LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 723

While being an undertaker is an honorable profession, undertakers give most people the creeps. Just one of those things.

ODD BEHAVIOR IN A BATSHIT CRAZY WORLD

To say that we are living in a world gone batshit crazy is merely to state the glaringly obvious. If you need reasons why, or disagree with this assessment, odds are you've been living in the wilderness without access to telephones, computers, newspapers, TV, radio or other people. Either that or you're simply batshit crazier than most. Either way, that's quite understandable, and the best of luck to you.

Meanwhile, the rest of humanity, comprised for the most part of relatively sane and decent human beings doing their level best to keep themselves and their families safe and warm in a world gone mad, just can't help but scratch their heads in dumbfounded wonder at the extreme behavior of some of our brothers and sisters. Consider these signs of the times:

The celebration of the stupid and annoying: Brilliance, hard work and creativity used to be highly valued in this world. Apparently we got tired of all those brainy show-offs and decided to give peabrains a chance. Cases in point: Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, the wearing of pants with one's ass hanging out, the deification of our 2nd dumbest president, Ronald Reagan, Paris Hilton, Reality TV, Ashton Kutcher's huge Twitter following, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nancy Pelosi, George Bush The Younger, our hands-down dumbest leader, Joe the Plumber (who's name isn't Joe and still a plumber's helper at 34), extreme (!) skiing, Rush Limbaugh, Adam Sandler, house "music," Life Coaches, The Aryan Nation, the Tea Party and other jackass racist gangs, Hu Jintao, Anne Coulter, Ultimate Fighting, face-piercing, Yellow Ribbons to "support American troops" that are made in China, or any financial or automotive CEO you'd care to name on any continent, people who, for fabulous salaries, were asked only to keep an eye on the golden goose, but instead thought it would a better idea to swallow it whole.

Red State, Blue State, 1-2-3: Somehow in recent years, The United States of America, the U.S.A, became the A.U.S., the Allegedly United States. While this place has always been a big-umbella place accommodating a very broad spectrum of people and ideas, our unity was pretty much a given, with people of differing political and social philosophies agreeing to disagree, but respecting the other guy's right to think and, as long as he wasn't hurting anybody, to live as he damn well pleased. No more.

Not since the Civil War have we been at each other's throats with such open animosity, constantly stooping to the scoundrels' tactic of declaring all who disagree with them to be traitors. People on both sides of the political spectrum thought President Obama was nuts to try to promote bipartisanship, and the fact that he almost had his fingers bitten off reaching out his hand to the opposition only strengthened this opinion. The truth is, Obama is one if the few politicians these days who is not nuts, a man who loves his nation more than his political party, and wouldn't mind a little more unity in these United States.

Extreme Religion: No one is certain whether the advent of Extreme Sports is responsible for turning much of humanity into some sort of industrial strength God Squad, but this formerly private and mild pursuit designed to teach the kiddies ethical and moral behavior and provide some measure of spiritual comfort has turned into a huge pissing contest between rabid, violent wannabe tyrants. What was once a gentle activity has become a contact sport.

Extreme Religionists are either killing "infidels" in the name of God, oppressing everyone in sight, including their fellow believers, or condemning non-believers to eternal Hell Fire. In America, they are trying their damnedest to violate the Constitutional cornerstone of separation of church and state. All of which is batshit crazy in a religion (Islam) named for peace, or one (Christianity) whose savior is called the Prince of Peace. Whatever happened to humility, forgiveness, peace, tolerance, kindness and love? That whole Love Jesus or Die routine sort of misses the whole point of the man's message. By about a bazillion miles.

Bad enough the whole world is batshit crazy, no sense aiding and abetting the madness. Fight stupidity, embrace excellence and celebrate diversity and just maybe this will all blow over.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 722

Let the little things go. No sense wasting good anger on trifles.

ON BEING HUMAN: OUR GOD PROBLEM

A recent exchange on Facebook recounted an ugly incident on a recent Sun-mmer night in Brooklyn's Crown Heights where a woman was mock assaulted with an automobile, with the driver pretending to try to run her down and them laughing at her distress. It was a crazy and hateful thing to do. She angrily confronted the people in the car, only to be pelted with a couple of bottles of water. Unable to get the car's license plate number before it sped away, she was left only with her justified fury at the young people in the car, and expressed her anger on Facebook.

Quite the spirited Facebook discussion was spawned. The fact that the occupants of the car were black and the woman was white and Jewish provoked all sorts of ugly racist comments, and an equal amount of anti-racist rebuttals. The word "nigger" was thrown around like it was still 1960, or 1860, and many incidents of black-on-white violence were recounted. "Subhuman" was one of the phrases used, even though there is no such thing.

When we use the term "subhuman" to describe another person, what it does is give us license to feel superior to others, either because of their skin color, national origin, economic status or their religion. It is one our least attractive human qualities, and an attitude responsible for more deaths and more human misery than any plague or famine ever.

Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, between the three of them responsible for well over 100 million deaths, were, as much as we'd like to deny it, human beings. So is Charles Manson, and so was Idi Amin. They were all raised and taught the difference between right and wrong by loving mothers, and educated by their respective societies. They grew up with the same values as their peers, none of whom became murdering scumbags like they did.

No one encouraged these people to become butchers of their fellow human beings, but that is what they became. To deny their humanity is perhaps understandable, but too easy. And dead wrong. There were choices made in their lives, and actions taken, that made them supremely evil people, but people nonetheless. To deny the destructive potential of human beings by classifying them as "subhuman" is to ignore the obvious; that we all have unlimited potential to become a whole lot of things, some of them quite heinous.

Were they madmen? Certainly. Did they convince others to be willing accomplices to their murderous and hateful agenda? Of course, that is well documented. Many millions of people were willing accomplices to genocide, and have been for as long as civilization has existed. Were they all "subhuman" too? Was one of the Gods we invented to justify our hatred and power lust just one more murdering scumbag when he ordered the Israelites to "slay them down to the last man, woman and child?" Sure sounds that way.

Any person publishing those words today would be rightfully lambasted, and anyone attempting to implement such heinous slaughter would be vilified and hunted down. God has always been an excuse to kill and conquer, all the words of love and righteousness notwithstanding. For every Mother Theresa, Ghandi or Reverend Martin Luther King (all of whom made excellent life choices with the exact same raw material as a Hitler or a Manson), there have been a hundred psychopathic butchers killing in the name of God.

The Jew who first pointed out this glaring hypocrisy in the Jewish texts was crucified by his brethren for his trouble, and rewarded with having one of the most murderous and repressive organizations ever invented being dedicated to him, organized Christianity. When one reads his simple message of love, peace, kindness and tolerance, the mind boggles at the horrible acts perpetrated in his name by the "Holy Church." Holy shit is more like it.

