Test Post

GuyK, over at Charming, Just Charming blog, allows as how he has been restricted by this blogging outfit that we both use.

This is a test post to see if they do the same thing to me. If so, they can have their blog back.

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UPDATE: No restrictions here.
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Test Post

GuyK, over at Charming, Just Charming blog, allows as how he has been restricted by this blogging outfit that we both use.

This is a test post to see if they do the same thing to me. If so, they can have their blog back.

My Flag 2

OK, time to wave My Flag. This is about Me! This is what I think and I say, on other people's blogs, because I don't post every idea I come up with on mine. In the process, some of these other folk get exposure. I will link the posts of the other bloggers, and you can then read down through the comments to get to mine, if you are still interested in that thread.

1. The Bitch Girls:
   
2. Gut Rumbles:
3. Smoke on the Water
4. The Origin of Soul
   
5. Charming, Just Charming
   
6. Random Nuclear Strikes
   
7. Random Nuclear Strikes
   
8. The Bitch Girls
   
9. Random Nuclear Strikes
   
10. The Bitch Girls
    
11. The Bitch Girls
    
12. Smoke on the Water
    
13. Random Nuclear Strikes
    

There you have it, a Baker's Dozen of good blog-posts, and at least one good comment to each one. Think of it as your weekly briefing on important stuff.

No more "carnivals"

I have a mission now. Probably won't be able to hang the "Mission Accomplished" sign anytime soon, since I let the world of corporate blogging steal too long a march on me, but this mission has one goal:

Promote individualism in blogging.

Concomitantly, I will also work the reverse:

Fight corporate blogging.

Bear with me here.

The "blogosphere" works as the world's best information source because it is made up of millions of individuals, blogging individually. When bloggers assemble their work onto corporate blogging sites, for whatever reason, blogging suffers as the last resort of individual expression (and it really is, admit it).

I watched as individuals invited and searched out contributors to their blogs, and made up collective posts from these other bloggers, and gave those posts a generic nickname. Those posts became known as "carnivals". I don't object to them. I began to write one myself, right here, and cross-posted it on my main blog. "Carnivals" are a good way to get a lot of information in one place.

Then, along comes a blogger, naming himself Conservative Cat, who wants all the "carnivals" to be linked through his site. Offers "convenience", says the dude. It does, really. If you like the "carnival" format, he links to many of them, so all you have to have is his one URL, and you can find most of the "carnivals".

Most of them, not all of them. You won't find Carnival of The Curmudgeons there, because I refused to post it there. My "Carnival" was a vehicle for accumulating fine writing written by, or in the style of, Curmudgeons. It took me about 3-4 hours a week to compile, but I probably won't compile another, because the very idea of "carnivals" has been hijacked by Conservative Cat, who has a big enough ego to want the entire genre of writing to go through his site.

I was wrong to put the title of "Carnival" on my posts, because I didn't invent the term, and failed to research who did and then give proper due. I apologize for that.

Conservative Cat owes us an apology, too, unless HE INVENTED the term "Carnival" (a claim he has never made).

He has no moral claim for what he wants to do, and lacking such a claim, is just another corporate collectivist, improving his own fortunes by dint of the creative work of others, without offering adequate recompense.

If any of you "carnival" writers or even "carnival" readers come across this post, you might be as surprised at it as are the two good bloggers commenting in the last post.

If those two guys knew me AND my philosophy, they wouldn't be surprised.

There are two forces at work to obliterate individualism, which is the source of creativity. Those forces are the forces of collectivist government and collectivist corporate greed. Most consider corporate greed to be a necessary evil of capitalism, but that is the one point I disagree with Ayn Rand on. She writes of individualist giants in the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but she fails to condemn the force that works hardest against individual creativity, corporate collectivism.

Many corporate leaders have tried to harness individual creativity to pull corporate wagons, and some have done better than others, but none have succeeded. None of the creative individuals in those corporations will tell you that they are as satisfied working for the corporation as they are when they are working for themselves.

Support of collectivism is why we are taxed. Support of collectivism should NEVER be the reason why we write creatively.

"Carnival" renamed

Since a wannabe corporate meglo has successfully seized most of the "Carnivals" (I didn't think that they were his to seize, so he's a pirate), I will be renaming "Carnival of the Curnudgeons" to something else.

There will be rant up shortly about these meglos and their insatiable urges to control everything.

Hoseheads.

Never surrender!

By now, you've guessed...

