occasion as "the-post-which-must-not-be-named" because I didn't want another mention of it to increase traffic again.

The Guns of Hellsing is by far my top post for this year, originally posted on March 1.  I made the mistake of hosting all 35 of its graphic files here at Eponym.  At first, this was no problem.  But then last July Google images finally indexed all those files.  My bandwidth and traffic skyrocketed from people looking for pictures and info about that show.  In July alone I had 1,591 hits to that post.  By the time I was forced to delete it, I had had more than 2,500 hits to that post alone.  If I hadn't deleted it, it might have even cracked 10,000 hits for the year.  Today while doing some housekeeping, I discovered that I had never finished moving the entire post to the old Blogspot site like I meant to do.  So tonight I fixed that.  Follow the link above and you will see the full post once more, hosted on the old blog.  Hopefully it will get indexed soon and people will go there to get their Hellsing fix instead of coming here.

A couple of minor points this year were when I made up the header graphic at the top of the page, and when I finally dug into the template and changed the color scheme to something other than one of Eponym's pre-fab templates.  One commenter thought that purple looked "gay."  Whatever.  As you can see, I wasn't dissuaded because 1) I like purple, and 2) no one else on Eponym has a blog that looks like this one, as far as I know.  I guess someone could have copied it without me knowing.  A couple of other people thought it looked "goth," which I don't object to at all.

Another milestone reached this year was when I started doing photoshops and getting into some photoshopping contests.  The first such a one was in September and can be seen here at Cowboy Blob's.  This has been a lot of fun and brought in yet new referrals and traffic.  I haven't done any of that in about a month, partly because I haven't really been inspired to, and partly because the problem I had with my shoulder for a few weeks made it too painful to sit here and tinker with photos for a couple of hours at a time.  By the way, the shoulder is almost back to normal.  I'm still a little shaky sometimes, but at least it doesn't hurt all the time anymore.

And, yet another new aspect of blogging began this year when I recently began posting things I call Ramblings, which are just stories from my own life and stuff like that.  This has mostly been inspired by Hammer.  However, back when I had my first website many years ago, I wrote occasional essays just like these, a few of which I've reproduced here because I thought they were worth reposting.  I first began accessing the internet in 1994, and had my first website up in 1996.  So this year is ten years since I've had some kind of website up, somewhere in cyberspace.  My first website was called Farm Road 539, subtitled "an obscure backroad on the information superhighway."  I created my own background for it by scanning a few inches of one of my own blue jeans with a hand scanner(!).  I also had one way back when called "Pictures of People with Pipes," which is why I have this collection of notable pipe-smokers.  There was one called Owl Sounds, which I never deleted and although I had to move it a couple of times, it is still there at its last home.  Owl Sounds is just a small collection of low-quality sound files that I recorded of the barred owls that make their homes around my house.  In years past, I have been contacted by a few school teachers who told me they were using the sound files in some of their classroom instruction, which was very gratifying.  Another old site that is still at its final resting place is The Shunned Site.  If anyone is interested in the material referenced at The Shunned Site, you can visit The Last Ancient House, which was updated recently and I think is easier to navigate and read.  But, I digress.

One other point is that I was added to Eponym's blog directory under the category of Activism:  Gun Control.  I think I know who made the submission, but I'm not sure.  I didn't do it myself.  For a long time I was in the #2 position after Of Arms and the Law.  Right now I'm at #3 after Of Arms and the Law and Alphecca.  There are a lot of other gun blogs that I think should be in this list before myself, and I am going to be submitting some of them in the future.  I already submitted one a few days ago and will post on it after they decide if they're going to include it or not.

So, this blog is still pretty much all over the map and I can't stick to just one topic with it.  But if I did try to focus on one thing only, it wouldn't be a true reflection of myself.

If I have had one failing with this blog, it is that I have never posted anything that caused anyone to flame me with a really nasty comment.  Some might see this as a success instead of a failure, but it seems to me that I must not be doing something entirely right if I haven't p*ssed at least one person off.

One thing that I plan to post more about in the future is when I find good quality graphics that can be used as desktop wallpaper.  I have done this sometimes, but I am grabbing photos like this all the time and I probably blog about it only 1/10 of the time.  I change my wallpaper about once every week, or two, and I still haven't really made a dent in my collection.

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who reads this blog, everyone who links to one of my posts now and then, and everyone who has added me to their blogrolls.  When I started doing this, I never thought blogging would become such a big hobby for me, or honestly, that it would become such a big part of my life.  Thanks.

JournalStar.com - Lincoln, Nebraska:

After we left the range, some of the students talked about why they want a permit. One said personal security. Another mentioned a cousin who was murdered and how he doesn’t want to be a victim. A couple of the others said they want to carry handguns while they’re traveling on the road.

I thought about it a lot in the last few days and decided even if I do get the permit, I won’t carry. I’m just not willing to accept the responsibility of keeping a loaded handgun in public.

