LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 42

There's no such thing as free lunch. Until you're a senior citizen, that is. At that point every social organization in the neighborhood wants to give you bland sandwiches, fat-free milk and a banana every day whether you like it or not. Refuse them at your own peril.

WHEN POODLES ATTACK (THINGS TO BE GLAD ABOUT)

Be glad that Chihuahuas and Toy Poodles are tiny. Unhinged looking, too, with those angry, bulging eyes and snapping little jaws. If they were the size of Great Danes or German Shepherds we'd all be in trouble. Doesn't seem like owning one of these maladjusted little creatures is anything like having a regular dog, who are for the most part pretty happy-go-lucky. Give me a slobbering, easy-to-please mutt any day of the week.

Be glad we have the Olsen twins. It could have been the Olson triplets.

Rejoice that Earth Day is over and we can get back to the business of conspicuously consuming.

Be of good cheer when contemplating our brilliant Cable TV political commentators and the fact that most of them will go away after November's election. At least for 2 or 3 months, anyway. Then as soon as the new President is sworn in the presidential campaign for 2012 kicks off.

Be glad you were born who you are and not Donald Trump.

All are invited to wax ecstatic about the Summer Olympics in China, Incorporated. They will last but 17 days. It will only seem longer. But don't worry, if your favorite Synchronized Swimming Team doesn't win the Gold, there' s always 4 years from now.

Be very glad you you don't have to read in the papers every day what a whack job your minister is.

Be eternally grateful that Rupert Murdoch has not bought the internet. Yet.

And finally, be glad that things are not worse. You could be living in Bayonne, New Jersey.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 41

The reason why it is sometimes hard for us to realize that danger is near is the lack of background music in ordinary life. A tense arpeggio would go a long way towards warning us of imminent bodily harm. In the absence of background music, it's best to keep your senses sharp and use your instincts.

HOWARD DEAN REALLY IS A DERANGED SON OF A BITCH

So here we have the Chairman of the Democratic Party insisting that the Democrats go into their June convention with only one nominee. He says that either Senator Hillary Clinton or Senator Barack Obaba must drop out of the race if there is no clear cut winner by then. He doesn't much care which one surrenders, only that one of them does. Isn't that why they have conventions in the first place, to choose a nominee? He says that letting the convention do the job it was designed to do will put the Democrats in danger of losing the general election. How does that work exactly, outside of, shall we say... the unique mind of Howard Dean? Now we know why he was appointed to that job in the first place, to keep him from running for the presidency himself and repeating his 2004 meltdown.

But maybe in retrospect it wasn't such a great idea to let this guy be in charge of the whole party. He's melting again and saying foolish things. All I can say is, it's a good thing for his patients that this medical doctor got out of the doctoring business and into politics where he can do them no harm. It's the rest of the nation who has to put up with him now, but a judicious dose of ignoring the fool should work wonders. One gets the feeling that the only reason he says this stupid shit is to call attention to himself, and like all such people, there is no other plausible reason to notice him at all. Obama and Clinton ought to unite in telling him to shut up and go away until the voters, or failing that, the delegates choose a nominee in the normal way. What, he's afraid that only four more months of campaigning is not enough? The campaign already seems like it's dragged on for the better part of a decade.

Hell, four weeks should be plenty to get your message out. Are our political campaigns designed to keep idiot TV analysts gainfully employed or to select a president? And it's not like there's any shortage of issues with which to challenge the Republicans, no matter who emerges as the candidate. There's that giant albatross of an illegal war going on and on like some Energizer Dragon. That might get a little mention, no? There's 8 years of corruption and thievery to be addressed. There's a drowned city still waiting to be rebuilt. There's the economy, or lack thereof. There's torture and incompetence and Christian Fascists and the fact that the best equipped army in history can't find a 6-foot 6-inch tall Arab in the midst of his jockey-sized brethren.

There's that massive transfer of wealth from the working classes to the super wealthy that can be mentioned. There's our friendship with the Saudi kings who fund terrorism and manipulate world oil prices in collusion with our own corporations. There's the Republican fear mongering and assaults on the BIll of Rights. And there's the public record of John McCain who has licked every jackboot offered in order to secure the Republican nomination and the fact that corporate lobbyists make up the majority of his senior staff. Does any nominee need Howard Dean around to distract him or her from concentrating on these issues.

His big mouth becomes an issue, one of the few that can return the Republicans to power. As he tries to sabotage the process designed to select a nominee, he sabotages the chances of getting that nominee elected. How can he not know that? Maybe he's getting bribed by the Republicans. Or just maybe he really is one very deranged son of a bitch! Wouldn't be the first politician to be completely nuts. If his former patients had an ounce of patriotism, they'd sacrifice their health and invite him to reopen his medical practice and get him out of our hair. Howard Dean for General Practitioner in '08!

THE TIME CHANNEL AND OTHER CABLE TV FAILURES

We've got a lot of choices in our TV viewing these days, not only the national networks and a whole lot of regional ones, but literally hundreds and hundreds of cable channels to choose from, covering subjects from cooking to sports to nature, drama, history, comedy, soap operas, politics, crime, science fiction, science fact, westerns, 24/7 news shows, feature films, even a weather channel for those too lazy to open a window or possessed of a morbid curiosity as to whether or not it's still snowing in Wisconsin (Unless it's August, it is.). So you pretty much figure there's no room for new channels to be created, the cable people have got it covered.

Not quite. Like any competitive enterprise, TV executives are ever on the alert for new and better cable channels to add to our viewing menu and win valuable advertising revenue. Towards that goal, there are new channels being tested every day. Some are wildly successful, others... well, you be the judge. Offered below is a list of new cable channels that didn't make the cut.

THE TIME CHANNEL- Brought to you by the creators of The Weather Channel, the Time Channel offered basically a clock telling you what time it is. Not only where you are, but anywhere in the world. Tokyo time, London time, Borneo time, even what time it is in Bayonne, New Jersey! Unfortunately, in a test run, most viewers agreed it was time to turn the channel.

COOKING WITH THE HOMELESS- This channel was designed to compete with the many food and chef-oriented cable channels. Techniques were compared between traditional hobos cooking cans of beans over trash fires with that of deranged dumpster-diving unfortunates trying to warm up frozen half-eaten Big Macs with only their body heat. Ratings were quite low in spite of heavy advertisement by fast food chains and sterno manufacturers.

FORENSIC JAYWALKER FILES- It turns out there are some crimes that fascinate no one.

THE PHILOSOPHY CHANNEL- Enough said.

THE DENTAL CLINIC CHANNEL- See above.

THE LIVE SURGERY CHANNEL- This was actually a fascinating idea, having real surgeons performing real operations on live television. True, it was a little on the gory side but quite educational. Unfortunately, the enterprise failed when TV producers insisted on injecting an element of risk into the show in the form of a faulty anesthetic feed, with the chances only 50-50 that the patient would not wake up screaming in the middle of delicate surgery. Even the offer of a free operation deterred many patients from signing on. Then a few of them died on the table when they started writhing in pain just as the surgeon was wielding a scalpel near something vital. Then lawyers got involved, the government got all pissy and that was that.

LIFESTYLES OF REGULAR PEOPLE- The idea was to profile the daily lives of people who are not rich enough to appear on the celebrity lifestyle channels and not poor and deranged enough to appear on COPS. Unfortunately, bowling alleys, supermarkets, commutes to uninteresting jobs and the tribulations of soccer Moms bored even the producers and they cancelled themselves.

THE KNITTING CHANNEL- This one was all set to go until demographic studies revealed that most young people have no idea what knitting is and that people who knit generally don't have cable.

GREAT AMERICAN FOREIGN DIPLOMAT CHANNEL- Another good idea shot down by research. It was discovered that there are no Americans with any talent at all for foreign relations since Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson died.

GOOD CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP CHANNEL-Produced in the Canary Islands with no professional union technicians, this channel was unable to produce five minutes of videotape where the sound matched the visuals. The ensuing footage about corporate responsibility is now being offered for sale to Comedy Central.

THE GOOD MANNERS AND HUMAN DECENCY CHANNEL- This one was scrapped when no professional TV hosts could be found that fit the criteria.

THE AL JAZEERA COMEDY CHANNEL- In an effort to humanize Islamic Fascists, an exhaustive search of those regions of the world was made to find their funniest comedians performing acts that don't include the maiming of infidels. At last report, the search continues, but don't look for this one on your Fall TV schedule.

BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB CHANNEL-This one never even made it out of the corporate offices, unless you count the people who came up with the idea getting bodily thrown out of the corporate office window after receiving a severe beating at the hands of chubby TV producers.

LIFE EXPLAINED-PART 40

Try not to ask permission for what you want to do. Why give somebody else the power to turn you down? If it's illegal, you'll find out soon enough. And remember, men, it is weak and unmanly to ask for directions. That's why those GPS things are excellent face saving devices.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 39

The world is an infinitely better place because of Coney Island.

WHEN I'M RUNNING THE SHOW

When I'm in charge of the world there will be no no renaming allowed. Used cars will be advertised as used cars, period, no matter how many BMW engineers swear on stack of owner's manuals it's as good as new. Pre-owned, my ass. If it was such a cupcake, why'd the guy who bought it get rid of it? And heavy fines will be levied on corporations who announce they are "downsizing" instead of admitting they are firing a bunch of people because one of their boy genius executives fucked up, or they simply want to make more money for the corporate elite by shipping said jobs to some place where running water and electricity are novelties and safety inspectors are the mayor's cousins with third-grade educations. Calling relocating people's jobs in a foreign country "out-sourcing" doesn't make it anything else but a betrayal of those who made you successful in the first place and skipping out on paying taxes to the nation that provided you the opportunity. It is what it is and they are going to have to say so.

