... maybe you should take all of those clothes off so we can be comfortable while talking about it.

I've been AWOL here, and apologize for that. I've been given the glorious freedom to work from home for my law practice, and I find that I work a lot more hours. That's good for the office bottom line, but bad for my non-legal scribbling. Did anyone miss me? (Don't answer that.) When I've found time to write, I've been plugging away at Vlad's story, from my Forever Series that starts with "A Faerie Fated Forever." It's meant that the blog has been neglected though -- which isn't good. Can someone add a couple more hours in a day?

Because I do try to keep up with literary happenings, a recent piece in the Guardian caught my eye. It's writing tips from acclaimed novelist/creative writing instructor, Colum McCann, titled, "So You Want To Be A Writer? Essential Tips for Aspiring Novelists. Likely, it caught my attention because one of his first tips is that "there are no rules. Or, if there are any rules, they are only there to be broken. Embrace these contradictions."  I'm a rule-breaker from way back, so I settled in for a read.

McCann says "to hell" with grammar, formality, plot and structure - but only after you've learned them so well that you can walk through your work "with your eyes closed."  He points out that the great ones will make their own rules, only to break them  and unmake them.

He says that a writer's first line should "reach in and twist your heart backward," and it should be active, "plunging your reader into something urgent."  And what should that first line be about?  What kind of book should you write?  The old adage says to write what you know, but McCann disagrees.  He says to "write towards what you want to know."  By this he means that writers can - and should- create characters who are people the writer would never be and would never want to be.  To do this well, and create a character that leaps off the page, a writer must empathize with the character. And empathy, McCann says is tough and violent and can "rip you open," changing you forever. That rang true because I've experienced it in several of my books.  I first experienced it in my first book, "Brotherly Love."

The most important tip that McCann gives applies to aspiring authors - and those who've written a dozen books.  The only way to write is - to write. "A writer is the one who puts his arse in the chair when the last thing he wants to do is have his arse in the chair."  He says to stare the blank page down, don't worry about word count and keep your arise in your chair.

McCann says to create characters by introducing them in a "singular moment in time" when they are about to change or collapse.  Avoid the information overload and show the moment and to "make it make it traumatic, make it mournful or make it jubilant."  Just make it so that your readers care about the person painted by the words.  Dialogue is a way to paint your characters more vividly, he says, but remember that everyone speaks differently and has different quirks.

He discusses structure and plot.  One of his points about plots really struck home.  He says to "unbloat" your plot because nothing is better than a "spectacular piece of inaction" - like "Ulysses" points out the author who is himself originally from Dublin. McCann makes important points about grammar, research, and learning from failure.

My favorite part of the article is that part that is my goal, what I want to do every time my fingers meet a keyboard - to write well.  McCann writes well when he describes good writing like this:

Good writing will knock the living daylights out of you. Very few people talk about it, but writers have to have the stamina of world-class athletes. The exhaustion of sitting in the one place. The errors. The retrieval. The mental taxation. The dropping of the bucket down into the near-empty well over and over again. Moving a word around a page. Moving it back again. Questioning it. Doubting it. Increasing the font size. Shifting it around again and again. Sounding it out. Figuring the best way to leave it alone. Hanging in there as the clock ticks on. Not conceding victory to the negative. Getting up off the ground when you’ve punched yourself to the floor. Dusting yourself off. Readjusting your mouth guard. Sustaining what you have inherited from previous days of work.

Again, check out the article:  here.

I don't know if any of my tales have knocked the "living daylights" out of you - yet. I'll keep learning to write by writing, and by listening to tips from other folks.  Writers grow as they write, and their work evolves as they grow. It's the cycle of life - grow and change or wither and die.   So, if the last one of mine you read didn't rock your world, please check out another one.  The next one might be the one to make you laugh and cry and cheer - and feel better about a bad day or a crappy week.  That's my ultimate goal and in one way or another, I think it's every writer's goal. I'll keep trying to reach it with each book for each reader.

