War on Christmas Over -- RNC Surrenders

Good news, everybody -- the War on Christmas 2009 seems to be over. You might think that after retail boycotts and even attempted legislation (Sorry, Rep. Brown, your bill might be considered after the recess, ha ha) that the advocates of mentioning Christmas in every other sentence had carried the day. After all, we're a Christian nation whose Constitution is based on the Ten Commandments, and it was likely Jesus himself who came up with the bicameral legislature (although the three-fifths compromise was clearly the work of the devil, or at least ACORN).

But no -- I recently received this in my inbox from the Republican National Committee -- entitled Holiday Greetings from the RNC, it doesn't even mention Christmas -- the very day it was sent.



Clearly this means that the Republicans have finally given in to that perfidious godless secular minority who are hell-bent on dooming our citizens to a lifetime of casual, meaningless sex, rampant drug use and evolution -- or else they never really bought into the seething rhetoric of the Torquemada wing of the Republican Party, but just used them to spur on the masses who respond to knee-jerk sentimentality that lacks any basis in the tenets of liberal democracy.

Either way it doesn't look good for the party that routinely appeals to family values and religiosity as some sort of evidence of its ability to lead -- they're either acknowledging that they've lost or that they're dragging their base along in a cynical ploy for their loyalty.

So anyway, I'll be anxiously awaiting the AFA boycott and the calling-out by Bill O'Reilly.

Happiness Is Being Snowed in with Two Gallons of Apple Cider and a Bottle of Jack Daniels

A little nor'easter blew up from the gulf coast today, and smacked into some cold air coming in from the north and we ended up with tons of snow that started falling around 5:30. By 11:30 I wandered outside and took some pictures. The streetlights, swirling snow, softened contours and the snowfall's luminous reflectivity made the familiar landscape fun to look at again.

There were tons of accidents on the road. Sirens blared on Semmes for most of the time I was outside. So stay off the damn road if you don't need to be driving around. Walk to the convenience store for your six-pack. On your walk back you can contemplate those mottled gray cylinders revolving on the rack of greasy rollers under the heatlamp. By the time you get home you will be aching to start on that novel you always swore you would write.




The wind was a howling
And the snow was outrageous
Okay maybe the wind wasn't so bad
But what do I know -- I'm excavating
A pyramid in Alaska.

Lightness on lightness
Covers the trees and chassis --
Rust melts under snow.