Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

There are almost as many reasons as there are blogs. I do it because it allows me to vent when I need to, it allows me to talk about my kids and golf. If nobody pays any attention, that’s okay, too. I’ve been getting over 100 visitors each day, and the number grows each month. I checked Andrew Sullivan’s site, and he gets about 50,000 visits a day. No thanks. Of those 100 visits, about 2/3 are people who arrive here from a search for such things as mulligan, don bendell, and child molestors. Someone’s apparently been making up stories about me!

That means there are 30 of you out there who actually take time to read what I write. Thanks. I hope it is of value.

This is no ego trip for me. I write what I want to write. Sometimes my vision is consumed, as it has been recently, by things like Kerry, UNSCAM, and Fajullah. I’ve been reading brother Darwin’s book of golf stories, and want to add my own stories to the collection. So, I do that here, too.

But I typically write as my mind works here in front of a keyboard. Which means it can be disjointed, with spelling and grammar errors. In the past, I’ve always written with a pen and pad, then digitized after the fact. Typing rather than writing is a bit different, and what you see is the unvarnished creation of electrical and chemical processes in my brain.

I began reading blogs only about a year ago. It seems many are having their first anniversary this month, so I may have jumped into this at the right time. I look at quite a few, and have a difficult time deciding whether to add one to my list or not. You see, I don’t want to clutter my list with a lot of links. Right now, I feel like there are way too many. The list needs to be pared. My list of links is my connection to those I read regularly, not a “thank you” to someone who has added me to theirs. And as I cruise through links, I more and more that interest me. But I can’t connect to them all, nor do I have time to actually think about what they have to say.

You see, I get most of my news from the internet now. I still watch Brit Hume, but little else on television. If there is something interesting happening, I will surf channels to get the best vantage point I can. I don’t care which network has it. Most of the time they are all covering exactly the same stories with exactly the same angle. They also like to cover celebrities. Tedious.

This is not the same as journalism. The old newspapers just can’t keep up. But what many of them have done is shift their focus to stories television won’t touch. Like the story of soldiers in Kurdish Iraq I posted last. That came from a local Maine newspaper online. I almost always follow a link that references a URL that sings out, and seldom follow links that go to another blog beyond the one I’m reading. Of course, there are some folks who point things out that I will follow regardles. That is a function of my opinion of the blog, and that comes from time spent reading what they, personally, have to say. For example, if Sarah links to something, I will generally follow it because I’ve learned to trust her judgement. But her broader interests are different than mine, so even that isn’t exact.

I like to keep up with print journalists I respect. Some can be found at the Townhall site, some at WorldNetDaily. I found Joe Galloway’s columns through Wallace. I used to read Salon regularly until they began having money problems and went subscription. Besides, Camille quit writing for them. PressThink is a new one I think I’ll continue to follow because it is written by a journalism professor who takes many of his counterparts to task. I don’t connect to the right or left exclusively, although I lean more right than left. I try to link to those who have a libertarian bent, such as Neal Boortz, and others who offer reasoned opinion. Noam Chomsky is there for the same reason as Dave Barry–simply to get a laugh or two. Barry has more reasoned thought on his site.

My blog is my writing pad. It just happens to be open to anyone with an internet connection. It is also my link cache, where I go to connect to other sites I read. Maybe there are one or two that would interest you over there on that list. Like Arts & Letters Daily or Coober Pedy News. Amazing.