Where we've been, where we are, or Campground Reviews, sort of

We’ve been on the road for two weeks now, sort of ambling toward southeastern Arizona and the opportunity to annoy the Younger Daughter. We had more or less planned to be there by February 1, but it’s looking like that timetable might get pushed back by a few days. The Guppy is currently suffering from a glitch in the fuel line. At the moment we’re mooch docking in Brownwood, Texas, while the S.O. and Billy Cook (aka BBC) work on replacing various pieces parts. They thought they solved the problem by replacing a fuel filter, Guppy fine ran for 36 miles. Managed to get it started and limped back to Brownwood. It died again after a little over 20 miles. Restarted, and now we’re back where they did the first attempt at a fix.

The current diagnosis is a dying fuel pump. A new one has been purchased, but the weather turned to what might be termed shit: dramatic thunderstorms and heavy rain during Monday night, mud and sopping wet grass and a bitterly cold wind Tuesday. Not much mechanicking got done. Today’s supposed to be better. One can hope.

It would, incidentally, be easy to just sit here for awhile if we didn’t have a strong reason to get to Arizona soon. One of Billy’s friends allowed us to park the Guppy in her yard, we have electricity, and we have access to her house for replenishing water, taking showers, and doing laundry. She has been remarkably generous to people who were complete strangers. Best of all, there is no snow on the ground. I even dug out the sandals and wore them for a day or two. 

Then again, Billy has also been generous with his time and expertise. He was a professional mechanic and knows more than the S.O. about vehicles, but he’s also older than us, retired, and could easily have said he wasn’t up to doing anything hands-on. But as usual I’m starting off with a long digression. The title implies I was going to talk about the stops we’ve made along the way and not just the Guppy’s current woes.

This is a handicapped site so has more space next to it than the regular spots.

We hit the road Tuesday afternoon, January 14. It was a later start than we planned to make. Between a late morning dental appointment and the inability to load anything perishable until the last minute, it was after 2 p.m. before the Guppy was rolling south. Our first night was in a motel in Wisconsin. We had no desire to Wally dock when the interior of the Guppy was still similar to a refrigerator. We just kept our fingers crossed that it did not get cold enough in the Guppy for the canned goods we loaded to freeze. They didn’t.

In researching our possible route, I discovered the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois, has a campground that is open year round. During warmer months the campsites – 300 or so of them – are full hookups. November through March there’s electricity, access to a heated showerhouse, and a dump station. We wouldn’t need the later but power and a place to bathe sounded good. We planned to stop there for two nights. That would give me time to organize some of the chaos in the Guppy, get things that just got sort of tossed in at the last minute stashed more neatly, and also allow us to play tourist, which we did. Woke up on Friday to freezing rain so decided to sit for a day, which gave us more time for organizing stuff in the Guppy.

Each of those posts is the hook-up for a camp site. They're on both sides of that guard rail so the spacing isn't quite as tight as it looks. Still tight, but at least you'd be able to open side doors. 

The Illinois State Fairgrounds campground is a good example of the loose way the term “campground” gets tossed around. It’s more like a set of parking lots with utilities provided. There are about 300 sites, but the majority are in flat paved parking lots with the sites so close together that in the summer when it’s busy it must look like an RV dealer’s lot. There are tent camping sites on grass with shade from mature trees, but not many of them. It looked like there might also be some RV sites on grass, but again, not many. Most people who stop at the Fairgrounds campground are going to be backing their rig into a parking space in a lot.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. It worked fine for us. It was actually a great place to stop at the start of our trip, just like it would be at the end. If a person just needs a safe, clean place for a night or two, it’s great. The showerhouse is clean, the fairgrounds overall are well maintained and secure. The grounds are fenced with access through just one gate at night and there are security patrols. It’s also quiet and easy to get to from I-55. If a person is interested in Lincoln sites, it’s not far from the cemetery where Abe is buried and it’s an easy drive into downtown Springfield to visit Lincoln Home National Historic Site and the Abraham Lincoln Library. Best of all, during the off season it’s cheap: $15 per night. It’s pricier in warmer months, but they do veterans and seniors discounts. There is also decent wifi, which seems to be a must for a lot of people these days.

