My ex-wife showed up unannounced at 9:30 this morning to collect my son. I was cooking bacon and eggs for the boys, because my son had his friend, Jack, spend the night with him. They slept on the inflatable bed I have, but they conked out before I could inflate it, so they slept on the floor last night, on top of the uninflated bed. They slept like a pair of rocks, too. They were hungry this morning, but I never got the chance to feed them. Bacon was still sizzling in the frying pan and biscuits were in the oven when Jack ran home and the bloodless cunt tooled away in her really cool sports car with my son on board.

I went into the usual fit of depression I experience when my son is taken from me. But this has been a well-used and well-enjoyed home for a week. I have the wall-smudges and dirty handprints to prove it, too. God, I miss that boy already.

My son left his bicycle in the garage and a pile of dirty clothes in the bathroom. I suppose I'll have to return those things eventually. But the cunt will come to retrieve them, because she doesn't want me around her house, where the unemployed, dope-smoking lover stays. She's afraid that I'll shoot the bastard if I have a gun, or simply liver-punch the diseased piece of shit and drown him in his own vomit if I am unarmed.

She's right to keep me away from there.

The Friday Five I usually copy from Dave Tepper's site is about television this week, and I don't watch commercial TV; therefore, I am totally unqualified to answer any of the questions. I am probably one of the few living, breathing human beings in the country who has never seen an episode of ALLIE MCBEAL or even SEINFEILD when it was in its prime. I stopped watching network television when CHEERS went off the air, and I have not missed it at all, except for the popular culture questions I can't answer in trivia contests anymore. I watch TV occasionally, but I usually view sports, the History Channel or the BEHIND THE MUSIC stuff on VH-1. Okay, I confess: I still watch STAR TREK reruns in Sci-Fi, too. But that's about it. Needless to say, I do not subscribe to TV GUIDE.

So, here is a FRIDAY FIVE that I stole from an e-mail about "modern zen."

1) If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

2) If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.

3) Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

4) It's always darkest before the dawn. So, if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.

5) There are two theories about arguing with woman. Neither one works.

Yeah, yeah. Gag me with a spoon again. Here is some more COMMENTARY by Nat Hentoff about that glorious piece of self-serving, horny trailer-park trash that befouled the Oval Office before the President we have now. At least Nat understands what a corrupt hairball Clinton was. Having THAT PRICK as a two-term President says a lot about our country, and none of it is good.

Clinton shoud have been a television evangelist. He could have preached stirring sermons to believing multitudes, produced snot from his nose and tears from his eyes whenever the situation called for it, collected lots of money and screwed all the women he wanted in the revival tent after the show was over.

Wait a minute... the sleazy bastard DID THAT. Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show came to the White House, preached for eight years, then stole the silverware and the doorknobs when it left. Amen, brother. Clinton might not have been exactly Abraham Lincoln, but HE WAS DA BOMB, MAN, and it was really, really cool to see him sitting behind that big desk and acting so serious when he signed Presidential Orders left-handed, and saluted the Marines when he got off that really neat Presidential helicopter and did that awesome thing of forming some stones into a cross on Normandy Beach when he went there to grieve, apologize or pose, whatever it was, and he was, like, the COOLEST DUDE you ever saw. I know I miss him, and if I had been in the White House at transition time, I would have spray-painted a few obscene messages on the wall and ripped the "w" off MY keyboard just to show how much I want to grow up and be JUST LIKE HIM one of these days.

But that will never happen. I'm not left-handed.

Maybe Cynthia McKinney is not as deranged as I thought. Perhaps, she is merely a typical bought-and-sold politician serving her TRUE CONSTITUENTS instead of the citizens of the Fourth District in my beloved state of Georgia. She DOES receive a lot of money from people who ain't from around here.

Sometimes, you just have to stand back and marvel. THIS GUY obviously has a few problems, and the judge probably made a wise decision by denying bail. My only question is: Why did he keep his socks on?

