Fire On The Mountain

Published in the Desert Valley Times
June 28, 2005

“Fire on the mountain, run boys run.”
Boy, that Charlie Daniels guy sure knows how to give a weather report.
Last year around this time, I remember that being a popular catch-phrase out West, since a lot of the landscape was in flames.
I particularly recall that the heavy fire season was due to a lack of rainfall.
This year, the hills are alive once more with the sounds of burning timber.
The heavy fire season is due to…
Too much rainfall.
That’s the story being advanced by Smokey Da Bear’s keepers.
(When I was growing up, he was known as “Smokey THE Bear,” but rumor has it he changed his middle name following the 1985 Chicago football season.)
According to Da Bear’s people (not to be confused with the DeBeers people), the fires this year are attributable to the rainy January, which caused the grass to grow extra high.
The grass has now died and become more combustible than a Tom Cruise-Matt Lauer conversation about psychiatrists on Prozac.
So we have fires if we don’t get enough rain, and we have fires if we get too much rain.
Personally, I think Mother Nature is just a pyromaniac with a really big book of matches.
Word is that lightning is the most likely cause of this year’s fire crop, a fact that will really tick off the environmentalists.
They’re never happy unless they have some careless humans to kick around, and Mama Na’Ture is just a little out of their political sphere of influence.
It’s kind of tough to rally a bunch of tree huggers to carry picket signs (ironically made out of wood and poster board) and march around Washington D.C. chanting “Down with Nature” and “Nature is environmentally insensitive” and “Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who do we really hate? Na-Ture! Na-Ture!”
I also find it ironic that this is again occurring near the Fourth of July, a day noted for its man-made pyrotechnics.
First, there aren’t many bottle rockets that can compete visually with a mountain on fire at night.
Second, it’s funny to see what Mama Na’Ture can do with a little dry grass and some lightning, while dads in backyards across the country can’t get a fire going with twelve pounds of charcoal swimming in two gallons of gasoline.
And third, it makes you wonder what Mama Na’Ture has against fireworks vendors.
Once again, the flash-bang merchants will have trouble emptying their shelves in towns where fireworks have been banned due to the fire risk, except of course for the folks hired by said towns to light up the skies with high explosives and incendiary devices.
I think it may be time for us to consider moving the Fourth of July to another month, like March.
We can still call it the Fourth of July, although I like the impressive sound of “March Fourth,” which sounds like a command from George Washington to his troops.
This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, since our federal government is good at juggling national holidays.
(Since the implementation of “Presidents Day,” I’ll bet you can’t find ten kids who know when Washington was born, other than it was on a Monday.)
So as a reminder, please be careful this year with your sparklers, your campfires, and your back yard grilles.
Maybe have dad use only one gallon of gas this year.
After all, Mother Nature hates the competition.