Our next stop was at the Almost Home RV Park in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. I had found a couple of state parks close to US-67 that sounded interesting, but high water levels made us re-think that option. It seemed like once we dropped down into the five rivers area and saw that what was supposedly the Current River was looking a whole lot more like a lake (definitely way over its banks) we started thinking that maybe, just maybe, the campgrounds we’d considered cwould be a wee bit damp. Almost Home was in a good location, promised full hookups, and had the added bonus of a laundry room. When the S.O. spotted the sign, we pulled in.

There was no one around, so we called the posted number at the information kiosk. Turned out the owner was in Missouri at an auction. He told us to pick a site and he’d collect a payment in the morning. So we did. Almost Home is a small RV park and is probably an older one. It is clean, though, the wifi  was decent, the laundry room and shower house were fine, and there’s a play area for kids. Some sites are pull-throughs. Because the Guppy is a smallish motorhome, we did a back in. It seemed a little bleak in January, but I think it would be quite pleasant once the pecans leaf out. Most of the sites are shaded, or would be once there are leaves on the trees. We were close to the highway so did hear truck traffic, but that’s true of any RV park that’s close to a busy road.

As far as cost, it falls right in line with the typical private RV park that provides FHUs and wifi: it was $35 per night if you pay cash, slightly more if you use plastic (they tack on the fee Square charges them). I had no complaints; we’d stay there again. 

Our stop on Monday was our first on this trip at a federal campground, Beaver Dam in the Caney Lakes Recreation Area on the Kisatchie National Forest. I can say without hesitation it is the nicest national forest campground I've ever seen. We've stayed at some good ones, but this one hits all the high points. The individual campsites are big, none are in a bad location, the campground is clean and well maintained. The picnic tables had been replaced fairly recently (they look close to new), the showerhouse is spartan but clean, ditto the restrooms. There 27 sites with water and electricity, and the campground has a dump station so you can empty your wastewater tanks when you leave. I was regretting the decision to make it a just one night stop. I could see staying for the full 14 days you're allowed. 

Site was really deep. We could have parked the largest Class A easily. 

Like many federal campgrounds, sites are reservable through recreation.gov. This particular campground has a limited number of first come, first served sites in addition to the reservable. We did not have a reservation, but I had checked the website and saw that things were very slow in January. At a busier time of the year, I would have made a reservation rather than take a chance on doing a successful walk-in.

The itinerary put us in Waco, Texas, next. We planned to visit Yellowdog Grannie, do lunch and get caught up on what's been happening with her, and also take some time to play tourist in Waco. I wanted to visit Waco Mammoth National Monument, one of the newer parks in the National Park system. We hoped to stay at the same Corps of Engineers campground we'd stayed at before, but when we got to it the campground was closed. It is apparently still repairing flood damage from last year. That kind of threw us for a loop. 

View from a campsite at Beaver Dam

There was a private campground and marina nearby on Waco Lake so we went to check it out. One problem: no place labeled "Office" or directions on finding it, and when we called the number posted on a small sign the call went to voice mail. We drove around, discovered the RV area looked horrible, very raw and new with lots of loose gravel and no shade whatsoever -- the place is going to be hell in another month or two when the sun starts beating down on whoever is parked there, and no signage telling people where to find anyone in charge. So we did a Google search and found information for an RV park north of Waco. It looked pretty good on the web site.

Unfortunately, it apparently not being our day, it got dark before we got very far up I-35. We got far enough north that the S.O. became concerned we'd missed the exit. We doubled back, and then saw a sign for Waco North RV Resort. We figured that was it. Pulled in, discovered the office was closed already but there was a number up. Called it, asked about a site for two nights, and was told what might be open. The woman on the phone said we could just come to the office in the morning and also told me how to find the wi-fi. 

The Waco site was a pull-through but very narrow and short.

We found a site that looked okay, well removed from the interstate, so figured it would be fine for two nights. The park didn't look like what I'd seen on the website, but websites get creative with photos all the time. It was a full hookup park, which was nice. And the wi-fi worked, although it was an open network so not particularly secure. We were feeling pretty relaxed, glad the day was over and we were off the road for awhile. That's when the freight train came through the living room.

