I'm Moving

In today's Progressive environment of inclusivity and civility, I no longer feel comfortable that Google will continue to ignore this blog.  I am therefore migrating off of Blogger to a privately hosted server.  This requires moving to Wordpress.  The translation is not very clean.  A LOT of formatting problems, and I still haven't figured out how to export the Disqus comments from here to there.

The site needs a LOT of work, but it's up at http://smallestminority.org.  I have no plan to delete this blog, I'm just going to start posting over there (and probably copy over here for a bit.)

Blog Irregularities

So I posted a couple items down about election fuckery, and for some reason Blogger doesn't post any older content on the front page.  Hitting the "Older Post" link gets you the older posts like normal.  Not sure what the deal is there, but I'm willing to bet it's in the HTML of that post.  Sorry about that.

Going to Blogorado!

I attended Blogorado for the first time in 2017.  I missed it in 2018 due to my illness.  I tried as hard as I could to make it to the 2019 gathering, but that effort ended in disaster when I managed to blow up the engine in my truck, stranding me in Las Vegas, NM.  That was the most expensive vacation (that wasn't) I've ever experienced in my life.  I could've taken my wife to Tahiti for what that ended up costing.

Blogorado 2020 is this weekend.  I leave tomorrow.  I've never needed a vacation this badly in my life.

I'm taking the T-shirts I had made for last year:  

That's "the most photographed barn in Colorado."  It's gone, now, but not forgotten.

Meanwhile, at My OTHER Site

I joined Quora back in 2013.  In late July of 2019 I opened a personal "Space" there, which I cleverly titled "The Smallest Minority."

I noticed this today:

This blog has at present slightly less than 2,000 subscribers.  I'm pretty happy with the alternate.  Yaaay me!

I Missed My Blogiversary!!

May 14, 2003 I put up my first post here at TSM.  That means this blog is now (carry the one...) seventeen years old.

In seventeen years I've hit "Publish" on 7116 posts, including this one.  I've lost my mother, lost my liver (but the new one is working quite well), gained a kidney (I now have three, but two are decoys), and I had a great-grandson for about 10 weeks.

We've had three Presidents in that time period, and been at continuous war with a noun the entire time.  Now we're in the middle of an international overreaction to a pandemic.

It's been a helluva ride so far.  Judging from what I've been seeing, Bette Davis's admonition is even more valid today:

Vent of the Weekend

If you've read this blog for any reasonable period, you know I like to use other people's words when they say something well.  Today I give you, in its entirety, a comment by reader Grumpy Old Fart to my post Quote of the Day - P.J. O'Rourke Edition from a few days ago:

Democrats are the party of hatred, envy and bigotry. It's the basis of everything they do, and they use it at every opportunity.

If you disagree with them on race, it's because you're white (even if you're Thomas Sowell, Mia Love or Marco Rubio). If you disagree with them about women's rights, it's because you're a man (even if you're Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter or Megyn Kelly). If you disagree with them about gay rights, it's because you're straight (even if you're Jimmy LaSalvia or Chris Barron). They're not interested in empowering minorities, they're only interested in punishing white people. They're not interested in empowering women, they're only interested in punishing men. They're not interested in empowering gays, they're only interested in punishing straight people. They're not interested in helping people become successful, they're only interested in punishing the wealthy. They don't want justice, in fact they work hard to subvert it... because they pander to those who want revenge.

Of course, they always claim the opposite. But it wasn't the Republicans who wanted a Supreme Court Justice who thought she was better than others because she wasn't white or male. It wasn't the Republicans who called Condoleeza Rice a "house nigger." It wasn't the Republicans who coined the term "white hispanic." It's not the Republicans who to this day call Justice Thomas an "Uncle Tom." It's not the Republicans who delight in "Teabagger" as a derogatory term.

It isn't the Republicans who are proud to be associated with openly racist organizations like BLM, the NAACP and La Raza. It wasn't the Republicans who proudly put a proven rapist in the White House in the 90s. It wasn't the Republicans who were proud of voting for our last President because he's not white. It wasn't the Republicans who voted for Hillary because she's not male. It's not the Republicans who have fought tooth and nail to make it easy to get on welfare, but hard to succeed in business.

