A little Christmas cheer

The holidays used to be a wondrous, magical time - back when the kids were innocent little tykes who earnestly believed everything their parents told them, such as how Santa Claus would find a way in even though your house didn’t have a chimney, you better be good or you wouldn’t get any presents, and broccoli is an acquired taste.

Nowadays, though, as the kids grow older and wise up while the parents just get older and more wizened, it seems the tinsel has lost a bit of its luster. Around our house, the turning of the calendar page used to be accompanied by cries of delight: “It’s Christmas time again!” Lately, it’s coming out more like “It’s Christmas time again?”

Commercialization no doubt is to blame for much of the blasé attitude; after all, it’s hard to get but so excited about a holiday that starts as soon as the witches’ costumes go on sale and you begin to be bombarded with incessant inducements to single-handedly spend the republic out of its economic doldrums by purchasing overpriced merchandise to give to people you haven’t given a second thought to for the past year who don’t need any more stuff anyway and will probably return it for something else just as soon as the post-holiday sales gear up.

The commercialization has even filtered down to Christmas trees, which of course is a pretty big industry in this area. It’s a credit to the craftiness of the mountain people that they can get their supposedly more sophisticated neighbors down in the flatlands to shell out the equivalent of a week’s worth of groceries for, let’s face it, a piece of vegetation that is most emphatically living impaired.

But trees are one of the most beloved of holiday symbols, and the whole tree selection process is what usually gets the sap rising, so to speak, for the holiday fun ahead. In my family we all pile in the car and head off to the Christmas tree lot so that everyone can have a say in picking out the absolutely perfect specimen, which would metamorphose on the roof of the car on the ride home into a crooked, broken-branched pine that had mysteriously sprouted two trunks, some sort of alien-looking fungus on the bark and which required a chain saw to hack off the three feet of height needed to cram it in under the ceiling.

It is the father’s job, naturally, to string the lights on the tree, this being the technical aspect of the project and requiring great expertise in matters of a, well, technical nature, not to mention extensive experience in being mildly electrocuted by faulty wiring. It is the wife’s job to survey the light-stringing with a critical eye and pronounce that, yes, there are some blank spots on the tree and is that all the lights that are going to be put on the tree?

Over the years, I have accumulated enough strings of lights to decorate a middle-aged sequoia, so this year to forestall any criticism of shortlightedness I wrapped the tree up like a mummy, winding string after string of lights around and around. After inviting spousal perusal, my wife squinted, frowned and said it looked okay.

“Okay?” I said. “Just okay?”

“It’s … fine,” she amended.

“Fine?” I echoed, hearing the damning phrase of mediocrity. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing … really. It’s fine. Really.”

“So what are you saying? Really.”

“Nothing. It’s just that, well, a picky person might say that there was kind of a hole right there.”

“Right where?” I demand. “There? There’s not a branch there,” I declare smugly. “You can’t have lights where there isn’t a branch.” This is the kind of highly advanced technical expertise concerning light stringing about which mere ornament-hangers and tinsel-throwers don’t have a clue.

“How about this?” she asks sweetly, rearranging my carefully placed lights to fill the hole.

“How about we break out the eggnog?” I say.

Once the lights are on the tree, the hard-core decorating commences. Musty boxes are dragged out of the attic, each containing its own treasure trove of ornaments – most of them inexpensive, glittery gewgaws that are priceless in their sentimentality. These fragile balls and bells and snowflakes and candy canes and assorted members of the animal kingdom are what help make the whole tree experience so special. The ornaments carry the traditions of Christmas on from year to year, bringing forth memories of happy holidays gone by.

“All right, kids, c’mon and let’s decorate the tree,” I call out.

“Now?” they exclaim.

“What do you mean, ‘now?’ Of course, now.”

“But, Dad, I’m in the middle of this video game,” my teen-age son points out.

“And my favorite TV show is coming on,” my younger daughter yells down from her room.

