If you go to this link- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056001. htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_oct19&link_position=link1

You can read an excellent article with some damning testimony about the validity of Renewable Energy Credits.

Hey Hummer owners, do you want to be disgustingly rich and "part of the solution" at the same time? Ever wondered if there was a way you could use your money to make yourself "part of the solution" without giving up materialism? GOOD NEWS! Now you can offset your embarrasingly huge carbon footprint by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits from Al Gore! Thats right, Al Gore, recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a very wealthy progressive, has made guilt free wealth affordable for people who are shamefully wealthy. Its easy!

STEP ONE: Go on-line, using the computer in one of your Hummers or one of the computers in your massive house, and track down a company that offers "Renewable Energy Credits", or carbon offsets, preferably one with Al Gore on the consulting pay-roll.

STEP TWO: Purchase the appropriate amount of Renewable Energy Credits according to a mathematical formula that calculates how much you shit on the earth and all of its inhabitants. The Renewable Energy Credit company will take your money and pay some working class loser to go out and plant a tree, or build a wind mill, and WAH-LAH! Now you can continue to feed your voracious ego and drive your Hummer guilt free, in smug contentment. If you buy enough credits you're hummer could actually leave a wake of carbon free air clean enough to pump into a new born babies incubator!

Of course the owners of Renewable Energy Credit companies will "skim off" just enough of the money to buy their OWN massive house and Hummer. If all of this sounds too arduous you could probably hire somebody else to buy your carbon offsets for you. Its AMAZING! What an ingenous way to remove CO2 and guilt from our atmosphere! Where did our avid greenies come up with such a great idea? From religion, or I should say from some OTHER religion.

Basically, it is the old "sale of indulgences" routine. I know, some of you are thinking: Hey, Silent G, what in the heck is "the sale of indulgences?" Well, in anticipation of your question I made up* a short history of the sale of indulgences.

Some scholars theorize that the sale of indulgences evolved out of the ancient practice of live sacrifice. For this elaborate cleansing ritual, sinners would bring the best of their flocks and crops to the local priest to be offered as a "live sacrifice" to God for the forgiveness of their sins. On the day of worship the priests would wait eagerly at the doors of their temple, mouths watering in anticipation of their weekly meal. (1)

This system, known by the priests as "the pot luck system" left room for the occasional streak of bad meals. In 749 BC, after a particularly bad stretch of flax seed meal and cat, a high priest of Rah Rah, named Karmen Ghia De A'lacarte introduced the first "price list" for sins. (2) By assigning specific items to each sin, Karmen was able to insure that every meal was a winner.

In 245BC money was invented. (1) Priests quickly converted their "sacrifice" price lists to cold hard cash and the "sale of indulgences" was born. (4)

The Catholic Church practiced the "sale of indulgences" for a couple of centuries. For parishioners it was convenient. If a man got carried away with his libido, a couple of spare ha'pennys was all he needed to be right with God.

For priests the sale of indulgences was lucrative. In a matter of months a market economy of sin developed, with priests competing for parishioners with lower prices. One record tells of a priest who tripled his attendance in one month by selling sodomy for a schilling. (1)

Soon, centrally located churches began to cash in on their prime locations, selling indulgences at inflated "convenience store" prices. Some accounts describe impoverished guilt laden sinners walking for miles to pay for sins that were too expensive at the church located next door. In the cities, the old or infirm could hardly afford to sin at all. (3)

In a suspected price fixing scandal of 1437, self abuse prices simultaneously skyrocketed all over Italy. Families with teenage boys were especially hard hit. Many people lost their homes. Remarkably, the "Masturbation Inflationary Incident of 1437", as it became known, gave new meaning to Adam Smiths Invisible Hand theory a full 286 years before his birth in 1723. (4)

In 1492 Simon Clivebald, a blind galley cook, wanted to get laid before setting sale with Christopher Columbus. The sexually frustrated sailor "put down" 5 pence for the act of fornication, normally a 40 pence sin. Simon agreed to pay the remaining 35 pence over time or suffer the penalty of death by mud. The priest took the first "down payment" in history and instructed the blind cook to "lay-away". The sale of indulgences spawned many of the complicated pricing schemes that are still used today in the car and mattress industries. Bait and switch or the old "What do I have to do to get you into an adultery today?" approach were all developed during the sale of indulgences. (3)

The Catholic Church has long since abandoned the practice but, thankfully, people can still purchase a clean conscious in the form of Carbon Offsets or by ordering a DVD or CD from a comic who drives a Honda Civic at www.getbengt.com. (I'm saving up for a big house and Hummer).

