I Don't Trust a Doctor With Zits

Call me old fashioned...but I don't like young doctors. Especially when they still have zits. I don't think they know enough to be treating me. A young doctor bought my old doctor's practice. (Why do they call it "practice"? It's as if they are learning at your expense!) On my first visit, I asked the nurse if the guy was certified. She said she thought he was. But I asked to see his diploma. It was fresh...and he was fresh. He said, "You are way too fat. You've got to lose some of this weight." I told him it was "baby fat" but he said my records showed that I was 65 years old. But some people don't lose their baby fat when they are young. My old doctor never bitched about my weight or my blood pressure. I guess he was old enough and smart enough to know it wouldn't do any good. The New Kid on the Block uses a computer to help him diagnose illness. I went in with a hand rash...he made me put my hands up beside a computer screen and he kept calling up photographs until he found one that sort of matched. "I think this is it," he said gleefully. I told him I could get his computer program and could do the same thing on my computer at home. And "I think I could get rid of those zits of yours."

Buy One, Get One Free

It's become popular for grocery stores to run weekly specials whereby if you buy one jar of peanut butter, you get a second one free. I love these promotions although I have to admit it makes me buy stuff that I really don't need. But I can't resist. My pantry looks like it belongs to the Doublemint Twins...two of everything. Or like Noah stowing away rations for the big flood. Two peanut butters. Two pork and beans. Two cans of green beans. Two Duke's mayonaises.

William Thompson, Visionary Artist

William Thompson lives in a castle in Spartanburg. He likes living in a castle. This is the second one he has lived in. But what really makes him unique are the fantastic paintings he creates. He was a business man who had never painted in his life. But he came down with a terrible nerve-related disease...he could barely walk and his hands were so crippled that he could hardly hold a spoon. He was in Hawaii recuperating from the disease when God spoke to him and told him to paint. It was such a clear message, he went right out and bought canvases, paints and brushes. And he began painting as God had instructed him to do. He said the first paintings were so ugly he thought he had misunderstood what God had said. So he prayed for God to speak to him again...and God said, "Yes, Thomas. I want you to paint." So he went back to painting. One of the first paintings he did when he got back home was a 300 foot painting (yes...you got that right...a painting as long as a football field!) depicting the entire Book of Revelations. It was so big it had to be worked like a scroll. When the American Visionary Art Museum was doing a year-long exhibit called "The End Is Near", they selected his painting to be displayed. It was draped from the ceiling. They had Army ambulance stretchers on the floor...you would get down on the stretcher and use a pair of binoculars to view the painting. This one painting put him on the art map...at least in the world of Outsider Art. Although it's difficult to find places that can display a 300 foot painting, his work has been shown throughout Europe and also here in the United States. Right now he has been commissioned to do 7 paintings for the American Visionary Art Museum on "creation"...the first seven days from Genesis. These will be put on permanent display at AVAM beginning in October. Just recently, two art books on Thompson's work have been published...available I'm sure through Amazon.com.

Living in Kudzu Country

If you don't live in the South, you may not know about Kudzu. It's a wildly rambling vine that covers everything in its path. Stand in one spot too long and you would be covered with it. Actually it's a beautiful vine, but wild, wild wild. Here, where I live in the mountains of North Carolina, it completely encases huge trees...covers entire valleys. It dies down in winter and comes blazing back the very next year. People brought it here from Japan back in the 30's to help stop erosion, especially where they were cutting away hills to build new roads. It stops erosion alright! No one has come up with anything useful to do with Kudzu. Some people make jelly from the beautiful little Kudzu flowers. I've heard that people make baskets with the brittle vines. And I know a woman who uses the leaves to make paper. She dyes the paper...cuts it into various shapes and creates quilt-like wall hangings. But there's still a lot of Kudzu left if you've got any ideas. And I think it is moving north like the fire ants and the armadillos.

