* Don't you ever wonder about toilets? You fill them up with all kinds of nasty stuff, flush, and bingo, gone. Where does all that crap go?
* I sit in front of the computer and wonder-how can this thing be so smart? I don't know anyone smart enough to make it that smart.
* I can't come to terms with carpet cleaner. I prefer Resolve. You put it on a stain and bang, it's gone. Where does it go? I've been thinking of putting some on my fingers and shaking hands with Bush. What do you think?
* I wonder if we'll make it as a species? Homo sapiens. Some days I think the universe would be better off chewing us up and spitting us out. In another billion years or so, maybe we'd climb back out of the primordial ooze for an encore.
* Cell phones. No wires. Makes me wonder how they would have done it with wires?
* I wonder why aliens only show up in remote places and only let themselves be known to nut cases? I'd like to see them show up at a town meeting, just once.
* I can't make out the lyrics to many of the new songs. I wonder what that's about?
* How can you win an election without having the most votes? I wonder which Bush thought that up?
* If you think you have an exclusive arrangement with God, and that He or She somehow favors your politics, or ideology, or country, or military, or even religious belief, it makes me wonder whoever led you to believe that? There are a lot of different stairways to heaven.

I saw Dr. King in Chicago in 1967. I was there as a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in support of his public housing and equal job opportunities marches. In less than one year, he was killed in Memphis, on April 4, 1968, my twentieth birthday.
In honor of his birthday, here are some of my favorite quotes:

"Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

"When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong you cannot be too conservative."

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."

Happy Birthday, Dr. King. And thank you.

* Attend church irregularly.
* Spend more time practicing good. Get rid of the racial talk and jokes. Accept diversity. Give up the idea that your way is the only way.
* Rather than collecting possessions, collect friends.
* Don't believe everything you hear, even if the messenger is wearing a collar, a robe, or a designer suit. In fact, be real careful if they're wearing any of those.
* It is better to approach faith inwardly rather than outwardly. That way, you can own it rather than buy or borrow it.
* If you think your God is bigger and better than mine, how about letting me see you walk on a bed of red-hot coals, kind of as a sign?
* If you're practicing right-wing, Christian, Republicanism, get out. You been brain washed. Well, maybe.
* We are each fashioned after the Divine, which I interpret to mean we each have a touch of the Divine in us. We should treat ourselves and one another accordingly. Thus sayeth the Gospel According to The Peever.

This was lifted from one of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition shindigs:

Democratic Party="godless Democrats"; pro-choice advocates="baby
killers"; health-care reform="socialism"; gay rights
advocates="sodomites".

That should give you an idea of the level of idiocy we're dealing with. And their King is the President of the most armed and dangerous nation on earth, who in a moments notice can have civilization, as we know it, wiped out. Comforting thought. The moral of the story: the election this year should only be seen as a start of the right-wings decline. We cannot let up for a minute. They are still firmly in the drivers seat. Let's make sure the road they are traveling on is a one-way street to hell.

ALIVE IS BETTER THAN DEAD, AS FAR AS WE KNOW.