Last night during the Republican presidential debate aired on CNN, one Mr. Keith Kerr challenged the candidates on the US military's policy of excluding homosexuals from service.

Kerr, a homosexual, is retired United States Army Colonel, as well as a retired Brigadier General in the California National Guard.

He's also a fucking Hillary Clinton campaign hack. He was appointed last summer to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Americans For Hillary Steering Committee.

Kerr, naturally, denies that the question was set up in advance or that the Clinton campaign was in any way attached to his question.

CNN (which preselected all the questioners), naturally, denies that they had any knowledge that Kerr was associated with the Clinton campaign. CNN says they verified his military background and that he did not contribute to any presidential campaign's.

Bullshit. Bull-fucking-shit.

Let's check the track record.

CNN spent most of the Democrat presidential debate lobbing softballs at the esteemed Senator from New York. CNN is also widely known as the "Clinton News Network" because damn if they don't have a chubby for the Clintons.

The esteemed Senator from New York has a history of planting audience questions.

CNN supposedly chose this guy's question "at random."

I'm calling shenanigans on this one.

I hope you're all are fucking paying attention, because she's going to be our next president.

And, for what feels like the millionth time, I ask you, "what if?" What if, say, during the Democrat debate on FOX News, a woman had asked the esteemed Senator from New York if she was only continuing her marriage to William Jefferson Clinton because of her quest for power? What if it turned out that this woman was a member of, say, Toothless Gun-toting Rednecks to Elect Fred Thompson? What if FOX News said they had selected the questioner "completely at random."

Would you be able to hear yourself think over the hemming and hawing and weeping and gnashing of teeth coming out of your idiot box during the evening news?

Note:Once again, tblog censored the title of one of my posts. It was "S" is for "Suck". Why is it I can put something like shit-eating donkeyball licker IN a post, but can't put "suck" or "gay" in the title?

I played Scrabble this week for the first time in years. I remember now why I hated playing Scrabble in the first place.

Here's the setting. There were four of us playing, my wife, her sister, HER husband, and me. We had already played two games and were at the very end of what was our last game. There were no more tiles to be drawn and each of us were trying to use the last of what we held. There wasn't much of a chance of someone dropping "Birsled" or "Euripi" on the board, we were trying to find room for a single "V" or an "A" and "I." "Van," "Ail," was the limit to what we'd be able to get.

My problem with playing Scrabble with my in-laws is that you must use The Book&trade . If the word you use is not in The Book&trade, it doesn't count, and I've gotten burned by this before. So I usually stick to words that are indisputable, like "stick" and "words." I played "Radomes" earlier and had to wait a tense 2 minutes as the word was challenged (and subsequently upheld.)

During one of the earlier rounds, I had a G, L, U, and N, and an open O to play on. I debated playing the word "Gluon," but, knowing that gluons were not discovered until the late 1970's and not knowing how old this edition of Scrabble was we were playing, I decided against it. You see, for my in-laws, just proving that a word exists is not sufficient. As I said earlier, if a word is not in The Book&trade, it is not technically a word for the game in which we are playing. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary; 11th Edition simply won't do.

So, as our last game was in its final throes, I decided to look at The Book&trade and see if "gluon" was in there. My mother-in-law, Scrabble Master and Word Wizard Supreme, eyes wide, asks "WHAT ARE YOU DOING???!!" "Looking up a word," I reply. She's aghast, "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!!" She goes on to explain that you are not allowed to look in The Book&trade except on challenges. Having been briefed on The Rules&trade prior to the game, I explain that the round is effectively over, that we would not be playing anymore and I was just checking to see if a word I wanted to play in a previous round would have been valid. "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT! IT'S IN THE RULES&trade!!!! If you look in The Book&trade, there's a chance you'll see a word you can play with what you have."

I asked "What difference does it make? The game is over, I'm not going to be able to play this word, I am just looking to see if it's in there for next time." At this point, I was remembering how just 20 minutes earlier my mother-in-law had helpfully told my wife that "Xi" is a word in order for her to play an "X" tile (and also take the lead over yours truly). When asked what it meant, she said "I don't know. Me and momma (my wife's grandmother, a wise woman in her own right) used to study that book so we would always be able to play something with what we had."

