Satire free

Today, the daily pamphlet interviewed Sue Hilderbrand, the director of the Peace and Justice Center. You will remember them as the group that sponsored the lightly-attended Cindy Sheehan visit. Hilderbrand felt it necessary to say, "We are not the lunatic fringe. We are organized."

There is no relationship between those two sentences. First, if she is as committed as she claims, the misconception doesn't require her defense, and, second, many lunatics (KKK) and fringe groups are organized. I acknowledge her group is legitimate. She promptly apologized for one of her members who suggested a global warming researcher should risk suicide to test their theory. She seems to be a classy lady.

Their latest project was to confront people in City Plaza (the cement tribute to ugliness), hand them a cell phone, and ask them to tell our Representative to vote to cut off spending for the war. I wasn't there, and I don't know how many people they recruited, but when I phoned from home to express my support for the President, my call went right through. This is still the North State.

Smiley face

I couldn't finish today's Sudoku, even after two tries. I am so bummed out. So, I'm going to have happy thoughts.

We have a new puppy. She is so cute, and even though she gets into everything, we love her. Out in the field, we have lots of horsies, and the yearlings are being prepared for sale. If we make them real pretty, they will bring more at the sale. Won't it be nice to have extra money?

There are birdies in the trees and their tweeting is delightful. The fishies in our little aquarium are almost as entertaining as the ones in the big tank at the rehab facility. Sometimes we see a squirrel in the yard, and out in the barn we have several kitty cats. It's all so idyllic.

There! No one could be offended by that. It's so innocuous that it should endear me to everyone. What was I thinking when I created satiric material?

Dave

As seen in the daily pamphlet:

David Kensinger, a Clinton apologist, in his letter to the editor on 7/26, suggested that if we aren't specific about Clinton crimes, we should "keep it zipped." How ironic! If Bill had kept his fly zipped, he wouldn't have had to lie to the grand jury and the American people, and be impeached. Is that specific enough for you, Mr. Kensinger?

Hillary is still married to the multiple adulterer, when any moral woman would have long since kicked him to the curb. Instead, in her zeal to be president, she parades his disgraced presence around with her on the stump.

Earlier in his letter, Kensinger, like other unreasoning liberals, called the President of the United States a maniac. President Bush is a steadfastly moral person, and that challenges the amorality that pervades the liberal ethos. Kensinger should stop spouting the party line, and start thinking for himself.

SUTURE STOOPED QUIZ-CHIN: Q: I recently purchased. . . a townhouse condominium. . . One of my neighbors, who rents her townhouse condo, says she has a renter's insurance policy. . . Do I also need a renter's insurance policy?

A: No. As a condominium owner, you need a condominium owner's insurance policy.

Duh. (By the way, "condominium" is a bitch to type.)

FYI

From a phone call to the daily pamphlet: ". . . I'm a nurse and see a lot of different men, both circumcised and uncircumcised, and the people that are not circumcised -- a lot of them are more dirtier than the ones that are -- and this is also for infection."

Also from the pamphlet: "A Paradise man, Cole Younger, was severly injured in a motorcycle accident." I was surprised that a member of the Jesse James gang went to Heaven.

From "Last Comic Standing:" The comedian from Hickory, North Carolina, pointed out that the name of the town had "hick" in it, and that made it a Red, White and Blue community: Redneck, White Trash, and Blue Collar.

More plus humor

Yesterday's post was inspired, in part, by a recent item in the daily pamphlet, wherein a woman described her youthful encounter with Scientology. They had instructed her to repeat an offensive word (unspecified) until she drove it from her consciousness. She admits that, even now, she still finds it offensive.

Putting aside the fact that you can't be offended unless you allow yourself to be, I hope that the NAACP interment has some positive effect, although they themselves stated that until "pimps and hos" can be eliminated, the N-word might be appropriate to describe Black people who engage in such behavior.

