Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

Recently it was revealed that 17 crewmen were removed from duty at a nuclear missile base in North Dakota. Their commanding officer revealed that the suspensions were the result of an 'attitude problem' and complained of 'rot' in the Strategic Air Command.

The commanders spoke of 'turmoil' in the nuclear missile branch of the Air Force and acknowledged the perception that the nuclear mission is a dying field. The best and the brightest young Air Force officers go to great lengths to avoid being assigned to the missile force.

"Sure, I understand that," you say. "You don't have to be a budding Einstein to figure out you don't want to be stuck in a cement hole in North Dakota. I'm surprised they got anybody with an IQ in the triple digits to do the job in the first place."

Apparently this was not always so. Ending the world in a radioactive catastrophe was once regarded as a promising career path. The men in those nuclear silos in the halcyon days of the Cold War were the cream of the Air Force crop. They sat beneath the fields of the Midwest with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts, optimistic that they would be able to end humanity with a fiery final Armageddon or else they were squatting on the path to making general.

Alas, that world no longer exists. The replacement of the Soviet Union, the only nuclear-armed state in our weight class, with Russia, a country with nominally enough missiles to end our civilization, but with missile troops widely suspected of stripping their rockets of vital components in order to make vodka stills, means that our boys can't sit underground and still hope to make astronaut.

Consequently, the less talented are now in charge of weapons that could wipe out most of the higher life forms on Earth, and, unsurprisingly, they've been caught slacking. Even missile launch codes may have been compromised. The Air Force higher-ups don't say how, but knowing this generation as I do, having fathered a member of it, I suspect they were posted on Facebook.

The Air Force let this happen. The eager and ambitious were replaced by recruits straight off the short school bus. The motto "Peace through Deterrence" was informally replaced by "You got a thumb? We got a button for that!" which was considered superior, from a morale-preserving point of view, to "We're going to put you in a hole in the ground. Stay there."

What's to be done? Sadly, nothing. Sitting in a missile silo with someone you don't know or really like waiting for nothing to happen is never going to replace career choices like being a celebrity, a porn star or even a poorly paid humor blogger. It was tough enough to get people of my generation to do it, even though we were specifically trained to sit around with a bunch of unpleasant people and think about nothing until a bell went off. We called it high school.

In the modern era, which may fairly be said to present the fewest opportunities for boredom in human history, young people that will tolerate endless waiting for the off chance to incinerate humanity and still maintain a level of enthusiasm about it are getting nearly impossible to find. The Air Force shouldn't be surprised that it is digging around the bottom of the recruitment barrel, and when the people they select end up posting pictures of their missile silo on Instagram or pinpointing their ICBM's location on Google Earth and putting it on Reddit, that shouldn't shock them, either.

And it's going to stay that way until people once again see a promising future in ending the world.

Recently anointed Pope Francis just shocked the religious world by announcing that atheists, like Catholics, can be admitted to Heaven.

This column salutes the Pope's decision, although I'm not going to be bashful about pointing out that I made a similar pronouncement back in 2011, proving that if you want cutting edge, outside-of-the-box, pushing the envelope or any other cliche that means new and cool, theology,  you've come to the right place. Furthermore, I will explain here the exact metaphysical mechanism by which atheists sprint past Saint Peter and into eternal bliss.

First off, the Pope and I are both using the word 'atheist' to describe not only atheists but the whole motley crew of nonbelievers and semi-believers, including atheists, agnostics, apathists, Deists, humanists, rationalists, existentialists, Buddhists, Baha'is and Jews. The true atheists are merely our leaders. They don't mind pissing off religious humanity by suing to get Bibles, crosses and prayers removed from classrooms, hills and graduation ceremonies, whereas the rest of us just sigh and ignore them. While we root for the atheists, we realize they tend to be angry people. Here's a link to a guy who has already replied to the Pope's invitation to the eternal hoe-down by saying, in effect, We don't want to go to your stinky old Heaven.

