The word "lifestyle" should be a red flag whenever it's used.

In an earlier era, a "gay lifestyle" meant you wore overly-tight trousers and too much cologne. In the 1970s it meant you had a moustache and a bandanna of a specific color in your right pocket...er, left pocket...er, right pocket. You get the idea.

Craig lives an ostensible "straight lifestyle". That doesn't mean he isn't or can't be homosexual. This needn't imply that he's even in the closet.

But he's scared so he may be unwilling to be honest.

This is a shame, really, an embarrassment and it should have never happened. But people reap what they sow. Maybe he'll learn from this.

I'm being as magnanimous as I can.

"the popular TV show "Ow! My Balls!":OK, now THAT was funny!

Thanks!

Pardon me for posting a second time on this topic but I do not find this strip more than faintly amusing and barely so..

Never had a chance to enjoy this work in it's original incarnation so perhaps I need a backstory but really...

Tom Tomorrow, now HE's funny.

Sorry, BB, you had yer day in the sun.

I believe the source for this may be Terry Southern in his novel Blue Movie (1972).

But this time about consumer nostalgia: real-time nostalgia about something that exists in the present.

We're an amazing species and can waste our precious time ranting about...pretty much anything.

Thanks for the synopsis. This format works well and I wouldn't mind if you used it for the Democrats, too.

I'm not smart or well-informed enough to make a prediction but I'm feeling reckless today and want to riff on an earlier poster's hope that someday being a Republican will be a social embarrassment.

I'll go farther and predict that within seven years, the Republican Party as we know it will cease to exist.

There may be a small cadre of people who keep the old appellation but it will effectively be dissolved. For all the reasons you'd think.

Anyone take me to lunch if I'm right? :)

My credit card rate just went to 20%+.

It's called ethics, muh man, not survival of the most rapacious.

Mmmm, let's see...what's the recipe?

No universal health care (hell, Bill Frist said, "...can't happen in this country...") so the only way to avoid medical catastrophe is to work for someone else. Not for yourself and self-insurance is generally cost-prohibitive.

Let's change the bankruptcy laws...only "deadbeats" go bankrupt, right? Not because of medical bills or massive unemployment.

Speaking of, cherry-pick all statistics. Through manipulated indices, disinform. Modern service sector employment living standards cannot stand scrutiny.

Allow corporations to off-shore, allow wild financial devices and sub-prime mortgages. Overinflated mortgages sold under dubious terms to unsophisticated borrowers.

Extol American success stories like Wal-Mart, Enron. Over and over again propagandize an "ownership society" in which most could not partake of even in better times.

Distract and preoccupy by creating a miasma of Constant War with transferable and portable Enemy, The Terrorists.

Have some of your money buddies cash in some chips. Stand back and *voila* witness the further subjugation and continued creation of a subservient underclass for at least a few more generations.

The deployment of more troops wasn't to quell violence in Iraq, it's to have enough of a force to attack Iran.

Dude. Chill. Pill. Take.

Foolish soldier! He thinks service to his country earned him a hearing, assured him some status, an impeccable cred.

But it does not. None will be heard.

Rush right out and buy a high-def TV? Who can afford a high-definition TV?

And who wastes the precious time of their life playing games except adolescents who know no better?

Please, get a real life. One with people in it.

Like I said.

I am not getting this comic strip. I understand this cartoonist has a rep from a previous incarnation but in the few episodes published so far I am not charmed, amused, incited, excited, nada. Ho hum.

Don't "get it", sorry.

My subject line is a paraphrase from last night's (072807) Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.

At the end of his Friday night show he had a segment with Mark Shields and David Brooks, as he often does (I'll reserve my personal opinion of either men for another rant another time).

Among the topics was this past week's testimony by Alberto Gonzales before the Congressional committee headed by Patrick Leahy to which we have all been (well, some of us have been) witness.

Lehrer asked these two whether the American Public (all of us) has any interest in/is following the Gonzales issue and they both replied that No, the public seems to evince no interest in this.

While it's unwise to rely on anecdotal evidence to draw a complete conclusion on a subject, my personal experience is that many, many people are not just discussing but are nearly up-in-arms regarding the Gonzales testimony and are ready to run the man out of the country on a rail. We're sick of this, all of it, and Gonzales is a prime example of the bad actors in play.

On top of that to have overfed, overpaid TV pundits tell me what I'm thinking is to twist the knife. How dare they. Their opinions were apparently based on the content of questions at campaign appearances or other staged events where content is severely limited and edited. But they treat it as if it's fact and aid the powers-that-be in our blatant manipulation.

I thought better of Jim Lehrer but apparently this is the current course of our culture and of our awakening: One by one our institutions and public servants (elected or not) show us for whom they really work and how they're failing us and the scales fall from our eyes.

May we see clearly before it's too late.