Don’t know if you saw or heard, but General Clark stepped in it on Sunday. I don’t disagree with what he said, but I do wish he’d said it a little better - it did come across as a little disrespectful. Obama is distancing and Clark is doing damage control.

Interesting counter-argument to Intelligent Design - humans aren’t that well designed once you give us a closer inspection. Nice little point no one else seems to be making, wish I’d have said it.

Still losing weight, looking and feeling better everyday, still not trying to get too excited about the changes since I’ve got a long way to go to reach my ultimate goal. Can’t help but be excited about this, though.

The BDU’s I was wearing when I ETS’ed out of the Army? They fit.

They FIT.

It’ll be a while before my green Class A jacket stops being snug, and I can’t get into the Desert Uniform just yet, but for whatever reason, knowing that last set of BDU’s I refused to part with is wearable once again for the first time in twelve years just feels… right.

Take pride in the little victories.

Greg Mitchell is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, and his crusade is my crusade - keep people aware of what five years of unending war is doing to my brothers and sisters in uniform. To add insult to injury, SGT Benjamin Miller had been Stop-Lossed to keep him in uniform and was being sent back to Iraq for a fourth tour of duty when he took his own life while on leave. His family buried him a few days ago.

Breaks my heart. And nothing makes me angrier than to hear someone explain it away with “They volunteered, they knew what they were getting into.” They did know what they were getting into - they knew they were sacrificing much or all to keep their country safe - but they also believed that the civilians and officers placed in charge of them would not squander that sacrifice needlessly, that they would be used strategically and in the best form possible at all times. That’s the covenant this administration has broken time and time again - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the others have consistently and conveniently treated our service members as chess pieces to be discarded when no longer of use instead of the heroes they truly are. That lack of respect is evident in every story of a wounded and/or disabled veteran fighting to get benefits for up to a year after being mustered out of service, the Walter Reed-type fiascos, or stories of soldiers preferring death at home to a return to the killing overseas.

Soldiers preferring death to killing. I don’t care anymore if removing the troops results in a bloodbath in Iraq. I don’t care how many innocent lives are lost as a result. I just don’t care - bring my brothers and sisters home.

Essentially, I’m lazy - if I was stuck having to find envelopes and stamps to keep in touch with folks, I’d be a hermit - so when it comes to doing the right thing, I don’t do much. I donate to a couple of causes near and dear to my heart because they make it relatively easy to do so - the Texas Vietnam Vets Fund comes to the house and The Russ Martin Listener Fund takes donations online. The Lady Fair and I are geeks, though, so when we heard that our fellow pop culture fanatics were organizing a charity midnight screening of Serenity on Joss Whedon’s birthday, we signed on early. This year, the showing was in the afternoon - not an improvement since mundanes trying to see the other flicks had to dodge us to get to their theaters - so we were able to drag Mommy Dearest and the Old Man with us.

As much as I love Serenity, it is much better on the big screen, especially with a killer sound system - Whedon is the master of the intimate moment, but the folks he hired to handle the special effects worked some major overtime, so the Big Damn Battle is freakin’ awesome. The parentals were late converts to Firefly, so this was their first time to view the flick in all of its big screen glory. Good times, good times. Best of all, we geeks did what we love while raising funds for a good cause, a karmic win-win all around. Looking forward to next year.

(If you don’t get the reference in the title, shame on you - find Serenity on cable as quickly as possible and get your geek on.)

Other Brother is doing okay. Other Brother is not doing okay. Just depends on how you look at it.

Healthwise, he’s doing good - just had surgery to install what amounts to a shunt into his arm so’s the nurses don’t have to stick him every time he heads in for dialysis. Once that’s healed up, the doctors will take the plumbing out of his chest, which will make his life much easier - no tubes means showers and the return of his kitties. Still looking/waiting for a donor, but he’s remarkably healthy and tops the waiting list.

Emotionally, he’s been better. Surgery, no matter how minor, puts a strain on the body, and when the body don’t feel good, the heart and mind follows. Other Brother has always had a problem with the melancholy, and when it rears its ugly head, Other Brother’s tendency is to sequester. The more he doesn’t see or talk to people, the more depressed he gets; the more depressed he gets, the more he doesn’t want to see or talk to people. Vicious cycle, one he knows he shouldn’t get into, but sometimes it’s just damn hard not to. Hopefully now that we’ve talked, he’s ready to climb out of that well of despair.

