Parental Guidance Requested!

From a fellow worm, IRL:

"I'm a manager at the local movie multiplex.  Someone came to me to complain about some kids who were disturbing others during a movie.  I went to see what was happening, and sure enough, several tweeners were being loud, throwing popcorn, running around...you know, the usual stuff you see from kids off the leash.  So I rounded them up, refunded their ticket money, and told them to leave the building (it was nice out, so no problem).

"Their mom drove up and found them sitting on the curb, and they told her I had made them leave.  She marched in and asked me why, and when I told her, she got really mad at me and told me that her kids would never do anything like that.  And even after I explained that I had seen her children's bad behavior, she continued to defend them."

Dude, I feel ya.

I've worked retail for years, and it astonishes me how kids have become--well, not more wild, but less supervised--in stores, museums, and other public places.  And now that we are well into the Christmas season, with entire families out shopping, we clerks are up to our ears in childish misbehavior...and the grownups are often just as bad!

But before I get any parents yelling at me about how I "hate their children," allow me to clarify.  I don't hate kids.  I do get upset at kids who misbehave in public, because as a child I was taught that in a public place--and this included any homes our family would visit--you were supposed to behave like a young lady or gentleman.  I was expected to obey and respect all adults, not just Mom and Dad, and if I didn't, I'd get in trouble.  (Yes, we knew not to obey an adult if we were told to do something wrong.  We also knew to report such adults to our parents.  It was the 70's, not the Dark Ages.)

But since some folks nowadays don't seem to have a very good grasp of how either they or their kids ought to behave in public, here are some of the lessons I was taught.  Use them if you find them useful, pass them on if you think others could use them, and do feel free to get mad if you think I'm being "too mean" or "shaming" your kids.  Just remember, if you don't teach them proper public behavior now, they will grow up to be very unpleasant adults.  And society at large will not be so lenient then.

Remember, too, that children learn much of their behavior from watching you.  So be sure you're following the rules, too.

1)  No Food!

Don't let your kids bring food or drink--not even candy--into any store, even if there isn't a sign forbidding it.  I have seen preschool-age kids carrying drinks and food containers that are way too big for those little hands, and you can guess the result.  Most parents will notice their child spilling bits of food or drink and simply go on without informing store employees of the mess...and if the floater has just made his rounds through that area, other customers will have walked through and spread the mess around by the time he makes another pass.  That's just plain rude.

It's far better to just finish your food before you enter the store.  That way, there are no spills and no messy hand prints on doors, shelves, or merchandise.

There are three exceptions to this rule:

- Kids do get thirsty, so water in a kid-sized cup is okay.  That can spill, too, but it's far easier to clean up than soda or ice cream. 
- Infant formula is not only an exception, it's a necessity. 
- Food for a special-needs kid, like the fruit or candy a diabetic would need to balance his blood sugar at set times of the day, is also necessary.
 
Notice that in all these cases, the parent should be in control of the food or water, not the child.

One more thing.  When you go to a restaurant and bring in a fast-food kid's meal for the fussy son who doesn't like anything else, expect to hear from the server.  Not only is this behavior rude, it may be in violation of the restaurant's set policy.  (Note:  if you call ahead and ask, most places don't object to a birthday cake.)

If your kids are that fussy, try doing what my old college friends used to call "Build A Meal."  We would visit several restaurants and get "to go" orders of our favorite foods--burgers at one place, Thai food from another, etc--and then take them all back to our apartment or dorm and share them like a buffet.  On nice days we would go to a park.  It was a neat way to get the best of everything.

2)  Keep Your Children With You.

If I've seen it once, I've seen it a dozen times this month:  I'm on my way somewhere, and I see a school-aged kid in, say, our gift section, handling something breakable.  "Where's your mom?"  I ask, and the answer is "With my dad looking at tools"--said section being halfway across the store.

Parents, please don't allow your kids to wander around a store while you're shopping for a particular item.  It's a place of business, not a magical land of exploration.  Not only can your children get lost, they can also break things or get hurt messing around with things like nails, garden shears, and poisons like drain cleaner and mouse bait (leaks and holes happen, even if the inventory was thoroughly checked before it went out on the shelf).

And don't send your kids to the toy section "to play" while you shop;  the toys in that section are intended to stay packaged until they are bought and taken home.  It's frustrating to have a parent bring us a packaged toy with the package torn open, complaining that he doesn't want to buy this one because it's obviously been used!

Which reminds me:  never, never, never give a toddler a toy "just to occupy him" as you're pushing him around in the cart.  Two reasons:  first, if he gets it grubby from handling and soggy from chewing, it's no longer a new toy, is it?  I mean, if someone else's kid had done that, and his parents put that toy back, and then you came along...honestly, would you buy that toy for your little one?  I thought not.  So please don't do that to anyone else.  And second...to a little kid, possession is ten-tenths of the law where toys are concerned.  When you get done with your shopping, you will probably have a fight on your hands with kiddo screaming "MIIIINNE!!!"  So if you aren't intending to buy him a toy this time, don't take the chance.

Please be aware that although we expect you to keep your kids in line, we will intervene if we see your child doing any of the following:

- Climbing any sort of shelving or display (most of them aren't designed to hold human weight)
- Handling anything dangerous or breakable ("looking" is done with eyes, not hands)
- Running up and down aisles (if she runs into an elderly person, guess who gets hurt worse in a fall?)
- Entering any area not intended for customers (including warehouses, equipment sheds, workshops, and back offices--our insurance doesn't cover customers or their offspring back there!)

If you are in sight, we will tell you that this behavior is inappropriate;  but if not...please don't get mad at us for "ordering your kids around."  Trust me, if I'm warning your kid not to do something, there is a good reason, whether you understand it or not.

3)  Use Carts Properly.

There is only one safe spot for a child to sit in a shopping cart:  the fold-out seat designed for that purpose.  Hanging on the outside of the cart, lying on the shelf underneath, or sitting in the body of the cart are all unsafe methods of transporting your child around a store.  I have seen carts that were more full of kids than of merchandise...and suppose the merch gets dirty, torn or broken as the kids climb and squirm around?

Then there's the other thing I once saw.  A kid was hanging off the side of a cart; his little brother was sitting in the seat of the cart.  Big Brother's weight tipped the cart over, and cart and Little Brother landed on the kid.  Fortunately nobody got more than bruised, but as a store, we would have been liable if there had been serious injuries.  So be safe, and be smart:  if kiddo's too big for the seat, he needs to walk at your side (see Rule 2).

4)  Teach Your Kids "Politeness Words."

And be sure to use them yourself.

Shopping can be a stressful time, and I know everyone's in a hurry;  but don't forget to be polite and kind while you're out and about.  Teaching your kids to say "please,"  "thank you,"  and  "excuse me,"  when appropriate and without prompting,  goes a long way toward making everyone's experience nicer.  As an added bonus, your children will discover that politeness toward others will make their path smoother as they go on through life.  It won't solve everything (let's face it, there are some incorrigible assholes out there), but a polite person is generally welcome everywhere.

5)  Potty Time?

If kiddo's doing the "potty rumba" in the store, don't just send him to the restroom--go with him and at least wait outside.  If you know he's not able to manage in any way--clothes, getting up or down from the toilet (or aiming, if it's "number one"), using toilet paper properly, flushing, or hand washing--then you need to be in the room with him.  (If there isn't a family/unisex restroom, it is perfectly okay to to take your opposite-gender child into "your" restroom.)

Older kids should understand that "skipping steps" in the restroom--like not flushing or failing to wash their hands--is not only rude, but also unsanitary.  Washing hands is particularly important;  there are a frightening number of diseases that can be transmitted by dirty hands, like viral meningitis, Hepatitis B, staph, e. coli, and listeria.  Your kid might think he didn't get any poop on his hands while he was wiping up, but it's probably there.  Don't take the chance.

Oh, and about flushing:  I had a relative who was on a trip with his family.  They made a potty pit stop at a state rest area, and he sent his youngest daughter in on her own.  The toilet flushed, and the kid started shrieking.  When Dad went in, the little one was scared out of her wits--turns out, the toilet was one of the new ones that flush themselves!  The girl had never encountered such a thing before, and it scared her so bad that for years afterward, whenever the family was in a strange place, kiddo would insist that Daddy check out the toilet to make sure it wasn't "a scary one."

Funny story, sure...but it's one more reason to go in the restroom with your child.  And BTW, if the toilet has a handle on it, it's meant to be manually flushed!

6)  If Your Child Breaks Something, Offer To Pay.

Every parent has experienced this:  you turn your back for five seconds, and smash, your child knocks something over and breaks it.  Or tears a book page.  Or grabs a forbidden candy bar off the shelf and gets one end open and a bite taken.  Whatever the case, please don't grab your child and run.  Own the mistake and offer to pay for it, whatever it may be.

It's true that there isn't a real "Pottery Barn Rule"...at least not at Pottery Barn, or any of the big box stores.  But small mom-and-pop businesses are at a disadvantage when customers are negligent about how they treat merchandise.  Every item lost through damage or breakage is a financial loss, and over time it can affect a store's ability to keep its doors open.

Okay, I heard that:  "It was just a lousy paperback book (or knick-knack, or lollipop)!  It's no big deal!"

Sure.  Just one item.  But imagine a hundred people with that attitude, per year let's say, and multiply that times the cost of that paperback.  Even a cheap one goes for $7.99.  100 x  $7.99 is...$799.00.  That's not chump change anymore.  To this loss you can add the extra time an employee must take to mark the damaged book out of inventory, plus the cost of a new book.  Times our hypothetical 100.  Given the misbehavior I see on a daily basis, that hypothetical number is probably larger in real life!

