The Roof... The Roof... The Roof Is On Fire...

Another week in review delayed by illness. But that’s the advantage of having a blog only six people read. No one cares if you miss a day. Anyway, now that the fever has broken, let’s get this show on the road.

In case you hadn’t heard, southern California is on fire. Again. Anywhere from 500,000 to a million people have been ordered to evacuate their homes and head for safety in the face of several massive wildfires sweeping across the state. Fortunately there have only been two reported deaths so far. I say ONLY because the last time this happened about four years ago, the death toll was much higher. I credit fewer instances of idiots saying, “I’ve lived here in this house all my life dammit, ain’t no little forest fire gonna drive me out of my home!”

Patriots vs. Colts, two weeks from now. Circle it on your calendars people. The winner of this game could be staring down the barrel of an undefeated season. Oh, and if the Rams and Dolphins get any worse, they may have to be demoted to the NCAA. Notre Dame could beat those two teams.

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas has decided to end his bid for the Republican nomination for president of the United States. I’m sure that’s quite depressing for the three people who knew he was running, and the one person who actually cared. The real tragedy of the Senator’s decision is that the rest of us will now be deprived of Brownback jokes for the remainder of the primary season. And there were precious few of those to begin with.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. James Watson told a British newspaper last week that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really. Dr. Watson is white. Most Africans are black. Later in the interview he noted that although he hoped everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” Wow. I’m not even going to dignify that statement with a comment.

But speaking of the Nobel Prize, they’re just handing those things out to any old so-and-so now, aren’t they? Almost two weeks ago former vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. Hmm. I must have missed something there. Peace Prize, for work on global warming. The Nobel committee’s explanation for the anomaly is that in the future, climate change caused by global warming will result in first regional, then global conflicts over dwindling resources. According the committee, simply imploring people to sit through “An Inconvenient Truth”, Gore has put an end to war and saved the future nations of the world from cannibalizing themselves in the pursuit of essential resources. Heck, if all you have to do to win a prize is raise awareness, I’d like to be considered for the Nobel Prize for Sarcasm. No other blog has done more in the past five minutes to raise awareness of sarcasm than this one. Where’s my little statue – and 1.3 million dollar cheque?

Headline: Children’s Literature – Now With More Gay Sex. That’s right, Professor Dumbledore is gay. The wise old headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and mentor of one Harry Potter has come out of the closet. Actually, he was outed by his creator, J.K.K. Rowling, when she learned that the screenplay for an upcoming film involved some back-story of a love between the fictional professor and a fictional woman. To my knowledge, the Harry Potter novels contain no description of sex, heavy petting, petting or thoughts of petting – gay or otherwise. So, why the sexual orientation of Professor Dumbledore is even remotely relevant – especially in what would more than likely be a flashback scene of less than a minute – is completely beyond my understanding. But, for what can only be described as no good reason whatsoever, Rowling felt the need to make a stand, be true to her imagination and strike the offending scene from the script. So, in case you couldn’t live without knowing the sexual orientation of your favorite literary characters, now you do. And for the record, there is no evidence to support a suspicious claim that it was actually Dumbledore and not Larry Craig who was caught soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. None at all.