Obviously your cat. Check the comb-over.

As indicated by the title, this post will be literally all-over-the-map.

You ever wonder about blogging?

How about this:

Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
Over 57 million Americans read blogs.

1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
51% of blog readers shop online .
Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .

Do NOT minimize the major blogs you frequent. You never know who just might be a very influential and subtle powerhouse.

And Fall is here.

The leaves are beginning to drop. The sap is beginning to pool on my car. The snap-cones are littering my deck. Right now, as I write this at midnight, storm clouds are literally gathering in the darkness and the winds make the pines bend and hiss. I’m expecting rain. Blessed rain.

People in my mountains have said: this will be a wet winter. It will be a colder winter. Wetter or colder, I’ll take whatever it gives.

I still have to hoist the wood from my outer deck and onto my inside stack. Unlike other counties in Fornicalia I can still burn wood in an open stove. No pellets. No bullshit. No restrictions. Because, after all, we leave our cars running when we get mail at the post office or groceries at the store. We kill horse thieves. Steal a car? You’re a horse thief.

I can remember a couple of years ago: I stopped at the post office and left my car running. I was heeled. I came out and this guy, in the summer — clearly a Flatlander — observed that I must be “stupid” to leave the keys there. With the motor engaged. I pulled my shirt aside to reveal my personal Sig. “No big deal,” I said. “We shoot thieves here.” I paused. “You a thief?”

I hate summer. Fall and winter are, quite frankly, my favorite months. Spring isn’t so bad — but for me it heralds the scorching months to come.

Aaaah, fall. For me it means football, the cessation of DST, cooler nights, higher winds, stacking my wood, turning leaves, the purchase of new personal knives, handgun qualification, shotgun qualification, a new blanket on the bed and, perhaps more pointedly, the exchange of my thin summer bedsheet for a quilted poofy comforter.

It also means some new local beers to sample.

An addendum: I signed my wife and I up for a year’s contract with Massage Envy. I figured that we could use the relaxation, the additional sessions. ME is remarkably flexible. If you have an ability to pay. That seems to be a priority now, with me and my wife. Some people are “ucky” with other persons touching them. Good for you. More massages for me.

Today sucked. I work in Custody now. If we can’t even perform the Basics we are doomed to failure. And I posit that failure isn’t more than “just around the corner.”

I still count my blessings:

I have a wife who adores me, and I adore her;

I am proud of the ring on my finger;

We have figured out how to argue, disagree, then make up. Consistently. And to vent.

I live in the most powerful, the most outrageous, the most blessed, the most overbearing, the most civil, the most arrogant nation in the world.

And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

You want to live in Haiti or the Third or Fourth or Fifth World?

You go ahead. Be my damned guest.

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama’s top energy adviser said Friday there is no way Congress will be able to pass a bill on climate change this year.

“That’s not going to happen,” said the adviser, Carol Browner.

Browner made the statement at a conference organized by The Atlantic magazine, just days after Senate Democrats introduced a major bill on climate change. In a video posted on the magazine’s Web site, Browner was asked about the prospects of enacting climate legislation by the time negotiations on a global climate treaty begin in December in Copenhagen.

“Obviously, we’d like to be through the process, but that’s not going to happen,” Browner said. “I think we would all agree the likelihood you would have a bill signed by the president on comprehensive energy by the time we go early in December is not likely.”

Senate Democrats unveiled a bill Wednesday that aims to cut greenhouse gasses by 20 percent by 2020. The House passed a bill in June that calls for a 17 percent emission cut by 2020. The Senate bill includes an economy-wide cap-and-trade system that would require power plants, industrial facilities and refineries to cut carbon dioxide and other climate-changing pollution. While there would be an overall emission cap, polluters would be able to purchase emission allowances to limit reductions. The bill, however, does not lay out how emission allowances would be distributed, a contentious issue left for resolving later.

The fight isn’t over.

It really hasn’t even started yet.

Looks like the International Olympic Committee just landed a hard right cross to the jaw of Our Hero:

WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama‘s politically risky Olympics gamble failed to bring home the gold on Friday, with the Olympics committee’s refusal to grant the 2016 Summer Games to his hometown Chicago.

With all of this Das Hopenchange, it was my learned opinion that Mr Obama was going to portray America in such a light that she would be loved and massively admired instead of hated as was the prior administration. So, the Olympics being awarded to Rio de Janeiro? How could that possibly have occurred? Chicago newscasters are in tears — tears, I tell you.

What? Do I mean to say that — dare I suggest! — Mr Obama has not been singlehandedly responsible for the rest of the entire planet seething with joy and runneling with drool at the thought of catering to the United States?

I thought there was going to be change. We were promised Change!

Let’s say you have a daughter. She is 13 years old.

Let’s say that a movie director supplied her with champagne and drugs and then took nude pictures of her in a hot tub during a fashion shoot. Let’s say that same movie director had sexual intercourse with your daughter despite her resistance and requests to be taken home. Let’s say the original charges against the director included anal intercourse and rape.

Then let’s say that director fled the US in order to evade sentencing. That was in 1978.

Flash forward to 2009. Let’s say that same director was recently arrested in Switzerland when he arrived there recently and faces extradition back to the US.

Then let’s say the Hollywood Elite “weighed in” regarding this favored director. Like Whoopi Goldberg, who said:

I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.”

Plus, over 100 film industry figures signed a petition calling for the release of this director, including Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton and Monica Bellucci.

Actress Debra Winger said of this director:

This is a three-decades-old case that is dead but for minor technicalities. We stand by him (the director) and await his release and his next masterpiece.”

Your daughter has waited 32 years for justice. She is now 45 years old. The perpetrator had sex with her when he was 38 years old himself. And she was 13. Forced sodomy.

But, after all these years, I suppose that just doesn’t mean much now. Right? Because the suspect is such a brilliant director — such an artiste.

How can those in Hollywood look themselves in the mirror today?

You bleeding idiots.