…must have had an interesting past fourteen years together.

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

“I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

So the husband, who visits brothels, is appalled that his wife works at one, and his wife is appalled that her husband visits them? I mean, is this an uncontested divorce, or a plaintiff and defendant affair?

I admit to being just a bit confused, as one would seem to be the Yin to the other’s Yang. The first thing that came to my mind was the foundation of a slightly more liberal remake of “Escape” (The Pina Colada Song).

This may sound a bit redundant, but if it weren’t for people, there would be no comedy.

…so we’re talking SPAM here.

“Awright, Moose, we got one replica watch, eleven people whose lives are dedicated to enlarging our penises, six companies that are offering us cheap drugs, two time shares an’ a couple o’ women who say they’re real hot and they wanna talk to us.”

“Great, Biff, then we’re all set. First we’ll buy the phony Rolexes, then we’ll add a few inches to our love muscles, then we’ll order some cheap Viagra, then we’ll get some time in a Florida condo, then we’ll call the hot women. I guess we’ll have to let that Nigerian education minister smuggle in his twenty million bucks so we can use our 20% to get the watches, drugs, Miracle Grow and time shares.”

Where the hell, you ask, is all this going?

It’s just an observation: When a certain type of commercial overture goes on for a few months or years and then dies out (as has, for the most part, the above mentioned Nigerian scam — believe you me, they have replaced it with others, just check out this site, for example)… to go on,

When a certain type of commercial venture is going hot and heavy in the old “bulk mail” or spam filter, it indicates that it is profitable, thus being continuously pursued with much vim and vigor.

The spambot traffic that is arrested by the Akismet Spam filter at this blog averages 15,000 attempted such intrusions to my comment threads per month, and when I occasionally scroll through them, they are typically promoting sexually stimulating drugs, “nude celebrity photos” or pornography that goes to extremes that should land the purveyors in prisons or mental institutions for life.

My concern, here, is that unless there was a substantial and enduring market for these “products”, they wouldn’t be advertised so pervasively or over such a long period of time.

Some people are making major money off all too many other people who need some serious help!

…to both help me feel the span of years on my back-trail and remind me that nothing’s forever, was to read this column.

Just look at those lists, by the month, no less. I’m not much of one to follow celebrity demises, but several of the names therein definitely took me by surprise. So many of them in one year!

As Greg Crosby concludes,

One year, so many celebrities. I don’t think I’ve missed anyone of note in this list — if I have, let me know. Happy New Year and remember one thing about this world of ours … no one gets out of it alive! Enjoy yourself and be good to people.

…to Great Britain? The English! The Brits!???

England has got to be the single most globally streetwise nation on earth — in the history of their great country, they have had colonies all over the world, learning first-hand of copious diverse cultures, religious customs, governance systems, ethnic mindsets and so forth and Englishmen travel the globe as easily and familiarly as most others move about their own countries, yet their government sits by and not only allows Islam to transition her gradually into the realm of the Sha’aria, but also prosecutes those who protest this disgraceful surrender.

This is unacceptable.

The Brits need to have an aggressive chat with their politicians, pronto!

Now that Channukah, Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone and I’ve recovered sufficiently from a rather active New Year’s Eve to take a poke at this keyboard again with some semblance of coherence…

First, being a smoker, I need to pitch a brief bitch about the no-smoking-in-bars law that was moved up from this coming summer to the day before yesterday (1 January, 2008) here in Illinois. I read all these pieces about fellow smokers facing the tribulations of having to step outside the bar, into the Chicago winter (if I’m not mistaken, it’s less than 10 degrees outside as I type this), to smoke a cigarette. They speak of everything from purchasing ear muffs and extra scarves to giving up the tobacco habit.

For me, this just means I won’t go to any bars other than those in restaurants where I’m having dinner with friends, and I’ll abstain until after I leave the establishment. I simply won’t hang out at my favorite watering hole any more, or any other local drinkeries, for that matter. So I’ll save a couple of hundred bucks a week.

