The Tao of Hoik Ptui

My sweetie and I can be in the midst of an argument, and suddenly she'll want to know why I'm always trying to be funny. I don't agree that I'm always trying to be funny. I can think of several times when I have tried to be serious. Or was it merely that I came across as being serious because I failed to be funny? What if she's right? And if she's right, why am I always trying to be funny?

I shall use the Cartesian logic of Rene Descartes to figure out why I always try to be funny. It should work. Descartes started with “I THINK, THEREFORE I AM” and proved the existence of God. "I think, therefore I am" makes reasonably good sense, although, before reading that sentence, it had never occurred to me that I might not be. And do I really need to be capable of reason to be self aware? I assume that the lowly octopus (I ink, therefore I am) knows that it's not really a part of the sea floor into which it blends itself so perfectly. If I am part of the cosmic whole, do I really exist, or do I need some unique trait that separates me from the whole, rather like a skunk (I stink, therefore I am) in a perfume shop?

What about when I'm not thinking? Just today, I left work and drove home by the same route that I always take. I turned into my driveway without the slightest memory of what occurred during the miles between work and home. Did that lost road (I link, therefore I am) exist? Did I exist during that missing interval or at any time before the present?--which incidentally, just passed. I sense that some people go through their entire lives in a state of mental and emotional oblivion until, like the passengers of the Titanic (I sink, therefore I am), some catastrophe propels them into a higher state of awareness.

Is thought proof of my existence, or merely proof of the existence of thought? Can I exist without thought in the same way I can exist without playing the piano (I plink, therefore I am), or engaging in wild and crazy sex (I kink, therefore I am)? I can even exist without beer and soul food (I drink, therefore I yam). And now, I am, I think, at the solution. I don't try to be funny, but life is punny, and things just come out that way. I laugh, sometimes at the wrong times, but I wouldn't be... well... me... without a sense of humor. (I wink, therefore I am).

Much, but not all, of this book is an attempt to be funny, and I hope that you, Dear Reader, will forgive me if I'm not always funny, or I strike you as trying to be funny at the wrong times. Remember, it's all written in good old all American fun. (Hijinx, therefore I am!)

Incidently, this is my first ebook. If the feedback is positive, it may not be my last. Enjoy! ~~back to table of contents

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

With Dr. Kervorkian having been taken--unfortunately, in my opinion--out of circulation, people who feel the need to commit suicide must do it themselves or find somebody else to help do the job. This is where the War on Terror comes in. What we have here is a perfect of conjunction of a need, the people who want to kill themselves; and a means, people who want to kill them, of satisfying that need.

Nobody drafts terrorists, and the only reason I’m mad at terrorists is that they draft their victims. I’ve never heard of a victim of a terrorist who wanted to get blown up or get their head lopped off or whatever, but perhaps all we have here is a failure to communicate. What if the victims of terrorists were volunteers? All we have to do is get the Americans who want to die with dignity together with Osama Bin Laden's successor and everybody would be happy.

Compared to terminal cancer, stroke, heart attack, infection from bedsores, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s, and a host of other 100% fatal but lingering ailments, getting blown up sounds like a pretty good deal. Instead of American, United, or Air Canad, fly Air Al Qaeda, and your pain is over. And there’s no religious roadblock, because it wouldn’t even be suicide. You're not blowing up the plane, they are. Maybe every millionth passenger would get 75 virgins or something as a promotion. Hell, if I were suicidal or afflicted with some terminal illness, I’d let Al Qaeda punch my ticket in exchange for 75 virgins on the other side.

The only downside is that I have a hard time thinking of any group that I consider more stupid than terrorists. With my luck, they’d blow me up and I’d live. Now that thought is terrifying.~~ back to table of contents

LEARNING DISABLED EPIDEMIC

If you find this article boring, it's not my writing, you're probably learning disabled. Having a learning disability doesn't mean that you're not smart. It just means you have a harder time proving that you're smart. I know because I'm a teacher. I see a lot of learning disabilities because I'm trained to recognize LD in young people. I don't see why LD should be less obvious in old people. As an example, I know that, relatively speaking, I'm not stupid. But the fact that I'm not a dumb as my relatives doesn't keep me from eating hot, as in spicy, food when I know I'll pay dearly for it later. That would seem to me the epitome of a learning disability.

I can think of a lot of learning disabilities: People who drink too much even though they know they're going to get a hangover the next day. Ugly guys who keep making passes at cute chicks because they saw an Oprah episode where Oprah said that cute chicks were approachable. How the hell would she know anyway!

Some people with learning disabilities don't even respond to immediate negative feedback. How about the idiots who keep putting money into the soda machine even when no soda comes out? Then they kick and bang the machine. By now they should have figured out that the machine doesn't give sodas or a shit. I once saw a guy in a fight who kept getting up after getting knocked down. Now there's a helluva learning disability. Of course he may have been knocked senseless with the 1st blow.

I think a lot of people who are classified with a learning disability aren't learning disabled at all, because they seem to have no problem using common sense. Who cares if numbers look funny to them or they get bored while reading "War and Peace". But nobody should get bored reading this article because it can't be my writing.~~ back to table of contents

HITTING A FLAT NOTE

I visited the Grand Canyon once and it was not a spiritual experience for me. All I saw was a big hole in the ground. Well, not a hole, but rather a deep crack in Mother Earth. I felt dirty just looking at it. And what the hell is so grand about it? You can look way down. So what? The canyon is big, but so is the Sonora Desert. Stand on top of a mountain and you see all the way to forever in the Sonora Desert. However, you don’t, in general, hear people waxing eloquent about the spiritual experience of being in the Sonora Desert. That’s because, like an inverted mountain, the Grand Canyon changes radically in the vertical plane, while the Sonora Desert is mostly flat.

Any kind of flat terrain gets a bum deal because the first thing we want to do is plow it up or build something on it. Native Americans had been hanging out on the Great Plains for thousands of years, picking up buffalo chips and keeping the place pretty much as they found it. But as soon as the first white people saw the Great Plains, they said, “Let’s kill off those funny looking cows, exterminate the Indians, and plow that sucker up!” We’ll never know how beautiful the Great Plains used to be because now it’s nothing but the great wheat fields and cornfields. Back in the day, if you were standing on top of one of the Great Smokey Mountains, the great hardwood forests of eastern North America would fall away before you as far as the eye could see. But now those forests are the great plywood subdivisions.

So ingrained is it in us to plow up and violate anything flat, that positive images are almost never associated with the word flat. We always use one of flat’s synonyms: level, smooth, or even. A calm unflappable person is referred to as level-headed or even-tempered, never as flat-tempered or flat-headed. If the Flathead Indian of North America had only called themselves the Level-headed Indians, they could have been one of the great tribes. In the board room, if sales are level, that may not be good, but it isn’t bad either. If sales are flat, that’s bad. Why does it have to be smooth sailing? Why can’t it be flat sailing? And what’s wrong with flat-chested women? We men might like them better if we just referred to them as smooth-chested women.

I've become enamored of the beauty of the southwestern desert. My favorite use for mountains is to be to climb to the top of one so that I could look out over the expanse of the Great Sonora Desert, but I can hardly stand to do that anymore. Subdivisions made of termite food are springing up like mushrooms and ruining the view. I’m not a canyon man, but I wouldn't advise becoming too enamored of the beauty of the Grand Canyon either. Eventually we’re going to run out of level terrain, or discover something really profitable in the Grand Canyon. And once that happens, just see how quickly we flatline that sucker.~~ back to table of contents

SAY IT LOUD. I'M THE L WORD AND I'M PROUD!

I’m a liberal:: a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, unapologetic, if-you’re-a-conservative-you-can-kiss-my-ass-twice liberal in the tradition of other famous liberals like Jesus Christ, Gautama, and Thomas Jefferson. OK, I know that these days, Mohammed kind of blows, but 1500 years ago, even he was liberal for his time. Liberals have something worthwhile to say, so why can’t I turn on the TV, just to see what President Obama is up to, without being deluged with diatribes from the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and John Boehner.

As an aside, did you ever notice how straight-as-a-rod Ann Coulter looks like a penis, while Rush Limbaugh looks like a big old, shaved vagina? Maybe if we could get these two together, they’d leave the rest of us alone.

Since liberals are supposed to be tolerant, I have tried being tolerant of conservatives because they’re stupid. A person can’t help it if they’re stupid. Most stupid people are born that way. But there is no excuse for being ignorant, and what conservatives don’t know would fill up almost all the books ever written. In fact, what conservatives don’t know is already filling up every book ever written by the likes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

The real reason right-wing, fundamentalist assholes have gotten on my last damned nerve is that they are willfully ignorant, meaning they don’t want to know the truth about anything. I guess they’re afraid of truth, which makes sense. People fear what they don’t know. I’ve checked out other liberal blogs on the net and these blogs speak to the issues, but they try to be nice. Now just listen to your average conservative radio talk show host. Do they sound like somebody who understands nice? Of course not! We liberals need to put a toe tag on nice and start getting verbally medieval on their asses.~~ back to table of contents

DIETRIBE

It seems like dieting has invaded every aspect of our lives. The other day, I went to the circus and the sword swallower wouldn't swallow anything larger than a butter knife. He said he was eating smaller portions. And the knife had to be butter free. The fire eater smoked a Camel and called it quits. He was on a diet too. I couldn't even find the fat lady. She was on Oprah bragging about losing weight.

It's getting ridiculous. I put odor eaters into my shoes and they only nibbled at the odor! Everybody at work is on some diet or another. And these diets all have names, as though they are Hollywood celebrities or military exercises. I exercise, but I'm thinking about dieting just so I'll have something to talk about around the water cooler.

All this dieting has gotten out of hand. The word "Diet" is plastered on everything except where it should be. I see cans labeled Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, or Diet 7 Up. Why don't I ever see diet water? Isn't plain old water a diet drink? If bottled waters were marked "diet", maybe people would drink more water.~~ back to table of contents

BEST POPE EVER

I miss Pope John Paul II. I was truly sorry when he died and it bothered me that the cardinals went and elected a successor. Why didn’t they just re-animate the pope everybody liked? The idea came to me while I was watching TV and the cardinals were solemnly filing past the Pope's body. John Paul II's feet were sticking out from under his cover and I thought what if they just started moving of their own volition, kind of like Steve Martin's feet did in "The Jerk"? How cool would that be?

Why does the pope have to be alive anyway? He preaches in a dead language and he's trying to run things according to a philosophy that was made up thousands of years ago. I mean, isn't this stuff written down somewhere by now. All the pope has to do is lip sync. Instead of burying JP the Deuce, the body should have been sent to PIXAR Studios.

After they get through with him, he'll be much more marketable and sales of Catholic toys and paraphernalia will skyrocket. He'll probably have the voice of Eddie Murphy or something, but c'mon, all popes need to lighten up.I never understand why a pope dies anyway. Isn't whatever he decrees on Earth supposed to be decreed in heaven as well? If I were pope, the first thing I'd do is decree myself immortal. Of course, JP the Deuce didn't declare himself immortal, and now we're stuck with Pope Benedict XVI.

Just as I was getting some traction in my campaign to make John Paul II pope again even though he’s dead, Pope Benedict XVI goes and insults Mohammed. Before he made that gaffe, who even knew who Benedict XVI was? People thought Benedict was something between the legs of a Latin lover. Now everybody knows who he is, and his popularity is going to skyrocket, because all the Christian fundamentalist assholes are going to circle the wagons around him.

The next time I talk to God, I’m going to suggest that for future generations, he make assholes square, with a flap, so that it will be harder to circle the wagons around them. As things stand now, the bigger the asshole, the more fundamentalists, of one ilk or another, who will be pulled into its orbit. I certainly don’t consider myself a fundamentalist, but even I find myself rising to Benedict XVI’s defense in this case, because he was quoting from a medieval text.

