The Law of Life

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to prolong reaching the future.

I remember my fourth grade teacher giving us a glimpse of the future. We were told that things would be so modernized when we grew up that we would have much more free time on our hands than our parents.

My father, like almost everyone else in the 1950’s, was working 40 hours a week. My mother was being a 1950’s mother, staying at home to take care of the family. I was relieved to learn that I wouldn’t have to put in that many hours when I was my parent’s age.

But it never came true.

More than a half century later, Americans are still stuck in the rut of a 40-hour workweek. In fact, Americans now average more hours per week than they did fifty years ago and have less vacation time than any other industrial nation in the world. And in many cases, both parents are forced to work just to stay even.

The average American family pays more in taxes than food, clothing, shelter and transportation combined. Either we are incapable of being personally responsible for our own welfare or government has gotten vastly out of control.

Nearly 50 percent of our income goes to government. This includes federal & state income tax, social security tax, Medicare tax, real estate property tax, personal property tax, state & county & city sales tax, self-employment tax, gasoline tax, liquor tax, cigarette tax, federal excise tax, import tax, luxury tax, gift tax, inheritance tax, hotel tax, transportation tax, federal & state & county telephone tax, etc., etc.

We’re stuck at 40 hours per week of labor with nearly 20 of those hours going to government coffers.

This is insane.

Instead of finding a rational solution to this tedious work load, the federal government keeps churning away trying to find new ways to fit everyone into a 40-hour per week job to keep the giant economic engine going. They are stuck with a 1950s model of the way things ought to be, rather than figuring out ways to lesson the tax burden on the people and lower government spending.

The government assumes the solution to unemployment is to create more jobs into a full-time 40-hour week paradigm. Instead, it would make much more sense to be flexible with the 40-hour per week system. If the work week was shorter, more people would have jobs, creating the same amount of output.

For example, if you have 80 people working and 20 people on unemployment at a 40-hour week, you have an output of 3,200 man-hours of production. But if you reduced the work week to 32 hours, all 100 people would still create 3,200 man-hours of production per week. Flexibility of hours allows everyone to work and shortens the hours, without any loss of productivity.

An even more radical solution is a 3-day work week of 9-hour days. This would allow half of the work force to work 27 hours for 3 days and the other half to work 27 hours the next 3 days. This would increase overall output from a 40-hour week of productivity to a 54-hour per week productivity, whereby we would actually produce more while working less individual hours, plus there would be “jobs” for twice as many people as before.

Nobody, with the possible exception of Hugh Hefner, goes to their grave wishing they had spent more time working at their job. Recent surveys show that most Americans don’t really like their jobs. They’re working jobs they hate in order to buy things they don’t need, and half of what they earn is confiscated from them for various dubious government adventures that are overly costly and almost always include unintended adverse consequences.

A prime example of the wastefulness and sheer ignorance of consequences of the federal government was the recent Cash for Clunkers program, which they naturally claim was a smashing success.

A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year. A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year. Thus, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year. They claim 700,000 vehicles were involved so that's 224 million gallons saved per year, which equals about 5 million barrels of oil. And 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars. Therefore, the government used $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million, which amounts to costing $8.57 for every dollar saved.

This is the same government that creates a penny at a cost of 1.7 cents per penny.

And everyone keeps grinding away, 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, pouring money down a rat hole, while their inefficient central government is having endless meetings trying to think of ways to create more 40-hour per week jobs.

If we reduce the workweek, more people will have jobs. Plus, everyone will have more free time, which in turn will create more job opportunities in various travel, recreational, vacation, entertainment, hobby, crafts, art, and environmental sectors.

Instead of trying to maintain a 1950s model of existence, we should endeavor to improve our quality of life. We need to work less and enjoy life more. As predicted, everything has been modernized. My fourth grade teacher would be amazed -- electronics, robotics, improved vehicles, computers, Internet, satellite communications, i-pods, e-mail, cell phones, laser technology, medical advances, etc.

A rigid 40-hour workweek contributes to the “unemployment” problem, not the lack of jobs. A shorter workweek is the solution, not creating more tasks for people to do. Flexibility and adaptability is the key, not trying to fit the modern world into the distant past.

The wasteful, ever-growing federal government intrusion in the economy is beyond the scope of their function and will only make matters worse. Their task is to ensure a level playing field, protect individual rights, maintain a common infrastructure and allow the freedom of the marketplace to flourish on its own. It is not within their purview to define or maintain or manipulate or manage the private jobs of private citizens.

