Blog Ain't Going Anywhere

Accomodating a request by the person at WUSF supervising my snakeman story to do more interviews for the piece, I went to the Rattlesnake Festival in San Antonio this past Sunday. It was the 40th annual, you know. Only now instead of local residents bringing their own rattlers (to see who had caught the biggest) as they used to do, people show up to see them in Jim Mendenhall's snake shows.

I interviewed some patrons as well as one of Mendenhall's childhood snake-hunting buddies, Bob Lawton, who still collects snakes himself and sometimes assists Mendenhall with his shows. Mendenhall tells crowds that Lawton is a better snake handler than him because Lawton been bitten only once while Mendenhall has suffered snake bites five times.

I sent a revised script to my supervisor yesterday. She wrote back that she'd look at it on Monday and added, "By the way, I need to ask if you are actively participating in any blogs."

Huh?

"I do have a blog," I replied. "Why?" She didn't say why; she asked for a link to it. I sent her the link and asked again why she needed to read my blog. She hasn't replied but soon after I sent her its link the stat counter for my blog showed visits from two ISPs at USF, one of which included a search for the keyword "politics."

Checking to see if I was a Matt Drudge wannabe, I guess. Neither of the visitors appeared to stay for too long so they must not have found anything interesting. I could have told them that. My blog is pretty innocuous and you'd have to work hard to dig up material on it that could paint me as a partisan hack. Even then it would be a pretty amazing stretch. If the powers at WUSF are going to disqualify me from contributing to the station because of my blog, they were going to disqualify me for something else anyway.

Had I more notice maybe I'd have gone back and changed its occasional references to NPR to "WUSF 89.7, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota -- my NPR station!"

I hope they don't waste the expense of a criminal background check. I'll confess: It currently consists entirely of minor traffic violations. I'd hate to disappoint them like that. Perhaps it's not too late to embezzle something. How do you do that? I did take a company pen home this week. Does that count? Oh, and I jaywalk across U.S. 301 when I walk to the gym all the freaking time!

My life lacks excitement. That's why I write about my observations of other people. Including the snake man. And perhaps soon about the labyrinthine process it takes to get a story on the air at WUSF.