A Welcome and Some Notes

Timothy Birdnow

A few notes.

First, let us offer a hearty welcome to the great Alan Caruba as a new contributer to this website. I've always loved his writing, and have tried to model my own on his. As regular readers are aware, Ron De Haan loves him, too, and frequently posts his essays here.

I corresponded with Mr. Caruba recently when we had very similar articles appear at Canada Free Press at the same time, and he has graciously offered to send me his latest essays. While they will not be exclusive to this site, they may well appear here before anywhere else, so we may get the "scoop" on the big names. It's a thrilling development; he has his own Wikipedia entry, after all!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Caruba

It is a great honor to be able to post Mr. Caruba's work.

On another topic, I have to ask for some ideas; guys, we simply have to come up with a decent name for this website. Birdblog really doesn't work anymore, since I write only a portion of it these days. Any ideas? If we ever hit the big time nobody will know what to call us. It doesn't matter that I founded the thing; there are better writers than myself here, and we should come up with a name that includes us all. Preferably a pun (Jack and Dana love puns, too). Tom Joseph once suggested "Surfing Bird" because the Bird's the Word! I like it, but it's a bit California for my midwestern hillbilly tastes. (Anyone ever read the Richard Matheson story about Las Angelas being a plague, and the rest of the country becoming infected? Old women begin walking around in midriffs and hot pants, playing tennis and driving around in convertibles while wearing dark sunglasses and scarves; really scary stuff!) Suggestions for a name would be appreciated.

Also, one of these days I need to customize the site. A header would be nice. GM Roper kindly produced one for me using the Birdman of Cahokia, which would be fun. The Birdman was an ancient symbol of the once great city of Cahokia, an ancient capital for the Mound Builder culture. Jack Kemp has produced one using a cardinal, in honor of the baseball team here in the 'Lou. I would also consider putting a picture of the Ozark Hilton on the top; it does rather resemble the unibomber shack, and would doubtlessly give our liberal friends a fine tweak. Problem is, I just don't know how to do pictures, and experiments have failed me.

It's supposed to be about the writing anyway. I don't even bother to insert hyperlinks, as you all know. I DO know how to do that.

Perhaps it's time to make this site less amateurish. I rather like it amateurish; it gives it a kind of charm that is missing from the big guns. It's a sort of workman mentality; we put out raw, unpolished but solid stuff. I really don't want a slick site, but perhaps it's time to make it a bit more slick?

I am very proud of this site. We do not get many visitors, but we get visitors with some clout. I know of one particularly top rated talk radio giant who has visited here before; he borrowed my phrase "Max Headroom President" the very day I posted it! We are linked up at Commentaries website, too. We may not be big but we are influencial.

At any rate, keep a sharp eye for Alan Caruba's fine work here in the future!