Some thoughts before I'm kidnapped and taken to Disney World.

The haikubreakup site published one that I submitted. Click here to read it.

I've heard the phrase "John and Kate plus eight" about a hundred times over the past week and I have absolutely no idea what it means. Is it a TV show or are they real people? Or both?

As I sit here, ABC is televising the Scripps National Spelling Bee. I'm not watching it, because I don't think kids spelling is captivating television, but I'll bet a week's pay that some kid with a foreign name wins it. No way somebody named Adam Smith or Jane Williams can spell better than a kid who was probably born in another country.

They win the Geography Bee too, the foreigners. It's probably because we're so ethnocentric that we don't know or care which country borders Yemen or the name of the longest river in Bolivia. It doesn't concern us until we're sending troops in - then we're experts.

A gay student at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles named Sergio Garcia was named Prom Queen. He wore a gray tuxedo and a tiara. That's all I have to say about that.

Jay Leno is leaving the Tonight show soon. In the fall, he's going to be on TV five nights a week in prime time. I'm guessing that large numbers of Americans who are usually asleep when he is on will watch and find out how annoying he is.

Between the time I started and now (that I'm finishing) the spelling bee finished too. This year's winner was Kavya Shivashankar who claims to be from Kansas. She said she is retiring from spelling, but I'd say that's impossible. We always have to spell. She said she might enter the Brain Bee (whatever that is) and said, "But I don't think anything can replace spelling. Spelling has been such a big part of my life."

Wow. Is there an Insect Bee for people who know a lot about bugs?

And now, a Spelling Bee Haiku:

I'm American.

When I need to know something,

I just use spell check.