First love never dies

First love never dies. Even when you try to kill it with practicality, time and distance, it persists. Just the cadence of a voice over the phone line and the distance and time falls away and all that is left is memory. Memory selective;not sullied by historical accuracy. No memory of infidelity and disregard challenges the utopian recollection where the relationship existed without anger or harsh words.Rose colored remembrances wherein we have no inkling of how we let the love of our lives get away. The ache never leaves. The grass looks greener from our vantage point. Life looks emptier at the sound of that voice. What seemed acceptable only hours before now looks cheap and tawdry. Memories of what could have been consume. Hours of productive time lost to recalled lovemaking so passionate that you can't imagine that you survived. Echoes in our eardrums cause us to assess and replay the implication. First love breaks our heart again and again.

Truth???

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free

Each of us believes that when we hear the truth that through some magical manifestation of neurons we will recognize it and know that it is the truth. With a cloud parting clarity the truth will break forth. Yet for most of us truth is subjective. Leaders in authority look into cameras and feed us a line of bullshit so incredibly earnest as to evoke thunderous applause and yet we know deep down that they are simply playing us. Husbands fresh from the crotches of nubile young nymphs arrive home in a cloud of essence o' pussy and somehow convince their wives that they are to blame for the clump of pubic hair causing the frog in his throat. Our children convince with charming toothpaste grins that we should not worry about their time on the internet and when they go missing we lie to ourselves that our children are different, above the fray. Somehow they've gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd. Talking heads from inside our televisons lie to us incessantly. Buy our furniture, skin cream, clothes, weight loss gizmo, skin lightener, skin darkener, penis lengthener, hardener, vaginal tightener, orgasmatron, whatever and you will be happy. Insidiously happy news people tell us of one horror stacked atop another and yet we lie to ourselves that "everyone's alright really". Our mask of Christopher Robinesque innocence safely in place. Red politicians lie to red voters and say our way is best. Blue politicians lie to blue voters and say our way is best . One has only to cast a glance out of the window to see that no one primary color has the answers. What we need are purple politicians telling the people, "hey we're just as screwed up and scared as you are and we think we got the answers but we really won't know until everything shakes out." Educators in poor school districts encourage their underaeducated parents and teachers to continue to send their children into a system that is designed to make the vast majority of them failures. A system that says to them subpar is better than nothing. Based on your socioeconomic background and inadequate social skills you should be happy that we give you substandard text books with antiquated information and send you into a higher education system that you are ill prepared for. Rappers from the right or wrong side of the tracks lie to our children and convince them that there's no future in working for a living, get you some gold grillz, some six pack abs and some young women willing to get naked on the off chance that they might get an illegitimate child for a baller and your road to success if paved. And watch out now because I'll be damned if it ain't. Violence runs rampant and experts lie and say it's not what you see on TV or hear on the radio or imbibe from the internet that's to blame. That's a blatant lie. Our children's brain networks and neural pathways have barely formed and yet they are exposed to the seedy and the seamiest the world has to offer. Can we possibly be so foolish to believe that it doesn't have an effect on them. Come on now. Even Ray Charles can see that is some foolishness. Chalk this up as the off the cuff ramblings of someone who should have been in bed hours ago or find the grain of truth amidst the lies that we are told and the ones we tell ourselves.

Wacky History Lesson

Actually I was going through some papers here at home and I ran across my copy of these student bloopers that were compiled by Richard Lederer. I laughed until I nearly peed on myself. Who doesn't need that kind of laughter in their lives. For more from Richard Lederer check out the website, www.verbivore.com or pick up one of his hilarious books; Anguished English or Crazy English.

This history of the world has been compiled by Richard Lederer from actual student bloopers and mistakes collected by teachers.

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be fore her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In on of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained."

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the 6cPilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post without stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are flaling off the trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

Richard Lederer

It's hell to be po'

It's a shame the way they do po folks. As a po folk I feel justified in my outrage. I am one of the uninsured millions. If you have a job and insurance coverage consider yourself blessed. It is hard to be poor and sick. If you've never had to sit in an emergency room surrounded by people who are sick and tired then you can't possibly understand the anguish of not having. The knowledge that your plight or that of the person next to you is so inconsequential that you can sit undisturbed for hours at a time. Employees pass and glance in with pitying looks. They are probably thanking God that they have insurance and therefore do not have to suffer this indignity. I know there are places worse than our county hospital. Places where people wait for days to be seen. That is the crux of the problem. The American healthcare system is in CRISIS, Crisis with a capital C. The Research and Development costs for new medications are increasing so astronomically that even if you are lucky enough to be seen by someone in the emergency room, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to afford to purchase the medicines that are prescribed. It seems that there should be a more egalitarian way of treating people. Until a few years ago I was gainfully employed in what would be termed a good job and had insurance. The contrast of being insured and uninsured is palpable. A person with insurance seems to matter. They have a quantifiable worth, while those without are made to seem as nothing. Having stood on both sides of the fence I can say that as a country we have to do something. It's not just healthcare. It's utilities and food and entertainment. The gap between the haves and the have nots is a vast chasm that is expanding exponentially. Pretty soon the basic necessities will be out of reach of a large part of the population of the world. The inability to have access to adequate healthcare is the tip of the iceberg and as Al Gore will tell you; even that that iceberg isn't what it used to be.