Took Mommy Dearest and the Old Man to a charity screening of Serenity and talked to the Other Brother Sunday - both deserve a longer mention and I may still in a day or two, but this trumps.

George Carlin has passed away. While his dependency problems were pretty well known - he was coked up when he appeared on the premier episode of Saturday Night Live - Carlin also suffered from heart problems, which is what killed him.

Hailed as an anti-establishment hero, Carlin spoke the truth in the funniest way possible - his take on the wussifying on the English language was and still is spot on. When the banality of the 70s had passed, he stayed edgy and relevant, appearing on his fourteenth HBO special just last year. It’s not by accident he’s the first comic interviewed on the documentary “The Aristocrats,” and his take on the classic joke is as disgusting as it is funny. Carlin wasn’t just the Grand Old Man of Comedy, along with Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor, Carlin was the bar of excellence other comics aspired to, an example of what being true to yourself and your beliefs could accomplish.

George Carlin was a legend in his own time. In this day and age of political correctness, he will be sorely missed.

Little Brother has taken up playing the drums - never played before, but like a lot of us, he got to a certain age and decided he was tired of not knowing how to play the drums. Got himself a starter set, started playing along with his favorite records, and in an amazingly short time, he was pretty good. Good enough, in fact, to jam along with a buddy of his who plays amazing lead guitar. I am not joking when I say I am impressed - Little Brother and his band of merry-makers are quite good.

After his bass player’s voice gave out at a paying gig, Little Brother finally realized a lead singer with a strong voice and some support training was the way to go and gave me a call. most of the songs he plays I don’t know - Little Brother wants to be the Allman Brothers and I’m more of a Journey kind of guy - but I know enough of them and can fake the rest well enough to hang. I hand my Thursday and Saturday night classes to the other instructors, and start printing out lyrics for my song book. Thursday is jam night, Saturday is gig night.

Thursday night, there’s no mic - the bass player took it home and wasn’t there Thursday, so no vocals. Cool, gives me a chance to check out the layout of the bar. Hole in the wall is too nice a term, but hey, it is a biker bar, what do you expect. It’s got massive amps and a stage, what more do you need. Little Brother is playing well, his lead guitar is kicking major tail, Saturday is starting to look good.

Saturday, the bass player flakes - got another gig somewhere else, probably a paying gig, probably a better paying gig. No replacement to be found, so no band.

Two nights off, two nights without pay, two nights no get to sing. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.

Little Brother swears he’s waited too long to do this to quit now - he does now understand why I went into art instead of music after dealing with flaky musicians. As soon as I get back from vacation, my Number Two Priority after skinnying up is learning the bass guitar so this crap doesn’t happen again. I need to sing - my heart needs it.

I do now know all the words to Pearl Necklace, so I guess that’s something.

Don’t think the country is in a recession? Newsweek is reporting a nearly 45 percent decrease in revenues at the legal brothels in Nevada.

Smell the java, folks. When even the oldest profession is having a hard time finding customers, you know you’ve got trouble.

Since I pointed out I’d blogged 37 times since the last post from Best Bud, he’s blogged once.

I’ve blogged 30 times.

Just rubbing it in.

Gay marriage is legal in California, and I have no problem with that. I’m a touchy-feely artistic type who sings show tunes and watches foreign movies with subtitles, which means if I want to hang out with guys who share my sensibilities, I’m hanging out at the gay bars off Cedar Springs. One of the first things I learned as a very young adult chilling with my creative tribe is love is love in all its forms - there’s no difference between the love of Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve. Period. Puts me at odds with the Religious Right, but if you’re known by the company you keep, I don’t want to hang with those folks anyway - been my experience they tend to lean towards not only holier-than-thou-ism, but hypocrisy as well. I’ll take a flamboyant gay man over that nonsense any day.

Those of you with a problem, please check this photo out again, then explain to me finally what your problem really is. 55 years together waiting for their love’s validation - how is that not family values?