Life Is A Highway

I had the best intentions of writing this post yesterday, but I was so excited to finally have a locksmith show up with a key to my Jeep that I decided to celebrate by taking it for a ride around town. I was enjoying a warm, spring drive with the windows rolled down when my wardrobe malfunctioned and the wind blew the handkerchief I was wearing as a top right off my body! OH NO! In a frantic effort not to expose myself to the Windy City, I grasped for the fluttering garment and accidentally knocked my shiny tiara right off my head. It landed resting on my nose and the sun glaring off the glistening diamonds had me seeing spots for several hours. I couldn’t see clearly to write my post. A CATastrophe, indeed.

Things like this should not happen in America! I tried to call The Wiseman Donald for help, but he was otherwise occupied determining the 21st century’s definition of pornography. This is great news because I think the Hysteria Lane red light camera caught the whole incident and I’m running for “Miss RANTastic America” next week. I’d hate for those pictures to be released for publication and ruin my chances. My platform is “CatBoots For Everyone!” I’m really excited about it.

Seriously, I’m finding the coverage of the Miss California USA debacle absolutely hysterical. Major news networks interrupted normal coverage to air the decision regarding Carrie Prejean’s pageant fate to the universe, even though she didn’t win the bigger title and really, would probably be only appearing at local charity functions and at schools giving children important lessons about the US Constitution. Like this:



Ummmmm Carrie, darling, sorry to be the one to burst your bubble, but the First Amendment protects your right to freedom of speech from government interference and constraint. It does not protect you from beauty pageant judges, Satan, bloggers who scribble often funny, but, yes, sometimes obscene words over celebrity pictures, the paparazzi and sometimes even worse, it does not protect you from a response to your words from the general American public, like me. Who, by the way, really thinks you lost not because of the content of your answer, but because you didn’t answer the question posed to you and decided to take advantage of an opportunity to express your personal opinion when it wasn’t even asked. (I know, phew!)

All that matters is if the government is interfering with your right to free speech, so unless some secret government faction whisked you off in the night and threatened, tortured and/or imprisoned you, you are not being punished for your statement, you are learning a valuable lesson that freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences. Life is a highway, my dear, not a one way street.

Imagine that you just steered your car off that one way street and are now driving down a major boulevard through the United States of America. The traffic is not just moving freely in opposite directions, there’s a whole lotta stuff going on in those intersections, as well. That’s why they have red lights on occasion. They force you to stop, pay attention to what’s going on and give people who are traveling in a different direction the ability to move forward at times. Sometimes this happens without incident and other times, there are major crashes.

On the road of life, some of the drivers passing you will give a friendly wave and some will give you the finger and that’s ok. It does and should happen in America, no matter what you look like.

Phew! Now that that’s done, I’m free to tackle other important issues like tongue lashing both Jon and Kate Gosselin.