CLOGS!

I suppose that I should try to stop yelling.. see this font, it is normal size, and I hate it!. Apparently I have been screaming and yelling in cyberblab. So what if I like colouring my pages.

This morning someone asked," what are you 5?"
Yes I am 5. 5 going on 50/500/5000....nyeh!

Perhaps it is time to find a new thing. Blogs, for the most part, are love-ins between like minded strangers and friends. They are CLOGS (cliqueblogs). I have tried my hand at stirring it up a little by either charging or slathering into the comment sections of Blogs that I loved, loathed and benignly dismissed altogether, and still nothing. So FU, farewell unfazed.

Apparently, people don't venture out of their comfort zones even in cyberspace. I thought that this was a medium to test the limits of tolerance and really get into it without the constrictions of polite conversation and common sense. HA! Most Bloggers even conceal their real identities to allow themselves the freedom to say the things that they normally wouldn't, couldn't or dare I say it, shouldn't! Eventually they/we all seem to gravitate to Pleasantville, Cyberspace, for a nice chinwag and a few smatterings of encouragement. That's nice.

I don't know...maybe because it is cloudy today ..cue Moody Blues "I know you're out there somewhere" but geez, cue U2 "But I stillllll.... haven't founddddd... what I'm lookin' for". I had such modest hopes for this. Mind you I have found some fantastic OUT-THERE sites that are totally fun and interesting. I guess I've missed their entry/best before date. Most people are doing this as some sort of glorified E-MAIL with their buddies. I guess that's OK. Whatever! I don't think that my point of view is any more irrelevent, irreverent, irrational, irreducible, irreparable, irrepressible, irritable, irredeemable, irrecusable, irreligious or irrefutable than any others. Hey I'm OK you're OK.

Feh! Enough with the farshlugginer kvetchin'already....Today during my regular allotted rant hour I'm going to blog off and snoop around. Hopefully they all won't be CLOGS. Then I'm going OUT OF DOORS, to the real world, with my young charge, almost 5 himself, Sir Ridley.

Together we will discover something new and interesting every 5 seconds....

How cool is that!?

FOR PUCK SAKE!
Did you know (or care) that the National Hockey League was hosting a Play0ff series this year? Apparently it's GAME ON GARTH!

The devastating NHL strike of 2005 is now but a bad memory. (the what?) Yes, unbeknownst to the rest of the Entertainment World the playoffs are back. Hardly anyone noticed, outside of Kommissar Bettman's office, that the collosal clash between millionaire owners and millionaire players not only crippled the Canadian Economy but nearly brought all multicellular life on this planet to a premature and cataclysmic demise! WOW!

It is a welcome relief to see the absolute,very best of the 3,000 (rough estimate) teams back in action in their quest for the Stanley Park Cup. Personally I abandoned the league sometime in the 1880s after the dynastic Edmonton Oilers group was eviscerated and the last real team was finally killed off by the owners. By team I of course mean a group of individuals who play together, sometimes for two consequtive seasons. WOW!

These days the unpopular consonent laden names of unrecognisable players evaporate into the darkest corners of my mind where I keep the latin names for insects and my PIN numbers.

When I was a lad Springtime mean't one thing, Bicycles! no I mean Playoffs! Every boy in the country would race out of their homes before and after every game to ride their Bikes, I mean play street hockey. Yes Hockey still had relevence and the NHL even had identifiable stars, Orr, Mahovolich, Makita, LaFleur, Hull, Howe, Unitas, DiMaggio, I could go on and on. Yes even the biggest weiner in your classroom (that would be me) could rattle off the names of almost every player in the league.WOW!

Since then the NHL has all but disappeared from the cultural radar map of Canada. Now the watered down 3000 team league has lost it's mojo. It is not entirely NHL Kommissar Bettman's fault either. The Information Age inevitably, and mercifully some would add, destroyed, no, disintegrated the time honored image of the sports hero. Today we have the shenanigans of uber-role models like O.J.Simpson, Kobe Bryant, and the lovable Barry Bonds to look up to.. WOW!

