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The tree had too many legs

My dear old Blondie is on medication that causes her to wake up every night at least once and need to go out. So I got up last night and stumbled down the stairs to the back door with her. Out of habit, I did a quick sweep of the yard before opening the door. Nothing seemed out of place or moving. And that’s when I noticed that one of the trees in the yard seemed to have grown two legs. Which, as we all know, is two legs too many for any tree to have. I opened my eyes

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Columns 2012

A life cut short

Of course, the first question that comes to mind is “Where were her parents?” While this 14 year old lay in a bed dying of a heroin overdose, why weren’t her parents concerned with where she was all night? Maybe they weren’t part of her life or, if they were, they were not a terribly positive part.

Death is always a sad moment. But when the death comes to someone who should have been scheming about how to get her parents’ permission to go to the school dance with a 16 year old and not how to get some 28

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The flying black rhino

Surely you’ve seen the picture by now. The rhino is tranquillized, slung upside down under a helicopter and flown to a new sanctuary where his endangered species is protected. He’ll soon be joined by a female so that they can make many baby rhinos.

Imagine what that rhino must have thought when he finally came to from the tranquilizer. He had to think, “Wow. I must have been abducted by aliens. What a trip. Everything was upside down. And then they weighed me and gave me the darndest exam” And when he brings this up to his potential mate, imagine

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To the new year

I spent New Year’s Eve in a pleasant daze in front of a roaring fire while watching a Big Bang Marathon and being grateful I’d been allowed to live long enough to see the Big Bang reruns make it to cable.

As I get older, I find it takes less and less to make me grateful.

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And so here we are

The end of a year that included some of the stupidest and most embarrassing moments in this nation’s political history… moments that belonged to no one particular political party but to all equally. In a year that included LIndsay Lohan continuing to make headlines for being a drunken loser, our politicians still took the cake. Congratulations, guys and gals. You may not have brought sanity to government but you sure brought gales of laughter into our homes. 

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Why I’m grateful

I’m grateful that this week between Christmas and New Year’s is a time of blessed silence from the bleating and blathering of the political candidates for office. My sympathies to the people of Iowa who do not have this gift.

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The 2011 Hall of Infamy

And so we come to that special time of the year when we say goodbye to the old and welcome in the new. Before we do, let me announce the nominees for my 2011 Hall of Infamy. Who will get to join such permanent inductees as Tom Cruise and that thing on Donald Trump’s head?

Let’s start with a nod to those pregnant celebrities who show up for special events wearing outfits stretched so tightly across their bellies that you could actually see the fetus trying to tap out “Help me!” in Morse code on mom’s stomach. If I can

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Finally it makes sense to me

I’ve always wondered why the Republican right wing was so dead set against gay marriage, calling it a threat to the American family. Now I think I’ve figured it out. The problem is that the seeming majority of Republican right wing Christian men are closeted gays. If gay marriage were legal, it would threaten their current heterosexual marriages. Ergo, gay marriage threatens the American family. It all makes so much more sense now.

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