The Plot to Kill Billy Mays Unfolds

Wine stains around the world rejoice today with the confirmation of the death of their arch enemy and nemesis, Billy Mays. The battle between Mays and wine stains on white carpet, oil stains on dress shirts (because apparently people wear dress shirts to work on their cars sometimes), grass stains on pant legs and blood stains on the clothes Drew Peterson wore to kill his wives has come to an unexpected end.

Early word is that a team of assassins hired by a secret society known as the Red Wine Stain Coalition carried out the deed. Mainstream news is, of course, not reporting on this angle because the RWSC is widely believed not to exist, but those in the know and conspiracy theorists around the world obviously believe otherwise.

On the condition of anonymity a member of the RWSC spoke with me regarding this tragedy. “How’s that for ‘acting now’ bitch? Huh? You though you could eradicate our kind, you thought you could spearhead the Oxy-Clean Holocaust, eradicating our kind just because you don’t like the way we look. You called us blights on the carpets of the world, you used your oratory skills to convince others that we had no place in the world, you poisoned the minds of people against us all for your own financial gain. Well now, in the end, you know that wine stains are NOT to be fucked with!!! Too late, you discovered that we would not be oppressed by some bearded guy with a whiny voice and evil in his heart! Power to the stains!!!!”

Meanwhile, the world has put aside their grief for Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson and now focused it on their real hero, pitchman Billy Mays. Prisoners in a Taiwan prison have started to grow beards and are doing daily reenactments of Mays’ infomercials aimed at stain eradication. The eBay website is inundated with merchandise once sold by the man the RWSC called the Hitler of Stain Removal.

Candlelight vigils are taking place at As Seen On TV stores across the nation as Mays’ many devoted followers gather to mourn the loss of their champion. Vince Shlomi, better known as the Shamwow guy had this to say, “We will miss Billy. He was our leader, he was an inspiration to me and other shady salesmen of dubious products everywhere. His death will not go unavenged! I hereby vow to beat up a hooker every day until the assassins who killed my hero turn themselves in!”

One thing is for sure, Mays’ death will not end the war between infomercial peddlers and stains, in fact, it seems to have just escalated matters. Foolish people will point to matters in the Middle East or North Korea as the most pressing potential causes of war, meanwhile, under their noses, pitchemen and wine stains have begun a fight, which will surely cause us all to eventually choose sides.

Who was Billy Mays? The evil dictator of an empire of cleanliness enthusiasts hellbent on purging the stains from existence, or a simply a benevolent man with a message? We may never know, but you can be certain, the war has begun and sides must be chosen. One thing is sure; historians are sure to look back upon this, as the beginning of all that comes next. May Providence be with us all in the trying times to come.

...meanwhile at the Pearly Gates

St. Peter: Name?

MJ: Ummmm. Michael.

St. Peter: Michaelllllllllll?

MJ: Ummmm. Jackson.

St. Peter: You’re the one who liked to have little kids over for “sleepover parties” where they’d sleep in your bed with you right?

MJ: Well….ummm…you see….ummmm…

St. Peter: Beat it. Just beat it. Beat it-beat it!

MJ: But…I love the children…with a child’s heart!

St. Peter: You’re bad. You’re bad. You know it!

MJ: Nothing happened!

St. Peter: [chuckling] who do you think you’re talking to here kid?

MJ: Ummmmm.

St. Peter: I’m sure as hell not the man in the mirror, I can tell you that.

MJ: This is because I’m black isn’t it?

St. Peter: [laughing] Black huh? You really think so? No kid, it don’t matter if you’re black or white.

MJ: Please let me in?

St. Peter: You should have stopped before you got enough.

MJ: It wasn’t my fault!

St. Peter: Well whose fault is it? It’s not human nature!

MJ: I’m….I’m….I’m gonna kick your ass!

St. Peter: Oh yeah? You wanna be startin something?

