Sheena for President

Sheena for President, Felon of the Week, and Bizarre Holidays

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I have ruminated on it before. Even though she is a tad bit mentally challenged, and she has yet to be nominated, Sheena should run for President.  Nothing in the Constitution specifically forbids dogs from holding office, although I could see two sticky points.  She is not 35 years old (not even in dog years, though I don’t know exactly how old she is,) and she doesn’t have a birth certificate.  But other than not being able to prove her age or citizenship status (the nebulous origins of the current POTUS’ vital documentation didn’t seem to stop him) Sheena is supremely qualified to hold public office.  She is free of sordid scandals, but is expert in digging up others’ trash.  She does have a current Franklin County dog license,  and a current rabies tag, which ought to count for something. 

As I was trolling the Marion (OH) news station’s website seeking Buckeye Chuck’s latest weather prediction, (I was sort of bored this morning) I entertained myself by checking out the other features on the site and came upon the Featured Felon of the Week page.  Sort of like TruTV, but closer to home, with fuglier mug shots.  Since I spent the first 25 years of my life in Marion, I was pleasantly surprised not to have known any of the felons pictured.

I still have to ask, who smiles for a mug shot?  Are you stoned, or have you confused jail with the BMV?  I know driver’s license pics generally resemble mug shots, but come on.  Maybe you’re just happy to have three hots and a cot for ten days and a bit of time away from your drunken old man, but I can’t see  felony charges and/or jail time as “things to smile about.”  I just don’t have that kind of optimism.

Even in this “enlightened” 21st century we entertain some pretty bizarre traditions.  Groundhog Day is one of my favorite holidays – because you don’t have to buy anything or do anything other than inquire on the prognostications of a large rodent that puts me in mind of a hairy armadillo.  Buckeye Chuck didn’t see his shadow this time around, so in theory this means we are in for an early spring.  Or not.  Who really gives a rat’s ass- or should I say a groundhog’s ass? Central Ohio doesn’t really get spring anyway.  The weather goes straight from Snowbooger Grey to Monsoon to Stygian Heat.

I also have to wonder about another February holiday- Valentine’s Day.  St. Valentine supposedly was a martyr sacrificed by the Romans back in the third century.  The tradition is that he was martyred for marrying young Christian couples – therefore the hoo-hah about celebrating love and all that.  I have to wonder, since tradition also holds that he was beheaded, where we came up with the heart business for Valentine’s Day.  Why not a dismembered head?  Maybe decapitated heads are too closely associated with Halloween, but so are disembodied hearts, and the Aztecs and Mayans had the jump on pulling hearts out of live bodies even before the Romans discovered decapitation.  I can, however, see the connection between love and decapitation and/or evisceration.  So it works in a weird kind of way, though I can’t figure chocolate into it at all.

The old Roman holiday, Lupercalia, that was once celebrated on February 14 is rather interesting.  Let’s all worship the Wolf God?  Dog sacrifice?  I don’t think so.

St. Patrick’s day is the next weird holiday that I don’t completely get.  What does green beer have to do with converting people to Catholicism? Do I really want to know?  I know the Irish like to drink, but whiskey would make more sense.

The Year of the Apocalypse? Wasn’t That 1984,or 1986, or 1999, or 2001?

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I have to say that I am somewhat amused by the plethora of 2012 doomsday predictions that are scattered all over the Internet, TV and pretty much everywhere else.  The whole bit about the Mayan calendar ending, as if people who were into human sacrifice (by yanking out the victim’s still-beating heart) were some kind of infallible authorities on scientific and/or eschatological issues, seems more than a bit nebulous to me.  I understand that the Mayans had a lot going for them in matters of astrology and astronomy, but even the modern understanding of either of these studies is incomplete and likely not as accurate as we would like to believe. 

Of course, this year we are offered the sublime public imperative to get Obama the freak out of the White House before he does even more damage. 

I am no fan of Mitt Romney either, but for comparison’s sake I would rather see Sheena elected president if only because she would do a lot less damage than Obama.

I can see it now: Sheena for President: At least I’m housebroken,and the only ass I lick is my own!  But I don’t think dogs are eligible to run.  Pity.  But they don’t go rambling on about global warming myths, and they don’t make pacts with terrorists either.

As recently as 1975 the scientific community was seriously concerned about another impending ice age- and that was back when the air was dirty and sex was clean.  If pollution was going to cause global warming, then why wasn’t Ohio a tropical paradise back in the 1970’s?   Today’s wisdom is to go from a couple decades’ (if that) worth of weather reports as sufficient evidence to claim “global warming” and blame “apocalyptic climate change” on the use of internal combustion, frequent bathing, and the Western world’s use of toilet paper to wipe our behinds.  OK.  If the use of internal combustion, frequent showers, scrupulous wiping and the inevitable pollution those luxuries supposedly generate is causing global warming, then I would like to know how the same creature comforts that supposedly are making the earth a stygian hell were paving the way for us to die on a frozen planet less than forty years ago.  It seems a bit fishy to me.

What do the tree huggers have to gain?  A world of people who smell like ass and can’t drive?  I can show you a whole room full of them down at the BMV waiting to take their driver’s tests, and it’s not a pleasant experience. 

Just because something is synthetic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.  Plastic, spandex (*on hot, buff dudes, I must clarify), computer chips, acrylic nails and McDonald’s cheeseburgers all come to mind as man-made items that are pretty damn handy.  On the other hand “all-natural” doesn’t necessarily mean “good.”  Arsenic is an all natural poison.  Ebola virus is an all natural disease-causing agent too.  So let’s all go snacking on arsenic-and-Ebola and see how those all natural goodies treat us?

I have to look at the end of the world with a pretty pragmatic eye.  No human being is more than a minute electrical charge away from the Dirt Nap.  Death is inevitable, whether it’s all at once with the rest of the world, or all by myself  at some random time when that little electrical switch in my heart decides to stop working. 

Like the Serenity Prayer says: Accept the things you can’t change.

Life is a lot easier that way.