Happy New Year 2018 And Expanded Content Update

Greetings and Salutations, Y'all!

This year begins the 4th official year of Southern Fried Common Sense & Stuff. 

Folks, when I began this blog in December of 2014, I did so largely to have a platform for this blogger to share his opinions about various topics, not the least of which was countering the misconceptions and outright lies promoted about Southern heritage as a whole and Confederate historical heritage in particular. 

I also like to travel to many local places of interest and wanted to share those with you, the reader. I am very proud of upstate South Carolina where I was born. I am proud of it's various history and of the multicultural heritage of the area. Sharing them with you and telling the local history of many of these events from the perspective of a simple small-town country writer has been and continues to be a pleasure for me.

Last year this blog reached a number of milestones, not the least of which was crossing the hundred-thousand views mark. I could not be more pleased to know that folks around the world on every continent enjoys my various posts. It is this blogger's hope to cross the next major milestone and achieve another hundred-thousand views by the end of 2018 -- or at the very least halfway there.  

As I promised y'all near the end of last year, this blog will be branching out a bit more on it's mission statement and bring y'all more expanded content. 

Certainly I am going to continue countering the regressive narratives seeking to demonize and denigrate Southern identity, Confederate historical heritage, and free-thinking individuality as a whole. If anything I intend to double-down on those and counter the anti-Southern stereotypes. However instead of just Responding To Regressives posts, I will go into more specific details about what Southern heritage as a whole is, and what Confederate heritage in particular actually means to those Southerners and Americans like me who continue to do those eyebrow raising things like place flags on graves and wear hot wooly uniforms honoring ancestors who lost an ugly and terrible war.

This blogger will also continue to bring you more stories about local history and the cultural impact it has had on American identity as a whole. My Travel & Photojournalism posts will also continue, as will my Planetary Photography posts. 

Among other things, this blog's new expanded content will include details about the personal likes and history of yours truly, Carl W. Roden (esq). This isn't to stroke my own ego, but rather to give you the reader a better understanding of who this weird pseudo-adult whom many in the Southern heritage community call The Man Deniers Fear The Most really is as a free-thinking individual rather than someone's build-up stereotype.

These details will be included into a new segment on this blog which I will call the Tales of My Existence. These tales will detail true slice of life stories about growing up in upstate South Carolina and my dealings with various situations in my life till present. Some of this personal stories and experiences will also be included into some of my social commentary on other causes I sympathize with, such as how I deal with my autism and how it impacts me on a daily basis.  

Some of these stories are quite humorous -- including several mishaps during my childhood and adolescence, which are a bit embarrassing -- while others are a bit painful to talk about on a personal level, a couple of which I have never even told my own family about. None the less, I hope that by sharing some of them with y'all, maybe they may help someone else who went through similar experiences in the past or present day.

In addition to this expanded content will be Southern Fried Fandom & Reviews. This will include personal reviews of movies and television shows that this blogger enjoyed growing up and how they affected and influenced me as I grew to maturity (sic). These reviews will include everything from cult classic science fiction and fantasy stories to cartoons, anime and animated series that I loved from my youth in the 80s and 90s to present day. This will also include top 20 lists of my favorite shows and series episodes, and how said shows had an impact on my life in general. 

Finally, the expanded content will include reviews of graphic novels and webcomics that this blogger enjoys, or finds relevant to various topics on this blog. As a former librarian and someone who loves books having practically grown up in a library, I enjoy reading and have found it fun to look through and collect graphic novels for my reading collection. Many of these are really good reads, and have really important lessons that young people need to learn today -- for instance how to handle bullies the right way, or learning to empathize with those who are often overlooked and neglected. Some are just fun action and adventure stories told by really talented authors and artists. I am looking forward to sharing my two cents about these great literary works -- and yes, graphic novels may not be Shakespeare (expect or course for his works written in graphic novel form), but I would put a good many of them right up there with much of the modern young adult stories and even a few serious adult writers as well. How one tells a story is just as important, if not more so, than the manner in which it is put to pen.

Many of these subjects will overlap in a few cases, like the upcoming story about how one old cult classic sci-fi film largely helped influence my love for science, space exploration, and ultimately my support for Martian Colonization efforts promoted by far-thinking people like Elon Musk and Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society, a group I happen to be a supporting member of.    

Since this blogger doesn't set a particular timeline for what content I post to this blog, you the reader will just have to keep checking in to see what's coming up next here at Southern Fried Common Sense & Stuff. Will it be more local history? More photojournalism? Movie or animation reviews? Book or graphic novel reviews? More Southern heritage and Americana? More planetary photography? Or will be the upcoming true story about how this blogger once stowed away on a class field trip he was not supposed to go on in 3rd grade? 

To quote actor Johnny Depp in the okay, but somewhat unnecessary remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by director Tim Burton: "The best kind of prize is a sur-prise."  

Find out next time, but until then: Have A Wonderful Dixie Day, Y'all!