“Max, I don’t see how you can go on saying that we are ‘simple-minded organisms wallowing in the equivalent of a brackish pool, squirming in our blind quest for nutrients,’” I said, quoting a line Max had written a couple of years ago.

Max looked impatient. “Compared to what humankind can be, we are highly primitive, analogous to the simplest single-celled creatures.”

I held up my hands in the traditional ‘time out’ signal. “Max, we’ve sent men to the moon and brought them back. We have sent robots to another planet in our solar system to run around and take soil samples. We have wiped out smallpox. We transplant vital organs from the living and dead to living humans and extend their lives. We have unraveled the secret of DNA and are learning how to manipulate it for the good of humankind. We have manipulated the genetics of food crops to make them immune to killing diseases and we are feeding millions that, just a few years ago, the experts thought would starve to death. How can you say we are still primitive as a protozoa?”

“I am aware of all those things,” Max said. He turned around and picked up a folded newspaper. “Primitive, you ask? Let’s take a random look at the newspaper. Here’s today’s.”

He opened the paper and started reading.

Tyler – A 47-year old Tyler man charged in the 2007 stabbing death of his mother avoided a possible death sentence with a plea agreement. He admitted fatally stabbing and beating Martha Miller, 64, who managed a motel where he worked. He also stole money from her, prosecutors said.

Nacogdoches – Authorities have arrested the estranged husband of a Nacogdoches woman shot through the kitchen window while cooking dinner for their children last week.

Philadelphia – Vincent Fumo, a Democrat who once was one of the most powerful figures in Pennsylvania politics, was convicted Monday of more than 130 counts of corruption for schemes that defrauded the state Senate and others of more than $3.5 million.

St. Poelten, Austria – Austrian pleads guilty to incest. For years, an Austrian man refused to even speak to his daughter, coming to the cellar where he held her captive only to rape her. Often, her children watched, a prosecutor said Monday.

Sudan – Despite an International Criminal Court warrant for the arrest of Sudan’s President, General Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity, he intends to continue traveling to friendly Arab and African nations and China . The charges against Al-Bashir include murder, extermination, forcible transfer of civilian populations, torture and rape. Even now as more black Muslims die every day as his helicopter gunships clear the way for murders of civilians, mass rapes and razing of villages. He has ejected all the international aid groups that were attempting to save lives in the Sudan . As of March 10, the U. N. Security council failed to agree on even a nonbinding statement about the expulsion of the aid groups.

He stopped reading and looked at me. “Need I read more? That’s just five pages of the first section. Surely we can find some more delights, some more examples of horrors inflicted by our fellow humans in the Metro section.”

Picking up the next section of the paper, he smiled smugly and said, “Ah, yes, the piece de resistance.”

Dallas – A former pastor at United Methodist Church in Royse City, Steve Richardson, 36, has pled guilty in federal court to two child pornography charges. According to the U. S. Attorney’s office, Richardson , using the identity “Cowboysspades,” communicated with an undercover agent online via Google Hello, through which users are allowed to chat and exchange computer files. Last September, authorities seized a computer containing more than 600 child pornography images at the church office and Richardson confessed to possessing child pornography and trading images with Google Hello users.

"My goodness, how far the Christians have come in 2000 years!" he exclaimed

I held up my hand, palm outward. “Don’t read any more. Granted, there’s still a great deal wrong with humanity. But if we keep looking through that paper, we’ll find some examples of goodness and love for one’s fellow humans.”

“I agree,” Max said cheerily. “That’s the reason we can hope for humankind’s ultimate salvation.”

“Salvation? You talk about salvation?” I gasped.

“Not the magical kind you subscribe to as a Christian,” he sneered. “I’m talking about our future controlled evolution in which we become more conscious of ourselves and nature. Long ago, we realized there is no “purpose” in nature; it acts toward no ends, it is indifferent to us. Man is unique in nature because he became the first creature to be self-aware, and started seeking his place in that nature. For the first time in the billions of years history of Earth, when man came along, there existed a creature that needed ‘purpose.’ Moreover, this creature has been given the intellect to manipulate nature itself. But even as far as humans have progressed to date, they are a mere speck of algae compared to what they ultimately can become. I know this flies in the face of what you religionists believe, that your evolution has reached its pinnacle and you were made in God’s image. Excuse me while I guffaw.”

“Max, that’s rude!”

“Rude?” he chuckled. “I’m sorry, but I can’t get ready for a God that looks like Dennis Kucinich.”

“I thought you were being serious,” I grumped.

“I was being serious,” he replied. “You and I won’t be here to see it, but one day, perhaps ten thousand years from now, we will have eliminated genetic disabilities, conquered disease, abolished hunger, made race a relic of ancient history and adapted the ultimate rule of morality.”