21st Century Philosophers

Back when civilization was fresh out of the oven and still cooling on history’s window sill, the human condition was examined by such great men as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates.
People would gather from miles around to hear the orations from these deep thinkers, who would expound about man’s destiny, the sciences, and how to pick up babes around the Parthenon.
One of my favorites is “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.”
This was one of the gems attributed to Socrates.
It’s odd that the “Big Three,” as they were called back in those swinging BC days (“Before Cable”), all hailed from Greece.
Socrates was the first, and was the teacher of Plato, who went on to open a vo-tech school for philosophers that was attended by Aristotle.
It reminds me of the chain between three of today’s great philosophers.
It all started with Richard Pryor, who was the teacher of Eddie Murphy, who went on to school Chris Rock.
Here in the 21st century, we don’t really have philosophers.
At least, none that get quoted like the “Big Three.”
I suspect it’s because the philosopher gig doesn’t pay very well.
Instead, we have comedians dispensing the little nuggets of wisdom that explain human behavior.
The high priests of humorous wisdom today include such philosophers as Dennis Miller, Bill Maher, Robin Williams, and Eddie Izzard.
Today’s lectern is the cathode-ray altar, and the current greats sometimes opt for Hawaiian shirts and sneakers instead of robes and sandals (although Izzard often espouses his soliloquies while wearing a skirt and open-toed high heels).
Socrates was run out of town and eventually died because of his opinions.
Maher was run off the air, and his show “Politically Incorrect” was killed because of his opinions.
Fortunately, it’s just a sign that we are more civilized today, since we tend to reward our philosophers with big contracts funded by advertising dollars.
(I’m sure there’s an irony buried in there somewhere.)
Socrates died broke, mostly because he was never able to land that big chariot-wheel sponsorship.
And while today’s philosophers can choose to hawk Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, or “The Dew,” Socrates was pretty much limited to that one-time endorsement of Hemlock cola.
(I can see the TV tagline…”New and improved Hemlock cola. It’s a killer!”)
Admittedly, the words of Miller and Pryor and Williams probably won’t last through the centuries (although Pryor’s encouragement to speak up for your rights, “Act a fool, you’ll get your seat!” will probably show up in philosophy text books somewhere along the line).
But then, Aristotle never got a guest shot on the Leno show, so it all balances out.

Hell In A Handbasket

A news flash for you: The World Is Going To Hell In A Handbasket.
I remember my first encounter with that statement.
At 8 years old, I overheard my paternal grandfather punctuating a long-winded diatribe with “the world is going to Hell in a handbasket”. I don’t remember the topic which inspired the statement, but I do recall the imagery.
In 1969, I had grown up with supermarkets, which involved wheeled shopping carts.
I didn’t understand what a “handbasket” was, but since it was apparently the vehicle in which we were traveling to Hell, I figured it couldn’t be a good thing.
My grandfather got out of the “Hell In A Handbasket” industry when they planted him in 1972.
He won 2nd place in game that was popular back then, called “I’ll Bet I Can Smoke 3 Packs Of Cigarettes A Day Without Dying of Cancer”. (Unfortunately, the only people I ever met who won that game were those who got hit by buses.)
My dad inherited the “Hell In A Handbasket” franchise, and business was booming.
According to him, the Democrats and the Commies (which is redundant, because he believed the terms to be synonymous) were responsible for Nixon’s implosion.
We had lost the war in Vietnam.
And Hippies were ruining everything.
Being children of the 1960’s and 70’s, most of my friends disagreed with my dad’s philosophy.
They thought he was just too old fashioned, and that the world was really a wonderful place full of new ideas and opportunities.
We alI tried to maintain that optimism through the 1980’s, when “greed was good”.
Now I’m in my 40’s.
Most of the things I read in the news confirm that my grandfather and father were right.
I’ve adopted their philosophy, although I’ve updated the vernacular.
“Hell In A Handbasket” has been replaced with “That Sucks!”, but the sentiment remains unchanged.
Kids today have taken my former place in the heirarchy, convinced that I’m just old fashioned and out of touch.
They see nothing wrong with the fact that “Ozzie and Harriet” have been supplanted with Ozzie and the Osbournes. (It’s ironic. Back then, I insisted to a parent that Ozzie qualified as “music”. Today, kids insist Ozzie qualifies as a parent.)
Schools without armed policemen have become as foreign to them as the old 1 room schoolhouses were to me.
And Constitutional Rights are as relevant today as the Magna Carta was in the days of disco.
Every generation has “H.I.A.H.B.” as a rite of passage.
It is usually bestowed with the confluence of the first gray hair and puberty-bound offspring.
Of course, in my humble opinion, I believe the handbasket now has shuttle rockets attached.
Everything in society is moving at warp speed, including our impending demise as a species.
I am not crotchety, nor a fuddy-duddy.
In today’s words, I am simply “politically incorrect”.
Typical.
Even my status as a *@&!%$# has become a kinder and gentler insult.

