richardcahill.net

Fiscal Cliff-Diving Part of Republican Plan to Limit Obama to Two Terms

12/31/2012

Puzzled by the Congressional Republicans apparent unwillingness to bend even an inch to avoid this nation plunging like Wile E. Coyote over the fiscal cliff, I sought out my source for all thoughts Republican, veteran political operative Joe Redstate.

Joe's been making himself scarcer than Mitt Romney since the election. I finally caught up with him at his favorite drinking hole, the airport bar at Des Moines International.

"It's simple," he said. "Obama got re-elected, but we still have the House of Representatives. To us, that means the American people want him to be President, but they also want us to make sure he never accomplishes anything."

But Joe, the Republicans are taking it to extremes. They wouldn't even follow their own Speaker when he suggested raising taxes on people making over a million dollars a year.

"And they were absolutely right to do so. People making over a million a year are the backbone of the American economy."

They'd only get taxed 4% more than the next bracket. And it's a marginal rate, so they'd only get taxed that much more on income over a million bucks. So if a guy made one million, ten thousand dollars, he'd actually pay only $400 more under the plan you guys rejected. How does that make these people the backbone of the economy? I just spent $400 bucks on a new TV.

"When a poor slob like you spends money, it doesn't help anybody. When a millionaire spends money, he's a job creator."

How does that work?

"Don't pester me for details. Most of these guys just hand the money to their butlers and say 'Go out and stimulate the economy.' People in their position in life know how to delegate."

Joe, I know it's more or less your job not to make any sense, but you sound like you're not just going off the fiscal cliff. You're going off the deep end.

Joe turned his red-rimmed eyes to me. He looked like he'd aged ten years since November. "I know," he croaked. "We all are. It's Obama. We're all afraid he's going to get a third term."

Relax, Joe. The Constitution says he can't run again.

"I know what the Constitution says!" Joe snapped. "We're just afraid it won't matter. Frankly, Obama scares the crap out of us. The guy has already won twice, even though his middle name is Hussein, his last name rhymes with Osama and he's black! Plus, he's a college professor. It's a bedrock American belief that a guy with a couple drinks in him at the country club or the lady fishing next to you on the pier can solve any complicated national problem better than any intellectual. But Obama wins anyway! Last time we had a billion dollars, a candidate who was better looking than Warren Buffet's portfolio and an economy that was sputtering worse than an NBA player looking at a paternity test and he beat us like a bathroom rug! The ballast in our boxer shorts is still aching, if you know what I mean."

Yeah, I remember that.

"So going over the cliff is the best thing for this great nation, as long as we make sure Obama's standing at the bottom of it."

But what if John Boehner's the one who gets squashed? Are the Republicans going to jump off a cliff then?

"We'd seriously think about it. Why do you think I'm in Iowa? There's not a cliff in the whole state."

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Gila Bender

12/28/2012

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My son and I took off for Tucson for the holidays, where I have friends and he has family. The road east from San Diego through Arizona is one I had taken many times before.

My son and I soon settled into a routine, in which I drove and he found the same song over and over again on the radio. He was conflicted about going to Tucson, where he spent part of his childhood (he is now in his rookie year of legal drinking). Like anyone's, his childhood memories are not uniformly pleasant. He said on the way out, "Arizona is nothing but old people with bad health habits, gun nuts and teenagers on crystal meth."

"That's not everybody in Arizona," I told him. "Just your relatives."

On the way out we stopped in Gila Bend. I had been there before, but I had forgotten that once the traveler gets off the interstate in Gila Bend, he or she is forced to travel the entire length of the town before getting back on the road. This design, hatched long ago by the state authorities and the city fathers, enables the town to survive as a roadside Anopheles, sucking a little green from the wallet of each passerby.

While we had stopped at a fast-food place near the edge of town on the way out, the eye-catching Space Age Lodge was noted by my son while we were seeking the entrance back to the road east.

"Ate there thirty years ago," I told him. "Had the Astro-Burger." Haven't been tempted to stop there since, I nearly added.

