So, who's next?

The FW ... of emails never ceases to amaze me. It seems that everything goes around and around and back again. This one, however, was new and amusing. It comes from that vast netherland of whobeyons. The topic was that the people you always need to call when your techno-problems are out of hand are usually in that faraway land of India, where the high-technos are waiting. This particular photo (one of three but representative) is allegedly from India. And we wonder, the story continues, why we bother. Perhaps it's better in the suburbs.

I confess to having almost no fan loyalty to the National Football League. I guess the closest I ever got was in the 1950s when the old Cleveland Browns were on TV every Sunday. Black and white and not much fanfare. Jim Brown was a bulldozer. Other teams, other cities. We got the Browns, or else. Now, I have no idea which team would qualify as my favorite. I know one that won't and another that gets my support, just because of the former. I'm rooting for the Jets this year. The Colts gave up and tanked their game and gave NYJ a chance to make the playoffs. What justice might occur this year if the Jets survive this absurdity and go on to win the Super Bowl? If you can't root for the underdog, why bother? The Colts are an embarrassment.

This is one of those made-for-CNN stories that just always seems to happen someplace in Nebraska or Kansas. It hasn't fully played out and I'll keep an eye on it. Kansas girl says Superman lifted vehicle off her OTTAWA, Kan. (AP) A Kansas mother is praising a neighbor as a "Superman" after her 6-year-old daughter told her he somehow found the strength to lift a car off her. The alleged "Superman," Nick Harris, 32, insists he doesn't know how he conjured up the strength to save the girl, who didn't require much medical treatment. It's usually called adrenaline. The car somehow backed over the girl in the driveway and pinned her. Other details were not so clear, as to who was driving and how Harris happened to be nearby. In any case, the cops think the story is legit and believe the girl, whose parents would naturally be inclined to smell a national TV camera crew heading their way. Or the National Enquirer. Little Ashlyn Hough becomes America&

I generally pay attention to baseball, generally because the game is slow enough and patient enough to let somebody like me catch up to it. Baseball is not unlike a soap opera. What happened 30 years ago still is being considered as a part of the plot. There is a blogger who goes by the handle of riverfront76 who has somehow crunched the numbers (either he did it or he used somebody else's methodology) to construct a list of the top 100 Cincinnati Reds players of all time. I have no idea how this was done but it includes some guys named Hippo and Doc, Huey, Dewey and Luis ... people who played before I was born. Others, guys you probably heard of. The No. 1 player in Reds history is predictably Pete Rose, ahead of Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Barry Larkin and Frank Robinson, in that order. I doubt we needed the list as compiled by a saber-metrics operation to come up with this group of names, though Edd Roush and Heinie Groh are also in the top 10. Huh? You need to know your Reds hist

There's a battle going on again between some parents who are standing up for the fragile underdog (their own kid) against the evil Nazi regime (the school) and ... by GOD! ... they don't think they need to yield on principle. It's about little Tater Tot, (Taylor) whose long flowing hair violates school policy. Ma and Pa say the dress code violates the kid's freedom of choice and he agrees, despite being 4 years old and not quite ready for kindergarten politics. BALCH SPRINGS, Texas (AP) The parents ... are battling a suburban Dallas school's decision to segregate their son because his long locks violate the district dress code. Taylor Pugh again found himself facing in-school suspension. The Mesquite school district is keeping Taylor in the library apart from his classmates because his floppy hair falls in his eyes and extends below his earlobes and shirt collar. There are significantly fewer episodes of victim abuse than we really believe, but there are as many

A few years back, I endeavored to create an original Christmas story every season. Along the way, I gave up on that and the reasons escape me. But this is one that I saved. THE GREAT CHRISTMAS BIRD/2006 Long, long ago, perhaps you have heard The story they tell of the great Christmas bird. His feathers were white, his beak it was full In truth, he was simply a lonely sea gull. Each winter, they say, more often than not He’d fly over rooftops to see what was what. He ranged up and down and from far and from near Just checking to see if we had Christmas cheer. He swooped down this chimney and sooty and black, Crashed in like a dummy, fell flat on his back. He sat there in darkness, a pitiful sight Couldn’t tell him from the dark of the night. No tree in the foyer, no lights in the hall No holiday spirit, no … none at all He brushed himself off, aimed for the sky He’d be out in a minute, at least by and by. He flapped his great wings, set his com

