Making Amends...

by Albert Danforth, Roving Historian

One of the most ridiculously unnecessary vote-magnet "issues" to crop up in the political conversation in the last ninety years or so is the debate over amending the United States Constitution to ban gay marriages. Regardless of one's religious, moral, spiritual and/or personal stance on homosexuality, the contention over a nationwide constitutional ban over gay marriage is patently ludicrous. The Constitution is not, should not, and can never effectively be the battleground for a moral cock-stomping contest.

The Constitution was established by this great nation's founders for the expressed reasons to establish limits on government with respect to the rights of the individual and parameters regarding the individual's rights and responsibilities to participate in government, as 25 of the 27 amendments demonstrate. The other two amendments revolve around the only attempt for the United States Government to restrict the rights of the individual at the federal level: the 18th which established the prohibition of alcohol, and the 21st which repealed Prohibition only 14 years later due to its spectacular failure of which its most emblematic feature was cementing the influence of the Mafia on American daily life for the next fifty-plus years.

Before the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors was made illegal on January 16, 1920, the Mafia was little more than the town council for large cities' Little Italies, largely flexing their criminal muscle only in their ethnic enclaves. Once Prohibition got enacted, however, an underground black market developed for alcohol and the Mafia proved an effective and efficient agent to garner a supply for the burgeoning demand. The monumental booze wealth amassed by the fabled crime syndicates over the next dozen years allowed them to expand their influence into the greater cities at large and the suburbs, as well as diversify their operations into the gambling-and-loan, prostitution and narcotics trades. An overly-ambitious top-heavy foray into organized labor eventually lead to the Mafia's downfall in the mid-1980's, reducing their influence mainly to the inner-city vending and waste-removal sectors and HBO series - at which point the Mafia's bastard Prohibition-sired country cousin NASCAR picked up the influential slack.

One can only logically deduce that a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage would thusly create similar black-market heroes of the downtrodden, rapidly building their influence in American politics and culture taking decades if not centuries to absolve. Unless you are prepared to damn your childen and grandchildren to a lifetime of knuckling under to Capoes Blaine "Prince Albert" Colagiacomo and Marcel "Under Bear" Vigliorini, enforcers Rudolfo "Rusty Trombone" Alligheri and Arnold "Dry Crack" Fiorino and/or a plague of media coverage dedicated to Miata-based left-turn festivals, I would strongly recommend that virulent segment of self-Righteous nationwide nannies abandon its attempts to codify morality in our Constitution.

Just Call Me Beaky Buzzard

by Bambino Helsel

No-o-o-ho-ho-hope! Nope nope nope... don't wanna do it. Don't wanna come out... n-n-nope!

Where I am, it's a toasty mid-nineties 24-7 with good humidity. I have my own private swimming pool. Out there, it's... well... it's Ohio in November. Not only the weather colder, but bounces back and forth between colder and hella-freakin'-colder more often than I get my lunch personally delivered via umbilicus.

You want me to leave my own personal Mexican Riviera to flail around in an arid bassinet like a shell-less wrinkly pink turtle? Madness, Mom and Dad... you speak madness.

Trust me, everybody is better off the way it is now - OK, maybe Mom's shouldering more than her fair share of the efforts - but it will be no blissful stroll through a pristine pastoral park for her out there, either. As it is, she only has to eat once. When she eats, I eat - it's all good! Out there, she needs to eat, then feed me - which in this weather can prove more than a pinch uncomfortable. In here, I make no waste... none that you can see, at least. Once I'm out, you'll both be elbows deep in my butt-guacamole every six hours or so until I'm potty trained.

Potty trained... hmmm... Bambino senses an angle. Let me stay in here until it's warm again and I'll come out fully self-sufficient. I'll learn to walk, poop, clean myself up... heck I'll even take on web design while I'm in here - I've got the time! Just don't make me come out... because I don't wanna.

I'm quite entrenched on this topic - I'm inside until June or July. Period. Go ahead... try your worst. Tape iPod buds to Mommy's tummy and play Warrant non-stop for days on end like I'm some pre-natal Noriega - I ain't budging. That whole "weather" concept can kiss my silky smooth butt.

You're gonna have to come in after me like Elian Gonzales. If you think you're uncomfortable NOW, Mom - think about the ATF storming your womb. I'm not coming out! Nope. Noo-ho-ho-hope! No-o-o-ope nope nope nope. I don't wanna. Nnnnnnope.