If you hurry, real, real fast, you can find that GUT RUMBLES got a link to something other than JB's SITE. JB cut his hair, I'm going middle-aged crazy by growing a pony tail, and I finally got DAVE TEPPER'S ATTENTION (scroll down a few posts) by really insulting the legal profession.

I love it when a plan comes together.

When I wrote last night about doctor-assisted suicide, I didn't elaborate on my Libertarian belief that government has no business peering over physician's shoulders when they write prescriptions, for fear that some individual might abuse those drugs, or telling states that they can't allow medicinal marijuana, for fear that some individual might abuse that drug, or even that government has NO RIGHT to forbid me to commit suicide by any means I see fit any time I feel the urge, for fear that I might abuse that right by killing myself when I might have changed my mind later.

It was too late at night to go into all of that stuff. But JACOB SULLUM takes care of a lot of what I left out. Does the government's duty to "provide for the common defense" mean it must protect me from myself? I don't think so.

But government does.

It's almost dark, but another football game is raging in my front yard.

Two weeks ago, I carefully seeded and fertilized that sandbar yard of mine. Monday, the little grass seedlings were poking their green leaves out of the soil and sprouting everywhere. This evening, my yard appears to have hosted a rodeo, complete with bull riding and calf roping contests. I believe that the majority of my grass crop has been destroyed by young terrorists who plow up my yard with their games and then track dirt all over my carpet when they come inside for something to drink.

I wouldn't have it any other way. I can plant more grass. They will be kids only once, and I enjoy watching.

Here's why President Bush wants THIS DORK fired. After reading the article, I want his self-serving, scare-mongering, data-manipulating ass gone, too.

I never believed I would see THIS INFORMATION released at Earth Day festivities. The environment is getting cleaner and healthier every year, even though the "public perception" is that it's getting worse. I wonder: where does that misguided public perception come from? It couldn't be the brainwashing, propagandizing, lying, scare-mongering environmentalists, could it?

Yeah, it could.

I just thought I would throw this out there for whoever might be interested. Just look at the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) who voted against drilling in the ANWR:

Republicans who opposed drilling: Lincoln Chafee, R.I.; Susan Collins, Maine; Mike DeWine, Ohio; Peter Fitzgerald, Ill.; John McCain (emphasis mine), Ariz.; Bob Smith, N.H.; Gordon Smith, Ore.; Olympia Snowe, Maine.

Democrats who supported drilling: Daniel Akaka, Hawaii; John Breaux, La.; Daniel Inouye, Hawaii; Mary Landrieu, La.; Zell Miller, Ga. (emphasis mine again)

God bless Zell Miller, goddamn that incompetent pilot and worse senator John McCain (it's seldom mentioned that he was a reverse ace in Vietnam. He piloted FIVE planes into the ground and the fifth one put him in the Hanoi Hilton), and why don't the fruit loops in New England just go ahead and elect ice cream churning Ben and Jerry to represent them? It could lead to a new flavor, called "Green Maroon."

Mark Steyn has written many insightful opinions about the bizarre state of affairs in the Middle East, but THIS ANALYSIS is one of his best. I ranted a few days ago about the fact that the Palestinians, despite all the love, hugs and cuddles they receive from Europe, are a bunch of pathetic losers who couldn't govern a decent homeland if they had one. When we started our country, we had a few available statesmen, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to help paint the big picture. The Palesinians have Yasser Arafat, a demented troll who can't control his own Palastinian Authority (a true oxymoron), and anybody else available to take his place is worse than HE is. Their "leadership" is a festering bunch of nutjobs, liars and schemers whose only "big picture" for their country is KILL ALL THE JEWS. I don't believe their behavior is an auspicious sign for a thriving, free and democratic Palestinian state in the near future.

The only Palestinians enjoying anything approaching a good life are those who LIVE IN ISRAEL and have more rights there than they ever would have in their own homeland if it's run by those claiming "leadership" now. We have plenty of oppressive regimes in the Middle East already. We don't need another one, especially if it's founded on a bedrock of sheer, boiling hatred and resentment, which is pretty much all that motivates Palestinian leadership.

