Yesterday Don Herbert, better known as his TV personality Mr. Wizard, died of bone cancer at the age of 89.

Just writing that line makes me sad. It’s odd how you can connect to TV personalities as if they were people close to you, though you never actually met them.

Mr. Wizard was for me what Mr. Rogers was for so many kids. He came before Bill Nye the Science Guy and Beakman’s World — a true original. But most of all, Mr. Wizard was a guy who came into my house and helped me learn about simple scientific concepts in a way I could understand as a young child. He was my first teacher.

I remember watching him perform simple experiments on TV that I could duplicate at home using household items (and let us not forget: parental supervision). My favorite was adding vinegar to baking soda. It was so simple but also a load of fun for a kid like me who was way too into volcanoes. I didn’t have to know why this concoction produced a foamy mess, just that it did and was fun. Thus the lesson: science can be fun (which was better than the lesson: science can build better bombs).

I didn’t know it then, but I was learning a very basic concept of chemistry and, years later, when I was in eighth grade, stupid facts like that were useful.

Sadly, I probably learned more from Mr. Wizard than I would from several teachers that came into my life via the public school system. Odd that people paid to teach me and inspire me to learn were so thoroughly outdone by a guy on TV. But it’s true. He stirred the love of knowledge in a lot of us that came through the eighties.

But it wasn’t just his show, Mr. Wizard’s World, that he gave to us. He also gave us a multi-purpose sarcastic response. His presence is so engrained in all of our psyches that I am sure all of us have at one time or another said, “Hey, way to go, Mr. Wizard.” I know I’ve said it at least once this year.

I know it might seem strange, but it’s that last reason that has me missing him. Plenty of people from my generation couldn’t tell you an experiment from that show if you had a gun to their head, but all of us remember the show itself. Very few things can bind a group of people, but just the knowledge of Mr. Wizard’s existence — in some small way — actually does.

In a world with so many terrible things going on — war, corruption, violence, famine, etc. — it’s hard to find the ties that bind us. And it’s weird, but sometimes it really is just the pop culture around us. Mr. Wizard was part of that.

In light of this loss, hopefully we can all take a minute to remember how learning can be fun, easy, and rewarding and to reflect on some memories from childhood that Don Herbert was a part of.

Patrick Duganz

Seventeen years ago I woke my mom and aunt up with a problem: I wasn’t breathing normally. My mom worried because that’s what she did, and my aunt worried because she had one idea: asthma.

This was the beginning of what has been a wonderful life of wheezing, gasping, and taking steroids. And the best part is that I have to pay for inhalers — the devices that give medicine to asthmatics. I use this wonderful device because I need it to live.

So let me write this line and see if you’re as angry as I am: After insurance I get to pay $10-$30 a month to live. Not “live comfortably,” just “live.” And thanks to that wonderful, conservative idea of the “free market” (where corporate bailouts and subsidies are somehow allowed), there is a person out there making money off of me.

The idea of profiteering off of the illness of someone else is infuriating. I think of someone — a stock owner! — sitting on his ass collecting dividends or (even better) waiting until that hugely profitable moment when a bigger corporation buys his stock for an assload of money. Making this nightmare even better is the fact that if I don’t find affordable insurance in the next few years (I can stay on my dad’s until I’m 25), my inhaler cost will eat away my bank account quicker than a cake in Oprah’s greenroom.

My government does not care about this and continues to defeat any attempt to help everyone afford the cost of medical care. I am pretty sure I know why: Those people collecting dividends and making money off of my sickness, well, some of them are running for Congress. And, oh, it makes me feel great to know that.

When I was five I was told I could grow out of asthma, that it would improve with age, but it never has. I have a thousand triggers that can set off the panting/gasping sweat-storm that is a normal asthma attack for me. Luckily I only have one of these every couple of days, so I’m doing wonderful.

And when I lose my insurance and have to pay out the ass to live, it’ll warm my heart that I will be helping this generation of pharmaceutical stockholders buy BMWs, which is going to be a real comfort when my O₂ stats drop.