An administration that attempts to solve the over-spending of the past by excessively over-spending even more in the present and the future is not to be trusted with the economy, or anything else.

Plunging the nation into unprecedented debt may be the governmental prescription for keeping its citizens enslaved into working full-time forever, but it’s not much fun for the slaves.

The USA is based on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have a long history of sacrificing lives to maintain our individual freedom. Yet in 2009, we are being treated like cogs within a monolithic, socialistic central government machine.

Planet Earth is slowly becoming a prison planet. And if we stay the course, it will culminate in a monolithic, socialistic one-world government.

The struggle for freedom never ends.

Instead to rallying for more jobs, we should be rallying for less work and more freedom.
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Quote for the Day -- “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where modernization includes indoor plumbing. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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The Darwin Awards

In 1993, a student at Stanford University named Wendy Northcutt began collecting unusual stories about the foolish actions of her fellow human beings and sent them to her friends. Thus the annual Darwin Awards, given to individuals who "remove themselves from the gene pool in the most spectacular manner," came into being.

To be honored with the Darwin Award one must behave in an extraordinarily idiotic manner. Death is not required. The honoree must merely be removed from the gene pool (unable to procreate).

Past honorees include a man in North Carolina who jumped out of an airplane without a parachute to film skydivers, a man in Croatia who juggled live hand grenades and a person who used a cigarette lighter to examine a fuel tank to see if it contained any flammable vapors.

The 1996 Darwin Award winner, Garry Hoy, 39, was a lawyer demonstrating the safety of the windows of the Dominion Bank Tower in Toronto. Explaining the window strength to visiting law students, he took a run at the window and crashed through a pane with his shoulder, landing in the courtyard 24 floors below.

A man named Phil in New Zealand was a Darwin Award finalist in 2003. He needed to make repairs under his car but when he jacked it up there wasn't enough room to work so he removed the car's battery and mounted the jack on top of it. The battery collapsed trapping Phil underneath, rendering him unable to breathe. As often happens with Darwin Awards, there was plenty of irony involved. Phil was the Accident Prevention Officer at a large factory. Several years earlier he had been working under a car when the jack collapsed, breaking his leg.

Another 2003 finalist was a man from Kansas whose car broke down on Interstate 35. He stepped away from the busy freeway to call for help on his cell phone. Unfortunately, he was now standing on railroad tracks. The railroad engineer later explained that the man was holding the cell phone to one ear and had his other hand cupping his other ear to block the noise of the oncoming train. The train was not damaged in the collision.

At approximately 3:00 a.m. one winter night/morning, David Hubal, 22, and some of his buddies hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley on Mammoth Mountain in northern California. On the way up the slope, they removed some foam pads from one of the lift towers. Using the pads to slide down the ski slope, Hubel crashed into one of the ski towers and died. Naturally and ironically, it was the very tower where the foam pads had been removed.

My favorite Darwin Award winners are (the late) John Pernicky and (the late) Sal Hawkins from the state of Washington. After consuming 18 beers, they decided to attend a Metallica concert. Since they had no tickets, they figured they could sneak into the show and backed their truck up to the nine-foot fence. Pernicky weighed 100 pounds more than Hawkins so he went first, failing to notice the 30-foot drop on the other side.

Pernicky heaved himself over the fence, crashed into a tree, breaking his arm, and was abruptly halted when his shorts became snagged by a large branch. Dangling from the tree with a broken arm, he spotted a clump of bushes below. Using his pocket knife, he cut away his shorts to free himself and promptly landed in the prickly holly bushes where he became thoroughly scratched by sharp leaves and impaled by holly branches. Plus his pocket knife had somehow penetrated three inches into his thigh.

Hawkins, seeing his buddy in distress, quickly tied a rope to the back of the pickup truck and tossed the line down to Pernicky. But in his drunken haste, Hawkins threw the truck into reverse, crashed through the fence and landed squarely on his buddy, putting him out of his misery. Hawkins was thrown 100 feet from the truck and died of massive internal injuries. When the police removed the truck from atop Pernicky, they discovered a half naked body with multiple contusions, a knife in his thigh and his shorts dangling from a tree branch 25 feet in the air.

When it comes to idiotic behavior, it only takes a couple of stooges and 18 beers to get the ball rolling.