Oh, and eating food in a store without paying for it is called theft.  The sooner your child learns this, the better.

Okay, I heard that, too:  "Well, aren't they insured?"

Depends on the store.  But even if they are...you know what happens if you have to file an insurance claim--c'mon, all together:  the premiums go up!  The higher the premiums, the less likely a small business can afford them, and therefore, the less able said business is to just blow off the loss of an item.

(Update:  A coworker who used to work for an insurance company tells me that the deductible for a store with merchandise-loss insurance is $10,000!  Definitely not chump change.)

So please do offer to pay.  And encourage your child to apologize to the store manager.  Maybe it was just an accident, but that's all the more reason to say "I'm sorry."

(A friend of mine who caught her child opening a bag in a store told her kid,  "Okay, I'm paying for it now--but when we get home, you have to pay me out of your gold dollars."  He'd been saving those gold Presidential dollar coins, and yes, Mom really did make him pay her three of them--the candy was $2.99.  It may sound harsh, but if you do something wrong, there are consequences!)

Finally...

Kids develop at different rates.  Some are easier to teach than others.  So if you've done everything you can and your children continue to misbehave in public, they may not be "ready for prime time" yet.  Consider leaving them at home when you're shopping.  If there's not another parent of relative to leave them with, consider tag-teaming with a play-date mom to take turns, with one mom watching kiddos while the other mom shops.

But whatever you do, don't just excuse the bad behavior and say  "Well, kids will be kids--they'll grow out of it."  Because they won't--not without your guidance.

These Are The Times That Turn Our Stomachs

Laugh, Cry, Or Vomit?

Molly Ivins once wrote that when following modern politics, you had three options:  laugh, cry, or throw up.  But since crying and throwing up are bad for you, you might as well laugh.

Me, I think there is a proper season for everything.  And now is the season to look at this swollen pimple of an administration...and then take that important call from Ralph on the big white phone.  Because the things our so-called President says and does on a near-daily basis are the rough equivalent of riding a runaway Tilt-A-Whirl right after eating an ipecac-flavored Sno-Cone.  If Molly were here to see the Thing that a bunch of angry, fed-up right-wingers sent up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she'd agree--right before gagging and losing her lunch in the nearest waste basket.

Surely they didn't invent Twitter for this...

Even before Day One, Donald Trump communicated with the world mainly via Twitter, the app made for those with short attention spans.  Messages at that time could be no longer than 140 characters, including spaces, emoticons, and symbols.  And boy, Trump took to it like a pig to a mud hole.  He used lots of all-caps words and phrases, which I was taught was rude because it was the cyber-equivalent of shouting.  He splattered the Twittersphere with diatribes and insults against everyone he didn't like (a veeeerrrrrry loooooong list, apparently).  And he created hashtags that are still sliming around the Internet, like #MAGA and #AmericaFirst...both of which have been eagerly ingested and regurgitated by white nationalists and other haters.

It's worse now.

Remember how up in arms folks got over President Obama's BlackBerry?  And all the fuss over Hillary's non-secure server with all those classified e-mails?  Well, O Best Beloved, we now have a President who tweets more than he actually works at the job he was elected to do.  Not only that, his tweeting fingers are apparently faster than his brain, because he posts the most outrageous shit--like his threats against Iran, or the horrible things he tweeted about Puerto Rico, or even government actions he's planning...things you'd think he would discuss in private with his Cabinet and then announce in a TV broadcast or at a press conference.  Worse yet, he doesn't find out whether he can legally do what he intends until after he tweets it.  Plus, he tweets about important, sensitive diplomatic stuff that his people are trying to do--like negotiate with guys like Kim Jong Un--and says things that sabotage those activities!  And to top it all off, he doesn't give a flying shag at a rolling donut whether he even has his facts straight...the most egregious example, of course, being his attempt to one-up the National Weather Service about Hurricane Dorian hitting Alabama.

Oh, and that 140-character limit?  Some non-genius decided to double that.  So now we get twice as much of Trump's empty-headed Twitter use.  Because, to add yet more bales of misery to our already-overloaded backs, the news media reports every damn tweet that Trump sends!!!

Ready...aim...

Ah, how things change.  Once upon a time, a flag flew at half-mast on national holidays honoring veterans, when an important political person died, when a prominent local figure who had passed was declared worthy of the honor by the city fathers, or--much more rarely--during a time of national crisis.  At any rate, we all pretty much knew why the flag was flying low.

These days, that half-mast could happen at any time, and more often than not, it's because some angry /nutty person with a gun went and opened fire on other people.  So now, when that flag flies low and it's not a suitable national holiday, I find myself sighing,  "Oh, Lord, not another one."

And how has our leadership responded?  Better care for the mentally unbalanced?  Waiting periods for gun purchases?  More intensive background checks?  Or how about banning the kinds of guns that are made (or can be converted) only for killing people in large numbers? 

Nope.  None of the above.  Because the National Rifle Association has elevated the 2nd Amendment to an almost idolatrous position.  And the NRA has money--big money--which it donates to the political campaigns of those it deems most likely to support its cause.

Now, I am not against gun ownership.  That nice hunting rifle, or that handgun for personal/home defense...I'm fine with that.  But do you really need something with a bump stock for that purpose?  If you've had your training and kept up with your target practice at the shooting range, you shouldn't.  And remember, Good Guy, the more shots you can fire at once, the greater the chance of an innocent bystander getting hit, as well.

Hey, by the way, check out this image of the magazine used by the Dayton shooter (lower left):

Dunno about you, but I think somebody's compensating.  Maybe that's the whole NRA's problem.

But Trump is a Christian!....Wait, what???

I couldn't believe it when I first heard it, but apparently, Donald Trump is a Christian.  However, he's not the kind of person who immediately comes to mind when you think of that label...you thought Mother Teresa, didn't you?  So did I.  No, Trump's brand of Christianity is the type espoused by the so-called "prosperity preachers,"  who believe that monetary wealth and physical health is a sign of God's favor--a reward of faith.  So if you are a child of God, you are entitled to have lots of money, a nice house, and three luxury vehicles!  And bless God, you can just rebuke that sickness in Jesus' Name, because you're a King's Kid, and He takes care of His chosen ones!  Just the thing that a narcissistic, money-loving man like Trump would be attracted to.

It's no surprise, therefore, that Trump's spiritual adviser is a woman pastor named Paula White, who has been investigated in the past for shady practices but was never found guilty (sound familiar?).  She also once told her viewers to send their first paycheck of the year to her ministry, or God would be angry.  (That is a distortion of the Old Testament doctrine of giving the firstfruits of the harvest to God...a segment of the Law which, being fulfilled by Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, is no longer necessary.)

The prosperity preachers cherry-pick verses from the Bible to support their "name it and claim it" message, but when it comes to holiness in life, compassion toward the poor, and showing forth Christ in word and deed to the unsaved world, they fall very short.  I have listened to many of these guys and gals, and I hear almost nothing about any of the virtues I just named--in fact, I once heard one guy, Creflo Dollar, (what a name, right?) make the appalling claim that people don't want to worship a God whose people look poor, because it's unattractive;  but if you follow the prosperity doctrine and get rich, the non-Christians will "want what you have"--i.e., a pipeline to the God Who's showering you with everything your little heart desires!

When you know all this, it's easy to see why there is a massive disconnect between what Trump claims to believe, and what he actually does and says.  When you've got your eyes and your hands focused on seeing and grabbing that next blessing, you have no time or means to have compassion on, say, refugees from war-torn countries who want to come here.  Since you're focused on the bits of the Bible that talk about blessings for you, you completely miss the much larger parts telling you to love your neighbor as yourself, to be a good steward of whatever God has given you, to be generous to the poor, to be humble, to be kind...not to mention the long section in Matthew 25 describing the Last Judgment, when Jesus defines the kind of behavior that is the mark of a true King's Kid--feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and welcoming strangers into one's home.  He tells us that doing these things for "the least of these, My brothers" is the same as doing them for Jesus.  By the way...do you notice that if Trump signed a new executive order granting all those migrants asylum, he would be ticking all but two of those boxes?  And if he actually visited the overcrowded refugee camps and offered the inhabitants real hope, he'd clear the list?

Unfortunately, I don't have enough faith to believe in a miracle that huge.  I could see Jimmy Carter doing it, and if Liz Warren were President right now, she would already have most of them settled in where they were most needed.  But Trump?  Sorry, no.

Cha-CHING!

With Donald Trump, everything is about money.  He defines people and countries by how much "business" he does or can do with them.  As President, he was supposed to step away from his holdings and businesses and hand them off to a third party.  He refused to do so, and the cesspool of profiteering, shameless promotion, and even accepting taxpayer funding when his aides and other members of his administration visit his hotels (remember Pence staying at the Trump Hotel in Doonbeg, when his meeting with the Irish PM was in Dublin?  You and I are paying for that.  Trump has plenty of money--why couldn't he have comped his VP and family?) has created a stench so bad that every window in the White House will have to be opened for at least a year to air out the building when Trump leaves.  Even then, it might be like pig manure--that aroma may be permanent.  Hell, we may have to change the name to the Brown House!

Here's a link to an article that tells you just how bad Trump's conflicts of interest have gotten:

https://www.citizensforethics.org/presidential-profiteering-trumps-conflicts-got-worse/

Birds of a feather...

Trump is a shameless bully toward those with less money and power than he has.  But when he hangs out with other bullies, he's like a Zen novice at the feet of a master--he drinks in every word, watches every move, learns whatever he can, and always acts like a sycophant.  The worst example was the Helsinki summit, when he kowtowed so shamelessly to Vladimir Putin.  It was a horribly embarrassing incident.  Even if we never have such a bad President ever again, the entire world will remember Helsinki...and it will make them think twice about trusting us.

