Dear Kahunum:

I vent, I crab, I whine. And in response I get a love fest. What gives? I’m not looking for agreement here. I’m looking for a fight. You are sullying my reputation as a black belt contrarian. So I’m turning it up a notch. The following is a parade of points of view to which I earnestly subscribe, and with which I’ve had good success quieting a room and creating distance where there was none before. I want to see you wince. I want to hear you groan or gasp or spit.

The only lettuce I love is Iceberg. I find Shakespeare tedious, too much work. I revile everything with Walt Disney’s name on it. Frank Sinatra’s singing makes my skin crawl. Likewise Streisand, Celine, Neil Diamond. While we’re on the topic, Bob Dylan’s genius remains sprawled lifeless on the highway, where it has lain since his 1969 motorcycle accident. I believe drugs should be legalized and all licenses issued by the government should be eliminated. As a rule, I find history boring. Bruce Springsteen is a one trick pony who was all used up by 1980. Don’t even get me started on the Beatles and the Stones. The only Mexican dish I like is chicken enchiladas suizas -- without the cheese. In fact, pretty much the only ethnic foods I find palatable involve chicken. It seems to be the only thing that no country can screw up too badly. All Democrats and Republicans are deluding themselves -- we have no two party system, there is only one party, and it’s called Grow The Status Quo. I am repelled by the density of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Give me the Sun-Times any day. If I had one of those “I’d rather be . . .” bumper stickers on my car, it would read, “I’d rather be hanging out at the mall”. Peanuts was pablum. I unapologetically soak up six to eight hours of TV a day, and wish it were more. Should ballet, opera, Irish dance, folk and country music vanish from the earth tomorrow, I wouldn’t even shrug. One of my life’s goals is never to spend one second in Las Vagas.

Having read the above litany, if you still want me to continue sending this thing, perhaps it’s time you took a long look inside.

We are such an arrogant species, aren’t we? We think we know sooo much. Here are three environmental reminders that we don’t know the whole story. And never will.

1. Global Warming may be very bad news. Or not. Some scientists argue that, if the average temparature on Earth winds up only going up a couple of degrees, that would ultimately result in more water in liquid form, encouraging the growth of more flora, more crops, more trees. That would be a good thing. Who knows?

2. Environmentalists have long attacked oil companies for screwing up the environment. But the balance sheet may have just shifted. It turns out the Earth leaks a lot of oil and gas naturally into the oceans, fouling the water, and ultimately, the air. A recent study indicates that pumping oil and gas has decreased the amount of hydrocarbons leaking out of the seafloor. “If you suck oil out of the ground,’ says Bruce Luyendyk of the University of California, Santa Barbara, “the seepage rate is going to drop off.” Who knew?

3. Another piece of conventional wisdom holds that, at the present rate of consumption, our supply of fossil fuel will run out in the forseeable future. Now, however, it appears that some petroleum resevoirs are refilling, lending credence to Thomas Gold’s theory that this petroleum is not the result of biological matter being compressed over time, but rather, that these resevoirs are fed by a vast amount of petroleum residing far deeper within the Earth, which has been there since the Earth was formed. A creamy center of sorts.

Family matters

I attended a cousin’s funeral recently. It was very sad. But what was saddest of all was the cell phones, ringing so loudly and so often that I couldn’t make out the priest’s eulogy.

I just met Mr. Succes. Seriously. He’s my daughter Holly’s gym teacher. A very together guy. Apparently, when your name is Mr. Succes, you have some license concerning how it’s spelled.

The other day my college-student son, Brett, reached into his pocket while I was driving him somewhere and pulled out his little squeeze bottle of contact lens solution, the stuff you put in your eye. Only it wasn’t. It was a very similarly-shaped bottle of Ora-Gel. Oooh, that smarts.

Stoically,

 

“Where is it written that important assignments must be carried out with an air of grim determination?” - Cheryl Dahle

The universe is far more crowded with galaxies, relatively speaking, than galaxies are with stars.“ . . . our ever-growing predicament: there is nothing so boring in life, let alone in cinema, as the boredom of being excited all the time.” - Anthony Lane

“Times are bad, children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.” - Marcus Tulius Cicero (106-43 b.c.) (Thanks to George Kase for providing this one.)

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.” - Confucius

If you combined all the energy from all the signals received by all of the radio telescopes in the world since they were invented 70 years ago, it would approximately equal the energy released when a snowflake hits the ground.