AllMilitary.com

We recently interviewed the mind behind Charming, Just Charming to find out more about him and his blog.

Question: What are 3 things your readers probably do not know about you?

I doubt that there is little that my readers don’t know about me. I have been to several blog meets and met numerous other bloggers and if you have ever been to one of those things you know they are all about expose..HAHA. I have made no secret that I am a successfully recovered alcoholic..15 years dry and I fiughre 14 of them sober. I do dip snuff and I usually have some fingernails chewed off. By the way, my wife just started a blog and if I had anything my readers didn’t know she would damn shore tell them. I used to have a hot temper..now it is just luke warm. Oh, and I can’t spell for shit and also do a poor job of editing what I write..I make no claims to being an accomplished writer ..hell man. I have to translate my redneck think into some sort of English write just so most of my readers can understand what I am trying to put down. So if you use this be sure and edit and maybe correct some spelling, huh? I had a secretary that did this when I was in the Air Force and later in business.

 (Ed. Note: I went ahead and left the spelling as is and hopefully he doesn’t hate me for this. I think his way of writing is what attracts many to his blog and would hate if his true personality didn’t show through. Plus, it sounds like I’m really sitting there talkin’ to him in person, another aspect that attracts you to his blog.)

Question: How long have you been blogging and why did you get into blogging?

With the help of my bat shit crazy blog momma, I started my piece of shit and wit on the 23rd of July 2005. Why? Well, Northwoods woman kept chewing my butt for using her comment section as a chat room with some other chatters. She as well as a couple of others on her blog and the late and great blogger Acidman who wrote  encouraged me to start my own. I knew absoultely nothing about setting up a blog but they helped me via e-mail and telecon. Acidman gave me a few links the first three or four months and it just kinda took off from there. I met acidman at a blogmeet a few months before he died. Great guy. But the whys that I blog? Several reasons and maybe the main one is to just let off steam..I do some rants occasionally..my wife claims it keeps me from having a stroke when I have a place to vent and by venting on the blog it keeps her from having a stroke just listening to me. Another good reason is the people that I have met via bloggin’. I was kinda sorta surprised to learn that there are millions of people out there that have a lot of the same ideas about life and life in this country that I do. But mostly I reckon that I just like to laugh and have people laugh with me or even at me. I was raised in the oil fields and among he ranchers and farmers of south central Oklahoma..a tough bunch of people during some tough times. But we laughed instead of crying and it always made it just a bit easier to take. I used that philosophy during my USAF career..it worked for me and maybe kept me out of the slammer…

Question: What is your military experience?

I spent twenty two and a half years in the USAF from October 1960 through April 1983. I retired as a Master Sgt. The first nine years I worked on the flight line in Aircraft Refueling. I managed to pickup a training management Specialty Code and transferred into the On the Job Training Supervisor business. I was at various times a class room instructor, NCOIC of Base On The JOb Training, and NCOIC of Maintenance Training management. I retrained again in to base personnel and when I retired I was the NCOIC of Base Personnel at an airbase in Alaska.

I had two state side assignments once I left tech school. MacDill AFB twice and Malmstrom Montana once. I had overseas assigment to the Phillipine Islands, Turkey, and Germany and the base in Alaska was considered overseas at the time I was there. I also had numerous TDY assignments overseas and in the CONUS.

The USAF was good to me and for me. I enlisted as a dumb country boy and retired as a dumb country boy with some education and a bit more self discipline. After I retired I found that my Oklahoma friends and family were laying odds that I would never make it through boot camp because of my temper…but I did. If I had got kicked out there was just no way I could have went home and faced my Dad. He taught me better..

Question: What are some of your other favorite Milblogs?

One Marine’s View . Since he got promted he calls himself Major Pain but when I first stated reading it he was Capt B. and I reckon he sounds like the kind of officer I could non com up for. I also read Sarge Says which is written by a recently retired USAF senior non com and occasionally just go down the list of military bloggers. Oh and there is a couple of wives that blog that are damn good communicators… The Shannon Chronicles’ hubbie is on his last hitch in the Army and plans to retire when he returns to the land of the big PX. And then there is Sandy who writes from Germany. Her hubbie is also nearing retirement age and is deployed to Iraq. I take my hat off to the spouses and kids of todays military. Deployments are always tough and knowing that a return to CONUS and an overseas assigment could also mean another damn deployment to Iraq makes it even tougher.

Question: What has been the biggest factor in helping you create and publish a successful blog?

Heh, successful blog? I reckon maybe by some standards but when one compares my traffic with such icons as gut Rumbles and Texas Fred and Straight White Guy and The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, I am just the tenor voice of the Budwieser from on the pond. But I am proud that I currently am averaging some 270 people a day who either read on purpose or stuble on via google looking for a 14 year old indian virgin or how to cook amberjcak…don’t ask..

I do try to post a mix of humor, news commentary, rants, and personal stuff from sweetthing’s half acre. I also don’t go out of my way to slam anyone..except politicians, lawyers, preachers, ragheads, and anyone else that pisses me off. I would recommend to any new blogger to just write what you think unless what you think might land you in the slammer..(I know that someone in government view my place periodically..I traced that hit from Washington DC and either Homeland Security is watching me or someone clicked on looking for a picture of that 14 year old Indian Virgin.) Acidman once told me that people can see through you if you are a phoney..well I weigh 235 pounds and there is a lot of blubber to see through…

Question: Do you have anything else you would like us to mention about you, your blog, or your readers?

Yeah, my readers are the best! Without them I have my doubts that I would blog everyday..several times every day. When I go to the site meter n the mornings and see that I have had 280 to 300 people by my place it makes my hat size just a bit bigger. They make it all worth while. And just one other thing I would like to add. Bill Quick of  calls it the Blogosphere which is as good a name for the phenomia as any. Blogs have made the communication of ideas and news from all over the world an instant thing. I read reports from the Isreali/Lebanese Terrorist fight as it was happening. At times I read the same from Iraq. Blogs have changed the political process in this country..for the better? I hope but maybe not. I figure that if we want our blogs to be taken seriously we have to clean up our acts. I don’t mean the language..I mean the posting of down right lies about various bloggers, the military and politicians. Hell, politicians fuck up by themselves..we don’t have to lie about what they are doing. I get about fifty e-mails a day that are chain type stuff that someone started attributed to some dignitary..and I have been burnt a couple of times because I posted them without verification of the facts. This is NY Times kinda stuff and bloggers are gonna have to be better than that if we are to be taken seriously.

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