It’s a bit snowy and chilly today so I thought I’d just sit here and ramble for a while.
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This is the fourth day since my cataract surgery, so I’m still feeling my way along life’s path. I had the left eye done Thursday, and the right will be done on Feb. 6 — in the meantime my glasses are as useless as breasts on a firetruck.

The vision in my left eye is really coming along nicely. It should be healed and ready to go in another week or so. It’s already much better than the pre-op vision.

By the way, if any of you kiddies ever have to have such surgery, don’t sweat it. Despite the fact that they were inside my eye chopping the old out and sticking the new in, it was totally painless. I’ve had more discomfort while getting a haircut.
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I’m upset by the announcement that we are selling 84 of our fancy jet fighter planes to Saudi Arabia. We will also give (SELL) them helicopters, missles, bombs, delivery systems, radar, and night-vision goggles–and they will pay us 60 billion dollars for all those deadly toys. Who gets all that money? Does any of it come to you?
It makes me nervous when we sell boom-booms to Muslim nations. Too often they come back to bite us on the ass. Most of the arms that bin Laden used against us were made in the USA, back when we considered him one of the good guys. Even if the friendly purchasers don’t use the armament against us directly they seem to like selling the stuff to people who are inclined to look upon us with disfavor when we invade their country and kill their men, women and children — and then pee on the bodies.
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Have you ever taken a close look at bird’s eyes? They are proof that they are the direct descendants of dinosaurs. Look into the eyes of an eagle, owl or hawk and you see something that would like to gobble off all your most tender appendages.
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I’m always anxious to excuse some of the silly things we do, and to believe that we are still the greatest country on Earth. Then I see the TV ratings and learn that most Americans get their news and analysis from Fox News! FOX NEWS! No wonder most of the rest of the world thinks we should be kept in a cage.
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When I wrote of Christopher Hitchen’s great quotes I forgot to include one of my favorites: “If Jerry Falwell had been given an enema at his death he could have been buried in a matchbox.”
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I read this morning that four more of our soldiers were killed over there. It was reported that “Our brave boys gave their lives…” Bullshit. None of those kids wanted to give their life for that foolishness..Those young lives were TAKEN not given.
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Don’t forget your coat.

My blessed Current Wife (going on 50 years now) wouldn’t watch or read Bill Maher if you had a gun to her head — but she knows that I consider him brilliant and hilarious, so she bought his new book for me for Christmas. It’s called “Bill Maher–the NEW new rules.”
Here are some samples of why I love the book:

NEW RULE: No black athletes in the Winter Olympics. There’s a reason we schedule these things in the cold and snow — so tropical people won’t show up and kick our ass. Look, you’ve got football, baseball, basketball and the presidency. Is it too much to ask that you leave us ice skating?

NEW RULE: Did you know that there is now floating in the Pacific Ocean a 3.5 million-ton island of shit made up of all the indestructible crap we toss away, the stuff that will never break down,like Styrofoam and old Clorox bottles? And it’s twice the size of Texas — that’s right, the Pacific Ocean now contains more white trash than Texas.

NEW RULE: People talk a lot about a third political party in America. We don’t need a third party, we need a FIRST party. This is because we don’t have a left and right party in this country anymore. We have a center-right party and a crazy party. Over the last 30 years the Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital. So what we have is one perfect party for hedge-fund managers, credit-card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical companies — that’s the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat earthers and Civil War reenactors who communicate via AM radio and call themselves Republicans, and who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He’s not even a liberal…Shouldn’t there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military budget? A party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, legalized pot, and steep direct taxing of polluters?

NEW RULE: Someone has to make a mustard container that doesn’t squirt out yellow water before it gets to the actual mustard. I get all excited for lunch and then Grey Poupon pees on my sandwich.

NEW RULE: I’ve heard many women ask, “Why don’t they make a Viagra for women?” They DO. It’s called an M&M.

NEW RULE: Let the Pope be the Pope. An animal rights group in Italy has asked Pope Benedict to give up his fur-trimmed hat and cape. To which the pope answered, “Don’t be hatin’ on my cape, bitch.” Sorry but popes are the original divas, they invented bling, they’ve been wearing outlandish outfits for a thousand years –almost as long as Elton John. The clothes, the jewels, the fancy palace…those aren’t just symbols of the papacy, they ARE the papacy. The day the pope shows up on that balcony in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt is the day Catholics finally go, “What the hell were we thinking?”

NEW RULE: If churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry, Reverend, that’s one of those “services” that go along with “payin’ in.” I’ll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.

NEW RULE: The L.L. Bean catalog doesn’t need to have a black guy in it. I know they’re trying to be inclusive, but not once in our nation’s history has a black man put on a turtleneck and wrinkle-resistant chinos, slipped on his moose-hide slippers, gone to the mailbox and proclaimed, “Yes! The L.L. Ben catalog is here! Now I can get the canoe I’ve always wanted!”

SEE WHY I LIKE BILL?
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FIGHT FORTH

There have been more amazing changes during my lifetime than during the previous thousand years — and most of them are IMPOSSIBLE.

Take airplanes for example. The very idea that I can board an machine as big as a football field, and weighing more than 22 pregnant elephants, and then sit there having beer while it dashes down the strip and hurls itself into the air and take me to New York in two hours is crazy. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

Computers are also impossible. There used to be firm advice to young writers: “If you don’t live near a great library, move!” Now the worlds’s great libraries are cuddled here inside this amazing little machine on my desk. The idea that I can sit here and hit a few keys and send my nutty ideas around the world (Hi Ann, down there in Australia). THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

When I was a kid the family telephone was a big black thing attached to the wall, and it was as heavy as a bowling ball — and if you stayed on it for more than a minute your mom reminded you that “Phone calls cost money!” Today phones are as big as a thumb and weigh as much as a butterfly’s burp — and the calls are either cheap or free. And now we have something called skype, which lets me sit here in Montana and visit with my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids in California and Nevada and actually see them on the screen. They can see me and I can laugh and gab with them, all for free. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

Then came Christmas and I got something called a Kindle. What the hell kind of name is that? They told me what it would do, and I responded “Bull Pucky.That can’t be done.” And then I went ahead and did it. They said I could load thousands of books onto this skinny goofy-looking little thing that is the size of a paperback book, but weighs about as much as three marshmallows — and many of those books were free! In one afternoon I requested and received more than a hundred books absolutely free. Now I can carry a big fat library in my pocket. Any time I want to I can visit with Thoreaux, George Carlin, G.B.Shaw, Shakespeare, Sinclair Lewis, Bill Maher, H.L. Mencken, Edith Wharton, Steinbeck and Mark Twain. They join hundreds of others who just sit there in my pocket until I beckon them forth. I like to read history books at night in bed, and most good history books weigh enough to cause hernias, but with my little Kindle I can read them with one hand while scratching something with the other. I got,for FREE, all six books of Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” for NADA. This morning, while working out at the gym, I had a delightful visit with the late Christopher Hitchens. We talked religion. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

When I look into the faces of my wee great-grandkids I wonder what amazing changes they’ll face during the next few decades–but you can be sure there’ll be lots of IMPOSSIBLE things.

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FIGHT FORTH!