P.S. Some of you might be tempted to give your extra cash to some fund that would provide poor people with trivial stuff like food, clothes, shelter, drinking water, medicine or maybe birth control. BE WARNED! This kind of frivolous donation does NOT OFFSET CARBON FOOTPRINT GUILT!!!

Many guilt ridden rich Americans are VERY excited about Carbon Offsets. One exclaimed, "Now I dont' have to feel guilty when I use money and resources to make myself feel special and superior! In fact now I can use my money to make myself feel even more morally superior than ever! I'm rich AND I'm saving the planet! I was afraid I was going to have to cut down on my outrageous consumption in order to sleep at night but thanks to Carbon Offsets I can now wrap my mind around my hypocrisy!" Big YES with three excalamation points!!! Isn't American Innovation great!? Now even the richest among us can live a lifestyle of outrageous consumption GUILT FREE! Bitchin'! Thank you Renewable Energy Credit companies for enabling the ego-driven selfish behavior of our richest "environmentally aware" citizens!

*pulled out of my butt.

In Detroit, party promoter Ulysses "DJ Lish" Barnes announced that he would cancel a women's party that offered free admission to black women whose skin tone was roughly the same as a grocery bag. He was going to call it the "Light Skin Libra Birthday Bash". and it was going to be followed up with "Sexy Chocolate" and "Sexy Caramel" nights later that month. DJ Lish-Barnes, a sexy chocolate African American male was flooded with complaints. Among those complaining was Los Angeles based activist Pearl Jr., a sexy chocolate female. "Ignorance can't always be an excuse. Colorism is real in the black community…" said Pearl Jr., the founder of the Black Womens Movement in Los Angeles and the author of the Book "Black Women Need Love, Too" Apparently, the exact same brown paper bag test was used in the previous century during the days of blatant colorism within black American culture. Awkward.

So DJ Lish is doing the right thing. He has cancelled all marketing gimmicks that rely on skin tone to promote attendance or determine admittance. All doormen have been instructed to go back to issuing admittance, free or otherwise, based solely on physical appearance, gender, wealth or political/celebrity status. So far there have been no complaints. Hmmmm.

"Thank God we still have uglyism, sexism and nepotism!" Said Dj Lish Barnes, "I don't know HOW I'd screen my meat markets if they took those tools away!"

5:07 pm..---Beanie hat guy-..Just stopped kick ass air drum solo to.."gouge" it...Left handed? Must be..quite a..large one to break concentration. Maybe just volatile consitency??..Strong feelings of ..curiousity. Now glad..I..DON'T have binoculars...

5:38 pm---Light changed on middle aged lady in silver SAAB, (ID liscence plate: 4233DB) Car stuttered into intersection. Pretty sure she drives a very messy stick...

5:39!!? pm--- Old..man in ill-fitting Boise State Bronco hat..second-knuckled his..pinky right up to the ring!!!.. Twisted hand till palm went skyward!! Must have some sort of deviated septum-ledge and a double jointed wrist! Why does one use pinky anyway? It is less coordinated but smaller. Maybe eating finger food with..index, middle,..and ring?? Been there. I drive alone a..lot. Through dry climates even...

BTW: Boise States colors are crazy. Hunter Orange and toxic dye blue. I think the strangest possible team colors..would be..fleshy pink..and..yellowy-white. Uniforms could be designed to look like naked white men in jock straps. Maybe with farmer tan sleeves...I don't think black athletes would like them but I DO..think it would distract the..opponent.

Recently, Rush Limbaugh displayed symptoms of the illness when he labeled all Democrats Stalinists. That's right, Joseph Stalin, world record holder in murder, (60,000,000) is the mentor of the Democratic Party of the United States, disconcerting news now that they control our house and senate. You'd think that a bunch of Stalinists wouldn't wait to get a majority of votes before seizing power, but Americas' Democratic Stalinists have shown uncharacteristic restraint and respect for the electoral process.

Rush astounds me. To be able to imagine Stalin running for office in America; to picture him waiting anxiously in the wings during the election of 2000 to find out if he was going to assume power, requires a special kind of diseased imagination. Try as it might, my little mind can't imagine Stalin, on the edge of his chair, biting his nails and fondling his beard, as officials carefully count all the hanging chads in Florida. I can imagine Stalin hanging Floridians in Chad to save Social Security. Maybe if I read less history and took more oxycontin.

Yes I'm disenchanted with Democrats,(and not exactly in love with the Republicans), but unlike his American political contemporaries, Stalin didn't follow polls so he'd know to whom he should pander, he followed polls so he'd know how many people to kill.

