Annus horribilis.

Begone, annus horribilis!

You’ve gone and made me scribble dis

You taxed me to the breaking point

You’ve made your godforsaken point

I hate your Chinese Viral Doom

That filled each ER waiting room

But Dandy Cuomo went one better:

“Let all da fogies die togeddah!”

Run to Walmart! Buy PPE!

Sanitizer! Lysol! TP! 

Small businesses by lockdowns rotted

What was left, the riots gotted

In the streets, the fire-bombah

Arrested, but sent home to momma.

And our fine health bureaucracy

Made errors far as eye could see

“Bigots worse than death!” they cried

And three hundred thirty-nine thousand died.

Then the election, where more folks voted

Than battleground states had voters toted

The counting stopped, strange votes came in

To let the cellar dweller win.

A terrible year by all accounts

And now as seething anger mounts

Congress tries to close the gate

By printing cash to stimulate

And form an economic bubble

Which always leads to fall and rubble.

Annus horribilis, out with you

And kiss my anus as you do.

Fred's Book Club: A Whole Lotta Nothing.

Welcome, readers! It's time for another Hump Day, which means an entry for our Humpback Writers, which also means I have to explain that the writers don't really have humps, but maybe you know that by now. Anyway, it's Christmas week, so we have another Christmas themed book, sort of. Also, I've been slapped with a bunch of paying work, so we have a lame short entry. And what could be better for a short entry than the gift of nothing?

Cartoon fans will know immediately that this is a book by Mutts creator Patrick McDonnell, and it features the strip's two main characters, Earl, the dog, and Mooch, the best-named cat in comics history. It's a Christmas gift-type book, published by Little, Brown in 2005, and indeed I got my copy as a gift. I'm a big fan of McDonnell's simple but evocative art, and have been since he was doing spot illustrations for Reader's Digest many years ago. Sure, he's a PETA guy and smushes into lots of left-wingness in his work, but I can overlook a multitude for a genuinely funny and charming strip.

This particular book is a simple story about Mooch's simple and common dilemma: What can he give his friend Earl? Earl already has a food bowl, a squeaky toy, and so on. 

Mooch ultimately decides that since Earl needs nothing, that's what he's going to get! And not just nothing, but a lot of it! 

How will Earl like his gift of nothing? Well, it would be a shame to give the story away. Rest assured that it's a happy ending in a true Christmas spirit. And get the book yourself, if you want to have a copy of a comic classic.

As I said, I've been a little short on time this week, and I am grateful I thought of this book to include in the book club. I have a lot of McDonnell's collections of comic strips, and there's always a lot to enjoy, but this is one of the first he wrote and drew that is a self-contained story. Happy Christmas season, and see you here tomorrow for New Year's Eve. 

Golden sings.

Fifth day of Christmas and what do we get? 

This is not my Smudge meme, but surely we've all screwed up lyrics, by accident or on purpose or maybe both. 

I've related my soap story about "Jingle Bells" before, how Child Fred had barely any idea what a sleigh was, let alone an open sleigh or worse a one-horse sleigh, so I would sing loudly, as kids do when they're not asked to sing, "Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one horse soap and sleigh!" But I could not figure out where the soap came in. As it turns out, soap may be used in place of wax to protect runners on sleds and make them slippery, and I presume on sleighs as well, so I may have been onto something unwittingly. 

But that's a classic mondegreen. A more purposeful Christmas mis-sing was related by Dave Barry in his novel The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog. The narrator, a boy dragooned into playing a Wise Man in the pageant, had a hard time not laughing when friend and fellow Wise Man Mike would sing "We three kings of Orient are / Smoking on a rubber cigar." And Mrs. Elkins would get mad.

Another I recall from a kids book, I think it was in the Mrs. Coverlet series, featured "Good King Wence's car backed out / On a piece of Stephen."  

"Jingle Bells" alone seems to bring out the lyricist in young children, who have over the years taught us with the song that Batman smells and what fun it is to ride in a beat-up Chevrolet, among other lessons.

But the accidental words often come from circumstances like my soap issue, where I just didn't understand what was being said so I applied what I did know to the sounds. 

One time in junior high I was in a chorus that was planning to attempt the "Gloria in excelsis Deo" for a concert involving multiple schools. I do not know if it was Bach's or Handel's or one of Vivaldi's or someone else's; I've listened to them and they didn't sound like ours, which was probably our fault.

