The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

This is seriously going to get personal, you ready? About as ready as George W. Bush making a speech. If you were caught cheating, would you fess up? If I were caught cheating? No, I would deny it and say, as I was cheating, "Honey, it's not what it looks like! I swear! Have I ever lied to you?" The last time you felt honestly broken? Back in 'Nam Are you craving something? Why yes... Are you going to ask what or is this just a yes/no-type of question? If you could have one thing right now what would it be? Donald Trump's hair Would you rather have ten kids, or none? Those are my only two options? Okay, I'll say 2. What do you hear right now? Voices. One is speaking to me in Spanish with a gravely baritone voice and the other is speaking to me in sign language. Is your bed against more than one of your walls? Yes. It's against all four.  What’s on your mind right now? Why am I filling out this survey? Are you there for your friends? I'm a...

I don't know if it's due to me growing up or if it's actually the truth, but Christmas seems to be getting less and less exciting each and every year. It was the most exciting when we were kids. We'd leave milk and a cookie on the table for Santa when he stopped by. We swore that we'd wait up all night to see him. The next morning, we were amazed at all the presents that suddenly appeared beneath the tree. By and large, we were also very impressed by Santa's knowledge of our wants. There were always exceptions, though. Santa did have a slight case of 'sometimers' disease, I like to call it. But then we found out the truth to the story and lost a bit of that childish naiveté and excitement for the holiday. But I remained excited for every December 25th up until I was about 15 years old. I liked the opening-presents aspect of Christmas and looking into my stocking only to find my favorite candies and chocolates. But ever since I was 15, the Christmas...

It's happening all over. At grocery stores. Department stores. Malls. Evidently, there are terrorists running around, hiding bombs under trees, yelling out obscenities and protesting against the Christmas holiday. Okay, so maybe not that extreme, but when I think war, I think WAR - like the current one in Iraq. I don't think about a holiday, about trees and about carols. But some (many) people are talking about it, that there is an all-out War on Christmas. It started with people simply being politically correct and saying “Happy Holidays”. Or perhaps some of those people weren't even intentionally being politically correct; they just realized there were multiple holidays upcoming and from the fact they may never see you again (not that you were soon to be dead, but, well, you know what I mean), they thought they'd make their job a bit easier and just say “Happy Holidays”. This, instead of saying, "Merry Christmas, Happy Ramadan, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year...