Hey...anybody there?

It's been a while hasn't it?

Five years ago my kids talked me into starting a blog. I started by spilling my guts, and moved on from there. Quite a few things have happened since then.

For starters, we're all five years older.

My hobby blog led to some fun opportunities. I had a pretty good run as a paid blogger and got to hear myself on the radio a few times, that was kinda cool. While I was all full of myself and letting my head swell I kind of neglected things around here.

So now I'm cleaning out the cobwebs, chasing off the snakes and opening the windows to air things out here at the Compound. I don't want to make any money, I don't want any public notice (beyond a few dozen friends and family), and I don't want to write about anything police-related--unless, of course, it involves alligators, weenie-wavers or predatory clowns. And maybe amputees.

I'll start with a couple of items that caught my attention this week.

Meet Mark Thompson of wild, wonderful West Virginia:


I'll just quote the lead from this article in the Charleston Gazette:

Police say an Alum Creek man high on bath salts killed his neighbor's pygmy goat and that neighbors found him in his bedroom, dressed in a bra and panties, next to the dead animal...

Believe me when I tell you that there are more details in the article, and it gets weirder.

Just because I stopped writing about it doesn't mean that the ongoing war between alligators and humankind has stopped, or even slowed--as a matter of fact, I see clear indicators that it might be escalating. Example:

A kill-crazy alligator in Gainesville, Florida, recently attacked a marked police car, clamping down and seizing the bumper of the patrol car in its deadly jaws:



I got this last one courtesy of Lisa Golden, an old blogging chum, via Twitter. The story originates in (of course) Florida, and sports one of the best leads I've seen:

Floridians are going to have to start pulling up their pants and stop having sex with animals soon.

Florida recently passed two pieces of legislation--one aims at ending the state's nightmarish epidemic of human-animal sexual relations, and the other aims at getting young men to pull their damn pants up.

That's all for now. We have a big weekend coming up: the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, and Mother's Day on Sunday. I'm digging through my photo archives for suitable material.

Have a great day, and thanks for stopping by.