Category: humour

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Go to Bed Crying for Scott Twaddle: He will be Your Inspiration

The United States Navy likes to take civilians on joy-rides on their submarines.

You can’t wait for your turn? You’ll have a long wait, unless you’re rich or famous, or well-connected. No, no, these rides are not for the people who pay for the submarines. These thrilling excursions are for people who, at a time of a threatening peace, are in a position to promote massive expenditures of your money on more, bigger, faster, deadlier submarines.

You see, there are a whole raft of deadly submarines out there, just waiting to whack us one with a big nuclear missile. These submarines come from our deadly foes, like… well, Britain might get mad at us someday. The Russians still aren’t fond of us, really. China? Someday they might well have a sub that comes back up after it submerges. And North Korea– rumour has it that they are plotting our final destruction at this very moment. So, yes, by all means, more $2 billion submersibles, please.

That’s why there are the joy rides. You see, Congress is not always as forthcoming with the money for these toys weapons deterrents as they should be. So they must be promoted. So if you are a Congressman and you and your famous or rich loved one would like a thrilling ride in a giant steel cigar, the navy will oblige.

But there are some limitations, my friends. If you and your significant other– one can’t imagine a submarine hosting Elton John and “friend”– go joy-riding together and the excursion happens to last more than a day, you are not allowed to bunk down together. Oh no, no, no! You must sleep in separate bunks. And the rules are spelled out in case you still don’t get it: no sex. We can’t have love on a submarine!

When the nuclear-powered attack submarine Greeneville hit a Japanese trawler, it was not out on a training mission as first reported. No, the training mission had been cancelled. But important visitors had been promised a ride so, at an operating cost of $25,000 a day, the navy obliged. The Greeneville was out on a joy ride. The Ehime Maru, the Japanese Trawler whose name barely rates a mention in the follow-up news stories, was out on a genuine training mission, teaching young people how to fish. They were out in the middle of a very big ocean. Then a nuclear-powered submarine on a joy ride bashed into their hull and sank them, and twelve people died.

The New York Times has published a lengthy article about the grief and despair experienced by the crew of the Greeneville! I may have missed a similar article on the families of the dead fishermen. I must have missed it. If I didn’t miss it, this weird apologia is a pathetic joke in extremely bad taste.

But if they ever published an article about the families of the dead fishermen, it is not listed in the links to this article. I’m afraid the suffering of these families did not rate the New York Times.

This article is interesting in a perverse way. I wouldn’t normally argue that the grief of the submariners or their wives should be completely over-looked or ignored. There is a place for genuine sympathy for crew members who didn’t make the mistake but worry about public perception that they were responsible for needless death.

We only honor them, after all, when they are responsible for needful death. We give them medals.

But this article attacks a perception that does not exist. Who out there, in his right mind, thinks that the working crew were responsible for this disaster? No one. We all know that it was the Navy brass that made the decision to go joy-riding, and the Navy brass that wanted visitors to experience the thrill and excitement of riding a death machine, and the commander of the sub who did not take adequate measures– measures that are normally required as a matter of policy– to ensure that no vessels were above them when they pulled their stunt.

The New York Times quotes a submariner’s spouse: ”

In 16 years here I’ve never faced that kind of crisis. It makes you get more loyal, more defensive. I’ve gone to bed crying for Scott Waddle. And his crew — it’s going to affect them for the rest of their lives.

One hopes she shed a tear or two for the families of the dead fishermen.

Why does the New York Times publish this drivel? Remember, we’re talking here about the poor submariners who got to sail back into port alive. Are you supposed to forget all about the Japanese fishermen and go, “oh, those poor submariners…”?

Well, we know why. Somebody got to the New York Times. I don’t mean in a sinister way. I mean that someone high-ranking in the Navy or government called an editor or the publisher at the New York Times and gave them a big lecture about how they were ignoring the sufferings of the poor crew and how they were needlessly damaging the reputation of the brave and courageous men of the armed forces. God help us, they might even have accused the New York Times of undermining NATIONAL SECURITY by giving needless focus to the families of the dead.

Like a rotting fish.

