A month ago, I had the chance to make another redneck pilgramage to West Monroe, the home of the hit show, Duck Dynasty.

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(July 3, 2021: I'm next to the wood carving featured in Statue of Imitations (S10xE2))

While I first watched it and saw its merchandise while I lived in Alaska, it has been in syndication in my family for the years thereafter. I've caught a lot of the broadcasts of their Unashamed podcast / study and for fun filler, I'll watch the Duckcall Room. I've even read the books below:

Phil Robertson

• Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander (2013)
• *unPHILtered: The Way I See It *(2014)
• The Theft of America's Soul: Blowing the Lid Off the Lies That Are Destroying Our Country (2019)

Willie Robertson

• The Duck Commander Family: How Faith, Family, and Ducks Created a Dynasty (2012)
• American Hunter: How Legendary Hunters Shaped America (2015)
• American Entrepreneur: How 400 Years of Risk-Takers, Innovators, and Business Visionaries Built the U.S.A. (2018)

Others

• Jase Robertson's Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl (2014)
• Si Robertson's Si-cology 1: Tales and Wisdom from Duck Dynasty's Favorite Uncle (2014)
• Jep and Jessica Robertson's The Good, the Bad, and the Grace of God: What Honesty and Pain Taught Us About Faith, Family, and Forgiveness (2015)
• Al and Lisa Robertson's A New Season: A Robertson Family Love Story of Brokenness and Redemption (2015)

In many ways, the Robertson's have been like a second family to me. They remind me that truth matters—the TV show is silly, of course, but I'm speaking to getting to the sources beyond that. As for me, never in my life have I felt that systematically, things that are wrong are so quickly cheered and encouraged and it's good to realize that I'm not alone in seeing how this society's rebellion in sin does not lead to freedom, but brokenness.

A thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.

John 10:10, HCSB

I watched this short clip with Phil talking about these times. When I'm on point, I'm right there...when I'm not, I'm working toward that way:

YouTube Link

It's time for me to back off from what everyone else in the world seems to be harried about. It's time for me to set aside the news and sports medias—news, because it's never really news about my sphere and sports, because I'm not participating—and CLEARLY, it's no longer about interpreting analytics wizardry! I want to take on the attitude I took last year as I made such powerful gains in my weightloss and fitness regimens.

For a time, I felt I was in a post Facebook space. I tried, of course, to return to social media earlier this year, though I found it to be a challenging minefield with explosions all about. It was taxing to maintain neutrality and be a beacon of "winning" (with flailing attempts at wit). I left, as I do, throwing my hands up in exasperation. And yet, I'd like to make another return—oh, not now, but perhaps upon another New Year's Eve.

For these recent months, I didn't know what I wanted to do with this website. I considered torching the whole thing...or starting over. And yet, the best choice is a continuation. The Expeditions go on, don't they? However, instead of being infused with music, I want soul. When I advance in fitness, I recognize that very little of it is about the body. It is about the heart and the mind. For all of the attention we spend on our body regarding fitness, I find it curious that we focus on merely the reaction the body has toward the behavior of the heart and mind. Heart, of course, inspires action and the mind is the knowledge we possess. Sometimes, we don't know any better—potentially a fatal failing.

I envision this site as a notebook for my thoughts and rolling cabinet to keep my tools. Perhaps one day, I'll convert the whole thing back to jekyll and feed the geek in me.

Yes, I swore off Google. I then accepted my digital fate and plugged back in—only to pull away and ride out into the night leaving Google behind...to now find myself HERE, once again, making out shapes in the Google cloud. At the end of the day, while I can surely live without the vaulted Mountain View Behemoth, it just adds a lot of unnecessary work to the mix! The same logic could be applied to my basic take on electricity: yeah, I could adopt an Amish life where "we been spending most our lives / living in an Amish paradise" actually sounds APPEALING! Think of all the DUMB stuff that's going on in the world right that is connected to the use of electricity! But, why do we go with that sweet, sweet juice? Life is easier. And it's why I cannot ultimately shelve Google.

And while you might think I might pick up my CD hobby again, or more specifically, my CD-to-FLAC hobby, I'm going to kill that project before I keep throwing money into something that eventually I'll recognize as a bunch of clutter and toss out (perhaps I'm more like Google than I care to admit, Killed By Google), I will most definitely do that one day as I seek greater optimization, a throwback to a time when I was minimalist before minimalism was cool—yeah, I gotta give props, it's one of the few takeaways from millennials where they got it right!

While I do NOT like its interface, I like Google YouTube Music to play CDs from my favorite country singer, Garth Brooks or, chiefly, my 4-album collection of Battlestar Galactica. That said, I just found that the remastered versions of those albums are now on Spotify! In fact, even now I'm playing Season 2 and a couple of my favorites, Pegasus followed by Something Dark is Coming. Love it! Back in 2017 I actually purchased this very domain to create this site while being miffed AND listening to the Colonial Anthem. I once learned how to pick out the basic melody of Kara's Coordinates from Season 4 on a guitar—but, gosh, those few notes are THROUGHOUT the series! Finally, whenever I hear Wander My Friends, it reminds me of the relationship I had with my dad.

And now, I'm done with this digital medium stuff. I'm going with Google. It's time to shift my focus.

A strong motivator for me to bring my old content into this new reboot of my site is that I just didn't want to write up the first episode of season 1! You know: introducing the characters, outlining the theme, scaffolding the plot—that sort of thing. Instead, I want to charge into the story in progress!.

Honestly, I've never liked introductory episodes—life isn't like that. We either catch on with what's happening around us or just fake it until we make it to somebody's flashback.

And again, this would be a LOT easier just to import an XML file and be done with it, but I want to do something anew with this site...while this site ultimately is a function of becoming...better. I know, I know, that's not the sort of thing that will drive revenue for Googe's AdSense—WAIT, what's that? I don't have THAT on my site? I don't have ANY monetization? That can't be right—check again...aw man!

No, Google's AdSense could not be applied to this site for the very same reason why I am typing this up in the Brave Browser: yes baby, this boy is off Google! I blew it away this very evening! I gotta admit: this feels LIBERATING. I'm no longer jamming to Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me! It's surreal to open my email client and realize that it hasn't been pre-read by Google in order to manipulate my behavior. That said, I'm NOT gonna spend my days running in terror from the Mountain View Behemoth. It's just the end of my active involvement. I don't think the domo arigato misuta Roboto font is going away anytime soon.