Just an Awesome Song

Here's Percy Sledge singing "When a Man Loves a Woman."

Soul doesn't get better than this:

Tennessee's Second Base Law

Several years ago, he Tennessee General Assembly was currently on a morality kick, with a laissez-faire Republican Governor in office and a rapscallion corps of legislators trying to win the favor of their constituents that they stand for purity, religion, and the American Way. Among the bills of the current session are the infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill and another one making it okay to teach Creationism as an alternative theory to evolution. In a brilliant stroke, those legislators' may be attempting to rebut Darwin's theory by passing such stupid legislation.

But a trio of mossback legislators from East Tennessee were dining in a fern bar restaurant in Nashville and they noticed a young coups who were very fond of each other -- even to the point where the guy cupped his girl's boobs. They were shocked! And they resolved to do something effective to put this unseemly groping to a halt in the future.

They came up with a legislative act, which they presented to the State Assembly:

An Act

After ninety (90) days from the passage of this act, it shall be unlawful for males to fondle female human's breasts within the boundaries of Tennessee, unless the following conditions are met:

1. The persons involved include one (1) male human and one (1) female human.

2. Both members of the couple consent to this activity.

3. They are duly married to each other; and the date this fondling occurs is not on a Sunday.

[Their feeling was that Sunday should be given over to church matters, and not to carnal pleasures.]

4. Or, they have demonstrated some form of significant commitment to each other, whether in the form of a public betrothal or having dated exclusively for a period of no less that three (3) months, or dated exclusively for no less than ten (10 dates).

5. Each member of the offending couple shall be punished by a sentence of ten (10) days in jail and a fine of no less than $250.00.

[One of the original legislators wanted to require marriage for all groping activity, but a compromise with Memphis Democrats on the committee resulted in the agreed-upon ten days' or three months' requirement. As one Republican legislator put it, "I've been married for twelve years, and my wife still won't let me do that.]

Unfortunately, one of the major in-state newspapers referred to it as the Second Base Law.

Bulky Sweaters

Premarital Clothes Washing

Dear Rev. Sister Peg,

My boyfriend and I have been keeping company for six months now, and both of us are determined to remain pure, to save ourselves until marriage and afterwards, when the LORD is pleased that we should start a family. We have been following your advice to do small things together, and the question of washing clothes came up. Specifically, should we start doing each other's clothes? Is that too much for a proper Christian relationship?

Confused


Dear Confused,

Your question raises an important niceity with regard to morality. Certainly, doing ordinary things together is meritorious, but the sensitive Christian young lady should be careful both to avoid exposing her intended to temptation, and to avoid temptation, herself. Specifically, the matter of underwear is something to be concerned about. Now I'm sure that you always wear only full-sized chaste white underwear; but you should also refrain from your intended by the LORD seeing them until you have been married for an extended time and his fires have been banked.

When you wash his jeans, be sure to use sufficient starch and iron on the crease.

Civil War Monuments as F*** You Expressions

I guess there's been a lot of printer's ink squandered on Civil War monuments lately, anti and pro. Let's put this in a historical perspective, shall we?

The Civil War was the bloodiest in U.S. history; even more killed or wounded than World War II or the Viet Nam war. It was the most divisive event in our history; and Sectionalism is still a thing today. (As a Tennessean, I have encountered irritating Yankees putting down the South and the Volunteer State in particular.)*

Anyway, after the Civil War, several G.A.R. units from Northern states erected monuments on battle sites such as Shiloh and Lookout Mountain that were often garish and ostentatious. After all, they came mostly from states that wallowed in the Gilded Era!

The South pretty much had to make do with the ordinary business or survival after the Civil War. Any statues they erected came later. So it was, in the 1890-1920 era primarily. Any erecting that went on took place primarily in bed.

Anyway, it dawned on me that the Yankees put up their monuments in part as a message to the South: "We whipped your asses, and we're letting you know it! And we can come around and do it again. And rape your mules, as well."

And they left their sculptures there on the battlefield sites as an original 'F-you, Rebs' message!

So a few years later, their Southern brethren came along and erected their own bronze or marble 'F*** You' expressions. 

In Franklin, where I came from, there's the Confederate soldier nicknamed Chip there. This has always been seen as a token of defiance in Williamson County.

*I can't figure out why they came to a place they don't like. Is this a type of masochism?

"When You're Screwin' Other Women (Think of Me)"

Here's Doyle and Debbie, singing "When You're Screwin' Other Women (Think of Me):

The Doyle and Debbie Show is a satirical tribute to Nashville's country music scene. Read about it here.

Denver