Most of us, though, are pretty tickled at the Pope banging open the Pearly Gates for us, although we're not surprised. We knew it all along. Not only do we go to Heaven, but we get the best spots There. Let me illustrate by means of two hypothetical cases:

Bob Christian passes on. Of course, he, all his friends and family have been supplicating God for weeks to let his soul into Heaven. After his final moment, he floats through the Tunnel of Light for his interview. The Deity looks at him thoughtfully, and says,

“Finally here, eh, Bob? Well, I know you've been thinking about coming here for years. In fact, you've pretty well kept me abreast of everything you've ever desired. When you were a kid, you prayed for toys for Christmas, instead of writing to Santa like all the other kids. When you were a teenager, you prayed you wouldn't get caught touching yourself by your parents. When you became a parent, you prayed that your son would get a big penis. When I granted that prayer, I also made him gay. I thought you might get the hint, but, no, you just kept on praying. You prayed that your daughter wouldn't marry that black guy. By the way, when she didn't, I was granting his prayer, not yours. You prayed for promotions at work. You prayed for your sports teams to win championships. You prayed your wife would never find out about that Asian prostitute you had sex with at that one convention and you still thought about every time you wanted to get an erection afterwards. You prayed you wouldn't get cancer. Gotcha on that one, too.

"I don't know how many times you prayed to win the lottery. Lucky for you, you mumbled something about wanting world peace once or twice, so you get in, I guess. Take that far seat over there by the kitchen entrance and try not to remind me what a bottomless pit of needs and wants you were.”

After Bob shuffles to the back, a non-believer, Joe Idunno, comes up for Judgment. The Creator checks his record and says,

“One thing about you, Joe, you weren't a whiner. You were content to live in the random Universe I created because hey, that's the way I wanted it. You didn't question My doings. You didn't ramble on about Me working in mysterious ways when life kicked you in the patootie. In fact, you seemed to grasp my essential nature, which is that at My age and place in eternal life, I don't think I should have to work at all. And the one prayer you ever said, the one after you fell onto the subway tracks and saw that headlight coming—I think it went “Oh, God, if you really exist and there is a Heaven, I would sure like to go”--that had the ring of sincerity to it. It was good to hear from you. Take that spot over there by the bar...the one between Darwin and Gilda Radnor, and grab yourself a brew. The pale ale in particular goes great with manna.”

There you have it. It's not complicated, not even as complicated as the Pope makes it. God loves atheists because we don't bug the crap out of Him about everything. Amen.

CBS has reported that some of the Benghazi emails turned over to Congress by the White House in response to Republican demands were apparently re-written before being released to the press--News item


After listening to my pal Joe Redstate complaining that all the media attention the Obama scandals were getting was making Republicans look bad for saying that the mainstream media were always carrying Obama's water, I was surprised to get a late-night phone call from him a few days later.

"If you were going to write 'I love jihadists,' would you spell out the word 'love' or would you use the little heart symbol?" he asked.

I would write out love, Joe, since I don't have the little heart symbol on my keyboard. What are you up to?

"Just rewriting a few of the Benghazi emails. I'm taking a batch and goosing them up so Congressional Republicans will be able to keep the heat on Obama and Clinton."

You aware that that's completely dishonest and illegitimate, right, Joe?

"Not at all. I'm not altering the essential messages, which show that various government agencies were try to coordinate a coherent response instead of blurting out something stupid off the top of their heads that we Republicans would jump on like a goal-line fumble on the last play of the Super Bowl. I'm just trying to make them a little more cinematic. The original hundred emails were a big problem for us. Not only did they completely fail to implicate Obama, but they were dull, dull, dull. Really. You'd rather read the extended warranty on your weed-whacker. Then theCongressmen tried re-writing them themselves, but the results weren't much better, from an attention-grabbing point of view. So, like all good Republicans do, they decided that the matter would be better handled by the private sector. That's me. Let me bounce a few ideas off you."

Go ahead.

"Do you think Hillary might have written 'Ix-nay on the extra security for Benghazi. That Marine detachment is scheduled to be at my place for a private naked barbecue that night?"

I doubt it.

"Yeah, you're probably right. I've never heard her use pig Latin. All right, I've got CIA Director Petraeus saying 'I'm much too busy jogging and having sex with this woman who's writing a book about me to worry about every frigging Ambassador out there. Just tell that guy in Libya to look both ways before he crosses the street and he'll be fine."

Well, the General was having an affair.

"So you're saying that one has the ring of truthy about it?"

You're not going to get me to endorse any of this, Joe.

"I'm aware you have your little journalistic standards. I have a higher calling. I have a mission here."

"What mission is that, Joe?

"To convince the American public that a combination of the explosion of the Yellowstone super volcano, a North Korean nuclear attack and having Hurricane Sandy every single weekend in New Jersey next year would be far less perilous for the nation than allowing Obama to accomplish anything between now and 2016."

