Little Hate-house on the Prairie

Fred Phelps and family. These people SUCK.

Now that most of the hubris and smoke has cleared surrounding the death of Heath Ledger, I may as well say something. Thus far I had assiduously avoided doing any commentary on it, because I don’t want my blog to become another lame tabloid. I stopped commenting on the ongoing Great Britney Meltdown of ’08 when it became painfully clear that the chick had jumped the shark and was really sick instead of just being a dumbass. She’s got a serious mental illness, and poking her through the bars with a stick just feels wrong now, like the neighborhood brat throwing rocks at the short bus. Of course, I could always start in on her sister but here’s just no challenge anymore in ridiculing a train wreck the magnitude of The Spears Family.

Heath Ledger’s death came as a shock, completely unexpected, a tragic waste of potential and a young talent silenced too soon. I saw many of his films and as a whole enjoyed his body of work. If you’d asked me a couple weeks ago to pick an under-30 Hollywood star who would die in 2008, I’d have penned a list with all the usual suspects, and Ledger would not have been on it. Britney? Of course. Lindsay Lohan is ripe for a psychotic episode pretty soon. An Olsen twin could have choked on a grain of rice. Prior to pulling her head out of her bony little ass this past year, I might have said Nicole Ritchie. Former American Idol contestant Jessica Sierra seems well on her way to candidacy. However, I still say it’s Britain’s Favourite Mess, pop chanteuse Amy Winehouse, who’ll end up on a coroner’s slab if she doesn’t successfully complete the rehab she entered last week. But Heath freakin’ Ledger? Never saw that one coming, not one bit.

But I digress.

Anyways, I really was going to let this subject drift away into the ether except for one little sideshow to the main media circus that reared its ugly head and really chapped my ass. Thankfully, Ledger’s family opted to keep the funeral arrangements quiet and private, opting to fly him back to Perth, Australia for burial, because those ignorant asshats of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas publicly stated that they were going to picket and protest the funeral. Why? Because Ledger played a gay character in the film “Brokeback Mountain”.

I’ll let you digest that little crouton for a minute…since it just smacks of coherent, educated forethought, doesn’t it?

This “church”, made up almost entirely by family members of its founder, disbarred Mississippi lawyer Fred W. Phelps Sr., has made a name for itself (and a rather shitty one at that) for doing such wonderfully Christian acts as protesting military funerals across the country with placards bearing shock-value messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers." These cretins believe soldiers are being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as punishment for what they say is the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. A press release circulated by the WBC stated, “Heath Ledger is now in Hell, and has begun serving his eternal sentence there.”, and a verbal statement said,” “God hates fags. The wrath of God has been revealed before the eyes of this nation with the death of Heath Ledger. … This nation worships the dead almost as much as they worship their filthy sex acts. America is doomed.”

The organization runs various web sites, including GodHatesFags.com, GodHatesAmerica.com, and others that condemn lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Muslims, Roman Catholics and Jews, as well as populations it believes are supporting the aforementioned groups, including Swedes, Canadians, Irish, British, and Americans. Great Christian values, no?

I first heard about these vile creatures on, of all things, the Howard Stern radio show, back when it was still on regular broadcast radio. He brought them on to ridicule them and showcase their arrogance, ignorance, and intolerance, and ironically their mouthpiece had no idea she was being mocked as she earnestly babbled on about God hating fags and even had the audacity to put her own brainwashed elementary-aged child on the air to spout the same venom & vitriol. If not for the zeal in which the child proclaimed that “God hates fags”, it would have been almost comically nonsensical. Instead it was coldly scary.

I have a lot of friends in the gay community. I’m proud to have them as my friends. A couple of them are Gulf War veterans who served to defend this nation so that the WBC would have the freedom to even exist, which is painful in its irony.

Just today, a Maryland judge upheld an award of millions of dollars to the family of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, a 20-year old Marine killed in a vehicle accident in Iraq. In a 52-page decision, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett upheld a jury's verdict in favor of Snyder’s family for enduring emotional distress and having their privacy invaded by WBC members waving anti-gay signs at the Marine's funeral in March 2006.

The FAQ section of their website states that, in their view, soldiers did not join the military out of a sense of patriotism, but because they are "lazy, incompetent idiots" unable to find work elsewhere. The WBC has characterized the AIDS Memorial Quilt as "100,000 living fags slobberin' around 45,000 dead fags" and declared Elizabeth Taylor, a fundraiser for AIDS research, to be a "world-famous filthy Jew whore." Other regular anti-homosexual slogans of Westboro include "Homosexuality = Death," "Fags Die, God Laughs”, "AIDS: Kills Fags Dead" and "Ellen DeGeneres is a Lesbian Slut."

