"Swimming Lessons"

Mister Rogers at his creepiest. Where was Chris Hansen on this one? Keep those hands above the water Fred!

Sacrifice

President Bush announced yesterday he quit playing golf out of respect for the families of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war. His last round of golf was reportedly in 2003, when he decided it "just wasn't worth it" anymore. What an inspiring story. It is so rare these days that a leader truly leads. There are a lot of people out there saying they "support the troops," but who can claim they are actually making the kind of sacrifice President Bush has made? And the best part is that he never even wanted credit for it. He hasn't played golf since 2003, and he is just announcing this now? It just makes me so proud to be an American to think that President Bush has been silently suffering, not playing golf, for 5 years and we all had no idea.

I have to take back all those things I said about Bush not supporting the troops. Sure, he may have sent them into an unnecessary war based on questionable intelligence, put them in more danger by horribly mismanaging the post-invasion strategy and failing to provide them with decent armor and equipment, and for icing on the cake is stretching them to the breaking point with increasingly longer tours and inadequate leave, but wow, for almost the entire time he hasn't played a single round of golf! And we all know how much President Bush loves golf. It must be just about as much as our troops love their spouses and children, or as much as their families love them, or it would be a slap in the face, or, more appropriately, an IED in the cranium.

If President Bush loves golf as much as I love Creed, I totally know what he's going through. I remember when I gave up listening to Creed for Lent one year, and it was so hard! If giving up golf is as hard for the President as giving up Creed was for me, it must be totally killing him! Well not actually killing him, because that would be what's happening to our soldiers in Iraq, but I bet he really, really, really can't wait for this thing to be over so he can golf again. Which is weird, because he's had so many chances to stop the war from dragging on, yet he continues to veto any legislation with a timeline for troop withdrawal. I would think, knowing that as soon as the war is over he can golf again, he'd be jumping all over getting our troops out of there. Maybe he's just nervous about getting back on the links after such a big layoff. Or maybe he just wants to wait until after he's out of office, so he can avoid moments like these:

Bums, Tramps, Hobos, Transients, Layabouts

I live downtown and work only a few blocks away, so I walk to work. Because I walk to work, and because I live in this area, I encounter more than my fair share of homeless people on the street. It's really no big deal, other than I have to be careful not to step on them sometimes (seriously), but the encounters can often be fairly entertaining. For example, here is one recent exchange:

Homeless guy: Hey.
Me: Hey?
Homeless guy: What's the difference between an oral thermometer and a rectal thermometer?
Me: I don't know.
Homeless guy: The taste!

For some reason, I feel like he knew that from experience.

Another guy, awhile back, simply sat on a bench all day yelling at everyone who went by. I went by him twice and both times he was yelling, "Mutants! You're all damn mutants!"

Another lady would periodically sit on a bench outside my office window and yell at a pine tree for hours. I don't know what that tree ever did to her, but she was not happy about it. To the tree's credit, it didn't fight back. It just sat there and took the abuse. She spent a good few days yelling at the tree off and on, and then disappeared. Maybe the tree finally said it was sorry.

Just the other day, I passed two seemingly homeless people and one of them was asking the other one, "What's the difference between a tramp and a transient?" I don't think he was setting up a punchline for a joke, and if he was I didn't hear it. But if he really was asking because he wanted to know the answer, and if he is reading this, I would like to offer my theory:

A transient is someone who moves from place to place, with no permanent residence. A transient may be homeless from time to time, but is not necessarily so. A tramp is not necessarily a transient, nor is a tramp necessarily homeless. But a tramp will always accept money for sexual favors and if you go to prom with one you will never live it down. Used in a sentence: "Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are having a contest to see who can be the biggest tramp." Further, a bum is not necessarily a tramp nor a transient, but always smells like steel reserve and urine. A hobo is always a transient, not necessarily homeless, may be a tramp, and is always a bum. I hope this helps.

My favorite homeless people, by far, are Crabapple Guy and J.W. Crabapple Guy first appeared some time last year as a black cowboy, wearing a leather jacket (with fringe), cowboy hat, boots, and carrying a portable stereo. He would sit outside my window (which looks out over a courthouse lawn), not far from where the lady would argue with the tree, and blast his radio while singing (more like shouting) along. He never really stayed on the same station for more than a couple minutes at a time, and rarely shouted the lyrics accurately. Sometimes he would turn the radio off and have running conversations and/or shouting matches with himself. At one point he lost the radio, but that did not phase Crabapple Guy. Instead of singing to the radio, he stood underneath the American Flag and shouted the National Anthem as loud as he could. He saluted the whole time.

At this point you may be wondering why I call him Crabapple Guy. There is a crabapple tree in the courthouse lawn, and at one point last fall, after it had dropped all its crabapples, Crabapple Guy showed up with grocery bags and methodically harvested every single crabapple from the lawn. He gathered them a few hours a day for a couple weeks until they were all picked up. He didn't even keep the crabapples. He just left the grocery bags full of crabapples on the lawn. Done and done. And when the crabapples were gone, he would spend his time arranging pine cones into elaborate formations all over the lawn. If you live on a farm and you've ever had "crop circles" appear in your fields, you might want to find out if Crabapple Guy was in the area before you jump to any conclusions. He is extremely disciplined and devoted to whatever imaginary entity is telling him to complete these tasks.