"How did you learn that ecks-eye ("Xi," since no one knew how to pronounce it, just that it was in The Book&trade and, thus, was an official Word&trade) was a word?"

"I told you, I used to look at the book in my spare time."

"I don't understand the difference. Why can you look in the book in your spare time to learn words to play, but I can't look in the book for this one word and see if I could (emphasis on past tense) have played it."

"You're just not supposed to, it's in The Rules&trade ."

"So, what you're telling me is that I can't look in The Book&trade right now, but if I were to wait the 3 minutes its going to take for this game to be over and THEN look, I would be within my rights?"

She brightened at that, as if her petulant child (which I admit, I am of hers sometimes) had finally caught on to some basic parenting tenet, "EXACTLY!"

"That's stupid."

"Heavyarms, that's The Rules&trade ."

"Well, I have a problem with The Rules&trade . The Rules&trade allow you to play words that you don't even know the meaning of. (Along with the aforementioned "Xi," "Ab" and "Ya" were also played, challenged (by me) and upheld. The words were played, not because the player knew what they meant but simply because the player knew they were in The Book&trade . You should have to know what a word means before you can play it, and any definable word should be allowed."

"Those aren't The Rules&trade ."

"The Rules&trade are not logical."

I guess that's my main problem with Scrabble. It doesn't reward players for their knowledge and vocabulary so much as it rewards you for memorizing The Book&trade . My memory sucks.

Did You Know?
...That the version of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the version you've watched annually for 5, 10, 20 years and have memorized and know by heart is NOT the complete version of the special?

The original 1965 cut of the special had numerous "product placements" (signs, etc.) for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola signed on as the special's sponsor and remained so for three years. In 1968, Coke ceased being the primary sponsor and all references to the company were removed. Some cuts included:

- In the opening credits after Snoopy spins Charlie Brown and Linus around with Linus' blanket, Linus crashed into a wooden fence with a Coca Cola sign. This scene was edited so that you can't tell where Linus lands.

- In the scene where the characters are throwing snowballs at cans on the fence, Linus knocks down a Coke can. This scene has been edited so that Linus knocks down a generic can.

- The original ending had the message "Merry Christmas from the people in your town who bottle Coca-Cola" along with a voiceover that gave a similar message. This is why "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" sung by the characters ends in a sort of funny place.

- Well, besides a fried turkey, I mean? Seriously, if you've never had one of these, give it a try. Unless you live north of the Mason-Dixon. I don't know if yankees can fry a turkey. I asked my in-laws (with whom where spending Thangsgiving) if they were going to fry one this year (because I always do when we have Thanksgiving at my house or at my parents' house). My mother-in-law's eyes dropped, she sighed and said "No, where just going to bake one this year..." I pouted long enough that they offered to buy the oil and get out their fryer if I promised to do the labor.

- Does anyone still participate in the mass hysteria shopping binge on Friday after Thanksgiving? I went one time when I first got married. I don't even leave the house on Friday after Thanksgiving anymore.

- One of my best memories of Thanksgiving is waking up that morning before the sun came up to go squirrel hunting with my Grandaddy. We'd plan it so that we'd be in the woods right as the sun started to break through the forest canopy and Rocky and all his little buddies were rummaging around for acorns (unaware that the God of Death was about to place his icy hand on their shoulder...mwah hah hah haaaah!)

- Do squirrels even have shoulders? I miss going hunting with my Grandaddy. I'll have to remember to call him.

- I also miss the annual football game my brother and I played in our backyard after Thanksgiving dinner. I don't remember all the rules for 1-man football, but our yard was about 10 yards wide so it made for some pretty high scoring affairs.

- Go Lions!

- Go whoever's playing the Cowboys!

- I always try to limit my intake at the Thanksgiving meal to two plates worth of food, but it doesn't count if I take it off my wife's or my kids' plate.

