Friday Update - "Do Not Feed the Animals"

(We should entitle this post "How To Attract Graceful and Beautiful Deer to Your Property," but we won't for reasons to become obvious.  First, wait until the weather is unseasonably warm, and then break out the old rototiller.  After you're done tilling the soil and fertilizing everything with expensive bagged fertilizer, jump in the truck and get your Farmer Freddie butt down to the local garden store and buy up as many tomato, pepper, and cucumber plants you can carry, but don't, repeat, don't forget the large expensive strawberry plants.  Wife likes fresh strawberries.  On your way home be sure to drop by your local liquor store and purchase your favorite alcoholic beverage, because you're going to need a drink before all this is over.  Now get home and start planting.  Make a hole in your freshly rototilled dirt, then bend over and pick up the potted plant, turn it over gently in your hand, tap the bottom gently several times, and the entire plant - root ball and all - will slip effortlessly into your outstretched fingers.  Oh, I forgot to mention the cursing.  Lots of cursing.  Repeat this step until you feel like slashing your wrists, or you run out of plants.  This is called "farming."  Most people "farm" using large mechanical equipment called "tractors" which do most of the difficult work automatically.  But you do not have a "tractor."  You have "cursing."  Lots of "cursing."  Now, those really expensive strawberry plants can be placed in a hanging pot, and can be placed on large wrought iron hooks in front of the kitchen window, where they can be observed and enjoyed for the rest of the summer.  Great idea, right?  Right.  After a couple of backbreaking hours you will be finished, with nothing left to do except to enjoy the verdant fields of succulent fruits and vegetables to come.   Be sure that the next morning you gaze out the kitchen window at the remnants of the strawberry plants, now reduced to mere tiny straw-like sticks.  Also be sure to stop "cursing" long enough to observe the garden area, now a verdant field of stubby foreign looking plant matter, scattered amongst about a hundred deep holes that will later be called "deer tracks."  Observe how the graceful and beautiful little animals haven't even had the courtesy to leave you a freaking "thank you" note.  At this point, when you have finished "cursing," be sure to remember your trip to the liquor store the day before.  Enjoy the rest of your day.  And we digress ... )

• Wrigley Field in Chicago has been the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs ever since the early 1900's.  It was named after a stick of gum - well actually the chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr - and up until 1970 it was also the home of the Chicago Bears football team.  The Chicago Cubs baseball team is now owed by a family trust managed by Joe Ricketts, a conservative billionaire.  Wrigley Field is a great old park indeed.  But it's in need of renovation, and it seems there's a problem with the raising of public funds for that renovation.  Arthur writes:  It turns out that the recent flap over a planned attack on Obama as a Jeremiah Wright sympathizer and a Metrosexual has had a bit of a backlash. The elder Mr. Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade (who are also not happy with the publicity) is an enemy of public funding, except that his kids were trying to get Chicago to put up half the money to refurb Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs… owned by the Ricketts family. Chicago Mayor? Rahm Emmanuel. Oooopsy...  "Mr. Ricketts became a case study in the risks of political neophytes with big checkbooks seeking to play at the highest and roughest levels of politics," writes the NYT. 
• For quite some time now the Republicans have been saying that they're going to come up with their own health care plan that would rival Obama's plan (good thing we haven't been holding our breath).  While some have said their plan would have a few good parts of Obama's  plan included, recently John Boehner nixed that idea by saying "We voted to fully repeal the president's healthcare law as one of our first acts as a new House majority, and our plan remains to repeal the law in its entirety."  So there.  When the Republicans have their way, tens of millions of Americans lose their health care coverage, seniors pay higher prescription drug costs, small businesses lose their tax breaks, and the deficit goes up by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.  In other words, everything must go.
• If I said there was one of our (The United States of America) states that might not have President Obama's name on the ballot this year because they're not sure if Obama is an actual American citizen, which state would you think that would be?  You're right!  Something's funny about Arizona.
• When President Obama finally declared he supported same sex marriage, reactions from both sides of the issue were quick and loud.  But one of the funniest and weirdest came from Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute, who accused President Obama of being gay.  What? you may ask.  Yep.  And what's more fun is this bizarre interview with Dr. Cameron, where he admits to his own attraction to men.
• But for sheer understanding of the homophobic mind, check out this video from Lincoln, Nebraska.