It says something about a blogger when his post with the most comments — by far, at least in recent days* — is written around the definition of the term coprophilia.

I'm not sure exactly what it says, but it says something.

*Hey, I'm not going to go through every one of his posts. Believe it or not, I have a life. If you really want to know, then the answer is left as an exercise for the reader.

Once I published the above post and saw the results on the web page, I realized I couldn't have that sitting next to (or, as Jeff would put it, "juxtaposed with") a photo of my lovely granddaughters.

So I stuck this in between. A buffer, if you will.

For those of you dying to see more photos of my granddaughters, here ya go:

Kiara and Aubrey

Due to some scheduling conflicts, I was unable to watch the season finale of "Survivor: Palau" live tonight. Fortunately, I set up the DVR to record the finale and the reunion, where they revealed the winner. But still, I haven't been able to watch it yet (it just finished), and it's bedtime.

Worse, this means I'll also have to delay reading Jeff Harrell's Survivor post (will update with actual link once Jeff gets it up...so to speak...I mean, Stephenie was voted off several weeks ago) on the episode. For anyone too stupid (insult) or ignorant (letting you off the hook for something you don't know) to know what I'm talking about, Jeff has been blogging every Survivor episode for at least two seasons now. He does a masterful job at it, and even if you don't watch Survivor (I didn't when I started reading Jeff's posts), it's well worth the read. Jeff's an interesting and funny man.

Except for when he's interesting and depressed. But he's always interesting.

Update: Jeff's final Survivor: Palau post.

My firstborn, who also happens to be a Marine, is currently in an undisclosed location in the Middle East conducting an unspecified activity. While that may seem odd to folks who read about the locations of Marine units and what they're doing all the time, Boyd Jr is with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is embarked (or was embarked...who knows?) aboard several Navy amphibious support ships. The Department of the Navy (which includes the Marine Corps, in case you didn't know) is usually very closed-mouthed about future (and sometimes current) locations of Navy vessels.

So anyway, I won't be hearing from him for a while. But fortunately, he got a chance to celebrate his birthday a little early while they were in Bahrain.

And before you ask, his four siblings, wife and two daughters are doing fine, too.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company that they keep. So, by looking at my friends, what can you tell about me?

I suppose the friend that I've had for the longest time is a fellow Navy retiree, currently working in a state veterans affairs office, who also happens to be bisexual. Another very good friend is a member of my county's Board of Supervisors. Another is a mechanic for the DC subway system. Then I have one who is an Archbishop in the Episcopalian church, and we have a mutual friend who is a Wiccan Priestess (or is it High Priestess? I lose track). Being a geek myself, I've got oodles of geek friends, one of whom calls himself "CodeWookie" in certain circumstances. And let's not forget the electrician, nor should we overlook the several medium-haul truck drivers, either.

Another friend is a co-worker from India. Then there's the VP of a major financial firm, who's a geek at heart (if not at skill...you know who you are).

There's no shortage of military friends, either. One's in the National Guard, deployed to Iraq. Another is a retired Marine who now sells real estate, and serves with me on a county advisory committee. Another had the same job as me (more or less) in the Navy, and we ended up working for the same company (but he went and moved to Seattle...or more precisely, Redmond, Washington, so my fellow geeks will understand why). Then we have the recently retired Navy Captain, who is also an author of military novels. Oh yeah, let's not forget the Navy retiree who wanders around the world aboard his yacht. And another shipmate who left the Navy before retirement and pursued civilian geekdom, living a few short miles from me here in Virginia (and has been an Amateur Radio operator (Ham) for many years).

My friends tend to fall into at least one of three categories: military, geek, Amateur Radio (with a lot of crossover between categories). And this doesn't even begin to touch the blogosphere, where I have many more friends, too. But being the blogosphere, you all could be lying and I'd never know. :)

So if you want to know me by my friends, there you go. Good luck figuring it out.

I hope you took the opportunity to tell your mother you love her today.

Mama's been gone many years now, and Dad left us last year. I'm still not used to the idea that my brothers and I are the "senior generation" in our family now.

So tell Mom you love her every chance you get, and especially on Mother's Day.

Be sure to check out HowStuffWorks' entry on Star Wars Lightsabers. This is critical information, especially considering the imminent release of Star Wars Episode III.

The most important parts to me were how to use a lightsaber to slice a bagel, and other tasks around the house. Especially informative was the illustration on how to use a lightsaber to light my cigarette.

I can attest to the truth of the following anonymous quote:

The three best things in life are a good landing, a good orgasm, and, a good bowel movement. The night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities in life where you get to experience all three at the same time.

Indeed.

The following is a letter to the editor in a local weekly newspaper.

To the Editor:

This Sunday, May 8th, is Mother's Day, when we celebrate the cherished bond between mother and child. But dairy cows, world-wide symbols of motherhood, never even get to see their babies.

The newborn calves are torn from their mothers at birth and chained by the neck in tight wood crates. They are denied mother's milk and love as well as natural food and water, fresh air and sunshine, straw bedding, or any movement. They suffer from chronic anemia, diarrhea, and respiratory disorders.

The product of this misery, laced with saturated fat, cholesterol, antibiotics, and hormones, is sold in gourmet restaurants as veal.

Because of consumers' revulsion at these abuses, the infamous veal crates has [sic] been banned by the European Union. Yet the U.S. diary [sic] and veal industries have resisted similar reforms.

This Sunday and every day, we should honor motherhood by dropping veal, milk, and dairy products from our diet.

I can't recall that I've ever eaten veal, but this letter is enough to make me want to run out and buy some veal steaks and slap them on my ever-ready Weber charcoal grill.

As many of you know, David Anderson is constantly searching for Utopia, reflecting his unrealistic, idealistic liberalism. That notwithstanding, he's still a pretty good guy for a leftist Commie pinko.

Over a week ago, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy sabotaged David's web site host and reformatted all of their hard drives, and they apparently didn't use tape backups. Tom Delay says that the host just didn't pay their bills, but The New York Times put Jason Blair back on the payroll and on the hunt for evidence, which clearly shows that Jack Abramoff had a hand in the dastardly deed.

David has finally evaded their nefarious efforts to silence him, and ISOU is back online. With a vengeance.

IANAL, but legal procedures and such have always interested me. So when Spoons (who practices law in Illinois, and recently became a prosecutor) recommended CrimLaw, I popped over for a look. Coincidentally, CrimLaw's author lives in Virginia, as I do.

I've really enjoyed perusing CrimLaw, and he has linked to several other interesting blawgs (apparently a term which refers to law blogs). As a result, I've blogrolled a few of them, especially CrimLaw.

But I have to ask the question, why don't any of these lawyers (not referring to Spoons here) provide an RSS feed? It's not especially difficult, and it helps regular readers to know when a new post is up. I'm just afraid that I'll forget to go check one day, and another, and another, and then I'll eventually remember to check, and there'll be thirty new posts.

But anyway, I find them interesting.

I'm currently working on a MovableType template to use when I transition from Blogger to MT. I've got the general layout and color scheme down, but I'm still not especially happy with them. On top of that, I still need to finish adding all of the sidebar and footer elements.

The current Blogger template uses tables extensively. One of the many benefits of changing to MT is changing my template to one that uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) instead of tables for the layout. One of the things that I'm going to lose, as far as I can tell so far, is the darker blue outline along the right and bottom sides of the various elements. I kinda like them, though, so I'm working (I'm thinking about ways to do this as I type, in fact) to bring that style element over to the new template.

Thanks for hanging in there through my lightweight blogging.