NOT EDITED FOR TIME OR CONTENT - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Lord, help me understand. On "Deal or No Deal," there’s a dude who, yeah, is an Iraqi vet, even got a Purple Heart (which I will never understand - doesn’t that mostly mean they didn’t duck fast enough?), yeah, yeah - but he has, as one of his ‘support’ people, his girlfriend (note, not his WIFE), who has already had their first baby, and was pleading with this guy to take what ended up being the best offer on the entire show.

Listen, Purple Heart dude, I KNOW, especially as a military spouse, that your sweet little girlfriend did NOT get, and WILL not get, any military benefits, support, or (God forbid), if you had NOT dodged that bullet, any life insurance!! Your ‘ fiance ’ (I absolutely hate that word - perhaps because it’s French and it has come to mean ‘girl/boy friend that you have convinced there is a better than 51% chance that someday you might actually marry them’) is standing there with tears in her eyes, begging you to take the offer ‘"because then we’ll have enough money to get married!"

(Sideline -how much money does it take to get married? Justice of peace, who you slip a $20 bill to - a church minister (free if they’ll LDS, I guarantee) - really, even if you have dreamed all your life about a huge wedding and flying all your relatives in from Wisconsin, isn’t it a little bit more practical to have the legal status before your ‘ fiance ’ goes into a war zone?!?)

And now there is a cool Hawaiian guy (from Maui) who is playing to help his mom (we're back to "Deal Or No Deal" in case you weren't following me), and is actually CRYING because he is so happy that he has SIX million dollar cases in the mix.

Okay, thanks, I needed to get that out of my system.


Onto the next bee in my bonnet (talk about using outdated expressions, man).

A certain someone (who will remain nameless in the name of marital harmony) tonight climbed (rather shakily) on his soapbox late this evening, and lectured for a full 20 minutes about one particular gospel point (which I really don’t need to get into to prove my point) and how this had been taken to great lengths in a church meeting (actually a particular group’s regular weekly gathering, which normally is the solitary lecturer, reading from a manual, accompanied by snoring - or in rare instances, such as the particular meeting that this specific someone was talking about, voices are raised, everyone argues loudly about some insignificant point of doctrine and/or scripture while not listening to anyone else and all leave the room disgruntled) ...

Okay, I need to take a breath here . . .

ANYWAY, I, bless my little self, bit my tongue, and did NOT say anything, like "listen, buddy, aren’t you old guys meeting together in church to LEARN AND BECOME MORE LIKE CHRIST, not argue about really stupid little details that have NOTHING to do with yours (or anyone else’s) eternal salvation, and are precisely pointed out in the scriptures as CONTENTION (which is NOT good)."

Of course, am I being contentious by letting all this bother me? ARGHHHHHHHHH!!

(And now I’m watching Mythbuster blow up a pig’s stomach with soda, pop rocks and/or baking soda . . . YUCK! This is a SIGN - give up television ... NOW!)