I imagine people on both sides of this polarized issue will view my decision through their own filters. Gun advocates might call me a coward, while the antis might crow that I had second thoughts after having gone through the course.

My choice does not mean others can’t handle the responsibility of carrying a handgun. It means I’m being honest with myself in knowing I’m not one of them.

A good article that is actually not biased against guns or self defense, I don't think.  My only question is about the first paragraph of the story where he mentions that his target was three feet away.  Did he really mean three feet?

Dallas Morning News:

State Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, wants people to have the same right to shoot intruders who invade their cars and businesses as they have to shoot people who break into their homes.

If House Bill 284 were to become law, a person would have the right to use deadly force and would no longer be required to retreat to avoid violence in a business, workplace or vehicle.

Actually, we already have legal precedent for lethal force in self defense while in a vehicle. Tomorrow when my blog comes back online and I can search it, I'll try to look up the reference and link it.  [UPDATE:  Link here.]

In short, the very first instance of lethal self defense by a Texas CHL holder was when he was attacked while sitting in his car in a traffic jam.  The man who attacked him was punching him with his fists through the open window.  The man being attacked shot and killed the one hitting him.

It was no-billed--the pre-trail hearing determined it was lawful self defense and that was that.

However, this bill also provides protection against civil suits.  Pertinent part here:

Sec. 83.001. AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE. It is an affirmative defense to a civil action for damages for personal injury or death that the defendant, at the time the cause of action arose, was justified in using force or deadly force under Subchapter C, Chapter 9, Penal Code.

SECTION 5. Chapter 83, Civil Practice and Remedies Code, is amended by adding Section 83.002 to read as follows:

    Sec. 83.002. COURT COSTS, ATTORNEY'S FEES, AND OTHER EXPENSES. A defendant who prevails in asserting the affirmative defense described by Section 83.001 may recover from the plaintiff all court costs, reasonable attorney's fees, earned income that was lost as a result of the suit, and other reasonable expenses.

Of course, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Lawful Self Defense doesn't like it, but they couldn't stop this movement in numerous other states, and I doubt they'll have much effect in Texas.

The full text of the new bill can be found at the Texas Legislature website as House Bill No. 284.

Crossposted to The Gun Blogs.

As I mentioned before, Kaywoodie made a big selling point out of advertising their use of real Mediterranean briar, because they had large stockpiles of it and during the war there was no way to import more.  Some other U.S. pipe makers ran out and tried to use American briar, which is not fit for pipes by any means.

Based on inflation, the pipe above would cost $140 right now.  That was a lot of money to be shelling out for a pipe in 1943.  An expensive pipe like this was certainly at least a Prime Grain, but more like was a Flame Grain (both high-end Kaywoodie grades).  With wood of this quality, the meerschaum insert is only a sales gimmick--it wouldn't improve the smoking qualities at all, except in that the usual cake build-up would be neither necessary nor even desired.

During this era, Kaywoodie stopped using a white cloverleaf logo and instead used a white circle with a black cloverleaf outline in the center of it.  The logo could be either on the top or side of the stem.

Just wanted to point out this blog that I found, pretty much by accident (one post turned up in one of my gun-related searches):  Strange in San Antonio.

The writer of this blog reports on odd goings-on in the Alamo City and some other general observations.  I've been reading his archives and found them entertaining and interesting.

It doesn't look like he gets many comments, so visit and let him know he's not alone.

Written in October 1999 for my old website, because I always think of him around this time of year.

---

The restless season is here once again. September has brought us some sweet relief from the torrid heat of summer, and now it is already October. A restless time, I have said, because of such changes in the air. Dry leaves go skittering in the northerly winds and collect overnight in the bed of my pickup, only to go whirling away the next day when I reach highway speeds on my way to work. Cardinals, sparrows, and many birds beyond my knowledge to identify are gathering in their winter homes, already inspecting the still-empty bird feeder for food. There has been a patch of bright yellow flowers growing in my back yard all summer long, somehow in defiance of the lack of rain. They are the only flowers I have seen for miles around, and are thick with bumblebees every day from sunrise to sunset. I have avoided mowing them, suspecting that they are one of the very few food sources available to the bees this summer. Soon these flowers will be turning brown and brittle as well, and I only hope the bumblebees have stored up enough food to last what will probably be a very dry winter. The last harvests are being gathered in, and the first hunters are going out. And my daughter has just turned 7 months old.

My daughter! When last I wrote one of these little meanderings she had not even been conceived, neither in mind nor in body. What strange and wonderful surprises have come with her birth. To care for such a tiny and helpless person, to see her smile in recognition when I first enter her room in the morning...The emotions these things bring on are already well known to anyone who is a parent, and--I think--beyond my power to describe to someone who has never been a parent.

