Ok, so, not to distract you from more important news (like Britney Spears' porno tape and OJ's book/ tv special) but did anyone notice this thing about a Russian Cosmonaut hitting a golf ball off the International Space Station the other day? I saw a blurb about it, said, "Hey, it's been done before" and moved on with my life. Well, when I saw the headline today that said that he shanked the shot, I was intrigued. Was the ball going to crash into a satellite and take out my MTV? Will it hit the Space Shuttle and cause it to burn up on reentry again? Not according to NASA. What I did get from the article, however, is that they spent FIVE MILLION DOLLARS to hit ONE GOLF BALL. Wait, let me say that again: FIVE MILLION DOLLARS to hit ONE F'N GOLF BALL. WTF, America? Apparently the stunt was paid for by a Canadian golf manufacturer called Element 21. Their whole deal is that they make golf clubs using "space age technology." So they gave the Russian Space Agency $5 million to stage this little stunt.

You may be wondering why I'm making such a big deal out of this, and I'll tell you. $5 million is almost 5 times the total donations given to Project Renewal in the past year. YEAR. Project Renewal is an organization that helps give food, clothing, shelter, and medical care to New York's homeless. They give people a second chance. They could use the money.

America's Second Harvest, the largest hunger relief organization in the country, could always use an extra $5 million. Or perhaps Canada's Second Harvest would have been a better choice. There's always Amnesty International, an organization that works to guarantee basic human rights around the world, if you're not into the whole "feeding other people" thing.

I guess my point is that I could think of better things to do with $5 million than to shoot a specially engineered golf ball into the planet's atmosphere using a gold plated golf club. It just seems to me that this was not just a publicity stunt, but a big 'ol F U in the faces of some of the less fortunate. You know, kind of a "Let them eat cake". So, yeah. Hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving, and now you know what to do with the leftovers.

"The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value."

Charles Dudley Warner (1829 - 1900)