DRIVELERATA

• I complained when I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no cell phone.

• The more you know a person the less likely you are to look unkindly on their choice of toques.

• You are what you eat. Unless, of course, what you eat contains MSG. Then you are slowly becoming someone else. Who, is anyone's guess, but hope it isn't Sarah Palin.

• Wisdom is much like eating salted peanuts. The more you have the more you have the urge to drink liquids that aren't good for you.

• You can lead a horse to water but you can't put a fish in a barn.

• The meek shall inherit the earth. My guess is they'll stop being meek then. So you have to wonder . . . . are they just being meek while waiting for the big payoff?

• Time and fortune wait for no man. Or is it 'Newman'? If it is, you might want to change your name.

• Avoid vexatious people. Who's kidding whom? They're everywhere, especially you.

• If life serves you lemons, make lemonade. If life serves you a summons, make yourself scarce.

• If your best friend runs off with your wife, congratulate him for taking up jogging.

• The most important thing in life is balance. The second most important thing is overdraft protection.

• If you can't count on your friends, count on your fingers.

• With age comes wisdom. That doesn't mean ALL children are stupid. Just many of them. Maybe everybody's but yours.

• I've seen clouds from both sides now. It's a LOT cheaper from the ground.

• From adversity we gain strength. From advertising we gain useless objects.

• I dreamed they held a war and nobody came. Fox news said they could fix that.

• One is the loneliest number. Two is company. Three is a crowd. Four is something we don't talk about in polite society. Five means there's probably a cameraman.

• Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. It's okay to curse dripping wax any time.

• I don't believe educated fleas can fall in love. They'll jump at the chance to do most anything but not that. On the other hand, they WILL join service clubs.

• If life is a river, bullshit and bad luck are tributaries.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; but mostly He just taketh away.

HUMAN SURVIVAL

An Australian professor of reproductive endriconology has predicted the end of the human race. Environmental degradation is the putative culprit - toxins entering the reproductive system and being passed on from father to son (like prejudices, only worse). Eventually, he claims, our sperm count will dwindle to zero and we'll become, albeit briefly, a race of two-legged geldings.

Personally, I see this as a 'good news', 'bad news' story.

Let's begin with the 'bad news'. The good professor was careful to point out that all this wouldn't happen for a couple of million years but what does he REALLY know? We thought Celine Dion would disappear from popmusic radar screens years ago. We're not good predictors, is what I'm saying. If we were, wouldn't we have bailed on Wall Street back in the fall of '07?

The scientist SAYS a couple of million years but it could be just around the coroner, as it were. And I see that as a problem. Speaking personally - as you see I am - I had planned (or imagined) my name living on through my offspring. I don't mean literally - 'Bob' is a name that could easily be considered a candidate for extinction - but the IDEA of me. What my family and friends and associates think of me and who I am. The legacy of me, if you will.

But now that I am older, I can safely conclude my name will NOT live in perpetuity, especially if the matter were left up to my friends and associates. It's not that I am actively disliked or thought to be a complete dipshit. It's that I am simply not all that special. My friends and associates have limited time and resources to devote to perpetuating the memory of people they know and I suspect I'm not that high on anyone's list. So say we all, hmmm?

Anyway, the point is that if I am going to live on in memory, it's either going to be through my family or an indestructible videotape. The latter is, however, an oxymoron - videotapes EXIST only to be destroyed. Some more than others - your cousin's wedding for example. People of taste the world over now realize that videotapes are a blight on the countryside, a metaphorical half-chewed leg of mutton in the fruit bowl of life. Besides, I couldn't afford to hire Brad Pitt to play me when I was thirty. Not to mention the dozens of actresses needed to play, uh, supporting roles.

That leaves me with my children - and their children. I know this and have extracted promises from them all to build campfires often and use the evocative atmosphere to extol my accomplishments in life and the profound effect I have had on their lives, all slightly embellished, of course, but no more than I and my publicist think reasonable.