“What’s that?”

He smiled and said, “We’ve talked about that. ‘Do unto others…’

Dear friends:

Yeh, Yeh, I know it's Sunday and good Christians take off from work on Sunday. That's fine. And that's the reason Sunday mornings are quiet, the Christians are in church and the sinners are still asleep, exhausted (or hung over) from their excesses of Saturday night, (Or is it the other way around?)

So why not use Sundays to good purpose? Monthly rants and holiday rants aren't enough for me to blow off the head of steam I build up every week so I'm going to use Sundays, holy day or not.

This is the first of my Sunday rants.

I’m sick to death of hearing every big-dogging politician mindlessly mouth the empty phrases "alternative fuels" and "end our dependence on foreign oil” every time they open their yaps. They’ve been feeding us that snake oil ever since ol' rabbit hunter Jimmy Carter created the Department of Energy to end that dependence, and how long ago was that, kiddies? If they are banking on that subsidized moonshine they’re already requiring us to add to our gasoline and reduce our average miles per gallon, that’s a physical impossibility. If every grain of corn raised in this country went into the subsidized production of ethanol, and we cut down our national forests and planted corn, it wouldn’t come anywhere close to replacing gasoline; and they know it! Moreover, it would raise the price of food to an astronomical level, even higher than what it’s already done. (Of course, that would make the moonshiners and the corn belt people happy and obscenely rich.) So ending our dependence on foreign oil is just so much BS! But what else do we expect from politicians? Candidness? Truth? Excuse me while I guffaw!

Sidenote: (1)The American Coalition for Ethanol is claiming the downward pressure exerted by ethanol on fuel prices is responsible for reduction in the cost of gasoline. Damn! All this time I thought it was reduced demand! (Don't take my word for it. Look at their press page.)

(2) They also chewed out the (big) food industry for blaming increased food prices on ethanol, claiming instead, it was the price of gas. What, pray tell, what caused the rocketing cost of food products long before gas went to $4.00? Was it Satan?

Fortunately, we are getting most of our "foreign" oil from Canada, thanks to the tar sands that have become economical to exploit. That doesn't bother me too much because the Canucks are dear neighbors. It's when we buy oil from people who wear towels on their heads, shun bath water and stone to death rape victims that steams me.

Seriously, if the government actually wanted to end our "dependence on foreign oil," we would have been drilling in ANWAR, offshore and in the Bakken Formation decades ago. There’s at least a century’s worth of energy for the US of A in those areas. Therefore, it's painfully obvious they don't really mean it! What they are avoiding saying is "it's gotta be something else but we don't have the slightest idea of what it's going to be, but anything but oil." Meanwhile every transportation expert knows we'll be using fossil fuels for transportation purposes for at least another 50 years. (or until that new mystery fuel comes on line.) And they haven't figured out yet how to hook up one of Boone Picken's fancy windmills to an 18-wheeler for the long haul from Dallas to L.A. That would be one hell of an extension cord!

Of course, home-grown socialist Maxine Waters makes it no secret that she wants to nationalize the oil industry because the oil company highbinders keep finding and selling oil and gasoline and making an obscene 10% profit and it makes her mad as hell when the cost of gas goes up because the Arabs are selling oil for $150 a barrel. Can you imagine what it will be like when Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Maxine Waters do for oil companies what they did for mortgage banking? A hell of a lot of people are going to be taking shank’s mare or riding bicycles to get to work: If there is any work!

The bottom line: One of these days, we have to stop pumping noxious gases into the air we breathe, but politicians are not being honest with us or with themselves. Let's get it out in the open and have a public forum on it. Let's formulate a plan that will work in the real world, not in the rarefied atmosphere inside the beltway. What are they afraid of?

I strolled into Max’s den to see what he was doing and caught him reading what appeared to me to be a dirty book! The dust jacket featured a photograph of seven attractive naked ladies in single-file, each with her left arm on the shoulder of the girl in front. The hairdos and the tone of the photograph said it was from the 1930s.

I said, “I’m shocked, shocked, you are reading such a book! What in the world?”

He looked at me with that long-suffering look he gets and said, “This is not a dirty book. Look at the title; it’s a book of instruction.”

I looked. The title was Lesbianism Made Easy by Helen Eisenbach. I said, “Oh heavens! Sodom and Gomorrah ! Are you planning on switching?”

His eyes narrowed. “Switching? How can I switch? I already prefer girls.”

“Oh,” I said. “I suppose it’s a technical matter then, or maybe just a question of semantics.”

“Don’t analyze it,” he growled. “Actually, it’s a rather clever, funny book.”

“Why are you reading it?”