It seems to me that Islamic fundamentalists want to turn the clock back to the Middle Ages anyway, so what’s the problem? The Pope was only saying what a lot of us think:: that Muslims are violence prone, woman abusing, religious relics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Give those Muslims a Bible instead of a Koran and they’d fit right into any Southern Baptist Congregation in the USA.

The problem is that The Pope claimed that he was merely eschewing violence in the name of religion because Muslims are fire-bombing churches and killing a nun in Somalia. One person with some sense in all of Somalia and they had to go and kill her. Pope Benedict XVI is certain to ride a wave of sympathy in the West. The next thing you know, he’ll be releasing an album of German folk songs on his way to celebrity status. Everybody will forget about my guy, John Paul II. It’s kind of hard to keep JP the Deuce before the people when he’s dead. I wonder how Elvis’ manager does it.

I have to hand it to John Paul II for not taking advantage of the eternal life loophole. When it came time to die, he just died. He didn't hook himself up to a lot of tubes and machines and such and run up the cost of everybody else's health insurance. He died like a man and there's no denying the impact of the first pontiff of the a-gazillion-pictures-and-a-sound byte era. Easter came and went and went and drew about as much attention as a poot in the Pacific Ocean, but John Paul II dies and the entire world is in tears. If we do re-animate him, we must make certain to put a name tag on his vestments. We wouldn't want to confuse him with Jesus Christ.~~ back to table of contents

KING KONG'S SHORTCOMINGS

You know how you’re just sitting around sometimes and a puzzling thought that you just can’t shake hits you. Well, what exactly was King Kong planning on doing with Faye Wray, Jessica Lange, and Naomi Watts? I didn't realize The King's limitations until I was sitting in a dark theater watching the great ape throw a real chest thumping, Whirling Dervish, trees-ripped-out-of-the-ground temper tantrum, and from the back of the theater came the weak and innocent voice of a small child, "Ohh loook, Daa-Dee, he's got no balls!"

From the mouth of a babe, but son of a gun, the kid was right. OK, I'm lying about the kid, but that doesn't change the fact that King Kong gave up a great job in show business and an endless supply of bananas for a blonde. Granted there's not much difference between a blonde and a banana. They're both yellow until you peel them and then they're white, except there's always a big-old dark splotch on them somewhere. (But you can always eat around that part.)

At least in the 70's version, the Kongster copped a major feel on Jessica Lange, but it takes a lot more than that to make the average guy jump off a building for a woman. There has to be some hidden meaning here that we guys just can't figure out. And when we do get it, I don't think we're gonna like it.~~ back to table of contents

THUG JESUS

I'm standing in the line at Blockbuster and renting "Ella Enchanted" and right in front of me, tattooed on some woman's back, is Thug Jesus. I can't believe my eyes. But I know Jesus when I see him and this is definitely Our Lord and Savior, except he looks like a long term meth user. His cheeks are all sunken and his eyes are set so far back in his head that his eye sockets look hollow. And the expression on his face, I never realized before how much Jesus and Charles Manson look alike.

The woman reaches the counter and starts shaking and nodding her head as she talks to the cashier. As she moves about, poor old Thug Jesus' face is contorting as though he's also trying to speak, but it's like he's possessed and the demons won't let him open him mouth, which is only a serpentine line writhing beneath the scraggly beard. I want to touch him, but I can't touch him without assaulting her.

And it occurs to me that that’s how it always is. You can't reach out to Jesus without getting slapped down or getting the law called on you. Better to look away and pretend you don't know he's there.

Jesus looks likes he's had a rough two thousand years. I don't like seeing him like this. I will to go to church where, in exchange for not paying taxes, they keep Jesus stuck up on a pole so that he can't move. Perhaps in church I can forget the desperation in those sunken eyes.~~ back to table of contents

PASS THIS ON

There are five categories of cyber scum that I find particularly despicable: child pornographers, identity thieves, Virus writers, spammers, and chain mailers. If you’re in one of the first four categories listed, you already know you’re maggot manna and you’re probably OK with it. There’s no point in haranguing you here. If you’re in the last category, you probably think of yourself as a sweet, Christian spreader of love and well wishes around the world. But I still consider what you send garbage and it is to you that this rant is directed. I’m especially angry at people who send on chain mail letters because some of you are friends of mine and I know you know better.

Of course sometimes people really believe in this chain mail voodoo. I have a friend like that and he always getting himself into trouble by forwarding chain mail email garbage on to me. The email will sometimes contain a hokey prayer. He views sending them on as participating in a form of group prayer. Ha! They usually start with a prologue about how many times this particular piece of swill has been around the world. Next we get the story of how some unnamed person from some wild and inaccessible place like Ouagadougou or the Galapagos Islands or downtown Cleveland either benefited from forwarding the trash on or paid dearly for breaking the chain. Generally the spiel is something like:: Send this to 12 other people and good fortune will come your way. A woman in Ouagadougou sent this to 12 other people (by camel, no less) and she was overlooked while standing in the line for female genital mutilation. But misfortune may come your way if you break the chain. A man in Cleveland broke the chain and he was hit by a bus while reading a telegram from his girlfriend in Ouagadougou.

My friend is an idiot because he insists on forwarding this nonsense to me. I’ve told him a dozen times that I’m only going to break the chain. I’ve learned from past experience that if I delete, something bad happens to my friend and not to me. You’d think he would have figured it out by now. Technically, he broke the chain when he sent it to me because I always break the chain, no matter what kind of chain it is. It can be a chain mail letter, the chains of slavery, or a conga line. I don’t care. Years ago, Aretha Franklin had a hit single, CHAIN OF FOOLS. I bought the 45, listened to it once, and then broke it.

I think there are many otherwise rational and intelligent people who click into one of these nutty emails and then fear that by breaking the chain, they will make God mad. I talk to God everyday. Trust me, he doesn’t mind.~~ back to table of contents

CENSORSHIP

If you value the free and unencumbered exchange of ideas and you are willing to accept the social turmoil that invariably comes with the free and unencumbered exchange of ideas, then censorship is an abomination. Period.

If you value "the old ways" and want to preserve them above all else; or if you have an agenda to promote, such as getting taxpayers to ante up for more government spending on programs of dubious value, then censorship is not only acceptable, it is necessary.

In the USA, lots of people say they don't like censorship because we're supposed to be all about freedom, but they really want censorship. Hence support for an amendment to The Constitution to ban burning the flag. I support some censorship and in the areas where I support it, I think we need a lot more. Unfortunately, it is very difficult.

I think, for example, that there is too much ridiculous sex and violence on TV. I have nothing against explicit sex and violence, just gratuitous sex and violence. Same thing with profanity. Bleeping out the F word doesn't change the fact that everybody knows that the character just said "fuck", so why bother. If "fuck" is appropriate, it should be left in. If it is not appropriate, it should fall to the censor. And therein lies the problem. Who gets to define appropriate?

For me, the amount of discomfort, caused by the interactions that take place within a social unit, that one can tolerate before something becomes inappropriate is what in truth defines the difference between a Liberal and a Conservative. A liberal being willing to let a lot more pass than a conservative. In the privacy of my home, I am a staunch conservative. When it comes to public affairs, I am an unapologetic liberal. That's why I have no problem with allowing flag burning and at the same time, I despise the parents of poorly disciplined and manner less children. I see no conflict there.

A society has the right to set some common standards and values. Otherwise, what is the point in having a society? The mores of a society need to be maintained. The real question is about what your values are. Unless we're anarchists, we all want to censor, we just don't want to be censored. Whether in the home or the public arena, whoever is in power gets to define what is appropriate. The winners get to censor and gloat. The rest of us just have to say "Fuck!"--under our breaths of course--and wait our turn.~~ back to table of contents

THE DEAD

Why is it so hard for people to say that somebody who has just died is dead? It has become good manners to refer to the recently deceased as being something other than dead. As a result, dead people go a lot of places:: He went to his reward... He went to heaven... She went to a better place. Dead people also cross over, which would, of course, make a near death experience a double cross.

Sometimes where dead people go is just left up to the imagination of the listener:: He's left us or she's gone. Wherever they go, they move really fast because they do a lot of passing:: She passed away... He passed on... or simply… He passed, which sounds like something a kidney stone does.

There are humorous ways to say somebody died:: kicked the bucket or bit the dust. Kicking the bucket makes no sense at all to me, but biting the dust is not a bad euphemism for dying.

I think that people don't want to say "dead" because dead sounds so final. People talk about life after death, but that is a big contradiction. If there were life after death, the dead would only be sort of taking a short break, just a catching a little well-deserved power nap maybe. Perhaps that’s why the newly deceased also rest or sleep.

After someone has been dead a long time, it's OK to refer to them as dead. There must be some statute of limitations that has to expire before one can acknowledge that a dead person may not be in a temporary state? That attitude is kind of disrespectful to the dead. It's like walking up to a black person or a white person in the United States and calling them "colored".

There’s no reason to treat “dead” like it’s some dirty four-letter word. Being dead probably isn't all that bad, and even if being dead is all that bad, what are you going to do?~~ back to table of contents

IN THE BAG

My sweetie, The Bombastic Brit, just achieved a significant birthday milestone, which I shall, of course, not reveal to the entire world. In any case, I gave her jewelry, even though I object, with the exception of a wedding band, to buying portable property for any woman. And even then, I don’t believe in going beyond a simple gold band, sort of the-hamburger-and-a-coke-is-enough principle applied to tying the knot. The Bombastic Brit is, however, a good woman, so I figured what the hell. Just this once shouldn’t hurt anything.

I went to a jewelry store in the mall, something people who buy jewelry on a regular basis say you should never do. But I figured what the hell. Just this once shouldn’t hurt anything.

I should have known I was in over my head when there wasn’t a price tag to be seen, but you see a lot of that no price business even in grocery stores these days, so I went ahead and looked around. They gotta tell you what this crap—and that’s all jewelry is as far as I’m concerned, a bunch of sparkly crap—costs before you pay for it, don’t they?

The only thing more boring than looking at diamonds is listening to somebody who owns one talk about how cheap they got it. I walked right through all that glitter without anything catching my eye until, in a case near the exit; I saw these matching earrings and pendant. I stopped. Big mistake. A woman popped up and asked me what the occasion was. And when I say popped up , I’m not exaggerating. I lowered my eyes for just a second to look at the set, and when I raised my eyes, she was there like one of those pop-up targets at the police force practice range. Must have been a trapdoor in the floor or something.

I told her what the occasion was, and she told me that I have very good tastes. Not just good tastes, mind you, but very good tastes. Next she informed me that the items were very reasonable priced at “eight”. I agreed that “eight" was reasonable for some junk that somebody just picked up off the ground in Namibia because, after all, it cost them something to ship the stuff here. Even with tax, I was going to get out of the place for under “ten”.

But like the pitchperson in an infomercial, the woman was not done yet. The earrings and the pendant were sold separately. It was “eight” for the earrings and “eight” for the pendant. I knew I was fast getting behind the eight ball here, but she had just said the items were very reasonably priced. If I objected to the price now, then I was being very unreasonable by definition. Besides, even with both “eights” and sales tax, I was still getting out for less than “twenty”. Hell, I had a twenty in my wallet. No problemo.

In my defense, I must say that it was not until after we had agreed on “sixteen” that the word “HUNDRED” ever came up. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound! At least the saleslady put the stuff in a really nice box. Looked like a tiny casket in which to bury the corpse of my dead bank account. Then she put the box into a bag. Well hell! If I had seen the bag at the get go, I would have said forget the rocks, just gimme that sack! Damn thing probably added one of those hundreds onto the price.

The Bombastic Brit is already gushing over her new treasure. She is really happy, so I guess it was worth it, as far as that part goes, but now she is already pestering me to take her out so that she can show off her trophies. That’s a downside that even I didn’t anticipate to giving a woman portable property. Oh well--heavy sigh--just this once shouldn't hurt anything.