I frown at my wife. “Remember,” I say, “when they would come in screaming with excitement to decorate the tree? Now they’re screaming from their rooms to be left alone.”

I shake my head. “Kids!” I holler up the steps. “C’mon. It’ll be fun. We’ll play some Christmas music and get out all the neat stuff for the tree.” To my wife I say, “Maybe we’ll need a touch more of that eggnog.”

The kids come dragging down the steps, faces long and eyes rolling. “So, Dad, where are the decorations?” my son asks.

I consider this. “Well,” I say, scratching my head, “Perhaps we could try these boxes scattered around the living room.”

They rummage in the boxes and desultorily begin to hang ornaments on the tree. My wife and I watch with satisfaction for a moment and then we join in, humming along to “Deck the Halls.”

“Um, son,” I say after a while. “That’s probably enough of those red balls, don’t you think?”

“Why?” he enquires.

“Well, you’ve got about 12 of them all hanging on three branches all together. Don’t you think you could spread them around a little?”

“Gee, Dad, you said you wanted us to help you decorate the tree. If you don’t like how I do it…”

“No, no,” I say hastily. “Here, why don’t you start in with this box?” I sigh and notice that my daughter is bending a branch to the breaking point with a heavy glass ornament.

“Sweetie, that’s not going to work,” I tell her.

Tears form in her eyes. “Well, how was I supposed to know that!” she wails. “I’m trying my best to do this, you know! You don’t have to yell at me!”

“I’m not yelling,” I say, my voice rising. “And you’re doing just fine. It’s just that ornament is too heavy … now what?” The kids are pushing and shoving.

“She grabbed the ornament I was going to hang,” my son informs me.

“Well, he took the one I wanted,” she fires back.

“Did not.”

“Did, too.”

“Enough!” I shout. “Can somebody turn that *&#$ music down? I can’t hear myself think in here. Sheesh, guys, c’mon, it’s Christmas. Can’t we all just get along?”

They glare at each other, arms crossed.

“Honey,” I say to my wife. “Maybe I’ll take a tad bit more of that eggnog. And you can leave off the egg.”

I flop down on the couch. “You know, guys,” I say, “We don’t have to have to do this.”

“Fine,” they humph.

“We don’t have to have a tree.”

“Great.”

“We don’t have to celebrate Christmas.”

“So what?”

“We don’t have to have any presents.”

They look at each other. They grab some ornaments.

“You know, Christmas is about more than trees and ornaments and presents,” I tell them. “It’s about peace and love and joy to the world.”

“We know, Dad,” they say. “We’re sorry.”

“Good,” I reply. “Your mom and I are going to sit on the couch for a bit and enjoy some good cheer. You guys work on the tree for awhile.”

“Sure, Dad,” they chorus.

“And when you get done,” I add, “you can start on the outdoor lights.”

What makes you think we're not serious about this alleged global warming thing?

Gee, can't we all just get along?

"The European Union threatened on Thursday to boycott U.S. talks among top greenhouse gas emitting nations, accusing Washington of blocking goals for fighting climate change at U.N. talks in Bali."

I thought the point was to reduce hot air, not add to it.

"The December 3-14 Bali talks are split over the guidelines for starting two years of formal negotiations on a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a U.N. pact capping greenhouse gas emissions of all industrial nations except the United States until 2012.

Washington, long at odds with many of its Western allies on climate policies, has called a meeting of 17 of the world's top emitters, including China, Russia and India, in Hawaii late next month to discuss long-term cuts.

President George W. Bush intends the Honolulu meeting to be part of a series of talks to feed into the U.N. process. Washington hosted a similar meeting in September, which attracted few top officials and achieved little."

Ho, ho, ho!

This came just in time for the holidays. We wouldn't want to put any undue burdens on smokers and we certainly don't want to give the middle class any breaks.