“The same reason I read Latina or Lilith, to see what’s going on in another dimension, another part of reality that we traditionally ignore. Surely, as a writer, you understand that.”

“Oh course. In fact I read, or, ahem, tried to read Proust.”

“Did you understand what he was telling you?” Max asked brightly.

“Not in the least,” I replied. “Went sound asleep every time I opened the book.”

“Oh well, you tried.”

“What I really wanted to ask you about, before your nontraditional reading choice gave me whiplash, have you heard about the latest fad in dear old Switzerland ?”

“No, I have not. What is it?”

“It’s skinny hiking.”

He looked stunned for a moment then said, “Does that mean what I think it means? People are going hiking in the snow without clothing?”

“Exactly!” I cried. “Isn’t that the damndest thing you ever heard?

“In the wintertime?”

“Yes!”

“Good grief! Don't they get frost bite?”

“Oh, they wear shoes and gloves.”

“That’s not what I’m taling about!"

“Oh,” I said, “the article I read didn’t mention that.”

“How did this start?”

“I donno. It’s been going on for years, apparently. But it’s now growing into ‘the thing to do’. The internet helps get out the word and info on preferred locations.”

Referring to the newspaper clipping, I said, “Officials in Appenzell were aghast in September when police arrested a young fellow in the mountains wearing only hiking boots and a backpack. But when they checked the law, they found there is no Swiss law against hiking in the nude, so they had to turn him loose.”

Max threw back his head and laughed. “Good for them! By golly, that’s an excellent example of democracy, more power to them.”

“I thought you’d see it that way. The fewer pointless laws the better, right?”

“Damned right.”

I read farther into the article. “Here’s an architect that’s been skinny hiking for 30 years, name of Hepenstrick. He says that people he meets along the mountain trails are rarely offended. In the wintertime, they just ask, ‘Aren’t you cold?’”

Max laughed again. “Fabulous!” he exclaimed.

“Here’s something else, a legal expert said that Switzerland , in 1991, threw out a law that banned public nudity. He said, and I quote, ‘Simply being naked without any sexual connotation is no longer illegal.’”

“I’m glad you came over today,” Max exclaimed cheerily. “After watching the hypocrisy of a bunch of politicians trying to say King’s Ex on a law they passed last month, I was in a deep funk. You have restored my faith in humankind.”

“Always glad to be of service,” I replied.

Max said, “I see by the papers that Exxon-Mobile is pressing on with the exploration thing and putting money into it while the other oil companies are cutting back.”

“Yes, I saw that.” I replied. “Of course you know that old double x bases its business plan on turning a profit in lean years so when a good year comes along, they really make hay, like the 10% profit they made last year.”

“Well, it must be true,” Max add. “The company’s stud duck says they are going to make a capital outlay of $29 billion this year to start nine new projects. They even know how much oil they are going to produce from those. In fact, in the next five years, they expect to spend up to $ 50 billion on drilling rigs, oil platforms and refineries. Damn, that’s a lot of money! But to the politicians nowadays that just amounts to walking-around money.”

“Good,” I said. “That’s what they're supposed to do. Find oil, extract it, refine it and get it to market at a profit and in doing so, pay their stockholders a dividend. Anything else is socialist bullshit.”

“You don’t mince words do you?” Max chuckled.

“Not when it comes to big corporations. They either do what they are supposed to do or go down the tubes and the stockholders get stiffed. Obviously, since Exxon is talking about investing that much money, they aren’t too concerned about alternative fuels.”

Max laughed out loud. “Since no one has come up with a doable alternate fuel for transportation yet, they figure they are going to be selling oil and gas for a long time yet. In fact, the head man says something about that.” ( Reading ): ‘Trouble is, alternatives, such as biofuels or electric vehicles, contribute only a sliver of the total of the total U. S. energy supply.’ He goes on to say, ‘Shifting more of the country’s energy supply to alternative fuels will require enormous manufacturing capacity that’s not there today, as well as, infrastructure to distribute new fuels.’”

“He’s being realistic,” I commented. “The pipelines may have to be different, the storage tanks at depots and retail outlets would have to be changed out, pumping equipment will have to be redesigned and it goes on and on. Whatever happens will be a slow, costly process.”

Max, still reading from the paper, said, “By the way, this fellow’s name is Tillerson and he says that electric hybrids will eventually take a bite out of the vehicle fuel market but ‘it’s going to play out over a very, very long time.’”

“Does Tillerson say anything about alternate fuels?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact he does,” Max replied. “He said he doesn’t like to invest in products that rely on government aid to turn a profit. Plus, he said, politicians don’t like to give aid to Exxon.”

We both laughed. “That’s an understatement,” I said.

“Get this!” Max said, holding up his hand for silence. Here’s what he said about subsidies.