The words parent, party and mentor will revert to their former status as nouns. The label handicapped was never meant to be a negative connotation so "physically challenged" is out, too. "High risk behavior" will be referred to as it used be; lunacy. Government contractors who carry automatic weapons, drive armored attack vehicles and fly helicopter gunships will be called mercenaries again. Government contractors will be people with tools in their hands or a truckload of supplies. An economic downturn will be once again called a recession. Or a depression, depending on how much the government and the corporations screw up a robust economy.

Polluters don't get to be called "the regulated community" anymore. "Oil Speculators'" will be called pirates and thieves and beaten with sticks until they stop siphoning billions out of our gas tanks. Calling a spade a spade will be the hallmark of my Boss of The World Administration. Reality television programs will be properly labeled Crap TV. News stations will be required to actually report news and leave the celebrity gossip to Pat O'Brien. Christian Conservative political groups will be forced to explain exactly which of the four Gospels detailing the life and teachings of Jesus Christ instructed them to promote war, intolerance and bigotry as Christian family values. If they can't do so then they have to rename themselves Fascists for Jesus and wear matching shirts and funny little caps.

If I was not so adamantly opposed to capital punishment I'd find the guy who invented the term "power nap" and slay him on the spot. That's a power nap, you jackass, not my little enjoyable snoozes! I'd also get all the medical authorities together to finally decide once and for all what the hell is the deal with good cholesterol/bad cholesterol. I would also demand to know exactly why somebody should call a doctor instead of all their friends to brag about it when their erection lasts more than four hours. That's not something your wife is likely to seek out the complaint department over. Trust me on this one, Docs.

And when I'm running the world political candidates must be asked questions about what they plan to do when they get elected. TV morons will not be allowed to ask them about their religion, the price of their haircuts, flag pins, their patriotism(!), their spouses, their ethnic background or which historical figure they'd like to have dinner with. The only thing these bozos forgot to ask the candidates is their favorite color. Don't blame the candidates. They'd love to discuss their policies if any of the half wits in the media would only ask them.

I'd also force people the world over to stop calling their racist tendencies "tribal loyalty." The world has long since moved on from tribalism. At least the progressive and technically advanced portions of the world. Everybody is sick and tired of all the slaughter and genocide in the name of your so-called tribe. If your tribe is so special why are they living in unsanitary backwaters of the world doing not much of anything but slaughtering their neighbors? If your tribe is so important to you why have you done nothing to change this? Do the words education, initiative or enlightenment mean anything at all to all you earnest haters? How about logic? Try this: If the tribe you hate is worth nothing but scorn and slaughter, what makes it so surprising when others feel the same way about you?

Can I get a show of hands here, tribes? No, I didn't think so. Never was a lot of logic or any sort of thinking at all involved in that whole racist thing. But be proud of your consistency. Where others have learned, you have refused to do so. And where they have prospered, you have wallowed in your own shit. Perhaps with centuries of tradition of living in a shithole maybe the only excitement is in murdering your neighbors. Breaks up the monotony of having no importance whatsoever in the scheme of things. Well, stay in your shitholes if you must, but just have the balls you were born with and admit you are a genocidal racist wasting the lives of your children who will learn your ways. And by all means have a nice day.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 38

Christopher Columbus no more "discovered" America than Isaac Newton discovered gravity. Both America and gravity existed long before these guys pointed out their existence to some other people. In the case of Columbus, his discovery came as no shock to the people already living in the Americas. They didn't call it The New World, they called it The World, the only one they knew about. So maybe to them, Christopher Columbus discovered Spain. In any case, Columbus' discovery didn't work out so great for them. Nothing like The Spanish Inquisition and the complete destruction of your culture to sour you on Spanish immigration. In Newton's case, the laws of gravity were universally obeyed by all even before he wrote them down. Everybody knew that if pigs had wings they still couldn't fly but at least we'd have a tasty new cut of pork.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 37

If you speak English, there's more than enough words and phrases available without having to make up your own, yet many do so in an attempt to deceive. What they fail to remember is that most people are plenty smart and so they know that "pre-owned" means used, and "certified pre-owned" means that yep, this thing is definitely a used car that somebody else didn't want anymore. "Downsizing" means getting fired, "alternative lifestyle" means homosexual, "write downs" are losses of a whole lot of money, "an alternate explanation" is a lie and "collateral damage" means that whatever it is you were trying to do has not only blown up in your face but taken down a lot of innocent bystanders too. Only poets get to have poetic license. That said, I think I'll just go and gyre and gimbal in the wabe.

THE SMELL OF FEAR

Dogs must be going nuts in America. They say animals can smell fear in human beings and we must be stinking up the joint these days. If we're not fearing nebulous threats from rag-tag militias or small nations we're fearing for our health. The Republicans, experts on creating and exploiting fear, are already starting the not-so-subtle process of creating fear ads in regard to Barack Obama, who hasn't even won the Democratic nomination yet. All manner of journals and video media are implementing fear campaigns about threats to the health of Americans, possibly the most well-fed and healthy group of people in history. I'd bet dollars to Trans-fat soaked doughnuts that poor people in Third World countries would trade places with even the poorest Americans in a heartbeat, figuring they'll cross the cholesterol bridge when they come to it.

And if they did manage to get to reside here, do you think these people who have had to fight over canvas sacks of flour and grain would give a rat's ass whether their meat was cooked on clean propane or regular gas? They'd be eating meat for a change, and their children would have a better shot of seeing their tenth birthday! They'd most likely take their chances with acid reflux and elevated cholesterol levels. Would these people wonder about the phobias and fears Americans are embracing? You bet. They' look around them and see more cars in a single city than exist in their entire nation, retail food outlets specializing in cups of coffee and they'd be hard pressed not to faint in ecstasy when entering any supermarket anywhere in the United States.

You think they'd notice that not only is schooling freely available, but mandatory? That public libraries would lend them any book they wished to read for free? That water is so plentiful that people grow inedible pants just to beautify their surroundings? Would it escape their notice that even many poor Americans are fat? Or own cell phones, TVs and computers? That sanitary conditions, clean running water, reliable electricity and paved roads are universal? They'd be all eyes and ears. And being humans, they'd be full of questions. Such as: What he hell are you people afraid of? You're Americans living in America and nobody's coming here to shoot up your village, steal your livestock and crops and kill you.

You're Americans who get to decide who runs your government, giving you at least the opportunity to change things. You can watch any sort of TV show you like, read whatever you feel like reading and travel around free as a bird with no checkpoints anywhere to inspect your papers. You can call your leaders idiots if you like, practice whatever cockamamie religion appeals to you and nobody will lock you up for it. No government agents kick down your door in the dead of night and haul you away or stop you in the street for no reason. You can get rich in America, where, by Third World standards, everybody is rich. You can enjoy all these things and rejoice that you live here.

Or you can be afraid of your own shadow and ruin the whole experience. You can succumb to the repressive politicians who would have you making decisions based on fear or you can worry yourself sick over every killjoy report hat comes out identifying yet another nebulous threat to your perfect health. Better to recognize that the fear mongers run in packs like wild dogs, knowing that their kind is dying. What has worked so well in the recent past need not work anymore. There is a man named Barack Obama who wants to prey on your hopes and dreams and concentrate on the positive aspects of life in America and that has the fear mongers working overtime to cut that nonsense out. The last thing they want is for people to open their eyes.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 36

A committee is the place where ideas go to die.

GOD'S NOT YOUR DAMNED COPILOT, FOOL, AND OTHER DICEY ASSUMPTIONS

I tend to give cars with I'm-more-religious-than-you bumper stickers a little more space than regular cars. I figure that people who rely on divine intervention to get where they're going aren't as alert as other drivers. Which other drivers? You know, regular people who realize it's their responsibility to get themselves and their passengers from Point A to Point B in one piece. Regular drivers figure God might be too distracted answering the incessant prayers from the religious bumper sticker crowd to guide each and every one of us safely to the supermarket and the dry cleaners and back home again. Maybe the reason so few prayers get answered is the sheer volume of such supplications.

Now, according to believers, God is the entity who created the entire universe, and the Hubbel telescope tells us he's not done yet. There's stars being born at an incredible rate out there in space, forming new galaxies as we speak, so apparently the universe in still a work in progress. And believers also feel that we are made in God's image. Okay then, aren't we for the most part the type of beings who prioritize? We don't attach the same importance to spilt milk, for example, as we do to broken legs. Now imagine 6 billion people complaining to you about spilt milk and maybe only fifty thousand about broken legs. Don't you think the help-me-I've-got-a-broken-leg requests would get a little more attention from us than the milk spills? You've got to figure that God as we imagine him has an awful lot on his plate requiring his attention other than your questionable driving skills. So, just in case God's in the middle of a particularly tricky cosmic building project, perhaps it's best to keep your eyes on the road and use the skill he built into you.

We assume too much, we humans do. Being at the top of the food chain will do that to a species, make us think we're in control of things. Then tsunamis and earthquakes happen and all the kings horses and al the kings men can't do jack about it. And those are just the natural disasters. What about the ones we create? Has anybody ever seen the town of Nyack, New York? Sorry if that's your hometown, but you should be even sorrier. And that's not the only eyesore by far. But that's only ugly, a spilt milk complaint, really. How about all the poisoning we've done to our sky and land? That's broken leg material well worth getting our attention but still we burn the remains of our planetary predecessors to get energy. We assumed this resource would last forever even though unlike wood, our previous go-to energy source, we can't grow any replacements.