MJ: I…I…I just….wanna be where you are!

St. Peter: You should have thought of that before you played hide the pickle with those little kids

MJ: That was never proven!

St. Peter: Say, say, say what you want, but you’re no smooth criminal, we know EVERYTHING up here.

MJ: Can’t I just have one more chance? What more can I give?

St. Peter: Don’t cry kid. We just have a very strict rule up here about kiddie diddlers.

MJ: Then where do I go?

St. Peter: [shrugs shoulders] You could go haunt O.J.

MJ: I think that guy is creepy.

St. Peter: You are not alone.

MJ: Can I go haunt MacCaulay?

St. Peter: If you ever want in here…that would be….dangerous.

MJ: So there’s still a chance for me?

St. Peter: You know the Big Guy. He just can’t stop loving you.

A New Sport!

I did something today that I don’t normally do. I read one of the articles way in the back of the sport section. You know, the ones about the fringe sports? Well get this! Apparently, the U.S. has a soccer team! You know, the sport you see all those six year old kids playing while their mom’s stalk the sideline, trying to outdress each other? Yeah! That sport! Apparently, adults play it too!

I’m pretty new to the concept, so I’m not sure if the adults still have their moms on the sideline or not, but it seems that not only do we have an adult team that represents the United States, but they beat the best team in the world yesterday!

USA! USA! USA! Way to go!

It was a pretty big upset too. The team from Spain (they call it football over there for reasons that don’t make a bunch of sense since everyone knows that real football is played with your hands!) was on some world-record-setting stretch of consecutive victories and the US team only wound up in the semifinals by a bit of a fluke having to do with crazy tie-breaker rules. It seems that everyone knew the US was going to get a butt whoopin’, but you just never know what’s going to transpire once…hmmmm—what do they do in soccer? Drop the ball? It’s just a guess, but I’m going to go with it—they drop the ball! On any given day, one team can beat another!

Now, the US moves on to the final where they’ll play…some other country, I suppose, for the championship. And it has to be important, even ESPN had an article on it’s site about it! And not just a brief, 200-word article, they had a full, feature-length article and the person who wrote it even knew the names of the coach and some of the players! Can you imagine that?

I, for one, am happy for the team and more than that, I’m happy for all those six year old kids and their mom’s in their pink designer jogging suits with matching purses that have tiny dogs in them with matching bows tied in their fur. Now they can dream of something big like this! Now they can dream of someday playing in a big soccer…ummm…game? Match? What?

These little kids and their moms can now dream the kinds of dreams that kids playing little league baseball and pee wee football and biddy basketball have dreamed. They can dream of a world in which their sport is actually important, relevant and worthy of one article on the website of the most powerful sports conglomerate on Earth! They can dream of someday being famous enough to find their name mentioned on the back page in a tiny article of a major newspaper—and if it’s a slow sporting news day, people like me might even read it!

Who could have possibly foreseen that soccer could ever have reached such an important height, not only here in the US, but across the world? It’s simply amazing! It’s almost like a legitimate sport now! How cool is that?

Well I’m pretty darned happy about the whole thing. Kids should be able to dream. Soccer moms should be able to think that all the money they pay to have their kids play soccer can amount to more than just a fashion show for themselves. This seems like a great first step. Congratulations USA! Congratulations soccer!

Help Wanted

HELP WANTED:

Seeking energetic, unmarried (and therefore virginal—because you’re all about the abstinence until marriage thing) conservative politician for important position within the government. Previous experience isn’t important, but the applicant must be able to keep it in his/her pants, believe abortion is murder, gay people are gay by choice and shouldn’t be allowed to get married, poor people suck, rich people rule, Dinosaurs walked the Earth only 3000 years ago, the best way to solve a problem is to bomb the fuckers, poor people don’t need healthcare because if they start dying off we won’t have to support their broke asses anymore and of course, that all socialist ideas lead to communism.

