LEAVE IT TO PEEVER--


Bumper sticker of the week: Suspected al Qaeda member.--

Quote of the week: ''McDonalds is struggling. Its market is tumbling. Mad-cow disease is spooking customers, competitors are gaining ground, and sane people everywhere are asking, ''Can a 99 cent burger really be worth eating?'' Likewise, Coke drinkers in droves are losing their thirst for bubbly, brown sugar water. That's right: we kick them while they're down. And as their sales and logo-power plummet, we demonstrate once and for all that it isn't ad agencies and spin doctors that make or brake corporate cool. It's us, the people. Let's make 'em dance.'' Abusters--

More of John Ashcroft's police state mentality: A federal raid on a legal marijuana medical distribution center in California once again demonstrates Ashcroft's disdain for states' rights. It was very uplifting to watch the feds cart off a paraplegic visiting the center to receive treatment for severe pain, of which marijuana seems to give relief. Ashcroft seems to think pain is a lame excuse to use drugs. This person did seem to be a rather obvious threat to society. I, for one, am glad to see how diligent our federal government is in working to protect us. I feel much safer knowing that some half-crazed, drugged-up paraplegic has been jailed for faking their pain in order to use marijuana. Thank you Mr. Asscroft.--

About all Galesburg has left are long trains and remote memories of better days.--

Michael Moore is having a good year: Moore's book, Stupid White Men, has been this year's best selling non-fiction book, and his new documentary, Bowling for Columbine, had the best opening day ever for a documentary film. This appears to provide some hope that there is still time for mankind to be declared sane. The silent 90 percent of America that deplores violence and the overuse of guns need to begin making noise.

Speaking of revolution: This is an activity that is viewed fairly negatively nowadays, particularly by those in power. Yet it was revolution that America was borne out of. The Declaration of Independence makes it very clear: ''Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government....But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.'' It would appear our founding fathers realized that every now and then, government would need a good enema to keep it running, as they say, smoothly.--

Pete Calderone, Lane Evans' opponent for U.S. Congress, calls Evans a socialist: I like this kind of talk. Right when I was just about to give up on Evans as being too conservative, his opponent thinks he's too liberal. Thanks, Pete. You lost even more votes.--

My mother died last week. She was a good mother, to the point of being doting. I suppose that was to be expected, me being an only child. Now my mother and father are both gone, although I have a wonderful stepfather. It feels kind of weird. I guess it was best, since she wasn't going to get any better, but it's still hard. I'll miss her.



Uploaded to The Zephyr website October 23, 2002

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