CHRIS will ROCK the OSCARS!

So its Hollywoods biggest weekend! No Clay Aikens tour aint starting! Its THEE ACADEMY AWARDS weekend! Whether its a yippee or a yawn for ya, its news! Another sappy loooonngggg shallow awards show is news? Yep, slippin out from the stacked deck of rasism cards is stunning news.You arsty fartsy folks could be in for quite a bumpy ride Sunday.You love your 4 and a half hour epics and tear jerker stories of retards or killer prostitutes or foriegn 'time pieces' or some sort of handicap or addiction. So ABC executives deside to inject some fresh juice into the production by giving us Chris Rock as the host to keep us from falling asleep between all the exceptance speeches (I want too thank God,my hair stylist..) and Jack Valentes (hes still the Prez and/or alive right?) boring stats. So far the publicity and the pros and cons of an edgy young black stand up comedic are generating alot of buzz.Great plan ABC! They knew very well what type of comic Rock is,and as a fan of his, I am glad to see the brother get a chance.He isnt rasict, he keeps it real by pointing out the differences in all the cultures and makes fun of it all.I realy doubt he will drop any F bombs or say anything too out there.He is a highly paid professional,and frankly with new babies and a wife to feed, he will fall into place nicely and keep us entertained,and awake! Sure Chris will be his edgy self.Jokes that might make some squirm.But hes not going to break into his jokes from his 'Bigger and Blacker'(LOVED IT!) But I am certain he will keep his shizzle from nizzlin' and frightenin' the white folks up past their bed time! ;-)> The Academy isnt to fond of comedy.They like it dark and with a big impact.Hey thats Chris Rock! And what he said that got everyones feathers ruffeled were not so far off base. Its realy not a single young black guys thing to get your party on with the Oscar show.But as far as a black and white thing, I think it may be another great year for the black actors. I say Jamie Fox and Don Cheadle are a lock for Best.And Morgan Freedmen for Suporting. But what about the poor white trashy folks they over look year after year.For instance, Paris Hiltons 'One Nite in Paris'........ snubbed!OMG! Theres always next year Paris dear,maybe it was the crap lighting? And HELLO! What the frick about the great Will Farrell in 'AnchorMan'??? That one makes my hair stand up! Or 'DodgeBall' for crying out loud! So, I say you go Rock on with your badd self Chris! You will for sure keep us awake and make us laugh at those dressed up, propped up over payed posers. Except Johnny Depp and John Travolta ;-)> =^.^=

JUICED or just JUICY ????

Being the sporty spice I am, I couldn't pass the topic of Jose Conseco and his titalating tatletale book, JUICED. No its not another OJ Simpson book, 'Juiced' is about Jose's career,bed hopping,steriod usage,randy nite club action and much disturbing and destructive snitching on former playmates and atheletes.Jose not only blows the doors off his own steriod induced body but he drops names of who he injected with! No Way Jose??Your a rat, a snitch? You dropped the dime on your former band of brothers?Now that you made your millions (and blown them) and had your own career successes (and failures) you deside you are divorsing yourself from the game, (which baseball has been veddy,veddy good) selling your hard earned hardwear on the net and opening the door t your closet of dirrrty little secrets.So you claim you never had sex with Madonna.This is the Bill Clinton line kidz, she lets say... serviced him. Hopped up Jose could have written this book without naming names and causing such drama, esp. on OPENING DAY of SPRING TRAINING!! (that musta sucked!).Hes dropping the bomb! Barry Bonds,Mark McQuire!OMG! They are on 'roids??? Holy shit! I woulda never guessed!!! (insert sarcastic eye roll). DUH!! Like steriod use is unheard of.How many Olympic games are there steriod dramas? Is there any athelete in major leagues that DOESN'T want to enhance their performance? Dont think so. Not with all the money, endorsements,babes and all the benefits that go with the big time ballers!They aint giving that stuff away to Mr. Puny-verse! We want the big hitters,the big men with big bats and know how 2 swing 'em, BABY! Of COURSE these people want to enhance their performances.Ya know, cork the bat a bit.In Hollywood to keep those multi million dollar paychecks coming, they inject botolism into thier faces and get fae boobs and pecs to enhance their performances.At least the Hollyweird crowd aint in toilet stalls with their pants around their knees sticking each other in the butt! (hey, save The George Michael jokes,wise guy!) Baseball has slowly pulled away from us diehard fans over the past few decades.It makes me sad. I also hate to think Bucky Dent, Lee Mazzili or Steve Garvey were once in a stall together gettin' jacked on the juice back in the day!Say it aint so! So all in all the book,a fiery anger fueled bio from a once beloved son of the Great American Past Time,comes off as a bitter bitch has been.He not only pissed his fans off, but the fans of those he outed.And again I will say, no big surprise about these guys been on the juice anyways,Jose.Its just tacky to drag them out,NOW,while they are on the top. So its ONE,TWO,THREE SHOTS YER OUT!!! Good for you Jose, you cleared your conscience (and your bank account) got passed your demons and are looking to gain much respect and money off this book.But you broke the code, man.You coulda come clean, and left the others in the shadows (we can fill in the blanks, just pull out your Giambi,Bonds,McGuire,etc rookie cards and compare to today). In one way its an eye opener to the ones with their heads in the sand and dont know or want to know about the babes, drugs money and cheating that are hand in hand with pro sports from the time the kids are in High School. And I cant blame them for wanting to up their game,its very competitive and ya gotta be exceptional to stand out (or realy realy suck!) so to enhance makes sence. I just PRAY someone back home in Miami 'slips' some steriods to my failed Miami Dolphins team.They SURE NEED SOME PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT for Petes Sake!! YYYYEEEEAAAAAAWWWWHHHHHH! =^.^=