Or at least that's what it felt like. Loud, very loud, and very close. Turned out that train was not an anomaly. There were a frequent trains. Luckily, the S.O. and I can tune out freight trains. I grew up in a house next to railroad tracks. I find it easier to sleep next to railroad tracks than next to a highway with truck traffic. In the morning we discovered the only way we could have been closer to the tracks would have been to be parked on the right-of-way. The back end, the "quiet" end of the park is next to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks. 

We also discovered when we drove up to West to do lunch that there are a lot of RV parks along I-35 north of Waco on both the east and west sides of the interstate. All of them seemed to have "Waco" and "North" in their names, so no doubt all of them are hoping to be mistaken for the really good Waco North (North Waco?) RV park, the one that's a Good Sam park and gets really high ratings in the Good Sam guide. Live and learn. 

And now we're mooch docking. The Guppy developed a fuel line problem between Waco and Brownwood so we've been sitting for a few days. We were aiming for Brownwood so we could stop to visit Billy Cook, someone the S.O. and I met through blogging but had never met IRL until last week. He's a retired mechanic (among other things) but I don't think he expected the first phone call from us to be "Help. The Guppy died." 

He found us a place to park the Guppy while he helped the S.O. with repairs. The initial diagnosis was a bad fuel filter. Replacing the filter didn't make a difference so then the fuel pump got swapped out. We're still waiting to see if the fuel pump was the problem. There will be a test drive or two locally before we venture farther down the highway. 

If the Guppy had to develop a glitch, I guess Brownwood was a good place for it to happen. For sure it beats being broken down by the side of the highway.

Weirdness overload

Astute readers (all two of you) may have noticed I haven't had much to say about The Donald lately. I'm suffering from what is probably a common affliction these days: weirdness overload. I'll see the news first thing in the morning (the little bit of news I do see), think "Aha! That calls for a blog post!"but before I manage to start typing, something even more bizarre or outrageous or just flatout stupid has popped up.

Ivanka Trump's fashion line tanking and The Donald declaring war on Nordstrom. Kellyanne Conway violating federal employee ethics rules. The Donald indicating he plans to spend every weekend jetting between D.C. and Florida (and people had the nerve to complain when President Obama went to Hawaii once a year?). The Donald holding policy meetings discussing classified information in the middle of a public resaturant. Betsy DeVos. Michael Flynn and the Russians. Oprah scuttling a cabinet pick. Learning that he'd filed for re-election on what was basically his first day in office. Three weekends in a row of golfing in Florida after the man spent multiple years complaining about how much it cost taxpayers any time President Obama left Washington. It's a never ending shit storm. How the more political bloggers manage to deal with it all is beyond me.

Part of me has to wonder, as I've noticed a number of the more conspiracy minded types are doing, if the weirdness overload is all part of a nefarious plan, a deliberate attempt to keep everyone distracted while the truly evil stuff happens behind the scenes. I don't know. Is it really plausible that anyone, be it Vladimir Putin or Steve Bannon or whichever the puppet master you prefer, would deliberately set out to cross The Manchurian Candidate with a Three Stooges movie? I doubt it. (And I am now mentally casting movies about the Trump administration and trying to figure out which role Josh Rogen would be good in. And how on earth could any casting director mange to persuade any actor to portray a human toad like Bannon?)

As I noted in a previous post, The Donald doesn't appear to be a particularly smart man. He's a rich guy who succeeded primarily because he inherited money and has spent his entire life surrounded by butt snorklers and enablers who helped him survive in a gilded bubble. With one or two rare exceptions, everyone of his appointees and advisors falls into that same category: not particularly smart or talented, although some do possess a certain amount of avaricious cunning (his now irrelevant pick for Secretary of Labor fell into that category). Nope. In the case of the floundering, chaotic Trump administration, I don't think we need to look for conspiracies or grand schemes. Like the old saying goes, Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity -- and in the Trump administration there's definitely more than enough stupidity to go around.

On a positive note, it has been fun lately watching news clips of various Congress critters being confronted by their constituents. Anyone who thinks that showing up for town hall meetings and asking hard questions doesn't make a difference should take a look at the clips of representatives like Jason Chaffetz (Republican from Utah) freaking out as voters chant "Do your job!" and "Your last term!" Chaffetz was getting enough crap from the voters that he actually withdrew a resolution he had introduced that would have made it easier for the Bureau of Land Management to sell land. The resolution was actually fairly innocuous -- it dealt with lands that had been previously designated as suitable for sale and not as some activists seemed to think a wholesale auctioning off of national parks -- but given current public sentiment about keeping public lands public Chaffetz managed to stir up considerably more controversy than he'd anticipated.