Patrick Duganz

A few nights ago I was staying at my girlfriend’s apartment and we were having a bit of a fight. It was late, we were tired, and things were a little weird from an evening at the bars. Nothing too extraordinary, but at 2 a.m. we were each annoyed with the other.

In the middle of this, one of her neighbors returned home with a gaggle of older women laughing and talking in the same volume they would have used at the bar. More annoyance. Could these cretins not tell we were having a fight? Some people.

One in the group announced that she couldn’t find her key. Also, her husband is not opening the door, which is pissing her off a whole bunch. This is one of the neighbors: “Helen.” Her husband is a guy we’ll call “Dave.”

Soon everyone is bored of waiting for the door to open and decided that the party actually was over. Most of the gaggle left and we were left with a small murmur of conversation between two people — some guy and Helen. It wasn’t a very interesting talk for two drunks locked out of an apartment, so the girlfriend and I got back to our own argument.

At some point a bit later Helen and the guy start having a very nice conversation — I mean that in the “Borat” sense of the term “very nice.” They’re giggling and making groaning noises. Suddenly I was no longer concerned with our argument and, like a nosey jerk, I dove out of bed to wedge my face as close to a crack between the floor and the door (she lives in a studio). I can’t see anything, but I can hear everything better.

“We could go down that hall and no one would see us,” the guy said.

“No. No, we can’t,” responded Helen. All I could do was wave my hand to beckon the girlfriend to join me on the floor. She got there just in time to hear Helen say this: “Put that away. I’m not going to put that in my mouth here.”

This made my day. Here’s a married woman, outside of the apartment she shares with her husband, and she’s telling some guy she refuses to perform oral in the hallway. Screw Desperate Housewives; reality is so much better.

The back and forth — no pun — between Helen and the random guy continues for a few minutes with him offering and her denying. Then Dave arrived on the scene as the disgruntled lover.

He opened the apartment door and announced, “I think it’s time you leave.” The guy agreed, but Dave continued. “Seriously,” he said, “I own this f—ing apartment. Get out of here.”

“Yeah, whatever. You have fun f—ing that slut,” said the guy.

At this point, having been insulted by her would-be lover and caught by her husband, Helen entered the conversation with this: “It was nice to meet you tonight Waylon.”

Crouched on the floor trying to see someone, we could barely hold our laughter at what was a sad, but ultimately hilarious, event. And we learned something that night: no matter how crap things are going in your relationship, someone always has it worse. So really, your problems aren’t that bad. The girlfriend and I said some apologies to each other and went back to bed, our problem solved by Helen’s disregard for her mate.

Oh, but the best part is this: Dave and Helen are born-again Christians.

Guess those “Commandment” things are grayer than I remember…

Patrick Duganz

There should be a rule on how grandiose a self-gratifying claim can be. For example, last week Bill O’Reilly used his Web and newspaper column to glad-hand himself for “knowing” that Rosie O’Donnell would leave “The View.”

Reading it, you would have thought Mr. O. was pulling strings behind the scenes as some well-respected newsman, instead of just being a steamy pile of upper-class, Bush-voting crap.

But that’s Bill: he makes outlandish claims because he thinks he’s bigger than Guy Fawkes Day. This week, however, Bill has gone too far.

People who watch his drivel on TV will be familiar with his recent inspired ranting against Virginia Beach Chief of Police Jake Jacocks, who did not call Homeland Security over Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant, who had had four run-ins with the law. This has Bill miffed — and maybe rightly so — because on March 30 Ramos killed 17-year-old Alison Kunhardt and 16-year-old Tessa Tranchant when he drunkenly hit their car. Of course Bill felt Ramos should have been sent back to Mexico already, before this tragedy occurred.

Virginia Beach’s Jacocks didn’t share this idea because Ramos had not been a violent offender. More pragmatically Jacocks said he didn’t want to get federal authorities involved, possibly because Feds don’t play well with the locals; Feds like to have a lot of power and that’s something of an issue with people who like freedom. This fact has got Bill, who apparently thinks the Feds should have a camera in every home and a tracker on every computer, angrier than a pit bull in a room full of cats.

