Every year around this time it gets harder and harder for me to write this column. That’s because I buy my words by the year and the new shipment doesn’t arrive at the warehouse until January 1st. When you consider the sheer weight of words that pour through this column in a year, well, by the end of December, as far as words go, I’m running on fumes. I just want you to understand that if it seems like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel this week it’s because I am. I’m using up all the left-over words I have in reserve. I’ll be a lot more relevant, insightful and funny first of the year when all my new batch of words arrive. Until then, you’ll jut have to put up with crap like this …

… After laying off 40,000 employees and cutting expenses in other areas, the U.S. Post Office only lost $3.8 billion last year. Sounds like they’re finally getting the hang of it.

And this …

… You know, you look at the tens of millions of people out there living with AIDS, and for what? All for the love of a monkey.

That’s good, I like that, “All For The Love Of A Monkey.” If that were a movie, I’d go see it.

No, I wouldn’t. But if it was a book, I’d read it.

No, I wouldn’t.

Headline at the Drudge Report last week read, “Tiger’s Lonely Days: Golfing at Night, Alone …” Awww, poor Tiger. But you know what? If he’s moping around golfing alone at night it’s his own choice, cause he could be doing other things. He could be counting his billions, for example, or ordering pizza pies. He could be sleeping til noon, eating donuts, swimming in the pool, flying to Mexico for Chimichangas, picking up the phone and calling any hoochie mama on the planet to come keep him company. What I’m sayin’, the boy’s got options. If he’s “golfing” alone, that’s on him. Also, is “golfing” a euphemism? And if so, can it really make you go blind? Tiger wants to know.

One sports writer called Tiger Woods “royalty.” I was reading about King Solomon the other day and all his women and the thought struck me ~ if Tiger Woods is royalty and all his hoochie mamas are concubines, then isn’t he really just being Biblical? Throw that one out at your next Sunday school class and then tell me what they say.

And I Quote: ”Imagine that. Eleven AP reporters dedicating time and resources to tearing up (my) book, instead of using the time and resources to ‘fact check’ what’s going on with Sheik Mohammed’s trial, Pelosi’s health care takeover costs, Hasan’s associations, etc. Amazing.” ~ Sarah Palin, posting on FaceBook after the Associated Press assigned nearly a dozen reporters to fact-check every page of her book, Going Rogue, for accuracy.

Okay, Sarah, you had your say, now I’ll have mine. That was a hate-filled statement and shows how much you hate everything that is good and everyone who doesn’t want to kill and skin a moose. What on God’s earth has Sheik Mohammed ever done to you, you dumb stewardess-looking four-eyes? Or Hasan, or Nancy Pelosi either, you Alaskan sea otter cow octopus woman. Reality check: Reporters don’t have time to fact-check other things because they’re too busy fact-checking the stupid lying lies that come out of your mouth, you penquin-eating bimbo. You know, I didn’t hear you complaining when they didn’t fact-check Barack Obama’s books, or Bubba and Hillary Clinton’s books. Didn’t fact check Joe Biden’s book or Ted Kennedy’s book either. They didn’t even fact-check Nancy Pelosi’s book and all the time you never said a word. Okay, Sarah? You never said a word! So shut up, you have no right to speak anymore. Shut up! SHUT UP!

Actually, it’s not just Sarah they fact-check. When Saturday Night Live did a skit making fun of mighty Barack, CNN fact-checked all the gags … and determined them to be untrue or exaggerations. That’s good, huh? Fact-checking the jokes.

Speaking of which, I got a joke for you. Midget walks into a bar with a talking dog in his pocket … uh, wait a minute, I’m getting a phone call (he said, taking the call) … Uh-huh… Uh-huh… Okay, hold on … uh, CNN is on the line. They just fact-checked whether a talking dog could fit in a midget’s pocket and have determined it probably cannot. So the premise of that joke is an exaggeration and therefore untrue, so nevermind.

What? Yeah, sure, Nancy Pelosi wrote a book. It’s called Know Your Power. The sales on that bad boy almost reached 3,000 copies. A scorcher. Flying off the shelves. Seriously, people died in bookstore stampedes trying to get a copy for Christmas.

And hey, John Kerry, did you hear? Harry Reid voted against Obamacare before he voted for it.

