'Tis the Silly Season

There is just not a lot happening for opinion bloggers this time of year. Sure, the killing and dismembering in Iraq is continuing apace. President Bush is laboring mightily to come up with some way to describe his "New Approach" in Iraq so it doesn't sound like just pouring more troops into a Stay-the-Course cauldron. It's raining, or snowing, depending on your latitude and altitude. There is not much sun to brighten up the annoyingly short days.

Which brings me to the Magical Mystery Meme. 300 Dollar Wonder tagged me with this challenge: Write five stories. Four are absolutely true, the other is utter crap. Guess which is false.

1. I ate caviar on Ritz crackers at the grand opening of a sewage treatment pond south of Tijuana. There is something oddly beautiful about the way the bright sun glistens off billowing foam pillars of human waste as they soars high in the sky.
2. While kayaking on the Porcupine River well above the Artic Circle in the Yukon Territory I developed such a rapport with the millions of mosquitos there I would calmly watch them sucking blood from my arm before regretfully squishing them.
3. In my youth I bought a mule and hiked alone from Lone Pine to Death Valley. The route crossed the Cottonwood Mountains and down Marble Canyon to Stovepipe Wells where a friend picked me up. It was far more brutal than I had imagined; the mule died on the trail.
4. I was once chased by a herd of ravenous raccoons while visiting with a mountain lion researcher in Northern California. The raccoons had been making a decent living off of humans in a campground south of San Francisco but an earthquake caused landslide had closed the road and they had changed from sly nocturnal thieves into bold daytime gangsters.
5. While on a solo tour of Alaska's Inside Passage I was walking from the ferry terminal to downtown Sitka when a huge dog, large enough to frighten an Alaskan bear, ran down the road to confront me. As I stared down the snarling dog I imagined the headline, "Patriotic Pooch Eats Hippie Freak." I was a patient hippie. The dog got bored with the staring contest and wandered away.
   

So, there you have it. Four stories that are totally true and one brewed out of my sick imagination. Good luck.