Look, I’m all about free speech. I exercise it daily. I understand that it’s protected under the the Constitution, the same Constitution that I swore an oath to protect and defend back in 1987 when I enlisted. However, this goes well past free speech to hate speech and their protests border on hate crimes.

Last I knew, not that I profess to be a biblical scholar by any means, God did not hate gays. After all, why would God hate something He made? Why in His infinite wisdom would he willingly and knowingly create a human being just to hate? I thought your Christian God was all about love, tolerance, and forgivenes? If God should hate anything , He should hate charlatans posing as a church, spreading dissent and hate and vitriol against folks who aren’t heterosexual, an actor who played a fictional role, and brave soldiers who died in the service of a free country that allows these creatures the right to pervert the values of religion into ugly bigotry.

Evil is as evil does.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RIP
Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, USMC
7-18-85 to 3-3-06
Semper Fi, Matt

Gretzky Comes to Chucktown

Wayne Gretzky conducts a team practice Friday at the North Charleston Coliseum.



How often in the course of your lifetime do you get an opportunity to be in close proximity to one of your lifelong heroes? Probably once in a lifetime, if ever. Sometimes we manage to get close to, or even meet, famous people or people of greatness, but those people may or may not be heroes of yours just because of their fame or deeds. A couple years ago I met South Carolina governor Mark Sanford at a golf tournament; a nice guy but not my hero. In 1996 I was about 75 to 100 feet away from President Bill Clinton when he stopped off & gave a speech in Bangor, Maine. A man of greatness, but not my hero. I said hi to author Stephen King as we passed each other in a grocery store parking loot, but he’s not my hero. I talked to Cal Ripken for a few minutes in the airport in Bangor during the baseball strike in 1994, but while he was one of the nicest and most genuine guys I’ve ever met and he’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but baseball’s not really my sport. Hockey is my sport. Ergo, it would be safe to say that the hero I had a brush with on Friday was connected to hockey, no?

-----------DING! DING! DING! ---------------you win a prize!!!!!---------------------

Friday afternoon I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, arguably the greatest player ever to strap on skates. Gretzky is now the coach of the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes, and by a stroke of great fortune Wayne and his “Desert Dogs” were in town on a breather during a road trip. They just needed a day or two away from hockey to relax as a team, play some golf and tennis on Thursday, and in the afternoon on Friday they did a light practice at the North Charleston Coliseum, open only to some press and season ticket holders of the South Carolina Stingrays. That meant that me and Crys would definitely be in attendance.

There were perhaps 200 people in the stands, since not every season ticket holder could get away from work in the middle of a Friday afternoon, but I recognized most every face who was able to be there. Us ‘Rays fans are a pretty tight group. It was absolutely fascinating to watch famous NHL players like team captain Shane Doan, defenseman Ed Jovanovski, and goalie Ilya Bryzgalov working through puck drills and sprints. As fast, accurate, and fluid as many of the Stingrays are, these guys from the highest level of pro hockey looked even more so.

Their goalie coach, Grant Fuhr, is an NHL legend himself, winner of five Stanley Cups, an inductee to the Hall of Fame, and a former team mate of Gretzky during four of those Cups. Fuhr was there in the thick of the practice as the skaters did shooting drills against his charges, starting goalie Bryzgalov and his backup Mikael Telqvist. And of course, in the middle of it all, directing the action with a quiet intensity and occasionally doling out advice, wisdom, and the occasional grin, was The Great One himself. The hair’s a bit longer, the face a bit older, and the #99 jersey he wore was only visible on fans in the stands, replaced by a burgundy Coyotes windsuit, but the same ready smile and aura of mystique surrounding was the same I remember from his playing days.

In his 20 years of pro hockey, Gretzky held or shared 61 NHL records, won nine Hart Trophies for the NHL’s Most Valuable Player, ten Art Ross Trophies for scoring champion, two Con Smythe Trophies for playoffs Most Valuable Player, and four Stanley Cups, scoring 893 goals and 1,963 assists. Wayne Gretzky is the consummate ambassador to the world for the sport of hockey.

At the end of the session, the players handed several sticks and pucks over the glass to eager kids, which I thought was very cool. After the practice was over and the crowd cleared out, a few of us opted to try our luck for an autograph by standing outside by the team bus. Sure enough, after about 30 minutes, people started to trickle out, like Coyote’s commentator and former Chicago Blackhawks goalie Darren Pang, and Grant Fuhr, who was kind enough to sign my Edmonton Oilers t-shirt when Crys got close enough for an autograph. Eventually, Gretzky came out surrounded by five security guys, who tried to keep everyone at bay and tried to rush Wayne to the bus like we were in downtown Baghdad. It was a little off-putting, actually, but Gretzky was very gracious in signing as many things as he could and even stopping for a couple quick pictures. I tried to hand him my shirt to sign but kept getting scooted back by his handlers, but somehow Crys managed to weasel her way close enough to hand both my shirt and a picture of Gretzky up to our friend Jackie, who got both of them signed for us. I now have an Oilers shirt signed by two Hall of Famers who won four Stanley Cups with that team. Needless to say, the shirt is officially retired and will probably be framed soon.

