I couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear when I read that the judge ordered Joe Miller to pay Alaska Dispatch over $85,000 in legal fees for his sleazy (and does the man know any other way, really?) attempts to use the law to duck the law. He’s the type of lawyer that Charles Dickens skewered so well over 150 years ago in Bleak House with the case titled Jarndyce v Jarndyce. In fact, Joe would have fit right in with the sleaze that Dickens described in that lawsuit. Yay for Alaska Dispatch! Yay for John McKay! And yay for full disclosure winning again.

We can send men to the moon. We can send spaceships to the outer limits of our galaxy. But the best we can come up with for attaching dog tags to dog collars are those damned tight little curled metal pieces that defy fingers, knives and pliers to open and twist the tag on. I’ve just spent the better part of Sunday afternoon affixing new dog tags to my dogs’ collars and my fingers are bleeding, my normally only slightly rancid personality is now totally gone to hell and I may need to drink heavily to get over the ordeal.
This is 2013. Surely we can do better than this.

In all my life, I have never seen two dogs more reluctant to go out and “do their thing” as Bubba and Carm on Friday when that crappy mixture of rain and snow fell. I think they would have held it for twenty four hours if needed… or at least until I went to bed and couldn’t see them peeing on my carpet.

I didn’t think it was possible to feel this miserable for this long. I guess this is what I should expect when exposed to sunshine, humidity and heat. Alaskans just do not do well under those circumstances. I have gone from a scratchy throat to a stuffy nose to a hacking cough and I now feel as though someone screwed my ears on too tight.
Yep… sunshine will kill you if you aren’t careful.

Not unlike the three amigos, they travel together and they are a force of nature. I’d show you their front but you’d be blinded by the beauty.
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I’m not sure Alaskans were ever meant to be hot AND humid at the same time. It simply isn’t healthy.

Back in my mostly misspent youth I could have written something in a stream of consciousness fashion that would have been coherent… or, at least, coherent to my addled brain. But now in my old age I find that if I miss a night’s sleep and then try to stay awake to write something, my stream of consciousness doesn’t even rise to the level of bizarre. It’s just incoherent.  All of which goes to explain why I won’t have a column in the Daily News today or on my website tomorrow. You can only push so hard before you collapse into bed whimpering.

It is 6 AM. I’ve just returned home after an overnight flight from Hawaii. I thought I’d try to stay up and then just go to bed tonight so keep my schedule straight. Not gonna happen.
Good night.

Why do people take pictures of their meals in restaurants? What’s the point? I see these pictures on Facebook and in my heart I feel sorry for those that take them. I just want to take their hand and gently suggest they get a fork, eat their dinner and then get a life.

While I, as a diehard Alaskan, welcome that brief period between snow and mosquitoes that we laughingly refer to as spring, the return of the sun does have one down side. And that is the appearance of all that dirt that we was so hard to see by the dim light of winter. So I went through my usual crazed moment and had the carpets, floors, windows and blinds in my house washed. Now I no longer fear my mother glancing earthward and wondering how she could have raised such a slob. And let’s just keep it our little secret that I pay people to do this for me. I’m not sure she would totally approve. 

Whenever I see Sarah Palin, the phrase “You can never underestimate the intelligence of the American voter” pops into my head.

Especially when you are sharing it with a family made up of some of the greatest people in the world. To say nothing of two little boys who could make the world bright in the midst of a eclipse with just the light from their eyes. Our world is going to be just fine so long as we continue to produce families like this. The future seems a little bit more secure now.
Love you Pruetts and Mushovics. Thanks for letting me be a part of your circle of love.
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Let them bury the Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlan wherever the hell they want. American soil is stronger than his decaying body. Soon the site will be forgot but the bravery and valor of those who helped the wounded that day will live in our memories forever.

The explanations I’m getting from Alaska’s senators about their no vote on something as simple as background checks before gun purchases simply hold no water. They are merely playing to the NRA on the assumption that the NRA can fire up its base and get the votes out more strongly than the people who support common sense gun legislation. So I can only hope that those groups supporting this sane legislation will get out and vote with even more fervor than the NRA and show our scared and chicken shit little congress people that they are very, very wrong and will pay at the polls for their scared little vote.

Went down to Park Square here in Anchorage last Wednesday to help show Bird TLC education birds to all the sailors and marines on leave from the USS Anchorage. There was a time in my youth when, during fleet week, I would not have had to pay for a drink all night. Now I looked at all the beautiful young men and women in uniform and they all looked like they could be my grandchildren. I couldn’t have worked up the energy to flirt with them even if I wasn’t aware that I would just look like a wrinkled old lady with clearly unachievable aspirations. So depressing. Had to come home and watch an NCIS rerun to get my balance back.