The 2009 Darwin winner was an amateur rocket scientist in Arizona who attached a JATO unit (a solid rocket engine) to his 1967 Chevy Impala and went out into the desert on a long, straight stretch of road for a demonstration. The JATO reached its maximum thrust in 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to immediately attain a speed in excess of 350 miles per hour and continued at full throttle for another 20-25 seconds, reaching a speed of 420 mph. The car remained on the road for about 2.5 miles. The driver melted the brakes, blowing the tires, then went airborne for an additional 1.4 miles whereupon it smashed into the face of a cliff at a height of 125 feet. A fingernail and bone shards were removed from a chunk of debris believed to be the steering wheel.

Some Darwin winners expire in acts of stupidity, others go out in a blaze of glory.

I once owned a 1967 Chevy Camaro -- canary yellow with a black vinyl roof. I never got it up beyond 120 MPH though. But then again, my mama didn’t raise any rocket scientists.
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Quote for the Day -- “A child of five would understand this -- send someone to fetch a child of five.” Groucho Marx
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where idiots roam free. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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The Whiskey Rebellion

The hardest thing to explain is the obvious truth which everyone chooses to ignore. Those who seek to rule others are simply seeking to impose their version of heaven on earth on others, by force.

The birth of a nation may look grand in history books, but in reality a birth can be a rather painful experience.

George Washington was the first president of the United States. He served two terms (1789-1797).

During this period, the region west of the Appalachian Mountains (western Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky) was in turmoil. People were at odds with the new government which led to various protests and acts of violence. It was a spontaneous insurrection by those seeking regional secession from federalism.

Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, referred to this problem as "the Whiskey Rebellion" because distilled liquor played an important role in the economic lives of the people in the area and Hamilton blamed the recently enacted federal tax specifically on whiskey for the rebelliousness. It was also his way of insulting the rural population (Hamilton was a New York City lawyer) and trivializing criticisms of his federal economic policy.

In the summer of 1794, George Washington dispatched General Henry Lee to the region, without warrants or approval of Congress, whereupon mass arrests of citizens were made. Federal troops rounded up hundreds of people and detained them without any evidence or charges against them. Detainees were subjected to harsh conditions and interrogations where they were told they would be hanged if they didn't cooperate.

During the operation, federal troops visited every home in the region and required every male over the age of 18 to sign an oath of loyalty. Only then were some of the detainees released. The remaining detainees were forcibly marched 400 miles to the capitol, paraded through the streets and imprisoned under extreme conditions.

Welcome to America – a brand new nation based on freedom, with liberty and justice for all.

Alexander Hamilton, an influential force during the birth of the nation, advocated a powerful national government to manage the economy and society through massive federal borrowing, supported by an elaborate scheme of taxation, to achieve a social agenda based on the consolidation of business and finance.

Small enterprises would be absorbed into corporate structures with close ties to the executive branch of the government, and a large military establishment would be created to impose national unity, by force, even if it meant the systematic violation, by the executive branch, of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights.

Hamilton (and others in the administration) wanted big government to control every aspect of American life. Like today's liberals, they yearned to manipulate society and manage business. Like today's conservatives, they yearned to dominate people by force.

But big government costs big bucks and tends to suffocate the masses. The federal government spends tons of money on social engineering (government as an inefficient, bureaucratic, special-interest charity) and tons of money on military items (more than all other countries in the world combined). In 2009, our national debt now exceeds $12 trillion and continues to rise every day. Divided evenly among all Americans, each of us is about $40,000 in debt. And our current administration lusts for even more government to direct and control its subjects.

The Whiskey Rebellion was a prime example of the need for a limited, balanced government.

Prior to federal intervention, the meager earnings of ordinary folks either fell prey to lawless thugs or local government cronyism. In the aftermath of the uprising, the federal government usurped undue excessive authority over innocent citizens. In both cases, the populace suffered.

In a perfect world, there would be little need for government. But the world isn't perfect, thereby requiring a collective decision-making body. The function of government is to ensure a level playing field, maintain a common infrastructure, adjudicate disputes and protect individual freedom. Its purpose is to serve the people, not for the people to serve it.

Without government, the greedy bully rules by force.

With too much government, the government becomes the greedy bully.

Our country was born in 1776. Over the last 233 years, we've shed sweat and blood to become the richest, most powerful nation on earth. Yet we still spend more money than we earn and lust for more.

With wealth and power comes responsibility. Perhaps one of these days we'll grow up, if it’s not too late.

Government expands at the price of individual freedom. For eons, certain elements have been manipulating humanity toward enslavement by a one-world government, to be ruled by them. Catastrophes and conflicts are created, then “solved” by the same forces, who continue to gain more wealth, power and control in the process.

