Boo

That show had it all: half-naked women, dirty jokes, funny songs, innuendo, double entendres, a little bald man getting slapped on the head... And the combination of Yakety Sax and fast-motion sequencing can make anything funny.

Congratulations on five-years of freedom Sirius.

So...I'm doing a little math work here. If Austin Riley continues at the pace he's on right now since being called up, in his first full season with Los Bravos he will hit 74 homeruns and have over 170 RBIs. Welcome to the A-T-L young fella.

I asked Mr. Met if he's seen him. All he did was wave his hands and fire off a t-shirt cannon.

I was watching a baseball game last night and they showed a commercial for a reboot of "Child's Play." That movie where the demented little doll becomes self-aware and goes on a killing spree. They changed the name of the doll from Chucky to Buddi and included some shots of smartphones and drones, you know...gotta keep it current. Other than that, it's just a straight-up remake. Was there any real demand for this? Was the movie-going public clamoring for Chucky 2.0? Or was Hollywood just being lazy and figured they could polish that turd one more time and sell it again?

Here's a couple of young Canadians getting an early start...

Three weeks from today. As the big day gets closer, it starts to feel more and more surreal. Not to mention nerve wracking. A guy I work with was laughing at me this week when he saw that I was getting nervous. He thought it was weird that a guy who canoes Class V whitewater and climbs mountains would be nervous about a wedding. I tried to explain that I know what I'm doing when I'm paddling and climbing but don't know my ass from third base when it comes to weddings. "Don't forget the balls" is a line I removed from the vows during the editing process.

As I get older, I'm less current with what's going on in the world of music. Didn't even learn that Clutch had put out a new album until yesterday.

Thinking about trying the "Wim Hof Method." Not for the health benefits or to prove my ability to endure. It's just so damn hot out there. Now to figure out the risk/reward of effectively cooling off versus having my balls totally ascend into my body.

Awesome chick. Rock solid quit. Keep on keeping on Jenny.

Way to be Mona.

High five Sunshine.

Congratulations Sammy.

Good job Parsley. Enjoy the freedom.

Congratulations MLMR. Nine is fine.

Joel Spitzer and Allen Carr are not pop psychologists. They shined a light on smoking, what it truly is and what it isn't, and forever altered the way many of us smokers viewed our addiction. The truth resonates. Yes, the willpower quit was the norm for many years. And for many years moving things around was limited by how far you could walk and how much you could carry on your back. Then the wheel was invented. Much of the history of human progress has been motivated by finding a better way to do things.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't know that I ever genuinely enjoyed smoking. I may have lied about enjoying smoking, but that was just an attempt to justify my addiction. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about quitting things that I genuinely enjoy.

Two years already. I still remember when PeaceTrain was just rolling out of the station. It's great to see you again PT. Congratulations on your continued freedom. Roll on!

Prepare the Lido Deck. Tammy is coming in hot! Congratulations Tammy. Celebrate and enjoy.

The only thing I like about the GPS system I have is listening to the voice try to pronounce the names of some of the places around here. Chickamauga is the best, she pronounces it Chi-ca-a-mooga. Ooltewah becomes Ooh-ooh-tell-wahh. And for some reason she calls Ocoee: Ooh-coo-oh. The animated voice-bot lady is not familiar with the pronunciations of the Cherokee language.

Here, here! The interstate system and major highways are convenient if you just want to get from point A to point B as quick as possible. And they serve a purpose in the field of trucking and commerce. However, for a road trip nothing beats the backroads and scenic routes. "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything." --Charles Kuralt

If any of the kids of today plan on leaving the streets and sidewalks of the cities and suburbs, they need to learn to read a proper map. If you find yourself out in the woods or up in the mountains, the best map app is no substitute for a physical topographical map. Sugar Britches laughs at me for keeping copies of The Atlas and Gazatteer for the states of Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama in my truck. She asked if I used to travel with Lewis and Clark.

What happened in the 1950s is that the evidence of the dangers of smoking was mounting and made it impossible for the tobacco industry to silence all dissent. This led to Reader's Digest publishing "Cancer by the Carton" in 1952. The British Journal of Medicine published two articles on the link between cigarettes and cancer around the same time. And Hammond and Horn started the "Cohort Study" in 1952 and published the results in 1955. The scientific research was proving links well before 1950 though. Herman Rottman was researching links between smoking and illness in 1898. The Adler Study built on and improved Rottman's work in 1912. Franz Herman Muller conducted a comprehensive study on the links between smoking and cancer in the 1930s. These studies were known of outside of Germany but not allowed to gain any real traction. They did. The 1950s was when the tobacco companies really started to weaponize their product. They were perfecting their mass production capabilities while simultaneously continuing to alter cigarettes to make them more and more addictive. This was also when big tobacco really began to grease the wheels on their propaganda machine. In 1954 the tobacco companies published "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers" in 423 newspapers across America reaching over 40 million readers. The Frank Statement produced such gems as: "the statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any of many other aspects of modern life." And this one: "We believe the products we make are not injurious to health." And more: "For more than 300 years tobacco has given solace, relaxation and enjoyment to mankind. At one time or another during those years critics have held it responsible for every disease of the human body. One by one these charges have been abandoned for a lack of evidence." Complete bullshit. Also arguably the single most effective piece of corporate propaganda ever produced. They didn't close up shop, they just moved on to new frontiers. China has become the market for big tobacco. The number of smokers has been steadily increasing for over a decade in China. Big tobacco is also flooding developing nations with cheap cigarettes with higher nicotine content than those sold in America. A market like Indonesia is practically the wild west for the tobacco companies. They're able to sell cigarettes to prepubescent children and have them hooked by the time they are teenagers.