Arizona is a beautiful state, and it can be visually stunning in unexpected ways. On the way back, my son took dutiful note of a mountain shaped like a pair of female breasts. The Mammary Mountain was noticed by me on my first trip down that highway many years ago, and no doubt by every traveler prior to me down to the earliest North Americans, fresh off the land bridge across the Bering Sea. I guarantee that the first humans that laid eyes on that mountain couldn't help giggling and saying to themselves, in their primitive Paleolithic mother tongue, "Huh! Mountain look like boobies!"

A few miles later, a tease of a desert rainstorm burst over another mountain ridge in the distance. The storm was being blown through by a wind that elongated the falling rain into a curve. "Looks like shrimp feet," my son observed.

After passing the Shrimp Feet Mountains we were hungry and I knew we were destined for a stop in Gila Bend again and the Space Age Lodge. Our waitress was a stolid woman of Central American descent. After depositing our Astro-Burgers, she disappeared as completely as any civilization her ancestors had ever founded, leaving us plenty of time to enjoy the extraterrestrial ambiance of the place. Spaceships and space-walkers lunged at the diner from every corner, but my favorite painting was the one above. It depicts the disembodied head of a Russian cosmonaut floating over the curved surface of the earth, surrounded by seagulls whose need for oxygen and living space near a landfill has at least temporarily been obviated. Possibly it is a memorial for this brave soul, blasted into bits and birds by some terrible Soviet accident while trying to set forth into the galaxy.

But the décor of the Space Age Lodge can only distract the patron for so long. Eventually I noticed my fellow diners. They consisted of two elderly couples eating French fries, a pair of rail-thin teenagers drumming their fingers on their table, sucking down cokes and talking relentlessly and three well-fed men who wore camouflage jackets festooned with NRA patches.

None of them were related to my kid. I swallowed the last bite of my Astro-Burger (not bad) and we got the hell out of there.

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Mayans Now Say They Were Only Predicting The End of the Republican Party

12/26/2012

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Statue of Mayan prophet

It is more than seventy two hours since the Mayan Apocalypse was supposed to render the earth uninhabitable and from the view outside my window, it looks like we're going to have to wait for global warming to do that after all. Looking for a little post-Armageddon analysis I headed over to Berto's Breakfast Drive-Thru where the only Mayan I know personally, José (Joe) Mayan works as an egg cook.

Demand for eggs falls off about mid-day, so around noon Joe and I each grabbed an adult beverage and sat outside by the grease trap. I expected him to be embarrassed by the fact we were still fully encased in our mortal bodies enjoying a cold Carta Blanca the day after his people had predicted a final fiery end for Earth, but Joe was nonplussed.

"We Mayans never said the world was going to end anyway. We said it was going to mark the start of a new era for Earth and now it is apparent that my wise ancestors, who were making sage predictions when your ancestors were living in medieval mud, meant that on 12/12/21, the Republican Party would end."

That's a pretty convenient alternate explanation, Joe. Aren't you a little self-conscious about all these people panicking about the Final Day and then it just turns out to be a bad day for John Boehner?

"And some bad day, huh? Turns out the rest of the Republicans would have serious reservations about following him backstage at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, let alone passing Plan B. Don't forget last week, when Mitch McConnell filibustered himself. It's like the Democrats said 'Make our day. Go filibuster yourself, Mitch.' That's something a Mayan would never say."

Most Mayans don't even know what a filibuster is.

"Neither do most Americans, but mostly we wouldn't say it because there are no Mayans named Mitch."

This is all pretty weak, Joe. You sound like Karl Rove explaining how he actually won when he lost the election.

"I like to think of myself as being more like Newt Gingrich explaining how cheating on his wives brought him closer to God. But the accuracy of the prediction isn't the most important thing. The important thing is that we are going to be living on a Republican-free Earth! Do you know what that means?"

You tell me.

"People who holler about American exceptionalism and then threaten to secede when they lose the election can turn in their elephant hats! People who think it's perfectly ok for everybody to have car insurance but a ghastly form of Bolshevism for everyone to have health insurance can drive their cars off the nearest cliff! Women who are raped can get pregnant again!"

That all sounds great, Joe, but...