So I have a chance here. But what if they have no children? What then? Will I be forced to write an autobiography and hope for some literary sleuth to 'discover' a moldering literary masterpiece? Long, long odds. Not to mention the possibility there'd be no one around to read it.

So you can see that the bad news about gene deterioration hasn't given me much hope, vis-a-vis, living on after death.

But the GOOD news! It's no secret the human gene pool has been deteriorating on several fronts and the prospect of certain demises may, I suggest, be a cause for celebration.

At one time, the human race could be divided into two camps - civilized and not. If you were civilized, it was your job to stand guard over the uncivilized, keep them from hurting themselves even if that occasionally meant separating their heads from their bodies or lashing their limbs to horses. This was a small price to pay for keeping order. Basically, you were either a person of taste and discernment or you were an untutored swine who ate with his thumbs and smelled like a tailing pond. No one needed a program to tell what side of the civilized fence a person was on. It was as plain as the beauty mark or hairy mole on one's face.

But then mankind discovered democracy. It's hard to criticize democracy. One negative word and the booboisie dredge up that facile comment attributed to Winston Churchill - 'Democracy is a terrible form of government - until you compare it to the rest!' Ho, ho, ho. How droll, Winnie. The fact is, it IS a terrible form of government, one honored more in the breach than the practice, and its practice has led to a number of adverse side effects to the art of living.

Over the past two hundred or so years, we have seen the emergence and continued existence (as opposed to evolution) of several mutated versions of the species homo sapiens.

1) Politicians - (apologies to Barack Obama. Its early and it would be nice ot have him prove me wrong) everyone's favorite whipping boys (Along with lawyers, which is fine, since they're usually one and the same) They are the ones who stand up tallest for democracy because they're the ones who benefit the most. Where else can you get a job where, after you've got it,no one much cares what you do?

Getting close to a politician can be hazardous to one's health. We've all seen those wildlife shows in which an intrepid camera man sneaks up on a Komodo dragon. Speaking in a whisper, the narrator tells us the dragon smells really bad and has the worst breath since Neanderthal man gave up eating raw polecats. 'AND,' he adds, 'HE WILL EAT ANYTHING! MY LIFE IS IN DANGER!' That's how I feel when I get close to a politician. My life is in danger. Think what he does for a living - he tries to convince people he's their friend and then tries to steal all their money. AND he has the government on his side! The politician has not been a happy evolutionary development.

2) Anyone Connected With Television - when Newton Minow declared fifty years ago that television was becoming a 'vast wasteland', it took only a few short years before the statement leaped from its status as an 'Overstatement' to one of a huge 'Understatement'. Television today is so pervasive and so wretched that no one even criticizes it any more. The whole industry has become a sumphole of cynical crapola, recycled pap, feckless management, dishonest outlaws, and warped personalities. And, because it comes into the home as an invited guest, it is treated with an unwarranted degree of respect. The truth is it's a bit like inviting an abusive parent into the home - poisoning minds, withering curiosity, and numbing the viewer against any ability to discriminate or exercise abstract thought. Its practitioners ought to be ashamed and if their limb on the human tree were to shrivel and die, the loss would rate no more than four lines in USA Today, which, come to think of it, might well disappear with it.

3) Business Gurus - what a pinhead group this is. If life is a four-lane highway, these morons walk a tightrope. They obsess over the notion there are one or two miraculous revelations waiting to deliver fortune and fame. These gurus sometimes achieve success simply because too many people listen to them and for reasons only superficially apparent. But the fact is, they are life-nibblers, little brains that have reduced the pursuit of happiness to a vague hunt for money. The good news is they may devolve on their own, the majority being too preoccupied to procreate. One of them would actually have us believe financial and career success is a function of dressing well. The irony is that this may actually be true, which makes it only more pathetic.

4) Miscellaneous - rude people, 'Friends' fans, tailgaters, and football players who mug for the camera.

Well, there you have it. That's the GOOD side of the story. Still, maybe we should hope the three million year figure is correct and let the sperm count fall where it may.

RAD