Husband slash webmaster here.

Quacking Alone is having some difficulties with e-mail contact forms as of the moment, so we deeply apologize for any problems this may cause any of you out there who want to contact me or Mary Anne.

I am working on the issues. We will hopefully have everything working correctly soon. I also apologize for stomping on my wife's update.

Angry Old Fat Man

UPDATE:

E-mail forms are working as of May 23, 2017 8:50 AM. However, you will have to type in a subject line for the e-mail form instead of having it default to something meaningful. Sorry. Mea maxima culpa.

Big Daddy here.

I believe we had a picture like this before, I just can't find it here. At any rate, Mary Anne's Giant Duck Flotilla of Terror is not Photoshopped. It invaded a harbor in Hong Kong before. Now, Canada has been conquered.

Mr. Duck and I have two amazing sons.  The youngest attends a local college and is a rising junior with ambitions to teach history at the high school or college level. The eldest is an engineer  who works in upstate New York with a company that runs the Navy's nuclear program.  Every summer the youngest flies to NY to spend a month with the eldest, and they take weekend trips to indulge their joint love of history and touring forts and musty, dusty sites. This is THAT month, meaning that both ducklings are away from Daddy Duck on his special day.

This year, Mr. Duck is stuck with Mrs. Duck as his father's day companion, and he'd be the first to tell you that I'm a mighty poor substitute for his sons.  He'd be right, of course, because Mr. Duck is always right.  And he sired and raised some amazing boys. Nothing says as much about the man he is as the sons he raised.  They are his finest tribute - and he did a great job with parenting, taking the role of steady, stern disciplinarian to offset his overindulgent wife. His success shows in his sons' character, achievements, honor and honesty.

Mr. Duck is afflicted with yours truly.  I'm spoiled, clingy and largely incompetent at most things that aren't related to writing.  I have two skills - writing and worrying.  Other than that, Mr. Duck must captain the ship and I thank God every day that he puts up with me as much as he does.  Yes, he gets aggravated with me, but I am often an aggravating person.

My husband is a zombie-loving, movie fan who works with computers for a living.  He does RPG programming for the AS-400, and has also held jobs doing tech work, so he knows the hardware and the software side of systems.  He left a local tech job a couple of years ago to take a full time RPG programming job working for a county about 2.5 hours away.  He stays there during the week, living in a Class A RV named Walter - in honor of the lead character in "Breaking Bad."

I've spent some time with him there this month, and I'm amazed all over again at his strength and steady determination.  Walter is ancient, and not intended for the road so much, but he was purchased as a workplace residence for Mr. Duck.  He's parked in a field, supplied with well water, sewer service via a septic tank, and gets electricity from a tap Mr. Duck installed on a light pole.  A co-worker lets him use the property free, and we really appreciate Ms. Susan for that.  But like most of us who are getting on in years, Walter has his issues.  He didn't have two knees to go bad, but he had two AC units, and both have gone.  We bought a floor model designed to cool a room for the front living area.  The bedroom area is on its own and stays hotter than hot.

Mr. Duck endures the bedroom heat, though the sofa has a bed that pulls out from underneath up front.  While I've been visiting, I've slept on the couch, up front, because I lack the strength of character to endure the heat in the back.  Like I said, I'm spoiled. He sleeps in the back bed instead of the front because - that's where he sleeps and it won't change for something as irrelevant as comfort.  That strong determination saw him through getting our boys from crawlers to college, and he was the same way with the rules and discipline.  Our sons didn't have to wonder what Daddy would do if they did this, that or the other thing - they knew what the consequences would be and they knew that tears and pleas might move Mom, but Dad would do what he said he would do.  The boys are better men today because of Dad's unwavering and steadfast determination.

I'm writing this tribute to say how much I admire my husband as a man, as a husband and as a father.  He puts up with an insane duck lady who doesn't do good enough at anything, even though he's a perfectionist by nature. He must love me a little bit, because if he didn't, I'm convinced he'd have killed me years ago. But he can't love me the way I love him - Mr. Duck is my universe, my heart and my soul and his presence in my life is a daily miracle.