After the media/coaches bus left, the players themselves came out and got on their bus, with players graciously signing autographs and posing for pictures. And then all too soon, it was over, and once the bus was gone, we all parted ways for a couple hours to get ready for that night’s Stingrays game, which was a 5-0 victory over the Gwinnet Gladiators. Over all, Friday was indeed a great day for Lowcountry hockey fans.


Grant Fuhr signing my t-shirt

Rap, 'Roids, and Rock & Roll

I find it funny that in addition to all the finger-pointing going on about the alleged use of steroids in baseball, additional fingers are being pointed at, I kid you not, the record industry, most notably rapper 50 Cent, R&B singers Mary J. Blige and Wyclef Jean, and producer Tim “Timbaland” Mosley. Author & actor Tyler Perry has even had fingers pointed at him.

In the past, similar speculations and accusations were made about comic actor-turned bulked-up non-entity Joe Piscopo, aging mumbler and sequel-maker Sylvester Stallone, and nasally-voiced former wrestler-turned-Playboy model Joanie “Chyna” Laurer. Stallone admits he uses HGH and takes testosterone. Piscopo has repeatedly denied the allegations and says he began a campaign to improve himself after battling thyroid cancer from 1981 to 1982. He also appeared in anti-steroid public service announcements. Laurer is a former pro bodybuilder and denies ever using steroids.

Back to the musicians. Look, kids, these people do not lead what you and I lead as a normal life. They don’t have normal 9-5 jobs. After photo shoots and interviews, if they aren’t making a CD or perhaps doing a show, they kinda have the bulk of the day to spend in the gym with a very expensive trainer. They aren’t up at 6AM to fight traffic on an hour-long commute to a crappy office cubicle to file reports all day for under 30K a year. In between albums & tours, wtf else have they got to do but work out? And unlike sports stars, would “juicing” be as big a deal since they don’t exactly need an athletic competitive edge to sell more abums?

I guess the fingers need to be pointed to other likely candidates for steroid use in music:

Rock legend Mick Jagger


Techno guru Moby


REM singer Michael Stipe


Country crooner Dwight Yoakam


The artist formerly known as Prince who changed his name to a symbol and is now known as Prince again after realizing no one could pronounce the symbol


Evil hench-cat Mister Bigglesworth


However, maybe some other fingers need to be pointed at other guys, like maybe noted rage-a-holic and rehab freakshow Danny Bonaduce, and “comedian” Carrot Top, who looks like he was dropped off here by aliens trying like hell to create a lab experiment to blend in with humans to learn our secrets.

What's in a name?

Usually, a lot of thought goes into picking the name of a sports team. I’ve seen some teams hold naming contests to name a newly-formed team. I’ve seen creative names, and ridiculous names. And names that just made me scratch my head and say “WTF?” like the Amherst College Lord Jeffs, or the Lemmings of Bryant & Stratton College-Cleveland Campus. For those unsure, a lemming is a small rodent related to rats & mice.

Some are for colleges; some are for minor league baseball and hockey teams,

Here are some of the ones that really caught my eye:

University of California-Irvine Anteaters
Presbyterian College Blue Hose
University of Arkansas-Monticello Boll Weevils (men’s teams)
University of Arkansas-Monticello Cotton Blossoms (women’s teams)
California State University-Long Beach Dirtbags (baseball only)
Hampshire College Frogs
University of Minnesota Golden Gophers
Pittsburg University Gorillas
South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Hardrockers
University of Alaska-Southeast Humpback Whales
Earlham College Hustlin’ Quakers
Columbia College Koalas
Whittier College Poets
Oglethorpe University Stormy Petrels


Baseball teams from the 1800’s:

Newburyport Clamdiggers
Oswego Starchboxes
Zanesville Kickapoos
Lincoln Tree Planters
Sandusky Fish aters
Davenport Onion Weeders
Burlington Babies
Saginaw-Bay City Hyphens
Des Moines Prohibitionists
New Haven Nutmegs
Lebanon Pretzel Eaters
Kalamazoo Celery Eaters


Modern baseball:

Lansing Lugnuts
Traverse City Beach Bums
Montgomery Biscuits (wtf?)
Winston-Salem Warthogs
Walla Walla Walla Wallas (real creative, no?)
Albuquerque Isotopes
Savannah Sand Gnats
Cedar Rapids Kernels
Lehigh Valley IronPigs
Casper Ghosts
Toledo Mud Hens
Hickory Crawdads
The now-defunct Bangor Blue Ox (for Paul Bunyan’s Babe)

Minor-league hockey has a few goodies too:
Fayetteville FireAntz
The now-defunct Macon Whoopie (the mascot was a whooping crane)
Bloomington Prairie Thunder
Odessa Jackalopes (the legendary antlered rabbit)
The now-defunct Louisiana IceGators
Austin Ice Bats
Shreveport-Bossier Mudbugs (a euphemism for a crawfish)
Rockford IceHogs
The now-defunct Danbury Trashers, owned by a waste disposal company

Let’s not forget the Omaha Beef of the US Indoor Football League.