That is a tall order, Joe.

"Damn straight. That's why these emails have to be good. Now, would you believe it if I wrote 'Don't bother me about Benghazi now. I'm busy going over the implementation of Agenda 21 with Osama bin Laden at his luxurious secret hideout funded by the American taxpayer. Then I've got to roll a few frames with him in the White House bowling alley again. You know how he complains about being stuck inside all the time."

I'd make it hoops instead of bowling, Joe. You want it to sound authentic.

Now that this new political era of the Obama presidency being mired in scandal has set in, I called my old buddy, veteran political operative Joe Redstate, to congratulate him, but found him in low spirits.

Joe, I don't see why you're unhappy about Obama's problems being exposed by what you usually call the lamestream media. I would think you'd be jumping for joy.

"Or jumping off a bridge. I don't see how it helps us at all."

Well, you've got ABC on your side for a change. And the Associated Press. Nobody's ignoring this stuff.

"It just shows that when they ignored us when we complained about Obama being a Muslim or that he secretly hated America, or that windmill company going bankrupt in California being his fault, they were right about it being a bunch of cow flop."

Wow, Joe. This lack of faith in the GOP message is not like you.  Or most Republicans. Dick Cheney just said Benghazi was the one of the worst things he could remember happening to America ever, even though he's old enough to remember Vietnam, the hostages in Iran and the attack on the Pueblo and was actually Vice-President on September 11, 2001.

"Only Dick Cheney's brave enough to go out on a limb like that and say something only a panel truck full of zoo monkeys would believe. We're not all heroes like Cheney. The fact is, none of those Benghazi emails implicate Obama at all. When we find an email that he fired off from Camp David on the day of the attack saying 'Leave that whiny bastard in Benghazi on hold until I finish my round.' or 'Screw our ambassador under fire. I've got to get par here,' then maybe we'll have him."

At least with Benghazi, you've got something on Hillary now.

"Something we desperately need. Here's a woman who's probably the best-qualified person in the country to be president, plus she'll clean up on the broad vote like Obama did on the black vote and our best bets so far for 2016 are a nasty freshman Senator from Texas who was born in Canada and a guy who belongs to the Hair Club for Men."

Probably you shouldn't call it 'the broad vote,' Joe.

"Right. Thanks. Got to keep reminding myself about that."

Sounds like you're not too optimistic about the IRS scandal bringing down the White House either, Joe. Can't blame you for that. It's pretty unlikely Obama was able to instigate the harassment of those Tea Party groups, since the IRS commissioner at the time was a holdover from the administration of Republican President George Bush.

"Okay, when you're a Republican, there are three things you never say. Number one is 'Global warming is real,' number two is,  'Somebody, somewhere might benefit from Obamacare,' and number three is, 'Republican President George Bush.'  Would you like to rephrase that last remark?"

Naw, just go ahead.

"We were real excited about that last scandal when we got a secret video in the mail at GOP headquarters. It showed a black guy in a hoodie talking to a group of IRS workers in Cincinnati. You couldn't see his face, but he was about the same height and weight as Obama and he sounded like him. The guy was saying "Hey, if you've got Tea Party in your name, which means you hate government workers, particularly minority ones, but you're claiming to be a non-profit educational group, why shouldn't we be investigating the crap out of you?"

Wow, that's a bombshell. Why aren't the Republicans broadcasting that all over the country?

"Somebody noticed the return address was the same as the Onion's."

I guess I can see why you're discouraged, Joe. Probably all of this is going to amount to nothing.

"Worse than nothing. The fact that the mainstream media will criticize the White House when the White House actually does something clearly wrong means that Obama hasn't screwed up much. Their real motivation is to make the American people think Republicans are full of crap for claiming Obama's the worst President since Millard Fillmore. When the mainstream media attacks Obama, they're actually attacking us."

That's kind of paranoid, Joe.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean nobody's out to get you, pal. 

I have a brother who still lives with our mother. A man in his mid-fifties who still lives with his mom is generally regarded as either gay or eccentric and while one look my brother's clothes, purchased almost exclusively at Wal or K Mart, pretty much rules out gay, he does not disappoint in the arena of eccentricity. One of the unusual habits that sets him apart from other men is a devotion to the Catholic faith that is only marginally exceeded by the Pope. If you do not share that devotion, he will not hesitate to mention the error of your ways to you. He was declared disabled some years ago, so he has plenty of time to reflect tranquilly on your life and how poorly you are leading it.