But more than this it was Presidente for Life Napolean Bettman and his zany expansion plans that included teams in East Timor, Addis Ababa, Tel Aviv, Naples and the lost City of Atlantis that has somehow completely backfired. Yes, the years of unbridled hubris have ended in a Waterloo of sorts for hockeynut Bettman. The dream of world dominance died in the bowels of the Deep Southern US marketplace where hockey now competes 'toe-to-toe' with 'possum racing.

Expanding to a league of some 3000 teams has watered down the talent pool to the point where three periods of hack, clutch, snore, slash and diving to a 2:1 victory is considered an offensive bonanza. WOW! Yes even a disinterested small child in Ethiopia understands why lumbering defensive behemoths now outnumber exciting speedy finesse players by a ratio of one million to one.

The number 2 problem: Fighting in Hockey is indefensible, extremely tedious, and a mystery to every man, woman and child outside of Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. It is a black hole that is sucking the ratings life out of the game. Consentual Assault and Battery exists only to satisfy the deep and troubled psychological needs of tens of hundreds of passive/aggressive Canadians.
Fighting is so anti-everything that sports should be (trying to KILL your opponent is called WAR) that it is truly laughable for anyone to try to defend it. HA HA HA HA!
Hey kids even if you can't skate or shoot a puck, if you can strike another person in the face with extreme prejudice (but without malice aforethought) you can still make it to the show. WOW!

The admittedly seasonal/marginal viewer like myself, now happily satiated by World Junior and Olympic Hockey, pucked off long ago. Sorry Sydney, but I can't help but believe that the league will turn into a Globe Trotter type sideshow in the next twenty years just as the futurists predicted. An Extinction Level Event will occur to the NHL unless of course a couple of dinosaurs like Gretz and Mario take over and fix it.

Way, way up here in the Great White North, look up Gary, waaay up, there ya go, way up here in Whateverpeg the collapse of the Jets has left a permanent stain that cannot be erased from our civic psyche. Unfortunately the present somnambulistic sideshow that you (and your avaristic masters) have created is a mere shadow of the once proud traditional (more or less mandatory) Canadian Institution.

It is an insult SIR to the tens of hundreds, if not more, of puckheads like me who grew up loving..er..really enjoyed the game...um...or who atleast used to watch the flippin' playoffs. Let our battlecry ring forth across this land. 'Je me souviens Hockey!'
Kommissar Bettman, Good Day to you Sir!

LIFE IS A GARDEN, DIG IT!

I recently updated my Blogger profile. I have come to realise that something profound has happened to me during the last three months thanks in part to Blogging.

Now I don't have to wait (although I find it irresistable) to disseminate my entire worldview upon some naive soul at a social gathering who inadvertently asks me how my children are doing. This tedious habit has historically been fueled by several double shots of Appletons and generally ends poorly with both of my feet hanging from my mouth. DOH!

Blogging affords me the luxury of controlling a system for exchanging ideas and information that I can edit when I am completely wrong about something. I can manage the free distribution of personal propaganda, dumb ideas, and poorly thought out points of view on any subject matter. Voila, I have my own little magazine/diary for that cranial junk drawer that I call my brain.

My recent travels in cyberspace have justified my suspicions that I am far from unique in my intellectual quest to have my parking pass (existence) validated.
By searching other Blogs it is now blatantly apparent that there are literally hundreds, thousands and maybe even millions of other human beings on the planet (big surprise) with rich imaginations and fantastic well organised worldviews that I can now interact with. And don't forget all of those wonderful idiots to torment. This is heaven!

For the first time IN A LONG TIME, maybe even since high school, I feel connected. The best part is that at the age of 48 (hey, 50 is the new 40) I either am or atleast feel truly free from the hormonal slavery and peer pressure of my youth, and the mindnumbing tedium of the following ratrace years. Welcome to the Middle Ages.

