The Written Peace: Open Forum of October 25, 2005

Now that the weirdness here at The Dark Wraith Forums is over for a while, it's back down to business. Several new posts will quickly follow the inevitable and timely deletion of the posts about The Challenge, now that everyone has been able to see the fruits of the labors of the great bloggers who were involved.

First up, tomorrow evening, will be a Special Blog Post in a new, occasional series called "The Code Hack's Corner," wherein bloggers and other Web content developers will be given tips and tricks to improve the functionality of their blogs. Generally speaking, the tips will be relatively simple to implement, and some bloggers will already know about them. This service is being offered to bring folks up to speed on the old standards, as well as on some new tricks of the trade. There will be some information for non-bloggers, too, so don't avoid the articles just because you don't blog.

Somewhere in upcoming posts will be an Inflammatory Opinion about the soon-to-be released results of the investigation into the Valerie Plame scandal. Unless the special prosecutor comes up with a far more sweeping set of indictments than what is now indicated in the ever-reliable rumor mill, your host here at The Dark Wraith Forums has every intention of taking one last rip at a process that has gone on far too long and that will leave far too many criminals unindicted. Enough said about that for now lest I write that rant prematurely. Perhaps I shall come to the end of this week pleasantly surprised by the results of the grand jury investigation. Perhaps, too, donkeys will fly.

A four-part Special Analysis entitled "Money" will be starting soon. Each part will take readers deeper into the standard macroeconomic theory of money, beginning with the basics and working up to the point where readers who stay with the series can look at Federal Reserve policy and understand what it's all about. My opinions of the tenure of Alan Greenspan and his recently named replacement will have far more meaning for interested observers if set against the backdrop of understanding what money is, how it is used in the modern political process, and how the Fed has abused its grave fiduciary duty to prop up miserable economic policies of the Bush Administration to the end of putting the country on course for a long and painful economic crisis looming on the horizon. Readers will then not only see the future with gloom and despair, but more importantly, they'll understand why they're so miserable. Knowing the source of one's misery is always nice.

As many of you have noticed, The Dark Wraith Forums is now posting advertisements both here at the blog as well as on The Dark Wraith Forums Message Board and on the blogScream News Wire Service. Although it would have been preferable for these operations to remain free of advertisements, the expanding financial requirements of this blogging endeavor have necessitated moving a bit back into the world of commercial business activity. I can assure readers that the advertisements will never be overly intrusive, and the products and services offered will always be tasteful.

Using that as a lead-in, I want to specifically introduce one new commercial service now being offered here by tying it in to a request that was made by Gary and Dan of American Regression. After they informed some bloggers they know of a piece of hate legislation that's slithering its way back into the Congressional agenda, I replied to them by asking if they thought it would be appropriate for me to use that issue to introduce a new service whereby people can send a fax to Congressmen by simply filling out a Web form and paying a relatively modest fee. I was concerned that promoting my new affiliate service on the back of their issue would appear tacky (and yes, I do see the irony in worrying about tackiness after the just-concluded He-Stuff Challenge). They indicated that they didn't see any conflict of interest in that regard, so with that, allow me to announce that you can now click on the link on the sidebar or on blogScream and be taken to Politifax, where you can send a fax to one Congressman or to every Congressman. A one-page fax to a single Congressman costs $1.99. Of course, it gets more expensive from there, but it's still pretty cheap and efficient compared to trying to fax politicians on your own. So if you ever think about yelling at Congress, click on the link and bookmark the site once you get there. Now, about that hate agenda in Congress. The specific incident about which Gary and Dan were referring in their original e-mail was a hearing held on October 20 before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. At the behest of Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), the Subcommittee wasted taxpayer money listening to testimony about the Marriage Protection Amendment to the United States Constitution. Oftentimes, such trash is set out for the consumption of a particular Congressman's local sheet-wearing crowd, and the sponsor knows very well it has little if any chance of passage. The dead-on-arrival status of such proposals was, however, more assured in the old days than it is in these weird times. It's better to beat the dog food out of your Congressman's e-mail, fax, and mailbag than to simply hope that he or she will do the right thing when it comes to issues like this. Not that responding to popular outcry seems to be in vogue among elected officials these days, of course; but a well-stated diatribe every now and then to a thick-skulled politician does good for the blood pressure if nothing else.

Enough attention given to pandering Prairie politicians.

The Dark Wraith Forums will be undergoing some minor changes; these are primarily backroom alterations to get the loading time back to a reasonable level. That will be important for the next big project, which has been over a month in the works and is now about ready for unveiling to wild oohs and aahs... or perhaps, yawns and snores. One way or the other, it'll go up the flagpole in the next couple of weeks.

At noon EDT on October 26, the blog posts about The Dark Wraith Forums He-Stuff Challenge will be taken down. That in itself should reduce the loading time for the blog quite a bit, what with the big graphics and the no-right-click javascript that were part of that posting party. So if you haven't had the time to fully take in those two shots of Mr. Shakes, only a few hours remain before the pictures become nothing more than a memory. The Dark Wraith does what must be done.


Say what you have to say here on this open thread. There's plenty of food in the cupboards, and the drinks are on the house, tonight. You'll find a few new tunes on the jukebox, including the new Country favorites, Ain't Got No Reason (to Blog About You) and, of course, Bidding for Your Heart on eBay.


The Dark Wraith cruises down the country road on a cool October night.