This just in from New Bedford, Mass. It seems that witnesses were abundant and video cameras trained to catch the horrible, despicable crime just as it occurred. Nope, Joshua Linhares couldn't avoid his fate. And well he should not. After all, he was accused, convicted and condemned for ... running over and killing a mother duck walking her 12 ducklings across a Massachusetts mall parking lot. Somebody actually counted the little ones. Josh gets a year probation and the life-ending scar of having been ridiculed as perhaps one of the most evil people since the Salem witch hunts of 1988. Witnesses say Linhares deliberately drove at the ducks, turning sharply and speeding up. Surveillance video from nearby stores supported their account. Mr. Stalin ... er, Linhares said he didn't see the ducks because he was distracted by a woman waving her arms at him. He says he left the scene because he panicked. I know I would if I'd just run down a mother duck in a parking lot. What exact

Consumer group Good Guide contends that Zhu Zhu Pets hamsters are unsafe. They could be killers. Apparently the consumer group says the toys have too much antimony in them even though the manufacturer Cepia LLC of St. Louis, says that's a crock. Of course, the toy (aimed at 3 to 10-year-old kids) would be the most popular on the must-have list this winter. Good Guide says it's flat-out dangerous because of the antimony, one of those chemicals that hangs around wherever consumer groups exist. Careful, some of it could be on your shoes. Or your cat's fur. Or in the paint that's on the toy that your kid shouldn't be eating. GoodGuide CEO Dara O'Rourke said his group bought three of each of the year¹s 30 hottest toys and tested them multiple times. Antimony was measured at 93 parts per million in the hamster's fur and at 106 parts per million in its nose. Both readings exceed the allowable level of 60 parts per million. O'Rourke also suggested the Zhu Zhu

The annual holiday season comes complete with a long list of "we wish you a happy ... (then they fill in) whatever, depending on your religion." Say, just because your religion decides to celebrate the holiday season during the holidays, doesn't mean you have to pretend you give a damn about Kwanzaa, Hannukah, Hoopteedoo, or the more fashionable Interstellar Let's Be Ethnically Equal Promotion of Warmth and Joy. Better known as "the intrinsic period just after Black Friday." It is about the money, isn't it? Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Refinance now while our low rates apply.

Verizon sends out an amended terms of agreement article for all of us. We are more than just a little happy they made this decision, and I wonder how many witches gathered around the cauldron to construct this major policy edict. 1. If you are on a term plan and Verizon ceases offering service to your location prior to the end of your term commitment, you will not have to pay an Early Termination Fee. Darned nice of them, I say.

This is the kind of drivel that keeps the print media alive. When no real news occurs, and god forbid we'd go looking for some, we wait for the annual press handout from an organization that ... believes bad fiction writing not only deserves to be recognized and honored, but bad sex in fiction is even more compelling. LONDON (AP) A cringe-inducing passage which compares a sexual encounter to battle with an one-eyed mythological monster was awarded Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction Prize on Monday. The editors of the Literary Review magazine said best-selling American author Jonathan Littell won the prize for describing a sex act as "a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg." The offending passage compared female genitalia to various Greek fiends, including the mythical monster Gorgon and "a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks." (I guess it's better than calling it a beaver, huh?) The story goes o

PETA would be better served if it tried to be slightly more mature. It's hard to tell which is dumber -- the turkey or the people who defend its constitutional rights. A lso remember that PETA was once on record as saying we needed to use human breast milk to make ice cream because milking a cow was cruel. I go along with that one. RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) Four NBC affiliates broadcasting the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade are banning a commercial promoting veganism sponsored by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The commercial depicts a young girl saying grace at Thanksgiving, giving thanks for "the turkey farms where they pack them into dark, tiny little sheds for their whole lives."

Another awe-inspiring report, this one out of Terre Haute, also known as ... well, never mind. It seems there's a battle of vocabulary going on between a "horrified" Muslim and a completely clueless Baptist preacher. The sign outside the Bible Baptist Church was recently posted with the message, "Jesus died and rose and lives for you. What did Allah do." Saagarika Coleman says she was horrified when she saw the sign on her way to school. She says the message seems like an unchristian challenge to Muslims. Pastor Bob Parker (said) the sign wasn't meant to be derogatory toward Islam. He says its message simply meant that "the founder of Christianity still lives." Hint to the Muslims: Get over it. Hint to the clueless preacher: If you meant something else, then say what you mean.