Front Page News

With all the bad news in sports today, it's nice to read some good news for a change. Instead of incessantly focusing on big-time athletics at major sports factories all the time, the national media would be well served to go out and find more of these type stories. It's also nice to hear sportscasters finally learning how to pronounce the name of the school properly (it's App-uh-LATCH-un State).

Merry Christmas

‘Tis the season to be dismayed
‘Cause the holiday spirit’s been waylaid.
It’s all about buying and how much you spend;
Carols we heard while pumpkins still grinned.

And look at what we’ve made of the world;
A litany of horrors we have unfurled.
Gas prices so high they make your blood boil,
Though at least they’re lower than home heating oil.

Fixing global warming, they say, is just not doable;
Scorching the earth is much more affordable.
Our health care system is ailing and unwell,
Bank loans are needed for the drugs that they sell.

It seems every week there’s a new tragedy
So much pain and suffering and sad misery.
People dying, Big Brother spying, politicians dividing;
It all makes you want to give up and start crying.

But before we lose faith in this old human race
Perhaps we just need to put our priorities in place
And know that if it’s a season of excess
Then let’s make greed the key to success.

Let’s go out and spend money like a house afire
And buy stuff for those whose needs are more dire.
Let’s cook enough food to feed a whole army
And give it to those who often go hungry.

Time is fleeting, it goes by so fast
You can’t buy it back, so make it last.
Spend a few moments with those who are lonely.
And don’t dread the time with your own family.

See, Christmas is about peace and goodwill;
Not who ends up with the biggest Visa bill.
It’s about love and caring and what we hold dear,
So dig deep and spread lots of holiday cheer.

Their Bark Is Worse Than Their Bite

Life sometimes can be more offensive than intended in this age of political correctness.

Take these seemingly harmless phrases: thorn in the side, knotty problem, uprooted, blooming idiot, out on a limb, nut case, fruitcake, going bananas, shady deal, sticks and stones breaking bones, wooden acting.

Offensive? Hardly, at least to the vast majority of people. Yet to one group these phrases are all crude epithets, objectionable beyond belief.

The Specimens of Arboreal Persuasion Promotion Society, or SAPPS for short, wants to stop what they view as sordid slander of trees. They denounce the casual use of denigrating words and phrases that they feel do irreparable harm to the reputation and essential well-being of trees. They want people to cease treating trees as second-class species and give them the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness – or at least as much happiness as is possible for entities that must depend upon third parties for a satisfying sexual experience.

But SAPPS know they have stereotypes to slash and burn, barriers to bulldoze, and skepticism to hack down. So to accomplish their purpose, the group’s ultimate goal is to restrict election to Congress and other higher offices such as dog catcher to – get this – trees. Yes, as unlikely as it seems, SAPPS wants the upper branches of your government populated by a veritable forest of lofty flora of both the deciduous and evergreen varieties.

It is not for us in a free and open society to criticize or condemn anyone’s beliefs, as wooden-headed as they may be. But it should concern all of us when a group complains that what we take for innocent and innocuous expressions unwittingly cause harm and hurt.

So it is with these tree expressions, which all have exceedingly negative connotations, according to SAPPS, and generally reflect poorly on trees – undermining their chances for electoral victory, much less for societal advancement, a difficult enough endeavor for a species that is rooted to the ground.

Moreover, just where would we be, the group argues, without wood, pointing out that the extensive contributions of trees to the historical development of civilization is all too often overlooked in textbooks. Why, without wood, they say, Columbus would never have made it across the Atlantic unless he was prepared to swim or try to sail a boat carved out of stone, in which case he might today be credited with discovering a New World at the bottom of the ocean.

In addition, SAPPS say trees make critical contributions to the health of humans, providing shade in the increasingly hot weather and helping recycle the air that we breathe. Trees house us and feed us and even provide sap to put on our pancakes. They provide paper for us to write on. And unlike humans, deceased trees have the common decency to fall down where they stand and decompose, thereby replenishing the life-giving soil. SAPPS feels strongly that it’s just not right for one species to treat another with such disrespect.

