Greetings ‘blog fans!

Blog.  Now there’s a word for you.  I had a hard time finding out the proper spelling of it.  Oh, yes way, really!  I did so try to look up the spelling of it.  Spelling errors just drive me up the wall.  I cannot stand the thought that I have misspelled or misused a word and there are some people who don’t even care!  I shudder at the very thought of using affect for effect or except for accept.  Others can do it, but I just cringe to even think about such a possibility.

Now there are some of my friends and correspondents who do not feel this way at all.  They take the position that if a word is used a certain way long enough, even though it is used improperly or inaccurately, then the Whole English language should be changed and a new meaning adopted because obviously that’s how people want to use it.  They point out how words from 400 - 500 years ago are either no longer used or their meanings are completely changed.  There are many examples in Shakespearean writings of this.  They also are quick to point out that in the time of the Founding Fathers all spelling was done phonetically.  They say the language is a fluid, evolving, living thing and changes and should change all the time.

I say, "Phooey!"  The only people in Elizabethan times who could read and write were the rich, the landed gentry, and the nobility.  Since these were the "educated" classes, it was their responsibility to maintain the language and its meaning.  As far as the Founding Fathers go, well, I would suppose that if you are a little pipsqueak of a group of colonies fighting to be free from tyranny and no one has passed down any hard and fast rules of spelling or usage to you, you might be allowed the occasional misspelling now and then because you were busy fighting for Life, Liberty and The Pursuit Of Happiness.

Okay, so I don’t always take people to task for it as I should, in fact, I generally try not to say anything to most people.  The exceptions (not acksepshuns) are those people that make a point to let you know how educated they are.  I especially cannot stand to be reading along in a book and discover a misspelling.  I don’t mean a non-published manuscript, but a published book that was run once through "spell-checker" and sent to press!  Newspapers and magazines do this too and it aggravates me to no end.  There are supposed to be editors and proofreaders who catch this sort of thing!

So, anyway, I wanted to learn, once and for all, the correct way to spell ‘blog and I never really did find out.  That it is a shortened form of the word "weblog" I know, but is it a word on its own, yet?  Do we still need to keep the apostrophe to be correct?  That goes against my beliefs about the language, but if we are going to make it a word of its own, let’s gets rid of the apostrophe.

Apparently, this is not much of an issue, however.  First of all, it’s not in the American Heritage Dictionary, third edition, which I use a lot.  So, I went online, thinking that would be the place to look up such a word.   The first place I went, www.infoplease.com did not have it, and asked, "Did you mean ‘bog?’"  So, I tried looking up the word "weblog" there, but they just asked me, "Did you mean ‘web log?’"  They then gave me references to definitions of "web" and "Log Cabin."  Yahoo http://education.yahoo.com/reference/ did better.  They showed the word as "blog," no apostrophe, with the definition, "weblog."  So, I looked up "weblog" and was told: 

web·log

NOUN:

A website that displays in chronological order the postings by one or more individuals and usually has links to comments on specific postings.

So.  One definition as a noun.  I went to www.OED.com but that is a pay site although www.askoxford.com is not.  No results.  By the way, if anyone plans to spend $1500 or more on me for Christmas and doesn’t plan to buy me a new computer, say a new notebook PC, they could buy me the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary on sale for $849.99.  *sighs, wipes drool from chin, off of keyboard*

Since I am going to be blogging (to blog, a verb, meaning to make entries in a weblog), I think I shall have to make up my own rules for now.

My van, a dirt and maroon 1993 Dodge Grand Caravan, was sitting at the gas pumps Saturday waiting for me to pay my bill.  It’s a nice van and gets about 20 - 24 MPG when it’s running right, which is good because we put on 100 - 200 miles in a day.  (We are also blessed in that we have found an honest mechanic.)  Even now, when i have to put in a quart of tranny fluid at each fill-up it still does me good and gets that mileage.  Under the dirt are my "W ‘04", "Bush/Cheney ‘04" and "Veterans For Bush" bumper stickers.  There is also one large anti-abortion one that says, "She’s a Child...Not a Choice." 