As a public-school kid I'd never heard much Latin before, and being presented with a choral piece in which all the words were in Latin was a shock. To this day I can still hear the public school music teacher with the midwestern twang working through the tenor part with us:

Gloria in excelsis Deo
et in terra pax hominibus
bonae voluntatis.
Laudamus te
benedicimus te
adoramus te
glorificamus te!

Fortunately for me and for the choir, fate intervened that year and I had to drop out. I don't recall why but I don't think it was my idea. In any event it saved the choir from hearing me resort to Pig Latin in desperation.

Years later I heard the "peanut butter and jelly" trick. Supposedly, if you're singing a choral arrangement and are in danger of forgetting the words, the tip says to sing "peanut butter and jelly" instead. Your words will blend in with the correct words until you find your place, and meanwhile your voice is still heard. I immediately imagined that public school choir, faced with the Gloria in Latin, hearing that tip and resorting to it en masse:

Peanut buh Ter in Jel-LEE
Peanut butter pax in jellybooss
Peanut butter jeh LEE

I decided that it actually works better on the Hallelujah Chorus:

PEAnut BUTter
PEAnut BUTter
And JELly
And JELly
And Jeh heh heh LEEEEE

Mostly these days I keep my singing to when I'm alone in the car. Safer that way.

Old snobs and new.

On the whole, I think I prefer the old-fashioned snobs, the kind one hardly sees anywhere anymore. I think they were a better class than our newfangled snobs. 

Stay back, hoi polloi.

They certainly share things in common, mainly the unbridled joy of being able to look down upon the mass of humanity. And that can be maddening to us in the rank-and-file. And yet the old snobs had it all over the current crop in multiple ways. For example:

1) They were cultured. They supported opera and other classical music, artists whose ardent devotion to their work showed in every stroke of paint, great books of historical importance, and they did it with their own money, not by making the government pay for it. They supported the Western culture that supports everything else. They did not think you could cut the legs under the table of civilization and it would float in air. They preserved Bach and Brahms; they didn't write articles celebrating the social importance of Cardi B.

2) They never tried to pretend to be "commoners." One might point out stories of little jaunts as "normal people" by Victoria and Albert, or rich women posing as shepherdesses, but that's just what those things were -- poses. They didn't try to be "street" when the "street" they came from was a "cul de sac." A snob in those days dressed in ragged clothing was not trying to be an oik any more than a guy dressed up as Green Lantern at ComicCon thinks he can fly. But slovenly hipsters with trust fund money on bikes in Brooklyn think they have cred.

3) They had noblesse oblige. Charity may have been and still be a haphazard thing, but it was considered a social obligation. When a war broke out, rich people were involved, and for real. When a rich person bought his way out, like Teddy Roosevelt's father in the Civil War, it was shameful, whether known publicly or not. They were expected to have skin in the game. Second and third sons were sent off to fight, not "raise awareness" for things. God, I am sick of rich people trying to raise my awareness.

4) They believed in tradition and heritage and God. See #1 above. Were they hypocrites? Sure, many of them, but like François de La Rochefoucauld they believed that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, so the social benefits were enforced even if the sinner was lost. Now we have believers in the Year Zero, who think that the world and its people can be remade if everything is co-opted into the great project, everything up to and including faith in God, which tells us that the so-called Liberation Theology is not dead -- worse, it now has precious little theology. As C.S. Lewis famously concluded, "Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.  It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies.  The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

5) They tried to help in ways that sometimes helped. See #3 above. Also see the work of William Gladstone, a British PM best remembered here for being skewered constantly by rival Disraeli, but a reformer who for whatever his other faults went out to help get poor women off the streets in genuine acts of charity. He also got rid of peacetime flogging in the navy, so that was nice. Modern snobs are more concerned with making themselves feel good about themselves, and if everything goes to hell, at least they tried. 

6) They were not everywhere you looked. The old snobs kept to themselves. One of the worst things about modern snobs is that you can't get away from them. There are more of them and they are all entitled to wonderful careers. Most have parents to support them in unpaid positions that pad the résumé, and the connections to get the good jobs before the talented climbers can even apply. They may have lots of money from the folks or they may not, but they're always turning up in workplaces, especially in media and government, where they want to make change. The only change these modern snobs should be making is four quarters for a dollar, and why? Because in the old days...

