Archives for August 2005

Boy, you have got to love men like Pat who are willing to speak their minds, even if most of it is nonsensical blather.

(CNN) — Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him “a terrific danger” bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.

“If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson told viewers on his “The 700 Club” show Monday. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.”

You know, he is right, it is cheaper than starting a war. Of course there are other tactics and strategies to be explored before we investigate more serious options. Maybe G-d left that out of their last conversation.

Of course Pat has a history of making outlandish comments. Within that same article the refer to one of my favorites:

“In May, during an ABC interview, Robertson ignited a firestorm with his response to a question about whether activist judges were more of a threat to America than terrorists.

“If they look over the course of 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that’s held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings,” he said.”

Them activist judges are a mighty big problem, voting for civil rights, trying to integrate the schools. Boy I sure wish that life was like it was a 100 years ago. Of course it didn’t work out so well for Leo Frank.

Maybe Pat should just tend to his flock’s needs by taking a vow of silence.

In a few short months my son will turn 5 and the rest of my hair will fall from my head. My poor daughter will never know that her daddy once had very thick and curly black hair, but she’ll be fine as I am sure that she’ll appreciate that her own thick curly hair resembles what I used to have.

One of the great joys of being a parent is a toilet trained child. For obvious reasons this is something that makes all parties happy. And it is an experience that remains with you because there is something about bathrooms that the young folk find to be of interest, or at least my son and his friends.

They love checking out the restrooms of the various stores we hit. Wherever we go I can almost guarantee there will be a trip to the restroom just to inspect the area. And when we get in there I can also be assured that my son will want to see if there are any buttons to push, knobs to twist, levers to pull or doohickeys to play with.

One of his favorites used to be the fabulous autoflush because there were just so many ways to manipulate it.

But within the last week he has grown irritated with it because he feels as if it is robbing him of the right to flush the toilet. He is a big kid and if he used the toilet, by gum he should be both responsible for and allowed to flush it.

So courtesy of his displeasure with the autoflush he has asked his dear old dad to engage in acts of vandalism. What sorts of acts, well to quote him, “Dad, every time you see one you are going to break it and smash it and crush it and then throw it in the trash. And then you are going to kick the toilet so that it behaves.”

Call me crazy, but the juvenile delinquent that lives inside me is kind of attracted to this idea. I admit it, I want to break it, smash it, crush it and then throw it away. But every time I think about it I have this image of old Luke cutting the tops off of those parking meters and you remember what happened to him.

They sent him off to a special camp where he got to play with the man with no eyes and learned about what happened when you have a failure to communicate.

And I am not so sure that I am real interested in that, but I can tell you that I can eat more than 60 eggs. But the more I think about it the less interest I have in spending time in such a place. Maybe I can just pretend to break it, smash it and crush it and then throw it away.

Nothing wrong with a little imagination.

Hello all,

As always I have received a plethora of proclamations provided by participating plebians. Actually plebian is not an appropriate term, but I was enjoying myself and needed another ‘p’ word.

Within the past week I have received comments and email regarding the posts here on this blog and wanted to share some that caught my eye.

On the Speculation on Sharon’s Thoughts thread Q Said:

“I don’t think we’ll see peace in the Middle East in our lifetime, Jack.

If anyone thinks the disengagement is going to buy peace, they’re going to be sadly disappointed. The best one can hope for is that the disengagement will position Israel strategically for subsequent developments (military and political).”

I am in agreement with him, but with resignation. It really is a sad comment.

Stacey agreed with me regarding Frist and Intelligent Design:

“I’m with you on this issue. I think it’s total bunk. I was so excited when Frist broke party with his stem cell support. But this is disappointing.”

But Jim from Tulsa disagreed saying in an email:

“Evolution is an unproven theory. What does it hurt to expose people to multiple viewpoints.”

A number of posters commented on the Work Linked To Brain Damage post.

Cindra shared the following:

“My family already has a inherited brain degenerative disease in our genes – Huntington’s. I can tell you that, as a teacher, I can understand the connection. Aside from the humerous explanations, many of the older schools have asbestos, to say nothing of chalk dust, which has gone by the wayside. It would be interesting to see if these numbers change as asbestos is removed and chalk is no longer used.”

