My Apologies

The House of Representatives today finally issued an apology to African Americans for slavery and Jim Crow laws 140 years after slavery was abolished. I say it is too little too late. This is an important and meaningless gesture that all involved hope leads to continued racial harmony and world peace and butterflies landing on lollypops in green fields of lovely...love...and stuff (but without reparations, of course).

In fact, I think we should carry our penitence a little bit further. I personally would like to also apologize to not only the African Americans but to the Native Americans since neither I nor anybody I am associated with had anything to do with their mistreatment and since their great-great-grandchildren have to live on government -subsidized casino resorts. That obviously is working well for everybody. They ought to have that alcoholism and unemployment problem licked any day now. We could at least apologize.

Since we are apologizing, let's not forget the Irish Americans and the Italian Americans who came over to this country just hoping to make a better life for their families and all we did was enable their work habits. We are enablers in this country and we should apologize for it immediately. Who knows where those poor people would have been if not for us Americans (you know, me and my family)? Why, they might have been able to, oh, I don't know, starve in Ireland or Italy? I am so sorry.

It is also time to make known our remorse publicly to the Midget Americans who came over in their tiny boats The Miniflower, The Nino, The Pint-Sized and the Santa Clauses Lap just to make a little life for themselves and have had to endure more than a little bit of cruelty in word and deed by me and my friends ever since. An apology is just what they need to make up for all of the jokes and Dwarf-tossing and misproportioned bodies that we have caused. Midget Americans across the land should stand up (oh, they are already standing) and accept my apology.

This non-rush to apologize should also include some of the most ill-fated citizens of this country, the Mustachioed Americans. For hundreds of years Americans with mustaches have been denied the American dream because of their choice of facial hair. Employers regularly deny employment to anyone sporting a Mutton chop even today and the opportunities for women with handlebar mustaches in this country lag far behind more apologetic countries in Eastern Europe. Let's save the world and spend precious resources apologizing to all who wear the FuManchu or Dripdown or Goatee or soul patch. Well, never mind the soul patch. That just looks gay.

Did I miss anybody?

I hate it when my prayers are stolen!

Having been to the Western Wall in Jerusalem many years ago, I know what a holy place it is to the Jewish people. Even as a Christian, I recognized the importance and the aura of sacredness that surrounded the wall. When I was there the crowd was intense and kept me from getting close enough to touch it. I was surrounded by fervently praying believers dressed in a way that was foreign to me and seemed to come from another time far removed from my own. At the same time, I justifiably felt that I was the one dressed inappropriately and had barged into an era that I did not belong. Their devotion was impressive to say the least.

As you know, the custom is to approach the wall and place a written prayer in the cracks between the stones of the wall as Barack Obama did recently on his rock 'n roll world tour. With cameras blazing and fans drooling, the crowd parted for Obama like the Red Sea did for Moses and he placed this note, written on his hotel stationery, in the wall:

"Lord, protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins. Help me guard against pride and despair. Give me wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will."

We know this is what was written because someone stole it from the wall minutes after Obama left and promptly turned it over to a local newspaper which of course stopped the presses and published it. This story is just this side of tragic. What kind of person would steal a prayer which is a personal and private communication to the Creator of the Universe? What sort of National Enquirer wanna-be newspaper would dare print the thing? It is a disgrace and makes me embarrassed and ashamed for both parties. The only thing to make this tale more tragic would be if Obama had expected or even planned for his prayer to be stolen and therefore wrote the beautiful imploration with that in mind. Surely that is not the case. Surely not.

**Update**

I don't often reply to a comment to any of my posts but I had to respond to the first comment by Mr. Anonymous about Obama giving his prayer to the newspaper. I have not heard or read anything about this at all and I would appreciate commenters giving their sources if they have any but for now, let's assume this is correct. Let's assume that Obama gave his permission for people to read his prayer. Does that not prove my point capitally? What an arrogant jerk! If it is true then why put on the show? Why not come clean? Obama never denied that the prayer had been stolen. An Obama Presidency would be the real tragedy. Also, whether or not a person is Jewish makes no difference to the expectation of privacy at the Western Wall or before the Creator.

What's in a name?

The life of every average child is filled with good times and bad. Sometimes as a youth I felt like everybody was picking on me. I'm sure most young people have times when they feel that way. Maybe one is too fat or has large ears or has clothes that are less than the latest and greatest but almost everybody is made fun of as a child by other children. Children are especially good at making fun of names when there is not necessarily anything else to make fun of. You might think that with a name like mine I would be exempt. Not much rhymes with Todd except maybe "odd" or "pod", neither of which take up much space in a child's vocabulary. It was "Toddy Waddy Potty" that was the vicious slander for me. It's just not fair! How could my parents be so cruel as to stick me with such a horrible name as Todd?

As cruel as kids can be, though, do you think if a child has a really distasteful name that a judge should be able to legally change the name against the will of the parents? How bad of a name would it have to be before one could justify such intrusion by the government? I think this name qualifies with ease: Talula Does The Hula in Hawaii. That's the poor 9 year old girls name in New Zealand. Too bad her name was changed she could have hung out with her friends, "Violence" and the twins, "Benson and Hedges" or the blond "Sex Fruit" over at the house of "Number 16 Bus Shelter". They would have heck of a time coming up with a name for their band.

