Have I been abandoned? Am I the sole remaining blogger in Parker? Have my colleagues been unable to accept rejection or to reject acceptance? Whither the Fellowship of the Blogs?

Is there a dearth of subject matter? I don't think so. Scanning the newspaper headlines reveal a remarkable range of material that demands comment. Rise up citizens; we are about to be subjected to yet another prolonged series of nauseating media reports on O.J. Here is a man who is clearly not the brightest bulb on the porch. He will once again be victimized simply because he allegedly barged into a hotel room and demanded that memorabilia allegedly belonging to him be returned to him. In case no one took him seriously he and his associates allegedly were packing heat.

But I digress. The foibles of O.J. are a tempting subject to write about but what can we say that hasn't already been said? Henry Kissinger once observed, "The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault."

I sometimes fall back on writing personal stories from long ago. Reluctance to expose past exploits is due to a feeling that there are few who will have the same level of interest in me that I do. When writing, "Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It's the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors." This advice came from Rhys Alexander in Writing Gooder, 12-09-05.

The pencil sketch might be, "I recall the first time I was bitten by tsetse fly. It stung like hell."

Here are a few strokes in a lush oil painting: "I have a vividly clear memory of the first time I was bitten by a tsetse fly. It was on the third finger of my left hand, just above the finger nail. It wasn't so much the sharp stinging sensation that I recall but the fact that my hand was gripping the stirring wheel of a 1964 red Volkswagen Beetle. The fly had landed on my finger undetected and dug its piercing mouthparts firmly into the skin without warning. Jerking my hand back nearly caused me to capsize the car. As anyone who has experienced the VW Beetle of that era will know, there was a tendency for them to flip over and lay upside down on the side of the highway for other motorists to comment on."

"The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them." (Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 07-10-2006) If Henry Kissinger was correct, readers who are bored by this blog will think it is my fault. But then, although completely lacking in celebrity, I have at least allowed you to take the first step.