I love you, Mr. Duck and Happy Father's Day!!

Entertainment Weekly says that the "happily ever after" genre is taking on Trump by joining the resistance.  I'm distressed to learn that some of my colleagues are repeating the mistake made by the entertainment industry. Like actors, actresses and comedians, writers are free to have political opinions.  Among friends and family, or at a political gathering held by folks of a particular leaning, expressing political opinion is perfectly acceptable.  Conning your audience into buying one thing and selling them another is a lie and liars deserve to lose.

The article notes that Lauren Billings, who writes with Christina Hobbs as Christina Lauren, responded to readers who reject mixing romance with politics by saying, "we share our opinions in our books in every word we write."  If that's true, before you ever buy one of their books, you should consider that these writers aren't channeling their characters, they're not telling you the story you bought, they're feeding you their personal beliefs and ideology.  Is that what they marketed?  Is that what readers bought?  No, it's not.  With all due respect to Ms. Billings, Ms. Hobbs and every other romance author on the planet, readers don't give a darling damn about what you think or feel or believe.

Readers buy romance to crawl inside the heads and hearts and souls of the hero and heroine.  A good writer often pens thoughts she'd never have and describes acts she'd never perform.  How does the writer do that if "every word she writes" contains her opinions?  She can't.  An author feeding her opinions through the mouths of her characters is telling her story - not the tale the readers bought.  A writer who gives in to ego to that extent echos the errors of entertainers.  There is a reason that movie theaters are empty.  Romance writers who feed readers stories with political overtones are herding romance to a place where shelves stay full.

The EW piece commits the same mistake made by reporters, prognosticators, actors and entertainers.  It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why Americans back President Trump.  The President is neither anti-gay nor anti-woman and neither are the hordes of Americans who voted for him.  Many Trump supporters aren't particularly conservative.  What unites ALL Trump supporters is not a political party.  In fact, it is the exact opposite of a political anything.  Trump supporters are tired of politicians, labels and political correctness.  America voted Trump into office to elect a businessman who would run the government like a company.  Some businessmen want to make and sell a better car or a better thermostat.  Trump wants to make and sell a better America - not better for Democrats or Republicans, or for liberals or conservatives - but better for the vast majority whose lives and beliefs mix a little from all of those things to create the most unique thing on Earth:  an American.

Writers should disclaim and denounce the EW article and everything it contains and advocates.   I disclaim it and I surely denounce it. Romance writers should write  because they want to tell stories where people face obstacles, triumph over tragedy and end up happily ever after.  Those stories should be the character's stories, told through the eyes and the hearts and the minds of the characters, not the authors.  A writer who sells a love story but delivers something else has betrayed her readers. That writer will not inspire that reader to do anything but avoid her work in the future.

Life is full of problems and despair and the Great Duck knows - it's far too full of politics these days.  Anyone who wants to experience any of those things can turn on a number of 24-hour news channels.  People don't go to a movie to hear an actor mouth lines filled with political drivel.  People don't turn on a comic's special or late night program to hear him talk abut how much he hates Trump.  And people don't read a romance novel to RESIST anything.  Romance is about indulging senses and emotions. It's about love and triumph and living through a roller coaster ride that ends at a happy forever.

People don't read romance to get some writer's take on politics or her opinion on the President.   So, the EW piece has it wrong  - it's not the romance authors who should join the resistance movement.  Romance readers should RESIST any writer whose product description or blurb describes a love story but tells a thinly-veiled political allegory.   So, how to RESIST being deceived by a writer, especially one you enjoyed before?  Here's how - RCW - return, complain and warn.

Whether you bought it in Kindle or in Paper, return any book you were conned into buying.  Complain to the seller.  Email Amazon or Apple or Barnes and Noble or your neighborhood bookstore.  Email the big publisher.  Explain that you were the victim of a bait and switch that you feel was a deceptive act by the writer, the publisher and the seller.  Explain that you expect a clear warning about any romance novel containing political opinion, references or overtones. And warn your fellow readers by posting a review on the seller's website, but don't stop there.  Follow up by tweeting and posting on any board or forum where you interact with other readers.