10 Years Later (2011)

How about that! Here it is about ten years later and all those people lamenting the fate of Commander Scott Twaddle… well, he’s now a motivational speaker. Here he is on Youtube.

Yes, people are paying a lot of money to hear Scott Twaddle twaddle about his astonishing courage in dealing with his own astonishing incompetence.  I hope part of his speech is about how people are so stupid that you can actually make a lot of money bragging about your biggest mistake.

Is this where Donald Trump got the idea of running for president?

You couldn’t make this shit up.

Sometimes I am truly flabbergasted by the turn of events… And other times, I am silenced by the unspeakable, incomprehensible absurdity of human behavior.

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Mad Magazine

All right– so it wasn’t always funny or incisive, and it could be tired and dowdy at times. And occasionally it picked the wrong targets in some misguided belief that all sides of every issue deserve equal measures of humiliation. And it hasn’t been really relevant for twenty years. Still, you have to shed a tear for the death of Mad Magazine.

Not that it’s actually died.

The new owners of Mad Magazine — the quintessential greedy, ruthless, heartless corporation– AOL/Time Warner– will now accept advertising, thank you.

How can Mad Magazine, which used to mock the fundamental principles of hucksterism and commercialism, continue to attack the great hypocrisies in American culture while simultaneously urging you to buy Schlock Beer or Fuds Candy Bars?

My guess is that they will do the insidious thing: they will install a pseudo-hip self-mocking irreverence in the advertising itself, thereby confusing the reader into thinking that it can be cool to be an idiot– precisely the sort of clever marketing strategy that Mad used to mock.

I don’t think any sell-out on my list makes me sadder. Poor William H. Gaines (the original publisher of Mad, who refused all advertising).

Mad was no great shakes as a magazine. It had it’s faults. But the one thing I loved dearly about it was that it alone, among all American media outlets, had the courage and audacity to defy the one real sacred cow of our culture: that greed is good.

Sob.

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Timothy

Some record company executive back in 1970 or so listened to a song about cannibalism and thought, hey, this could be a hit. And so we have “Timothy” by the Buoys, which had pretty well disappeared from the airwaves for thirty years until Napster gave it new life. Yes, people are using the Napster and the internet to share music files and one file that shows up a lot is “Timothy”.

Not since Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” have people taken such delight in such a morbid possibility.

“Timothy” gets right down to business. The narrator is trapped in a mine shaft that caved in. “Everyone knows” the only ones left are Joe, and “me”, and Tim. When they finally reach the unfortunate trio, the only ones left are Joe and– long silence here– me. The chorus:

Timothy!
Timothy!
Where on earth did you go?
Timothy!
Timothy!
God, why don’t I know?

Well, we know why he doesn’t know. “My stomach was full as it could be/and nobody ever got around to finding…. Timothy.”

Uh huh.

Now, let’s not get sidetracked by the fact that the song is about cannibalism. And let’s not even begin to discuss the question of whether or not this is another one of those pernicious rock songs that promotes anti-social behavior, like eating your co-workers. Let’s focus instead on the reliability of the narrator, because he is quite clever. You see, he tries to get you, the listener, to share his sense of shock and outrage that Timothy has been eaten. He thinks that because he shares your presumed shock and outrage, that you won’t suspect him of being the instigator of this tragic development. Oh no. He says:

Timothy,
Timothy,
Joe was looking at you….

Ah ha! Yes, I may have eaten my co-worker, but it wasn’t my idea. Yes, yes. As your present co-worker, I feel a lot better now.

So where’s Joe? Why don’t we get his version of the story? Maybe he’s the one who really “blacked out just about then” and suddenly woke up with a full stomach.

And let’s look at that sequence of lines there. Joe is looking at Timothy after saying that he would sell his soul for just one piece of meat. Joe takes a sip of water and hands the bottle to the narrator saying that there is just enough left for one person. And then:

I must have blacked out just about then
‘Cause the very next thing that I recall
Was the light of the day coming through.
My stomach was full as it could be
And nobody ever got around to finding Timothy.