Fun With Pedestrians

Published in the Desert Valley Times
June 21, 2005

Here’s a tip for any budding humor columnists out there.
When that inevitable writer’s block rears its ugly head, simply turn on your TV.
It’s like the toy box for playful minds.
Don’t bother with watching sit-coms or mindless reality shows.
Use your TIVO to skip through to the commercials.
They represent the cerebral gold mine for humorists.
While enjoying the fruits of my Father’s Day labor, which involved exploring the multitude of comfortable positions in my La-Z-Boy chair and surfing channels like Laird Hamilton on a weekend bender, I came across an ad for Honda.
It was ironic that the ad should appear on the same day that I had caught a piece of a Dateline report which intimated that car manufacturers had gone about as far as they can go in passenger safety.
The Honda ad exalted the newest safety feature of their cars:
Pedestrian safety.
Apparently, Honda engineers have developed a way that you can hit people with your car while causing a minimum of injuries.
It involves a lot of technical yadda yadda about hood angles and front frame construction, but most of it was lost on me.
I was too busy imagining the benefits of this latest feature.
First, you really have to hand it to the Honda engineers for recognizing one of the most desperate needs of American drivers, which is a way to run over people without excessive lawsuit exposure.
My mind immediately drifted to a vision of sitting behind the wheel at a crosswalk in Las Vegas, where drunken gamblers paraded in front of my Honda wearing bulls-eyes and silly grins.
If the car lived up to the hype, you might be able to hit three or four inebriated pedestrians at a throw without invoking serious injury.
I also considered the benefits of this technology when pulling into your mother-in-law’s driveway.
The sports writer in me also reared its ugly head, with visions of new vehicular sports that don’t involve racing around an oval track.
“Pedestrian Bowling” was one of the first ideas that came to mind, followed closely by “Bumper Tag.”
I suspect this new feature will make Honda the number-one seller in California, where steering wheel-challenged drivers in a hurry to get everywhere have turned hitting pedestrians into an art form.
I also pondered what the Honda engineers might be able to come up with next.
Cars with a safety feature that keeps drivers from running over family pets would be a nice option.
Making automobiles bicycle-proof would be another, since bike riders are even more susceptible to broken body parts than pedestrians.
As part of the technology, Honda developed a new pedestrian crash-test dummy which is designed to measure the damage when a jogger has an unfortunate encounter with a Prelude.
If they can come up with a way to mass-produce the dummies at a reasonable price, I’m sure a contingent of American drivers will line up to buy them for target practice.
After all, if you’re going to hit someone with your car, you want to be good at it.
In fact, I can see a new Olympic event on the horizon.
Since we can’t seem to beat anybody in Olympic basketball or archery, this might give us a chance to up our medal count.
I would write more about this, but the commercial with the wedding party falling into the lake is on again, and I just can’t wait to find out what Enzyte Bob is “up” to next.