As Steyn says, "The 'Palestinian Authority' was an unlikely bet for a state but, from Arafat's point of view, it would make an ideal launch-point from which to kill Jews in the very heart of their tiny sliver of territory.

Other than that, what's the point? I'm sure the Middle East can always use another squalid corrupt dictatorship, but at the very least it ought to be a viable squalid corrupt dictatorship. An Arafatist squat on the West Bank and Gaza would be insufficient. If Israel is, to the French, a "shitty little country," this would be littler and shittier."

He got the shitty part right.

The General Accounting Office confirms that the departing Clinton team ACTUALLY VANDALIZED THE WHITE HOUSE after all. No one should be surprised, because these cretins worked for a man who demeaned his high office from the time he oozed in the door until the time he left, hauling off whatever booty he could carry with him. Clinton should have been provided a single-wide mobile home for an office, with half-buried tires painted white marking the dirt driveway, a couple of pink flamingos flanking a cracked birdbath in the weed-infested front yard and a rusting 55 Chevy up on concrete blocks for lawn decoration. That's the kind of guy he is.

People of solid character won't work for a sleazeball, so the kind of people who worked for Clinton reflected his values, his intregity and his dignity. So, they stole doorknobs, scrawled obscene graffitti on White House walls and left pornographic pictures behind to remind their replacements about what fine, upstanding public servants they were. There is Clinton's legacy in a nutshell.

We had an immature, self-centered President, surrounded by an immature, self-centered staff and they displayed their appreciation of this country, its citizens and its honor by trashing the White House on their way out the door. That sort of behavior is both pathetic and sickening, which is an apt description of the Clinton Presidency.

I just hope George and Laura had all the White House toilet seats thoroughly disinfected before they sat down on one.

Well, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. These BARTENDERS need a little more training if they are going to perfect the trick of setting the bar aflame without igniting a few customers, too. It gives a whole new meaning to "I went out and got really LIT last night." DO NOT try this at home.

If an incident such as THIS happened in Georgia, and white people were attacking black motorists and shouting racial epithets, it would make banner headlines in every paper in the country, every network newscast would lead with it, and every "expert" available would appear on talk shows to analyze why we remain such a racist country. I am surprised that a story about blacks behaving as racist hate-criminals made the news at all.

The usual suspects will attempt to explain this disgusting episode as a manifestation of "black rage," just the way they did after the Rodney King riots. No excuse they offer will justify that sort of behavior to me.

I am filled with rage about a lot of things. I manage to control it, except for a few over-the-top rants on this blog. If I nut up one day and act out the outrageous impulses I sometimes feel when I think about my ex-wife, when I experience road rage or when somebody really pisses me off at work, I richly deserve whatever consequences follow. I have no one to blame but myself for my total loss of control and self-discipline. We cannot have a society, let alone a civilized society, if we excuse and condone uncivilized behavior.

Anyone who attempts to excuse this wanton, racist and uncivilized mini-riot in Cincinnati should absolutely love Palestinian terrorists. They can't help themselves, either.

I don't know where JB finds this stuff, but sometimes I like it. I don't agree with everything the writer says in THIS SCREED, but he raises a lot of interesting points. I can't argue with this:

There is a theory that many women are naturally collectivists run by their feelings (hence their falling for Bill "I Feel Your Pain, and Monica Lewinsky, Too" Clinton and Phil "Dumped My Wife and Family, Married a Younger Trophy Wife" Donahue). I suspect this is why women have traditionally been denied the vote throughout history; the majority of them would vote Democrat and ultimately bring society down. Their desire for "security" trumps freedom.

That's why Al Gore called everything George Bush proposed during the 2000 presidential campaign "risky." He was courting the feminine vote and he won it by appealing to that innate alarm women feel about "risk" whenever somebody else says they may be taking one. Of course, these same risk-averse women have no problem driving at 70 miles per hour, steering with their knees and gazing at their faces in the rear-view mirror while applying makeup on Highway 21 every morning. THAT's not risky. Government giving you the freedom to succeed or fall on your ass all by yourself is.