That doesn't guarantee that I won't still make a complete ass of myself, just read my posts! It does mean that the semi-isolation of being a humble, stay-at-home Dad in a world that boasts 793 Billionaires is more palatable. Hey, with enviable scallywags like George Clooney and Colin Farell out there it is easy to think that you're missing something. I'm not really. My life is now considerably more balanced. It would appear from this sugarcoated posting that my testosterone levels have dropped faster than the Icarian like plummet of Tom Cruise from Olympus.

I consider this electronic outlet the icing on my wonderful little life which I am insanely lucky to share with a beautiful, patient wife, four brilliant, charming children, loving family, and a handful of close, supportive, friends . I hear violins..what the?...OK..we're coming back from commercial...switch to camera 2...camera 2 a little tighter please...and cue...in 3,2 NOW..

I was intent on discussing how it took something like 14 days for the news of the assassination of President Lincoln to sail across the Atlantic, mere minutes to report the death of John Kennedy via TV, and that today bad news would be measured in seconds on the internet. But whatever..I'll save it for a rainy day.

Have a nice weekend...Life is a Garden, DIG IT!

PS. We now return to our regular scheduled program....I knew it...I knew it the second that I clicked Publish Post...my Mom emailed me and said, didn't you forget someone dear, signed chopped liver? GAWD! I probably deserve that but she never reads these things! Now I have to do an entire post on how wonderful my Mom is. Then in the twinkling of an eye, my four year old, in a fit of spring fever, decided to go au natural in our enclosed backyard, and proceeded to uncharacteristically apply #1 (weed killer) and #2 (fertiliser) to the lawn. UGH! YOU DID WHAT? My brief moment of serenity is shattered and the reality check is now complete.

I can certainly state for the record and without fear of contradiction, that it will always be impossible to A. pretend that you have-it-all-together and B. please everybody all of the time.

THE TOP TEN
UNSEXIEST MEN!
(Summer Re-Run March 06)

Well since nobody cared to plod through my previous ranting of the day (defending gay people gawd!) so I might as well reveal my encyclopedic ignorance of something else.
A-Ha!
Today's biggest news story: The 100 unsexiest men in the world?

What sort of sick, disenfranchised, little, twirps wasted all of that time and energy creating this list anyway. These poor bastards on the list are as the Good Lord made them. Let's see some photos of the scoundrels who created this list!

While the price of Oil is set to take off in the $70-$100 per barrel range (and upward for the rest of your life) here we are discussing mugs?
Iran Nukes? Hamas bombings? Solomon Islands? World Peace?
No not even something as pedestrian as the price of gas..HELLO!..
howzabout a little reminder of what gas hikes signal....

cue Aretha Franklin..
R-E-C-E-S-S-I-O-N
sock it to me sock it to me....
Nope...doesn't ring a bell?
Alrighty then, never frickin' mind.

Therefore I must humbly concede to the lowest common denominator but on my own terms. I cannot dignify this unsexiest 100 list with a reply because,
A. I don't recognise half of the names on it and
B. as you know, everything is beautiful in it's own way (barf!). These men have families, friends and feelings you heartless bastards! I am reminded of a fabulous Yiddish phrase:
There is a LID for every POT.

Allow me to present, for my enjoyment, a list of unsexy men who are currently dead or as good as dead.
I can promise you that I won't be sending any of these guys into a shame spiral.
Here then is my highly unexpected list of the
TOP TEN UNSEXIEST MEN.....

J. EDGAR (nice dress buddy) HOOVER









IDI AMIN DOODOO









kiss my HEINY HIMMLER










LIL' KIM










GENERAL WRONG-SIDE-OF-THE-BED SHERMAN










EYE-FOR-AN-EYE-ATOLLAH KHOMEINI










PRIME RIBMEISTER NORTH











VLAD (DRACULA) the IMPALER










YASSAR HE'S MY BABY!











and last but not least,
SATAN







WHO WOULD YOU ADD?

