Fathers and Sons

I was talking with my friend Jonesy the other day when I couldn't help but ask him what was wrong. We were sitting at my tiki bar drinking Dr. Pepper on shaved ice with crushed cherries. The sun was hot. There was no breeze.

"Oh, I'm having trouble with my younger son." he answered. "He's having trouble dealing with my divorce and he absolutely hates that I live at a nudist resort." He stirred the ice with his finger. When he lifted the glass, the beaded moisture left a ring on the bar. I'd wipe it up later.

(Note to self: put the coasters on the tiki bar.)

"What's he been doing?" I asked.

He put the drink back down near the ring.

(Couldn't he at least hit the same spot each time?)

He gave me a wry smile, "Every time we talk he feels like he has to beat me up about living here. He won't give it a rest. He thinks it's wall to wall parties, naked beauties and orgies."

"I thought the orgy thing was a secret?" I feigned incredulity. "Have you told him that people around here look like people you meet anywhere?"

A nudist resort does not automatically attract beautiful, hard bodies. In fact, just the opposite is true. Most good looking young people enjoy the dress up, the clubs and the sexy flirtations. The people who come here skew older and, as an act of gross rationalization, claim complete body acceptance. This allows them to be over weight and out of shape - without embarrassment. In fact, most of the people here would not go to a clothed beach because of how bad they would look in a bathing suit.

"Yeah. But he doesn't believe me. I even snuck a picture of Adele." He pulled a photo out of his pocket. Adele was a very sweet but large lady of our mutual acquaintance. Picture taking at the resort was mostly forbidden. We also knew that Adele was a free spirit and that she wouldn't mind.

He handed it over to me and said, "I was going to send it to him with the caption:

.............................See Son, It's not all about sex!

I glanced at it and handed it back to him. "Cute." I said. "Adele's husband, Roy, might object."

Jonesy took the photo back and looked at it again. "Oh, wait! This is Roy!" He tucked the photo away then picked up his glass and sloshed a little as he turned on his stool.

(Oh, look! You missed a spot.)

I changed the subject and asked, "What's your son do?"

"Besides bitch at me like we're married?"

"That's rhetorical, right?" I always have to check after that incident with the traffic cop.

He nodded, then said. "He's a teacher in Ohio."

"Oh!" I answered, trying to sound impressed. "He must be real bright."

"He is. if you're impressed with night lights. He was recently turned down by Mensa Lite. He spelled his name wrong on the application. I asked him how that could happen and he claimed it was a union thing. The teacher's union is very strong in Ohio."

I never know when Jonesy is messing with me. "What's Mensa Lite?" I prodded.

"Mensa Lite is for pseudo-intellectuals. People who talk about their degrees rather than their accomplishments. People who talk about the book reviews they read, rather than the books they have read. People who think Al Gore is an intellectual."

"So, why're you so down on him?" I wondered.

"Maybe it's because he won't let up on me. Maybe it's because when his mom left me he never once asked me what had happened or even how I was doing." He paused and picked a piece of cherry out of his drink, dripping across the bar and onto the deck.

Then he seemed to rouse himself, remembering that he was supposed to be making a joke or something. That was Jonesy's coping mechanism. Mine was wall to wall parties, naked beauties and orgies.

"You know," he said, "I remember the night he was conceived and, I gotta tell you, the sex wasn't that great."

There's the old Jonesy I know!

He sat a little straighter in his chair and I could see the gleam in his eye. He was getting ready to be on a roll. I picked up my drink and sloshed a little on the bar by way of encouragement.

"I kid around about his mother being unfaithful but I am almost 100% certain I am his father."

"How so?" I played the straight man.

"When he was born he had my last name." I smiled and he continued, "Did I ever tell you why we named him P.J.?"

"Uh, uh."

"Because his mother had called dibs on B.J."

"Cute." I said. I began to fondly remember Jonesy's ex-wife but he wasn't done yet.

"Isn't it ironic," he asked, "that being an actual bastard is passed on through the mother?"

I had to laugh.

"And why isn't there a specific name for illegitimate females? I think bitch would have been a great choice. But it was already handily taken by adult women." Jonesy has been a little bitter since the break up.

I sucked on some ice, tasting the cherry juice.

"I am wondering one thing, though."

"What's that?" I mumbled through the ice.

"Even though I am as certain as a guy can be that his sons are legitimate, does my recent divorce make them Bastards by Proxy?"

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Pet Killer Shocks America!

Pet Food Manufacturer Can't Explain Deaths -- WASHINGTON — The pet food linked to the deaths of 16 animals has shown no signs of contamination, the manufacturer says, and the company cannot explain why the cats and dogs developed acute kidney failure and died.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Paul Henderson, the chief executive of Menu Foods, said Wednesday the company was looking at a single ingredient. He wouldn't identify it, but the Food and Drug Administration has said the investigation was focusing on wheat gluten.

Our hypothesis is that it is that ingredient that in fact represents the highest probability as to the cause," Henderson said. "But we have been unable to prove that through scientific information."