Democrats spent several years calling Republicans "terrorists," "suicide bombers" and "hostage takers." But the majority of Hamas supporters in America are Democrats.

I'm agnostic, and yes, I find it annoying when Christians act as if I'm some poor deluded soul who must be saved from his own stupidity. But at least Christians treat me as if I am a human being, and by their lights they are trying to help me. They'll try to change my mind, but they don't try to have me arrested or outcast when I don't. The anti-Christian left thinks I should be punished for daring to disagree with them, if they concede that I should be allowed to exist AT ALL.

"Diversity" my hairy butt. I want my doctor, my lawyer, my local police and firefighters, even the guy who sacks my groceries, to be the best, and I don't care what color they are, whether their underwear has a fly, or who they kiss when they go home in the evening. And because I have that attitude, I have been called a racist, a fascist, a white supremacist, a neo-Nazi, and just about any other derogatory name you can imagine. This is apparently what is known as "reasoned discourse" and "rational debate" among members of The Party of Tolerance™.

I have nothing to add to this.

Facebook

I deleted my Facebook account.  Deletion should occur on or before 6/28.  I don't have access to the account anymore.  You want to get in touch with me, email works.  I think I'll just return to blogging.  It's less toxic.

This Blog is Old Enough to Drive

Sixteen years ago on this day I hit "Publish" on my very first blog post:

Is this thing on?

Apparently so. Too bad I managed to lose the opening essay it took me an HOUR to compose. Oh well. I'll reconstruct it and put it back up later.

Welcome to The Smallest Minority, so named because most of the really good names Eject! Eject! Eject!, USS Clueless, Instapundit, Acidman, and so on were already taken. And while not a Randian, I accept a lot of Ayn Rand's observations as accurate, and it was she who wrote: "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

This blog is about the rights of individuals, that smallest of minorities, so it seemed apt.

More (hopefully MUCH more) to follow.

And MUCH MORE did follow, damn, did it ever.  6950 more posts, plus this one.  Three of the four links above are now defunct, but this one soldiers on.

"That America will return one day, I know it will."

Digging through the archives looking for something else, I stumbled across this old post. I liked it so much I thought I'd repost it here:

Humbled

During my second, third hospital stay? my daugter set up a GoFundMe fundraiser, and - being cogent - I told her to take it down.  She did.  But the first 2-3 days of my last hospitilization, "I wasn't all there" puts it mildly.  I'm currently on short-term disability, and I need a replacement liver.  My health insurance is great, but there's only so much it covers so my wife told her to fire it back up again.

She raised $10,140 over a very short period, almost exclusively from readers of this blog.  Other bloggers such as Say Uncle (and I don't have a complete list) linked to it.  Lots of encouraging comments were left with the donations, along with a lot of praise for the contents of this blog.

All I can say is, I'm humbled and grateful for all of you.  Thank you from the bottom of my soul.  Thank you for letting me join this tribe, where I have met, both online and in meatspace, some of the finest human beings anyone could ever know.

"Thank you" is inadequate for what I feel, but it's the best I can do.

Anybody Interested in a Central/Southern AZ Blogshoot?

Got an Aussie friend whose brother will be in town late May, early June.  We're looking at June 3 at the Casa Grande public range for an informal gathering of the People of the Gun.

Anybody still read this blog and interested?

Still Doing Cleanup

Going through the archives trying to clean up broken links and other things in old posts.

Damn I posted a lot back when.

Wow. Is This Thing Still On?

I see it's been awhile since I posted here.  Sorry about that.  Not intentional.  Lots to write about, not much interest in actually writing.  Maybe after Thanksgiving.  Thanks for visiting.  Read the stuff on the sidebar.

9/11

I've got nothing to add to this post from 2003 except "Thank you" to the operators of the Internet Wayback Machine, and I'll be sending them a donation.