Now think about this. He blacks out but wakes up with a full stomach. Can you eat while you are unconscious? No. Do you suffer trauma to the head while chewing on somebody’s forearm? Not necessarily. Is your psyche so traumatized by the experience of dismembering a friend that it represses the memory of the experience? Well, that’s what he’d like you to believe. But, in fact, research has shown that …..

Wait a minute. You should never believe any sentence that begins with the phrase “research has shown”. Research shows whatever the researcher wants it to show. Which is not to say that research is always wrong. It’s just a warning: don’t believe somebody just because he says “research” says. Check it out for yourself.

So check it out for yourself: do people repress memories of horrific events? No, they don’t. I know– dozens of Hollywood movies have shown this exact thing and they are all “based” on true stories. They are all lies. Seriously, check it out: they are all lies.

Back to the research, and I’m serious here: some researcher talked to a number of people who had verifiable experiences of traumatic events. Everybody can remember the events. Nobody “repressed” the memories of those terrible events. They are always there, always available to the mind to consider and reconsider.  Survivors of the Holocaust can tell you the same thing: they have not lost their memories of their terrible experiences.

On the other hand, in almost every case in which people claim to have repressed memories of traumatic events, they have no proof that the events actually happened.

But that’s a separate issue.

Anyway, the guy says he can’t remember anything from that last swig of water to the rescue. Well, he’s a liar. I just thought you should know that. He just doesn’t want to remember. He should stop whining. He should rewrite the song. The chorus should be:

Timothy!
Timothy!
I was chewing on you.
Timothy!
Timothy!

God! What did I do?

Yes, yes, yes, I know that “Timothy” is a miner’s slang for a mule used underground for hauling cars full or ore to the surface. But the song never tells you that, does it?

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Idiotic Previews

Sometimes, for discernible reasons, the corporate marketing hacks who try to control our lifestyles, do something really really annoying. And then again, sometimes they do it for no discernible reason.

Case in point. I just rented the VHS tape of the movie “Walkabout” by Nicholas Roeg. I popped it into the machine, pressed the “play” button, and watched. What I saw was a preview for the movie… “Walkabout”, by Nicholas Roeg.

I thought, whoa! That’s cool. A preview of the movie I just rented.

Now, wait a minute. Do people go to a video store, pick a movie at random, take it home, watch the preview, and then decide if they are going to watch the movie?

Not very likely, you’ll agree. No, like most people, I picked a movie I wanted to watch and then took it home to watch. So why is there a preview for the same movie on the tape?

Now, previews are designed to peak your interest. They show you the most interesting or provocative scenes from the movie, in the hope that you will want to see the whole thing… a few weeks later at a movie theatre.

But when you are about to watch the movie, do you want the preview to show you what is going to happen to the people in the film? Do you want to know that the car you see them driving in at the beginning, is going to end up burning in the dessert? Do you want to know that the girl is going to go skinny-dipping? Do you want to know that she and her little brother will run into somebody out in the dessert?

Yes, you do, when the movie gets to it.

It’s like the loudmouth leaving the movie theatre as you are going in, muttering, “can you believe it? The butler really did do it!”

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The London Defibrillation Choir

The New York Times, which never lies, has an article today about a movement to train everyone on how to use defibrillators. Apparently about 90% of the people who have cardiac arrest– which is not the same as a heart attack or a heart with no companion– die in the first 10 minutes. But if you have a defibrillator handy (in your purse or your camera bag or something, I assume), about 53% of the victims survive. That is amazing. Now the heart can have a companion.

They were even able to demonstrate that the average grade six student, who doesn’t know the state capital of Alaska where the oil is, can nevertheless be trained to operate a defibrillator in just a few hours. They tell them it’s just like a Sony Playstation.

Still, I find it somewhat alarming. New York State has passed a law that released from liability anyone who uses a defibrillator to try to save someone. You see, if you use a defibrillator on someone who is not having a heart attack, you can actually kill them. So I think the first thing we need to do, after making defibrillators available to everyone in order to save lots of lives, is to restrict their availability in order to save lots of lives.