One soccer team in Thailand is called the Thailand Tobacco Monopoly.

The local high school in Cairo, Georgia (home of Karo Syrup) is called the Syrupmakers, while Teutopolis High School in Illinois is the Wooden Shoes.Yuma, Arizona’s high school is the Criminals (which really must make the PTA happy) and Frankfort High School in Indiana is the Hotdogs, I kid you not. Their mascot is a vicious Dachshund.

However, my personal two favorites are real winners. These take the freakin’ cake.

One needs travel to Scottsdale, Arizona to be intimidated by the Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes, and if you’re in Califiornia, head over to the University of California-Santa Cruz to cheer on the one and only Banana Slugs. Yes, you read that correctly. The Banana Slugs.

I guess not everyone can be an eagle, a lion, a tiger, or a bear.(oh my!) Then again, having an unusual name guarantees your team is going to get press coverage and mentions in obscure blogs scribbled by a bored dude on a Sunday afternoon when his own South Carolina Stingrays are playing out of town.

And another thing about Rambo....

When the Rambo films were all the rage there were a lot of crappy promotional pictures and stuff floating around. These two above are standouts to me.

On the left we see Stallone in his ubersexy Rambo headband and carrying a Soviet-issue RPG-7, or rocket-propelled grenade. This is a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon, and only a total tool with no knowledge of the weapon would carry it under his arm as if he were ready to fire it that way. The weapon is placed on top of the shoulder for stability and then fired, like a bazooka.

And then there was the video game for Rambo, shown on the right. When Sega commissioned the box art, someone with ABSOLUTELY no clue about weapons whatsoever created some new kind of hybrid. Starting with the M-60 machine gun featured heavily in First Blood, and Part II, the artist replaced the flash suppressor at the end of the M-60's barrel with the anti-tank rocket projectile from the above-mentioned RPG-7. Last I knew, it was a fictional apparatus, but I'm sure that artist thought it looked cool. And then no one at Sega, or in Stallone's camp, caught it. Then again, Sly was counting his paycheck and looking to make his next masterpiece of cinematic achievement, like "Tango & Cash", "Cobra", or "STOP! Or My Mom Will Shoot!". Somehow the Oscars have overlooked these great films....

And in Rambo 12, he mounts a machine gun on his Rascal Scooter

It started in 1982 with a man. A solitary loner of a man who drifted from place to place, trying to find inner peace and exorcise his personal demons. These demons were left over from his days serving his nation valiantly in a war that no one wanted to remember.

But those petty small-town cops just had to push it. He didn’t start it; they drew First Blood…and thusly the legend of John Rambo was born, and Sylvester Stallone’s bad acting, bad dialogue, and melodramatic proselytizing created a franchise that simply refuses to die. To quote the new film’s trailer: Old heroes never die; they just reload.

First Blood served to usher in all the big 80’s action films about highly-trained former commandos who, deep down, are sensitive guys forced by ne’r-do-wells into utilizing their deadly skills to lay the smack down and put the Bad Guys in the hurt locker, using everything from toothpicks to rocket launchers and guns that never run out of ammo, seldom getting more than a shaving nick in the process.

After John Rambo torched the forests of Washington, defeating the National Guard and the entire local constabulary, he ended up in the clink but gets sprung by his old commander, Colonel Trautman. It seems the good Colonel has an offer that John can’t refuse, which is to go back to Vietnam and find evidence of POW/MIA’s still alive in-country. Of course, Rambo gets captured, resists torture, escapes, liberates to camp’s prisoners, and flies a surplus Huey helicopter full of the aforementioned liberated prisoners to the base camp, and confronts the CIA scumbag who left Rambo in The ‘Nam , all before dinner time. The confrontation with the CIA guy culminates in Rambo firing an M-60 machine gun with one hand, ripping off an entire hundred-round belt of ammo at all the radio equipment in the control center while issuing a guttural grunting yell. Good times…

After receiving a Presidential pardon, Rambo ventured off to find his inner peace in Zenville, Thailand, living in a monastery and making ends meet by participating in prize bouts of Thai stick-fighting. Enter Trautman again, asking his old protégé to accompany him to Afghanistan to drop off some Stinger missiles for the locals to use in killing Soviet occupiers. Rambo declines, and his mentor is captured. Of course, Rambo travels to rescue him, using this amazing compound bow with exploding arrows to destroy most of the Red Army, which of course is entirely plausible in Reagan-era propagandist fiction.