By now you may be wondering, what does any of this have to do with an old Kaywoodie pipe? It is also about this time of the year that I find myself thinking of a man much older than myself who I knew well but had never met. Bruce became my penpal, for lack of a better term, sometime around 1987, and we wrote each other for several years. We had some things in common. We both liked a wide variety of music, and our tastes in such usually coincided. We both grew up on small farms and preferred small towns and country life to living in a city. We both liked science fiction and weird fiction in general, and H.P. Lovecraft in particular. In fact, it was through a letter to the editor of a weird fiction magazine that we met, when Bruce wrote that he would welcome correspondence from other fans of weird fiction to discuss our mutual interest. Three people answered his invitation. The other two both lived outside the United States, and being on a somewhat limited income, he didn't want to spend the extra money on international postage, so I was the only one he answered.

Over the years we came to know each other very well, our long rambling letters going well beyond the discussion of literature into the revealing of our pasts, our childhoods, our failures and our hopes. He told me how his mother had been killed in a farming accident when he was a young adult, how he was so shocked that he couldn't bring himself to go to her funeral, and how he had regretted it ever since. He told me also how a near-fatal bout of mumps when he was a child had rendered him unable ever to have any children of his own. I came to know him very well, as I have said, and if I could write to him now I can imagine the bittersweet rejoicing he would feel at the birth of my own daughter and his own lack of a child.

But I still haven't explained the pipe. Bruce was a heavy cigarette smoker, and I'm sure it contributed to his declining health in his last years. Occasionally, however, he smoked a pipe, an old Kaywoodie that he had picked up years before in a PX while in the army. Recently I was able to purchase such a pipe. It is not his pipe, but with its battered rim and the familiar white cloverleaf logo faded only to the outline of the stamp, it could be very much like the pipe he once smoked. Over the years our letters grew less frequent, until for the last couple of years we were down to only one or two each year, with a card for each other at Christmastime. He had a number of health problems, which he wrote to me of, and two Christmases ago when I sent him a card, I never received one in return. Nor have I heard from him since. He told me more than once that he had never felt the need to worship any kind of higher power, and his belief in an afterlife was shaky at best. Still, he said, if he did go on after death, he hoped he would be able to flit ghostlike around the old farm where he grew up, and revisit some of the places and people he had known, the few people and places that had brought him some happiness. And he hoped he would be able to see his mother again.

It is only an old Kaywoodie pipe. Made from a hunk of low-grade briar, it was not an expensive pipe when it was new, and is worth less now than when it was first put on a shelf sometime decades ago. There is nothing particularly special about it, but when I smoke it, I can't help but remember Bruce, and I hope wherever he is, he knows of the pleasant thoughts his memory brings me, and I hope that he remembers me.

Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon--
   Over the crinkling sea,
The moon man flings him a silvered net
   Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say when the net lies long
   And the midnight hour is ripe;
The moon man fishes for some old song
   That fell from a sailor's pipe.

And some folk say that he fishes the bars
   Down where the dead ships lie,
Looking for lost little baby stars
   That slid from the slippery sky.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
   And the nodding night wind blows,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
   Only the moon man knows.

Zoon, zoon, net of the moon
   Rides on the wrinkling sea;
Bright is the fret and shining wet,
   Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say when the great net gleams
   And the waves are dusky blue,
The moon man fishes for two little dreams
   He lost when the world was new.

And some folk say in the late night hours,
   While the long fin-shadows slide,
The moon man fishes for cold sea flowers
   Under the tumbling tide.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
   And the gray gulls dip and doze,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
   Only the moon man knows.

Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon--
   Over the crinkling sea,
The moon man flings him a silvered net
   Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say that he follows the flecks
   Down where the last light flows,
Fishing for two round gold-rimmed "specs"
   That blew from his button-like nose.

And some folk say while the salt sea foams
   And the silver net lines snare,
The moon man fishes for carven combs
   That float from the mermaids' hair.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
   And the nodding night wind blows,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
   Only the moon man knows.

---

Because I haven't written anything myself in a while and this is one I have liked as long as I can remember.  From The Golden Book of Poetry published in 1949, given to my mother when she was a little girl, and which she has passed on to me.

I have been looking back through the archives at this end-of-year time and realized that it was one year ago today that I began posting a Pipesmoker of the Week.

The latest is only #45, not #52.  That's because I put it off for a few weeks just recently, and a couple of times I just forgot or didn't feel like it.

If civilization doesn't collapse, by this time next year I should be getting close to the end of my collection.

From the Roswell Daily Record News

Not only is it feasible to build an alien-themed amusement park in Roswell, a city official said, it’s the only city where such a park could work.

Zach Montgomery, planning director for the city of Roswell, said New Mexico State University’s Arrowhead Business Center did the feasibility study on the possibility of locating an alien theme park in Roswell. Because of the worldwide recognition of Roswell for aliens, he said, it was much more viable in the area.

“This is not a guaranteed project, but it has gone farther than any other theme park that has been considered for the city of Roswell, and it’s looking very positive,” he said.”This project will add greatly to the things to do for the visitors that visit our great city in search of answers regarding aliens and UFOs, and the tax benefits and profits that could be realized from a project of this magnitude are tremendous.”

Sounds a lot more entertaining than Mickeyland.