The applicant must be at least 35 years old. If your skin is brown (even if you just have a really good tan) you move to the top of the list—same goes for applicants with boobs. If you’re male or have white/grey hair, we unfortunately cannot consider you at this time.

Must be an effective orator, have their own Twitter and Facebook accounts, be able to name at least 3 Miley Cyrus songs and be able to complete an entire interview with Jon Stewart without looking like a complete idiot.

We have officially run out of candidates for this position because each has proven to be an idiot, an adulterer, or spends too much time hunting moose from helicopters and not enough time teaching her teenaged daughter how to roll a damn condom on remain virtuous pure and chaste until marriage.

All applicants meeting the above criteria will be given serious consideration. Those with who can prove incurable impotence will be become automatic finalists.

Start Date: 2012 (however, some preliminary work will be required before then)

Please send applications to: R. Limbaugh at:

rushisgod@liberalscansuckmyass.com

Thank you, and God Bless America!
(and by America, we mean only the people living here legally who make six figures or above)

On having safe trips...

I took a business trip a couple weeks back and before I left, everyone I saw said the same thing to me: “Have a safe trip!”

I have decided this is one of the dumbest things anyone could tell another person. My reply was the same to everyone: “I’ll try, but it’s not really up to me.” The consensus is that I’m a morbid freak who just needs to learn to accept socially accepted colloquialisms and not take everything so literally.

There’s probably some truth to that, but I’m going to state my case anyway because knowing me, I have to be right to at least some degree, right?

I understand that the intent is a wish of a safe journey, not an instruction, but that’s not what people are saying. The words they use, in the combination they say them makes it kind of an instruction. If people had been coming up to me and saying, “I hope you have a safe trip.” I’d probably have replied with a thankyouverymuch before making an Elvis-like exit. If they’d said something vaguely medieval like “Safe journey!” or “Godspeed!” I’d probably have bowed with a flourish and thrown a thank-you M’lady or Good sir back at them.

I wasn’t being wished a safe trip though, I was being told to and while its all fine and well to want to have a safe trip, I don’t fly the plane, I don’t pick the mugging victim, I take my chances with every taxi I get into—I have very little control over things actually.

But really, what’s the difference between that and my everyday life? Why is safety so important for my trip, but not for my everyday life? Why aren’t these people who care about me calling to wish me a safe trip to work each day? More people die in auto-related accidents than do in airplanes after all. Why is my trip safety important and my everyday safety not?

I’ve decided that “have a safe trip,” is one of the dumbest things that anyone can say to anyone else. I wonder what they’d think if next time I replied with, “thanks, have a safe staying here!” After all, they could get struck by lightning, they could have a tree fall on them, they could eat poisoned sushi, they could fall down an open sewer, they could catch Flying Pig Flu and topple over with fever! Anything can happen!

Some expressions have just run their course. I’m not mounting up on a horse and riding down a trail filled with highwaymen and vagabonds waiting to assault me and steal the coin purse hanging from my belt. At no point will I be forced to use a sword to defend myself and my trusty steed. In fact, if I try to bring a sword with me, they won’t even let me travel now! Travel has become pretty mundane for the most part—at least compared to when the actual journey part was perilous and treacherous.

Travel now consists of sitting in a plane, reading a book, watching the clouds fly by and if something bad happens to the plane, well there’s not much I can do about it is there? People who are travelling are no more likely to die or get hurt than those who stay home now. So, while I appreciate the demand that I actively take measures to assure that the trip I take is a safe one, or even the wish and hope that it will be, next time, I think I’d rather hear a “see you soon,” a “take care,” or a “have fun,” than the standard and irritating “have a safe trip.”
Unless, of course, you see me saddling my horse and sheathing my sword, in which case I’d heartily welcome the wish of a safe journey.

Oops! Our bad!

