Because I know you love it when I rant...

I really should take notes. Things pop into my head during the day and I think, 'i need to write about that' only to find that my head hasn't the data capacity that I would like, and out it goes as easily as it came in.

I was thinking about all the pomp surrounding the Tiger Woods scandal and how his sponsors dropped him to the point that he decided to take an 'extended leave of absence' from golf. I was thinking, how many of the executives in the companies that dropped him as a sponsor were out doing the same types of things that got Tiger dropped? Plenty, I'm guessing, and if their wives found out they'd be dropped as quickly as Tiger. But, it's a one-way street and since Tiger is their meal ticket, he's out on his ass.

I was reading an article on the Internet that some states are considering putting referendums (referendii?) on the ballot to legalize marijuana, and I remembered that I once wrote that when states run out of ways to generate revenue, ideas that were once considered outrageous suddenly become good ideas - unless, of course, you consider (as I do) that legalizing marijuana is a good idea. It would certainly cut down on my drinking. C'mon, while we're young.

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that tough economic times across the country have lawmakers looking at everything, and may lead even more states to eventually consider the potential tax value of pot.

This was a good essay. When I had functioning brain cells.

Back to the marijuana debate:

"There's no upside to it in any manner other than for those people who want to smoke pot," said Travis Kuykendall, head of the West Texas High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area office in El Paso, Texas. "There's nothing for society in it, there's nothing good for the country in it, there's nothing for the good of the economy in it."

Can you name about a thousand laws that are created that have no economic good or value to society? Me too, which is why Travis' (something) argument is specious. He's probably stoned. Nothing good for the country? How about the billions of dollars we waste on the so-called War Against Drugs?

Couldn't we spend that money on a rocket to Mars, bringing WiFi to the masses, inventing a truly wrinkle-proof fabric, getting rid of the penny, eliminating service charges from concert tickets, paving some streets, keeping newspapers alive, finding a fifth pizza cheese, getting Sarah Palin a job at Wal-Mart, building a rail line between Gloucester County and Philadelphia (instead of just studying it), reducing cable TV rates, getting rid of the nine-tenths of a cent price on gasoline, eliminating plastic shopping bags or (God forbid) going toward public health care?

Priorities, gang.

Any of those things are a bigger benefit to society than hovering helicopters over pot fields in Florida.