Tags
animals, blogging stats, fundamentalism, intelligence, Iowa, meatloaf, moral majority, personality, relgiious right, spring, winter
"First Kiss," by Ron Draine, Art.com
I have a bad habit of thinking, and so periodically, I have to post a lot of drivel, just to clear out the debris to make room. I tried using corks to plug up the oozing tidbits of extraneous info, but that both gave me a headache and increased my hat size a bit too much. People were starting to stare, if you get my drift. So in no particular order:
Animals just continue to freak me out. It’s not just the variety and so many shapes and sizes, so many attributes and such. It’s the personality that, as I get older, gets more and more complex. I realize indeed that we human have just upped the ante a small bit, we are no great leap.
Take our dogs. No, no not literally. First we have Bear, the “A” dog.
Bear is a singular example of the dog in charge. He is willful and stubborn, yet level headed, basically quite kind, and he watches over the girly girl Brandy as any big brother ought to.
He is a stern task master, and during Brandy’s youth, she was tumbled and shaken a good many times until she properly learned the ways of a “B” dog.
Bear will behave, unless he doesn’t wish to. Then you get the blue eye, and well, it’s best to just back off and let it be. Brandy learned that freshly caught game was off limits, sometimes for days. Just because he wasn’t hovering over it didn’t mean she could take a close whiff.
Yet, dear Bear is monumentally afraid of thunder. Has been since day one. It must be embarrassing for him, yet he succumbs to the first rumbles and gets into the house fast, and lays close to any human. Brandy, heck you have to order her in the house. She could care less.
On the other hand, Brandy has her own oddity.
When the Girly is asleep, everyone treads carefully and away from her. If she is even breathed upon, she erupts a snarling fang bearing behemoth, ready to kill.
All the cats, all the humans, and even the King, Bear, know this and respect it. Bear will even whimper to have help getting around her, should she fall asleep in some way that boxes him in.
In every other respect, Brandy is pure love. The tail never stops wagging, and she has yet to figure out that anyone has ever been mad at her. You can yell your fool head off, and she wags away. She pretends to not know the meaning of any word that would limit what she wants to do, but has an amazing vocabulary of words that symbolize things she likes.
Both are adept at going out alone, barking up a storm, thus enticing the other to come out, then coming in and grabbing the best seat in the house, their couch! Don’t tell me they aren’t smart.
***
I’m given to understand that the religious right is having some name pangs. Seems they can’t settle on how they would like to be addressed. For reasons that escape me, they don’t like being called fundamentalists, though that describes their religious theology quite well I believe. They don’t like religious right either, again I’m not sure why. They do seem to like Christian Right. Not sure how that’s really different from religious right. They don’t like American Taliban and things like that. I can understand. I guess they have come to realize that the term “moral majority” is a bit presumptuous. They seem to have abandoned that one. They don’t like extreme right, and well I guess I can see that.
I call them idiots. It seems descriptive to me. Sometimes I call them the wacko right, sometimes the wingnut right. But that is as much political as religious I guess. I guess I’d settle on Extreme Radical Religious Right. I’m sure they won’t like that either. But heck, I don’t find them sensible anyway so why should I care?
***
I’m puzzled as all get out at what has been happening here on this blog. One day I opened up the stats to discover that nearly 400 people had visited. That would be double the usual flow. I checked the forum here to see if there was a bug or glitch. No one else was reporting bizarre numbers, and seldom is a problem singular to A blog. I added another counter, and it is keeping pace as best I can tell.
I’m confused. The second day, it fell off a tad, but was still around 350. Yesterday it fell back to 175, respectable, but still a significant drop. I don’t know if I had some tag that just got picked up or what. I find the “key words” thingie most unuseful in figuring things out. Most of the terms used are artists for some reason, or weird bastardizations of phrases that make no apparent sense.
It’s one of those shrug the shoulders kind of things. Perhaps just more evidence of my universe shopping.
***
It’s cold here in Iowa again. Much too cold for me. I’m through with this chit and ready for spring. I don’t want to see a snow flake again. It would suit me if I never saw one again. That is unlikely as long as we live in Iowa of course. Less than two weeks until spring by my calculations. March can’t come too soon, and I mean that in every respect. Of course it will come exactly on time no matter what I want or need.
***
It’s meatloaf today. I made up a big batch and will freeze one. I decided to cook both though. Figured it wasn’t a good idea to refreeze raw meat. It will come in handy one day when I don’t feel/have time to cook. The Contrarian loves meatloaf, more for the cold sandwiches afterward, but meatloaf means mashed taters and gravy, and well, if you read yesterday, you know about gravy. Just a tip on the meatloaf: I don’t use filler in mine, but if you put about 1/2 a packet of unflavored gelatin in your raw mix, it will be nice and solid. I cook mine free standing, having molded it in a bowl or pound cake pan. It slices nicely and holds together well.
Well, the brain feels a bit more comfortable now, room to stretch out a bit. Unburden your heavy brain here if you need to. There seems an endless ream of paper on this Internet. You can write forever and never run out!
