Why thank you, and a joke

I must say that your welcome messages are very heartwarming, and I must try to do my best to live up to your expectations. I fear that the word "curmudgeonly" will from time to time prove appropriate - I can be a tad misanthropic; rarely if ever Pollyanna.

Shorn of a direction such as provided by blogging on COUNTRY Living, I find myself uncharacteristically lost for words. I suppose I could tell you what I had for breakfast, but that would surely lose the audience (unless I confessed to baked cat, or frogspawn, or something).

So, I thought I'd post a joke. It seems that jokes are all the rage on PurpleCoo.

Harry is getting along in years and finds that he is unable to perform sexually. He finally goes to his doctor, who tries a few things, but nothing seems to work. So the doctor refers him to an American Indian medicine man.

The medicine man says, "I can cure this," and he throws a white powder into a flame, whereupon there is a flash and billowing blue smoke.

Then he says, "This is powerful medicine. You can only use it once a year. All you have to do is say '123' and it shall rise for as long as you wish!"

Harry then asks, "What happens when it's over, and I don't want to continue?" The medicine man replies:"All you or your partner has to say is '1234', and it will go down. But be warned -- it will not work again for another year!"

Harry rushes home, eager to try out his new prowess. That night he is ready to surprise Joyce. He showers, shaves, and puts on his most exotic cologne. He gets into bed and, lying next to her, says, "123."

He suddenly becomes more aroused than at any time in his life, just as the medicine man had promised. Joyce, who had been facing away, turns over and asks, "What did you say 123 for?"

And that, my friends, is why you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition.

Hello, one and all

Some might remember me as an unwelcome presence on the Country Living website, where I initially made a pest of myself, and then back-pedalled hard to regain some semblance of mob approval.



I've been keeping a weather eye on PurpleCoo and all the goings-on, and thanking The Powers That Be (buzz off Richard Dawkins) that I was never involved in the competition (or was it a promotion? I understand that even now squadrons of highly-trained, sorry, highly-paid lawyers are preparing to do sematic battle over just this question).



So here we all are, freed from the tyranny of having to write about our rustic existences. I don't mean that we can't - I just mean that we don't have to, or at least we won't be excluded from consideration for the competition if we stray onto other territory.

I suspect that I'm about to find that I'm not really one of life's natural bloggers, because nothing very interesting happens to me. That's how I like it, but it doesn't make for very good reading.