Several days ago David Codrea published the information about the Bush admin's apparent approval of the "collective rights" argument regarding the Second Amendment.

He was attacked with personal smears that had nothing to do with the original argument on a forum called CalGuns.  When he attempted to respond, his response was deleted by a "moderator," who also allowed the original attack against Codrea to stand undeleted.

Read the whole thing by clicking the link above, or jump straight to this comment that sums up the whole thing quite nicely and puts the calguns quislings in their place.

And yes, I chose the word "quislings" quite intentionally.

The Constitution has no place in legal proceedings, according to U.S. Attorney Wendy Johnson:

A man charged with possessing illegal machine guns shouldn't be able to make constitutional arguments at trial, according to a motion filed Friday by federal prosecutors.

Constitution? What Constitution? The law is what we say it is, and to hell with all you unwashed subjects.

The government is arguing that it is the court's role to decide matters of law and to instruct the jury. The jury's role is to then determine and apply the facts to the law as instructed by the court. The jury has no role in deciding legal issues, according to the motion.

In other words, it is the jury's duty to pass any summary judgement that they are instructed to by the ruling elite who know better than they (we) do.

In fact, and all sarcasm aside, there is a little thing called jury nullification.  It's something that the enemies of freedom don't want many people to know about, because if too many people really knew the power they wielded as a jurist, it would mean a lot of shysters would be out of their jobs.  It would also mean a lot of stupid laws would be in effect nullified because no one would try to prosecute them.

Via The War On Guns.  More here and here.

Gerald Ford was born with the name Leslie King in Omaha, Nebraska.  His parents divorced after his birth and eventually his mother remarried.  In 1935 he formally changed his name to that of his adopted father, legally becoming Gerald R. Ford, Jr.

During his boyhood he joined the Boy Scouts, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout--the only president ever to hold that distinction.

He was a star football player at Grand Rapids High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He also played football for the University of Michigan, where he was known for being an excellent defensive player (check out his football photo at Wikipedia, it's pretty cool).  His number--48--has been retired by U of M.

He graduated in 1935 with a degree in political science and economics.  He turned down offers to play pro ball from both the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers so he could take a coaching position at Yale and apply to its law school.

He graduated from law school in 1941.  During the 40s he also worked occasionally as a model.  He received a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942.  The details of his military service are beyond the scope of this post, but can be found easily.  For his service, he earned the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with nine engagement stars for operations in the Gilbert Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, Marshall Islands, Asiatic and Pacific carrier raids, Hollandia, Marianas, Western Carolines, Western New Guinea, and the Leyte Operation. He also received the Philippine Liberation Medal with two bronze stars for Leyte and Mindoro, as well as the American Campaign and World War II Victory Medals.

Ford became a congressional representative for the Grand Rapids district in 1949 and held that post for 24 years.  During that time, he was a member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.  In 1963 he was elected Minority Leader.  He was also appointed to the Warren Commission.

In 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned his position as Vice President, and Ford was nominated to fill the post in accordance with the vice-presidential vacancy provision of the 25th Amendment.  When Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in 1974, Vice President Gerald Ford became president.  Thus he is the only president to hold that position without being elected to it.


As far as I can tell, Gerald Ford is the only president to pose for his official presidential portrait with a pipe.

In 1974, he gave Nixon a full pardon, which cost him a lot of support and probably even cost him his chance at being elected during the next presidential run.  At present, many believe that pardoning Nixon was actually the best thing he could have done for the country, although it was probably the worst thing he could have done to himself personally at the time.


In 1974 he was also voted People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive."

His tenure in office was an eventful and perhaps even chaotic time.  Most notable was the end of the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon in 1975.  In that year he also survived two assassination attempts.

In 1976, Ford defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination for president, but then lost in the general election to history's greatest monster.  He remained close friends with Carter for the rest of his life.

On November 12, 2006 he officially became the longest-lived president by surpassing Ronald Reagan.  Ford had the second-longest post-presidential life, after Herbert Hoover.

Gerald Ford passed away at his home on December 26, 2006.

See also Gerald Ford's Official Whitehouse Biography.

Thanks to JR of A Keyboard and a .45 for emailing me the photo at the top.

But it looks like I'll be offline for one day due to bandwidth limits.

I think it's my own fault for hosting more pictures here this month than usual.  I'll have to go back to hosting all the pictures at photobucket.

This is especially remarkable because I recently got a free upgrade to 5 gigs of bandwidth (previously it was 2).

So thanks to everyone who visited here this month.  There were more of you than usual.

UPDATE:  I changed a setting that might help reduce bandwidth a little.  The front page now shows only the most recent 10 posts instead of 20.  On the other hand, I changed the monthly archive setting to display the entire month instead of only part of that month.  I was getting annoyed with my own settings while trying to search back through the archives for something.

Also, I noticed that my "about me" post has been viewed 145 times so far this month.  That's way more than any month previous, so I guess there were quite a few new visitors this month.