"However, based upon Al Gore's book The Inconvenient Politician: 'The most illogical, inconvenient and expensive solution will often garner the most attention.' I'm not sure how that applies to this situation but it does sound kind of thoughty, doesn't it?"

"Anyway, back to this pet food situation: We're not sure what the problem is. Take this warehouse, for instance. We ship to both of our businesses from this location. These boxes marked Wheat Gluten 76767 (a pet food supplement) are shipped to our pet food factory at 27 Bear Road, Smallville, Illinois. These other boxes marked Wheat Gluten 67676 (a pesticide) are shipped to our farm supply factory at 27 Boar Road, Smallville, Illinois. There's no way they could get mixed up."

"But, sir . . ."

"Nope, No way. We'll just have to keep on looking. It's too bad, though, that wheat gluten idea was pretty good."

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Al Gore's Oscar

New Study of Polar Secrets in Global Warming Fight -- LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of scientists from across the world join forces this week to investigate the effects of global warming on the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets.

The ice in both polar regions is melting more rapidly than anywhere else, leading to rises in sea levels and possibly to dramatic changes in ocean currents and food chains.

"The reality is we know so little. The difference is that we know how important it is," Martin Siegert of Edinburgh University said at the London launch, one of several around the world before the main event in Paris on Thursday.


Here's another reality. Thousands of politically motivated scientists are joining forces to get the cart before the horse.

In the entirety of recorded human history, mankind has been living on a world at the end of an Ice Age. There has never been a time when the ice or glaciers or ice sheet or whatever they want to call it has not been receding. The Earth has yet to stabilize into it's normal state.

(One proof of this is the evidence of animals and vegitation and lakes and trees, etc. that has been found UNDER the arctic and antarctic sheeting.)

Put more simply: Global Warming is not causing the Arctic ice sheets to melt, the end of the glaciers receding is causing Global Warming.

And when all of the melting is eventually done, the Earth, with warmer average temperatures and higher oceans, will be whatever it will be. We cannot do anything about it. It is our planet stabilizing at the end of an Ice Age.

All of the pseudo science in the world is not going to change that FACT and all of the Oscars in Hollywood will not validate their bad science.

The Global Warming movement is a political movement and basically the new home for Socialism. According to them, all of the industrialized (wealthy) nations are bad and all of the poorer nations want that money, through penalties and sanctions and aid, to compensate them for their poverty.

It is not about the environment, people. It is about politics and money. They are trying to level the playing field -- any way they can.

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Truthiness . . .

There were two stories in the news today that caught my eye and, at first, seemed non-related. One is about Wesley Snipes and tax evasion and the other is about Merriam-Webster choosing The 2006 Word of the Year.

In the case of Wesley Snipes, he is accused of fraudulently claiming refunds totaling nearly $12 million in 1996 and 1997 on income taxes already paid and with failure to file returns from 1999 through 2004.

According to the indictment, Snipes had his taxes prepared by accountants with a history of filing false returns to reap payments for their clients. The firm, American Rights Litigators, would receive 20 percent of refunds from clients, according to the indictment.

Snipes' case came to light when a man from Pennsylvania was arrested for not paying his taxes. He believed the system was voluntary. The man, Arthur Farnsworth, had a number of "investment funds" designed to hide income and avoid paying taxes. Snipes was listed as one of the investors of these funds.

Arthur Farnsworth, 44, contending that he was not required to pay income tax has been convicted of tax evasion. His lawyer argued that "it did not matter whether Farnsworth was right or wrong. The issue was whether he was sincere in what he believed."

In the other story, Merriam-Webster has decided that The 2006 Word of the Year is . . . "truthiness." Truthiness was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

"We are at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people's minds, and truth has become up for grabs," said Merriam-Webster president John Morse.

Colbert, who once derided the folks at Springfield-based Merriam-Webster as the "word police" and a bunch of "wordinistas," was pleased."Though I'm no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me."

The thing that I find interesting about these two stories is the common mind-set that truth no longer needs to be "reality based." Apparently, whatever you want to believe is the new truth. In a world that believes Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth even though it is based upon bad science, half-truths and outright lies, and where people are claiming the Twin Towers came down because of some right wing government plot even though we all watched it happen live on TV, it only makes sense that the Word of the Year would celebrate the ephemeral qualities of truth.

The Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, was known for "The Big Lie" or argumentum ad nauseum, the name given to a policy of repeating a falsehood until it is taken to be the truth. Bill Clinton, former U.S. President, in known for lying under oath and the Weasel Doctrine which poses the theory that truth depends upon "what "is" is."

Although it is true that "truth" can be subjective at times, there are larger, universal truths that will never be corrupted by weak-minded individuals or groups. At one time, our founding fathers considered these truths to be self-evident. Now, we live in a world where they need to be spelled out.

But maybe, if we stand against the lies and repeat what we know to be true often enough, it may eventually be taken to be the truth . . . again. And then it won't matter what "is" is.

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