Billy Button

Do you ever see how far you can stick your finger down your bellybutton? I do. Last year, for some reason, I tended to accumulate a lot of bellybutton lint. Maybe it was Arkansas. Maybe it was a reaction against global warming. I don't know. For those of you with outies, besides scaring other kids at the pool, it must be hard to never feel comfortable in conversation about our bellybuttons, since you don't really have them, just weird smooth bumps. For you to jump in, you might have to say something like, "My dad had a big bellybutton," but nothing that would raise suspicion about your own lack of one.

This week, I wish some other things would disappear into that shallow abyss.

Mother Russia again. I tell you, I thought that wall came down along time ago. Some Ruskies seem to be acting like closeted racists, waiting for the time and place where communism and the Eastern Bloc will be chic again. You know the type, those guys that interject something so over-the-top racist you feel the back draft of the time warp vortex closing up. Some one mentions watermelon in the summertime and the racist grabs a rope and asks if that's the bait.

And yes, that is what I am saying about Putin, that he's waiting for the day where he can open the wardrobe with all of his USSR jerseys and march in high step around Red Square. Bill Murray will not make his country look like a fool again. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Russia is selling arms - fighter planes, surface to air missiles - to Iran and Venezuela.

I took the ladyfriend to a nice dinner last night to celebrate two years together. We had a wine expert put to rest those rumors you had been hearing about Two-Buck Chuck. My bride-to-be is guilty of spreading the rumor that they mistreat their workers, a la letting pregnant Mexican women die in the fields picking grapes. And for my brother's wine and spirits class professor, the beverage is not rebottled from restaurant wine backwash.

The truth is this. You pay for the packaging. The grapes used are surplus from vineyards and because of business reasons, vineyards would rather sell them than throw them out. Two Buck Chuck buys the surplus and makes wine. So they buy their grapes from others, eliminating pregnant picker possibilities, and they make their own.

His suggestion was to open the bottle in the parking lot and taste it. If it tastes good, go back and buy from the same box. If it sucks, you can still get drunk.

That's all for now. I could talk about how both campaigns are engaging in sixth grade student government politics, but you have probably witnessed that yourself. Also, Bill Richardson has proposed a plan to tie driver's licenses to a student's classroom performance. Dangle that carrot Bill.