Unclear on the concept...but that's nothing new...

Trump does not believe in climate change.  Or at least, he doesn't believe that what humans do affects the earth's climate over time.  He has in the past said (or tweeted) that man-made climate change is a hoax, foisted off on us by--of all people--the Chinese!  He sees no need to do anything to rein in the use of fossil fuels, even though these resources become scarcer as time goes on;  worse, he scoffs at the efforts made by others who are trying to conserve natural resources and find new, cleaner ways to produce electricity.

Needless to say, Trump's appointees for Secretary of Energy, Secretary of the Interior, and head of the Environmental Protection Agency neither know nor care about the departments they are supposed to run.  That's not their job in this administration.  They are there solely to create (as Molly Ivins used to say about Texas) "a healthy bidness climate."  That means adjusting rules, rolling back standards, ending long-standing regulations--anything that helps big, wealthy corporations...more of Trump's like-feathered friends.  Of course, a lot of endangered species will go extinct, and a lot of national parks will be ruined, and people will die from poisons and pathogens in the environment...but oh, well.

The most recent salvo fired by Trump at conservation efforts was aimed at California, whose emissions standards are by far the strictest in the country.  But those high standards go back a long way;  back in the 40's and 50's, when "photochemical brown" was the color of the skies over Los Angeles, and people were getting sick from all that smoggy air, two scientists named Arie Haagen-Smit, a flavor chemist, and Arnold Beckman, who built advanced detection equipment for emissions, determined the cause to be automobile exhaust and the smoke belching from industrial chimneys.  After a big fight pitting lobbyists for the oil and auto industries against a bunch of ordinary citizens who were tired of the dirty air, California's state government took action in 1959 by setting up a pollution control board for motor vehicles.  With ozone having been identified as the worst of the various tailpipe emissions, the new board set a limit--150 ppb (parts per billion) of ozone per cubic meter of air.  (This limit is still way higher than the federal standard.)  Because the "car culture" really started in California, the auto makers would have to find ways to reduce ozone emissions before Californians could buy their cars...and with over 2,000,000 cars on CA state roads at the time, Ford, General Motors, and all the other automakers listened.  Particularly since 22 other states jumped in and followed California's example by setting their own clean-air standards.

During the 60's, the federal government began catching up and setting standards of its own.  But they were lower than those of California and the states who had followed their example, and by 1970, when the Clean Air Act was ratified, California was worried that the new federal standards would be a step backward that would reverse the gains the pollution-ridden state had already made.  So Congress made an exception for California:  they could set whatever clean-air standards they wanted, so long as they were stricter than those set by the federal government.

Then the catalytic converter was invented.  California mandated that it be installed in all cars produced from 1975 on, and since the automakers weren't about to produce two sets of cars each year, catalytic converters became the standard.  This reduced not only ozone emissions, but also carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.  Since leaded gasoline (the "lead" is a compound called "tetra-ethyl lead," or TEL) could not be used in an engine with a catalytic converter, that fuel was finally phased out--a good thing, too, because it turned out that the combustion of leaded gasoline released the lead into the air, where it became yet another dangerous substance when breathed in by animals and humans.  Eating paint chips or drinking lead-heavy water weren't the only ways to get lead poisoning--if you lived in the middle of a big city, all you needed to do was breathe the air!

BTW, we have a geochemist named Clair Patterson to thank for the new knowledge concerning lead and its effects on living things.  While doing research on a meteorite, using uranium-lead dating to determine the age of the earth and the solar system in general, Patterson found that his samples were being corrupted with lead in the environment.  After he built a "clean room" to eliminate the problem, he was able to finish his research, no problem...except he wondered about all that lead in the air.  Was it normal?  After testing deep-sea ocean water and finding that its lead content wasn't even close to that in L.A., where he worked, he did some more experiments and found that the culprit was--no surprise--the TEL in gasoline.  He fought like an avenging angel to get it banned, despite opposition from the makers of TEL, the auto industry, and even fellow scientists, some of whom were bought and paid for by the TEL and auto folks!  But in 1986, Congress banned "leaded" fuel in all but a very few, limited applications...and we're now testing at 80% less lead than we were in the 50's.

Okay, back to the present and Trump.  He says that California's strict standards cause cars to be too expensive, and so people keep their old cars longer, which makes them unsafe.  Forcing the state to back away from high emissions standards will take the pressure off the automakers, who can then make cheaper cars, which will make everyone safer.

Sure...unless you live in L.A., or Chicago, or any of the other large cities where smog is a problem.  And even the auto industry is unhappy with Trump, because they think he's gone too far.  Oh...and ironically, the day I read about the California-Trump rumble, I also read, in the same newspaper, that the pollution a pregnant woman breathes in goes through her lungs and winds up in her placenta.  Imagine how much of that could end up in the unborn baby.  Are you sure you're pro-life, Mr. President?!

Of course, California has vowed to fight.  Along with 22 other states, the District of Columbia, and the Cities of Los Angeles and New York, California is suing the Trump Administration, and so far, a few judges have sided with the plaintiffs.

But here's the thing.  Trump doesn't give a shit about the environment.  He never even goes outside unless it's to golf, and I doubt he's ever seen an eagle in its natural habitat.  He knows nothing of the various ecosystems that make up our country (let alone our planet!), and I doubt it would make any difference to the way he thinks...because when he talks about "excessive regulations" that restrain the damage that industry and business do to the environment, it's another way of saying, "we could make a lot more money if we didn't have to worry about the junk we dump into the water, the ground and the air--and anyway, it's not really that harmful."

Because Trump's abiding passion is to make even more money...and who cares about what troubles his grandchildren will inherit?  All that fast food he eats, he probably won't last another decade, so he'll never have to worry about it.

So, what do we take for this intense nausea?

There are two Constitutionally-approved treatments for our gastrointestinal woe.  The first is, we invoke the 25th Amendment and get Trump declared unfit for office.  Honestly, how hard could that be?  He tweets such incoherent sprays of liquid pig shit that you could get him out of the White House just by presenting his Twitter archives as evidence.

The second is, we impeach the man.  That's a little harder.  See, the House of Representatives impeaches, but the real trial is held in the Senate.  We have a split Congress--Democrat House, GOP Senate.  And the GOP, however they may loathe Trump privately, probably will vote along party lines to exonerate him.  The Dems worry that this could energize his base and help get him elected for another four years.

Oh, yeah...there's a third remedy.  Vote, dammit!  Be creative about it, too.  If your state has ugly voter-ID laws, organize a drive and get others registered and ID'd up for the occasion.  If you can afford the ID and your neighbor can't, help them out.  Same goes for the sneaky polling-place changes--get informed beforehand, and let those who have transportation help those who don't.  Don't let evil people in power rob you of your right...which, remember, is just as much a right as that right to bear arms.

And finally...remember that your vote counts.  No matter how much money the PACs and corporations spend, no matter how many nasty ads and junk-mail flyers they send out...it's still down to us.  Ordinary people pulling levers and filling in little circles at set locations on Election Day.

Think about that.  And hopefully, your stomach will feel better.

SSL? Bring It On!

Someday, sooner or later, the United States of America will have more black and brown ethnic minorities combined than people traditionally considered Caucasian or white.  The closest estimate is 2040;  the "hold up a sec" estimate is more like 2044.

It's got a bunch of white-supremacist panties in a twist, and certain folks on the left end of the political spectrum are citing the coming demographic change as the main reason that Trump and his lackeys have been so hard on both illegal and legal immigrants...and in some cases, even naturalized citizens.

Me, I hope that all the estimates get blown out of the water and the demo shift happens way sooner.  Like in 2035.  Or how about 2020?  And man, I hope that new majority is ready to unite and hit the ground marching, voting, and working like hell.  Because that is the only way all the old white farts are going to vacate the halls of power and let the hoi polloi run the country.

I Remember "Schoolhouse Rock"...

When I was a kid, there were a bunch of 2-minute bits that ran during the commercial breaks between cartoons on Saturday mornings.  They were collectively known as "Schoolhouse Rock,"  and they used catchy tunes and fun animation to teach all kinds of things to kids.  Most kids of that generation probably learned the Preamble to the Constitution from "Schoolhouse Rock,"  along with other parts of American history.  Plus, there were new-math hacks, grammar usage, science, money and how it worked...wow.  It really was a schoolhouse.

But the segment I remember best was the one called "The Great American Melting Pot."  It was all about how America wasn't just colonized by the English, but also by the Spaniards, Dutch, and French...and how, later, other people came from many other places to make a better life here (the nationality that gets the most attention is Polish, but I think that's because one of the creators of SR was of Polish descent).  The catchiest scene in the segment is the one from the chorus where the Statue of Liberty opens the book she carries to reveal that it's a cookbook, and the recipe for "America" lists many different nationalities as "ingredients."

I saw that segment recently on DVD, and I started crying...both because it's such a beautiful vision, and because we've stopped living up to it.  The ugly things I hear on a regular basis regarding immigrants are things I would never have heard as a kid, even in my racist, nowhere home town.

English Only?

It started with language, back in the late 80's:  "Why can't these blankety-blank immigrants speak English, for cripes' sake?"  (And nowadays, the complaint is that you have a Spanish-language option when you call a company or agency.)  But when you've spoken a language from the time you could first form words, you don't realize how hard it is to learn that same language from scratch as an adult.  And the less education you have, the harder it is.  And English is a language with so many roots, runners and grafts that it's a wonder anyone who comes here manages to learn it at all!

