I’ve been writing this post for a week. Have a seat, grab the chair, and hold on. It’s coming. Dear god, it’s coming.
Your pal,
– bob
A Little Housekeeping Is In Order
Friends,
I’ve been away for a little while doing a couple things, but I’m back and ready to use this to avoid having to write some other stuff on a deadline! Now that’s taking the bull by the horns! (and getting gored anyway. -ed) Let’s review:
- I went on a little trip with The Man From S.T.I.N.K.O. from Chicago back to California. More on this in a bit, but in the meanwhile, think how you could use your lottery winnings in a systematic way to destroy Oklahoma. My secret plan has something to do with genetically engineering a super army of hammerhead sharks, but there are some kinks to work out.
- We’re rebranding the Far Eastern Outpost of San Diego’s Omnipresent Charitable Organization and the whole thing drops in a week and a half (hope you like russet and taupe! -ed) so I’m going to be writing more here for the procrastination reasons stated above.
- If you know somebody in rural Riverside County who has fire wood for sale at a cheap price, drop me a line. It’s still kinda chilly at the Damp Dog Lodge and I’ve run through my cord and a half of oak.
More stuff has happened since the last post those many weeks ago, but you might find those things sort of boring. I do have some pictures from the trip though, so you’ll see those in a little while.
Your pal,
– bob
Let’s Review The Jaunty Little Traffic Logs!
Friends,
I noticed a big jump in traffic hitting this here hot little mess and upon closer review noticed something stunning—the giant spike is coming entirely from Bulgaria. That’s right. The Black Sea former communist nation of 7.4 million has taken a shine to this proud beacon of American values, including japery, tomfoolery and general sniping as well as this annoying itch that we can’t seem to get rid of even with the most powerful over the counter liniments and tinctures.
Welcome aboard Bulgaria! We’re glad to have you as new members of our minor chattering society. Please do feel free to leave comments and let us know how we’re doing.
Your pal,
– bob
Happy New Year!
Friends,
A new year is upon us and it’s time to reflect on the year that’s been. The highs and lows, the tragedies and the triumphs.
All done? Great!
Happy new year!
– bob
Happy Christmas!
Friends,
Between my several jobs and the grind of winter, I’m afraid that I just haven’t had the time to post as often as I intend to. I really do prefer longer posts, but those kinds of pieces require more thought than I seem to have the capacity to produce. Things should, on the whole, settle down in the new year though, so expect much more starting in a week or so.
In the meanwhile, with things starting to heat up again in the Falklands, please enjoy this news photo of an imperialist subjugating the locals.
Have a happy and safe Christmas and a fine new year!
– bob
Happy Halloween!
Friends,
Here’s a little snapshot of the office Halloween party here at Jaunty Central we thought you’d enjoy. The Idyllwild Weather Clam and I thought it’d be fun to dress up as Roy Clark and Buck Owens, but the girly dog insisted on dressing up as Ernest Borgnine.
I don’t get it either.
– bob
Mountain Lion Spotted! Still Checking For Pumas and Cougars…
Friends,
My part-time, next door neighbor called last night to let me know that when she drove home from her cabin on Sunday, she had to make a panic stop halfway down the street to avoid hitting a mountain lion. “I don’t know if you leave your dog out overnight (I don’t because she’ll bark at rustling leaves and nobody will get any sleep), but I’ll bet that mountain lion would have no trouble climbing your fence.”
I have a couple thoughts about this. The first would be that she must not have been that worried to wait until Tuesday. Maybe it looked sickly or sort of unmotivated. The second is that despite the delay, I still took time out of my evening last night to lose my mind over every tiny noise inside or outside. But my biggest concern isn’t that the nice kitty will climb the fence…
Your pal,
– bob
Gladiolus? Better Than That, We’re Tickled Pink!
Friends,
It’s time to clean out the card on the camera for the weekend, and I thought you might like to see pictures of flowers and a grinning puppy dog. The mild weather has done wonders for the late Summer bulbs and having the place to herself again is doing wonders for the girly dog’s disposition.
The pictures are pretty good, but I’ll try to get more words out very soon.