Are authors, actors, comedians, singers or athletes allowed to be political?  Absolutely.  They can write a political book, give a speech at a rally or appear on an opinion talk show.  But they must learn to separate their politics from their work because the audience is not paying to support their politics.

Politics is politics and romance is romance. Any author's effort to combine the two should be met with reader resistance. Resist with your purse, your email, your reviews, your boards or forums, and your Facebook and Twitter. Unless there is a clear posted warning that the books contains a political point of view, all readers should be able to buy and enjoy romance novels by all writers.  Any writer who believes otherwise can be taught that they are wrong and it is the readers' job to administer the lesson.  Money talks and reviews and social media make fine megaphones.

I'm from South Carolina and it's a football rivalry state.  Here, you're either a Gamecock or a Tiger.  You may not have attended either school, but you're still one or the other. (I attended law school at the University of South Carolina, so it's a legit alma mater for me. And BTW, like Darius Rucker says, our USC was a school before California was a state.) In SC, team loyalty is a matter of tradition, heritage and culture.  Both teams have had good years and bad years, but fans stay loyal.  Clemson has had many more good years and by far holds the edge in the rivalry football game - especially lately - but forget that whole National Championship thing.  You know what matters?  It matters who wins the Carolina-Clemson game.

The Gamecocks have been in a rebuilding period since Steve Spurrier walked away from the team mid-season several years ago.  But they hired Coach Will Muschamp and he's done an amazing job.  It's Year 2 of the Muschamp era and the Gamecocks are #2 in the SEC East - instead of dead last as was predicted pre-season, and they'll end with a winning record and go bowling.  They're 7-3 now, Wofford is ahead which will have the Cocks 8-3 going into the last game of the season -- the "Palmetto Bowl" - the BIG one - the Carolina-Clemson game.  No one outside of the state thinks we can beat Clemson this year, but Gamecock fans believe.  And win or lose, the Gamecocks will proceed with the motto that Muschamp brought -- "So what?  Now what?"

I read a blog  from "The State" newspaper, and it's the first time I'd heard of the motto.  It seems the team has adopted it and the players live it now.  I've just decided to adopt it too.  What better saying to guide your life?  Whether you won or lost, yesterday is in the past. We can't change yesterday.  We can relive it, and allow the mistakes of the past to define the future or we can say, "so what."  If it was, then it was and no amount of self-torture will change it.  It happened.  So what?

The thing we can change is what we'll do today, and how we'll approach tomorrow.  We can choose to recognize that today is ours to conquer and tomorrow is ours to prepare for.  We can wake up saying, "now what?"

On a writing level, this means that I can look at Amazon and see that my books haven't taken off yet.  Kindle Unlimited folks - love y'all - have been reading, but not enough customers have been buying.  I could wallow in that, and cry over that.  I could toss up my hands and stop writing altogether, or I can say, "So What? Now What?" I chose the latter.  I've dropped the price of a few of my books to .99 cents, hoping that it will spur some folks to join a duck lady in the journey over the top of forever.  The books that are currently .99 cents are:  Brotherly Love, Seducing The Billionaire, and Tempting Duty.

Maybe you haven't read one of my books before.  So What?  Now what - you can do is pick up one of my .99 cent specials and give crazy love a try.  And here in Casa de Duck my youngest son and I (the football fans in the family) will await the Carolina-Clemson game, saying So What if Carolina lost last year. It's Now What time!

Hello my delightful little readers, it's me, the Nasty, Angry One.

Wow. It's been a long time, hasn't it?

I'm so sorry about the time period involved, but we've had a lot going on at Casa de Pato Loco (House of the Crazy Duck). Thanksgiving, family loss, Christmas, and now New Year's. Along with my working over 2 hours away, one way.