21st Century Pioneers

Traveling from Florida to Utah gave me new respect for the Pioneers who settled this land.
After selling our house in 2001, my wife and I filled our Conestoga wagon (a Budget rental van) with everything we couldn’t unload at our last yard sale. Then we loaded my car onto a trailer behind the truck. Finally, we packed my wife’s car with suitcases, 2 daughters, a dog, a rabbit, a guinea pig, and a cockatiel.
For those of you shaking your heads and holding your noses, remember that the original wagon trains included smelly livestock. Fortunately, my wife has bad sinuses, so the aroma wasn’t much of a burden.
Our first catastrophe came when the kids snapped the antenna off of their battery-operated TV/VCR during a game of “Gimme That! It’s Mine!”. This may not seem equivalent to a broken wagon axle, but then the pioneers never suffered 2 kids going through cartoon withdrawals. We were rescued when we found a trading post (pronounced “Wal-Mart”) where we stocked up on videos.
We passed through Mobile, Alabama. My olfactorily-challenged wife called on the radio from her small SUV packed with the dog, rabbit, guinea pig, cockatiel, and 2 daughters and asked me what that smell was. Enough said about Mobile.
Like all pioneers, we marveled at the mighty Mississippi. We asked an American Mart convenience store clerk about the river, but like the Paiutes in 1847, he didn’t speak English.
We continued on through Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas, Texas… (it’s a big state).
Eventually, we hit Utah. The map showed we could take Route 9, drive through Zion National Park, and on into St. George. Unfortunately, the map didn’t mention anything about a cover charge.
We pulled up to the tollbooth at Zion. (The Park Service calls them “Ranger Stations”. That’s a lie.). I rolled down the window of the van and informed the nice man that the blue SUV was with me. He looked at the van, looked at the car on the trailer, and looked at my wife’s car.
“Van and a car, $20 each, $10 for the trailer,” he calculated, “That’ll be $50” .
I was stunned. “You don’t understand. We’re not visiting the park. We’re just driving through on our way to St. George.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied.
I fumed. This was a National Park, which meant my tax dollars had already paid for it once. Route 9 was a state road, which meant the nice people of Utah had paid for it again. And people with tents were paying Ramada Inn prices for patches of dirt. I realized that National Parks are not about preservation or wilderness, they are about money.
“How about this,” I ventured. “What if we promise not to look while we’re driving through?”
The park ranger was not amused. We paid.
Finally, our caravan arrived in St. George. Like the pioneers before us, we were thankful to have survived the long journey, and to have only been scalped once.

Fax Terrorists

“This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please delete it from your system without copying it, and notify the sender by reply e-mail or by calling (999) 555-5959, so that our address record can be corrected.”

This is the footnote that is popping up on business faxes all over the country.
Once upon a time in a soul-less city not so far away, some bright but bored attorney sat down at another in a long line of meaningless meetings.
Instead of doodling images of Tweety and Bugs, he starts drafting this disclaimer while the speaker drones on about something like the dangerous food-poisoning liability exposure of Homeowner Association presidents who eat their boogers.
After the meeting, the practical-joke-loving barrister decides it would be a hoot to see how many clients he can rook into believing that this disclaimer is absolutely critical to the protection of the American free enterprise system.
So now we see this stupid clause at the bottom of nearly every business fax transmission in the country, which is often longer than the actual message being sent.
Eventually, one of these lands on my desk.
Is it just me, or is there something odd about somebody sending an unwanted fax to someone by mistake, using up my paper, toner, and phone time (when I’m expecting a truly IMPORTANT fax from the pizza place down the street to let me know what toppings are available), then threatening ME over THEIR mistake?
In a tremendous irony, the fax is to announce another meaningless meeting of some cataclysmically dull group.
Let’s be honest, this unwanted fax would ordinarily find a home among its junk-mail brethren in the bottom of my circular file without a second glance.
Unless of course it included some sort of juicy gossip about a political leader or co-worker, which would immediately find its way onto a website or news wire within the hour.
(Face it, if I inadvertently catch an errant doctor’s note explaining why Paris Hilton’s gonorrhea isn’t responding to treatment, I’m not going to sit on that. Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded for less, I don’t care WHAT the little disclaimer says.)
(Disclaimer: to the best of my knowledge, Paris Hilton does not and has not ever had gonorrhea…see, I have lawyers too.)