Then some other guy comes along claiming Abraham, Moses and Jesus as his spiritual ancestors and invents a religion called Islam, which means peace. HIs name was Mohammed. Not much peace ensued as his spiritual descendants decided that "conversion by the sword" was the way to go, conquering and slaughtering from Africa to the Pacific. That just annoyed the crap out of the Holy Church, who took a break from torturing and repressing their own faithful to to rouse a bunch of them to invade the "Holy Land" to prove that our God could out-murder and out-torture their God.

And so it goes, from all-out genocidal wars to minor racial incidents on the streets of Brooklyn. This is what humans do to one another, and most of our inhumanity towards one another can be traced to the cynical charlatans who claim to speak for God, as if such a thing were remotely possible. If there is such an entity as a God, a gnat would stand a better chance of being able to speak for us than we would have of being qualified to speak for God.

There is no religion anywhere that is not the "one true religion." Which would be just fine if not for our human need to prove this most unprovable notion by shoving it down the next guy's throat, even to the point of killing or torturing if that's what it takes.

There's also no religion anywhere that is based on anything approaching the sort of reality we experience every minute of every day. Every one of them is based on some sort of impossible fairy tale that never occurs anywhere in our human experience, and yet is believed fervently by billions of otherwise mature and intelligent people.

So we call our religions "faith" and support any number of professional clergymen who live quite well feeding on our fears and superstitions, never having to work an honest day in their lives. Priests, imams, rabbis, shamans, bishops and witch doctors (the most honest title among them) exercise an unreasonable amount of influence over human beings, people who live and work honestly and hard in the world of the real.

Unlike the God Professionals, who claim all sorts of miraculous and divine connections, it is they who perform "miracles," miracles of science, of technology, of architecture and engineering, of letters and miraculous works of art all by themselves, no matter who claims that their efforts and ingenuity are dictated by God. And they have accomplished all this in spite of organized religion's determined attempts to suppress and sabotage literacy, science, reason, logic and exploration.

Imagine how far along humanity could be without our various religions actively working against us? With no "subhumans" to hate and attack, with no ideology to demonize and prohibit, with no attempts to stifle progress, we could have been working together all along to improve our lives, learning from one another, sharing our ideas, our art and our inventions for our mutual advancement and benefit.

Without our invented "Gods" and their self-appointed human tyrant representatives, we just might have avoided Colonialism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Jihad, the Holocaust and our countless other genocide campaigns, and the plague of starvation that still claims 13 million lives every year, mostly children under the age of 5.

That's 36,000 small children dead each and every day, most of them in Third World countries that much of the world feels do not matter since they are nations populated by lesser beings. When a person is considered subhuman, then their pain can be shrugged off as unimportant or even nonexistent, even the unbearable pain of burying one's child who has starved to death on a bountiful planet.

This happens in a world where the God Professionals put forth the absurd notion that mankind cannot form a code of ethical behavior on its own, or discern right from wrong without them. Like their guidelines have caused anything but pain, death and humiliation. The truth is, we all have within us enough goodness, wisdom, logic and reason to find our way just fine without paying the freight to support these expensive charlatans or suffering for centuries under their boot.

We also have a huge capacity for joy and spiritual fulfillment without their input or their permission. We know what is right and proper, and we know how to govern our affairs equitably without the fear of some unseen fairy tale entity or their alleged human mouthpieces.

Their skewed notions of right and wrong that much of humanity adheres to have led directly to our Hitlers or those young thugs in Brooklyn terrorizing an innocent woman for sport. When a person is considered subhuman, anything goes, from murder to oppression and slavery to mere harassment, and these ideas were propagated by the God Squad. Our pain has always been their gain, our degradation their elevation. Damn them all to the Hell they invented to go along with their imaginary cruel Gods.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 721

All that is good in this world flows directly from love.

SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY YOU'RE GONNA WAKE UP AND YOU'RE GONNA SEE THE SUN
YOU'RE GONNA LOVE ME LIKE YOU NEVER LOVED NO ONE
YOU'RE GONNA TELL ME LIFE HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN
SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY WE'RE GONNA BUILD A WORLD THAT EVERYONE CAN SHARE
THERE'LL BE NO POVERTY, NO HUNGER, NO DESPAIR
WE'RE GONNA BUILD OURSELVES A BETTER WORLD, I SWEAR
SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY WE'RE GONNA SEE THIS WORLD FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS
WE'RE GONNA FIND A WAY TO FEED THOSE HUNGRY KIDS
WE'RE GONNA BUILD OURSELVES A BETTER WORLD THAN THIS
SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY WE'RE GONNA BUILD ANOTHER TOWER TO THE SUN
I'M GONNA TAKE YOU THERE 'CAUSE BABY YOU'RE THE ONE
WE'RE GONNA LOOK DOWN ON THE CITY THAT WE LOVE
SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY WE'RE GONNA FIND A WAY TO PUT AWAY THE GUNS
WE'RE GONNA PUT THE FEAR AND HATRED ON THE RUN
WE'RE GONNA UNDERSTAND THAT WE CAN LIVE AS ONE
SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY YOU'RE GONNA WAKE UP AND YOU'RE GONNA SEE THE SUN
YOU'RE GONNA LOVE ME LIKE YOU NEVER LOVED NO ONE
YOU'RE GONNA TELL ME LIFE HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN
SOMEDAY

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 720

If we start now, we can always say Today Was The Day it all started. Or, we can spend one more forgettable day only dreaming about building a better world. Roll up your sleeves, this could take awhile.

LIKE ANY OTHER WAR, THE WAR ON DRUGS KILLS A LOT OF PEOPLE

At an International AIDS Conference in Vienna the other day, the participants stumbled upon a stunningly obvious truth. They said that one of the biggest contributors to the spread of the HIV virus is the fact that recreational drugs are illegal.

Nominally, the conference was about addressing the rapidly growing AIDS epidemic among Eastern European drug addicts, and any way they looked at it, it came down to this: drug addicts cannot legally obtain clean hypodermic syringes, and so they share them, and in the process pass on any diseases they have.

The conference called the 50 year-old War on Drugs a failure, about 49 years after it became obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain that this war, like any other war, killed a whole lot of people. The fact that most of the slain individuals were users of recreational drugs was just fine with a lot of people, those who had bought into the demonization of drug users, an odd concept in a world that embraces the widespread use of the most damaging and deadly intoxicant known to man, alcohol.

From 1919 to 1933, The United States of America provided the world with the model of what not to do about alcohol abuse when it passed the 18th Amendment to our Constitution, prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages. It was called Prohibition.

The results? Bathtub gin and other unsanitary home made beverages that blinded or killed a lot of human beings. The rise of organized crime, the original drug cartels, when they found a product that was cheap to produce and that everyone wanted at whatever price they chose to charge.

Illegal fortunes were made and local and state governments completely corrupted, and gangsters slaughtered one another in broad daylight over the huge profits at stake. The murderous gangster Al Capone was the most famous man in the world at one point, earning a million dollars a week in the 1920s, when 9¢ bought what a dollar buys today. That's even better than today's hedge fund thugs can manage.

