Obama's minister of claptrap
by Bryce Martin

Criticizing the good reverend (ahem) Pfleger in a context that makes his skit involving a putdown of Hillary Clinton the point of emphasis is missing the point. His main indiscretion in that little stage show was his pandering to the black congregation. Look up the word claptrap in the encyclopedia and you will now see a picture of Pfleger.

Just look at the robed black chorus behind Pfleger as they become more animated the closer Pfleger gets to the transparent punchline you know is coming.

Another thing more galling than his easy Hillary joke is the fact he is obviously homosexual. Galling, because he is what denomination?

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Gathering a Poem While Gazing Out the Nighttime Window While Dreaming
by Bryce Martin

Those moon-lit dolls
With their cemetery smiles
The bow-wow
In the bedroom dust is ours

Vince Young a portrait of immaturity
by Bryce Martin

How can Vince Young think anyone would care if he had retired after his rookie season?

One blogger commented he'd retire too if he threw the football as poorly as Young. Another said he probably changed his mind only after he found out he'd have to give most of his money back to the Titans.

Young got little sympathy from readers regarding his admission in a recent interview to wanting to chuck it all when his comfort zone closed like a zone trap after replaying Year I of the NFL in his mind.

Personally, I wouldn't care if it meant not seeing him sulking on the sidelines after a benching for oversleeping and other team infractions. He always says he is just displaying his emotions, those that he has because he is such a competitor. Really? I could have sworn I saw a whiny kid.

Now he comes up with this "I thought about retiring" gambit. Retiring from what? Quitting is a better word. And for him, it is still a decent option.

Young's immaturity level is now apparent. It's just above the mercury bowl near 0. Immature kids commit suicide with the idea that the world will be sorry, that the world will sorely miss them when they're gone.

Young's mistake is thinking that anyone would care about his career suicide.

He needs to grow up, whether he can ever throw a football well or not.

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"El Paso" from 1959 by Marty Robbins.
The line is actually "Rose's Cantina."

Rosie's Cantina
by Bryce Martin

Nothing much happens in my hometown of Galena
Midnight you could find me at Rosie's Cantina
After a few beers down the way at the Mile-A-Way
Time for some black coffee and a pinball game

The jukebox is playing Lonnie Irving's "Pinball Machine"
Charlie Brown brings me my coffee and its steaming mean
Soon the place starts filling up with drunks of the night
Someone called "Nasty" is ambling the room for a fight

Plates fly past of eggs over easy and bacon fried up crisp
Silverware clatters on tables, in the corner someone gets kissed
Quarters are placed on the glass of my pinball machine
Meaning others are wanting me to concede the use of the thing

Sorry I say but I'll keep on drinking my mud and playing pinball
I might just play forever as long as I'm winning and all
I'm at Rosie's Cantina located just off main after midnight again
Lighting up the room as I give another pinball a spin

Well, ole Nasty I guess he sees this as his chance
He stands up across my way and gives me his best death glance
I act as if I hardly notice and wouldn't care if I had
He cowers back down and falls asleep on a chef's salad

Plates fly past of eggs over easy and bacon fried up crisp
Silverware clatters on tables, in the corner someone gets kissed
Quarters are placed on the glass of my pinball machine
Meaning others are wanting me to concede the use of the thing

Sorry I say but I'll keep on drinking my mud and playing pinball
I might just play forever as long as I'm winning and all
I'm at Rosie's Cantina located just off main after midnight again
Lighting up the room as I give another pinball a spin

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Who could follow Ted Kennedy?
by Bryce Martin

I read that in what I can only gather was a serious headline.

A dog comes to mind. A bloated one maybe. One who tosses another dog to die in a pond off the road.

So, how is that wonderful example of humankind to be replaced, to get back to the question. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

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Which twin has the Toni?
by Bryce Martin

Or, which quip is mine?
Is it:

1. On a clear day you can see Claire Trevor

2. (regarding Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden) The Mork and Mindy of radical chic

3. He gives diarrhea a new egress

4. He has delusions of adequacy

5. (regarding Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker) children of a lesser god

6. After getting caught in an army of lies, as a general rule I received corporal punishment in a private place.

7. He's such a liar he'd lie when the truth would be better

8. (Candy, to anyone, at the Bonanza Bar, Argus, Calif., C. 1965) Hang it in yer ear, Fluffy

9. Pop culture is an oxymoron

10. Oxymoron is probably an oxymoron.

Unfortunately for me, I guess you could say, it is No. 6. Quipping is something I'm still working to improve after all these years.

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I am not well envoweled
by Bryce Martin

I found out that I am not well envoweled but that I might be a monkey's uncle, or something close to one.

This all from a site called isthisyour.name:

Etymology:

Forename:
Origin: English (Root: Brice)
Meaning: Son of Rice

Surname:
Origin: (Origin Scottish) This name may be derived from the Latin martius, warlike, from Mars, the God of War. In the Gaelic, mor is great, and duin, a man. Morduin, a chief, a warrior.

Top 5 Facts:

1. How well envoweled is Bryce Martin? 27% of the letters are vowels. Of one million first and last names we looked at, 87.6% have a higher vowel make-up. This means you are poorly envoweled.
2. Backwards, it is Ecyrb Nitram... nice ring to it, huh?
3. In Pig Latin, it is Ebrycay Artinmay.
4. What is Bryce Martin in binary code? 01000010 01110010 01111001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01001101 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101001 01101110.
5. People with this first name are probably: Male. So, there's a 98% likelihood you sweat just thinking of the price of shaver blades.

