Okay, I need a sanity check here. First, watch this YouTube clip of a Heinz commercial currently running in the UK.

Do you get it? Mayo with a New York deli flavor. Mom is making the sandwiches with New York deli flavor, so Mom “appears” as a rough, tough, stereotypical New York butcher. Get it? Ha haaa… Clever-ish. And the kiss at the end comes off as slightly comical, with some shock value.

Enter my friends at the American Family Association. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I respect what those guys do. I appreciate the work. I need someone else to keep an eye on things that I don’t have time or opportunity to watch. Without the AFA, I would not have known about Ford pumping money into “gay pride” parades and running explicit ads in “gay” magazines because, well, I don’t go to those parades nor do I read those magazines. I don’t have eyes or ears in the advertising market to let me know when someone’s putting money toward that kind of thing.

But there are times, when the folks at the AFA really puzzle me. Did anyone watch that commercial and jump to the conclusion that Heinz was promoting gay marriage? I could be wrong, but I don’t think gay marriage is even a hot button issue in Britain. It’s not legal and I haven’t heard anything about a push to legalize it.

You can read the AFA’s alert here.

Is it just me or is the AFA way off the mark on this one? I mean, seriously. Who looks at that and thinks, “Oh, that big, burly butcher with the New York accent must be the homosexual lover of that wimpy little Brit. And look! They have kids!” I can just imagine what that big, burly butcher would say if you told him that, but I can’t print it here because my blog is rated PG.

Some of you may not have been around when I first explained the White Board Quip of the Week. I touched on its origins in the first WBQotW post. There I mention the first true weekly quips that showed up on my cubicle white board when I interned at Hewlett Packard, my first “real” job in the industry, in 1998. But really, the tradition has deeper roots.

The real impetus was a college calculus class in 1994. My friend Galyn and I would usually arrive early for class. It was in a newly renovated building, one of the first to have white boards rather than chalk boards. Galyn and I were both (and still are) given to odd sayings. We were both fans of Ren and Stimpy, odd t-shirts, and funny bumper stickers. So, we began anonymously writing the weirdest things we could think of on the white board, just to see the reactions of our classmates as they came into the room.

This week’s quip was one of the first from those crazy days at Amarillo College. (It’s a weird one that you have to think about. It was written in the form of a mathematical proof.)

1 Funeral Procession = Absolute Right of Way
> 1 Funeral Procession = Funeral Processions Increasing w/out Bound

(You may want to read the WSJ editorial that inspired this post.)

Have you noticed all the news coverage of the war in Iraq lately? No?! Funny. Neither have I.

I remember not too very long ago national news was reporting deaths and casualties daily. When there were no soldiers lives that they could gloat over, they talked about Iraqi civilian deaths (even conveniently neglecting to mention when those civilians where, in fact, insurgent fighters or homicide bombers).

But in the last few months, those reports have disappeared. In fact, there haven’t been any major reports since the Iraqi army routed the Shiite militias in Basra and Sadr City. Their murderous leader, al Sadr, has resorted to hiding in Iran (which the media calls a “truce”). In May, the U.S. suffered the fewest casualties in any month since the war began five years ago.

The truth that the (big L) Liberal media does not what you to hear is that we are winning on all fronts in Iraq. The Iraqi government has finally started taking some responsibility. The Iraqi army is maturing and starting to fight its own battles. And all over Iraq, terrorists are losing. They’re losing in the streets and in the media (which is where their only hope for victory lies).

Why would the MSM not want you to know that? Elementary, my dear. It is because their darling, messianic, presidential candidate needs for us to be losing in Iraq for his moronic, cowardly, surrender and run policy to make any sense. Plain and simple. If you’re an anti-war nut-job, victory is bad for business.

Honestly, I don’t understand how anyone could be so blind. Yes, peace is a good thing. Yes, war is a bad thing. But anyone with half a brain should be able to see the lessons of December 7th and September 11th. If you don’t fight oppression and terror abroad, it WILL fight you at home.

It seems that every human has a miraculous, powerful, innate ability to justify the dumb things they do. (Hey, that would make a pretty good white board quip itself.)

I believe in karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it.
-Dogbert

It’s that time of year, boys and girls, when we gather around the charcoal pit, turn on the flood lights, flush two extra times, and leave our SUVs idling in the driveway. Yes, June 12th is Carbon Belch Day!

In response to the idiocy of the “carbon footprint” nazis, we, the intelligent few who recognize a poorly conceived conspiracy theory when we see it, are celebrating today by producing as much “climate changing” carbon dioxide as we can in a single day.

Read all about it at the official Carbon Belch Day website. You can even calculate your own personal belch. (Tammy and I combined will belch approximately 145 pounds of carbon today.)

And in honor of this great celebration, last night Katie helped me make a Carbon Belch Day video. Thanks, Katie!

And please don’t think that Carbon Belch Day in any way besmirches my parents’ wedding anniversary, which is also June 12th. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!