Light Housekeeping

Quick note: I've had to do a bit of cleaning up the sidebar where I've put up links to what I'm reading or sites I want to push up. I removed several links.

That's always a bit saddening, because it means that I've lost some friends from my digital life.

One of the saddest was having to remove The Hidden Thimble.

I've followed Talyssa and Siree's blog for years, as long as I've posted their blog up on the right side of my page. I've enjoyed the hell out of their adventures both for the adventures themselves and for the way the two of them shine through the words and pictures on their blog like good deeds in a weary world.

But their last post was over a year ago. 

The site has drifted, untended, since then. I'm afraid my friends have moved on in the way people on the internet do. I hope that means they've moved on to other happy, adventurous places. I hope they're well, and enjoying their lives.

But I'll never know. And that's a trifle hard. As much as you can "like" someone you've never met IRL, I liked the Thimblers a lot.

Another loss is Maia's The Voyagers. 

(Here's what I remind the reader that Graphic Firing Table's privacy policy is that we don't show anyone's face outside family - and The Girl has made clear that it's not okay to show her face, either, so that's no longer a thing - so if someone is mentioned in a photo it's only from the knees down. Cats? They're attention whores, so they don't count...)

Not Maia herself - she's still busy and creating beautiful things over at Feather and Stone - but her account of her voyage through her and her amazing child's lives.

That's been dark since 2019, and I have to conclude that she, like so many other friends, has moved on from blogging. She joins the rest of the crew that was linked by our adoptions, like Carrie (formerly of walternatives) and India (formerly of The Atomic Ranch) who are nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la; not gone, merely marching far away.

I still need to do some more work here. The US Army Field Artillery site isn't linking anymore, and the TechDirt links to some sort of gibberish.

The happier news is that I have some new places to link to, but that's a matter for another post.

Comments

I looked at the "popular post" settings and saw that some obscure posts from several years ago were suddenly up in the "ten most popular", so I went to check them.

Spam.

Everything from Chinese bots pushing Viagra to who-the-hell-knows Russian bots pushing...something SO Russian (probably fucking Trump...).

So I've set up a comment ID and moderation setting. I apologize for that, but, sheesh...Chinese Viagra? Seriously?

Sorry if it inconveniences anyone. But, goddamn.

Chinese Viagra?

I have lived too goddamn long.

Parted out

So I'm back at home after two days at the hospital getting rid of the old worn-out hips parts and getting a shiny new metal one. True to form, the post-op pain pretty much held off until last night when I'd walked through the door and then hammered me flat; my right leg swelled up from the iliac crest to the top of the knee and I had a very, very bad night last night.

Things are better today, but not all that much. And I STILL haven't managed to get a used-food blockade runner past the Hillbilly Heroin Barrier; today has been the first stage of Operation Big Dump which has involved prune juice and several bowls of raisin bran. No luck so far, but we'll see...

(TMI Update 3/4: OBD is a go..!)

The reason for the tissue blow-up was, apparently, that when the ortho team opened me up what they found was a complete and utter mess; floating bone chips, arthritic spurs, all sorts of nasty junk. They had to clean all that up and in the process tore up a lot of soft tissue. Hence the pain and the suffering.

But I'm recovering, slowly, and having a worse time with the boredom than with the pain, at least at the moment. I'll be back in a bit with a longer update, but I just wanted to get this out so's you'd know that I wasn't food for worms, brave Percy.

Irritating Blogger Tricks

Yes, I know; it's free, and if you're not paying for a product YOU'RE the product, yadda, yadda...

Still.

I'd been noticing this for a while; since late in 2015 or early this year and I hadn't really paid attention to it until now, but...

Used to be that when you pulled up an older post Blogger would give you a link to all the posts you put up in that month in the archive gadget. So, for example, if I looked up a post from May, 2008, I could see in the "Calls for Fire" sidebar all the other posts from May, 2008.

Now?