I’m been thinking about this and I think what the House and Senate both need right now more than anything else is a good, old-fashioned, strike-a-match bowel movement. Then go do an honest day’s work. Be the best thing for em.

When asked how he would grade his performance so far as president, mighty Barack said he’d give himself a good solid B+. I told Kanye West that would have to be grading on a pretty freakin steep curve and Kanye said the reason I hate on Obama is because I don’t like black people. I guess he’s right, I don’t like black people. I don’t like white people either. Don’t like the yellow ones, brown ones, red ones or the puce. Especially don’t like the puce. Truth is, I don’t like hardly anybody, people give me the creeps. Get right down to it, I don’t really even like my friends and loved ones all that much either.

Hah! I got ya! My friends and loved ones are the best.

Look at the world leaders gathered in Copenhagen for their big, important summit to solve global warming. Rolled in in 1,200 limousines, 140 private jets, convoys, toadies, climbers and hangers-on, sucking back caviar, 12-year-old scotch and more CO2 than 60 countries combined use in an entire year. Left a big, fat carbon foot print you can see all the way to the moon, yammering, greedy, ineffective, useless … look at them, because there’s your one-world government.

According to a study from the University of California, San Diego, U.S. residents consumed something like 1.3 trillion hours worth of information last year from radio, television, computers, newspapers, mobile phones and other sources. They said if all that raw data were converted to text, it would cover the entire country under a pile of books seven feet deep.  Well … then why are we still so dumb? Shouldn’t we have learned something? Consumed all that information, we’re still no smarter than a rectum. Unless maybe it has something to do with the information itself.

Or, in the words of some guy, “Uh … you know …”

Nathan Myhrvold says the way to fix global warming is run a hose up to the stratosphere and pump out enough sulfur particles to dim the sun’s heat, thus counterbalancing the effects of global warming. Course, then we’re back to acid rain, I guess, what with all the sulphur. Wasn’t acid rain gonna kill us a while back? But I like my idea about fixing global warming best ~ just put a thermostat on the sun. Earth gets too hot, we turn the sun down; gets too cold, we turn it up, just like we do at home. Or, you know what? We could just leave the whole thing alone and let it take care of itself, like its been doing the past billion trillion years. Yes? No? Too radical?

And I Quote: “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.” ~ Father Tim Jones of St. Lawrence Church in York, England, offering sage counsel to the poor people in his congregation

Actually there’s a method to Father Tim’s madness. He knows if a poor person gets thrown in jail for stealing they’ll be fed, clothed and given a warm place to sleep. No really, prison’s not so bad once you get past the tiny cell, the rapes and the occasional shiv in the throat. Merry Christmas to all at the St. Lawrence Church and to all a good grief, what next?

A four-year-old boy in Chattanooga was picked up by police for being drunk and disorderly. True story. Police nabbed him wandering around in his neighborhood at two o’clock in the morning, wearing a little girl’s dress and drinking a beer. Kid’s only four, but he knows how to party.

I love those human interest stories, though. Especially at Christmas.

Another kids-gone-wild story comes out of Massachusetts. A school teacher up there told the class to draw a picture that represents the holiday, and an eight-year-old boy drew a picture of Christ on the cross. The boy was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. Okay, so the kid’s drawing was a little closer to Easter than Christmas, that’s no reason to bust his chops. After all, he’s being educated in the public school system, so you can see how he might be confused about things relating to Bible stuff. Boy don’t know if Christmas is Jesus, Africa, a Festivus pole or prehistoric jihad. Meanwhile, another kid in that same class who drew a picture of Santa tea-bagging an elf received an art award and got hired as a writer for David Letterman.

Man, I think of some of the pictures I drew when I was eight, especially around Halloween. If I was a public school kid today, they would probably by-pass the psychological evaluation altogether and go straight to the part where they open my skull with a bone saw and set my brain on fire to rid it of impurities. And now I think about it, they’s some who’d like to do that anyway.

Course, like the man said, I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer turned 102 this week. How does it feel to have reached such a venerable age? Well, according to Oscar, “Turning 102 is crap, and there is nothing to commemorate.” There you have it, my peeps. I’ve been right all along ~ life sucks and then you die. Or, in Oscar’s case, life sucks and you just go on living. Merry Christmas, Oscar, the worst is still ahead.

