Bogus Gold

Lord how I miss the always insightful blog "The First Ring," run by the still occasionally posting First Ringer (his posting turf is TvM now, though posting far less often... it should already be in your bookmarks unless you're not cool). Why do I miss it most?

Oh I could say I missed the deep insight and original analysis that always characterized the blog. I could say that, because it's true, but I'd only be telling a partial truth.

What I really miss is the steady stream of obscure puns that comprised many of First Ringer's post titles. Just browsing the last several posts before he shut down the blog I see gems like: "Going, Goering, Gone", "Dubai DuSell", "Good Night and Mixed Luck", "Fission Trip", and "The Dowd-ing Street Memo." God, I miss those. They really stood out amidst the average political blog post titles, comprised of lots of capital letters, excited punctuation, and talking point bullets (no offense to Brodkorb... You keep doing your thing, man!).

Anyway, perhaps I now have my bloggy methadone to cure my First Ringer habit. As today Mitch offered up this beauty of a post title / obscure pun...

Watching The Defectives

God, that's beautiful. Can I possibly have found a new First Ring for my blog title-pun fix? Or is Mitch just suckering me in so he can throw yet another "It was twenty years ago today" post my way? Stay tuned!

I think the record will show I've taken my forceful expulsion from the Minnesota Organization of Blogs rather gracefully, once I got a few shots at the the prime demon responsible (Hinderaker *hissss!!!*) out of my system. But when said organization seems to grind my nose in the fact that blogs can go totally dead... even to the extent they return "404 site not found" errors for the better part of a year... and still hold truer to the standards of that organization than me... well that hurts.

It would hurt less if I didn't suspect the other blogger's resemblance to a hobbit didn't bias the vote in his favor. I mean, how can I be expected to compete with "hobbit" as a niche? I'm 6'3" and my feet are distinctly hairless, for Chrissake!!

Anyhoo... Welcome back, David Baggins... er, Strom. And the same to the Missus (aka Margaret), who looks less like a hobbit herself but seems to have thing for them. Creepy. Umm... but creepy in a nice way. I'm sure.

You know what's worse than reading a blog post written just to fit in with some scheduled "theme" which makes people write about a topic at the same time just to feel socially engaged and therefore somehow socially relevant? Reading the exact same thing on the exact same blogs one year to the day later.

This is just ONE of the many reasons Blogs for Bacon is better than Blogs for Choice (last year one of them blogged for Uranus, while the other has been stuck in a rut two years running).

It seems my expulsion from the blogroll of the Minnesota Organization of Blogs was only one minor step... one might even say a step belonging to a "Long March"... on the way to more complete control by our local wannabe dictator. Apparently John Hinderaker's blogging fame and fortune are no longer sufficient to satisfy his rapacious need for control of the local dextrosphere. And he has turned to like-minded allies for support.

Bogus Gold has uncovered shocking photographic evidence that will likely shake the local blogging community to its very core. Yet unlike our major media Quislings, I'll not sit on this waiting for sweeps week. I'm taking the ugly truth directly to the people...

EXCLUSIVE!!! MUST CREDIT BOGUS GOLD!!!

John Hinderaker poses with a close personal friend.

It seems Mr. Hinderaker wants to model his iron control of the MOB after one of his "heroes" about 90 miles off the coast of Florida. And I'm not talking about Elian Gonzales!

We're on to you Mr. Hinderaker! Time to loosen your iron grip on the blogroll which belongs to ALL the people! I will not be silent! (Hey... that reminds me of something I once read somewhere.) You must restore Bogus Gold to the MOB Blogroll at once or face even more damaging revelations! And don't think I'm not capable of faking them doing the gritty reporting necessary to uncover them!

It has come to my attention that I have been dropped from the blogroll of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers. Well... basically it came to my attention by reading it. And not finding myself on it anymore.

So it seems the organization of which I was once proud to serve as pretend-mayor has forcibly expelled me.

Sure... I could assume this was due to my multi-months-long period of non-posting. Or because my URL changed and I never notified them about the new one. But that would be the easy way out. (Also the rational one. And what fun is that?!)

Instead I intend to interpret this as an intentional act of censorship by that SO-CALLED conservative voice in charge of that organization... The Trilateral Comission Media Matters The Joooooos Major League Baseball John Hinderaker!!! (disclaimer: John Hinderaker may not really in charge - or even aware - of the MOB, but focus groups assure me this is WAY funnier than naming someone from one of the other NARN blogs. Except maybe Spitbull).

Like the late Benazir Bhutto was shut out by the autocratic General Musharaff in Pakistan, I have suffered a similarly unjust fate. Jimmy Carter, check your answering machine. Hinderaker's aggressive move toward dictatorship will never stand!!

I. Shall. Return.

Ahem... Is this thing still on? Testing... testing...