HOMOPHOBIC ESCAPEONS

Well, well, well, the US Supreme Court
has refused to hear the Reverend
Jerry Falwell's trademark infringement suit against Christopher Lamparello.
Mr. Lamparello operates a website known as www.jerryfallwell.com *notice the double L.

Lawyers for the Lynchburg, Virginia based Falwell (Lynch-burg, God does have a sense of humor) accused Lamparello of cyber squatting and stealing customers. They argued that it was a trademark infringement. The Supreme Court decided to dismiss this frivolity.

What Mr. Lamparello does on his website (complete with disclaimer and redirectional click to the reverend) is cerebrally battle against Jerry's war on homosexuality. Jerry believes that being gay is not only a sin but an affliction or disease (like measles) that can be healed.

Like any biblical blowhard worth his salt,
Jerry draws upon a few handpicked scriptures to support his theory. Mr. Lamparello deftly
exposes other politically incorrect scriptures
that Jerry refuses to enforce (but I'm sure he's tempted) such as stoning brides who
aren't virgins, supporting slavery, keeping women silent and covered in church, and
ensuring that men keep their hair short.

Poor Jerry, as a goyum gaybasher, he ironically presents himself as the polar opposite of the compassionate Yeshua bar Yusef of Nazareth. I find that a little queer!

These days Jerry is regularly (unwittingly one assumes) used as a foil on newscasts featuring debates on ignorance, intolerance and his latest victim global warming.
undoit.org Jerry dispels global warming as a non-threat to our 6000 year old planet and a 'lie from the Devil' and environmental atheists ie. Democrats.
Maybe he has global warming confused with glowbowl warming. Yeah that could be, Jerry strikes me as sort of a straight ten pin kind of guy.

Jerry must believe that he is perceived by the viewers as some sort of modern day-divinely inspired-reformationist-prophet. In reality he is paraded about by the media as a living parody. He comes across as a smarmy, self righteous, know-it-all, blowhard, religious nutjob. Yessiree, this funny little pharisee really gets under your skin when he opens his piehole.

Regretably, Jerry and his adherents
in the far-right/always right spectrum of the religious world are on a crusade. These people are still espousing their irrational homophobic prejudice as divine truth and fight against Gayism with almost (but thankfully not quite) the same fervor that was used on Jews(Christ Killers) during the Spanish Inquisition. Oy! What's with all the Jewish references? Last night I viewed a horrific accounting of the systematic destruction of the European Jews in Auschwitz. I am still angry and saddened by the depravity of mankind. I recognise that there are terrible consequences for ignoring hateful, ignorant men who can implode our world in their pursuit of delusional grandeur. Religious and political powerbrokers can be extremely hazardous to your health.

Being Gay, Jerry, is not the same as having the measles. I won't bore you with the usual scientific evidence of the altered hypothalmus and the 34% larger (ooh la la!) anterior commisure discovered in gay men. Check out How Big is God's Hypothalmus? @ http://LARGETONY and for further hypothesis on the hypothalmus www.genuinejeff.com/researchdata.

What about the obvious self evident nature of homosexuality. Let's just say that most of us pretty much 'get' the gay thing. We 'get' the not-so-inside jokes on Will and Grace. When Jack says "That is SO gay!"we laugh with them, not at them.

It seems fairly obvious to most of us that individuals are genetically predisposed as such. Oh yeah, and one other little thing, every family has someone hiding in or waltzing out of the closet.

Oh sure a few brave, curious, souls try it out for size, but 99% are naturally here and queer so get used to it. Let it go! Try something a little more Christ-like for a change, like tolerance!

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion?To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."

Thomas Jefferson
(ref. Bartlett's 16th Ed., p.343)

THE LOWDOWN ON HEIGHTISM!

This morning my brain is wrestling with Giraffes. You see my body type could best be described as the polar opposite of the lanky Giraffe.

In fact, it could be said that my body type more closely resembles that of the the jolly mesomorphic Wombat.

Therefore to my way of thinking Giraffes are by far the most impossibly, elegant creature on the planet.