Elsie Egan was arguing with her boyfriend Peter Schabhuttl over whether to have rolls or sliced bread with supper when, as often happens during heated discussions about starchy carbohydrates, tempers flared and Elsie ended up assaulting Peter with a raw, 10-ounce steak. They were lucky this time ~ if that steak had been well-done, she might have killed him. Steak assaults always spike during the holiday season and statistics indicate the cause is usually always some type of bread. Had a wife once attacked me with a frying pan because she wanted croissants and I wanted cornbread. She just went berserk, flew into a rage and bam! ~ next thing I know I’m waking up in a hospital bed after being in a coma for three years. So yes, I know only too well the risks inherent in dinner when two people are not on the same page about bread.

“THE FAT MAN’S LAST RIDE”

Christmas eve. Tad and Jennifer were parked under a stand of sycamore trees, making out in the back seat of Tad’s car, radio tuned to an oldies station. Suddenly: “We interrupt this program for a special announcement. Residents of Glendale and the surrounding area are warned to be on the alert …”

“Gosh,” said Jennifer. “This is Glendale.”

“… A crazed psycho killer has escaped from the Glendale Prison for the Criminally Insane. Citizens are urged to stay inside and lock the doors.”

At that moment, there came a great thrashing among the limbs of the sycamores. Then something, a claw, began scratching the roof of the car, slowly ~ ssscritch … sscritch ~ scratching to get in. Something thick and wet began dripping onto the roof. A raspy, strangled voice spoke from outside the car, but the words were guttural and unclear.

“The … the killer!” gasped Tad, shivering with fear. The young lovers cowered in the back seat, paralyzed with dread, too gripped by foreboding to even move. All they could hear was the clawing and dripping and strangled, guttural voice in the night, the night itself closing in around them, drawing them tighter, compacting them into icy helplessness, trapping them like two tiny figures in a snow globe of dark, cold Hell. Throughout the interminable night, Tad and Jennifer clung to one another as though they were falling. Even long after the strangled noises outside the car had stopped, the two doomed lovers remained frozen within the paralysis of their terror …

Because that’s how they found them the following morning, Christmas day ~ in the back seat, still locked in their terrified embrace, silent screams stalled within their throats, wide eyes staring into the face of madness, still alive but in a catatonic state.

And there above the car, caught head-down in the branches of a tree, was the strung, lifeless body of Santa Claus. Evidently, the fat man had fallen from his sleigh and impaled himself on a sycamore branch. His injuries left him so weak he could barely move and could only speak in a strangled voice. His left arm dangled to within inches of the roof of  the car. What Tad and Jennifer heard was Santa desperately scratching with feeble, outstretched fingers, trying in vain to get their attention, begging for help as his life’s blood slowly dropped, fatly, wetly, onto the roof of the car.

“THE PHANTOM SALES ORDER”

A newly employed kitchenware salesman was working the North Pole territory … cold calling on Christmas eve. His blistery route finally brought him to the isolated manor of a “Mr. and Mrs. S. Claus.” Seeing a light on in the kitchen, the salesman walked up on the back porch and rang the bell.

Mrs. Claus herself opened the door and invited him in. The kitchen was warm and dimly lit and no one else was about. Although she was a pleasant host, Mrs. Claus seemed to have about her an air of wistful melancholy, tentative and preoccupied as she greeted the young man. They sat at a heavy cherrywood table and as the salesman spieled, Mrs. Claus gazed out the kitchen window with a faraway, sweet-sad expression on her face. The snow lay like a fluorescent blanket over the world. The arctic sky was so complete with stars that the Milky Way glimmered like a Christmas ribbon tied around the earth.

The kitchenware salesman was discouraged by the woman’s inattention, but he plodded gamely through his sales pitch anyway, eventually reaching its conclusion. Outside, an aurora borealis painted shimmering brush strokes of color across the sky. The salesman could hear his watch ticking.

Abruptly, Mrs. Claus came to herself, smiled and placed an order for all new kitchenware products. Surprised and delighted, the young man wrote the order up, re-packed his samples and continued on his route in order to be home for Christmas day.

A week later the salesman returned to the Claus residence with the delivery of kitchenware. He was met at the door by a female kitchen elf who knew nothing of any such order. The salesman insisted that it was Mrs. Claus herself who had placed the order.

Hesitantly, the kitchen elf asked, “Mrs. Claus?”

“Yes,” the young man replied. “A white-haired woman wearing a maroon dress and a white bib apron.”

