Best Caption:

“Hurry up, bus, before someone else sacks Fifth Avenue!”

— ­ Posted by Robin Edmiston, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Runners-up:

The Chinese delegation walks out on the “who really invented pasta” talks.

— Posted by Charles Almon, Brooklyn

“Oh, dear. I thought you said you wanted more Romans in our marriage.”

— Posted by Pplusplus, Palisades, N.Y.

Read more captions here.

Monologue | Thursday night on “The Late Show With David Letterman” on CBS: A couple of days ago, there was the annual race, people come from all over the world, and they race up the stairs of the Empire State Building. Wait a minute. You want to get your heart racing, you really want to get it pump pumping? Do what I do. Drive to work in a Toyota. Read more…

Toyota dealers have been swamped with calls about vehicles that may have uncontrollable acceleration problems. The dealers tell them, “Hurry on in” … like Toyota drivers have a choice. — Jerry Perisho

COLUMN: Back to Nothing in Particular

Image via Wikipedia

By Tobin Barnes
Nope, there will be no more discussion about the global war on terror from this guy.

After spending three weeks nattering on about something with which I’m only vaguely familiar and totally unqualified to comment upon, I have decided to come back to my roots. That’s right. I’m going to talk about nothing in particular…again. Like usual.

It’s not that serious substance doesn’t suit me—I think I made as good a case on that deeply important global problem as any other blathering idiot—it’s just that solemn, well-intentioned analysis hardly ever makes any difference anyway. So why bother?

After all, nothing ever really happens until there’s some mind-blowing crisis that can’t be swept under the rug and simply ignored like everything else. It’s the modus operandi of human kind throughout history. Emotion trumps analysis every time.

Nope, I’m going back to writing about nothing in particular—at least for a while.

Yeah, nothing in particular like what a cold, rotten, stormy winter it’s been.

There. Enough said about that one. Who wants to hear anymore?

Hey, this nothing-in-particular stuff is easier than I remember.

And, let’s see, other nothings in particular, such as my puppy getting a really rare, weird disease and dying after getting to live for only four months. Uh huh, it was a bummer. Scout was a good little dog with a lot of potential.

And it’s sad.

We’ve talked about this kind of stuff before. How when compared to the mass of misery out there needing to be documented and grieved and addressed, we sometimes get caught up in little tragedies that might better be quickly passed over and given little regard—little tragedies like the grossly premature death of a puppy.

That little loss is a mere drop in the ocean of the global suffering that takes place every day. Therefore, it’s hardly remarkable in comparison.

But, nevertheless, I mention it anyway. Little tragedies make an impact, too, just like little joys. Actually, they are much of what life is made of. If it were all big stuff, good and bad, we couldn’t cope.

So I think I’ll treasure my little bouts of sadness and joy and pass on the big ones; that is, if it’s a matter of choice, which I highly doubt.

And some more recent nothings in particular…?

How about trying to lose weight, a theme that touches most of us?

As for me, it’s been so far so good. I’m about twenty-five pounds less than I was this time last year. I guess that’s one of those little joys I was talking about.

But as we’ve often been told by the media, the process of losing weight and then keeping it off, statistically, is likely to be a failure. Now that certainly qualifies as a little sadness.

That’s right. Most people can’t keep the weight off that they’ve struggled mightily to take off. In other words, taking it off is easier than keeping it off.

Huh.

When I talked about this subject last summer, I was approaching a total weight loss of nearly twenty pounds. I said at the time that after all the effort it took, I shouldn’t weigh a mere twenty pounds less, I should weigh only twenty pounds, period. That’s what the effort feels like.

Yeah, it’s a job, an everyday grind, and, admittedly, things have slowed down this fall and winter. As I said, I’m now at a twenty-five pound weight loss, total, only five more pounds than last summer.

The cause of the weight-loss slowdown must be my caveman genes. It’s like I need to preserve some bulk like our ancestors to survive the life-threatening winter. But like the appendix, this latent characteristic no longer does us much good.