Like all Catholics, he loves saints. The aforementioned Pope just swore in a whole new batch of them, 800 or so in number. The devotion of the Church to its saints makes critics of the faith sneer that it is not a monotheistic one at all, since a Catholic can pray to a saint or saints rather than address the Deity directly. In some ways it makes sense, however. Religions like Islam and Protestantism pray to God or Allah exclusively, but they also credit Him for being busy at all times in the wheelhouse of the Universe. If Catholics are confronted with a problem that could use a little otherworldly intervention, such as a cousin skipping bail, they can pray to God, but if they feel a little awkward about bothering the Big Guy about their loser relatives, they can ask for the intercession of  St. James the Diffident, the patron saint of bail jumpers, instead.

My Catholic brother is devoted to images of the canonized. He decorates his room with crosses and saints (see above). He plants their images all about the property, plaster statues that my mother uproots and discards not because she is any less faithful but because they make the place look like a cemetery. One that she was too reverent to remove, though, was a 30-inch Blessed Mary figurine. This representation of the Holy Mother sits in a shaded grotto under the trees, about fifty yards from the house, peacefully exfoliating mold and moss. Another relative asked my mother decades ago if he could store his aluminum fishing craft in her yard. With her permission, he placed it close by the statue, upside down. This tableau of faith and skiff was dubbed Our Lady of the Overturned Boat by one of the more cynical members of the family.

I spend a few moments with her every time I return to my ancestral shores. She's a great girl to sit and have a beer with, thanks to the stone bench nearby. What I did not expect was to find another saint in the closet of my mother's guest room.

I admit I jumped back a little when I spotted this statue while attempting to hang up a shirt, not out of agnostic guilt but because at four feet or so tall, she was about the right height for the kind of evil gremlin that hangs out in closets. I realize most of those gremlins work little kids' closets, but you open a closet in a dark room and notice a shadowy figure lurking inside and see how you react. When I asked my mother who she was, Mom replied that she was Mother Cabrini. When I asked her how she got in the closet, the answer was much longer.

It seems the statue belonged to a devout, wealthy woman who died and left it to another devout lady. This lady was a friend of my mother and the two of them decided to give it to their favorite parish priest, so he could display it in his parish's Hall of Saints, a room devoted to statues the parish couldn't find any other place for.

Then the diocese decided to shut down the church. They assigned the priest to another parish and locked the building up. My mother was disturbed, since they had given Mother Cabrini to the priest, not the parish.

Most of you may be unaware of this, but few people can plot like elderly Catholic women. A scheme was hatched in which the former secretary of the shuttered parish "forgot" to lock the door to the Hall of Saints and my mother and another guilty octogenarian absconded with Mother Cabrini, Mission Impossible-ing her right out from under the Church's nose in the dead of the afternoon (Mom doesn't drive at night). Mother Cabrini currently sits in the closet because she is still in transit to her rightful priest.

So now when I return to my roots, I drink with Our Lady of the Overturned Boat and I sleep with Hot Mother Cabrini in the Closet.

I feel closer to Heaven already.

I’ve been visiting the East Coast for a week and one thing I’ve noticed is that cultural differences between the right and left Coasts seem to be narrowing.  No longer is California considered the land of fruits and nuts by Eastern cynics, populated by people whose values include being “laid-back” and “mellow.” The reality is that your regular Californian is no mellower than your average insurgent force, and Easterners have learned to respect that.

Back in the last century, you couldn't get decent Mexican food in the East, or a good sandwich in California. Now there's all kinds of great Mexican food here, thanks to the presence of all kinds of Mexicans who now do all the landscaping, house painting and concrete work around here as well as in the West. It's still tough to find a decent sandwich in California, but it's hardly anything to feud about.

Even rappers that used to shoot each other over which coast they rapped on seem to have chilled on that practice.

The only real difference nowadays is that people in the East are willing to live with insects, while Californians are not. If an insect is found in my Significant Other’s house in San Diego, its presence is greeted by an indignant howl beginning with my name, identifying the insect by type and location and a demand that I promptly grant that bug eternal peace.

My mother, on the other hand, greeted me as I walked through the door by saying “The ants aren’t bad this year.” Her house has ants. Tiny little ants that have lived there longer than she has. I'm not saying East Coasters like ants. There are many exterminators here that will try and kill ants for you, but none of them will kill them all. A completely hygienic household here, regularly doused with ant-fatal chemicals, will still have a few tiny ants patrolling their kitchen counters. This is considered successfully controlling them.