Anyway, onto the GREAT news. This new year, 2018, brings with it the fifth book in the Forever Series, A Forbidden Forever.

According to the author, my dear wife, this one is from the viewpoint of Vlad the Gypsy. Click the picture above and buy it for the Kindle. The paperback will be available soon.

Until next time, my kiddies, have a Happy New Year and may 2018 be one of the best for you, if not the best.

Let's head home, Detective Duck Squad. We got the bad guy.

Hello there dear gentlefolk (and assorted jerkasses) it's me, Angry Old Fat Man, otherwise known as Crazy Duck Lady's husband and website manager.

My wife has discovered a strange, wonderful thing. It is the ability to link, via the site Books2Read, to a "universal" vendor page for each and every book she writes.

So far, I've put a button on every book that has this capability (in the Mary Anne Graham book page) to allow you, our blessed readers, to buy the books for whatever e-book device you happen to own. The button looks like this:

Right now it's functional in the Mary Anne book list page, but it will soon be available in the Olivia Outlaw book list page and possibly the Book Bundle page as well.

Enjoy them, s'il vous plaît!

Hey, AOFM here.

Had some problems with e-mail links in the right sidebar. Got them fixed, tested, looks good.

If you have any e-mail that we didn't answer, please re-submit it and we'll be back with you about it as soon as possible, provided the Contact Form plugin decides to work properly.

Gracias.

Dear little morons,

Angry Old Fat Man here, aka your worst nightmare and the reason you dream of gulags as places to put me and my generation in.

Let me announce today's topic: the New Atheism and its ignorant dipshit unthinking followers.

I have been on Youtube lately and made the mistake of reading the comments, the writers of which overwhelmingly suffer horribly from the Dunning–Kruger effect.

This is mainly because young little morons do not know that they are ignorant, and therefore display their stupidity by believing if SMURT PEEPLZ HURP DURP (i.e., people that are as ignorant as they are) say it, it must be true and the little morons must repeat it 2 B SMURT 2 HYULK HYULK.

The piece of spinach stuck in my teeth right now is the description of Christianity as a "Bronze Age fairy tale hurp durp".

These little imbeciles have latched onto the "it's fashionable to be atheist because it makes me look smurt hyuk hyuk", which is an ignorant piece of mental trash and philosophical laziness. Why? Because anybody with any cursory knowledge of history and/or Christianity could tell you it's simply not true. It is also not true of the Quran.

The Iron Age (which, please note, succeeded the Bronze Age) began long before the advent of the New Testament and, for that matter, the Quran (which I don't care for, but anyways...) . Jesus Christ was crucified during the early Imperial period of Ancient Rome. As any enemy of Rome at the time could tell you, the typical Roman soldier did NOT have a bronze sword. It was STEEL, it was hard, and it was as nearly as sharp as a razor. So no, it WASN'T the Bronze Age.

Islam came along after a couple of hundred years of Imperial Rome's collapse. Scimitars were long, curved, hard, and sharp. AND STEEL.

So this whole "Bronze Age" bullshit you want to pull out is simply you being parrots for people only slightly more knowledgeable than you are, if you consider Kim Kardashian's huge ass and drooling hatred of President Donald Trump to be knowledge. You need to put down the Playstation controller, go outside, and get a job, at which point you will begin praying that the government doesn't take all of your money and give it to a useless basement-dwelling moocher who has bipolar PTSD autism that only allows him to breathe and maintain a Twitch channel to play some game with his fellow moochers with lots of bright lights and loud noises.

AOFM signing off, for now.

Angry dude here, the lucky husband of the Crazy Duck Lady.

Today's my birthday. I'll be fiftajjdisoijd this year.

I was born on my Dad's birthday. So I never really had big birthday parties or anything like that, especially considering the economic status my immediate family had when I was growing up.

But this is the first year that I've had my birthday that my Dad was not around to at least say "happy birthday" to me, and that I couldn't do the same to him. He died a number of months ago.