Life's little mysteries

I've always kind of wondered what the point was of tracking the number of "followers" a blog has. Unless a person is blogging for money, i.e., someone is actually paying you to share your most profound thoughts and deathless prose, why would anyone care? Does it make any difference in the overall scheme of things, the course of a person's life, if they have a handful of people who actually read their blog, hundreds, thousands, or none at all?

I am musing on this topic because I happened to notice when I first logged in to the blog this morning that once again the number for my followers had fluctuated. I am moderately intrigued by the way that number goes up or down for no apparent reason. Did I pan someone's favorite author enough to tick them off? Did a casual follower suddenly realize that, holy wah, that woman is so far left on the political spectrum she makes Bernie Sanders look like a Goldwater Republican? Or did someone stumble across a blog post I did on a visit to a National Park and erroneously assume that everything I wrote was going to be part of a travelogue? The numbers dipping up or down seem unrelated to the frequency or subjects of blog posts and also don't seem to correlate with the occasional comment from someone who suggests that if I follow him or her, that person will follow me. Reciprocity in action. Or mutual ritualistic counting coup, depending, I suppose, on one's cultural frame of reference. It's another of life's little mysteries.

Skunk egg, Pizza House, West, Texas

Maybe if I'd monetized my blog or had started it because I had fantasies of it leading to bigger and somehow better things the concept of "followers" would mean more. As it is, the blog's  primary function has always been as a place to metaphorically doodle, to jot down thoughts that don't fit in letters and that I might stick in a journal, assuming I kept one. The fact it's allowed me to connect with some interesting, funny, and nice people both online and out there in the real world was a happy accident. After all, if I hadn't started blogging, the S.O. and I would probably never have encountered skunk eggs. I'm not sure just what the secret ingredients in that thing are, but for sure that is food you don't find on the average Upper Peninsula menu.

Time flies when you're having fun

It's now been exactly 8 years since I decided to start blogging. I am amazed I'm still at it. Most of the people whose blogs inspired me to get started vanished from the blogosphere some time ago. Oh, some of them still have active sites but their postings are rather sporadic. Some migrated to other social media -- Twitter, Faceback, Instagram -- and others left because life interfered. I'm not sure why I'm still plugging away. One of my original motivations was being stuck in a job where I wound up with way too much time to kill while collecting a paycheck. That same job also provided plenty of grist for the proverbial mill in the form of neurotic co-workers and bureaucratic insanity. Life is a lot quieter now than it was when we lived in Atlanta. So why am I still blogging? No clue -- but I guess it does beat doing housework.

A blogging question

Am I the only person who will update posts when/if a typo gets noticed? I'm not in the habit of going back to review my deathless prose, but every so often I'll be scrolling down the page kind of checking to see if any one bothered checking one of the little boxes at the bottoms of posts and a huge honking typo screams at me. Some of the stuff I manage to miss when I'm supposedly proofreading before hitting Publish does not speak well for my copy editing skills. Then again, I always tell people no one can accurately edit themselves: your mind sees what you think you put there and not what your fingers on the keyboard actually did.

I do know most bloggers will fix stuff if a reader points it out, whether it's a factual error or a typing blooper, but that's a little different than being sufficiently anal-retentive to go back and correct minor typos that may have been sitting there for a month without anyone else noticing. Maybe I really do have CDO . . .  

Thoughts on blogging, sort of

So much for resolutions

Back in about January or so I made a resolution to myself that I'd try to post more. I'd noticed that I started off strong back in 2008, but the amount I had to say seemed to be steadily dwindling. I always tell other people that the more you write, the better you're likely to get at it -- not that it holds true all the time; all one has to do to see that quantity and quality aren't always a match is pick up a Danielle Steele novel. If I wanted to remain semi-competent as a wordsmith, I needed to crank out more verbiage. Purely for my own satisfaction, of course. I have no delusions (well, almost none) of ever being an A-list blogger or having a gazillion readers.