Nothing. The posts for 2016 are shown by month. But for all the earlier years? Nothing; just the year and the number of posts. Doesn't matter what the date of the post you're looking at.

And that's goddamn irritating because I often string together a series of posts in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way; one provokes another which nudges loose a third. So it's nice to see the month's posts surrounding whatever I looked up just to see what the hell I had been thinking about. Now I have to scroll all the way back through pages and pages of posts if I awnt to do that, and that's not worth a damn.

Who the hell thought that was a good idea, Blogger? Your IT guys? Corporate? Or some marketing genius? Sheesh.

It's like the irritating-as-hell thing that Facebook has decided to do where it shows me every fucking thing my friends "like". WTF? I need that, Facebook? Seriously? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Sometimes I want to slap the people who administer these applications like Moe did the other Stooges. Ya knuckleheads!

And you little bastards get the hell off my lawn, too.

Vibennius' Revenge

I know, I know. You're thinking, what, has this sonofabitch just wandered off an left the damn blog? Has he up and died, like the poor dude over at Bats Left/Throws Right?

No, and no.

It's just that I don't really have anything to say at the moment on the subject of politics that isn't a profanity-laden rant full of vitriol and bile. The Great American Parade of Stupid seems to be endless, and I see how ranting on this blog will change that. Seriously. I can repeat "Ceterum censeo GOP delendus est" until Michelle Malkin hooks up with Te-Nisi Coates and it will do absolutely not a goddamn thing to change the central reality of my country's politics which is that the "conservative" of the two parties we allow ourselves has gone completely, utterly batshit crazy, gobbling on about Agenda 21, death panels, and deficits while half the country is out of work, living in the back of their Ford Fairmont, and scrounging meals off the Salvation Army.

So. I can't write about politics.

Battles? I've got a piece on the strategic aspects of the Stalingrad campaign I'm working on for the "Battle" in August, but that's a couple of weeks away.

Personal stuff? Domestic bliss? I've had little or no time for pondering the majesty of a Northwest summer what with work and kiddos and you can't possibly want to hear about either one. I don't have any really cute or interesting stories to tell. I have been getting worked up about our local women's soccer team but the product of that is on display over at my soccer blog Slide Rule Pass; gauging from the pageviews you could give two shits about my love affair with Thorns FC...

And speaking of pageviews that's really the other factor.

I don't want to write this blog for pageviews. I'm not Slate (thank God...). This is just a place for me to entertain myself, get whatever writing I have out of my system, and talk to the small group of people who come around to visit. But...

The reality is that it's the "Battles" pieces that are about the only thing that about 95% of the visitors here come to read. If you looked at the stats you'd see that the only posts with more than 100 pageviews is either a "battles" piece or something connected with p0rn, like the one with the Tom of Finland picture as the illustration. Ah, Internet, you ARE for p0rn, aren't you?

Almost every other post has less than 50 views; most of them much, much less, typically somewhere between 10 and 20 views.

So I'm pretty much talking to myself here.

So frankly, unless I have something to say there's no real point in talking.

My mother used to say that if you didn't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all.

Since I can't seem to come up with anything, then, instead let's go to a man who knew how to write when he wanted the venom to positively drip from his pen.

Take it away, Brother Catullus:

A Suggestion: to Vibennius

O first of the bath-house thieves
Vibennius the father, with sodomite son
(since the father’s right hand is dirtier,
and the son’s arse more all-consuming),
why not go into exile, to some vile place?
Seeing the father’s pillage is known
to us all, and the son’s hairy arse,
you can’t sell for a farthing.

Now THAT's poetry.

Commo Problems

The home computer slipped into it's black dress and sauntered off down to the local electronics dive bar for a pick-me-up. That is, Mojo had to take the laptop in for some serious borescoping and a pullover. The damn thing was so slow and kludgy that it's either got some feelin'-like-I'm-fixin'-to-die hard drive issues or has been virused with something nasty. Hopefully the good people at our local Computer Wash can clean it up and get it feeling a little more peppy.

