LEAVE IT TO PEEVER

Intelligent design?

— Bumper sticker of the week: Is Bush an example of intelligent design?

— Quote of the week: “If I thought going to war would bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn’t have drafted me. I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up and following my beliefs. We’ve been in jail for 400 years.” Muhammad Ali

— Some things you should have learned by age 55:

• Don’t skimp on the toilet paper.

• Never trust anyone wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and a tie.

• Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time.

• Showing off body parts is a trick that eventually wears thin.

• Never lick a steak knife.

• Life insurance is a no win situation.

• If someone is nice to you, but not to the waitress, walk away.

• Marriage is not a fairy tale, it’s an ordeal.

• No matter what you think about growing old, or how many hair implants you have, or how much plastic surgery you get, its going to happen. Don’t make yourself look ridiculous in the process.

• Not every day is going to be good.

• Don’t put off doing things until retirement.

• Old men fall for younger women. Old women get even.

• A politician is only as good, or bad, as the people who elect them.

• Communities are not built, they’re lived.

• Bad happens. Disasters occur. Sorrow abounds. But you can chose to live happily.

— The Army Corp of Engineers: Here is an elite group of overpaid government engineers who try to build a better environment than God did. They change the course of rivers, build dams and levies, and in general try to out-think and outdo Mother Nature. It never works.

— Take away the wetlands and replace them with oil refineries, and devastation and despair will be the end result.

— Intelligent design is stupid: I thought we already went through this. You know, back in the Dark Ages. Oh well, I guess you can’t blame these right-wing Christians. They don’t want anyone to tell them that their beliefs are based on mythological archetypes. That would break their Dark Age hearts.

— High tech farming: Great for production, poor for farmers. The family farm has all but disappeared from the landscape. The farmer too has vanished. The result has been a strange combination of corporate managers running an agribusiness designed like any manufacturing concern, with its emphasis on production and efficiency, devoid of stewardship and maintenance of the land. Today, farm families buy most of what they eat at the store.

— Five things you wish you had done on your death-bed:

1. Taken that trip you had always talked about.

2. Wished you had apologized, where necessary.

3. Gotten your affairs in order, so the survivors don’t squabble.

4. Told them to let you go when the time came, rather than keeping you alive for their own needs and insecurities.

5. In the end, you’ll wonder why you got in that bed in the first place. But you’ll come to understand.