Back on the Blog!

So I'm dying to get this blog back up and running; my goal is to at least restore it to it's former glory, if not greatly surpass it.

For anyone new to this blog (and any former Professional Americans readers who never knew it), here's a bit of its history: during the last presidential election, my family (my wife, young daughter and even younger son) got really into the debates; my wife was for McCain, I was for Obama, my daughter (6 at the time) was for Hillary, and my son? Well, he was for his Dad.

During that time, then-Senator Obama came under fire in the media for not wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. I thought to myself, "How stupid is that?" and I wanted to express exactly how stupid I thought it was. So I wrote a song about it, and called it "Professional Americans." I got the term from a John Lennon quote, where he referred to someone as a "real professional American."

The song itself has never really been finished, although it may emerge one day soon. But while I was writing the song, I realized I still wanted to say more.

So I started this blog, and invited friends and family to comment and contribute.

I wanted to have a place where people could share their views on all topics (not just politics) in an exciting, heated, yet civil manner, and I thought a blog was perfect.

We had a lot of success all the way through, and even after the election. However, with deployments and travel and work, managing this blog kind of fell to the way side.

But, I am now fresh back from Afghanistan, and just about ready to transfer out of the Seabees (which has been an amazing, but very tiring and time consuming experience), and I'm ready to start upsetting the world with my opinions, and getting upset at theirs!

For a while I was screening all comments, but I am going back to the originial format, where you're free to say and to post what you want. Hopefully whatever we say, or how we say it, will be well thought out, and as civil as possible.

If you want to be an actual contributer to the blog, and make your own posts (which I hope many of you do!), just contact me and I'll give you the necessary permissions. I think you have to have a blogger account to do so; otherwise you can always leave your comments with or without the blogger account.

Additionally, this is now going to be the semi-official blog of my band, "Micromegas". We're working on a second album now, and many of the themes that used to be discussed here have been or will be the topic of a lot of our songs, so it seems like a good fit. I'm not sure yet, but we may actually put the song "Professional Americans" on the next album, and if so, we'll feature it here.

Just like we used to do, the updated blog has a music player.  The songs are normally what I'm currently listening to, or songs from Micromegas, solo work or bands of friends or relatives.  You can always mute it if you prefer not to listen.

Anyways, let's get blogging!