I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes and I Don't Like It.

Mostly TV ads just get on my nerves, but sometimes you find out something important.

Chevy showed me how to pull big, railroad cars up a mountain with my four-door SUV. Jack LaLane showed how old and saggy looks even when you work out too much. But now the probiotic, blue-state yogurt and clotted milk people are telling me secrets about who I really am—it’s like finding religion, or seeing your best friend’s mama naked when you are nine, or finding out, when you visit your Aunt Ethel in the country, that smelly, grass-eater cows squirt milk from downstairs. The world just looks different and you give up milk forever.

I used to think I was me. Now the yogurt people tell me I was all wrong-- I am more than me. In fact, more of me is not me, than is me. For every cell that says Chuck Kerns in its DNA, 1000 microbes, without papers or proper clearance, climbed the fence and live in my heartland. Well slightly lower, but you get the idea.

At first I was not sure whether to welcome them or build a fence. Now I know.

Those yogurt guys are smuggling in microbes, even charging you extra to carry them home in your car trunk. You are an accomplice and give billions sanctuary down there in your personal basement.

OK, I hear these microbe guys do work hard--dirty work--and don’t get much pay, just leftovers. It’s dangerous--if they don’t hang on tight, they get flushed. But they are taking away jobs from full Chuck Kerns DNA cells. If I could get a couple neurons or liver cells to go down and work a double shift I would, but the liver cells like to stay near their own types. And neurons think they know everything.

My problem is there are just so many microbes. A few would be fine. But they breed like rabbits in a sex club. Microbes say they don’t want to take over, but who knows. I am just one big, fat, happy colon to those guys. If things keep going this way, one day I may not be Chuck Kerns anymore. I will be a big, tall bunch of microbes named Bifidobacterium or something even longer and hyphenated too.

Now I am formally calling on those Minutemen who sit on the borders to go patrol our dairy shelves too. We need a fence in the milk case running from non-fat coffee-mate to smelly blue cheese. Microbes can’t climb high so a short wall is just fine. But those microbes slip thru damn-near invisible holes so it’s got to be tough, like us, when we can’t digest anything stronger than soggy biscuits and Wonder bread after cleaning out our system of those symbiotic alien-cell types.

We are fighting for purity in our colons today and cleaner pipes tomorrow. Remember that when you go down to Safeway and fill up your cart. Those yogurt guys will back off soon and start putting good old artificial, all-American, bacteria-free gooplets back on the shelves soon, if you act right now.

Fight On.

My Favorite Sins

Those hot-shot Catholics in Rome just approved some new, big sins a couple of weeks back. I think that’s great. We built a bunch of really neat, super-bad things in the past couple hundred years but were still playing with old sin rules. It’s like having a skinny-butt, Victorian-age pitcher tossing up softballs to 21^st century steroid guys. We have long ball, home run Sins today that the Pope never thought of until just now. He never talked about bad cell phone behavior. Or leaving cluster bombs on playgrounds. But times are changing and Hell is opening up for new age sins. I’m glad they are finally making the big time back in Rome.

But they forgot to downgrade the sin top ten, I mean the seven big guys that just are not that deadly any more. Next to atom bombers and poison-kid factories those seven deadly sins are downright tame. Let’s look at them one by one:

First, how can you say much bad about Greed here in America? We celebrate rich folk flaunting their mansions, hi-cost cupcakes and other surgical protuberances. We all want greed; some are just better at it. And to help those without money in their genes, we have greed schools everywhere: four “Growing Greedy” cable channels, a thousand Pray-and-Get-Rich Mega-Churches, web courses on grabbing houses from the dumb and poor and, for the big league greedy, MBA’s in finance. Remember, Do greed. Do it good. How can you go to hell for that?

And you’ve got to have Envy to help that top-tier greedy sons-of-guns get rich. Without envy who is going to buy anything new. The news is we have grown way beyond envy. We don’t want what our neighbors have (that’s envy) we want something better and bigger with fancy, shiny, chrome spinner wheels, too. That’s not envy that’s consumerist competition. Our President said it’s our sacred duty, like being a dead soldier. He says “Have more, more often.” That won’t get you to hell. That gets you to the mall and saves our economy.

I thought Gluttony was making a real sin comeback. I thought we had a holy war coming with Big Mac living getting clobbered by metro-sexual new cuisine. “Too much” was wronger every day. But now I see we celebrate the virtues of all eating; both big and flashy are OK. The slim and active chow down and eat arugula, too. Food technique can get you a PhD these days. If you know the regions in Tuscany and the 93 types of dim sum, and have the sharpest knife set in your neighborhood, you are hot, not evil. If you can eat 47 hot dogs in 12 minutes you are a hero. Can you really go to Hell for powering your heavenly body and even plumping it up a bit, all in the glory of hamburgers, Cinnabuns, and pate? Praise God and pass the condiments. That sounds like heaven to me.

Four more to go.

Poor Pride. How can it go against bumper stickers praising smart-ass kids, high school pride rallies, Pick your color ethnic pride, and those banner wavers who buy Chinese-made US flags. The opposite of pride is not humility; it is neurosis, self doubt and wussiness. Pride rules.