In 2009, this manipulation is accelerating -- 110 miles per hour down a dead-end street. Fasten your seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

More government isn’t a solution, it’s a cancer.
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Quote for the Day -- “The only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.” Ayn Rand
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where less is more. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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Water Voyageurs

There are two kinds of adventurers -- those who go hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won’t

On July 17, 1930, two high school buddies from Minneapolis, Eric Sevareid and Walter Port, boarded their canoe on the Mississippi River, near Minneapolis, and headed south. Soon, they turned right on the Minnesota River and traveled north-northwest, all the way to Big Stone Lake in South Dakota, the source of the river.

They navigated onto Lake Traverse and followed the Red River north, eventually reaching Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. Then they went northeast through uncharted territory of rivers, lakes and hostile (sparsely inhabited) terrain, and ended up on the shore of Hudson Bay.

The entire journey took 14 weeks and covered 2,200 miles.

The following year, Eric Sevareid enrolled at the University of Minnesota and received his B.A. degree in 1935. He wrote a book titled CANOEING WITH THE CREE, recounting the trip, and later became a TV broadcaster, alongside Walter Cronkite, on the CBS Evening News, where he earned two Emmy Awards. He died in 1992.

Sevareid's account of the journey is filled with peril and misery, including constant rain, dangerous rapids and lengthy portages where they had to haul their canoe and provisions over soggy tundra to the next body of water.

"Day and night, the drizzle did not cease for so much as an hour. The woods oozed with water, every leaf held a pond, every dead twig and log was rotten with wetness. We had paddled a canoe twenty-two hundred miles, had survived, and had proved nothing except we could paddle a canoe twenty-two hundred miles."

Maybe they didn't prove anything to the rest of the world, but they probably proved something to themselves.

In 1970, I was in graduate school at the University of Minnesota and had five weeks to kill between summer school and fall quarter. So a friend of mine, named Kent, and I decided to take a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota and Ontario, Canada.

We were just a couple of restless pool hall fixtures in search of an adventure. I was bored and Kent’s train of thought was missing a caboose. I figured we’d make a good team.

We started out on Gunflint Lake, on the border of Minnesota and Ontario. After two full days of paddling upstream on a river system connecting a string of small lakes, we made it to a tiny island in the middle of Big Saganaga Lake where we were stuck for three more days because of heavy winds and turbulent waters.

When we finally got off the huge windy lake, we headed west along the Rainy River to Knife Lake where we made a wide loop up into Canada for nine days, then came back down across the U.S. border into a laborious grind from lake to lake and over difficult portages, some of which were several miles across rugged ground.

During our entire trip, which started after Labor Day when summer vacationers were scarce, we only ran into another party of voyageurs on one occasion. We met them in the middle of a lake as they were traveling in the opposite direction. Basically, the two of us were alone in the wilderness, far from the troubles of the world.

All in all, we covered a few hundred miles and it took 26 days to return to civilization.

It was a grand experience, but not one Kent or I wanted to repeat soon. Besides the physical challenge of hauling a large, heavy canoe and well over two hundred pounds of provisions (tent, sleeping bags, spare clothes, food, etc.) over rough footing between lakes, there was also the challenge of getting along and pulling together.

Sevareid reported that he and Port had gotten into a campfire wrestling tussle over their differences, no doubt prompted by the stress of the journey and the lack of a way out of the situation without completing the trip.

Kent and I had plenty of disputes, but were too exhausted to get into a physical altercation. Instead, we alternated between teamwork and bickering. We were stuck with each other and needed to finish what we started before we ran out of food, so we kept plugging away across water and land until we eventually made it back to square one.

In the end, we proved nothing, except we could paddle a canoe a few hundred miles. We also learned that mosquitoes never sleep, Kent couldn't read a map, and neither one of us was very easy to live with.

A life without adventure is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, without the peanut butter and jelly. If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.
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Quote for the Day -- “Tenacity is a pretty fair substitute for bravery.” Eric Sevareid
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and is easy to get along with once people learn to worship him. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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A Message to Mankind

The small town of Elberton in northeast Georgia is known as the granite capital of the world.

In June of 1979, a well-dressed, articulate man who identified himself as R.C. Christian walked into the Elberton Granite Finishing Company and ordered a monument to "transmit a message to mankind." The man claimed to represent a small group from outside Georgia and wished to remain anonymous.

Today that monument, known as the Georgia Guidestones, sits atop the highest point in Elbert County, Georgia. An engraved plaque placed in the ground near the monument reads, "Guides to an Age of Reason."