In fact, only a few languages are harder to learn than American English.  Magyar (Hungarian) is one, because unlike the Romance languages (like Spanish, French, and Italian), it has almost no European linguistic connections.  It has anywhere from 18 to 35 cases, many derived from Latin, and a number of gutteral sounds that a student would find hard to pronounce.  Then there's Welsh--that "ll" is nigh on impossible for an adult student.  Mandarin has tonal sounds that are treacherous to navigate; get the wrong one, and you could end up speaking nonsense.  Or maybe getting your lights punched out.

And of course, there are also a number of African languages that use elaborate clicks as consonants, one of which--Xhosa--is used as the language of Wakanda, the fictional country that is home to the superhero Black Panther.  Another, spoken by the Ju'/Hoansi tribe of the Kalahari desert, was spoken by the hero Xi in "The Gods Must Be Crazy."

If you ever tutor ESL (English as a Second Language), you get to see and hear our newcomers struggle with the confusions of English.  No wonder some of them give up and let their children (who have little trouble picking up the new language) act as their interpreters.

It Got Worse...

The nineties were no improvement.  The things said about immigrants got worse, and for the first time in my life, I had to provide proof of citizenship when I applied for a job!  I needed 2 forms of ID--my birth certificate, and a driver's license or passport.  Not having one of the latter, I substituted my voter-registration card, and fortunately that was official enough to pass.  (Now you can't even vote with one of them...not unless you also have a photo ID!)

Then came the Twin Towers attack, and suddenly all immigrants were suspect--mostly Muslims, but if you even looked Middle Eastern, you were a candidate for harassment.  That was when I first heard "send them back."  After that came the groundless rumors that terrorists would pretend to be Mexican and cross our southern border and attack us.  And that was when the government started talking about fences and walls.

...And Now, It's Silly, Too!

So, as awful as Trump's verbal scours are, they're nothing new.  I've heard it for years.

But now, it's gotten just plain silly, too.  Not in the fun sense, but in the "this is brainless and unreasonable" sense.

Folks who were little kids when their parents sneaked in?  Just as guilty and worthy of deportation as the parents!  Never mind that the kids know nothing of the old country, and they don't speak anything but English--send them back!

People who are here illegally, but they've used their time here to work hard and try to fit in?  Out with them!  But notice that nobody's raiding the houses of idle white people sitting on their asses and drawing SSI on false pretenses.  Or rounding up our home-born homeless and putting them to work picking up trash in exchange for "three hots and a cot."  No, that's inhumane...but removing a foreigner from the family who loves him and the employer who values his service apparently isn't.

Oh, and it's okay to separate parents and kids when they're just asking for asylum--they haven't even sneaked in, they just walked up and surrendered to ICE and asked to be admitted legally.  Time was, their case would have been reviewed, and they probably would have gotten to stay.  Not anymore.

(Oh, and by the way...remember when our department for dealing with immigrants was called INS--Immigration and Naturalization Services?  Now it's ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Aren't those initials friendly-sounding?  Well, the new department is every bit as cold as its acronym.)

Hurry up, 2040!

Well, I, for one, am sick and tired of all this bigotry and suspicion.  If this is how white people in power are gonna act, then it's high time for us to step aside.  We deserve to sink into the quicksand of obscurity and do what we ought to have done all along:  pass the reins on to the next qualified person in line, regardless of race, color or creed.  I'm betting those qualified folks are all around us.

And if that means I have to learn Spanish as a Second Language, I'm ready.

Waking Up In Russia

Just When I Thought It Couldn't Get Any Worse...

This last week, I decided to sleep on my day off...like, almost all day.  So I was late getting out to run errands, and when I stopped to buy a newspaper--a rare event these days--I glanced at the headlines and screeched to a halt in mid-step.  Because apparently, I had awakened in Russia.

The headline that got my attention was from the "illegals roundup" that happened last weekend, brought to us by Donald Trump and his merry band of ICE-men.  The idea was to swoop in, arrest all those evil illegals, and deport them.  But in this story, there was an interesting wrinkle:  the man in question, who was in his car with his girlfriend and their two kids, was approached by an ICE agent who commanded him to get out of the car.  The girlfriend says that the agent never said the name of the man they were looking for, nor did he show a warrant.  So the family stayed in their vehicle and kept the windows closed.  The ICE agent then broke the car window and dragged the man from the car, while his son screamed for the agent not to take his daddy.

Fortunately, the girlfriend recorded the whole incident on her phone, and it's all over Facebook as I write.  Hurrah for her.  It's about time we Harold Beale this ugly mess.

This whole business of "rounding up the bad guys" smells like a mid-summer mass fish kill anyway.  The media have been reporting on it for weeks, which my paper said was problematic for an operation that relied on "secrecy and surprise."  Wow.  Can you say "KGB," kiddies?  How about "police state"?  Or "unconstitutional"?  Because, kiddies, breaking a car window and dragging a man out of it without showing a warrant is called "illegal search and seizure," and it's something we're supposed to be protected from by the Fourth Amendment.  The fact that the ICE agent did not tell the family who they were looking for is also a red flag--what if they had just been profiling anybody who looked Hispanic?

The ICE maintained that the man was an "immigration fugitive" with "prior misdemeanors."  But his biggest crime seems to have been that when he was ordered to leave the country, he kept sneaking back in.  My bet is that he didn't want to abandon his family here in the States.  And he wasn't a shiftless layabout getting free handouts from the government;  he was a chef.  Whether that means "high-end fancy cook" or "gourmet burger-flipper" is immaterial--the guy worked to provide for his family.  He "took care of business," to quote Chris Rock (who had no love for deadbeat dads).  Isn't that the kind of immigrant we want to have living here?

But Donald Trump doesn't see it that way.  He wants only people from "good" countries to immigrate to the USA.  And if you come from a "shithole country,"  you can apply to come here, but your request will be shunted to the bottom of the heap.  An unskilled laborer will wait decades for even a temporary work visa, even with an employer to sponsor him...and he has to leave voluntarily at the end of his term of work and reapply again!

It gets worse.  If you come here illegally, then obey a voluntary deportation order, you can't reapply to enter legally until three years have passed.  This assumes you only crashed the party for six months, though--if you stayed illegally for a year, you have to wait ten years.  And even with employer sponsorship...well, re-read the last paragraph.

In fact, our immigration system is broken, but not in the way some people are saying.  Basically, our borders are closed, but with a few holes (got that phrase from an immigration article on the Cato Institute's web site).  Rather than potential new Americans being considered eligible until proven otherwise by the government, they are automatically rejected unless they can prove their worth.  A poor person from, say, Guatemala, whose only skill is as a farmer and who knows little or no English (and may, in fact, be completely illiterate) just wouldn't be considered a good fit under current immigration law.  Never mind that he is quite intelligent and would flourish if he had the chance to learn to read and write, first Spanish, then English.  (Where I live, a guy like that would be an asset--we're losing too many family farmers because of age, expenses, or plain lack of interest.)  Highly-skilled folks aren't in a much better position.  Oh, and remember when we welcomed people who were fleeing oppression?  Donald Trump's response is that the present refugee crisis isn't real--it's a gigantic plot by Central America to sneak in gangs and drugs.  Yeah, gotta watch those infant/toddler MS-13ers...herd 'em all into detention cages!

How To Get On The Trump Shit List

It's simple.  Be a Congressperson of color, and criticize Trump's immigration policies.

Four of those fearless sisters--Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)--did just that.  Trump's response?  He accused them of being unpatriotic and told them to go back where they came from and fix the messes in their own countries!

At a rally in North Carolina, a chant started up--"Send her back!"--when Trump mentioned Rep. Omar.  He just let it go.  Later, he flip-flopped, at first saying he tried to stop the chant, then later saying that those NC attendees were patriots, and that Omar and her fellow Reps had said "horrible things" about the USA and some of its people.

Wow.  Where to begin...

1) Need A Mirror, Mr. President?

Because the number of horrible things you have said about this country and its people increases with just about every tweet you post.  The only thing about this that amazes me is that you are too unaware to realize how ironic this entire situation is.

2) And What About Those Rallies, Anyway?

Aren't you supposed to be fulfilling your duties as President?  They're outlined in the Constitution.  I bet there's even a cardboard version with brightly-colored pictures and first-grade vocabulary, if eighteenth-century English is too hard for you!

You should not be gallivanting around the country when there's work to be done.  And BTW...I'm waiting for one of your "chant shills" to repent and confess.  No way are all those slogans erupting spontaneously.  Think those paid performers are all completely loyal?  Well, you've been fooled enough by this time that we're way past shame on anybody.

3) Send Who Back Where To What???

All those ladies are United States citizens, and only one--Ilhan Omar--has ever been anything else.  Omar came here from war-torn Somalia when she was ten, becoming a citizen when she was sseventeen.  The other women were born here.  And how do you, Mr. Trump, expect the messes in poor countries to be fixed by anybody when thugs and gangs control everything?  I suppose it only matters if the thugs and gangs in question allow you to build a golf course or tower, or if they buy arms from us.  In other words, if you can "do business" with them.

On Second Thought...

Y'know, I've changed my mind.  I'm not in Russia--I'm in freakin' Uganda, with Trump as Idi Amin Dada.

Well, maybe not.

I only know that if we don't all stand up and shout "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" when we meet up with injustices like this...then I'm definitely not in the USA anymore.

P.S. About That Article...

It's really rare that the Cato Institute publishes anything reasonable, but that article on immigration certainly qualifies.  If you want to read it, here is the link:

https://www.cato.org/blog/why-legal-immigration-system-broken-short-list-problems

Saving Trees Or Snubbing Bibliophiles?

