LEAVE IT TO PEEVER

 

– Bumper sticker of the week: If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.

– Quotes of the week: "Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

"With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?" Henry David Thoreau

– Ashcroft and Bush take on Greenpeace: The environmental group, Greenpeace, one of your best friends, whether you know it or want to admit it, is under attack by Bush and Ashcroft. They don’t like groups that are against their raping of the environment for fun and profit. Greenpeace boarded a ship carrying illegal mahogany from Brazil and put a sign across the bow reading: Bush–Stop Illegal Logging. Instead of arresting the owners of the illegal shipment, the government arrested the Greenpeace protesters, using an obscure 1872 maritime law. Than they proceeded to indict the entire organization, not just the protesters. Greenpeace is considered a "security concern" by the Homeland Security Authority. Welcome to BushWorld, where if you disagree with this administration’s raping of the environment for profit, you are considered a security risk. I sent Greenpeace a $100 check to help with our defense, seeing I’ve been a member for a number of years. Years from now, when people talk about how we let this administration full of totalitarian goonies take over America and rape and plunder the land, they ain’t going to be able to count me among those duped by all this patriotic bullshit.

– More bumper stickers: In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.

– Right-winged Republicans: You can always tell when you’re speaking to a right-winged Republican. No matter what the subject, two things are likely to come up: 1. They badmouth Hillary Clinton. These right-winged, mainly male, Republicans are scared senseless of her. I hope she runs for President, I’d love to watch them squirm. 2. Locally, our right-winged, Christian brethren will invariably badmouth the health department. They think it’s some kind of socialist plot against mankind (apparently similar to evolution). Just once I’d like to see them have to go there, maybe for something like a syphilis shot.

– The Supremes do it again: In the now infamous 5—4 vote, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Breyer uphold the unconstitutional law allowing school administrators to require urine tests of anyone involved in extra-curricular activities, without any type of probable cause. This brilliant group of justices believe that random drug tests will rid the schools of bad apples. Seeing they can’t usually think beyond the information they get from the Heritage Foundation, they seemed to overlook the possibility that perhaps students involved with drugs will dump athletics and extra-curricular activities for alcohol and drugs. So much for the 4th amendment. This group of morality seeking saviors ought to try some of their own rules on themselves. They’d soon realize how pitifully simple their thinking is. Kids use alcohol and drugs because adults do and our culture condones it. Urine screens are a minor inconvenience.

– You don’t want to dwell in, or on, the darkside for too long: The Underworld, The Black Dog, The Owl’s Breath, Death’s Door. This is a place few venture into. You’d better have a fairly good idea what you’re doing if you do. One of the major problems is telling reality from insanity. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out the difference between the two. Some people scoff at the idea of a separate reality, another world where things are different, where there may not be any opposites, or where you can fly, or change shapes, like from a human to an animal. When none of the familiar holds true, we prefer to call it insanity. Still, it has its advantages. It enables you to see the unseen, see music, hear colors, soar like an eagle, crawl like a snake. In the end, I suppose it does sound insane. But no more so than killing innocent people for oil, or destroying the Earth for profit, or scaring people with a silly terrorist alert system. The darkside is not to be lived in, only visited. Otherwise, you go insane.

–"There are some monuments where the land is so widespread, they just encompass as much as possible. And the integral part of the–the precious part, so to speak–I guess all land is precious, but the part that the people uniformly would not want to spoil, will not be despoiled. But there are parts of the monument lands where we can explore without affecting the overall environment." Our president, George W. Bush