Ready for a good laugh?  Wallabies in Tasmania are breaking into legal poppy fields and eating up the world’s supply of poppy plants, which are used to make morphine and other painkillers.  Oh!  And they are also creating crop circles while stoned!!  Awesome!!!

(Thanks, Lisa!)

Do you know anyone who would be caught dead having sex with this man?

Let me begin by saying that I don’t think that sexual interests have anything to do with governing. That said, I ask that my politicians show integrity and honesty. I don’t give a rat’s ass about moral failings and all that jazz. But honesty and integrity rank high.

My least favorite politicians include all of the guys who ripped Bill Clinton a new one during Monicagate while they were (or are) pussyfooting around with honeys of their own – mainly Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, John Ensign, Bob Livingston, Henry Hyde, John Edwards, Larry Craig, and Mark Sanford.

I hate hypocrisy. I HATE it. I love honesty. I LOOOOVE it.

One of my favorite politicians is the publicly asexual Ralph Nader. He is a guy who walks the walk. He is boring as all hell and only preaches moral accountability of government to its citizens – never sexual moral accountability to God. Nobody cares that he is asexual, and the fact that he has largely kept his love life secret is of no interest to me. Why? Because he isn’t a hypocrite!

Republicans, in particular, love to bash the sexual appetites of people. They hate themselves for adopting a life of the missionary position. They are jealous that Democrats get to do it reverse-cowgirl style. They have so little self-confidence in their abilities to sexually-please their wives that bash anybody who is into sexual positions that they believe their constituents would publicly find to be vile. What they don’t know is that the reason their wives no longer give it to them is because these men refuse to do the things that make sex interesting (things that I won’t mention in this article).

BUT Republicans WANT to have hot sex. They want it so bad they can taste it. And the aforementioned assholes even got caught tasting it.

I don’t blame them for wanting hot sex. I blame them for being complete assholes to anyone else who wants hot sex.

Mark Sanford should resign. John Edwards got his comeuppance. Newt Gingrich should be expelled to the political purgatory of obscurity. These gents all are hypocrites to the nth degree. Believe me, there are plenty of would-be politicians waiting in the wings; we don’t need to give these guys more shots at fame.

Honesty is admitting that you want to have hot sex. Integrity is not cheating on your wife to get hot sex. Seems simple, right? Well, I guess it’s easier said than done. The aforementioned guys lack the honesty and integrity to be good leaders.

And the worst part of all this is that while these guys were/are off secretly banging their hot, young confidants, their sexually-deprived (and sometimes hot) wives are sitting at home reading spicy novels, and dreaming of the day their husband might ask for reverse-cowgirl.

Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago . Capone wasn’t famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.

Capone had a lawyer nicknamed “Easy Eddie.” He was Capone’s lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie’s skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.

To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well. Not only was the money big, but Eddie got special dividends, as well. For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day. The estate was so large that it filled an entire Chicago City block.

Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him.

Eddie did have one soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly. Eddie saw to it that his young son had clothes, cars, and a good education. Nothing was withheld. Price was no object.

And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was.

Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn’t give his son; he couldn’t pass on a good name or a good example.

One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done.

He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al “Scarface” Capone, clean up his tarnished name, and offer his son some semblance of integrity. To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great. So, he testified.

Within the year, Easy Eddie’s life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street . But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he could ever pay. Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine.

The poem read:

“The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop, at late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will. Place no faith in time. For the clock may soon be still.”

STORY NUMBER TWO

World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O’Hare.

He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific.
One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission. After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank.
He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship.
His flight leader told him to return to the carrier. Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet.
As he was returning to the mother ship, he saw something that turned his blood cold; a squadron of Japanese aircraft was speeding its way toward the American fleet.
The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless. He couldn’t reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger. There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet.
Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes. Wing-mounted 50 caliber’s blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another. Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent.
Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible, rendering them unfit to fly.
Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction.
Deeply relieved, Butch O’Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier.
Upon arrival, he reported in and related the event surrounding his return. The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch’s daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had, in fact, destroyed five enemy aircraft.
This took place on February 20, 1942 , and for that action Butch became the Navy’s first Ace of W.W.II, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.
A year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29. His home town would not allow the memory of this WW II hero to fade, and today, O’Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man.
So, the next time you find yourself at O’Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch’s memorial displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It’s located between Terminals 1 and 2.
SO WHAT DO THESE TWO STORIES HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?

Butch O’Hare was “Easy Eddie’s” son.

I submitted this item to Found Magazine about a year ago, and it finally posted this month! Yeeehaw!!!