And she just loves that cute little bag too!~~ back to table of contents

SAVE YOUR BREATH

Every time I turn around, somebody is imploring me to SAVE something. I think a lot of this "saving" this and that is just hyperbole. Can there really be that many things in the universe that are endangered?

I see bumper stickers exhorting me to SAVE THE WHALES. Now I'm as fond of whales as your average elderly Japanese man, but a whale is pretty damned big. Do we really need that many of them? I am, however, for saving whales simply because I can't stand the thought of hurting one.

Then there's the SAVE THE POLAR BEARS campaign. Seems there are only a few thousand polar bears left in the wild. So what? As far as I know, there are no people left in the wild (probably because we're afraid of polar bears) even though we're breeding like rabbits on Viagra. Polar bears have sometimes been known to eat people. I suspect that the SAVE THE POLAR BEARS campaign is only going to result in the SAVE THE ESKIMOS campaign.

But I am an animal lover, of sorts. I don't see the need for killing anything except a few nasty germs and viruses out of the world. What I really can't stomach is all this business about saving stuff that's already dead. I was paying a bill, and when I went to put the stamp on the envelope, there was, SAVE A STAMP, PAY BILLS ONLINE. Why in the hell would I want to save a stamp? I don't care if they stamp out stamps forever!

Every time I turn on the TV, some car salesperson is exhorting me to "SAVE MONEY" by rushing to their lot and buying a car right now. Dollar bills have the same relationship to my wallet that polar bears have to the wild, there are definitely not enough of them in it. But is money really an endangered species? Do these salespeople contribute part of my monthly car payment to the U S Mint for the care and feeding of greenbacks?

It's all a big scam. Many popular products and services claim to SAVE TIME AND MONEY. If so many people are saving time and money, then why are we always running out of them both? We don't need to save anything or anybody. Nature and the wild will be just fine if we would just let them alone. There would definitely be more dollar bills in my wallet if I would just let them alone.~~ back to table of contents

NOBODY DOES IT BETTER

My boss will not accept Planned Obscurity as a career strategy. I simply cannot get him to understand. Since he is a supervisor, he is somebody, at least in relation to his underlings, so he is already too far gone to see the upside of being nobody.

In my work life anyway, I’m such a nobody that saying I’m nobody would be an insult to nobody, which is OK as long as I don’t insult anybody. Being nobody at work works for me because people tend to leave you alone, until appraisal time comes around. Then they want a plan for success. Well if I become successful, then I would be somebody, which would ruin my carefully crafted karma.

An even worse scenario for an incorrigible nobody would be to implement a plan for success and not be successful. Then I would be somebody who failed, which sucks because one can never go back to being nobody, and all my friends are nobody. We lead a happy, rive gauche type of existence: wanting nothing, going nowhere, hanging out with nobody. What’s not to like?

Nobody has job security. When a company has a reduction in force, they don’t lay off nobody, but somebody gets the axe. I may even be immortal. When somebody dies, that’s exactly what happened. Nobody doesn’t die. Nobody is safe. Nobody is fun. It never sucks to be nobody.~~ back to table of contents

GIVEN WITH GREAT PLEASURE

Emails sent within a business should be succinct and to the point, so what’s with all the flowery emails I get at work. A lot of people seem to get great pleasure from sending out emails. And it’s always GREAT pleasure. I never get an email that starts with “It gives us a small, insignificant, hardly noticeable amount of pleasure.”

People also get a big kick out of announcing things to me with great fanfare. I don’t know why that is, but maybe I should ask the folks over at the values committee. They just sent me an email that starts “The Values Committee is happy to announce the winner of the Spring Values Egg Hunt!” The next sentence starts with “And the winner is…” Well I’m glad that they’re happy, but why couldn’t they have just said “Greetings: The winner of the Spring Values Egg Hunt is…”

When I get an email that starts out, “It is with Great Pleasure that…” I get extremely jealous. It must be wonderful to have an imaginary friend named Great Pleasure. All I have is a giant white rabbit named Harvey.~~ back to table of contents

FREE MIKE VICK

Just because I have a FREE MIKE VICK bumper sticker on my car, people think that I don’t like dogs. I like dogs and cats. I really do, especially in a taco. Just kidding! Dogs and cats are like children. I like well-behaved ones that are seen and not heard. The main problem with dogs and cats is dog and cat owners. Competent owner equals good dog or cat equals no problem. Apathetic owner equals rotten dog or cat equals big problem. And these days most dog owners don’t even own dogs. They own annoying little toy things that go yap rather than woof. A real dog is useful.

Another thing that frosts me is this idea that dogs and cats are better than other animals. Pigs are smarter than cats and they rival dogs in intelligence. Cows are about the most useful animals on the planet. I was amazed at how we overweight Americans, after a lifetime of eating pork and beef, had the audacity to complain about Mike Vick’s treatment of five pit bulls. We don’t complain about the millions of hogs and cattle that are tortured, up to and including vivisection, on a daily basis to allow us to pig out on pork chops and ribeyes. I wonder how much jail time will be given to that jerk who bulldozed a sick cow with a forklift? How about none. Don’t even get me started on what we do to chickens.

It’s not that I don’t like dogs and cats. It’s just that little fife dogs and house cats are not at the top of my hierarchy of useful animals. But cows and chickens, now you’re talking.~~ back to table of contents

GOOD HURT

Remember when you were a little kid and Christmas was coming and it seemed like Christmas would never get here and the closer Christmas got, the suspense kept building up and up until it was downright painful to think about it. Well, Girl Scout Cookies are one of the few seasonal pleasures left that still builds up that air of anticipation until you just can’t take it anymore. We can buy all kinds of fruit all year round; kids expect a toy every time they go to the store; and you don’t even get to enjoy watching illegal immigrants picking fruits and vegetables anymore because we truck the stuff in from south of the border.

Girl Scout cookies still only come around once a year though. No instant gratification there. You have to buy them and wait… and wait… and wait until it’s almost painful. Girl Scout cookies are worth the wait though. And I like buying them almost as much as eating them. The girls come around in their little brown or green uniforms, looking like little wannabe Marines or Border Patrol Agents. And they’re so pleasant, with their parents are hovering over them like vultures. This year though we only had one little girl come through the office. I would have thought that we would have more parents of girl scouts.

At work I never buy enough cookies because I also like to buy them from the kids in front of the grocery store. That’s always great fun, unless you inadvertently make one of the little rascals mad. One year, after I had just come from the Post Office, where the stamp machine gives change in Sacagawea dollars. I decided to pay for my cookies with Sacagawea’s. After all she was the original girl scout. Well the short person in brown screwed up her face in a look of anger and disdain that would have frightened the Grinch. In fear for my very life, I quickly reached into my pocket and produced some George Washingtons. Scary, yes, but what fun.~~ back to table of contents

GO SONIA!

It's time for my mid-life crisis, and any decent mid-life crisis involves having an affair. But cheating on my sweetie would leave me awash in guilt, and since I can't stand feeling guilty or having her angry with me, an affair is out of the question. It seems I’ve worked hard for four decades only to be denied my mid-life crisis. I feel violated. What I need is a guilt-free affair, so thank goodness for having three women; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, serving simultaneously on the US Supreme Court Since women make up over 50% of the population, we could use another two or three women on the Court, and once the ball gets rolling, maybe we’ll see an increase in the percentage of women for other important fields as well. I especially would like to see a lot more female doctors.

Anything untoward occurring in a doctor’s office is automatically the doctor’s fault. Any time a doctor’s smock or frock—or whatever that little overcoat they wear is called—is unbuttoned even one button, the doctor, and the doctor alone, is to blame for any funny business. I see it all the time on those lawyer TV shows. The lawyer asks the doctor, “Was your smock unbuttoned?” and the doctor answers in the affirmative and the courtroom gasps in horror! Then the lawyer asks the alleged victim how they were dressed, and the alleged victim says, “I was butt naked.” and the courtroom coos in sympathy.

So, if I had a female doctor, I could have an affair with her, and it would be all her fault. After my mid-life crisis was over, just to clear my conscience before going into my dotage, I could tell my significant other about the affair, and she would be like, “Oh, you poor sweet baby. You didn’t do anything wrong, but… I'LL KILL THAT STETHOSCOPE-WEARING BITCH!” The problem is that all the female doctors are taken. So many other middle-aged men have already had my idea that it’s not even worth getting on the waiting list for a woman M.D.

I’m hoping getting women properly represented on the Supreme Court will be just the impetus that motivates women to increase their representation among M.D.s as well. All those new (and young and nubile) female doctors will probably come on line too late to help me, but at least future mid-life crisis'ers may benefit.~~ back to table of contents

PRO CHOICE ROCKS! PRO LIFE SUCKS!

Abortion is nothing but a non-issue “issue” fabricated by the wealthy elite for keeping their Christian, fundamentalist stooges frothing at the mouth with political support and attacking anyone with some sense like a bunch of rabid dogs, thus allowing a privileged few at the top of the economic food chain to plunder the wealth of the American people.

No level of government has any compelling reason for intruding into the reproductive processes of any individual woman. The closest thing the Pro-Life bowel movement has for a compelling reason is the argument that a fetus is a human being. So? Who cares? This country is, as I write this, dropping bombs on people who are unquestionably human beings and blowing them into much tinier pieces than any aborted fetus because we have decided that it is in our best interest to do so. Abortion is like bombing, except on an individual or micro level rather than a macro level.

If there is a core issue here, the issue is not whether a fetus is a human being, but whether a woman has sovereignty over her own body. The fact that a woman has a baby growing inside her neither helps nor harms society. The fact that a woman aborts the baby growing inside her neither helps nor harms society. An unborn fetus is not by any stretch of the imagination a member of society. It is a citizen only of its mother’s womb, and if she wants to execute it: Well, see ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya. That is what it means to be sovereign over yourself.

Unfortunately all the Uncle Tom women in this country, who like being controlled by men, have obscured the fact that whatever goes on inside a woman’s body is nobody else’s goddamned business. I don’t care about the butt-sucking bitches of Pro-Life. If they want to be slaves, let them. But like crabs in a bucket, these women insist on dragging all women into reproductive involuntary servitude. Last time I checked, the 13th Amendment to The Constitution bans slavery except as punishment for a crime. Is getting pregnant a crime now, because a woman is a slave to an unborn fetus? In fact, a fetus is the dictionary-picture definition of a complete parasite. Forcing a woman to carry a fetus when she doesn’t want to sounds, to me, like the very definition of slavery.

There’s not even a compelling religious argument against abortion, at least not for Christians. Jesus Christ didn’t say anything about abortion, and even if he had, there is no such thing as a Christian country. According to the gospel of Luke, no such thing is possible on Earth. These Satanists, doing business as fundamentalist Christians, are doing what followers of the devil do and deceiving people.

At this point, I have to say that while I support a woman’s right to an abortion, I am not an advocate for abortions. I am for doing everything we can as a society and a nation to encourage women to have their babies. But I am for positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement, and I don’t even want the positive reinforcement done in the name of preventing abortions. Why can’t we have a national healthcare system, so a woman can afford to care for her baby properly? Why don’t we have free higher education, so a woman can still achieve her aspirations, even with a baby? Why don’t we have free daycare, so a woman can pursue her career, even with a baby? Why can’t we create a system where it’s in the woman’s interest to choose life? Hell, we want to force a woman to give birth, but we won’t even force a deadbeat dad to pay up after she gives birth.

