Obama Man Can, Y'all

This requires no introduction ...

... and no commentary, except to say that I like this because these days, if I don't laugh, I'll cry.

And laughing is much more better!  Satisfying and delicious ... you can even eat the dishes.

Beautiful? You Decide.

It has been well documented that I am not often rendered speechless.

However.

When it was brought to my attention this morning that People has published a new 100-Most-Beautiful list and two names (and faces) in particular are on it, I couldn't think of a thing to say for, like, fifteen whole seconds.  The silence was deafening.

Happily, I recovered.

People (and People) ... Turbo-Tax Tim Geithner and First Malady Michelle Obama? On a list of booful peoples? My retinae are burning! In what lobotomized society would this fly one inch off the ground?

Of all the terms of language we've been forced to redefine, a beautiful word like "beautiful" is now one of them?

Help me. I think I've died and gone to where I know I'll never go.

Folks.  Look.

Beautiful black woman:

Beautiful black woman: 

Not a beautiful black woman:

Beautiful white man:

 Beautiful white man:

 Not a beautiful white man:

And y'all, it has nothing to do with politics, or even airbrushing. It has everything to do with facial features.

The world has become an insane asylum. Not just the Spanish Main, luv ... the entire world!  The derelict denizens of the Oblahma-crazed mainstream media are the wardens.  I think it's time for my lithium. 

They're coming to take me away.  Thanks for listening.

Charmin' Garmin

On Monday morning I was tooling down the road toward Manning, South Carolina, which is a little less than one hundred miles from my home. The deposition was set to begin at ten o'clock. It was a beautiful day and since I had plenty of time to reach my destination, I stopped at one of our lovely roadside rest areas to stretch my legs and freshen up.

As I exited the ladies room and headed for my car, I saw a female employee of the Palmetto State polishing one of the glass doors leading to the parking lot. She looked up and caught my eye, so naturally I give her a big smile and said "Good morning!"

Got GPS?

She sort of smiled back but instead of returning my greeting, she waved her cleaning rag and told me I was going the wrong way.

Huh?

I looked through the sparkling door. Grass. Trees. Picnic tables. Trash barrels. A person walking a dog.

No cars.

A concrete picnic table wouldn't get me to Manning; I knew that right off. I've never learned to drive one. And I figured the dog probably wasn't fast enough.

I laughed when I realized -- pretty quickly, I am happy to report -- that I'd turned the wrong way out of the ladies room door. I thanked the nice worker for pointing out my error, did a one-eighty, and there was my car sitting right where I had left it.

What a relief! I'm fairly ditzy and consequently do not take serendipitous outcomes lightly.

I was a couple of feet out into the sunshine when a man in front of me on the sidewalk turned around and grinned real big.

"Get confused comin' outta there, didja?" He asked in a friendly way.

"Yeah, story of my life," I admitted. "If there's a hard way to do a thing, I'll find it."

"You got GPS?" he wanted to know.

To find my way back to my car from the ladies room? Uhm, no.

I told him I was usually the last woman in the Western Hemisphere to acquire new technology, and that I still relied on MapQuest to get me where I needed to go in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and even points beyond.

Assume nothing.

He gestured in the direction of his vehicle, which turned out to be a white van. "I deliver caskets, and I couldn't do it without my GPS," he assured me.

I glanced at the van and could see through the back windows that there were indeed a couple of caskets nestled cozily there.

"I got mine at the pawn shop," he said.

I assumed he meant his GPS and not a casket, but I figured I'd best make sure. "A Garmin?" I asked him. (Even I know Garmin makes GPS's and not coffins.)

"Yeah, a Garmin," he said. "My daughter-in-law stole a bunch of our stuff and pawned it awhile ago, and when I went to get some of it back, the GPS caught my eye. Best hundred fifty dollars I ever spent. You should tell your husband to get you one."

Duly noted. Next time TG and I visit a hock shop (which will be the first time), I'll check out the GPS units. I may even ask if they happen to have a casket, because in this "terrible" economy and pigs flying (swine flew!) all over the place distributing potentially deadly cooties, you never know when you might need a bargain-basement deal on a coffin.

I located Manning without incident and without a GPS, by the way ... found it sleepy and charming as ever, "Matchless for Beauty and Hospitality" ... right where it's been since 1856.

And while "Assume Nothing" is my sometime-mantra, I assume the caskets were delivered right on schedule as well. Wherever they ended up, I hope they sit empty for a long, long time.