Freaky, Freaky

I've always loved freaks. When I was a kid my mother would always say, "Don't stare. Don't stare." But I couldn't help it. I wasn't crazy about midgets because they came to the N.C. State Fair every year. They had a sideshow tent and they dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos. I had to give up five rides in order to buy a ticket, but I always went to the midget show. At halftime they would come out into the audience and sell stuff...you could buy autographed photographs signed with a midget hand. One year they sold midget Bibles which didn't even have one chapter. And then the next year they sold straight pins with the Lord's Prayer engraved on the head of them. So they said. I bought one. I was one of those "a sucker is born every minute" kids. I was so eager to get home and tell my Dad about my treasure. He held the pin under the light and turned it slowly. He squinted. Finally he said, "There's nothing on the head of this pin, son. You've been screwed by a band of midgets." I was sure he was wrong. I took the pin back and turned it slowly and read, "Our Father who art in Heaven....". "You're just making that up, son," my Dad said. "If I were you I would go back over to the fair and kick some tiny butt." I said, "Would you go with me?" He said, "They're midgets. You're as big as they are. You can take them." They were little alright, but one of them smoked a cigar so I figured they were probably fairly strong. I just put the pin away and swore I would never go to a midget show again. But I never lost my fascination for midgets or other freaks. My daughter just bought me a book titled FREAK BABYLON...it's filled with real pictures of real freaks. Many of them are in the movie, FREAK. The movie that was made in the 30's and was considered so scandalous that MGM pulled it. The book talks about the movie, but also about freaks and the people who loved them. I knew that Diane Arbus, the photogapher, became enamored with them toward the end of her life. She would go to 42nd Street and take pictures of them. In the book it said that Catherine the Great loved giants...she had them brought to Russia so she could have sex with them. But being unsatisfied with giants, she took to having sex with horses. The book claims she died having sex with a horse. A friend told me it was the horse that died.

Judging Miss America

I always wanted to be a judge for the Miss America pageant. Because of my work with the USO, I did get invited to be a judge at one of the preliminary pageants in Maryland. There were two guy judges...and six women judges. They instructed us very carefully that Miss America is not a beauty contest (what???)...it's a scholarship program with the victor being the best all-around young woman. I whispered to the other guy who was a judge and said, "I don't know about you, but I've voting for the one with the biggest hooters." He said, "Me, too!" I told him that's probably why they had so many women judges. They all voted for the opera singer and she won. Of course breathing in and out deeply so you can sing opera develops fairly sizeable hooters, too, so in a way the two guys won as well.

Sleep Your Fat Away

It seems as if I have always been searching for ways to lose weight. Especially ways that allowed me to do it easily while I continued to eat, eat, eat. When I was about 15-years-old, I saw an ad that said, SLEEP YOUR FAT AWAY: Lose Weight While You Sleep. Now that's what I call a miracle way to lose weight. I sent away for this "suit" that your wore at night. When it came, it looked a lot like a shower curtain. It was a bright pink plastic thing, sort of like pajamas. You zipped yourself into it before you went to bed. The whole idea of this invention was the fact that the body is mainly water...so you would sweat your fat away. It sure made you sweat. I woke up the first morning and thought I had wet the bed. The suit was stuck to me from all the sweat. I thought, "Damn, this is working. I will be thin in no time." I worried that I would have a thin body but a fat head, fat hands and fat feet. But I didn't worry enough that I stopped putting the plastic suit on every night. After a few days I noticed that my body was as bright pink as the shower-curtain pajamas. I had a heat rash all over my body where the pj's went. I had to shower after gym class and I caused quit a stir. They re-named me "Pinkie". I probably would have kept using the sleep-your-fat-away pj's even with the rash. But fortunately, they ripped. And I still feel ripped for paying $14.95. Maybe I can find them at a good price on eBay.