When I look at the partial list above of what needs doing, the items look like liberal initiatives rather than conservative initiatives. Pro-Life, anti-abortion conservatives will never have the money for making the sort of efforts that I list because that would be funneling the earnings of the American worker back to the people who earned it. Yet these same “Pro-Life”, anti-abortion conservatives will always have money for another bomb or another aircraft carrier or agriculture subsidies or any other rip off that funnels money away from the people who earned it.~~ back to table of contents

OUR SECOND AMENDMENT MADE EASY

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is a conservative fighting for his right to keep and bear nuclear arms. The policy of the United States is that he shouldn’t have the right to keep and bear nuclear arms. The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a conservative politician who supports the right of his country to keep and bear nuclear arms. US policy is that the Iranian people do not have the right to keep and bear the same kinds of arms that we have. The case against allowing either of these two countries to obtain a nuclear weapon parallels the Second Amendment argument here in The United States. The Second Amendment is quite clear, and if North Korea and Iran could invoke it, the NRA would be helping them build nuclear reactors and missile sites. Yet here in the US, conservative politicians oppose, even to the extent of going to war, allowing either country to attain nuclear capability.

Sportsmen, hunters, collectors, and even people stupid enough to think that owning a gun will make them safer, all have a legitimate, if sometimes hard to understand, reason for owning a gun. But only a pervert owns a gun just to own one, and for many of us liberals, there is something perverse and troubling about the proliferation of guns in America. We blame the availability of guns for the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech and most of the murder and mayhem extant across America every day. We need to let that go. The Second Amendment says what it says, and we must accept what it says unless we change The Constitution. Instead of decrying guns, we must work on reducing the number of conservatives who want to buy a gun.

We liberals need to understand that while we have a dream, conservatives have a nightmare. Just as we work to make our dream of America: the shining beacon on a hill, come true; conservatives work to make their nightmare vision of America, the oppressive wasteland, come true. In a time of serious terrorist threat, they vote for “good ol boy” politicians rather than competent administrators, and then when the US gets bombed by terrorists, they see barbarians at the gates and run out and buy guns. They vote against reasonable regulation and taxation, and then point to our crumbling economy and infrastructure as proof of the breakdown of authority and run out and buy more guns. They vote for conservative politicians, who rise to power on divisive issues. Then they run out and buy even more guns because they’re afraid of other Americans.

We liberals need to stop obsessing about the Second Amendment and start winning more elections. Only when we have a firm grip on power, can we reverse the stupid laws and policies that make our citizens insecure in their own homes. Not only do we need to make America safe, we need to make Americans feel safe. In the hands of a competent person, guns are just another tool. Unfortunately, nothing can be made foolproof, and too many guns are in the hands of fools. Even so, we handle this issue like we handle all issues; we err on the side of freedom. Watching this country enjoy the blessings of Liberty will eventually unseat oppressive regimes like North Korea and Iran. Just look at the so-called Arab Spring. The conservatives won’t like it. They want their nightmare. But they’re long overdue for a wake up call.~~ back to table of contents

WHEN THE MOMENT IS RIGHT

There was a survey on the news the other night that said that something like 90% of all Americans believe in God. Bullshit! If that’s the case, why do Americans buy so much Viagra? You’d think a god who can raise the dead could raise a few droopy dicks.

People go to faith healers for treatment of all kinds of infirmities: blindness, deafness, irritable bowel syndrome, and so on, but you never hear about anybody going to a faith healer because his peter is too pooped to pump. Millions of Christian men in America, and you’re going to try to tell me that it never occurred to even one of these God-fearing pussy hounds to try for a cure at the local tent revival?

If I were at a revival meeting and if I were on Viagra, as soon as I saw the cripple guy throw away the crutches, I’d be jumping up and down screaming “Me next! Me next!” I can only assume that a lot of the men claiming to believe in God are lying, because we have figures for the sale of Viagra, and figures don’t lie.

That there are men of Viagra makes sense to me, but who in the hell are the WOMEN of Viagra? I see the commercials for products like Viagra and Cialis, and when their husbands walk in the door with a bottle—box of tablets? Vial? White powder in an envelope? or whatever type of container this stuff comes in—of on-demand boner, the women of Viagra are overjoyed. My sweetie would probably slap the stuffing out of me if I came home with such a thing.

She doesn’t understand that at my age time is of the essence. My heart can only support so many competing demands for my body’s blood supply, and for some reason, over which I apparently have no control, as I get older, a stiff Johnson slips ever farther down the list of priorities. If I’m watching TV when the “right moment” comes along, just the act of standing up puts stress on the system. By the time I make it from the couch in the family room to her favorite reading chair, my amorous intent is no longer in evidence. I stand before her with my cutest little-puppy-dog look and she says, “Go away. I’m trying to finish this chapter.”

The women of Viagra must read a lot, because the commercials entice you with the staying power implied by that talking small print: “If you have an erection lasting longer than three to four hours, see your doctor.”

Doctor Hell! If I have an erection lasting longer than three to four hours, I going down to the senior citizens’ center and show that bad boy off. The women of Viagra must be married to liberal atheists, because conservative Christians could just pray for it: “Heavenly Father, give us this day our daily bread and an erection lasting no longer than three to four hours…. Amen”

That’s all I’ve been able to figure out so far, but I’ve decided that I want to write the definitive work on the women of Viagra. Perhaps the women of Viagra can befriend me on facebook and provide me with further enlightenment.~~ back to table of contents

KEEPING IT SHORT FOR THE USPS

Sometimes a cultural change comes along that I find frightening. Living in Tucson, I’ve noticed that as we give more streets Spanish names, the street names have become longer and longer. I hate long street names. Every time you write a letter, you have to spend half an hour on the return address. When I lived in Illinois, the street names were almost always short: one, two, or three syllables, and that’s it. Here in Arizona, I run along Paseo de Diego Puerta. In Illinois, that would be Door Street. We made a sentimental exception for Dr. Martin Luther King. There are Dr. Martin Luther King Drives all over America, but everybody just calls them King Drive.

If native Americans hadn’t had such long addresses, they might have been able to write letters to their friends warning of the depredations of the white man before disaster overtook them, but here’s a typical Indian address. This one is from Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,

Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

Dark behind it rose the forest,

Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,

Rose the firs with cones upon them;

Bright before it beat the water,

Beat the clear and sunny water,

Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

How would you like to be the mailman delivering a letter from Hiawatha to his grandmother? I can just see poor, old Nokomis sobbing in her teepee, “Why doesn’t he write? Sniff…” Today that whole thing would have been Lake Street.

My ex is from St. Thomas, USVI, so I know a little bit about the strange street addresses they have down there too. They’re like British addresses or something. My in-laws lived on something called Agnes Fancy. A street name should provide an answer, not raise more questions. I find myself asking, who is Agnes? And what’s fancy about her? The street addresses of St. Thomas kinda make sense when you realize that the only town was in a hole surrounded by hills. I guess each one of the hills had a name, and that’s how they got their addresses. Lots of people don’t know this, but the uniforms of our modern day mail carriers were inspired by those hills.

You see, back in the day, everybody on the island of St. Thomas was descended from pirates or runaway slaves, so they all had spyglasses. There was no postal service for the hills surrounding the main town of Charlotte Amalie, so the postmaster would just throw all the letters for the hill folk onto the big lawn in front of the post office. The people living outside of town owned such good telescopes they could look down from their front porches and read the names on the envelopes. If they received a letter, they had to walk down to town and then climb back up the hill.

I’ve climbed the hills around Charlotte Amalie, and after the first thousand steps straight up, you start looking for a better way. Nowadays of course we have cars. Back in the old days, there were no cars, so the hill folk taught their donkeys to read and sent the donkeys into town to fetch the mail. The donkeys didn’t mind. The job sure beat the hell out of carrying heavy loads of produce to and fro. They walked slowly going and coming, and more often than not the mail was late. But it was a workable system until one of the donkeys started picking up the wrong mail.

The problem was solved by fitting that donkey for glasses, and the system was working fine again. But you know how donkeys are. Donkey see, donkey do. Soon every donkey on the island just had to have glasses. The mail was getting expensive because eye glasses are expensive. And of course some of the frames for the glasses were bigger than others, which set off a competition among the donkeys as to who could get the biggest frames. Pretty soon every donkey on the island was wearing big, old Elton John sunglasses. Then some of the donkeys started accessorizing, and pretty soon every ass on the island was in big, old Elton John sunglasses and a wide-brimmed, straw hat, all of which cost a fortune.

As if the mail wasn’t moving slowing enough already, the donkeys used to stop when they met each other and discuss the latest fashions. But you know how donkeys are. They liked to chew as they listened, and sometimes they’d accidentally eat the letters. So in addition to being slow and outrageously expensive, now the mail service was undependable. Disgruntled Virgin Islanders started walking around in tee shirts that said, If I had known, I would have picked up the mail myself. Finally the hill folk had a big meeting about the mail carriers and fired every one of their asses.

So the poor donkeys were back to just being farm donkeys, and donkey mail has long been replaced by snail mail. But the United States Postal Service has never forgotten the traditions started when asses were first put in charge of the mail. That’s why even today, mail carriers dress in those gray slacks that are the same color as a donkey. Is it any wonder that the Postal Service is going bankrupt? The least we can do is help out by keeping the addresses short.~~ back to table of contents

AIR FORCE WHITE

As a young man, I was in The United States Air Force. I can’t understand why anybody would ever want to be in any other branch of the military. My underwear supports me on that point. When I went through what passes for basic training in The Air Force, we wore white underwear: just regular briefs and boxers that can be bought in any men’s store in any mall. My older brother, who was in The Army, tells me they had to wear green underwear called skivvies. My younger brother next to me in age was in The Marine Corps. He claimed Marines had to wear brown underwear.

I can understand it for a bunch of toddlers, but why should any group of grown men be force to wear green or brown shorts. I can’t help but wonder if they came with a big, yellow polka dot in the front. Why then, are Marines called leathernecks. I thought it was because the Nazis claimed Brown Shirts before World War II, but the Marines could have become The Brown Shorts instead. And why are The Army known as Doughboys. If they gotta wear green shorts, sounds like they’re not eating enough dough. Maybe they should be known as Veggieboys. In all fairness, I should point out that back in the day, all the services used to wear khaki. But khaki isn’t brown. It just looks brown to the untrained eye.

I didn’t believe the brown underwear thing. I suspected my brother was pulling my leg and having a good laugh offending my delicate Air Force sensibilities. So I got on the web and googled Marine Corps Uniforms. What a relief, no brown underwear in sight. But as soon as it got better, it got worse again. There was a link for Marine Corps kilts. I clicked on the link, and there was the cutest little plaid skirt! Now you can call it anything you want, but a kilt is just a an above-the-knee skirt for men. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) But why would a US Marine need to wear a kilt anyway? Is there a US Marine Corps dashiki for African-American Marines? Or how about a US Marine Corps turban for Sikh Marines? I’ve never seen a male Marine in a skirt, but if I did see one in a skirt; the idea of a skirt being worn over brown shorts by a man who thinks his shit don’t stink, would make me run away. Just run away!

I was so upset that I googled Marine Corps Underwear—I know! I feel so dirty.—and it turns out I was right all along. My brother was pulling my leg. Marines don’t wear brown underwear at all, at least they’re not issued brown drawers in boot camp. They are issued green skivvies, just like The Army, and they are also issued white briefs, just like normal people. And when I think about it, for people shitting in enemy infested woods, skivvies make sense. If their commercials are to be believed, even when they’re not in the woods, solders in The Marine Corps and The Army do a of climbing over walls and swinging on ropes over little mud puddles. You could break a nail doing that stuff, not to mention getting awfully dirty. That’s the advantage of whites. White shorts make a man more efficient. For example, while you’re running that extra rinse cycle to get the bleach out is the perfect time for painting your toenails that perfect shade of Air Force blue or Old Glory red. A good airman should be multi-tasking, always multi-tasking.