Another thing I find alarming about defibrillators is that you have supposed to shave the person’s chest before applying the two little paddles and shouting “all clear”, so everyone knows you watch ER. I mean, some guy is dying (most likely in a Casino where there is a disproportionate number of cardiac arrests as well as tacky double-knit pantsuits), and you rush over to help and everyone’s standing around watching and you have to say, “anyone got a razor– while he’s down, I might as well shave his chest.” What if it was Burt Reynolds or someone? “Oh my god, this is going to take hours. Anyone got a Philishave?” What if it was Dolly Parton? “Bigger paddles, quick! We need— yes, those satellite dishes will do quite nicely….”

Another thing is — which is why Cohen’s explicit poetry is actually good for our society– what if it is a woman undergoing cardiac arrest and you’re kind of a shy young man and all these people are watching…. Can New York State also make an exception for sexual harassment lawsuits? But then, if they did, you’d have all these guys walking around the beach with defibrillators on their shoulders instead of boom boxes, and they’d be targeting good looking girls who fall asleep while tanning. “All clear. Leon! I said ALL CLEAR! Now. I mean it. All right, see if I care. ZZZZZZAAAAAPPPPP. Oh my God! Leon’s down! Someone get a razor, quick!”

I’m only bringing this up because if Leonard attends Hydra 2002… well, he is getting on in years, and I hope they have a defibrillator handy just in case. You know how women react around him. If Fiona or Judith or Ania actually met Leonard, you’d have to be ready to use those paddles, I think, though I would be very nervous about it myself. And, instead of shouting out “all clear”, I think, apropos of the occasion, I would shout “did you ever go clear?” ZZAAAAPPPP. “Bill, Bill, stop! She’s only taking a nap!” “Not any more. We better do it again. It’s like the reset button on a computer, isn’t it?”

And before I go to bed, I want to note that they have an actual video of a 77 year old man having cardiac arrest in a Las Vegas Casino. He falls over. The security guards rush to his aid. They look like they are in grade 6. They rip off his shirt and shave his chest. They apply the goo, the little sensor pads, and then — “Go Clear!”– the paddles. ZAAAAPPPP. He’s up. An old man who had fainted was revived. And everyone agreed twould be a miracle indeed…. except that the video also shows all the other people in the Casino basically ignoring him. I’m not kidding. They took one look at the guy and went back to their slots and blackjacks.

I think hell is… you’re in a Casino. Wayne Newton is singing “Dunkeshein”. Fat ladies in pastel-plaid double-knit pantsuits are working the slot machines. The décor resembles Andy Warhol repackaged by Walmart. You have a heart attack. Your soul starts to rise from your body and you look down and notice that not a single person gives a damn. What depresses you even more is that these are not the kind of people you wish would give a damn about you, but Ania and Fiona and Judith and Corisa and Tim and both Mikes and Mark and Jarkko and Nancy and Barbara …. are all in Hydra jamming to an aud and eating roast sheep. They don’t give a damn, and the guards stand helpless by: no one remembered a shaver. They try the paddles on your butt instead. With every zap you return to your body and the whole experience starts over again.

Did you ever go clear? No. ZZZZZAAAAAPPPPP Ow! Now I am.

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The Immorality of Komodo Dragons

I just watched a television documentary on Komodo Dragons. These creatures are real slime balls. I think we should have nothing to do with them. In the first place, they are very ugly. They’re up to five feet long, covered with scales, and they have kind of a baggy, flabby look. They look like a log covered with wet burlap. And it’s no wonder: they’re only active for about three hours a day. Why are they only active for three hours a day? Why don’t they get out there and put in a regular eight-hour day like the rest of the hard-working animal kingdom? Because they will eat anything, no matter how old or disgusting. Komodo dragons will kill large animals, like goats and deer, and eat part of them, and put the rest away for later, and not in a fridge. I guess when you’re as ugly as a Komodo dragon, you don’t care what goes into you. You see this fresh elk go leaping by and he looks real tasty and all, and then you look over at a two-week old rotting goat carcass and think, “hey, that looks good…”

Komodo dragons drool when they’re hungry. But not like you and me. Oh no. Komodo dragon drool is toxic. You see, Komodo dragons don’t go chasing after deer, knock their legs out from under them, and then break their spines, like the hard-working jaguar or cheetah. No, the Komodo dragon sort of wanders around as if he wasn’t up to anything, and then, if a deer gets kind of careless and doesn’t move out of the way quickly enough, they leap– “leap” being a relative term here–into the air and bite them. The deer often gets away, or thinks it gets away. It moves off into the distance and looks behind itself and sees this ugly, baggy old lizard coming after it… slowly. But the Komodo dragon will follow the deer for a week, from way behind, because the Komodo dragon knows that, thanks to that toxic sludge drool, that little bite is going to get very badly infected. That deer is doomed. Eventually.