Damn, but I've been negative the past few days. Must be something in the water...

I stole THIS STORY from The Professor because, if the "magic foo-foo dust" actually works the way the inventors claim it does, it will have a tremendous impact on smokestack industries and I work in one of those. An inexpensive additive that will scrub SOX and NOX from stack emissions with 99% efficiency is a dream come true for chemical manufacturers and power generators.

It's also a nightmare for environmental activists.

If this stuff works, smokestacks will belch, for the most part, nothing more menacing that hot air. How will environmentalists continue their hysterical scare campaigns after one of their most precious boogey-men goes away? Since their true agenda is NOT to protect the environment but to tear down civilization, clean smokestacks present a real dilemma for Greenpeace, Citizens For Clean Air and other such nutcake organizations. They NEED dirty smokestacks to justify their existence and to keep donations flowing into their coffers.

You heard it here first: If foo-foo dust works, IT will become an environmental menace that causes cancer, kills at least 10,000 people every year, aggravates asthma in our precious children, pollutes our waterways, destroys wetlands, damages rain forests, wipes out endangered species, interrupts migration patterns of Monarch butterflys, turns male frogs into females, promotes tobacco use among teenagers, contributes to global warming and enlarges the ozone hole over Anarctica. Numerous "scientific studies," produced by the same people who made a good living for years producing "scientific studies" about the dangers of belching smokestacks, will be trumpeted to alert the public about this NEW MENACE to life as we know it on our delicate planet.

If foo-foo dust works, we can burn the massive coal reserves we have in this country and enjoy clean air at the same time. That's the LAST THING environmentalists want to see.

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES. The Senate managed to hock up enough hairball votes to defeat the proposal to drill for oil in the god-forsaken, frozen wasteland of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. The 46 idiots who filibustered to stop the drilling were led by that wizened gnome from Connecticut, who demonstrated his confused state of mind in these words: "Development (of the refuge) would irreversibly damage this natural resource," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., a leader of the filibuster.

Uh, Joe... the ANWR is not a natural resource. It is 19 million acres of utterly useless ground. The OIL UNDERNEATH IT, however, IS a valuable natural resource, you posturing maroon. Sparing the precious caribou herds that use the coastal plain for a calving ground is a poor excuse for whoring for environmental pressure groups, which is exactly what you are doing. The caribou were all gonna die if we drilled Prudhoe Bay, too. They not only did not die, the herd QUADRIPLED IN SIZE. Unlike most of the people who oppose drilling in ANWR, I know a little bit about the technology used to extract oil from the earth today. I work for a company that dabbles in that sort of thing all over the world. Amid that 19 million acres, we would require a spot about the size of a typical Super Wal-Mart parking lot to extract however many billions of barrels of oil that entire area may contain.

To forbid drilling in the name of protecting the environment is not a moral stance; it is a display of absolute ignorance.

My son's baseball team kept their perfect record intact this evening by losing 8-6 to a team almost as bad as they are. On the way home he asked, "Daddy, we stink, don't we?" I know Ward Cleaver would have handled that question better that I did, but I was at a loss for fatherly wisdom at the time. "Yeah, y'all stink pretty bad," I replied. "But you look GREAT in those uniforms."

My son seemed perfectly content with my brutal honesty and asked for another post-game cheeseburger for supper.

Maybe I was too hard on Dave Tepper last night about health care, but my take on LAWYERS was dead on the money. "Squeegee-boys," indeed.

Usually I enjoy his site and agree with a lot of what he has to say, but DAVE TEPPER pissed me off tonight on back-to-back posts. First, he pondered with furrowed brow the mystery of why some people have a low opinion of lawyers. I wrote him a lenghty epistolary explaining the fact that a lot of low-down, bottom-feeding, scum-of-the-earth types, who would cold-bloodedly strangle their mamas and sell their children into Sudanese slavery for a dollar, give the few decent ones in the profession a bad reputation. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe in justice, and most lawyers don't.

