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By Richard, August 4, 2010 11:11 pm

This is for all the ultra-right-wing, TEA-party-esque, red-state-voting gun nuts out there, and this is my message: I am a liberal, and I own firearms.

I have to tell you, gun crowd, you’re embarrassing yourselves. President Obama does not want to take away your guns. If you doubt me, please leave a comment citing anything he’s signed into law to take away your guns. If he did want to take them away, I’d let him, and here’s why: you don’t deserve them. I see you in the sporting goods stores, dressed in your wife-beater t-shirts, crowding the pistol counter, talking to the clerk

My Ruger SR-9 9mm pistol, with my TLR-3 Streamlight tactical flashlight mounted on the accessory rail. This modern, striker-fired pistol is an excellent design.

who is also a gun nut, discussing hydrostatic shock and whether a pistol cartridge is a “man stopper” that can take down someone on drugs, like killing humans is a sport. I gather from what I can overhear that you are buying your 20th or so .357 magnum, and this one is “for your wife,” which we all know isn’t true.

If you were married to my wife, you would know that gun ownership isn’t about killing people at all. In Abby’s family, shooting was about time-honored tradition. Her father taught her to hunt before he taught her to drive. Abby has known since she was six how to reload a spent .30-06 shell. When Abby was growing up, her reward for ironing was two .22 shells for every shirt she pressed.

Abby’s family never debated whether or not a .38 Special could kill a home invader or if a .32 auto causes a big enough wound cavity. They were too busy packing and freezing the venison Abby’s dad brought back from Wyoming on his last hunting trip so the girls could have meat through the winter.

I didn’t grow up in Abby’s family, but many of those values have influenced me. When Abby’s father passed away in April of 2010, a few of his firearms were passed down to Abby, and it is a privilege simply to be able to shoot them. I also own a few guns of my own, and while I don’t imagine killing anyone with them, of course I would if I needed to protect Abby or me. But the main reason to have them is the pure enjoyment of the sport of shooting, which we can do to our heart’s content here in the country.

Every firearm we found at Abby’s dad’s house was loaded, because he always said, “They ain’t much good if they ain’t.” He was that kind of guy; as straightforward as anyone gets. It is an honor for me to carry on his tradition of responsibly owning and enjoying firearms of all kinds.

My Smith and Wesson M&P (Military and Police) 15-22 rifle; this excellent weapon is built with all the components similar to the popular AR-15 assault rifle, but is chambered for the far more affordable .22 Long Rifle cartridge; shown here with the included extra 25-round magazine. (Note that the same tactical flashlight that was on my Ruger 9mm pistol fits on the tactical rail of this weapon.)

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By Richard, August 3, 2010 11:11 am

On the back of this photograph my mother wrote, "Sept 1973, occasion: Dedication of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, Lawton, Ok. Richard Barron, Sarah Jo Barron, Nicole Barron."

My family and I were Episcopalians when I was young. For much of that time we attended an Episcopal mission in Lawton, Oklahoma called Saint Margaret’s. It was built in the southwestern mission style, and looked just like a Taco Bell.

As part of my parent’s plans and hopes for me to be a good Episcopalian, they “asked” me to be an acolyte, which as many of you know is the church’s equivalent to junior forest ranger.

My fellow acolytes and I were trained by a nice man who looked just like Don Rickles named Hal Sharp. He taught us when to kneel, when to stand, when to enter and exit, how to use the candle-lighter, how to tie our belt sash, and on and on. The Episcopal Church’s service is as rigid and dogmatic as any, so there were a lot of moves to memorize.

The first level of acolyte was simply “acolyte.” At this level, you carried tapers, lit and extinguished candles, and not much else. On high holidays like Easter you got to carry flags. The higher levels of acolyte were “crucifer” and “server.” The crucifer bore the huge brass cross on the handsome wooden standard, moved the lush, leather-bound Bible at the proper time, and held the Bible on its ornate brass stand during the Gospel lesson. The server assisted the priest at the credence table, giving him water, wine and wafers in the correct sequence.

Wearing the traditional cassock and alb for my duties as server in the Episcopal Church

When we were scheduled to be in a service, we would say that we were “on” Sunday.

I remember when I got “promoted” from mere acolyte to server. I suddenly thought the younger kids were little boys, and that I was a big, respected junior clergyman. As you can see from the photo, I was still very much a little boy.