Existential Ennui 
//I have a bad habit of thinking,… Take our dogs//
ya know…. you can be very funny.
but seriously folks…. try some meatloaf
http://www.bigdaddyskitchen.com/cookbook/recipes/Cajun%20Meatloaf.htm
fantastic…. forget the gravy and serve with pecan rice. Just saying. 🙂
I love these wandering posts. Blog traffic has been weird lately, but it’s hard to determine what’s going on.
Can’t imagine having so many visitors! If I had over 20, I’m amazed. Meat loaf sounds good. Sounds too cold there to me, too. Like Lisa, I enjoyed all the mish-mash and wanderings. You have an interesting mind! And I’m glad you’ll take EFM next year–it’s something that has brought together lots of critical scholarship in one place that I admire.
Great mix of subjects. Bear is such a unique dog! Is he part Husky or what? You may have said before but I’m too lazy to go look in your archives, LOL!
Our old dog Alice was just like Brandy – would snarl horribly if you disturbed her sleep. Otherwise she loved us; she was the personification of the old adage “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
Last but not least, I have tagged you with a meme if you want to play!
Lovely pics of your dogs. I had to laugh about the “key words” on your counter. I’m always astounded on the key words that drive people to my blog. One of these days I might just do a whole blog post on that. Anyways, sounds like you have lots of visitors.
Jim, LOL. oh goodie I have humor! If you say so anyway. I’m gonna check out that meatloaf recipe. I’m always in the market for ideas!
Lisa, it seems like it was a glitch, since things seem to have returned to a more normal pace. It’s weird.
Jan, I’m so glad you find it worthwhile the EFM thing. I am worried only that I’ll miss too many classes in the winter.Sigh…but I can’t wait to get the new book list. I’m am getting the book you recommended in a couple more days, Just got word it was sent out yesterday!
Maui, Bear is mostly a border collie, but mixed with something else. I’ll check out the meme in a bit. 🙂
Koot: you could not write or tag to create them that’s for sure, They are just weird as all get out. As I said, most seem to deal with the art work I post, and I don’t tag them anyway, so it beats me how they get on the list as the main google items.
your brandy sounds like my cat Carlos – when he is sleeping on the bed – i dont go into the bedroom
it is amazing how dogs/animals develop their personalities – and how people/animals react.
the religious right – or reich – are scary idiots – and when you have people like Alan Keyes spewing what he spews youi know you are in trouble — they are like wild animals backed into a corner
as for traffic – maybe you got picked up by a highly traffic blog- i have been picked up by Crooks and Liars and my traffic goes from 200 to over 1000… and then drops
DC, thanks for the info. I was thinking that perhaps I did get picked up, but sadly, this track back system doesn’t work here any more for me. It used to tell me whenever my blog was linked to and now it just shows that I’m on somebody’s blogroll. Not very useful!
WOW I love that giraffe-love pic!!!
Oh, our kindred spirits of the not-human … For starters, I call my three cats “my holy trinity.” I’m a goner for felines, and I think the Egyptians were truly onto something by worshipping cats. Cats themselves enter into another one of my holy trinities: cats, jazz, and chocolate. One of our original three was Jaliya, in whose honour I’ve named my online me … She would pour herself into rapture over Diana Krall’s music, especially “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (on *All For You*). I mean this cat would tremble like molasses pouring through sunlight … and she would purr so deep that she couldn’t stay on her feet. Ecsta-kitty!
Blog traffic … I don’t think on it much … I figure bloggy numbers show us, in a novel way, what goes on among humans anyway: there are folks who come into your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime (so the saying goes) … Bloggins who visit for a season might hit your site once or twice, take a boo, and move on … bloggins who visit for a reason might get interested in a certain theme you’re writing about, or the scathingly brilliant way you’ve coloured, textured, and designed your blog … or they might fall in love with your dog or cat, whose utter adorableness you can’t help but share with the world several times a week. And then there are those bloggins who become *friends* with you, through that marvelous mystery of kinship. Something clicks and off you go, wandering into heart-land and starting to really *mean* something to one another.
I think, too, that those of us whose great loves include reading, writing, thinking, and conversation are creating our very own versions of heaven through our bloggy bonds … 🙂
I’m utterly mad about the written word; I express myself with the most comfort and clarity (well, sometimes, hee hee) through writing; I can’t get enough of the ways that we can express ourselves — and *understand* one another somehow through conversation … It truly blows my mind.
See what I mean? I get started, and … ;-D
Jaliya, we have 4 cats! LOL. They are all crazy and adorable in one way or the other. Even the demon spawn! LOL.
I agree with you on the blogging. You get addicted to the rush of numbers and, frankly I kind of wore out trying to keep up my comments, so others would fee obligated to come. I read quite a few, but don’t leave all the comments now, and I’m happier. I just was pushing my limits on time. They know I visit! I prefer some actual good conversation, which I think we are doing better at now.
I’m a chatterbox myself. LOL. Get me on a forum and I can spend a couple of hours typing away, sending my opinions everywhere. Not worth much, but I feel like I let off steam that way.