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the evolution archive

so long, folks

Hi everybody,

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching in this day and age as to whether or not I’m going to keep this up any longer. I received a notice that the .com version of this domain address will come up for renewal, and I’ve decided not to renew it. The .net version is up in June; I won’t renew that either.

This site will remain as it is now until then; and after that, I suppose, it will pass into the ether, or into the Internet Archive or some such. As of this moment, this blog and I are permanently and irrevocably retired.

No doubt those of you have been with me for a while and stayed with me through the fun days and the not-so-fun will wonder why. If you’ve been reading and comprehending the things I’ve been posting, you should know already, but I’ll spell it out for you: I believe that while a country called America will live on into the unknown future, the idea of an America founded upon the idea of free spirits, individualism, the limits of government, and certain immutable truths will soon be dead if it isn’t already.

I’m going to take a friend’s advice and just live – to enjoy life while I still have the ability to do so.

I just no longer feel that there is a point to this national “conversation”, particularly as it exists in the blogosphere, or that it will lead me anywhere that I want to go.

There are a few people I’d like to thank:

  • Bill Hoyt. There were a lot of days when I didn’t have it, until I read Bill’s blog that day, and was able to riff off of it, thanking whatever it is we thank these days that there was someone out there that thought as I did, and that I wasn’t just howling into the hurricane.
  • Joel Mathis, and his wife Jocelyn. I “met” Joel online when he was doing a piece on Kansas bloggers right after blogs broke, we met for real not too long after that, and have been friends ever since. These thoroughly kind and decent people left me, at least for a little while, with the hope that maybe what I’ve said is not going to happen is indeed all possible.
  • Tony Botello of Tony’s Kansas City. Tony has promoted this site and many others generously on his own very popular blog, on which traffic is many times heavier than this one. He’s driving the conversation in Kansas City in his own way, and for those things he has my respect and gratitude.
  • Jeff Goldstein. Can’t say as I’ve met the guy, or that he would know me from any of the other millions of people shouting into the darkness, but his blog was inspiration to this one.

Finally, and perhaps greatest of all, I would like to thank you, the readers of this blog past and present. Those times when we got to learn from and exchange ideas with were entirely worth it.

All things good and bad must one day come to an end, and after six and a half years, so must this thing, which was probably at times a little of both.

Thanks once again, and I wish you all the best.

Yours most sincerely,

j.d.

congress seeks revenge upon the american people

… by attempting to shove through another bailout package, this time with 150 and 1/3 times more pork.

there’s someone for everyone (alternate title: i enjoy being single, goddammit.)

Seven-hundred pound (who used to rock a svelte 1,230 pounds) Mexican man to wed girlfriend on 26 October.