HUMOR: The Rev. Craig X. Rubin, the leader of the 420 Temple in Los Angeles, is facing seven years in prison if convicted of possessing marijuana for sale. The Rev. and some 400 members of his church assert that marijuana is a religious sacrament, and they smoke pot during services. "We feel pot is the tree of life mentioned in the Bible. . ." said the Rev., who was ordained in 1990 by the Universal Life Church, which, for a fee, will ordain anyone.

It's only a word, and now it's gone.

(CAUTION: The thin-skinned may find the following disturbing.)

At their July 9th annual convention, the NAACP symbolically put the word "nigger" in a casket and buried it. There were cheers and applause and the realization "No more nigger." Now we can be assured that we will never see or hear the word nigger again. No one will ever call someone a nigger, no one will ever write another book entitled "Nigger," and nigger-lovers will become a thing of the past. The Ku Klux Klan will stop using the word nigger, and for good measure, the word niggardly will disappear from the dictionary, and Mark Twain will be excised from the library.

To paraphrase the Jack Nicholson impersonator, who, after his act, said, "Is that enough 'Jack' for ya?", I ask, "Is that enough 'nigger' for ya?", or are you a hypocrite, like the NAACP, which only referred to it as "the N-word?"

TV Submissions

1. How do you want the Harry Potter series to end? Quickly.

2. Don't you think that some day, sick children, when they recover, will regret that the holier-than-thou put the funding of their treatment exclusively on the backs of smokers? I hope that future healthy children will appreciate the hypocrisy, and not persecute the pariahs of their generation.

3. Barry Bonds still has a chance to show some class. He can retire right after his 754th home run, and leave the record to someone whose name has never been associated with scandal.

4. A frugal city would send some regular workers over to DeGarmo Park with some surplus fencing and, voila, a dog park. The city that has a $56M deficit would hire an expert to confirm that a dog park is a good idea ($20,000), engage an architect ($20,000), buy $10,000 worth of the finest fencing available, and put the labor out to bid for another $20,000. I recommend the first option; the dogs won't care.

Why don't you go to church, Daddy?

Well, here I go, beating the dead ecclesiastic horse, but I consider the following to be common sense.

Priests sign on to be celibate. If they engage in sexual activity, they can no longer be priests. Period. The Catholic Church has to either change the rules or enforce them. There is no third option. A part of the enforcement for child abuse must be a report to the police, because that is a criminal as well as an ecclesiastic offense. What's so difficult about that to understand?

I hope I never hear the Church give me any crap about forgiving and forgetting and second chances. No amount of love, compassion or money excuses child abuse, and I'm sure God considers defrocking and imprisonment appropriate until He renders His decision.

D. C. Fun

Tuesday night, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) threw a slumber party. I used to think that Harry was an idiot ("The war is lost"), but it turns out he's crazy. He keeps doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. That's the classic definition of crazy. It could be considered merely juvenile, but he's an old dude. He petulantly declared he would keep taking a vote every two hours all night, but when the motion failed at midnight, the Senators started going home and the cots they had brought in went mostly unused. They ate the pizza that was delivered, washing it down with Yoo-hoo, the official beverage of the Senate. After Senator McCain made a fool of him, Harry retired to his office to read his bootleg copy of the soon-to-be-released "Harry Potter and the Enlarged Prostate."

Missing were sex, kissing games, pillow fights, panty raids, and all other features of a good slumber party. Teddy Kennedy complained there was no alcohol, and the ladies' slap-fight was embarrassingly short. There was no report on what the staff and interns were doing, but apparently they stuck it out [oops].

Dominus vobiscum

The TV used the last sentence of yesterday's EXTRA. Because it doesn't encompass the full thrust [oops] of my thinking on the matter, I offer the following.

I find it impossible to believe that besides celebrating the mass, writing the next sermon, eating, and sleeping, all that priests do is diddle children. As I observed in previous posts, the Catholic Church is governed by sin and guilt. What the priests are accused of doing must be one of those mortal sins. Child abuse is a despicable offense, and a man of God would suffer extreme guilt. No moral person could believe that prayer, even priestly supplication, could wipe away this sin.