Scientology

I try to keep an open mind about religion, although I am wary of nearly every organized religious body.
The recent stir about Tom Cruise and his belief in Scientology made me curious.
So I went online to try and research the core tenets of this burgeoning new belief system.
Here is what I learned:
First, L. Ron Hubbard is their Buddha.
Hubbard, the best-selling author of “Dianetics,” seems to be the lynchpin of the movement.
I’m always fascinated by obscenely wealthy men espousing their religious beliefs.
It actually makes more sense than our current system of worship, which is often led by guys who can’t even afford a decent haircut or a leisure suit that doesn’t make that “whick whick” noise when they walk.
I’m not saying that following rich guys on their lunatic crusades is a good idea either, as evidenced by those who really believed that six million dollars was going to buy Oral Roberts a “get out of heaven free” card, that Jimmy Swaggert didn’t have sexual relations with that woman, and that Jim Bakker could offer them a comfy place in the hereafter if they would just fund an adequate air-conditioning system for his pet’s dog house.
But maybe ol’ L-Ron is onto something, so I kept reading.
I now know that “the aims of Scientology are a world without insanity, without criminals, without war, where the able can prosper and where Man is free to rise to greater heights.”
I know this because they have it posted on nearly every page of their website.
Of course, nowhere on that website does it explain exactly how that’s to be done.
The answer is in one of the dozens of L. Ron Hubbard books that are offered for sale on the site.
Which is a hint that Scientology is a real profit-based religion.
Unlike the Mormons who will gladly have a pair of persuasive, clean-cut missionaries hand-deliver a free copy of the Bible and the Book of Mormon, or the Gideons who save souls every day with their free bedside Bibles in nearly every hotel in the country, it takes a major credit card to find salvation at the church of Scientology.
After an hour on the site, I still don’t know whether Scientologists believe in God, because they play their principles pretty close to the vest.
In fact, I haven’t seen this much institutional secrecy since the last three or four times people have tried to suck me into becoming an Amway distributor.
But I suspect the answer would be a big “no” on the Creator, since it appears ol’ L-Ron hasn’t figured a way to copyright his image or trademark.
It also appears that the church is just jammed full of former political speech writers and Madison Avenue execs whose previous God, swathed in green, let them down.
I say this because I haven’t seen so much intellectual misdirection, obfuscation, side-stepping, and double-speak since the Republican National Convention.
(Or maybe it was the Democratic National Convention. All those guys look alike to me.)
The Scientology website never does explain what they believe in, why they believe in it, or why we should believe, too.
Except of course for the fact that Tom Cruise believes in it.
Which, when you think about it, is really reason enough to sign up.
After all, can your prayers, rituals, or flagellations at whatever religious franchise you currently call home, help you land a date with Katie Holmes?
I rest my case.

Thick Skin

Workman Chronicles
Published in the Desert Valley Times
June 14, 2005

I came across a message website recently that claimed I was a complete idiot.
They didn’t elaborate as to what I did to earn such a moniker, but it was in print, so it has to be true.
I’m thinking of taking all the labels that have been hung on me since coming out of the literary closet (admitting that I am a Dave Barry wannabe, taking the major pay cut, becoming a professional writer, attacking innocent yearbook kids, and using the ugly slur “adequate” in reference to the local library), and including them on my business card.
You know, like haughty professionals who punctuate their name with PhD, MBA, CPA, etc.
I would be “Morris Workman, Complete Idiot, Arrogant Jerk, Untalented Hack, Dufus, Donkey.”
(I haven’t really been called a Donkey, but this is a family newspaper and I can’t use the “A-word” that my detractor actually used.)
Since it won’t all fit on one card, I may have to abbreviate it as “Morris Workman, CI, AJ, UH, D&D,”
The bad part is that people may not know what all of the initials mean until after I open my mouth.
I’ll admit that it stings to be called such things, but it also allows me a wonderful latitude in behavior.
I can act a fool, then simply point to my title as a Complete Idiot, shrug my shoulders, and say in a perfect Tony Soprano voice, “hey, whattaya gonna do?”
Like most people, I want to be loved by everyone, respected by the powerful, admired by the meek, desired by the voluptuous, and tolerated by my wife.
However, until I finish making payments on my home-study course in hypnosis, I suspect this will have to be an unfulfilled wish.
Like it or not, this is the cost of being a semi-public figure willing to share his musings.
Even such luminaries as Bill Clinton and Pee Wee Herman discovered that, if you put it out there, people will talk bad about you.
Fortunately, I have a good support system of friends, family, and fans that simultaneously keep me grounded and above ground.
I also have a tolerant editor whose litmus test for publication basically consists of “will it get us sued, shot, or shut down?”
He has also counseled me repeatedly not to take it personally when people want to figuratively club me over the head for telling a truth they would rather not know.
I’m sure that even the kid who blabbed about the Emperor not wearing any clothes received hate mail.
So the more I write, the more I need to toughen up.
I want you to keep that in mind the next time you see me in public.
I’m not fat.
It’s just thick skin.

