While on my walk this afternoon, I saw this guy rolling his prize across the road.

Many dung beetles, known as rollers, roll dung into round balls, which are used as a food source or brooding chambers.

Dung Beetles are good for agriculture, and serve as nature’s sanitation workers.

I was certain my apathy-induced disregard for Wake Forest basketball spelled the end of Deacon Blues.  But when Athletic Director Ron Wellman decided to meet the press today, another episode sprang forth from the sarcastic depths of fan hell.

Here’s the 8th episode of Deacon Blues.  In this episode, Ron meets with a hand-picked reporter for an all-holds barred discussion about the status and future of Wake Forest basketball.

Note: All characters and events in this show—even those based on real people—are entirely fictional.  All celebrity voices are impersonated…..poorly.  The following program contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone.

Obviously, this is satire and humor.  No offense to any person, real or fictional, is intended.

Deacon Blues Archive: Episode 1 is here.  Episode 2 is here.  Episode 3 is here. Episode 4 is here.  Episode 5 is here.  Episode 6 is here.  Episode 7 is here.

At the risk of sounding like my parents, to my kids who think good music is  the big-media-created, studio-enhanced drivel that pollutes their iPhones, I say this.

That is music, friends.

Lindi Ortega.  Happily discovered via Twang Nation.

Cassidy had a volleyball tournament and a birthday party this weekend and Lucky Dog is recovering from a little surgery to fix his eye (you know, so he can see and all), so Delaney, Luke and I went up to the farm by ourselves on Friday night.  One of the most interesting parts of the drive out to the farm when Raina isn’t in the truck is to watch Luke transform from Felix Unger into some sort of tough as nails farm boy, courtesy of my absence of patience for the first world problems of a 7 year old boy.  I’m turning him into either a man’s man or a neurotic mess.  Only time will tell which.

We had dinner at the Burton Cafe on the way in.  There were some (other) old folks there, doing karaoke.  I’m a second time tweener (as in between middle age and old), so they aren’t sure whether to give me great grandfatherly advice or ask me to join in.  So they mostly ignore me, in polite rural fashion.  Since I generally ignore even my best friends in polite rural fashion, this works out great for me.  There’s a lady there most nights who can flat out sing.  She did a great version of Harper Valley PTA, credited both Tom T. Hall and Jeannie C. Riley, and wrapped things up by saying that Jeannie C. Riley lives in Brenham- the nearby “big city” of 15,000 souls.  I had no idea.

Then some dude I’d never seen before got up there and absolutely killed a duet with her.  I didn’t recognize the song, but that cat can sing.  I offered to buy Delaney her very own Ranger if she’d go up there, sing an entire song and try really hard.  She passed, which says all you need to know about her feelings about singing.

We got to the place in time to take the 4 wheelers for a spin, including the one that Delaney has already wrecked.  Twice.  I don’t know which has less of a chance to remain intact- Delaney’s farm implement or Raina’s car.  Later we watched The Hobbit and a couple of American Pickers episodes, to get me ready for some haggling at the Round Top Antiques Fair.  Or at least the fringes of it that I’ll actually see.  I am deeply crowd-averse and antiquing with 30,000 or so other people along a two-lane country road is not on my bucket list.

As always, Luke and I checked the game cameras diligently.

We’ve seen deer, coyotes, hogs (must kill them all before they destroy my hay field) and all manner of small mammals on the property, but nevertheless we usually get pictures only of ourselves and the guys I have working up there on various projects.

We rode the 4 wheelers on Saturday morning, did a little work, made a run to town for supplies, ate some pie in Brenham (sadly we didn’t see Jeannie) and went for a walk/bike ride.

Later we took a ride over to Dime Box.  Bought some groceries…

And saw a colorful roadside honky tonk.

We ate dinner at the Cactus on Saturday night.  Then we hurried home and watched the most awesome Chupacabra vs the Alamo.  It was good.  I’m hoping Sasquatch vs the Eiffel Tower will be next.  I’d be torn as to who to pull for.

Through some combination of sheer force of will and random chance, Luke and I finally got a bad photo of an actual wild creature late Saturday night.  This was the basis for much celebration- and yet another camera relocation.  We see tracks almost every morning, but they must be Romulans.

Today Raina, Cassidy and Lucky Dog came out for lunch at Royers, then we went to some of the antique venues that are already open.  Again, there’s no way I’ll set foot over there during the madness of the official show weekends, so this was it for me.

Finally, one more thing happened.  It was terrifying.  Delaney behind the wheel.  Of my truck.  Fear not neighbors- only on our dirt road.

Later, I resolved to figure out the problem and fix it.  Without going into all the nerdy details, it turns out there was a conflict with one of my Chrome extensions.  Specifically DoNotTrackMe.

Disable the extension via Settings>Extensions

Once I disabled that extension, I was able to share to Facebook via Feedly.

Hopefully this will save others who run into this issue a little time.

So I gave it a try.  Here’s my considered analysis, in the form of my one and only Google Keep note.

Farewell old friend

It’s no secret that almost all of my web content consumption is done via Google Reader.  Which, of course, means that like most TV shows I watch, it was doomed.

I have been dreading, expecting and/or denying the reality of this event for a while.  So when I read the official word, I was more resigned than sad.  Google Reader is awesome and, to be frank, Google sort of owes it to us to keep it operational even if it isn’t making money.  But even in the unlikely event Google capitulates to the hue and cry of the masses, if it’s not going to actively develop the app, it’s better to pull the band-aid off quickly.