My parents embraced the Episcopal Church for their entire lives. In Florida in the last 20 years of their lives, they were elders of Saint Thomas of Palm Coast, and their ashes are interred in the columbarium there. Despite their lifelong devotion, and to their chagrin, I never embraced the church, or any church. But when I was little, I imagined a beam of prayer energy shooting through the roof of our little Taco Bell up to God. My sister told me once that when she was very small, she thought our priest, grey-haired Bill Merrill, was God.

Though I found Episcopalianism obdurate and ritualistic, I did understand that its structure and elegance were of great comfort to my parents.

Saint Margarets Episcopal Mission

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By Richard, July 21, 2010 9:51 am

Spider and I

by Richard R. Barron

Sssssst!

Suddenly the fuzzy black spider leaped from the ceiling and parachuted to the floor on an invisible string from its abdomen.

Hairy and huge, it guickly made its way to my basic fear center. I returned the favor by treating it to its next dose of [2(2 (1-Methylethoxy)phenyl)methylcarbamate)].

When it hit the floor, it ran for cover, but the deadly neurotoxins were already working, and before it could crawl six inches, it was running in spastic, uncoordinated circles.

Spider

Sssssst! I sprayed again. Always hit them again, I say, and hit them hard. They’re the enemy.

“But spiders are our friends,” David whimpered to me at every opportunity. David likes spiders.

Once when I was five, I was in the backyard at Grandma’ s house. The home was fairly austere, but the yard was lush and huge. At the center stood a giant willow tree. Sometimes my sister Nicole and cousin Lori would gather yard-flotsam from under the willow, mash it into paste, and dub it “crummards,” which would sit in the garage until it became foul-smelling, then be thrown away by Grandma on her way to pick strawberries.

This time, though, the yard was mine. The evening sun glowed on the grass green and gold, and she and I had gone out back to enjoy it.

As a kid of five, I had abundant, random energy. I skipped, hopped, slid, jumped and bumped around the yard, spastically pining for Grandma’s attention.

I took position on the far side of the yard, came running toward the back patio. “Look, Grandma!” I excitedly shouted, about to perform some pointless but spectacular stunt in front of her.

“Rusty,” she interrupted, “you’ve got one of those big ol’ black spiders on your lip. ”

I reached up and pulled off a black jumping spider the size of a silver dollar. From my lip!

Sssssst ! A little more of the deadly petroleum polymer on this one on the kitchen floor should do nicely, should punish it for terrifying me so much as a child.

The spray soaked the bug w€etter but not deader. My father told me once that insecticides work in two ways. First the bugs had convulsions, then they hemorrhage. It moved slower.

I walked to the cabinet to put the spray away, and continued with my original activity. Since the spider was still alive, even though it was dying, I kept my eye on it.

In a few moments, I got bored and went on to something else. When I looked up again, the spider was gone.

How will I be able to sleep tonight?

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By Richard, July 18, 2010 11:22 am

Recently another group of “ecclesiastical scientists” claimed to have discovered the remains of Noah’s Ark, the wooden boat claimed by the Bible to have held two of each animal or species (depending on who is reading which version of the Bible) during a great flood that supposedly destroyed the earth. Yeah, you know the story, since it is a Sunday school favorite. Teaching it to kids is really the only way to get anyone to believe in it, since the story is so silly and childish that it’s impossible to convince a thinking adult that a man and a woman built a boat by hand and packed it full of, well, everyone who mattered. Come on, it’s a kid’s story! It reminds me of all that popular young adult fiction about dragons and heroic teenagers who save their special little dragon-infested world single-handedly.

Crazy Horse memorial, South Dakota in 2005; even using modern machinery and explosives for 60 years, this thing isn't even close to being done.

Adults believe this story as adults by resting on the time-honored “When I was young, I was taught that…” axiom, which conveniently relieves them from the burden of thinking for themselves.

I digress. The idea that the ark was real ignores a couple of simple ideas. First, there are now about 30,000,000 species of creatures inhabiting the earth, meaning that assuming we don’t allow for evolution of any of them (since the church doesn’t care for the idea), Noah and the Mrs would have needed to collect 60,000,000 organisms to populate the ark. Second, why would Noah collect ticks, but not unicorns? I can almost imagine saving the leech and the mosquito, but Noah, please. Ticks?