Then, Dave waxed philosophical about health insurance. Universal health care has become some sort of sacred totem for the socialist, give-away-everything-for free dorkles who believe money grows on government-tended trees and free access to a doctor every time you break wind is a medical necessity. I disagree. When I was married and my wife and I double-dipped on health insurance, we essentially had free medical coverage. What my policy didn't cover, hers did, right down to the $15 co-payment. I could go to the doctor anytime I wanted to FOR FREE. I seldom went, because I HATE going to the doctor. I must be not only at death's door, but have one foot in the grave and the other one slipping into the hole before I visit a physician.

Not everybody feels the way I do, because I know many people who would rather go to the doctor than eat when they're hungry. Especially if the doctor will write them excuse to lay out of work. It's a sad fact, but true: If health care were free for everybody, you likely would bleed to death in a crowded waiting room from a severe injury while all the medical personnel were tied up tending to some hypocrondiac complaining about how his shoulder hurt when he tried to pick his nose. If the whining doofus had to pay for the visit himself, he might actually contemplate the idea of NOT PICKING HIS NOSE until his shoulder stopped hurting. But if it's free, he'll go see a doctor. We don't really want to give that sort of platinum Visa card that you never have to pay for to people who will abuse it. To receive free medical care, you actually should NEED medical care first.

Over the past six months, I've spent a lot more time than I ever wanted to in hospitals and doctor's offices. I am yet to see anyone dying unattended in the parking lot or some demonic Nurse Rached creature turning the truly sick away at the door. You need health care, you'll get it. But people with a cold don't need to rush to the doctor's office. If your shoulder hurts when you pick your nose, either stop picking your nose or learn to live with the pain. Leave the doctors some time to take care of sick people instead of lavishing attention upon your pathetic head. If you need sympathy, go see your mama.

People always require more of anything that's free. That's the main reason health care should NEVER be free.

A Federal Judge has upheld Oregon's doctor-assisted suicide law and delivered in his decision a STINGING REBUKE to John Ashcroft and the US Justice Department for attempting to thwart the will of Oregon voters, who TWICE passed referendums to allow it. I believe the judge was absolutely correct, but I still have mixed feelings about the law.

I rant regularly about the ham-handed federal government intruding into places where it has no business going. The Constitution was written to rein in the natural tendency of a central government to spread like poison ivy over the body politic and usurp both individual and state's rights. Despite that excellent plan, the federal government, with the help of some really squishy, penumbra-detecting judges, has mutated into a giant overseer of all that happens, right down to the molecular level, in this country. Such power concentrated in a faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy, obsessed with one-size-fits-all rules, is the stuff 1984 was made of. I really don't want to be "served" by public servants who turn me into a slave through regulation and micromanagement of my life. I am capable of making decisions all by my self, and I should have the right to do so.

I may have a vested interest in doctor-assisted suicide, too. I had prostate cancer. Although I appear to be "cured" six months after a radical prostatectomy, I have no written guarantee that I have an entirely clean bill of health. Statistics show that a person in my situation (successful operation, 0.0 PSA results three months later) has a 95% chance of surviving ten more years with no recurrence of the cancer. That also means that I have a 5% chance of NOT surviving ten more years. I am very well aware that I had only a 1% chance of developing prostate cancer IN THE FIRST PLACE before I was 50 years old, and I sure as hell defied THOSE odds. If the cancer comes back, it will be in the bone, and that's a difficult, painful way to die. If that ever happens, I may want to bail one of these days, quickly, quietly and painlessly, and I want that option. The federal government has no business and NO GODDAMNED RIGHT to take that away from me.

My beloved state of Georgia has the right to do that. If enough people RIGHT HERE WHERE I LIVE decide that doctor-assisted suicide is a terrible thing that will never be allowed in the Peach State, I will abide by that decision as long as I live in Georgia. If it's what the people want, I am not so arrogant or impolite as to shove MY trendy ideas of right and wrong down EVERYBODY'S throat the way the federal government does. Of course, in an ideal country where individual states make at least SOME of their own rules, I have the option of moving to Oregon if I don't like the climate here. That's the way it should be.