My youngest brother was in The Navy. There is almost a whole generation between us, so we've never talked about what color underwear they wear in The Navy. I do know that if I hadn’t gone into The Air Force, my second choice would have been The Navy, because there are places in The Navy where it’s almost like being in the Air Force. I will give this to The Marines though. I googled Marine Corps Uniforms, and on the first click, I got an entire site of Marine Corps uniforms. Googling the uniforms of any other service led me into sites where I had to click several times and then log in. The Air Force threw up a site full of badges, insignia, and patches. I guess if push came to shove, I could use the patches like a fig leaf. I can do that because my underwear supports me.~~ back to table of contents

ULTIMATE CONSPIRACY

Who really shot Kennedy? Where was President Obama really born? Any thing to keep a conspiracy theorist theorizing. But for all their suspicious minds the conspiracy theorists are missing the biggest and longest running plot ever hatched against America and all mankind. Instead of worrying about the president's birth certificate, we should be trying to find out the truth about chickens.

Chickens are taking over the world and the cows and the pigs are in on it too. I would never have believed chickens could be so malicious because they give and they give. But all that giving is just a cover for their diabolical plan. The cornerstone of their scheme is that, like the beast in "The Restaurant at The End of The Universe", chickens want to be eaten. Thus they become ubiquitous and indispensable, and just when we are lulled into a fat and greasy and false sense of security, they will strike.

Oh, they're not going to kill us, just weaken us with the bird flu, so that we can't fight back and have to lie in bed eating chicken soup. Don't forget that chickens want to be eaten and we humans are incorrigible chicken eaters. In order to eat chickens, we have to breed chickens and the more chickens we breed, the more chicken we eat and the more chicken we eat, the more chickens we breed...

And the more chicken we eat, the more necessary they become. Already, you can't make chicken soup without a chicken. You can make Hawaiian chicken without a Hawaiian and you can make Greek chicken without a Greek, but you can't make either one without a chicken! We are breeding billions and billions of the little white peckers. Nobody pays much attention to little white peckers and every new chicken hatched is incrementally, albeit minutely, smarter than the one it replaced.

Chickens are like The Borg. The individual doesn't matter. Only the henhouse counts, and in their quest to make the world their henhouse, the faster we eat them, the better! A national independent laboratory has determined that just within the last fifty years, the I.Q. of the average chicken has increased from 0.000015366 to 0.000015367.

In some ways, they are already ahead of us. Simulations run on top secret government computers have proven that all that barnyard clucking is really a complex digital code. We humans can't communicate digitally without the aid of computers, while chickens are hatched with the skill.

Chickens may have already developed the framework for a secret world government. Documents hidden deep within the Pentagon point to the existence of a Liberal, Al Qaeda, Yardbird axis of evil. If you're muttering, " a Liberal, Al Qaeda, WHAT? axis", it just goes to show how little we know about the chickens in our midst.

And when chickens decide to reveal their dominance by communicating in analog: English and French and Swahili, and so on, I'm guessing they will be as insufferable as the Jews in Palestine. Imagine being awakened at the crack of dawn by a crowing rooster. You roll over and shout, "Shut up, you stupid bird!"

And the rooster shouts back, "Eat me!"

And what's to stop them from going to the same bars that we go to and picking up chicks. There are plenty of women out there who already prefer chicken, bone in of course, to a man. We all know where this going. It's only a matter of time before you come home to catch your wife or your daughter or your girlfriend in bed with some big cock. And even then we won't stop eating them.

Wake up America! Wake up world! Breast men and leg men, join a support group and become floret men. Broccoli is our friend. No more chicken in our stores. Pullet off the market!~~ back to table of contents

I AM NOT A RACIST

My significant other, the Bombastic Brit, and I were accused of treating some recent guests in our home like white trash. I'm very upset about it. It was a woman versus woman battle. The other gentleman and I had nothing to do with it, until I had to throw the rabble out. I don't know how one treats white trash, but since I tossed them out without the benefit of a garbage can, I guess they're accusing me of white littering. I never litter. I looked outside a little after the hostilities ended and they weren't blowing up and down the street, so I don't see what the problem is.

During the flare up, Woman A (not her real initial) said something that the Bombastic Brit didn't like, so the Bombastic Brit stormed out of the room. Woman A then accused the Bombastic Brit of being a snob. I will grant that the Bombastic Brit snubbed Woman A, and I will grant that snobs snub, but this was not a snooty snub. Woman A said something snotty about the Bombastic Brit's daughter right in front of the Bombastic Brit, thus causing the snit that precipitated the snub.

But why did Woman A say that we treated them like white trash? Why couldn't she just say that we treated them like trash? She could have said garbage, filth, refuse, shit, or excrement, et cetera, and I would have had no problem. But I take umbrage with white trash. The word "white" adds a racial slur that did not occur. All I did was stand by my woman, who was somewhere else at the time. I wish they'd leave me out of it. And I really resent being accused of littering.~~ back to table of contents

AT LEAST HE CAN HOLD HIS LIQUOR

If it were up to me, there would be no stem cell research because there wouldn’t be any stem cells lying around. I’m not sure where stem cells come from, but I think they are left over test tube babies.

I fathered a test tube baby once and, trust me, it’s a bad idea. Things were going pretty well until I went out and bought a vase one day. My son’s mother accused me of seeing another woman and left me. I found myself a young single parent struggling to raise a child afraid of sonic booms and opera singers. Each year for Mother’s Day, instead of those little kits of perfume and soap, he would give his mother a bottle of Windex. One year I suggested a box of candy instead and he sent her a dozen roses.

I wish my son and I had a better relationship. I was a kid once and you’d think that I'd see right through him, but every little problem gets magnified all out of proportion. Maybe he’s been smoking something. Well, it’s too late to put the baby back into the bottle, and everybody has an opinion as to what I should do. But that’s all anybody has: an opinion. Any time anything is done in an unnatural way, it’s bound to raise all sorts of unanticipated, unprecedented, and unanswerable questions; and creating embryos inside bottles is about as unnatural as it gets. I know couples who can’t conceive and who want to have a child. That still is not a good reason for test tube babies or left over stem cells, because there are plenty of babies to be had in this world.

But if we are going to play God by creating and maintaining stem cells in an unnatural environment, it’s ridiculous to start moralizing about how those stem cells should be used. You don’t set limits on God.

Now that he’s out of high school, I just don’t know what to do with that kid. I was hoping he’d meet a nice beaker in chemistry lab, but on top of everything else, I think he’s gay. Says he wants to be a glass blower.~~ back to table of contents

MEN, BE NOT CUTE

When it's time to get a new pair of glasses, a process that I dread only slightly less than going blind, my sweetie is constantly trying to goad me into a pair of “cute” glasses. I’m not cute. Why should I wear cute glasses? Can I accessorize my way into the ranks of the visage-ly favored? I think not. Cute junk is always small and thus, by definition, impractical for those of us who are challenged by our outward appearance. Homely people should be covered by a thick layer of some impenetrable-to-light substance like Tammy Faye Baker’s makeup. So while my significant other is thinking two tiny glass discs held together by delicate wire frames, I’m thinking welder’s face shield or at the very least, mask of the Lone Ranger.

Fortunately for men who look like I do, we serve a useful purpose. It’s just not that easy for women to look good by themselves. This may be an age thing, but I seldom see a movie actress that I consider really attractive. The last time I saw a movie heroine who I thought was really beautiful was Naomi Watts, and she was playing opposite King Kong. (Now that I mention it, King Kong looked pretty good in his last movie too. He must be working out.)

The point is that it’s easy to look good when you’re standing next to a gorilla. And like King Kong, we men don’t worry about how we look because we’re…well, men. My well-meaning but misguided SO should appreciate how gorgeous I make her look, instead of trying to cuten me up with little glasses. Besides, there are times when cute can be hazardous to your health.

A couple of days ago, I bought a pair of short pants. I made my choice based on the numerous pockets sewn into this particular style of the garment. I like pockets because pockets are useful, but I suspect that pockets are now considered cute or trendy.

I get the pants home and there’s a piece of lacing through the zipper lever. For over fifty years, I have been able to grasp the little, flat, metal tab and zip or unzip my zipper. Now, suddenly, I need a piece of shoestring attached to the tab to be able to perform the same functions? Has it become cute or trendy to have a small rope dangling from your crotch?

Cute and trendy have gone too far. I don’t think men are supposed to be cute or trendy. We’re supposed to be competent and trustworthy and if we’re lucky, handsome. Handsome is exercising regularly so you will look fit. Cute is wearing black so you will look thinner. Handsome is trimming your beard and mustache. Cute is plucking your eyebrows.

I was just working around the house, so I put on the pants and forgot about the bit of string. A couple of hours later, my significant other pointed at my crotch and said, “You need to cut that off.”

Reflexively, I reached for my gun, but luckily I had left my pistol in my Tuxedo. In the nick of time, I realized what she meant, and no harm, no foul. But it just goes to show the trouble that trying to be cute can lead to.

My SO is pretty level headed and she had no use for cute. In the end, cute men only appeal to shallow-minded followers of the cute and trendy; while a handsome man looks good to anybody he puts on.~~ back to table of contents

AMERICA NEEDS BUMS

Lots of people think we need a better national anthem and I'm one of them. I want "La Marseillaise", and the only good reason I can think of for going to war is to take it from the French.

If we owned "La Marseillaise", we would have good big screen music. When you're watching a movie and the scene switches to London, you always hear the 1st four notes (buuum-bum-bum-bum) of "Rule Britania". The shot switches to Paris and you hear all nine notes (bum-ba-bum-bum-bum-bum-buuum-ba-bum) of the beginning of "La Marseillaise". I love French bums and if they won't give it up willingly, I say we take em. Or maybe a trade, say Louisiana and 200 billion dollars for "La Marseillaise".

The only Americans who have their own movie music are our Native Americans and they have to share their bums with the Japanese and the Chinese. Indians, Chinese, and Japanese all get the same three notes: bum-bum-buuum. If you hear a deep low BUM-BUM-BUUUUM, kind of like the Big Billy Goat Gruff of bum's, the camera is panning across a war party or an Indian village. For Hollywood, low down bum equals Native American.

Higher up the range are the Japanese. Hollywood doesn't make US vs. the Japanese war movies anymore, but when I was a kid that mid range bum-bum-buuum was a movie staple. You never saw the faces of the Japanese, but as soon as you heard them, you knew who those bums were. And then John Wayne would get medieval on their asses. John Wayne hates Japanese bums as much as I like French ones.

At the top of the range, actually more of a pling-pling-pliiinnng than a bum-bum-buuum, we have the Chinese. The Chinese are known for small bums, so whenever you hear that pling-pling-pliiinnng, prepare for a sea of conical hats. It takes a lot of Chinese to equal one stout English bum.

If you're familiar with Hollywood, you can tell a lot about people from their bums.~~ back to table of contents

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Let's give amnesty to the millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico and South America. I think white people initially encouraged all these illegals to get back at us black people for making it so hard for you to figure out what to call us.

I'm talking about what you call us in public, not in private. First it was colored, but then we went to Negro and you let us see you sweat, so we just decided to make it a moving target. Just when you thought it was safe to say Black, we switched to African American. There is a secret committee convening right now to decide what our next group appellation is going to be. Oops! I wasn't supposed to reveal that!

Now we also have to suffer with what to call the newest additions to our society. Do we say Hispanic, Latino, Mexican, or what? Are we going to offend when we're trying to be nice? Well, if that was your intent, it must feel like a hollow victory now.

Besides, I like Mexicans. Most of the Mexican men that I meet are shorter than I am, even when I'm slouching. They make me feel taller, and I like feeling taller. I say let's open up that border and slouch to our hearts' content.

Except that llegal immigration is a toughie for a liberal. On the one hand, we are racially tolerant, so no problem there. On the other hand, most of the illegals hail from cultures dominated by the Catholic Church, old fashioned family values, and hard work. Well, I don’t want any more of that crap crossing the border into the US.