It’s one of nature’s cruel jokes. Ha, ha, I can almost see some humor. My genes are making me work as hard now just to keep weight off as I was when I was losing it.

But then on the bright side, I’m not gaining weight as I statistically should be, which is an unqualified little joy.

If only this and a few other little joys could continue. That would certainly be more than nothing in particular.

Uh, No

Good Old Days of Late Night

(Sent by Roy Wilson)

COLUMN: This Doesn't Totally Make Sense, but What Does?

Image via Wikipedia

By Tobin Barnes
If you’ve been following my columns the last couple weeks—heck, maybe you gave up—I wrote a couple harangues on the War on Terror, a topic, admittedly, very well out of my league. But I’ve got opinions just like anyone else, so I gave them.

Today, I’ll finish up my viewpoints with my last geopolitical rant. (I think I can hear “Thank goodness!” collectively rising from my dwindling audience. “It’s about time, Barnes. Go back to those light, slice-of-life-type things instead, like dealing with a new puppy and that kind of powder-puff stuff.”)

Uh huh, thanks for the vote of confidence. Now is your chance to escape because here I go again for one last time:

My basic premise is this: We should fight the War on Terror from outside third-world countries rather than in them. The war should be fought from a position of strength instead of chasing around foreign countries, losing precious lives and using borrowed resources, stirring up resentment but little gratitude, and never knowing when we’re finally done.

I said we should cut off (quarantine) these troublesome countries with our global reach and influence and let them work out their own problems in their own good time—starting from whatever century they’re currently living in—until these countries are ready to become contributing members of the world community. Pressure from without would be much more effective than pressure from within.

Yeah, I know it’s a mouthful, and by stating it that simply, I also realize it sounds naïve and filled with gaps a battleship could steam through.

But let’s consider some arguments against my weakest points.

For example, quarantining “bad” countries didn’t work prior to World War II.

True, but we were trying to quarantine territorially aggressive military superpowers that had the power to grab whatever they wanted. The present third-world trouble-spots have difficulty ruling within their own borders.

Next weak point: Don’t we have a humanitarian obligation to these countries?

Yes, two-thirds of the world could use our help, so, as with the rest, we should give the trouble spots aid and instruction where it is wanted and is effective, but we shouldn’t hold their hands. It’s insulting. They themselves have to do the heavy lifting, or improvements will never take hold.

Then how about this? Many of those trouble spots have resources (let’s go ahead and call it oil) that we want and need.

Granted, but we tend to forget that third-world countries, oil rich nations such as Saudi Arabia included, need us as much or probably more than we need them. Their pugnacious attitudes may change once we have cut off relations and trade with them. If not, they can enjoy all that oil amongst themselves.

But our way of life will fall apart if we can’t access the oil and/or other essential resources we must have.

Well, maybe this is where the real War on Terror needs to be fought. Maybe we should spread the burden of war around to everybody instead of hefting it solely on the shoulders of our patriotic young people who are willing to fight for our country. Our war should be a war on foreign energy dependence with all citizens doing their parts as we re-gear our energy infrastructure for a greener future.

This will necessarily require sacrifice from all our citizenry, as well as some economic dislocations, but this is the war we really need to fight. And in the long run, it will be much cheaper as technological energy efficiency will spur job creation through a burgeoning economy that will leave a better world for future generations.

Okay, even if we buy that overly-optimistic scenario, Barnes, how about the nuclear threat?

If we had forces trying to regulate every benighted country in the world, it still wouldn’t eliminate the chance of some disaffected group successfully touching off the big one. There will never be a total guarantee against that.

And what will more likely continue to ignite terrorist fervor, our forces rampaging through every trouble-spot that pops up in a virtually infinite stream, or just allowing these wild-eyed fanatics to fester in isolation until their own people come up with their own solutions to their violent agendas?

So there. That’s my two cents worth even if it’s worth only two cents.