By the way, the Marquis de Lafayette is buried on a plot of American soil he had transported to France. Maybe our brave Congress will sponsor a resolution to go rip the American dirt out of his grave. If it wasn't for Lafayette and the French fleet at the Battle of Yorktown, there may not even be a United States.

My father has been forwarding every e-mail he is sent supporting the war, and containing stories of some unwashed anti-war protrester getting a can of Shut-Up opened on him by someone whose brother died in France (those ungrateful wretches!), etc. I was finally compelled to send this reply:

---

Here's a story you can also forward to everyone on your list. You do forward them, don't you, or do you actually agree with everything you send on?

 Anyway, I know this one is true, because it happened to me!

I am currently working second shift at a downtown Chicago office building. Upon the start "Iraq II: the Revenge!", a number of anti-war protests had been organized that went through the Loop. One evening, as I was coming back to the office from my lunch break, I saw the protest of the day was parading down Wacker, right in front of my building. The procession of several thousand was big enough that it had to use the street, which was lined on both sides by a row of police from departments all over the area. I walk back to my entrance, holding my hand up in solidarity (boy, that peace sign thing just doesn't cut it gesture-wise).

 Right at the corner of my building, some twentysomething lout is shouting at the protest: "LO-O-O-OSERS! GET A JOB!" Now, it's 7:30 in the evening. I wonder how anyone would assume someone marching in a protest at this hour didn't have a job. I shout back at the guy: "Hey, maybe next someone will liberate US from from OUR dictator! Y'know, a dictator? Someone who takes over a country without being elected?"

 (Now here I am picking a fight with some frat boy on a street corner surrounded by more police than appeared in all of Buster Keaton's movies. That's why I don't join movements. They're safer without me.)

 As expected, he lays into me with some more brilliant invective: "Why don't you get a JOB!!!"

 Me: "Why I have a job. I'm going back to it right now."

 Him: "Probably cleaning TOILETS!"

 "No, I work for the very company after whom this building is named!"

 "No you don't! _I_ work here!"

 "Really? What do you do?"

 "I'm a LAWYER!" He bellowed it out like it would stun me into reverent silence. Meantime, I'm showing my building ID to the desk guard. He continues: "Hey, that guy doesn't WORK here, does he?"

 The guard says, "Yes, he does."

 Frat boy can't take it. "It's a sad day when people like HIM work in this building! He probably cleans TOILETS!" I shrug my shoulders at him, thinking whoever has to clean up after him must be getting little pay and less respect. He turns to enter the bar in our building's entrance, with one last "I'm a LAWYER!!!"

 The guard just watches him, then tells me, "Yeah, he's already had a few." Me, I wonder if gets to argue cases in court, with that kind of brilliant declamation.

 This is the kind of pro-war person we encounter more often than not. The kind of ditto-head who found time to go the Florida in 2000 and assault recount judges with their "Sore/Loserman" signs. They seem totally incapable of understanding that people who oppose Bush's little vendetta are anything but leftover hippies, too indolent to look for work or form a well-reasoned opinion.

 They're the people passing along lists of French corporations to boycott, while completely forgetting that it was American firms like Honeywell, Rockwell, and others, that sold Saddam his weapons of mass destruction, with Bush I's blessing. They focus on getting REVENGE for 9/11, even though the perpetrators were born in Saudi Arabia, funded by Saudi oil money (that's your car and my car), educated in America, and took refuge in Pakistan. They never see the many veterans of previous wars, 9/11 family members, and religious leaders asking why we are starting another war with a former CIA "friendly."

 Instead, they're the guy in Houston who last week assaulted a spectator at a rodeo because he wouldn't stand up for a recording of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." (Here's the link to the story:
abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/31403_local_rodeofight.html#. I verify MY sources).  Now last I heard, this song isn't the national anthem, at least outside of Branson. It also happens to be owned by MCA Records, a division of Vivendi-Universal, part of the new French "axis of evil." (I also don't know how all the news reports reported the song's title as "I'm Proud to Be an American." Maybe the policeman who wrote up the report got it wrong.)

 Any way, I just needed to vent. I also e-mailed an anti-propaganda poster created by a former Army Ranger who has a few things to say himself. this link.

Additional Laws of Cartoon Physics

This was based on a humorous piece passed around the Internet many years ago. Despite its topicality, no one has really bothered to add to it.

