Last Dance With MaryJane

Another week, another weekend recap. Strange that so little happens during the week, but Friday thru Monday is just bursting with little gems – if one can call them gems.

For those of you who haven’t heard, the Midwest is under water. Vast expanses of Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin are wishing they had heeded the Lord’s warning and built the arks from gopher wood to ride out the deluge of the past couple weeks. Rumor has it we might actually see the sun for the next few days and get a chance to dry out. Until then I’ll keep the pump next to the inflatable raft in the basement, just in case.

In keeping with the natural disaster theme, television tells me Greece is on fire. Apparently the entire country is engulfed in flames, and two guys caught on an amateur video are being blamed for the whole thing. You’ve got to love a country that feels no shame in blaming a countrywide disaster on a couple guys in an ill-advised home movie. We should consider doing that here. Infrastructure falling apart? Health care doesn’t work? No problem. Let’s pick up Frank and Donald off the park bench by the Seven Eleven, beat them senseless and toss them in prison for twenty years. That should fix it.

Reputed Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale, 72, was sentenced to three life terms for kidnapping and conspiracy in the murder of two black teenagers in Mississippi in 1964. Well it’s about DAMN time! All it took was 43 years, several major motion pictures, and one of his co-conspirators with a grant of immunity to finally roll on him. Justice isn't just blind, it's slower than $&*!.

Pre-orders of O. J. Simpson’s book “If I Did It” have doubled since Barnes & Noble announced last Tuesday that it would not stock the “fictionalized” account of his wife’s murder in its stores. I guess that begs only one question. What’s wrong with you people! This is not a trading card that will increase in value the rarer it becomes. It’s a book about a guy murdering his wife, written by a guy who got away with MURDERING HIS WIFE! Why would anyone read this drivel? How may trees have to die so that this fool can remain in the spotlight long after his fifteen minutes are up? I guess Fred Goldman thinks it’s okay to exploit his son’s death, as long as he can reap the benefits.

Michael Vick officially entered his guilty plea in federal court in Virginia on Monday morning. Shortly afterward he offered his apology the media. He said he “made a mistake,” he “took responsibility” for his actions, and said that through this situation he had “found Jesus.” Hmm. Seems like he’s already started off on the wrong foot. You see Mike, the first step in taking responsibility for your actions is to understand exactly what it is you are taking responsibility for. You didn’t make a mistake. Six to eight dogs didn’t accidentally drown in the tub while you were bathing them. Your actions, and those of your cohorts willfully and intentionally led to the death of those dogs. And as my step brother-in-law so eloquently put it this weekend, claiming you owned and oversaw the kennel but never bet on any of the fights is sort of like saying you own the casino but never play the slots. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t collect the money in the pit if that blood money ends up in your bank account at the end of the day. Parsing your words to try to avoid further punishment from the league in no way diminishes the vileness and the violence of your actions. As for Mike Vick finding Jesus, maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. Why is it that so many people find Jesus only after they’ve been caught doing something they know is wrong? Perhaps if you had spent a little more time searching for Jesus beforehand, you wouldn’t be in the situation you are in now. Remember, now that you’ve found him, you have to answer to him.

Attorney general Alberto Gonzalez has finally seen the light and has tendered his resignation effective September 17. Too bad it took 6 months of suffering through lies, denials, deflections, hearings and moronic statements of support from the president for him to get the message. This administration decided very early on that its modus operandi at the first sign of any trouble would be to deny, conceal and claim as privileged any relevant information in an attempt to shut down its critics. Gonzalez could have nullified the whole U.S. Attorney firing scandal before it started with the following statement, “The president has decided to remove eight U.S. Attorney’s and replace them with these eight yahoos standing here beside me.” Instead he said he said they were fired for sub-par performance, then said he didn’t have anything to do with their firing, then said he didn’t know why they were fired, then admitted he didn’t really know what a U.S. Attorney was and why he was talking about them in the first place. Gonzalez’ stewardship of the justice department boiled down to this. Either he knew exactly what was going on in his office and should be fired for lying to cover it up, or he didn’t (want to) know and should be fired for being incompetent. Either way, this resignation is at least six months too late, and for the president to come out and blame the vast left wing conspiracy is just embarrassing for him.

On the “lighter” side of the news, so to speak, someone released a study today showing my state of Indiana to be the 9th most overweight state in the country, with about a quarter of the adult population classified as obese. That doesn’t include obese children, or people merely classified as fat. Apparently too many Hoosiers are driving through the crossroads of America instead of walking or cycling. At least we aren’t Mississippi.

Finally, supermarket newsstands all across the country are mourning the passing of a tabloid icon. The final printed edition of the Weekly World News was published today. The tabloid will continue to exist online, but it just won’t be the same. No more Martians in the White House, no more finding Satan’s face in tornados, no more yearly Nostradamus predictions of Armageddon. All we have left now is a drunken Britney Spears swimming topless in some stranger’s pool. So long Batboy! This one’s for you.