This mental illness, with its historically inaccurate and half-ass comparisons, is not limited to conservative talk-radio hosts. Liberals are also susceptible. Leading up to the renewal of the gulf war, I saw hundreds of infected US citizens on the news, marching outside the Whitehouse with some obviously symptomatic signs, "Bush = Hitler". The protesters signs actually claimed that Bush and Hitler were mathematically interchangeable. They are most certainly not. Hitler was a brilliant speaker. Nobody left a Hitler Rally shaking their head,

"did you hear ze vay he stumbled ont zee verd snitzel?"

And Hitler was also a genocidal maniac. The mere fact that one carries the "Bush = Hitler" sign on Bush's front yard and lives to talk about it, is proof that the sign is mathematical malarkey. I'm pretty sure Hitler would KILL you for equating him with Bush.

What bothered me most about the protestors signs was the use of the equal symbol. Maybe they didn't know how to spell equal. Maybe they were running out of room on their signs, and maybe they were trying to scream an obscenity without screaming an obscenity. In any case, the equal symbol doesn't invite comparison, and all of its accompanying complexity, instead it oversimplifies. The equal sign ignores all the glaring differences between these two super-power leaders.

For instance: Hitler was way better with kids. Bush has two unruly daughters to go with a nation full of violent teenage slackers, who either skip school or show up late only to shoot their classmates. Whereas Hitler tamed millions of German teenagers by enrolling them in the Hitler Youth Movement. For those who don't know, the Hitler Youth Movement was kind of like Boy Scouts for Nazis. Roughly the same oath and uniform- a tad more exclusive. Disciplined and Orderly, Hitler Youth refrained from shooting fellow pupils until it was a direct order.

Ironically, when we take our cue from the equal symbol and actually do some math, Bush falls far short of the mass murdering Mo-look-alike. Adolph killed at least six million Jews, a couple hundred thousand gypsies, a bunch of gays, a few French, some Russians, some Danes, some Fins, some Poles, some Czechs, a few thousand of our boys and of course several million of his own countrymen.

Now for Bush's numbers. Even if you ignore logic and conveniently count all the deaths in Iraq, including the Muslims being killed by Muslims, Texas state executions, suicides after the dotcom bubble popped and deaths by hurricane, Bush has, at most, a couple hundred thousand deaths to his credit.

The point is, when it comes to murder and mayhem, Hitler was a bit more productive than Bush. Perhaps because he was more proactive. He didn't jostle unwanted poor and minorities out to the coast and then hope for some hurricane of a "homo-hatin' God" to wander into town. He shipped them to concentrations camps and gassed them.

And unlike George W., Adolph surrounded himself with competent people. To execute the "Final Solution" Hitler hired a brilliant accountant named Karl Eichmann. To run FEMA, Bush hired a horse show expert. Would Hitler do that?

Himmler: "Who should vee get to run zee hollow-cost?"

Hitler: "How about Gunther? He is zare goot vis zee ponies!"

If FEMA had even one little Karl Eichmann in charge, Katrina would have been a different story. You can bet your gold teeth that those busses wouldn't have been bogged down in a parking lot, empty, they would have been PACKED! And I mean packed like...like…well, like trains on the way to Auschwtiz. And they wouldn't have been going away from the storm either.

Bush equals Hitler. Democrats are Stalinists. Where do these ridiculous historical connections come from? One thing for sure, all the fightin' words have polarized and paralyzed America, causing several of our elected and reportedly educated leaders to proclaim, "This country has never been more divided!" True statement! -except for that civil war thing and the subsequent one hundred years of colored water fountains and Vietnam. I guess the country was pretty divided during segregation. For a second there I almost got the disease. I guess it just feels good to use superlatives like never and always.

Then sometime in the early nineties they introduced triple blade technology. Now the first TWO blades pulled the hair, like a small tug of war, and the third blade performed a follicle abortion of sorts, cutting unborn bristle that wasn't going to sprout for another FOUR or FIVE hours.

Now there are five blades. How far into the future do we need to shave?

The first blade locates a worm hole in the time space continuum, the second blade, or the 'lookout blade', holds the hole open, so that blades three through five can slip into the future virtually undetected and cut hair that wasn't going to grow until four days after tomorrow.

Seems like we are running out of needs and developing some really weird wants.

Have you seen the pens with shock absorbers? They have a suspension system better than many third world vehicles on their business end. I thought it was silly when shocks started appearing on trikes and now they are slapping them on pens. And its patented technology. Wouldn't you feel kind of silly standing in the patent line with this invention? You and your smooth writer, next to some rocket scientist/brain surgeon.