...that I'm not going to write a Carnival this week.

Apologies to the three people out there who actually read it. You now have an extra 15 or 20 minutes added to your week, so do something with the time.

Come back next week, when maybe the raging gout has subsided and I feel more in the mood to do something but lay in bed with my foot in the air on 3 pillows, and there might be a Carnival here.

Bleeeaaah!

Relative Attitude Check

Sir, my MOTHER reports that my attitude sucks...

(and she's been dead for 16 years).

Attitude Re-check

Checking, checking....

Sir, I found an attitude, but the report is still negative...

MY ATTITUDE SUCKS

Attitude check

Checking, checking, check negative, no attitude found.

Carnival of the Curmudgeons - Perfect Harmony

Perfect harmony.

Yep, I feel perfectly in tune with the curmudgeon world. I got in some good pistol practice this week, and some coaching for an old, dear friend who was starting to lose her pistol skills (in her yute, she was a steely-eyed killa). Then I picked up my B.A.G. Day purchase, a North American Arms Guardian in the wildcat-pistol caliber .32NAA. Then all my new killa carry ammo arrived, and after cleaning said carry guns, I am now ready for mortal combat with the BEST in high-velocity pistol ammo, Cor-Bon JHPs in 4 different calibers.

There's nothing like being well-armed to give a curmudgeon the desire to tell EVERYONE to Piss Up a Rope.

So yesterday I open my mailbox, and there's an envelope in there that has the "smell" of a solicitation, but it is marked official government business. Doesn't add up, since it has a commercial postage frank on it:



So, before opening the letter, I scan both sides, then open it and scan the contents. It is a solicitation, obviously designed to make a dumber version of retired military personnel think that the Federal Government now has low-cost nursing-home insurance. The solicitation refers to "The Federal Insurance" several times.

Down at the bottom is the logo of the company that is really behind the solicitation, MetLife.

I have a curmudgeonly question here: how the hell does the Feddle Gummint think it can hold our respect if it allows some sleazy (yep, SLEAZY, even if they bought rights to the image of Snoopy) insurance scammers to impersonate the gummint? Does anyone in the government care that the entire operation has been sold to fraud artists and scammers?

I think I am going to call up the Attorney General for this Judicial District and see if she wants to prosecute Met Life. I'll promise to be a star witness, having lots of experience testifying in Federal Court, and all the time in the world to get on the train and go downtown each morning of the trial. I may also try to get one of the local TV stations involved. One of them, KATU-TV2, the local ABC affilliate, prides itself on having a scammer-killer reporter, Ed Teachout, who makes a very good living exposing scams to the viewers (just stopped blogging and sent him an email).

As we get into old age, we curmudgeons have a lot more on our plate. Some of us lose mobility due to various diseases (gout, arthritis). Some of us lose cognitive ability due to losing too many brain cells (to Scotch?). ALL OF US develop a healthy skepticism of the younger world around us, their fads and their wastes of their precious time, which we can all see is going to be a problem for them, but they can't see it.

Why do individuals and corporate scammers take us for fools? Most of us have been through at least one war, either in combat or waiting for someone near and dear who was. Most of us have had children, and the children have given us grandchildren. We've been there, done that, seen it all. Why do these scammers take us all for fools?

A.A.R.P. is really the worst offender. A corporation set up for the sole purpose to sell older folk insurance of dubious value, it had to adopt a "political wing" when it got a little too obvious that it really wasn't the "Grey Panther" it made itself out to be. Of course, it adopted a strong liberal slant in it's political machine, dispite the fact that most of it's members are conservative. That came to a head last Presidential election when AARP claimed to be able to deliver beaucoup votes for John Kerry, and certain conservative dissidents within the membership pointed out that Kerry was unlikely to get 40% of the AARP membership. The dissidents were correct, and the geezers voted for Bush by a large margin.

Then there are the phone solicitations, but I have a handle on them now with the "gizmo". The Federal (and State) "Do not Call" lists have proven to be a failure, as there is no penalty consistently applied for violations. My gizmo never fails, and I bet some boiler rooms have spent repair money on their phone equipment because of it. You see, I have programmed it to have the "unknown caller from unknown number" calls dropped. It just drops the calls. The phone doesn't even ring, and to the boiler-room scammer, it seems as if his phone has gone dead. Other scammers calling from identifiable numbers get dropped into my "dumpster" list, and when they call back, they get the same blanking treatment. Since only solicitors use outward-WATS, I have also programmed all incoming WATS (800 #s) calls into the dumpster. Best $100 I ever spent.