My mother doesn't believe in insecticides or exterminators, so her ants have to be controlled by eternal vigilance. Anything that might attract ants, and this includes water, has to be stowed where the ants cannot get to it. That is why there is a pineapple upside-down cake in her microwave as I write this, even though there is no such thing as microwaveable pineapple upside-down cake.

Pineapple upside-down cake attracts ants like Kate Upton attracts second looks. Just a crumb of it left vulnerable on the table will cause some wandering ant to throw on the robes of the Ant Moses and lead the rest of his peeps to a sugary Promised Land, which means that piece of cake will soon be carried away by an estuary of ants as thick as a pinch-hitter's forearms.

Don’t think that the insect life in my ancestral home is composed of only one species. It is too soon to put in the screens here, but too warm to sleep with the windows closed and there is a night light in the guest bedroom, which I presume my mother, being an exceptionally gracious person, has installed for guests who are afraid of the dark. Guests who object to sleeping under the flight path at Bug O'Hare are just plain out of luck, as most of the neighborhood biomass of tiny airborne creatures streams through the open window, vectoring towards the beacon of the night light.

These insects can only be identified by their buzzing and, occasionally, biting properties. The visible insect denizens of her house, besides the ants, are the stinkbugs. These things do not come by their name arbitrarily. When undisturbed, they emit a light but unpleasant odor. When they are lying on their backs with their legs waving in the air, which they do because they fall frequently, being the clumsiest members of the insect kingdom, their panic makes them smellier. If you succumb to the urge to crush them, you will regret it. They will still have natural enemies, but you will no longer be one of them.  

Colonies of them abide in the window wells and houseplants of my mother’s home.

If my S.O.’s house was mobbed by reeking beetles, she would consider torching it for the insurance money morally justifiable. East Coasters just coexist with them. My sister in law has a pair of gold stinkbug earrings. If you can’t beat them, salute them.

As I write this, real-time bug drama is unfolding before me. A spider is letting itself down from the ceiling by a strand, dropping straight for the bare skin of my knee. Not wanting such a close encounter, I grab its thread with my fingertips and bungee the arachnid towards the corner. It crawls away unharmed. I couldn’t kill it. Mom won’t let me.

After all, spiders eat insects. It’s on her side. 

There once was an unwritten but rigidly-adhered-to rule regarding all people who appeared on American television to entertain you or advertise products and that rule was that they should all be attractive people.

After a heavy week of TV viewing, I am of the strong opinion that we need to bring that back.

I should explain that I fell out of the TV habit long ago by getting a night job. For twenty years I worked in the bar business. I only watched what was on bar TVs, which were mainly sports and occasionally, wars. When I started working in the light of day again, I kept the non-viewing habit. I have actually seen only four episodes of "Seinfeld," the most popular sitcom of all time, despite the fact that hundreds of episodes were allegedly made. This is due to lack of interest, but also due to the First Law of Rerun Viewing, which states that the number of episodes of any TV series made is in inverse proportion to the likelihood that you will flip on the TV and see one you haven't seen before.

I only have to flash on the opening credits of "Seinfeld" to know that it will be the episode where Elaine pulls the plug on Kramer. Or hear the original "Star Trek" theme to know that it will be the one where Spock goes into heat. You know how it works.

But my Significant Other is a big TV fan. She just bought a TV with a screen bigger than a soccer goal. The definition on the thing allows you to see every flaw in every square inch of skin flashed by everybody taking a turn on the screen.

And believe me, there are flaws, because reality, as you have probably heard, has taken over TV.

There are reality shows where the people are not ugly. Dance competitions, for example, Dance strenuously your whole life and you will end up with a well-toned, attractive body. Or so I've been told. I might try it someday. And there is "Project Runway," where Tim Gunn takes a bunch of aspiring fashion designers to, say, a roofing supply company, gives each of them sixty bucks and tells them to buy something there and make a prom gown out of it. Heidi Klum sneers at the results.

I don't watch this show. My S. O. loves it. I tell her I don't watch because it is a gay screechfest, which is true, but the real reason I don't watch is because I have no designing talent whatsoever. That's a fact. Give me a roll of something universally useful, like duct tape, and I could probably make you a clump of duct tape out of it. Might take me a couple tries.

