Good old Buzz Aldrin. The white-haired bird is 79 and still appears spry and sharp enough to outrun a 25-year-old from here to the corner and then trounce him in a Jeopardy! game.

Just a few years ago, when Aldrin was 72, a moon-landing-was-staged conspiracy theorist got in his face and began shouting accusations. The guy called Aldrin a "thief," a "coward" and a "fake," his face so close to the ancient astronaut's that I'll bet poor Buzz could smell the morning's coffee on his breath. Ugh. Aldrin up and clocked the guy with a right to the jaw.

Normally I don't condone the use of violence to settle spats but watching on You Tube as Aldrin put the exclamation point on this one made me smile. The insults, the violation of personal space and, I'd guess, the smell of stale coffee breath seemed ample justification for Aldrin to send the guy to REM-land with a tap on the chin.

Last Monday, the 40th anniversary of Aldrin and Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, I sat in the patio of Dick's Pizza, awaiting the start of the weekly Trivia contest and gushing about how cool I still think it is that people flew a quarter of a million miles to an inhospitable orb and planted a flag there. Not many 50-plus-year-olds gush about anything, other than the workings of their lower digestive tracts, so most of those sitting around me grinned at my exuberance.

Except for one. A guy named Seamus. He's generally a decent sort but now and again he exhibits evidence that he's a little tightly wound. As I rambled on, I noticed his eyes burning a hole through me. Clearly, he couldn't wait for me to finish so he could set the record straight.

"Just think of it," I said. "The only things standing between those guys and certain, immediate death were their spacesuits! Hell, I can't bear it when the temperature hits the high 80s and it's humid. The surface of the moon in sunlight is around 250 degrees! Plus, with no atmosphere, had their pressure suits failed, they woulda popped liked water balloons in the snap of a finger. Man!"

Mayor Judy shook her head and smiled. "Y'know," she said, "we forget how amazing that was."

"Yeah," said Old Gus, the cranky coot who'd normally be unimpressed if Marilyn Monroe magically materialized in his lap, "that was somethin' else."

"I don't know what I wished for more that summer," I continued, "to see the moon landing or for the Cubs to finally make it to the World Series."

"You were asking for too much," Mayor Judy's husband Tom said, laughing, "two miracles in one summer!"

"If I actually believed in miracles, that's what I'd call the moon landing," I concluded.

Everybody nodded. Except, of course, Seamus.

"That is," he said, boring in on me with narrowed eyes, "if it did happen."

My first instinct was to invite him to kiss my fat ass. My second, and clearly wiser, was to ignore him. Mayor Judy, though, couldn't let it pass: "What? You think they faked it?"

"Uh huh," Seamus said, nodding sagely. "They spent billions of dollars and they knew going to the moon was impossible."

Mayor Judy guffawed. "Oh, come on," she said.

"They didn't have the technology 40 years ago!" Seamus said, his voice rising. At this point, I got up and headed for the men's room.

Lunatics have been with us forever. Usually, they're relegated to the fringes. I don't recall true believers in the Area 51 conspiracy or the USS Philadelphia plot getting much face time on the mainstream media in years past. But ever since Barack Obama proved himself to be a viable candidate for President, the nuts seem to be leaping out of the woodwork. The latest example is the Birthers. I don't know exactly how many of them there are in the US but one is far too many. They believe Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.

Naturally, Fox News, a handful of Republicans in the House and mean old pricks Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy and Lou Dobbs have advanced the Birthers' claim. Their harangues continue despite there being more proof put forward that Obama was born in the US than there ever had been for any other president.

They all make me wanna scream. Birthers, UFO-abduction theorists, global warming deniers and the rest. They're so frustrating that sometimes I'd like to pull a Buzz Aldrin on them even if their breath doesn't smell of stale coffee. But I don't.

My best bet is to ignore people like them and Seamus. Communing with a urinal is far more satisfying.