You have to respect the Komodo dragon’s patience, don’t you? Would you go into MacDonald’s, order a hamburger, take a bite, and then wait a whole week until it quieted down ten blocks away so you could finish it off?

Komodo dragons will eat other Komodo dragons if they can. This is a non-issue for Komodo dragons. I don’t think they give it much thought at all. You certainly don’t see other Komodo dragons gathering around a corpse and demanding an investigation. They are more likely to demand a share. And this is why young Komodo dragons live in trees until they are three years old and at least five feet long.

Komodo Dragons mate for life, but the male doesn’t have a good memory. He can’t tell just by looking at a female whether it’s his wife or not. He kind of follows her for a while until she notices him. “Huh? What do you want? Oh—again? I should have known. Is that all you think about?” Yup. That’s her.

Seriously, if he is strolling along and he happens to see a female and he gets the urge, he has to get real close first and then taste her sweat glands. Then he knows. It is very important for him to be very, very sure that this beauty is his wife, because, if it isn’t, the minute he gets close, she might kill him and eat him. This makes it very difficult for Komodos to have orgies. I’m not saying it’s impossible or that it’s never happened: just that it’s difficult. And for the same reason that a dead goat lasts a Komodo a month, they aren’t too worried about “protection”. A Komodo thinks, “Listen, I just had a mouthful of month-old maggoty goat meat, I’m been crawling through leech infested muck for three hours, I live in a dark cave with thousands of fruit bats, and I just sniffed your sweat glands— and you’re worried about exchanging bodily fluids? What are you? A prude?”

In order to mate, the male Komodo has to bring his body temperature up about ten degrees. So he goes and lays in the sun for an hour before sex. This takes a lot of spontaneity out of the Komodo dragon’s life, but hey, how spontaneous can you be if you only move three miles per hour? So, say a couple of Komodo dragons meet in a singles swamp. He says, “hey, you look like my type.” She says, “Oooo. You’re getting me hot. Let’s make it.” He says, “Okay. I’ll go find a sunny rock and we’ll see you in an hour.”

And what if the nearest sunshine is waiting for him on the other side of a shady mango grove? He waddles over there at 3 miles per hour, lays in the sun for an hour, brushes his teeth and slaps a little after-shave under the old burlap, waddles half-way across hell’s half acre, through swamps, under trees, through gnarled roots, finds the female, sniffs her sweat glands to make sure it’s her, rears up… “Oh damn. I’m too cold.” And you thought Viagra was inconvenient?

As if life isn’t hard enough for the male Komodo dragon, if he stays in the sun too long, he will die of heat stroke. So he can’t let himself go way over the ten degrees up, and then hope he cools off just the right amount by the time he gets to the female. For Komodo dragons as for humans, timing is important.

Komodo dragons live in only one place in the entire world: you guessed it: Komodo. People have to be careful on Komodo because Komodo dragons will sometimes eat people. Now, you’ve got this 150 pound lizard roaming around this island drooling this toxic sludge and attacking your children… and what do you? You protect the lizard! You put him on the endangered species list!

Well, I think we’re just getting carried away with this endangered species business. If it was up to me, we’d be having Komodo soup every night until they were all gone.

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I Came Upon a Wedding

When I was seven years old, I used to chase girls around the school yard and try to kiss them. Especially Elizabeth, whom I loved because she had long pig-tails.

