BobHarris.com: "If you're innocent, you shouldn't mind a shotgun blast to the face "

Theme From Red Dwarf by Jenna Russell
"It's cold outside; there's no kind of atmosphere
I'm all alone, more or less
Let me fly, far away from here
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun
I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose
Drinking fresh mango juice
Goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun"

"The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
-- Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions p. 215"

There Is No God
by Penn Jillette

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.
But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

"Poem: 'Change' by Louis Jenkins from The Winter Road.

Change

All those things that have gone from your life, moon boots, TV
trays, and the Soviet Union, that seem to have vanished, are
really only changed, dinosaurs did not disappear from the earth
but evolved into birds and crock pots became bread makers.
Everything around you changes. It seems at times (only for a
moment) that your wife, the woman you love, might actually be
your first wife in another form. It's a thought not to be pursued.
... Nothing is the same as it used to be. Except you, of course,
You haven't changed ... well, slowed down a bit, perhaps. It's
more difficult nowadays to deal with the speed of change, dis-
turbing to suddenly find yourself brushing your teeth with what
appears to be a flashlight. But essentially you are the same as
ever, constant in your instability. "

A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: "If you learn nothing else from great literature, at least you learn that the nicest people are capable of the darkest deeds. If you don't know that, then you are not a functioning adult. Perfectly lovely, well-behaved children active in church groups suddenly show up in the paper, accused of heinous crimes. Blame it on secular schools, if you like, or video games or high sugar consumption. But it may be that the thermostat was kept too high. Heat relaxes the inhibitions, and soon you start to think about stealing from your mother and getting hopped up on happy dust. It doesn't matter that you went to Sunday school regularly. The heart wants what it wants.

So chill, children. Put on a sweater. When tempted, go outdoors and lie in the snow and make angels. "

Frank Gelett Burgess

"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead."

SHIPOOPI
(c) 1957 M. Willson
Well, a woman who'll kiss on the very first date
Is usually a hussy
And a woman who'll kiss on the second time out
Is anything but fussy
But a woman who'll wait till the third time around
Head in the clouds, feet on the ground
She's the girl he's glad he's found
She's his Shipoopi
Shipoopi! Shipoopi, Shipoopi
The girl who's hard to get!
Shipoopi. Shipoopi, Shipoopi
But you can win her yet.
Walk her once just to raise the curtain
Then you walk around twice and make for certain
Once more in the flower garden
She will never get sore if you beg her pardon
Do re me fa so la si
Do si la sol fa mi re do
Squeeze her once, when she isn't lookin'
If you get a squeeze back that's fancy cookin'
Once more for a pepper-upper
She will never get sore on her way to supper
Do re me fa sol la si
Do si do
Now little ol' Sal was a no-gal
As anyone could see
Lookit her now, she's a go-gal
Who only goes for me
Squeeze her once when she isn't lookin'
If you get a squeeze back, that's fancy cookin'
Once more for a pepper-upper
She will never get sore on her way to supper
Do re me fa sol la si
Do si do
Shipoopi, Shipoopi, Shipoopi
The girl who's hard to get
Shipoopi. Shipoopi, Shipoopi
But you can win her yet
Shipoopi

New Poll Finds Mixed Support for Wiretaps - New York Times:

"The poll, conducted as President Bush defended his surveillance program in the face of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans that it is illegal, found that Americans were willing to give the administration some latitude for its surveillance program if they believed it was intended to protect them. Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they supported eavesdropping without warrants 'in order to reduce the threat of terrorism.' "

AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)

QUOTATION: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Avocado

Scoop the pit out
Let dry for 2 to 3 days
Place flat bottom down in water.
It will split and
when a strong root extends
place in dirt.
25% successful.

Patriots lost to Denver why?

"I got my haircut"
"I drank to much before halftime"
"I didn't bring by game face"
"I wasn't focused"

They didn't play so well.

January 21'st

Pulled up to the driveway,
asked if he was OK?
He said yea and added he would call tomorrow.
We exchanged our goodbye's, thanks and Love You's
and he went into the house
now guarded by someone else's
gray car.

1971 Plymouth Satellite

The jonquils jumped up
on the way to Fogland.
They knew what we knew.
WEEI on the FM converter
and
Spanada with hot apple cider.
Dear God.

BobHarris.com: "I hereby justly declare that God Almighty, the Infinite and Unknowable, Creator of All That Is Beyond Comprehension, is cheating on his diet with a tuna sandwich at the moment. He also bats left-handed but throws with his right, loves the ketchup-flavored Twisties snacks you can buy in southeast Asia, and hasn't played the banjo in almost a year."

BobHarris.com: "Oh -- and here in Australia, the film went into living rooms unedited, complete with every last S-word, F-word, 10-letter C-word, and 12-letter M-word.

Hmm. And yet Oz has lower crime, poverty, and divorce rates than the U.S. How is this even possible? I thought those words had magical powers to destroy minds. Hmm. The very fact that one of Australia's major broadcast networks has no compunction about this, and yet I'm expected even by many people who are open-minded by the standards back home to bowdlerize my use of these words to the level of baby talk, tells me that tomorrow Australia will be destroyed by America's powerful Republican god.

If not, then obviously all this decency shit is fucked."

The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media:

"Poem: 'Despond,' by Jim Harrison.

At midnight in his living room a man
is angry at a fly that is bothering him.
How can this be?

A man is angry at things
that never happened
and never will happen.

He's angry at the woman he'll never meet
because she refuses to meet him
because, not existing herself,
she has no idea that he exists.

He's frying potatoes that don't exist
at sunset. The frying pan is a black sun
and out the window in the gathering dark
the ocean looks so heavy that it might fall
through the earth and join another ocean.

At dawn he wakes. There's a fly in the room
but perhaps it's a miniature bird. Magnified,
the sound is the basso rumbling of the universe
the peculiar music galaxies make when they fray
against each other. He sleeps again, his hand
on his dog's heart which says don't be angry.
She senses the steps of the last dance saved for us "

"Never use the word 'relationship.' You can say 'marriage' or 'romance' or 'partnership' or 'living arrangement' or 'hubba hubba ding dong,' but the word 'relationship' is like the hissing of vipers. If the romance or marriage needs help, the answer almost always is Have More Fun. Drop your list of grievances and go ride a roller coaster. Take a brisk walk. Dance. Take a trip to Duluth. Read Dickens. There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes. "

"I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it."

In a solar system of dead rocks, snowballs, and gasbags, Earth was a theater, a rotating stage upon which a thin green scum of organic life acted out countless, continual scenes whose content, whether explicit or oblique, was almost wholly sexual. The colors, the smells, and the sounds of organic things had evolved as sexual attractants, created to keep the trillion romantic plots moving toward a trillion, more-or-less happy endings.

I Enjoy Your Pain - Men, women, and the pleasure of punishment. By William Saletan:

"More evidence that men are vindictive: Brain scans show that when somebody they dislike suffers pain, men "but not women" show a) zero activity in empathy-related parts of the brain and b) a surge of activity in pleasure-related parts of the brain. In the study, disliked people were those who had behaved selfishly in a game. Interpretations: 1) Men are born mean. 2) Men are made mean. 3) Men are deeply ethical and reserve empathy for those who deserve it. 4) Men do women a service by instinctively punishing cheaters. "