Tag: blogging

I Love James Lileks

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And I want to have his baby….wait, no…I want to write like he does. (Yeah, that’s the ticket!)

Today’s Bleat is a masterpiece, especially if you’re a Trekker.

Dammit, I missed the season finale of Enterprise. Anyway, here’s some savory bits from the column:

“It was all about 9/11. Proves my point, which isn’t really mine at all and is crushingly obvious besides, but one I’ve been making for years anyway: Star Trek TV shows explicitly mirror the geopolitical climate of its times. Each one is an analogy for the era in which it’s conceived. I’ve written this before but I’m too lazy to find it in the archives, so I’ll repeat myself. Warning: this will contain small fragments of unbelievably dorky insider references. Apology: I know this is of limited interest. Explanation: it’s my website. Accusation: you think I’ve cared one whit about Buffy for seven years? No. Have I said one word against the Slayer? No. I respect people’s adoration of the show. I understand these things. Hell, I still watch Twin Peaks reruns.

“The original show was your post-Kennedy New Frontier view of the future, with an oversexed cowboy at the helm. You wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Kirk’s first command had been the NCC-109. We all know what that show was about; it’s been pecked to death, so let’s move on.

“Next Generation was the New World Order version of Trek. The Enterprise wasn’t a warship threading its way through uncharted seas – it was a space-faring UN agency with a career diplomat in the captain’s chair. A French diplomat, for heaven’s sake.

“In the original series, the Klingons were the Soviets. In the Next Generation, they were still the Soviets, but now there was a chilly entente. This was a smart move, dramatically speaking; it allowed the show to more time with the Klingons, who were far more fun than any of the stuffy wads-o-rectitude on the Enterprise. (You can trace the entire Klingon subculture to the episode where Riker has a brief tour of duty on a Bird of Prey.) All of a sudden everyone realized these guys were actually alcoholic pirates with a mean sense of humor and a complex social code. And who were the humans? Sober missionaries who never got involved, just showed up to sign treaties. Booooring.

“Oh, NextGen did give us a new species: a villainous bunch of misshapen dwarves called the Ferengi, whose social system was ordered entirely around profit. Capitalists.”

Go read. It’s all good.

KevinLeave a comment

The Department of Tinfoil Hats

Now THIS is interesting. Sitemeter tracks the system origin of visitors to my blog, and tells me how much time the visitor spent, and how many page views they had.

Of course, most visitors are in-and-out, spending a recorded 0 minutes and 0 seconds. I wonder if this isn’t slightly in error, because a lot of these in-and-outs are apparently repeats, hitting a few times a day, or over successive days. Of course, this could be different viewers who happen to share the same domain.

But I found one point of interest – a visitor or visitors from The John Hopkins Medical Institutions server. And he/she/they have spent some time perusing the blog.

Welcome! And I’m curious as to how you found me.

I cannot help but wonder, however, if he/she/they are visiting from The John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

Now I’m going to have to peruse a couple of the articles there and see what they have to say. Considering the fact that they seem to believe that suing the gun companies out of existence is “an effective public health tool for injury and gun violence prevention,” I believe we will not see eye-to-eye on the topic.

More later.

KevinLeave a comment

Blogging will probably be light today.

I DO have to work for a living. Unfortunately.

Hey, would SOMEBODY leave a comment?? I payed good money er, looked long and hard for that option.

KevinLeave a comment

Comments! We Got Comments!

I don’t know how well this is going to work, but I’ve installed a commenting feature. Halleluja!

Click on “SHOUT OUT” at the bottom of the post you want to comment on. It really works!

KevinLeave a comment

WOOHOO!

According to Sitemeter, the blog has had 100 hits (and they’re not all me!) I’ve checked, and I’ve got at least five readers!

Thanks, y’all! Address your hatemail to gunrightsATcomcastDOTnet.

KevinLeave a comment

The Highest Praise A Writer Can Receive

I like to write. I think I’m good at it. But my writing is of the essay / non-fiction genre. Still, I love the written word and am deeply appreciative of really good writers, both fiction and non-fiction. (I’d like to be able to write fiction, but as Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character said: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”)

Truly engrossing fiction, however, transports me to other places to the point that my wife essentially has to whack me with a stick to get my attention.

John Ross wrote a novel that is popular among the gun culture that I found informative, thought-provoking, and entertaining entitled Unintended Consequences. In an interview he was asked: “What has been your proudest moment as a writer?”. Go read it.

I cannot imagine greater praise.

(Warning: Author accepts no responsibility for keyboard damage should the reader be consuming food or beverage while reading.)

KevinLeave a comment

Welcome to the bathroom wall. The link goes to a post by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, which I will quote shamelessly (hey, I gave the link).

The Internet is a bathroom wall.

Consider: Anyone can write anything on a bathroom wall. There’s little accountability on a bathroom wall. It’s hard to tell who wrote what on a bathroom wall. Truth looks just like rumor on a bathroom wall. Great stuff is interspersed with awful, stupid stuff on a bathroom wall.

Most people know instinctively not to offer as verification or a point of information the phrase “Well, you know, I read on the bathroom wall that. . .” Yet far too many seem willing to lace their discourse and communications with “facts” gleaned from bulletin boards, e-mail and Web sites.

That from a 1998 Chicago Tribune piece by Eric Zorn. Now Eugene’s pithy comment:

The sad fact, which I’ve noted in many posts over the past year (and even setting aside egregious examples like the Jayson Blair affair), is that most media turn out to be a bathroom wall, too. An exaggeration, but less of an exaggeration that I’d like it to be.

Precisely. So, who says that one bathroom wall is superior to another? The reader does.

Testing, testing, testing….

KevinLeave a comment

Is this thing on?

Apparently so. Too bad I managed to lose the opening essay it took me an HOUR to compose. Oh well. I’ll reconstruct it and put it back up later.

Welcome to The Smallest Minority, so named because most of the really good names Eject! Eject! Eject!, USS Clueless, Instapundit, Acidman, and so on were already taken. And while not a Randian, I accept a lot of Ayn Rand’s observations as accurate, and it was she who wrote: “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

This blog is about the rights of individuals, that smallest of minorities, so it seemed apt.

More (hopefully MUCH more) to follow.