Percussive Reprocessing
Any organic entity (animal or plant), when struck with sufficient force, will be knocked out of the top of the frame, and return to earth as finished goods, ready for immediate use or sale.
Dicsussion
Popeye can strike a charging bull so hard that it slaughters in mid-air, gets cut up, ground for hamburger, wrapped or encased as sausage, and even undergoes USDA inspection or Kosher certification. As the meats fall to earth, they array themselves as in a butcher shop.
Popeye can also strike a swimming herd of ravenous alligators in such a way that they are skinned, tanned and manufactured into alligator-skin luggage, shoe and belts. They fall to earth along with a retail counter, price tags and cash register.
Popeye and other characters can walk through the forest primeval, striking trees so hard they form a log cabin as they fall to earth, complete with windows, a hinged door, and stone fireplace chimney.

Corollary: Percussive Degeneration
Conversely, any manufactured product can be stuck with sufficient force that it resolves into a more primitive product. The value or utility of the resulting object is in inverse proportion to the value or utility of the original object. This effect can also be achieved through the use of high explosives.
Discussion
Popeye or Mighty Mouse can strike an expensive, streamlined motorcar so that it bursts apart, revealing a tricycle underneath. The occupants of the vehicle do not realize the transformation has happened until they look around.
A locomotive engine demolished by dynamite will fall to earth as a railroad handcar.

Velocity-based Redressing
A character or object moving at sufficient velocity will create a wake capable of switching the clothing of any two characters caught in it. If only one character is caught in the wake, their outer clothes will be blown off to reveal red polka-dot boxer shorts. Inanimate objects caught in this wake may undergo a process similar to Percussive Reprocessing or Degeneration. Exception: A formal portrait will remain attached to the wall, but its subject will have at least one layer of clothing blown off.

Literal Utility

1. Every commercial product will work exactly as its name implies, usually within a few seconds. "Vanishing" cream and "invisible" ink will render a character covered in it invisible. "Plant-gro" or other fertilizers will grow plants even on Elmer Fudd's head.
   
2. A character using a product in contradiction to its labeling will assume characteristics of the product's intended users. A cat that consumes dog food will commence barking and chasing cars. Consuming bird food will give any character an urge to perch on a wire and chirp.
   
3. Any character donning an article of clothing intended for a specific person, occupation, age group or sex, will similarly assume characteristics of the intended user or original owner. An 18th-Century sea captain's cap will endow the wearer with the personality of Charles Laughton in the character of Capt. Bligh. A male character donning a dress will exhibit effeminate tendencies.

All of the above laws can be observed in action at the resolution of a fight between Popeye and Bluto. Such altercation usually ends when Popeye strikes Bluto so hard, he flies into a heavy piece of wood furniture. Bluto and the furniture fly up out of frame, to fall to earth as a high chair occupied by Bluto, his clothes transformed into an infant's jumper, bib and bonnet. So dressed, Bluto cries like an infant.

Iris Manifestation
The traditional iris out at the end of a cartoon manifests as a physical object.
A sufficiently nimble of "cool" character can leap through the closing aperture, or even grab its edges and hold it open.

Safety-Oriented Malleability
Railroad tracks, highway roadbeds and guiderails are engineered for both tensile strength and malleability, especially in dangerous location.
A guiderail on a highway winding along a mountainside can stretch sufficiently to keep a careening vehicle from running off the road.
The roadbed in a sharp curve can absorb the centrifugal force of a fast vehicle, stretching outward to keep the vehicle from sliding over the embankment.
Railroad tracks can be grasped and given a single shake to induce a wave effect that safely catches a careening rail car, or shake a threatening barrier off the tracks.
This malleability has a side effect in that tracks spanning trestles can give way under the weight of a train and stretch like rubber bands.

Alum
A character who ingests Alum, a condiment intended to add an astringent taste to food, will see his mouth pucker and shrink until he no longer able to speak. Too much Alum can cause the entire head to shrink to one-tenth its normal size.

Explosive Minstrelry
An explosion or gunshot to a character's face was momentarily able to make him up in minstrel blackface, and give him the ability to imitate Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, or the Kingfish character from Amos 'n' Andy. Corollary: The force of changing tastes is able to manifest changes in the laws of cartoon physics. Explosive Minstrelry has not been observed to occur since the late 1950s.

Schaller, Iowa Pop Corn Days 2002
The Jaycees Beer Garden

A local band blangs away
  from a flatbed stage
In a beer garden walled
  by semitrailers

The singer channels the Foo Fighters
  like him, we're "Lookin' for the sky to save me,
   "Lookin' for a sign of life"

In front of the stage
 a young mother "dances" with her daughter.
She's wearing a tank top and not-quite-Daisy-Dukes
 so is the three-year old
Clinging tight to Mom's hip.

Everyone is back in high school.