MERCHANT MARINERS SEEK LONG OVERDUE REWARDS

WWII Merchant Mariners Seek Belated Thanks �UPDATED - Thursday February 10, 2005 5:48pm Washington (AP) - The bullets and torpedoes they faced were just as real, but World War II merchant mariners say the government hasn't given them the same treatment as military personnel. When the fighting ended, they got no homecoming parades, "no GI Bill, no nothing," said former � � � � � � WWII Merchant Mariners Seek Belated Thanks �UPDATED - Thursday February 10, 2005 5:48pm Washington (AP) - The bullets and torpedoes they faced were just as real, but World War II merchant mariners say the government hasn't given them the same treatment as military personnel. When the fighting ended, they got no homecoming parades, "no GI Bill, no nothing," said former mariner George Duffy of Seabrook, N.H. Now there's proposed legislation to pay $1,000 monthly to the aged former civilian sailors, who hauled troops, tanks, bombers, fuel and other wartime goods to keep Allied forces supplied. "My bill is a belated thank you," said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif. A Navy movement to put them under military control was scuttled during the war by shipping companies that held lucrative government contracts and by the men's union, which didn't want to lose control of the workers, historians say. The rivalry and later general disinterest in the merchant marines' cause conspired to relegate them to second-class veterans. Duffy recalled the disparate treatment he received compared with a friend in the Coast Guard. Captured by the Germans at 20 and delivered to the Japanese, Duffy spent 37 months - exactly 1,119 days, he said - in Pacific prisoner of war camps. He endured scarce food and medicine and his prisoner work detail was forced to build the Japanese a railroad across Sumatra. "I came home after this experience and had no benefits, no (paid college tuition under the) GI Bill, no nothing," Duffy said. His friend got full military benefits after spending the entire war as a clerk in a New York office of the Coast Guard. A little like today's civilian contractors working with the military in war zones, the 1940s seamen got higher pay than military counterparts - though not that much higher. They say the difference was negated once they calculated that they were paid only for time at sea - not shore time like the military - and they didn't get the insurance, health care, lower mortgage rates, preferred employment status and educational opportunities that returning armed forces got. Frank Medeiros said he was paid $3,000 in 1943 for what had been billed as a four-month convoy to supply allied Russian troops at Murmansk. The round-trip run ended up taking 13 months, and two dozen of its three dozen merchant ships were lost to attacks along the way. Now an 83-year-old part-time dispatcher for the union Masters, Mates and Pilots in San Francisco, he says grateful Russians later invited former mariners to visit, awarding them medals. "And I got a letter from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev," said Medeiros. "They called us patriots." Of his own government, he says: "They shouldn't have done what they did to us." A benefits bill was killed in the 1940s - "torpedoed by powerful military lobbyists who influenced congressmen and senators," said author Brian Herbert, who drew from government documents, diaries and survivor interviews to write his 2004 book, "The Forgotten Heroes: The Heroic Story of the United States Merchant Marine." The mariners got veteran status - and therefore some limited benefits - when they sued the military in 1988, by which time some postwar programs had expired. In 2000, Canada approved $34 million for one-time payments of up to $16,400 to its World War II merchant seaman, who also belatedly got veteran status. --- On the Net: Merchant Marine: http://www.usmm.org To look up the bill, H.R. 23: http://thomas.loc.gov ~~~~~ALL MY LOVE,THANKS AND RESPECT TO ALL VETS and active TROOPS and THIER FAMILIES.GOD BLESS YOU ALL &GOD BLESS AMERICA!!! =^.^= ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MERCHANT MARINERS SEEK LONG OVERDUE REWARDS

