Some combination of surfing got me to this post by Acidman, which lead to this response by Venomous Kate. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Of course, I just wanted to see titties and if that’s all you want, don’t bother and go here instead (he’ll post some just wait). It was a train wreck. I’m not taking sides but it was like a Springer episode.

Another blog Soap Opera to rival this one, I suppose.

If it’s blogoticking, it worked because I linked to it.

Publicola once sent me a link to SmallestMinority, and I liked it. For some reason, I neglected to bookmark it. I recently found it again, thanks to Bill Hobbs.

Here, he takes on the ACLU’s hypocritical stance on the Second Amendment and it’s a good read. It seems we agree. And he (like me) is a member at AR15.com.

I have a close friend who was a much decorated chopper pilot in Nam, I mean real John Wayne stuff. Anyway, he once gently admonished me for suggesting he use it to his advantage in a certain situation. “I’ve never known anyone but worthless liars and phony bastards to do that.” Yup.

A brothel in Nevada is offering returning troops freebies.

A reason people think Breed Specific Legislation is a good idea. Of course, the dogs should have been in a fenced yard and not running amok.

Uberblogger Bill Hobbs, one of my regular reads, and I finally disagree. He feels that Tennessee’s having a Choose Life license plate is OK and shouldn’t be vetoed by Governor Bredesen because it doesn’t violate the first amendment. That may mean that it is not illegal but it’s not OK.

State sponsored political opinions about debatable issues have a tendency to oppress the non-sponsored political opinions. Obviously, the extreme example of this is Nazi Germany. If you want to have a pro-life plate then you need a pro-choice plate. In fact, let’s have license plates for all political opinions. In fact, here are some I’d like to have:

Republicans Suck
Democrats Suck Slightly More
Eat Meat Because It’s Normal
Vote Libertarian, Nobody Will Notice
Nuke The Gay Whales For Jesus
Fags Are Okay
No Income Tax Was Used To Pay For This License Plate
Buy A Gun, You Pansy
Destroying Civil Liberties Is Like Letting The Terrorists Win (from UnknownNews)

I don’t think my political opinions would make it on many T-Shirts, much less state sponsored license plates.

Damn Art Diary turned one year old.

I met a pro-choice vegetarian the other day. She won’t eat eggs but she’s fine with abortions.

And read the whole thing.

We bloggers like our traffic. I do, which is strange because I don’t get much. At SayUncle, I’ve gotten just over 20K hits since August of 2002. 8K of those were in two days from an Instalanche. Of course, it’s mostly my own fault as I suck at blogoticking. I don’t pay for ads. I don’t troll (if I post a link in someone’s comments section it is because I feel it adds to the discussion). I’ve only emailed a few bloggers with links to my site and that was because I thought they’d be interested in what I sent them. Of course, a gratuitous link in response would be nice but I didn’t expect it.

You should notice that the title of my page is Remember, I do this to entertain me . . . Not you.

My lack of traffic is my own fault as I’ve not put forth much effort into actually drawing traffic. Even when I ordered all of you to link to my site, only some folks did. Enough of my crying!

Apparently, there comes a time when you get so much traffic that you don’t care about offending people. Or (more likely) you’re offending people in an effort to draw more traffic to your site. I guess it’s reverse blogoticking. Mac-a-ro-nies has a good summary of same anger in the Blogosphere. Is it genuine anger or attempts to draw traffic? Her nice little summary consists of:

Someone just generally being insulting to other bloggers – why link to someone whom you’re just going to insult? If you’re going to disprove a contention that’s one thing, but just calling someone a name isn’t productive.
Very angry commenters
A blogger threatening to quit blogging because he doesn’t like where blogging is going (it requires marketing)
And someone spending $376 a month in ads to get you to their site

Most seems to be an effort to get traffic.

In the exact opposite vein, banning your commenters is popular too. Hey, then why do you have comments? I can understand if someone is being genuinely offensive but banning folks for criticizing your writing style and making bad jokes about Florida seems kind of silly. I haven’t had to ban anyone (and I don’t think I would unless it was just offensive) but that’s because my traffic level doesn’t warrant it. I have a few loyal readers but not droves that come here en masse. Naturally, I am jealous because I want enough traffic where I could ban commenters and not care that I may lose some of my audience. If you’re going to have such stringent guidelines, why have comments? The really big blogs don’t even have comments because of the massive trolling that would occur.

Of course, whoring yourself is always acceptable too.

And in the same vein of my previous post on blogotics, I order you to link back or else. And by else I mean nothing, really.

A while back when the Rolling Stones did a tour, the jokes were flying about how old they were and that they were too old to rock. They proved people wrong by having a successful tour.

Metallica just released a new single. In case you haven’t heard it, here’s my in-depth, riveting analysis of it: It sucks ass. It sucks real bad. It’s god awful.

