This Is the End

Dear Devoted Reader of Suds & Soliloquies,

I apologize. This note should have been written earlier. You deserved better. But, on the other hand, if you are a reader of this site, you've had plenty of reason to expect you would be treated shabbily, right?

Anyway, this post is simply to inform you that S&S is no more. Toast. Dead. Kaput.

In other words, I will no longer be updating this blog, in case the fact that I haven't posted anything in nearly two months did not tip you off.

It's been a great run. Six years, almost to the day (of the last post), I kept this stupid blog. And in case that doesn't sound like a long time, let me refresh your memory as to how long it is in blog years:

• When I started, Blogger was not yet owned by Google.
  
  
• You could not host images on your blog.
  
  
• I still lived in Midland, Michigan, the little toenail of the universe (it's not interesting enough to be an armpit).
  
  
• I was likely 20 lbs. lighter.
  
  
• The shameful, evil, endless Iraq war was still a gleam in the collective eye of Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumseld, Bill Kristol, David Wurmser, and George W. Bush, among other dishonorables.
  
  
• Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn, Art Carney, Gregory Peck, Hume Cronyn, Buddy Ebsen, and Johnny Cash were all still alive.
  
  
• CSS was still only Satan's nightmare, meaning normal, non-nerdy people could modify their blogs without an advanced degree in computer dorkery.

You get the idea.

Anyway, wipe that tear off your grubby face. There's good news: I've started a new site at www.davidbardallis.com. Yes, it's a hybrid business site/blog designed to make me look smart and respectable, and I can't promise the level of angst and sarcasm you've grown accustomed to here.

But it's still me. I did it. I'm doing it. I'm writing on it. I'm still an anarchist and I still love beer. And, inevitably, it's the Wave of the Future™®©.

So: Update your browsers and feed readers and tricorders and whatever. And be sure to let all of your friends in need of a freelance writer and editor know I'm open for business.

And much gratitude to my (very) small but dedicated group of friends and readers over the years. This blog may have started as a purely selfish endeavor to keep me from going insane, but...

Well, no buts. It succeeded brilliantly, thanks to you.

So...

I just got my hair cut and a new pair of glasses (before my vision insurance dies on Tuesday). And then it occurred to me I now look kind of like a fatter version of Cory Doctorow. See for yourself.


And today I even went to a panel on copyright and fair use. (I'll blather about that in another post.) Next thing you know I'll start writing wacky sci-fi stories and pimping them on Boing Boing.

It's Styx Time, Bitches

Give me a job, give me security
Give me a chance to survive
I'm just a poor soul in the unemployment line
My God, I'm hardly alive

My mother and father,
My wife and my friends,
I see them laugh in my face

But I've got the power
And I've got the will,
I'm not a charity case
I'll take those

(Long nights, impossible odds)
Keeping my eye to the keyhole, if it takes
(All that to be just what I am)
Well I'm gonna be a blue collar man

Make me an offer that I can't refuse
Make me respectable, man
This is my last time in the unemployment line
So like it or not, I'll take those

(Long nights, impossible odds)
Keeping my back to the wall, if it takes
(All that to be just what I am)
Well I'm gonna be a blue collar man

Keeping my mind on a better life
Where happiness is only a heartbeat away
Paradise, can it be all I heard it was?
I close my eyes and maybe I'm already there

Bonus: Get your Tommy Shaw on with the YouTube video.

Live-Blogging the Depression: It's Official

So, yeah, it finally happened. As of 9:30 this morning, I don't have a job. It isn't all bad. I didn't much care for my job anymore because it had changed into something I wasn't hired to do nor much interested in (cutting and pasting bits of HTML code into the most user unfriendly web content software ever devised by man or demon). After months of the Bobs prowling the hallways, the work environment was roughly the equivalent of spending 8 hours a day in a Laundromat: tedious and depressing.

Not too sure what's next career-wise, but I still plan on having a fun weekend. Plus, I can sleep in tomorrow while everyone else rises early to go to their own version of the Laundromat. See? Not all bad.

Hit and Run Stupid Beer News

File under "Hasn't Our State Suffered Enough?":

Company brews up Kid Rock beer, nearly 400 future Michigan jobs

The Michigan Economic Growth Authority approved Tuesday a state tax credit valued at $722,957 so that the Michigan Brewing Company, a Webberville-based brewer of craft beers, can produce a new product line: a craft beer for musician Kid Rock.

Of course, the idea that MEGA somehow helps create jobs has long been exposed as foolishness and wishful thinking. It's just another wasteful government bureaucracy.

The real question is: Will Kid Rock beer come in 40-ounce bottles?

Live-Blogging the Depression: Les Bons Temps

As I wait to find out whether I've still got a job -- the current rumor is this Thursday is D-Day -- preparations for the annual Mardi Gras party continue apace. Job or not, I see no reason not to laissez les bons temps rouler as usual.

Yes, the auto industry is moribund, resulting in a rising tide of unemployment around these parts; the stupid and evil federal government is taking over what's left of the car biz; and Detroit tops the list of "most abandoned cities."

You know what I say?

Toga! Toga!

Ron Paul. Listen to Him.

Down with war. Down with torture. Down with inflation and funny money. Down with the police state. Down with the American empire.