WWII Merchant Mariners Seek Belated Thanks �UPDATED - Thursday February 10, 2005 5:48pm Washington (AP) - The bullets and torpedoes they faced were just as real, but World War II merchant mariners say the government hasn't given them the same treatment as military personnel. When the fighting ended, they got no homecoming parades, "no GI Bill, no nothing," said former � � � � � � WWII Merchant Mariners Seek Belated Thanks �UPDATED - Thursday February 10, 2005 5:48pm Washington (AP) - The bullets and torpedoes they faced were just as real, but World War II merchant mariners say the government hasn't given them the same treatment as military personnel. When the fighting ended, they got no homecoming parades, "no GI Bill, no nothing," said former mariner George Duffy of Seabrook, N.H. Now there's proposed legislation to pay $1,000 monthly to the aged former civilian sailors, who hauled troops, tanks, bombers, fuel and other wartime goods to keep Allied forces supplied. "My bill is a belated thank you," said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif. A Navy movement to put them under military control was scuttled during the war by shipping companies that held lucrative government contracts and by the men's union, which didn't want to lose control of the workers, historians say. The rivalry and later general disinterest in the merchant marines' cause conspired to relegate them to second-class veterans. Duffy recalled the disparate treatment he received compared with a friend in the Coast Guard. Captured by the Germans at 20 and delivered to the Japanese, Duffy spent 37 months - exactly 1,119 days, he said - in Pacific prisoner of war camps. He endured scarce food and medicine and his prisoner work detail was forced to build the Japanese a railroad across Sumatra. "I came home after this experience and had no benefits, no (paid college tuition under the) GI Bill, no nothing," Duffy said. His friend got full military benefits after spending the entire war as a clerk in a New York office of the Coast Guard. A little like today's civilian contractors working with the military in war zones, the 1940s seamen got higher pay than military counterparts - though not that much higher. They say the difference was negated once they calculated that they were paid only for time at sea - not shore time like the military - and they didn't get the insurance, health care, lower mortgage rates, preferred employment status and educational opportunities that returning armed forces got. Frank Medeiros said he was paid $3,000 in 1943 for what had been billed as a four-month convoy to supply allied Russian troops at Murmansk. The round-trip run ended up taking 13 months, and two dozen of its three dozen merchant ships were lost to attacks along the way. Now an 83-year-old part-time dispatcher for the union Masters, Mates and Pilots in San Francisco, he says grateful Russians later invited former mariners to visit, awarding them medals. "And I got a letter from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev," said Medeiros. "They called us patriots." Of his own government, he says: "They shouldn't have done what they did to us." A benefits bill was killed in the 1940s - "torpedoed by powerful military lobbyists who influenced congressmen and senators," said author Brian Herbert, who drew from government documents, diaries and survivor interviews to write his 2004 book, "The Forgotten Heroes: The Heroic Story of the United States Merchant Marine." The mariners got veteran status - and therefore some limited benefits - when they sued the military in 1988, by which time some postwar programs had expired. In 2000, Canada approved $34 million for one-time payments of up to $16,400 to its World War II merchant seaman, who also belatedly got veteran status. --- On the Net: Merchant Marine: http://www.usmm.org To look up the bill, H.R. 23: http://thomas.loc.gov ~~~~~ALL MY LOVE,THANKS AND RESPECT TO ALL VETS,ACTIVE TROOPS AND THE FAMILIES KEEPIN" THE HOME FIRES BURNING!KISSES! AND GOD BLESS THEM AND GOD BLESS AMERICA =^.^= ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TOP TEN EAGLES EXCUSES 4 LOSING GAME ;-)>

Top Ten Philadelphia Eagles' Excuses 10. "Spent two weeks practicing the coin toss." 9. "Discouraged by half time show's lack of nudity." 8. "We were missing 'Desperate Housewives'--who could think straight?" 7. "We're overwhelmed by the awe-inspiring metropolis that is Jacksonville." 6. "Oh, suddenly referees are too good to take bribes?!" 5. "Who really wants to get Gatorade dumped on them?" 4. "Should have campaigned harder in Ohio." 3. "It's totally unfair, the Patriots are really good." 2. "Maybe being from the land of cheese steaks ain't a good thing." 1. "When Tom Brady looked at us with those gorgeous eyes, we just melted. =^.^=

A VERY PATRIOTIC SUPERBOWL! Are ya Ready 4 some FOOTBALL???

