A Personal Note.

It’s been more than a week since my last post. (I was going to put up some snarky excuse about hanging out with Gov. Mark Sanford, but after the truth was revealed I’m glad I didn’t. I mean, I'm not Argentinian...) I wish I could tell you there was some extenuating circumstance for the lack of things to read round here, but there isn’t. I just haven’t wanted to post.

Call it burnout. Call it blogger’s fatigue. Call it… whatever you want. I’m in a funk.

Why? Well, first, our country is going to hell and there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing we can do about it. Voicing your opinion gets you ostracized and ridiculed; protesting gets you labeled a “domestic terrorist.” Our Rights as Citizens are being taken away in the name of some amorphous greater good provided by the State which - in light of all evidence to the contrary – our leaders promise will somehow provide that good at a higher quality and lower cost than what we can currently choose for ourselves without government control. And the same leaders pushing this are also spending all of us, and our children, and our grand-children and our great-grand-children into the poor house – again in the name of some amorphous greater good provided by the State. Not that I’ve become a Ron Paul conspiracy theory zombie – those folks seem to be a putsch looking for a beer hall – but I guess I’m tired of yelling “It’s a cookbook!”

And as for my home state, what do you do when something becomes a parody of itself? For me, this pretty much about sums up the state of my home state:



Watch it all. It shows an up-and-coming rapper - one Hurricane Chris - serenading the Louisiana House of Representatives and our State about, well, wanting to fuck Halle Barry. (A harsh, but I think accurate, description. Look at the words, dear readers – that ain’t a love song.) They even gave this young wordsmith a commendation for his efforts. And the reason he was given this opportunity? He is the godson of the legislator who introduced him. Clifton Chenier is whirling in his grave.

So much for the mortal side – but the spiritual side ain’t much better. As an orthodox and Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian, I have watched for the last 30 years or so as The Episcopal Church ™ slowly jettisoned 2,000 years of Christian understanding and values in the name of some non-specific feel-good secularism. They are now worried more about my political values and who I have sex with, than my mortal soul. That trend has gone from a trickle in 1979, to a flood in 2003, to a torrent in 2006. And in few weeks The Episcopal Church ™ will gather in it's General Convention, and jettison the last remnants of what I value - like scraping so much shit from their shoes - and fully embrace their "new thing" secular theology of “inclusiveness” and the Millennium Development Goals. I’m tired of being told I’m only welcome at the Episcopal table if I keep my mouth shut and my checkbook open.

So that’s where I am right now. I’m still in the fight on all these things, but not anything I feel like blogging about right now.

Maybe a little hiatus will do me good. I started Red Stick Rant as a “training blog,” but it got discovered and well, that was that. Compared to blogs that I admire, I’ve always thought RSR lacked focus (or, more accurately, reflected my lack of focus), and for some time I have wanted to refine it’s focus and maybe restructure it’s format. Maybe even a new name. Maybe I should take the time now and do that.

But do not despair, dear readers, I ain’t leaving the fight, and I will be back in a few weeks. I just need some time off the front lines. This blogging thing takes up a lot of time – seeing what’s out there, looking up facts and figures, writing posts – and that’s time away from work, family, and the other things that make up our lives. In the interim, I will still be posting occasionally; and you can still find me (sometimes) on Twitter at @redstickrant.