But I also worry about what doctor-assisted suicide may eventually morph into. How long will the law allow terminal cancer patients, mentally acute but physically ravaged, to determine THEIR fate before sons, daughters, in-laws and outlaws use it against dear old Mom, physically fine but mentally ravaged, to determine HER fate because she requires too much caretaking, or simply because she's pouring all that glorious inheritance money right down a nursing home drain? If you believe that scenario is improbable, just look at abortion.

Abortion should be legal but rare. In reality, it is a common form of birth control. Those who defend partial birth abortions tap dance all around the truth without ever admitting it, but we condone the murder of newborn babies in this country today as long as the murder is performed a few seconds before the baby actually is born. Now we've reached the point that my state has a "no questions asked" policy where a mother can drop her newborn off at a hospital and drive away, abandoning the child, without even giving her name. We have THAT policy because it beats digging the same baby dead out of a trash can. The value of a human life has been cheapened by abortion, and I'm not certain doctor-assisted suicide won't contribute its own lubricant to this slippery slope, until some day, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT decides whether you are fit to live or die. I do not want to go there.

I believe the judge made the right decision in telling the federal government to butt out of this one. I believe Oregan voters have the right to do what they did. But I would give them one piece of advice: be careful where this goes.

I drink; therefore, I am successful. That seems to be the conclusion reached by Professor Chris Auld of the University of Calgary in Canada. His research shows that PEOPLE WHO DRINK more than average amounts of alcohol make more money than moderate drinkers or teetotalers. I hope he's right and can prove it, not just to justify my own appetite for Demon Rum, but to pour some sugar in the gas tank of the New Temperance machine. I would love to buy that man a drink.

This woman KNOWS NO SHAME.

Hillary Clinton is coyote ugly on the inside. Sophisticated New Yorkers may think we're a bunch of dumb Bubbas down South, but we have more sense than to elect the likes of her to ride tailgate on a garbage truck, let alone senator. You bunch of Yankee idiots!

For many years now, the only voices protesting the "war on drugs" belonged to interest groups such as N.O.R.M.L., which never quite shed its hippie-doper image, and a few others who never registered on the national radar screen. But I believe the times may be a-changing. Many RESPECTABLE PEOPLE are beginning to speak up about this exercise in stupidity, and I find it encouraging.

The "war on drugs" has not stopped, or even slowed, people who want to buy, sell or use drugs. It HAS thrown thousands of non-violent people into prison, cost incredible sums of money, corrupted many figures of authority, killed a number of innocent citizens, eroded individual rights, diverted money and manpower away from fighting true crime and resulted in such ungodly ideas as property forfeiture laws, which encourage those who are charged to "protect and to serve" to plunder and steal. More collateral damage is done to innocents in this war than in the War On Terrorism.

I recently celebrated my 50th birthday. I don't know of ANYONE in my age group who didn't AT LEAST experiment with marijuana, and most of us did more than that. Yeah, we INHALED, too, and swallowed, snorted, smoked and probably would have tried something in suppository form if someone told us it was really good shit. I look around today and the same people who drank the bong water with me back then are doctors, lawyers, architects, judges and school teachers now. Every one of us are lucky not to be convicted felons with lenghty jail terms under our belts. We just didn't get caught. Would the world be a better, safer place if we had been unlucky back then? I don't think so. A LOT of people were not so fortunate.

Everybody I knew in college thought it was a real hoot to get stoned to the gills and go watch Reefer Madness. That piece of pure propaganda made us giggle like chimpmunks while we stuffed our munchie-craving bellies with popcorn and massive doses of M&Ms. The movie is absolutely ridiculous. But it accurately reflects the mentality that gave us the drug laws we still have today, and the mentality that vigorously pursues the "war on drugs" long after the war mutated into something uglier than the drugs themselves.

