I will likely be taking down the picture site with the Plogger software and start using Coppermine, which has better spam protection, in fact I have already done it and the new URL for the photo gallery is http://herbthiel.com/coppermine/

 Last weekend was our church’s annual Father and Son Campout and it was really great.  Ben brought Trent and three of the younger boys from the church whose fathers either couldn’t or wouldn’t bring them.  You don’t have to be a member of our church to come along and nobody gets all preachy at people, but the one man is a hardworking man and also very, exceptionally shy.  I don’t know what the other one’s problem was.  Perhaps he’s afraid that, even though no one would preach to him or get after him to get back into church, his own conscience might.

 Anyway, it is always a lot of fun and this year was even greater because Ben and Trent and these few of my Sunday School friends were there.  I have been teaching so long that many of the dads are people I have known and liked since they were in my class themselves.  It’s a fine time had by all, with Ben’s home-made foam swords and boys and young men testing their skill and strength, the camaraderie of a group of men and the beauty of the Pike National Forest.  It’s this beauty I want to talk about and where the stupidity comes in.

There has been little or no rain in The Pikes Peak Region in the last couple of months.  The area is dry.  The scientists at the National Forest Service have ways of measuring how dry it really is.  They can tell you how much moisture there is in the potential fuels all around the area and determine how high the danger of a forest fire starting is.  They are not a bunch of rascals waiting for the time when someone wants to go camping and then decide to take all their fun away, they are trying to prevent the loss of life and property.  You all remember Smokey the Bear, right?  The Forest Service operates a website for him that shows in real time the number of acres burning up right now.  http://www.smokeybear.com/wildfires.asp

You know I try not to make my entries rely too much on Youtube videos, but every once in a while there is one that comes along that seems to punctuate, sometimes with an exclamation point, what I am trying to say.

 (This video clip on Youtube is also available on Smokey’s homepage http://www.smokeybear.com without the comments.)

So, what got me on this tangent?  Stupid people.  Stupid, ignorant, idiotic morons who don’t know anything about how fire works or what you are supposed to do when you leave a campsite, e.g., pick up your trash, including the dog food you put on the ground for your dog.  On that little side note I want to know why in the world you would bring your dog or dogs on a camping trip with you (bad idea in my opinion) but not bring a bowl to put their food in?  Oops, wait, I forgot.  You’re an idiot!  Now, while people are camping, if you drop something on the ground it is still considered edible and depending on what it is you dropped the five second to thirty minute rule may apply, but you don’t actually eat off the ground.  Or did you do that on purpose because you didn’t like our group or the fact that we had kids with us, so you thought you could leave some skunk/coon/bear bait to spoil our time.  Is that why you left your trash, including some melted frozen sugar-water pops?  Oh wait, I forgot again, you’re stupid and need someone to grab you by the shirt and shake you up real good, maybe banging your head against some trees in the process.

The people who were camped next to our spot decided, for whatever reasons they had, to take their big dog and pack up and leave.  I don’t know why.  Our kids weren’t awful, although, being kids, and boy-kids at that, they did get up early and do boy-things, like see who could cross the creek on a narrow log, search for fish and have other adventures and so, if perhaps the folks next door were hung-over, which might explain but not excuse their knuckleheadedness, I guess they might have been bothered, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of how boys behave and they were actually very polite and tried to be thoughtful.  So, for whatever reason, they pulled out, leaving their trash and skunk-bait and a fire ring with a few of those frozen sugar water pop things tossed in.

Giving them a big benefit of the doubt, I think they were just stupid.  High gusts of wind and dry conditions like we have had are a bad mix with stupidity.  They pulled out and we were sitting around our little propane stove with our coffee when we looked over and saw what I first thought was a bunch of ash blowing out of their fire pit.   It only took a couple of minutes to realize that while the ashes were being blown away, there was smoke blowing from it as well.  The high winds had blown the ashes off some still-warm coals.  We all ran over there with gallon jugs for water and sure enough, the coals were red hot and as the wind blew you could see the coals getting hotter and hotter and the contents of the plastic packages of the frozen pops was bubbling inside.  Some bigger pieces of wood that were in the pit started to heat up and have red coals on the bottom of them as well.