Your pal,
– bob
Urgent News Update
Friends,
It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with the Riverside Press-Enterprise’s breaking news blog. In this, one of California’s geographically largest counties, hardest hit by the recession, the editors and journalists at the region’s local newspaper must be pulling their hair out looking for the stories that can make sense of it all…
RIVERSIDE: Rain water floods gym floor Rain water leaking through newly installed light fixtures flooded the gym floor at La Sierra University this morning.
Keith Gustafson, owner of the Inland Empire Volleyball League, said he had to cancel his organization’s practices today because of the water on the gym floor. Once he heard about the flooding, he started at 8 a.m. calling and texting parents of the 200 players involved in the league to tell them of the cancellation.
“We didn’t expect this at all,” said Gustafson, noting that he’s never had to cancel an event because of the weather in the 12 years he’s run the year-round program.
– DAVID KECK
Water polo is kinda like volleyball,
– bob
UPDATE: I’ve changed the picture to puppy pads. I trust Arm and Hammer won’t mind.
Blink.
Friends,
Congress has decided to play a game of chicken with the finances of the United States. A game of high-speed mumbley peg with the nation’s digits under their rusty jack knife. What’s worse, (a worse thing, or are you extending the metaphor? -ed) is that the country’s economy hasn’t recovered enough to afford even a tetanus shot against the missteps of these ham-fisted apes. Before you get all fiscal on me, I’m not cutting the prevaricator in chief any slack on this either. He had the opportunity at the beginning of the year to ask for a clean debt increase bill and missed his chance. Now it’s the ’72 Munich Olympics in the capitol with our finances held at gunpoint, all due to some red meat types latching on to the idea that a debt limit increase is for future spending and not to pay for stuff we already bought.
The Treasury Department has set a deadline for next Monday when we’ll run out of money to write checks for government things, like checks for pensioners and tranquilizers to keep the space monsters we’ve locked up from eating us. We’re in a pickle, folks.
What will happen? Will the legislative and executive branches cut a last-minute deal? Will the president, in lieu of a deal, exert his executive privilege to extend the debt ceiling on his own? Will the “full faith and credit of the United States” be as suspect as a clean lab result from a professional bicycle racer? The answer to these questions, and whether we’re all doomed, will be answered next Monday.
In the meanwhile, fill up your gas tanks. Just saying.
– bob
Finality.
Friends,
America’s space shuttle program ended today with the successful landing of Atlantis. Times are tough in this country right now, but this really drove it home.
Your pal,
– bob
P.S. Image courtesy NASA’s photo stream on flickr.
A Jaunty Little Blogiversary!
Friends,
Today is the ninth anniversary of this little mess and I’d like to thank both of you for hanging in there and continuing to follow along. A lot has happened over these last nine years, of course. I lost a marriage and lost a house, then got a house and a new community to go with it. Lost too many family members and gained a bunch of little ones. Lost a dog and got a dog. Lost a job, then got a job, then lost some of that job again.
In the state, we recalled a governor then got a minor movie star to replace him, then we got our old governor back again. We lost our budget surplus, some wildlands burned (sorry, Smokey), then gasoline nearly reached five dollars a gallon.
Some might say that the timing of this anniversary suggests that the blog started as a belated reaction to 9-11, like so many other warbloggers. The follow-on wasn’t so much because of the beginning of the war, but that blogging tools were starting to mature then and I still needed a place to write after the loss of my copywriting gig. I will admit, though, that some of the pieces I posted did have a squirmy, chickenhawk flavor to them. I was in favor of invading Iraq before I was against it, for instance.
I’m now focusing my time here on other things, mostly local news and events. I tend to get less hate mail that way. Cute pictures of cute things seem to also grab my attention lately, whether I take them or not, so they’re going to continue. It’s been fun so far and I’m trying to pick up the posting pace as we approach the ten year mark. It’s hard to believe that our little blog is nearly all grown up. *sniff!*
So along with the Idyllwild Weather Clam and Mme. Puppy Dog, I thank you for stopping by. The next year should really be something.
