Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie

I thought: if Congress can take a vacation for the month of August, I can too. Except, as I hope you noticed, I came in on Mondays.

This August there were five Mondays. On some of them, it was almost too steamy to get hot under the collar about anything. Almost.

Spinoza’s dictum that “Nature abhors a vacuum” wasn’t an invitation to Rush to fill the void. When Nietzsche postulated, “Man is something to be surpassed,” he meant without DeLay, two-step or goosestep notwithstanding.

In the pulpits, we have men of God who preach hatred of God’s people, but hate only some of them. God isn’t omniscient, it's a homophobic Arizona pastor who fulminates about gays in the ministry and advocates death to the President of the United States who is—and can cite 30 verses in the Bible why God hates everybody.

In communities throughout the country, the golden rule is the Second Amendment and proper schooling is aiming and firing a rifle. These schools are never out for recess.

And in the Capital, we have a majority party that always seems to be in retreat—even when its members are away on vacation—and a minority party for whom a national conversation is “No.”

Rank-and-file members of the current House and Senate pay themselves $174,000 annually. That’s $14,500 a month, including the month of August, when they don’t have to show up for work at all! Leadership receives $193,400 annually and the Speaker of the House, $223,500. (All are entitled to an annual cost-of-living-adjustment.) I don’t want to begin to tell you what kind of month I’ve had. But this being the last dog day of August, I’m letting sleeping dogs lie and laying low.

If God Had Blogged

If God had had the Internet, he could have rested on the fourth day. (Unless he had service from Time-Warner.)

Adam would have been computer-generated, photo-shopped, j-pegged and pinged in an HTML. His rib? Cut and pasted into Eve’s virtual pecs.

If the Disciples had blogged, the Gospels would have been posted--every four years… or so. In 400 word chapter and verse. Spell-check would have suggested replacing the begats and the haths. Would Matthew et al have auto-corrected? Without asking the Writers Guild if they had to?

If Moses and the Israelites had possessed “Final Cut Pro” (user’s manual on two tablets), the Red Sea would have parted digitally, perfectly. The polls, reflecting it, would have predicted another three or four centuries of cyber-sway for the Jews, give or take a margin of error of two or three tribes. YouTube would have offered five or six different videos of it.

The Black Plague might have been deleted. Hitler, isolated as a devastating virus. Hoover, spammed.

If Lincoln had twittered, the entire Gettysburg Address would be:

4 score & 7 yrs ago our fathrs brought 4th on this continent a nu nation
conceived in liberty and dedicated 2 the proposition that all men r

r what for God’s sake? dont leave me hangn there, abe!

If FDR had texted, we’d have had nothng to fear xpt fear itslf.

If Congress created the world…………..



…we’d still be waiting for it.