If each organism weighed just one pound, that’s 60,000,000 pounds, or 30,000 tons, roughly the displacement of a World War II aircraft carrier. An individual and his wife, even if he was assisted by family members and cheap Mexican laborers, couldn’t have built such a structure in the allotted time, and probably not in his entire lifetime. (I site as example the ongoing labor involved in the construction of the Crazy Horse memorial in South Dakota, which has been going on since 1948 and isn’t even close to finished.) None of that takes into account the needs of the creatures on board, since you can’t just cram 60,000,000 creatures into a boat and stack them like cord wood; they require food and clean water (though maybe flood water was clean back then), and space to move about.

Never mind that there isn’t any physical evidence of a catastrophic flood 6000 years ago. Bible believers disregard a lot of physical evidence and the lack thereof when it suits them. I also acknowledge that much of faith is belief in the impossible, since if it were possible, it wouldn’t be a “miracle.”

I also love the fact that the Bible made sure to have the ark made of imaginary wood (gopherwood), so no one could really prove or disprove the “miracle” of the Great Flood. That’s brilliant. It reminds me of the logic used by JFK conspiracy theorists.

Next week, the second shooter on the grassy knoll? It was me!

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By Richard, July 15, 2010 2:21 pm

The Author at Two

The government is not your mother. Television is not your mother. The army is not your mother. The police are not your mother. Your mother is your mother. And no matter what, you are an adult, and you shouldn’t need your mother any more anyway, except for cordial chat and visits on major holidays.

I write this as I read two articles. One is by a mom who writes:

“The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Tuesday declared the FCC’s indecency policy on ‘fleeting expletives’ unconstitutional. As a journalist, I am pleased with the decision and how it removes the FCC’s chains from the First Amendment. As a parent, I have mixed feelings”

The other item is about skin-whitening cream, and this is the lead:

“A new Vaseline ad campaign in India urging men to whiten their faces has sparked international controversy, with critics of the ads contending that Vaseline–a subsidiary of the Dutch-Anglo conglomerate Unilever–is promoting the notion that only white skin is beautiful.”

First, journalist/mom: Item number one is to drop the double standard. Either it’s good law or it’s not. Item number two is this: it is not the FCCs responsibility to raise your kids. It’s not the government’s or the TV network’s or the TV station’s. It’s yours.

Secondly, the skin-whitening cream: So what if some company comes along and offers a product you don’t like? They offer it to sentient, adult human beings, and if they are stupid and childish enough buy snake oil, they deserve snake oil. I don’t care if Vaseline offers Hitlerizing cream. I just won’t buy it. It’s not Vaseline’s job to take care of you. It’s not the government’s or the billboard company’s or… well, you get the idea. I hope.

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By Richard, June 26, 2010 12:05 am

I was 16.

She consumed me so much that I believed that surely she was feeling it also, that she could feel what I was feeling, even when we were apart.

I believed that missing her enough would make her miss me.

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By Richard, June 22, 2010 9:59 am

5:06am by Roger Waters

In truck stops and hamburger joints
In Cadillac limousines
In the company of has-beens
And bent-backs
And sleeping forms on pavement steps
In libraries and railway stations
In books and banks
In the pages of history
In suicidal cavalry attacks
I recognise…Myself in every stranger’s eyes

Morning

And in wheelchairs by monuments
Under tube trains and commuter accidents
In council care and county courts
At Easter fairs and sea-side resorts
In drawing rooms and city morgues
In award winning photographs
Of life rafts on the China seas
In transit camps, under arc lamps
On unloading ramps
In faces blurred by rubber stamps
I recognise…Myself in every stranger’s eyes

And now, from where I stand
Upon this hillI plundered from the pool
I look around
I search the skies
I shade my eyes
So nearly blind
And I see signs of half remembered days
I hear bells that chime in strange familiar ways
I recognise…The hope you kindle in your eyes

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By Richard, June 13, 2010 1:49 pm

This entry may be the one that completes my mission: to write at least one thing that offends every person who reads this blog.

A Human Breast Nipple

My message today is this: men who are sexually aroused by breasts really just want to sleep with their mothers.

Fact: the breasts of mammals are not reproductive parts. The breast’s purpose beyond simple anatomy is to provide milk for an infant.

There are so many things more appealing to me about a woman than the fat surrounding her milk glands. I would say that her eyes are first, and to me the eyes that appeal the most are bright, intelligent, creative eyes. The smell of a woman, or at least the smell of my own wife, is incredibly intoxicating to me. The soft, white hollow of her hand, the way her hair frames her beautiful face, even the sound of her voice…

All this finds its way to my heart before her baby-feeding glands.

