Just who ARE these people?!

My little list above that goes by the name Axis of Weevil, that is.

Well, you see (which is how all good stories begin, as well as most of my run-on sentences) when I first started doing Possumblog back in December of 2000 & 1, I wasn’t sure how many other Alabama bloggers there were, but I wanted to find a few simply because I thought it would be nice to point out that there are lots of good folks who live here who don’t necessarily fit in with the preconceived notions some folks seem to have about Alabama. (See!—85 words and encumbered with only four commas!)

Along about March or so of Twenty Ought Two, I had found a couple of folks who would admit they had some ties to the Heart of Dixie; a bloodthirsty War Liberal dude, and a smart chick from Wetumpka who lives up in New Yawk. (As an interesting aside, both of them used to actually use BlogSpot!! Hee-hee.)

Anyway, after a lot of looking around and inquiring in filthy back alleys, I started finding a few more Alabama-ish folks, natives or members of the Redneck Diaspora. Some were tremendous writers—funny, sharp, intelligent, could fabricate tractor parts in their home machine shop—and I added them on my blogroll in a snap.

Of course, this being the Internet and all, there were some other folks I stumbled across...

Folks who, while their driver’s license might have said they lived here, could just as well have been dropped here by the big flying saucer behind the comet.

Then there were the ones who wrote maudlin, long-winded essays in microscopic dark gray text on black backgrounds (you will notice that the readable parts of Possumblog are composed entirely of black text on white background, just like the good Gutenberg intended).

Anyway, along with the folks on the list, there were others who, in distinct opposition to my desire to show that Alabama is full of good folks and good writers, were neither.

So, I figured I would come up with a way to separate out the folks I liked to read from the ones I didn’t, and thus was born the Official Membership Rules of the Axis of Weevil:

1) Born in, or now live in, or once lived in, or would like to live in, Alabama;
2) Not ashamed to admit to #1;
3) Staunchly anti-idiotarian, or can at least pretend pretty good
4) Functionally literate
5) Don't type in ALL CAPS or all e.e. cummings case or MiXeD.
6) Update your blog more than once a month
7) Willing to be made fun of
8) Willing to make fun of yourself
9) Have a framed picture of John Moses Browning
10) Personal library must contain more books than you will ever read
11) Must be able to recite Monty Python and the Holy Grail and give an episode synopsis of all Andy Griffith shows from memory
12) Your pickup truck must be in good working order--use of ether to get it started is not recommended, but will be allowed on a case-by-case basis

That's about it. However, like Calvinball, the rules may change in the middle of the game.

Well, then the whole shebang just took off—being on someone’s blogroll is one thing, but a CLUB is something else entirely!! So, folks would stop by, inquire about the Axis, fill out the application, and subject themselves to sporadic bouts of ritualized paddlings and lectures on the benefits of red clay in the diet.

So, over the intervening year and a half now, the Axis has grown a lot, along with the rest of Blogonia (and occasionally shrunk a bit, as folks are cured from the obsessive blogging disease).

Drawn by the lure of the fabulous and World Famous Axis of Weevil Gift Pack, which now contains:

a slab of Dreamland ribs, a gallon jug of Milo's sweet tea; a G-Lox Wedgee gun rack from Mark's Outdoor Sports for your pickup truck, a package of Bubba's Beef Jerky (according to Dr. Weevil, this is homemade and is available only at the gas station at the end of Highway 82 in Bibb County); a three piece, 24 ounce box of Priester's Pecan Logs; a box of Jim Dandy grits; a 16 ounce bottle of Dale's Steak Sauce; AND a six pack of Buffalo Rock Ginger Ale

I managed to find folks all over the country to chat and play with and swap manatee recipes with.

But, one thing that my list has NOT been is a real list of every Alabama blogger who honest-to-goodness lives here.

This has come to my attention because I have had several local folks who have come by and visited, and I still haven’t gotten around to putting them on the blogroll even though they are home folks—nice people such as young computer geek girl Kerry, who runs the always warm and tasty Webgrits.com, and David the Largeheartedboy toiling away up there in North Alabama, and Steven King’s favorite slobbering beast Cujo, who lives down yonder toward the Gulf and writes Water Never Sleeps, and former Special Forces guy and paramedic Doc from up Huntsville way who writes a good one over at Sea ‘Doc’.net—all these folks do great work and have been awfully nice when they drop by. The only reason I haven’t gotten them onto the blogroll (aside from being rather dim initially to the fact that they are from Alabama) is sheer laziness—all of you please forgive me my lethargy. This oversight will be rectified shortly…

ALONG WITH a link to a guy who has been going around and doing his own bit of back alley scrounging to come up with a list of REAL, LIVE, IN STATE Alabama bloggers—one Matt Cuthbert from right here in Birmingham who writes Impending Distractions. In addition to his blog, Matt is the guy who has been responsible for getting together AL.com’s Huge Giant List of Alabama Bloggers, which can be seen by clicking on this helpful button:

ONE HUNDRED SIX BLOGS, folks! All from right here in the greatest state ever to be called Alabama!

Now, I don’t quite know how many of those folks would actually want to associate with the riff-raff known as the Axis of Weevil, but they certainly do at least need a link up topside somewhere. As well as one way down at the end of the page (as if anyone ever reads down that far, but hey…)

So, anyway, those of you with a hankering to do some reading, go see what all you can find...Chet the E-Mail Boy and I have some Gift Packs to prepare!
posted by Terry at 1:32:00 PM