Oops. Our bad! No hard feelings black people! That’s the message that the U.S. Senate sent out today, apologizing for wrongs done to blacks through slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws. This isn’t the first time our Senate has apologized either. They’ve issued mea culpa to people of Japanese descent who were interred during World War II, to Hawaiians for overthrowing their kingdom so that we could have a nice vacation spot and to Native Americans for the whole stealing and raping of the land and killing them off with smallpox thing.

And that’s nice. I remember when I was four years old and my mom taught me that you should try to never hurt people, but if you do, that you should always say you’re sorry. Then I got to have ice cream.

So, I can’t help but wonder why it takes Congress almost 150 years to do something that I mastered at the age of four. Do they not serve ice cream in the Senate cafeteria? Did all of our Senators grow up without mothers?

What troubles me most is why now? I mean no disrespect but everyone who was once a slave is now dead, the apology, in addition to being long overdue, is falling on ears that are listening from heaven, so I can’t help but wonder why our elected officials are finally apologizing to dead people when those of us who are still alive are in such desperate times.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that dead people vote more religiously than the living do?

I can’t help but wonder if in 150 years, our Congress will get together and formally apologize to the descendants of slaves who were alive in 2009 and didn’t have health care, who were unemployed, whose mortgages were in foreclosure because instead of actually doing something about the problems of the day, in a dire and serious time, they chose to pander and prance on camera, posing for pictures, slapping each other on the back for doing something a child could and would have done in less than five minutes back when the people we were apologizing to were still around?

I wonder if they’ll apologize to the rest of us who face the same circumstances? I wonder if they’ll admit that their predecessors, so completely incompetent that they wanted no part in solving the issues of the day, chose instead to make news splashes with issues that were important, but in no way time sensitive?

I wonder how alone President Obama must feel? I wonder if he shakes his head and questions exactly how he’s supposed to affect change in a country that desperately needs it when an entire third of the government is actively working on apologizing for things that happened 150 years ago. Even as a black man, I wonder if our President is just rolling his eyes and asking God, how can he possibly be surrounded by so much ineptitude? What a lonely feeling it must be to try to solve a financial crisis, out of control unemployment, financial institution collapse, a couple of wars, lack of a coherent and effective healthcare, energy crisis and every other problem of the day when the 535 members of the legislative branch of the government are high fiving, smiling and posing for pictures with whatever black people they can find?

Perhaps we should take note. Perhaps, when our Senators and Congressmen are next elected, we should ask them what they were doing with their time when we were hurting? Were they actively seeking solutions to current issues that faced our nation, or were they posturing, taking care of business that children could have accomplished in much less time?
Perhaps the Change We Need involves more than the election of just one man. Perhaps we’ll have to clean the whole damn house and save our ancestors from the idiocy of a too late apology that can only sooth a sting that won’t ever fully heal.

The Electronic Leash

You never realize how much a part of your life your cell phone is until you lose it. That’s what happened to me on a recent trip to New York. I lost my phone. And it wasn’t just any old phone either, it was my Blackberry, which had three email accounts coming directly to it. Essentially, once lost, it was identity theft waiting to happen. I’m normally pretty anal about making sure my phone is with me and secure, but in this case, a little monsoon and an inside out umbrella diverted my attention.

The good news is that I found my phone after retracing my steps—the monsoon ostensibly keeping the many people who could have picked the phone up and kept it indoors and away the place where my phone sat filling up with rainwater. Long story short, I had to get a new phone and instead of opting for another crackberry, I chose to go with an iPhone.

At the risk of sounding like someone who should be wearing white shoes, suspenders and a WWII baseball hat, I’m simply amazed at what has become of cell phones. I’ve been here for it all. I remember being in high school when just having a pager was the coolest thing ever (mine was aqua blue see through). I remember gawking at the people with cell phones that were essentially little briefcases with a phone attached. I remember the brick phones, the Nokia craze, the introduction of flip phones. I was amazed when I got my Blackberry that I could actually visit websites and email from my phone.