Surely, a few rotten apples lurk in many barrels, but one has to suspect that many of the alleged victims here are either mistaken or lying. Just because the Catholic Church is the richest institution in the world doesn't excuse their abandonment of all priests by throwing money at the problem, which I don't believe is as wide-spread as it appears. I don't believe that thousands of priests disrespected their vows and violated common decency, and I am disappointed that the church of my childhood would fail to defend itself, especially at this time when all of Christendom is under attack.

The Awards

According to Blogger, today is my 200th post. It is time for the awards. I have decided that Nos. 34, 125 and 157 were memorable, but I am partial to yesterday's entry. It had just the right mix of truth and sardonic satire to make me continue to laugh, even today. If I'm still laughing tomorrow, I'll give it the blue ribbon or some other meaningless accolade.

EXTRA: I doubt the TV will use the following, but I like it.

I once picked up my cousin, who was an Air Force chaplain, at Travis Air Force Base, and he seemed gratetful and thanked me profusely. Do you think he was coming on to me? I'd sure like to get in on that $1.3M per victim. Is there anything that money can't make go away?

Quantos pesos?

It is time to seriously consider buying Mexico. We bought parts of it before, so maybe they'll be in a selling mood again. We would purchase three major assets, although one of them would come with some opposition from extremist environmentalists.

First, we would gain an unlimited supply of workers who could be exploited by disreputable American businessmen. Then there would be thousand of men to serve as cannon fodder to face the scimitars of the Islamic jihadists. Finally, there's the oil. Glorious gallons of oil being extracted from the Gulf of Mexico, and all we'll have to do is fend off Greenpeace and other pipeline huggers. Perhaps we could appease them by giving them that 15% of Mexico that is arable land on which to grow organic foods and produce ethanol. Let them put those inefficient windmills on the mountain tops, and encourage them to examine the energy potential of cow flop. We'll keep them busy thinking about hydrogen (expensive) and solar (unwieldy). While they are otherwise distracted, we will keep the world running on Pemex oil.

That crazy Bob

It is difficult to understand why an elected Florida state representative and co-chair of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign in the state would go to a public park restroom and offer an undercover cop $20 for oral sex, but that's what Bob Allen allegedly did. Don't politicians get elected expressly to be able to afford such peccadillos with up-scale professional perverts in fancy hotel rooms? Oh, wait, Slick Willy got serviced in the Oval Office for free. Maybe that's the standard for office holders, and Bob may have been offering to overpay by $20.

Bob says, "This is an ugly and unpleasant situation that has been thrust upon my family." What potty-prowler could have done that? Apparently, Bob had a different thrusting in mind. That crazy Bob.

Metamorphosis

Apparently, my heart problems have been exacerbated by the fact that I am shy. Those ubiquitous scientists have announced that shy men have a 50% greater chance of having a heart attack.

As a result, I am making plans to become outgoing, loud, fun-loving and thoroughly obnoxious. I'm going to watch and engage in extreme "sports," run with the bulls, hoping to be gored, go to every local auto race to encourage global warming for miles around, and scream obscenities whenever and wherever possible.

I will be going to bars and hitting on all unescorted women while touting my sexual prowess and boasting about my physical endowments. I will accost perfect strangers in all public venues, and attempt to engage them in conversation, especially about politics and religion. I'll show them who's shy.

Just for good measure, I intend to have impure thoughts, and tell anyone who will listen about them. Finally, if anyone invites me to a party, I will be the life thereof, or have a heart attack trying.

Yes, Virginia, sin does exist

It's the next day, and I already have an answer to my question. Senator David Vitter (R-LA), whose phone number was disclosed by the so-called "D.C. Madam," accused of running a prostitution ring, says he is sorry for a "serious sin in [his] past for which [he is], of course, completely responsible. . . Several years ago, I asked and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling," said Vitter. Still no word from Bill Clinton.