Fortunately we were by a small creek and had fast access to water.  I poured several gallons of water on it and stirred it into mud while Brother F. took the now-glowing logs out of the pit and tossed them into the creek.  It did create a teachable moment, though, since we were able to show some of the boys why there are fire bans and how easy it would be to start an uncontrollable fire.  I showed them how to stir it, put it out, and make sure it was out.  Here is a link to a ranger showing how the process is done, but remember, he’s not a movie star or actor, he’s a guy doing his job.  http://youtu.be/tqqGjD_TqhA

I had looked around for one that I remember from being a boy in the 60’s where Smokey or someone walks you through the process of putting out a campfire but I couldn’t find it.  I did find a link to Rod Serling doing a commercial about it, though: http://youtu.be/QykWmqrLcPI

And this one from the Seventies is really quite clever, with the father at the end saying, “Ah, just leave it.  It’ll go out on its own.” http://youtu.be/hSSRhsdOuNs

Anyway, it is really true, YOU can make a difference in the number of acres we lose to wildfires each year.  It’s not a conservative/liberal/libertarian cause, either, but rather a matter of common sense.

Till next time,

Herb (Flamin’ Mad) Thiel

We live in a town with five military installations; four Air Force and one Army, and we get to see many feats of flying skill quite often, especially when the Air Force Academy is playing a home game in football.  The Fabulous Thunderbirds are here for every graduation as well.  I have seen a lot of different types of things that fly in the air, but when I see what I saw I saw earlier today, it always takes my breath away.  This was the real thing, baby, uh-huh!  Aerial combat at it’s finest and right in the skies over our fair city.  A large enemy had tried to attack one of the smaller, hidden, out-of-the-way spots to attempt to do who-knows-what sort of damage to it when suddenly, as if out of nowhere came a pair of fierce, screaming fighters.

I have seen it before but it amazes me each time.  Here in the Springs, especially out on the eastern high plains, we have a lot of raptors of various breeds and sizes.  Red-tailed Hawks are common, Golden Eagles are seen, many of the smaller falcons, owls, I don’t know what all, live on the plains and often in the green belt areas in town.  Drive up into the mountains at the right time of the year and you will see flocks of Bald Eagles.  The raptors are amazing and powerful creatures, with deadly talons and beaks that could have exacted the pound of flesh for the Merchant of Venice with one pass.  If you have ever seen an animal, say a cat or raccoon that has been killed by one of them you realize that this is a force to be reckoned with.  A dangerous animal that flies high in the sky watching for the movement of its prey, swooping down at a high rate of speed, screeching at the last minute to strike fear in the heart of whatever misfortunate creature it has stalked.

With all that power, I wonder what makes it want to try to rob the nests of smaller birds.  Perhaps they are after an easy snack or what appears to be an easy snack.  I don’t know.  But even as it sits in the tree and readies itself for the strike, out of nowhere comes a pair of screaming sparrows!  Watch out, little sparrows, don’t you know who you are dealing with?  They don’t care.  There is a predator in their tree and they strike.  They fly at the back of his head at a high rate of speed and hit him full force with their beaks.  Again and again until the hawk tries to take flight.  He gets out of the tree but the little birds are above him, taking turns diving onto the back of his head and neck, driving him away from the tree.  They are unrelenting, too.  They are not content to merely chase him a little ways off but rather chase him until your eye can no longer see how far they went.  They do it with crows or ravens, too.  Even though the birds are bigger and more powerful and stronger fliers, the sparrows defend their young with such ferocity that you almost have to wonder which would be better; to get between a grizzly and her cubs or to try to mess with a sparrow nest?

Yours Truly,

Herb (Sometimes Joe Audubon) Thiel

Thanks for dropping in and visiting, even when I haven’t written anything.  I have been working and keeping busy that way, of course, and most of the time recalling why I like working in a retail environment, although I have met a few who are good candidates for the Not Always Right website.

But really, there has been something other than my normal procrastinationary habits that has been on my mind.  A thing that has needed to be written but is hard, almost impossible.  Yet I can’t never write again so I have to try to frame my grief in words that make sense, if not to you, gentle reader, then at least to me.

Being a Sunday School teacher has a lot of rewards.  One of the many things is that, when you have been doing it more than 20 years, you get to know a lot of people.  Some, like one of our local preachers that I started out teaching in the 10 – 11 year old Junior class, are always in touch.  You see them all the time, see them around and eventually watch their families grow up, too.