Word to the asshole who scooped up the bogusgold.com domain and is trying to sell it back to me for over a hundred dollars. Not going to happen. And no one else is going to pay you for it either, dickhead. So enjoy.

Anyway, I may dust this thing off again and get it going anew for the new year. A presidential campaign is apparently underway, and there's just not enough opinion being written about it. At least... not the right opinion. Because I haven't told you what that is yet. Sorry. My bad.

You won't find it under "bogusgold.com" anymore (see the reference to the asshole above). So reset those bookmarks and blogrolls to http://bogusgold.powerblogs.com. If I buy some other domain (not bogusgold.com though... because of the asshole) be assured that momentous news will be prominently - nay exhaustively - featured here.

That is all for now. There's only about 5 people who care at this point anyway. And if you're not among them and you're reading this anyway, you need to get out more.

Now an AWARD WINNING entirely silent blog.

Yes, I'm still here. Yes, I still intend to post. And yes, I am pissed off and fried over trying to get GoDaddy to sell me back my bogusgold.com domain, so I haven't felt much like posting. I'll get back to it eventually.

In the meantime, go make fun of Kathy's new hairless do. I'd do it except, you know, the whole cancer-chemo thing makes it in pretty poor taste. So now you know how I think about the taste of people who read this wretched little blog. And I mean that in a good way. As far as you know.

Later.

Apparently my blog is rated PG. I got this from the Not-Safe-For-Children Ace.

WARNING: I don't think this rating accounts for nudity. Not that I have nudity on this blog. But I'm thinking of Captain Dirty-Mushroom.

Okay, so this little unplanned blog outage has turned into a whoppingly huge blog outage of the sort that deserves some kind of explanation. So here goes...

The blog has actually been up this entire time, only you would have to use the URL:

http://bogusgold.powerblogs.com

to see it. And no one links to the URL with "powerblogs" in it, because I registered the domain bogusgold.com so no one would have to.

However I registered my domain via Registerfly - at the time a reputable domain name registrar. However since then a freaking soap opera involving scorned gay lovers, allegations of fraud, and a total fark up of basic operations lead to my domain (bogusgold.com) being shut down.

Of course, I was unable to get any response from anyone at Registerfly. The domain passed its re-registration date and expired. I couldn't re-register it at Registerfly, or reach anyone there about it. And I couldn't register it elsewhere because Registerfly held on to it, even though it had expired.

Finally today I discovered Go-Daddy.com had come to the rescue, and I was finally going to be able to fix the domain. One problem... someone else had already taken it sometime in the interim between my last check and today. What's more they're hiding behind some secret proxy service so I can't even tell who it is. I'm guessing some company looks for expiring names and snaps them up so they can re-sell them to their original owners at a profit.

Well I'm not paying some extortionist fee to get back a stupid .com domain. Technically those were supposed to be for commercial sites in the first place, and I don't even put Google Ads on my blog. I can grab a .net, .org, or even the kinda-fruity .info instead.

Anyway, I took the domain outage as an excuse for a short break, figuring I'd get it fixed in a week or two. That dragged on and on. And now that the original domain thing may never be resolved, end of excuse for a break.

So until I get a new shorter domain, those who care to read my witless witticisms, and rum-sodden ruminations are going to have to use the full "powerblogs" URL (it's listed above - cut and paste it if you're as lazy as me).

UPDATE: Okay color me slightly weirded out. The .com domain is back up, even though I don't seem to own it anymore. Might want to hang onto that "powerblogs" address just in case.

This blog will now have a brief intermission due to its entire support staff (i.e. me) coming down with the flu. The real flu. Not some wimpy cold which gets called "the flu", even though it's little more than some sniffles. The real flu, like the one people keep thinking birds are going to develop into the next black plague.

Pretty sure this isn't that one though, because Tamiflu seems to be kicking its ass. Not that I'm recommending catching the flu just to watch the Tamiflu smack it around like Johnny Socko sicking his giant robot on a giant monster. Though come to think of it, it is similar. Only your body plays the role of Tokyo. Remember all the destruction Giant Robot and Giant Monster made on Tokyo even while the good guys won? Did you ever think, "Dang! I sure wish I lived in Tokyo just then!" Of course not.

I'm just saying don't catch the flu. Unless you have a giant robot. No, wait... even then. Wait... was that the point? Didn't I have some other point?

Oh, right! Blog shut down due to illness. And weird giant robot analogies. Whichever seems most destructive.

Don't you hate it when some blog you read regularly just suddenly stops without warning? I mean no new posts forever. So you think it's dead. And then... One day you check it out and you see it's been back again for some time and no one ever told you about it?

What?! What are you looking at me like that for? I'm talking about Drew at Darn Floor. Welcome back Drew.