"But what? It's a brand new world! And my far-seeing ancestors predicted it! Maya! Maya! Mayans! We rock, dude."

Sounds great, Joe, is what I said, but I was already starting to have doubts. No more transvaginal probers, no more lawmakers who spoke of God's will as if they golfed with the Guy, no more UN army resisters or dinosaur riders. No more lobbyists who claimed that a milllion "armed volunteers" would keep our kids safe in school while that icon of armed volunteerism, George Zimmerman, is awaiting trial for murder. I sensed a yawning shortage of material in the new era. Sure, I'd still have the Democrats, but what good are they now that Spitzer has sworn off hookers and Anthony Weiner keeps his underwear and his Twitter account in separate locations?

I started to be overcome by a feeling of depression. It felt like the end of the world.

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Doing the Apocalypso

12/21/2012

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It is morning on the Left Coast, on the latest predicted day of the Earth's end and so far everything looks disturbingly normal, here at least. We Apocalypse aficionados can only hope and pray that God is playing Whack-A-Mole with the Himalayas.

Wait, was that a tremor?

So what if it was? We Californians have earthquakes on a regular basis, some of them disturbingly large, but none large enough to end the world. So far. Anyway, it was just a trash truck.

Look! Something is hovering outside my window! Is it the phantom planet Niburu, come to shatter our Earth into uninhabitable chunks?

No, it's just another process server. Now I have to finish this blog post hiding under my desk while he knocks away at the door. The guy must have calluses on his knuckles the size of donut holes. It's the price I pay for living in this litigious society, rather than in the Central American rain forest, where many Final Days fans are gathered to witness the Earth's end among my spiritual ancestors, the ghosts of the ancient Mayans. Certainly if I had been alive in those times and found a giant round rock in the jungle I would not have hesitated to carve a prediction for the end of the world on it, because playing a massive practical joke on people a thousand years in the future is one way to show you're having a worthwhile civilization.

But if the world doesn't end, and it looks distinctly non-Armageddonish right now, we are looking at a bleak, no Apocalypse future, at least until somebody else adds up the ages of the Prophets plus the number of letters in the New Testament plus the bust sizes of Kardashian sisters in centimeters or some other such soothsaying arithmetic and comes up with another Biblically inspired date for the air to be let out of this balloon we call Earth, or they find another ancient race that had predicted Doomsday for we moderns long after their civilization had safely sputtered out. Barring that, we humans will have to live in a world with no scheduled planetary collisions or Raptures. A lot of people are going to be disappointed by this, although my creditors have been betting on it.

The only hope remaining for the end of everything is the Computer Game theory of this universe's existence, which is that the entire known cosmos is a computer game being played by advanced beings. The German scientists who are testing this theory seem to think that our universe is being played by a giant, responsible government agency in the Uber-Universe, but there's no way they can know that. It might be being run on the computer of a sneaky, cheating ultra-advanced alien husband, who's just screwing with it until his wife goes to bed so he can resume checking out profiles on plentyofadvancedaliens.com. Or a lonely, shy, physically unattractive Superior Being who hasn't had sex for several billion of our years and is about to click "Exit" on the entire human experience in favor of some incomprehensibly futuristic alien porn.

That Apocalypse is even worse than the current one. It lacks all drama. To be a truly great Apocalypse, the event needs a prophet and believers. Even if you believe in the computer-game model of existence, you can't claim to know when the entire universe is going to go blue screen. There are no Four Horsemen, no moon dripping blood, no creepy ancient predictions, no eternal flames for the wicked, no heaven for the pure of heart. Jesus wouldn't come back. Of course, according to the theory, He was never here in the first place.

We'd merely wink out of existence, to be replaced by the words "Permanent Fatal Error." Which might be appropriate, but the feeling here is that it's not going to happen today.

We'll just mutter something much less self-aware, like "TGIF," and go about our business.

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Reality Check, Please

12/18/2012

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A group of German scientists has announced their suspicion that our reality does not exist. They think everything we do and perceive is part of a huge computer simulation run by advanced beings.