Others will come up to you in a store or be your cashier at Wal-Mart and say, “You’re Brother and Sister Thiel, aren’t you?  Do you still go to the Pentecostal Church?”  “Yes…” “You brought me and my sisters to church in your van every Sunday and we…” or, “My name is…, Do you remember me?”  You struggle for recognition, and then the person explains that you were their teacher and even if they do not go to your church, you know that you have influenced their life in some way for the good or they wouldn’t act like you were someone.  The fact that you are still in the same church and still teach Sunday School gives them a sense that something is permanent somewhere, even though you know that anything in life can happen and twist that fate all up into an unrecognizable mass.

Others run in and out of your life and after they graduate from your class, you still see them, but as they get older, you don’t see them as much, but when you do, they are still the same.  Like a smiley young lady and her sister, who loved me so much and every time they’d see me they would always greet me with a big, warm, genuine smile and a hug, even when they knew that I did not always agree with the choices they made, there is love there that is hard to explain unless you have experienced it.  Of course, whenever you have two (or more) kids, even close siblings, they are as different as day and night.  In this case the one might have seemed a bit moodier, not as outgoing or as openly friendly.

The other one, always smiling, always talking, always being friendly.  Treating her friends with love and compassion, joking and teasing and even occasionally embarrassing them, sometimes just by how outgoing and extroverted she was.  She was in my 4 & 5 year old class, then again in my 8 & 9 year old class and was always the same.  Ebullient, smiley, happy-go-lucky, loving, caring, kind, generous, considerate.

Even after life threw her some of those wretched curves that it throws at all of us sometimes, the light was still in her eyes along with a bit of the wisdom that experience brings.  The smile on her face.  The love for her friends and family.  She had a baby and a husband and a couple of best friends and confidantes, including my youngest daughter who stayed her best friend and kept in touch and loved her as they shared in all sorts of times comforting and strengthening one another all through their young lives.  I mentioned a sense of permanence before, and it does kind of go both ways.  You may not always agree with them but you know that they love you and you love them and I guess you feel like they will always be there.  Perhaps (often?) taking their presence for granted.  You almost have to, in some ways, or how could you live your daily life?

As I watched my parents age and grow ill it was supposed to be “expected” that they would die.  I guess that’s true and something you should try to expect and even though the expectation does not make it any easier when it happens, it still seems to make some sort of sense.  Unlike a 21-year-old wife and mother and friend whom you have known since she was 4 years old whose life is tragically cut short by a bullet.

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What’s up with this, anyway?

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is “up.”  It's easy to understand up, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake up?  At a meeting, why does a topic come up?  Why do we speak up and why are the officers up for election and why is it up to the secretary to write up a report?  We call up our friends.  And, we use it to brighten up a room, polish up the silver; we warm up the leftovers and clean up the kitchen.  We lock up the house and some guy fixes up an old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.  People stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work up an appetite, and think up excuses.  To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special.  A drain must be opened up because it is stopped up.  We open up a store in the morning but we close it up at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed up about up!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up, look the word up in the dictionary.  In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes up almost ¼th of the page and can add up to about thirty definitions.  If you are up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used.  It will take up a lot of your time, but if you don't give up, you may wind up with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding up.  When the sun comes out, we say it is clearing up.  When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things up.  When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry up.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it up, for now my time is up, so it is time to shut up!  Now it's up to you what you do with this email.

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Okay, this is where i am going to do it.  I’m feeling lazy and uninspired this evening so I am going to let the grammar and spell checker in Microsoft Word XP run the show.  For instance, where I use the pronoun “I” it tells me that I should not use the first person.  Hmmm, that’s going to be interesting…Oh, it doesn’t like contractions, either.  I think what I will do is type the whole thing up first, then go back and check the whole document and use the machine’s preferences everywhere.  But, what to write about?  Well, i could cop out and just type the first 175 words and then scan it and copy it below.  I think i will.  That way you can see the differences between my pitiful grasp of the English language and the superiority of the machine.  Oh, man!  Oh, man!  i just had to get a couple of those in there because i thought it was such a hoot last time i used it.  I know, it’s not particularly spontaneous, but, well, i guess i must feel a little lazy tonight.  I do my best work in the morning.  OOOHHH!  OOOOHHHH!!  Mr. Kotter!  OOOH!  How about this, also:

Eye Halve A Spelling Chequer

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Sauce Unknown

Okay, i know, I’m having too much fun.  Well, here we go, then.  Time to run it through the checker, and do you know what?  I STILL will have managed, by the time i end this sentence, to have broken 350!

