Can you say "ersatz," boys and girls? . . .

I drink no-fat milk.  I use whole wheat spaghetti noodles and pizza dough.  I eat low fat cheese.  I use turkey sausage, not pork.  One morning, for breakfast, my wife made "pancakes" using grated apple, banana, and egg.  (They were good.)  I use artificial sweetener.  My hamburgers have no burger in them, so they have soy and nuts instead.  I think the little bits of bacon in my salad are really flavored bits of brown styrene.  My buttery popcorn involves no actual butter.

I could have teeth "whiter than white" by use of an inexpensive product.

My shirts don't need ironing after washing. 

My car shifts its own gears.  The gasoline in its tank comes partly from corn alcohol.  The fabric of my pants comes from an oil well.

So, it occurs to me that I am living an inauthentic life.  And I'm not alone in that.

Is it then any wonder that we can hear the pitchman on television say, "Get the facts, just try it for yourself," and not even hear the  clanking of the logic underneath that statement? 

All the phony we live with has nourished our stupid quotient.  (If you can have an intelligence quotient, I.Q., then you can have a stupid quotient.)

So, don't get me started on politicians.

Bad moon rising . . .

IRS is being sued for going far beyond the scope of a search warrant and seizing all sorts of patient treatment records, far in advance of 4th Amendment limits. 

Keep in mind that IRS is given enforcement obligations for Obamacare. 

If IRS won't "play by the rules," why are the citizens required to report honestly, on penalty of criminal punishment? 

Are we getting closer to when massive and pervasive civil disobedience is in order?

Freedom of speech . . .

The Homeowners Association said he couldn't have an American flag in his yard, so, as a good neighbor, he took the flag down and freshened the look of his home.  Take a look.

That'll show 'em who's boss . . .

So the acting head of IRS had turned in his notice that he was quitting in June.  in response to the IRS scandals - one of the four breaking out in Washington at the moment - the President fired him.  Two weeks before he was going to leave on his own.

The President wants us to know that sometimes doing the right thing means being a hard-ass.

Happy 21st Century Mothers Day

Mothers Day.  Once, 'twas an honored and harmless commercial tradition of coercing males to spend money on useless trinkets, flowers, and over-priced buffets.

Now, in the politics is everything age, it is a splendid opportunity to increase breast cancer "awareness," whateverthehell "awareness" is supposed to actually mean.  Also, a good time to celebrate and encourage abortion rights for reluctant breeders - they's kinda the same thing as mothers, right?

Fathers Day?  The kids spend five minutes crayoning a card. 

Increased awareness of prostate cancer?

Cue the sound of crickets.

Hey, make me a sammitch . . .

Washington State Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles

is sponsoring a six year effort to go through all the laws of Washington and remove all mentions of men, males, and suchlike so as to make all official language gender neutral.  It's going to be a six year process to bugger the language so as to make men aware of their reduced status in a modern world run by women who are mighty.  Hear them roar.

So, instead of watchman, we'll have watchperson.  Also, there'll be firepersons on duty and people can make a living or just be fisherpersons for a hobby.  Instead of penmanship, we'll have something horrible like good write-itude.

I guess Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles has checked around and satisfied herself that having a hyphenated name entitles her to a mandate.  I mean persondate.

And for manhood and womanhood, I guess we could go with "convexity" and "concavity" to refer to traits normally associated to distinguish gender behaviors.

One can make jokes about this endlessly, but I'm pretty sure Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles would not "get" any of them. 

The sad thing is that this sort of effort to achieve gender neutrality in the language can only grow out of a sense of inferiority.  I suspect that women who are comfortable with themselves don't get their ears hurt when they hear the word "fireman."