According to this article from the 700 Club (not on my regular rotation – I was just checking if Pat Robertson has left the GOP over Cheney’s gay marriage remarks. He hasn’t, yet.) Jesus and I have the same blood type. I’m AB+. “The Universal Taker”, the rarest blood type. Conversely to type O, who can donate to anyone, AB people can take from anyone but can give only to fellow AB’ers. Because of that, I routinely get turned away from blood drives. “Blood shortage crisis!” the posters say. “All types needed!” they cry. But when I get there, they say “Sorry, AB’s not worth our effort.” On rare occasions, when they need blood parts that aren’t type-dependant, they’ll take it. But that’s less than 10% of the times I’ve tried to bleed for the good of my fellow man.

Jacob Weisberg at Slate was wowed by the same moment as I in last night’s Vice Presidential debates. Until last night, I didn’t have a single nice thing to say about Dick Cheney. But what he said about gay marriage floored me. He’s still not getting my vote, but I was truly impressed. I wonder what the fallout will be.

“What the vice-presidential debate did was confirm the wisdom of both choices. In selecting their running mates, both candidates found what they lacked, Wizard of Oz-style. By picking Lieberman, Gore got a heart. In choosing Cheney, Bush got a brain. "

From fellow Athens weblogger Chip comes a link to Minnie Minnola’s Story, an amusing recollection by the woman who inspired REM’s (Dont Go Back) to Rockville.

Here we go. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has finally put up an in depth article on the Coffee County drug situation. The sheriff was known as “the scourge of South Georgia marijuana farmers” before all of this came to light. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to learn that law enforcement in South Georgia is primarily a family affair.

Here’s a tiny CNN article I found buried in yesterday’s archives about the Coffee County Sheriff who shot himself yesterday after being indicted on drug charges.

I listened to the Cardinals-Braves baseball game off the internet while at work yesterday. Though I’m in Georgia, I grew up outside St. Louis. I’ve long loved the Cardinals, almost as much as I despised the Braves. Their collective cockiness has always made me shudder. America’s team, indeed. After a weird, wild game, the Cards wound up on top. The local Athens newspaper has a great quote: “In a remarkable example of Southern hospitality, the Braves made red the color of the day by giving away Game 1 of the best-of-five Division Series “.

The debate results are in, though they’re not surprising: Bush is a doofus and Gore’s a jerk.

The inventor of Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs (as well as 191 other things) was born Harold Nathan Braunhut in a New York Jewish family. At some point, he changed his name to the more German-sounding Harold von Braunhut, though his close friends knew him as Hendrik von Braun. He hung out with his friends (including the recently poor Richard Butler) posing in front of Nazi flags, lighting burning crosses, and writing newsletters that advocated a society where Blacks were forced to make leather sporting goods out of Jewish skin. Braunhut has lost several Sea Monkey distributors because of his activities, but the current distributors (who have managed to reignite sales) would rather not think about it. I learned all this via The Sea Monkeys and the White Supremacist -- a wonderful piece in this week’s LA Times magazine. The best quote from Braunhut: Sea Monkeys will remain naked until “fish wear pants”.

The drug war claimed another high profile victim today. The sheriff of Coffee County, Georgia, was indicted yesterday on charges of conspiracy to grow marijuana. Today, as federal and state agents arrived at his home to arrest him, the sheriff shot himself. This hasn’t made the news yet, so I’ll have to add a link when the wires pick this up.

Three wishes, in no particular order:

• That the refrain to the Baha Men’s smash hit single Who Let the Dogs Out (Woof Woof Woof) wasn’t so catchy.
• That the mascot for the University of Georgia wasn’t the bulldog.
• That I could reasonably expect to tune in to NPR and not have the song played at me. I realize thay consider all things, but upon further consideration, they should have left that out. I’d rather go back to The Grand Old Duke of York, thank you very much.