Cue the music. It’s 20 years later, and Rambo is back. Still living in the back woods of Thailand, Rambo comes out of retirement to rescue foreign aid workers caught up in the 60-year old civil war in Burma, a war as old as Rambo himself, since Sylvester Stallone is almost 62. Through the miracle of hair dye and HGH, he doesn’t look a day over 50. And, as usual and in a most predictable fashion, Rambo saves the day while shooting exploding arrows and mowing down the Forces of Evil with belt after belt of machinegun ammo.

Memorable crappy Rambo dialogue clichés:

“God didn't make Rambo. I made him.”—Trautman
“I don't think you understand. I didn't come to rescue Rambo from you. I came here to rescue you from him.”—Trautman
“There are no friendly civilians!”—Rambo
“When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing.”—Rambo
“God would have mercy. He won't.”—Trautman
“What you choose to call hell, he calls home.”--Trautman

Yawn. Maybe I’ve outgrown the Rambo franchise? I was 14 when I saw First Blood, I believe, and now I’m 38. Maybe if Stallone had set the movie in a timelier Iraq, rescuing Americans held by insurgents, or a trip back to Afghanistan to find Bin Laden, I’d care more. Maybe if he wasn’t so cavalier about his use of Human Growth Hormone in order to defy the aging process and make another trite uninspired movie full of bad cliché dialogue and astoundingly incredible marksmanship, I’d care. Stallone was busted carrying HGH into Australia, where it’s classified as an illegal substance, and was recently quoted as saying there’s nothing wrong with taking it and champions its use.

Of course, HGH also allowed Stallone to make a sixth Rocky movie, since 60-year old boxers who routinely wallop any and all 22 year olds who enter the ring are just so exceedingly commonplace. Dude, hang it up. You’re an aging Baby Boomer approaching Social Security eligibility. I’m not saying that older folks have to roll over & die, but I think you’ve passed the credible believability mark a while back.

Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have Rocky maybe become the coach and trainer for a new up & coming boxer who has to overcome adversity and keep your franchise going for another few flicks? Maybe Rambo should have been more of a mentor to train a new young-buck commando, perhaps even Tranh Phuc Ngyuen Rambo, the long-lost son you thought dead when you left Vietnam? Then again, that kid would be in his early to mid 40’s now and needing HGH himself to be the buff believable action hero too.

By the way, when I was in Military Police school, a couple guys in my platoon tried to emulate the Rambo scene of firing the M-60 with one hand. These weren’t little dudes, either, but big football players over six feet tall. (Stallone is five seven). An M-60 machine gun weighs 23 pounds, without the ammo belt, and fires 550 rounds a minute, or 9.17 rounds a second if my math is right. One-handed, it’s a bit off-balance, and after three to four rounds, the recoil kicked the gun almost vertical. Yet Rambo could do it.

C’mon, Sly. Retire Rambo and let him play golf on Hilton Head in the sun. He’s earned it. He never wanted this, but they drew first blood.

Cold enough for ya'?

Since Jack Frost has been nipping at our noses the past couple days, as well as a couple weeks ago, I thought I’d chime in.

Few words can illicit a knee-jerk response in the way that this one simple phrase will:

“Cold enough for ya’?”

Those four asinine words are enough to incite many people to violence. Even the Dalai Lama would have to clench his teeth and count to five to avoid cuffing the speaker across the brow. Like we’re gonna answer back with “Golly, no, it’s not cold enough. I hope it drops another 40 degrees or so and all the pipes in my house burst.’, or perhaps, “Why, yes, it is cold enough for me. That damned pleasant weather was getting downright tedious.”

I myself detest being cold. I always have. As a kid growing up in the Maryland suburbs, we saw temperatures routinely in the high 20’s/low 30’s throughout the winter. We’d get snow a few times a year and like all kids we’d beg for snow days. A one or two hour delay to classes was no fun; that was just a teaser.

However, I learned what cold really was when I moved to Maine.

There was a whole new level of cold that I experienced during my four years of high school living in Kittery, a small coastal town at the very southern tip of Maine on the border with New Hampshire. Things that would close schools in Maryland might get a 2-hour delay in Maine, and stuff that delayed schools in the DC area would just get laughed at Up North. Walking to school over a 2-inch layer of ice in 8 inches of snow, the temperature hovering at a crisp 10°, was what some people might call a “character builder”. I just called it Frikkin’ Cold.