7) They thought they were better for better reasons. Personally, I don't mind being accused of ignorance; everyone is ignorant about some things. And I know I have little appreciation for the most high-minded offerings of culture. But I will not stand to be called evil because I don't subscribe to the modern shibboleths of Critical Social Justice, or that I know recycling is a money-wasting joke, or that I despise abortion and I love my church. Yet our modern snobs must not just look down on me, but call me all kinds of synonyms for evil. 

I'm not saying that it would be better to be poor in, say, Victorian London than in modern Detroit. The fact is that all kinds of advancements have made life better for people of every class in the last 150 years. I am saying that we now have what Glenn Reynolds calls the worst ruling class in the history of this great nation, all of which can be traced back to bad ideas from European Communists. 

Why are the bulk of our Communists people who grew up with money, rather than the unwashed poor? Answer that and it explains everything.

The Florida menace.

People keep wondering: Why do so many people in New York retire to Florida? They got hurricanes, they got alligators, they got weird and incompatible cultures from Miami to Orlando to the Panhandle, and most of all they got Florida Man (as detailed most Fridays by PJMedia's own VodkaPundit). Plus, it's hot and humid, so they can't even claim they have a "dry heat" as in the Southwest. So why Florida?

There are theories, of course. We have to discount the "Because New York Sucks" theory first, because while it is true, it does not explain why New Yorkers go to Florida rather than, say, Colorado or Arizona. So let's look at the plausible theories.

1) Leisure police. It's not that older people want to go to Florida; they have to. Jerry Seinfeld explained this about his parents long time ago: "They don't want to move to Florida, but they're in their sixties and that's the law. They got the leisure police. They pull up in front of the old people's house with a golf cart, jump out: 'Let's go, Pop, white belt, white pants, white shoes, get in the back. Drop the snow shovel right there, drop it!'" Maybe, but I've never seen the leisure police in action.  

2) Lower taxes. AARP (which doesn't stand for anything anymore, except maybe dog with a speech impediment) says, "Nine states — Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming — have no income taxes. Tennessee and New Hampshire, however, tax interest and dividends, although Tennessee is phasing out its tax in 2021. New Hampshire is phasing out its interest and dividends tax by 2025, according to the Tax Foundation." But why should the Sunshine State get all the AARPers in New York? Maybe because...

3) Weirdness magnet. Back in 2007, Miami humor columnist Dave Barry proposed the existence of a "weirdness magnet" that drew weirdness to South Florida. "We need to find it, dig it up, and get rid of it. I’m talking about the South Florida Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet. It’s buried around here somewhere. It has to be. How else can you explain why so many major freak-show news stories either happen, or end up, in South Florida? O.J. Simpson, for example. Why is he here? Did anybody in South Florida ever say, 'Hey O.J.! Why don’t you pack up your golf clubs, your one glove and your remaining cutlery, and come be part of our community!'? Of course not! Nobody WANTED him here. He was DRAWN here, by the Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet." It's not hard to imagine that the magnet is strong enough to pull people to Florida, but they may be able to stop anywhere along I-95 once they cross the border. Maybe the major Floridian weirdness is in the southernmost part of the state, but it's not all there. 

4) I-95. Speaking of Interstate 95, that majestic road that runs from the Maine/New Brunswick border to Miami, I can tell you that it seems to exert its own attraction over New Yorkers in a way our west-bound Interstates like I-90 and I-84 do not. There's a feeling that all of civilization worth seeing must lie on I-95 somewhere. The theory is that New Yorkers can't bear to live too far away from this modern Appian Way. Go west, young man? Nay -- go south, New Yawk man.

These are all valid reasons, but my personal favorite is:

5) They can't feel their fingers. When you're a child you can play in the snow all day and still feel all your appendages. When you get a little older, like over forty, suddenly an hour in the cold makes you wonder if your hands are covered in frostbite and will have to come off. After enough winters of this you succumb to the temptation to get in the car and keep driving south until you run out of road. Thus, ultimately, Florida.

Perhaps all these are true. New Yorkers, a little weird by nature, after being taxed like Hagar the Horrible long enough, and sick of freezing half to death, are guided by the leisure police to the I-95 corridor, and the weirdness magnet does the rest. 