Unveiling

Well, folks, I would like to once again thank Alison, Brad, Ken, Luke, Michelle, Scott, and Ted for their guidance regarding the Sports Blog.
I spent the weekend re-vamping the Workman Chronicles website (not the blog…as my dad would say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it).
As part of the facelift, the address has changed (www.mesquedia.com, although www.morrisworkman.com will still work).
I have also done away with the Phantom of the Cineplex blog, and will de-activate the DVT Sports Blog by June 30.
Again, I want to thank those who took the time and cared enough to comment.
Now, on with the show!

Little Help

I need a favor.
I need you to take a look at the other blog I operate, "DVT Sports Blog."
I'm doing some journalistic housekeeping, and I'm contemplating shutting it down because it doesn't get much action or visitation.
This isn't a shameless ploy to lure you to another ego-stroking blog.
I want your feedback here as to whether I should keep it or dump it.
Scott, ol' buddy, I'd really appreciate your appraisal.
I also would value the input from those of you who have continued to visit the Workman Chronicles, who already know my style and haven't run screaming into the woods yet.
Don't hold back, let me know what you think. (As Hemingway said, "we have to kill our darlings." It may be time for some delete-key euthanasia.)
I appreciate it.

Stephen King Fan-atic

In looking over the last two columns, I noticed consecutive references to Stephen King.
I guess that’s to be expected occasionally, because King is my literary idol, my Buddha, my Vishnu, my Bo Bice and Kerry Underwood all rolled into one.
I want to be Stephen King when I grow up.
While other more sophisticated writers might cite Thoreau or Emerson or even Steinbeck as their most significant influences, my benchmark begins and ends with the Dark One.
It’s funny, because I’m not even a particular fan of the horror genre.
When evaluating novels and other written material, I basically cull them into three categories: 1 – “I can write better than that;” 2 – “That’s like something I would write;” 3 – “I wish I had written that.”
(That’s not arrogance…the amount of stuff out there which exists in category three is sufficient explanation for why I write for a twice-a-week newspaper in the middle of the desert.)
Stephen King lives in category three.
Always.
I believe that his signature on a dinner check is more “category-three” than anything Tolstoy or Faulkner ever penned.
While most people think of him as the Master of Horror, I see him as the Master of Character Development.
Any writer can tell a story.
Truly great writers can breathe life into their protagonists, and make you actually care about them when they get eaten by the giant bat monster.
(Let’s see Tolstoy come up with a story about a werewolf-fighting kid in a wheelchair. Classic!)
There has never been a major character that I didn’t wonder about after finishing a King tome, craving more.
Hopefully, this sheds some light on why his name may occasionally pop up in a posting.
I’m a supporter. I’m a wannabe. I’m a fan.