My Mom misses him so much, but she did wish me a happy birthday today. My wife and my boys will be here with me as I praise the good Lord for another year of life, and for all of them, I could never express enough gratitude.

Happy birthday, Dad. I love you, and will until I see you again.

Crazy Duck Lady may have suffered from premature empty nest syndrome, even though we have not thrown our youngest boy out of the house yet. He, however, will be 21 years old near the end of this month, so on Mary Anne's birthday earlier in the same month she was beginning to yearn for another little one to fill her heart and give some love to.

Well, she found it. It's furry and tiny and cute - everything Crazy Duck Lady wanted.

Say hello to the newest member of the family: Pixie Bear!

Well, Aggravated Husband here, and my family survived the hurricane that just ripped through North and South Carolina a few days ago.

We evacuated some days after our governor said we should. We have a son who lives in New York state, but we didn't have to go to his residence.

We stayed at a small hotel in Walterboro, SC for not quite a week, then proceeded home.

We were very, very lucky. When we we returned home, our house was not damaged at all and all of our utilities were still functional.

However, my mother is out of power with a number of surrounding roads blocked. She lives just outside of my hometown of Dillon, SC, which is experiencing the effects of flooding. At least her house is not flooded and she has a generator, so there is that. She also has other people she can live with nearby, so she isn't completely out of sorts. Thank the Good Lord for that.

To all that have assisted our section of the country. thank you and bless you.

Hi there, it's the Portly Husband of the Crazy Duck & Morkie Lady, imparting his wisdom upon you.

WARNING: IF CLINICAL TERMS FOR SEXUAL ACTS DISTURB YOU, TURN BACK NOW!

There we are. Crybabies should now be gone.

Anyways, Netflix, the television and movie streaming service, has been having problems keeping stock prices high and subscribers enlisted. From my observations, they've come up with a strategy they think will raise their viewer numbers and their stock prices.

Porn. And not the old softcore Cinemax version either, but the kind that shows the whole thing.

I first saw it there when, out of curiosity, I watched the director cuts of both Nymphomaniac movies. I had heard that Lars von Trier was a very controversial director, though I had no idea why since I had never seen any of his movies.

So I kick up the movies in question and BAM! I see oral sex - real, unsimulated fellatio - on the screen. And that was the first movie. The second movie showed - get this - real, unsimulated double penetration. That is, simultaneous vaginal and anal penetration. Two men, one woman. Two penises, one vagina, and one anus.

Whoa.

Now, Lars von Trier said that none of the actors or actresses had actual sex. Instead, the real actors' heads and/or faces were superimposed on porn performers' bodies.

I don't know about that, but if it's true, the team who did it deserve more special effects awards than Industrial Light and Magic. Because, damn.

I wrote it off as a big movie director doing a big director thing. Otherwise, the movies stunk, but hey, now I could say I saw movies done by that dude.

Fast forward to a couple of years later.

Looking for other things to watch on Netflix, I came across a documentary about Rocco Siffredi, an Italian porn star with whom I was familiar. While interesting to find out what drove the man to do the things he did, it was right on the border of pornography. I honestly can't remember too much about it, but I think that was it.

I thought it weird that Netflix had him in a video, but whatevs.

Then I saw a completely unrelated foreign film. Fellatio, right there, plain as day.

Finally, a Rocco TV series showed up. And there they were - fellatio, and anal penetration.

So there you have it, in my opinion. The way that Netflix is going to raise their profits is to shift to outright porn.

Their marketing department probably recommended it after seeing the numbers being pulled by real, unabashed porn sites. And as I've told my sons about corporate, the two most useless departments are marketing and human resources, in that order. And the only reason human resources ranks better is because they actually get employees paid.

Let's face it, marketing departments are responsible for such travesties as New Coke, ET: The (Atari) Video Game, the Apple Newton, Google Glass, and the Edsel. So while I expect a quick uptick in income at Netflix, that will last until the novelty wears off.