Lust, it’s an ex-sin for sure—it’s the gas that keeps our four-stroke engines going. It’s the sticky wet glue of our society. Why else would car-hound guys hang out with clothes-happy women? And vice versa. But what about unnatural lust. Some want it to move up to the next level of Sin. Unnatural is hard to find though. Monkeys and my Mom’s chihuahua do it with anyone furry they can find, monkeys even do it with their big banana trees. And humans figured out more ways than monkeys to be super-natural. This nature stuff is what sin was supposed to save us from, but now natural, green living gets you thru those pearly gates. And who knows what really goes on up there where there is no underwear beneath the white silky robes. Let’s root for more lust not less.

Next is Lazy. It’s bad, for sure. Just laying around, doing nothing, maybe sipping on a margarita. Bad. But wait, that sounds like my last vacation. Jimmy Buffet made a business singing about this to old retirees. Lazy is good if you work for it. Lazy is a just reward, not a sin. And I can see me with my wings tucked in, laying around beside the pool, upstairs with those angels. How can heaven be a sin?

Finally we get Wrath--that’s red hot anger to most people. I know I can’t take all the anger shows on TV. Fox News is surely a sin. And talk radio is worse. But then public TV is so polite you wish Cokie Roberts would slug Bill Moyers sometime in a WWR ring. So this one is a maybe on my new sin list.

One maybe out of seven. We really need an update. Please forward your new sin list to Rome. Let them come up with more top-dog new sins, like the FBI and Most Wanted TV shows do with their crooks. We need sins that deal with tight seats in airplanes, racism, genocide, droopy pants and boogie boarding, oops, I mean water-boarding. You all go right now and text that guy with the funny hat and who drives around in the Pope-mobile.

From Wikipedia, here they are: “. . . luxuria (extravagance, later lust), gula (gluttony), avaritia (greed), acedia (sloth), ira (wrath), invidia (envy), and superbia (pride). Each of the seven deadly sins has an opposite among the corresponding seven holy virtues . . . chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility.”

Free Gas

Someone has to do something. Gas costs more than bottled water. No more cheap rides in Big-O-Mobiles. Even worse, maybe no rides at all.

Americans don’t ride in hi-mile, put-put-cycles or tin-can cars. They need elbow room. They need butt room. On a big steel chassis. That’s what America is about. Freedom to ride away from any problem, no matter how big.

I am afraid I see 200 million cars sitting dead in the driveway. Is this the America that our heroes, Chevy, Ford and General Motors, built? We need big thinkers to get past this mess-up. We need oil. So let’s do something and get some oil--NOW.

We tried the friendly route. How many kisses did Bush smack on Mr. Saudi’s cheeks last month anyway. It was a bunch and he didn’t even get a gas burp back.

We tried the bad-ass route and invaded a place with oil for 100 billion summer vacations to the Ozarks. But that got screwed up and now, besides not having any oil, we are spending enough on the war to fill up the Prez’s 747 for a long flight to Mars.

Everyone said just borrow, borrow. I got a credit card in the mail every day. And Uncle Sam had the biggest credit card of all. Everyone rich wanted a piece of him. Big-Bank here and Rich-Guy there. They all fed his habit. And Uncle taught us to live like him. So now we have to pay. Pay bunches of bucks for oil. And then try to sell our SUV’s as storage sheds and cheap homes for the broke.

England had this problem. They spent it all and couldn’t afford even a used tank back in ‘41. But that was fighting Mr. Hitler. Then, after the war, with all their borrowed bucks those Brits tried to repossess the world. Owing everything to everyone and just hoping they could bluff their way saying “Mission Accomplished.” That’s what they tried and now they are just a piddly-wet island. We don’t want that.

We got into hock buying TV sets, snappy shoes and oil. We are maxed out. We need to call one of those credit counselors I see on TV. I know what they will say: Hey, why are you so in debt when you got so much in the bank, the land bank that is! You got more square miles than you need and you are borrowing bucks. Just sell off some of that dirt and you can be free of debt and buy all the gas you want. Maybe even get a new four-wheeler.

There is one thing you can’t buy more of right now and that is land. And we got a bunch. The world is filled up and you can’t get any new half-full countries anymore. We should score enough money to buy us a gajillion oil wells and save the Hummer and Escalade from extinction. Or maybe we just do a trade. 50000 square miles of God’s own earth in trade for 100 years of oil. Free. What a deal.

O.K., the problem is--what goes?

It’s like GM selling their big skyscraper in Detroit. They didn’t need it. They needed factories in China. We need to think like GM. Sell something big.

I say--sell Florida. It has lots of water around it and what do those guys with oil need: water. Nice wet, jungly beaches. A nice place to take a break from hot dry sand dunes in the desert. And for the Floridians, what does Florida have that you can’t get in Belize or Thailand or Cancun anyway, where it’s a lot cheaper.

Florida goes.

OK, I am holding back on you. Here’s the secret. Who cares if we sell Florida to keep our SUV’s alive. Florida will be underwater soon anyway if we use enough oil. Just don’t tell anyone or it may break the deal.