Word of the Day: CURMUDGEON  (ker-muhj'-uhn), NOUN: Crusty, ill-tempered, irascible person.

First, I must apologize for last week. I was sick as a dog (No, I am not sure why a dog should be particularly sick) and the doctor warned me to stay in bed and that any blogging could result in severe injury. But now I am better, and I promise to update this blog as much as possible, consistent with my time constraints and lazy temperament.

The weekend news was dominated by the fact that someone staying in a Las Vegas Extended-Stay found some Ricin that a previous guest had left in his room. Ricin is an extraordinarily  toxic substance. It is 1,000 times more lethal than cyanide, and an amount of ricin that would fit on the head of a pin is enough to kill a man. After writing a VERY nasty email to hotels.com, the man brought the ricin to the guy at the front desk, who promptly alerted the FBI.

Imagine the embarrassment of the terrorist who left his ricin in the hotel room. "Honey, where is my ricin. I told you to bring the rest of the bags from the hotel room out to the car! Now how am I supposed to do my terrorism, without my ricin? I am going to get fired when Osama finds out about this. Is that what you want? You want me to get fired? By Allah, you are my least favorite wife!"

The entire incident has reaffirmed my belief that we desperately need an old, wrinkly, Republican, curmudgeon in the White House. We need a cranky old bastard like Dick Cheney, who drinks ricin for breakfast and  whose favorite sports are huntin' and launching missiles at terrorists (and in both cases isn't picky about who he hits). We need someone who can strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists. Someone like John McCain, who is liable to have a bad  war flashback and blow up  Vietnam. I don't care if they listen in on my phone conversations or make abortions punishable by death or make it legal for oil executives to eat illegal aliens. I will be happy as long as our next president  keeps ricin out of my Diet Coke supply.