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By Richard, June 11, 2010 8:31 am

There is more than one way to be a patriot and a good citizen

I have nothing against genuine attempts to enlighten the closed-minded, but so often those attempts are just hatred from the other side. Much of the time it seems to me that the oppressed enjoy and nurture their role as victims. It gives meaning to their otherwise empty lives, and that meaning is almost certainly as destructive as the bigotry they claim to despise.

• Liberals, conservatives don’t want to “ruin our country.”
• Conservatives, liberals don’t want to “ruin our country.”
• Most people on both sides of the political spectrum want our country to be great. They just have very different views of what that greatness should be, and how to achieve it.
• It’s unlikely any of you really hate Barack Obama or George Bush or any other president, because quite honestly, there is little chance you know all that much about them. Did you read the legislation they passed? Sit in on their meetings? Work in their offices when they were campaigning? Or did you just feel a rush of blood to your head when Fox news read you some poll results or when you heard the chant of “four more years!!!” and saw the banners flying?
• Accept the fact that if you live in a democratic society, sometimes you will lose.
• Lead by example; anything else is hypocrisy.

“There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless.” -Full Metal Jacket

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By Richard, June 4, 2010 10:41 am

Another oil spill entry:

Lots of people on Facebook are clamoring for a boycott of BP, the giant oil company that owned the Deepwater Horizon, the Gulf of Mexico drilling rig that was destroyed and caused the largest oil spill in U. S. history (though not the largest in the world). Here was my comment about one of them…

The problem with a boycott like that is that ALL the oil companies have the same agenda, the same lack of scruples, the same slack safety standards, and the same commerce-driven business model. It was just BPs turn. Do you still boycott Exxon? Enron? WaMu? WorldComm? The NEXT oil company that has a spill? Boycotting BP might make you feel good in the short term, but in the end, if we are a part of commerce, we are also a part of the problem in the bigger picture.

Map from ifitwasmyhome.com showing what the oil spill would look like if it moved to our home here in Ada, Oklahoma

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By Richard, May 31, 2010 11:01 pm

I just shot this onto a friend’s Facebook wall. I expect to be flamed, but that doesn’t make me wrong:

BP is certainly culpable in the most recent disaster, but the truth is that big corporations are the evolution of capitalism. Whether we like it or not, everything from the automobile to the iPod are integrated with the infrastructure of our mercantilist culture. BP was just at the business end of really bad luck. Get 8 acres of land and get off the grid; then you can complain. Until then, we are all as much a part of the problem as we are part of the solution.

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By Richard, May 29, 2010 5:34 pm

The Ascent of Man

by Richard R. Barron

David made more sense to me than most people do. He reacted intellectually instead of emotionally, and was bluntly honest about his thoughts and feelings, even when they were abstract or vulgar or completely out of reach.

As we searched for a way around the imposing bulge of granite, I wondered why, philosophically, I made the distinction between thoughts and feelings. When I touched the huge, cold rock, I thought about it, about the way it felt. What kind of arrogant, presumptuous fool was I to decide that the two, thoughts and feelings, were independent of each other?

“That they drink that much? It’s not surprising at all,” he answered.

I paused for a moment as I lifted hard with my arms to climb over a protruding shelf of rock. “Alcoholism,” I continued, partially out of breath but anxious to make my point, “isn’t a ‘disease.’ Alcohol doesn’t infect you the way polio or measles does. You have to actively drink.  You have to pick up the bottle and put it to your mouth. You are the disease.”

After a small struggle to reach the top, and a hand up from David, I stood on the summit. As I stood up I was greeted by a voluminous rush of cold wind. The side of the cliff we had just climbed had shielded us from the wind, and now we were out in the open. It felt fantastic.

Cliff in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Southwest Oklahoma

After a few minutes, we broke our rest camp and began to assail the day’s second mountain. This one was gateway to the famed “whale hump,” an elusive because-it’s-there lump of yellow rock we’d been targeting since I brought my friends Robert and Scott to these hills ten years before. On that occasion, we€ never got anywhere near the “whale hump,” as we took on a piece of government granite that nearly killed us…

From my position, I could see everything they did. They ascended thirty feet and then abruptly stopped. “I think we have a problem here,” Scott confidently announced. “We can’t go up any further and we can’t go back down.”

“I think we should keep going up,” Robert suggested. The two struggled a few more feet and were at the end of their climb; only the gulf between them and my position remained. I climbed down to the smooth, slick ledge and looked around. It would be difficult and dangerous, but they could make it.

