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Grasshopper Soup: Cloudy with a chance of humanity

Bob Sweigert
Grasshopper Soup
By Bob Sweigert
ALL |

In total freedom, the sneaky clouds turned west Saturday morning. It was liberating to see them go their own way. West isn’t their usual direction, but they all looked like they knew exactly where they were going. The sun embraced every cloud with a silver lining.

Barely clinging to privacy (also the name of his boat), poor sports great Tiger Woods is on the mend while he and his wife try to avoid answering lots of embarrassing questions.

Tiger’s 2:30 a.m. drive landed him in the rough. I know exactly how he feels. The best lesson you can learn in life is to be as perfect as you can be and then screw up. Tiger is still a good example. He’s teaching young people an important lesson. If you are the best and have everything, you can still end up poor in some ways. Hang in there Tiger. The clouds darken the land, but eventually the sun shines through.



Friday, the same day Russia added its endorsement to a United Nations rebuke of Iran, a terrorist bomb blew a high speed Russian train off the track, killing maybe 40 and injuring up to a hundred people. A second Russian train was also attacked last week.

Is it possible for the cross, the crescent moon and the star of David to peacefully coexist with each other, and non-believers? Some say the Devil is more likely to appear as a member of a church, a mosque, or a synagogue, or as a know-it-all.



We all have our own interpretation of life’s events. The dull and ignorant also have their story. Intelligent men and fools have one thing in common; they both talk like they know everything. Humble, learned men are the rare exception. Some people know for sure the world will end in 2012. But don’t sell your golf clubs based on that.

A skinny blonde from out of the blue in a hot red dress, and her husband, crashed the White House State Dinner party. They had to be plenty deceitful to make it past all that security. Maybe they counted on a very open, transparent party where intruders could blend in dressed like everybody else. They also had to be highly confident of their own sense of political and social sneakiness. Anything for a good time.

The incident has many calling for a congressional investigation into presidential security. Nancy Pelosi should pay extra attention to the length and sharpness of the potentially lethal fingernails on the woman in the hot red dress. She was too skinny and pale to do much damage, but you never know.

Her testosterone half was all smiles. He looked like he won a ten thousand dollar bet for sneaking in and wanted to see how much more he could get away with.

Everybody loves the good guy, and that’s what the bad guy knows. The bad guy uses his gift of gab to pretend he’s the good guy, and gets everybody to do whatever he wants.

All’s well that ends well. The gate crashing couple should get an award for best practical joke of the last two centuries, and pay a penalty of half of their net worth.

Speaking of dolled up people who will do anything to hang out with the powerful and talk about all the things they have, were any green people at the State Dinner? They would have been the ones in gowns or tuxedos made of hemp. Were people with hair spray, finger nail polish and shoe polish allowed in, or did admission require a safety deposit box full of carbon credits per head, finger and shoe? Did they have to show a permit proving all their jewelry and handbags were child labor free and animal friendly?

Who will tame the changing world wind? Whose idea of justice will prevail? Who will attack who next, with what and from which direction? It’s only a matter of when.

I asked all these difficult life questions to my favorite know-it-all, and he babbled on and on like the clouds, with absolute certainty, incoherent and wind blown.

Bob Sweigert is a Sierra Sun columnist, published poet, ski instructor and commercial driver. He’s lived at Lake Tahoe for 27 years.


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