Largely through the efforts of SAPPS and similar groups, the government is finally contemplating a crackdown on offensiveness. A study commission is in fact now examining the issue and is expected to recommend nothing short of a total ban on affronts, insults, and general offenses to the senses.

If offensiveness is made illegal, civil libertarians no doubt will want to know how anyone will know what constitutes an offense. Simple. It’s just like obscenity; nobody knows exactly what it is or how to define it, but everybody knows it when they see it.

Rulings on offensiveness ultimately will be made by the Supreme Court, which has become something of an expert on offensive decisions in recent years, but the government is also expected to establish an official Board of Offensive Behavior to hear complaints from any person or group who feels he, she or it has been maligned.

In this manner, if you don’t like something you hear, you will have some recourse: Complain to BOB and if you prove your cultural, ethnic, sexual, or political sensitivities or sensibilities have been ruffled, then the offending party will be fined, jailed or have his, her or its mouth washed out with soap.

Obviously, it will become necessary to control and curtail communications to a degree. Again, libertarians may carp that this erodes people’s right to speak freely, but then there is no constitutional right to offend people. Only when everything offensive is stamped out can open discussions be carried out free of the fear of hurting someone’s feelings. (This, by the way, is the central philosophy of the revisionist view of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.)

The irony is that while this movement toward official sensitivity grows, the efforts of SAPPS have been stunted. Trees are still being abused, the group claims, and there has been no groundswell of public support for the plight of trees. Not only are trees still the subjects of offensive language, whole forests are being butchered while the government and the media stand by and do nothing. And the group has had absolutely no luck with its primary mission of replacing elected officials with trees.

However, some success has been reported by a splinter group, LESS: Let’s Elect Some Shrubs.

The Business of Government

These are heady times for the thingamajig industry.

A new day is dawning for thingamajigs, gadgets which we didn’t know we couldn’t get along without until we had some, at which time everyone needed at least one.

The industry’s lobbyists are finding a much more receptive Congress these days, and no wonder: The industry worked overtime to manufacture campaign contributions to help elect candidates sympathetic to the thingamajig cause.

Tax cuts, for instance, are at the top of the congressional agenda. Tax cuts will give you, the consuming public, more money to buy more thingamajigs, even if you are under the mistaken belief that you don’t need any more. This will spur production, allowing product expansion, which means more great jobs at factories throughout Malaysia.

And increased production will enable the thingamajig industry to raise prices while cutting costs, thereby enhancing the bottom line and pleasing the shareholders. Profits can then be poured back into thingamajig research and development – researching ways to better influence the government and to develop new candidates for public office. Without this continued support of basic research and development, there’s no guarantee that the free enterprise system will get a fair shake from the government.

It was undue government intrusion in the marketplace, you may recall, that caused thingamajig profits to go south and its factories to Asia in the first place. Just because thingamajig manufacturing produces unfortunate byproducts – muck and gunk, in particular – does not mean that people can’t adapt to unnecessary evils. How much clean air and water can a body need, anyway?

Now, with a more business-friendly government in place, look for free enterprise to be stimulated with bulk government purchases of thingamajigs. Why, billions of thingamajigs are needed just for national defense; naturally, they will need to be modified with special and exorbitantly priced doohickeys to meet rigid Pentagon purchasing standards, but how can you put a price on peace and security?

A more open marketplace would also be created if the government would stifle competition from foreign thingamajig manufacturers, who have dominated the market in recent years by selling better products at a lower cost – all in all, a pretty sneaky and underhanded, not to mention un-American, way of capturing market share. All we need to do is to throw up a few trade barriers and slap on a couple of tariffs, and the thingamajig playing field will be leveled.

