Brand Spankin' News - Gettin' Down to the Last Gasps!

Brand Spankin' News

Good Morning Neighbors!

I know . I know. For someone who has given up writing the Brand Spankin' News I've certainly had a flurry of activity to the contrary for the past few days. Although many of you are supportive of my terminating the e-mail and beginning a blog, my e-mail blizzard is driven by many notes that could be boiled down to this theme, "Well, what do we do now? Where do we go from here?"

After stringing you along for maybe fifteen years, I owe it to you to give you a lifeboat before I scuttle this old tub.

Perhaps there is someone else who will volunteer to captain the e-mail ship. I've heard rumors, but no one has stepped forward to say, "I'll do it." Until something better comes along, the blog "The Bunkhouse" is open for business as a meeting hall.

http://remry1.blogspot.com/

The blog is better suited to our purpose than Facebook and it's much easier on the host than e-mail; speaking from experience, that is for certain! Yet there is reluctance against the blog.

I asked Fara Lee Ignert, "Why do you suppose some of the good neighbors are either reluctant, totally turned off or maybe even fearful of the blog idea; I mentioned that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had opined, 'There is nothing to fear but fear itself.'"

Fara Lee said, "Well them years of FDR was a much simpler time. The only things folks back then had to skeer 'em was a BIG Depression, dust-bowls and droughts, dirty thirties, a stock market kerlapse, a World War Two or two, mushroom clouds, soup lines, bein out of work and maybe catchin' tyfloid fever 'er polio and wearin an iron lung fer the rest of yer borned days. FDR was only opinin' the oblivious, that none of that was skeery. But that was years before The Blog!"

I asked Fara Lee if she was familiar with a blog.

She said, "Alls I know is "The Blog" is only one letter away from that horror show back in the late fifties where Steve McQueen got his start in Hollerwood. That oozy goo that gobbled up everthing in its path was certainly skeery. I figger a Blog is nuthin more than a Blob with the tail draggin' on that last "b". Them blogs are out to gobble up our personal information and set us to runnin' in the streets without nary a stitch to our names. Bossman, the innernet ain't to be trusted!"

I said, "What if I told you that a blog is no different than any other webpage? You don't have to sign up to read a blog; you don't have to give out any personal information to read a blog or comment; you don't have to be a "Follower" or subscribe. In fact it's safer in that regard than Facebook where you do have to join.

The only ones who will have to register to use the blog are those who want to contribute independently and on a regular basis. Then it's only a Google account. Many folks may already have a Google account and not even realize it. If you use Picasa for your photos or use Gmail, you have a Google account. If you use Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Chrome or use iGoogle or Blogger, changes are you have a Google account. Google, in my assessment, is safer than, for example, some on-line greeting card services that collect e-mail addresses, etc., when people use them.

"Blog" is short for "Web Log" - a specialized webpage designed specifically for people who want to keep a log and then either keep it private, share it with a select few, or open it for everyone. A Web Log could as easily have been called a Web Diary or Web Journal but the designer called it a Web Log and it became known as a Blog. Sort of like the army's General Purpose (GP) vehicle becoming known as a Jeep.

Fara Lee thought for a moment, "Well maybe it ain't so skeery afterall. I tell you though, bossman, If'n Blog is short fer "Web Log" then I can see why the inventer din't call it a "Web Journal."

I asked, "Why?"

Fara Lee opined, "Then one of them innernet nerds woulda giggled and called it a We-Urnal and that's what we'd be callin' it today!"

This is what happens at the bunkhouse when the Fair Bride is not around to keep order.