The Famous Meatloaf Cook Off

My family is very competitive. We don't play touch football like the Kennedys when we get together. We have cooking competitions. Last New Years when we gathered with our family and some friends, we told everybody to bring their favorite meatloaf recipes. I don't know anyone who doesn't like meatloaf and I'm so happy that it has made a big comeback in even fancy restuarants. Everybody thinks their recipe (or their Mother's recipe) is the best. So we had everyone cook a meatloaf for which we offered prizes and trophies. My oldest daughter was in charge of organizing the cookoff. She eliminated me from the competition! I made MEAT MUFFINS, little meatloafs that were cooked in muffin tins. They were so cute and so tasty, and they cooked much faster than the normal loaf. But she said, "It's a meatLOAF competition, not a meatMUFFIN competition. You're out." Well it pissed me off because the meat muffins were eaten up like...muffins. My daughter knew my meatloaf would win...she eliminated me so she could win. She did. I have to admit that her meatloaf was pretty good...a Mexican Meatloaf. One of my other daughters made Greek Meatloaf (stuffed with feta cheese and spinach); another one made Italian Meatloaf. And a lot of the other people just used their Mothers' recipes and none of these even made it to the top three. Some of our health-nut friends made Tofu Meatloaf. They did not win. Nobody even wanted to taste it except them. You couldn't eat Tofu Meatloaf even with a bottle of catsup on it. In fact, their meatloaf got booed. My latest meatloaf venture is MEATLOAF WELLINGTON...it's a meatloaf wrapped in crescent roll dough...it not only looks beautiful, it tastes great. Once I made a meatloaf in a bundt pan. Once it's baked, you turn it out on a platter then fill the middle with peas and put mashed potatoes around the outside edges. I'm sure my daughter would eliminate this one, too.

An Untraditional Thanksgiving

I like traditional stuff for Thanksgiving...cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and a turkey that looks like a turkey. Last year my wife and I spent Thanksgiving with one of my daughters...since it was just the three of us, my wife instructed her to get a "turkey breast", not a whole turkey. My daughter found boneless turkey breasts that had been injected with Cajun spices...on the internet, yet. She wasn't sure how many people one breast would feed, so she got two. They were flat and rectangular; looked more like loaves of bread. They didn't look like anything we had ever had for Thanksgiving before. I complained just looking at them. I wanted something that looked like a turkey. So my daughter bought two wings and two legs which she tried unsuccessfully to hook to the double breasted flat breasts she already had. It was one weird sight! I decided to put two prunes on each breast piece, sort of like nipples. That improved the looks of it tremendously, although my wife and my daughter both insisted that turkeys don't have nipples. "You don't know," I said. "Maybe they do! This one certainly does." I"m glad to report that the turkey tasted much, much better than it looked. Now that tradition has been broken, my daughter is planning to have a Tur-Duc-Hen this year. What? You've never heard of a Tur-Duc-Hen? It's three birds in one...a turkey stuffed with a duck that has been stuffed with a hen. Poor things. We treat our barnyard birds with such disrespect. But it has Cajun spices so it will probably be delicious, too.

Watch Out! He's Coming Your Way

My friend Robert Frito Seven, a well-known folk artist, musician, minister and man-about-town, is about to embark on a cross-country tour in a great ART CAR he has created from an old ambulance. He's leaving from Asheville, N.C. shortly...heading to Nebraska where he hopes to participate in the world's longest art car parade...it crosses the whole state and stops in various towns. His ambulance --- Emerge N See --- is devoted to creativity...and Robert hopes to open the minds and hearts of children as well as adults to the joys of being creative. We all have the potential...we just need to hit the right switch and get connected. He will be going on to the famous Burning Man Festival north of Reno where he will dance, sing, make music on suitcases that he has turned into musical instruments, cook bar-b-que...and probably run around naked at night when the temperature drops from 110. If you see a strange ambulance pass you by, wave. Better yet, toot your horn and give him a few bucks for gas and his mission. Do NOT wave your Bible at him. He is not a Heathen. He has come to save you...for yourself.