The corrected text:

Okay, this is where Herb is going to do it.  Feeling lazy and uninspired this evening, this writer is going to let the grammar and spell checker in Microsoft Word XP run the show.  For instance, where the author uses the pronoun “I” it tells him that he should not use the first person.  Hmmm, that is going to be interesting…Oh, it does not like contractions, either.  This one think what I will do is type the whole thing up first, and then goes back and check the whole document and use the machine’s preferences everywhere.  However, about what should Herb write?  Well, Herb could cop out and just type the first 175 words and then scan it and copy it below.  He thinks he will.  That way you can see the differences between this writer's pitiful grasp of the English language and the superiority of the machine.  Oh, operate!  Oh, staff!  This writer just had to get a couple of those in there because he thought it was such a hoot last time he used it.  He knows, it is not particularly spontaneous, but well, he guess he must feel a little lazy tonight.  He does his best work in the morning.  OOOHHH! (It says this is a fragment and to revise but this author feels that an interjection is something he is unable to edit appropriately.)  OOOOHHHH! (It says this is a fragment and to revise but this author feels that an interjection is something he is unable to edit appropriately)  Mr. Katter!  How about this, also:

Eye Halve a Spelling Chaucer

Eye halve a spelling scheduler
It came with this writer's pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye is wrong oar write
It shows this author strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist aches, is house cleaner?
It nose bee fore two long
In addition, eye can put the error rite
It is rare lea ever wrong.

Eye has run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter-perfect awl the weigh
This author's torque tolled him sew.

Sauce Unknown

Okay, Herb knows, Herb is having too much fun.  Well, here we go, then.  Time to run it through the checker, and do you know what?  Herb STILL will have managed; by the time, Herb ends this sentence, to have broken 350!

I finally took a shower…well, okay, I have taken more than one since 2004, but the reason this one is such big news is that it was the first one out of the new water heater.

Tabitha heard a strange noise coming from the mechanical room and had Margaret call me.  I was in the middle of going to the bank and then I was going to buy some groceries.  I got the call and came back right away and sure enough, there was a sound like water being poured into a metal pail or large can.  I turned off the water and the gas to the thing and called some friends for advice.  I know zero about water heaters but I do know any noise in any mechanical object that is not normally present is also not normally good.

Blessing number one, we have two plumbers in the church and one of them was in our old Boy Scout troop and the other worked for a very long time at one of the big name guys in town, so I had people I could trust.  Not that I don’t trust professionals to do their job, but to me it is like when I went to the Place That Has Brakes In Its Name and the girl gave me an estimate, first of close to a thousand dollars and then a “reduced” one of six hundred dollars.  Took it to a mechanic I have worked with before that I trust and it was one hundred thirty-five dollars.  Kind of the same principle applies here and to be fair, I don’t think that everyone is out to rob innocent people needlessly but also to be fair there are a lot of places that instruct people to write their estimates high.

But there are also good and honest people in the world as well.  My friend from the Boy Scout troop went over to Home Depot and bought the water heater and all the necessary parts to install it and that bill alone was four hundred and fifty bucks.  Ouch.  Thankfully, we are working out a plan for the labor, which is lower than others but man.  You take one step forward and two steps back.  Plus today is tax time.  We don’t make a lot of money but we do make just enough that we don’t qualify for many of the credits we used to get so now we owe in instead of getting a refund.  Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh…

What a pain in the bother!  But, I have two separate ways I can look at both of these things.  Either I can see it as blessings or cursings.  Well, if the water heater had gone out in the middle of the night when nobody heard it, a likely possibility, there could have been hundreds of gallons of water everywhere and in a worst-case scenario, even an explosion.  Followed by being forced to call someone I didn’t know who would write an estimate to replace it at a totally ridiculous price along with finding other things that needed to be done on an emergency basis.  So, okay, I think we have one in the “Blessings” column.

Second, even though it seems immensely more logical to me that a whole government and its bureaucracy could find a way to take the proper amount of taxes out of everyone’s check the first time and eliminate paperwork unless you wanted to apply to the government for some credits, which you could do at your leisure, within a specified timeframe, I am thankful that we are, in fact, making more money and the Lord has blessed us.  So, another blessing, in disguise.