Another AP gem, this time reporting on the Post Office's decision to scrap Santa letters. This is another zero-tolerance event that reminds us Dilly Do-Gooders of the need to be careful about what we wish for. I am amused by the entire episode. It's what we deserve. NORTH POLE, Alaska (AP) The Postal Service is dropping a popular national program begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks.Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer there as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child's letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to tighten rules in such programs nationwide. People in North Pole are incensed by the change North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson agreed that caution is necessary to protect children. But he's outr

I have decided to invite my friends to visit the blog. This didn't come as much of a shock to me, once I realized I needed to establish a definition of "friends" that could loosely be associated with an opinion blog. Blogs are rather curious tools that feed our own sense of security in the world. When nobody else is paying attention, we've written down our thoughts, posted them on the ever-permanent Internet and left them there for everyone to see. Everyone, dammit. That means you and you and you and the entire population of Nigeria, Switzerland, Rhodesia, Indochina and Budapest. (Where in F... is Rhodesia, he asks?) Just so you know, I get lots of FW ... emails from my friends, some of them old stuff, some of them retreads, lies, amusing cartoons drawn by folks who have even more time to squander than I do. If I really wanted to get your attention, I'd post the photos of the Internet model named September Carrino. Women would be offended, I think. I will post thi

I came across this bit of tangible drivel the other day and found it worth adding to my up-till-now useless blog. It's from the livescience.com online news journal: Though you might not be able to run away from your problems, moving to another state could be good for the soul. New research suggests U.S. states with wealthier, better educated and more tolerant residents are also happier on average. The reasoning is that wealthy states can provide infrastructure and so it's easier for residents to get their needs met. In addition, states with a greater proportion of artists and gays would also be places where residents can freely express themselves. On average, well-being was highest in the Mountain states and West Coast states, followed by the Eastern Seaboard and then the Midwest and Southern states. The researchers note that because a state scores high or low doesn't mean you could pluck out a resident and expec

In story, song and concept, we live out the seasons. They all mean pretty much the same thing to everyone, even if we express them in different ways. I have discovered as I mature that I enjoy autumn perhaps the best. I think it's just prettier. I got to thinking recently that if you were given a choice of two months during a year that you could live, which ones would they be? One rule would be that only so many people could actually occupy that month, so if it was full, you'd need to select an alternate. Most of us would probably choose May, or perhaps June. I'd go for October, with June a close second. A lot of folks like the holidays, so they'd go for December. I doubt anybody would select January or February. Maybe February, if you have a Valentine's sweetie. The worst month is August. It's seedy, hot and buggy. November and April are the wild cards. Unpredictable but interesting because of that. September is rather interesting and it's back to school. F

I find it curious - October is deemed Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Why is that important? First off, not to diminish the nature of the illness and the need to find treatments, cures and possible ways of preventing it, why is this particular form of cancer more public than some others? Maybe it's not more public, but it seems to be more interesting. Even men wear pink armbands to play pro football. Kids wear pink shirts to volleyball games and items are being sold with the pinkness all around, all deeming interest in breast cancer. Second, one wonders if what we see is what we get. Just saying you are aware of breast cancer doesn't mean you plan to contribute to the fund. So you can sell something in a pink wrapper, say you are supporting breast cancer awareness ... and go on about your life. And, third, I also think men are behind this because it caught their attention. It's about the boobs, isn't it? T-i-t-s. Cervical cancer doesn't stick out quite as far. We cou

Hope is a curious emotion, one that hangs around even when most or all of it is gone. I think we sustain hope because it allows us to connect our future to our present in an exciting fashion. We hope for good things, usually, and in the case of our enemy (or rival, to be more gentle) we hope for either misfortune or bad luck. Hope, they say, springs eternal. I am more inclined to believe that it's something that never goes away. It drives us to get up every day and start the process of moving forward. On the back side of hope lies the other version of it. That would be our memories, which connect our present to our past. Inside that are the subtitles of fulfillment and perhaps regret. Had we known where we'd be when we had all that hope, we could understand our memories. Maybe if we did that, we could make sense of our present.

A recent conversation with an acquaintance about the relationship between happiness and wealth yielded the predictable response. Money can't make you happy. This, of course, coming from somebody who doesn't have to worry about that problem. Poverty can't make you happy either. What we are about in life, generally, is our ability to make choices. That's why we cherish our American way, calling it "freedom" but meaning something else. What it means is that we aren't required to be peasants just because we were born under the sign of peasantry. Choices. Stupid people have stupid parents. Given the choice, most folks would choose intelligence over stupidity, unless they didn't know the difference. At that point, they'd say they were blessed with "common sense," a vague way of rationalizing their unwillingness to understand anything beyond what their minister told them. Most Americans ("most" being a term loosely connected to our gov

In varying degrees, all forms of wildlife come equipped with a cuteness quotient. I presume that's a form of protection from people. I doubt other animals relate to cuteness. I don't speak for them, but my assumption is that most animals see other forms of life as either: a. their potential to threaten b. their general ability to provide food. In the case of this particular chipmunk, I found him cute. He sees me as an endless source of unsalted peanuts. As of this photo, he'd stashed about 2 pounds somewhere in the back of the yard. By now, he's taking them from my hand, staring into my face begging for more and is generally becoming my personal rodent welfare case. But he's small and has a very high cuteness quotient. Of course he has a name. He just isn't telling me what it is.