Then there’s this other law that kinda’ sorta’ went into effect without my even knowing about it: I noticed, over the duration of my last carton of Chesterfield Kings, that the durn things kept going out on me when I laid them in the ashtray (more of my cigarettes spend time in the ashtray than they do being smoked, as I light up most while I’m on-line, blogging, reading, commenting, etc). It seemed that there was a problem with the paper — so I called Phillip Morris to inquire, and they informed me that certain states (including Illinois) had adopted a law requiring that all cigarettes sold in them had to have the paper thickened so that they go out when they’re not being smoked. This was explained as a measure to prevent cigarettes from starting fires. Right. Okay. Whatever. I search-engined the law and read all the statistics. Fine. Ram it.

It’s sure nice to have government entities, be they local, state or federal, protecting us from ourselves. I mean, what would we do without intrusive government? Let’s make things really easy: Let’s simply shitcan the Constitution altogether. Who needs it, right? Today’s politicians apparently haven’t read it, anyway, so why bother to perpetuate its existence?

Having gotten that out of the way, let’s move on to the meat of this post:

Just like that–like flipping a switch–Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet.

The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don’t be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it’s next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb–and there won’t be any. By 2014, the new efficiency standards will apply to 75-watt, 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs too.

So now the government is dictating what kind of light bulbs will be available to us, cost be damned.

As a disclaimer, I will say that I use compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) for the simple reason that I dislike pedestrian hassles, especially being a high ceilings kind of guy, and the spiral bulbs mean not having to change a light bulb for a really long time.

However, I don’t believe that CFLs should be forced on the public, like it or not. They are significantly more expensive, for one thing, and for another, as was bandied about the Blogosphere several months ago, they bring a serious element of risk into the household.

Brandy Bridges heard the claims of government officials, environmentalists and retailers like Wal-Mart all pushing the idea of replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving and money-saving compact fluorescent lamps.

So, last month, the Prospect, Maine, resident went out and bought two dozen CFLs and began installing them in her home. One broke. A month later, her daughter’s bedroom remains sealed off with plastic like the site of a hazardous materials accident, while Bridges works on a way to pay off a $2,000 estimate by a company specializing in environmentally sound cleanups of the mercury inside the bulb.

With everyone from Al Gore to Wal-Mart to the Environmental Protection Agency promoting CFLs as the greatest thing since, well, the light bulb, consumers have been left in the dark about a problem they will all face eventually – how to get rid of the darn things when they burn out or, worse yet, break.

So here we’re talking about government regulation requiring families and individuals to purchase and install in their dwellings common objects (unless, of course, they have no problem with living in the dark) that present potential health hazards.

Now, I’m not a litigious person, but…

… if the government can impose this upon the masses, then the masses should, by all means, be able to sue the government, big time, in the event that these CFLs, once they’re the only game in town, present the problem they did for Brandy Bridges. Instead of the citizen with no remaining freedom of choice paying for the clean-up, let Uncle Sam pay for it. After all, Uncle is forcing the situation on us, and doing so by ignoring the Constitution and the very principles of freedom that our founding fathers bestowed upon us.

… and to that end, a positive note, well delivered as always by Greg Crosby.

Attorneys are an integral part of our Constitutional legal system. That is, they are as necessary under our form of government as are litter boxes to cat owners, composters to serious gardeners, carpet stain removers to hotel housekeeping departments or grease traps to restaurant kitchens.

There are a lot of honest, hard-working lawyers out there, but there seem to be an equal or greater number who are parasites that prey on any situation they can in as despicable, sleazy and dishonorable a fashion as they need to in order to milk the most money possible out of said situations.

These latter include liberal trial lawyers whose victimization of defendants via manipulation of the legal system has created a litigious atmosphere (and cottage industry) in this country that has businesses and individuals investing large sums of money and man hours in protecting themselves from frivolous lawsuits. One biproduct of this is a lot more work for lawyers who enjoy large retainers on the defensive side of the equation.

One thing I don’t miss, spending a paucity of time nowadays in front of the television, is all those commercials you see for law firms that specialize in sueing companies. You know, “if you’ve ever worked for a company that employed (name the chemical or compound) in their manufacturing process, you may be entitled to a significant cash award. Call Joe Schmoe Law Associates at 1-800… Now!”, or that tele-ambulance chaser’s ad a few years back that ended with an obvious welfare case bragging that “Ah got five thousand!”

