I'll see you at the crossroads

Over my extended weekend I caught up on nearly nothing until late Saturday. I spent far too much time tending to errands which can only be accomplished by taking time off from work but those menial tasks are now complete and I am glad.

Truthfully, I was happy last night to sit down finally and catch up on some reading which has been piling up for quite some time. To get to the point, one of my favorite magazines, Rolling Stone, turned 40 years old this year and the third and final 40th anniversary issue was waiting for me.

Staying true to their roots of bridging music content with in-depth politics and news coverage, this issue covers where America is going in the coming years. Rightfully, the first lengthy interview was with Al Gore.

Sure, about 35-40% of Americans would write Gore off as a liberal wacko but, politics aside, and he did a fantastic job of pontificating on the future of America, Gore had many valid points. He managed to connect his cause of global climate change awareness to America being at a crossroads. We can either come together to correct climate change or we can continue bickering about the political aspects of it and how people of different political affiliations view this divisive issue.

I have to agree with Gore because he is grounded in the presentation of his cause. Would you rather err on the side of caution and find common ground in something we all depend on -- our planet -- or continue making the environment and the health of our planet a political issue? Would you spend money securing antiquated resources from far-flung, politically volatile areas of the world or would you rather see that same money spent within our borders to create innovative technologies and new energy sources that can bring our country back to the shining superpower status from days of yore?

What would you like to see? What is your honest opinion on climate change (and try to see it fron a non-political viewpoint)? Would you rather take our planet's health for granted or take care of its health?

I discovered the real cause of global warming

Everyone has their own weekend hobbies that keep them either busy and out of trouble or busy and in all sorts of trouble. Mine, though, is the former. Some of you don't know too much about me but I like to both dabble in science and research and I simply loathe alcohol. I mean, come on, that stuff is the juice of the devil himself. So instead of demeaning my morals and taking part in a booze-fueled orgy of wild behavior, I soaked in the weekend rays in my ever warming back yard.

I wondered, though, why my back yard is getting warmer as each summer passes by. Sure, Americans are driving larger vehicles and driving more and those in the rest of the world are driving more too but that sort of science that says burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming is straight up hooey.

Not satisfied with the answers of professional scientists with fancy learning degrees from huge universities, I took to doing my own research. I craned my neck to the right and there it was, my answer.

Two houses down, my neighbors built a patio between their house and detached garage. Each and every night for the past ten days, they have had a fire going of varying sizes. Ten straight nights of drinking the devil's juice ass they sat next to their planet-warming fire. I know they were drinking that evil booze because the cans, in the gleaming mid-day sun, were obvious and there are plenty of them.

Without a fancy degree in science, though, I had discovered the answer that hundreds of thousands of well-funded scientists have been unable to obtain. As not only Minnesota, but the rest of the world gets hotter, my alcohol drinking, wood burning neighbors are solely to blame.

Well, once they sober up, they should be put to work making the world a better place. They should walk a couple doors down the block and scrape the ashes out of my fire ring and make sure my beer bottles make it out to the curb for recycling come Wednesday morning.