*Sigh.*

All these years I was worried that one of my favorite authors, Diane Duane, was ill.  Or maybe even dead.  Because I hadn't seen a new book by her on the shelves in ages.

But she was just fine (sigh again, this time with relief).  She wasn't even on sabbatical.  She was still writing books...but not for physical publication.  E-books, to be exact.  Apparently, there's a rather large stack of digital stories that take place between the events of various novels in her Young Wizards series.  (Note:  this lady was writing cool stories about wizards loooong before Harry Potter was ever created, and Nita Callahan and Kit Rodriguez are well worth your time.  First book is So You Want to Be A Wizard.  Check it out!  Now, back to the original post...)

Now, I really don't have a quarrel with Kindle, and the fact that I am blogging right now proves my status as a non-Luddite.  But I am rather old-fashioned in that I love books.  I love ordering from my local indie book store, or from Abebooks or Amazon or wherever (I do prefer the actual book store if they can get what I want), and I love opening that new book and turning the pages and devouring every word, and I love shelving that new book in its proper order when I'm finished.  A good enough book will catch my eye later on, and then I get the pleasure of re-reading it!

A physical cardboard-and-paper book is very low-tech.  All you need in order to read it is enough light.  If it's night and the electricity goes out, you can light a candle and carry on.  Or just put the book down and go to bed--the sun will rise and give you enough light again!  And a blind person doesn't even need light--just a Braille book and sensitive fingers!

Kindle is great in that you can carry lots of books in the same space you'd carry a thin paperback.  But it's a machine.  You have to be careful not to drop it or get it wet, and if the battery dies, all the light in the world won't get you to that next chapter of The Pride of Chanur, or The Arabian Nights, or even Oliver Twist.  And if there's a nasty power surge while you're recharging and the hard drive goes kaput, so does your compact little library...unless you backed it all up on yet another machine.  Honestly, a real book is so little trouble by comparison.  At least, I think so.

So I will never get a Kindle.  Which, unfortunately, means I will also never get to read all those in-between stories about the Young Wizards (some of whom are cats--there's an entire e-novel about them that I just found out about).  If I sound like I'm whining, well--maybe I am.  But too much screen time isn't very good for people's eyes, filters or no filters.  Science has shown that reading a real book before retiring is better for your sleep cycle than staring at a phone, TV, computer...or Kindle.  And I'm one of those people who actually can't get to sleep without reading a couple of short stories or a chapter from a novel.

Long ago, when Stephen King wrote The Green Mile as an e-book serial, he subsequently had each chapter published in physical form, then expanded and combined the chapters into an actual novel.  He understood that he had fans who might not be computer-literate, or who might--like me--prefer printed words on paper.  Diane doesn't seem to know that she has fans who still read physical books;  she may think all her readers are wealthy kids who get the newest e-reader every Christmas.  But if so, she's sadly mistaken.

Or maybe she's saving trees.  It does take wood pulp to create paper.  But there are sustainable forest initiatives, and paper is recyclable...and a physical book can be regifted to a friend, donated to a library, sold to a secondhand store, or traded in at the nearest Little Free Library!

But at least Diane seems unaware that she's snubbing people.  Other writers, like Charles Stross, revel in techno-snobbery;  if the stupid yahoos won't embrace the Technology Revolution, why, they deserve to miss out on the latest installment of that hero who started out on paper but has since uploaded to the Internet, where he and his in-the-know fans can live happily ever after, far away from the Great Unwashed who still write with ink pens.

But technology, besides being fragile, is shallow.  And no society lasts forever.  And when they finally get around to digging up the remnants of the USA, what will they find that will actually tell them anything about us?  Laptops?  Xboxes?  Kindles?

Or...maybe...books?

That's where I'm laying my bets.  Too bad I won't be around to collect my winnings.

The Homeless Question

I've lived in my town for over two decades now, and a lot has changed.

When I first moved here, a car could only turn left on an arrow.  Now it can "yield on green," which I translate as "turn whenever you like and hope everyone else stops for you"--which is a danger to everyone, especially pedestrians who are trying to cross on their own signal (more on that in another post).

Also, Wal-Mart played nice with the surrounding businesses--in fact, it lived right next to a grocery store, and it was perfect.  You bought groceries from the grocery store, and clothes and shoes at Wal-Mart.  No problemo.  Then Sam Walton passed on, and his remaining family started doing dark experiments on his creation, and now we have an evil mutant corporation that is presently trying to devour the world.  They built a big prison-block building just outside of town, and they not only sell clothes and shoes (none of which are made in the USA--ol' Sam's probably spinning in his grave), but also groceries, tires, gasoline, computers, chain saws, et cetera, ad nauseam.  Many of our native business species have withered and died because of Wally World's shady dealings.

Oh, and we used to have a fish place.  Not a very good one, but at least you could get a broiled tilapia dinner.  That place is now history, and nobody else has ever decided to replace it...although there are several Mexican and Chinese restaurants.  And we have enough fast-food burger joints to give this entire town permanent indigestion.

But the newest change, the one that fills me with the most dismay, is our growing homeless problem.

Now, there have always been a few homeless around.  One old dude wandered around dressed in full fatigues, carrying a knapsack that looked like WWII military surplus, leaning on a walking stick.  His hair and beard were wild and overgrown, and he was freaky tin-hat crazy.  How do I know?  Because he used to go up to pay phones, pick up the receiver, and just start talking.  I was passing by one day as he did this, and he kept repeating that "at 7 a.m. on this date, war is declared...repeat: at 7 a.m. on this date..."  And no, it was not the anniversary of December 8th, 1941.  So yeah--crazy.

We also had a halfway house in town, and patients from there would occasionally wander into the local diners to try to beg a free cup of coffee.  The waitresses and owners were informed by the folks who ran the house that coffee interfered with the patients' meds, so that stopped.  Those same patients would beg a cigarette from passers-by--sometimes it worked, sometimes not.

And one young man was a violent case;  he once threatened a coffee-shop manager, who called the cops on him.  Another time, he walked into a restaurant, went up to the buffet line, and began picking up food and eating it right there.  When asked to leave, he got belligerent.  Again, the cops were called, and nobody in town ever saw him again.

But what I'm seeing now is something way different.  I'm talking about people who step into your path and beg for money from you.  Sometimes they ask for a cigarette, or for food--but most times, it's cash they want.  And there are a lot of these folks.  One kid, who was carrying a cell phone worth about as much as I earn on one paycheck, tried to get a little spare change from me.  I said no.  Seriously, I could not believe this guy's chutzpah.

There's one guy who rides a bike up to a busy intersection, lays the bike in the grass nearby, then stands there with a sign all day.  Seriously?!  What blows my mind is that there are hundreds of cars that pass that way, and if only 50 of those cars stop and give him money--say two bucks each--then that guy has just made more in a day than I do at my job.  And he's not a skinny dude, so he must be eating regular, if not balanced, meals.

I always feel a little guilty refusing these folks, because my faith teaches me to be generous to those in need.  But how much need are they in when they always smell of alcohol, seem to have plenty of cigarettes, wear nice sneakers, and carry smart phones?  I'm getting seriously mixed signals here.

Apparently, I'm not the only one, because signs are beginning to sprout in business windows:  No Loitering.  No Public Restroom.  No Soliciting.  I have no doubt that people are beginning to petition our city council to Do Something.

Church groups have been trying;  they give away food and clothing, and at times vouchers for overnight motel stays.  But these are Band-Aid solutions that don't solve the underlying problems.

Some of them are mentally ill and need treatment, but unless they're violent, you can't call the cops and get them off the street.  Strike one.

Many of them are healthy enough to work, but when offered day labor by well-meaning people--farmers wanting help with setting fence posts, townies wanting help cleaning up a yard or moving junk out of the back shed--the homeless refuse.  They simply want the money given to them.  Strike two.

There are some who do, in fact, have jobs;  but only part-time ones at minimum wage, and housing is so expensive here (we have two colleges and an air base in our ambit) that they can't afford the deposit-plus-first-month's-rent it takes to even move in to a place.  Strike three.

So, what to do?  These days, I don't give money to the homeless.  If I have food, I'll offer it, and if they refuse, I go on.  I donate instead to organizations like the Salvation Army or one of the job-training charities.

But my guess is, the city council is going to get tough with this problem.  It won't get solved--nobody can fix people who don't want to be fixed--but if our leading citizens start passing anti-squatting and anti-panhandling laws, as has been done in surrounding towns, most of the homeless will move on to the next soft-hearted town in line.

And the problem will continue.  Just somewhere else.

Komics Kerfuffle

Okay, I'm shouting it from the rooftops:

There are only two comic strips I have ever truly enjoyed on a consistent basis:  Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, and Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller.  After Watterson retired, Non Sequitur became the only good reason to turn to the comics page.  Other strips might occasionally warrant a chuckle, or a brief time stuck to the fridge;  but Non Sequitur nearly always did.  The only times it didn't were when the fridge was already overloaded and I wasn't ready to let the displayed ones go yet.  Whether it was animal predators acting as business folk (and using their carnivorous natures in a manner that seems oddly appropriate to today's corporate world), the adventures of Danae (notice what her name rhymes with?) and her family (including, oddly enough, a horse), the whoppers of Eddie the Yankee fisherman (whose cat always rides on his shoulder as he sails his boat, the Anoesis--which means, according to the Urban Dictionary, an emotional response to something without understanding it), or all the cute cats and dogs (you can tell Wiley knows both, because he draws them in such realistic postures--my personal fave in that genre [still on the fridge!] is titled "The most ergonomic laptop for stress reduction", featuring a man relaxing in an armchair with both his cat and his dog peacefully sleeping on his lap...get it?), this strip just doesn't quit.