Illin'

by Knorr the Interpreter

My Buckeyes took a tough loss yesterday to Illinois 28-21. It happens. Illinois has always given us trouble - and this year Illinois is actually good - so my fellow citizens of Buckeye Nation really should have expected this.

Gone are the winning streaks: 14 straight at home, 20 straight in the Big Ten, 28 straight in the regular season. Feh! Those are just numbers. Quoting such gooberishness should be the purview of national sports media and stat geeks - fans don't care, players don't care, coaches don't care, and you can be damned sure that The Next Opponent doesn't care - and The Next Opponent is all anybody should ever be concerned about.

Gone is our shot at the National Championship. Oh well. Did anybody in Buckeye Nation truly think we had a real chance at the title in the beginning of the season? Hell - some of the true-scarlet-and-gray-bleeding fans I know couldn't even spell our starting quarterback's last name until October. (Honestly, I still have trouble remembering how many n's are in Boeckman.) This wasn't supposed to be our year. In August, 95% of Buckheads would have said "Thank you very much!" if the Football Gods told us they'd give us a 10-1 record at this point of the season.

What we are left with is all that really matters - exclusive focus on The Next Opponent. National media bollocks about BCS garbage is gone, and the winner of Next Saturday's Game was going to walk away with the Big Ten title no matter what happenned this week. Now instead of diverting our positive football energies into poll-watching, LSU/Oregon/Kansas/Oklahoma scouting, and defending our right to be in the BCS hunt against the national media naysayers, we can concentrate the whole of our Buckeye Chi for the next six days on one and only one fundamental truth:

Michigan Still Sucks.

Open Letter To Congressional Democrats

by Ron R. Clark

DO SOMETHING, DAMMIT!

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, I haven't seen anything as noisy and boisterous, yet ultimately futile and frustrating as the 2006 Democratic Congress since I witnessed a monkey furiously trying to fuck a football at the Denver Zoo a few years ago.

You shitheads had better listen and listen good. I come to you as a duly appointed spokesperson for the Purple Nation - those who vote neither Republican nor Democratic, but for whom we feel can do the best job. My Purple People represent about 80% of potential voters and about 50% of actual voters. If we're satisfied with the way things are going, we don't even bother to vote much, but when we're pissed off heads roll. You may have noticed us in 2006 - we put your asses in power. We can take your asses right back out in 2008 - you have one year left in your term to do something.

Apparently, you think people actually like you. Some do, I'm sure, but the vast majority of your votes in 2006 came from people like me who would have voted for a ham salad sandwich if it ran against a Republican. Honestly, very few of the Purple Legions could name a single plank of the Democratic platform in 2006, but we knew enough about the Republicans that we figured you guys couldn't be worse. Now Election Day 2007 is rolling around and most of us STILL don't know a single plank of the Democratic Party platform. Your 24-month trial period is about to expire and nary a one of us in Purple Nation feels ready to buy - not good.

The only thing we know is that you hate George W. Bush. Fair enough - so do most of us out here. If hating Mr. Bush is the sole qualification to get a cushy Congressional job, however, The House of Representatives would be a crowded one indeed. I know I can't stand the bastard, and I would gladly accept $150,000 a year to prance and pose for the cameras and mics like a rhythmless Mick Jagger and whine about how much Bush sucks. If you House Democrats have no interest in actually REPRESENTING something, I'll vote for myself next year - apparently, I'm qualified for the job and I could use the scratch.

And don't get me started on Democratic Senators... I can't go one sentence about them without using the phrase "spineless douchebags". See what I mean... you spineless douchebags!

I hear you... "Ooooh... mean bully Bush vetoes everything! We can't do our jobs... Bush won't let us! Waaaah!" I seem to remember a Republican Congress having a rather successful six-year stretch with a Democratic President at the helm about ten years ago. Granted, that President was much more compromising - as were his interns, apparently - but it can be done. You have one year, Donkey Breath - grow some balls. The country you purport to love and represent is at stake.

For six years, Congressional Democrats were the Republicans' prison bitches. Purple Nation gave you Democrats the keys to the cell block in 2006, and expected that you would know what to do with them. I guess we need to be more explicit for you Sugar Babies: Unlock the cell door, open it, step out of the cell, keep the derelicts we don't like in the cell, close the door, lock it with the criminal inside, and walk and talk like the wardens you should be. Jingling the keys and cooing "Look what IIII've got!" to the Republicans as they continue to bend you over and bone your borne and buttered bungholes really doesn't accomplish the change which the Purple Nation was seeking.