My job requires that I occasionally interact with so-called "customers."  Most of these people are not memorable to me, they are just someone else with a question or a complaint.  The most interesting people I encounter are elderly widows.

How do I know they are widows?  Because they usually manage to mention it during our brief conversations.  These are older ladies who have lost their husbands, their contact with other people seems to have been cut back quite a bit, and they are happy to have a stranger to talk to for a minute or two.

---

There was one house at which the handheld I carry when meter-reading beeped and gave me a "vicious dog" warning.  I could see into the back yard, and it looked like a dog should have been in there, but there didn't appear to actually be a dog.  So I knocked on the door.

My knock was answered by a little old lady.  I told her who I was and asked her if she really had a dangerous dog in her back yard.  Her eyes darted from side to side, as if she were looking for spies or something, and then she even partially covered her mouth with her hand.  In a loud whisper, she said, "It's dead."

Her behavior was very funny, letting me in on her secret while taking such measures to ensure that no one else heard it.  There was no one else nearby who could have heard it.  But I retained my composure as she let me into her back yard and told me the whole story.

She had had a big, vicious dog back there, she said.  Her husband was the only person who could handle it.  But he had passed away a few months ago, and she couldn't even go into her own back yard without getting attacked.  She had been forced to call the animal control people to have it put down.  They had told her to leave her "beware of dog" signs up as a security precaution even if she didn't have a dog.

"So, don't tell anybody I don't have it, anymore," she ended.

"I won't ma'am."

---

Another little old lady I ran into once reminded me of my grandmother, even though she was black and I'm not.  She was barely five feet tall, as thin and straight as a match stick, and she followed me around her yard cracking jokes while I read her meters.  At some point I made some reply that she also thought was funny, and she slapped me on the arm just like my grandmother used to do.  It nearly brought tears to my eyes.

---

One day I was working in a very bad neighborhood where packs of dogs roam loose in the streets and bedevil anyone unfortunate enough to walk through their territory.  These are the kind of dogs that are chicken**** and only attack from behind, so I had been spending a lot of time walking backwards and turning in circles.  The day had begun as most days, with me thinking "I'll just be careful and try to avoid them."  This attitude doesn't last long, however.  I had already passed up my level of tolerance hours before, and was now at the point where I was just wishing one of them would get close enough to me and move slowly enough that I could seriously hurt it.

As I worked my way down one street, zipping into yards and back out again as fast as I could go, I noticed an old lady coming down the other side of the street toward me, being hounded by a pack of about a half dozen small- to medium-sized dogs.

"Do you need help, ma'am?" I shouted over their noise.

She didn't say anything, but she looked up at me and the expression of fear and pleading in her eyes filled me with rage.  I charged into the pack, kicking and hitting with my dog stick.  The dog stick is actually a defensive tool and not an offensive weapon, but I was hitting with it anyway.  As with most of these kinds of loose dogs, as soon as someone actually put the fight to them, they scattered.  I was able to get in only a couple of glancing blows here and there before they were gone.

"Thank you."  Her voice was ancient and as brittle as the pages of an antique book turning.

I asked her if she would be okay from there, and it turned out that "thank you" was about the full extent of her English.  My Spanish is lousy too, but from what she said, it seemed that she was saying she didn't have much farther to go and would be okay.  I kept an eye on her as I went on my way.  When she got to the end of the block, she went inside a house, so she made it there okay.  I don't know if she had to walk back again later or not.

When I got to the end of that street I had to turn around and go back down the other side, the same way the lady had been walking.  I found an empty beer bottle and stuck it in my back pocket, and picked up a hefty rock to carry so I'd have some throwing ammo in case the dogs came back.  Only one of them had the guts to show up again, and it was sure to keep its distance.  I threw the beer bottle and the rock at it anyway, just for fun, but both missed.

---

One hot summer midafternoon I got to one little old lady's house and she saw me coming.  I yelled "meter reader" and she yelled back to go on in.  As I came back from her back yard, she came out of her house with a bottle of beer in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.  She asked me if I wanted a cold drink and offered me the choice of either.

I accepted the water and thanked her for it, and drank it in the shade of her carport while she helped herself to the beer.  For the next few minutes she expounded upon her philosophy of life, the universe, and everything.  I was amazed that she could simultaneously talk and drink beer, somehow without ever pausing to breathe.  I don't remember it all, but I remember that as she finally ran out of wind she finished up with, "But you know what Solomon said."  She paused.  "Or do you?"

"All things are vanity under the sun," I quoted.

That impressed the heck out of her.

---

One day I came to a house where I couldn't get into or even see the back yard, where both meters were.  So I knocked again.  This little old lady was not really that old, mid-sixties I'd guess, and had a very light German accent that echoed of numerous great-aunts and great-uncles I had known while growing up.  The kind of accent someone gets from parents who were native speakers of German.  She said she'd have to open the garage for me to get to her back yard, and she went back inside for a moment to get the door opener.

