The Return of the Tiki Lounge from Hell!

Greetings friends. The Tiki Lounge, I'm proud to say, is back.

Where did it go, you ask? Well, even if you didn't ask, I'm going to tell you. Back in 2008, the Tiki Lounge relocated to The Record, the local newspaper here in Waterloo region. I blogged regularly when the Tiki Lounge was housed on The Record's website. I blogged about damn near everything: Barack Obama, the financial meltdown, world crises, loud-mouthed FoxNews types, chickenshit liberals, mushy-minded political correctness, Sarah Palin, inner-city poverty, overseas wars, nuclear weapons, music, movies, TV, books. You name it, I blogged about it.

Then something happened. I got sick of Blogging. By the late summer of 2009, my Blogging had tapered off significantly. I decided I needed to step back. Andrew's Tiki Lounge had taken on a life of its own and I'd gotten burned out.

There was another reason I ducked out. I have to admit, I got sick of the Politics of Nastiness, which is so abundant on the Right and the Left. It's more pervasive on the Right, but Lefties have their fair share of assholes, too.

Also, my politics changed, as politics are bound to do. Not my commitment to human rights, which is unwavering. Not my sympathy with the vulnerable, which is stronger than ever.

No, the change came in the form of an intensified aversion on my part to all forms of dogma. I became more of a Libertarian Humanist. I became an Animal Rights advocate. I went vegan.

I neglected the Tiki Lounge. Then the people at The Record deleted it. Months and months and months and months of hard work and writing disappeared with one keystroke. I was fucking pissed off. I'm still fucking pissed off when I think about it.

I started a whole new blog, We're All Animals: A Celebration of Animal Rights and Vegan Living. My main focus is now Animal Rights, which I think is the single most important issue confronting the human race right now. Close to 60 billion animals are being murdered each year by the Factory Farm System. Billions of other animals - aquatic and land - perish at the hands of human beings for no good reason at all.

So I blogged about Animal Rights. I blogged and blogged. I still do.

But I grew to miss my non-Animal Rights blogging. I wanted the Tiki Lounge back.

And here I am.

I figured I'd return to my old, abandoned Tiki Lounge, still on that same run-down little Cul-de-sac, clean the place out, and start blogging again. The New Andrew's Tiki Lounge will be a departure in many respects from the Old Tiki Lounge of '08-09. For one thing, the blog entries probably won't be so detailed (when did I find time to write those suckers????). But one thing will remain the same: It'll be my own little soapbox where I can pretty much say whatever in the hell I want.

To quote the theme song of one of my favorite 1970s' TV shows: "Welcome back..."