No what?

I bet my amimals can spell better than you!

I heart Babes

No, not that kind of babes! Babe's Chicken Dinner House. I'm in Granbury today for work and stopped to have some of the best fried chicken and fixin's anywhere. They also have a place in Burleson. The food is family style and I ate enough to feed a family but half way through the meal all of the young waitresses got up to dance. You might think that would be entertaining but you would be wrong today. I enjoy the "Hokey-Pokey" as much as the next man (insert eye roll here) but every time I do the "Hokey-Pokey" I try to add as much feeling into it as is reasonable. These girls mutilated a perfectly good annoying child's song with particular unemphasis on the putting in and taking out of their elbows. They also only partly shook the various body parts, not one of them shaking anything "all about".

When that song was mercifully over, the girl who was my waitress got the microphone and launched into a dreadful version of "Crazy" by Patsy Cline and went around the restaurant singing into the eyes of male customers even holding their chin with her hand as she sang. I looked up from my chicken and noticed how most of the patrons in the place were politeley averting their eyes from this wanna-be budding young star but the girl was looking at and coming toward me! I'm not easily embarrassed but one of us needed to be and so I just smiled as she softly touched my shoulder and sang about how crazy she was for me just like she just did for some fat trucker in the other booth. I love fried chicken but I don't know if I can handle the collateral damage to my psyche from eating at Babe's any more!

The better to hear you with!

And then a little girl fell in this ear and we had to call the fire department to get her out.

Bush Breath

Then I found out why they call him "Putin" and I had to hold my breath like this!

Coulda been worse

The announcement at church brought back bad memories of one of many embarrassing days in High School. Our Sunday School classes were to compete in a softball game at the Youth Ballpark in Arlington and all I could think of was the last time I played softball in High School and not only struck out but struck out and fell down in front of everybody in the school. Surely, things would turn out better this time.

The mood was festive. People were laughing. Birds were singing and the self-expectation and confidence were high. The bottom half of the inning was spent in the field where luckily nothing was hit my way and I hardly moved. Fine with me. Three up and three down and we headed to the dugout. Several people on our team batted and some did better than others. No pressure if you are a child. No pressure for the women. Pressure for a full grown man.

I hid the shock of my name being called to bat and ran toward the bats hanging on the fence. I grabbed one like I knew what I was doing and jogged confidently towards home plate. I dug my feet into the dirt next to the plate and took some practice swings. Crowd cheers. Pitcher rocks back and lobs. No fancy stuff. Not too fast. Right toward the plate and a swing! I was surprised to not hear the crack of the bat hitting the ball but instead...silence. Strike one.

I vaguely heard the gasps of the crowd and with all of the confidence I could muster I dug in a little deeper in the dirt and took another powerful practice swing. No problem, I just needed to see one. This next one is going downtown! I think I heard my wife holler something. Was that my daughter laughing? Concentrate. Watch the ball. Here's the wind up and a lob straight toward the plate. Big swing! Swish. Strike two.

Two strikes and my head is swimming. This couldn't be that hard but it seems like things are moving too fast and the repressed High School memories are making concentration difficult. I stepped out of the batter's box and batted at my shoes a couple of times like I had seen real players do. Ouch! That was a little too hard. Now I have two strikes and a sore foot and I'm watching the taillights of my confidence fading fast. I step back to the plate and looked at the pitcher. He's old. Maybe he'll have a heart attack on the mound and I won't have to face another pitch. No such luck. The wind up...the pitch...I ain't swinging. Should have. Strike three.

But I didn't fall down! At least I didn't fall down. Right? Right?

Why NRA?

I try to be open-minded. I don't want to be so open-minded that I lose my brain and some things I think are worth sticking to your guns about (some pun intended) so I'm looking into joining the National Rifle Association. Yes, Don (both of you), I am thinking about it. The motivation climaxed this morning with the news of the Supreme Court doing the right thing by upholding the Second Amendment in Washington D.C. and I realized just how fragile our gun rights are. In deep reflection, I think my stubbornness to avoid the NRA comes from an idealistic view of the world where we should not have to lobby for automatic weapons and grenade launchers just to counter the other side who are lobbying for us to lose our right to keep and bear arms all together. In my naive world, there is a middle ground that is obvious to everybody and the NRA is not really necessary. Maybe I have been wrong. Maybe I have changed and the world has changed and maybe the NRA has changed. I'm willing to at least be that open-minded and check it out. I'll let ya know.

Why Obama?

I have a question. I don't want to be racist. I'm not racist. I have no reason to be racist. One's skin color makes no more difference to me than one's eye color. The question is: would the black people who are voting for Obama vote for him if he were not half black?

Where's the controversy?

Sounds like a pretty easy decision if you read the 2nd Amendment.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Obama Idol

Ooh! That monkey god will look great on the mantle of the Oval Office!

Read the 5th paragraph!