3 Things You Didn't Know:

1. Bryce Martin, what is your Power Animal? Bryce Martin, based on your name and a process known to only three people on the planet, we can tell you that your Power Animal is the: Cynomolgus Monkey.
2. Your 'Numerology' number is 2. If it wasn't bulls**t, it would mean that you are supportive, diplomatic, analytical, and play well with others. A team-player, you seek peace and harmony in a group.
3. According to the US Census Bureau°, 0.016% of US residents have the first name 'Bryce' and 0.2778% have the surname 'Martin'. The US has around 300 million residents, so we guesstimate there are 133 'Bryce Martin's.

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Is lead the killer it's made out to be?
By Bryce Martin

Galena is the name of my home town. Galena means lead. My home town had the largest lead smelter in the world, starting around a hundred years ago.

"Long-term exposure to lead dust poses a health risk, particularly to young children."

I've heard that.

A killer tornado blasted the old home front over the past weekend. In the region, typical summer dust devils traditionally blew dust off mountains of mining waste, known by locals as chat piles.

We breathed it.

Still do.

The most recent tornado destruction in the region, and perhaps deadliest of all, that fairly well put Picher, Okla., to waste for good, was making news in stories and headines nationwide and alarming EPA people as to what extent it had stirred up ancient lead dust to wreak its own kind of havoc in the wake of front-end tornado damage.

I would surely imagine that breathing and taking into the body by other means elements of lead ore would be harmful to the body and, as most anything else, there are always exceptions. The exceptions might explain why at least three people from Galena that I am aware of have lived to be 100 years old, and many more have lived well into their 90s.

While I would not expect research later on to indicate that breathing lead dust over a long period of time is beneficial to a human being, I have to wonder if it is truly the menace it is made out to be by today's standards, where even a flake of lead paint on a child's toy causes an uproar.

My Galena is in Kansas. Other Galenas exist in Missouri, Illinois, and elsewhere, but mostly in the geologic lead belt that supplied lead ore turned into bullets for most of the rifle munitions used in World War II. Other Galenas have different names, such as Picher. There are, in fact, hundreds of towns not named Galena in roughly a six-state area that could have been thus named.

I knew her as Norma Thompson in the 1950s when she was my music teacher. She died at age 100 on October 20, 2003, in Oswego. With a zest for life, she taught vocal music appreciation and stressed such things as inflection and proper breathing while vocalizing. She didn't live all her wonderful years in Galena, but she was in the immediate region all that time, breathing in the times, if you will.

Questions remain after all these years. Why do some suffer and die from lead exposure and why do others just as touched go on to lead long and normal lives?

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Did McCain vote for Bush or did he not?
by Bryce Martin

Why does it have to be one of the two?

I imagine the truth is that John McCain did both. He voted for George Bush in 2000, but at a party later on, to appear cool to the sick left, he told Arianna Huffington he didn't and others overheard it.

In saying that I am in no way defending Huffington. Based on her track record, that would be impossible. Unless, you were one of the "sick left" that I noted, as she is.

The liberals really are a pathetic bunch of sick puppies. When I hear from certain TV pundits that recent victories by Barack Obama show that his stand on the fever-brained Rev. Wright proves that dip in the road is now behind him. Please. This is a democratic primary, please keep that in mind to aid any relevance. An apology from an ax-murderer would be sufficient, if that cretin was a democratic front-runner.

Just being a democrat automatically makes you upstanding to other democrats. This is the godless, anything-goes party. Liberal dems would back Hitler if they thought he could take Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Tell me that Obama is not defined by his association with the misguided Rev. Wright when it comes up in the general election, and Republicans, the ones who actually have a few scruples left, question the odd association between candidate and religious mentor. Tell me then -- Oh, pundits! -- that Obama has put that issue behind him. He can't put that issue behind him. It's part of who he is, a big part, and it's not good.

McCain, as undesirable and as big a phony in his own way as Obama, is not a choice, either. Democrats, though, always have a choice. Any democrat will do.

In a comment that a majority of Americans should be thinking and expressing out loud, I have only heard it voiced once when I heard Sean Hannity say he is surprised that Obama has even 25 percent of the democratic vote, much less the lead that he does enjoy. I can believe that from the democrats. I would hate to believe that for all America.


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Sure, this'll be my summer beach read
by Bryce Martin

Headline:

Barbara Walters discusses her candid autobiography

Aside from the old canard about how any life story would make an interesting read, I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to read Barbara Walter's autobiography. Nor can I conceive that a publisher would even consider the notion.

However, I also remember the other old canard about never underestimating the bad taste of our citizens. Kenny Rogers not being around much anymore has made me lose my edge on that one. After further consideration, Rogers might rightfully fall under the category of no taste.

Walters, a woman born in this country, who cannot speak English, and who was incensed by the Saturday Night Live segments that poked fun at "Barbara Wah-wah," is the female version of Regis Philbin. It's not so much that she has never accomplished anything noteworthy, it's that she has accomplished nothing. At least, not in the terms of reasonable noteworthiness.

To each his own, unfortunately.

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