But until then the noise-to-signal ratio is pretty harsh.

But the sad truth, though, is that I'm not exactly full of ideas at the moment; a recent perusal of the new Blogger format has me feeling a little mopey.

The new telltale that gives you the views for each post is kinda depressing. I thought that this was a semi-interesting blog; I was used to the idea that I got 600-700 pageviews a day. That seemed like a decent amount of interest for a little random private blog that I use mostly for my own vanity and entertainment.

But the per-post views make the source of almost all my traffic pretty clear;

1) the "Decisive Battles" posts,
2) anything with smut in it, and
3) damn near nothing else.

Now I respect all Internet traditions and I know that the 'net is for porn, but, damn; I really don't seem myself turning this thing into a war/porn site.

But it seems like nothing else holds fashion.

I need to think a little more about where I want to take this place.

And I'm curious; would you regular readers (assuming there is such a thing) follow this dog if it was reduced primarily to the "Battles" posts, with the occasional sidetrack into geology, Vargas pin-ups, and Tom of Finland?

Feel free to let me have it.

Hard Drive Housekeeping

Mojo is feeling poorly and has taken to her bed clutching her vinagrette, the Boy with his PS2 is being a mighty slayer of pixels, and the Girl is waiting impatiently to go to our little rock and gem shop to purchase some agates.

I am trying to do some light housekeeping, cook breakfast for everyone, and do a little gentle browsing.

Among with my other tidying I've been tidying my image files and ran across some odds and sods I saved just...well, just because I liked them. Thought you might, too.

I just liked the contrast of lights and darks, and the composition of the image:OK, this one was just strange. Not even erotic, unless your eros revolves around circus contortionists.Like they used to say about Nike: it's gotta be the shoes.

This was just for the prettiness:and nothing more.

I wonder how they find these pictures?Mind you, I suppose that if I had a camera and the opportunity to point it at some shapely woman's backside, I'd probably do it. Yes, yes, I know. I'm scum. It's true. Sigh.

A friend took this little snapshot of a chickadee getting a last bit of evening suet.Just liked the colors, particularly.

This was just...odd.Although did you know that there's a whole sub-genre of porn involving cooking and eating women? Google "Dolcett cartoon" sometime. It's beyond weird. But I will never underestimate the kinks that lodge in the folds of the human cerebrum.

One of my favorite characters is Sun Wukung, the Monkey King; here he is, from one of the talented illustrators at deviantart.Tough guy, huh?

It must be hard to sit in a hole underground with multiple megatons of nuclear devastation. It must help to have a sense of humor about it:An empty silo, one mushroom-shaped cloud, and it's Miller Time.

Just for the pretty:Now THAT's a speeding ticket:And speaking of pretty:Another in the wonderful series of images produced by Brent Diskins as part of "Diskin's Timbers Propaganda". Rose City 'Til I Die!In case you don't get this, the point is that she's wearing her PT uniform; she's supposed to be exercising, not gutsing pogie bait:One more funny:And one more just for the pretty:Looking this stuff over, I have to accept that I have a very pack-ratty sort of mind. I have no idea what binds these together, other than my peculiar tastes in pictures.

Oh, well; off to find some agates. Hope you're having a peaceful and pleasant Saturday.

Light Housekeeping

I keep meaning to post something up here but one thing or another keeps getting in the way; working Saturday and late on the weekdays is part of it, family and kiddos is another, pure laziness a third. I should have something for Halloween, since that's always good for kiddo pictures, if nothing else.

The other issue is that I just don't have much worthwhile to say at the moment. I don't want to repeat and you don't want to hear anymore moaning about the irritating combination of incompetence and moral corruption (that is, not the taking of actual payoffs but, rather, the complete voluntary subordination of the "public good" to the greedy desires of the oligarchy) that seems to comprise the U.S. government circa 2011. I've hammered away on wars and foreign policy, had the usual utter lack of effect, and am frankly bored and tired of both the moron-grade imbecility of the former and the nuclear-red-ass-grade irritation of the latter.