Graceful, gorgeous, tall and serene, they seem to live above the fray.
From their lofty point of view Giraffes can atleast appear to ignore the depravity of nature red in tooth and claw.


We homo escapeons love tall people, buildings, and tales. Unfortunately my Swedish, Belgian and Prussian gene pool could only muster a mere 5'9"s of verticality when I am fully erect (hee hee).

Oh well. After 49 years I've learned to deal with my substandard leading man stature.

These days it seems as if everybody is getting taller.

It wouldn't be as irritating or discouraging if it wasn't for the discrepancy between my moderate elevation and those of my children and their friends. Most of my children's friends, despite being disarmingly cordial and remarkably entertaining, are all freakishly tall and the vast majority of them tower above me.

Did you know that the average soldier in the American Civil War was 5'5'', now the norm is 5'10".

During the 1860's, a guy like Abe Lincoln who was 6'4" must have stood out like a pyramid.

Intimidating other males would be insanely easier if I was 18 feet tall like a bull Giraffe. As a youth I could always easily outrun big and tall bullys and dive into impossibly small spaces where I could nibble on acorns and nuts.

Nowadays, to thwart being accosted during random encounters with panhandlers, skinheads and serial killers, I must rely on simple bluster. Idiots who exhibit a failure to resist aggressive impulses will be subsequently exposed to some old fashioned intermittent explosive disorder.

Squished into my gravitationally challenged form is 200 lbs. of unbridled chub which is purposefully exaggerrated by my brain as herculean muscle.

C'est la Vie!
I am as some say as the Good Lord intended. Remember that great line in the film Chariots of Fire,"when I waddle, I feel his pleasure!

It would be heavenly to be a Giraffe. Up there you can calmly go about your business and quietly ignore the day to day carnage on the deck of the Savannah far, far below.

Anyway dealing with Short Guy Complex is way, way too much work and so blatantly tedious. Besides, my other far more interesting phobias and quirks keep me engaged and occupied 24/7 thank you very much.

Besides, trying to overcompensate the psychological burden of Short Guy Complex can lead you into a lot of trouble. For instance, I have learned to control the primal urge to conquer Europe. It would be pure folly to ignore the tragic tale of the most famous short guy in all of history Napolean Bonaparte.

Therefore I leave you with this thought.

A distinct advantage of being short is that other people have a tendency to underestimate you and it only takes half the effort to impress them.

Here, for my enjoyment, are other vertically challenged males who have fought the thinly veiled disdain of tall people and prevailed over heightism:

Tom Cruise, Michael J Fox, Prince, Danny DeVito, Willie Shoemaker, Dudley Moore, Olga Korbut, Pauls Simon and Williams, and my personal hero Jiminy Cricket.

THE BANDIDOS ARE BACK!

Well Spring is officially here in Whateverpeg.

Now that it's a little warmer outside the street urchins have resumed their nightly efforts to break into the the van. There are flowers blooming, birds galore, and the masked Bandidos have returned.

This morning at 1 am I heard a crash in the backyard. I grabbed my baseball bat and ran out the back door. At the foot of my landing lay a huge, wheezing Raccoon.

This Raccoon was huge! I mean this guy was the Orson Welles of the Raccoon world. Apparently He had just fallen off the fence and knocked the wind out of his lungs. Poor guy just stared at me and sighed. I could tell that He was thinkin,'Ah sh*t do I have to climb back up this 6 foot fence!'

We sat and stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. The Raccoon realised that I wasn't going back in the house so He sighed, rolled his eyes and painfully hauled his fat arse back over the fence. It was pathetic. I thought about giving Him a boost at one point. I also wondered if I was going to have to perform CPR on him.
When He finally made it to the top of the fence He rolled onto the roof of my neighbour's aluminum garden shed. Creeeeaak BANG! It sounded like the whole structure would collapse.

