It's been another interesting week here in newspaper land, complete with times when I feel sensible and other times when I feel I have a complete and utter lack of anything even resembling sense.

Last week was even worse. I had two appointments on Thursday that I tried to attend, only to realize that they were both actually this week. Everyone seemed to get a good laugh out of that, with the possible exception of me. I had to admit that it did lean toward the funny side, though.

It turned out that I was looking at the 11th and I should have been looking at the fourth. At least I was a week early instead of a week late.

Despite those apparently embarrassing episodes of calendar myopia, I have survived another week.

I guess I have been under a little extra pressure lately in trying to prepare to run the war on terrorism single-handedly.

While the current administration is doing alright, I do hope they take my suggestions and try to move forward with the next phase of the war.

While a lot of folks have been focused on the news lately, which seems to show only the same boring footage over and over, I can hardly stand to sit through all the boring drivel just to get a 10 second sound byte of real information.

Perhaps I should instead turn my attentions on the home front. I saw the other day where some folks were protesting the war.

Now there's a bright bunch. Let's just pull the covers over our heads and maybe the ‘boogieman' won't come out of the closet or out from under the bed.

Like Merle Haggard said, "They love our milk and honey but they talk about a better way of living." Also agreeing with Merle, they're walking on my fighting side, too. These people shouldn't even be allowed to breath the same air as our armed servicemen and women, who fight to keep even them free. However, as I have said so many times in the past, you have to protect the rights of every horse's rear-end in the country if you want to ensure rights for yourself. Welcome to America, where it rains on the just and the unjust.

However, that doesn't stop us from giving them even more rights, does it? We should offer all those protesters a free two-week vacation in the fundamentalist Muslim country of their choice. Perhaps then they would return here with a whole new way of thinking about this country and those who protect it (and them).

Now I see on the news that someone is mailing out anthrax germs to media outlets. I guess if I get a package full of brown powder, I'll know not to stick my hands in it.

I can't imagine opening a letter, seeing a powdery substance inside and not being alarmed. You know, it's probably not something you ordered.

"Look here, the free sample of instant coffee I never ordered just arrived, dumped inside a regular white envelope with no return address." Maybe those people watch these crime shows where the detectives stick their fingers in the evidence, take a lick, and then say, "It's cocaine." I guess all that stuff would stop pretty quick when the department underwent random drug testing, wouldn't it? I was always told that it wasn't good to stick your fingers where they don't belong. Along those same lines, I heard an account of a plane that was landed because a powdery substance was found in the lavatory and that three crew members had come in contact with it. You know, the fact that stupidity knows no bounds never ceases to amaze me.

While the powder is now thought to be a benign packing agent, why would you have three people touching something found in a bathroom trash can? I can't imagine wanting to stick my hand anywhere near a garbage container on an airplane, considering all the stuff that could potentially be in there. Or perhaps it took three of them to open a trash can, remove a bag and then insert a new bag. I thought airplanes just ejected all that stuff into the sky, anyway. I remember, when I was on the plane and heard the suction sound as the toilet opened, wondering, "Who's house am I over right now?" You can only hope they deserve it.

As for the anthrax germ stuff, perhaps I should take this stuff more seriously, but I just can't imagine any country boy or girl living in fear of a germ that comes from cows and goats. After shoveling as much of their manure as I have, I would imagine that I am quite immune to all those microbes and such. Not to mention all of the other contact I have had with the critters, like tagging ears, giving shots, getting kicked and butted and even pulling a calf out of an abandoned spring house once with a chain hoist and getting trampled in the process. I don't guess Peter Jennings or Dan Rather could put something like that on their resume. They probably spent their entire lives (prior to galavanting around the world in front of a camera) in some posh boarding school in New England. No wonder they're afraid of germs.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

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