And it wouldn’t hurt for the government, while it is at it, to subsidize domestic thingamajig operations with some special tax breaks and other incentives. This would only be fair, a little quid pro quo (Latin for “greasing the wheels”) for all the many contributions made to America and its politicians by the thingamajig industry over the years.

In this way, the nation can march into a new era confident in the knowledge that it is the world leader in thingamajigs. All this success will mean that nobody, but nobody, will be able to touch our thingamajigs.

Although, of course, it will leave you, the consuming taxpayer, holding the whatchamacallit.

What Politicians Really Mean

Many people have trouble following along any time there is an election looming, what with having to figure out which candidate they’re supposed to support and what the issues are while trying not to miss “Wheel of Fortune” every night.

Too, many people consider elections and the whole political process boring because they find them arcane and mystifying. The problem for many people is that they simply don’t understand the language of politics; it’s as if they were listening to a bunch of aliens from another planet babbling on about their own peculiar issues light years removed from real, down-to-earth problems – a suspicion, by the way, that scientific studies have not entirely ruled out.

So, to help you, the average voter, understand the politicians a bit better, herewith is a guide to political talk, complete with the standard political code phrase and what the politician really means.

“I understand ordinary Americans’ everyday problems because I’m one of you.” – By “ordinary” I of course mean “ordinary rich white males who I see almost every day at my country club; you know, they one you can’t afford to join.”

“I represent working Americans.” – I, personally, have never actually worked a day in my life, unless you count all the times I’ve elbowed my way up to the public trough.

“I never pay attention to polls.” – Rats. The numbers are way down.

“Public opinion is on my side.” – Hey, you blind, babbling bozos in the media, just look at the polls; I’m the front-runner.

“There’s no place for negative campaigning in this race.” – You know, folks, I’m too much of a gentleman to mention the fact that my opponent, the former member of the Communist Party, is a dope fiend who has had numerous affairs since that sex change operation a few years ago, but rest assured that my trusted aide here, who is a scoundrel, has no qualms about leaking that information to the media.

“Character should be an issue in a campaign such as this; it tells us what kind of person we are electing.” – Have you talked to my aide yet?

“We must put America back to work.” – Elect me so I will have a job.

“We must restore family values that have been lost in this country.” – My girlfriend left me when I wouldn’t divorce my wife.

“Health care must be accessible to all Americans.” – Thank goodness Americans are paying for this really nice government health insurance plan.

“We cannot tolerate drugs in our society.” – Make mine a double.

“We can support public education best by helping our teachers in the classroom.” – My kids go to private school.

“We must take care of the nation’s senior citizens.” – Boy, am I glad I’ve got a government pension coming to me.

“We need to address the high cost of prescription drugs and come up with a plan to make them more affordable.” – My plan is to give the electorate free Prozac to keep ‘em from caring what we do with their tax money.

“A healthy environment is a legacy we must leave to our children.” – Oil spills, toxic waste, acid rain and dirty air are the price of progress. Besides, I’ve got all the environment I need right there on my country estate.

“Special interests are controlling the campaign, pumping millions of dollars into the race, resulting in a playing field that is anything but level.” – Dammit, my opponent has raised more money than me.

“This campaign will not be played out on the television screen.” – Dammit, my opponent has raised a heck of a lot more money than me.

“We must curb wasteful government spending and restore a sense of fiscal responsibility to the process.” – You say you want that highway coming into town widened?

“Trade with foreign nations must be conducted on a fair and equitable basis. If elected, I promise you that I will be tough and unyielding in negotiations with other countries.” – Hot dog! If I’m elected, I get paid vacations to foreign countries where they’ll treat me like a king.

“National security is the most important issue facing us at this time.” – A cushy job consulting for the Pentagon doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

“Peace and prosperity come with a price.” – The Pentagon will let me drive a tank if I give them a bunch of money for all the cool stuff they want.

“I will not raise taxes.” – Promises are made to be broken.

“If elected, I promise you’ll be better off four years from now.” – They say you can fool most of the people some of the time.