Hello from Sierra Vista, Arizona, otherwise known as the Cultural Center of the Universe. Or the largest town in Cochise County, anyway, without even counting the dogs and livestock. I jest after a fashion, but only because I (usually) wait until I'm well liquored-up before making changes to this very strange screed. Tonight's poison of choice is the house brand white rum from the supermarket. It will never challenge Bacardi for taste, but at $9.95 a half-gallon, my tastebuds are gonna have to bite the bullet.

I won't go into details about how many previous screen names I've had. It doesn't mean much anyway as I was a longtime lurker before my present incarnation. No, I can't share the secrets of breeding jackelopes here. This is a family oriented website, after all, and Jim Robinson is trying to keep the place rated PG-13. Or maybe a soft R. Besides, the techniques are proprietary and dangerous. What if some other bright Freeper tried it -- mixed suckerfish DNA with a cow-flop and accidently came up with another Billary or Hillary Clinton? I really don't need that on my conscience.

I really don't know if I'm what most people consider a Conservative or not. More to the point, I don't give a rat's ass. We have too many labels and too many dorks with too much time on their hands who spend all their spare time analyzing those labels for philosophic and political purity. Maybe Dennis Miller had it right: "When people ask for my political persuasion, I tell them I'm a pragmatist. That means I think everyone is an asshole -- except me."

First off, I'm not religious in the way most people think of religion. I do believe there is a God, but I do not believe I have any clue whatsoever as to the nature of God. I also seriously doubt that God would attempt to explain matters to me or that I would ever have enough wit to understand whatever it was I was being told. Somewhere, in a far distant and extremely unimportant corner of His mind, God is laughing at my silly ass for the vanity of even imagining that I might ever understand. There it is -- my ultimate function in life is to provide entertainment to a couple of God's spare gray cells. To tell the truth, I'm trying to escape Official notice, just in case God decides he needs a junior apprentice associate assistant angel in charge of counting nitrogen atoms in a galaxy we haven't even detected yet. Do I believe in the bible? I dunno -- but I'd bet I live closer to its tenets on a daily basis than most self-professed Christians.

But yes, I have found Jesus -- he was hiding in my trunk the last time I came back from Agua Prieta, Mexico.

Any creature with sentience higher than the grapefruit, politicians, or daytime TV talkshow hosts, has the God given right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. Anyone objecting to this ideal is fair game to end up rotating on a spit with an apple stuffed in their mouth -- Hannibal Lector, bless his black heart, had that part right. Pass the fava beans and Chianti, please. (Note to self: find out what fava beans are...)

I own guns because I like them. A lot of guns. I never met a gun I didn't like. I also own a rather large collection of swords, daggers, spears, battle axes, etc., most of which are displayed on the walls. My 17-year old daughter refers to this as the too-much-testosterone-syndrome. I don't mind; it also gives her potential boyfriends pause for thought. I don't hunt any more; I'm a good enough shot that there just isn't much sport left except the stalking. I personally think most game animals are less tasty than dead cow or pig. It takes me 24 hours or more to cook venison the way I like it, even more for buffalo, and Safeway will provide me with a perfectly delicious beef tenderloin in five minutes or less if I use the express line. On the other hand, I have inadvertently eaten both dog and monkey in Asia and felt like a cannibal both times. You decide.

I live within a stone's throw of the Mexican border. I really like Mexicans -- legal Mexicans, that is -- they're fun people. They're usually more fun than us gringos. You have not lived until you have been to a Mexican wedding. A gratuitous piece of advice: if Santana's "Samba Party" is on the playlist, don't ask the girl to dance unless you are ready to marry the wench. One of my favorite songs, but I have never danced to it yet. I don't know what hurts worse, the sight of of a beauty spinning around the dance floor on someone else's arm -- or the looks from the equally beautiful young ladies who are standing on the sidelines with you, wondering why someone won't ask them to dance.

Think about it for a minute -- you can probably rattle off a couple of hundred blond jokes, but when was the last time you heard a Latina joke? I was recently advised by a co-worker, hereinafter referred to simply as the Aztec Goddess, that any attempt at even making Latina jokes will get me squashed like a cucaracha.

At the same time though, I greatly despise Mexican politicians and most of their law enforcement and military personnel. Presumed corrupt until (very conclusively) proven innocent. Try to find the right taxidermist, though...

Sadly perhaps, this being an imperfect world, I would also immediately deport every illegal alien just as fast as they can be apprehended. I don't care what country they came from. (Okay, one exemption for the Swedish Bikini Team, but that is it.)

Part of this is very personal. My own government made me jump through sixteen different sets of hoops in as many months to get my late wife's visa. She was not from a communist country, had a clean record, and was totally healthy. Within hours of our arrival in this country, INS lost all of her paperwork and it took three and a half years to get it straightened out. She actually got her citizenship without ever receiving her green card.

Nowadays it seems you only have to jump the fence, swim the river, or ride in disguised as a truckload of watermelons. Upon arrival there is a whole support system of butt-sniffing, vote-sucking political parasites from both parties ready to help you out on the US taxpayer's dime.