If Netflix wants more stable earnings, here's what I, Angry Old Fat Man, say it should do instead:

1. Show more blockbuster movies.

Granted, that will be a metric assload of superhero movies and reboots these days, but there have been otherwise interesting films, like Heredity, for instance. Basically, I'm sick and tired of obscure-ass foreign films that mean nothing. Get rid of that shit.

2.  Get off the Trump hate train, and possibly feature more conservative content in documentaries.

3.  Use your earnings to produce decent storytelling in feature format as well as the current TV series format. The Man in the High Castle is a good example.

There you have it. Follow my advice and you could keep Amazon's Jeff Bezos off of your asses. Unless you like that sort of thing, you freaks.

Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, while speaking to our President, Donald J. Trump (of Make America Great Again fame), said the following (translated):

Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. [...] By pursuing our own interests first, with no regard to others’, we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and makes it great: its moral values.

The dictionary gives us a definition of nationalism:

na·tion·al·ism
/ˈnaSH(ə)nəˌlizəm
noun
patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.
synonyms: patriotism, patriotic sentiment, flag-waving, xenophobia, chauvinism, jingoism
"their extreme nationalism was frightening"

So, that explains a lot. Either Macron is lying about nationalism, because France is a nation that historically has no interests outside of France's direct interests, or Macron is the most incompetent President that France has ever had.

If the latter is true, then one must ask of President Macron:

Hello kiddies, it's me the Irritated Dude again.

The family had a pretty good Thanksgiving this year. My Mom was still in emotional recovery from losing Dad, but then again, she had been married to the man for over 50 years. She married him when she was roughly 17 years old, so it's completely understandable.

Also, she lives alone so she's found that she has to take care of things around the house that my father formerly did. I offered to help her, but I'm not in the best health myself and she has a lot of trouble thinking that I'm competent enough, so that's that. Besides, my sister visits her a lot with my Mom's youngest (and last) grandchild, and Mom has a few friends in the neighborhood to help her out as well.

So we didn't go to her house for Thanksgiving. However, my oldest son came down from New York for a week, and he wanted his Grandma's Thanksgiving specialty: homemade dumplings. For some reason my Mother refers to them as "pastry", but I'm guessing it's an old North Carolina thing where her side of the family originates.

That meant that I had to make the dumplings. I didn't do the job as well as my Mother, but it was sufficient for my boy, and he ate a decent amount of them along with the turkey I cooked.

We even fed the dog, who promptly went into a food coma. He loves turkey anyway, but he couldn't stop on the Thanksgiving bird until he passed out.

Before my oldest son had to return to his workplace up North, I treated him to two cinematic masterpieces via my streaming services:

The Godfather, and The Wolf of Wall Street. He mostly enjoyed them, though the latter movie was a bit cringeworthy for him.

For the latest news, Macron has proven to the French people how incompetent he is and how he doesn't understand the importance of looking out for the interests of his nation.

They have expressed how unhappy they are with his poor leadership with not just civil unrest, but violence.

Good going, you dimwit.

Angry Old Fat Man here. My mobile phone is dead.

Actually, it was dropped a couple of times in the past year or two and doesn't display or sense screen input anymore. It was a very nice Samsung smartphone, very expensive when I paid for it. It had an outstanding camera which took beautiful pictures even in low light. It had 32 GB of RAM which allowed me to load a large number of apps if I so desired (a grocery list one and a couple games were great). It allowed me to get on the Internet from practically anywhere and look up important stuff, like the date when Abe Vigoda died (you have to be pretty old to get that joke). And most importantly it had an alarm clock that got me up every morning without an annoying buzzing noise.

But yeah. Phone dead. No texting, talking, or alarming.

Being an old fart like myself, though, has made me hate anything and everything "smart". I like the good old days, when everything was dumb.

Why is that? you may ask. Well, that was when technology was much simpler. A device had ONE JOB, and if it didn't DO THAT ONE JOB WELL, you scrapped it and got a new one, usually from another company.