It took America more than a dozen years to undo the damage, and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution cancelled the 18th and booze became legal, sanitary and inexpensive once again. Fast forward to the 1960s and '70s and the rise in popularity of recreational drugs, mostly the harmless weed Marijuana but also including hallucinogens such as LSD and mescaline, and narcotics like heroin and opium, barbiturates of every pharmaceutical description and stimulants like cocaine and various amphetamines.

The nation was stunned and angry, and cynical politicians jumped all over the demonization bandwagon, passing laws against any drug that people seemed to enjoy. And so Prohibition was reborn, but this time not with an amendment to the Constitution but a thousand local and State laws varying in their severity, plus a smorgasbord of Federal Statutes thrown in.

The results? America holds more prisoners in our jails than any other nation on earth, an unconscionable 2 million souls, well over half of them on drug offenses. The spotty and unsupervised production of drugs resulted in overdose deaths and diseases, and the unavailability of clean needles created an epidemic of hepatitis among IV drug users.

And then there's the rise of the new Capones, the billion-dollar drug cartels every bit as violent as the gangsters of the Roaring Twenties. They in turn have corrupted untold government officials to turn a blind eye to their lucrative business. The products they sell are derived from weeds, wild flowers and plants, cheaper than corn to grow and process, yet fetching caviar prices on the street.

Their profit margin was not lost on the huge pharmaceutical companies, who today produce many, many times the amount of "legal'" addictive drugs than medical doctors require for treatment purposes. The rest find their way to drug users at hyper-inflated prices.

These astronomical drug prices contribute to crime, with many addicts needing to steal to get their fix, which would be the equivalent of one Martini costing $75, or a single glass of beer $15. Does anyone believe that our countless alcohol addicts wouldn't turn to crime if faced with paying those kinds of prices?

The argument that alcoholics aren't breaking the law by drinking doesn't take into account that almost the entire nation broke the law during Prohibition. The amount of drinking in America didn't change at all during Prohibition, and the attempted demonization of drinkers never took hold outside of the few hopeless drunks that were in every town and neighborhood, and still are.

The argument that consenting adults drinking alcohol do very little harm to society is also a myth that has been exploded in recent years by organizations such as MADD, and the vast carnage that drinking alcohol creates is general knowledge. No one, however, asks that it be outlawed, not wanting to return to the days of bathtub gin, infectious diseases and Al Capone.

So it's odd indeed how few people see that this is exactly what is happening, and what has been happening for a very long time when it comes to drugs. And so the War on Drugs continues to claim many lives, many of them innocent children born to HIV-positive parents, or relatives of addicts who themselves do not use drugs.

No one condones addiction, whether to cigarettes, chocolate, bourbon, pain killers or heroin. But these things exist, and people who like them will find them, no matter who approves or how much they have to pay. That's reality.

Another reality is the existence of a huge infrastructure built up over a half century dedicated to maintaining the War on Drugs. The huge growth industry that is our prison system has gotten so large that some state and municipal governments are privatizing prisons, prompting the private prison corporations to lobby legislators to pass even stiffer anti-drug laws with lengthier sentences in order to ensure a steady flow of their industry's only raw material; human beings.

Then there are the countless law enforcement agencies dedicated to drug interdiction, huge bureaucracies employing hundreds of thousands of individuals, s well as having every police department everywhere dedicate a portion of their forces to drug enforcement. The assumption is that all these things are necessary, while the reality is that the whole thing is a self-feeding machine that exists only because it exists.

The fact that recreational drug use has dramatically increased during the 50 years of The War on Drugs only prompts the drug enforcers to throw more money and personnel at the problem, a problem that could be erased with the stroke of a pen making drugs legal. 50 years of failure and an ever-growing death toll demands that we end this idiotic war.

It is time we grew up about drugs and deal with them as we do alcohol, legalize, regulate and tax them, treat the hopeless addicts and educate potential abusers. 90% of all alcoholic beverages are consumed by 10% of the population, and the figure for legalized drugs will be identical. Doctors and scientists know this, educators and rehabilitation specialists know this too.

That's the nature of humanity, 10% of us are addicts. No law and no war will change that. Treatment, research and medical science may one day change this, but killing people and locking them in prison for many years is far more heinous and inhumane than anything the average drug addict will ever do. Let's send up the white flag and figure something else out.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 719

Life is unfair to everyone, but most of all to fools. Wise up.

THE ANSWER MAN IS BACK!

It's Answer Man Time, boys and girls! Shoot me your questions and The Answer Man will answer them. Nothing's simpler, so let's get started:

Dear Answer Man: Should America legalize Medical Marijuana? - Beau Dashuss

Dear Beau Dashuss: Yes, of course it should, Marijuana is relatively harmless, but only if all the pot smokers admit they really don't care about Medical Marijuana all that much and just want their mind-bender of choice to be as legal as whiskey. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Who da man? - Slappy McCoy

Dear Slappy McCoy: You da man, Slappy! Next!

Dear Answer Man: When will our precious animals be given their rights? - Kitty

Dear Kitty: When the precious things start voting and paying taxes and quit crapping all over the place, that's when. Meanwhile, make mine medium rare. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Would you explain to my little Billy how important it is to eat his vegetables? - Peg O'Mahart

Dear Peg O'Mahart: No. That would be your job, Mom. Besides, for all I know, you're trying to feed the poor kid Brussels sprouts, which falls under the category of "cruel and unusual punishment." Next!

Dear Answer Man: Will Sarah Palin be the next president? - Bull Shultz

Dear Bull Schultz: Of what? Next!

Dear Answer Man: Of America, of course! - Bull Shultz

Dear Bull Schultz: Im sorry, but you need to put your inquiry in the form of a question before the Answer Man can help you. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Not so fast, Slick! Will Sarah Palin be the next President of The United States?

Dear Bull Schultz: No. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Why not? - Bull Schultz

Dear Bull Schultz: There's an unwritten rule that America only gets to have one really stupid president per century, and Bush The Younger already used up the 21st century's quota. Next!

Dear Answer Man: How come Bull Shultz got 4 chances? - Mike Hunt

Dear Mike Hunt: I like his name. Yours, not so much. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Who is really buried in Grant's tomb? - Cici Ryder

Dear Cici Ryder: Ulysses S. Grant. Next!

Dear Answer Man: What do you call a butler from India? - Rick Shaw

Dear Rick Shaw: Mahatma Coat. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Who wrote The Autobiography of Winston Churchill? - Alex Allenti

Dear Alex Allenti: He did, of course. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Who did? - Alex Allenti

Dear Alex Allenti: Who did what? Next!

Dear Answer Man: I meant who wrote The Autobiography of Winston Churchill? - Alex Allenti

Dear Alex Allenti: I just told you, he did! You're starting to get on Answer Man's nerves here, pal. Next!

Dear Answer Man: What's with that Alex Allenti dude? - Juan Barleycorn

Dear Juan Barleycorn: Some people are just slow, Juan. Next!