People who defend the "war on drugs" either make their living fighting it, or seem convinced that when they've dug a hole they can't get out of, the logical response is to dig deeper.

It's about time we took the shovel from their hands.

My son had a baseball game today, so I took him to play. It's the first game I've seen this year, because I won't go if his low-rent slut of a mutha is there, and she usually is, so I'm not. But she's on a business trip this week and I've got my boy for seven whole days.

My son plays for a team called The Vipers. They were 0 and 6 going into this game. They are 0 and 7 now, thanks to the 15-3 drubbing they took today. You could rake all the talent on that team into a pile that would fit in a quart Mason jar and my son WARMS THE BENCH. It was a pretty pathetic exhibition, but the kids had fun. They play again Thursday evening, and they'll probably bite the dust one more time unless there is a team in the league worse than they are, which is difficult to imagine. But I cheered and clapped and rooted my ass off, the way a parent is supposed to do at one of these games. Then I took my son to McGrunge for a cheeseburger, which he ate heartily. Defeat caused him no agony at all.

I hope, however, that he doesn't become TOO accustomed to coping with it.

I didn't know whether I would do it this year or not, but I did. Between yesterday and this evening, I tilled, prepped and planted my garden. I have four rows of Silver Queen corn, two dozen different pepper plants, forty-eight stalks of okra, twelve crookneck squash and eighteen tomato plants in the ground. I fertilized and turned the sprinkler on for the second evening in a row. I have room for more stuff, so I think I'll stop on the way home from work tomorrow and buy some zuchinni and some more tomatoes. It's not the half-acre I used to farm every year, but it's a nice, big garden.

I suppose my Kentucky roots kick into my subconscious about this time every year. I come from a long line of farmers and moonshiners and I know both skills. I am good at growing things, and I made good moonshine until I burnt down my still two summers ago. But that was all back on the mini-farm, which I don't own anymore.

Now I'm starting over, and I thought my heart was not in it at first. But I was wrong. The ground feels good under my fingers and the dirt smells rich and fecund. The plants will grow. The harvest will come. I will give most of it away to my neighbors, but that's okay. I grow it because I like to watch it grow. That's a good thing.

Now, I'm going to work on rebuilding my still.

According to THIS ARTICLE I found on the Professor's site, my beloved state of Georgia, like Texas, has a law banning dildo sales. That revelation is a complete surprise to me. A few years ago, I went to a Savannah establishment called "Joker's Novelties" to buy a filthy birthday card for one of my friends. Joker's specalizes in filthy birthday cards, edible underwear, bondage equipment, drinking games and a vast assortment of personal pleasure devices, including a giant, two-pronged "condom demonstration device" with a handle on the end that resembles a huge, obscene dowsing rod. That double-dose of vulcanized love is prominently displayed in a glass case right next to the cash register.

I selected the appropriate filthy birthday card and approached the register. A cute, young blonde about twenty years-old was running the show that day, and I decided to embarrass her. "You sell many of those?" I asked, pointing at the two-pronged wonder-wand.

I wish I had not done that.

"Oh, no," she replied, very LOUDLY. "We keep that thing there pretty much as a conversation piece. But we sell a lot of THESE," and she reached into the glass case and dragged out a twelve-inch, blue-veined artificial penis and waved it in my face. "I wouldn't like one like this, but a lot of people do," she said, still waving the dildo in my face. "If you want to buy one, I recommend this." She reached back into the case and produced a mere eight-inch, blue-veined rubber replica (that reminded me a lot of ME, before my prostate operation) and tossed it on the counter. "You get a lot more dick for the dollar with that one."

I paid for my filthy birthday card and got the hell out of there. A crowd was forming around the register by then.

DO NOT think you're going to embarrass a young woman who works all day behind a glass case featuring a giant, two-pronged dildo. She will embarrass YOU. Or, you can BUY THAT THING. They sell them in Georgia.

I simply MUST do this.