Book Money

Published in the Desert Valley Times
June 7, 2005

Like most writers, I have fantasized regularly about publishing that “Great American Novel” and being swept away on the tides of outrageous fortunes.
Lowering my sights a little, lately I’ve been toying with the idea of putting together a compendium of old articles into a bound form and selling them at gas stations and restaurants.
Now, with school drawing to a close, my eyes have been opened.
Heck with traditional publishing.
It’s too much like work, and the payoff is hardly worth the effort.
I’m going into the yearbook business.
All you have to do is take a bunch of pictures, spend 15 minutes on witty captions, slap it together with some paste and a pretty cover, and you’re on your way to Bill Gates land.
I say that because our local high school is charging students $120 for this year’s edition of the yearbook.
Stephen King’s latest book, “The Dark Tower,” is selling for $35.
That’s $85 less than the VVHS yearbook.
To be honest, I’ve never seen the yearbook on the New York Times Best Seller List.
(Personally, I think that’s a significant slight, considering the tome is filled with such brilliant literary bon mots as “Sally and Tammy fooling around in the cafeteria.”)
And yet we’re expecting kids (which, like most things, really means “parents”) to pony up $120 for this collection of high school hijinks.
Some folks think this is less about selling books and more about holding high school memories hostage.
Even worse than the fact that it’s three times more expensive than one of the most pricey productions ever produced by an internationally best-selling author, you can’t get the discounted model of the yearbook at Amazon.com or Books-A-Million.
To be fair, kids could have gotten the book for $60 if they had been willing to pre-order back in the fall, much like the $17.99 price you can secure now if you pre-order Harry Potter’s latest adventure at Amazon, which will be $29.99 if you wait until it’s actually been finished, published, and printed.
Can you imagine buying a house using this method?
Where someone requires you to pay $300,000 for a house that’s not even built yet?
(Wait, this is Mesquite…that actually happens here. Sorry, my bad.)
But even at $60, that’s a pretty big number for such a slim book, still nearly twice as expensive as the 672-page Potter tale.
And J.K. Rowling’s sixth book doesn’t contain a single advertisement for such local establishments as Wally Burgers or Fred and Barney’s Real Estate which fills the back pages of our yearbook.
I’m sure it’s not really the school’s fault, since they are most likely the victims of confiscatory pricing by the manufacturer.
(Although it’s ironic that the school apparently has to pay more for a collection of cheesy photos than they pay for 12th grade Calculus text books).
And I’m sure the finished product has to price out at double the original cost to make up for any leftover books that don’t sell.
After all, it’s not like there’ll be a booming E-bay market for 2005 VVHS yearbooks.
But it just seems an unfair burden on either end of the school year, whether folks have to find another $60 in September after selling their blood in order to afford the back-to-school clothes, back-to-school supplies, and that ever-important back-to-school IPod, or they need to come up with an extra $120 after funding their kid’s high school ring, graduation garb, graduation announcements, senior trip expenses, SAT tests, and party supplies for the end-of-school bash in third period geometry class.
I don’t even want to imagine the horror for some of our local families with three or four kids in high school.
What do they do, buy one yearbook, then parcel out the pages?
“Tommy, you can have it on Monday, and your friends can sign pages 18-23. Janie, Tuesday is your day, pages 24-29…”
So next spring, look for my new book, “The 2006 VVHS Budget Discount Yearbook.”
And I’ll only charge $34.
After all, who do I think I am, Stephen King?