I am also thankful for you, all my fans, friends, fiends, foes and family, both old and new.  You guys are a great encouragement to me and the most awesome readership ever.

I hope you have been enjoying the restoration of the archives.  I forgot all of the many things that have happened over the last several years and also look back and see how I have made improvements in my writing and writing style.

Your Humble and Thankful Friend,

Herb

I want to thank all of you who have expressed an interest in me getting this site back up and running again.  I am often amazed at the number of people who still want to read my writing and think it’s good enough to stop for.  It’s an awesome feeling to have fans and I really appreciate it.

I am always thinking of things to write about, especially when I am screaming at the radio news, but when I sit down to write about something, I forget what I wanted to say.  I do have some personal news, though.  I have found a part-time job.  This guy has just, within a couple of weeks ago, started a new coffee shop called

“The Munch Box” and I am part of the team that will help to launch it to success.  I hope.  It is a good feeling to be back working and in a retail environment.  The pay is little but I am making strong coffee and drinking my mistakes.  We make genuine Chicago Style Hot Dogs, which the people who like them, love them, and regular hot dogs and homemade ice cream treats like cones, malts and shakes.  If anyone from the Springs is reading this, it’s at the corner of Hancock and 4^th which is just off of Fillmore.

The boss and the place are both an interesting dichotomy of character.  He’s a young fellow about my age and is a contractor who has run a carpet and flooring place for several years.  The construction business being what it is, even with the emergency restoration calls he does, he decided he wanted to get into something totally different.  So, he opened this coffee shop/hot dog stand/ice cream place.  He took an unused portion of the building and walled it off and made a nice little kitchen.

If a flooring store slash ice cream parlor sounds unique, then you should meet this guy.  It can be like talking to a shotgun sometimes and the interesting part is that he is part liberal.  He is quick to point out a lot of the standard stuff that libs generally spout off about but doesn’t always have the same pat answers that a lot of them do.  He actually seems to think for himself and enjoys shouting as part of the argument process.  This is only natural since he is from New York and the East Coast, but it is refreshing to get into it.  Well, not in front of the customers of course.  Anyway, for the last couple of weeks I have been trying to think of ways to help him market the place.

I am also thinking of adding something new to the site.  I have been talking to Carter lately, who is a walking encyclopedia of military history trivia and long-time ketchuptologist (don’t know why the spell check doesn’t like the word ketchuptologist) and is well-written and well-spoken.  Since he is so ugly, we may not post any pictures of him, so your monitors should be safe.  Just be glad the internet hasn’t developed smell-o-vision technology, yet.  We may revive the Republic of Bob as well.

Anyway, that’s all for now.  If I re-post more from the archives, which I probably will, I will try to keep you up to date on that as well.  If it is a more mundane repost I may just mention it in the sticky message at the top of the page, otherwise, if it’s one of those pieces I am especially proud of, I will talk to you about it in a regular update like this.

Anyway, I sure would like to thank you folks for kindly dropping in, you are all invited back again, to this locality, too.

Herb The Barista

Deer Playing in Yard 02

Deer Playing in Yard 03

Deer Playing in Yard 04

Cats Caught Zhu-zhu

Enjoy,
Herb "Mister Nature" Thiel

Today I will begin reposting older stuff as I find it in the archives.  I will be posting it to its original date, so the Archives will go back to October 4^th, 2004 when I first started blogging on BlogDrive.  I am, for now, using only the Word files I find but will like go back through on BD and make sure I don’t miss too much that’s important.  As I hit on ones that I really think were good or important, as I said the other day, I will repost them to the current date.

As you know, I really welcome comments from real people.  If you are a spammer and want me to release your comment as though it were real then please take the time to at least read the post and make your comment sort of match.  It is satisfying, though, to delete you.

Herb “The Old Blogger” Thiel

Before we get too far I must introduce you to my daughter-in-law, Isabel, who has taken up the art of blogging.  See her very family-friendly site at http://izaultrasounddreamer.blogspot.com .  She has nagged encouraged me to get myself in gear and actually write to all of you on a much more regular basis.  She pointed out what I had said that I need to just write something all the time, even if it is short and that it’s better to put something out here than nothing at all.