Dear Answer Man: How do you fold a fitted sheet so that it is perfectly flat? - Ophelia Kidney

Dear Ophelia Kidney: You don't. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Glen Beck is losing his eyesight. How can I help? - Al Dante

Dear Al Dante: See if you can get the infection to spread to his vocal cords. Next!

Dear Answer Man: I meant how can I help Glen Beck? - Al Dante

Dear Al Dante: Make up your mind! Think seeing eye dog here, Al. Next!

Dear Answer Man: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? - Murray Poppins

Dear Murray Poppins: You can't fool The Answer Man, Murray, this is a trick question! Everybody knows angels can't dance. But if they could dance, the answer would be one. Pinheads are tiny (check your mirror). Next!

Dear Answer Man: Have you ever read the Bible? If so, how does it turn out? I lost interest halfway through. - Di Tryon

Dear Di Tryon: Yes I have, and it ends with a lurid description of a bad acid trip. Sort of anti-climactic and disappointing. Go figure. Next!

Dear Answer Man: How dare you call the Book of Revelations a description of a bad acid trip? It is the revealed word of God! - Reverend Mel Lowe

Dear Reverend Mel Lowe: I just call 'em like I see 'em, Rev. If you know for sure what The Book of Revelations means let's hear it. That ought to be a real revelation. Well, that's it for The Answer Man, boys and girls. We're done!

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 718

Everybody's least favorite Benjamin Franklin quote is "A stitch in time saves nine." You sort of expect something a little snappier from the guy who's inventions made modern civilization possible.

EXECUTIVES GONE WILD! SCREW BP AND THE GOLDMAN SACKS OF SHIT

So, we need to coddle and protect the Goldman Sachs of this world, and pass no laws intended to cramp their style, according to New York City Mayor and Wall Street bazillionaire Michael "Peewee" Bloomberg. Little Mikey's contention seems to be that the banks are led by supermen who make our lives possible. If this is true, we ought to be grateful.

But it's not true. Bankers have been around forever, usually doing all the things that banks do very quietly and carefully, which is pretty much what you want from them. Banks, while producing no hard products, were the places where individuals and companies kept their money, the collective power of their many deposits enabling banks to make loans at a modest but steady profit to said individuals and companies for housing, agriculture, industry and commerce.

Bankers were careful, stodgy men who watched over their businesses like mother hens, making sure that the money people entrusted to them was well protected and solidly invested. It was, after all, not their money, but their customers'. The strict rules and policies of most banks prohibited reckless behavior, and the people attracted to banking were the perfect sort of fussy, uptight squares you would want safeguarding your hard-earned.

Wild men have other functions in society, and banking is definitely not one of them. Think warrior, poet and acrobat here, areas of endeavor at which wild people excel. Every so often throughout history, however, it dawns upon bankers that have their mitts on all the money, and the fusspots turn on us and start playing super-high stakes poker with our dough!

When they win they don't spread the honey around, but when they lose they never pay the freight themselves, we do. When bankers go wild it is always other people who suffer. Their greed always mangles others.

Twelve years of global poverty and desperation we now call the Great Depression comes to mind, as does our current Recession/Depression, which doesn't seem so great to those millions among us forced from our homes and jobs while the executives who engineered their misery soar high above the fray in luxurious private jets, lighting Cuban cigars with bonus money taken straight out of the pockets of the dispossessed.

And when Bankers go wild, the heads of other industries follow suit and assume that the laws of the land do not apply to them, either. Guys like the bosses at British Petroleum, the geniuses who brought us the massive crude oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is ruining the lives of millions and millions of Americans living on the southern coasts of the United States.

Not a single one of those people would be allowed to invent a car first and brakes second, nor would it even occur to them, but that is exactly what BP did in the Gulf of Mexico. They drilled for oil a mile beneath the sea before the technology existed to deal with leaking oil wells a mile beneath the sea.

There are 3,000 other oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and that technology is decades old, long past the time to have invented a decent set of brakes.

While working without a net might be impressive for trapeze artists, the only lives at risk are their own. Apparently the corporate pirates figured their high wire act would be more entertaining if the price of their failure would cost a good portion of their audience all their money and possessions. Some circus!

Not that we were ever invited to be dealt in at the table with our money sitting in the middle of it, or even consulted on the matter. No CEO asked for permission to play Monopoly with our money or our planet. Their thinking was that they were the supermen described by Peewee Bloomberg and so were above any tawdry laws and regulations meant for lesser beings.

Rules for Masters of The Universe? Perish the thought!

Hence all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from corporate boardrooms when the United States government decided to pass new laws governing their actions, just as it has always passed laws binding the actions of the rest of us. You try digging a leaky oil well in your back yard or gambling with your neighbor's dough and see how far you get before you're scraping a metal cup on the bars of your cell.

So screw the Goldman Sacks of Shit for having to pay only a $550 million fine for cheating their own loyal customers out of many billions of dollars. That's chump change to these high rollers, and $15.5 billion less than the bonuses they awarded themselves out of other people's money this year. Their stockholders will also foot the bill for this paltry fine.

And anyone like that dumbass Congressman feeling sorry for BP for having to set aside $20 billion to pay for the damage they created can also go screw themselves too. 20 billion dollars is but a small down payment on the sort of epic ecological disaster they created without a thought to safety.

The American government has as much right to pass laws governing the behavior of corporations as they do individual citizens. The basics apply to everyone; don't kill anybody, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, and treat others as well as you'd like to be treated. Simple.

There's no one who is unaware of these universal no-nos, nor is there anyone who has never violated any of them. The whole idea of passing laws is to forbid what almost everybody agrees is bad. The ones who do bad things get punished. Also pretty basic and simple.

The eleven workers who were killed when their unsafe oil rig exploded and triggered this environmental catastrophe are rarely mentioned in the press, and never by the spokespeople for BP. Workers dying horrible deaths are hardly the responsible corporate image BP desperately wants to project now.

These eleven dead men left behind eleven devastated families whose silence will soon be purchased by the company that killed them by arrogant negligence. Justice will not be done and the culprits will not be made to answer for the blood on their hands, the oil on our beaches, or the empty places in the hearts of these men's children and wives.

Serious crimes have been committed by Big Oil, Big Banking and Big Insurance, devastating our economy and our physical surroundings, yet few arrests have been made, the results of few investigations. People are dead, money was stolen and fraud committed.

Sounds like the textbook definition of a serious crime wave, one where the government response should have been just a little sterner than handing the thugs responsible even more billions of dollars of other people's money. That's what started this whole mess in the first place.

In a better world, being rich and powerful wouldn't automatically qualify anyone for a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. This just might be a good time to start building a better world.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 717

There is a secret to life, and it's very well kept.

JIMMY, THE BLOGGING DOG CROSSES THE DEEP BLUE SEA

It's me, Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, back from my travels. That's right, humans, Jimmy, The Bogging Dog has been across the ocean and back, all in the name of science, or at least that's what they tell me. For me it was all about the bitches.