The Subject Was Peaches

By the time I was your age I was in the coffee business nine years. ~John Cleary, The Subject Was Roses by Frank Daniel Gilroy

Of course I like her! She's a peach! ~George Bailey, It's A Wonderful Life

I rather crave violence. ~Jo March, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Just peachy, Mr. Shooter. How are you? ~Mort Rainey, Secret Window

Who ate the last of the peach cobbler? ~Me

It's a cryin' shame. ~Astute four-year-old boy, son of a South Carolina lawyer

~}{}{~}{}{~}{}{~}{}{~

On Wednesday (where I live we pronounce that word "winsdy") I reported the deposition of a young man embroiled in a sticky bit of litigation stemming from the purchase-gone-awry of some peach orchards and an adjacent packing and shipping operation.

I used the opportune moment to wolf Nip-Chee crackers and quaff copious amounts of Diet Coke.

Sound like a nickel-and-dime dispute to you? Nope. This here was a seven-figure deal, gone further south than a moss-draped bayou. Hence the acrimonious lawsuit.

I like money okay, and often fantasize about it, but say the word "peach" and my mouth commences watering. Immediately. The mere thought of a sun-ripened, fuzzy-blushy, pinky-gold, firmy-soft, tangy-fragrant, succulent South Carolina peach practically makes me forget ...

I can't even remember what it makes me forget. Large fortunes? Johnny Depp? Oh, wait ... the two are synonymous. And both quite peachy.

All I know is, I want the peach strings in my teeth and the peach juice dripping off my chin. And elbows. And I want it now.

Our (understandably) somewhat tense deponent -- a young peach farmer who is also a devoted husband and the father of baby twins -- told me during a break that the peaches will be ready "on May 20th."

Duly memorialized on my calendar. And etched on the inside of my skull. Nobody better get between me and the nearest farm stand on twentyo de Mayo.

Back to our legal proceeding, which featured long stretches off the record so that the plaintiff and his attorneys could pow-wow out of earshot. I used the opportune moment to, in a ladylike manner, wolf Nip-Chee crackers and quaff copious amounts of Diet Coke (I'd had no breakfast; just coffee). Between crunches and slurps, I asked the remaining two gentlemen in the room to tell me about their children.

The twins can't talk yet, so our guest of honor had no anecdotes to share apart from the fact that they are "cute." Duh. His sweet smile, though, when he talked about them, told me all I needed to know. The wee tykes won't want for love. Or, apparently, peaches.

I was tired of sitting still. I wished for some excitement.

But the attorney of the young man who will soon celebrate his first Father's Day was glad to share a few recent utterances of his own little son, whom I quoted above. The one about something being "a cryin' shame." I could tell by the look in his eyes (and the goofy grin on his face) that the legal eagle was mighty proud of his eaglet's early command of southern slang.

As it should be.

Amongst all this misty-eyed talk of young'uns (yes, I slipped in a few doting-mamaw comments about my grandkids), what I thought was a cryin' shame -- besides the fact that the peaches won't be ready for another month -- was that no fisticuffs erupted between our witness and his adversary, who was in silent and watchful attendance.

Into the third hour of his testimony, the model deponent -- calm, courteous, credible, clear of speech, unflappable -- began to show cracks in what had been pretty impressive composure. After all, the fellow who had done him wrong was sitting three feet away, giving him the evil eye the whole time. And occasionally making faces.

When he wasn't scribbling notes on a yellow pad and showing them to a member of his legal team.  All perfectly normal and above-board.

I guess you'll think I'm mean or something, but all I was, was bored.  Weary and still hungry, I was tired of sitting still. I wished for some excitement. So I surreptitiously eyed first the witness, then the other guy, then the witness again, watching for signs of emerging testosterone-driven redneck hostility.

You might say I was keen for it.  Peachy-keen.

For a few breathless seconds -- when the deponent recounted that his former friend had "lied to my face about the deal even when I took him out and paid for the beer and wings" and the other guy was looking daggers in reply -- I thought there was a peach slice of a chance. But then the moment passed, uneventful.

It was the pits. And a cryin' shame.

Innocent. Life.

Yo dawg ... I am so down with Twitter.

As a potential time-waster the twittersphere ranks right up there with Johnny Depp fansites and computer Solitaire, but it can be used to good effect. And believe me, one who is logging on a half-dozen times a day and paying attention can sometimes glean an important insight from a 140-character-or-less tweet.

But this wasn't one of those times.