Sin

Whatever happened to sin? As a child, I attended "instruction," the Catholic Church's equivalent to Sunday school. The dialogue dealt heavily with guilt, and talked a lot about sin. In fact, there were so many sins that they had to be divided into two categories: mortal and venial. Mortal sins would send you straight to Hell, unless you told God how sorry you were before you died, and then you could be sent to the mysterious Purgatory for an unspecified length of time to somehow serve some kind of punishment before you could go to Heaven. Venial sins, as I remember, could be forgiven by the priest in Confession, if you mouthed a reasonable number of prayers and acted penitent.

My favorite venial sin was "having impure thoughts." When I reached puberty I began to understand what that meant. It involved members of the opposite sex and physical contact therewith. Fortunately, it was at about that time that I joined the church choir and it interfered with my "instruction." Also fortunate was the fact that there were no teen-age girls in the choir, so my impure thoughts were limited to school and the solitude of my bedroom.

Today, if you believe the TV evangelists, the most serious sin is failure to tithe. They are saying that your road to Heaven is paved with 10% of your worldly goods. They are also opposed to drugs, alcohol, gambling and adultery, but there is no mention of impure thoughts. Do you suppose the Catholic Church has also bade farewell to the Big Brother concept of impure thoughts?

Live Earth

No, I didn't see it; it's not my kind of music. But, as I was channel surfing on Saturday, I noticed that each time I cruised past Live Earth, I saw millions of watts of electricity powering le son et lumiere. You would think that some musicians, sitting on stools, bathed in just enough light to be seen, playing acoustic instruments would have been more in the spirit of the event.

Au revoir

I have just learned that a loved one is moving to Central America (Costa Rica, Belize, who knows where). I am told he plans to live in the jungle, and eat mangoes, maize, macaws and monkeys. Apparently, he also plans to cut down a goodly portion of the rain forest to build a dwelling to shelter him from the giant insects and roving bandits.

His mother had a wandering foot, and he is made in her mold, always looking for something, and relocating as his whim dictates. His mother's search ended in her early thirties, so he has already beat the curve.

He says he plans to eschew all modern conveniences and vestiges of civilization, except for occasional trips to town to email and gorge on burgers. He will be accompanied on this quest by a woman who gave up her dog, and hopes her college-age child understands. We wish them our best, and await their next reincarnation.

She's baack. . .

Reacting adversely to President Bush's compassion toward "Scooter" Libby, Cindy Sheehan accused him of turning our nation "into an Evil Empire," and announced that she would lead a ten-day walk from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. for a "people's accountability movement." As you know, I'm all for personal accountability, so I will be holding my breath that it actually means that. Hopefully, she will start with herself.

I continue to be amazed that those who profess peace, love and caring can be so vitriolic. In a letter to the local pamphlet, a member of the "Peace and Justice Center" suggested that a local weatherman, who is researching global warming, go in his garage, close the door and turn on the engine of his car to see what effect that might have on the environment. For good measure, she also bashed the President. I have responded and hope to be published.

But, it's Independence Day. So, let's remember how it can be.

Sail on, sail on
o mighty ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on

-- From "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen

"Scooter" scoots

President Bush: "I respect the jury's verdict, but I have concluded that the prison sentence given Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am communting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison." Left intact were a $250,000 fine and two-year probation.

Senator Chuck Shumer (D-NY) and other liberal Democrats nationwide are outraged. The Democratic Party (whose new motto is "We've got what it takes to take what you've got") are those people who gave us the welfare state and encouraged abortion, who profess love and caring through pandering to the poor and ethnically diverse, who are the party of Bill Clinton, who lied to the grand jury and didn't serve a day in jail -- that party is upset that "Scooter" wasn't burned at the stake.

Liberal policies have damaged the family and almost destroyed Black families as promiscuous women mate with irresponsible men, knowing that the state will support the children their fathers abandon. And the Democratic Party, which is now in power, is more concerned that one minor functionary is able to avoid imprisonment, and imply that it is only because he is a Republican, and his release may somehow negatively impact their re-election prospects.