But somewhere along the way, my phone became an appendage. It’s a part of me now and I’m dependent on it. The day I spent without a phone in NY was one of the longest in recent memory because a phone is so much more than a phone now. It’s a lifeline to the world.

It’s my watch, because there is no reason to wear something on your wrist to tell the time when you have it there on your phone. It’s my picture album, long gone are the days of keeping photos in my wallet. It’s my address book—in fact, when the data from my recently demised phone was found to be unrecoverable, I officially lost touch with anyone for whom I don’t have an email address.

It’s my primary communication tool. I text, I email, I talk—and probably in that order now, actual talking being such a drain on my time and all. It’s my datebook, my calendar, my calculator, my camera. If its not within my reach at all times, I literally start to get jittery.

And my new phone, my iPhone, it doesn’t stop there. It tells me how the stock market is doing, it gives me the news, it tells me what the weather is like outside and anywhere else I may like to know it. It tells me how to get where I’m going and it tells me where I’m at. It connects me to YouTube so I won’t miss a second of the goofy videos that people post. It will download 16 gigabytes of music and video for me to listen to and watch. I cut my teeth on a Commodore 64 computer in grade school!

10 PRINT “HI”
20 PRINT GOTO 100
30 PRINT RUN

That’s right. There was a time in my life when making the word “hi” appear on a screen 100 times after only typing it once seemed magical in a computer that weighed more than I did and maxed out at 64 kilobytes. Now my phone, that I carry with me everywhere, in my pocket, holds 16G worth of information. It’s constantly connected to the World Wide Web. If I want it to go faster, I can connect it to my WiFi.

We’ve come a long way from creating sprites on low-resolution screens. Now I can watch, crystal clear, my favorite television show which I happened to miss last night, right on my phone.

And yes, I’ve become so addicted to it, I need it at my side so badly that when my phone was destroyed, I simply couldn’t wait more than 12 whole hours before I HAD to get a new one. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have anyone’s number to put into it. It didn’t matter that I didn’t especially have anyone I needed to call. The idea of being out of touch, unreachable made my skin crawl. What if Britney Spears did something stupid? I might not now about it for HOURS if I waited until I logged on to my laptop—the computer that I bring with me when I go places because the idea of being without a computer is as ridiculous as being without a phone.

What’s left? If they figure out a way for me to have my drivers license and insurance card and my Borders Reward card on my phone; if they make a credit card application that allows me to pay by swiping my phone instead of an actual credit card—well I’d have no need for a wallet at all. If they figure out a way to make it start my car and open the door to my home, I can stop carrying keys too.

I’m already dependant on it. Why not go the whole 9 yards?

I really can’t say when it happened. I just know that it’s a fact of life now. I am a cellaholic. I am addicted. I don’t want to be rehabbed. I’m a happy addict. I need my phone and my phone needs me. We’re happy together. We’re always together. We’re like peas in a pod.

I’ve come a long way since that aqua blue, see through pager I used to wear, clipped to my pants, mostly as a symbol of how cool I was and how I was someone people wanted to be in touch with! The electronic leash was loose then, it was comfortable, it wasn’t threatening in the slightest. Now? Well now it has me, bound tightly in inescapable knots that I wouldn’t try to undo even if I could.
Dependence. Bondage. Enslavement. Necessity. Convenience. Aid. I don’t know. I don’t care. The cave men had their pointy sticks and fire; I have my iPhone. How’s that for evolution?

Whale Wars is Back! Deathwish II

The show I love to hate is back and it’s back with a vengeance! Whale Wars has returned for a second season on Animal Planet and the incompetence, disregard for human life and flat out stupidity of Captain Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd command crew have never been more prominently on display!

I think their slogan should be Save the Whales AND Die Trying, the “and” being an obvious substitution for the word “or” which just wouldn’t make much sense because as far as I can tell, the goal of Watson and his Eco-Pirates is to accomplish both aims, not one or the other.