Well, it hasn't happened. It's mid-July, and I seem to be averaging (if I'm lucky) a post once a week or so. I'm not sure if it's because it's summer and I'm sort of busy, or if it's because I have nothing to say. I used to like ranting about politics, but lately I don't see the point. It's really hard to tell the politicians on the right side of the political spectrum apart -- they all seem to be competing for a lead role in a "Dumb and Dumber" sequel -- and I can't work up any enthusiasm for saying anything about the Democrats. I'm just relieved that no one seems to be focusing much on Bernie Sanders's age -- as long as the mass media are more focused on trying to figure out just what a democratic socialist is than the fact that Bernie is older than Hillary, they're at least sort of focusing on ideas more than on personalities.

As for other current affairs, like the negotiations with Iran, about the only thoughts I've had are all along the lines of "just how stupid are you people?!" "You people" being the folks freaking out over the idea of using diplomacy instead of brute force for a change. As far as I can tell, the only appreciable effect lifting sanctions on Iran is going to have is that oil prices will remain low as Iranian oil re-enters the market -- so how is this a bad thing? Granted, Israel is freaking out, but that's their problem, not ours. Israel already has nuclear weapons; it seems like they should be able to intimidate their neighbors just fine without our help.

Another meh moment

I was doing my usual ambling aimlessly around the Intertubes yesterday and stumbled across a post by a fellow who was musing about giving up his blog. On one level, I found myself thinking, Well, that's considerate of him. If his blog goes silent, anyone who read it on a regular basis won't be wondering if he keeled over with no warning and is now taking a dirt nap. At the same time, I have to admit the dominant reaction was more along the lines of "Who cares?"

Seriously, unless a person is getting paid to post something on a regular basis or if you have real (not virtual) friends and relatives following your blog as a way to keep up with your health and well-being, what difference does it make if you do a post daily, weekly, or maybe once every couple of months?  Blogging isn't supposed to be a chore. It's not a job. There is no formal production quota that if you fail to meet you're going to find yourself out in the cold, cut off forever from cyberspace and your 3 regular readers. When you're doing something as a hobby, it's never supposed to feel like work.

I'll concede it's nice to throw out an occasional warning if you're planning to deviate from your normal routine, but what's the worst that happens if you don't? A few of your "followers" may notice that nothing new from you has shown up for awhile, they may wonder briefly what happened, but in the overall scheme of things it's going to be a nonevent.

If someone were to ask me why I'm even bothering to think about a blogger's musings about possibly shutting down his blog, I guess it's because I tend to see that type of thing as a plea for attention. You know, it's an attempt to generate comments that will say, in essence, "Oh, please, please don't stop posting. You're so wonderful that I'll be lost without your words of wisdom." If there are events in the real world that are going to take you away from the computer, just say so, e.g., "I'm going camping for a week" or "Other obligations mean I don't have as much time as I used to." Then walk away. Don't turn cutting back or giving up blogging into some sort of never-ending farewell tour where you keep promising to leave but never actually do. In short, how can we miss you if you won't go away?

Blogger weirdness

I see that Blogger is busy being weird again. Word verification seems to have become the default on a number of blogs that never used to have it. Even weirder, on a couple blogs I visit regularly it's now impossible to leave comments. The comment box is there, everything looks normal, but when I type the cursor moves but no characters show up on screen. I have no idea if the comment is registering or not. Very, very strange.

Adventures in blogging

A few months ago I was invited to become a contributor to a blog that invites a variety of perspectives, political and otherwise. I had qualms, but decided to give it a shot. I still have qualms.

When I blog here in my little self-created corner of the universe, I'm doodling in a space with an established structure. It's comfortable. I can take off my metaphorical stays, relax, and cheerfully free associate. Over in the new space, however, it's still feeling like the lacing is being pulled tighter. There's too much of a sense of being constrained. I'm not sure why. Comments are civil, although it's pretty clear a number of regular commenters on that site have their responses set on auto pilot. They have their pet theories and, no surprise, manage to work those pet theories into every comment they leave regardless of the supposed topic of the original post. That's not really a problem, though, because just about the only comments I ever bother to read seriously are the ones when I see while doing comment moderation on this blog.

Maybe it's the quota system -- I'm supposed to do two posts a month in order to remain an active author. Okay, so two posts isn't very many, but I never was real keen on production quotas in general. Having worked at a number of shit jobs that had production quotas, I know from sad experience that if everyone always meets the quota, sooner or later the quota goes up. This month it's two posts. . . if everyone does their two posts, pretty soon the blog administrator will start demanding three. . . and so it goes. Pretty soon I'll be typing my fingers to the bone and for what? No reward other than the remote possibility half a dozen people will read my deathless prose. That isn't much of an incentive.

