“Peace, prosperity, liberty and morals
have an intimate connection.”

- Thomas Jefferson

File this under "Game Called On Account of Life": Batgirl is taking her blog and going home. Having recently moved out of state and given birth to future Twins star Dash, the demands of a long-distance love affair with her Boyfriends of the Day™ and child-rearing meant the blog was out of options.

I suppose every winning streak has to end sometime but I'll miss the often surrealistic game recaps and and passion for pluck. Count me among the fans standing and applauding, calling for Batgirl and her contributors to step back out of the dugout for a nod and a wave.

Going, going...gone!

Buffy brings the beau home —

Girl brings home suitor. Father tries to frighten suitor. For real or for jest. With harsh words. An intimidating stare.

Pa used arms the size of tree trunks and a highly arched brow. A friend’s dad employed over the counter drug tests. “Here. Pee in the cup.” The old codgers from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers used guns. Lined up the boys and whipped out the rifles.

Mine used dynamite.

T was the first and last guy I ever brought home to meet the family. I was 25. We’d been together for two years and it was his first visit to Appalachia. I should have been shocked by it all. I wasn’t. Not that I expected my father and his pack of dark-eyed brothers to blow up the mountain, close down the only road out and block any chance of escape for a good portion of the day. But I didn’t not expect it either.

I've noticed something unusual in my blog traffic the last month or so: I've been getting a lot of http://images.google.com referrals. Unlike the Google-search links I used to get where certain word-searches brought readers, these are driven by photos.

Ok, I've posted quite a few photos here in the last 2+ years, so that image searches shouldn't be too unusual — except there appears to be a certain pattern to the images being viewed: they're either people who want to view the "Loch Ness Monster Truck" evidence photo from last May...or people who want to see a picture of the Mall Diva in a prom dress.

It's hard to keep a thorough list since my Sitemeter account only registers the last 100 visits, but as of 15 minutes ago 77 of the last 100 visitors to this blog had come from image searches; 18 of these were Loch Ness Monster Truck driven and 16 were led to see a photo of the Diva and her cousin in their formal gowns. Another half-dozen or so wanted to see the photo of the bruise on MD's knee from last fall's Paintball outing. That's actually a significant decrease for that particular photo; one month recently my Powerblogs tracking tool showed more than 800 referrals to that image from a website in Taiwan!

Are there not enough lovely things to look at on the internet that people have to come looking for an oversized tire in a loch, a couple of well-dressed girls or a close-up of a naked, discolored knee? Are there that many fetishists out there living in their mom's garage, surfing the internet so they can ogle and drool over a photo: "Ooooh, it's a B.F. Goodrich!"

I know I should be glad for the traffic, but frankly it's beginning to creep me out.