‘If I wanted to kill tax subsidies in those (alternatives), the quickest way would be for Exxon Mobile to invest heavily, and Congress would cancel the tax subsidy …”

“He’s more than likely spot on there, Max. It’s a sad commentary on our times when the deadbeats, the incompetents and the do nothings get handed vast amounts of tax payer money and those that produce goods and get them to market at a profit are despised.”

“Oops, you said the P-word. That’s unprintable in an Obama-era family newspaper.”

“Again, a sad commentary on our times,” I sighed.

It would appear,” Max said, “that Congress will push through a bill outlawing the secret ballot in union elections and substituting the card check.”

“It appears that way,” I replied. “In the last 20 or 30 years, they’ve found that when workers are free of intimidation, they’ll vote against losing their independence 80 percent of the time. But the unions have been pouring members’ dues money into the DNC to get that changed. It looks like they’re going to get their way this time.”

“How many workers, do you suppose, are going to say ‘no’ when two large men come to their door and say, “Sign this!” Max chuckled.

“Very few, I imagine,” I murmured, shaking my head. “The goon squads are coming back. The unions have been able to legally lie to workers and make any promise they could think of to get people to vote for organizing while the employer can’t make a promise even if it’s an honest one. Having the propaganda advantage is no longer enough for the unions. The glory days of unionism are over. That’s why union membership has dropped off in recent years. People just don’t feel like they need the unions anymore. They have other routes to air grievances. I know; I spent 20 years as one of those routes.”

“They’d get on the horn to you at the corporate office?”

“You betcha! If they figured they were getting screwed, they’d call me. If I couldn’t get it squared away on the phone, I’d jump on a plane and check it out personally.”

“Like what?”

“Like the time a female employee in Kentucky complained about her supervisor sexually harassing her. The local management came up with what they thought was a fair solution. They transferred the female to another plant so she had a 60-mile round trip commute every day instead of her 5-mile trip.”

“You’re not serious!”

“Serious as ebola, man. I had to explain to those Neanderthals that the solution to a harassment complaint was not penalizing the victim.”

“Sounds like the kind of stupidity that got unions started in the first place,” Max observed.

“That’s fair to say,” I agreed. “Different complaints, same management indifference.”

“But you dealt with unions didn’t you?”

“Sure. But we never surrendered management prerogatives to the unions like the big three auto companies did, so we didn’t have that cost albatross around our necks. The unions themselves didn’t give us a whole lot of trouble but some of the members got away with murder because they figured we couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Pushed their weight around, did they?”

“There’s one that stands out in my mind. In a less civilized environment, he would have been strangled and dumped in the desert.”

“The desert?”

“The Mojave. We had a couple of contracts at Edwards, Plant 42. You’ve heard of it?”

“Who hasn’t heard of the legendary Plant 42?”

“You got it. I loved going out there. There was always some strange looking air vehicle in the big hangar. It was a fascinating place.”

“Anyway, we had some offices out there and the manager needed a light switch installed in a particular room that would be changed to an office. The manager put in a request to have the light switch installed by the door, a logical place for the switch. But the electrician that showed up was the meanest, most hostile SOB on the whole damned base. He hated management, apparently having been raised from a pup to hate management simply because it was management. Anyway, he showed up to install the switch. The walls were sheet rock and the framing was that thin sheet metal. To install the switch, all he had to do was get on a ladder, push up a couple of ceiling panels, cut a hole in the sheet metal framing, and drop his electrical cable down inside the wall by the door, cut a hole for the switch and hook it up.”

“He couldn’t do it that way. He took a hammer and smashed a groove in the sheetrock from the ceiling to the place where he was going to put the switch. Then he ran the cable and hooked it up to the switch and left. So the manager had to request a janitorial visit to clean up the mess on the floor, sweep up the gypsum and so on. The next morning, the janitor showed up and cleaned the room. Then the manager had to request sheet rock repair. The next day, two workers showed up, looked at the job, took measurements and went back to the warehouse for sheetrock. They finally got the sheetrock cut and installed, replacing the sheetrock from floor to ceiling. That took all the third day. Then the electrician had to come back and install the switch. So a job that should have required one person for one hour required four people and three and a half days. In that situation, it wasn’t a serious thing. But when something like that happens in a production setting, it costs real money.”

“So you have some bad memories?”

“Sure, but I have some good ones too. The Teamsters in New Jersey were reasonable people.”

“I’d hate to think if they’d been unreasonable.”

“You’d hate to think! Their names were Sidoti and Pulughi.”

“You must have been reasonable too. I see you still have all your fingers and your knees still work.”

“I charmed them with my winning personality.”

“Don’t start lying!”