I can’t remember a stage of life where I didn’t like girls. Just loved them. I loved the way they looked, the way they talked, the way they walked…. I had girl “friends” when none of the boys I played with wanted anything to do with girls. I had an immense crush on my Sunday School teacher, and erotic dreams about her. I had a crush on a bride I saw at a wedding in Holland. A substitute teacher. A friend’s mother. The babysitter. Well, not my babysitter, like Paul Anka. Someone else’s babysitter. She was fifteen and I was about thirteen and she invited me upstairs to watch tv and “neck” during the commercials. She really wanted my older brother, Al, but I was a temporary fix, I guess. Our relationship started to deteriorate when she kept asking me to get her some milk for her “ulcer”.

Tonight, I went to a wedding, that two college students had contrived.

It was held in the Court House Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the scene of my very first date with a girl named Leslie, to see a musical based on the music of Leonard Cohen called “The Sisters of Mercy”. We thought it was great. It was our first play. I think it closed a week later.

The reception itself was right in the auditorium. The stage, the proscenium, is still there. I still like girls, and I especially like watching them dance. There were two spirited young women at this party: Christine, who danced like a maniac, all arms and legs and outrage and torrential energy unleashed, with earrings in her nose, and a tattoo, and who was more interesting to talk to than anybody else. And then there was Kim, who was dark and mysterious looking, who teaches dance, and who moved with elegance and style, but also exuberance. Kim was dramatic in a black dress, with spaghetti straps, and long black hair, moving around the floor like some healing gypsy with a gift of uncharted rhythms for everybody.

It was wonderful night until– I’m not kidding– they played a polka. The halls of my beloved courthouse rang with “e-i-e-i-e-i-o”.

I watched someone make a move on an attractive young woman with big hair. I watched them intently. He couldn’t dance worth a lick, but she was sporting and patient and tried to teach him the steps and keep her feet out from under his. I went out for a smoke and found good conversation with a gent who looked like Einstein and had traveled to the Arctic. I wasn’t sure I believed him. He said that when aircraft land in the Arctic, they have to keep their engines running because it is too cold to restart them. Once, a C-145 Transport was shut down for two hours. It never flew again. It is now somewhere beneath the pack-ice, a hundred miles from where it stopped.

So I learned four things tonight. Firstly, always keep your engines running. Secondly, there is a dance for everything, and for some people, that dance is a polka. I don’t know if that guy went home with the girl, but he at least had a polka. Thirdly,: in the dance of spirituality, someone, somewhere always needs a polka. Fourth: dancing is like keeping your engines running. In this arctic life of ours, this world of spiritless tundra, if it takes a polka to keep your engines running, go outside for a smoke.

[The wedding was of my nephew, Steven, and Noemi.]

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That Darned Subversive Cat

Remember all the stuff you heard about democracy and freedom and so on when you were kid? And how the Russians were supposed to be so evil because their government spied on their own people and arrested and imprisoned them just for daring to criticize Communism? And how the United States and Canada were so great, because here we were free to vote for whoever we wanted and think whatever we wanted?

Well, let’s keep things in perspective. What follows is not meant to suggest that the West was as bad as Russia was then (and China is today). It’s just meant to balance out a fairly idiotic image of who and what we were during the cold war. The truth is, our own governments were spying on us, and arresting people who spoke out in dissent and attempting to control the free flow of information, just like the commies did.

Actually, none of this is news. We already know about McCarthyism and the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover. I merely want to add a little tidbit here to help put the extent of government control into perspective.

It seems that in 1965 Walt Disney wanted to make a movie based on a book by former FBI agent Gordon Gordon and his wife, Mildred, about a cat who belongs to a kidnap victim. When the cat turns up one night wearing the victim’s wrist watch, the FBI puts the cat under surveillance. Hayley Mills, Dean Jones, and Frank Gorshin starred. Hilarious concept!

Anyway, the FBI heard about this movie, and, when informed about it, J. Edgar Hoover immediately turned to his faithful sidekick, Pedro De Loach, and told him, “Hey, it’s a free country. People can make movies about whatever they please.”

No, he did not.  As a matter of fact,  Mr. De Loach dispatched an FBI agent to investigate this movie to ensure that the Bureau’s “interests” were protected.  I’m not making this up.