I had paid for my gas Saturday and was getting ready to pick up Margaret from a client’s house (they are clients, by the way, not patients, pardon my previous vernacular) and here is this woman eyeballing the back of my van and giving me a real hard stare as i walk up to it.  As i get closer she has a rather stern appearance and is wearing dark glasses (i hate talking to people wearing dark glasses, there oughta be a law) and she says, "Excuse me!  This bumper sticker on the back of your car.  Do you mean that for just teenage girls or do you mean that for anyone or what do you mean?"

If you know much about me at all, you know the last thing i enjoy is a full-blown, face-to-face confrontation with someone in public.  I really have never been much of a fighter.  Yes, I understand that putting bumper stickers on your car could be considered a direct invitation to a fight, but it could also be possible that you could open a dialogue with someone.  I like to have discussions and friendly arguments, but i suppose i had not had the foresight to realize that a confrontation with a total stranger was possible as well.  Not that i am going to take my bumper stickers off now that i realize it’s possible.  So anyway, there it was, an apparent full-blown confrontation in the 7-11 parking lot about to happen.

"Ma’am," i said intelligently, "I think abortion is wrong, period, no matter who or what."  I speak intelligently like that to strangers.  When I write i can, if i want to, take the time to think about what i am going to say, but sometimes the words don’t come too fast if i am face-to-face with someone, especially an unknown, potential antagonist.

"Good."  She said.  "I think it’s horrible."  She then proceeded to tell me that two of her three children are special needs and she was told by the doctors to abort them.  They hammered away at her and tried to get her to, in her own words, "kill my baby."  She had had an amniocentesis done and the geneticist got exasperated and asked her why she had had it done if she wasn’t planning to have an abortion.  She told him it was so she could get the proper medical treatment.  We have known other people who have had a similar experience, which I related to her. The child I was talking about did turn out to be a "Special Needs" child, but any child that can say, "Daddy, I love you," should not have been murdered.  Her girls are teenagers now and she feels the same way.  She said she can’t imagine how empty her life would be.

We talked further about how, in this state, Colorado, anyway, a teenage girl can go to the hospital and the doctor can give her the "Morning After" pill without even asking her parents and we spoke about the upcoming elections and the ban on Partial Birth abortions and just stuff in general and went our ways.  I was so flabbergasted that I completely forgot to invite her to church or give her a church card.

Okay, so a ‘blog is supposed to be where you can vent your spleen and rant and rave and carry on, right?  So let me tell you something that makes me mad every Sunday!  Something so frustrating and aggravating words nearly fail me.  WHY, oh why, do newspapers think it is okay to hide the comics section?  Back in the good old days (that, by the way, is the phrase, not, "Back in the day.") when i was a boy the funnies were on the outside of the paper.  You could see what was going on in Peanuts or Dick Tracy (depending on what paper it was) right on top.

One of our papers divides the comics into 2 sections, then completely wraps one of the sections in an ad.  If you don’t know that they do this, you discover that you have thrown away half of the comics section!  The other part has one of those fold-out, tear-off ads that tears the paper in half instead and the punch line to "Dilbert" has to be fished out of the trash.  Today the first section came wrapped in a full-page ad, then had another ad under that, plus the tear-away ad!

And whatever happened to "The Funny Papers," anyway?  When did adult humor become appropriate for the comics?  There are times that even the strips that you would think are for children come out with the most risqué and sometimes downright nasty jokes!  And who wants to know the political ideology of a cartoonist?  Put the op-ed funnies on the op-ed page!  I don’t care if they are left, right, middle or what, get them off the comics page.  Particularly the ones that are blatantly and openly political like "Doonesbury," "Boondocks," "Mallard Fillmore," et al.  Maybe newspapers could start a separate op-ed comics page, but get all of the politics out of there.  This would make room for funny strips like "Tumbleweeds" and "One big happy" and of course allow us to track Mary Worth and Little Orphan Annie much more closely also.