Some critics immediately noticed the similarity between the Germans' theory and the movie "The Matrix." Others pointed out that these scientists were "likely full of it," "probably just making some kind of bad joke," or "a bunch of stoned idiots."

Undeterred, the Germans have decided to test their theory and maybe even make contact with the advanced beings, (or AB's for short). No one knows how these beings, who are the real creators of the universe and everything in it, will react. Imagine your Angry Birds coming alive, flying out of your iPad and starting to crap all over your room.

No matter what the AB's do, however, including ending the universe with a fiery final hard boot, the implications for history and philosophy are huge. Philosophers through the ages have debated the nature of reality, annoying the rest of us immensely, especially those of us with jobs. Some of them have even been brained with rocks for their efforts. These assaults were often accompanied by the question "How's that for reality?"

The most intriguing part of the theory is that the program we're in doesn't need to have been started a million, or four billion, or thirteen billion years ago. It could have started beta-testing yesterday, with all of your memories, your boss and the girl who lives upstairs and thinks you have some kind of eye disorder because you keep staring at her gigantic breasts already embedded in it, along with all of human and natural history.

Consider the following earth-shaking implications, even though there may not be an actual Earth:

The universe did not begin with the Creation or the Big Bang. It began when someone hit Ctr+Alt+Delete.

Those million years that humanity spent hunting, gathering and shivering through Ice Ages instead of settling down and inventing cable TV never happened, so you can quit being self-conscious about your ancestors being naked savages dumb enough to hunt mastodons with pointed sticks.

The original Civil War was a re-enactment.

Reality TV shows are no longer considered fake reality. They are fake, fake reality.

Likewise, there's no point at being embarrassed by the existence of Ted Nugent, Snooki or Honey Boo-Boo from this point forward. They're just part of the program.

Men, there's no need to worry anymore about whether your penis is the wrong size. Your penis doesn't exist. Likewise, ladies, all breasts can be considered fake.

Not all the implications of this discovery are as reassuring as the ones above. There's no guarantee that the AB's are a group of sober researchers. They could be a bunch of other-dimensional teenagers at a party, playing the program on Ultra-Facebook, and all of human history could have occurred between bong hits and furtive, experimental make-out sessions.

If we adopt the Matrix as a model for this reality, however, we know that we can quit looking for Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha or L. Ron Hubbard to save us, and start looking for The One, who in the movie was a dark-haired man with a Hawaiian name and a limited acting range.

Among his talents was an ability to corkscrew around in mid-air so that any bullets fired at him missed.

That would be handy nowadays.

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No Hell for Mike Huckabee Causing Atheists to Abandon Non-Belief

12/15/2012

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Going to Hell? You betcha!

The Newtown, Connecticut school shooting and subsequent remarks by overweight Fox pundit and former Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that the slaughter of twenty innocent schoolchildren happened because "we've removed God from our schools," has resulted in a significant drop in the nation's atheist population, as many former rationalists are signaling a willingness to convert to any religion that promises Hell for Mike Huckabee after he dies.

"I talked to a couple of my atheist buddies after Huckabee spoke out," said one former non-believer, who wished to remain anonymous, "and they all agreed that while Huckabee deserved eternal torment for telling the parents of these murdered kids that it wouldn't have happened if they'd had a few more Bibles lying around their school, as atheists they just couldn't start believing in a place of eternal damnation because they wanted Huckabee there.

"That wasn't good enough for me, so I started investigating belief alternatives. I have to admit, all the pastors I talked to were pretty dodgy about whether twenty-eight pointless homicides were part of God's plan, although they all agreed unanimously that He had a plan. When I asked them if bulleting babies was a result of God's will, or if He didn't actually will it, if He just was good with letting random loonies shoot kids, or if He was merely busy putting together His fantasy football team or otherwise occupied when that school started getting shot up, they all started fingering their collars or advising me to read the Bible kind of nervously. I actually lost a little hope that there was a religion out there for me. The one thing that kept me going was that all of them, even the ones that had the same point of view as Huckabee, agreed that he deserved to go to Hell for implying that we don't have enough crosses over our city halls or Ten Commandments displays on library lawns to prevent mass schoolchildren shootings.