And it's not like we have had no warning that the oil is disappearing. The old figures stating that it would last for hundreds of years to come forgot to factor in all the former have-nots of the world finally getting to have stuff, and thus ratcheting up the demand for oil and rendering those predictions even sillier than they were. Did the Western nations think they'd keep all the cookies in the jar forever? Apparently so. But then they decided that western workers were too well paid and too well fed to manufacture goods anymore so poor nations were enlisted to make cheap goods. The only problem is that the ingrates in the poor nations wanted electric lights and running water once they had a taste of modern amenities so now the demand for oil is through the roof.

And the roof, by the way, is leaking, that roof being our sky, the atmosphere that we breathe, and a thing more important to our lives than SUV's or flat screen TV's. And so we cry that the planet is in danger when nothing could be further from the truth. It is us who are in danger, not the planet. The Earth can get along just fine without oxygen or an ozone layer. We sure as hell can't. So we panic about losing our ability to survive and governments respond by convening committees, the places where ideas go to die. Committees are relatively cheap and and make us feel the problems are being solved. Meanwhile, our own government, for one, spends more in a single day on warfare than it does on research for the entire year on how come up with an alternative to burning and poisoning ourselves out of existence. Doesn't look like such a rosy future unless we get serious about alternate energy sources. Maybe we'll have a lot to ponder in the eons where we rot away into fuel for the next species to inherit the Earth.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 35

Taking a nap is a very civilized habit, in spite of some aggressive fools who label it "power napping" in an attempt to take the fun out of a guilty pleasure. The sweetest naps are those taken when there's something else you're supposed to be doing. If it was all that important in the first place, you'd be doing it instead of taking a nap. Most things can wait half an hour while you check your eyelids for cracks.

WHO IS SAM AND WHY IS HE RATIONING RICE?

Here's another phony crisis created by bored newspeople. The headlines say that some place called Sam's Club is rationing rice in the United States. It turns out that Sam's Club is one of those giant wholesale grocery warehouses that sell 55 gallon drums of corn flakes and is owned by one of America's greatest enemies, Walmart, and named after the dead guy Sam Walton who founded the rapacious retail chain. Anyway, here's the "rationing" plan: 200 pounds per customer per visit. That's rationing? Presumably you could haul your 200 pounds of rice to your car and revisit the place for another 200 pounds and do this all day long if you like. It's just like any coupon sale in any supermarket, limit four to a customer, nothing out of the ordinary. What you're going to do with enough rice to feed a large town is another story, and probably one more interesting than the phony food rationing reports.

Now, I'm an American and I work in the food business. During any given year, I personally throw out more perfectly good food than would sustain any thirty or forty large people, their entire required intake to maintain them as fatsos, fancy desserts and all. I just dump it right in the trash. Am I being malicious? Wasteful? Callous? No, I'm dealing with the realities of the food and party business. I'm sure not going to put leftovers in my car and take them home. If there was somebody to give this good food to I'd be glad to let them back up their own vehicle and haul it away but except in rare cases, that just doesn't happen. So if anything, there's too much food in America. Why do we have so many well-fed rats in New York? Well, because we're feeding them a lot of tasty stuff that we have no use for.

As far as the politics of having so much food and other places not having enough, well, I don't know how to fix that, any more than I know how to fix the phony news business. You can't just throw out unnecessary news people like you can uneaten linguini, as tempting as that thought might be. Bill O'Really would look good in a dumpster. There's a guy who wakes up in the morning with phony news stories floating around his funny shaped head and there's nobody where he works who has the nerve to tell him he hasn't had a lucid or important thought in decades. And he's far from alone in the video news media when it cones to inventing a phony crisis. No shortage or rationing there.

Unless of course your idea of an important story is declaring American flag lapel pins a good barometer for gauging someone's patriotism. Nowhere is it mentioned that turning our national symbol into a trivial wardrobe accessory seems like a pretty cheesy and cynical idea. No,that aspect is overlooked. It's like the whole flag burning issue, where people got all hot and bothered about burning American flags to the point where some wanted a Constitutional Amendment banning this act. The only trouble there was that there is already an existing law mandating that the only legal way to dispose of a worn-out American flag is to, you guessed it, burn it. So there was a tempest in a teapot, no? The Supreme Court agreed and sent the fools packing.

And once again, no mention was ever made by these geniuses of the disgrace to our flag by flying it over a nation conquered for no reason at all except to steal their oil. Or the disgrace not to the symbol of America, but America itself, of having a presidential administration mounting unceasing attacks on the Bill of Rights. That's okay with these people. The same people who use the words "market adjustment" for recession, "down-sizing" for firing workers and "outsourcing" for selling American jobs overseas would now have you believe that limiting somebody to buying 200 pounds of rice is food rationing. I've got a lot of leftovers for these guys to eat before they start talking about famine in America. Come to the kitchen door and bring your appetite.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 34

Some days life is a dog and you're a fire hydrant. Bear it with as much dignity as you can muster and hope tomorrow is a better deal.

NEXT STOP ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: GUAM(!)

I must confess that I think about Guam about as often as I think about wolverines. That is to say, not all that much, with wolverines actually having a pretty big edge in the cross-my-mind department. And now Guam is the next primary in the hotly contested Democratic Presidential campaign. While the 4 delegates at stake there are hardly scale tippers for either Senator Hillary Clinton or Senator Barack Obama, no state or territory can be taken for granted in such a close contest. So now Guam gets to make some news other than being a remote battlefield of World War 2 in the 1940's or a prize in the Spanish-American War of 1898. When you're Guam, it's a long time between headlines so you take what you can get.

Guam is an unincorporated territory of the United States, meaning...um... meaning... hmm... what? They don't get to have Senators or Congressmen, but they do elect a governor and a 15 member legislature and send a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives, one supposes to remind Washington that they exist and have needs just like anybody else. The electoral delegates they do send to the Democratic Convention don't get to vote but presumably can try to influence other delegates if they're of a mind to. Maybe invite them to Guam for some duty-free shopping and whatever else goes on there.

It must be a happening place since a million tourists a year visit this island of 173,000 American citizens. Ninety percent of their tourists are from Japan. Most of the rest come from South Korea, Philippines and Taiwan. Not many American citizens visit the place except for the many U.S. Military personnel stationed in the six bases there: four Navy installations and one each for the Coast Guard and Air Force. The Marines will be joining them between 2010 and 2014 when the Third Marine Expeditionary Force relocates to Guam from Okinawa. That move will increase the island's population by 25%. With all that firepower concentrated there you wonder exactly what's so valuable on this 209-square mile island smack dab in between Indonesia and Japan.

One supposes that like all real estate, Guam's great value is due to location, location, location. Modern day Imperial America needs to project its military might globally and Guam is pretty handy to Asia to deter the Chinese from getting frisky in the Pacific like Japan did 70 years ago. So for a place that doesn't have a lot of territory and not much to say about what goes on in American politics and whose capital "city," Hagatna, boasts only 1,100 inhabitants, Guam is actually more important to Imperial America than Arkansas. Probably a lot more fun and interesting too but that's another story. Candidates actually do visit Arkansas to try to win votes, as bland an experience as that may be, but none of them ever seem to visit Guam. I wonder if they hit the Virgin islands? That's also a territory and a tropical paradise, and pretty close to the mainland as opposed to the almost a half a planet away that Guam is from Washington, D.C.

At any rate, I think we all know about as much about Guam as is necessary for going about our daily lives. With all that military might assembled there one supposes it's safe from the Axis of Evil and Al Qaeda. Wondering why that armed juggernaut isn't assembled around around places like New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Seattle, New Orleans and a whole lot of other vulnerable and densely populated U.S.A. cities only gives you a headache. Let's just stay glued to our TV sets this May 3 to see who gets those four non-voting delegates. In politics, as goes Guam, so goes the Marianas.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 33

Getting older isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.

THIS JUST IN... LATE BREAKING NEWS FROM THE DESK OF DOPOTO

DOPOTO, shorthand for the Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious, has been getting some late breaking news reports form all corners of our great nation and beyond. We bring you the highlights.:

The efforts to develop bio-fuels is taking away much of the world's food supply. A lot of land once used to produce food crops is being converted to growing plants for producing synthetic and renewable fuel, thus reducing grain supplies and driving up prices. Combine that with some unfortunate dry weather in some key farming regions around he globe and the result is worldwide food shortages. In an effort to stem the wave of food riots in hungry nations, the ruling elite in those countries are turning to genetic alteration. Not of the crops, but of those pesky food rioters. They feel that the need to eat three times a day is selfish, wasteful and counterproductive. They have ordered their scientists to manipulate the genes of the working classes so that they need to eat but once or twice a week. While that is the norm in many of these places today, it makes the people pretty irritable and prone to all manner of debilitating diseases. Many kings and dictators in stricken nations are offering incentives to scientists for curbing humanity's appetite, promising them valuable prizes like staying out of prison and not being slain.

Piracy is becoming a huge problem off the coast of Africa. Sounds like a job for Pompey, the Roman military leader who once cleared the Mediterranean Sea of Pirates in only 3 months. Unfortunately, Pompey's been dead for over 2,000 years so all DOPOTO can say is Aaaargghh!

In Paraguay a Roman Catholic Bishop has been elected to the presidency, vowing to return that nation to the greatness it once enjoyed. Researchers at the Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious have thus far been unable to determine when exactly that was but are working diligently to figure that out and will get back to you as soon as we discover when The Golden Age of Paraguay was.