He leapt and landed right in front of me, wavering momentarily, neither falling nor lighting. Then as if we both suddenly relaxed, he and I stood on the ledge, and it seemed as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

After Robert stalled for what seemed like an hour, he finally realized it wasn’t going to get any easier. He took a giant breath and closed his eyes for a moment, then jumped into my waiting, but teetering, grasp. Scott pulled me back, and finally we were all safe.

Was he? Did he even exist? Who is entitled to exist? I thought of this as David and I crossed a larger, open, rocky meadow. I didn’t say any of this to David. It was kind of embarrassing to have an existential crisis.

The steepening, rocky hill before me only deepened my reverie. Even as the climb once again became difficult, and I had to figure out more and more complex solutions to the problems of climbing, only part of me did so. The rest of my mind rattled off theories and concepts about the Universe.

North American Bison, Wichita Mountains

“The way we herd and control cattle,” David said, derailing my growingly complex train of thought, ”is equivalent to a hyper-intelligent species of, say, squirrels controlling us. They would build technologically advanced fences that we couldn’t figure out. They’d keep us docile and temporarily happy. They’d feed us exactly what we wanted. It would be easy. Think about it. Cattle are much stronger and faster than we are, but we control them easily. They are lost, and we’d be lost too.”

I’d always admired David’s immense ability to think abstractly.

“What do you want to do?” I asked, more to be funny than to actually find out.

“Suits me,” I said, and followed David into a thick part of the scrub-oak.

“This way, ” I said, the disappointment obvious in my voice as we left the trail and made our way back into the brush.

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By Richard, May 22, 2010 12:00 pm

Mission graveyard near Farmington, New Mexico; Catholics spent hundreds of years converting the native Americans and Mexicans to Catholicism

From the AP today:

“Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in what is now Poland, far from Europe’s centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.”

Does it bother anyone else that religion spends so much time and effort telling you that God is the center of the universe, but also spends centuries of cruel effort like this? What they really want, and what anyone in power really wants, isn’t for you to see things as they really are, but as they want you to see them. They don’t really want humanity or the church at the center of it all. They want to be the center of it all.

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By Richard, May 21, 2010 8:03 pm

This is from a Facebook page about my grade school:

“We are so proud of all of you CP Longhorns. Once a Longhorn….always a Longhorn with CP pride. I’m retired now but have such fond memories!”

Why would we be proud of the fact that our parents sent us to the school that was closest to our house?

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By Richard, May 13, 2010 7:05 pm

Did anyone else here read 1984?

If you didn’t, please do, then come back and finish reading this.

Imagine that you are a politician and wanted to get elected. On the surface, you might imagine that a good clean campaign might attract voters, and that would be one way to go. So you play it that way, and let the fortunes of democracy swing.

If you are like me, though, you probably think that politicians and their ilk are a lot smarter than Joe Citizen believes. If I were a politician, I might invent a plan in which I hire some people to run for office who look just foolish and ignorant enough that they seem to sincerely represent a party, but are in fact plants. Example: if I were Barack Obama and I wanted to get elected, I might hire someone to run against me who might be a little too old or a little too young, a little too dogmatic or a little too idealistic, a little too religious or a little too angry. Sound like anyone you remember?

Another scenario: if I wanted to United States to go to war against my foe, how would I do it? Not by asking them, certainly. But what if I orchestrated an attack on the United States that looked like the work of my enemy? What if I dressed up like an Arab and flew some jets into some American icons? What if I picked airlines named United and American? I could get the United States to attack and destroy just about anyone, couldn’t I?

Seriously, go read 1984.

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By Richard, May 9, 2010 1:02 pm

Portrait of Malcolm X in the office of a local college professor

In a recent edition of a magazine for which I am the editor, I profiled some college professors who had developed an interesting comparison between entertainment and philosophy. Of course, I photographed them in their offices at the local college, making environmental portraits of four professors. After the magazine published, I received a phone call at my office from a woman who asked, “Is Louis Farrakhan really the kind of person we want in a magazine about our community?”

I suppose it might have been a valid question, except that the portrait on the wall in the college professor’s office was of Malcolm X, not Louis Farrakhan. Bigots, please. If you are going to hate, at least make an effort to know who you are hating.

Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X, side-by-side for comparison; perhaps they all look alike to you

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By Richard, April 30, 2010 10:51 am

nosophilia (noun), noso- from Greek νόσος (nosos, “illness”) + -philia:

Sexual arousal from knowing a partner has a terminal illness.

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By Richard, April 29, 2010 8:41 pm

I have been told this lie my whole life by women, even after I got married:

“I just want to be by myself for a while.”

This lie has always been told to me by very attractive women who have just gotten divorced or broken up from a serious relationship, and never, not once, have any of these women been by themselves for a while. Typically they are with someone within just a week or two.

I imagine that on the surface, they mean what they are saying. I say “on the surface” because deep down, they know they are full of shit. Deep down they know they will be with someone soon, because no one who is married or in a serious relationship wants to be alone for a while, or even for the next five minutes. If they wanted to be alone, they would have been alone the whole time.

At some middle-depth level, this statement is really this: “I don’t want to be with you.”

This lie and similar ones, like, “It’s not you, it’s me,” (it’s you, or she would want to be with you), or “I just want to be friends,” (which is almost never even remotely true), or “I don’t think we want the same things,” (which was spoken with great irony to me by a girlfriend who later became a lesbian, proving we both wanted the exact same thing, to be with a lesbian woman), are part of the pointless thrust and parry of courtship, and one of the reasons I am so very glad to be in a healthy marriage.

Sidebar: a woman once told me, “I just can’t be in a co-dependant relationship right now,” then proceeded to marry and divorce two more times in the next ten years.

I know I am asking for a lot more courage than almost all of you are capable of mustering, but people, please, at least once in your miserable little lives tell someone the truth, that you are thinking only of yourself.

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By Richard, April 24, 2010 8:47 pm

I normally don’t like to repost stuff I find on the internet, but I was unable to resist the brilliance of this pearl (one of great price, you might say)…

The Bible Explained

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By Richard, April 24, 2010 1:14 pm

I am loving this guy’s web site and message…

http://www.patcondell.net/

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By Richard, April 14, 2010 8:09 am

From a Facebook thread:

“That’s why I want to home school my kids. I do not like the public school system never have and believe it’s getting worst!”

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By Richard, April 8, 2010 1:06 pm

I was recently on the road, and I have XM satellite radio. By far my favorite station is Doctor Radio, an excellent call-in style show presented by the NYU Langone Medical Center.

As usual, many of the shows were about America’s latter-day health crisis, type II diabetes. For those of you who don’t know, this ailment is cause by a number of risk factors, but most significantly poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle, coupled with the obesity associated with them.

Image of an obese man taken from Wikimedia Commons

The biggest point the doctors on these shows make is the dangerous prevalence of refined sugars in the diets of people in the developed world. This, however, is a point that I don’t exactly understand, and what I don’t understand is this: why do people like sugary foods? In particular, why do people like the boring, simple taste of these foods? Doughnuts, cake, Pepsi, M&Ms, candy, bon-bons, Frosted Flakes, Twinkies, and on and on. I just don’t get it. Not only are these foods uninteresting to my taste buds, but I can feel a distinct negative effect on my body almost immediately after consuming them.

Have people forgotten how much better a strawberry is than a Ding-Dong? How much more complex and interesting a cantaloup is than a candy cane? Maybe that’s it: many or even most people have relatively simple, infantile, under-evolved tastes. The subtlety of a red bell pepper is beyond their capacity, so of course they need the sledgehammer-esque sugar blast of Ho Hos.

I was thinking about all this as I listened to these doctors proposing naive, unrealistic and ultimately ineffective solutions to this problem. Get more exercise. Eat a balanced diet. Yeah, right. These options have always been the right answer, yet we are fatter and sicker than ever. The developed world could be standing on the brink of a new era in human potential, with the aegis of science solving some the most horrible and incurable disease problems in history, but at the same time science and industry give us cheaper, sweeter, simpler, and ultimately more destructive foods, and the sedentary lifestyles that allows us to spike our blood sugar and destroy our bodies.

Instead of letting the beta cells in my pancreas die as I sit here, I’m going to finish my 15-bean soup and go mow the lawn. I hope to see you out there.

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By Richard, March 28, 2010 11:34 am

“No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.” -George H. Bush

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By Richard, March 24, 2010 3:17 pm

As the parent of a teenage boy, and as a family man in his 40s, I presently look at the world from a maturing perspective. From my point of view, characteristics such as responsibility and honesty trump characteristics like impetuousness, laziness, and rebellion. Every teenager, from my own self those decades ago, to the one under my roof now, is rebellious, lazy, prone to haste, and ignorant of real-world consequences.