No New Blog Content for Awhile

I'm going through the archives starting at the beginning and working my way forward cleaning up links (where I can - thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine) and moving photos onto Blogger (again, where I can thanks to the backups I made and what I can pull off of Photobucket.)  There are over 6,800 posts in the archives, so this is a long-term project.

My back already hurts.

Yup, It's Official

Photobucket sucks.  I've got to find another photo hosting service.  I'm sure as hell not paying them $40/month (Or $400/yr.) just so I can link photos here.  I don't need 500GB of storage (I'm currently using 2.7G of the 24G I'm paying something like $24/yr for.

This is like when HaloScan/Echo went pay-for-play on their "free" blog commenting service back in 2010.  I lost the better part of 40,000 comments dating back to just after this blog got started.  Through the herculean efforts of reader John Hardin, he managed to recover and host the comments to a large number of older posts, but I'm not going through anything like that again for the literally thousands of photos I've posted over the last dozen years or so.  Screw that.

Breda Fallon has said that blogging is dead.  I think she's right, and in large part because supporting industry business models simply don't work anymore.  It's just not worth dealing with bullshit like this.

Houston!

Looks like, barring unforeseen events, I'll be in northwest Houston, Texas the week of August 14-19 with my evenings mostly free.  Anybody want to get together?

The Obligatory Blogiversary Post

It's been fourteen years now.

Go read last year's post.  I have nothing to add.

Well, THIS Sucks.

When I got up yesterday morning I had an ache in my groin area (I know, TMI! TMI!) on the left side. Didn't know what it was, but it was only slightly annoying. Last night when I went to bed it was worse, but I noticed that my left leg was a bit swollen. Still, the discomfort was minimal. This morning the skin on my left leg was tighter than a bloated tick. Pain still wasn't bad, but it had reached the level of annoying.

I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I do read a LOT, and most of it sticks. "Kevin," my brain said, "I think you've got a blood clot in your leg."

So I did what every good digital denizen does when confronted with a possible life-threatening medical condition, I asked the internet whether I should go to Urgent Care or not. Consensus was "Yes." So I called my regular doctor (before normal business hours) and left a message asking them. Got a return call almost immediately: Emergency room. Urgent care doesn't do ultrasound tests.

So bright and early this morning I was in an ER getting an ultrasound of my leg. Diagnosis: a healthy bouncing baby blood clot, very high up in my thigh.

This shit can kill you.

But I told the ER doctor the reason I came in wasn't the possibility of sudden death by heart attack or pulmonary embolism, it was an old joke that kept running through my head:

A guy's mother collapses, and she's rushed by ambulance to the hospital. After hours in the ER waiting room the Doctor comes out. "I have good news and bad news," he says. "What's the bad news?" the son asks.

"Well, your mother has suffered a severe stroke. Her entire left side is paralyzed, but that doesn't really matter because her brain function is severely degraded. She can't talk, in fact about all she can do is make this really annoying screeching sound. You'll have to feed her, bathe her, change her diapers, basically care for her like she's an infant for the rest of her life. And she may live another twenty years."

"Jesus," the son says, "What's the good news?"

The doctor replies, "She died. I'm just fucking with you."

Got both the doctor and the nurse to laugh. 

Anyway, as I said, Deep Vein Thrombosis can fuck you up. I'm pretty sure that's what killed Acidman and Captain Phil Harris from Deadliest Catch.

Pay attention to the symptoms.

And if it gets real quiet around here, well.....

I Just Turned Down...

...an offer from Wideners to test ammo for free*.

I feel a little ill.

*They wanted me to review the ammo on the blog. Here's what I said in my response:

Thanks for the invitation, but I feel I must decline. I've cut way back on blogging, don't get enough range time as it is, and I'm a reloader so I pretty much make everything I shoot with the exception of .22LR and 12 gauge. I appreciate the opportunity, and turning down free ammunition makes me wince, but I don't think I'd be able to hold up my end of the bargain sufficiently well to make it worth your investment.

Honestyisthebestpolicy.Honestyisthebestpolicy.Honestyisthebestpolicy.Honesty....