I'm sorry I haven't updated for a few days. I've been busy, as you would expect, since I'm a popular guy. My social calendar is always full, but of late it has been fuller than usual. But I have some time and quite a bit on my mind this evening.

Over the last few days, I have run across three tools who deserve to be mentioned as tools of note in this space. I happened to see a guy pulling into a Home Depot parking lot this afternoon driving an oversized camouflage pickup truck customized for off-roading. Ordinarily, that alone would catch my eye, driving an off-road vehicle to Home Depot is never cool. However, this dude was wearing what appeared to be welding goggles in lieu of sunglasses. Wearing tinted safety glasses as sunglasses is never acceptable, never mind the welding goggles. It is ironic, is it not, that such a giant tool would be travelling to a massive warehouse filled with tools of every description sold by one of the world's largest purveyors of tools? Technically it's a mere coincidence, but ironic sounds better.

Another tool who has managed to stand out from the herd of tools to warrant mention in this space is none other than the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome. Mr. Newsome has decided to save the environment by banning bottled water from city offices in San Fran. Even though I realize that this decision is going to put a stop to global climate change, greenhouse gas concerns, the hole in the ozone layer and Republicans and their corporations, I wonder whether the mayor of San Francisco could have found a legitimate step to reduce his city's eco footprint.

It seems vaguely noble at first, trying to cut down on the amount of plastic recycled each year. But residents who sign the no bottled water pledge receive a stainless steel recyclable container. Now I might not be particularly smart, but doesn't that mean that you end the plastic problem by creating a stainless steel problem? Of course one can sell scrap metal (or recyclable metal, if you want to put a pleasant face on it) for good money. Particularly stainless steel.

I wonder, then, if this move to stainless steel recyclable containers is more utilitarian than altruistic, while still being a total waste of time and shameless grandstanding. Would that ending the public menace that is the plastic water bottle could change the fact that the city's budget is a mess, or undo the fact that the mayor got caught tagging a subordinate's wife.

Our final honoree for tool of note is our old friend, the CHB. In a recent "effort," the CHB came tantalizingly close to proving that he is, despite his advancing years, hip, with it and completely connected to current trends in the youth culture. He discovered what no one else had had the perspicacity to realize. It was the run of the 2005 Chicago White Sox that made Journey's Don't Stop Believing a cult classic.

Now I am no Journey fan, but I am sure that many others who feel that way have found that particular song to be a guilty pleasure long before the White Sox latched onto it. The song did manage to climb to number 9 on the charts following its release in 1981. It's been in a large number of movies and TV shows, most of which occurred before the White Sox made it their theme.

I think you'll find if you take the time to look up when the White Sox were on a road in Baltimore and Joe Crede requested some Journey songs, which triggered the song becoming the team's theme for 2005, that it had to have occurred after the Family Guy episode that started the song's reintroduction to the mainstream was shot and probably after it aired. That particular episode aired in June, and it got a much wider audience than the White Sox did prior to the playoffs. I also don't think that Laguna Beach took its inspiration for using Journey from the White Sox.

Thanks, though, for the effort. If only the CHB would either familiarize himself with a small portion of the world outside of his experience in the press box prior to writing about it. Far better if he just retired, but why would any of us be so lucky.

And finally, congratulations are due to the Chicago Bears. After all, who would believe that they cut Tank Johnson for the sake of expediency? It takes very little moral courage to drop a guy like that who has had legal trouble. It also took little moral courage not to step in with a sterner hand before the situation came to this pass.

I really don't know what the right thing to do in a situation like this is. I like Tank Johnson as a football player. I think he has a chance to get his life together. He hasn't shown the propensity for attracting trouble like Pacman Jones. We know Tank didn't pay a visit to the strippie prior to his meeting with Roger Godell because Jay Mariotti probably would have had that big heart attack, the one Fred Sanford always threatened to have from the sheer unadulterated pleasure he would have derived from another slip up from Johnson.

I was looking forward to another year of rooting for the Bears. Now I'm not so sure. Any team that did something Mariotti hoped for this much might not be worth rooting for over a long season. I don't have any other team that really inspires me right now, though. I will make a deal with New England though. If Bob Kraft can conjure a pair of testicles and some guts, make his way up to Kennybunkport this weekend and come back with the ring a certain Russian head of state (can't mention his name lest I get some polonium in the mail) pocketed a few years back, I'll root for the Patriots. I'll even defend Randy Moss when he lets his team down when they need him most.