Playground Bullies

I remember a kid from the schoolyard playground. Danny loved to play King of the Mountain. He loved it, because he always managed to be king. Our "mountain" was a one-foot high lump in the playground, and he would gleefully, and with excessive force, push anyone who tried to replace him there.

However, when one of the kids got hurt by this shoving and complained to the playground nun that he'd been pushed, Danny got very upset. "I did not!" he cried. "We were just playing!" And then, in a flash of brilliance, he added, "That kid just doesn't like me! He's trying to get me in trouble! He's always trying to get me in trouble!"

Cheney's Got A Gun

Anyone can have an accident, right?

What separates the men from the boys is how quickly a man owns up to it.

Saturday afternoon, "around 5:30 pm" vice president Cheney was "hunting" with friends and accidentally shot one of them. I have no reason to think the shooting wasn't an accident. If Cheney had wanted his friend dead, he wouldn't have done it himself. So this posting isn't about Cheney being a bad shot, or how this proves guns should be outlawed, or how is it possible to catch game with a man who is flanked by heavily armed Secret Service agents.

What it's about, is character.

Reefer Sadness

In colonial America, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous and were grown as an ornamental plant called the "love apple." The odor of the leaves made people think it was poisonous. It wasn't until the 1800s that tomatoes made their way into American cookbooks, always with instructions that they be cooked for at least three hours or else they "will not lose their raw taste."

Personally, I am not a big fan of tomatoes. But considering that I recently co-authored a political thriller in which the major characters grow medical marijuana (and smoke a little, too), one might assume that I am an experienced user of this other, so-called, "poisonous" plant. I am not. But marijuana's press has been just as misleading as that of the tomato once was.

Stop, Thief!

Does this ever really happen? On a crowded sidewalk, a thief snatches a woman's purse and dashes away. "He stole my purse!" the woman cries, and some hero takes off in pursuit, tackles the would-be villain, and rescues the purse to the applause of onlookers who, despite not helping, are pleased the woman got her purse back.

Banner Decade For Nitwits

When I was growing up, I learned to identify previous decades by the epithets that had been assigned to them by the Columbia Record Club. "The Gay Nineties", "The Roaring Twenties", "The Swinging Forties" and so on were both names of record collections and descriptions of life in those long-gone eras.

Unexpected

As you must have heard by now, yesterday's tragic shootings at Virginia Technical Institute claimed the lives of 33, including the shooter. Unsurprisingly, some mainstream media pundits were already calling this the "worst mass shooting" in the history of the United States, although a few of those outlets qualified it as the worst mass civilian shooting, which conveniently brushes aside various massacres of Native Americans such as those at Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, and Marias (and others). In those massacres, the shooters were Army soldiers and the victims were people of color, and the media tends to ignore the entire act of genocide of this nation's first inhabitants, except for the occasional blockbuster movie.

Loose Lips Sink Shitty Politicians

Arizona Republican Congressman Rick Renzi has introduced an amendment into the bill authorizing intelligence programs for the coming year, that makes it illegal to leak secret information to the press. The amendment is non-binding, but urges the White House to take "firm action" against government employees (and ex-employees) who leak secrets to the press.

Identity Theft

A cute series of ads running on TV these days shows a regular person—a guy at the gym, or a barber, or a housewife—speaking in a voice that clearly doesn't belong to that person. A black guy at the gym will have the voice and accent of a Valley girl, or a white housewife will sound like a Japanese teenager. The ads are intended to raise awareness of the new phenomenon of "identity theft" and a particular credit card that claims to insulate its customers from such a crime.

Voting At The Primary

But first, I had to be identified. Arizona recently passed a controversial "voter identification" bill, which means a voter registration card isn't enough. So much for the American Constitution's declaration that a "universal ID card" will not be required. "May I see your papers, Herr Citizen?"

Once Upon A Measured Time

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far, away, there was a world that turned in natural balance, its sustainable tool-using population fed, clothed and housed in a simple manner that left much time for contemplation, artistic pursuits, and the enjoyment of life.

Wish I'd Thought Of That!

Dennis Hope is a pretty happy guy these days. In 1980, it occurred to him that there were, literally, trillions of acres of unclaimed land in our solar system alone: On the Moon, on Mars, and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, not to mention on the hundreds of thousands of asteroids whizzing around in orbit. And that's only in our solar system—hundreds of planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than our Sun.

Bang For A Buck

You won't be surprised to hear that I never intended to go to Tempe for fireworks again. But then Karen found herself spending the day there to work, and Zach wanted to watch the fireworks where she was, and besides even though it would be hot, they now have a splash park within the grounds and there would be inflatable kiddie bounce things and if we got there early enough, there shouldn't be an issue with parking.

Love, Republican Style

Men, women, boys girls, cops, even mules—is there anything a Republican won't screw, in between "defending marriage" and sending the sons of Democrats to die in Iraq for Bush's oil war?

Political Humor

Given the past two weeks' excess of Republican hilarity, I thought it was time to present a few choice bits of political cartoons I've been saving.

I'm Sorry

Last year, I was so busy during the month of October that I didn't have a chance to blog at all. Near the end of the month, I began to receive emails from loyal readers I've never met, wondering if I was all right! Since this month promises to be as busy as October of last year was, I figured I would apologize in advance. But, this is October 1st; so at least, no matter how bad it gets, I will have blogged at least once in October! And the topic is, The Return From The Funeral.

Look Out For Mr. Stork

The significance of the stork mythology to us is that it vividly portrays an example of eagerly well-meaning parents telling lies to their children on the assumption that the child doesn't need to know the truth. (How many Victorian girls found themselves pregnant, with no idea what was happening to them, since they hadn't been near a stork?) These same parents, of course, would vehemently deny the same kids the right to withhold truths from them on the basis that the parent didn't need to know! Yet we adults find ourselves living beneath a paternalistic government which believes we should be "protected" from truths we don't need to know. And, as with the stork, the consequences of living with false information are hard to gauge but should not be ignored.

A Little Bird Named Enza

On last night's American Idol, Simon Cowell mentioned not once but three times that we Americans are in the grip of the "worst flu season in history!" This had, apparently, come to his attention because a number of the contestants had come down with the flu that week and the sickness had affected their performances. He also claimed to have never heard the Spiral Starecase song, "More Today Than Yesterday", or, for that matter, of the group itself.

Another Republican Bites The…Prostitute

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. When sex is forbidden, sex is hidden. Forbidding it only pushes it below the surface, where it frequently becomes perverted as it inevitably is expressed anyway.

Wordles

Here's a cute one. A website, Wordle.com, exists solely to allow you to build "word clouds" in which the non-trivial words in a block of text are displayed with the most-frequently used words appearing larger than the less-frequently used words. The above, for example, is the Wordle version of my posting on the last Cub Scout camping trip I made with my grandson, Zach.

Brains Being Rushed To Few Remaining Bush Supporters

As news of President George W. Bush's continued approval by fewer than one in five Americans makes its way around the world, an outpouring of generosity has resulted in the Brains For Americans campaign to donate unused brains to the 18% of the American population who have been doing without.