She also likes shows where guys swoop in and "rescue" failing restaurants. These restaurants are generally owned by people who might as well have bought a minesweeper, so little do they know about the operation of an eating establishment. They are rescued by either a foul-mouthed chef with dyed blonde hair or a gentle English giant who my girlfriend insists is gay. I would not call him that to his face unless I was dead solid certain he would regard it as a complement, however, since he has biceps the size of beer kegs.

She doesn't follow shows that feature spoiled rich women behaving badly. There are no shows featuring spoiled rich men behaving badly, since this is so commonplace it wouldn't be regarded as worthy of broadcasting.

She does like outback cop shows, but I don't see the point, since the cops in these pristine wildernesses end up dealing mostly with drunk, drugged, mentally injured people just like cops everywhere. They just have to drive further to find them.

But the worst offenders are the fishing shows. I don't mean the fishing shows I like, shows where people go onto the ocean or into the wilderness and kill a few of God's perfect marine creatures with rod and reel. That happens to be my hobby, so I empathize completely. No, these are shows that come on after the shows I like. They feature "hillbilly hand fishing," where a bare-chested obese man in cut-off shorts wanders the banks of a murky river, sticking his hand in underwater mud holes in the hope that a catfish will chomp down on his arm, enabling him to grab it by the adenoids and haul it in a truck to a competition featuring other fat guys who have caught other catfish by their windpipes. It's a convention of big ol' boys in wet jeans. While I'm watching, I'm just hoping the director has borrowed one of those Butt-Crack Blur-Cams from the cop show, just in case. 

The catfish are ugly as well. But God or Darwin made them that way, not Pizza Hut, and they also have the excuse of not owning shirts they ought to be wearing.

I had it right here. I got it the other day while I was at the ballpark with my Significant Other, who insisted I sign up for the Hooters' emailing list in order to obtain it. The Hooters girls had themselves a nice booth and some nice push-up bras and were encouraging passing baseball fans to grab an eyeful and a calendar while they signed you up for their list.

At least I'm still on that, or, to put it precisely, I remain a member of the Hoot Club. Every week they send me invitations to Hooters Events, and there are quite a few, most of them wing-centric. I've been invited to the West Coast Hooters Swimsuit Pageant, which is going to be held in Santa Ana, only a hundred miles of choking, crawling traffic jams away from where I live. As a reward for going and paying to ogle young girls in bikinis who wouldn't touch me under any roofie-free circumstances, I get five free wings.

Or I could meet Shawna, Hooters May Girl of the month. For that I get ten free wings. Apparently Hooters is feeling a little insecure about her. Couldn't say why.

Since north of here we're having one of our nice all-consuming California wildfires this weekend, Hooters emailed me notice that they are jumping on that bandwagon by giving everyone affected by the fire five free wings. That's right—as you drive away from the advancing flames while watching them consume all of your personal treasures in the rear-view mirror, you are supposed to think "Oh, boy—five free wings, here we come!"

Those Hooters execs aren't ashamed to market. No, they are not.

But my calendar is gone. It was sitting on the dining table in my special lady's house. I barely glanced at it, because my girlfriend and I have strict standards we hold each other to regarding ocular admiration of attractive young members of the opposite sex. I am allowed to look at young women in revealing clothes through my sunglasses as long as I merely shift the focus of my eyeballs and don't actually turn my head to do so. She is permitted to frankly stare at any attractive male for as long as she wants, and even mutter something like "yeah, baby," under her breath if she really likes what she sees. She was ogling a bare-chested jogger so unmercifully the other day from the car that I offered to swing around the block again so she could take a picture of the guy with her cell phone. She checked her watch and decided we didn't have time.

The calendar stayed on the table for a few days. I suggested hanging it up in her office, where I frequently work. She said "You're not hanging that thing up in my house!" in a tone of voice as decisive as a drone strike and not much quieter, either. "Hang it up in your house."

I failed to pack it, however, and then I made the mistake of opening it. I swear this was because I only wanted to find out what day of the month Memorial Day fell on this year and we didn't have any other calendars with the holidays marked on them in the place.

No sooner had the plastic wrap been peeled off of it than it disappeared. She decided that her graduate assistant needed the calendar more than me. She suspects him of having a less than completely successful love life, and apparently feels that a girlie calendar would help.