One Leg at a Time

Some famous person --- maybe Mark Twain or Harry Truman --- said that they got over being intimidated being around famous men because they always remembered that every guy puts his pants on the same way...one leg at a time. I remember this line every day when I try to get my pants on and both legs go into the same hole! I did not always have this trouble...I'm old and my sight is failing...plus I have LONG toenails like all old guys do. The long toenails are partially to blame when I'm trying to get my legs into my underwear. Invariably when my feet do get through, they are sharing the same hole. I am thinking seriously of cutting the crotches out of all my underwear...then I won't have to aim my left foot into the left hole, etc. Or do them one leg at a time like the rest of the guys.

Show Me Your Tongue

I am a renowned tongue portrait photographer; the world's most famous and perhaps the ONLY tongue portrait photographer. I realized years ago that no one else was taking pictures of tongues so it was a wide open field. At first I would approach people on the street and say, "Give me some tongue." After being hit a few times, I changed my approach. I opened a Tongue Portraiture Shoppe and advertised in the Yellow Pages under "Tongue Pictures". In the studio, I had many empty picture frames. When customers would come in, they would select a picture frame that pleased them. I would have them hold it up and put their face in it before sticking out their tongues. This way when the picture was developed and printed, it already had a frame on it. Basically I followed the Wal-Mart practice of giving them a "package deal" whereby they got one 8x10, two 5x7's, and a hundred wallet size pictures...all for $l9.95. Business was slow at first because many people did not understand the signifance of an extended tongue. It is a sign of hospitality in New Guinea. When someone approaches you, you stick out your tongue in welcome...they stick there's out back at you. This is much more sanitary than shaking hands and much, much better than doing what dogs do. (What are they doing when they sniff each other's ass?) I might also add that the tongue is a much better sign of hospitality than a pineapple. To appeciate the tongue, one must understand that tongues do NOT age...they are forever young. Go to a nursing home and check this out. Most of the people there can't keep their tongues in their mouths so it is easy to check. They look old, but their tongues are young looking. Tongues are like snowflakes...no two are alike. For this reason, I wrote to the FBI and suggested that they make Tongue Prints for finding criminals and for ID purposes instead of doing fingerprints. With fingerprints, you have to do TEN images, whereas most people only have one tongue so one tongue print will do the trick. Of course it means that those who are tongue printed will go around with black tongues for a long, long time. But this is better "profiling" than doing racial profiling. I also wrote to the State Department suggesting that they use tongue portraits instead of regular mug shots. Nobody looks like their passport pictures anyway. But with tongue pictures, it would be quick and easy to check them out...people just stick out their tongues as they pass quickly through the gates. And because tongues don't change, you would never have to renew your passport. I have not heard from the FBI or the State Department. But oddly enough, I have seen Men in Black near my house. I'm going to try and get a photo of their tongues. I am seriously considering franchising my idea: TONGUES R US. We could expand into doing school photos...think of having pictures of your childrens' tongues at all ages and grades. And, of course, we could offer Christmas card photos with the whole family --- and the dog --- with tongues extended in holiday fashion. Want a picture of MY tongue? I bet you do, you pervert.