Under duress with the bad press he was getting all around, Jacocks changed the policies of his department.

What does Bill say?

“After my reporting battered the government of Virginia Beach, it has changed its dangerous and irresponsible policy. But Jacocks got in a last shot calling me, your humble correspondent, ‘pathetic.’”

Did you read that? He claims it was his reporting that changed things and then has the audacity to call himself humble. I’d call that an oxymoron if that were not two syllables more than what O’Reilly is.

The fact is that Bill wasn’t the only person “reporting” on the Ramos case. It got a lot of attention in the press (I’m betting he got it from the AP) and the public was angered. O’Reilly didn’t do anything, the people did. But The Culture Warrior is not above hyperbole.

My whole point is that people responding to the policies of their government make changes — not middle-aged white men pontificating from inside of a box. Anyone who thinks they do may require therapy.

However, maybe Bill is on to something. Maybe everyone with a forum for opinion should use that to make claims that they are the ones that make the differences.

All right, here is mine: I’m the reason Lindsey Lohan is doing so well with rehab. You see, I’ve publicly stated that she is a “hotty” several times but that I don’t like “drunks.” Hearing this Lindsey must have chosen to turn her life around.

Now I’m off to cause a thunderstorm in Wyoming and end the LAPD’s violent ways. Thank god I have this forum, or nothing would ever change. Aren’t I swell? I did a great job.

Patrick Duganz

I love Hillary Clinton. Not because I think she’s a strong female figure in a world flooded with idiotic figureheads like Paris Hilton and her gang of spoiled leeches, but because she entertains me.

I’m not fooling around. When people ask me who my favorite entertainer is, I always say Hillary Clinton.

OK, that’s a lie, but she could be, especially now that she’s on the campaign trail to become the first female president in history.

Saturday Hillary said that if elected president she would appoint her husband to a position of “roaming ambassador.” Billy-boy would travel to and fro making nice-nice with the nations of the world President Bush has pissed off. My estimate is that he’ll be gone for two years or more.

According to the AP, she told a crowd gathered in Marshalltown, Iowa, "I can't think of a better cheerleader for America than Bill Clinton, can you?"

But even reading that direct quote, what I heard her say was, “I can’t think of anything better than to make damn sure Bill is as far from my interns as possible, can you?”

She also said that Bill told her he would do anything she asked, which is why she says she’s putting him to work. In other words, Bill asked how he could help her, and she said, “You can fly your ass around the world undoing wrongs like Scott Bakula in ‘Quantum Leap’ for all I care, buddy boy.”

All kidding aside though, I think she’s got the right idea. We don’t need the entire government working to better relations to the rest of the world. We’ve got the Hillary doctrine: Let’s just use Bill Clinton to solve the problems.

Look at it this way: Whether it’s a tsunami or a hurricane, Bill has been doing much better than our current government at helping people desperately in need. He’s like Jimmy Carter, but with a raging libido (none of that lame “lust in my heart” crap from Bill) and the uncanny ability to make bad situations look great.

Where did Bill get his skills? I’m not sure; I only know he kicks ass.

Yes, NAFTA was a bad idea, and so was “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” And that whole impeachment deal was entirely lame, though not all of that was his fault. But look at how good he made those bad things look? It was amazing.

Now none of those missteps matter much because Bill is still adored, so Hillary should hold onto him like a Kennedy holds onto a bottle of fine wine or Bush holds onto bad ideas. (See? I’m an equal opportunity basher.)

So rock on, Hillary. Don’t bother with your own policy ideas — just use Bill. We like him.

Patrick Duganz

The more time I spend with them, the more I feel that condoms are the worst idea man has ever come up with. And no, it has nothing to do with the “feeling.”

I hate condoms because the little Catholic boy in me gets embarrassed every time I have to buy them. He’s not scared of wasting his seed (Sing it! Every sperm is sacred…), he’s scared of someone knowing about it.

I avoid the subject of “them” as much as possible because “they” embarrass me. When people see condoms, they know exactly what you’re doing. It’s a complete invasion of privacy.