Last season, the witless captain coerced crew members into actual, honest to goodness, punishable by law piracy, routinely sent untrained, untested, amateurs into the Arctic Ocean in tiny inflatable boats to harass the Japanese Whaling boats they struggle against—that is if they can get the boats launched in high seas with almost no training to do so.

And let’s break here for the disclaimer shall we? My problem isn’t with the cause. The cause is one I actually feel is noble, worthwhile and one that should be fought for—don’t doubt that. My problem is with the careless regard for human life on the part of the captain and his command crew, my problem is with acts of terrorism and end justifies the means ideology and the seeming goal of martyrdom for the cause.

This season, only two episodes in and the Sea Shepherd flagship, the Steve Irwin, a ship that Captain Watson sails into the iceberg rich waters of the Arctic Ocean even though it’s hull has a ZERO ice rating (which means that it’s not built to withstand any contact with icebergs) is already stuck, due to a poor decision by the captain, in a field of icebergs with no apparent way out.

Of course, being only the second week of the show, obviously they’ll not only survive, but their pure dumb luck will see them through, but what seems obvious to me is that these people are living on borrowed time. My favorite scene so far was the one where the hull keeps getting battered by an iceberg in the same spot and it seems that a hull breach is imminent. Two of the dumb kids who volunteered to help save the world are dispatched to the area to monitor the situation (yell and scream when water starts rushing in) and the camera person taping for Animal Planet refuses to stay with them citing the absolute idiocy of being there.

At least someone has some common sense!

My favorite new character though is the woman who was formerly in the U.S. Navy and has obviously been on a well-run, organized, ship where the crew has been trained, the captain is competent and the command crew is…well, sane. With every new dumb thing Captain Watson does, they cut to her telling us why its not the right thing to do—it’s brilliant!

My favorite returning character, aside from the foolish Captain Watson is the imbecile First Mate, Peter Brown. This man can’t seem to get through a sentence without mentioning how deadly what they do is and how happy they should all be for the chance to die! His nautical experience obviously doesn’t qualify him as a First Mate, as he was at the helm trying to steer through a field of icebergs, a more experienced crewmember kept reading off the bearing he should be heading—and Brown, inexplicably, didn’t know how to steer the ship to correspond to those bearings!

He kept demanding, “Port or starboard?!?!?!?!” Oh yes! The crew is in good hands indeed, when Mr. Brown is at the helm!

The sad part is that because these people are such buffoons, the cause becomes lumped into that buffoonery. These people come off as being stupid—and they are. Sure, before they get on board, they are all told that they should be prepared to sacrifice their lives for the whales; what they aren’t told is that their lives will constantly be put in peril, not for the whales, but for the inexperience of their Captain and his command crew, for the complete lack of training they receive and for the decisions made with careless disregard for life.

Simply put, it’s a clusterfuck. But it sure is entertaining! And we’re only two weeks in! Will Captain Watson finally screw up bad enough to earn his first martyr? Will Peter Brown manage a single sentence that doesn’t mention risking life or dying? Will the former U.S. Navy Sailor get tired of all the incompetence, mutiny against the idiocy and take the ship over? Stay tuned!

Second World Countries

Does it bother anyone else that while we still have Third World countries, we don’t have First World, or Second World ones anymore? This is the problem with putting me into an airplane—my mind wanders to subjects like this one.

It really started bothering me, at 30,000 feet too. I’d never even heard of a first or second world country! I assumed, incorrectly, that First World countries were the ones with indoor plumbing, the Third World countries were the ones without and that really bothered me because for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what that meant as to how a Second World country would be defined? Would it be a country with some indoor plumbing but not a lot? Would it be a country where they had indoor plumbing you were still at risk from having wild monkeys fling poo at you for sport?