When in a random search I entered the term "pro-life" (looking for like-minded Twitterers to follow), I found many pro-aborts whining opining that pro-lifers are ignorant hypocrites.  Why?  Because frequently their anti-abortion stand coexists peaceably with a conviction that the death penalty is decidedly not cruel and unusual punishment when warranted by the circumstances and carried out according to law.

Seems a no-brainer to my simple way of thinking.

Despite its predictable ubiquity among libs, this tired old "argument" -- stale as last December's fruitcake -- never ceases to astound me.

I drape the word "argument" in quotation marks because while I think these people believe they are posing a valid point, the premise is so untenable that it barely counts as the real thing. As apples-to-apples types of things go, this comparison is weak at best and ludicrous at worst.

*stands at mid-ring and grabs microphone that descends from ceiling*

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to tonight's prizefight! In this corner, wearing nothing but its birthday suit, we have a teensy-weensy unborn baby contending for the title! He could have been somebody!

In the other corner, wearing an orange jumpsuit, we have the challenger: a convicted serial murderer! He came, he saw, he tortured and killed his fellow man!

In a moment the bell will sound and they'll come out swinging! The winner gets to go on living! The loser takes the big dirt nap!

I'm rooting for the little unborn baby to live. I do not care if the murderer dies. In fact, I prefer it. Seems a no-brainer to my simple way of thinking, but then I was not "educated" at a fancy Ivy League school or, for that matter, any stripe of a liberal state university.

For which I thank God every day.

The "intellectual" libs (ever learning yet never coming any nearer to the truth) are on their feet ringside, cheering for the likes of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Marie Noe, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz, Aileen Wuornos, Richard Speck, Charles Manson, Michael Swango, Marybeth Tinning, Gary Leon Ridgway, Eddie Gein, Albert DeSalvo ... and their despicable murderous ilk, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

It is not hypocritical to be pro-life and, at the same time, pro-death penalty.

(Not a single abortionist in the above list of names ... and they're the most prolific serial killers the world has ever known. Collectively, they make Adolf Hitler look like a rank amateur. And yet, nobody's doing a 20/20 segment or an episode of Notorious about them.)

Make no mistake: the libs want that baby dead ... the baby who, having committed no crime apart from existing in the first place (through no fault or effort of its own), is presumed guilty from the word go and summarily consigned to a merciless agony of death with nary an advocate to plead its case.

It never heard its Miranda rights. It never got its phone call. It had no defense counsel, no offer of a plea bargain, no bail hearing, no psychological evaluation, no trial (fair or otherwise), no jury of its peers, no insanity defense, no family members in the gallery, no probation, no commuted sentence, no appeal, no pardon, no last (or first) meal, no last (or first) words, no forgiveness, no prayers, no chance.  No rights whatsoever.

The pro-aborts want that baby to be swiftly executed in ways so unspeakable, they refuse to speak of them and won't hesitate to vilify anyone who does. They don't want to see pictures of the finished product, either. I mean, why confuse yourself with images of tiny baby parts lying in bloody heaps alongside surgical instruments? So tiresome when you just know you're in the right on the issue of this "tissue."

But they picket and protest and hold spooky candlelight vigils while hollering about the "inhumane" ways in which we rid society of psychotic bloodthirsty criminals -- the ones guilty of remorselessly hunting men, women, and children like animals, snuffing out human lives in the most heinous, vile, humiliating, and painful ways imaginable -- who are required to "suffer" being put to sleep in a sterile room with a comfy pillow beneath their heads.

If I think about it for too long, my own sanity will soon be nothing but a chalk outline on the pavement.

I'll never be smart enough to figure that one out.

I suggest leveling the playing field. If the pro-aborts are happy and proud about the incredibly savage way that little babies are put to death in America -- one every 23 seconds, more than 50 million since abortion infanticide was legalized -- then I think it only fair that criminals convicted of offenses worthy of the death penalty under our laws, be subjected to a mode of death identical to that which the innocent babies are obliged to endure.

Maybe when the scissors are poised at the base of the death row criminals' skulls and the giant turkey-baster at the ready to suck their brains out, and their limbs are about to be torn from their torsos -- without benefit of anesthetic or even a tranquilizer, while their executioners enjoy full protection of the law -- unborn babies will be safe in America once more.

It is not hypocritical to be pro-life and, at the same time, pro-death penalty. It makes perfect sense. The mindset I cannot comprehend is the one that is vehemently pro-abortion but dogmatically anti-capital punishment.

I'll never be smart enough to figure that one out. In a different situation the fact of my ignorance might rankle me, but in this case, I gladly embrace it. I think it's the only intelligent thing to do.