They love to breed me, those scientists, and I insist on the real thing. None of this artificial insemination for Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. Being the one and only Canine Einstein available for these people to study has its perks. Wherever I go I'm asked to mate with the finest bitches in the world. Think of me as the the Wilt Chamberlain of Dogdom, but with about 20,000 children.

Ever since people discovered that I can read and write English, they've been calling me "The Canine Einstein." While I am a genius by dog standards, don't get carried away and expect me to start solving all kinds of stupid-hard problems.

By human standards, I'm only a little smarter than your average Cable TV host, so let's keep things in perspective here. You wouldn't ask those people to solve anything complex.

Anyway, these Finnish scientists were okay, yet another bunch of geneticists trying to duplicate another dog genius, like that will do them or the world any good. Like I said, I'm not exactly Steven Hawkings over here. Besides, I would have been fine just being a regular dog. The things I've learned by being the Canine Einstein haven't helped me one bit.

I'm still the property of human, I can't work a doorknob, don't have freedom of movement when I do manage to get outside, and most of my brethren have been sexually mutilated by our human masters. Dogs are a captive race, and we can only take comfort in the fact that most of you don't raise us for food like you do a lot of other animals.

I wish I could tell you what Helsinki was like. My owner sure knows. He was staying in a 5 star hotel, seeing all the sights and living it up every night with the money he earns from owning Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. I stayed at the house of one of the scientists, the one I called Old Fat One, and got to run around his yard a little bit, so Helsinki seemed pretty much like any other place to me.

The rest of the time I spent typing back and forth on computer with my special paw-friendly keyboard with the scientists. I don't actually speak English, being a dog and all. We bark, period. But the scientists and I talk about all sorts of things electronically.

They ask me a question, I type my answer. They do some tests on me, I type up my reactions. I'm pretty used to it by now, and I put up with it because our sessions always end with me having sex.

From FInland we went to Paris, Berlin, London, Rome and Prague, all legendary world capitals. I would tell you about those beautiful and enjoyable cities, but my description would sound just like my description of Helsinki for all I got to see of those places too.

You'd have to talk to my owner about that, and what the women in al these places were like too. Jimmy, The Blogging Dog wasn't the only one getting a lot of vajay-J on my Grand European Tour.

The scientists in all these places were pretty nice people, and all of them asked if I wanted a copy of their findings or some "paper" they were publishing about me, whatever that is. Dogs are polite, but we never got the whole concept of lying, so I had to tell them thanks, but no thanks.

What the hell am I going to do with some dry, scientific mumbo jumbo that doesn't mean scat to me? I hate that stuff! You think dogs nap a lot now? Watch me nod when I have to read some tedious technical manual! One of these days, one of these people is going to realize that it really is all about the bitches for me, but hopefully not anytime soon.

Well, whatever happens will happen, and there's not a hell of a lot I can do about it. I'm just happy to still have my family jewels and so many sweet bitches to share them with. Until next time, this is Jimmy, The Blogging Dog.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 716

The end rarely justifies the means. No sense pretending we don't know right from wrong, that fools no one.

NO MORE STEINBRENNER? CAN'T BE!

So, George Steinbrenner, the volatile and famous owner of Major League Baseball's premier team, The New York Yankees, died the way he lived, upstaging the game he loved. On the morning before baseball's annual All Star Game, George Steinbrenner reminded the world that he has done more to transform and promote the game of baseball than any of the sluggers or fireballing pitchers being showcased in Anaheim on Tuesday night. Right until the end, he was George being George.

Every one of these ballplayers have Steinbrenner to thank for their lofty salaries, whether or not they ever played for the Yankees. Steinbrenner acquired the Yankees at a pivotal time in baseball history, when the reserve clause was finally done away with and players got to be free agents, selling their services to the highest bidder. Guess who the highest bidder for the best available players usually was?

He had inherited a once-proud franchise in 1973 that hadn't won anything since the early 1960s when Mickey Mantle carried an ailing franchise on his ravaged legs into 5 straight World Series, losing 3 of them. By 1968 The Mick was gone and the Yankees stunk and would keep stinking until the fire-breathing George Steinbrenner showed up and refused to accept mediocrity from what used to be the most successful and recognizable team in sporting history.

Only 3 years into his tenure, his aggressive playing of the free agent market brought the Yankees baseball's best pitcher, Catfish Hunter, and the American League pennant in 1976, their first since 1964, only to see them lose 4 straight to the Big Red Machine of the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. Steinbrenner considered the season a failure. Enter Reggie Jackson, Mr. October, Catfish's old Oakland Athletics teammate, and the Yanks took the next 2 World Series, highlighted by Reggie's 3 home runs on 3 pitches in the final game of the '77 Series.

The Yankees were back on the map in a big way, and free agency was embraced by every baseball club owner serious about winning a pennant. The Yankees got another pennant in'81, but lost the Series and would wait another 14 years (the great Don Mattingly's entire career) to get back to the Series. This personal slump for Steinbrenner taught him that throwing money around didn't win titles, but throwing money around wisely did, and that team chemistry is as important as RBI records, so he leaned more and more on the advice of the many shrewd baseball lifers in his organization.

The emergence of Derek Jeter as the Yankee Captain personifies this current era. He is not a home run hitter or a flashy personality, but as solid and knowledgeable a baseball player as the game has seen in decades, excelling in every aspect of the game and never taking his eyes off the prize; victory, no matter how it is achieved, in a big splashy way or in the thousand and one small things a player can do to help his team win; proper positioning, astute baserunning and taking immediate advantage of an opponent's mistakes.

Surrounding Jeter was a core of bonafide stars like the great Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez and now Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano and C.C.Sabathia, as well as solid journeymen who know how the game of baseball is supposed to be played. Gone were the days of the Manager-Of-The-Month Club and Mount Streinbrenner erupting after a frustrating loss and sticking his foot in his mouth yet again.

For all of today's Yankees' astounding individual talents, the quiet professionalism and meticulous preparation of Jeter is the prevailing sensibility of this most recent Yankee dynasty, the same approach that has Jeter closing in on becoming the first Yankee ever to collect 3,000 hits in pinstripes. Guess who gave this non-home run champ and quiet man a 10 year contract at almost 20 million bucks a year, a contract nearly finished and one that paid handsome dividends? George Steinbrenner.

The result? 7 pennants and 5 World Series titles since 1996, the latest one coming last year, the first year at the new Yankee Stadium that George built across the street from the House That Ruth Built. By that time, the old firebreather was old and sickly and his sons were running the day-to-day operations of the club, but George Steinbrenner was sharp enough to follow the action and appreciate the victory that capped his remarkable career.

Every so often he would still issue press releases and remind the world who it was that rebuilt the Yankee franchise, energized the free agent market and introduced the new era of teams having their own cable TV networks and building their own stadiums with their own money. The feeling was that Mount Steinbrenner was laying dormant but could erupt again at a moment's notice. With his team once again the most successful and recognizable sporting franchise anywhere, Steinbrenner made a dramatic exit.