I appreciated the insight. Call me slow, but I had forgotten about chalk dust and asbestos.

A number of readers wrote me about the All It Takes is a Good Hug and A little Love and the One More Post- A Good Hug posts.

They confirmed that there are a large number of people who are in need of a good hug. Share a little love with those around you.

I just broke one of my cardinal rules when I wrote ‘Trust Me, I know.’ I hate reading/hearing things like that because all too often they are said by people who haven’t much substance to support their claims/allegations.

And now I have just made myself into one of those ‘self-appointed’ experts. I’ll tell you where and when this kind of statement really began to irk me. It was in college and I was a heartbroken lad pining away over a girl.

The ‘trust me, I know’ crowd assured me that if I listened to their advice things would improve. Here is a sample of what I heard:

1. You need to just grab her and kiss her. Don’t let her push you away. trust me, I know, I am a girl and we love that.
2. She is not interested and she never will be. I am sorry to tell you this, but trust me, I know, I am a girl and this is just the way that it is.
3. Find a really ‘hot’ girl and start dating her. When she finds out that you are with a really ‘hot chick’ she’ll come running back. Trust me, I know. I am a girl and that is how we act.
4. Dude, you need to find a woman who looks just like her, date her and dump her. Trust me, I know. I have been there.
5. You need to go learn in yeshiva. You are searching for the derech and until you find it, you’ll never be ready for love. Trust me, I know. Before I went B’T I was just like you.

See what I mean. There is contradictory advice, not to mention an attitude that just irritated me.

But I have to switch gears. Earlier in this post I said that I broke one of my cardinal rules. There was a time in college when I tried to create a new saying by saying that I busted my bishop.

I wanted it to be a substitute for that line I mentioned, you know the one about breaking a cardinal rule. The problem was that any time I used it people thought that I was engaging in sexual innuendo.

One of these days I might have to try doing that again, but this time I’ll come up with a better line, trust me, I know.

This story about the British and their pubs made me shake my head.

“LONDON — It all seemed like such a good idea when the government proposed the law change in 2001: Eliminate Britain’s notorious 11 p.m. bar closing times, and the nation would become a more civilized place.

Nightlife would thrive; residents and tourists alike would drink and eat continental-style into the early hours; and, most important, the British would start to lose their international reputation for drinking too heavily and getting into trouble. This was, after all, the 21st Century, nearly 100 years after the 11 p.m. closing was imposed to keep munitions workers producing shells for World War I.

But that was 2001. Four years later and with the deadline for licensing applications under the pending law nearing, there are screams of alarm throughout the news media, police, courts and parliamentary circles that allowing Britons to drink longer will make matters worse. They will, so the new argument goes, get more drunk over more time, cause more trouble and fill up more hospitals, courtrooms and jails.”

Ok, call me crazy but I kind of suspect that the latter paragraph makes more sense. Give people more time to get drunk and watch the lunacy on the streets increase. Especially if the following is true:

“Binge drinking is considered so bad in England and Wales that senior judges have told the government’s Home Office to expect alcohol-fueled violence to soar when the new law allows bars to stay open up to 24 hours a day.

“The situation is already grave, if not grotesque,” wrote Warwick Judge Charles Harris in a report to the Home Office. “And to facilitate this by making drinking facilities more widely available is close to lunacy. It simply means that our towns and city centers are abandoned every night to tribes of pugnacious, drunk, noisy, vomiting louts.”

But even the conservative Daily Telegraph has said it is not the pub hours that are the problem, it’s the British character.

Culture of non-teetotalers

“There is no doubt we have a problem in this country in the way we drink alcohol,” said a Telegraph editorial. “This is partly a lack of personal responsibility: We have never quite caught the continental habit of combining sensible amounts of wine with the related pleasures of fine food.”

Historically, the British have been among Europe’s heaviest drinkers, statistically imbibing not quite as much as the Germans or Finns but drinking heavily in short bursts.”

One of these days I’ll blog about my experiences in various pubs as I routinely slammed the sport of soccer/football as being a children’s game suggested that if the hooligans really were men they wouldn’t need such stupid excuses to run wild.

There is nothing like attacking the fragile male ego, trust me, I know.