Many of you know of my love of sports,my love of football and my DEEP LOYALTY and love 4 the Miami Dolphins! I dont think in my life there wasnt a Super Bowl I didnt watch,even as a little dol-fan I loved it! This years game,even though my beloved Dolphins werent in it (shut up! I know its been a lonnnngg dry spell!) I thought it was a patriotic show from top to bottom! The two teams: EAGLES and PATRIOTS, how much more American can we get kids?! The pre-pregame FOX show brought us ex Presidents Papa Bush and Bill Clinton to the analyst desk with the boys! Clinton looked great, rested,happy,ready for some ball (note:Hillary...NOT THERE!) Papa Bush looked great,too! So nice to see 2 boys from Yale getting along so swell! They looked so comfy and happy! Then comes the top notch pregame music portion! Its that red hott RedNeck Woman Gretchen Wilson singin one of my jamz,and out comes Charlie freaking Daniels! The Devil went down to Georgia blazed from his finger tips (and no Hannity anywhere close to sing along,damn!).Then the Black Eyed Peas followed and they all jelled together on stage, it was cool..UNTIL one of the Peas took Charlies 50 gallon white tetson from his head and placed it on his under Charlies weird glare! OMG! AND the Pea left out Gretchens name.Oh no he did int!Yes, he did.Charlie snached his white stetson back to his head and hopefuly staightened that kid out backstage. The ceremony honoring our beloved Vets fromwars gone by.They looked so awesome.The men and women who kicked some major ass to save ours.They may have looked frail,but there beats the hearts of great Americans.I had to stop and think, 'Kitten,if you were geared up,ready to take the field,this is lighting your ass on fire to win this big show!Look what these awesome folk did, at least I can go out there and play the best damn game POSSIBLE!' ! GOD BLESS all those vets and thier families and those who passed before them.And the FLY OVER! Amazing.My proud American heart was swelling and thumping like Bill Clinton at a Hotters! Man, I WAS PROUD,cried a tear or too for those vets and thinking of the brave souls overseas right now.As we comfortably sit on our nice couches gorging on subs,chicken wings,beer and chips and salsa ( I love the word salsa!) those troops are wishing they were home.That brought me down! I felt guilty,then the show some bases and the troops! YYEEEAAAWWHH!!! All our love and supprt to ya'll! This show was for THEM! An All American Super Bowl! What a mass undertaking it must have been to secure that place! Kudos to the team who pulled that off! What a great job done! I thank them for that! I could go on for hours on how detailed and hard that job must have been.Hey CLINTON and TRAVOLTA were both there,only team America can watch over this game! I just said "If anyone gets hurt, I hope its Michael Douglas" ;-)> Do ya think Clinton asked Mike, 'Hey wheres that hottie wife of yours? hehe'? Watching those hulking ballers with thier hands over heart and tears in their eyes realy was touching.I felt some were gonna give all for the vets and troops and America thanks to this massive wave of patriotism! Yeah!The guys are gonna take the field,hey wait! No way Terrell Owens is gonna START! He is STARTING with that leg? OMG! Well,he stayed and played and did a GREAT JOB! I say he gets MVP, but whatever! The game was great,the commercials had a great patriotic undertown. My FAVORITE COMMERCIAL: The Budweiser 'THANK YOU' to the troops returning at airport! LOVED IT! Cried in my nachos, but LOVED IT!! MY LEAST FAVORITE: (some of you might have guessed!) The one the guy is preparing a romantic meal,and right as the girl comes thru door,the white cat knocks spagetti sauce on floor, and guy winds up w/ cat by scruff of neck and big ass knife in other! You KNEW that would make me yak up a big furball, didnt ya!? The game was good, even though my Fins werent in it, I was enjoying it anyways!Hell, at least Dan Marino will be inducted into the FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME this August in CANTON,OHIO! YYYEEEAAAAAAAWWWWHHHH!!! (My Canton/Ohio peeps give me a call!) Half time show! Oh, its Paul McCartney.......no sexed up show here! Wait, Bill Clintons in the house, mabe he bought his sax and some fly girls! Oh Please,Fox! Now they payed Sir Paul 3 million bucks for 12 minutes.He shoulda done it for FREE. I am sorry.What massive exposure and all.That went well even though Bill never came up and blew us away with his madd sax skillz! So all in all I give it a red,white and blue seal of approval.It entertained, it made us feel proud to be Americans,the music was great, all the players and the whole place rocked! T.O. impressed and frightened me.I hope you all took away a little piece of American pride and joy! Hopefully you didnt eat and drink too much and this morning your head is thumping like my little patriotic heart! Look forward to next years game, hopefuly my Fins will make it thru the stretch and return to the Glory Days! Hell, maybe even Clinton would be half time show! What a Super Sunday that would be!YYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAWWWHHHHHHHHH! So yeah,yeah,yeah, big fatt congrats to you chowder heads up there, ya got baseball and footballs top prizes!ENJOY!Ooops.. Oh,BUT,wait, ya STILL GOT KENNEDY and KERRY! SNAP,BABY! ;-)> =^.^=