“Yes!” gasped the kitchen elf. “You have described her!”

“Well, if you would be so kind as to call her I trust she can straighten this out.”

“Sir, that will be impossible.”

“And why is that?”

“Mrs. Claus died on Christmas eve … five years ago!“

Hey, got a little snow on Saturday. Very little snow, but snow nonetheless. And to me that little snowfall said, “Merry Christmas, Mikey.” It didn’t say merry Ramadan or merry Kwanzaa … it said Merry Christmas. And Happy  Hanukkah. It said that, too, cause tis the season to be a Christian or a Jew. I don’t have a problem with that.

The Post Office (an exemplary example of exemplary governance) put out four “holiday” stamps. One’s got the menorah to symbolize Hanukkah, and one’s got a 17th century Sassoferrato painting of the Madonna and child to symbolize Christianity. Very nice and Christmassy. But then they throw in a Kwanzaa stamp to symbolize, I don’t know, maybe the fact that we’re gonna start celebrating bogus, made-up holidays that have no connection to religion, let along Christ. And to add insult to injury ~ or injury to insult, as the case may be ~ they also included an Eid stamp. Eid is a Muslim holiday that celebrates the end of Ramadan, which is another Muslim holiday. Thank you, Post Office, but I think you forgot the Festivus stamp. Maybe next year, huh?

FYI … Kwanzaa was created in1966 by Maulana Karenga, who was born Ronald McKinley Everett in Parsonsburg, Maryland, which is located just northwest of Africa. Karenga is a violent, ex-convict who was sent to prison in the 70s on charges of felony assault and false imprisonment for the torture abuse of two women. Today, Maulana Karenga serves as an esteemed “professor and academic advisor” in the Department of African studies at California State University, Long Branch. That, my peeps, is an American success story …

… or is it really just one more lie heaped upon 500 years of lies perpetrated upon that vast and mysterious group of hapless victims known only as “black” people? Discuss among yourselves.

You know, since I’m cracking on bogus, made-up, non-religious holidays, science fiction writer Harlan Ellison told the story of a conversation he had with fellow sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard back in the day about how hard it was to make money writing for the pulps. Evidently, L. Ron told Harlan of a scheme he had that would not only attract rubes by the truckload, but would make them willingly fork over their cash. Harlan said L. Ron’s big scheme was Scientology. And that, my peeps, is an American success story, too, based on us not knowing the difference between a religion and a science fiction story.

The Sussex Square Homeowner’s Association in western Henrico County, Virginia is busting the chops of Colonel Van Barfoot (ret.), a 90-year-old military veteran who fought in World War II and Vietnam, was wounded three times, is the most decorated American combat veteran alive and has received more than 20 medals, including the Medal of Honor, Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Why are they busting his chops? Cause he’s flying the American flag in his yard and they say flagpoles are an eyesore. They want him to put his flag on one of those banner poles and hang it off the porch. Therefore the Sussex Square Homeowner’s Association receives my “You Ain’t Squat, You Commie Jerks” award for being a bunch of Commie jerks who ain’t squat. Colonel Barfoot (ret.) has earned the right to fly his flag. Leave him alone

While I’m thinking about it, I want to also give a shout-out to Frank Buckles in West Virginia. Frank is 108 years old and is the last ~ I said the last ~ combat veteran of World War I still living. Merry Christmas, Frank. Thank you for your service. I would wish you a long life but that would be redundant.

I think I’ve figured out what’s causing global warming. It’s the sun. The sun’s doing that. Go out at night when the sun isn’t there and then go out during the day when the sun is there ~ every single time it’ll be warmer during the day when the sun is there. I looked up “The Sun” on Wikipedia and it said the sun’s temperature is 5,780 K. I don’t know what a K is, but I bet it’s hot. And the sun’s got almost six thousand of em. Anyway, barring the possibility that there is some other heating device I’m unaware of that comes out only during the day, then it’s gotta be the sun causing global warming. It’s gotta be.

I’m going to tell you one more thing about the sun. It’s only 26,000 light years from the core of the Milky Way. A light year is about half that of a heavy year, with a heavy year being the standard 12 months, somethings thirteen if it’s leap year. But anyway, if you traveled to the core of the Milky Way, you wouldn’t have to travel the entire 26,000 light years, because the core of the Milky Way is actually located back to the rear of Earth. So since Earth is 93 million miles away from the sun, we can automatically cut those 93 million miles off the trip. Of course, it’s still a long time to be in the car, but there are games you can play to pass the time. Pack a cooler and some snacks so you don’t have to stop so often and make sure everybody uses the bathroom before you leave.