Unfortunately, it's now in danger, because Wiley goofed up.

About a month and a half ago, the Sunday Non Sequitur was a black-and-white "coloring page" featuring anthropomorphic ursines of the "Bearnaissance."  Fine so far...but in one of the sketches, depicting invention diagrams and notes by "Leonardo Bearvinci,"  one of the notes, waaay down in the corner, was a scribbled suggestion that a certain current President should go and engage in  reflexive sexual intercourse.

I'll wait while you work that one out...and then tell you that no, Wiley didn't say "fudge."

When I first heard about this controversy, I went back through my old Sunday comic pages to see if I'd bought that paper.  Turns out I had;  but I'd been so impatient for the resumption of a continuing storyline called "Nebbish" (about a mute simpleton around whom miracles happen, and who is being exploited by an evil duke who wants to take over the world), that I'd simply looked at the coloring page and dismissed it.  But now, I took off my glasses and peered very closely at each panel...and sure enough, it was there, though barely readable.

Now,  before you go collapse on your fainting couch, or tsk-tsk about how horrible it is that someone would drop the F-bomb into a comics page where children could see it, let's step away from our own anoesis and get some perspective.

Wiley says it was a scribble written only for himself, which he intended to white out later but forgot. 

I actually believe this to be true, for two reasons.  The first is that these strips are drawn quite a while in advance;  if Wiley follows a process similar to Watterson's, he was working on the "Bearnaissance" strip at least a couple of weeks--maybe even a month--before it was published, along with the six daily strips sandwiched between Sunday strips.  Erasing a scribble dashed off in a moment of irritation could easily get lost in the shuffle.  Which brings me to the second reason:  the government shutdown was in full swing when that strip was drawn, and the awfulness of the situation--that a mean clown-President with orange cotton candy on his head could throw a veto-powered hissy fit because Congress thought six billion dollars had better uses than building a border wall--would have tried the considerable patience of St. Teresa of Calcutta (you probably still know her as Mother Teresa).  I'd have needed to vent, myself;  and I might very well have forgotten to use that correction-fluid pen, too.

Besides all this, how did Wiley's syndicate editor not catch that scribble before it ever went out?  If a sharp-eyed reader could do it, a paid editor surely should have;  if he/she had, there would have been a supersonic e-mail sent--"Hey Wiley, what's with this strip?  You can't put this in the Sunday funnies!"  "Oh, shit, did I forget to erase that?  Thanks for the save, Ed!"

But alas, 'twas not to be.

And then, Wiley goofed again.

After the strip ran, and angry readers began contacting their papers, he tried to pass the scribble off as an intentional "Easter egg,"  thinking that might solve the problem.  Instead, it made things worse, and his apology for the mistake rang hollow with newspaper editors and layout folk, who were not amused. 

And papers began to cancel Non Sequitur.

Interesting thing here...

I was scrolling through a list of these cancellations, and many of them sounded nearly the same, if not exactly so:  that it wasn't the insult to Trump, it was the F-word that tipped the scales.  This smacks more of a corporate party line than a decision by individual newspaper editors.  Given that only a handful of super-rich moguls own nearly all our country's newspapers, the odds are in favor of my conclusion.

"But, Lisa, you can't have the Queen Mother of Dirty Words in a Sunday comic."

Yeah, but...the man has been writing and drawing this strip since 1992.  Nearly 10,000 strips later, he makes one mistake--two, counting his CYA maneuver.  Was it stupid?   Yep.  Immature?  I agree.  Worth ruining his livelihood?  Sorry, no.  Especially since his own editors were asleep at the wheel, too, and if Wiley needs firing, so does his entire syndicate--sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, right?

So what now?

If your local newspaper was one of the ones that cancelled Non Sequitur (mine was), and if you love this comic as much as I do (or at least believe in  freedom of expression and giving folks a second chance), there are a few things you can do. 

One is call or write your paper.  Get all your friends to do it, too.  Tell the folks on the other end that you want Non Sequitur back.  If you subscribe, tell them you'll cancel if they don't restore it;  if you don't subscribe, tell them you'll stop buying copies.  Given how expensive a newspaper is these days, that might be an easy breakaway.

Another thing is, follow the strip on gocomics.com.  It's an awesome site, and setting up a free account is easy.

Also, find a paper that hasn't cancelled Non Sequitur and subscribe.  This is a good option if you're like me and prefer a physical newspaper.  If said paper is far away, however, you will probably have to pay extra for shipping, plus you'll get the news a couple days late.  On the plus side, you'll get a broader perspective on the state of the nation!

Finally, write a supportive e-mail.  Wiley Miller's e-mail address is wileyink@earthlink.net. 

In closing...

I've spent a lot of time on this issue, haven't I?

But I wouldn't have done so if I didn't believe that Wiley's comic is a real treasure that we should fight to preserve.  If a few fat cats who own a bunch of papers can dictate what comic strips we see and cancel the ones they don't like over some flapette du jour,  and if we just let them do it, then we're actually aiding and abetting censorship. 

And I won't do that.

Fun With Crazy Stupid Cold!

According to my calendar, it's March 3rd.  But according to my thermometer, it's more like mid-January.  And we just had another six inches of snow dumped on us, just when the last of the dirty drifts from February's snow/ice extravaganza had finally melted off!

I note these things because this sort of situation used to happen every year when I was a kid, although the earliest cold snap usually happened around Thanksgiving, we almost always had snow by Christmas, and the final melt was over by mid-March.  But the last time we had this much snow in recent memory was a few years back, when we got several rounds of 3-4 inches, including a surprise winter storm in early May.  That year was so cold, I literally had to run the heat for half an hour to get the house hot enough for the inspector to properly test my AC...and that was in mid-May.

However, the weather has become wildly unpredictable; it might be what I consider a "normal winter" one year, with the temps being brrr-cold and appropriate precipitation falling...and the next, we might have light-jacket weather in December and tornado warnings in February (been there more than once).  Summers are worse:  the temps might be moderate, with so much rain that basements all over the state leak...or it could be like 2012, when we would have welcomed even a rip-roaring severe storm if only it would save the grass from crunching under our feet, and when the only flowers that thrived were the blue chicory growing along the highways.  (That year, I watered my foundations so much, I was surprised the house didn't grow another story higher.)

But right now, the temperature is falling to an expected overnight low of a handful of degrees above zero, and tomorrow won't even reach 10 above.  In other words, it's freakin' cold.

I mention all this because I've been a pedestrian all my life, and I know how to dress for whatever weather is out there.  It's all common sense.  Yet all around me, I see evidence that the general population is growing steadily wimpier.  For example:  hardly anybody shovels their sidewalks anymore.  Even most of the businesses on my shank's-mare commute to work don't do it.  Don't ask me why.  I do mine whenever we get more than an inch of snow, just in case somebody might want to walk somewhere besides out in the road...but that, you see, is the other thing:  people don't walk anymore to get places.  Why would they, when they can drive?  And those same businesses who won't shovel their sidewalks always plow out their parking lots.  But hey, y'all--I notice which businesses don't do their sidewalks, and I choose where to shop accordingly.  Because if they don't care how hard it is for me to walk past their building, then they don't want my money very badly, do they?

And then there's the fact that everything seems to shut down when it gets into the single digits.  The list of churches that decided to cancel their evening services tonight was disheartening.  I mean, there wasn't even any ice!  And the parking lots, at least, would be plowed out, right?  I mean, come on!!!

I get asked a lot why I walk all the time.  Why I don't get a car.  And don't I know I could get frostbite?  Well...maybe.  But if you're acclimated, the cold doesn't affect you like it does most of the hothouse flowers around you--the people who leave a heated house to get into a heated car (thanks to new technology, you can point a little remote and start that car from inside the house) and drive to a heated workplace.  In fact, if you get out and walk in the extreme cold, you actually reap some health benefits.  Like, fresher air...and when you're out while it's snowing, there's a clean crispness to the air that nobody has ever succeeded in imitating or bottling for sale.  And you catch fewer colds, because you're not breathing the same indoor air as all your sick colleagues...or at least, not as much.  Oh, and walking through a few inches of powdery snow is a lot like using an elliptical trainer at the gym!

So, yeah, that's why.  Want to brave the elements yourself?  Here's some common-sense advice:

1) Layer Up.  A few light layers will warm you better than one big, heavy coat, and will give you better freedom of movement.  And be sure you cover your head accordingly--you lose a lot of your body heat upward.  Wear breathable inner layers so you don't get sweaty (and then feel clammy), and tough, insulated outer layers to keep the heat in.  Wear a scarf around your neck and a hat that covers your ears, and if you have a hood on your outer layer, pull it up and cinch it tight.  My fave head/neck hack is to wear an under layer with the hood pulled up, then a long scarf wrapped over my head, then around my neck (like in Fiddler on the Roof--in fact, that's where I got the idea!), then outer hood up and tight over it all.

And thermal underwear is your friend, especially during the deep-freeze times.

2) Take Time.  Let's face it--it's gonna take you longer to get places when you walk, especially if there's snow and ice on the ground.  So be prepared to take some extra time.  As a general rule, I allow twice as much time on snowy days for my commute as I do on dry days.  If you're not sure how long it will take you to get somewhere you need to be, try a "test walk" to the place on a day you don't have to be there, and keep track of your time.