These unscrupulous toilet cakes have corrupted our courts, severely damaging and making a mockery of our legal system for the sole motive of making money for themselves. Now don’t get me wrong, greed is good in its own arena, but these people are “officers of the court”. They are licensed to practice law, not to twist it and bend it according to their financial desires, nor to make victims of law abiding individuals, hospitals or business firms for the purpose of personal gain.

Also of the same low degree are attorneys found at such political institutions as CAIR and the ACLU. The former use the threat of lawsuits whose legal costs alone would bankrupt the average citizen as a way of stifling freedom of speech, the latter use lawsuits against all levels of government in order to stifle religious expression.

I won’t even go into the prophalactics who make careers of specialization in defending sexual predators, celebrity murderers, terrorists or drug traffickers.

But the sleaze doesn’t end at private sector level. It also seeps into the courts themselves, in the form of activist judges who legislate from the bench by way of decisions that reflect their own political agendas rather than the letter of the Constitution or even the will of The People. Remember, also, that these judges are lawyers, and if the “loser” in one of those politically motivated decisions needs to appeal to a higher court, such as SCOTUS, one or more lawyers will make a lot of money representing him/her/them on the appeal.

Moving right along, we go upstairs to the attorneys who become politicians and find their respective ways into lawmaking capacities.

The Senate. State or U.S., take your pick.

Think about that — lawyers making the laws.

Hmmmmm……

While it makes sense (musicians make music, engineers engineer, artists create art, writers write, designers design, etc)… I mean, pornographers create pornography, so why shouldn’t lawyers be allowed to create laws?…

Sidebar, as they call a conference at the bench between opposing lawyers and a judge: I am reminded of the term nepotism, only changed to replace family members with colleagues.

Back from sidebar: The more laws these lawyers in elected office enact and the more technically complicated they make them, the more work they generate for fellow lawyers and for themselves as well, in the event that they lose an election and have to go back into private practice.

We have are a society ruled not by government, per se, but by lawyers.

With that thought in mind, I need a good, stiff drink….

…who actually have respect for Islam!

… I’m a good Jewish kid, but…

My current playlist includes such items as Sleighride (Boston Pops), Christmas Wrapping (the Waitresses), I Believe In Father Christmas (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) and Do You Hear What I Hear (Andy Williams).

I love Christmas music!

My favorite Christmas classic is the Andy Williams song mentioned above.

And my playlist goes on…

Here are three factors that contribute to a major imbalance in the very existence of the United States of America:

1. We are exporting our product assembly and customer service/support positions.

2. We are replacing our domestic blue collar employment – that is, depriving Americans of work – with cheap labor from Mexico and other Third World countries (if you don’t, because of its proximity to the U.S., think Mexico is a Third World country, you probably haven’t spent much time there or ventured far from your Mexico City or Cancun hotel room).

What’s wrong with that picture? Well, gee! Jobs are heading out in one direction while illegal immigrants are coming in from the other and snatching up jobs that have been left behind.

Yes, the latter are supplying cheap restaurant help, providing lower tier labor and harvesting various crops for farmers at “affordable” rates. “They are doing,” the liberal mainstream media and Democrat politicians advise us, “the jobs that Americans won’t do.”

What they apparently don’t remember to include among these jobs that Americans won’t do are carpenters, masons, roofers, furniture movers, painters, mechanics, framers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, cooks, construction laborers and a few other occupations I’ve probably missed.

I have toured more than one “township under development” wherein there was a contingent of illegal Mexican labor ensconced in a dormitory-like living environment at the convenience of local builders, available for whatever work is offered. One such municipality is a mere fifty or so miles from Manhattan, in Putnam County.

Here in Chicago, a federal immigration enforcement agency authorized to enforce the law would have a field day…

However, and I really don’t want to sound “I-told-you-so-ish”, last year before the elections, when the President signed the Border Fence into law, I expressed my doubts that this was anything more than a vote-getting device, and, well, I told you so…

Congress isn’t funding the proposed double fence, wherein vehicle patrols can do their thing, in fact I’d wager that even the single fence among the remains of the broken promise won’t ever be completed.

3. More than ten million people sending half or more of their mostly untaxed wages out of the United States, to support their poverty stricken – at first — families in the old country.

It’s nice (pick some nice flowers) that they do this (insert violin music), but it takes an awfully big bite out of our economy. Do the Math.

Something’s gotta give. If not, well, sayonara America!