This is worse than kids.

Kids may be demanding, but you don't have to remind them to stop licking their anus every five minutes!

Denial is the default position of any bureaucracy, since most bureaucrats regard appeals to objective reality as somewhat gauche, if not an actual threat to their jobs, an occupational trait they share with most philosophy and literature professors these days...

...a hot water pipe burst on the top floor of our apartment building last night, leaked into the wall, shorted out a light switch and set the apartment on fire and the fire alarm went off for twenty minute and the fire department came all at about two in the morning last night...

My Grandad and Grandma met in Seattle, during WWII, where Grandad was stationed.

A friend of hers set them up on a blind date.

They met at the train station, and Grandma had told Grandad on the phone that he would know who she was because she would be wearing a brown hat.

When he got to the station, he saw three girls wearing brown hats.

So he picked the prettiest one.

They were married 61 years.

"But what about woman's right to choose?"

A Woman makes that choice when she decides whether or not to have sex.

"But what about rape?"

Then a criminal has taken away her right to choose.

Uh, you guys are, like, WAAAY too late.

Cars are a basically good idea. A basically good idea, but a terrible execution.

If one does not compromise one's beliefs, if one is true to oneself to the core -- in the deepest, most utmost, most central part of one's being...

Then suddenly, without meaning to -- simply by existing -- one becomes a challenge to those around. Suddenly everyone around feels threatened, dogged by suppressed feelings of guilt -- they feel shown up.

It is faster to send a petabyte of data from San Francisco to Hong Kong by sailboat than by the internet.

Why does the ACLU protect pedophiles and pornographers and, at the same time, challenge prayer and religious expression?

BUSH IS MAKING ENEMIES FASTER THAN WE CAN KILL THEM.

setup [verb]
gonna
sortof
kindof
whaddya
hafta

On a backward street within a residential district, one that is littered with parked cars -- so much so that both sides of the streets are solid, leaving only a narrow lane for TWO DIRECTIONS of traffic -- prowls the KILLER BUS.

You are lulled into a false sense of security in this sleepy sub-district. Absent-minded and carefree, you step into the street when...

VVRROOOMMM -- the KILLER BUS bears down on you and zips by, at, I kid you not, sixty miles an hour. That is ONE-HUNDRED kilometers an hour.

Sparks fly from the electric wires. Wind rushes past you. Car alarms shriek.

And then all is silent. Quiet descends one more.

The KILLER BUS has taken yet another unsuspecting victim.

For some bizarre reason, these European-types seem enamored of IKEA. They live, breathe, and sweat IKEA furniture, IKEA silverware, IKEA everything.

(1) Their stuff sucks.

To start with, without even mentioning their long list of moral and ethical transgressions, let's start with the brass tacks.

These avant-garde, modern, post-modernistic -- whatever you want to call them -- styles grievously violate norms that are tied to function. These norms are tried, tested, and TRUE. They exist for a REASON.

I don't understand how popularity exists IN SPITE OF rationality. But then again, that's the key to free will and rationality: we, as human beings, have the OPTION to ACT AS IF WE DID NOT POSSESS REASON. Only the rational animals can be accused of acting without regarding their reason.

For example:

Yesterday I picked a spoon up out of the drawer here at our hostel and tried to eat breakfast. The spoon was too big -- it was from IKEA.

I made tea, and then tried to hold the cup as the tea cooled to a drinkable temperature. The tea cup nearly burned me. It was very poorly designed -- it was from IKEA.

While we were in Belgium, at Camp Pukealot, the chairs at the dining table in the kitchen were plastic, they were fashioned into shapes extraordinarily UNLIKE the human figure, they were uncomfortable, they made terrible scraping noises when they were moved along the floor, they were not stable, and they were perpetually interlocking with the other (similar) chairs next to them and getting stuck -- they were from IKEA.

We "built" some bookshelves. They were made of glued-together bits of wood. Holes were drilled every few centimeters in case you would want to put shelves there. The construction and design was so crappy that they had already pulled apart and were collapsing before we got all the books and shelves on them and got them in place in the corner -- they were from IKEA.

I have NEVER BEFORE seen a product line where EVERY SINGLE item is a colossal design failure.

Of course, I've never seen a product line where the designers try to do EVERYTHING directly opposite of nearly universally common human design, and directly opposite of common sense and reason.

(2) Assembling it yourself has NO redeeming value.

When you cobble together something purchased from IKEA, YOU ARE NOT BUILDING ANYTHING.

YOU ARE NOT BEING CREATIVE.

YOU ARE NOT BEING A CARPENTER.

You are not being MANLY just because you got the power drill out.

You are following directions like on an assembly line. Everything is pre-cut, pre-drilled, pre-fabricated.

You have no human thought, investment, interaction, or imagination going on when you are following these directions. It is NOT a human task.

You are saving the manufacturer the small cost of slave labor to assemble the piece (this IS genius on IKEA's part) but still paying for it. You are increasing their profit margins.

You are piecing together a crappy, fake product that, with the time and money you have invested, you could have bought some REAL WOOD, and, with a little imagination and handiwork, made a REAL THING.

(3) You ARE morally responsible responsible for the TRUE COST of what you buy.

It is lamentable that fiscal responsibility and moral responsibility no longer dovetail. But that is the reality of the situation, and morally responsible people must face up to this fact.

In the case of IKEA, this means that your product has traveled across the world how many times? What is the true cost of each piece of crappy, glued-together furniture?

(4) Non-sustainable practices must be avoided.

Shipping poorly-made and non-functional items from all over the world to other places all over the world is not sustainable. And it would not be economically viable if we were paying the TRUE COST of fuel oil.

(5) "Fair Trade" ??!

How can it be "fair" to members of one country or one economic unit to render their prosperity subject to the whims of rich, extravagant, and morally deficient nations?

(6) Unrequited Greed

Where are the moral limits that cap lust for money? Why are large, multi-national firms championed as heroes? When did profit-seeking and power-craving become our sole occupations?

"Hey, we just got in here, to Frankfurt, and it's the middle of the night, and..."

"Oh, look, that train leaves for Vienna in 2 minutes! Can you run with that guitar and banjo? 'Cause I'm holding the eight-foot long wienerschinzel-thing! If we can just get the conductor's attention! Maybe we can buy a ticket on the train!"

It's about four pages a day. You can miss up to three weeks and still finish by Dec. 31st.

Benedict's masterly lecture at Regensburg was seen by many Christians and Muslims as a false step by the Pope, a simple mistake, something to get over and forget, if we don't want to set off a war of religions. Instead, at Regensburg, this Pope traced, with his balanced, courageous and by no means trivial thinking, the basis for true dialogue between Christians and Muslims, giving voice to many reformist Muslims and suggesting to Islam and Christians the steps to be taken.