Most of us here at DOPOTO come from Earth so we welcome the annual celebration of Earth Day. However, our studies reveal the focus is a bit skewed. It seems that contrary to popular wisdom, the Earth is is no danger at all from humans, no matter how many pollutants we belch out into the land and sky. It is humans who are in danger from all that icky stuff, not the planet. Our research has confirmed that the Earth got along just fine for billions of years before we got here and will get along fine without us. The planet really doesn't care what sort of atmosphere surrounds it or whether or not it is sheathed in mile-thick ice sheets or blazing lava. Nor does it seem overly attached to any of the creatures who happen to ride its back as it spins through the heavens. So perhaps we should celebrate People Day and try to focus on keeping the Earth a user-friendly place. Just a suggestion from the people here at DOPTO who would like to stick around and keep pointing out the obvious a while longer.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 32

To animals there are no differences at all between any color humans that exist. White, black, brown, yellow, orange or tan, man scent is man scent and it's usually their cue to leave the vicinity in a hurry. Animals trust us even less than we do each other, but at least they have sound reasons. What's our problem? We don't treat red cows any different from brown ones, or black sheep from white ones. We kill and eat them all, then make neat items of apparel out of their hides. So I guess we do treat one another a little better than that. When we kill our fellow humans over differences of skin color we don't skin and eat our victims. We just sort of let them lie there for somebody else to clean up.

LET'S ALL APOLOGIZE TO THE CHINESE DYNASTY

The eternal flame that is supposed to be the Olympic Torch touring the world seems to be getting extinguished a whole lot these past few weeks. It seems the world is pretty pissed off at the Chinese government for the way they are treating Tibet, a country they conquered and occupied in 1951 and has pretty much trampled underfoot ever since. No big deal, felt the Chinese government, that's what we do. That's what Chinese governments have pretty much always done, human rights and individual liberties never having been much of a priority for the various dynasties that have ruled China over the millennia, including the current Communist Dynasty, a raw kid in terms of Chinese Dynasties, dating back only to 1948.

The Communist Dynasty has, however distinguished itself pretty quickly for meeting the gold standard challenge established by Josef Stalin for murdering millions and millions of their own people. While not meeting the vast numbers of murdered Soviets under Stalin, the Chinese Communists have come in at a robust second place in the mass murder department, killing nearly 30 million of their own people. That's really showing initiative, even though the mass murder rate has slowed somewhat since the death of its main perpetrator, good old Chairman Mao himself. Mao wasn't only content with setting the Chinese Dynasty record for murdering Chinese people, he also insisted all his subjects dress like him in a drab grey suit and little cap, just to rub it in, one supposes. His successors lightened up on the dress code and have turned that admirable national energy towards industrialization and have broken all land speed records in creating the most polluted country on earth, no easy feat these days.

Once again, human rights are not a big priority, worker safety is a joke and worker poisoning is epidemic. Political dissent is now met with arrest and forced labor instead of a bullet to the brain, maybe figuring that all those murders they used to commit robbed them of able hands to work in their sweatshops. Organized political protests are still answered with armed force, and the severe beating of unarmed Tibetan monks has made a lot of headlines lately. Not exactly the kind of publicity the Communist Dynasty welcomes as they prepare to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. They spent billions to build stadiums, airport facilities, highways, railroads and hotels in an effort to showcase the "New China" to the world.

Unfortunately the pesky free press of much of the rest of the world keeps showcasing the same old repressive China that imprisons dissidents, attacks unarmed crowds and generally acts the way Chines Dynasties have always acted, that is to say, pretty badly. But their ace in the hole these days is that China now manufactures a lot of the world's consumer goods, having undercut the competition's prices with the ridiculously low wages that Chinese workers earn. So a panicked France dispatched three diplomats to smooth the Chinese Dynasty's feathers that were ruffled by all the Olympic Flame snuffing when the torch passed through France. They don't want to jeopardize he steady supply of all those black turtlenecks and berets made in China so they decided to apologize.

Maybe we should all apologize to the Communist Dynasty. In America the Olympic flame got doused a few times in San Francisco, and in countries all across the world as well. Where will Walmart get all the shoddy crap they sell us if China gets a hair stuck? Perhaps we'd all best look the other way at their history of murdering tens of millions and their present of keeping a billion and change decent people under their bootheel. Let them have their Olympics and let Bush the Younger fly there for opening ceremonies and get to meet some of his political idols, maybe swap stories with them about which human rights they were removing from their respective populations lately. Of course Bush the Younger has a harder row to hoe in that department since he's handicapped running a nation that has known nothing but freedom, but give the guy points for trying to repeal the Bill of Rights and exercise unilateral power like his Chine dictator counterparts.

They could compare notes on detaining suspects without benefit of a writ of habeus corpus, countries invaded and United Nations policies defied. They could discuss how they have managed to concentrate more than 90% of the incredible wealth generated in their two very powerful economies in the hands of a tiny ruling elite while the majority of their citizens' struggle to make ends meet. Bush could openly envy their strict control over their press and they could laud him for his administration's skilled manipulation of our press. The President could then pose for pictures with Dynasty Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao in front of Drapchi Prison, China's Guantanamo in Tibet, where they can make Roach Motel jokes about how "dissidents check in, but they don't check out." Good laughs can be had by all. Let the games begin!

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 31

Cliches get a bad rap. Most of them are true and come in pretty handy sometimes. And if you come up with a better description of something than a cliche, odds are you've just invented a new cliche.

I HATE MY CLONE

You have to figure that any year now they'll be cloning people left and right. Not for any pressing reason, mind you, simply because they can. They clone plants all the time, they've done it with all sorts of little lab animals and even the world famous Dolly the Sheep. People are not much more genetically complicated then sheep so it's a good bet some scientist somewhere is earnestly trying to clone a human. More likely a whole bunch of scientists and teams of scientists all hoping to be the first to introduce Baby X to the world, or whatever they call it. Probably some dopey dramatic science fiction kind of name like Progenesis or Adaman.

Yeah, yeah, there's laws against human cloning, and all sort of ethics questions too, but when something is possible, scientists generally go right ahead and do it, never mind thinking about the consequences. Think nuclear weapons, asbestos and DDT here. They just love to go Ta-Da! They can''t help themselves. Look at the iPod people over at Apple Computers. No sooner do they invent the tiniest iPod imaginable that can hold a billion songs and do lots of magic things than they go and invent an even smaller one that does even more magic things and before you can say microprocessor there's Steve Jobs at a big press conference acting like they've just cured cancer. Ta Da! I own an iMac computer from the same company and whenever I turn it on, guess what sound it makes to let me know it's up and running? That's right, it greets me with an electronic Ta-Da! It's one of my least favorite features on the machine.

Of course all the people who parted with a lot of their hard-earned for the first tiny iPods don't appreciate the Ta-Da all that much. Their whole cutting-edge aura takes a bit of a beating when the guy next to them is sporting an iPod the size of a cufflink that can run rings around theirs. I suppose it will be that way with cloning. The people who just have to be in the vanguard of technology will be ordering clones like crazy, probably never stopping to think that now they'll have a baby to raise. And if you're the type of guy who absolutely needs to have the very latest in techno gadgetry you probably don't have a girlfriend, never mind a wife. So who's going to bring up little Progenesis? You and your nerd buddies?

Or maybe there's women out there who figure this will be a neat shortcut to cut the lunkhead males out of the loop. Or if the science guys and gals can figure out a way to grow your clone in the laboratory there's a surefire way to cut down on the wear and tear on your body and preserve those perfect abs you worked on so long and hard. Then the world could be full of Olsen twins, those identical young anorexics who used to be child actresses but are now something else, nobody seems sure exactly what. They were pretty much raised in a sort of a laboratory, television studios and the public eye. Look how... hmm, how shall I say this kindly... unique... I guess that's okay, look how how unique they turned out. Sounds like one of those "Children of The Corn" deals. Not especially scary, but creepy nonetheless.

There's all sorts of possibilities once cloning gets popular. That movie, "The Island," where a giant corporation raises rich people's clones in isolation as replacement parts factories doesn't seem beyond the corporate mentality. If anything the clones in that movie were treated better than an actual corporation would treat a being they considered their property. The legal status of clones would have to be defined. Would clones enjoy the same rights as people born the regular way? Would they be your property? After all, they'll be an exact copy of you and a product you ordered and paid for. I can see clones becoming a sort of status symbol like a Hummer or a Rolex watch. Or maybe like one of those shivering little semi-dogs that eccentric rich women parade around with and adorn with jewels and funny little clothes. That's not a pretty picture. Imagine Paris Hilton parading around with an exact replica of herself? There's not enough Cyberspace to accommodate the resulting sex videos.

Which brings up another issue. What if you're an asshole? Does the world need a copy of you? Or worse, a whole bunch of copies? And if somebody is so very exactly like you, you'll probably wind up hating the poor son of a bitch and treating them shabbily until he or she screams at you and says "I didn't asked to be replicated!" And what if clones want their own clones? Maybe they'll look around at the way human reproduction has always been done and declare themselves an improvement on the whole process.The only trouble with that is that in a few generations the world will be lousy with look-alikes and we'll be looking back on the days when the world population was only a paltry six and a half billion since the rest of sure as hell won't stop screwing and making regular babies. That's not going to happen and clones will jump on that bandwagon with the same earnest abandon as any other human.

Sex is way too much fun and far too deeply imbedded in our hard drives to let anybody stop us, as a casual glance at history tells us. No laws, religions, moral codes, sets of ethics or parental commands have stopped us from populating the planet at breakneck pace, never pausing once to consider who's going to feed all of us. When our alternate brains take over, the ones located south of our regular ones, there's no logic involved until the deed is done, again and again and again and yet again. And still we're not done. A bit of rest and it's off to races once more and Voila! Six and a half billion served, with more arrivals every second of every day. And we want to add clones? You think the malls are crowded now? We'd better get busy and irrigate the Sahara ASAP.