My resident assistant freshman year got so annoyed with my stammering, woebegone way of asking him for free condoms he provided that he said, “Why be embarrassed? You’re getting laid. That’s awesome, you moron.”

But that didn’t make me feel any better. If anything I was even more uncomfortable. (He knew I was having sex…gross.)

Even when I think of my RA’s inspiring words, I still approach the cash register, box of phallus wrappers in hand, and get the same scared, bottom-of-my-stomach nausea. More and more I think this is my body’s physical reaction to the embarrassing-but-true reality that I am feeling judged by the clerk.

You probably don’t think about it too much, but the clerk at your grocery store knows more about you than most people. He or she knows what kind of food you put in your body, your favorite toothpaste, and now your sex life (I can only assume that they also giggle about your KY Warming Liquid as well).

It’s too much to imagine they know all of that. Some of my best friends have no idea.

I will concede that the clerk probably doesn’t care about me personally, but still, with all of the talk about “keeping it in the bedroom,” it does suck. Just imagine their thoughts: “Frozen pizza…peanut butter…box of Trojans? Who’s sleeping with this idiot?”

Terrifying.

The only idea worse would be if the clerk were actually depressed about the situation. What if they saw me there with condoms and thought, “Why am I alone?” That’s the type of thing that puts Woody Allen on a psychiatrist’s couch every week.

I worked at a McDonald’s for nine months and, believe me, we judged people all the time. A person with that expansive double-ass (where the front and back are equal orbs) would get ridiculed for hours after they left. I add in the knowledge of that person’s sex life, and I don’t want to imagine the things we’d have said.

My girlfriend asked me about why condom purchasing made me nervous (as I talked her into buying them instead) and, when I was done telling her, she stared at me for about 30 seconds before calling me an idiot. And she’s right. I shouldn’t be embarrassed about practicing safe sex.

But think about this if you agree with her: The clerk at the grocery store has a tattoo on his neck that says “Maddog.”

If you’re OK with that guy knowing about your plans, then buy up.  Then could I just have a couple?

Patrick Duganz

Politicians need to stop acting as if they understand the plight of the working man.

Wednesday, former Sen. John Edwards, currently running for the Democratic presidential nomination, worked a shift as a nurse aide at the Sarah Neuman Nursing Home in Mamaroneck, New York. This publicity opportunity was part of "Work a Day in My Shoes," a program sponsored by the Service Employees International Union.

Some might say, “Wow, Edwards is really trying to understand how it is to be blue collar.” Not me. I’ve worked as a nurse aide in a mental hospital, and I know first hand that one day working in those shoes is easy. It’s the next day, and the day after that, that’s a real pain.

Though it goes without saying: Nursing homes and hospitals of all types are hard places to work.

Take a moment and imagine working with the sick and infirm all day. Imagine a guy with Alzheimer’s who cannot remember his daughter, or a diabetic woman who has lost a leg and is terribly afraid she’ll lose much more. Now imagine seeing this everyday, and people in much worse condition, and not saying “To hell with this.”

Let me tell you this: It’s not easy. You wake up and you think of the people at work — those improving, those not — and you don’t want to do it. But you do anyway because you know how things are, and something makes you want to help (Note: It’s not the pay).

That’s why I can’t stand seeing a politician “working in someone’s shoes.” For them — and their publicist, the media, etc. — it’s a show. When you’re doing it day after day, watching how people are continuously abused by the system, then you understand the situation. And there isn’t one reporter there to ask you about it.

Sen. Edwards is a fine person I am sure. I voted for him and Sen. John Kerry in 2004, and I did it proudly, feeling that he would help the so-called little guy.

Both of my parents work in healthcare. My mom is a nursing home social worker and my dad, until recently, worked as a nurse aide in the same mental hospital I did. I’ve grown up watching the whole system because it’s put food in my stomach.

But not for a minute do I believe Sen. Edwards has clue one how it feels to be in that line of work. Yes, he has worked with insane men (I’m from a state that sent Conrad Burns to the Senate three times), but not in the way I or my dad did.