2 years since SPACE SHUTTLE DISASTER.DID Ya'll FORGET???

=^.^= I didnt hear any chatter yesterday on national news reguarding these brave souls who were lost in space 2 years ago.One of the astronauts was MICHAEL ANDERSON,a local Spokane boy, who will soon have a Memorial of him here.So heres a news story about the gatherings yesterday.God Bless them and their families.God Bless America =^.^= Shuttle crew remembered on anniversary 2/1/2005, 9:09 p.m. ET By PAM EASTON The Associated Press� HOUSTON (AP) � Family members of the astronauts who died aboard the space shuttle Columbia watched as officials dedicated a granite memorial to their loved ones Tuesday, the second anniversary of the accident that killed the shuttle's seven-member crew. The monument in a downtown park consisted of a concrete pedestal topped with a black plaque honoring the seven men and women "who made the supreme sacrifice to advance humankind." Surrounded by seven magnolia trees, the memorial is also near a similar tribute to the astronauts who died in the 1986 Challenger disaster. Johnson Space Center Director Gen. Jefferson D. Howell Jr. said it was fitting that a Columbia memorial be placed in Houston. "As most of us in Houston know, the first word spoken from the surface of the moon was Houston," he told visitors at the ceremony. Columbia disintegrated over Texas as it returned from a 16-day mission on Feb. 1, 2003. Investigators blamed the accident on a hole in the shuttle's wing caused by a piece of insulating foam that tumbled from the shuttle's external fuel tank, striking the wing during liftoff. The searing gases of re-entry entered the gash and melted the wing from the inside, causing the orbiter to disintegrate. The loss is still painful, said Jon Clark, a NASA neurologist who was married to astronaut Laurel Clark, a member of Columbia's final crew. "It's not the searing heart ripped out of your chest, it's more of just a chronic ache," he said. Evelyn Husband lost her spouse, shuttle commander Rick Husband. "There is such a desire in my heart to return to normal, and yet this is something we are never going to be able to forget," she said. She planned to go to her 9-year-old son's school Tuesday because he wanted to release a balloon with a private note attached for his father. "I told Matthew the other day, 'Feb. 1 was not a bad day for Daddy. He had a bad minute or so, but he didn't have a bad day. He went from flying the shuttle to being in the presence of God.'" The memorial was paid for by the city and private donors. Elsewhere in Texas, residents laid out roses during a remembrance ceremony in Hemphill, a small town where shuttle debris was found after Columbia broke apart. Mourners also placed flowers at a memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The shuttle fleet has been grounded since 2003 as NASA works to meet return-to-flight recommendations put forth by Columbia accident investigators. The agency plans a May or June launch of space shuttle Discovery. (Substitutes first paragraph to correct that families watched dedication but did not dedicate memorial.)

BEN STEINS LAST COLUMN ENTRY

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column for the online website called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time. Ben Stein's Last Column... (read all of this or you will have missed the best). ==================================== "How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World"?� ��� As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end. ��� It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again. ��� Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to. ��� How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. ��� They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world. ��� A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him. ��� A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad. ��� The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists. ��� We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die. ��� I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject. ��� There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards. ��� Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero. ��� We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction; and when we turn over our lives to Him, He takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him. ��� I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them. ��� But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms. ��� This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human. ��� Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will. ��� By Ben Stein