To start off with, I would like to make a special note to

To start off with, I would like to make a special note to one of the radio guys on the news-talk station you can depend on.  I am pretty sure that he has been to this blog before, especially when I was being abused by some in the County government over the egregious error of encouraging the use of eminent domain to expand Fort Carson.  Anyway, every once in a while he will be telling a news story about some ridiculous thing or other, like the story of a kid bringing a plastic butter knife to school being expelled while a Moslem student can bring a ceremonial dagger to school because of his religion (that story is, as far as I know, still cooking, so I refer to it only as an example of the type of contrast we are talking about) and he will say, frequently, “Come on folks, let’s let common sense prevail.”  I don’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered or if I flatter myself too much.  It is the common cry of most of my readers, anyway.

It is also a thing that happens among creative people.  I read an article in Writer’s Digest about two authors who wrote, separately, almost the exact same book.  Their fans each were convinced that the other author had, in fact, lifted the story from the other when the truth is that both books were released at the same time and neither author knew, indeed had never heard of, the other.  It is a strange phenomenon but apparently happens frequently.  You may or may not recall that I am a big comics fan.  Not as much of a fan as some, but certainly an avid follower of many titles.  This sort of thing occurs pretty often on the comics pages and I never thought it was a big deal.

Well, I never thought it was a big deal until I was at the blog of the guy who writes Pooch Café a few months ago and saw that he all but used the word plagiarism in his entry.  He spent a lot of energy showing the similarities between a couple of his old strips and some strips from a newer comic called “Dogs of C Kennel.”  At the same time it was impossible to join his blog to make a comment so anyone who went there who was new, could not remark about what a baby he was being.  He apparently didn’t realize that this sort of thing just happens and was being fairly asinine about the whole thing.  The guys who do C Kennel are the grandchildren of Johnny Hart and would know better than to try such a cheap stunt.  I quit visiting the Pooch blog after I tried several times to join up and make a comment and couldn’t, so I can’t tell you if it’s still going on. My point being that sometimes, in the creative world, something will happen like this, especially if two writers are using the same topic, in this case, dogs.  Dogs are pretty funny, but one of the things that makes them funny is that they always doo some of the same things.  There are only so many jokes in the world about dogs.  The reason I quit following the guy’s whiny little blog, however, was when he, or one of his commenters, said they couldn’t understand why someone would want to do another dog strip.  This sounded so stupid to me that I just gave up.  Before I did, I e-mailed the creators of C-Kennel and told them about this.  They had received many e-mails and told me that before all this came up, they had never heard of this guy or his strip.

Besides, in my opinion, Pooch Café is really not all that funny.  It’s okay, but not hysterical.  Very few comics are that uproariously funny.  There are a couple that are, however.  They are engaging and the characters are great and even if you don’t belly-laugh every single day, they are still great.  My top 3, off the top of my head only, not from my complete list, are tied between Pearls Before Swine, Brewster Rockit – Space Guy and Rip Haywire.  Some, perhaps many, will question my taste on Pearls, because there are occasions when his strip can be of questionable taste, but the characters are so funny and it is not every single day that there is something questionable.  I still read his blog, although, as I warn you about other blogs linked here, he does use bad language occasionally.

Anyway, thanks for coming back to my blog again and again, I really appreciate it and please feel free to comment, which I always like.  Just note that I have comment approval turned on so I can zap spammers before most of them get on here.

Herb “Back to the Writing Gig” Thiel

I thought I better let you know what I think and do about comments.

First, I really appreciate them.  REALLY. A lot.  It lets me know that there are real people out really reading this.

That being said, I don’t (as should be obvious to anyone who has had a website, forum or even e-mail address for more than a few days) appreciate spammers, bots, trolls and other morons including shoe salesmen.  I have a comment control program in place and your comments, at this point in time, will sometimes be held up until I personally approve them.  I apologize for the lack of spontaneity this may cause and hope you understand.

Speaking of spontaneity, I realize that it is a fact of life that some people curse (cuss, swear, say naughty things, et al.) but I think it makes you sound ignorant and weakens your point in my mind.  Since I started blogging in 2004, however, I have never removed any real person’s comments for this reason and likely won’t.  I do ask that you please refrain from it if at all possible and thank you in advance for your support in this matter.

I like conversation to ensue and will try to jump into any fracas that sounds interesting and will answer any direct question as soon as possible.  If I don’t, e-mail me to remind me.

Your Ever-Lovin’ Livin’ Host,

Herb