- Okay, the ABSOLUTE best thing about Thanksgiving...better than fried turkey...better than sweet potatoes...better than the best dressing you ever had...is the Thanksgiving sandwich. Once the kids are in bed, once all the beer has been consumed, once all the food has been packed away in the fridge, once the football games are over, I sit down and fix a late night snack. I take two slices of bread and toast them. I pop a spoonful of sweet potatoes, a spoonful of dressing, and a couple slices of turkey in the microwave until their nice and hot. Spread the dressing on one slice of bread, the sweet potatoes on the other slice, put the turkey in the middle with a few dollops of cranberry sauce (the real thing, not that canned purple jello crap) and enjoy!

- Happy Thanksgiving!

Okay, not really. Alexandria is situated right in the middle of the state and is situated in a perfect location to be the center of trade, communication, and infrastructre of the state. But it isn't. Because they have had idiots running the show for decades. When I was a kid, the mayor tried to find a use for the city's swimming pools while they were closed during the off season, so he stocked them with catfish. Only someone didn't tell him that fish don't take to chlorinated water all that well. I digress.
Here's the old house (HINT: click on the street address in the map below. For some reason the arrow on this map is not pointing to the right area. The map that opens up will be correct.)

View Larger Map

It's the one with the brown roof in the center. The yard's boundaries are roughly defined by the roads on the northeast and east sides, to the southwest by a line that starts near the large solitary tree to the south and runs parallel to the NE road, and a line that would continue to the SW where the two roads to the NNE intersect. It was about an acre to give you an sense of scale.

The large tree to the south and the two trees between the house and the road that runs NW/SE are large pecan trees. The two side by side are about 50 feet tall and the one to the south is a real monster, 80-100 feet. All the rest of the trees around the house are trees my dad planted and were only 5-6 foot saplings when we moved out.

My brother and I used to play in the fields to the south and south east. They were always planted with cotton, or corn, or sugarcane. When they were planted with cotton, we'd grab our plastic rifles and hide in the cotton rows, pretending the cotton combines picking cotton were enemy tanks or giant imperial walkers. My dad would go out sometimes and cut off a piece of sugarcane and let us chew it. When the fields were fallow, the grass would grow up over your shoulders. We'd go out and mash the grass down and make rooms and hallways and pretend it was a fort.

The building with a red roof directly to the east is a barn. I used to stand on top of our picnic table, which was under the big pecan tree, and shoot the roof of the barn with a bb gun. It was cool to take a shot and count "one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thouasnd-three" before you heard the "WHOCK" the bb made against the barn's tin roof. In the winter, the trees thinned enough that I could see the bayou (which curves in in the bottom right corner and curves out in the upper right) and could sploosh shots into it.

The road that runs off the main road to the NE is where I learned to drive. The houses in the area didn't have trash collection, we used to have to take our trash to a dumpster, about a quarter-mile up this road (which was dirt at the time.) When I was 12 or 13, my dad started letting me put the garbage bags in the trunk of his car and drive it down to the dumpster.

If you follow the main road southeast to where it both the road and the bayou make a bend and run directly east...right there between the road in the bayou, back up in the trees is where I smoked my first cigarette. Thankfully, it was also my last cigarette.

Zoom the map out about 2 or 3 clicks. If you follow the bayou north to where it makes a bend to the west, and draw a line directly north from the house until it crosses the bayou, you can see a little grass airstrip. There used to be some crop dusters stationed here. We'd hear them flying around outside and we'd go out and wave and they'd waggle their wings back.

When I was in 6th grade, I got punished for talking in class. For that, I had to "write pages" (which basically consisted of hand-copying some book until I filled up 12 pages of paper, single-spaced, no margins, front-and-back.) I didn't do my pages so I got suspended from school for a day. When I got home from school, I left my suspension notice on the kitchen counter for my parents to find, grabbed my tent and sleeping bag and ran away from home. If you follow the dirt road to the east of the house directly south until it comes to a creek, you'll see a building with a reddish roof on the south side of the creek. Follow that creek east until it runs into some trees. That's where I ran away to. My dad found me about three hours later.

Wasn't a bad little place to live.

At a campaign stop in Iowa last Tuesday, one Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton-Rodham was visiting a biodiesel plant. Naturally, there were more reporters than actual Iowa voters in attendance, and there were reporters from CNN, the AP, NY Times, LA Times, and others.