J.W. is a tall, gangly fellow with a scraggly beard and worn out cowboy hat who was around a lot last summer. Most of the time I saw him he would be staggering around in the streets yelling at things that weren't there while making wild gestures and just generally being disruptive. But one time a friend and I were having a couple of beers on the patio of a downtown bar and we noticed him shuffle up to one of the tables on the outskirts of the seating area. Oddly for J.W., he just sat there quietly. We soon noticed he was sitting quietly most likely because he was fading in and out of consciousness. At some points, he would put his head down on the table and appear to pass out, but then he would suddenly come to and sit back up. We joked with the waitress that we were buying a shot for "the guy over there," pointing to J.W. She laughed and said, "If you actually do shots with him I'll buy." Opportunities like that do not knock twice.

She brought the shots over and we took them to J.W.'s table. I think they were Washington Apples.

Us: Hey, what's your name?
J.W.: J.W. And that's Bruce [gesturing to the seat next to his]. But Bruce left. [It should be noted that at no time prior to that did we ever see anyone sitting with him].
Us: Well, fuck him.
J.W.: [emphatically] Yeah, fuck him!
Us: Hey, we got shots. You want one?
J.W.: [laughing maniacally] Sure!
Us: To Bruce!
J.W. Bruce! [laughter, mumbling]

From then on, whenever we saw J.W. we would yell "J.W.!" and he would stop his staggering and gesturing, smile and yell something incomprehensible in our direction. I would like to think that we were J.W.'s best friend that summer. J.W., if you are reading this, come back this summer. Drinks are on us!

WWJD? Meth!

Complaining about anti-drug billboards because you don't think your kids should see them isn't normal, but for some Christians it is. The Montana Meth Project recently agreed to take down some of its more "disturbing" billboards after Christian and family groups complained. According the groups, many people objected to the ads because they didn't want to have to try to explain what was going on in the billboards to their children.

I have to applaud these people. Kids have enough to deal with these days without worrying about what meth might do to them. Things like grades, summer jobs, teachers, clubs, athletics, deciding where to go to college, and just fitting in socially produce enough pressure on kids without the added stress of having to figure out which drugs will make them think there are bugs crawling under their skin, compel them to let strange men have sex with them at truck stops, or turn them into razor-toothed parent and sibling-attacking zombies. If these billboards are allowed to proliferate and make kids too scared to do meth, that is just one more thing in this age of terror they are told they have to be afraid of. How are they supposed to cope?

I think Jesus is an obvious choice. Undoubtedly, these Christian groups are hoping kids will choose to go to their church instead of drug and booze parties. And I think they will. I have found that nothing relieves stress for me after a long week of getting dumped on by the Man better than sitting in a building the size of an airplane hangar with a bunch of lunatics while a guy screams at me to accept Christ or I'm going to Hell. The immediate need for mass quantities of mood-altering substances is definitely the last thing I am thinking about at churches like these.

And if these groups have their way, the mere thought of drugs of any kind will never cross these pure, innocent children's minds as long as they live. Again, I am 100 percent behind them. Why sully the landscape of our towns with horrifying images depicting the real consequences of meth use and put ideas in kids' heads at the same time? "You mean I can have sex with truckers on a dirty bathroom floor and make 15 bucks? Where do I sign up?" It best not to even allow kids to think they have the option.

I'm sure most kids would never have even heard of meth if not for these ads. And everyone knows the best way to make a kid want to do something is to have an adult tell him not to.
In fact, I don't think any parent should talk to their kids about drugs unless the kid has been addicted for at least 5 years. Just like sex, they won't know what it is until you tell them it's wrong, so why take the risk?

No, kids are obviously better off without these ads, or even having to think about them. Such graphic, realistic and arguably gratuitous depictions of gory violence should be reserved for only the most worthy of causes, like religion. That's why I think these groups should go one step further, and not only have all the meth billboards removed, but have them replaced with images from The Passion of the Christ.

Picture it: The words "Blasphemy: Not even once" across a billboard showing Jesus hanging from the cross pouring massive amounts of blood from virtually every pore in his skin while Roman soldiers drive the last nail into his foot, or "Glorifying sadistic execution rituals for profit isn't normal, but for churches it is," on a picture of the horrifying and seemingly implausible lakes of blood left on the ground after Christ was scourged at the pillar.

It can't miss. As the Montana Meth Project has proven (teenage meth use in Montana is down 45 percent, and meth-related crimes are down 62 percent), these billboards work. So with the meth ads gone and the new "Passion" billboards in effect, expect to see kids flocking to Christian churches statewide, and the so-called "drug problem" will be just a memory. Thanks, Jesus.