Or perhaps the truth is even simpler. I keep forgetting the bloody password for the other blog. It's got multiple layers of security (the administrator is a bit of a zealot when it comes to protecting the space) and times a person out after a certain number of minutes. I get a few sentences done, get timed out, have to log back in and, despite having instructed the computer to "remember me," end up having to rummage around on my rat's nest of a desk looking for the odd scrap of paper with the most recent iteration of the password on it. By the time I find it, my fragile train of thought has fallen off a trestle, and I find myself thinking about cranes lifting boxcars out of rivers instead of whatever it was I thought I was saying to begin with.

In short, it's really hard to develop much enthusiasm for contributing to a blog when the contributions feel way too much like work. If I'm not getting paid to do something, then that something should be fun. When it stops being fun, it's time to walk away.

More blogger weirdness

A photo completely unrelated to the contents of this post.

For some inexplicable reason, no doubt known only to the Powers That Be at blogger.com, my blog rolls are doing strange things. They're alternating between displaying the way they should with the most recently updated being at the top of the list and showing the title of the most recent post and displaying as a randomized list with no information about recent posts. In the latter configuration, if I click on any of the links the result is a display that's solid HTML. Very, very strange -- not to mention hard to read.

I'm going to take this as a sign to walk away from the computer for the rest of the day.

How to tell you've won the argument without even trying

Clue Number One: The comments responding to the post are longer than the post itself. Any time someone has to try to bolster his or her counter-argument by either over-explaining or craploading, he or she has a weak case. Either that, or he or she has way too much free time and needs to put down the Cheetos and Mountain Dew, turn off the computer, and get out of the basement more often.  

Clue Number Two: Name calling. If a critic has to indulge in ad hominem attacks on the writer, whether it’s to refer to the writer as a rightwing nutjob or a bleeding heart liberal, instead of addressing the substance of the post, that critic has a problem. Regardless of whether or not the argument being made is sound, the personal ideology of the writer is irrelevant. If you don’t agree with the writer, point out the problems with the argument instead of being intellectually lazy. Counter arguments lead to discussions and the possibility of finding commonalities; name calling just builds walls.

Clue Number Three: Comments pointing out the obvious while ignoring the actual content of the post. “You used biased sources.” Well, duh. There’s no such thing as an unbiased source, especially if a topic is at all controversial. What’s your next stunning revelation going to be? Water is wet? Snow is cold?

Clue Number Four: Seizing on a phrase or a sentence that has little or nothing to do with the actual point of the post and attacking it like a starving weasel that’s just spotted a particularly fat mouse. Either the commenter doesn’t have an effective counter argument to propose, or he or she is lacking in reading comprehension. If the writer begins by saying, for example, “I saw X recently and it reminded me of Y” and then writes a post about Y but your comment is a lengthy crapload about X, then you’re not paying attention. And you’re also way too sensitive about whatever X might happen to be.

[h/t to Bad Tux for getting me thinking about deconstructing craploaded comments. It’s never been a problem on this blog, but it is in another place I write.]

Lighten up, people, the blogosphere isn't the real world

I had a rather bizarre experience this week. I had a brief skirmish in what might be termed a flame war. It was weird. A few weeks ago I had a fellow visit my blog, he left a comment, I checked out his blog and thought it was interesting enough to merit adding to my blog roll. Then things took a very strange turn: he did a post, I left a completely innocuous comment, and he decided I wanted to argue with him. I apologized for any misunderstanding, said no way was that my intention, and figured that was that.

Well, the next post he did was one that got fairly heavily into making a teleological argument for why we exist as well as throwing in a pretty heavy dose of biological determinism. I minored in philosophy. Talking biological determinism was like dangling red meat in front of a hungry Doberman. So I wondered if he'd thought it through. If the sole purpose of man is to plant his seed and the sole purpose of women is to be mothers, where does that leave the poor saps who suffer from infertility? I attempted to start a conversation using the familiar gambit of asking a rhetorical question. I even labeled it as a rhetorical question, which to most people on the planet is a signal you'd like to have a purely intellectual discussion. You're not dismissing what the original speaker has said; you just want additional explication. I was, in short, looking forward to a lively peer-to-peer discussion of a philosophical question.