In her driveway was some recent-model car, the kind of car one might expect an older lady to drive.  Nothing remarkable.  But as she hit the button and her garage door cranked up, my jaw dropped.

I am not a car person.  To me, an automobile is just a way to get somewhere.  Old cars interest me a little, but I'm much more interested in old guns, old books, old records, old photographs, even old currency and old stamps interest me more than old cars.  But this time, even I knew I was seeing something special.

Inside her garage was a Mustang, as green as the inside of a lime and as shiny as if it had just been driven off the showroom floor.  This was a real Mustang, old enough to have remembered Woodstock and Vietnam, if cars had memories.  I just said, "Wow."

"I bought that car when I was just a girl," she said.  "But then I got married and I decided that a married woman should drive a more sensible kind of car.  So I just put it away and kept it.  Now I'm an old widow lady with a 40-year-old Mustang that only has 20,000 miles on it."

I asked her if it still ran okay.  "Oh, sure," she said.  "I take it out and drive it around the block sometimes, just for fun."

I told her I had never seen a Mustang that old that looked that good.  "I know I could get some good money for it," she said.  "But I just can't sell it."

I thanked her for showing me her car before I went on my way.

Another good one at Wondermark.

Wondermark is fast becoming my favorite online comic.

I'm already getting hits for Gerald Ford and pipe smoking.

I'm planning on making such a post this coming Saturday.

Pretty strange that the hits are already coming and I haven't even posted it yet.

A long time ago, I tried keeping a paper journal.  I thought that maybe someday I would have kids, or at least nieces and nephews, who might wonder what I was like and what things mattered to me during my life.

It went on sporadically for a year or so, and I gave it up.

A blog may be more ephemeral than a hardcopy journal, but it's a lot easier and I always appreciate the feedback that I couldn't have in regular diary.

So if some of my stories seem pretty boring, and not up to snuff with some other good blogging story-tellers out there, just remember that I'm doing it for the future as well.

I do regular weekly exports that I save to CD.  I've been doing this for quite a while now.

Technorati Tags: Colt, Python, 357 magnum, vintage ad

I bet there will be some extensive posting and commenting on this (another link here) in upcoming days.

I think somebody is getting punked.

(And if I didn't misspell that correctly--I don't care).

As the old saying goes: Power corrupts and absolute power will stop you from eating trans-fats.

Article here.

From abc13.com:

Texans who are 55 or older are more likely to get concealed handgun permits than those who are in their 20s, 30s and 40s, according to Texas Department of Public Safety statistics.

That falls in line with national surveys that indicate seniors are more likely than any other age group to be gun owners.

In Texas, 42 percent of those who have concealed handgun permits are 55 or older. Texans who are 60 or older have about 25 percent of the permits issued, statistics show.

Makes sense to me. The older you get, the more you come to the realization that you're not immortal and bad stuff can happen.

Went to dad-in-law's this morning for breakfast, then headed to mom's for afternoon lunch.

The nicest part of the day was when I discovered Mom had broken out her rarely-used bottle of Crown Royal for general family consumption.  It had been so long since I've had that stuff.  So I fixed myself up about a finger and a half in an old-fashioned glass on two ice cubes and sipped it slowly.  Smooooooooth.

"What are you drinking?"

"Crown Royal."

"You're not mixing it with anything?"

"Nope."  General eye-rolling ensued.  Some people just don't know how to drink good blended whiskey.

The kids got enough presents, but not too many.  I got several pairs of pants, which I need, a few winter shirts, which I can use, and a rechargeable one-million candlepower spotlight.

Man, if I had had a cordless spotlight back in my coon-hunting days.  Reminds me of a story, but that will have to wait for another time.

I and my in-laws all agreed that the allegedly "hot" tamales weren't anywhere near spicy enough to be legitimately called "hot."

In which I remember that I do have a minor Christmas story to relate, after all...

When I was a senior in high school, this song by the Carpenters was going to be part of our annual Christmas concert.  Judy was a cheerleader who also happened to be in band.  I was just a band geek.  Judy was put together just the way a cheerleader should be--and even better in certain places.  And she had freckles.

She and I had an odd history, made rockier than necessary by the meddlesome interference of a third party who kept sticking her nose in where it shouldn't have been.  Yes, I had a huge crush on her.  What I was too stupid to realize at the time was that it was somewhat reciprocated.

I and two of my friends and fellow band geeks named Johnny and Eric came up with a plan:  just before we performed this song, our band director would announce to the audience that it had been dedicated to Judy from an anonymous admirer.  Good plan.

Several days before the concert, Johnny caught up with me when Eric wasn't around, and told me a new scheme.  "Okay, we're going to tell Eric that it's anonymous, but we'll tell Mr. (band director) that it's from Eric."  Cool.  It still sounded good.  Let's get Eric.

A few days later, Eric caught up with me when Johnny wasn't around and told me his new scheme.  "Let's tell Johnny that it's anonymous," he said, "but we'll tell Mr. (band director) to say it's from Johnny."  Hmmm...I thought to myself that our plot was getting somewhat complicated and twisted in on itself, which only made it more interesting.  I decided to sit back and see what our band director would make of it.