"I even thought about going Muslim, as all of them have to pray five times a day and some of them still wrap their little kids in explosives and send them out to blow themselves up. What says "inner peace" more than that?

"In the end, I decided it wasn't about inner peace. It wasn't about which religion had the nicest, most eternal Heaven with the coolest angels and the best entertainment. It was about Mike Huckabee's soul, so I picked the religion that had the biggest, ass-roasting-est Hell with the most generous admissions policy and now that I believe that Huckabee, right after he stuffs his gut with that final, fatal piece of pie that's waiting for him down the road, will go there, I have achieved spiritual tranquility.

"And no, I won't tell you where or what that church is. We don't need some nut coming out there and trying to shoot us all."

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Killer Boobs

12/13/2012

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Author poolside with not really doomed S.O.

It has been a week filled with foreboding around here, as my Significant Other is scheduled for reconstructive plastic surgery tomorrow and is convinced that she is going to die on the operating table.

Half of this fun couple is not so sure, but she is preparing for the end meticulously anyway. She has divided up her possessions. A lot of people use formal wills or trusts for this purpose, but she uses Post-It notes on her refrigerator. Not just regular Post-It notes, either, but free ones the real estate guy who sold her her house twelve years ago drops on her doorstep every couple months, hoping she'll remember him when she feels like buying a house again. His picture and slogan appear on every one, which to me does not make her last arrangements seem more legally tenable, but she assures me that her system is impregnable to challenge. When I argue with her about this, or anything, she usually points out that she has a PhD and I don't.

Most of her estate is being passed on to her daughters, naturally, but I couldn't help noticing she was leaving all her furniture and a hundred grand to her gay best friend. I only got the dog.

It's true I don't have a dog, but it's also true I could use a hundred grand. Also, I just moved out of a furnished rental, and if anyone needs furniture, it's me. I try not to let the unfairness grind at me. Thankfully, the procedure she feels looming over her has a better chance of being successful than Justin Beiber at a high school dance. She has to go under the knife to have her implants replaced. One of them has grown faulty over the years, so they both have to go. The only way to insure a satisfactory aesthetic effect is to replace them with larger implants.

I'm thinking there's no downside here, or at least I was, until she started putting her affairs in order. Then my natural insensitivity and general callousness started getting me in trouble.

"If I'm in a coma, I don't want to be kept alive on a respirator," she said for the several dozenth time. One of her enduring beliefs is that I will refuse to relinquish her to eternity should that time come, and keep her all gassed up on some hospital machine instead of finding myself another woman. I have not yet figured out a diplomatic way to tell her she couldn't be more wrong.

"You're not going to be in a coma," I said patiently. "You're going to be fine, except you're going to have enormous breasts."

"You never know what's going to happen."

"I know that you are going to have to wear bulky turtlenecks if you ever expect random men to look above your neck again. I also know I am going bonk-ass loony sitting around the house listening to you prepare for the end. Should we go to a topless bar? Sure, the drinks are pricey, but maybe it would make you feel better knowing that nearly every girl there has survived the procedure."

"When my brother went into the hospital, he had everything in order."

"Your brother had cancer. When they start printing pink Breast Augmentation Survivor ribbons, or when some month is designated Augmented Breast Awareness Month, I'll start worrying."

"All I'm saying is I don't want to be kept alive by a bunch of tubes."

"All I'm saying is that your gay boyfriend has no debts, no dependents and a job catering for Lady Gaga." (Unlike many statements that appear here, this one is true)

"Oh, so that's it? It's all about the money?"

"It's not about anything, because you're going to be fine."

"Well, if I'm not, I don't want to be stuck on some machine. I want you to pull the plug."

"WELL, I CAN'T WAIT TO! Is that what you want to hear?"

Then she stormed off and I heard her scratching away at another Post-it, and I knew the will was being changed again, probably not in my favor. I also know that for me and for many other men every month is already Augmented Breast Awareness Month, but in a flash of wisdom that was way too little and too late, I decided not to mention that.