And you just know that organized religion will jump in with some completely inappropriate and idiotic positions on cloning, with no shortage of deluded psychos announcing that they have received detailed instructions on the matter straight from God. With its usual flair for making a bad situation worse religion will inject all manner of guilt and condemnation into the equation, making the murky waters absolutely impenetrable and reasonable debate impossible. God's most likely response to the whole cloning question? "You're on your own here, people. Hey, I'm God, not a magician or Doctor Phil. You think you can do better than me, go for it! Get back to me and let me know how you make out or if you have something reasonable to discuss. In the meantime, good luck."

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 30

The most important things in life are breathing, eating, sleeping and finding shelter. Everything else is sort of optional.

THE BRIEF CAREER OF THE BEAR WHISPERER

There's a lot of job descriptions in this big old world. Take the late Timothy Treadwell, self-invented Grizzly Bear expert. Treadwell took it upon himself to spend 13 summers in Alaska observing Grizzly Bears up close and personal. He would have still been at it if not for the fact that one of the bears he liked to think of as his brothers and sisters decided to eat him and his hapless girlfriend. The German film maker Werner Herzog made a side-spliting comedy documentary about his life called "Grizzly Man," using mostly video footage shot by Treadwell himself during those 13 summers before he became bear lunch. Of course the documentary wasn't made to be a comedy, it just sort of turned out that way since Treadwell was such a natural buffoon.

Now, here's the thing about Timothy Treadwell; he had no education in the field of wildlife studies, no scientific background whatsoever and was a thorn in the side of the National Wildlife Service, who constantly cited him for violations of bear-safety rules in the wild. The guy would camp for months on end in the midst of Grizzly Bears, one of the largest, fiercest and most unpredictable predators on the face of the earth. His self-described mission was to "protect" the bears. And towards that end he filmed them, gave then cute names and approached them close enough to touch these irritable behemoths, never a wise move. Even dumber, there were numerous incidents of him sharply scolding these animals like they were mischievous human children.

Other times he would film himself having serious conversations with the bears. One-sided, of course, the bears giving him feedback only in the form of puzzled stares. with the occasional indifferent grunt or menacing growl thrown in. And Timothy Treadwell never carried a weapon of any sort, describing himself as a "Peaceful Warrior." I'd describe him more as an imbecile myself, and the fact that he often left his food unprotected in bear country and camped in places where hungry bears would pretty much trip over him sort of reinforces my opinion. It's nothing short of a miraculous he didn't get eaten sooner.

Now, I'm no wildlife expert or great outdoorsman, but in this world you can't help but be aware of the fact that bears will eat almost anything, have noses more sensitive than bloodhounds and that there are strict rules for anyone camping anywhere that bears might be. Your food must be hidden in an inaccessible place away from your campsite, preferably hanging from a tree nowhere near your tent. You also must move your campsite frequently and far away from your original one. And none of these campsites are supposed to be located on frequently travelled bear trails. In the National Park where Treadwell worked, rules limited any camper from remaining more than seven days, lest the bears decide you're part of the local wildlife and thus eligible for consumption.

Timothy Treadwell violated all of these rules, spending months on end in one location, leaving his food out and staying right in the middle of he bears. Many of the videos he shot were actually more about him and his bitchy ex-girlfiends than about the bears. Many more videos were rants about his perceived enemies in the scientific community and the National Parks service, people who knew better than he did about Grizzly Bears and their eating habits. The man could no more understand why these sensible women and scientists wanted nothing to do with him than the Grizzlies could understand his babbling gibberish. He was a bundle of neuroses and very funny in a pathetic kind of way.

So I suppose it's fitting that he died not for the cause of the Grizzly Bears, although he did wind up providing valuable protein for one or two of them. No, Timothy Treadwell's death was for a greater cause, that of Great Comedy. The only tragedy was that his latest girlfriend got eaten along with him before she had the chance to make him her ex-boyfriend. The world was spared his death on videotape since he characteristically left the lens cap on his camera while the bears ate him and his sweetie. The audio portion was pretty clear, though, complete with a lot of "Oh Shits!" and the delighted growls of a bear enjoying easy pickings. So for some good belly laughs, rent the movie Grizzly Man. I give it two claws up.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 29

What is, is. You don't get to decide what's real or not. You can believe what you like, but facts win every time so get with the program. Life and the world are what they are. We're here only temporarily so let's try not to waste too much time refusing to recognize reality.The sky is blue, people are difficult, life is complicated and that's that. Accept that and you can have a good time and do good things.

DEFINITIONS

What is "Old Money?" That's when you're lucky enough to be born into a family that had a smart guy in it a long time ago, somebody really good at making money. Fortunately for them he was so good at it there's still plenty left for his not-so-smart descendants. What is "New Money?" That's when you're the smart one. Funny how old money people look down new money people. Odds are the new money people are a lot more interesting, dynamic and intelligent.

What is "Compassionate Conservatism" but an admission that conservatism is usually a compassion-free zone? Otherwise there would be no need to invent a distinction. You don't hear liberals talking about Compassionate Liberalism. The whole point of being a liberal is caring about the other guy. The point of being conservative? You tell me. You want to be conservative, fine, be conservative. Just don't apologize for it by inventing a new qualifying distinction. And if you want to be a Fascist just say so, don't hide behind some "Neo-Conservative" or "Christian Values" label. This is America and you're allowed to be any sort of jackass you feel like being. As vile as the White Supremacists are, at least they have the balls to admit what they are just with their self-bestowed title. People are not stupid and they know exactly what you stand for no matter how you try to spin the truth with a new definition.

What the hell does "Politically Correct" mean? Politics is not math, where there's only one correct answer for 2 plus 2. Poltically Correct is a phrase invented by Chinese Communists back in the 1960's to enforce complete adherence to their government's world view. Politically "incorrect" people were arrested and sent to "re-education" camps where they were basically tortured and brainwashed until they fell into line with the prevailing wisdom. It worked too, if you remember those days when a billion Chinese all wore the same drab grey suits and little caps and the whole place was a backward and poverty stricken prison of a nation where very few dared question their own government. Since those days the Chinese puppet masters have relented and let people think for themselves a little bit more. The result is China's strong and growing economy. So why would anybody in America embrace the concept of Political Correctness? Notice how the Chinese economy is heading one way while ours heads the other? So if we really go whole hog with the politically correct concept we can buy those grey suits from Chinese manufacturers. The Chinese product retail outlet Walmart will sell them at a discount.

And speaking of definitions, what's going on with our music? Can anybody tell me what "Neo-traditional country" is supposed to sound like? Or "Alternative?" An alternative to what? Talent? And what is "Death Metal?" I thought that's what bullets were. How about "Gangsta Rap?" How is that different from Rap when there are no actual gangsters making that music? Guys who play doctors on TV don't get to be called "Medical Actors." If some of the Gangsta rappers used to be gangsters, well, they're not anymore. They're entertainers now. No matter how much anybody likes to play cowboy, they're not cowboys. There are still some people around whose job is cowboy and they don't pretend to be astronauts or firemen. Or gangsters either for that matter. They pretty much just tend to the cows and do whatever else it is that cowboys do.

And what's the deal with "quality time?" Isn't that just a phrase to make yourself feel better about the fact that you can't stand to spend all that much time with your own damned kids? Where's the "quality" in a squeezed-in little slice of your hectic schedule? Some of my best memories of my parents had nothing to do with any sort of contrived quality time, instead just being around them with no particular mission to accomplish and no pressure to create a meaningful experience. Quality time sounds vaguely unpleasant to me, sort of like having to spend an afternoon with an uncle you didn't like all that much.

And what's with "Play Dates?" That used to be called going outside and seeing who was around, deciding on your own what sort of games to play or what mischief you could get into. If nothing interesting was going on you went back in the house. Simple. Why are we messing with our kids? Can't we let them have that little window of life called childhood? Don't worry, they'll be stressed out grownups just like us soon enough. Don't rush them and don't put so much pressure on their little brains. You take their fun away and that'll just give them one more good reason to hate your controlling ass.

Maybe we should stop trying to redefine life. Last I checked that's not in our power. We sure as hell can enjoy life, it's not as grim as all that. It just seems like a big waste of time to relabel the wheel. It's a wheel and nothing else. Calling it "Downsizing" doesn't make getting fired feel any better. Being "Physically Challenged" doesn't make being handicapped more pleasant. That redefinition just makes those who are not crippled feel better about themselves with no change at all in the status of the afflicted. "Changing Economic Realities" still means a recession that makes more poor people. Are "People of Color" not black or brown anymore? And aren't "Media Consultants" still public relations hacks whose job it is to relabel shit as fertilizer? Yes, yes they are.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 28

People who tell you money is not important usually have plenty of it. Funny thing is that they don't ever seem to rid themselves of this unimportant baggage. Money is important, otherwise the subject of it's usefulness would never arise. Does anybody ever debate the importance of last week's newspapers?

STUPID QUESTIONS

"Do you believe in the American flag?" That was an actual question posed to a presidential candidate in a nationally televised debate the other night. Why not ask them their favorite color while they're at it? Or the classic: "If you could be any animal, which animal would you be?" That ought to clear up up who's more suited to being president, eh? Or keep hammering them on the American flag lapel pin issue, that's a real beaut. Make no mention of the cheapening of our flag by turning it onto a faddish wardrobe accessory, instead wonder out loud whether or not those who choose not to wear them are traitors. That's how TV politics a conducted, right? And who better to decide the parameters of political discussion in this nation than a bunch of tele-prompter reading bozos who can't think of anything remotely intelligent to ask a potential president?

Why jeopardize ratings with serious discussions? By all means, let's make our political campaigns as trivial and superficial as we can and invent as many phony issues as possible. Let's see if we can top the act of making a decorated war hero like John Kerry look like a traitor and a deserter like Bush the Younger look like a hero. That was a neat trick. The fact that none of it was true is beside the point, isn't it? It was more fun for the TV hacks than actually having to think. Let's see how they can paint John McCain as a man of integrity when he left no jackboot unlicked in order to gain the Republican nomination. John Edwards turned out to be easy to discredit. Who the hell did he think he was, running a campaign all about issues. Didn't he get the memo that issues are so last century?