Your best pal in the whole wide world,
– bob
Small Stories About Disappointing Things
Friends,
As the tags indicate, I think these things are related to each other in some way. I’m not sure you’ll agree, but let’s throw this stuff in the pot and see if we end up with stew…
- There were a couple little automobile races on Sunday, starting with the American classic — the Indianapolis 500. My houseguests and I didn’t care so much, but we watched the thing anyway and towards the end, fell in love with the pluck of rookie JR Hildebrand. What a clever fuel strategy! What skill staying out of trouble and holding his line! Look! It’s the white flag and this kid’s in front! And then he crashed on Turn Four, right before the finish line. On to our next story…
- Nascar certainly can’t let Indy Car have all the fun, so they decided to run a longer race on the same day. Again, we didn’t care until the very end, but what’s this? Dale Earnhardt Jr. is winning in the last lap! What skill staying out of trouble and holding his line! What a clever fuel strategy! Then he ran out of gas and some other guy won. Now for weasels.
- My dear friend called this evening with a story that gives sharks and bastards a bad name. Her father is struggling with Alzheimer’s Disease, but lawyers would like to depose him to testify in a dispute over a land deal from the 80s. His lawyers protested that he was too ill to travel and sit and speak under oath for hours, but the opposition hired an investigator to prove this wrong. Video camera at the ready, the investigator ignited an M80 outside his front door and recorded him ambling to the window to determine the source of the commotion. See? He can move around just fine, your honor. One more…
- As long-time followers of this mess surely know, my hours at the Far Eastern Outpost of San Diego’s Omnipresent Charitable Organization have been cut in half. In fact, my Wednesdays are literally cut in half to make the timing work. This knowledge did not prevent one of the bosses from getting huffy that I was not available to solve problems with his personal home computer not receiving company email in a timely manner. Allow me to clarify — one of the people who got together and decided to send me halfway out into the dodgy financial wilderness has the gall to protest that I’m not there often enough? Really? Seriously? I find this behavior stunning.
So, how was your Wednesday?
– bob
This Seems Bad
Friends,
This stinks. A real virus out in the wild for Macintosh? Really? For reals? Don’t sign up for any antivirus software for the Mac just yet. Even they don’t know how to deal with this at the moment, so don’t throw money at folks out of panic. Here at our Secret Alpine Laboratory, we’ve been working on a timer to let you know exactly when to panic. Not yet, my pretties. Not yet.
Just be careful out there people.
– bob
UPDATE: Here’s a non-hysterical list of antivirus and malware-ratting-out software for the Mac from Lifehacker. I’m going to run some free stuff for a little while to see if it doesn’t stink too bad and I’ll let you know how that turns out. This whole think stinks, kinda like the Russian mob telling you that you have to start wearing briefs under your kilt.
Another Good Use Of Bandwidth
Friends,
It seemed like a good idea when my hours at The Festival of Dirt were cut in half to go out and get a new job. The job numbers are looking up, I hear. Plus, the Great Recession (as we’re calling it now) is finally over. Good news! Nifty! Should be a piece of cake to find new employment!
Well dear readers, this has not been the case. I’ve submitted resumes for positions that are essentially what I do now and for jobs that I would love to do, but I haven’t heard from anybody except spammers who will rewrite my resume for a fee or provide me with a sure-fire job finding toolkit, also for a fee. I find this infuriating on two levels, as I’m sure you do. The end goal of my job search isn’t actually to give other people money (which seems intuitive, but when you’re busy being evil, maybe you miss the simple stuff) nor is it to provide personal information to a mailing list instead of an employer. This country’s economy has gone through a very rough patch, but that’s no excuse to prey on the desperate.
Speaking of desperate though, if I’m going to embark on Plan B, to get some freelance work to make up the other half of my salary, my poor website would need a refresh. You remember the old, tired, iWeb template site, don’t you? No?
It was pretty simple and I didn’t update it very often, so nobody showed up. The hit count was low and very few people gave it a second thought, but that’s about to change!
The new site, pictured at the top, is better in every way. It has pages and links, which makes it a proper website. A picture of the Mighty Jeepster is now on every page to lend some much-needed dynamism. The webcam is still there, plus there are now colored rectangles, which make it more modern. Also, the web development software I’m now using has some settings that make the thing render differently depending on the browser you’re using, which I hadn’t intended.
Overall, it’s really great and you should visit!
Your pal,
– bob