3) Keep Your Balance!  About that frozen stuff on the ground...you'll need proper footwear.  For ice, there are neat spiked things that stretch right over your shoes (check the size range on the box);  for snow, you can either wear plain boots and carry your regular shoes in a bag (an old plastic grocery bag is fine), or you can wear galoshes that fit right over your shoes (that's my usual thing).  If you go for the galoshes, try not to walk on the bare ground in them--it will wear them out faster.

4) Carry What You Need.  Remember that you won't be able to just dump a bunch of stuff in your car and go.  You have to plan for the day, and only carry what you will need.  Trust me, unless you have to carry a Crock-Pot to a church potluck, you can probably do it.  Invest in a tough, roomy, good-quality messenger bag, and you can practically travel to another city and survive (yes, you can even fit in a change of underwear and some toiletries, and yes, I have done that).

5) Once You're Out There, Look Around!  Because there is a lot to see.  Pass the same trees every day, and you get to know who lives in them, how close they are to leafing out, and where those broken branches are healing from that wind storm two years back.  And you'll see--and hear--the big V's of migrating geese overhead.  The first crocuses and daffodils will cheer you up, and I swear, you can smell changes in the weather.  Not to mention the new people you'll meet.  But watch out for the cars, because they're not always watching out for you!

And that's pretty much it.  Hey, maybe I'll see you on the sidewalk sometime...if they shoveled it, that is...

Can We Please Be Sane About The 2nd Amendment?

Seen Recently...

"In God We Trust - The Guns Are Just Backup"  (T-shirt featuring an eagle with an assault rifle in each talon)

"Trespassers Will Be Shot.  Survivors Will Be Shot Again"  (Metal sign)

"We Don't Dial 911"  (Bumper sticker;  also on t-shirt showing a pistol pointing at the observer)

"Keep Back - Driver Carries Only $20 Worth Of Ammo"  (Bumper sticker)

"Don't Mess With My Family - Faith - Firearms - Freedom"  (T-shirt)

Wow.

When I was a little kid, the NRA was the organization that taught you how to safely handle a gun.  I don't know how political they were, but they didn't seem to be as much about advocating for gun ownership as they are now;  they were more about making sure that people who did own guns used them wisely.

How times have changed.

When the Bill of Rights was first written, the most advanced firearm was the single-shooter.  It wasn't very accurate, and in order to reload, you had to use a ramrod to tamp in gunpowder and a little lead ball.  (There were, of course, cannons...but the same principle applied, on a larger scale.)  On a battlefield of that age, you had one line of men firing at the enemy, then stooping to reload while the men behind them took their turn to fire.  Close-in fighting was done with knives, bayonets, and sabers (those weapons carried by the officers weren't just for show).  And most of the weapons named above had other uses in civilian life, such as hunting or self-defense.  A man with a good knife could survive quite well in the wilderness, if he had a bit of knowledge to go with it.

So when the Founding Fathers wrote,  "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,"  they were thinking of  something quite different than what we have today.

Okay, So Here's What I'm Reading...

The English of the Constitution looks kind of weird, doesn't it?  And of all its articles and amendments, the 2nd is the one folks have the most trouble with.  That's because it's one long sentence with its clauses separated only by commas.  My high-school English teachers would have red-penciled it and given me an F.  I can see the comments now:  "Unclear sentence structure."  "Is this a single thought in three parts, or three separate thoughts?"  "Comma placement confuses your intended meaning."  And one of my instructors would have written simply:  "Run-on sentence."  (She thought shorter was better, and she loathed semicolons--she said they made for lazy writing.)

But if you break the amendment into its components, you notice that each part of it proceeds naturally from the part before it.  Here's my layman's rendition:

1)We need a trained group of people who can fight.
2) We need them to help keep our country free.
3) Therefore, we have the right to own and use weapons as part of this fighting group.

See, since the time of the Revolution, our armed forces has always been made up of Joe Blow and all his kinfolk.  They had their guns that they hunted with, and the knives they skinned deer with, and they took those to war with them.  The idea of military-issued weaponry didn't exist at the time.  And when we became a real country with a real government, even though we were small, the idea of the "citizen militia" remained - each citizen being trained to use his own weapons to defend his community, his state, and his country alongside his neighbors, whenever they were called to do so.  (The later formation of the National Guard is perhaps the best example of the "well-regulated Militia" spoken of in the 2nd Amendment, but I consider local law enforcement groups to be in that category as well.)

Now, weapons have changed a lot since the 1700's.  One man with an AK-50, or an M-16, or even a converted AR-15, can do a lot to defend his country...or, as we have seen in recent years, he can create a lot of mayhem.  The mayhem is why we need to revise our understanding of the 2nd Amendment.

Two Things To Consider

The first is, there have always been limits.

Don't believe me?  Try carrying a machete in a scabbard.  Yeah, just walk around with it, and tell everybody you meet that you're exercising your second-amendment rights.  After all, "arms" means anything you can use as a weapon, right?

Maybe so...but you could be arrested just the same.  Same thing if you're carrying a switchblade, or a belt full of throwing stars, or even, in some states, a Taser or a can of Mace.  In my state, the legal length on a knife blade is about pocket-knife length for concealed carry, but for open-carry it varies from state to state, and often cities and towns have their own variations.  Once, when I went in for jury selection, I accidentally carried a large Phillips-head screwdriver into our courthouse--it was in an inner coat pocket because I had forgotten and taken it home from work, and I was intending to return it to its niche on my next shift.  Of course, I set off the metal detector, and the cop took the screwdriver away.  After the jury was chosen and I was free to go, I had the devil's own time convincing that cop to let me have my screwdriver back.  When he finally returned it, I was sternly warned never to bring such a thing in again.

And if you remember, during the Prohibition era, sawed-off shotguns and Tommy guns were also considered illegal, mostly because that's what the gangsters carried.  Up until recently, carrying a large number of guns in your car could get you in trouble, and in some states it still will.  And even a single legal firearm becomes illegal if you conceal it in your car or truck, depending on where you live.

The second thing is, times have changed.

You know, even the Wild West wasn't as wild as the movies portrayed it.  Many towns had their own gun-control laws, often requiring visitors to check their guns and knives at a hotel or with the local law office.  You'd get a token saying that you had done so, and when you were ready to leave town, you turned in your token and got your weapons back.  If this sounds draconian, remember that this was the edge of the wilderness, and folks living out there got used to making their own way by hook or by crook (pun intended).  Coming into town, however, meant being willing to abide by community statutes intended to protect the residents.  In many places, if you weren't willing to do that, you could keep on riding, because that town wouldn't welcome you.

Nowadays, there's almost no wilderness left, and when you go out to hunt, it's at set seasons, with set weaponry and a limit on what and how much you can bag.  If you carry a gun in a city for self-defense, you are just as likely to provoke an attack as to fend off a bad guy already intent on attacking you.  And if you fire a gun into the air on the Fourth of July or New Year's Eve...well, that's illegal now.  Why?  Because what goes up must come down, and in a densely-populated area, that means your chance of committing involuntary manslaughter with that random bullet becomes depressingly good.

In the past, there were crazies out there, just like now;  but again, we live closer together nowadays.  So the crazy guy with a gut full of dope or liquor and a gun in his hand is even more dangerous than he was in the old days.  And the gun is not a single-shot dueling pistol anymore;  it could be a six-shooter, or the Luger he captured from a dead German back in WWII, or even a Glock or a Magnum...you know, like Dirty Harry's.  Do you feel lucky?  Well, do you, punk? 

Oh, and then there are the people who are just plain mad as hell, and they're not gonna take it anymore...and they're using firearms to solve the problem that made them mad.  Kids who get bullied and go shoot up their school...spouses who open fire on their partners...drive-by shootings...et cetera, ad nauseam.  Now that we all live in such close proximity, such events become more common and cause more loss of life.

So What Do We Do?

A gun is made to kill--whether an animal or a human, it doesn't really matter.  As I noted before, hunting is regulated;  but killing a human is murder.  Sometimes killing a person is necessary, but only within the bounds of law enforcement, and the cops who kill had better be damned sure they're firing on a bona-fide Bad Guy...because once it's done, they can't resurrect the vic and say,  "Oh sorry, we goofed--no hard feelings?"

And that is the real answer:  we need to think.

Notice I haven't mentioned knives, or swords, or throwing stars, or Mace or Tasers or even screwdrivers, for quite a few paragraphs.  That's because even though many of those items are lethal, they're chancier than a gun.  A couple of simple self-defense movements can disarm somebody who has one of those items, and if all else fails, you can run away and have a good chance of survival.  But any fool with a steady hand can pull a trigger and send a high-speed ballistic missile into another person's body, and even a quick movement on your part isn't faster than that.  And even if you have a gun too, it won't gain you anything if the Bad Guy has the drop on you.

It would be nice if we could read minds and tell who was a crazy, or a criminal, or an angry person right off.  But since we can't, here's what we should do instead:

1) Wait.  By this, I mean there ought to be a waiting period for all firearms purchases.  Time has a way of giving perspective to what we intend to do.  If you really still want to kill your wife after three days, you might be ready to consider counselling instead.  Which brings me to...

2) Some states have laws forbidding gun ownership to those with a history of mental illness or domestic abuse.  Laws like this should be tightened, plus there should be involuntary-commital laws to get these dangerous people off the streets, with therapy and meds available for those who can be fixed.  It has to be a two-pronged attack, or it won't help.

3) Registry of all legal firearms.  Those who are against this are just plain silly.  Sure, carrying a gun is a right...but so is voting, and we have to register to do that, too, and for the same reason:  so that no one abuses or misuses that right!  And if you could report your registered weapon as stolen, think how much easier it would be to find it, and the thief who stole it, before he could sell it or commit another crime with it.  "But I don't want the government to know what guns I have, or how many."  But you're happy to tell the cops all that if you get robbed, right?  Why not before?