And by all mean let's keep asking Senator Obama and Senator Clinton if they'd settle for being Vice President? Everybody already knows the answer to that one but they persist in wasting valuable TV time with distraction and distortion, thus sparing everybody the brain-busting chore of having detailed talks on the economy, the war, energy, taxes, poverty and a concrete plan for America's future. That's a relief, eh? We'll just pick somebody who looks presidential and acts the part well on television, like daft old Ronnie Reagan. That would sure rule out Abe Lincoln, but what the hell, who needs another Lincoln, we had one already. This is the time of the TV presidents. so let's just get the insane judges from American Idol to moderate the debates from now on. Make them sing and dance for us too when they're not answering questions about nothing.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 27

If someone steals from you would you steal from them? If you do, now you too are a thief and you have no complaint. Better to crack them a good one with a blunt object and take back what's yours, give them something to think about the next time they start eyeballing your stuff. What, you expected this advice to be noble or something? Life is messy sometimes. Deal with it. It can't all be sweetness and light, as much as we wish that were true. Every so often you run across some very bad people and you've got to make them understand in very clear terms that they made a serious error in judgement when they thought you'd make a good patsy. If you do, odds are the predators will seek more docile prey. Then you can go back to the sweetness and light part.

GOOD JOBS

Thinking of a career change? Maybe you've grown restless in your current occupation and would like to pursue other opportunities. Perhaps you feel your line of work is a dead-end proposition. Surveys suggest that crack whores and beggars are especially prone to these sentiments, and one supposes, understandably so. Those fields seem to be suffering from a new influx of workers making competition difficult for older crack whores and beggars, leaving many of them wondering if perhaps a new career path might be the way to go.

What to do with oneself? There's a lot to be said for sticking to what one knows best, and long years of experience an the expertise gained can be a satisfaction in and of itself. But these days, dwindling pay rates due to the influx of new workers to their already overcrowded fields have many beggars and crack whores looking elsewhere for their daily bread. Looking around a suddenly bleak U.S. economy, the handwriting on the wall tells beggars that there's less loose change around lately and many more outstretched hands seeking that dwindling resource. Crack whores are finding that drug addicts are feeling the pinch as well and many of them, forced to allocate their limited funds, are foregoing the services of the crack whore and going with only the crack. So there's two traditionally strong American jobs facing bleak times.

So here's a suggestion for crack whores looking to apply their skills in a new field: Hedge Fund Manager. That position is also a high-risk job that will find you consorting with all manner of unsavory characters and doing things most people would not approve of. And the pay is great, often exceeding a billion dollars a year. The highest paid hedge fund manger pulled down 3.7 billion last year, up from the 3 billion he earned the previous year, which is more than all the crack whores everywhere earned in that same period for pretty much being the same kind of natural born unscrupulous hustler that most crack whores are. Even the least well-paid hedge fund managers can earn a couple of hundred million a year from their investors, and a good crack whore is an expert at instantly assessing the maximum amount of money that can be squeezed out of each client. And it's the same in that it is always somebody else's money that you put at risk, so if the deal goes bad you're not out any of your own dough. A match made in career-switching heaven.

As for beggars, there's many golden opportunities for those willing to relocate to Washington, D.C. Our nation's capitol is Beggar Central and there's always room for more, an overcrowded field never being a problem since the beggars there target the entire nation's loot, not just the broke-ass people that happen to be strolling past your street corner. These beggars are called lobbyists. They wave no dirty cups and and wear no rags. They even have offices and big cars and nice houses and all the good things normally not associated with begging, but the job description is the same. They are experts in sob stories, and no one can invent a sob story like an experienced beggar. A good beggar will take your money and make you feel bad you didn't give him the keys to your car too.

Case in point: The Congress this week decided to pass a bill to provide relief to working class homeowners in danger of having their houses taken from them and being forced to join the overcrowded beggar industry. A good and worthy bill, no? Yes, but where average people see wisdom and charity, a good beggar/lobbyist sees an opportunity for a score. While the Senators and Congressmen were felling all benevolent and generous the lobbyists put on their best forlorn faces and managed to convince Congress to load that bill with billions in tax breaks for giant businesses, even car companies that have nothing to do with building homes or taking them away from their owners. By the time that bill was written in its final form, the beleaguered home owners were little more than an afterthought and slated to receive the least help of any of the beneficiaries of the new law.

Pretty neat trick, eh? But yet there were business owners who feel that the lobbyists didn't go far enough in looting the public treasury and transferring that money into their own bank accounts. They were angry that the working class home owners got any mention at all in the final version of the bill, figuring what the hell, we're the professional beggars, not those foolishly proud and independent American workers. How dare they try to work our corner? They felt there were many billions more left sitting on he table that a more skilled beggar could have easily cadged from a soft mark like Congress. So, there's a lot of begging jobs still begging to be filled on Capitol Hill. All that is needed experience-wise is the ability to tell implausible sob stories with a straight face. Any street beggar worth his salt would have no problem portraying multi-billion-dollar corporations as destitute orphans on the brink of starvation.

So, dissatisfied crack whores and street beggars, don't bitch, switch! The long years of hard knocks and harder experience can pay off big time if you apply yourself with the same tenacity that made you an expert in your field. The crumbling economy can be a godsend to hustlers. Remember, the Chinese character for crisis also stands for opportunity. And who knows better how to make money form a crumbling American economy than the Chinese?

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 26

What is the secret to life? If I told you, it would no longer be a secret and there would be no secret to life. Besides, how do I know i can trust you with a secret? I will, however, give you a hint: It is not anti-oxidants.

SHORT BOOKS

Spring is here, that golden time of the year where renewal is all around us and within us as well. While we enjoy this experience we can look forward to Summer and plan some light reading to while away the sunny days ahead. As a service to my readers I have compiled a list of short books. Here they are:

MANHUNT! SEARCHING FOR OSAMA
This semi-gripping pamphlet describes the unrelenting hunt for 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden from the day after the attacks on New York and Washington right up to the point where it relented after a few frustrating weeks.

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DOCTOR PHIL
In this little paperback, hear TV's Doctor Phil point out the obvious and rephrase the words of others while revealing the embarrassing private affairs of people who used to trust him.

TASTY VEGAN RECIPES
in the interest of making Vegan dishes actually palatable, the authors have taken the liberty of adding some meat to the bland recipes.

GREAT AMERICAN DIPLOMATS
This very short book begins and ends with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, the last two Americans to have any talent at all for foreign diplomacy.

COMBOVER! AMERICA'S MAYOR GOES AWAY
This glossy hard cover book finds Rudolph Giuliani whining about the fact that America will be deprived of his superb leadership skills following his embarrassingly poor showing in his campaign for the presidency. Hear him viciously insult the people he might have to count on one day to elect him to something else. A note to readers: Save some money and wait for the paperback due out a week later with the alternate title: "Burning Bridges."

THE GOLDEN AGE OF REALITY TELEVISION
This one is a very quick read, actually consisting of nothing more than glossy photographs of Flava Flav, Donald Trump and the various contestants from different reality shows with a brief caption beneath each picture informing the reader who they are and what shows they appeared on. There is mercifully no discussion of the actual content of the shows, the "Golden" in the title apparently referring to the money made by opportunistic producers.

BAYONNE: GATEWAY TO NEWARK
This little travelogue is designed to make you feel better about wherever it is you wind up spending your summer vacation, even if you can't afford to go anywhere. After reading this book you will be at least thankful you're not in Bayonne, New Jersey.

FOUR TWENTY-SOMETHING CRYBABIES WITH MESSY HAIR
This book examines the interchangeable pop stars of recent years and gives the public hints on how to actually tell them apart. Chapters include "Four English Weenies," describing a dozen or more British pop bands, "Midwest Clueless Malcontents," exploring the American pop scene, "Rip-Hop," a chapter that gives pointers on how to tell which rappers are which and what their public-realtions department-invented "street-cred" is, "Country Goes Vegas," which is pretty self-explanatory, "Generic Jangly Indie Sounds," describing the the ironclad formula for sounding "different" while sounding exactly the same as every other so-called Indie band and finally, "Dorky Whining Losers" which explores the phenomenon of singer-songwriters who look and sound almost identical and who give everybody the creeps. Indispensable reading for people trying to keep track of mass-produced corporate entertainment and how to tell one manufactured "artist" from another.

GREAT SPEECHES OF BUSH THE YOUNGER
The title is actually misleading since there are no actual speeches in it. Instead it a perfect reproduction of a coloring book completed by our president during coaching sessions by his handlers preparing him for his public appearances over the years. To his credit, he goes outside the lines only a few times, but the use of only the brown crayon is somewhat disturbing.

MODERN CHINESE PROVERBS
A disappointingly slim volume considering the rich history of previous Chinese wisdom. It opens with "Money good, disobedience bad" and goes downhill from there. Surprisingly, the most amusing quote, one from the Chinese minister of the Interior in charge of tearing down exquisitely designed landmarks and erecting faceless concrete apartment blocks and smoke-belching factories, sounds decidedly very un-Chinese: "Culture Shmulture." My personal favorite: " Nothing could be finer that a T-shirt made in China."

THE NEW CAT IN THE POINTY HAT
A celebration of Pope Benedict's first visit to the United States.

ALL WE WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS OUR TWO FRONT TEETH
This book consists of interviews with native New Yorkers wondering why it is taking longer to rebuild the Twin Towers than it took to build the Great Wall of China. Photos include endless artists' renderings of what they wish was built there and a few pictures of the two gaping holes that are still there six and a half years after the towers were destroyed.