The US is a pretty liberal country. Liberal values would dominate even more, except that the conservatives keep importing more conservatives. California just had an initiative on recognizing marriage between homosexuals. The vote was close, and I believe that marriage between homosexuals would have been recognized, had it not been for all the Catholic illegals to whom we’ve granted amnesty over the last 30 years. So now we liberals must retake ground we thought we had already taken. The people born here have a right to advance our culture, which while not perfect is pretty good. If all those conservative values are so great, why is it that every country that embraces those values is so messed up. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The United States was at its most prosperous when organized labor was at its strongest. The wealthy elite couldn’t stand sharing corporate wealth with ordinary workers. The CEOs wanted ALL the wealth, or at least a couple of thousand times more than what the lowest paid workers made, so they illegally imported cheap labor. I don’t blame the illegal immigrants at all. If I lived in some third-world shit hole and somebody told me the US Government would look the other way while I slipped across the border into the richest country in the world, I’m there. But I’d also remember why I swam swollen rivers, braved bandits and rapists, trudged across burning deserts, and crawled through rat-infested tunnels to get out of that shit hole in the first place, and except for the food, I’d leave the rest of the shit behind.

I live in Tucson, Arizona and I know illegals. Most of them are proud of their heritage, just not proud enough to go back to it. I am as conflicted as they are. As a citizen of the planet, I know that in the past US policies have helped oppress poor people in other countries, so we are to a great extent responsible for the immigration problem. As an American worker, I don’t want a lot of cheap foreign labor flooding the labor market and helping conservative US governments create a 2-class feudal system of the very poor working for the very wealthy.

For me, what it really comes down to is that no country can endure without controlling its borders, and the fact that the United States is not controlling its southern border is a death knell for the US as we know it. No problem there for the wealthy elite. Being rich-patron types is what they had in mind all along. Big problem for everybody else. We already see serious shrinkage in the size of our middle class. I can live with one more amnesty. Once again, we liberals will just have to make up ground lost to imported conservatives, and eventually gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose will be irrevocably recognized.

The US can survive with one more amnesty, but it’s time to take back control of our borders. If the politicians in Washington can’t show real gains toward controlling our borders, the voters should kick them out of office, and after this next amnesty, any new illegal immigrants should be kicked out of this country. I guess I'll just to stand up straight.~~ back to table of contents

ARE THE CHINESE COMING?

The Chinese are coming! The Chinese are coming!

I certainly hope so.

I keep hearing shrill cries from the news media about how we're about to be overwhelmed by the economic power of 1.2 billion Chinese. Why is that bad? Seems like a desirable outcome to me. We never invent anything important. The Chinese, on the other hand, invent important stuff like gunpowder, pasta, and cheerleaders. That's right. The frantic antics of scantily clad females at sports events evolved from the frantic antics of scantily clad females, who used to precede the Mongol armies doing cartwheels and chanting "Ghengis! Ghengis! He's our man! If he can't do it, Kublai Khan!"

And do you think that all the computers in the world will ever equal spaghetti? For the last 500 years or so, the world has suffered because Chinese innovation has been stifled by European oppression. Now that the most populous nation in the world has finally thrown off the yoke of imperialism, they will start inventing important stuff again. And not a minute too soon, because I'm getting tired of spaghetti.~~ back to table of contents

UNCLE SAM NEEDS OLD FARTS

The wars with in Afghanistan and Iraq could be a blessing in disguise. All we have to do is draft the over 50 crowd, male and female, and send us to fight the terrorist lackeys. Without even trying, I can think of 3 overwhelming national problems that would be solved.

The depressing parade of casualties:

People only care about kids getting killed. But we're old. We're going to die soon anyway, so what's the problem? And the combat isn't too strenuous for us. A seventy year old grandmother can drive a truck up the highway to Baghdad. Forming up convoys come naturally to old people. How many times have you seen a whole line of cars stretched out behind some little old lady, in a big GM car, dawdling down the road?

The Social Security shortfall:

We won't draw down Social Security because we'll be employed by the Pentagon. And what are the chances of us old farts spending a year in Afghanistan and coming back alive to draw down Social security later? Not good. Just think about it. A mortar shell goes off by the side of the road. One soldier is killed by the explosion, but nineteen others die of heart attacks! We're almost talking Stalinist purge here.

The Medicare shortfall:

See the Social Security shortfall above.

And there's one other problem that might be solved. That is the problem of people, who have lived long enough to know better, allowing their megalomaniacal leaders to start unjustified wars.~~ back to table of contents

HARD TO TRACK

I'm afraid of losing my significant other. I don't mean losing her as in getting dumped. I mean losing her like the guy who bought a camouflaged truck, parked it in the woods and then couldn't find it again.

You'd think that it would be easy to find my SO anywhere. She is an attractive woman: slim and graceful with fine features. She was born in Britain and I always wonder why the British let her leave. They probably didn’t realize what they had because she was just a child when she left. Now the Brits are probably kicking themselves and going, “Who Knew?”

Why can’t I keep track of such a nice looking woman? I live in terror of accompanying her to a department store. It’s like tracking the Taliban in Afghanistan. I turn my head and she disappears into the racks of clothing. I stand there looking at the backs of heads, but somehow she melds with all the other white women in the place. She has a thick head of hair, but I can't remember the color du jour. I try to remember what she was wearing when she was right beside me in the car, but I can’t seem to recall whether that blouse was solid or floral. I finally have to give up and find a seat somewhere and sit there like an obedient child until she condescends to fetch me from my perch. She never has a problem finding me.

I was stuck on a bench in Kohl’s for an hour yesterday while she bought a bra. I was stuck for an hour, and then she comes back with something that looked like a couple of bottle caps tied together with string. It took her an hour to buy that!

I never had this problem with black women, and I’m feeling very self conscious here because this is no laughing matter. Black men do not lose their women. If this ever gets back to the barber shop, I might as well shoot myself.~~ back to table of contents

EPISCOPALIANS ROCK!

Those Episcopalians are OK in my book. They just approved another measure toward easing the path to marriage for same sex couples. That people of the same sex should be allowed to marry is a good thing. I have absolutely no idea if they will have sex as a couple, but they can do that without getting married. And since when is marriage about sex? Judging from my own experience, marriage is more about not having sex. As a bachelor, there’s no limit to the amount of sex that a rapacious pussy hound can have. (Reference the memoirs of Wilt Chamberlain.) But in the traditional view of marriage, when you tie the knot, it’s a slip knot around your dick, which is promptly squeezed off until your spouse decides on loosening the noose. I don’t know about most guys, but the older we both get, the more reluctant my SO is to loosen the old slip knot. If marriage were about sex, I trade her in for two twenties.

Trading down is not that easy because the bond between two people entering into Holy Matrimony should be based on more than sex and procreating. Kids can be nice, but they just don’t hold up as a good reason for vows of eternal fidelity. And the bonds that do justify taking solemn vows can exist between any two people, including people of the same sex. When one considers that there’s no reason to assume that just because two people are a couple they’re having sex with each other, even people who oppose the gay lifestyle can still support same sex marriages.

A big part of the problem with same sex marriages is that there is no problem with same sex marriages. The problem is with grouchy old heterosexuals who can’t get over the yuck factor of two men holding hands, kissing, and… You see, I’m one of those grouchy old heterosexuals, and I can’t even bring myself to mention anything beyond hand holding and kissing. But I’m also not God or Jesus and therefore I don’t assume I have the right to make the rules for other people. That’s why those Episcopalians are OK in my book. None of the Episcopalians who voted for allowing same sex marriages were God or Jesus either, and they had enough sense to see that. Jesus didn’t make any rule against same sex marriages, and he certainly had enough time for making such a rule had he wanted to.~~ back to table of contents

GIVE TO CURE DEATH

Forrest Gump may have been on to something when he noted the day of the week on which people died. “She died on a Saturday.” or “She died on a Tuesday.” In a recent article in the prestigious Journal of This and Tha, and Whatever, Dr. Grant Mony, Direct of Research at the prestigious Underground Basement Institute To Chart Health Undulations, waxed eloquent on the relationship between our health and the days of the week. Hoik! Ptui! was fortunate to get an interview with the very busy Dr. Mony.

Hoik! Ptui!: Dr. Mony, Good morning.

Dr. Mony: Goodness gracious! Is it morning? I haven’t been topside for days. Lots of disease up there, you know.

Hoik! Ptui!: Tell me about it… Well, on second thought don’t tell me about it. What I’d like to talk about is the correlation you’ve claim between death and the days of the week.

Dr. Mony: Yes, my research team and I have discovered a positive correlation between death and the days of the week. Everybody dies on some day of the week. The data is irrefutable.

Hoik! Ptui!: But, Dr. Mony, everybody dies someday.

Dr. Mony: Precisely! It was generally thought these people died of disease. The research conducted here at UBITCHU indicates no relationship between disease and death at all. Many people get diseases and they don’t die, but eventually, one of the days of the week is going to kill you. That fact that some people have a disease at the time of death may be a mere coincidence.

Hoik! Ptui!: Well, what about hours in the day, or minutes in the hour, or seconds in a minute? Do these increments of time also cause death?

Dr. Mony: We don’t know. That’s why so much more research needs to done. What if we could prevent death simply by eliminating the thirty-third second in each minute of every day? The potential for saving lives is enormous!

Hoik! Ptui!: History has shown that everybody dies, an—”

Dr. Mony: History! Blistory! Just because up until now everybody has died doesn’t mean that everybody dies. I think Americans know this fact intuitively. There is a, well, I'll just call it folk wisdom, that’s says it's OK to live unhealthy disease-ridden lives as long as we don't die from it. That's why so much of our health costs are about prolonging death rather than prolonging our lives.

Hoik! Ptui!: What do you mean? Can you give us an example?

Dr. Mony: Take cancer. We spend billions of dollars each year trying to cure cancer. We may never find a cure for cancer, but we already know how to prevent cancer:: clean up the environment, take the stress out of our stressful lives, improve nutrition and get the chemicals out of our food, and so on. In this country, few people are interested in accomplishing the goals I just listed, even though those steps are known not only to prolong life, but also to improve the quality of life. What this tells me is that people don’t mind getting cancer, they just don’t like dying from it. That’s why so many health care dollars are spent on keeping people alive after they’ve got cancer rather than helping them not get the disease in the first place.

Hoik! Ptui!: You’re talking about poking a hole in time. How do you poke a hole in time?

Dr. Mony: We don’t know that yet. Probably the same way one cures cancer. The point is that much progress has been made in the search for a cure for cancer because so much money has been spent. A similar effort should be made toward eliminating particularly lethal increments of time. That’s why the National Institute of Health grant process should be overhauled to give facilities like UBITCHU more in grant dollars.

Hoik! Ptui!: OK. Say we eliminate Tuesdays, wouldn’t that just increase the death rate for Mondays or Wednesdays or some other day of the week?

Dr. Mony: We don’t know yet, but think of it like that arcade game where you bang down one little lamb's head only to have another one pop up. If you’re fast enough, you can bang down all the little lamb heads and win the game. The point is that we need funding so we can get back to banging sheep. Then we’ll just see what happens.

Hoik! Ptui!: But now you’re talking about eliminating time entirely!

Dr. Mony: Well, killing time is what we’re all about here at UBITCHU.

Hoik! Ptui!: And also apparently, applying for grant money.

Dr. Mony: Precisely.~~ back to table of contents

UNEMPLOYED MARRIED MAN'S GUIDE TO SURVIVAL

Sometimes, after a man loses his job, he also gets kicked to the curb by the old lady. While I find that sad, I’m not blaming the old lady. God knows we men do little enough around the house when we’ve got a job. Of course there are a few men who like housework. For their wives, having her old man lose his job can be a godsend, but most of us men manage to do even less after we get laid off than we did before. What part of “I’m not working right now.” don’t you understand?

Let me make this clear from the beginning. If you can stay in the house, stay in the house! If you get tossed out on your ear, the first thing people expect you to do is move and find work elsewhere. Men hate moving, and moving doesn’t get you out of anything. You just get another bill, for child support. Children are important. If you get laid off, one of the first things you should do is find out if you have any. Ask your wife for a headcount and their names while she’s still in sympathy mode. Later on, she’ll probably demand that you watch those people, so learn to recognize them on sight.

