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Scrooged

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Please don't feel left out if you find that you have not made my Christmas card list this year. I don't have a Christmas card list. I don't even have Christmas cards. I have come to the realization that what Christmas means to me, alpha charlie bravo, 4th grade, is the imposition of a series of unwanted obligations which, like all obligations, are to be carefully avoided.

Today is December 19th and I have accomplished no holiday related tasks.
I have done no shopping, no decorating, no holiday greeting or holiday themed cooking, no mix cd of holiday MP3's; and I have yet to develop any significant interest in these activities. I may very well find myself on Christmas Eve scavenging for gifts and not being able to acquire what I really wanted to give because I have not taken full advantage of the market and technology.

Well, perhaps it is not too late for me to change my ways. Maybe I'll open my window and toss a few shillings to a boy passing by on the street and ask him to bring back a Christmas goose.

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Catch-22

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I suspect that if you turned on Fox news at the right moment yesterday, you would have seen some conservative pundit doing his best imitation of Kadeem Hardison's victory celebration in the movie "White Men Can't Jump," cabbage-patching vigorously while exclaiming "We're goin' to Sizzler, we're goin' to Sizzler!"

I guess Saddam Hussein is not a vain man. But, if you had spent the last eight months alternating postures between cab driver and frightened rabbit, you would look like Ted Kaczynski too.

It's too bad that he can't be brought before the International Criminal Court to face justice since the U.S. is opposed to it. But, still I'm looking forward to the information that will come out of the interrogations. For instance, did Saddam Hussein and Michael Jackson use the same interior decorator? Finally, we may be able to learn the truth.

However, that may take a while. It's been two years since the height of fighting in Afghanistan and those prisoners are still being interrogated in Guantanamo. There must be quite an interrogatory waiting list, but I'm sure some strings can be pulled.

Well, that was a nice diversion. Does this mean the war is over again?

Captured! Can you believe it? ...A feather in the cap of El Arbustito. Now let me ask you, if you were the man most wanted by the most powerful nation in the history of human civilization, would you be hangin' around in your old home town in a house with a little tunnel out back that leads nowhere? Well, I guess it worked for a while.