Me, I'm taking the guy out to Hooters and letting him have my five free wings. Wings aren't my favorite things. I don't dislike them; I just feel that, like crab legs, they are more trouble than they are worth. I prefer something meatier. I'll have a cold beer and think what I always think when confronted by a plate of Hooter's wings, which is, Doesn't anybody around here ever think about breasts? 

Tim Tebow was released by the New York Jets April 29th, a year after his much ballyhooed trade to that franchise. Tebow only attempted eight passes as a Jet, after leading the Denver Broncos to the playoffs the previous year. Subsequently, he was offered a job as quarterbacks coach for the Legends Football League, formerly known as the Lingerie Football League.—News items.

The noted  born-again Christian QB, famed for his practice of "Tebowing,' or publicly praising the Lord after a successful football play, was in a modest hotel room in the Southeast, holding a bag of ice wrapped in one of the hotel towels when he detected a faint odor of burning sulfur. Whirling, he saw the shadowy form of the Prince of Darkness materializing by the room refrigerator.

"Begone from me, Satan!" he shouted at the figure.

Satan, ignoring the command, sat down on a corner of the bed, brushing a bit of grayish powder from his robes onto the bedspread.

"You're getting dust on everything," Tim Tebow complained.

"It's not dust," Lucifer explained . "It's volcanic ash. It's kind of sooty in Hell today. Must have been a big disaster someplace. When we admit a bunch of souls all at once, we have to turn the heat up. Wouldn't want the place to freeze over. Hey, is that ice you're holding?"

"Yes."

"Pass a few cubes over here, would ya?" Tim Tebow, not really knowing whether giving ice to the Evil One was a sin or not, let him have a few pieces. Satan rubbed them over his horned brow. Steam came up from his forehead.

"Ahhh, that feels good," he said. "So, the Lingerie Football League. Been thinking about that offer?"

"No," Tim Tebow said. "I knew right away that was one of your temptations."

"Temptation is such an-old-fashioned word, Timbo. Nowadays I prefer to refer to them as recruitment calls. Being a coach in the Lingerie League, with all of those muscular, barely-clothed beauties at your beck and call—that doesn't make little Timbo start stirring?

"I've got a name for him, but it doesn't begin with 'little," Tim Tebow snapped.

"Naturally not," Satan said soothingly. "So huddling with eleven panting sex bombs doesn't float your boat, eh? Well, we'll find out what does, Timbo, because we really want you to play down in my place."

"They don't have football in Hell," Tim Tebow said confidently.

"On the contrary, it's our favorite sport. And some of the truly great ones play for me. A lot of the guys you played with are heading my way, too—linebackers who beat murder raps, quarterbacks who got away with raping waitresses, guys who knocked up one supermodel and then married another, anybody who took a few bucks to break somebody's leg—can't mention any names until the signing deadline, if you know what I mean—well, Bill Belichick, but everybody already knows he sold his soul to me. I just hope he doesn't figure out how to cheat his way out of the deal. All the top talent is gravitating to my league. Say, can I have some more of that ice? Unless you need it for your bruises?

Tim Tebow handed him the bag. "Go ahead. Can't figure out how to put it on my ego, anyway."

Satan slipped a few of the cubes under his armpits. "Nice. That NBA center who just came out, he's coming to my place, too. I mean, he's not a football player, but..."

"I'm not gay," Tim Tebow said.

"Okay, just checking. But there's nothing like the football season in Hell, Timmy. It's 52 weekends in a row, counting regular season and playoffs. Then I put the whole place in a temporal paradox so everybody can have the two weeks before the Satan Bowl off. And of course your playing career is much longer. All eternity. Some guys already have eleven or twelve Satan Bowl rings. I grow them additional fingers so they can wear them all. The linemen complain about the extra time it takes to tape up their hands, but the wide receivers are grateful for them."

"No thanks. I prefer to play football in front of people, not your imps."

"Hell has the greatest fans in the universe, Timbo. Philly fans, Giants fans, Raiders fans—nearly all of them go to my place. A majority of the rest of them, too. Some guys get tired of praying for their team to win the Super Bowl and turn to me. I make them wear black robes with their team emblem on them and sacrifice domestic animals and such. You'll find those guys in the corporate suites. And you'll be happy to know this, Timbo—only the Jets don't have any fans in Hell.

"Why's that?"

"Jets fans live in Hell already."


For more of Tim Tebow's spiritual experiences, read Tim Tebow Cut by Jesus.