I snuck over to the fridge while she was upstairs going through her closet, trying to decide which of her shoes and outfits were too sexy to leave to her daughters and had to instead be bequeathed to her friends and found out that, indeed, my status as one of her beneficiaries had not improved.

But now the dog has a trust fund.

Author's Note: The operation was a success and the patient lived, much to her chagrin.

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Santa Claus Versus The Mayans

12/10/2012

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World-class sleigh rider

World class world ender

Now that we are just a few days away from the most boring Apocalypse of all time, it occurs to me that it actually happening would be the only victory we anti-Yuletide warriors could ever hope for over Christmas.

Not that I am in favor of either the Mayan end times or Christmas. It shows a total lack of cajones on the ancient Mayans part, them predicting the world to end a thousand years after all of them would be safely dead. If you're going to predict Armageddon, at least stick around to be engulfed by it is the feeling here. Still, I was at Trader Joe's this morning and Joe was playing "Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart" on the store soundtrack and I thought that if there ever was a good time to be hit by the phantom planet Nibiru, it would be before that song was over.

For those of you who have never heard of the phantom planet Nibiru, some of the Mayan world enders theorize that it is going to clean our clocks on December 21st. Regular astronomers point out that if some planet was going to plow into Earth on the 21st, we would be able to see it in the sky right now. With a telescope you could probably read some hostile graffiti painted on it, like the kind airmen scribble on bombs they plan to drop. "Terra Firma You're Gonna Squirma," for example, or "In Your Face, Human Race."

For those of you who have never heard "Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart," it is a song that was mined from the vast treacle mines that lie beneath the North Pole.[1] Lyrically sappy and musically deficient, like all Christmas music, or at least all Christmas music written since the Middle Ages, it is an auditory offense of the first order. And it is far from the worst Christmas song. That honor belongs to Alvin and the Chipmunks "Christmas Don't Be Late." The feeling of paralytic despair that can overcome a person after listening to just one chorus of this song can only be cured by going out to a forest and blowing actual live chipmunks into bits with a shotgun. As many as you can, until you run out of ammo. Only then will the ringing in your ears drown out the awful otoscopic memory. I've tried this, and it works.

Even the Mayan Apocalypsos can't make up their minds whether the Earth is going to be crushed under the cosmic wheel on the 21st or whether the day is going to usher in a new era of human awareness like the Age of Aquarius was supposed to do back in the day, as if there was barely a difference between the obliteration of the planet and all the Syrians suddenly dropping their guns and hugging each other.

Both seem equally unlikely, but on the off chance that the Mayans are /were right, and the Earth dissolves like a taco shop napkin in a hot sauce spill on the solstice, you'll never have to deal with your credit card balances, take down your Christmas lights or pay a guy with a pickup truck to take your tree to the dump again.

Of course, you will miss Christmas Day itself, the only day in the last six weeks that nobody tries to sell you anything, your kids are at least momentarily grateful to you for spending your life wallowing in debt on their behalf, you've got a refrigerator full of beer and a cabinet full of grog and there are seventy-eight or so football games on.

So the end of the world would be worse. If you don't believe that, I've got some real estate I'd like to sell you. It's on Nibiru.

[1] Actually, the Arctic Ocean lies beneath the North Pole, but if any of you Christmas crazies want to go up there and try to dig in the treacle mines, be my guest.

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War On Christmas--Where Do I Sign Up?

12/5/2012

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The War on Christmas has begun again, according to Fox News, where they are bemoaning the fact that some municipal Christmas tree is referred to by the municipality in question as a "holiday tree."

Whenever the War on Christmas begins, I have only one question: Where do I sign up? I'd love to be an Elf Eraser, or a Stocking Stealer. I'd even start as a lowly Reindeer Wrangler, and hope to rise through the ranks.

Why do we war on Christmas? Because Christmas wars on us. Its advance minions can be seen infiltrating onto shelves as early as September. After a feint attack by its ally Halloween, which serves only to distract us from the buildup of Christmas forces on the horizon, the season invades in earnest on November 1st. The beaches of Normandy on D-Day and the Spartans at Thermopylae were relatively unmolested compared to American wallets at Christmas time. Christmas seeks to gut our cash, eviscerate our MasterCards and make a mess of our American Express.

