Only Dick Knows Dick

Understandably fed up with having to repeatedly point out how wrong we all are about the progress and prosecution of the war in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney has decided it's time move on to smugly dismissing a few of our other wrongheaded notions.

The Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl.
Absolute nonsense. To begin with, the mere notion of the Indianapolis Colts even being in the Super Bowl is a false premise, an attempt to delude the American people as to the reality of precisely whose cleats are on the ground. Because to anyone who truly loves the game of football, who holds dear the rich history and grand traditions of America's chalk-lined battlegrounds, the Indianapolis Colts simply do not exist.

The fact of the matter is this: In 1984, after 31 glorious seasons in Baltimore, the Colts were hijacked, kidnapped, if you will, in the dead of night by hostile, aggressive Hoosiers. But to think this abduction somehow turned the Baltimore Colts into the Indianapolis Colts is as misguided as calling the Lindbergh baby the Hauptman baby or designating the Iranian hostages Iranian citizens. No, any suggestion that the Indianapolis Colts are this year's NFL champs is not only an affront to our core beliefs but an assault on reason.

But I'll go a step further. Even if the teams' respective geographical designations were to go away, leaving the unembellished assertion "The Colts beat the Bears in the Super Bowl," this, too, is dangerously disingenuous.

And anyone who takes the time to objectively assess the post-game locker room statistics — statistics that, for whatever reason, are under-reported in the press — will notice the Colts applied far more adhesive bandages, received far more cortisone injections, had far more MRIs and took far more and far longer therapeutic whirlpool baths than did the Bears.

Now I realize these types of stats don't lend themselves to sensational headlines or emotionally-charged video like "points scored" and "yards gained" do, but the fact remains: The Bears were clearly the physically superior team in this game and I'm on record as stating that it's only a matter of time before the Colts admit their defeat.

Dolphins aren't fish, they're mammals.
There's an old saying that goes, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." Now, as an avid hunter who's fired his fair share of birdshot through waterfowl, I can personally attest to the wisdom and truth of that adage. What's more, independent field intelligence confirms the walk-quack-duck correlation. So, bearing that in mind, doesn't it stand to reason that if something swims like a fish and gets caught in a gill net like a fish, it's a fish? Of course it does.

Unfortunately, there exists in the world a group of radical classificationists who would have us disbelieve the dorsal fins before our eyes and recognize these denizens of the sea as mammals. In other words, these zoological zealots consider dolphins more closely related to man than to manta rays. To which I say, "Hogwash." That might fly among a particular type of egghead, but I think you'll find in the real world dolphin is more often listed as a fish dish, not a meat dish.

Finally, let's not lose sight of an even more important, more incontrovertible fact: In Genesis, the first book of the Holy Bible, God grants man dominion over everything, including "the birds of the air and the fish of the sea." Nowhere does he say "fish and mammals of the sea." And God, being God, would know.

The sky is blue.
If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that the sky is a big, complicated thing and there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. It's not as simple as looking up, seeing a color, then matching that to a pretty paint chip and thinking the job is done. Hardly. I know some people would like to think it's that simple but, as I've repeatedly pointed out, it's not.

The first step in determining the true color of the sky is to look at the big picture, take it all in. That's where the truth is. You can't ignore or reject some portion or element of the heavens that doesn't agree with your your preconceived, parochial definition. And I say this because in my sky — and if you're honest, in yours too — there's a sun. It's up there all day every day. And that sun is yellow. Bright, burning yellow. In fact, to me, that sun is the brightest, most significant thing I see when I look up. By far.

My point is — and let me be clear about this — the intensity of the yellow sun, which we've established is an integral part of the sky, when taken together, averaged if you will, with the muted non-yellow of the non-sun (the "blue" as some insist on calling it) renders the sky green. That is — and government scientists at NASA, as well as children with crayons, have proven and support this position — yellow plus blue equals green.

The sky is green, and to consider it otherwise is to deny the facts.