What papers should do, which will never happen because there is money involved, is not only go back to the days of putting the comics on top, but make the comics normal sized.  Make them (and the weekly ones too) the size that they are when the comics come off the drawing board.  This would mean a much larger comics section, but they could also generate more revenue from their ads.  They could triple charge the rate for advertising in the funnies and make the funnies section as big as the front page for all i care.  I can hear and read about death and sorrow and murder and taxes any old time, but i can only see the Sunday funnies once a week.

I have a hard question for all of you, my gentle readers.  But, what is your all-time favorite Comic Strip?  Why?  Leave me some comments and i’ll try to reply to as many as i can.  Is it possible that there is someone who DOESN’T read the funnies every chance they get?  Could there possibly be someone out there who doesn’t even care???  If that’s you I would like to know if you are mainly a "Math" person or "English" person and are you right-handed or left-handed?  Thank you all.

I have a collection of jokes that i have saved, mostly from e-mails, but other sources as well, including Colorado Comments, GCFL, Humor Highway and others.  I was thinking of starting a separate blog (blogdrive.com lets you have more than one 'blog per account) for jokey sorts of things.  Many of the files I have contain several jokes and stories, so if I do 1 per day, I should have enough to last a while.

I will try to list the source i got things from, but some jokes have been around since God ribbed Adam and made Eve and either have multiple or unknown sources.  If you actually know the real original author and/or have some way to show i have not credited you i will either credit you or take it down.  But anyway, these will just be some of my personal favorites and i plan to start with some of the older ones first.

http://herbshumor.blogdrive.com/

No, Mary G., the "Artie Joke" ain't da same in a e-mail.

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!

Okay, so my friend and former co-worker, Alice, sends me an e-mail that says she has always heard it was supposed to be a minimum of a thousand words a day.  Well, I think that may be true, but the "Nifty Three-Fifty" was intended to just get you sort of jump-started and on your way.  I have been noticing that many of my entries are between seven hundred and a thousand anyway, so I will just sort of blather on as I have been doing and hope for the best.

In a book called "Don't Dig for Water Under the Outhouse and other Cowboy Commandments" by "Texas Bix Bender" which is part of a series of books of Western Wisdom and common sense which includes such classics as, "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On," page 39 says, "Do not tolerate weak coffee." 

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!! (Word counted that as one word) Okay.  I am pumped!  What an incredible thing!  Read it here!

I have been told in sundry times and in diverse manners, that what i need to do is set some goals for myself as far as my writing is concerned.

The idea that, no matter what, I will write three hundred and fifty words every day is a great start but a little tougher than you might at first expect.  I think the author of the original article meant that you should add to your current project or projects, but writing about something new each day, or, more accurately, scrawling a thought a day, should get the creative juices flowing.  I already write long e-mails to friends on esoteric subjects.  I like the idea also because it reminds me that I want to make this my work, not just a pastime.

This brings me to the goals.  What do I really want from writing?  I think I want two things.  I want to make money as a writer and I want my writing to have artistic merit as well.  Here is my tentative plan:

1) Complete a short story of 1000 to 3500 words and submit it somewhere, either to a contest or to a magazine before the end of, ummm, er, ah, well, how about before the end of 2005?  I will try not to take rejection personally.
2) Submit at least five poems somewhere other than Poetry Dot Com for publication.
3) Work on plotting a novel.

While this will not make me a superstar overnight, we can hope that it will help me to become more organized and more committed to writing.  I think it may also influence other areas of my life, such as my business, which I need to kick-start as well.

So, the "Long And Winding Road" may lead, not to someone’s door, but to the door of success and opportunity.  I must keep this small, three-hundred-fifty word commitment and meet these goals, and I will be on my way.

The last question I have is something I have noticed when trying this.  Why is it so hard to come up with three-hundred-fifty words?

Well, the adventure is pretty much over now, thanks to Margaret's cleaning prowess.  The whole article is here

I AM JAZZED, JAZZED, JAZZED!  Read Why Here