He's also now among the ranks of parents with multiple children. And he describes a curious side effect I can relate to:

The children destroyed my brain cells, and it's taken quite awhile for me to build up immunity to their mind-control rays. With the help of this hat made of aluminum foil (tin really doesn't work) I should be able to write again regularly.

Good luck with that, Drew. Looking forward to seeing you around again, with or without brain cells.

So in my long months of non-blogging I seem to have been dropped from the MNspeak Aggregator's list of blogs it monitors. Kind of a pity. The thing never tossed me more than 2 hits in a given day, but I always liked the concept. Guess I'll have to go whore myself to another blogroll to make up for the loss.

Though frankly I never had any contact with any MNspeak person at any time up to or after I got added. I just sort of... showed up there. Maybe that's my marketing strategy. "I built it. Now they will come." It worked last time.

Okay, that's now the official strategy. I will wait and eventually some blogroll thingy or other will pick me up for unknown reasons. Sure saves me time.

I've been pretty quiet lately. I know.

Politics just sucks the life out of me every time I try to write about it these days. As it has done since... well since last summer or so when I stopped writing about it. So that's out for now.

I could write about sports. But the Nebraska football season is over; I never want to think about this Vikings season again; and it's too early for baseball (despite what others contend, there are no other blog-worthy sports).

I suppose I could share my impressions of Top Chef. I've been watching it all season. I'm pulling for Sam personally. But I've never really had a lot of talk about reality chef shows here.

But do not despair. Something is coming which promises to more than loosen my bloggy tongue. I'm not saying what it is. But it starts on January 16th. Here's a very subtle clue:

Uh-oh. This can't bode well...

The technology firm Gartner Inc. has announced that 2007 may be the year the blog world loses steam. Perhaps hot air is a better term.

Almost enough to make me take up Thunderjournaling&trade instead. Just a thought.

Scene opens:

The placid surface of a dormant blog on a sunny day. Pan to a pelican gracefully soaring over the rising sun in the eastern horizon. The calls of seagulls break the peacefull lull of the waters below.

Cue ominous music. A rumbling is heard beneath the surface of the waves. Something isn't right. The seagull calls become alarmed. Birds flee in panic in all directions. Something is stirring beneath the waves.

The waters churn as a horrible, gigantic, and misshapen form begins to rise. Something too horrible to contemplate. Something unnatural to this earth. Something awakened by the horrible forces of nuclear testing, which now rises from the depths and begins a fateful journey toward... mankind.



Oh the horror! What has mankind - especially those tinkering with the power of the atom - done to themselves?! Only time will tell. (But I'll bet a metaphor about unintended consequences isn't far off the mark.)

As the blogworld likes to self-importantly say... Developing.

Hmm... well that didn't go so well. Four posts. A few dozen curse words. And then another week without posting.

I guess it wasn't the lack of fuckin' freedom holding me back after all.

Not to worry. Bogus Gold version 3.0 is already in the works. This time I think I have it all figured out.

Developing...

Fun thing about being back with some fucking freedom to write like I really want. I don't have to play nice anymore either.

So it's time to set some things straight. We'll start with Mitch Berg's latest attempt to make the right-bloggy world all screwey by his "influence." Let's walk down the list of blogs he reads every day and kick the crap out it so you don't fall into some Berg-shaped rut of your own....

Lileks: So 2004.

Rambix and the Red Star: If he was all that he wouldn't have to pimp himself out at Anti-Strib, now would he?

Kool Aid Report: The Head of Alfredo Garcia brought an otherwise decent blog into suckdom. Everyone knows that.

The Shiela Variations: Will Mitch fucking propose to Shiela, get slammed down, and move the hell on EVER?!

Radio Equalizer: A blog about radio? I'm waiting for a television show about radio. Or maybe a movie.

Cathy In The Wright: Mind you, Mitch says he reads these blogs every day. There were only 10 days posts were published there in July, and 6 so far in August. Let's just say it's unlikely Mitch is going there for the "articles" and leave it at that.

Jay Reding: Jesus, Mitch. How many times do you have to rub this guy's nose in his low traffic? It's fucking cruel!

MDE: An obvious suck up to a guy who is currently taking over Mitch's radio empire.

Mitch goes on to mourn the loss of Jeff Kouba, while noting he's actually still writing just at a different URL. We all know how tough it is to set a new bookmark in your browser, so nothing to pick on there.

See, this is why I had to come back to blogging. Or... I mean Thunderjournaling (*lightning strike*). Too many of you fuckers read Berg and nod your heads like little ... head nodding... hampsters. (Shut up! Hampsters can too nod!) You need better examples to follow. Examples who fucking swear more often because they fucking love freedom, baby! Yeah!

Fucking Berg left me off his list too. The fucker!

This is pretty good.