Holy fuck. There's no other way to put it. You'd have thought I'd just drowned kittens in his bathtub. Not only did he freak out in his reply to me, he devoted an entire blog post to ranting about how unnatural a woman I was because I had the nerve to not be blown away or absolutely riveted in awe by his deathless prose. My kids and grandkids would certainly be a tad surprised to learn that I had no interest in motherhood and that apparently I'd never learned to bake an apple pie. So much for the lively adult discussion and life of the mind I'd envisioned.

Okay. I got it. Some people need more validation than others. Maybe they didn't get enough gold stars pasted on their homework back in elementary school, maybe they're still smarting from the time someone kicked sand in their face at the beach, . . . who knows? It was a tad sad, but no big deal. It was now clear that whatever this fellow said was meant to the The Absolute Last Word on any particular topic. He didn't want readers or conversations; he wanted a cheering section. So I tossed out a parting shot, dropped him from the blog roll, and moved on. Life's too short to waste it trying to indulge in a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

But this is where it gets bizarre. He's still obsessing. I hear through other sources that he just devoted a post to telling the entire Upper Peninsula to kiss his nether regions. Why bother? Why is he wasting his time obsessing about a couple of comments from a person he's never met and never will meet? He seemed like a pretty nice guy until this weirdness happened -- why is he so upset about something so trivial? It's all very strange.

That poor bastard really needs to get a life. The blogosphere is not the real world. Yes, it's nice when people read your blog, it's validation of a sort when they leave comments, but (wash, rinse, repeat) It's not the real world. It doesn't matter if it's a compliment ("Nicely said"), neutral ("We like that restaurant chain, too"), or an insult ("You've got a fat ass"), it has no effect on your life other than the time it takes to read it. The healthy response would be a smile, a shrug, or a brief flare of annoyance and that's that.

As to why I'm wasting my time blogging about this weirdness . . . good question. Maybe it was that business about telling everyone in the U.P. to fuck off and die. That's just so sweeping in its megalomania that I couldn't resist.

The lost art of conversation

We seem to be devolving into a nation of people who have lost the ability to talk with each other. We want validation, not discussion. We make statements but don't want questions or comments that suggest less than 100 percent agreement with whatever it is we've said. It doesn't matter if the topic is one that's potentially contentious (e.g., politics) or totally innocuous (a purchase from Menard's). If someone asks a question, the original speaker freaks out. It's a personal attack. The questioner is being an elitist, a jerk, a socialist, a fascist, or whatever the preferred insult of the day is. Or, and I really don't get how this is supposed to be an insult, it's "an attempt to start an argument."

Well, what's wrong with that? Healthy debate is how we learn stuff. And it doesn't even have to be actual debate -- just kicking different ideas around, different perspectives on a topic where you're basically in agreement but coming at it from slightly different angles can be good. Besides, if you're secure in your knowledge, happy with whatever it is you may have said, why should you feel defensive about it? Why assume that if someone is less than effusive in their praise of your opinion that you're being attacked? People used to be able to have discussions, debates, arguments, whatever, without participants reacting as though their interlocutors were attacking them personally. You could ask someone why they supported a particular position, whether it was a model of car they'd bought or a choice of a political candidate, without that person freaking out and accusing you of trying to start a fight or calling them stupid.

Should I blame the Internet? It can do a lot of damage. It's real easy to find yourself a bunch of cheerleaders when you're wandering around Facebook or the blogosphere. There are lots of what the S.O. refers to as "circle jerk echo chambers" available. Don't want to think too hard about anything? Just find groups where everyone agrees with you, whether it's which NASCAR drivers are total asshats or where Barack Obama was actually born. Have a weak ego? Start a blog and then chase away anyone who says stuff that isn't some variation on you're so wonderful and everything you say is a sparkling pearl of wisdom.

Offensive content?

