Doing the "blogger thing"

So you all know that i don't do the "blogger thing" but somehow (through the generosity of a good friend) i was awarded an award. "The Stylish Blogger Award" Now i am not stylish nor do i seem to write about anything with any kind of mass appeal, but i won and there are rules: (although i must add that Little Yawps broke rule #4 and failed to contact me.)

So here are the rules for acceptance of the award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award 5 recently discovered great bloggers.

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

 Thank you Jen at Little Yawps (the link is below)

My Seven Things:

1.  I am charming but obnoxious. (and that comment alone personifies what i mean)

2.  I am passionate about many things, none of which benefit me professionally in any way, and i would like to change that.

3.  I have three great daughters and i am the biggest overprotective jerk dad in the world, that's not an apology, i am a total ass when it comes to my kids and i'm not sorry about it. I am the same way with my wife to a lesser extent (cuz she can handle herself), but i love her and can bring out the king kong of jerk if you upset her.

4.  I just found out, after 30 years of refusing to eat it, that i LOVE broccoli if it is raw. And i have set out to make up for lost time by eating my body weight in florettes over the last few months.

5.  I talk and act and look like i have a PhD, but i sell tires for a living. I am learned without the proper documentation, like an illegal alien of academia.

6.  I live in Florida but wish that i lived somewhere else, anywhere else ... seriously, anywhere. I have a friend who's husband runs a company in a central Asian country (-24 degrees F) and i sent him an e-mail to see if they were hiring. I haven't heard back yet, but i'm seriously ready to go.

7.  I love to read and will read any non-fiction i can find, which drives my wife nuts because our bank has an on going used book sale to benefit such and such and i bring home 3-4 books every week (hard covers are 50 cents), and the books are taking over the house. Some she throws out when i'm at work, she doesn't think that i know, but i do.

The Five Bloggers Who I Can’t Stop Coming Back To are:

i don't have five ... so i'll give you my 3 and two that are just cool but i don't read

http://littleyawps.wordpress.com/ the most awesome, schizophrenic, ironic, down right hysterical, blog out there. If you don't read it already you are sorely missing out.

http://lovelaughterandonecrazylife.blogspot.com/ the best tales of the adventures of a mom and her kids and husband and life in general. Honest and funny and cute ... and it has its own sound track which is cool. Of course she hasn't written since June, but if you go check it out and demand more i bet she'll oblige us.

http://caffeinatedcrossings.blogspot.com/ Not prolific, but the writing itself is stunning and descriptive and beyond professional.

http://www.shitmykidsruined.com/ pretty self explanatory ... you're gonna laugh!

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ no opinion, just the facts, numbers and it is simple and beautiful ... the opposite of pinkosworkd (all opinion)

Democracy is Great, unless ...

I just want to start off by saying that nothing I have ever seen in my entire life on 3 continents has ever been quite so ridiculous as “pro-democracy” protesters and their world wide supporters celebrating the installation of “temporary” military rule in Egypt. I’m sorry if you’re buying the media coverage of the events in Egypt and think that some how that the people have won and defeated a bad dictator ... because that is not what happened.
Egypt: A Brief History of the Presidency
The first President of a modern free Egypt was Muhammad Naguib, who was an Army officer prior to Britain’s withdrawal, the second president was Gamal Abdel Nasser who was an Army officer prior to becoming president, the third president was Anwar al Sadat who was an Army officer prior to becoming president and the fourth president was Hosani Mubarak who was ... you’ll never guess ... an Army officer prior to becoming president. When he resigned he turned over power to his recently appointed vice president Omar Sulieman (army officer) who then turned over power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The military has run Egypt since 1953, and it’s not going to change now, you can have all the elections you want, you can talk until you are blue in the face about the Muslim Brotherhood and the possible Islamification of Egypt, but at the end of the day it is the army that will decide the next president and the next and the next and so forth and so on. After a week of being head of state General Mohamed Hussain Tantawi has declared that labor and civil unrest will no longer be tolerated and that everyone need to go back to work .... hooray democracy!
So the American news media spent two weeks canonizing the Egyptian protesters and tell us how fantastic they were, so when the attacked Lara Logan, beat her and brutally sexually assaulted her, the language used to describe the horrible attack was so muted and shaded it was obscene. The crowd forcibly removed her from her crew and her security detail, NBC reported the she “became separated” and then she was brutally attacked and sexually assaulted by “a separate violent element”. So good, it wasn’t the wonderful protesters you were telling us about, it was someone else ... that’s good to know. There is a picture taken seconds before the attack and I can tell from the giant democracy protest sign that they are holding that it wasn’t the same people, clearly a separate violent element.
So now there are protests and clashes in Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and of course don’t forge the Tunisian thing from last month, and if you’re a geography student then you know all of this is right next to the bastions of stability Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Iraq and Afghanistan. Basically a 3500 mile swath of equatorial Asia and Africa are exploding in unrest and chaos and violence (4000 miles if you count the unreported, disastrous regime change in Kyrgyzstan). So what are we to do? President Obama says he supports to protesters for democracy ... in a place that polls repeatedly to be in favor of the destruction of our nation and our way of life ... so that’s odd. Add the head of or nation’s intelligence tells the world that he doesn’t really know what’s going on and it’s all a big surprise and the Muslim Brotherhood is a good bunch of guys, like the Knights of Columbus ... do you believe that? Do you believe he’s incompetent? Then there’s the little matter of the leaked cable (thanks wikileaks) detailing how the US state department was collaborating with elements inside Egypt to plan and carry-out a revolution in early 2011 back in 2008. But everyone was caught off guard and they loved Mubarak, or hated him, no wait, he’s great, no ... no he’s got to go.
So where’s it all going? I’ll keep looking and I’ll let you know as soon as I do, but just don’t believe the hype, the result of all this is not going to be a free and prosperous northern Africa/Middle East.