Although I did nearly get dragged out to sea on Hanalei Bay's beach. While the kids made it back in, my wife and I had to be hauled back by a surfer. Quite a jarring experience. Imagine my thoughts when I later finally looked through the Kauai Beach Safety guide the hotel had issued and found this illustration in it in the section on rip currents:

Yeah, you guessed it. The goddam photo example of the ideal rip current was the very beach I was at. Hanalei Bay. "Stay in the quiet water in the middle so you don't get clouted by a surfer," I told the kids. Yes, I truly did. That quiet water right there in the center.

Ignorance can kill you.

Read the goddam manual. It applies to more than computers.

I have yet to listen to a Dean speech at all. If you combined every current Democratic hopeful into one single person, they wouldn't be half the kind of candidate the Democrats fielded back in their heyday. Even Humphrey would wipe the floor with these guys. Now you know how I felt when Dole won the nomination.