My character was further developed by my 4 years in the Army, most specifically by my two years at Fort Riley, Kansas, where I learned the true meaning of “wind chill”, but also by one particular earlier field training exercise in Germany. Headquarters thought they were doing us a favor by letting us set up our cots in an empty and gutted former barracks building on an abandoned missile base we were using for our mock prisoner-of-war camp. But with no windows and no electricity, those walls weren’t doing much to stave off the very damp below-freezing December temps as the sun went down. Thankfully there were lots of plywood sheets around, which were duct-taped over windows to block the wind, and after lighting about 7 huge hurricane candles and igniting a few Tri-Oxane heat tabs in some scavenged soda cans, I soon had my little space warm enough to have condensation running down the walls. But that was nothing compared to my Kansas Christmas of 1990…

See, Kansas is just a bit flat. There was nothing between me and Denver, Colorado but about 400 miles of open prairie, and that wind coming out of the Rockies struck full force on the first solid object over 4 feet tall standing in its way. Often, that object was me. I had the honor of working the front gate of our little sub-section of the base that Christmas morning, and with the heater in the gate shack running full blast it was a balmy 35° inside, compared to outside, which was (I kid you not) a soul-crushing -35° with the wind chill factored in. So every time I had to go wave a vehicle in, I endured a temperature drop of SEVENTY DEGREES. At one point I looked outside at an approaching car and, recognizing it, just stuck my gloved hand out the door and waved him through. Character, indeed.

After the Army I eventually ended up living in Bangor, Maine, where additional misery & suffering was liberally dished upon my plate by days where you found yourself praying for the temps to rise up to zero. Yeah, it’s pretty bad when you hope for zero, or maybe even a positive number. That’s the kind of cold where it hurts to breathe, the cold air burning your lungs and freezing your nose hairs. When the ambient air temperature is -35°, without any wind chill, your character is so over-developed that you wish you didn’t have so much of it. When it’s cold enough to freeze salt water in a tidal river thick enough to be able to walk across that river from one town to another, it’s time to move South. And I did…

I’ve never regretted moving away from Old Man Winter to a better climate. And on days when it gets a bit bitter and raw here in South Carolina, I cope and deal with it secure in the knowledge that it will soon pass and I’m in no danger of having to snow-blow my driveway as ice crystals form in my eyelashes. At least until someone says “Hey, you’re from up north. You should like this stuff”, and I have to remind them that if I liked freezing my butt off for 7-8 months of the year, I’d have stayed there instead of leaving it in my rear-view mirror seven years ago. These days, the closest I get to snow and ice is walking through the giant milk cooler at the dairy, and my Stingrays hockey games.

And that suits me just fine…

And next week, Congress can investigate Mystery Meat in School Cafeterias

Having graduated high school in June of 1987, it’s been awhile since I took any U.S. history or Civics/Government classes. Ergo, I decided I’d use the ever-popular Wikipedia to refresh my addled memory on just what the actual duties of Congress are. Please bear with me.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; and borrow money on the credit of the United States
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; to provide and maintain a Navy; to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Okay, that said, I saw nowhere in there where it said Congress shall regulate and investigate steroid use in baseball, or any other sport. But here we are, in the sixth year of a war that has actually gone on longer than our official involvement in World War Two, oil prices are a hundred bucks a barrel, milk is over five bucks a gallon in some places, the economy is stalled, the housing market is circling the drain, illegal immigrants are pouring in across our borders and getting free health care and college tuition on our dime, and the latest Gallup Poll from last week (http://www.pollingreport.com/CongJob.htm) shows that Congress has an abysmal 23% approval rating, yet here we are with Congress wasting taxpayer money and time better spent on real Congressional duties, to grill baseball commissioner Bud Selig and various key players about whether or not they were juiced with ‘roids or Human Growth Hormone. And lest we forget, the Justice Department is now involved too, with their own Baseball Inquisition to see who committed perjury when Congress first stuck its nose into baseball and sent former Senator George Mitchell of Maine to dig up all that was transpiring on the Field of Dreams.

Look, we all know that steroids are bad. We know that HGH use is sketchy behavior. One report said that over 25 pro wrestlers’ deaths were steroid-related (and Congress wants to talk to them, too), several deaths among NFL players and former players (namely Lyle Alzado) were steroid-related, and recently the death of 27-year old Jesse Marunde has cast a speculative eye upon the World’s Strongest Man competitions. Young, impressionable student athletes have succumbed to the temptation of steroid use and many have paid with their lives. While this is tragic and a terrible waste, I just don’t se it as the New Scourge of the Millennium worthy of Congressional witch-hunts.