The Raccoon finally hobbled off at a glacial pace and I decided to go to bed. Obviously the Raccoons are getting plenty to eat this spring. I don't think that I will bother summoning the Raccoon Trapper this summer. The last time we had a trap set in the yard the smell of sardines had lured every Cat from miles around to gleefully come and crap in our flower beds.

I guess that I can deal with Raccoons playing with my Son's toys in his little pool for another season. But cats in the flowers, Not So Much!

MUSIC SHOULD BE HEARD AND NOT SEEN

Although I have thousands of songs in my music library I keep burning the same 22 songs. What's that about? My brain turns to sawdust and flakes down into my shoes when I attempt to assemble the ultimate CD.

Back in the day, the early 70s, when the SONG was more important then the VIDEO, people had to rely on their own mental imagery for every song. It was possible for different people to love the same song but individually it was a unique experience. Back then it was a personal sojourn and vastly more satisfying than the spoon fed hype of today. Isn't it?

Now in the 21st Century the visual presentaion overpowers the aural like a Pacman chomping through your imagination.
Homo escapeons are afterall is said and done visual animals so this is to be expected. But what a shame.

Gone are the lyrical journeys of the mind. Each song a personal meandering of images provided by your own imagination, memories and the occasional mind altering supplements.
(Hey Kids..Score Goals Not Drugs!)

Of course enough cannot be said of the potent combination of heartache and hormones. Hormonal input during puberty overwhelms the senses (especially Common Sense) and everything is SO EXTREME! That is why those songs from your youth stick with you.

This also explains the phenomenon of the hearthrob industry that began with the first idol Frank Sinatra and a new medium to sell him, Television. Imagine an intergenerational idol that both parents and their kids could enjoy. Next came hip-twistin' Elvis Presley and American Bandstand to permanently divide the music world into Youth and Old Folks. Then the Beatles and Woodstock came along at the perfect point in time for the Baby Boomers to exploit and widen the generation gap. Finally MTV and the VIDEO invaded our craniums and the rest is history. The next stage will be life-size holographic images of your favorite artists performing in your living room. WO!

In any event my discombobulated brain requires certain songs for specific moods and festivities. I will never be able to burn my 22 favorite songs without a forethought about the circumstances in which they will be played. I also require a thoughtful taxonomy to organize compilations of songs into meaningful categories.

I quess I have OCD: Obssessive Compilation Disorder.

In any event music can: soothe my soul, rock my world, shake my booty, get it on, expand my horizons and lift my spirits.


Despite the constant R-R-R-RINGING-G-G in my ears and the occasional flashback WO! (thanks'70s) I could not live without my tunes. Back then songs really were I TUNES!

*featured are some of my faves: Bowie/Roxy Music/Go Team!/Kate Bush/Imogen Heap/Split Enz/Cure and the indefatigable Keif!

SAD BUT TRUE!

I was painting again last night and my brain was in desperate need of cheap entertainment. The drudgery was nearly killing me. I knew that I had to combat the tedium to maintain my sanity so I struggled to come up with a new LIST of things to think about. The problem was that I was running out of ideas. I needed something that wasn't too complicated but amusing enough to get me through the next hour....and I had already pondered...

the best songs of each decade from the 60s to the present in each of the rock/dance/pop categories,

the most painful and terrifying ways to die (including attacks from a T-Rex, Hyaenas or Great White Shark/plane crash into a volcano/swallowing a poison frog/ burned at the stake by the Spanish Inquisition/multiple gunshot wounds and falling off the Empire State Building/ a broken heart/suffocation from an airbag deployment/Alien probing etcetera),

the worst movies ever made that didn't feature George Kennedy, special effects monsters or any Saturday Night Live Alumni in them,

the happiest philosophers of all time, Hmmmm,

and the absofrickinlutely dumbest things that I have ever said to a Police Officer, Teacher, Proctologist or Girlfriend's Father...

Unfortunately the only distraction that my pathetic brain came up with were the alternate terms for penis and testicles that boys discover in the Third Grade.

