The Baron Flies the Coop…Again

The pleasure of his company was requested and off he flew, disappearing into the blue, leaving me various instructions - and leaving y’all to suffer whatever I can manage to post while he’s gone. Since I never do know from one week to the next (or for that matter, from matins to vespers on any blessèd day) how I’ll be feeling or functioning, whatever gets posted here will be as much a surprise to me as it will be to you. Please be kind and ignore the dropsies.

There are lots of things worth talking about. Sometimes I even keep a hopeful list of topics I’d like to present. But then my energy level oozes out the door and I close my notebook once more. Maybe another day? I still have enough optimism to keep updating that journal, though)...

But there’s another problem. Not a problem really — more like a complication, which is this: We have a varied audience, reaching from Finland to Australia and stretching to California before bounding on to Alaska, Hawaii and Moose Jaw, Canada. Oh, and don’t let me forget Israel [that’s a cue for, “yeah, I hear they’re in the pay of Mossad”] and a few —very few — folk in the Middle East. Did I say Texas?

So with this motley crew, where to focus?

• Shall I bore the Europeans with too much “insider baseball” accounts of the ferment occurring right now in American politics and culture? Without a doubt, the coming election (and the surrounding events) will be a watershed in American history. It will define us and mark our course for generations to come.
  
  
• Or shall I make the Americans endure stories of the misery of continental drift and dissolution across the sea? The ruination of so many countries and cultures at breakneck speed is like watching a space alien horror movie stuck in fast forward.

There is a tangential problem here for both sides: we think we know enough about one another to hold forth on what the others ought to do. Sometimes we airily dismiss the complexity of the problems each faces as simply a lack of intelligence or integrity or both. In the end, these foreclosures of intellect and civil discourse come down to a dismissive hubris on both sides. We think we already know the answers for others when in reality we haven’t even begun to understand those problems in all their mystery and complexity.

Back when the Baron’s essays were posted on Breitbart’s “Big Peace” section, the harshly predictable comments left by my fellow citizens became increasingly embarrassing. Thus, when he had to give up posting at BP for lack of time I was relieved. No longer would we have to endure the oh-so-witty “Europe’s-done-Stick-a-fork-in-it” repartee in the comment sections. For the most part, those sloughs were déjà vu moments and I was once more slogging through swamps of lizards green and scaly as though no time had passed.

There’s no way to amuse all our readers in the Baron’s absence so I’ll flip through my notes and pick a pebble or two for y’all to examine.

• I have a piece half-written on an YouTube video from several years ago that cycled back ‘round again in the emails recently. I showed it to several people and did a random survey, asking some readers in particular to share their opinions. I’ll go dig that one out.
  
  
• And JLH sent an amusing satire — Hamlet’s soliloquy as channeled though our Supreme Court’s Chief Justice after his recent ruling on ObamaCare.
  
  
• Maybe a piece on the “international” gun ban and how far it will — or won’t — get in this country.
  
  
• Perhaps a post on the long-term results of divorce if I can write it so as not to cause a food fight.
  
  
• Some political predictions.
  
  
• A petition or two…

…and by the time y’all think you can’t stand another minute, why the Baron will be back at Command Central, both computers fired up, and the Gates of Vienna will creak open, weighted down by the accretions of emails hanging off the railings.

One thing’s for sure: that old adage about absence and a fond heart is all too true.

I apologize again for the execrable spam-prevention torture you have to endure in order to comment on Gates of Vienna. Peregrin is right: the Captcha ‘system’ is indeed getting worse. What Blogger has is inexcusable, but what can we do, ask for our money back? To leave the security of all those server farms would mean endless DOS attacks and a very high monthly premium. If anyone has ideas for an alternate system which is easy to implement, and can be used on Bloog, please let us know.

What annoys me no end is their mandatory updates, posing as “improvements” but making it more difficult for average people to keep a blog up and running. Yet they ignore the pleas for a better spam filter. It’s like the old days of regulated monopolistic phone companies, where the motto was, “We don’t care. We don’t have to care. We’re the phone company”. Same goes for Blogger, in spades.

Meanwhile, I continue to enjoy the luxury of moderated comments. In one recent attempt that hit the spam filter for what it was advertising, there was this little gem in the verbiage:

I do have 2 questions for you if you do not mind. Could it be only me or do some of these remarks appear like written by brain dead people?

It's you, buddy. Trust me.