Let the sports police themselves. Let Bud Selig keep his own sandbox clean; the same with Roger Goodell of the NFL. Let Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment watch over his own employees (though that dude looks just as ‘roided up as his alleged wrestlers). Coaches, watch your players and look for warning signs. If you’re suddenly getting premium performances out of a guy who was lackluster before and he/she isn’t spending any more time in the weight room or on the practice field, dig a bit deeper instead of just cashing your paycheck and smiling in the post-game interviews. Parents, be more proactive in knowing just what the hell your kids are doing. Yeah, they get a bit bigger during puberty but if your kid starts looking like he could lift the family car out of a ditch by himself then maybe you should check into why your previously skinny kid looks like the Missing Link now. And kids, stop looking at overpaid athletes (and rock stars and actors) as role models. You want decent role models, look at teachers, soldiers, cops, and firemen.

Congress ostensibly has more important things to worry about. However, rather than work on the problems facing America, it’s more convenient to be seen on TV “doing the right thing” about steroid use in sports. Those little sound bytes on CNN keep your concerned face in the headlines while supposedly cleaning up sports for America’s young people to have their role models Steroid Free. You get to look like heroes and you look as if you’re Doing Something. You want something to do? Try finishing that Border Fence to keep illegals out. Try turning more responsibility over to Iraq so our troops can complete this grand & glorious mission of Nation Building you’ve set them out upon. Try opening the oil fields for drilling so we can stop relying on foreign oil. Try really doing something instead of furthering your own public images by pretending to clean up sports.

A Generalized Rant on Election Crap

By and large, I really have to agree with the statement that “Americans get the government they deserve”.

We Americans love to crow about how we have so many freedoms and can vote for our governing official and yadda yadda yadda, but so few Americans who are eligible to vote actually do so (or even register to do so) that it’s no wonder we keep getting stuck with the same old corrupt, self-serving turds in office. More Americans vote during American Idol than have ever voted in any Presidential election, ever. That’s seriously sad. Of course, most Americans also believe that we live in a democracy, which we don’t. We live in a constitutional republic.

I personally vote in all the major elections, and always leave the polling place with a measure of pride for having done my civic duty and for exercising my right and privilege to vote. Admittedly, I’m kind of lax in voting in the smaller local and municipal elections, unless they happen to coincide with the usual November elections. I’m appalled at how few of my friends and coworkers vote. The common reply I get when I ask them why they don’t vote is that they don’t think their vote actually counts for anything, and I also sometimes hear that they have no idea who’s running or what the issues are. That just blows me away. It’s up to the voter to get educated on issues and to believe in the idea that every vote counts.

About five years ago I stopped off late in the afternoon on an election day to snap a few pictures from the boat landing off Dorchester Road by Oakbrook, and as usual there was a group of military retirees gathered under the pavilion socializing as they did almost every day, and one of them recognized me and asked if I’d voted yet. I replied that I had, and he said to me, “Good. That means you also have the right to complain. You can’t bitch if you don’t vote.”

I had to laugh, but I agreed with him wholeheartedly. Folks love to complain about the government, but if you aren’t getting involved and voting, then you really have no right to complain, because you just sat back & allowed things to happen and allowed others to choose your officials for you without taking any part in the process.

However, it’s also easy to get what I call Electoral Burnout. Every presidential election season, they seem to start earlier and earlier with the campaigning and stumping and polling and mud-slinging. This time they started almost a year and a half out. I’m sick of hearing about it and the election is still over ten months away. It’s just going to get worse the closer we get to November. But starting 18 months out is a sure way to burn some people out to where they’ll just tune the whole process out. Voter Apathy can be prevented, Big Media…

I also love how the media declares a new winner every five seconds. The Iowa Caucus last weekend was a glorified town hall meeting. Residents of Iowa meet in precinct caucuses in all of Iowa's 1784 precincts and elect delegates to the corresponding county conventions. There are 99 counties in Iowa and thus 99 conventions. These county conventions then select delegates for both Iowa's Congressional District Convention and the State Convention, which eventually choose the delegates for the national conventions. Only about one percent of the nation's delegates are chosen by the Iowa State Convention, yet you could have sworn that Obama and Huckabee had received the official nominations the way the media went all hullbaloo over it.

That was, of course, until the New Hampshire primary. Based upon the opinions of however many registered voters who bothered to vote among the state’s population of 1,235,786 citizens, all of a sudden John McCain, who had been lagging far behind all the front-runners, and Hillary Clinton, who feels entitled to the Presidency because she used to live in the White House, were the ones acting as if they’d received the nominations.

Look, I love New Hampshire as much as the next guy. I’ve been there hundreds (if not thousands) of times, and my sister and her family lives there. However, I just don’t see the rationale in acting like the elections are in the bag because a few thousand Granite Staters burrowed out of the snowdrifts in order to prove to the universe that They Vote First.

