SUMMER WITH THE SPOON

RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM THE SPOON:

-California legalized gay marriage. Way to go California. As far as I am concerned, people should be able to do whatever they want sexually as long as there are no children or animals involved and no one is getting physically hurt (who doesn’t want to be). I have enough to worry about without stressing out over two men or women having sex or getting married. If I wake up one morning and my biggest concern is that two men are marrying in California or Massachusetts or anywhere else, then it’s the best day of my life. For all of you homophobes out there, you have it all wrong anyway. If you really want to make homosexuals suffer, don’t fight gay-marriage, fight gay-divorce.

-Mike’s Hard Lemonade has a new slogan: “In a world gone soft, someone’s got to be hard.” It sounds like their advertising agency accidentally pitched them an idea that they had intended for Viagra.

-Republican John McCain declared for the first time two weeks ago that he believes the Iraq war can be won by 2013. That works out nicely for him that his timetable would take him a year into his second term in office. You’d think he could wrap it up nicely in just four years. After all, the war is going so well. If you vote for me as President instead, I’ll declare that we’ll be able to cure AIDS using potatoes by 2013; trust me.

-American Airlines is the first major airline to begin charging passengers for ALL checked bags. Most airlines currently allow each passenger to check their first bag for free. The price of the ticket is bad enough without all of the added insults. They charge for checking luggage, for food, for headsets for the movies, for pillows and blankets, for window or aisle seats, and even add an additional tax for each “take off and landing”…really? I thought the fact that the plane takes off and lands was kind of implied when I bought a ticket for an AIRPLANE. Way to earn your name by nickel and diming us; you are truly AMERICAN airlines.

-We went another year without a Triple Crown winner in horse racing. It’s now been over twenty years since the last Triple Crown winner, and almost 30 years since I decided I didn’t care.

-Experienced something very strange at the movies last night. A guy in the bathroom used one of the urinals and then went straight to the hand dryer to dry his hands. Did he urinate on his hands and then decide he’d just dry them off without washing them? Whoever taught this guy bathroom etiquette clearly forgot a crucial step. It’s called soap and water pal…look into it.

-The national average for a gallon of gas has now topped $4. When I was a kid we used to just drive around some nights if we had nothing to do. I guess that activity is now reserved for the wealthy. At least they haven’t taken a page from the airlines’ book, yet. By next summer they might come out with a $1 surcharge for activating the pump.

-Pentagon records show that more than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan (since 2003) were sent anyway. The reliance on troops found medically "non-deployable" is yet another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million service-members to the war zones, according to soldier advocacy groups. I know it’s often viewed as an honor to “serve” your country but the real honor would be if our country provided a service to our troops and gave them the proper time to recover before sending them back into combat. These are U.S. citizens and more importantly human beings. Dubya and his band of idiots need to stop treating them accordingly.

-It’s going to hit a record high of 96 degrees in Philadelphia today (with a heat index of 105). Yesterday topped the 90 degree mark and tomorrow is expected to reach 99 or 100 (with a heat index of 110). The normal for this time of year is in the 70’s. I guess Bush isn’t going to see the “proof of global warming” until people on the street start bursting into flames. The only thing hotter than the temperature in the City of Brotherly Love is the Philadelphia Phillies.

-Barack Obama finally secured the Democratic Presidential nomination this past week. I was annoyed that it took Hilary so long to admit defeat once he had the necessary amount of delegates. You lost Hilary; whether you admit that defeat or not, you still lost. Could you imagine if the team that lost the Superbowl just hung around after the game? “We know the other team had a higher score but we’re not ready to admit that we lost yet.” It would just be ridiculous. You fought a good fight but please, once you lose, just go away.

-Binocular manufacturer Bushnell, along with "Field & Stream" magazine, have teamed up to offer $1 million to anyone who can provide an unaltered photograph/video, verified and substantiated by a panel of scientific experts [including a zoologist and biologist] as evidence that proves the existence of a Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Yeti. Riiiiight…because the only thing that kept humans from discovering a Sasquatch (to date) was the lack of monetary motivation. I guess now that there’s a million bucks on the table I can finally develop my Yeti photos from that trip I took to Tibet. I’d thought about doing it before but it just seemed like too much work. How much for my X-rated photos of the Lochness Monster and Santa Claus tag-teaming the Tooth-Fairy?

-I wish I had an extra million dollars lying around. I’d offer it to anyone who could prove that George Bush won either of the last two elections without vast amounts of cheating and voter fraud.

-The Baltimore Museum of Art celebrated the art of tattooing this past Saturday night with a panel discussion among prominent tattoo artists, a runway show displaying the strongest output from local shops and high-minded discussions of the importance of body art among African tribes and Japanese laborers. Take that those of you who say tattoos are not art. You can’t call it a vegetarian restaurant if you serve hamburgers and you can’t call it an art museum if you display items that aren’t art. It’s true, some tattoos are ugly and/or tacky but so are many paintings, sculptures, etc. As with ugly people, beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

-I propose we drop the U from USA. It’s kind of like false advertising. If Jessica Alba and I are in the same movie theatre, it doesn’t mean we’re there together. We are just a country of vastly different people living side by side but very rarely together. George Bush (as well as many “leaders” before him) has made a career out of dividing this country. Currently it’s Red States vs. Blue States, Less Filling vs. Tastes Great, Big Mac vs. Whopper… Can’t we all just agree on something? Where’s the U-N-I-T-Y?

-According to the Vatican newspaper, Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, making Catholicism the Pepsi of religion. To quote an official from the Vatican, "For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," I assume he meant on top of the religious world, and not on top of underage boys.

-I missed some birthdays since my last post so a very happy belated birthday to my pseudo brother Dan, and my actual brother Josh. Also a belated happy mother's day to my mother and two grandmothers and an early happy father's day to my dad and grandfather.

-If you’ve just read this entire post, you’re definitely cooler than when you started. I’m glad I could help out; it’s the least I can do.

That’s the end of today’s Spoon people. I hope you managed to wrestle a morsel or two of truth from the randomness and I promise to have a new post up in traditional format by the end of the month. Thanks for reading and as always, sharing means caring so pass the link to the site along to a few people today and please, don’t forget to leave some comments.