This is fun to send to those "I-war-a-homa-shetual-but Jeezus-cured-me" sites:

"Bisexuals are attracted to both sexes.  You've managed to fight down your homosexual urges, because you made that effort, but remain attracted to the opposite sex.  To find out if you were merely fighting one set of sexual urges, try fighting down your heterosexual urges, as well. 

Remember that your kingdom is in heaven and has nothing to do with human sexuality.  Until you've freed yourself from all sexuality and human attraction, then you have not turned your sights toward heaven.  If you still have a "wife" or "husband" or "children"  upon this earth, then you have not fully accepted Christ.  You have given in to your body, instead of the Spirit.

It may be better to marry than to burn, but that is only a stop-gap solution.  Until you have fought down all your sexual urges, homo- and hetero-sexual, then you are not one in Christ, and are leading others and their souls into perdition.

The Bible says again and again that the greatest sin is hypocrisy.  Do not pretend to be one in Christ, when you have only fulfilled half your mission to cleanse yourself of the clay of Eve.  You must cleanse yourself of Adam, as well."

It's even more fun to go to the American Family Association and start chewing them out in biblical terms for being bad Christians.  Since they're not obeying much of their own book, it's really easy.

Vincent went missing October 2, 2001.  He had a broken right ear.  Did you see him?

Okay… how many people were in a military, and feel the civilian attitude toward soldiers — gooey, sticky, shiny-eyed, as though the soldiers were some kind of angelic children with no brains or responsibilies — is getting just a LEEETle WEIRD?

I can name another country last century that was accused of having this attitude toward its soldiers, based on what remains of their propaganda art and music.

It's freakin' ODD until we remember the only thing English about America is its language and its breakfast; the rest is based in that same country in central Europe — including the origins of the electoral college. 

I've been getting this line from Americans a lot:  "I can't be blamed for things that happened before I was born."

These are the same people who want to take credit for anything good that happened before they were born.

They are also the people who sneer at the Germans. 

Let's not start comparing American and German history.  Or, for some really evil bitter fun, let's.  The time-lines and numbers alone should make all Americans start throwing away credit for anything before their own diaper-time, just so they don't have to take the blame, too.

Quite the success for a first show. Follow the arrival and departure in these six short videos:

Scoping out the field.  Swinging around.  Landing.  Taxi'ing in.  Taxi'ing out.  Up up and away.

No, not the depression the cat gets.  It would take a lot more than a possible case of neglected saddle thrombus to depress old Spuds.

It's the depression the owner gets when we finally realize that there's definitely something we can do about a condition like wabbly hind legs. 

Spuds is on anti-anflammatories and pain-killers for his benign squamous nasal cancer.  He's taking those little yellow Amoxicillin for a bladder infection.  So far so good.  Spuds is 18, by the way.  And perfectly cheerful.  He lines right up for pills in the morning because he knows he'll be getting a few slices of fresh raw greenling directly thereafter.

I've left a call with the vet to see if he's open Memorial Day Monday to get the poor old man-cat in.

A letter I sent to All Things Considered:

"Recently read an article about Americans protesting Germany building  more brothels for an upcoming worldwide sports event.

There is a different attitude toward prostitution in Germany, based on the treatment of German women at the end of World War Two.  With their men dead, no way to feed their children or obtain shelter, and the threat of rape and death from invading troups, the women did what all women have to do in such circumstances; they negotiated sexual favors to live.

To protest German prostitution is to ignore an underlying reality that in Germany "everybody's" great-grandmother had to do it to live, and one's grandparents took the food and shelter it offered.

Neither America nor Russia want to admit that they turned German women into the Americans themselves called "whores" at the end of World War Two.  I don't think I've ever heard or read where an American soldier will admit to his own actions in this situation at the end of the war.  And yet modern American politicians want to point fingers at the Germans.

Could you address this question as an example of American hypocrisy in foreign policy?"

It might help if all Americans were given a hand-mirror at birth.  So whenever they're mouthing off about other people, they could look in their own mirror.  I say "they" because I already possess such a mirror.  I look at my own faults and foibles all the time.

And once I'm done polishing my mirror, then I have a cloth to come after the other dirty surfaces.

All those social security numbers flying all over?  After that guy at the VA sold the files ("Took them home and was burgled," my ass!)?

How many people will use their own credit cards to run up huge charges — and then claim theft?

How many people with debt now will say:  "But I didn't put those charges on my card?"

I'd get my $$ out of the stock market now while I had the chance.

Stuff from an email:

One of the reasons the Iraqis are SO damn mad is "Why the hell did you bomb US?  It was the Saudis and Afghanis that did this!?"

You can see why they would be more than a little torqued.  And wondering what is wrong with our aim.  If we just admit, "Look, it's about the oil," then they can kind of go, "Okay, we can understand that, it's just more empire-building.  We used to have an empire, too."  It may be the hypocrisy of claims of pushing freedom that makes them tear their hair. Well, that and kicking the doors in on their homes and scaring hell out of their kids.  And the insurgents are their relatives, and the present government is seen as American stooges trained in IRAN who they spent 8 years getting bashed against in an American-sponsored war.  It's a mess (well, people are usually a mess).

And while there are plenty of Germans who appreciate us after WWII, it's only because we were the lesser of two evils.  You should hear our kraut friends when they get some beer in them and the stories come out when they're not trying to be NICE and UNDERSTANDING.  They also saw us as white Western civilized people — like them — and the Russians as savage half-yellow Eastern people.  Oh, it can get interesting.  A lot of the older ones are still wondering why the hell we didn't throw in with them against the Russian peril at the end of WWII.  It goes on and on…

For too long, science has hung onto the old religious idea that humans are separate from animals.

The First Nations people had it right — there is no such thing as people vs. everything else.

Everything is People.

It's a concept that has nothing to do with maintaining a rank hiearchy, but of recognizing intrinstic worthiness of respect for everything.