4) Trigger locks, or some kind of smart tech.  This is mainly to prevent accidents, in particular when kids find Mom's handgun and start playing with it.  Failing this, how about a gun safe with a key?  Also, kids should be trained from their earliest years that guns are serious business.  You can shoot out more than your eye with a .38.  And speaking of that...

5) Training should be required for all gun users.  I would suggest a two-month course of at least police quality, in which a person is trained both how and when to use a gun.  Remember, the amendment talks about a "well-regulated Militia," right?  That involves training.  And no, the cops on the street don't always get it right, but a civilian is better off with the training than without.

6) Change the mindset.  Here in this country, we love our guns.  We seem to think they can actually solve our problems.  But other countries don't think the way we do, and I don't think it's an accident that the violent-crime stats are lower in many other developed countries than they are here.  I don't believe it's that they have better gun control;  it's that they have a better way of thinking--about guns, sure, but also about crime, punishment, mental illness, and even about social interaction.  Would we really feel like we need a gun if we actually knew our neighbors?  (I'm betting Trayvon Martin would still be alive if George Zimmerman had actually known Trayvon's dad's fiancee, and known that the boy and his dad were visiting.)  A gun is only an object.  But as long as we Americans keep thinking of it as a solution, things will never get better. 

The Apocalyptic Rock Fight, Part 2: How Did The Whole Thing Start?

Having written about my first clash with the anti-rock forces in the Christian church (and by this, I mean all the denominations represented in my town), I now proceed to how the war between the two began.  And guess what?  It all started with...racism.

You see, rock was derived from the blues and jazz, which were primarily black musical forms.  (When white people appropriated jazz, it turned into Big Band music.  Whether that was better or not depends on whether you prefer Glenn Miller or Count Basie.)  There was some "cowboy music" (country) mixed in, as well as gospel...but for the most part, the establishment considered it "race music," and it worried them.

(The irony here is that their parents worried about the music young people listened to when it was just jazz, country, and blues...and I bet the Stephen Foster generation worried about ragtime!  Honestly...nothing new under the sun here!)

The main worry, as far as I have been able to tell, is that the first real rock and roll was performed by black musicians, and the white kids were listening to it and enjoying it.  But if black kids also liked it, why, there might be one of these performances attended by both races!  And they might get all het up and start dancing!  Together!  And before you know it, you'd have the races getting mixed up--hanging out together, dating, even marrying!  The God-given idea of white supremacy would be destroyed!  Alas and alack, civilization would be doomed!!!

All right, perhaps not all the adults had that attitude.  But many did, and those people went out of their way to throw as much mud on this new form of music as possible.  Race music, they called it.  Jungle rhythms, demon beat, savage, uncouth, uncivilized...anything to discredit it.  Failing that, white artists were brought in to re-record some of those first rock records, to at least keep the races apart...but what that did was make young people ask questions.  Like, why is it bad for black and white people to hang out together?  Why is this music so bad, if all it's saying is have fun, dance, and love your girlfriend or boyfriend?  Oh, and by the way, why are we fighting in these far-away places with strange-sounding names?  The lack of satisfactory answers brought us the hippie movement, and music that was even more rebellious than the original songs.  And that brought on some truly weird backlash...

But that's another chapter.

The 10 Best (And Worst) Christmas Song Worms

It's all over.

The commercial Christmas season, I mean.  That means the ubiquitous Christmas music is gone, too.  Hey, have you noticed that no matter how early a store starts up its Christmas playlist, it disappears on December 26th?  Just something to make you go "hmmm..."

As I said, it takes me til at least Epiphany to recover from it all; but now that I have, I'd like to share my best and worst of the music that assaulted my ears from Black Friday through Christmas Eve.  (My company is closed Christmas Day.  And New Year's Day.  Yay us!)

Sooo...First: The 10 Worst!  (in no particular order)

10) Baby It's Cold Outside - Not for the reason you think.  In fact, I had only recently noticed that line about "what's in this drink?"  But all along I'd been bothered by the lack of chivalry in the song.  The girl wants to go home, so why doesn't the man escort her?  He could go ahead of her and break a path, right?  And it certainly would give him some "nice man" points with her family.  But then, I guess he's not a nice man, is he?

9) Santa Baby - Aaarrrggghhhh!!!!!  The version by Eartha Kitt was kind of nice, kind of naughty, kind of "eeewwww"...at least to me, since it sort of sounded like Eartha wanted a little something else from Santa besides all those expensive gifts.  But at least it was tolerable.  But, the version our store got was the one by Taylor Swift.  If you hear that three or four times a day, I guarantee you will be ready to bash in your company's sound system with a sledge hammer.  I mitigated that desire by going home and listening to track 2 of Peter Gabriel's "So" instead.

8) Merry Christmas From The Family - I was raised among rednecks, but I definitely wasn't one.  This song hit a little too close to celebrations I have attended in the past.  Sorry, no desire to go back to that--that's why it's the past.

7) Hairy Christmas - I was tired of Duck Dynasty long before this song came out, for much the same reason as above.  Did we really need a Christmas song by these guys?  If so, why not a rendition of a popular carol, like "Joy To The World" or "The First Noel?"  They're supposed to be these upstanding Christians, right?  Instead, it's all about overdecorating, needless expenses (renting a camel all the way from Texas???), overeating...bleah, I can just shop at the mall if I want all that.

6) The Little Drummer Boy - Okay, I get it.  Little boy has nothing but his talent to give to Baby Jesus, and what he gives is acceptable.  Great message.  But...it's a terrible song!!!  Especially when it's done in country-music fashion.  The Harry Simeone Chorale version was at least sung by children, so it sounded authentic;  but still.  Boring to listen to again, and again, and again....

5) Blue Christmas - Yes, even Elvis's version.  As if the season weren't hard enough on folks who have lost loved ones or who have no loved ones at all.  This song should be registered as a dangerous incentive to commit suicide...or banned altogether.

4) I'll Be Home For Christmas - Because the singer lies to us!  At the beginning, he promises to be home for Christmas, but at the end he says "if only in my dreams."  That's a nasty bait and switch, if you ask me.

3) The Twelve Days Of Christmas - This song is for singing, not for listening.  'Nuff said.

2) O Holy Night - This is a hard song to sing, and hardly anyone gets it right.  And Mariah Carey can open every garage door in the neighborhood if you play her version!  I can only handle that once per season, okay?

1) Any Christmas Song Performed By Michael Buble - Nice voice, but the Christmas stuff is so overplayed....

And Now, The Best! (Whew!)

10) Christmas Wrapping - This song by the Waitresses came out in 1981, and the only thing dated about it is the year mentioned.  It's fun, it's clever, it has a happy ending, and you can even dance to it!  More than a novelty song--it's more like a 5-minute rom-com.

9) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - The Springsteen version, of course.  The fun he has bantering with his audience and his band mates, plus the neat twist he puts on that chorus...talk about breathing new life into an old song!  Other artists have started performing the song in that style, but accept no substitutes--the Boss's version rocks!

8) This Christmas - A lovely, jazzy number by Donny Hathaway that I discovered in the 80's.  So far I've never heard a bad version of it;  even country artists have treated it with respect.

7) Santa Claus And His Old Lady - Cheech and Chong still make me laugh with this one, but I doubt Rankin-Bass would approve of the urban-core vibe or the drug references.

6) Green Chri$tma$ - This was a sort of mini-musical sketch by Stan Freberg (who also famously lampooned "Dragnet," "Heartbreak Hotel" (he hated rock and roll), and the Mitch Miller version of "The Yellow Rose Of Texas").  In it, Scrooge is the director of a big ad firm, and Bob Cratchett is a company president questioning the constant Christmas tie-ins on everything from cigarettes to soda (yeah, you know which one), to beer and...toupees?  It's so funny you don't realize it's making you think.

5) Mele Kalikimaka - Man, who doesn't like this take on Christmas?  Especially when sung by Bing and the Andrews Sisters?  And if you're tired of ice and snow by now, it's a great daydream to have.  By the way, if you look closely, "mele kalikimaka" is just the Hawaiian phonetic pronunciation of "merry Christmas."

4) It's So Chic To Be Pregnant At Christmas - Nancy White wrote this song from her real-life experience.  Any woman who has been pregnant will appreciate the subject matter;  the rest of us will laugh in sympathy and (hopefully) have better manners and respect for the next pregnant lady we meet!

3) Until Santa's Gone (Milk And Cookies) - Clint Black won me over with this one about a little kid at Christmas who makes sure to leave the traditional snack out for Santa.  It's so authentic you want to hug that kid, whoever he might be.

2) O Come, O Come Emmanuel - Ha, bet you thought I didn't have any traditional ones on this list!  This one's my all-time favorite carol.  It's derived from an old Gregorian chant, so it actually sounds better without music.  It made me smile to hear it, the few times the system played it.  The more popular carols like "Silent Night" and "O Come All Ye Faithful" got way more airplay...

1) Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 - Otherwise known as the heavy-metal rendition of "Carol Of The Bells."  The Trans-Siberian Orchestra is awesome, but if you want to hear this song in context, listen to the Savatage album "Dead Winter Dead," which is about the Bosnian War and its effects on two particular opposing fighters.  Since I did that, I've never heard the TSO version without thinking of that old cellist.  (You'll get it once you hear the Savatage album.)

Well, there you have it.  Now you'll have to clean the song worms out of your ears again, but once you've done that, have a lovely rest of the winter!