It's a Grand Time to Be a Hobo

I wonder if they still have Hobos. I know they have homeless people, but Hobos chose to ride the trains and lead the life of nomads. Now when I see trains go by, all the cars look like sealed boxes; not as easy to slip inside one. My Daddy was a Hobo for a while. Back in the early days of the Great Depression. He said there were too many mouths to feed at home so being the second oldest mouth in the family of six boys, he decided to leave home and ramble. I love that word "ramble". I realize that my Father tended to romanticize his life on the rails by the time I came along, but he said he wouldn't trade those years for anything. He claimed Hobos didn't beg or steal. They weren't like gypsies who came to town. They were willing to work for food. I have an idea that he was talking about himself and not all Hobos. Once my Dad joined a circus. Now that was romantic. I imagined him taming wild animals, riding horses bareback, flying on a trapeze high in the air, dancing with the bearded lady. But he didn't do any of that stuff. He packed and unpacked the tent and helped put it up. He was not in the Talent Department but, as he explained, it was important work that he did. No tent. No show. He was a roustabout. Then he worked quite a while as a hired hand on a big farm in Iowa. He lived in a bunkhouse just like cowboys did. He had never seen a farm so big and land so flat. It was here that he encountered his first tornado. The farm owner had an underground shelter where the family and the fieldhands went when they got warnings about a tornado. But being fearless and a little bit stupid at the time, he wanted to stay above ground and see what a tornado was like. But the farmer made him come below. It's a good thing he did or he would have been blown all the way back to South Carolina. When I was in the grocery store recently, I noticed how conveniently so many foods are packed. This would be a great time to be a Hobo. They have little flip top cans of peaches, ready to eat. Little cans of spinach and green beans. (I think they are made for Senior Citizens who are living alone, not Hobos. But Hobos could still carry them and eat them.) They have SPAM SNACK PAKS. It doesn't taste anything like traditional SPAM (not that SPAM doesn't taste great...we used to live off the stuff and I still like it, but my wife says "Your upbringing is showing".) It looks like pate. A very pale pate. But it's not like Potted Meat. We used to eat Potted Meat, too, until I read on the can that it's made from unidentifiable animals (read "roadkills" and "armadillos") and chickens that have been mechanically picked. The poor things! I hated the thought of a bunch of robots mechanically cleaning my chicken, so I am boycotting Potted Meat. By the way, we used to "dress it up" by adding chopped celery, onions and mayonaise. The stores now have peanut butter and jelly "rounds", little sandwiches that are stamped out of the center ofa peanut butter and jelly sandwich; no crust. My grandson introduced me to this treat. And if you are on the South Beach Diet (and who isn't?), you can get packages that have two tiny tortillas, ham, cheese and mayo so you can rip open the box and make a couple of roll-ups. My wife keeps a "Hurricane Survival Box" because we live on an island in South Carolina. So far we have had to evacuate three times but have not been hit (Praise the Lord!). But she keeps a food supply that would make a Hobo drool. When I get hungry and can't find anything decent to eat, I sneak into the Hurricane Survival Box and steal a few Hobo treats. She gets upsets and warns me, "We're going to have to go to a Shelter." On TV, people in the shelters always look like they're having a grand old time...playing cards, watching TV. My wife says if we go to the Shelter, we will have to eat Potted Meat. Twice I have had Hobo Picnics for my children and their friends. Once we went to the dump and spread out newspapers and ate our lunch with buzzards flying overhead. I brought canned foods with flip tops, but I didn't bring any forks or spoons. When they complained, I told them that Hobos don't travel with forks and spoons. They eat with their tongues. Then they wanted a napkin, so I ripped off part of our table-cloth newspaper and handed it to them. Another time I packed each lunch in a bandana and tied them on long sticks so we could hike over to the railroad tracks and wave to people on the train going to New York. I could read their lips, "Oh, look! A Hobo and his family." (It was a slow moving train.) This time I had sardines in cans. I love sardines. But I was the only one that did except for a kid that was with us from California who thought it was Sushi. Just when everyone was turning their noses up at the sardines, my wife arrived at the tracks with a big bag of McDonald's hamburgers. She saved the day.

Circumcision: Who Ever Came Up With the Idea?

