Chuck Baldwin!
The Presidential Candidate for the Constitution Party.

I made a promise to myself after the last election and have been trying to figure out how I was going to keep it. The promise was this: I will NOT vote for the "lessor of two evils" again. I just can't live with myself. I actually voted for George W. Bush TWICE because I thought he was the "lessor of two evils". I'm not doing it again. The lessor of two evils is still evil. And our choices for the current democratic and republican candidates are ALL EQUALLY EVIL!

Then I heard a guy on the radio this morning talking about the Constitution Party and I looked into it.

I'm joining 'em! Check them out for yourself.

Requiem, Mass.
By John Dufresne
John Dufresne is my favorite living author. His novel, "Love Warps the Mind a Little" is in my top 10 All-Time-Favorites.
The only thing bad about John Dufresne is that he writes very slowly. He only publishes a new novel every few of years. His novels are so good, so entertaining that I finish them in a day or two. That means every time I read a new novel by John Dufresne, I have to wait YEARS before I get to read another one! The only thing that helps is that he blogs a lot, and he published a book of short stories ('Johnny Too Bad') in 2005. I allow myself one short story every six months. As a matter of fact, I'm depressed now, because I just finished his new novel and it hasn't even been released yet.

Anyway, about the new book...
Go on over to Amazon right now and pre-order this one. It is awesome. It has a touch of "Love Warps..." to it, and that made me very happy.
The main character is John. It's a 'bio-novel'. It's John's life story in novel form. I'm curious as to how much is fiction and how much is true.
The novel is laid out with flashbacks from now, where John lives with Spot the dog and Annick the girlfriend, to the past, where he is growing up with his family and a host of other interesting characters.
Don't let the flashbacks scare you, either. There is no confusion here. Dufresne is such a good author that the flashbacks flow as if you were watching a movie, not reading. 80% of the book takes place in the past, anyway, so its easy.
John's mom is mentally unstable and thinks that John and Audrey (his sister) are actually robots that have replaced her 'real' children and are spying on her. The only time she thinks she's talking to the 'real' John is when he is talking to her on the phone. John's dad is an over-the-road trucker that has his own secrets (BIG ones, too). It all ads up to wonderful reading, filled with Dufresne's awesome humor and touching family feelings.

As with his other books, John uses his magic to breath life into his characters and they jump off the page and run all over your mind hours after the book is closed. The scenes are painted so lifelike that you'll swear they are photographs.
Don't miss it!

I give 'Requiem, Mass.' a 5 out of 5.

Another Great Classic!

I love this book! I can't believe it was written 400 years ago. The humor is extreme, the action is fun and the book is just a great read.
This book is broken in two sections. It was originally published as two separate books. Actually, it was first published as a cereal novel in a newspaper, I think.
The first section (book 1) was a little hard to follow at times, but never too difficult to take away from the pleasure. There are novellas in a few places. Some have claimed that these 'books in a book' stop the action and ruin the telling of the story. I disagree, and in fact, enjoyed the new stories and was refreshed for the returning of the original story. The novellas are still part of the story, too. For example, in one scene Don Quixote and Sancho are in an Inn and the owner tells them that one of his previous guests left behind a book that they might find interesting, and he read it to them. It was really good!
The second part of the book (book 2) was the best. The story flow was beautiful and new characters came and went with the old characters.
De Cervantes also filled the book with his own little 'inside jokes'. He named characters after people in his real life, and made fun of another author that had published a 'non-official' Don Quixote Pat Two book.
I never had the urge to read this novel before, because all I knew about it was that Don Quixote was a crazy man that attacked wind mills. In fact, that was only one scene from the very first part of the book. I think the whole scene took up maybe a page or two. It was a drop in the bucket of this book!
At 940 pages, this is offically the longest book I've ever read, knocking off the previous champ, Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much Is True", which weighed in at a hefty 901 pages.

On April 24, 2006, Nancy Pelosi said, “Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.”

That was over TWO YEARS AGO!

Nice plan, democrats.

Let's look at some numbers....

Under a REPUBLICAN CONGRESS the average gas price went up 1.2 cents a month.
Under a DEMOCRAT CONGRESS the average price of gas has gone up 7.6 cents a month!

How's that plan working for you? I know it's killing me.
No matter how we vote for president this year, I think its more important the clean house and get some republicans (or anything but democrats) in congress.

Today is my and Lori's anniversary.
We were married on May 6, 1988.
Seems like only yesterday.
I met Lori at Nashville State College, where we were both taking photography cl****. Which brings me to an interesting point.
I have a picture of my wife that I took the very first time I ever laid eyes on her. It's in a frame, right next to me on my desk, but I'll show you....

Lori says that this picture is proof that I am a stalker. Not true. I took pictures of all the good-looking girls when they weren't looking. So, I may have been a pervert, but I'm no stalker! 

I love this picture.  It is my favorite pic of Lori.  The printing is a little grainy, but I printed it during my first semester and didn't really know what I was doing.  But I think the grain actually makes the picture better.