Mark Knows It All

More and more those under the age of 30 are joined at the hip to their computers, their smart phones and their pads. It is chronic. Social skills are rapidly declining. More important, a phony sense of life is replacing reality. Folks are living in an alternative universe, an ersatz reality, a cyber life. It is clouding clear thinking, if there is any thinking taking place at all. The answers to the difficult questions of life are not found in a computer. I am afraid there is a time coming very shortly in which some of us are going to learn some hard lessons. Rapid communication is a good thing. The wealth of information available to all of us is a good thing. But it cannot replace reality and the hard truths that come with. Life’s problems cannot and will not be solved by looking them up on Wikipedia. Rick Santorum talked about evil in the world. He was poo-pooed. But he was right. There is evil in the world. Hitler was evil. Stalin was evil. Pol Pot was evil. And right now...

It’s time to say enough is enough. Do we live in Nazi Germany? Do we live in Communist China? Do we live in Soviet Russia? Have we reached the point where we are actually paying a public employee to inspect home packed lunches in our schools? My God, is this what we have come to? People make fun of me because of my political activity. Freedom is precious, and our freedom is being overwhelmed by a tsunami of do-gooder government regulations that have taken over our lives. We are watched everywhere we go. The government wants to know everything about you. It wants to know what you spend, where you go and what you do. They even want to send drones up into our skies to monitor you. Do you really want unmanned airplanes monitoring you? Case in point is the four year old little girl in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who had her home packed lunch inspected by the government food police in school. It consisted of a turkey sandwich with cheese, a banana, potato chips and juice. The food police...

The death of Whitney Houston is a tragedy. She was an outstanding talent and part of the soundtrack of our lives. Unfortunately, she is another in a long line of celebrities who practiced self destructive behavior which was condoned by their entourage and tolerated by the public. I want to feel sorry when something like this happens, but the addiction to drugs and booze by one of the most talented persons in America makes me shake my head and wonder what's going on. Self destructive celebrities are nothing new to our culture. The earliest one I remember is Marilyn Monroe, although there are those who still say something was askew in Camelot with that one. Her contemporary Montgomery Clift didn’t fare much better. But things go back even further to W.C. Fields who drank his liver into oblivion. And then there was Judy Garland…who passed her talent onto her daughter Liza Minnelli who also has had her problems with various addictions. Dorothy Dandridge, Lenny Bruce, Elvis Presley, Jo...

Have you ever opened up your mailbox only to have a plethora of coupons and papers and circulars and more coupons and more circulars, all touting BIG SALE 50% off, fall all over the street or the driveway or your front porch? It pisses me off. There I stand in the middle of the street in my business suit, my car running, and my butt sticking up in the air picking up all of this stuff that I neither requested nor wanted. Geez oh man, how many sales do they run? Macy’s is just one big sale, after sale, after sale. Come closer and I will show you where you can put that star. Grocery stores are worse still. I HATE coupons!!! My wife and I both work full time, and have neither the inclination nor the time to sit around and figure out how to save 10 cents off a bottle of Prell. Do I really need a coupon to buy peanut butter? And then there are those freakin’ loyalty cards. I had to have special pants made to carry all those cards in my wallet. All I want is a loaf of bread…wh...