Rarely will you hear me speak in absolutes.  And I don’t know that I have ever used the “E-Word” (at least not since Barack Obama became President).  But on issues of free speech, there seems to me to be only two camps – Good and Evil.

The ACLU is Good.  China is Evil.  Oh!  And Google is also evil.

In case you didn’t hear, Google is helping China to limit search results that might be critical of the Chinese government.  Google is also limiting Chinese citizens’ access to that age-old driver of economies – porn.  And forget about learning about the Tienanmen Square protests if you live in China.

Google is the world’s foremost controller/provider of online information, so this represents a disturbing trend for those of us who value freedom of speech.

It kind of reminds me of that time all of the major search providers (except Google) handed over to our government all of our online search records.  This type of behavior is an affront to democracy.

Liana is probably the most talented songwriter I have ever met in my whole life.  She writes all her own stuff, and records it all on her macbook – pretty fantastic, if you ask me!

Put simply, our War on Drugs has caused more problems than it has cured.  Our drug enforcement policies are stupid at best, and are racist and inconsistent at worst.

The War on Drugs was long ago coopted by corporate prison interests and local police monetary concerns, as well as the legal drug and medicine lobbies (see cigarrette lobbies, alcohol lobbies, prison lobbies, police officer lobbies, etc.).  There are industries that are unhealthy to our democracy making a killing supporting these racist and inconsistent policies.

SO, it is always nice to see examples of countries stepping forward from the status quo and trying new things out.  Case in point, check out what Portugal is doing with their drug offenders.  By helping and treating rather than criminalizing drug use, Portugal is not only heading towards to more secure and healthy citizenry, but also breaking free from the negative impacts of the aforementioned drug-related moneyed interests.

(Thanks, Lisa!)

I was listening to Pandora a few minutes ago when Ben Folds Five’s “For the Benefit of Tom and Mary” came on.  That song is pure gold, I tell you!  This is the only version of the song I could find on Youtube that was worth a glance:

Watching Sammy go from a 130-pound, base-stealing rookie to a 300-pound homer-hitting gorilla* over the course of 7 years raised some red flags in my neck of the woods.  I mean, seriously? He was gaining weight at a faster clip than SUVs were in the early 2000’s.  Like exponential weight gains, and ALL muscle, and ALL in the forearms and biceps.  So, basically, he gained 100 pounds IN HIS FOREARMS AND BICEPS!  I didn’t even know steroids could do that.  I mean, in the biceps and forearms?  Steroids can be that accurate.  Wow.  I am impressed.

In any case, I don’t really care about all this, because the golden age of baseball (1996-1999) was great.  We had more home runs during that span of three years than were hit in the previous 100 years combined!**  We were living in Eden, and our Adamses were named McGuire, Sosa, Rodriguez, Palmiero, Jeffries, etc. etc.   Sure they ate the forbidden fruit.  But wasn’t it delightful?

*weights are not based on any factual evidence and are likely exaggerated to support my opinion

**I totally made that stat up.

I was listening to MPR a few minutes ago, and they were doing a segment on the dangers posed to young users of the Internet. This sort of talk amuses me to no end. It amuses me, because parents are always looking for new things to worry about.

When I was a kid, parents were mainly scared of drugs, kidnappings, and television. Today’s parents are afraid of all sorts of other things, mostly stupid – cyber-predators, cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking, seeing bad things on the Internet, and learning about stuff that is taboo websites.

Personally, I would be more scared of hot girls promoting Jesus as a Savior than of all of the aforementioned cyber-badlies. Seriously. One of my brothers (You know who you are!) was totally led astray in high school by a super hot Jesus Freak of a girl who would only put out if he accepted Jesus into his life. Well, he did. And he got re-baptized too! And he started being really annoying at dinner, trying to get me to accept Jesus into my life and all. Nothing has the potential to ruin a career more than being annoying – and Jesus Freaks are the worst kind of annoying.

Anyway, thankfully the girl dumped him or he dumped her, and he managed to go back to being his lonely, old self.

The girl is now a Christian Rock superstar (seriously.), but she is still going to go nameless on this blog.

The point here is that of all the dangers to our youth, the Internet is one of the least frightening. Yet, it garners more attention from parents than other important stuff.

If parents really wanted to protect their kids, they would refuse to pay for year-round athletics, science camp, Pepsi products, and Crocs.

Above: Crocs. AAAAHHHhhhh!!!!

Indeed, we all grow up some day, and, outside of our parents’ overwhelming shroud, we all go on to live normal lives. But I can’t help but think we would be better off as adults had our parents just left us alone to go about learning about the world in our own ways.