Christmas deploys land, air and sea attacks. On land, assorted parades and tours by fire truck of its figurehead leader Santa Claus tie up traffic and remind us that the day of reckoning is nigh; by sea, endless container ships depart from Chinese ports crammed stern to bow with cheap plastic crap, and also pricey plastic crap.

But it is the air superiority of Christmas that inevitably carries the day. Even as I write this, the airwaves are humming with commercials for toys that our children will want more than the future itself; toys that they will beg for with tears glistening in their precious eyes. Toys that we will buy them for fear they will become mass murderers, or at least abandon us in our old age, if we don't.

Speaking of toys, I was staggering around the aisles of a major retailer the other day looking for some basic need like soap and instead finding myself surrounded by Christmas merchandise. I noticed the Halo play set. For those of you lucky enough not to know anyone under the age of forty, Halo is perhaps the most popular video game of all time. It is set in a far world in a robotic future, with combatants dressed like robots endlessly destroying futuristic menaces. Now, instead of wearing out your thumbs playing Halo on a video screen, you can push little plastic combat figures around in the dirt just like we did when we were kids. Also, if the US power grid is destroyed in an electromagnetic pulse attack, and our nation descends into an apocalyptic nightmare of cannibalism among warring tribes, you'll still be able to play Halo when you are not being pursued by armed mutants. And it only costs ninety-five bucks!

Who can we count on to help us war on Christmas? Only Scrooge, the Grinch and a few grumpy atheists. And Scrooge and the Grinch always betray us in the end. Just once I'd like to see the Grinch laughing as the children of Whoville are stomping and screaming at the theft of their toys and saying in their sweet voices "Screw that!" when invited to sing hymns anyway, like real children would, or Scrooge dismissing the ghosts' visits as a byproduct of eating too much porridge and cackling as he runs over Tiny Tim while illegally swiping a handicapped parking space.

So all we really have are the grumpy old atheists. They are our Dirty Dozen, our Seal Team Six against the forces of Christmas.

Pray for them.

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Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus Ready to Gun Sinners Down

12/3/2012

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Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus

This extraordinary representation of the Savior was discovered by the author's son in a 99 Cent Only store in Vista, California. You can dig up all the medieval relics you want, stare at all the Shrouds of Wherever for as long as you like, or pay precious money for ancient Byzantine icons and you will never see an image of the Christ quite like this one.

First, consider His garments. He has wisely abandoned His traditional robes for an outfit that pulses with modernity; a Columbine-style trench coat worn over desert camis suitable for a warrior from His native Middle East. This is a Jesus that was born in a foxhole, not a stable. True, in His left hand he still holds the Dove of Peace, but look in His eyes. They are the eyes of a man who has seen one too many of His Apostles die face down in the mud. He is just as likely to scream "Pull!" then toss the bird into the air and blast it into feathers with the automatic weapon strapped to His right side, laughing maniacally all the while, as proffer it to you. He is no longer the Prince of Peace. At best, he is the Prince of Wary Armed Truces. Turn the other cheek to this Redeemer and He'll shoot off your jaw. And who can blame Him? He's been crucified. Doesn't that entitle him to a diagnosis of PTSD as much as any namby-pamby homeless beggar holding up a "Veteran" sign at a major intersection?

On his belt he wears a grenade and a canteen. The canteen is filled with water, but he can turn it into wine any time he needs to. His helmet is placed on the ground beside him; whether this is because all enemy fire has been successfully suppressed or merely because He obviously has potential cosmetic issues with helmet hair is left to the critics to decide.

He no longer wears sandals, but his footwear is still traditional; lace-up combat boots. The trade-off in foot protection and traction on the battlefield is probably well worth the sacrifice of greater difficulty in walking on water.

I am seriously considering opening a shrine, despite having to open my bathroom to the hordes of semi-incontinent elderly faithful it will draw. You can burn His image into all the toast and tortillas you want; you can see His face in all the tree trunks in the ground and every cloud in the sky, but you will never see Him like this anywhere else.

My kid says it was the last one on the shelf.