Then came the day and the fateful song.  As I sat there waiting to see what kind of chaos, or at least minor confusion, might arise, our band director made the announcement and I realized I had been duped.  "This song is dedicated to Judy from Alan," he said.

Well, I was first chair sax and she was second, so we sat right next to each other.  Eric was third sax, and he was sure to point at us.  Johnny (being first trumpet) stood and pointed at us over everyone's heads.  They wanted to make sure everyone in the audience knew who we were.  They were both grinning like the proverbial possums eating greased owl pellets.  Judy was so flustered she couldn't play a note during the entire song.  I managed to start playing about halfway through.

Nothing else ever came of this.  I was never able to imagine that any girl in high school would want to associate with me, and I was also extremely shy.  That was 24 years ago.  I'm still not entirely sure why my wife claims to enjoy my company, these days.

I ran into Johnny a few years after graduation.  He told me that he and Judy had dated a little after they both graduated (she was a year behind us in school).  Their brief dating affair had happened around Christmas, and that song had come on the radio twice.  The first time, she immediately reached over and changed the station.  The second time, she left it there and started wondering aloud about me and why I had never at least asked her out.

Her family moved away from our small town and I have no idea what ever became of her.

Lots of other bloggers are posting things in this vein, and maybe someone out there is wondering what I'm going to say on the topic, although it's more likely that no one gives a plug nickel what I think.  It may be hard to explain.

The church to which I have been added does not celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ.  There are some members who do not celebrate anything at all on December 25 because they believe it sets a bad example.

We are not directed to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and we are not given the information as to the exact date of his birth.  So we don't celebrate December 25 as such.

Many of us do still have a day of fellowship with our scattered families, and that fellowship and goodwill includes the exchange of gifts and the sharing of food.

However, if people out there want to remember the birth of Christ on this day, I will not try to convince them that it's wrong or bad or anything.  I think any occasion that can turn one's thoughts to such a thing is good.

I once explained it like this:

When I was in college choir, did I refuse to sing carols at Christmastime that had religious subjects simply because I do not believe that December 25 is the actual birthday of Jesus?  No, of course not.  For he once said, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."  So if some carolers are gathered together singing "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Joy to the World," or "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," who am I to say that he is not there in their midst?

So celebrate whatever meaning you want.

I got bored today so I did some updates on my long-neglected and rarely-mentioned other project, The Last Ancient House.

I added some details to the template to explain what is going on there to the casual passerby, and added one poem (Where the Moon Is Always Gibbous) and one story (The Owls).

The site was put together with Blogger's novel template and I have assembled there most of my just-for-fun writing stuff in one place for easy reference, since my old website is long gone.

Reviewing some of my old stuff, I am thinking that I really would like to start writing again.

Generally off-topic for me, but I'm just wondering how long they're going to keep propping up this guy's corpse before they finally just give up and admit that he's dead?

I guess they'll be okay as long as the air conditioning doesn't break down.

From Dave Kopel, The Second Amendment in the Nineteenth Century:

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

--St. George Tucker

UPDATE:  Great minds think alike!

I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best--one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces...

--H.P. Lovecraft

Phoenix is wondering how to explain Cthulhu to people, and mentioned me in her post.

It isn't something I've ever really bothered with.  I am drawn to this kind of story for the same reasons Lovecraft wrote them, and which is explained in the quote above.

I once had a Cthulhu t-shirt.  The picture of the Great Old One was sort of cartoonish, though.  Someone who saw it asked me if it was anything like Godzilla.  "If Godzilla ever ran into Cthulhu," I answered, "He would run screaming home to his mommy--if he survived at all."

The shirt still exists, but I've outgrown it.  It has been used as a night-shirt by both of my kids at one time or another.

But that's about the extent of any explanations I've ever offered.  It just isn't something that comes up in everyday conversation.  Most people who are drawn to this kind of thing have already discovered the infamous Mythos on their own, although I have tipped a couple of people off to it through the years.

My grandmother, who in her later years began reading lots of fantasy and sci-fi because I kept talking about it to her and loaning her books, couldn't read Lovecraft.  I once loaned her the old Ballantine paperback of The Best of H.P. Lovecraft and she read only the first story, "The Rats in the Walls," and quit.  She said it was too scary.  And that was just monstrous rats and cannibalistic insanity.  She didn't even make it to the bad stuff.

So I usually reserve such references in conversation to the few times when there is someone around who I know will get it without explanation.  These days, that generally means only my kids will know what I'm talking about.  The effect of learning about Cthulhu when they were just old enough to talk remains to be seen.

So I guess I don't really have a good answer.  I will add the disclaimer that I realize all this stuff is simply fiction, and while it is to me a way to fictitiously explore the boundaries, I can also see a huge potential for humor in it.

I may have said it before, but I'll say it again.  Iona does a version of "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" that is just awesome.  The words are traditional, but they've composed their own music.

