I do like plumbers (and anyone who can actually build something) and whitewater rafting (rather, whitewater canoeing, where the stakes are higher: canoes fold, spindle, and mutilate up against rocks, whereas rafts are for "dem damn tourists"). So, if that garners me your good graces, I'll just grab a paddle, tell my partner to hitch up his pants, and go find a wild river.

And what he asserts bears repeating: I attribute much malaise to perpetual competition and consumption.

You borrow money to redo your kitchen so that you can have a party so that people will envy you and your new kitchen and go home and borrow money to redo theirs so that you can envy them.

And in borrowing and hosting envy-parties, we miss out on what we miss most, which is connecting with a human being without the shine of stainless steel appliances in our eyes.

I would urge, "Simplify, simplify, simplify," but someone might take that as the cue to subscribe to Simple Living Magazine, so they'll know how to live simply, and to go shopping for Thoreau's words on a plaque to hang in their 3,500-square foot vacation home.

Consumption is consuming us. We can never have pretty enough large appliances or purchase a pretty enough face, but we're told to never rest and to keep rolling that ever bigger rock of debt up the hill, no matter how many times it rolls down.

Now, excuse me while I go purchase a new nose. My current one (and especially the nostrils) is so 2005.

It is your sort of offensively simplistic divisive post that drives sane people AWAY from anonymous posters.

I imagine them as 60somethings, who, in this cyber-age have traded skulking behind curtains and hoping for some kid to cross their lawn, so that they can yell, "Get off the grass!" for skulking about Broadsheet, so that they can yell, "Get off my ass!"

Here's what I suggest: Go buy the Bill O'Reilly Loofah (Buy it now and you'll also get the "No Spin Zone" coffee cup at half price!)! The BOR Loofah not only takes the mud off a curMUDgeon, but it might also distract from your dire duty of curmudgeonly bludgeoning, much as it distracts Mr. O'Reilly from time to time.

Thanks.

And, "Yikes," my hands are looking veiny. I don't want anyone to know I'm mortal, so I'll have to have the backs of my hands plumped with fat from me bum. Then, since big bums are still "in," I'll have to have me bum bumped with silicon. The redecorating never ends, does it?

Now, if I could only decide if I'll be leaving a lovely corpse or if I already look like an out and about corpse, due to my many, many surgeries.

She might actually keep many troops safe by being there. She'd be a target and in being that target, others wouldn't be targets. Why bother to target a no-name from Iowa when you can target the President's daughter? The key would be keeping other troops far from her.

To be kind, she could be given the Dukes of Hazzard car, the General Lee. With the pedal to the metal, the desert might get her, but the insurgents never will.

Seriously, she's a coward who doesn't believe in her Daddy's "WWIII" anymore than he does.

The fundies who voted for Bush should be begging to fight because they'll get to cuddle with Jesus that much faster. And Jesus loves this war, since Bush said that Jesus is his fave philosopher and that he consulted with Him before invading Iraq.

So, just like the Iranians were once given keys to Heaven for fighting Iraq, Bush can give keys to all young Republicans who fight, since Jesus wanted this war, as George discerned through his tete a tete with the Big Socrates (Sow-crates).

I wanna marry Cary.

Babies are welcome.

I've made enough the last couple years and I don't need more than enough to live, since I live so simply. So, if I miss Dow 15,000 or Dow 16,000, that's okay.

..."told them to stop behaving like children" and he wonders why these women won't listen to him. I wouldn't listen to a boss either if (s)he were so belittling.

"...while our president may not think gay people have the same rights as heterosexuals, at least he acknowledges that they exist."

Sorta.

If you hang your presidency on some citizens (straight people) being more equal than others (gay people), that's denying the merit of a person and to a degree, the full presence of a person.

Likewise, believing, as fundies (and likely their president) do, that gay people just choose to be gay to make Jesus weep, denies their sexuality and to a degree, their personhood.

Presidents Ahmadinejad and Bush, ideologically, are cuddle-buddies.

Likewise, there are fundies who secretly rejoiced when Iraq hanged gay citizens and wish(ed) that the U.S. would do the same.

Why not wish you're gay in America, where you can be fired in so many states and risk being beaten and killed in everyone for being gay? You could also pay full taxes for partial rights and know that fellow citizens, cowering behind pulpits, hang their alleged faith on hating you long and loud. And you win all this if you survive high school and the common consequent depression, as "faggot" sounds in every hallway.

Here's the difference between America and Iran regarding gay people. In Iran, the state hangs gay people. In America, Bush hangs his presidency and morality on being not gay and therefore better than gay.