I don't know what to say...

I'm not usually a big fan of polls but this one intrigues me. 21% of Atheists believe in God? What...? How...? I don't underst...

I hate it when this happens...

Five sentences does not do this situation justice. For starters, I don't know what a "low-rise v-string" is but the heading calls it a thong. Do thongs usually have "decorative metallic pieces"? Is this a thong or a chastity belt? And just how much pressure was this underwear under? I have a vision of a can of biscuits popping open. Also, how could it possibly hit her in the eye? Is she putting them over the right part of her body? Finally, at 52 years of age shouldn't she just stick to grannie panties? Probably safer for everyone.

Good News!

Good news for all of us who want to marry outside the traditional bounds of marrriage! The California Supreme Court dropped the ban on same-sex marriage the other day so how much longer until I'm finally going to be able to marry the loves of my life? Since marriage no longer really means marriage and it now just means the union of loving individuals I figure that soon I should be able to marry the individuals that I love. I mean, if two people of the same sex can marry, why not three people? And if three people could get married, why not a person and a non-person? Let's just throw the stinkin' doors wide smooth open and let's just say anybody can marry anything! What's the difference?

If all you want is whatever benefits that come with saying you're married and you don't mind watering the institution down to whatever justifies your lifestyle, then I'm gonna marry my dogs! How about that? I guarantee that we love each other and have a loyal commitment to each other. What else do you need? If something happens to me I want my dogs to be provided for so what better way than to mutilate a holy instituion? I can't help that I love dogs. I've known that I love dogs since I was a little boy. I was born that way. Now I can finally prove with a piece of paper that I'm not wrong for loving dogs. I look forward to spending the rest of my life with Bo, Sara, and Dori in loving matrimony as soon as California or maybe Massachusetts makes it legal. Don't worry, I'll send you an invitation.

Fathers Day

Commercials

Ok, I know I have vented about radio and TV commercials before and I still believe that they are a direct curse from Satan himself but I have an idea. I'm not usually a fan of the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" motto but I'm pretty sure I could do that job. I mean, how hard could it be to make a commercial? They obviously are making somebody some money because if they weren't they would quit making them and I could watch The Simpsons in peace. But since we can't collect taxes like they used to in Bible days and I have yet to make anything close to my first million doing it legally, I'm thinking of a career change.

I have a couple of hurdles to get over before I can start doing commercials for a living though. First, I'm not very smart. Let's be real honest with each other here. Brain surgeon I ain't. But that in itself is not the real problem. The problem is that not being very smart, I always want to do things that don't work very well. There are lots of illustrations of that but those are stories for a different day. Anyhow, my thinking is that if I were doing commercials I would want to do them completely different. Call me crazy but I think a quality product would sell best if you plainly and without drama laid out the features and the benefits of the product in an honest and succinct way. I would not scream or use guys dressed like cowboys anymore to sell anything ever again. But that obviously wouldn't work or somebody would do it that way already, I'm sure.

This leads to my second hurdle and that is that I have morals. I think that probably disqualifies me from advertising and surely from law or politics but in my commercial-making world honesty would be the best policy. If you can't advertise the absolute truth, here's a thought: don't bring it up. You don't have to lie or even exaggerate about the benefits of a product. Don't say something is the greatest in the world or is recommended by 4 out of 5 doctors if you can't back it up. Be creative enough to honestly tell me why this product or service would be good for me and then shut up. If you can't then don't advertise it. In fact, make a better product and then tell me about it. How about that?

I think one of the easiest commercials to make would be a perfume or cologne commercial. There's no real good way of presenting the benefits of perfume except to say "It smells real good!" So, advertising people just get some model to walk around and you just have to use your imagination that she smells good. Sounds pretty easy to produce that one. The hardest part would be finding a model. Where do you go for perfume models? And if you want to really test your creativity, sell perfume on a radio commercial. Even I could model perfume on the radio! All you basically have to say is, "I smell better than you. Buy my cologne".

So, while my feelings for commercials haven't changed - I still hate them with the white hot passion of a thousand bottles of new and improved Tabasco - I would like to give it a try just for the money. Is that so stupid? I think I could make money and still be honest. Truth in advertising will alway win out. In fact, 60 % of the time...it works every time! Or your money back!!!

Fishing Monkeys

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080610/D9176BNO0.html

Yes, but will they bait their own hook?

Don't they know that river is "catch and release" only?

It's really neat to watch them drive their little boat out to the "honey hole".

If a fish gets away the monkeys actually throw their own poo at it.

If a monkey is too drunk to fish... he may be a redneck.

Schlitterbahn

Just got back from the water park in New Braunfels called Schlitterbahn. I realized a couple of things in my time there: First, I obviously don't have near enough tattoos and also, no matter how fat, ugly and freaky you are, there is always somebody fatter, uglier and freakier than you and they are wearing less clothes.

What is he saying to her?

I know it might be difficult for some of you, but please keep your comments at least PG-13.

Here's a couple to get you started:

You don't smell anything like what Rev. Wright said!

Wow, your skin is almost as smooth as John Edwards'!