THE MARRYING KIND
Profiles of some of our mast famous proponents of the institution of matrimony, people like Larry King, Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney, who love marriage so much they each did it six or seven times. An inspirational read affirming traditional family values. Tips of the cap are given to some of our younger stars who are emulating these masters by serial-marrying their way into the record books and our hearts. Recommended reading for nosy vicarious thrill-seekers.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 25

There are many components in life's rich pageant. You don't have to know or care about all of them. Most things are somebody else's department, things like tax bylaws and Sumatran tree frogs. There are people who are completely fascinated by these things and know a lot about them, freeing you up to concentrate on what interests you or is important to your life. And if it's tax bylaws and Sumatran tree frogs that consume your interest, well, keep me posted. But not in any great detail, mind you. I've got other things on my mind.

WHEN BALLOON ANIMALS ATTACK (AND OTHER DIRE THREATS)

The very fabric of our society is unravelling due to:
(A.) The prospect of a Democrat in the White House
(B.) Al Qaeda
(C.) Drunken young blonde entertainers
(D.) Balloon animal attacks.

If you said (D.) Balloon animal attacks, you'd be just as right as if you picked either A, B or C. Notice there's no (E.) None of the above option. It's my quiz and I never liked (E.) None of the above, so that's that. But getting back to my categories, we've been hearing a little too much hysterical nonsense about options A through C, various talking heads on TV and Op-Ed columnists waxing idiotic about how America is going down the tubes in a hurry. Sure, we've got some big problems, but nothing of the magnitude of say, the Great Depression, The Second World War or Elvis Presley getting drafted into the army for a couple of years and leaving rock & roll in the soft hands of the likes of Pat Boone and Fabian. Those were crises.

Granted, Al Qaeda struck a terrible blow to America that sunny September 11th in 2001. It was my home town that was hit first and hardest. But to think that they could ever overthrow the United States is ridiculous. The most dangerous result of those attacks was the passage of a series of anti-American laws by Americans themselves, the cynical Bush The Younger Administration fueling public fear of further attacks to take the opportunity to begin dismantling the Bill of Rights. One result was the ludicrously named Patriot Act, the first salvo fired by the Bush The Younger Administration against the American people. It is those poeple who have been the most effective enemy of this nation, not Osama bin Laden and his assorted franchise henchmen. They are just delusional thugs who will eventually be killed or captured by a smarter president than the one we have now.

A different president would have attacked them unrelentingly until they were dead or in custody, having no interest in using a traumatic attack on this nation's soil as an opportunity for making billions of dollars for his corporate cronies by attacking a completely innocent nation that had a lot of oil. Well, that's what our traitorous president did, abandon the attack on a proven enemy in order to attack an invented one and then proceeded to steal their oil and hand out billion dollar contracts to elite government-connected corporations, all the while passing the costs of this treachery on to the American public. A different administration would not have repeatedly cut taxes to the very wealthy or stopped searching for bin Laden or tried to terrify their own population in order to pass laws that make America less American.

Soon we will have a different administration, and hopefully a Democratic one. The Republican party as currently constituted has proven itself to be full of unbending ideologues, incompetents and corporate thieves. These larcenous goons who used fear tactics so well to advance their agenda now cry like little girls that the Democrats will surrender America to the terrorists. This from an administration who can't find a 6 foot 6 Arab living in a cave or defeat a nation like Iraq. Seems that the Democrats did okay winning World War 2 against the two biggest military machines ever assembled, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

That took only three an a half years, or about 3 years less than Osama bin Laden has been enjoying his second career as an inspirational video star. And it was managed by a country who had a small and ill-equipped army when that war started as opposed to today's American armed forces that are the best trained and equipped fighting forces on earth. America was also just coming out a decade of poverty that was the Great Depression. By contrast, Bush the Younger inherited a balanced budget and a booming economy from a Democrat. He proceeded to get the nation into Reagan-style multi-trillion dollar debt and ruin America's economy.

Not only that, this administration orchestrated a massive transfer of wealth from the working classes to the super-wealthy to the point where less than one percent of Americans now own over ninety percent of its wealth. And they want us to fear the Democrats? No wonder the blond bimbos are drinking so much. They probably read the newspapers and came to conclusion that this administration and the terrorists are partners in a scheme to steal America's wealth and turn it into a corporatocracy where only the wealth have civl rights. The greater enemy to America by far has been the current administration. They are the ones in the position to change the laws to favor the corporate wealthy elite and to limit the freedom of average Americans, not Osama bin Laden.

They are also the ones who decided to abandon one our great cities when disaster struck New Orleans because there were no huge money-making opportunities in saving our fellow citizens and rebuilding their stricken city. At least not at first. Now that the city is drowned and partly abandoned, the Haliburtons and the real-estate speculators are moving in to cash in on what used to be peoples' homes and neighborhoods, planning gated communities for the ruling elite and forgetting about the 40% of the city's population still disbursed like Oakies in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. To their credit, however, they are planning modest servants' quarters on the estates they plan to build. Thanks, Massa!

So, if you answered A, B, C or D, you were correct since none of those things are anything to tremble about. Al Qaeda is not Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. The Democrats are hopefully a better deal for running the country. It would be very difficult to do any worse. They will at least be a different deal than the traitors and thieves running the country right now, and we need things to be as different as possible in Washington next year. As far as the drunken blonde young bimbo entertainers, well, why complain about that?? If some young hotty wants to flash some slippery triangle at us, well, nobody's forcing you to look. Me, I only look a such things because, well, because I like to. Let the sexy young things have their fun. I don't know how anybody can overlook having a president that's public enemy number one and complain about half naked beautiful women. Where's our priorities?

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 24

If life is too short to waste any time why does it feel so good to do so? A few wasted hours can be very rejuvenating, doing nothing at all that's productive, healthy or instructive and not having anything to do with a greater purpose. Little kids are great at that sort of thing, just sort of zoning out into nowhere land, doing nothing in particular with thoughts to match. It's the perfect antidote to the world.

BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT, IT'S ALL GOOD

I don't care whether or not you believe in any particular religion. That's your business, and as silly as all organized religions seem, well, that's your own business and none of mine. Just don't ask me to join you. And don't get into particulars if you don't want to hear anything negative abut your beloved faith. If you ask me what I think, I'm going to tell you. I've read the books that are the basis of your faith and frankly don't see the connection. The practice of all religions usually strays pretty far from the instruction manuals. And some of the instruction manuals are pretty ambiguous and contradictory too, so I suppose people pretty much had to improvise to make a coherent religion out of the mixed messages in the various holy texts. But men never admit that they are the inventors of religions, they would have you believe that God told them directly what to do. Since it seems the cat's gotten God's tongue for quite some time now there's no way to refute or corroborate these stories.

So that's why it's called faith and not fact. If you want to believe the earth is only 5,000 years old, fine. If you think proven science is wrong because it doesn't agree with your mystical magical faith, that's okay too as long as you don't intend to pursue a career in science. If you believe that hallucinatory passages in holy texts accurately predict future events, well, don't let me be the one to pop that little balloon of belief. But don't expect to be taken seriously if you try to spread these notions in logical discussions with rational people. Wear all the silly outfits and insignia you like. Scorn who you will because they disagree. It's your life to fritter away on superstitions and your right to believe any foolish nonsense that makes you happy.

If your notion of God is that of an angry micro-managing tyrant, well, there's no proof one way or the next so go for it if that's the sort of God you're comfortable with. If you like the rainer of fire and brimstone and the deliverer of plagues and disasters, who's to say he's not that rat bastard type of entity? If you think God is a hands-on loving teddy bear always looking out for you every moment of every day, that's probably a pretty good feeling. If you think God anoints some of us to speak for him, well, as dicey a prospect as that is, believe it if you like. Me, I have a deep distrust of anyone who describes himself as a "man of God." What does that make the rest of us? Second class spiritual citizens? Spawns of the devil? And it seems a pretty huge presumption on the part of a human to speak for an entity responsible for creating the entire universe.

Would a human allow a dust mite that eats the dead skin on his eyelids to speak on his behalf, no matter how exemplary a life that dust mite leads? How could it have any conception of what's on our minds and communicate our wishes to his fellow dust mites? Dust mites would no doubt consider us angry Gods, what with all the washing of our faces we do at their mortal peril. And the dust mite priest just may have some accurate things to say about that human, like the shape of his eyeball and his physical characteristics maybe even as far as his nose and forehead. But a human being is a little more extensive than that small area of our bodies and no eyelid-dwelling dust mite could ever comprehend the full extent of a human being. So why do some humans claim to have a detailed knowledge of God and his wishes?

Judging by the astronomical scale of only the small portion of the universe of which we are aware, we don't even rate as dust mites. Not even as the dust mites on the dust mites' eyelids. Even claiming that miniscule designation seems presumptuous. For a race of beings that still earnestly kill one another and doesn't even know all that much about our own oceans or the tiny portion of the universe that surrounds our little planet at the remote edge of a smallish galaxy, we think pretty highly of our capacity to connect with an intellect of unimaginable complexity as near equals. When one contemplates the magnitude and incomprehensible power of an intellect that can create this magnificently vast and complex universe it seems to me the only thing we should ask of God is mercy. What happens to us when he washes his face? Let's hope he doesn't scrub too hard.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 23

When somebody tells you what should be important to you, what they are really telling you what is important to them. That's all well and good, but you are under no obligation to change your priorities if you don't want to. It's you who gets to decide what is important to you, and if that disappoints somebody, well, hopefully they'll get over it.

