To All the Kids Who Survived the 1930's, 40's, 50's 60's and 70's

Fun hyperbole from a forwarded email:

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because. WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal c omputers, no Internet or chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! If YOU are one of them... CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as ids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were. Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

06-06-06....what's all the fuss about, again?

So today is the 6th of June, and, were America had a sane culture, our thoughts on June 6, 2006 would be in commemoration of what was the most important day of the 20th century – the Allied forces invasion of the European continent on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. If the Nazis can thwart the invasion and hurl it back into the sea, planning and staging another invasion would take at least a year; there may even be talk of working out a peace treaty if another invasion was thought too risky. This would give Germany precious resources and men to devote to repelling their eastern front enemy, the Russians. Thousands more people – Russians, Europeans (especially Jews) – would be killed.

Instead, the Allies established a foothold in those morning hours, the most bloody of which was on the stretch of sand given the designation “Omaha Beach”. My dad was one of many 1st Infantry Division soldiers to land on the Easy Red sector of Omaha, where the fighting was so costly that Stephen Ambrose delegated a whole chapter to Easy Red in his D-Day book. Remember the opening 30 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan”? That was on the Dog Green sector of Omaha. Now imagine it being even worse. Now imagine that instead of it taking 30 minutes to break through, like in the movie, it took 7 hours. That was Easy Red.

With the foothold established, the Allies could begin the landing of a seemingly endless supply of men and material that, in the next 9 months, would overwhelm the German wermacht and halt the evil and destructive Nazi regime. To my departed dad, and the rest of the Allied soldiers who did their duty that day, I say “Thank you.”


Of course, this is not a sane culture we live in, so the big story today is “It’s 6-6-06!!! Anti-Christ time!!!” Hollywood is in on the act; in this era of pointless remakes, they are offering the most pointless of remakes, a near shot-for-shot remake of “The Omen”. Now, truthfully, the original scared the living crap out of me; but then again, I was only nine years old – the possibility of giant spiders hiding under my bed scared the living crap out of me, too. I don’t really pay much attention to speculating on the end of the world or the Anti-Christ or the Second Coming, or all the hub-bub that is supposed to come along with it. My only hope is that it doesn’t come during football season.

Some folks, though….geez. I remember finding a pamphlet in the bathroom stall at the gym a few years ago. The pamphlet breathlessly described a microchip being designed by Lucent Technologies that would be implanted in each person – the Mark Of The Beast!!! Lucent, the pamphlet explained, is short for “Lucifer’s Enterprises”; Oh, yes, it all makes sense now….this would explain them switching their company slogan from “Lucent – We Make Things That Make Technology Work” to “Lucent – Tool of Satan”. I haven’t heard much of anything since about any plant-them-in-your-head microchips, and come to think of it, I haven’t heard much from Lucent either. I guess Satan, with all his supposed power to manipulate world events, couldn’t do much about the technology market downturn of a couple of years ago. So much evil to keep track of, so little time….

Really though, despite what some fundamentalists or a somewhat unhinged pamphlet might say, the plain fact is that no one knows when The End Of The World is going to come, and when it does, there isn’t a lot anyone will be able to do about it, anyway. All we can do to prepare for it is to seek and know and love God, through prayer and our daily lives….which is pretty much what we should be doing, anyway.

So, in keeping with the 6-6-06 -> 666! theme, I present other Beastly numbers:

· $665.95 - Retail price of the Beast
· $699.25 - Price of the Beast plus 5% sales tax
· $769.95 - Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul
· $656.66 - Walmart price of the Beast
· 00666 - Zip code of the Beast
· 1-900-666-0666 - Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now! Only $6.66/minute. Over 18 only please
· Route 666 - Highway of the Beast
· 666 F - Oven temperature for roast Beast
· 666k - Retirement plan of the Beast
· 6.66 % - 5 year CD interest rate at First Beast National Bank, $666 minimum deposit
· i66686 - CPU of the Beast
· 666i - BMW of the Beast
· 666 * SQR(-1) - Imaginary number of The Beast.
· DCLXVI - Roman numeral of the Beast
· 666.0000 - Number of the High Precision Beast
· 0.666 - Number of the Millibeast
· 1010011010 - Binary of the Beast
· 666 mg - Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
· Phillips 666 - Gasoline of The Beast.
· 668 - Next-door neighbor of the Beast
· 6, uh... what was that number again? - Number of the Blonde Beast