It's on the album Journey Into the Morn from 1995.

Christian readers of this blog might want to check them out.  Especially if you're like me and can't stomach Jesus-pop, or contemporary Christian, or whatever it's called.

This really cracks me up.  Follow the link to Crumpet the Christmas Elf by David Sedaris.

Audio file only, easy to stream even on dial-up.

Sydney Morning Herald:

What the ancient objects are remains a mystery. One possibility is stars, the first to light up after the dawn of time. They would have been "humungous", said NASA, "more than 1000 times the mass of our sun". Or they may be "voracious black holes". While black holes are invisible, heat emitted by matter plunging into them can be detected.

"Whatever these objects are," said Alexander Kashlinsky, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, "they are intrinsically incredibly bright and very different from anything in existence today." The image was made by Spitzer shooting pictures of five areas of the sky. All light from stars and galaxies in the foreground was then removed, leaving only the ancient infrared glow.

SAN rolls, please.

The previous two posts might make people think I'm in one of those moods tonight, but I'm not really.  Sometimes things just set me off.  Friday night is when I stay up later than usual, have a pipe or two and try to write something halfway interesting or entertaining.  I've been trying to think of something in this vein that's also Christmas-y, but I guess I just don't have any good Christmas stories.  So I'll write about something else.

I was well into my adulthood before I realized that not everyone sees music.  It was several more years after that before I learned that there's actually a word for it:  synesthesia.  A simple definition from Wikipedia is that it's a "neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled."  In my case, it happens with music.

Many moons ago, when I was in college, I went to a "seminar" on electronic music.  It really turned out to be a (fantastic, I'll readily admit) demonstration of the then state-of-the-art Yamaha synthesizer.  I think it was the DX-7.  During the demo, the guy running things said something like, "Let's just add a nice red organ patch in here."  Without even thinking about it, I said, "That's not red, that's green."  Everyone thought it was some kind of odd musician joke.

I read about one case in which the person saw not only colors, but geometric shapes.  It was so bad, he couldn't listen to music while driving because the visions became externalized hallucinations that interfered with his driving.  My case isn't nearly so bad.  To use the word "see" may be too simple.  It's more of a perception.  In my case, I see flowing bands, and sometimes spots or flashes, of textured colors.  Right at this minute, my computer is playing a piece called "Urchin" by a group called Texas Yellow, and behind my eyes I can see a swelling flow of dark greens, yellows, some dark almost-blacks, silvery percussion hits, and tinkly specks of bright tan guitar welling up and subsiding like smooth waves lapping at a seashore.  At least, that's the best that I can describe it.  Most of the time, I can't put it into words very well.

Certain music, like traditional jazz, has relatively sparse instrumentation, maybe only 3 or 4 or 5 instruments.  The colors are fairly simple and not disruptive.  But with certain songs, I find that I have to suppress my perception or I can kind of sink into it.  For example, I can't listen to Pink Floyd while driving.  All their layers of guitar and synth create a tapesty that's too beguiling to ignore.  That's just one example.

I think this may be one reason why I enjoy listening to electronic music so much.  The dense layers and multitudes of different, unnatural sounds they can create look completely different from acoustic instruments.  If I close my eyes, it can almost take me over.

I recently burned a CD to use as a stocking stuffer.  I listened to it on the drive home today to make sure it played okay.  I don't normally listen to Reba McEntire, but this was for a good cause.  Usually, vocals don't have very vivid colors, and her voice is about normal.  However, the backing vocals that were providing her harmony got me.  After a couple of minutes, I realized I had let it go too long and I was toodling down the highway at 50 mph in 70 mph zone.

Enya is another artist who creates such dense, textured layers of colors that I have a hard time suppressing it, so I don't listen to her when I'm driving, either.

My favorite jazz musician is Jimmy Smith.  He defined, and was probably the best (so far) jazz organist.  I like to listen to his CDs when driving home, but I almost have to ignore it, and I keep the volume fairly low.  Like I said before, organ is not red, but green--to me, anyway.  Every "synesthete" sees their own colors.  The lower notes are dark green almost turning into black, the higher notes are bright yellowish green, and the whole spectrum is shot through with strips of gold.  The rotating speaker used with the Hammond organ creates ripples that change the flow and texture of the colors.  Instruments which can play several notes simultaneously, like organ, piano, synth, or guitar or pretty much any stringed instrument, have a much more dramatic effect on me than monophonic instruments like winds--sax or trumpet, etc.

This post has been an unusual ramble, even for me, because it's hard to put into words.  So just consider it a "something weird about me" post, and let it go at that.

At The War on Guns:

When John Ashcroft penned his "individual rights" opinion, it made headlines around the world. Terms like "sea change" were thrown about, and we were told how significant the opinion was for gun rights. The Bradys went nuts. 18 state attorneys general followed suit and drafted their own letter of concurrence. And this was used to tremendous advantage to convince gun owners to throw their support behind the Bush admin