Frankly, I’m fine with that. I’m not looking for someone to understand how it is to live paycheck to paycheck.

But more importantly, I’m not looking for someone acting like they do.

Patrick Duganz

This week the University of Montana campus, where I am a student, has been seized by angry Christians. Specifically, it's a group from New York called Open Air Outreach, a group of men who — I can only assume — have been told by Jesus that it is appropriate for them to travel around the country being dicks in the name of God. (Go here to read the article.)

I know that it is an old cliché to reject the idea of the evangelical Christian with their sanctimonious ramblings, but I'm going to do it anyway. And mostly, it's because I'm annoyed with non-Christians.

The OAO is setting up everyday by the University Center (a student union building) for big "discussions" with the angry, vocal students around my campus who've yet to realize you should never fight an idiot. They can't see that it's useless to fight the men of the OAO — men with God on their side, don't ya know.

This is what I've had to deal with when I want to buy some orange juice or a bagel: endless shouts back and forth between diametrically opposed groups. And the students should know better. People traveling around America to stir up controversy should be ignored.

In this scenario of fervent opposition, neither side can win, and their disdain for the other has ruined any chance of having a real talk. The OAO has an excuse — their beliefs are such that they have to be certain, but students are supposed to be open to new ideas and concepts. Or what would be the point of college at all?

My personal belief in the Almighty is not what I would call strong, but I do hold a small lingering spirituality from my childhood days spent in the Catholic Church. This is what I would call an Agnosticism that leans toward the notion that something caused that first cell, and I'm not sure what that was.

I'm setting those aside so I can approach the question of what it is that causes a person to grab a Bible and a bad attitude and hit the road in the name of God.

If you ask me, which you didn't, I think these guys would be doing the "I'm Right!" thing with whatever they believed in. That is to say, I think if these people were selling cars, they'd sell the best cars ever — you'd only have to ask them for confirmation.

In other words, I have no idea what causes this sort of feverish attitude. I can barely decide on pizza toppings for crying out loud.

So as Easter approaches, I am making a request to people of all spiritual persuasions to just stop the fight over who has it right. We're all flung together on this rock. I'm not sure why, and I've yet to meet a person who really does. Belief is a complicated concept, and it should never stand between two people.

That said, I can't wait for these guys to leave. I miss bagels.

Patrick Duganz

I’m not implying that Gonzales is completely incompetent because I believe it takes a certain level of competence to justify allowing the FBI to tap phones illegally and completely get rid of that whole Habeas Corpus thing. What I am saying is that Alberto Gonzales doesn’t fit the rest of the Bush Cabinet's streak of inhumane treatments.

Yes, he has that utter disregard for civil rights, but where’s the blatant indifference for his fellow man? Where’s that ol’ feeling of danger that former attorney generals used to give us? (“Let the eagle soar…”)

I mean remember Janet Reno? If someone got out of line, Reno wouldn’t just “tap a phone” or fire a bunch of attorneys for political reasons. She’d send in the ATF (even if it was just a kid from Cuba).

And, oh, how I miss those days.

See, things were much simpler during the Reno era. I didn’t belong to any religious cults, nor did I hoard armaments for the eventual war with the American government, so I knew there was no need to invest in gas masks.

But Gonzales is different.

Now when I pick up a phone I half expect to hear the tell-tale clicking noise of Uncle Sam listening in. This isn’t merely liberal paranoia though. It is important for me to note that tradition in my family dictates that we always say “Death to capitalism,” in greeting. I have a feeling that can cause problems…

But wire-tapping doesn’t have the same flare that 100 guys with guns have. And worse, it’s inconsistent with the rest of the Bushies' policy choices of “Let’s blow them up and see what happens.”

It’s for these reasons that I know Mr. Gonzales will not make it through the next three weeks with his title of Attorney General. It won’t be because he keeps getting caught breaking the law or further embarrassing this administration. He’ll lose his job because he can’t keep up with Janet Reno.

If only he shot people…

Patrick Duganz