For someone who never played the game, the man left a mark on baseball as big as Babe Ruth's. Every ballplayer, coach and fan at Tuesday's All Star game benefitted from the sometimes crazy and abrasive antics of George Steinbrenner, a born-on-the 4th-of-July American original and a Hall of Famer in his own right, possibly even in his own unique category. Can it really be possible that George Steinbrenner is gone? Doesn't seem possible.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 715

When man purses are outlawed, then only outlaws will carry man purses. Of course they'll be the silliest outlaws ever, and no one will celebrate them in song and story, but will properly shun them.

THERE'S NO PLACE HALF AS EXASPERATING OR COOL AS AMERICA

Okay, we've had it. It's America in 2010 and the ridiculous people just won't go away. We're surrounded by Christian Fascists who would have you love Jesus or die, freshly minted conservatives who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground about the ice cold realities of conservative politics and techie losers who want to wire our brains into the internet so we can all be as geeky as they are.

The earth is getting so hot that really old people are threatening to leave Florida and move back north, throwing their grown children who never liked them much in the first place into a panic. When scientists tell us it will only get worse, the Science Denial Industry holds another press conference to steer us back to the proper guide to predicting the future, the hallucinogenic Book of Revelations.

The Catholic Church is more famous for perverts than for saints these days, our athletes are morphing into Not-so-incredible Hulks and our televisions are fouled with phony "reality shows" celebrating the talent-free, the mean-spirited and the just plain dumb-as-a-turtle among us, and more ignorant blowhard Cable TV clowns than a healthy society can sustain.

Now we've got an arrogant young twat movie star grabbing headlines because she insists it is her right as a celebrity to use brick walls and pedestrians to stop her SUV instead of wearing out her brakes. Enough!

No sense asking the government for help either, they've got their hands full trying to clean up 8 years of damage by our first dictator, Papa Doc Cheney. They're also pretty busy trying to create jobs out of nothing since the bankers stole all the money, getting Big Oil to stop turning the Gulf of Mexico into an XXXL oil reserve tank, and trying to figure out how to pass a law when you've got a solid majority in both Houses of Congress.

Maybe math just isn't Professor Obama's strong suit. To our untrained eyes, in a 51 to 49 vote, 51 wins. What's with all the hand-wringing, Hamlet? This guy gets a little too dramatic sometimes. Maybe it's all that nation building this country is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, probably the two most difficult nations on earth to re-invent.

Nation building. Which is a good idea, once we finish building this one. That's the thing America had that no one else did, a fresh start. When Europeans came here, they came from nations that had been built for many centuries. They were done. What you saw is what you got. Iraq and Afghanistan have both been done for two thousand years. Good luck to their nation builders.

Not so in America. We weren't done the day after George Washington was sworn in, since there were only 13 states, slaves and indentured servants counted as 3/5 of a person and women couldn't vote. We weren't done when the slaves were freed, or women voted, when ordinary workers gained government recognition and support under FDR, when Civil Rights passed or when we put a guy on the moon just for the hell of it (how cool was that?).

We're still not done. Just like the entrenched mindset that led to the compromise of slavery in the United States Constitution, there are still pockets of blindness and injustice yet to be addressed in America. We still deny gay people, our last niggers, their civil rights, and can't seem to figure out immigration, which is odd seeing as how immigration is almost exclusively how America was populated.

The people that were already living here were mostly done away with, another stain on our national character we are still coming to terms with. After a stunning and complete victory in World War 2, we made some rookie mistakes in being the world's biggest superpower, a rarefied perch previously reserved for the Romes, the Spains, the Englands and Frances of this world, nations with many centuries of political preparation for becoming dominant empires in a treacherous world.

America pretty much made it up as we went along, showcasing our happy and prosperous citizenry and wearing the Big Dog target on our back as our navies sailed the 7 oceans for whatever reason navies sail the 7 oceans when there is no war going on.

Mostly to play cat and mouse with the 7 ocean-presence of the Soviet Navy. The Soviet Union played our made-to-order swarthy villain for 50 years in a Cold War our leaders never got tired of but scared the shit out of everyone on Earth. The Cuban Missile Crisis was very nearly instant global warming, and this would be going out by smoke signal.

That finally went away, then other crazy traumatic things happened, as they always do, and now we're alone at the top trying to plug every leak in the dyke and running out of fingers. Americans are wondering what's next for us, because in America you can still wonder that. America has always been as much an ideal as a nation. We're not done yet and we can always change things. Better days are coming.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 714

Everything after the simple gift of life is a bonus. There is nothing else you will ever have that can compare.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 713

Believe it or not, few people are eager to inspect that nasty rash on your upper thigh. That can be a real conversation assassin.

CRAZY FROM THE HEAT

It's Summertime in New York City and the city that never sleeps is getting very drowsy. The temperature hit 103 humid degrees the other day and hasn't gotten much lower, putting a huge crimp in our high-octane style.

Which is a good thing, really, since most New Yorkers you see buzzing around the streets the other 3 seasons of the year with that I'm-a-huge deal in-a-big-hurry look on our faces really don't have anywhere important to go or anything all that pressing to do.

We do it to fool the out-of-towners. Which is why we talk this way too, that whole New York Accent deal. Let's everyone know where you're from right off the bat wherever you go, and establishes you as someone who at least knows his ass from a hole in the ground.

Sorry, people from other places, that's just the way it is. Saves a lot of time-consuming chitchat. We're all about the expedience around here, and the way we operate is designed to get places more quickly in order to dedicate more time to not doing much.

The extreme heat always exposes us, though. We still go through the motions of pretending to be world-beaters as we cruise the canyons of Manhattan and boulevards of the boroughs, but it's a tired act, and every bench, bus stop, set of library steps and public park is draped in limp New Yorkers trying to catch their breath in this oppressive heat.

This time of year is when you can tell who the real movers and shakers are. They don't alter their New York Sidewalk Charge one bit, barreling along confidently, and never alter that earnest, almost manic expression, even in the most barbaric heat. They don't even seem to break a sweat, either, when the rest of us are a sodden mess.

It's days like this when you realize how few of them there are, sort of scary in a world capital and a city of 8 million. Maybe you start thinking that you should shoulder a little more of the load, make more of a difference.

Then the sun reminds you it's Summer and you forget that nonsense and join the sensible New Yorkers lying around relaxing, thinking of not much at all, except maybe Coney Island.

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 712

Being blind is irritating enough without the rest of us treating them like they were stupid too.

ARE YOU BLIND? THEN WHY ARE YOU DRIVING?

Humans. Ya gotta love 'em. Either that or want to slap some sense into our thick skulls out of sheer exasperation, so it's best to just go with the love and don't get yourself all worked up. It's not like we're going to change anytime soon or anything. After a couple of million years climbing the social ladder from hunter-gatherer to internet cadet we've shown both remarkable skills and a perverse streak a mile wide.