That nice but non-functional smartphone, for instance. The repair shop that can make it as good as new wants $190.00 to do so. But hey, you'll get all of your contacts and their phone numbers and their e-mail addresses back. Until you drop the phone again (even with its thick rubber protective cover).

Back in the old days, you didn't carry a phone around with you. You had that sumbitch plugged into the wall, and if it sat on a table, it was usually heavy enough to beat a burglar's head into a greasy, bloody pulp, after which you could plug it back in and it would still work wonderfully.

But it was dumb. It had ONE JOB. It allowed you to talk WITH SOUNDS FROM YOUR MOUTH to other people, and then allow you to HEAR THE SOUNDS FROM OTHER PEOPLE'S MOUTHS. Sounds more commonly known as WORDS.

No photos (you had dumb cameras for that). No music (unless you like "on hold" elevator-type music or you had a dumb music player for that). No texting or "apps" (provided by not so smart computers as e-mail and PROGRAMS).

Finally, you have dumbass politicians that promise dumbass things that have been (in some form) lied about by dumbass reporters.

Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Angry here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We've had a good Christmas at the household. I got a new mobile phone, and the rest of us got very good gifts (some needed, some not so much, but you know...).

But most of all, we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ today. We may not know His exact birthday, but we do know He was born. Because of Him, mankind will eventually know peace and experience salvation, despite our fallen nature.

However, if you ask many politicians, many near the top of our national government and sadly a majority of a particular political party, you would believe that Jesus is not necessary to bring such a thing to fruition. But still, in their stupidity (much like our villians of the past), they would try to use religion of which they are woefully ignorant to try and sway the ones they're supposed to be serving. Then again they see their constituents as their intellectual inferiors, commonly thought of as "the masses" by the neo-Marxists.

The politicians in question, though, usually show their true colors when their ignorance is plainly displayed. To wit, one Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Illinois 4th District):

It is repugnant to me and astonishing to me that during Christmas —I like to call them 'the holiday seasons' to be inclusive, but 'during Christmas' because the majority always wants to just call it Christmas — but during Christmas, a time in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jesus Christ who had to flee for his life with Mary and Joseph, thank God there wasn’t a wall that stopped him from seeking refuge in Egypt.

Thank God that wall wasn’t there and thank God there wasn’t an administration like this or he would have too perished on the 28th, on the Day of Innocents, when Herod ordered the murder of every child under 2 years of age

Maybe I haven’t gone a lot to Bible school but I know that part. Thank God.

Shame on everybody that separates children and allows them to stay at the other side of the border fearing death, fearing hunger, fearing sickness, shame on us for wearing our badge of Christianity during Christmas and allow the secretary to come here and lie.

First off, Representative Gutiérrez, you are supposed to represent the majority of your district. Even if they were Godless atheists (which they are not), December 25 as you said is the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, which is why we say MERRY CHRISTMAS, not a secular "Happy Holidays".

Second, Jesus was a baby, He didn't do any fleeing. It was his parents whom did so. Yes, they did so to flee a decree from their local politicians and their tyranny, which would more closely resemble you and your ilk, Rep. Gutiérrez. After all, while everyone considers the killing of male infants up to 2 years old to be evil, if Mary "decided" to abort Jesus, you and your fellow party members would be fine about that. It's just a matter of timing, right? Unborn today, 2 year olds tomorrow...

Finally, Egypt did have walls. Granted, Egypt more of a city-state than a nation-state, but did indeed have walls around certain places that, get this, protected them from foreign invaders. Invaders, as in thousands of people coming en masse into the land inhabited by ancient residents of Egypt. And, no city-state or nation in the 1st century had welfare. The portayal of Jesus and his family as illegal immigrants is so wrong that you'd need to be brainwashed to think it was true. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph migrated back to their hometown Nazareth within a month and lived there at least 30 more years. Central or South Americans? Not so much.

So Rep. Gutiérrez, I suggest you go back to Bible school and this time READ IT.

And MERRY CHRISTMAS!