During a Q&A session, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a student at Grinnell College, asked Senator Clinton what she would do to stop the effects of global warming (I guess she's fucking Super Woman?)

Well, as it turns out, Clinton's campaign actually PLANTED this questioner and her "spontaneous question." Ms. Gallo-Chasanoff came forward and admitted as much.

This act in and of itself doesn't bother me. I'm sure campaigns have planted questions in the "audience" at their campaign stops all the time. But there are two things about this that DO bother me:

1) This happened a week ago. It wasn't "widely" reported until this weekend. And by "widely," I mean, "reported by FOX News and the blogging community" mainly. But there was virtually no attention paid to this nationally. There was no outcry at all. Imagine, just imagine, if this had been done by Fred Thompson, or America's Mayor, or even those guys at the bottom of the "Insert Republican Here for President" tier. It would have been worse than the Jena Six. It would have been Nixon all over again. Corngate!! But no, it was the Woman Who Will Be President, and thus the free pass was granted.

2) When asked if the question was planted, the Clinton campaign replied in typical Clinton-ese (or Clintonspeak, if you prefer) "It is not a practice of our campaign to ask people to ask specific questions." Notice, if you will, that the Clinton campaign did not DENY this specific incident, just that it is "not a practice of their campaign." If When this woman becomes president, you can expect a lot more of this. And no one will call her on it, either.

A few minutes later, LH asks, "Dad, can I go over to Mr. James' yard?" "Did they invite you over?" "No sir, I just wanted to see if I could go play with their kids."

My neighbors have always been friendly with us. They brought us a gift when my daughter was born. They always set aside some extra candy for the kids at Halloween. We let each other know if we're going out of town for a while and keep an eye on each other's house. "Make sure its alright with Mr. James before you play." "Yes, sir!" he said an trotted off, happily.

I finished up with the brake pads and went inside to wash the brake dust and brake cleaner and brake lube off my hands. It had started to sprinkle outside so I went back out make sure LH wasn't in the neighbor's house. It's one thing to go next door and play with the kids in the yard, quite another to go inside someone's house uninvited. He wasn't in the yard, so I started over to the neighbor's house to tell him to get his butt back outside. However, as I rounded the corner of my house, I saw him standing under one of our trees, looking at the neighbor's house. I said "Whatcha doin,' bud?" and noticed, as he turned around, that he was crying. We met half way and I asked "What's wrong?"

He wouldn't look at me, instead he looked at the ground. He let go in that way that kids will when they're trying to hold it in but can't once they're around someone they feel comfortable with. He still wouldn't answer. I repeated, "What is wrong." Immediately, my mind raced through the possibilities; he got in trouble, he broke something and was told to leave, he did something he wasn't supposed to do, the neighbor's kids were leaving and he was upset he had to come home. Still no answer. He just stood there staring at the ground, fists clenched, crying. The sprinkle was turning to drizzle.

"Son, you need to tell me what's wrong." I stressed the syllable "need" in that "if you're hurt, I've got to know/if you did something wrong, you better tell me right fucking now" way that most father's have picked up over years of trial and error. I'm on the verge of impatience. This is when he picked his eyes up and looked at me. Choking back tears, "Those kids told me I stink!"

Here's where the difficult part of fatherhood comes in. My immediate gut reaction was to tell him "Son, it doesn't matter what those little fuckers say. The worth of their opinion is just a little shy of being exactly jack-shit." Nah, that was no good. Then that smart-ass little devil on my shoulder must have been whispering in my ear, because I thought to tell him, that next time just sa, "Yeah, I probably do. I'll need to take a bath later. Hey! It's too bad you can't take a bath for being a dickhead. You'll never be able to wash that off, I guess." That wouldn't work either. Then I thought about taking the psychiatrist approach; "Son, the only reason that kid said that was because he doesn't feel like he is important and feels the need to tear down everyone he perceives as being a little better than him, just so he can feel better." But, hell, the last thing you want to hear when you're mad is fucking logic.