Sometimes we are reminded that we need to be careful what we wish for. But I do have to admit that a warm Saturday morning in September, just over my house, quietly drifting along ... I wished I was someplace else.

Why this stone is curious depends on your origins. It's from the non-descript, really tiny hard to find and outlandish town called Kitchel, Indiana, about 3 miles north of Liberty just off U.S. 27 (eastern Indiana.) The school has been closed for years, yet the gym still stands, mocking time, glaring back at the future. The place was once the playground of the Kitchel Cowboys, a high school team from Harrison Township. This monument boasts that the Cowboys won the Connersville Sectional in 1942 and again in 1943. I have no idea about this team, why it was successful for those two years or how bad/good it was afterward. I recall the last years of Kitchel. They had maybe 80 students, played the game with enthusiasm, and like everyone else, got beat in the sectional. Except those two years. I can speculate why the gym still stands and probably none of it is connected to those '42-'43 teams. Then again, who knows? For a snapshot in time, the Cowboys ruled. Never thr

I am a member of the print media and I am concerned for its future. I actually fear that it will survive. Frankly, what we do in the name of news is sinful. It's time to let the newspaper die. Why? Because it's about blogging now. Writers are writing for themselves, for each other. They're wordy, unclear and far far too opinionated. The problem is: their opinions are based on the fact that they listen to one side of a story and come away believing it. They write that, post it on a blog and ... off they go. What has endured as the staple of print journalism is connected to something so far out of date as to be rendered virtually useless. News journalism as we know it needs to die. Soon. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. The editors of these rags can go too. All of them.

I generally believe that everyone is lying. To be less cruel about it, everyone has a version of the truth. Part of that truth is based on fact and part of it is based on fact as was told by someone else, who could indeed be fabricating the truth. The nice thing about writing is that truth and lie can be easily identified. Delivery is, however, a manifest of semantics, vocabulary, punctuation and sentence structure. The coach who tells the interviewer that he intends to take his team to the championship game could very well be telling the truth. Even if it's to watch. So you need to know which questions to ask. Men are less inclined to be credible than women for a simple reason, a woman once told me: Men don't pay attention. I told her that women were more inclined be deceptive. Now one of us was lying.

I hope to get myself up to speed on this blogging thing soon and at that time, I hope to share myself with people who can do me the most good. That would be either a publisher or an agent. In the meantime, I have an idea or two about a story or two that could be interesting for a couple of reasons. One of those ideas is about health. I mean, my own. Where do I intend to be in the next 4 years, 14 years? Next month. My doctor is optimistic. Sadly, at the end, not much gain is noticed. What we leave behind needs to matter. I'm working on that. Once I find a publisher or an agent who knows a publisher. I think I have something worth reading.

A larger question, if questions come in sizes, is probably why do I write? Most of us write, in a form or other. Some of us put it on paper. Virtually speaking, it's paper, this electronic sheet I'm filling now. Writing is essentially the organization of thoughts that occur in random fashion over the course of the day, week, month, year. The longer the time period, the less connected the thoughts. In a short frame of time, our ideas can be edited for clarity, meaning and substance. When we think in a sensible way, we are "writing" it down, on that electronic sheet of paper inside our heads. Writing, as a hobby or as a form of self therapy, should be rather easy, alleging the scope of the effort connects to a useful vocabulary and functional grammar. Putting ideas on paper is useful, even if it becomes a wad of waste, tossed into the trash can. If it goes beyond that, writing takes on a new meaning. Real writing is hard work. But it's worth the work. I've been

Jay Hughes is my nom-de-plume, my pseudo, my writer's name. It generally means "JU's" and was/is essential because my name and that of the late more famous John Updike were problematic for at least one of us. Establishing my own identity was more fascinating than I originally imagined, but once the character became upright and slightly believable, he became somewhat charismatic. Jay is about being honest, slightly confused, a bit on the naughty side and inclined to be clueless to the point of having the onions to "figure it out" on his own. The character has matured, generally, in the past few years, and I suspect that's along the lines of my own sense of maturity. We all eventually see where we've been, what may or may not be a discernable future and the capability to expect that nothing we plan will always go as we planned it. The adventure is what Jay is about, recognizing that -- in the story -- nearly everyone gets what everyone deserves. There

To win the championship, you don't have to beat everyone. You just have to beat who's next. Having established that, we come across the bizarre world of irony, absurdity and peculiarity. I love these three words. I love many words. I won't go much beyond that for the moment. It's pleasant outdoors and my flowers want to sprout. The flowers have made that perfectly clear. Later.