I have an idea. Instead of campaign ads and speeches and televised debates and all that, I think any candidate who aspires to public office should be required to take an exam to test their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, and that should be the criteria to determine who we vote for. Forget all the billion dollar campaigns and hype and hot air and dirty tricks and lying politicians … find out which ones really understand the Constitution. We get that, everything else will fall into place.

And no more freakin lawyers. That should be a law. No more lawyers in elected office. Lawyers’ll argue us into hell over the definition of “is.” Let’s have a moratorium on lawyers in pubic office.

The D.C. Sniper, John Allen Muhammad, who murdered 16 people in a cowardly killing spree seven years ago, has gone home to see his beloved Allah. Well, he didn’t go, we sent him. He was put to death by lethal injection. But don’t weep for Muhammad … while we labor on in this life of travail, he is, even as we speak, gleefully cavorting with his 72 virgins. Meanwhile, Nidal Malik Hasan is going, “That lucky duck sniper guy … that could’a been me if the cops had just been better shots.”

Did you know there are 1.57 billion Muslims in the world today? Don’t look now but I think the Crusades were a failure.

You know, the Prophet Mohammad said the majority of people in Hell will be “ungrateful” women. Gee, I don’t know why Muslim women are so ungrateful. They have nothing, are allowed nothing, they’re regularly beaten, maimed and killed on a whim and live out what they loosely refer to as their lives under a head-to-toe black drape. I would think they’d be grateful. But I ain’t gonna question the Prophet cause I don’t want the Islams to behead me when they take over the White House. Oops … too late. Forget I said anything.

My favorite media fossil, Helen Thomas, said she was thankful this holiday season for a black president. Yeah, Helen, and I’m thankful for stretch-waist pants, but I wouldn’t want a pair of em running the country.  Although stretch-waist pants couldn’t do much worse than an empty suit.

You know how when you break wind in the water, it makes fart bubbles? Well, Helen Thomas is so old she can make fart bubbles on dry land. Weird, huh?

And I Quote: “Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing, possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection.” ~ Suneeta Mukherjee, speaking recently at the United Nation’s annual State of World Population Report

I’m with Suneeta. This is a serious issue. Seriously. If I had a dollar for every farmer woman and/or fisher woman who was forced to turn to sex work because of climate change … well, I guess I still couldn’t afford a pack of gum.

But I read that there’s a secret vault buried under the Arctic permafrost that is filled with seeds. Seriously. This is in case there is some catastrophic event that wipes out the world’s food supply and kills all the crops. They’re keeping the seeds safe there under the Arctic ice so we can plant more crops, start over again if we need to. I wonder if they thought to stash any ganja seeds in there. Cause when the world ends, I’ll tell you now, there won’t be much else to do except smoke weed and shoot looters. Not me of course, but somebody’ll be doing that. I’ll be hiding out back in the woods figuring out different ways to eat kudzu.

Okay. Chastity Bono. Sonny and Cher’s daughter? She was born a girl but realized she was gay. A lesbian. She came out, became a spokesperson for gay rights, changed her name from Chastity to Chaz, got her a girlfriend, all that. Okay. So then she decides to take it to the next level and change her sex to that of a male. She’s going through the process now, had her breasts removed, taking male hormones and I guess, if they haven’t already done it, they will eventually do whatever they do to replace her female genitalia with a male’s. So anyway, fast forward, say, ten years …  she’s got the male equipment, the face hair, deep voice, now she’s a bonafide man, right? So here’s my question … what about the girlfriend? The girlfriend’s gay ~ which means she doesn’t like men in a romantic, relationship way … she likes women. How’s that work? The girlfriend’s still a lesbian, but Chaz is a man now. Is Chaz still a lesbian, too, only now he’s a lesbian in a man’s body? If that’s the case, then I could be a lesbian myself because I’m in a man’s body and I like girls, too, just like Chaz does. That’s blowing my mind. You see what I’m sayin? People, listen to me ~ the gender stuff is confusing enough without you go messing with your junk. K? K.