The granite slab structure has a total weight of 119 tons, with an overall height of 19.3 feet. It consists of a center stone resting on a support stone, four upright monoliths each resting on a support stone, and a cap stone.

The large four upright monoliths are oriented to the limits of the annual migratory cycle of the moon. There's an oblique hole drilled through the center stone providing continual, eye-level visibility of the North Star. And the sun shines through a slot in the center stone marking the summer and winter solstices.

Inscribed on the monument, in eight different languages (English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian) are the following ten guides:

1) Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2) Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
3) Unite humanity with a living new language.
4) Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
5) Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6) Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7) Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8) Balance personal rights with social duties.
9) Prize truth – beauty – live – seeking harmony with the infinite.
10) Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

In 1986, a book titled COMMON SENSE RENEWED was published. Its author, Robert Christian, dedicated the book to Thomas Paine (1737-1809), an early American revolutionary scholar and author of COMMON SENSE.

Among other things, Christian claimed to be the man behind the Georgia Guidestones. He wrote about his concern for the political and economic decline of America, and reiterated his desire to remain anonymous.

The ten guides (suggestions) seem harmless enough. The world is clearly overpopulated and mismanaged.

There are roughly 6.5 billion people on this planet. Guide #1 suggests a half billion would be ideal. However, reducing the global population by more than 90 percent and maintaining the results is beyond human practicality.

Guide #3 suggests everyone speak the same language. This would certainly make life easier, but extremely difficult to implement. No language is perfect, requiring the agreed-upon invention and acceptance of a new one.

Ruling with tempered reason, balancing personal rights with social duties, prizing truth, seeking harmony, resolving internal disputes internally, resolving external disputes externally, and so forth all make sense too.

While this all seems quite innocuous, for some people the Georgia Guidestones are the work of the devil.

A website called The Resistance Manifesto proclaims, "We are waging an incessant campaign to have the Guidestones removed and destroyed. The Guidestones are empirical evidence of Satanism in the world."

One man's guides to common sense are another man's evidence of evil personified. The mere existence of these differences is the precise reason that peaceful coexistence will never be realized on Earth in the first place.

I have my own guide to reason – mind your own business, don't tread on me, and I'll do the same.
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Quote for the Day -- “That government is best which governs least.” Thomas Paine
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and is guided by a mysterious witch named Melabella. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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The White Buffalo

The Lakota Sioux are a nation of Native Americans who roamed the northern plains in and around the Black Hills of South Dakota. They have a prophecy known as the White Buffalo Calf Woman.

According to the prophecy, two warriors were out hunting buffalo, approximately 2,000 years ago, when they spotted a white buffalo calf. As they approached the calf, it turned into a beautiful young Indian girl.

One of the warriors had bad thoughts in his mind. The Indian girl told him to step forward whereupon a black cloud came over his body. When the black cloud disappeared, the warrior with bad thought had no more flesh or blood on his bones.

The other warrior kneeled and prayed. The Indian girl told him to tell his people that she would bring them a sacred bundle in four days. So the warrior went back to his people and told the elders. Then all the Lakota people gathered in a circle and the warrior told them what the Indian girl had instructed him to say.

On the fourth day, a cloud came down from the sky and off stepped a white buffalo calf. As it reached the earth, it stood up and became a beautiful young woman, carrying a sacred bundle. The woman spent four days among the Lakota people, teaching them the seven sacred ceremonies.

1) The purification ceremony of the sweat lodge
2) The child naming ceremony
3) The healing ceremony
4) The making of relatives or adoption ceremony
5) The marriage ceremony
6) The vision quest
7) The sun dance ceremony

As long as the Lakota people performed these ceremonies, they would remain caretakers of the land. Then the beautiful woman left, the same way as she arrived, vowing to someday return for the sacred bundle. The sacred bundle, known as the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, has been passed down from generation to generation of Lakota and is kept in a sacred place on an Indian reservation in South Dakota.

The White Buffalo Calf Woman also made several prophecies upon her departure. One of these prophecies was that the birth of a white buffalo would be a sign that it would be near the time of her return. And upon her return, she would purify the world, bringing harmony, balance and spirituality back to the earth, and all the races of man would live in peace.

A white buffalo calf is projected to be a one in 10 million occurrence. These are about the same odds as finding the lost Ark of the Covenant within the city limits of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In August of 1994, a white buffalo was born in Janesville, Wisconsin. Although this event excited many Native American at the time, this particular buffalo was actually born red and later turned white.