SayUncle is a metal head. I love it. My favorite newer bands are Mudvayne, Slipknot, System of a Down, and Taproot. I’m a sucker for drop D (heck, even A for those 7 stringers out there) tuning. Older bands that I like include Pantera, Sepultura, and old Metallica. And the greatest band ever is Faith No More (who proved that you don’t have to be metal to be heavy).

By old Metallica, I mean anything from And Justice for All and before. Back in the day, Metallica was the heaviest thing around (until Pantera showed up). And when you bought an album, you got your money’s worth. You’d get like thirteen songs that were usually six minutes long. Then came the Black Album. It was the beginning of the end. Metallica went into that artsy-fartsy stage and released songs like Unforgiven. And they sucked. When I heard that Metallica was supposedly going back to their metal days on the new album, I half believed it. I heard the song. Hetfield doesn’t have it anymore. He’s too rich to be angry. The drummer is still amazing, and still remains in my top 10 favorite drummers list. It seems that following success, most metal bands can’t do a good album after that. The Deftones had a cool album (forgot the name, but it had Bored on it) then after that they started doing this music that had no hook, no feel, just meandering chord progressions and dissonant lyrics that didn’t go anywhere. I guess money mellows the angry metal types out.

The difference between rock and metal: The Rolling Stones were made fun of because they toured at like age 80, but they still rocked. Hetfield turns 40 this year and he is metalled out. You can still rock when you’re older, but you can’t give a rebel yell or the devil horns without looking (sounding) your age.

Bubba points out that Iraq has a better Second Amendment than the US does. What does the NRA think about this? Odds are, the NRA is awol on this issue as well.

I’ve speculated in the past that the entertainment industry is slowly implanting the notion in the heads of US citizens that infringement of our civil liberties is OK, as long as justice is the outcome. I don’t think that it is intentional, but it’s good entertainment. We like to see David Caruso violate the fourth amendment to solve a case about a child murderer. After all, the murderer deserves it.

Now, we have this new show about Homeland Security called Threat Matrix. I’m sure the theme for that will be along the lines of 24 and other cop dramas that are Ripped from the headlines. By the way, Ripped from the headlines is code for we don’t want to pay writers to actually think of things that we can just steal from real life and add our own touch to it. The same premise as The Left West Wing. And I am certain there will be plenty of scenes that acclimate us to the idea that It is for our own good to be strip searched and have our doors knocked down by a battering ram at 3 in the morning.

Again (so you don’t think I’m a conspiracy loon) I don’t think it’s intentional, but it makes for good entertainment when the good guys win. But the effect on society will be apathy with respect to keeping police power in check.

An analysis of moonshine whiskey samples obtained by University of Virginia researchers shows some samples have enough lead to be toxic to adults who habitually indulge in the illegally brewed liquor.

I periodically partake in un-taxed liquor myself, but I know my sources. Word of advice, place a small amount of your moonshine into a shot glass and set it aflame. If it burns blue, you’re good (minimal impurities); if it burns yellow or orange, toss it out (has some nastiness in it).

Lots of talk around the RTB about this MP article that discusses bigotry against Republicans. For a detailed analysis, check out Rich vs. Barry, which sums up the differences of opinion.

I have an interest in this to an extent. I’ve been asked why I choose to blog anonymously. The reason is that I work in an industry that is very liberal. I’m not making this up, but once I found an article on FoxNews that related in a very pertinent way to our industry. I forwarded the article to several key management employees. I received responses wherein they basically said: How dare you forward a link to FoxNews? I, jokingly, told them I’d only send them NPR pieces in the future. Anyway, the point was taken.

The other thing I’ve noticed that is somewhat discriminatory is the treatment of the fanatic fringes of each party. The fanatical right is decried in the media. Strangely, the fanatical left is treated with some credibility. No media bias, my ass. In fact, some groups on the right who are not particularly fanatic (the NRA comes to mind, as do some non-violent pro-life groups) are labeled fanatic.

It seems that it is OK to be bigoted toward people as long as you are bigoted toward them based on characteristics they can control. That is, it’s OK to discriminate against Republicans/Democrats because they choose to be that way. And each side does it. But don’t be a bigot towards uncontrollable characteristics (race, gender, etc.).

Of course, that is a dangerous assumption: What if I choose to be Jewish? Is homosexuality a choice? The fact of the matter is, it isn’t bigotry. It’s a disagreement among people that leads to particularly foul behavior. It’s a tantrum. It’s akin to kids taking their toys and leaving. I expect liberals to act a certain way with respect to conservatives and vice versa.

Long time readers of this blog (both of you) will recall when I started out, I often referred to liberals as tree-huggers and a few other terms of affection. I stopped using the term as often (unless it was funny) to avoid being offensive to my lefty readers (again, both of you). The fact of the matter is, I may disagree with a lot of people, but I at least try to be a good sport about it.

Now get out of my face you goddamn tree-hugger!

Saw the Matrix 2. Extremely mediocre. Take out the flash and effects, and the story is kind of weak. The only thing really memorable is that I want the full automatic Glock that Morpheus used.