CAL

How do you manage to take 5 and a half hours to play a round of golf? What is going through your head? Are you simply incompetent? Are you so clueless that you don't notice that you are two holes behind the group in front of you and that there are groups stacked up behind you all the way to the first tee waiting on you to hit every shot? Are you some passive-agressive nut case that gets off by making everyone behind you play an excruciatingly slow round? Is your sense of entitlement so great that you think just because you paid your fee that you can dictate the pace of play to the 100 people that had the misfortune to tee off behind you? What is it? I really want to know.

Here is the situation. I hit into a green-side bunker. It was hard packed and crusty. It looked like it had not been raked in days. On top of that, I had a horrible side hill lie. Anyway, I hit it thin and sent the ball into the parking lot. So I am pretty sure I have to play the next shot from that same bunker. Can I rake the bunker before I drop my ball? Also, do I drop it or am I supposed to try to recreate that crappy lie?

I had my tires rotated at a Jiffy Lube, and now I get a vibration when I hit the brakes at high speed. Everything was fine until the tire rotation.

I have (John) Adams driver and 3 wood, (Woodrow) Wilson staff irons, (Grover) Cleveland wedges. Maybe I could get a (Zachary) Taylormade putter to complete the set.

Humans have been creating gods since the dawn of civilization. Thousands of gods. It seems to be a basic human need to have a god or gods (although not all humans experience this need to the same degree or at all). So out of the thousands of gods that have come before and after the yours, why are you sure yours is the one?

When they had a Republican president and control of both houses of congress, they spent money like a bunch of drunken Democrats. Nobody in congress complained and Bush never vetoed a spending bill. Now we have a Democrat in the white house and all of sudden the Republicans are concerned about spending. Granted, Obama is spending at a rate that Bush could only dream of, but they both ran up huge deficits.

They got their panties in such a bunch over Bush's war in Iraq. At least Bush followed the constitution and got congressional approval before he went to war.

Someone said that since the Tsunami killed good and bad people alike, it proves that God is either impotent, evil or imaginary. What do you think?

I had a situation where my tee shot missed the fairway and my ball came to rest in a bush near a cart path. I could have made contact with the ball, but my chances of getting it out of the bush and back into the fairway were slim at best. I would have taken an unplayable lie, but my stance was on the cart path. When I took relief from the cart path, I then had a clear second shot. Was I entitled to take relief from the cart path even though the lie was unplayable?

I have been looking at You Tube videos by Potholer54 and Thunderfoot and they do a good job of providing basic information on evolution. The creationists that they feature in their videos are buffoons. Are they just picking easy opponents to discredit or is the creationist argument really that weak. Is there any Creationist/Intelligent Design proponent that does not come off as ridiculous or dishonest? Can you provide a link?

I am making a Christmas Mix CD. I need some ideas. Here is what I have so far:

Father Christmas - the Kinks

I Believe in Father Christmas - Greg Lake

River - Joni Mitchell or Sara MacLachlan

2000 Miles - Pretenders or KT Tunstall

Great Big Sled - Killers

I won't be home for Christmas - Blink 182

One of the caribou's functions in the ecosystem is to feed predators. I am assuming PETA is OK with wolves hunting caribou. They only seem to get upset when humans kill them, especially if they appear to be enjoying themselves. Do you think the caribou cares if the predator is a human or a pack of wolves? If you were a caribou would you rather die instantly from a bullet (assuming Sarah is a good marksman) or would you rather get brought down by a pack of wolves? I think if the PETA crazies are honest with themselves they will admit that it is not the caribou's death that bothers them, it is that somebody is having a good time doing something they don't like. It is not enough for them to refrain from hunting, they want to suck the fun from everybody else's life too.

I can understand not liking labels in general, but do you find this label to be offensive? I always thought it seemed to be rather positive.

My tee shot rolled up against a chain link boundary fence. All of he ball was inbounds, except for where it touched the fence. Is this out of bounds or just a really bad lie?

Atheists that behave in an ethical manner do so because it is the right thing to do an not because they expect to be rewarded or to avoid punishment in the afterlife. Christians behave morally, at least in part, to obtain eternal reward and avoid punishment.

There are still places in this country where there are very few new immigrants, illegal or otherwise. Somehow the people in these places get their lawns mowed, their corps cultivated, their children cared for, etc. The obvious truth is that there are no jobs that Americans won't do it the price is right. The reason some industries are dominated by immigrant labor is that they work cheap and undercut the the wages of native born workers. Here is an example. Thirty years ago, the meat packing industry was unionized and employed lots of native-born Americans. Then the owners used cheap immigrant labor to break the unions. The immigrants worked for less than half of what the union meat cutters were getting. Now there are no practically no native-born Americans working on the kill floor. The liberals observe this fact and cite it as evidence that Americans just won't do this kind of work. So are the liberal apologists for illegal immigrants just stupid or are they dishonest?

I play as a single a lot and I get thrown it with a threesome or some other singles. I have met some really good and interesting people this way. But every once in a while I get stuck with the golfer from hell. One time it was a guy who threw a tantrum every time he hit a bad shot. He yelled at the other three members of the group because he hit a wild shot an none of us saw where it landed. He finally quit after 12 holes. Then there was the "golf dad" and his daughter. She was a good kid and not a bad golfer, but dad had to criticize every shot she hit. I felt embarrassed for her.

So what is your worst horror story?

Why do Christians want to celebrate national prayer day by praying publicly? Didn't Jesus make it clear what he thought about this kind of behavior when he said:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.

The obesity rate for American kids is a shocking 30%. Among minority populations in this country, the numbers are even more alarming. Statistics from the CDC show that more than 33% of Hispanic/Latino boys are overweight, as are 35.7% of African-American boys and 51.2% of Mexican-American boys. As for female children, 30.1% of Hispanic/Latino girls, 46.4% of African-American girls and 36.7% of Mexican-American girls are overweight.

Don't tell me that it's because they are poor and can't afford healthy food. It does not cost much to buy a 50 pound bag of rice and there are a billion Chinese who don't seem to have a wieght problem.

The Brits in this section have a lot of fun with Americans who don't understand the difference between England and the United Kingdom, but I wonder if the British understand it any better. I just finished reading a question about Wales and the half a dozen or so presumably British people that replied could not agree if Wales was a country, a kingdom or a principality.

Another example is in sports. When I watch the Open Championship and they show a flag next to every golfer's name, they show an English flag for Paul Casey and a Scottish flag for Colin Montgomery. Never a Union Jack. When they show the American golfers it is always the stars and stripes, not a Florida flag for Tiger Woods or California flag for Phil Mickelson. In the Olympics, they always say the athlete is from Great Britain or the United Kingdom, never England or Scotland. Why can't you all make up your minds?