Johnny Mac's running mate?

Here's your chance to guess McCain's veep before he announces it.

There was speculation that he is going to run with that Governor of Florida which was why he had photo ops with him recently. But I think that would be a bad move, it would make him look like the second fiddle. That tall, tanned attractive guy makes white boring McCain look like a stick of spearamint gum.

Poor Sad Harry and kids

Well we had a rather sad day today and things are still early so I am not sure what is going to happen as a result of recent events. Harry bit one of Sadie's friends. We are quite sure that it is because she has a dog that he keeps getting into tussles with in the alley, but it's still pretty bad. He is so gentle around us that we didn't see it coming, but we knew that he has had a history of desperately wanting to get in fights with other dogs.

It is probably another result of the sad neglectful history that he had before he came to us. He was owned by this operation ironically called 'luvabulldog' and the woman nor his Breeder named Rebecca Babb seem to know much about treatment or care of bullies.

He hadn't had a walk in the whole first year of his life, according to the woman who had him before me. He hadn't had proper vet care and was covered in bacterial and fungal infections that were obviously painful and irritating and causing him to walk with a limp. No one had bothered to housebreak him. He was just allowed to roam around out in the mud in a farm like a pig which is totally inappropriate for a bulldog's socialization. He is obviously not yet securely attached to us because he probably fears whatever kind of treatment and neglect he got at the breeder's.

I am not sure what is going to happen to poor Harry at this point. The only thing that luvabulldog has offered to do is take him back, and there's no way I am sending him back there for more. Very sad.

(Note to Google blog people, I had put up a bulldog blog where I discussed this issue, and luvabulldog successfully lobbied to have it taken down by you, despite the fact that it was a regular blog and the information was accurate. She didn't even have to demonstrate anything against the truthfullness of it as far as I know, all she did was asked and it was taken down without any warning. Neither this post nor my other blog was about personal revenge on Rhonda at Luvabulldog or her business, it was not personal nor did it involve any threats or libel, they have been about my own experience and perhaps to warn others that animals are being mistreated and that if they have a choice they might not want to support it. I didn't think that mentioning a business name critically was against your policy, though if you would like to let me know in what way I have violated your specific rules I will make any revisions. Please don't take this blog down without first contacting me as I have put a lot into it in many other posts as well. Thank you.)

My attempt to be funny: What's wrong with The History Channel

I know I am posting a lot of links to my Helium articles lately but I have figured out that it works better for me than posting them here. I tried to write some of this up as a top ten list before but it didn't work so well. Comments appreciated. I haven't revised some of these yet and should do it so they are rated better. Thankx.

http://www.helium.com/items/939925-naked-archeology-wouldnt-involve

Black death!

I will not, however, give up history one of my best loves (at least one of my more marketable ones, linguistics doesn't pay and it never did). And some of them depending on the topic do pretty well like this one about the plague. It was actually featured on the Helium homepage at one point.

http://www.helium.com/items/908450-portend-disaster-about-drift

This one beat out a phd in anthropology who is in second place. I think what I like about online content is that it cuts out the middlemen academic institutions and publishers (sorry Jim) that you otherwise have to schmooze to get your stuff out there. This way if I write it, they will read. And they are!

Oh, and in response to mom's question the other day about how I know all this stuff, google google google! This article took me fourty minutes.

Travel writing

I think I am going to concentrate on travel writing for one of my Helium specialties because not only do I like it about as much as the history stuff it also pays much better because there are tons more online advertisers that will link to your stuff. Some people obviously fake their reviews but I for now am limiting myself to places I have actual personal knowledge of. If the topics seem weird it is because I was writing them in response to a contest, which I placed in to win extra money. Yay!

The Central Park one is kind of boring except for the beginning and middle but I think the cowboy one is pretty dang good if I do say so myself. I don't even see anything like it in magazines usually.

As is usual with me I have revisions to make but it takes them a while to fix them. The typos are what kill me with the ratings on these because the raters are so small minded that they wait till they find one because they don't have anything else to go by. I usually swamp competition in overall quality but if I accidentaly type thin instead of thing they nail me. Also it takes me a while to see my own errors and these contests only run a week. What I should do is forward these to mom to read, because she does actually read my stuff, and she's good at spotting it. How bout it mom?

The good thing is that my lead in paragrahps are one of my strong points and that is how people usually determine which articles to click through to (probably much like other types of publications I would imagine), and so I think I am doing as well on my revenue as higher ranked and experienced writers.

http://www.helium.com/items/938771-millionaires-shell-athletes-stretch

http://www.helium.com/items/939287-great-things-about-arizona

Happy St. Patty's

Hey all, JP asked on my last post why I hadn't made any new ones, and I guess I go in waves. I am working on a more disciplined approach to life, but I often have to go where the wind in my sails takes me. I have also been trying to go au naturalle with the back pain thing and tho there are upsides it is pretty tough.

We also just got back from a combination ski trip/chess tourney. They tourney was pretty good, not the boys' best showing yet, but dad and Chase won second place in the parent/kid combo division. Slade lost to the tournament director, dang it. We actually didn't take any pics, such bums, or I would post some.

I am starting to get better at skiing finallly after all these years. It may have something to do with weighing less because I remember that it used to hurt my knees and ankles to make the proper form. I tried a few of the jumps on an obstacle course and caught some wicked air. It was sick, dude. I did wipe out, tho it was the only time I did all day, so also caught some wicked snow up my coat, there was powder everywhere.

In honor of the holiday I will post an article that I wrote for Helium on the history of St. Patrick's day. I just posted it and so I have to submit some revisions that I just noticed it needed, but I think it will wind up a pretty good read. I also posted my St. Patrick's day recipes, which I also need to revise so it will do better in ratings. Enjoy.

http://www.helium.com/items/934697-patron-saint-ireland-didnt

http://www.helium.com/items/930994-world-holiday-celebrated-around