LEAVE IT TO PEEVER

– Bumper sticker of the week: Another country conquered for Christ.

– Quote of the week: "It is better to live a holy life than to talk about it. Lighthouses do not ring bells and fire cannons to call attention to their shining; they just shine."

– Some possible ways for Galesburg to prosper:

• How about a carnival? We could hold it in Abingdon, so it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone.

• We need some brothels. Maybe on Water Street. Kind of a throwback to the good-old days, when things were better in Galesburg.

• We could invite the North Koreans, perhaps the Chinese, maybe the Iranians, to build nuclear weapons at the soon to be abandoned armory.

• We could use some new leaders. Don’t we have an organization that trains leaders? What happens to all these people? I don’t see much leading going on.

• I think we should make a play for the Olympics, or maybe the Republican National Convention. Both of these organizations are into playing games, which seems to be quite popular in Galesburg.

• How about a new city motto: "The grass is always greener on the other side of the tracks."

• Or maybe a new industrial park, paid for by the taxpayers. I hear the Chinese are eager to build here. So are the Martians.

• We could turn the courthouse into a gambling parlor, but we would have to flood the rest of the city to get it on water, which may not be that bad of an idea.

– If I were Bush, here’s what I’d do: jump.

– An American solution to the fighting in Israel and Palestine: Quit fighting or we’ll kill you all.

– Nannies and housekeepers: One of our biggest imported products: women to take care of our children and clean up after us. Actually, aside from the huge amount of exploitation that goes on, it’s not such a bad thing. Most bring with them positive cultural traditions from their home country that we could use, like your first priority should be to care for your children. Ironically, to make money, immigrants must leave their own children and come to America to care for ours. Welcome to globalization, where others do for us what we don’t want to do for ourselves. Globalization seems a cute word for imperialism: The world is to meet our needs, the hell with theirs.

– The Supreme Court: The Supreme’s affirm the right of consenting adults to do what they please in the privacy of their own bedrooms. If you think about it, why are these people involved with such things in the first place? For the same reason they get involved with a woman’s right to control her own body. They want to control everything, including our morality. Thomas and Scalia, the furthest right of the five right-wingers on the court, argued adamantly that the Texas Sodomy Law should be upheld. They reason that to allow same-sex sex would be a terrible blow to mankind. These guys are wound a little too tight. I think it was probably their potty training. At any rate, Take notice: we need to do everything we can to keep any additional right-wingers off the Court. Otherwise, what we do in the privacy of our bedrooms will be the least of our problems.

– Some things I’ve learned at the donut shop over the years:

• If it looks like a donut, smells like a donut, feels like a donut and tastes like a donut, it probably is.

• The older you get, the more likely it is that you’ll forget to pay.

• Republicans never eat donuts with sprinkles on top.

• Never buy a paper until you see if someone else did.

• Keep the discussion light. The only problems I’ve ever seen had to do with discussing religion, politics, or same sex marriages.

• Men love to talk about sexual things. Women love to talk about anything other than sexual things.

• It doesn’t get any better than that first cup of coffee in the morning with friends who you know will cut your throat at the drop of a hat.