I looked at the various alternatives, and have decided that Feedly is clearly the best bet.  In fact, in some ways it may actually be better.  Feedly is catering to the displaced Google Reader masses and promises a seamless transition when Google shuts off our beloved service.  The interface is more feature rich.  Sharing is easier (even if sharing to Facebook doesn’t work for me).  I am warming to the Magazine layout (particularly for news-related media), though Titles will remain my preferred view.

With just a little work, Feedly can be almost perfect.  Here’s what needs to be tweaked immediately.

First, make my Facebook connection work.  Currently, my Facebook sidebar feed is in forever load mode.

More importantly, the Facebook sharing button at the bottom of each post doesn’t work.  I click on it and nothing happens.  Ever.  Twitter and the other sharing buttons work fine.  This must not be a widespread issue, as I only see a couple of posts about it.

I miss the Readable add-in for Google Reader, which pulls full feeds from a lot of sites, but Feedly’s Preview feature is growing on me.  It’s more or less the same thing – just in a pop-up.

I wish they would tweak the menu in four minor but important ways.

1. Increase the contrast and/or text size in the side menu.  It is really hard to read.  Much harder in the app than in the screen capture below.

2. Auto-sort the categories with unread items to the top.

3. Let me sort feeds within categories alphabetically, or at least manually by dragging them around.

4. Make Titles (Feedly’s list view) a default view option.

It may sound like I’m complaining here, but that’s not the case.  I really dig Feedly.  It’s about to replace Google Reader as my must used and important app. I just want to see it evolve into the perfect app it can be.

The new Burton Cafe annex is just one of the many fun places in and around Burton, TX

We just got back from a fun week on the farm over Spring Break 2013.  Here are a few of the highlights.

Thanks to Greg, Yvette, Evie, Aidan, Arnie, Christina, Remy, Sierra, Emerson, Kelly & Hayden for sharing some fun times with us.

Somehow I missed this record when it came out, but my goodness do I love this song.  The Duke and the King – Shaky.

“Shaky makes me all so shaky mama
C’mon wake me up
We go dancing however you wanna
‘Cause we were just babies
The Jackson 5 grew up so fast
C’mon baby, just come and shake that country a**”

This song will be heard often at Rancho DeNada this week.

I came across a discussion on Facebook a few months ago about Savage Breed, a book published in 1959, allegedly by a man from Chesterfield County, SC, my hometown county.  I’d never heard of it, but some of the comments intrigued me.

There were hints of censorship.

When I moved to Cheraw all the kids were talking about this book….could not be sold in Cheraw…could not be in the library…..there was talk back then that it was actually written by a woman.

And scandal.

At the time (60′s) I recognized all the characters. It was really the talk of the county!

And more scandal.

I remember being told the young man’s father tried to buy up as many copies as he could, out of embarrassment over the book’s content.

I wondered if there was any truth to the stories that this book referenced places and maybe even people from home.  So being the computer savvy cat that I am, I set up a few eBay, web and Amazon scripts and waited.  It took almost a year, but I got a hit.  Someone had a used copy for sale via Amazon.

So I bought it.  For $20.

Published by Newsstand Library Books in December 1959.  By William K. Douglas.  126 pages.  Originally 35 cents.   No “about the author” paragraph.  It’s pretty clear from the “other books” pages at the back that Newsstand Library Books featured a lot of soft-core pulp and not much high-brow literature.

Nevertheless, I was happy to receive my copy of the much-discussed book.  Here’s the first sentence:

“Luke Saxon turned off the Bloomfield Bypass, and got on Highway number 9.  He was going to Camel, 13 miles away, to pick up Dot Silvens.”  Hmm.  There’s no Bloomfield back home, but there’s a Bennettsville.  At first I thought maybe Camel was a thinly disguised pseudonym for Cheraw, but that turned out not to be the case.  More on this below.

It takes less than 10 pages to get racy.  By page 20, it’s crude and exploitative.  By 2013 standards.  Beyond that by 1959 standards.

First stop, “Lory’s Drive-In.”  Never heard of it or anything similar to it.  Same with “the Hightower,” described as the local beer joint.

In chapter 2 there’s a mention of Winthrop, “the state college for girls.”  I just think of it as one of the many schools to beat Wake Forest in basketball, since Ron Wellman’s ego assassinated the program.  There’s also a mention, in Chapter 2, of going to a Rock Hudson movie in…wait for it…Cheraw.  That is, however, the one and only mention of Cheraw.

Mostly, it’s just one scene after another in which some brothers and their friends do horrible things to weakly portrayed women.  A literary masterpiece, it is not.  ”When you had enough beer, you didn’t need a woman.  They could go to hell, and be damned.”

In sum, two brothers and their friends do horrible things.  One brother is a completely horrible person.  The other brother is only around 90% horrible.  90% marries a girl, who has been abused for years by her pharmacist father.  100% impregnates her, while 90% is at work.  An abused farm hand kills 100%.  The abusive father marries the brothers’ young cousin.  At the end, there is some small nod towards resolution, as the remaining family gathers for a completely dysfunctional Christmas meal.  It’s bad, shallow writing, designed mainly to get from one soft-core scene to the next.

The more interesting question is whether any part of this was based on actual events or people from my hometown.  I’d have to say unlikely, as the events are really just your run of the mill horrible acts by your run of the mill horrible people.  Cheraw was mentioned exactly once, and none of the action takes place there.  One existing road (Highway 9) was mentioned.  Other than that, I saw nothing that sounded familiar.

I will say this, however.  To the extent any of these events or people really occurred or existed, there is no doubt that this book would have been extremely scandalous when written.  I also think the author would have been sued, or killed.

Bottom line?  It’s poorly written, trashy pulp, likely authored by someone in or near Chesterfield County, SC.  If any of the events in the book are factually accurate, it would be surprising and likely unprovable.