The National Enquirer

I'm going to have to start buying the National Enquirer to get my news. I don't remember ever buying a copy. I picked up the Weekly World News once but could hardly stand to pay $3 for it.

I was thinking about making a career writing for them, then they went out of business. Some of my great ideas I still have, which I jotted out on a shoebox lid:

• A guy who made a big map of the United States from pork chops.
• Train graffiti in a museum, and an art professor who diligently studies it.
• Someone who builds their own fountain of youth (that is something Grandma Slump might actually do, perhaps next week if she lives long enough).
• Chinese gong balls curing arthritis in the feet (which is a true life story I have).
• Fortune telling with pizza (this isn't that ridiculous, since I can do it. For me, it's only one step up from crossing my eyes and seeing art masterpieces in terrycloth towels).
• A man whose aura is morbidly obese, yet he is only 98 pounds.
• A woman dies and actually takes her wealth with her.
• A slot machine haunted by a dead gambling counselor.
• A woman named Alma Daeus (amadeus pun) channels Mozart and renounces music.
• Science class skeleton turns out to be the missing principal.

Some of those are pretty good ideas. But as I understand it -- which I don't -- the National Enquirer is not in the market for these sorts of stories.

As we've seen in the recent past, the last several months, they've been hot on the trail of John Edwards. Perhaps he, like I, received strange phone calls, with a muttering voice saying, "I know where you go, and I know what you do there." If so, then I'm sure he was distraught. But for him -- and this is where we differ -- the whole world cares. If they ever caught me "dead to rights" it'd be one brokenhearted 104-year-old woman crying, and a half acre's worth of field mice going on their merry way.

The National Enquirer did it. They got the news when the others were sitting around, too good for actual reporting. It's just like all this nasty business of John McCain's adultery. Someone ought to do something about that story. Maybe the Enquirer will, since they have increasing credibility. It's a sad story what he did to his ex-wife. But so far he's skating by, not a peep.

I'm Withholding Judgment

I'm withholding judgment till all the facts are in. OK, that's long enough. I see the resemblance.

I have spoken with John Edwards on two separate occasions. That is a true statement. Unfortunately for this article, those occasions were both in 2004 and would have no bearing on the content of this article.

Be that as it may, I am a long time fan of the phrase "love child." I used to read it in Grandma Slump's magazines all the time. Every celebrity in the '60s and early '70s had a love child, or wished they did. Some of course would be infertile, impotent, or otherwise incapable of fecundating or being fecundated. These were left with little recourse but to adopt a love child. Who all had a love child in those days? I can't remember. But those who appeared on the covers of movie magazines back then included: Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Mia Farrow, Elizabeth Taylor, Lawrence Welk, and the Lennon Sisters. Put any two together and you've got a decent love child story.

It is a cool phrase, though -- "love child." You know, it's weird, if your parents are married and they have you, you're just an ordinary kid. But if there's something illicit about it you get a much more interesting title -- you're a "love child." I remember asking Grandma what a love child was. She always tried to put things delicately back then, and I believe she said it was "a baby that two people had."

When we were kids my cousin Roto told me "a virgin" was "a woman who f***s all the time." So I asked Grandma what a virgin was. And she told me that was "a good girl." Now of course I know that Roto had it backwards and Grandma was right. As for the definition of a love child, she left out one critical piece, that the couple is not married and has been doing what Roto thought virgins did.

Then the Supremes' "Love Child" record was a biggie around '68 or '69. But I don't really remember at the time making the connection between that and the wanton activities of virgins. Looking back it was sung from the perspective of the love child, now grown up, whose Mom and Dad probably never appeared on movie magazines.

Does John Edwards have a love child? He didn't mention it in 2004. But, could be.