So, I held my tongue, tempered my reaction, and dispensed what is probably the oldest piece of advise a father can ever give out to his son..."It doesn't matter what they say. If they're going to treat you like that, you don't need to waste your time with them."

But just let that little cocksucker accidentally toss a ball over the fence into my yard...

UPDATE: Sitting down to supper last night, I asked Lil' Heavyarms the specifics of what happened to him on Sunday. Turns out, the kids were telling him that he stunk at dodgeball. DAMN! I told him that the next time some kids in the neighborhood are giving him a hard time about his dodgeball skills, just bring them on over to the house and they can play against him and me. I got picked on in school a lot so one of the skills I perfected was a laser-guided throwing arm when it came to dodgeball. There was nothing more satisfying than the sound those red kickball's made when I was bouncing them off the head of some dick that was flicking my ear on the bus the day before.

Or we could have played them in football. Put a NERF ball in his hand, limit your routes to about 10 yards and the kid looks like John Elway.

Heavyarms don't do baby showers and so we left it up to our son to decide if he wants go out of town with mom or stay home with dad. We gave him the choice about a week ago and at dinner Sunday, posed the question again. He thought for a moment and asked, "If I stay home with dad, could I play video games?" "Well, you've gotten up on time and gotten dressed and done your homework for two weeks without any problems. Yeah, you can play video games."

My wife, who for some strange reason, believes it is not good to play video games for more than about 30 minutes at a time, quickly jumped in, "But you can't play video games ALL weekend, son. You'd have to stop playing for a little while and do other things."

He looked at her and, without pausing, replied "I know that MOM. I'd have to stop so I can eat and go to the bathroom and go to sleep!" (DUH! - H)

*sigh*

He's WAY too much like his old man, sometimes.

Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets has commanded and led bombing groups in the European and later Mediterranean theaters, earning his stripes in the B-17 Flying Fortress. In late 1944, he had just returned from a training flight in a brand new B-29 Superfortress bomber. He was met on the ramp and told to grab his clothes and his bags, he was going to Colorado Springs, CO. Once there, he told "we got a little thing going on called the Manhattan Project, and we're told you're the man we need."

The mission was outlined for him, dropping atomic weapons simultaneously in the European and Pacific theaters. The B-29 was the only aircraft suitable for the job, and Lt. Col. Tibbets was going to be able to hand-select the aircraft and crews he needed. He was told "There's nobody could tell you what you have to do because nobody knows." Essentially, Paul Tibbets was going to have to figure out the logistics behind dropping an atomic bomb.

Of the terrible weapon he was going to be using, he was only told that the bomb would explode with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT. To that end, "I'd never seen 1 lb. of TNT blow up. I'd never heard of anybody who'd seen 100 lbs. of TNT blow up. All I felt was that this was gonna be one hell of a big bang."

And Tibbets, being the extraordinary man he was, assembled the necessary components for his mission. And he carried his mission out perfectly. A lot of people would assume that Tibbets would feel terribly guilty. That he might have the death of 140,000 people weighing on his conscience every day. Not so.

"Second thoughts? No...Number one, I got into the air corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I believe in and that's what I work for. Number two, I'd had so much experience with airplanes... I'd had jobs where there was no particular direction about how you do it and then of course I put this thing together with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive I was to be self-supporting at all times.

On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan]."

In the end, I think that Paul Tibbets did not have any regrets over what he did, nor should he, I believe. Yes, 140,000 people died on the morning of August 6, 1945, most of them unfortunately innocent civilians. But, as Gen. Tibbets said later in life, he SAVED a lot of lives. Those 140,000 people died, (and 80,000 more in Nagasaki) so that hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million United States Marines, sailors, soldiers, airmen, Japanese civilians and soldiers, could be spared. "He said he wasn't proud of all the death and destruction at Hiroshima, but he was proud that he did his job well."

In the end, General Tibbets didn't want to be buried. He didn't want a physical location...a tombstone or grave, some place that could be easily designated as a gathering site for for anti-whatever demonstrators. Instead, he wished to be cremated and his ashes spread over the English channel. One last time to the body of water that so many Army Air Corps crewmen crossed on their way to war, never to return.