Now the attention is focused here on South Carolina, where we have a primary coming p in a few days. And again, here’s hoopla and hype. Look, folks in Los Angeles don’t give a rat’s as about what we in South Carolina have to say politically; in general ya’ll think we’re rustic hicks plucking banjos and drinking corn squeezin’s, just like those voters in New Hampshire look at most of you Angelinos as lunatic-fringe latté drinkers car-chasing your way around a sprawling suburb of Mexico, ducking the paparazzi.

Look, you have to educate yourself and vote for who YOU want, based on how you feel a given candidate will best represent your interests. You can’t just toss all your support behind whomever CNN or MSNBC or You Tube says is a winner. Don’t stop believing in a candidate just because some Talking Head on the news says he’s not the front-runner. (Crap like that is why no one gives any media attention to guys like Duncan Hunter (R-CA) who in my humble opinion is a damned fine candidate for President, but doesn’t have the huge name-draw or media support that other candidates have.) The actual nominees won’t be decided until the parties hold their national conventions anyways, so DON’T BE A SHEEP!!!!!


And I’m always appalled at people who just vote for any candidate that their preferred party throws out there. One night while he was filling in for radio host Rusty Humphries, I heard Douglas Urbanski say that he’d vote for anyone as long as they had an “R” after their name. Oh really? Almost makes you wanna run a guy like Hitler or some sicko pedophile as a candidate for the Republican Party just to see Urbanski eat his words. That sort of blind allegiance to a party is why things never get done in Washington. The Democrats vote against anything the Republicans do for no better reason than that it was proposed by a Republican, and vice-versa. A die-hard Republican could say the sky is blue, and at least one Democrat in Congress would argue that it was red. I’ve voted split-ticket many times. Although I’d consider myself a pretty moderate conservative with occasional liberal viewpoints, I refuse to label myself as Democrat or Republican. The closest I ever came to joining a party at all was registering in Maine as an Independent, but I do tend to vote more Republican than anything. I will say this much: I will not be voting for a Democrat for President this time around. Period. Regardless, this election is not about left or right; it's about right or wrong.

I am deeply afraid of how many of the Ignorati out there will knee-jerk vote for the Democratic candidate just because they hate President Bush and will blame all of his administration’s colossal failings on Republicans as a whole.

Take some time and Google up the various candidates to see their views and stands on the issues, and then believe maybe 60% of it. (A bit cynical, I know, but not too badly). Use that Internet for something other than surfing porn sites and sending me chain mail on MySpace.

Happy Mock Retirement To Me!!!

Today was indeed a very surreal day for me.

Had I stayed in the Army, today would have been my retirement. Yes, indeed, it was 20 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play….no, wait…it was 20 years ago today that I began my basic combat training for the United States Army. Eighteen weeks later I was a newly-minted Military Policeman. Thusly, had I stayed in for a full career, I would have been eligible to retire today with full pension and benefits at the ripe old age of 38.

After Basic and MP School at Fort McClellan, Alabama, I was shipped to Germany to serve as a Senior Military Customs Inspector with the 285th Military Police Company, part of the 42d Military Police Group. I was in Germany from June 1988 to June of 1990, when I transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas and the US Army Correctional Brigade, where I served as a Patrol Supervisor and Fire Team Leader. Germany was great, but Riley sucked. I disliked it so much that it prompted me to not seek re-enlistment, and I left my brothers in arms behind in January, 1992.

I only served four years on active duty, but I had a great time over all. Most days I think back on my service fondly, and I often wonder what it would have been like had I stayed in. I’d probably be a Sergeant First Class, or maybe even a company First Sergeant. Had I followed the urgings of my unit commander and executive officer in Basic and gone to West Point like they asked me to, I might have been a senior Major by now and pondering staying in longer to try and make Lieutenant Colonel. Or I might not even be here. Right after I got out, three guys from a sister unit of mine were killed by a roadside bomb in Somalia, and casualties among MP’s have been pretty high in Iraq. Who’s to say that I’d even still be here today to retire had I stayed in?

I try not to dwell on those might-have-been situations, since the point is moot; I can’t change history.

However, I do take solace in the fact that I served, and served proudly and with distinction. I also am very happy to still be in touch with some of my Army buddies. Steve and Mike I knew from Kansas, Rick and Ray were with me in Germany, and DJ, well, me and DJ have known each other since Day One. Our bunks were about 20 feet apart from each other’s in Basic, and though we haven’t actually seen each other since May of 1988 when we graduated from MP School, we still touch base weekly.

I feel a little strange saying that I’m now old enough to have retired from my first adult job. I think I’ll treat myself to a Twinkie with a candle in it and have a mock party on my mock retirement. And…no laughing at my boot camp photo!!!