On May 22, 2004, a white buffalo calf came into this world at the Spirit Mountain Ranch near Flagstaff, Arizona. This ranch has successfully bred three generations of white buffalo, As of May in 2008 their herd consists of 11 white buffalo.

In May 31, 2008, a white buffalo calf was born in Jamestown, North Dakota.

Plus, several other white buffalo have come into existence over the last decade.

Peace on earth seems like a hard nut to crack these days. Too many people are determined to force their way of life on others, through coercion and violence. Ultimately, those who live by the sword, die by the sword. Unfortunately, it creates a bloody mess for the rest of us caught in the middle.

You can’t change the world -- you can only change yourself.

Peace on earth starts with patience and grace, and treating others the way you want to be treated.

For the Lakota people, peace on earth starts with a white buffalo.

November of 2009 is American Indian Heritage Month. We honor out native brothers and sisters, and eagerly await the fulfillment of the White Buffalo prophecy.

Mi taku oyasin -- We are all related (Lakota proverb).
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Quote for the Day -- “It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.” Sitting Bull
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and the spirit of Black Elk. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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The Darwin Awards

The annual Darwin Awards, named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, commemorate "those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it;" most notably by doing something incredibly stupid.

To receive the award, the act of stupidity must meet the following criteria.

1) Reproduction – Upon completion of the act, the recipient must be incapable of reproducing.
2) Excellence – The act of stupidity should be colorful and memorable.
3) Self-selection – The recipient should have known better but voluntarily chose to do it anyway.
4) Maturity – The recipient should be old enough to know better. Kids are not included.
5) Veracity – The act of stupidity should be widely reported in local news outlets and verifiable.

As perpetrators of acts of stupidity, some of the winners of recent Darwin Awards are true geniuses.

A man named Phillip, 60, was in a hospital being treated for a skin disease. He had been smeared with a paraffin-based cream and warned not to smoke because the cream could ignite. But Phillip sneaked out onto the fire escape for a nicotine fix anyway. Soon, he ignited his pajamas that had absorbed the flammable cream. The good news is that the resulting inferno cured his skin condition. The bad news is he suffered first-degree burns on a large portion of his body and, as a result, died in intensive care.

NOTE: Smoking cigarettes is stupid. At a pack a day, it costs about $2,000 per year to suck toxic fumes into your lungs. And setting yourself on fire, on a fire escape, may be poetic but it's also bad for your health.

A man in Brazil tried to disassemble a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) by driving a car back and forth over it. He had 15 grenades he wanted to sell as scrap metal. When he failed with the car, he began pounding the RPG with a sledgehammer. The explosion wiped out one man, six cars and a repair shop.

NOTE: Explosive devices are not scrap items – they create scrap items.

A man in Florida speared and tethered himself to a grouper (a fish) that weighed several hundred pounds. Some time later, the experienced snorkeler was found pinned to the coral, 17 feet underwater, with three coils of line around his waist and a dead grouper that had been impaled by a spear at the other end of the line.

NOTE: If you have some sort of demented desire to take a joy ride on a large wild beast, put on a cowboy hat and sit down on the back of a bull, accompanied by a couple of rodeo clowns. Bulls don't go underwater.

A 35-year-old pastor in a small African country told his congregation that anyone could walk on water as long as one had enough faith. And to prove it, he set out to walk across a current where a river meets the sea. Not only did the pastor fail to walk on water, but he also couldn't swim. He did, however, meet his maker.

NOTE: You need more than faith to walk on water – you need connections in high places.

In Belize, an electrician named Kennon, 26, was flying a kite when the string made contact with a high-tension line. The kite string was made out of thin copper wiring, the sort of material an electrician would have on hand, sending a bolt of electrical lightning his way. He was survived by his parents, five brothers and six sisters.

NOTE: Electricity and copper don't mix, unless you intend to send electricity to the other end of the copper.

Jason and Sara were college students in Florida. This pair of thrill seekers actually climbed inside an eight-foot advertising balloon filled with helium. Their last words consisted of high-pitched giggling and incoherent mumbling as they passed out, due to a lack of oxygen, and died painlessly. No drugs or alcohol were involved. A family member explained, "Sara was mischievous, to be honest. She liked fun and it cost her."

NOTE: Being mischievous is disrespectful, fun is overrated and the inside of a balloon is not an empty room.

Acts of stupidity are common among the human race. While some people lead lives of quiet desperation, others enhance the species by riding groupers or squeezing into balloons. It's nature's way of thinning the herd.
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Quote for the Day -- “Stupid is as stupid does.” Forrest Gump
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where acts of stupidity are part of the local culture. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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