Who in their right mind would ever intentionally cut off the tip of their dick? Really! You think it was one of the Commandments that Moses brought down on those tablets? (You know there were more than 10 Commandments...there were hundreds, but Moses could only drag down ten of them so those are the ones that got famous.) I think it was Jews who came up with the idea. They seem to love pain, whether it's inflicting it on someone else or on themselves. I can hear them now, "Oh, I've got a great idea for a party...we'll have a feast and right in the middle of it, we'll bring out our new baby boy and clip the foreskin off. And whoever eats it accidentally will have the next party." I am circumcised and I am not happy about it. It would have only cost $5 if it had been done when I was born but my parents were too poor and for eight years I was a happy go-lucky kid. Then one Saturday, my father took me on a bus trip to North Charleston. I loved going places with him and wanted to know what we would be doing in North Charleston. When he didn't want to tell me where we were going he would say, "We're going to see a man about a dog." Of course that would excite any 8-year-old who would immediately think he was going to get to pick out a puppy. When we got off the bus, we went into a doctor's office. But before we went in my father confided in me: "We have come here to have you circumcized." I didn't know what circumcized meant...it sounded like it might be a circus. But then he explained: "The doctor is going to cut a piece of your peter off." I screamed, "WHY? WHY? Is it too long?" It didn't seem all that long to me. I didn't like the idea at all but he promised me he would buy me an ice cream cone. I should have bought my own ice cream. When it was our turn, we went into the doctor's office where I took all my clothes off and got on a long table. The doctor put some kind of clamp on the end of my penis. At that point, someone else tried to give me ether. I say "tried" because I began to panic...and began to fight to get the ether mask off. Before they knew it, I had jumped off the table and I ran naked out into the waiting room yelling, "They're trying to cut my peter off. Help me! Help me!" Some guy caught me, but he didn't help. He held me while my Dad and the nurse led me back in. This time four people were enlisted to hold me down while they administered the ether. The doctor wasn't happy at all. And I think he cut off a lot more than he had to, the bastard. Well, what's done is done. But I hated my father for many, many years because of this. If they develop Stem Cell Research further, I'm getting my foreskin back. And then we will have a real party!

Here in the South, people have bottle trees in their yards. You find a dead tree, trim the limbs but leave a little stub. Then you dig a hole and put the tree in it. Next you hang colorful bottles on it. The concept is this: the upside down bottles catch all the evil spirits that might come in your yard and you are thus protected from bad stuff. I have a bottle tree made from iron...created by my friend Kevin Lawless, an Iron Man on Hilton Head Island. It's at my house in the mountains and it sure makes people slow down to take a second look. I was going to put all gold bottles on it. If found some Spanish Sherry that comes in gold bottles. I got a little tired of drinking Sherry after 5 bottles, so I opted to use blue water bottles and other colorful ones. When my friends from Maryland, Kristin and David, saw the tree, they wanted one immediately. Sure, they would. I'm certain they have lots of evil spirits floating around because they are...well, heathens, in the best sense of the word. I performed their wedding ceremony two years ago in a quasi-voodoo style because I am a quasi voodoo priest. They convinced my friend Kevin to not only make them a tree, but haul it all the way from South Carolina to Maryland...and install it for them. They wanted a BIGGER TREE...yuppies that they are...they not only stole my tree idea, they had to have a bigger one and a better one. Kevin outdid himself on this one...it holds 76 bottles (I told you they were heathens and have a lot of evil floating around their yard!). They started drinking and emptying bottles when they placed their order...so they were ready with empties when he arrived. I told Kevin he could call this his REDWOOD version. I think everyone should have a bottle tree...you can't be too safe with all the evil in the world today.

Is It O.K. to Be Gay Again?

I just read that Gays now want to be called Queers. That's a relief because I've been ticked for years that they appropriated a perfectly good word for telling people how happy and light-hearted you were. I'm gay again! But not so fast, a voice in my head says. They probably call themselves "queer" but they don't want other people calling them that. Black people freely call themselves "niggers" but if a white person calls them that...well, you wouldn't be gay for long. So maybe I will hold off calling myself gay. But I am a happy person.

