During the course of doing what I do for the newspaper, I have subscribed to a variety of newsletters that are delivered to my email inbox on a quite frequent basis. I often enjoy these newsletters because they not only provide interesting information, but often they are a great source of story ideas. (Speaking of newsletters, you can subscribe to our Greene Publishing newsletter. Just give us a call at (850) 973-4141.) Recently, I saw a headline from one of these newsletters that stated, "Astronomer calculated the Earth's intelligent life is probably 'rare.'" Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that! My first thought was, "No kidding! Watching five minutes of 'Headline News' could have told him that!"
I've heard that a long time ago, ancient aliens visited earth. I imagine they were looking for either intelligent life or the "Largest Ball of Twine in Minnesota." I once stopped at a place in the middle of Kansas called "Prairie Dog Town" because they claimed to have the "World's Largest Prairie Dog" on display. Now that's something you can't just drive right by without at least giving it a look. It turned out not to be an actual prairie dog but a statue of a prairie dog. But I do admit that it was big.
But back to the original point of what I was saying. Seeing what has been happening over the past couple of weeks makes me wonder if perhaps I have been in surgery all this time and it was all just an odd reaction to the anesthesia. Just in case it was all just a bad dream, I'll recap. An idiot cop causes a suspect to suffocate while restraining him. This results in protests, which are completely understandable. Predictably, among the protesters are bad people who are intent on causing trouble and these bad people spend several nights burning, looting, stealing and throwing rocks and bricks at police officers. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. "I'm mad at the police, so I'm gonna burn down my neighborhood and steal a pair of tennis shoes! That'll fix things!" I wonder if it ever dawned on them that these police officers have real guns with real bullets. How smart is it to throw rocks at them? To their credit, they showed a great deal of restraint, I think. I would have been tempted to shoot back if some ANTIFA-type goober-head threw a rock at me! How smart is it on their part to bring a rock to a gun-fight, anyway? I'm glad that in the end, somewhat cooler heads have prevailed and cities aren't burning anymore. Cooler heads, but sadly not smarter heads. I say that because many of these same people are now saying they want to get rid of the police. It's true because, as wild as my imagination is, I can't make this stuff up. Do you want to see what it would be like without the police? Just hit rewind on your DVR to any night during all this and take a good look at the burning and looting. That's what life would be like without the police.
I also saw that Warner Brothers has decided to take firearms away from Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam. How's Elmer going to "hunt wabbits" without his shotgun? I do remember when he attempted to "kill the wabbit" with a spear in Wagnerian operatic style in that one cartoon, but that ended sadly. But, as Bugs Bunny said, "Did you expect a happy ending to an opera?"
Yep, I can just imagine Mr. Spock or Mork from Ork flying over planet Earth over these past couple of weeks and saying, "Nope, not much intelligent life down there! I think they just burned the Largest Ball of Twine in Minnesota! Let's keep looking."