Young lads are simultaneously enthralled and horrified with their mini me. For instance, no amount of therapy can ever erase the astonishing embarrassment of getting caught in class with a boner or a woody! By the same token if something humiliating happens to some other kid it is priceless.

To this day various terms inexplicably still make guys (sadly all men are stuck in the Third Grade) smile and giggle like schoolboys!? I know that it is childish but if you don't believe me just read them out loud ...for instance..

OOAH! Hey Guys LOOK Kevin just blocked a shot right in the ______A-HA!
(dingle berries, nuts, cookies, knackers, popsicles, sack, bag, and jewels)

Hey Guys LOOK Chris caught his _____ in his zipper ... A-HA!
(pecker, schlong, wanger, weiner, winky, wee wee, dork, dink, knob, tool, todger, schrinky, trouser schnauzer, noodle, doodle, schmekel)

Expectant Parents take notice:
Lord help you if your last name sounded like any one of the previous terms. The list of obvious first names to avoid if at all possible (including Harry) is displayed below. Actually any combination of the above terms and following names is fair game in the Third Grade. For the record it doesn't matter how a name is spelled or even pronounced as long as it even remotely sounds like ...

Hey Guys LOOK it's_______ A-HA!
(any combination of the above terms and following names: rod, peter, dick, johnson, willy, percy, woody and john thomas)

Sad but true!

KILLING THE EUNICHORN
(THE DAY THAT HOPE DIED)

I was painting all weekend and experienced a severe case of PB. PB or Painter's Brain is a semi-hallucinogenic trance like state induced by moving your arm up and down 3 million times in one day. It is Kinetic Chanting if you must know. Once fully induced your subconscious gleefully wrestles through the clutter of the right here/right now thinking mode and you start to examine deep thoughts with a crystalline clarity.

That is why I was immediately tormented by the realisation that Clay Aiken actually lost to Reuben Stoddard on American Idol. Let's face it, since then the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. It occurred to me that I haven't felt that shocked or depressed about world events since Bobby Ewing arose from the dead in the shower scene on Dallas!

Seriously, if ever there was a chance for mankind to right some wrongs and get back on track it was the opportunity to crown Clay Aiken as the American Idol. Since then we've had nothing but bad news: the War in Iraq, Asian Bird Flu and the absolute worst case scenario GASP the rapid devaluation of the uber film star and all-around-godsend Tom Cruise.

We have all witnessed Tom's self inflicted charismacide and Q-Rating implosion by couch jumpin' his way (like Tigger) from being the coolest guy on earth to some weird sort of creepy, katienapping, Scien-gerontologist. Eeew! His desperate cry for help is well documented by his mortal enemies at the American Psychiatric Association and more importantly, Enterpainment Tonight. Can you sense the irony? The analysis and treatment that he so fervently despises may be his only hope. OMG! What the hell is happening to our world?

But I digress....OK... remember when Reuben Stoddard stood before the world as the freshly minted American Idol? You could hear the gasp of disbelief that circled the globe (well the room anyway). Not because it so eerily mirrored the OJ Simpson verdict No No NO! Whoa Nelly we ain't goin' there. No it wasn't because Reuben was black. Reuben was a fabulous vocalist and a giant Teddy-Bear to boot! No my friends this is not about the colour of a man's skin. This is about something far more important than Human Rights or Racial Equality. This is about Showbiz dammit and Clay was a better Entertainer! He was Eunique! Yes, a little part of me died that day and I don't think that I will ever get it back.

Historians will someday write about that Televisual moment as a pivotal point in the evolution of our two greatest human inventions: Civilisation and Entertainment. Of course we can't change it now. What's done is done. You should ask yourself, 'who really killed the Eunichorn that day?' You did you bastard! You should have picked up the phone and voted for Clay. I hope that you can live with that. How do you sleep at night?

All I could do to console myself was to play Invisible over and over and over again in my head. I personally think that Clay should record Cher's song If I Could Turn Back Time just to rub our noses in it. For gawdsake Clay, come out, come out, wherever you are!