No Wonder I Don't Have a Job

According to the WSJ, you have to be damned careful when you go for a job interview nowadays. Even before you get out of the car. If you park in a handicapped space and you don't have a sticker and a limp, you're out already. Even the receptionist is making notes for your dossier. Don't try to come on to her and don't scratch your nuts. Or pick your nose. If you go to the bathroom, they can hear whether you turn on the sink water so they know if you're the type who washes his hands after he goes pee-pee or poo-poo. I always wash my manos (that's hands in Spanish) but I do it before I pee. I mean, my privates are probably the cleanest part of my body so I want to wash my hands before I touch it. Makes a lot of sense to me. Why wash your hands afterwards? Unless of course you are under-endowed in the genitles department and wee-wee on your hands. At least dry them off before you go in for your job interview. A clammy palm is not a good sign whether it's sweat or your urine. And don't forget to zip up your fly. (When I was President of an ad agency, I interviewed a guy who came in with his fly unzipped...one of our female Vice Presidents had interviewed him and he had made a "good impression". Sure. Sure. He would have. But he didn't make a good impression on me. She slipped me a note saying that I should tell him his fly was open. Not in a million years. I remember in the 9th grade telling one of my good friends this and he wanted to know why I was inspecting his crotch. Once burned is enough. I slipped the note back to her and said, "You tell him. He's your candidate." After the interview, she was still high on the guy but I kept saying, "He walks around with his pants unzipped." Then she would say, "It's a Brooks Brothers' suit." She was very status oriented. I finally gave in and we hired him. Big mistake. The guy was stupid. We had given him one of our biggest accounts...fortunately the people liked me so the ad manager was kind enough to tell me, "The guy walks into my office and the hair stands up on the back of my neck. I can't stand him. Give me a different person. Soon. Very soon." So I did. I called my guy in to tell him...decided I would do a performance review and then tell him. Basically I told him that the client hated his guts and never wanted to see him again, even at an office party....that I was taking the account away from him immediately. As he walked out the door, he turned and said, "Does this mean I'm not getting a raise?" I said, "No, no. Not at all. It means that you are FIRED, you dummy.") So if you are due to go for a job interview either zip up or go in naked. And don't pick your nose...and if you feel that you must, don't flick it or stick it on the bottom of your chair. Stuff it back up where it came from.

The Sky Is Falling; The Sky Is Falling

I don't want to be Chicken-Little here but I just read that the gravity pull of the earth is diminishing. That means as the earth rolls around and around, we might start flying off I have always been concerned about this ever since I was a kid and discovered (a) that the earth was not flat and (b) that gravity held us on this Merry-Go-Round. In fact, my Mom could never figure out why I wore my shoes out from the inside instead of wearing out the bottoms. It was because I clung to the earth as I walked, digging my toes into the shoes hoping to hold on. So far, so good. Except for the shoes. Actually I think it would be fairly neat if there were a gravity on-and-off switch. Especially if you could use it selectively. We could turn it off for the Middle East and slig all those crazy people out into space. Of course our troops would be protected from this by special magnetic boots made by Halliburton that they would be wearing until everybody else over there had been "raptured" to wherever Muslim Heaven is located...probably outside the Gates of Hell. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

Leave My Eggs Alone!

I was really pissed today to learn that CBS plans to put their logo and ads for Fall programs on eggs before they come to the store. First of all, I think they should pay the chickens. Those eggs are unborn chicks and the Moms should get paid if CBS is going to stamp the eggs with ads. Honestly...eggs are so beautiful...the perfect food WITHOUT ANY LOGOS. I'm telling you now, if I get a dozen eggs and they have CBS logos on them, I am going to the front of the store and pelt all the eggs at the manager. I would go to CBS headquarters and pelt the executives but with gas prices what they are, I can't afford to go that far. I hate those little stickers they put on fruits and vegetables. Chiquita started it all...branding bananas. Now the stickers are on tomatoes, peaches. lemons, nearly everything you buy. And they are a bitch to peel off...especially for the tomatoes. It rips the skin off of them. For the most part I am fortunate in that I have a Tomato Man who brings freshly grown heritage tomatoes to a market three times a week...all kinds...and colors. Some are almost black. Others are yellow, but when you slice them, they have a beautiful design of red inside. Others are knarled and ugly...freak tomatoes, and they are the best. You know the proper way to slide a tomato?? You sit it flat with the stem part on the cutting board...then you slide downwards. It conserves more of the juice and, thus, the flavor. Back on the Ad Front, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers are planning to offer advertisements on the cover/front page. There's really nothing new about this...back in the l800's newspapers had ads on the front page. And frankly, I'd rather read advertisements than the current news on wars, serial killers and Hollywood stars. Well, I'm glad I got that off my chest. I'll try not to be so negative the next time. Right now I'm going to the fridge and check my eggs.