Book Desecration

Okay, I’ve tried to resist, but I can no longer remain silent.
I am a book desecrater.
I’m guilty.
Call up the Muslim Chamber of Commerce and the Library Police.
I have actually stepped on a book.
In fact, I once kicked a book across my bedroom floor after it viciously reached out and attacked my big toe on my way to the bathroom one night.
I once used a Bible as a coaster for my bedside soda in a hotel that was too cheap to provide a decent nightstand.
I have used books to level wobbly tables, hold up temporary shelves, and as weights to help expedite the glue-bonding process.
In fact, looking around my desk, I currently have about a half dozen of them laying on the floor in spectacularly un-sacred fashion.
(Two of them happen to be Readers Digest, which probably don’t count as books.)
To be honest, none of those books were the holy Quran, but that’s just because I don’t happen to have a copy of that highly-popular text stashed on my bookcase.
If I had a copy, it would get just as badly abused as my Bible, my Book of Mormon, and my paperback copy of Stephen King’s “The Stand.”
(To be honest, “The Stand” is the only one of the three that I’ve actually read cover to cover.)
I love books.
As a writer, I hold them more sacred than the average page-turner.
But I’m nowhere in the same zip code as those who think book abuse should be punished by blowing up real human beings.
The big story these days, at least until the Michael Jackson jury comes in, is the desecration of Qurans at the Guantanamo Bay prisoner of war camp.
Apparently, a sizeable portion of Middle Easterners have taken the kicking and maybe even flushing of these books as the okay to suit up in their favorite explosive vest (the ultimate in instant weight-loss couture) and head out in search of innocent women and children to blow up.
Oddly, they seem to make a habit of blowing up other members of their own religion instead of actually springing for low-fare tickets to Cuba on Assassin Airlines to try and take it out on those actually using their holy book as soccer placebos.
It might have something to do with the fact that those doing the kicking are armed, and will actually shoot back, unlike the easier victims like the nine-year-old in Baghdad who can now spend eternity in her casket without arms and legs.
But that’s to be expected from a collection of lowly cowards who make a weekly picnic out of burning American flags because Americans kicked Islamic text books.
(Is “irony” a foreign concept in the Muslim religion?)
This is not a free-pass for American soldiers to begin using the Quran as their Charmin substitute.
I think everybody gets it.
Desecrating somebody’s holy book is wrong.
I understand how dedicated fighting men could lose sight of this, as they are so desperate they are willing to use any psychological squeeze if it gets someone to give information that saves one life.
But, in another ironic twist, book bashing is bad press.
So we as Americans need to stop this particular insult and go back to making remarks about the captives’ mothers and camel sex.
(Come on, Larry the Cable Guy gets raunchier than that in the first six minutes of his act, and he’s rated PG-13.)
And Muslims need to get over themselves.
They need to understand that no collection of paper and ink, no matter how sacred or revered, not even an autographed first edition of Stephen King’s “Carrie,” is worth one drop of human blood.

Dueling Lawsuits

Back in the good old days, when America got into a snit with another country, bombs usually ensued.
Now, the “New America” has taken the path of wimps and scam artists everywhere.
Instead of relying on good old fashioned bomb payloads, the U.S. is going…
…to court.
The U.S. and the new European Union are going toe to toe in the World Trade Organization court, with claims and counterclaims flying all over the place.
Ironically, the flying claims revolve around airplane manufacturers.
It seems that America’s big airplane maker, Boeing, is unhappy because the French had the nerve to actually design and build a plane that is bigger and better than anything we have to offer.
Once upon a time, the American spirit would have dictated that we simply pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and build a new and better mousetrap to regain superiority.
Today, we instead choose to whine and do what most weaklings do at the first sign of an imagined slight, which is to sue somebody.
The lawsuit claims that the European airplane manufacturer Airbus, which has been steadily eating Boeing’s lunch for the last decade, was able to gain a financial edge because of contributions from several European governments, leading to their production of the biggest and most fuel-efficient airplane in the world.
The response by the French was, well, typically French.
They’re suing us back.
The French claim that the U.S. has been subsidizing Boeing for decades.
To be honest, I’m not sure that the U.S. government’s involvement with Boeing could be construed as a benefit to the airplane maker.
After all, NASA is almost completely funded and run by the U.S. government, and only three of the five space shuttles operated by that partnership have managed to stay in one piece.
In other words, 40% of the flying machines built by the U.S. agency have suffered horrendous crashes, which isn’t a very reassuring flight safety record.
The truth is that the red, white, and blue emporer isn’t wearing any clothes.
Our government shouldn’t be in the airplane business.
If Boeing can’t do a better job of staying ahead of the competition on their own, (remember, the competition is French, for crying out loud!), they deserve to join their counterparts Studebaker, DeLorean, and American Motors on the bankrupt corporation trash heap.
If our airplane companies aren’t good enough, then maybe we no longer deserve the title as the best country in the world.
And our world image isn’t improved by whining to an international court.