Friday's statement from Rep. Cynthia McKinney

The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle. Certainly, if the American people deserve answers about what went wrong with Enron and why (and we do), then we deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why.
I believe MANY federal agencies have been busy since Sept.11 doing exactly that. Of course, they're trying to make sure that it doesn't happen again. You just want to preen on television.

Are we squandering our goodwill around the world with what many believe to be incoherent, warmongering policies that alienate our friends and antagonize our allies? How much of a role does our reliance on imported oil play in the military policies being put forward by the Bush Administration? And what role does the close relationship between the Bush Administration and the oil and defense industries play, if any, in the policies that are currently being pursued by this Administration?
Are you squandering your chances for reelection with incoherent, nutty conspiracy theories that alienate sane people and antagonize voters in your district? I hope so.

We deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why. After all, we hold thorough public inquiries into rail disasters, plane crashes, and even natural disasters in order to understand what happened and to prevent them from happening again or minimizing the tragic effects when they do. Why then does the Administration remain steadfast in its opposition to an investigation into the biggest terrorism attack upon our nation?
I wasn't aware that the Administration was doing that. Did this revelation come to you from one of the many spirits of dead people that you regularly channel?

News reports from Der Spiegel to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN, indicate that many different warnings were received by the Administration. In addition, it has even been reported that the United States government broke bin Laden's secure communications before September 11. Sadly, the United States government is being sued today by survivors of the Embassy bombings because, from court reports, it appears clear that the US had received prior warnings, but did little to secure and protect the staff at our embassies.
If somebody's suing us, we must be guilty. Why else would they sue?

Did the same thing happen to us again?
Good question, if your mind is made of processed cheese and you think like Cynthia McKinney. Stupid question if you are sane.

I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case. For example, it is known that President Bush's father, through the Carlyle Group had -- at the time of the attacks -- joint business interests with the bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which, have soared since September 11.
I am not aware of any evidence showing that Cynthia McKinney is a crack addict who sells blow-jobs on the corner of 14th and Peachtree, either. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case.

On the other hand, what is undeniable is that corporations close to the Administration, have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11. The Carlyle Group, DynCorp, and Halliburton certainly stand out as companies close to this Administration. Secretary Rumsfeld maintained in a hearing before Congress that we can afford the new spending, even though the request for more defense spending is the highest increase in twenty years and the Pentagon has lost $2.3 trillion.
A SMOKING GUN! Or at least somebody is smoking SOMETHING.

All the American people are being asked to make sacrifices. Our young men and women in the military are being asked to risk their lives in our War Against Terrorism while our President's first act was to sign an executive order denying them high deployment overtime pay. The American people are being asked to make sacrifices by bearing massive budget cuts in the social welfare of our country, in the areas of health care, social security, and civil liberties for our enhanced military and security needs arising from the events of September 11; it is imperative that they know fully why we make the sacrifices. If the Secretary of Defense tells us that his new military objectives must be to occupy foreign capital cities and overthrow regimes, then the American people must know why. It should be easy for this Administration to explain fully to the American people in a thorough and methodical way why we are being asked to make these sacrifices and if, indeed, these sacrifices will make us more secure. If the Administration cannot articulate these answers to the American people, then the Congress must.
Massive budget cuts in the areas of heath care and Social Security? I wasn't aware of that, probably because it didn't happen. I believe President Bush articulated our reasons for our new military objectives when he declared a WAR ON TERRORISM.

This is not a time for closed-door meetings and this is not a time for se crecy. America's credibility, both with the world and with her own people, rests upon securing credible answers to these questions. The world is teetering on the brink of conflicts while the Administration's policies are vague, wavering and unclear. Major financial conflicts of interest involving the President, the Attorney General, the Vice President and others in the Administration have been and continue to be exposed.
This is a time for intense psychological examination of Cynthia McKinney, whose thought patters obviously are vague, wandering and unclear.

This is a time for leadership and judgment that is not compromised in any fashion. This is a time for transparency and a thorough investigation.
It's time for you to shut up, you transparent idiot. If we need leadership and judgment, you don't qualify.