But this is the story of the actions of a teenager that are, quite honestly, amazingly selfish and thoughtless.

It was the Friday before spring break 1981 in Lawton, Oklahoma, and a nice day. My yearbook advisor Rick Hill and I had met up with the members of Eisenhower High School’s “Ike Mafia” to take a picture for the ad they bought for the ’81 Talon yearbook. We picked Chip Johnson’s house because it sported a circular driveway, we could get up on the roof to make the photo from above, and Chip was a member of the group and a yearbook staffer like me. The Mafia members were mostly rich kids whose parents owned expensive luxury cars, and those cars were props in the picture.

They circled the luxury cars in the driveway and placed two lawn chairs in the center. Most of the people in the photos donned mirrored sunglasses, which we simply called “mirrors,” and all the mafia members are wearing their signature “Ike Mafia” t-shirts. Amazingly by today’s standards, four of the ten people in the photo are holding firearms.

Jeff Glenn is the one on the far left side of the image. In all the frames except this one, his middle finger is extended.

When we were done making the picture, everyone got into their various cars and went home, except Jeff. He got into his gold Pontiac Trans Am and without telling anyone at all, most notably his parents, drove to Chicago to see his girlfriend. As a fellow 17-year-old, I wasn’t particularly concerned. But now that I have a 17-year-old, I can only imagine the phalanx of emotions that must have gripped his parents when he didn’t come home, and as they waited the three days before he bothered to call and confirm what they suspected, that he had run away to see his girlfriend 1200 miles distant.

His girlfriend was named Deanna, so in future conversations, we dubbed it “De Day.” It was a particularly rebellious act in the midst of a series of pointlessly rebellious acts, a series which ended in Jeff’s suicide just 14 months later.

If you are a parent, maybe you understand my point of view.

The infamous "Ike Mafia" yearbook ad photo, which included the lame, slightly racist cutline, "Keepa up the spirit or we breaka you face in."

Comments (3)

By Richard, March 21, 2010 11:07 pm

Rule #11: When a balloon pops, always say, “Oh, the humanity.”

Rule #66: Eat rendered koos koos.

Rule #12: Have a beer, neat.

Rule #98: It’s the porcupine apocalypse.

Rule #22: Wear a pleasant blouse.

Rule #7: Take as many naps as possible, preferably inside a tree hollowed out specifically for sleeping.

Rule #29: Always wipe front to back so you don’t get any crap on your under the butt nut hut.

Rule # 90: Remember that when you flip someone the bird, your middle finger is a little penis, and the fingers next to it are little testicles.

Rule #76: “Strap on no parts” backwards is “strap on no parts.” The same goes for “step on no pets” and “rise to vote, sir.”

Rule #16: If you work at a drive-through, on your last day say, “Welcome to the apocalypse, may I take your order?”

Rule #60: See at how many truly pointless things you can excel.

Rule #51: Don’t strain your god bone.

Rule #52: Empty your god bag.

Rule #9: Eat plenty of bitter grapes with huge, chewy seeds.

Rule #44: No gaping. Stare with dignity.

Rule #80: Crawl for all the right reasons.

Rule #77: Don’t fear the reeker.

Rule #2: Party on, Wayne.

Rule #69: Chicks with dicks.

Rule #4: You should be ashamed of yourself.

Rule #50: Hide the past at all costs. If someone asks you about it, tell them you haven’t seen it.

Rule #4: If you write it, they will come.

Rule #92: Take vitamins instead of food, and vice versa.

Rule #70: Make up lyrics to news themes.

Rule #21: Gimme gimme gimme.

Rule #39: Hold your tongue and say “My father owns a shipyard.”

Rule # 76: There’s already a rule #76.

Rule #2: You’re not good enough.

Rule #95: Use only the kryptonite washcloth to cleanse your soul.

Comments (2)

By Richard, March 21, 2010 9:07 pm

I was messaging today on Facebook with someone with whom I went to high school, and I asked what she was doing.

“Watching health care reform on Fox News. I hate him.”

We all know she was talking about the President.

“I’m not racist,” she added immediately. Only racists say that. If you’re not a racist, a comment like that doesn’t even occur to you.

Tell me why you hate our President. Better yet, let me tell you why you hate our president: because you voted for the other guy, and you are a baby and didn’t get your way.