Sometimes it seems like we're a nation split in two. There is a red half and a blue half, each feeling very strongly that they right and the other side is wrong. Before elections, candidates' signs litter our highways, streets and yards. Our mailboxes are stuffed with pamphlets, and negative campaign commercials and infomercials take over our TVs. Everyone has an opinion, but, truth be told, it often looks like we're a nation of sheep, blindly following a party or a candidate, and unable to think for ourselves. Well, fortunately not everyone has lost their independence and sense of humor, and what better way to gently poke fun at things or express a different opinion than with T-shirts?

Politics, of course, are important. We all have our views and opinions as to how the world should be and how it should be run. And some of us have the urge to express ourselves with clever imagery and wordplay. If you feel like we the people are really sheep in this whole political process, hey, maybe that makes us sheepol (rhymes with people and has "politics" thrown in) in this demockrasee of ours (yes, we do a bit of mocking here). And maybe we want to use sympols of our independence. And if you think I am making up words, I am not; the urban dictionary defines "sympol" as a simple political symbol representing a rhetorical metaphor. And sheeple as folks unable to think for themselves. Mix in "politics" and you have sheepol. Throw it all together and you have demockrasee T-shirts.

There are those who believe that miscommunication is the major problem in American politics today. Politicians say what people want to hear and what doesn't offend anyone. Or they build a platform of issues that gives candidates a way of pontificating without really saying anything at all, or committing to anything. As punsters, we'd advise to keep things as sympol as possible, and we consider clever political T-shirts as sympols of our independence. As long as we're all sheepols, why not a T-shirt that humorously shows that we at least consider ourselves as sheep that flock, or floc, differently? Or as long as the political parties view us as commodities, why not mock them a bit with clever commodatees Tshirts or younitee shirts?

There's just plenty of ways to poke fun at the ultra-serious, angry and often sleazy tone of political debate. I've seen political T-shirts with red or blue barcodes that cleverly oppose the concept that we're political party commodities with a human serial number. Or clever use of signs and symbols to do anything from gently opposing a concept of idea all the way to letting the world know how you really feel. Hey, if there are green T-shirts, environmental T-shirts, and a trillion T-shirts with commercial messages or stupid slogans (I'll never understand why that's considered cool), why not a brainteaser floc differently T-shirt, a protest commodatees T-shirt, or something else that gets the message across? That's the least you can do as an independent member of the voting block, or floc. Life's political and we live in a political culture, but no one says you have to be one of the sheep.

We live in a health-crazed society yet statistics show that Americans are getting fatter all the time. This can only lead one to believe that most diets don't actually work, with one exception....The Amish diet.

That's right. I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch Country where there are a lot of Amish people and I don't ever remember seeing a fat Amish person. So, from that I can make the scientific deduction that it is electricity that makes people fat. It has to be, they don't use it and everyone else does. They aren't fat and the majority of people using electricity are. Then just mix that electricity with a little bit of colorful clothing from a place like The Gap and you got a whole bunch of fat people.

The next time a guy gets the urge to sue somebody because they are fat they may just want to sue the electric company. Or a clothing store (and if you don't think it's fair to sue The Gap because you're fat sue them because they've made really stupid TV commercials in the recent past.)

If Jenny Craig was Amish and I was trying to lose weight I'd consider buying her stuff. Also, if Richard Simmons was Amish I'd consider buying his exercise tapes. Not because I thought it would get me in shape. It would just be funny to see a gay Amish guy jumping around wearing one of those big black Amish hats and making a fool of himself.

The federal government recently released the new "improved" version of the food pyramid, which should probably be ignored. I don't know why but when I think of the government I think of fat, as in fat budgets, fat "pork" projects being pushed through Congress and, of course, the "fat heads" who run it.

I guess I shouldn't be calling people fat because it's not politically correct. The correct term would be overweight or, better yet, corpulently challenged. How about a compromise and say, "the fat, corpulent guy." No, that would be redundant so that wouldn't work either. Hmm...the only thing that makes sense to me is to call them non-Amish.

There is more and more talk recently about children being overweight or, sorry, non-Amish. But you can't blame the kids. They are just following the example of their parents. From my extensive research into the subject (meaning, I happened to read an article in the newspaper since it was, conveniently, located next to the comic section) one third of all adults are non-Amish and another third are severely non-Amish. Interpreted another way, there are an awful lot of people keeping those Girl Scout cookie drives alive.

While you can get as complex as you want about losing weight it really just boils down to two things, as the experts will tell you, eating less and exercising more. But, since I am now an "Expert" on the subject too, since I've now written an article on it, I'd like to add two more pieces of advice, stay away from electricity and The Gap.