"Wow, your thingy saves people? Mine can do math on cardboard...if you know how."

The body’s rocket fuel for scrapping or skedaddling is adrenaline. Its a highly flammable liquid produced by some sort of gland in our bodies. Actually it might be inflammable, or inflammable, or inflammable, or inflamed? I dont want to get over-technical, plus I have no idea what it is or where it comes from, but it smells like fear and we all have a couple of teaspoons, or ounces, or centimeters of it somewhere in our bodies waiting to get scared into action.

Theoretically, a LEFTarded persons cowardly chicken-legs fill up with this adrenaline, so they can out run their enemies, or just their spouse, depending on the appetites and intentions of the threat. Whereas the RIGHTards adrenaline will rush to their chest and arms, for face to face, primitive combat. Either way, everybody gets retarded when adrenaline hits the system.

I have found that I have a muscle to adrenaline ratio that allows me to completely fill both my chicken legs and wimpy fighting muscles with adrenaline. In fact during the course of my last encounter with danger, (check your radio volume BEFORE you start your car!) I actually had enough adrenaline left over to evacuate my bowels, wet myself and pull every muscle in my body. I even cried! Probably TEARS of adrenaline.

So I was thinking maybe that is why our country is so passionately divided right now. We are under a constant perceived threat and therefore we feel a deep, primitive, instinctive, irresistible, uncompromising need to fight or run. Deep, deep, down we are all experiencing the kind of powerful emotion that bends all arguments to explain its presence.

As smart and rational as we might think our reasons are, maybe sometimes they are just rationalizations. Our subconscious trying to justify why we feel the seemingly overwhelming and constant need to run, fight, or in my case, crap my pants.

Poor person: "Wed had jus saved up nuff money to pay off our oxens, four hundred dollars, when we gets a CHAIN LETTER threatening us with all manners of misfortunes if we didnt forward it to twenty people! At an exam cost of four hundred dollars!"

Now the poor superstitious bastards are upside down on oxen and eating cockle-burr soup because they dont want their cow to get rot-tit and their pigs to get the hydrophoby.

As a Myspace newcomer I have received many frivolous bulletin/chain letters containing these ridiculous, albeit reproductively successful, threats. After stepping me through some hilarious and totally worth-my-time activity, theyll suddenly take on a very sinister tone: "Forward this immediately to twenty friends or one of your limbs or appendages will fall off at an inopportune time."

Since nobody wants that to happen at an inopportune time, everybody forwards the letter. Why not. Its easy and now they wont have to worry about losing their arm while hailing a cab or making a throw to first.

In the Pony Express Era sending a chain letter would be cost prohibitive and at least some of us would take our chances, maybe wear tight clothes for a while, avoid sudden or large gestures, and eventually discover that the curses are actually bullshit. But in the era of myspace and the internet why take the risk? It costs you nothing to believe. If your willing to cram your friends boxes and bulletins full of crap you can throw your limbs all willy-nilly, fearless and fancy free, superstition intact.

I saw a copy of the world famous Guttenberg Bible in Austin, Texas. I had no idea it was there. Stumbled onto it in the Ransom Museum at the University of Texas.

If you attend U of T you could easily check out the Guttenberg Bible, maybe for your next frat activity. They wouldn't let me check it out because I'm not a student. They wouldn't even let me take pictures or run it down to the copy shop.

For those who don't know, the Guttenberg Bible is a book that was ghost written by God.

Written in Latino, it is the first book printed in moveable type. It’s called the Guttenberg Bible after Steve Guttenberg, world famous actor and the inventor of the first real printing press. I had no idea that Steve Guttenberg was actually born in 1398, making him 608 years young and the second oldest cast member in "Cocoon". If you look up Steve's first headshot, a woodblock print, it’s obvious he had some work done.

People are always trying to steal the Guttenberg Bible, which is composed of paper, leather and delicious theft worthy ice cream. At least I assume that because they keep it in a freezing museum under the constant watch of several security guards who look even older than Steve Guttenberg.

Of course it’s not made of ice cream. That was just an admittedly lame attempt at humor. But it is valuable. People would steal it if they could. Who are we kidding MEN would steal it. So they could show it to their buddies or use it to impress hot Southern-Baptist Bible belt chicks.

There is also a friendly narcoleptic docent at the museum with a band aid on her forehead. She will tell you stuff about the Guttenberg Bible. Like why there are red marks all over it, where the dirty words are (beget you!) and how to turn the pages.

DO NOT SPILL COFFEE on the Guttenberg Bible! They WILL make you BUY it. And it’s expensive.