With us it's either landing on the moon or inventing lemon-scented toilet paper. Curing diseases or creating new ones. Harnessing the atom and then using it to blow stuff up. Singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" back-to-back with "99 Bottles of Beer on The Wall." Creating beautiful architecture and surrounding it with strip malls. Writing both the Bill of Rights, which giveth, and The Patriot Act, which taketh away. What's with us?

Now word comes to us from the National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech that as soon as next year a prototype vehicle will be unveiled that will allow blind people to drive a car. This bears repetition just to let it sink in: they want blind people to drive cars.

You just know that this achievement, called "nonvisual interface," had to take millions of man-hours of intense research and hard work by a lot of smart people for a very worthy cause, easing the plight of blind people, but you wonder if society will embrace this idea.

In a classic display of understatement, advocates for the blind conceded that "years of testing will be required before society accepts blind drivers." You think?

Now you're wondering if it ever occurred to any of these brilliant minds to apply all that time and energy trying to cure blindness. Other than training a dog to lead them around or giving them a stick to feel their way around life's many obstacles, pretty low-tech approaches, there haven't been a whole lot of breakthroughs in helping out blind people.

Then you ask yourself exactly what have they been doing with all those eyes that get donated by organ donors? You know how that works, you check off a box on the back of your driver's license that says if you buy the farm in a spectacular car wreck that doctors can help themselves to whatever organs you didn't mangle.

The results of this program have been stunningly successful, with news of kidney, heart, lung and other internal organs being transplanted into people and saving their lives quite commonplace, many of them children afflicted with a horrible condition. Except if that horrible condition happens to be blindness.

They're still shit out of luck and getting dragged around by dogs or groping their way through life with a cane, while those millions of donated eyeballs collect dust in a bin somewhere, or are being separated by color and used in games of Chinese Checkers on slow days at the lab. We just don't know, and they're not telling.

So, we've spit the atom, landed on the moon, replaced hearts and linked the planet together via the largest library ever assembled, right at our fingertips (except of course blind people, who can't seem to get the hang of computers, what with them being so visual-oriented and all). They get a dog or a stick, and now they're getting a car. They just won't know what color it is, what the speedometer reading is, or what color is that traffic light they can't see.

When you're blind, you sort of have to accept these things. Like deaf people who will never hear a Beatles song or their child's voice, there are huge slices of the human experience denied the blind. The Mona Lisa and the view from the Empire State Building are only the tip of the iceberg. Try shaving, showering and getting dressed with your eyes closed, or maybe cook a meal blindfolded once. You won't try it twice.

Apparently someone thought that driving a car was an indispensable experience, more important than giving them eyesight to see those little things we take for granted, like brick walls and pedestrians.

So, while congratulations are in order for the scientists, researchers, students and technicians who made driving a car possible for blind people, a part of you just wants to shake some sense into these people and ask: "What the hell are you thinking?"

Most sighted people are lousy drivers, and we're always accusing each other of being blind when we're out on the road. What would you say to a reckless blind driver? You're not supposed to verbally abuse blind people, but put them behind the wheel of a car and that bit of decency will disappear swiftly.

You also can't help but wonder if anybody asked any actual blind people what they could use to make their lives more manageable. It's hard to believe that driving a 2-ton hunk of steel at high speeds without being able to see all the other speeding 2-ton hunks of steel hurtling around you is very high on the wish list of a blind person. A peek at the Mona Lisa seems more like it.

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LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 711

There are no lucky or unlucky numbers, but just to be certain, avoid the number 13.

ASK THE ANSWER MAN!

Editor's note:It's NEW FEATURE TIME once again here at bobcrespo.com HQ in sunny Brooklyn. Today's new entry is a fairly straightforward posting. You ask questions and THE ANSWER MAN answers them. Hence the name THE ANSWER MAN. Not much else to say:

Greetings from THE ANSWER MAN! Here's how this works: You ask a question, any question at all, and I answer it. It's just that simple! Let's see what brain-busters you readers of bobcrespo.com have come up with for THE ANSWER MAN. I'm told this a very bright demographic so I'll be sure to be on my toes. Let's go:

Dear Answer Man: When was the War of 1812? - Fredo from Vegas

Dear Fredo from Vegas: 1812. Next!

Dear Answer Man: What's the capitol of Washington, D.C.? - Jimmy Crackhorn

Dear Jimmy Crackhorn:Washington, D.C. is the capitol city of the United States, Jimmy, and so does not have a capitol. Next!

Dear Answer Man: My bad! I meant the capitol of Washington State. - Jimmy Crackhorn

Dear Jimmy Crackhorn: I'm sorry, but there was no question in this letter. Can't help you. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Okay, okay! Is the capitol of Washington State The District of Columbia? - Jimmy Crackhorn

Dear Jimmy Crackhorn: No. Now that's 3 times in a row for you, pal. Give someone else a chance. Next!

Dear Answer Man: I'm doing a crossword puzzle I'm stuck on a 3-letter word for "man's second-best friend." Can you help me out here? - Sherry Pye

Dear Sherry Pye: The answer is "cat." It is spelled C-A-T. Next!

Dear Answer Man: But what if I hate cats? They wouldn't even be my 1,000th best friend! What would the answer be then, Mr. Big Shot Answer Man? - Sherry Pye

Dear Sherry Pye: The answer is "cat." It is spelled C-A-T. Next!

Dear Answer Man:How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? - Chuck Wood

Dear Chuck Wood: Just enough to make you a new wooden head, Chuck. Next!

Dear Answer Man: What is the most accurate figure for the value of Pi (∏)? - Forrest Sherwood

Dear Forrest Sherwood: That would be, to the 50th place: ∏≈ 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716933337510. Next!

Dear Answer Man: Don't you feel guilty answering all these foolish questions? - Benedict from Rome

Dear Benedict from Rome: Answer Man doesn't question how the heck you make your living, sir. Back off. Next!

Dear Answer Man: What's with that guy? - Butch McCoy

Dear Butch McCoy: He's a jerk. Next!

Dear Answer Man:What's that little hangy-down thing on my Grandma's neck that's just like a turkey has? What do you call that thing? I think it's funny. - Ginny who's 6

Dear Ginny who's 6: That's called a dewlap, honey, also known as a wattle, and it is not funny. Fear it. Next!

Dear Answer Man: What's the best way to plug an oil leak at the bottom of the sea? I can make it worth your while. - Tony from the U.K.

Dear Tony from the U.K.: Answer Man has that answer, Tony. Let's meet privately and talk turkey. Next!

Dear Answer Man:If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it fall, how much time would it take for a woodchuck to chuck it? Gotcha! - Chuck Wood

Dear Chuck Wood: Forever. The truth is, woodchucks really can't chuck wood, Chuck Wood. Now, The Answer Man is outta here. Tony from the U.K. is sending a jet. See ya!

LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 710

Betrayal is more painful than any injury.

NOTE TO SELF: TURN DOWN ANY OFFER TO BE A RUSSIAN SPY

What? Russian spies in America! Has the retro craze even affected those of us who wax nostalgic about the Cold War, of all things? What, they miss Nuclear Bomb Drills? They wish the Berlin Wall was still there and that it was Russian troops shooting up Afghanistan instead of our own?

Or maybe they have fond memories of the exhilarating tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the highest stakes poker game ever played, with nothing less than the fate of all mankind in the hands of 2 pissed-off, driven men?

Well, if you are one of those people who wonder what it's like to be a spy for Russia, it looks like they have some openings (11 and counting!) for avid fans of the bad guys in Robert Ludlum novels. The only drawback, it seems, is that today's spies live exceedingly ordinary lives.

No dead drops, no radio and code book in the attic, no blackmailing of scientists, no poison-tipped umbrellas, no tiny cameras to photograph sensitive papers during a daring embassy break-in, and worst of all, you don't get to cary a gun with a silencer, much less assassinate anybody!

Granted, the spies picked up the other day by the Feds were "sleepers," deeply imbedded moles instructed to keep a low profile and blend in with the American crowd while filing innocuous "political reports" and awaiting instructions to take action that never came.

The biggest action these people ever saw was fighting crabgrass. The only "intrigue" in which they were involved was connected with the leadership of their local PTA. So you might want to rethink pursuing the exciting life of an international spy. It's just not what was.

Employees of the FSB (the renamed KGB), it couldn't have taken them more than a month to realize that there was absolutely nothing at all secret or classified going on in the suburbs, but, not wanting to lose their cushy gig, they fed their spy masters all sorts of melodramatic nonsense, knowing they'd lap it up.

KGB operatives were most pissed off of all Russians when the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight back in 1990, rendering their vast espionage network all but obsolete. All they knew was the Cold War; the provocations, the propaganda, intelligence, counter-intelligence, espionage, sabotage and secret prisons. Then one day it was over without warning

Bureaucracies are, however, quite resilient, and the ex-KGB boys must have jumped at the chance to get back in the game when enterprising Russian and South American agents offered to spy on America from the comfort of their split-level ranch homes. What they promised to deliver we can only guess, but odds are they just made stuff up and passed it along on Twitter.

Imagine their chagrin when the Feds found out and thought they were on the level! Initial interrogations indicate that these people held no secrets about America, were in possession of exactly no classified documents or a single blueprint for a secret weapon on microfilm! Some spies.

One is reminded of the Conehead skit on Saturday Night Live where an alien family was sent to conquer Earth but instead wallowed in its bland pleasures and excesses, then panicked when asked for an accounting of their progress.

It was a good scam while it lasted, but with this Homeland Security Administration falling all over America like a ton of bricks to justify their own existence, these amateur spies were bound to find their way onto the radar of officialdom sooner or later. While busting this spy ring might have been a major coup twenty-five years ago, today it is only a mild curiosity at best.

Not too many people think all that much about Russia anymore, much less fear them. While this may bug the Russians no end, that's just the way it is. With the Gulf of Mexico filing up with crude oil, jobs disappearing, homes being abandoned, lunatic religious terrorists vowing to destroy us and our rapidly warming planet poised to flood our shores with melting ice caps and drown millions of us, well, the Cold War doesn't seem so bad now.

One would think that modern day Russian spies would be industrial espionage types, emulating China's success in that area, especially with the orgy of corrupt capitalism and the gangster/entrepreneurs taking over the banks in the former worker's paradise. For all we know, there's no shortage of those people working in the United States for various corporations and the mole couples were a red herring.

Commerce is where the stakes are highest in today's world, with the multinational corporations wielding more power and influence every day. And the pay is undoubtedly better. Russia has a whole lot of oil and natural gas, and when the Soviet Union's collapse led to the privatization of these assets, politically connected and corrupt Soviet insiders along with the Russian mafia were the big winners in the instant billionaire sweepstakes.

The Russian government, on the other hand, can't get out of its own way. Led by former KGB stalwart Vladimir Putin, a man who continues to call the breakup of the Soviet Union "a national catastrophe," and accuses the American police of "going crazy" over the crabgrass spy ring, Russia is consumed with small wars with breakaway former Soviet Republics with names ending in "stan" and obsessed with regaining their Superpower status. It's a little sad, really.

Even sadder is that so many within America's intelligence community miss the Cold War as much as the Russians. An entire generation of our own Cold Warriors had nothing to do after 1990, which was okay by most of the world since the Cold War scared the crap out of everybody and gave our CIA license to do the most abominable things in small nations all over the globe.

Not that our "Russian experts" were any good. The fall of the Soviet union was as much of a surprise to them as it was to the rest of the world. You'd think that all the thousands of people trained to speak Russian and know everything there is to know about the Soviet Union would at least have a clue that the whole thing was about to go kablooey? The answer to that one is "no" and they read about it in the papers like the rest of us.

Like their former-and hopefully-future nemeses in the KGB, our own Cold Warriors have now attained high rank through the merit of just being there and their mindset still informs the America intelligence community. Is it any wonder that a grubby bum in robes has eluded them by not playing by Cold War rules and hiding in caves in South Asia? Osama bin Laden has read all the Ludlum novels and wisely stays out of Prague and East Berlin.

And like most generals, our espionage leaders are fighting the last war, and this "Russian Spy Ring" vindicates that in their minds. We can look forward to more years of fighting the wrong wars with the wrong tactics. What will become of their new trophies, these Soccer Mom spies?

Who cares? They've already done enough damage, although not the sort their Russian handlers had in mind. America is unchanged by their feeble efforts, and more's the pity since we need a complete overhaul of our intelligence agencies and their priorities. The last thing we need is a huge splashy "Red Menace" spy trial to take our eye off the terror ball.

This is not the 1950s, it's the 21st century. Let's hope our president doesn't let our intelligence agencies get carried away with themselves and forget about bin Laden and his not-so-merry men, who, by the way, are feeling so comfortable that they have launched their own magazine to promote world-wide jihad. That should be interesting, as in horrifying interesting.

Probably the worst thing you can do to these spies is deport them, see if they can get hold of the spacious homes, minivans, iPads and the sheer American convenience of living in modern Russia. Those things are not for the Communist Party elite anymore, but the wheeler dealers in the private sector. The rest of Russia drinks plenty of vodka to ease the sting of getting screwed again by their latest Tsars.

Judging from their lack of initiative as spies, these mole couples are not exactly equipped to compete with the new Russian aristocracy of hustlers, mobsters and government-connected industrialists. There's no place in today's Russia for such people.

Thanks to them, however, there is a place again for American Cold Warriors and their legacy of psychotic, clandestine "black ops" that have caused so much misery. Way to go, Coneheads! Let's hope they like vodka and standing in line dreaming about that worldwide worker's paradise they were pretending to implement.