A friend of mine was laid off and his wife told him he had to watch the kids, something about saving on day care. He didn’t know how many kids he had, so I told him he had two sets of twins and tricked him into watching my kids too. Before he realized what was going on, I had saved enough money for a trip to Hawaii.

Once you know who belongs in your house and who doesn’t, you should learn a few standard phrases. You don’t really need to speak the same language as your children, because they’re going to ignore you anyway. You just need something you can holler at them as they go by. I like: “Did you clean up your room?” and “Finish you homework.” Be careful with the standard phrases though. My wife heard me using “Finish you homework.” on my son and shouted at me, “He’s not potty trained yet, fool!” How was I supposed to know that? The kid was 18; I figured he should have had homework.

Another thing you want to establish as soon as you get laid off is whether or not you’re really unemployed. There are some guys who are so talented and flexible that they’re never truly out of work. They’re the sort who lose a senior accountant position at Arthur Anderson today and tomorrow they’re roofing. They may not bring home as much bacon, but they’re still bringing home something. If you’re still bringing home bacon ends, you’re not unemployed. If you’re still bringing home bacon bits and pieces, you’re not unemployed. If you’re bringing home a few bacon rinds, you’re not unemployed. But if you can’t even bring home the greasy bag the bacon bits and pieces were shipped in; in other words, if all you’ve got in unemployment insurance, then you’re unemployed.

If you’re really unemployed, the first thing you want to do is buy some time. A good way of buying time is pretending to start a business. Pretending that you’re starting a business is pretty much like starting a business, except it doesn’t require any money. If you had enough money to start a business, why would you want to. You’d be independently wealthy and you could just retire to beach somewhere. But if you talk a good game, you can pretend to start a business for a good two or three months before you have to put up or shut up. That’s two or three months when you’re still your family’s hero, which means the kids are still in day care, you slacking off on that “Honey do” list, and she’s still coming home and fixing dinner. You’re just sorta hanging out with the guys, having a great time and recapturing your lost youth.

After a couple of months, the business thing will play itself out, and you’ll have to make a choice. Pick whatever for you is the lesser of two evils. Option A is watching your kids and doing housework. Option B is looking for a job. I say, you’ve had two good months, so just start with Option B. After a couple of weeks of Option A, most guys are so desperate for Option B that they’ll take any job at any pay. And that’s exactly what employers are after these days.~~ back to table of contents

THANK HEAVE FOR LITTLE GIRLS, YEAH RIGHT!

“Joe picks up 50 rocks on Monday. On Tuesday he picks up 100 rocks. (giggle, giggle) Then on Thursday Joe picks up… Oh! Wait. How many rocks did I say he picked up on Wednesday? Oh yeah. (giggle, giggle) So on Saturday Joe picked up 300 rocks. How many rocks did Joe pick up on Sunday? (giggle, giggle) See we’re doing word problems in school. This is a word problem. Giggle, giggle, giggle…”

Speaking of word problems, I need a word for describing 10 year old girls. EXISTENTIAL comes to mind. Little girls simply are what they are. They exist and that’s about all you can say, but I not sure they exist in the same universe that I exist in. Also I thought in literature, Existentialism had to do with a dreamlike point of view. I don’t know if that’s correct or not, but that brought me to REM, from Rapid Eye Movements during a dream state. But these are more like rapid mouth movements followed by giggles ad infinitum. I have no word.

“Watch me hit this ball!... Oh! I can’t hit it. You have to throw it to me… Ple-ease… (An hour later…) Why do you get tired so quick?… Oh, you’re not old. You have to be like ninety to be old. Are you ninety?... Didn’t think so. So throw the ball!”

Okay. Now I’m thinking relax. Just think of 10 year old girls as funny-looking 10 year old boys. Better the devil you know. Just throw the ball until your arm falls off. But now she’s tired and she goes into self entertainment mode characterized by frequent use of the “be/like” construction. I don’t know what this construction is from a grammatical point of view, but it generally follows a shrill, high-pitched noise. She fouls the next pitch and it arcs right above her head. She ducks and screams “AHHH!” followed by gales of laughter.

“Did you see that! I was like, “AHHH!” (More gales of laughter) Did you see me? (Rather hard for me to miss since I threw the ball and I’m still standing right in front of her) I was like, “AHHh!” (Still laughing hard) One time, when Mom was driving us to soccer, there was a snake crossing the road and all the girls were like, “AHhh!” (giggle, giggle) Like, “Ahhh.” That was funny. (Soft chuckle) (I’m thinking this particular fit has played itself out, but then--) “But what if Mom had hit it, then we would have really been, Like “AHHHHHH!!!!”

Now do you see why I can’t come up with a word? Oh, the answer is 350 rocks because it's like:: a pattern.

Like Ahhhh!!!!~~ back to table of contents

AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION

I know I'm a little too shrill when it comes to conservatives, but I'm in a bad mood lately because of the beating The Constitution of The United States of America is taking at their hands. While he was vice president, Cheney championed the water boarding of captured Al Qaeda. He claims he felt that it was the right thing to do because his goal was to “keep us safe”. I’ve seen this felt-like-the-right-thing-to-do defense in action before. It used to be really big in The South.

The prosecution: “Gee, why did you torture and murder Emmett Till, an innocent, teenaged boy?”

The witness: “Well, he whistled at a white woman, so it seemed like the right thing to do.”

The jury: “Oh well, you can go home then.”

Where in The Constitution does it say anything about keeping us safe? In its preamble, one of the six reasons listed for ordaining and establishing The Constitution is to “Provide for the common defense”. That is the closest thing I can find to “keep us safe”. The preamble is the mission statement for The Constitution. The rest of the document explains how the government is organized and what it can and cannot do to achieve the mission set forth in the preamble. Amendment 8 of The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on anyone for the purpose of accomplishing the mission set forth in the preamble. So Cheney, assuming that we’re stupid--and probably assuming correctly in the case of conservatives--substitutes phrases, like “keep us safe” and “enhanced interrogation techniques” that don’t appear in The Constitution.

I don’t see how any one who isn’t an idiot, evil, or an evil idiot can make a case that water boarding isn’t cruel and unusual punishment. According to the highest law of the land, it is illegal to water board people to provide for the common defense, to secure the blessings of liberty, to keep us safe, or just to make the bad guys pee. Water boarding is illegal. Period. Full stop. There are no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. No legal “opinion” can change that. Vice President Dick Cheney and his cohort, including President Bush, attacked and undermined the very constitution they swore on The Bible to defend.

Instead of supporting of supporting The Constitution, the conservative minions, like the little fascist wannabes they are, support Cheney. That is why liberals must insist that the miscreants who wrote those phony and un-American legal opinions, who approved torture, who just followed orders and tortured other human beings, and who tried to cover up the crime of torture are brought to justice and punished for their crimes no matter how loathsome Al Qaeda terrorists are.

I too raised my right hand and swore to defend The Constitution. There are those of us who are true to highest law of the land and those who dump on it every time something bad happens. My one huge disappointment with President Obama, who put his hand on The Bible, is that he doesn’t have the balls to be true to his oath. There are distinct sides here, and it’s time to pick one. Many liberals have already made the truly patriotic choice. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll find many conservatives who'll stand up, other than the 2nd Amendment, for The Constitution.~~ back to table of contents

RED ON BLACK

What is this thing with offensive messages in red writing on black tee shirts? Some of the thoughts presented on these garments are appallingly anti-social. And if you see a black tee shirt with a red skull on it, just cover your eyes. There’s no telling what’s going to be scribbled beneath the skull. It used to be that it was always a male wearing the intend-to-offend tee-shirt, but not anymore.

I see nothing wrong with conveying an anti-social message if you’re truly anti-social. But come on already, we're pretty much down to service jobs in this country. Can you be anti-social and work in a call center? Is there such a thing as an anti-social empathizer? Why do you need a tee-shit that says “Crush the Meek”? If you were really a wannabe Attila the Hun, you’d be repairing Harleys or something.

It seems to me that male call centers workers are a little self conscious about having wimpy jobs. But let’s face it; men who work in call centers are the sort who could only work construction when the weather’s nice. But at least pretend to be proud. How about a black tee-shirt with the lyrics of “Feelings” written on it big, red letters?~~ back to table of contents

OBSERVING MLK JR DAY

I'm awash in guilt because I'm working on Martin Luther King jr. holiday. I could have taken the day off, but that IN LIEUE OF day that I get for working today was just too tempting. What it came down to was a three-day weekend in January versus a three-day weekend after the water warms up at the beach in Rocky Point. I rationalize my behavior by the fact that I don't take veteran's day off, and I'm a veteran. So if I'm willing to work on my own day....

I wasn't that big a fan of King when he was alive, but I've lived long enough to know that I like where we are better than where we were. I'm not sure that the country could have held together if brave and patriotic people hadn't been willing to stand up for what is right. And that leaves me with something that I can't rationalize away. We ought to be able to set aside our greed and avarice long enough to honor the people who put themselves on the line for this country. It doesn't matter whether they were armed with the weapons of war or the principles of nonviolence.

People linked arms and fates and moved forward against appalling brutality and all they asked in return for letting the rest of us ride their coat tails is that we hold what they gained. Now the links are being broken because we can't even be bothered to think about somebody else's sacrifice--might interfere with our shopping. At least, between calls, I'm pondering what today is about. Would I be doing that if I had the day off? When I think about it, maybe I'm better off to be at work.~~ back to table of contents

READING SHOULD BE FUNDAMENTAL

At work people come around and leave newsletters on my desk. I can’t possibly fathom what they expect me to do with these things. They're kind of dry for my tastes. I think all the newsletters should be kept at the checkout counters in the cafeteria, like they do in the supermarket.

My workgroup is trying to get a newsletter organized. I don’t know if the publishing team will succeed or not, but I’m going to offer them some advice. How about some really blaring headlines to attract the people standing in the checkout line? I’m talking 500 POUND BABY SPOTTED IN THE HALLWAY sort of thing.

That’s the stuff that gets my attention when standing in the supermarket line. Of course, I never buy any of these rags, but I sometimes glance at them while I’m in line. And that would be an improvement over what happens to most of these company newsletters right now. And a lot fewer of them would be printed unnecessarily, leaving a lot more 500 pound trees to spot in our forests.~~ back to table of contents

VIRTUE IN HARD WORK?

Why do our politicians trumpet the virtue of hard work? I hear this as a justification for granting amnesty to “hard working” illegal immigrants from Mexico and South America. Now there are good reasons to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants from Mexico and South America. Most of them are shorter than I am, so they make me feel tall. On the other hand, the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, so no amnesty for them. But no one should receive amnesty because they are hard-working. If working hard produces such wonderful results, then why the hell are all those people coming here? They’re coming here because good government matters and the places they're coming from are, shall we say, governmentally challenged.

Does anybody think the United States will survive as a country because we peons work hard? I doubt it. We expect to survive by being nimble and prescient. Otherwise, we grunts will have to immigrate to other countries. In any organization, good leaders actually make things easier for good followers. So why is it so wonderful that Americans work so hard? And if we work so hard, why aren't we taller than the Dutch? I heard some conservative talk show host knocking Holland, but there is a positive correlation between the quality of a nation's diet and the height of its citizens. Maybe we're working hard, but the food is lousy. In any case, I think we’re getting rooked, and I think our nation is fast becoming governmentally challenged too. But just to be fair, I shall have to ponder this question more deeply the next time I’m lounging on the beach in Mexico.~~ back to table of contents

VERBOSE OBESITY

Americans are fat and fat people apparently want to read fat books, and that pisses me off because it's a rare author who can write a fat book that isn't rife with boring stretches that go on for the length of a good pulp novel. When I try to write something for publishing, I'm always way short on the word count requirements. Who are all these people who want to read all those superfluous pages?

