Break's Over, Back On Your Heads

The title for this entry is from the old joke about Hell. A man dies and finds himself in Hell. The Devil meets him and tells him "This is the new, user friendly Hell. There are three doors. Each one is how you'll spend your eternity. You have an hour, so take your time and choose wisely."

He opened the first door, to find a firey pit. Men were chained to posts and eternally flogged by demons as the flames burned around them. He decided that would not be an acceptable choice.

The second door revealed an icy slope. Men eternally pushed giant boulders up the side of an icy mountain, only to have a demon kick them back down when they reached the top, forcing them to repeat this for eternity. He closed the door behind him, deciding that this won't do either.

The third door revealed people standing neck deep in a pit of fecal matter, but they were drinking coffee and smoking and joking. The demons stood around the sides of the pit looking bored.

When the Devil came back to ask him if he'd made up his mind, he replied "Of course, I'm not stupid! I'll take door number three!". The Devil told him "As you wish", and he went in to spend eternity there.

He grabbed a cup of coffee from the urn and stepped into the pit looking for a smoke to bum and a person to talk to when the head demon cracked his whip and bellowed "All right, break's over, back on your heads!"

When I was in the Navy, we often used that statement with each other to indicate that the fun is over and that it's time to get back to work.

I hardly know where to begin. We just finished the long weekend of the summer. Everybody calls it "the Fourth of July", but that is not proper. If you look at the calendars of every nation of the world to follow the Roman calendar, you'll discover that each and every one of them shows a Fourth of July. Look at the small print in ours. According to the office calendar that I have in my cubicle, it is "Independence Day (US)". That's right; if you live in the United States it is Independence Day. I get so sick of hearing it called by it's improper name, just as I'm sick of Christmas time being referred to as "the holidays".

Sadly, we may not see another Independence Day, at least not as we know it. CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, passed the Senate and is expected to get voted on in the house very soon; July 11th was the last I heard. If this passes, we can kiss our independence good buy, along with our jobs and our economy.

And so, America, "break's over, get back on your heads". Contact your representative and tell them to vote NO on CAFTA. See http://www.stopcafta.com for short videos and more information.