Saw this cartoon and immediately was reminded of various fellow bloggers being lectured occasionally about offensive content. I've never understood why anyone would feel like they had a right to dictate what other people do with their blogs or Facebook posts. If a site has adult content (raw language, pinup photos), so what? No one is out there twisting your arm forcing you to visit a blog site or to read a particular post. Sooner or later everyone ends up at a blog they don't like when doing a Google search or clicking on a link at another site, but once you've figured out you're not interested in reading about the joys of motherhood, the perils of gardening, or looking at pictures of cats or naked people (or some combination of the two), why not just move on? Unless the site is promoting illegal activities (kiddy porn, terrorist plots, hate crimes) that merit reporting it to someone in law enforcement, just make a mental note to yourself that the site doesn't have any content that interests you and get on with your life. Why bother to hang around to complain in the comments? There are way too many people out there who need to find more productive hobbies.

As for the folks who complain that they're worried about what their children might see -- the accidental viewing of James Deen's dick, for example -- there's the same solution to that problem that is the solution to most problems with kids. Talk to the little barracudas about the various potholes in the information superhighway, pay attention to their browsing habits, and keep adult technology out of their grubby little hands until they're old enough to be semi-responsible.

Weirdness in the spam folder

Like everyone who blogs, every so often I'll have a comment show up that at first blush appears to be from someone saying something nice about a recent post but is in fact spam. You know, it'll have a line or two complimenting the post and then a "this may interest you" with a link. If you click on the link, you discover you're at a site advertising something you have absolutely no interest in -- male enhancement products, office space in Bangalore -- but usually the spam comment is at least directly linked to something you wrote. Granted, sometimes the post in question is a really, really old one, but you did at least write it.

Well, I got one the other day that was stranger than usual. It referenced a post I'd supposedly done on a topic I vaguely recalled but had done so long ago it might as well have been on a different planet. I've never had a spam comment that reached back 2 or 3 years in time, so that made me curious. I went looking for the original post. I could not find it. The link in the comment that included the post's title was a dead link. Very strange. So then I did several searches of the blog archive using terms that one would think would either be used as labels or would show up in the text. No luck. So then I decided to read my blog backwards. I learned a few things that weren't exactly news -- among other things, I used to have a serious addiction to C-SPAN -- but I never did find a post with the title the commenter had used. Very, very strange.

Testing, testing

Just checking to see if it's still possible to embed videos. One of the other blogs I read has been having trouble with YouTube -- maybe it depends on the specific video because this one seems to work.

Milestones

This is my 1,000th post on this blog, more or less. It's not the 1,000th published -- there are a couple drafts I've been tinkering with for ages that may someday see the light of day -- but it is the 1,000th post in the list of posts I've written since February 2008. No doubt if every draft had been completed the number would be higher, but quite a few drafts withered and died before reaching a point that justified hitting the Publish button.

I haven't been blogging much lately for multiple reasons: the hard drive on my computer developed Alzheimer's and had to be replaced, it's summer and I'd rather be outdoors most of the time even if it does require bathing in DEET to fend off the deer flies, and a lot of the stuff I'd like to whine about I can't because too many people I know personally are suddenly realizing I have a blog. The sense of freedom I felt after retiring from Large Nameless Agency the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- no more self-censorship! -- is gone. I now worry about saying the wrong thing about the museum or other volunteer experiences and inadvertently alienating potential allies. I've been networking like crazy this summer, trying really hard to move the historical society's membership numbers up and the mean age of its members down, and know that in a small town it's important not to tick anyone off. I've had tadpoles before. I've seen too many organizations go down in flames and good projects die hideous deaths because someone shot off his or her mouth at the wrong time.

In fact, about 25 years ago the historical society itself experienced what I tend to refer to as The Great Schism. Philosophical differences arose over the mission of the organization, harsh words were spoken, and, from what I can tell from the records, about half the membership walked out and never came back. Things might finally be to the point where it's possible to pretend it all never happened: all the key players in that particular drama are now safely dead.

Spam or not Spam?

Blogger can't seem to decide. Seems like more comments are ending up in the Spam folder than normal lately. I don't always remember to check it, so if you comment and it doesn't get posted, don't assume I decided not to let it through moderation -- it's more likely the Spam filter ate it.

I've always kind of wondered just how those filters work. When I leave a comment on my own blogs, I get an email notification just like I would if anyone else commented -- and the notification of my comment ends up in the junk mail folder right along with the Canadian pharmacies selling cheap Viagara and the Nigerian money scams. The Intertubes work in mysterious ways. . .