In Bush's America, no one can hear progressives scream

This moonbat spent much of last year doing Bush = Hitler photoshoppery, but didn't even last til the election. Good riddance, hope your head exploded on inauguration day.

A missing Iraqi voice

Ays has been silent for a month. His last post mentioned the death of his friend Alaa. My sympathies, but I was glad to learn that he didn't mean Alaa of The Mesopotamian Here's hoping that Ays finds an internet terminal and participates in the Iraqi election bloggage this weekend.

Probably not a flameout, but...

...I miss the Rantblog. Somebody hire Aaron quick! And Aaron, what? You couldn't leave up the archive?

Talk about government waste!

SenatorPundit picked up and moved to his own domain, SenatorPundit.com last autumn. After all of seven posts, he quit.

I had urged him, publicly and privately, to keep up his enjoyable schtick and song parodies, and therefore I can probably take credit for extending his run by a few weeks. You're welcome!

He is still extant on the blogosphere in comment boards here and there. I think he has another blog with a different--or no--schtick, but I don't know. Senator, if you're out there, I'm giving you props!

Quitting in Canada

Back in October 2004, Jay Random of Shiny Happy Gulag was in rough shape. His comments were infested by spambots, he was facing a number of personal setbacks, including loss of his home, and he was ready to throw in the towel. But, he moved successfully, got some moral support from his circle of real commenters, and quit anyway, after the election. One less conservative voice north of the border, apparently...

Mission adjusted

I've done some reconceptualization, as this online trifle is starting to pique my interest somewhat. I'll not spend the bulk of both our time listing my excuses for not blogging, as I originally planned. The joke was pallid, and would have gotten stale quickly. Instead, I've rewritten the header to reflect what I've actually been writing about: inactive blogs. Maybe I'll make a blogosphere reputation for keeping track of who be workin' and who be shirkin'. It's still a pallid joke, but there might be more potential for growth in it.

Anyway, gotta go.

Flameout of the week

Bastard Sword was an attractive, fairly interesting blog that lasted for eleven months. It went T.U. in last mid-November. Tsk, tsk; even has a coveted blurb from The Professor in the upper right corner.

I discovered that blog when I chanced upon this travel piece exploring the occult aspects of vienna sausage.

Flameout of the week

Last spring I offered my .02 to Chef Quix at Perceptionalism on how he could try to slake his new thirst for knowledge. Now, or rather I should say, way back in December, he left off posting, and in the comments to his last post said he was spending eight hours a day gaming online. There have been longer hiatuses (hiatii?) in his blog than this before, but it's hard to see how working on hand/eye coordination till the wee hours is going to revive his interest in the life of mind--or his blog.

On the prowl? Or on the lam?

What the...deuce, I guess I should say, is keeping Enoch Soames, aka The Charlock's Shade away from his blog? Can even Chicago offer that much diversion?

My other hobby is beckoning

I'm going to stop now, because I want to get another Amazon review done before I turn in for the night.

Reviewing for amazon could be quite a pissing contest, but I'm happy with my current ranking of 450-ish. Time was I was up in the three hundreds, but I left off for several months and nearly fell out of the top 500. The type of reviews that have garnered me the most votes are reviews for anti-communist history books. I think I'm still the top rated reviewer for The Black Book of Communism, in fact.

But I like to range all over the place, though mostly I keep to nonfiction. I know of some reviewers who wrote about seemingly everything they ever read, then reviewed all the music in their cd collection, then their favorite movies, and then just dried up. Not me. The reading life is a constant voyage of discovery, and I love sharing it with others. Much more than noodling away at some blog...

My review page
, which I really should learn how to permanently post off to the side, here.

About Last Night

Art critic Terry Teachout is not blogging this weekend. He's taking a break from blogging about his reviewing, in order to go review a play.

Teachout is the editor of A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, and a recent biography of Mencken, for any passing fans of the Sage of Baltimore.

Blackfive immersed

Blackfive took a blogger breather for "immersive" training. Deep diving, he said mysteriously. For paratroopers...?

Flameout of the week

Scott over at Thinking Rocks Hard is a young Briton who started his blog with the benefit of an announcement on a fairly major blog. I think I discovered it via The Commissar, either through him or via someone on his blogroll. Anyway, young Scott introduced himself as the 500,000th most intelligent person in the world, posted a couple or three posts about how patriotism is a prehistoric atavism, and hasn't surfaced since mid-December. Getting mentions from Kevin McGehee and OutsideTheBeltway ought to have been an encouragement to continue. Maybe he's so smart that he saw what a time sink blogging can be, and decided to quit early.

Changes at work, no changes in work

No posting lately because I'm in a supervisory development course, on top of my regular slate of schedule-gnawing meetings. The further in I get, the more I wonder if this course is really supposed to be punitive.

Anyway, no time/reason to post, regarding myself.

Oh, there it is. Hmmph...

Turns out it wasn't blogger's fault, I don't think. The post didn't disappear, it just didn't appear when the program said it would. Not really an ESO error either, though, so I don't feel so bad.

See, that's another reason I don't blog, too many ESO errors. Equipment Superior to Operator.

Well, THAT was fast!

Blogger took my second post and ate it. I had heard about Blogspot's unreliability, but I thought Google's good karma would have rubbed off on them by now.

Well, it's too late to re-type it. It's late, and that's my excuse for knockin' off now. 'Night....

The biggest burnouts

Steven den Beste, though never on my regular list of blogs to read, was obviously a heavyweight. But one too many readers crapped at him for posting what he posted on his own blog, so finally he called it quits.

Allahpundit, who made the lately-concluded Presidential campaign memorable for those lucky enough to have discovered his photo-shop wizardry, was also an inspired pundit occasionally. He also had a bigger hand in exposing Rathergate than he got credit for. And, as he mentioned in his new--and neglected--blog, he got involved in some unspecified legal trouble. From top to bottom, and from beginning to end, his too-brief career will be a milepost in these early blogosphere years.

Now The Commissar sounds like he's going to succumb to creeping whatsthepointitis. I'm sure he'll do a good job with his Iraqi elections blog--and I still think he should publicize his UN Oil for Food scandal blog more than he does. But he's been slipping out of schtick a lot lately, which I guess is a warning sign.

Now why should the likes of me climb up the heights they scaled, just to slide down the opposite slope? Besides, I'm getting annoyed calls from the other room, gotta run...

Excuses, excuses...

Since this is the first post in this weblog, I can't apologize for not posting more often. So, I guess I'll have to apologize for not posting sooner. Busy with work & family, you know...

Seriously, I've toyed with the idea of blogging for some time. Yet who has time to read another one, with millions in existence? In my surfings around the 'sphere, commenting here and there, I frequently remark that at least one other person will read my pearls of wit. Not so with a blog of my own. I don't feel any need to write diary entries. What creative juices I have get taken care of well enough at my Amazon page, my comments on other blogs around the 'sphere, and news:alt.quotations. Yet the urge for cheap self promotion, with a minimum of effort, still prods. So here I am.

Don't expect a lot, okay? Like you, I'll probably drop by infrequently.