Think about this. The FBI, using your hard-earned tax dollars, dispatches a highly-paid agent to Hollywood to investigate the possibility that a Disney movie about a cat might be dangerous to civil order and the justice system.

Did they have time? Well, Groucho Marx might have been retired by then, so I guess that freed up a few agents. Maybe Lucille Ball had let her communist party membership lapse. Perhaps Ring Lardner hadn’t ordered any explosives recently. Maybe Dalton Trumbo had started hanging out with Ronald Reagan. Who knows?

It is tempting to laugh at this bizarre episode and just shrug it off. When you were a kid and you recited the pledge of allegiance to the flag of America and the liberty for which it stands, did you think for a moment that your own government had it’s own little department of thought control?

Did you watch the television drama called “The FBI” on TV in the 1960’s? Did you know that the FBI virtually controlled the program? They could veto any line of dialogue, any shot, if they didn’t like it. And do you even have to think for a minute to realize that their first priority was not “accuracy”, as they claimed, but depicting the agency in a favourable light?

Ever see that episode where the FBI tapped Martin Luther King’s phones? Yeah, me neither. Or where they collected information about President Kennedy’s mistresses?

Even today, with all the so-called sophistication we now have, TV is still inundated with police-approved TV shows that labour mightily to convince you that the police never make mistakes. I watched one episode of “REAL TV”, which showed tapes from a police helicopter chasing a “suspect”. What was the man suspected of? We never find out, for the only thing he is ever charged with is resisting arrest– a chilling echo of Soviet Russia’s “enemy of the state”. All during the chase, the voice-over narration laboured to assure us that these reckless and insane pursuits were necessary because the felon might very well have done something unspeakably evil, if the police had not damaged five cruisers chasing him at speeds of 100 mph through populated suburbs and snarled highways.

Is there a single TV police show that does not show police officers assaulting suspects and violating their civil rights with approval. The program is careful to let you “know” the one thing that, in real life, the police almost never know with any degree of certainty: that the suspect is guilty.

Back to the FBI: I’m sure if you asked the FBI today, their official spokesman would chuckle and say something like, “Oh, well, yes, J. Edgar did get a little carried away back in the 1960’s, but I can assure you that the FBI today is too busy tracking down militant survivalists and murderers to waste time on Hollywood movies.”

Like the Branch Davidians, in Waco, Texas?

To see a copy of the FBI report on “That Darn Cat”:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/darncat1.html

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Video Rip-Off Terminals

Video Ripoff Terminals

Should the government allow video lottery terminals? Should the government be in the gambling business?

No.

Well, maybe they should. I didn’t think so, but, hey, the arguments in favour are pretty persuasive. They say that people should have a choice. Maybe you think gambling is stupid, but, other people might not. If they want to gamble, what skin is it off your teeth?

Well then, what’s holding them back? Maybe nothing. Maybe they already have plans to set up brothels too. Why not? It’s about choice. If a woman decides to make money by selling her body, who are we to complain? And if a man chooses to pay for sex rather than earn it by marrying someone and giving them a house and car and large appliances, then who am I to stand in the way?

Of course, the difference is, when you pay a prostitute for sex, you generally get the sex. But gambling is founded upon a different principle, namely, that people are stupid. People are stupid enough to walk into a fabulous casino, see all the people and equipment and furnishings and security guards and entertainment, and come to the conclusion that this place has been losing a lot of money lately.

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The Sacred and the Weighty

A recent study reported that the more religious a person is, the more likely he or she is to be overweight. In fact, fundamentalists are kings of the hill– Southern Baptists weigh more than any other brand of Christian.

This is a shocking revelation, indeed. But it doesn’t surprise me. It could mean one of several things:

1. Christians have more food than other people. That’s not possible, because Christians give so much food away to the needy. So let’s rule that out.

2. Christians eat fattier food than non-Christians. Again, not likely. The body is “the temple of the Lord”. Christians don’t fill that body with smoke, alcohol, or other people’s bodily fluids.

3. The Holy Spirit has an actual weight. Never thought of that before, did you? How much does the Holy Spirit weigh? Judging by looks, I’d say a good 40-50 pounds.