If only I could get the trash company to agree to pick up recycling from the community mail boxes across the street, I wouldn't even have to bring the junk mail in anymore. Why doesn't the Post Office have some sort of an "opt-out" of solicitation mail like you (supposedly) can get for phone solicitations? They could even charge for it. I would pay the Post Office a monthly fee to ditch all solicitation mail, in fact, all mail that is not sent first class. The USPS is working on computer sorting of mail, and when they get it up and running, it should be programmable to do this. I'll even let the USPS keep the bux for the recycled paper.

Old age and scam attempts. They go together. They wouldn't if we each picked out a scammer and made a project out of dogging his scumbag ass severely. Curmudgeon Power! Yeah!

On to the fine selection of curmudgeonly goodness this week.

Let's start with Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta, one of the "regulars" (actually, he's quite irregular, that Denny). Here's his take on Tax Time. Last couple of weeks, I pretty much beat the Immigration issue down, but Denny never took a break. Here's his take this week.

Then, the Acidman points out the folly of Democrats trying to upbraid the GOP for party corruption. Something about if you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones. A-man also does a book report on State of Fear by Michael Crichton, a new book that bemoans the loss of scientific integrity to political expediency.

PawPaw had a look at a passle of reports on WMDs found in Iraq, and concludes that there is no basis for saying we haven't found any, since the reports all detail such weapons. PawPaw also has a delightful story of bamboozling a crook into ratting out a burglary ring.

Oops, I found another Immigration post I just HAVE to link, from none other than the Chief Curmudgeon of Plano, TX, Kim DuToit. Kim also senses the "great disturbance in the force" that conservative are expressing over this vital issue. Listen up, POTUS Bush: your Immigration stance is about to lose the next two elections for your party, and history WILL stick that LOSER label on you because of it. Be my guest, have a flip-flop, we'll forgive you, just as all those (D)onks forgave John Kerry all HIS flip-flops.

Mr. Completely knows that curmudgeonly trait of taking a saber to a hot-air balloon party. Here he tells of a fancy-schmancy IT "focus group" and how he participated in it.

For those who think I don't put enough in from curmudgeonettes, here's Hostagirl, with an intriguing story of "invasion" (has nothing to do with Immigration however).

Also on the distaff side, here's Mel, Anarchangel's better half with another of her takes on fashion faux-pas.

And fellow NorthWest grump Analog Kid, a curmudgeon in training, has a take on public reaction to the Immigration protests.

Last but not least, your grumpy Rivrdog has had a few rants this week. Here's a selection:

• On the "random", but strangely concerted call by various retired (Clintonian) Generals for Donald Rumsfeld's scalp.
• On the hammer-murders in Pennsylvania.
• How to end the Invasion from Mexico by having the invaders VOLUNTARILY return.

No joke this week. Nothing funny happened.

Enjoy your Easter weekend. Wait, one final rant: How about the nerve of the print media, newspaper division: for one week, prior to Easter, they give some ink to various things Christian. for 51 weeks, they indulge in the most anti-Christian tripe imaginable, but they trumpet Christianity for one week, so they want us to think they are Christian. What a hoot! for that, they are my Peeve Of The Week.

Grumble on!

Newspapers, here's a dead fish. You know what to do with it. Get busy.

Curmudgeon's Syndrome

You KNOW you are a curmudgeon if you have this syndrome:

A.A.A.D. DISORDER

I'm sure some of you can relate, and those that can't, well, this might
explain why we are the way we are. Recently, I was diagnosed with A. A. A. D.
- Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests:

I decide to wash my car.

As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on
the hall table.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the
trash can under the table, and notice that the trash can is
full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out
the trash first.

But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I
take out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my checkbook off the table, and see that there is only
one check left

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go to my desk
where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking.

I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the
Coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over


I see that the Coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put
it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the coke a vase of flowers on
the counter catches my eye--they need to be watered.

I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading
glasses that I've been searching for all morning.


I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going
to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container
with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be
looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on
the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where
it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.

I splash some water on the flowers, but most of it spills on
the floor.

So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels
and wipe up the spill.

Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was
planning to do.

At the end of the day: the car isn't washed, the bills aren't
paid, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, the
flowers aren't watered, there is still only one check in my
checkbook, I can't find the remote, I can't find my glasses,
and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm
really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I'm
really tired.