I haven’t gotten around to writing anything or checking comments or responding since October 22, when my wife got crushed by a boulder and was taken by helicopter to the Modesto hospital, and when it was too much for them to handle, on to Stanford. She didn’t die or become paralyzed, but it was very close on both counts. She’s already walking a bit and should have a pretty good recovery and lots of titanium in her spine. I haven’t had the time or, more exactly, the inclination to write anything for a while. Also, I haven’t been really reading the news so I my mind just hasn’t been working that way.

Popularity: 18% [?]

I’ve been having some fun with my breaking news stories that nobody else makes up reports, but I’ll be getting back to some more serious stuff soon, including a couple of book reviews (or at least one). That said, I feel like fake news stories that mirror real news are sometimes more telling than the actual news.

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I’ve been keeping this blog with a simple default “Occadia” template, pretty much unchanged, though I never really cared for it. Now I’ve got a design all of my own confection, including the Ranter logo which represents what I sort of intended (getting up on a soapbox and yelling because things are so f… up).

I also had never really intended quite such a serious journal and lately I’ve been having more fun making up fake news stories and I have a small back log of those to publish in coming days and weeks. Hardly anyone ever visits this site, though, so it hardly seems pressing!

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I just installed a countdown timer to keep track of how long I have to wait until Bush becomes my favorite ex-president. I have taken a script freely available on the net and created a Bush-specific version for you to download. Check out the install page to grab your own. Also, in the process, I stumbled across the site of a guy selling an actual physical desktop Bush presidency countdown timer. I have a picture of that on the timer install page.

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Rant! Rant! Rant! What good does it do? I couldn’t say, but given the current state of politics in the United States it can’t hurt to have one more person out there ranting. Maybe an army of ranters. Got a good rant? I’ll post it if I like it. Got a thousand good rants? I’ll host ‘em if I like ‘em. Now I’m just ruminating about intelligent design, CIA secret prisons and torture, political cronyism in the Bush and administration and that other party we used to see around, but which seems to have nothing to say anymore. What were they called? The Democrats I think. Like Phil Ochs said about liberals: “Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center when it affects them personally.”

Popularity: 5% [?]