I have a report from a reputable, independent national laboratory that shows that the trend line depicting the increase in the weight of the average American and the trend line depicting the increase in the average number of pages in a work of fiction have been in sync for the last fifty years. I interpret that data to show unequivocally that if Americans would read thinner books, then we would lose weight. And this is without dieting and exercise. I can't wait for the result of the study on the correlation between the thickness of books and heart disease to come out.

And just between us guys, I can also say from personal experience that reading thinner books will definitely help you pick up chicks. Arrg! I mean girls. Doh! I mean women. Anyhow, say you're sitting around the pool at the ol trailer park and some hot young welfare mother looking to add to her monthly income asks you what you've been reading lately. You tell her you've been reading Plato's "The Republic". Two months later same question, same answer. Well, you can just forget about good ol Uncle Sammy taking any of your kids from 0 to prison in less than 18 years. What she's looking for here is quantity, not quality.

OK, bottom line:: If you want to lead healthier, happier lives, read thinner books.~~ back to table of contents

NICE GUYS REALLY DO FINISH LAST

Women are always swooning over handsome men? Don't be deceived. That's not what they want. Look at the roots of the word-some and hand. Sounds pretty damned depressing to me. Now right off the bat, I'll say that I'm not handsome. I'm more in the category of inoffensive enough for all practical purposes, but I can live with that until someone proves to me that handsome men have more and better sex than us slightly irregular guys.

I don't think being handsome matters at all. The most rapacious pussy hound that I ever knew was butt ugly and I'm not even talking human butts here. I'm talking about the north end of a south-bound Mandrill baboon, and yet this guy was getting in the pants of the best looking girls in the swamp. What he had was SELFISH AUDACITY. I don't exactly know what selfish audacity is, but I know it when I see it. As a young man, I was one of those who got it all wrong. I tried to play the nice card, which when sowing wild oats is the equivalent of drawing to an inside straight.

There is a reason for that old saying "Nice guys finish last." And what's really disgusting is that I figured this out early enough in the race to change mounts and I couldn't. Nice is so ingrained in me that I can't be anything else and thus I am condemned to a lifetime of hand me down, single mothers. I am the bon vivant of pissed off sloppy seconds. Now maybe I'm being a little shrill here. My life is actually pretty good, and I'm OK with it until I click into a blog by some codependent female crybaby whining about all the sorry-assed and selfishly audacious men who have jerked her around all her post pubescent life. Open question to these serial dumpees, Where were you when I needed you? Just because I was nice doesn't mean that I didn't want to bump bellies with you.

And then we could have eaten soft ice cream and had a nice little conversation. But nuh uh, I was stuck sitting around sipping tea with the grannies while you were in the bushes doing the wild thing with some outlaw type. So now you and the other burned out, high maintenance mavens of rotten men can just shut the hell up. You don't want nice guys. You don't even want handsome, nice guys. You're getting exactly what you want, so stop whining about it! Nice guys, can I get an AMEN.~~ back to table of contents

PRACTICE

Why do people who obviously have never seen a naked woman attempt to draw them? Yes, graffiti retards, I'm talking to you here. I don't mind the obscene poems and limericks. Some of them are actually cute. I don't mind the all out of proportion spread shots drawn on the walls of public bathrooms. Those pictures are just between us guys and maybe it's asking a lot of you to grunt and strain and draw at the same time. But when you draw this crap on exterior walls and overpasses and places where women can see it, it's embarrassing.

By making women look bad, you're not making men look good. I would put this down to the fact that you have to work fast, but there seems to be a pattern to the lack of proportion, especially in the spread shots of long Barbie legs culminating in an asshole the size of Mars and a vagina that looks like something you'd send back at a seafood restaurant. Handle drawing graffiti nudity the same way you handle sex. Get a Hustler, Penthouse, or something and practice in private before you go public.~~ back to table of contents

BE A PROFILE-PHILE

Many times when I change jobs, join an organization, self publish, or whatever, I'm asked to do a bio or profile, sometimes including a picture, of myself. Profile Now there’s a good word for you. Pro means for; so my profile must be a file that is on my side. In this world, it’s important to take care of the things that are on your side, so I gladly update my profile.

I’m always a little daunted by the task. The problem is that the picture on my profile looks like it was taken by somebody yelling, “Turn to the right!” and then “Turn to the front!” Well, if my picture looks like a police mug shot, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have to write at least a thousand and one words just to break even. That’s more words than are in a whole episode of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

I could try taking another picture, but if I'm being honest, I don't think it's going to get any better. Maybe I should turn to my profile archives. My favorite profile is one I wrote a long time ago for a blog. It’s just a list of things that I don’t like. Unfortunately, there’s little that I don’t like, so I’m not going to get my thousand words there. Come to think of it, I wonder if it would be all right if I just updated my profile with my police file. That’s gotta have at least a thousand words in it, and it goes with my picture.~~ back to table of contents

TRY TO REMEMBER THIS KIND OF SEPTEMBER AND...

At work, I get these emails and somewhere in the email, there will be a line that starts with “Leadership has decided that…” I don’t know what this new entity Leadership is, because sometimes the word Leadership is capitalized even when it falls in the middle of a sentence. It's like when you’re writing about God, you write He instead of he. (I wonder why we never write She.) That capital L must be a group noun sort of thing, but if there’s a Leadership, there must also be a Followership. I’m a follower and damn proud of it! Heaven for me will be a yellow-brick road. My favorite line from a song is Try to remember this kind of September and if you remember, then follow… follow… follow… I love that song!

I don’t what Leadership (capital L) is, but I know what Followership (capital F) is. I saw the definition in a movie once. Two guys, A and B, are waiting for guy C to show up. After a while A looks at his watch and says to B, “Let’s go. C is dead.” B asks, “How do you know C is dead?” and A answers, “If he weren’t dead, he’d be here.” That is Followership:: an unshakable faith in each other. The secret is in the “each other”. Try following by yourself. That’s why, oddly enough, when pursuing any objective of worth, the followers always--always--get there first.

A noteworthy example of a good follower is General Grant. Most of the "smart" Union generals, great leaders and losers all didn’t think Grant had enough sense to walk and chew on his stogie at the same time. They certainly didn’t think he could win the Civil War, and maybe he couldn’t. But he had enough faith in his soldiers not to stop them from winning it. He never commanded them to retreat when they wanted to go forward. That is great Followership, and somehow it seems a lot like great leadership (lowercase l). What worries me is it that when I talk about Followership, I can hear my own echo?~~ back to table of contents

LIBERAL TRUMPS CONSERVATIVE

What's the real difference between liberals and conservatives? Liberals play offense and conservatives play defense. Basically, conservatives try to counter proactive, or offensive, change with reactive, or defensive, status quo. Defensive change is the equivalent of passing a bill against illegal immigration. Offensive change is securing the border.

The US started off as a liberal--some would even say ideologically radical--country, but countries are like most people. As we age, we tend to become conservative and start playing defense. When the US was young, the Army and the Navy used to be part of the War Department. Now that we’re the oldest democracy in the world, the Army and the Navy are part of the Defense Department. As soon as the War Department became the Defense Department, its budgets skyrocketed, but we are less safe than ever. A persistent offense will always overwhelm even the best defense, and the threats to humanity only play offense. That’s why thirty years of either conservative or moderate governments have left the country in a mess. Moderate governments don't get it done either. It’s a sink or swim world, and dogpaddling ain’t swimming.

The US needs a liberal government that will play some serious offense, not just against the challenges confronting the US, but against the challenges confronting the developing world as well. A good place to start is with renaming the Defense Department to what it really is, the War Department, and slashing its budget to a fraction of what it is now. We can better use the money to combat global warming, overpopulation, and world hunger; and to improve a national education system so bad that kids with their pockets full of quarters can’t make change for a dollar.~~ back to table of contents

JOYOUS MUSIC

I love music. I spent hours the other day listening to some damned bird, a member of a species I didn't recognize, show off his or her pipes. To hell with records and CDs. As far as I'm concerned, music, real music, is in the birds--and in churches.

When I think of man-made music, I think of church, not those modern day phoney baloney, look-at-me Sunday social clubs, which have bands and choir directors. I'm talking about churches where people shout and get happy and make a joyful noise unto The Lord.

When I was a kid, I used to attend such a church, and I used to sing with the other members. Sometimes the old folks would cry or cry out as they sang. I didn't understand them then, but I do now. Very rarely, I'll go to my mother's church and sometimes they get close, but they have drums and a guitar now. Not quite the same.

I don't listen to a lot of recorded music. Real music is not something you listen to. It is a state of being that washes over you and you lose yourself in it. Wasn't it Nietzsche who said "God is dead". Without music, he just might be right.~~ back to table of contents

LAST STRAW

I live in the state of Arizona, which has a law that says that you are allowed to wear a gun into a government building unless the taxpayers provide a conveniently located locker in which you can store your weapon. I seldom do business with my local and state governments because my local and state governments are stupid. I prefer to give the politicians my money, let them piss it away, and just pretend that I don't know them.

Sometimes, however, the State of Arizona just gets too stupid. On the few occasions that I go to a government building, they have no obligation to provide parking for my car, but they are under obligation to provide parking for some dickless guy's pistol! It's beyond ridiculous! Libraries are government buildings and, yes, libraries are covered by this law. How many times have you walked into a library and seen a gun cabinet by the door? So in the great state of Arizona, any Bozo can wear their semiautomatic pistol or carry their 50 cal. assault rifle into the library with them. And this is in a state where there's a proposition on the ballot to ban all smoking in public buildings in the name of protecting our children from second hand smoke.

Usually I'm able to see some humor in the capricious and under-the-table-bribe driven behavior of our state legislators, but I just can't see anything funny in a law like this. I consider myself a supporter of gun owner's rights, even though I don't see the need for any man, who's even half a man, to have to walk around wearing a gun. To me, it makes more sense for women to carry pistols, but if you're less than half a man, or if you're a woman, I certainly don't want to abridge your right to keep and bear arms. But government buildings belong to all of us and as long as I'm paying taxes to put up these rat holes and maintain them, I don't want just anybody running around in them with firearms.

The law that legalized this nonsense has been on the books since 2000, but it's only been enforced for a couple of years. State legislators do that a lot here, pass a law that will take effect in a few years. The special interests that they serve get what they want, and since the vote took place years in the past, the voters don't know who to blame.

I try to mind my own business. Except for the police--an appalling number of whom don't appear to have enough sense to carry a weapon either, judging by the high number of people they shoot in Tucson--the fire department; and a couple of others, I don't need all those "services" provided by my local and state governments and I don't hang out with the sort of people who do need them.

I'm normally apathetic about all things political. On Election Day, I vote for the lesser of whatever evils I have to choose from, and afterwards I hold my nose when I read the paper. But this is just too much. I am just a cat hair away from finding some way to get involved in the political process. How many other stupid-assed laws are there out there that some thief of a politician voted for just to collect a few bucks under the table?~~ back to TOC

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EPILOG

This is my first ebook and I must admit that I agonized over what to label the short articles that make up this book. The entries are a sampling of the entries in my online blogs, but most blogs, or weBlogs seem to be online diaries, while I do more of an rambling, eclectic commentary sort of thing.

I thought about calling each topic a Bessay for weB essay. Or how about Bwit for weB wit. Some might say that no wit is being displayed here, but since my first two initials are E and S, no one can argue with BES for weB ES. I also considered Bopinion for weB opinion and Bramble for weB ramble. Nothing was too far out: Buttering for weB utterings and Boffer. Much of what I write just comes out end over end, with no structure of any sort, but the name game got too ridiculous even for me when I found myself considering Bend over end!

Finally, I just decided to stick with good, old fashioned, all-inclusive post. And whether or not you bend over when you read, by the end of each post, I hope you’ll feel like you’ve been buttered and boffed by the bESt.

Friend me on Facebook or email me at hoikptui@eulissmorgan.com, or follow me on Twitter. I'd love to hear from you.

Eulis S. Morgan