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Perhaps by now you’ve read some of the articles (and associated entertaining comments, such as those at Fark) about how Principal Murray has tried to ban his students from saying meep.

It’s been a long time since I was in high school, but I still remember what it was like to be young, and chafing under what seemed like arbitrary and capricious rules set down by school authorities.

So in solidarity with the students of Danvers High, and on my own initiative, I took about five seconds and sent an email to Principal Thomas Murray
( murray@danvers.org ), Assistant Principal Mark Strout ( strout@danvers.org ), Assistant Principal Cornelia Varoudakis ( cvaroudakis@danvers.org ), and
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Lisa Dana ( dana@danvers.org ). All of these addresses are publicly available on the Danvers High School website.

My subject line said (in full), “meep.” The body said (in full), “Meep.”

Yesterday I received a reply email from Assistant Principal Mark Strout, which said (in full) “Your E-mail has been forwarded to the Danvers Police Department.”

[..]

Gee, I’m scared — maybe the Danvers police will come to NYC to arrest me! I guess they’ll also try to extradite people who (I’m guessing) sent emails from other countries. We can be charged with . . . what, first degree meeping? Yeah, good luck with that.

The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Ronald Reagan

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Water on the moon, once a wild conjecture, appears to be solidifying into a scientific fact. Jubilant NASA scientists announced Friday that they have found the telltale signature of significant quantities of water, in the form of ice and vapor, in a shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole.

Excellent. The next step in my plan to take over the world is to start importing the water from the moon, and use it in alternative medicine. I will call it “Moonwater and Homeopathy: Taste the Lunacy”!

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It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”

“If you are prosperous on Earth, that means God is rewarding your rugged individualism! If you are poor, it is a sign that god frowns on your reliance on handouts!”

Perhaps Marx missed a trick; religion’s not so much the opium of the masses as the cocaine and/or Prozac of the bourgeoisie.