THE REALLY OLD GUY IN THE FUNNY HAT

Here comes another pope to America to say mass in Yankee Stadium. Or as I like to refer to papal visits, here comes another really old guy in a funny hat. Like the last pope, the very popular John Paul the 2nd, this guy is the enemy of his own people. If I was still a Catholic that statement would be considered heresy, as if heresy is some sort of serious crime. Well, for centuries heresy was a very serious crime, punishable by all sorts of cruel and unusual punishments. The Catholic Church for much of its history has been a repressive and bloodthirsty tool for controlling the masses, a political organization that stood in the way of human progress and promoted bigotry and slaughter against non-believers and enforced complete tyrannical control over its followers.

That's pretty much what I got out of 12 years of Catholic school. Even as a little kid I had a lot to wonder about when I noticed the glaring differences between the message of Christ that the church supposedly stood for and the actual practices of the Roman Catholic church. Of course as a little kid I knew better than to question my teachers since that sort of thing only invited a severe beating. I got enough of those as it was for the crime of being a typical restless and high spirited little boy. Many a Catholic school teacher in their bid to emulate the church they so loved made it their mission in life to beat and bully the spirit out of children. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. I was lucky enough to escape with a mind of my own.

I don't hate the nuns for it since they knew no better. They were, like priests, part of that very deluded segment of people who think they are God's representatives. To my mind their only mistake was to try to reinforce that opinion of themselves at the expense of others. Let people think what they want of themselves, it's no skin off anybody's nose until they try to force you to recognize their superiority and moral authority. And they got it backwards anyway, attributing to God their own cruelty, mean-spiritedness, control-freak tendencies and narrow minds, rather than trying to emulate the loving and tolerant God of their own Scriptures. No wonder they didn't want us reading the Bible, that would have exposed them immediately. Indeed, in earlier centuries, the church guarded education as its own provence, content to control the lives of the great majority of people who lived in illiterate ignorance and superstition.

When literacy spread, the church was threatened. When the Bible was translated into the various modern languages and spread to the common man through the invention of the Gutenberg printing press the Catholic church went to extraordinary lengths to prevent its distribution, claiming the sole right to be the interpreter of Holy Scripture. And no wonder, since even a cursory glance at the content of the message of Jesus Christ exposes the church as the biggest fraud in history. Before you could say A-B-C, the spread of literacy and the widespread distribution of bibles led to the Reformation, which was not really a reformation so much as a mass exit of people from Catholicism into other Christian faiths. The Roman Catholic faith never really reformed but instead remained for further centuries the corrupt, repressive and bloodthirsty organization it had always been.

As a response to the Reformation no soul-seaching went on in Rome, instead a series of wars were instigated to attempt to reseal the can of worms that literacy and self-thought opened up. That didn't work, but that can be no comfort to the millions who died horribly in the ensuing wars and the diabolical Inquisition that was Rome's response to the challenges to its authority. Boiling people in oil, burning them at the stake and earnestly torturing them did little to endear the church to the hearts and minds of those so afflicted. Not that a lot of the new so-called Christian sects were any better, having no other role model in the religion business than the Roman Catholic Church. It wasn't long before they started repressing people too, starting their own religious wars and torture programs. You've got to hand it "men of God," they are if nothing else consistent. My-way-or-the-highway people, almost every one of them. Even the gentler sects who eschew physical violence teach their believers that people of other faiths are lesser human beings, a direct contradiction of Scripture.

Which is a shame if you actually study the message of Jesus Christ. The guy never tortured anybody, never bullied a soul and never once advocated the use of armed forces to spread his message. He was adamantly against all of those things. After his death he was probably even more against them, considering what happened to him. His take on man's relationship to God was that it was to be a joyful and liberating experience drenched with love of one's fellow human beings and characterized by peace, tolerance and understanding. Pretty much the direct opposite of any organized religion. The more you study his life, methods and message, the more you wonder why the Catholic Church picked this guy of all people to be their poster boy. They couldn't have been any more his opposite if they tried. And they sure tried. Did they think the whole world would remain ignorant and illiterate forever?

If they had their way, that would be the case and they'd still be calling the shots in this world. As it stands now, Rome still holds a lot of power but its hands are tied in the warfare and torture business, forcing them to concentrate on their twisted ideology which still claims well over a billion believers. So they content themselves with stifling human progress wherever and whenever possible, refusing to allow birth control in poverty stricken nations, not allowing their priests to marry or letting women become priests, thus promulagating the pedophile aristocracy of their priesthood even in the face of huge public scandals. They have such a twisted perception of human sexuality they make it sound as if God made a huge mistake when he designed men and women to desire one another sexually.

One of the most beautiful experiences of humanity has been rendered somehow dirty and sinful, a human need almost as palpable as the need for air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. Sexual relations should be an elevation of one's humanity and self-worth, a celebration of our respective femininity and masculinity, not the degrading and base act the church would have you believe it is. Their view that sexual relations are a necessary evil to be used only for procreation is as warped a take on humanity as exists. Equating sex with shame is a singularly repulsive proposition, far more bizarre than any variety of sexual practice could ever be.

When you mess with peoples' sex drive you mess with their heads. All those poor young idealistic fools who join their priesthood and swear the near-impossible vow of celibacy have no idea the kind of twisted existence that vow entails. You might as well swear not to use your lungs and kidneys for all the good it will do you. Your organs are all there for a purpose and they will function one way or another. There was a reason that some societies throughout history castrated certain people. Only a eunuch will not use his penis, simply because he doesn't have one anymore. But that doesn't mean that even eunuchs won't have sex. After all, there's always the receiving end of the deal. So what has happened to a priesthood that has sworn off women? Ask the altar boys, for centuries considered the next best thing.

So a church that preaches that the 5% of humanity who happen to be born homosexual are sinners destined to burn in eternal hell fire builds a cult of homosexual pedophiles as their representatives. Does this make any sense to anybody? This current pope while he was a top aide to the last pope even wrote a letter to cardinals throughout the world instructing them to keep secret the charges of pedophilia against priests until the statutes of limitations run out. Now this is not a stupid man, rather a cold and calculating one, so he had to know that keeping such secrets pretty much guarantees that such behavior will continue. And this is the guy the church elected to be pope, dashing all hope that will reform themselves anytime soon. And this Pope Benedict (Arnold?) is the last guy who to expect to attempt to bring the Church of Rome into any semblance of Christian practices.

So go to his mass if you like, line up to receive his blessing. Do the mental gymnastics being a Roman Catholic requires if that's what you need to be happy. Just don't ask yourself too many questions about the church's teachings and the deluge of contradictions that will flow from those questions. It's much easier to go with the flow, even if in your heart of hearts the behavior of the church disgusts you on many levels. There are some good things about the church, their effective charities, their teaching of moral lessons (even if they themselves ignore them), the sense of community inherent in mass worship. There is also a comforting reassurance in the familiar rituals, the incense burning, the pomp and circumstance, celebration of communion and the message of a thoughtful sermon. And if you ignore the man-made distractions and concentrate on the simple and beautiful message of Jesus Christ that many of these sermons stress, there are many spiritual rewards to be gained.

But living the message of Christ need not be a part of any organized cult. Humans have a tendency to screw up any religion they try to organize, not just Christianity. The Word is in the book, not in men. Read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. The organ called our brain is meant to be used too. We all learned to read at a young age and much is made of our ability to comprehend what we read. Most Scripture is pretty straightforward stuff, while a lot of it is pretty convoluted and esoteric and difficult reading. But there's nothing in there that is beyond the average person's comprehension, and certainly nothing that can be explained better by a pedophile who is part of a devious organization. Sometimes it's quite obviously the work of men, while other passages seem to be imbued with profound revelations of a higher order. Read it and don't let anybody tell you that what you've just read means something other than what it plainly states and what it says to you as a person with a brain. This is not poetry or encrypted code, it's plain prose. You don't need a so-called expert to tell you what you've just read. You're smarter than that.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 22

Nobody likes a doorway stander. Get out of the way.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT, REVISITED

Recently I posed the question: "Who are you and what do you want?" I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. Still can't. Outside of being some guy from Brooklyn and wanting to be safe and warm and wishing the same for everybody else, I couldn't find any definitive answer of who I am and what I want. So I guess that's all I have to say on this subject until I figure it out. Or don't figure it out. There's a whole lot to do besides wondering about myself and a whole lot of other stuff to try to figure out, like why a giant country like Canada doesn't have anything newsworthy happen there more than once a decade. How low-key can a nation get? And I'd just hate to be one of those people who suddenly "find" themselves. In my experience people who suddenly find themselves usually find time for little else afterwards.

And why were they searching for themselves when they were right there all the time? A lot of times people use these epiphanies to become very selfish and self-obsessed, or just pretend they experienced a revelation as an excuse to openly practice what they have always felt, that they are the center of the universe and the rest of us just sort of live here to pay a lot of our attention to them. We all know one of these tedious dolts, and some of us are unfortunate enough to be related to one of them, so avoiding them is is problematic. Maybe people like that should go to Canada. Nobody there seems to have much else to do or have all that much to say. Send our annoying megalomaniacs north where there will at least be some basis for their conviction that they are the only interesting people around.

Maybe then Canada will will start saying something, even if it's only "get oot of here, you selfish lout! Leaves us alone to enjoy our hockey and red coated mounties!" Or just maybe Canadians will ask themselves just who they are and what they want. The only trouble with that is, nobody will care once they find the answer. They are, after all, Canadians, denizens of perhaps he most boring nation on earth. Say what you will about America and our recent foibles both international and domestic, our mildly retarded president and our Darth Vader of a Vice President, this joint is never boring. We're still in the throes of asking ourselves as a nation who we are and what we want, two hundred and and thirty something years after we became one. If we ever get an answer to that riddle then maybe I'll ask myself that question again. Or maybe not. I like to keep my options open.