I have some idle thoughts, but so do you and there is no reason to assume that mine are any more worthy of consideration than yours; it's that sort of thing that gives blogging the bad name for self-indulgence it has.

Here's one thing I would like some suggestions on.

I'm also coming to the end of the "Decisive Battles" arc. No so much because there are no more battles to write about - as long as there are humans there will be battles to write about - but because the remaining engagements are either already thoroughly discussed by better writers than I or because I'm just not interested in the affairs. I haven't touched on, say, Stalingrad, or Agincourt, or Gaugamela and that's because I really have nothing to add to the mountainous scholarship already expended on them, and as a result I have no interest in even trying.

But there are a few remaining days of battle I AM interested in. I thought I'd throw them up here and let you give me some ideas, either for engagements I haven't listed or some insights on the ones I have. So, in order by month:

October - two; Milvian Bridge, more for the religious politics involved than from the fairly straightforward combat involved (how the FUCK do you take position with your back to a major river AND compromise the crossing point to ensure maximum carnage if you lose? If I were one of your troops I'd have killed you twice, Maxentius...) and Tours.

November - two U.S.-native tribe engagements; "St. Clair's Defeat" in 1791 and Tippicanoe in 1811.

December - to be honest, I got nothing for December. Any suggestions?

January - the Fall of Granada, as a discussion of the Reconquista in general and its effect on the military politics of Spain and the Spanish colonies

February - Verdun; again, not so much for the battle itself, a boring and horrific meatgrinder, but for the combination of the transition of German strategy from maneuver to bloodletting by 1916 and the terrible long-term effects the slaughter had on French politics and military preparedness (and to some extent has to this day).

March - Adowa, and the foreshadowing of the post-colonial wars of "liberation", and the "non-battle" of the Rhineland, 1936 because it SHOULD have been a battle...and that is wasn't set Europe on course for WW2 - an object lesson that peace isn't always "better" than war.

April - I've done pretty much all the battles for April I'm interested in: Panipat, Shanhaiguan, Lexington/Concord, and Culloden.

May - Canton 1841 (as the end of the Qing and a harbinger of the internal disasters that kept China in a mess throughout the next 100 years). And possibly the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, agian not for the battle itself but as the culmination of two centuries of declining Byzantine and growing Ottoman power, setting the stage for the wars of religion in southeastern Europe that culminate in the Siege of Vienna in 1529.

June - Chalons 451 (again, more as the exclamation point at the turning of the tide of Hunnic invasion of the West AND the decline of the Western Roman Empire) and the Philippine Sea (the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" - again, not so much as a battle but as the symbol of the barrenness of the Japanese war plan and the beginning of the end for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

July - the Armada, 1588, and Königgrätz 1866

August - the only thing I can think of for this month is Stalingrad, and I just don't really have anything to say that hasn't been said. Any ideas?

September - Sedan, 1870.

And that's it.

So...any ideas, or suggestions?

Gotta go - have a good book that's calling to me.

Window dressing

Trying a new look. What do you think?

I like the more colorful blogface. I wish they had a "rain" background, since, hey, this is Portland, Oregon, it's what we do. But the mountain forest works for me, too.

The only think I'm not sure about is the light type on the gray background. Seems a little eye-strain-y.

Please feel free to slag off in it - I'm not sold yet.

Update 6/15: I've brightened up the post text - I like the yellow better. How's that?

Open Sesame

I told myself that I'd never futz around with the comments section on this blog. I told myself, let joy be unconfined, let everyone comment as they damn well please.

Well, I just checked some older posts and the spam was thicker than goddam kudzu, worse than Himalayan blackberry in a Gresham vacant lot in June.

So, much as I hate to do this, I'm adding one of those irritating "random word generator" apps to the comments section. I hope the faithful won't find it too much of a pain and if you do I will revert to the old system. But I hate to go re-read my old prose and find that all the comments relate to Viagra.