Louis in the Sky with a Moldy Marble Rye

You know how conspiracy theorists are always trying to convince us that our government does horrible secret things that nobody hears about, things we Americans think are only done by governments run by people like Josef Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin?

Well, those conspiracy theorists are usually full of malarkey. No American leaders, with the possible exceptions of Dan Quayle and Tipper Gore, ever killed more than about 6,000 of their fellow countrymen. In fact, I believe Michael Dukakis holds the record with a confirmed body count of 5,962. Continue reading »

Of Norma Jean and Mary Jane

As a so-called Gen-Xer, I have been bored with the myths of the Baby Boom generation for so many years I have lost count. This is not to discount them, but they don’t belong to me and other people my age. Just as I was not in Philadelphia when Benjamin Franklin flew a kite in a storm and shocked himself with a key, I didn’t see The Who at Woodstock, and I wasn’t in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Those events have no meaning for me other than as historical footnotes.

Who really shot JFK? I don’t know, and neither do you. James Dean? Still never seen one of his movies. Vietnam? Yeah, it was a bad war. Most wars are bad. Continue reading »

When animals attack the bad guys

Watch your backs, people. After millennia of being hunted and having their habitats destroyed, animals are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore, and now, they’re starting to fight back.

It all started two weeks ago, when a 19-year-old Canadian woman named Taylor Mitchell was killed by coyotes in Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia. Ms. Mitchell, an up-and-coming folk singer from Toronto, was hiking alone when she was attacked by two of the beasts. Continue reading »