“Trump is just the king of chaos and destroying everything and nothing good ever comes out of this man.”
The independent voters who cast their ballot for Trump in 2016 were suckers. Those who voted for him in 2020 were fools. In 2024 they proved themselves to be full-blown idiots.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice…
This site began in 2002 as a collection of a dozen static web pages, mostly composed with Microsoft FrontPage. Twenty years ago today, I turned dograt.com into a weblog.
Many, many bloggers have come and gone in that time. Most disappeared, while some moved on to Twitter. The serious essayists are now mostly on Substack, while the less serious Prattling Before the Pratfall endures as an independently hosted site.
Wanting to get on board with Web 2.0, I took advantage of having time each day that would have otherwise been spent running. The free time was thanks to a damaged posterior tibial tendon that is still very much with me. Two weeks after getting started with WordPress 2.0.2, this MRI was taken.
Depending on how you’re viewing this post, the total number of pages may be present at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the number will take you to the first entry.
The Red vs. Blue state battle is much worse today with Trump than it was in 2006 with George W. Bush. I’m pleased to see the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots are not only still with us, they still cost only $15.
https://www.amazon.com/Mattel-Games-Rock-Sock-Robots/dp/B07QW3HMKF/
Five years ago I fixed a serious technical problem with the WordPress installation, and since then everything has been stable. Unfortunately, the fix caused minor problems with many of the older posts. I fix them on an as-needed basis.
I’m deliberately not paying for the backup service that used to be included in my so-called “Pro” plan. If anything wicked bad happens to the site, that’ll be the end; otherwise, I would like to keep going until Donald J. Trump is no longer president.
Face Front! Excelsior!
A few days ago, I received this missive in the DogRat mailbox:
Hi Doug — I came across your January 29, 2009 post “Category Crossover: Colbert meets McCartney.” You had captured the Paul McCartney appearance on The Colbert Report yourself and posted it as ColbertMcCartney.flv.
I’ve been trying to find that particular interview, which seems to have disappeared when Comedy Central removed the old Colbert archive. By any chance do you still have your FLV file or the original recording? I’d be enormously grateful just to be able to watch it again.
Thanks!
Daniel
My reply:
Hi Daniel,
That file wasn’t transferred when I switched to Bluehost in 2010. It should be on a backup hard drive here. I’ll look for it.
Ideally, I kept the original AVI capture format, but I didn’t always do that when storage was a lot more expensive than it is now. If not AVI, the greatly reduced FLV Flash Video file should be in there. Assuming I find either one of them, I’ll convert it to MP4 and make it available online.
I’ll get back to you in a couple of days.
Thanks,
Doug
I found the FLV file and converted it to MP4. The first ten seconds are blank, then the video kicks in and all is well. Here you go, Daniel!
Denro took this photo on September 4, 2004. That was when I first met comic book creator Colleen Doran. Among the items I bought was the beautifully rendered pencil page of art she was holding.
I asked Colleen if she could ink it for me. She agreed and we would work out the delivery arrangements later. It turned out to be very much later!
Both of us sort of lost track of it. The commission request was forgotten by 2012, when I bought the cover painting for the third collected volume of Colleen’s trademark series, ‘A Distant Soil’.
Last year, at my first National Cartoonists Society event, Colleen told me she’d found the page and would make good on the commission. Which she did four weeks ago, at this year’s NCS event! We shared a laugh over the 22-year delay.
Colleen felt the paper wasn’t a good surface for inking, so she scanned the image and inked the copy. Now I have both the pencil original and the finished copy.
One of my favorite true stories is about the humor magazine HELP! Published by James Warren and edited by MAD Magazine’s creator Harvey Kurtzman, Harvey’s first editorial assistant was Gloria Steinem.
Gloria moved on and Terry Gilliam stepped in. Terry met John Cleese and put him in an issue of HELP! Before Terry left to follow Cleese to England, he arranged for Robert Crumb to be his replacement. Crumb arrived, only to be told the magazine was folding.
Gloria, Terry, and Robert each went on to bigger and greater things. Gloria is now gone.
A discussion of what’s happening with the bond market.
An unrealistically positive viewpoint.