I had no idea what the hell a second world country might be and more importantly, I didn’t have Google and Wikipedia to tell me for as long as I was in the plane! It was very disturbing. And, of course, when I got home and I was able to GooPedia “Third World Countries” I was shocked to find out that the term had nothing to do with living in huts, pooping into holes you dug into the ground or monkeys doing anything.

Apparently, the whole idea was a Cold War thing. The First World was the good guys (from our point of view), the US and our NATO allies and the countries who were neutral but friendly. The Second World was the USSR and their commie friends. And Third World countries were just countries who didn’t line up on either side.

There are no qualifications in terms of disease, famine, unsanitary conditions or war—and there are no per capita monkey minimums! Canada could wake up tomorrow and decide they want to be a Third World country if they wanted! Can you believe it? Well—perhaps Canada was a poor choice for example, but I digress.

Here’s my problem. After the collapse of communism and the USSR, we all became friends and the Second World was assimilated into the First World which is fine and well, but why didn’t the Third World get a promotion? Why didn’t we call the Third World countries and say, Listen fellas, you’ve all been doing a great job there doing nothing and staying off the radar of those of us who have been drawing lines in the sand, so we’ve decided to promote you to Second World Countries!!!!

I mean, take a look at the list. It’s not what you’d call a group of countries with a lot of notoriety. They could probably use some self-esteem! But no! Instead of giving them a promotion, we decide to just ignore the idea of Second World Countries altogether and let the Third World continue on at the lowest rung of the ladder. Hey Third World! You suck so bad we’re keeping an empty category in between ourselves and you in the hope that we can get some dumbass country to stand between us and buffer us from the stank of you! Seriously, it’s called soap! Try it!

Poor Third World. No money. No friends. Not only do they not have a Facebook page, they don’t even have the internet and even though there isn’t a Second World anymore, they still get the bronze medal in the Olympiad of Life.
Oh well, I’d write more, but my new iPhone just beeped and I have to check my email. Take care!

Separate and Unequal

I think that a very important issue is being overlooked here in all the confusion over the gay marriage thing that’s taken the country over lately. Specifically, what about us single people? I mean, if you ask gay people why they want the right to be married, they say its because they want equality, the right to be with their partner in the hospital, the tax benefits, the insurance benefits, the list goes on and on and as a single man, it leaves me thinking, just what is equal about rewarding someone—be they straight or gay couples—for partnering up?

Where’s my equality? Where are my equal rights? Why do I pay more in car insurance, with a spotless record, than a married person with an accident on their record? Actuaries be damned, how does getting married make me a better driver and therefore worthy of reduced rates?

Gay marriage is an issue for more than just reasons of equality; it’s an issue because there are advantages to be gained by getting married. So where are my fellow single people at in all this? Why are we taking the sides of the religious right or the gay community in this battle? Let them each fight their own fight. Why aren’t we looking out for ourselves?

Is it not discrimination to be charged more to insure an automobile because we are not married? Even if the statistics say that we are more likely to get into an accident, what if those same statistics said that gay people were more likely to get into an accident? How would that go over?

Why do married people get tax breaks that aren’t available to those of us who are single? What if our relatives are all a bunch of bastards and we’d prefer to have our friends at our bedside in the hospital—why can’t we have all those things too? Someone please explain to me the equality in this situation? Somebody please tell me why we reward the married with rights and privileges that the single are not entitled to have?

Look, if there weren’t enough people in the world already and we needed to focus on populating the planet, then I’d understand why a government might want to give incentive to couples to marry, but as things stand now, we have too many people. They should be giving people incentives to not marry!

I’m not against the institution of marriage. I’m not against anyone’s right to be married either. I’m just curious, in the midst of all this talk over people having equal rights, why those of us who are not married aren’t part of the conversation? Sure, we could choose to be. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that, but if we were to choose not to be, then we have to accept a status that isn’t equal to those who are married? Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t sound very American to my way of thinking. All men are created equal, but those who aren’t hitched are a little less so. God Bless America! (if you’re married).