I might fall for it, but my dogs won't let me. They're furry and they like the cold. They reminded me I'm too young to retire. I asked them and they both said "AARP! AARP!"

Christmas +1.

Whew.

So, Chinese Death Virus Christmas was okay. Santa was very good to me. I got some AirPods for the iPhone, a Batman T-shirt (not that I'm in danger of being confused with Batman), a FitBit, and some Black Rifle coffee, among other awesome things. 

All the same, it was weird. Mass was attended online. And it was sort of an anti-white Christmas, by which I don't mean there was a BLM rally outside the house. The temperature got up to almost 60, and the rain was heavy enough to cause flood warnings, so all the snow we had last week is completely gone. Even the mound at the end of the driveway, which had been more than three feet high, vanished within 24 hours. The ground got all muddy and squishy. 

It was also one of the most windy days I can recall here, and we've had a couple of hurricanes come by since we moved to suburbia. The roof I spent a fortune on this summer shed shingles like my dogs shed hair, leading me to spend Christmas morning cursing like a truck driver as I picked them up off the lawn. Up the street, a guy who put up a big PVC privacy fence at the corner saw it blown to bits, which was 100% predictable given our weather history; a cheap and lightweight fence with no windbreak and no means to allow airflow was going to get it. It just happened sooner than I expected. Meanwhile, so many reindeer cutouts on various lawns got flattened and jumbled that it looked like Santa's air traffic control had suffered a catastrophic screwup. 

In other news, while using the mandoline on some vegetables for Christmas dinner I managed to slice off a tiny bit of my right index finger, just about the time I was thinking how careful I was being. The Bible wins again. Bled like crazy and hurt like heck. So now I have to type without my right index finger, and have discovered that it pretty much does all the heavy lifting when I type. This entry is taking twice as long to write as it normally would. 

All the same, it was a lovely day, and a fitting end to the strange Advent of a strange year. Today it's two turtle doves and off toward the new year we go!

What would it say about you?

 

Naughty or nice, I wish you a happy and healthy Christmas. 

Buttons and bows.

It's Christmas Eve Day! Time to wrap those presents! 

What? You didn't buy them yet?

Well... get some and come on back. I want to show you something.

🕢🕗🕣🕘

My parents left us quite some time ago now, but every Christmas I encounter some of their things that I somehow kept. A bunch of ornaments for the tree, of course, but even some giftwrap supplies. Actually, quite a bit of giftwrap supplies. I swear I have enough curling ribbon to hang every hoarder and wrecker in the average People's Republic. Festively! 

Here's the thing:

The Pixie Bow Maker, proud little gadget of the eighties, is in my possession, along with a supply of the bow pins on which you wrap the ribbon to create the bow. And a fun little item it is, too. 

First, take a pin out of the storage compartment in the base. Lift the center column and put the pin in to hold it on position.

Take a length of festive ribbon and put it festively over the pin. Then make successive loops, passed over that pin, to build the bow.

See? Now we're getting somewhere! When you think you have made enough loops, pop the pin out of the column. Now you not only have a bow, you have a bow with a sharp plastic pin in the center, which you can apply to your gift by shoving into the cardboard. It sits in place beautifully. 

I would not shove it through the plastic bottle of Georgi Vodka you're giving to Otis, or get a large one and shove it through the roof of the Lexus you're giving to your kid, but if you have a gift in a cardboard box, it works like a charm. You can make a large, cheery bow out of any color ribbon you like. Also, you can leave enough ribbon attached to wrap around the box and get the classic ribbon-secured gift without any tape or knots.

The Pixie Bow Maker and pins were a product of Mag-Nif, Inc,. of Mentor, Ohio, as we see on the back of the box. Bloomberg profiles it thus: "Mag-Nif, Inc. manufactures toys and games. The Company offers gift mazes, brain teasers, coin sorters and banks, and pixie craft kits. Mag-Nif operates in the United States." Founded in 1963, according to other data. 

Unfortunately the company seems to have gone out of business, and recently too. They still have a Web site, but all the pages are blank. So that's the end of the Pixie Bow Pins. I think I have enough pins to make about another seventy or so bows. Then, like so many great things about the eighties, the Bow Maker will be no more. 

Sad, but don't be blue. If you are committed to making your own bows for gifts - - and if you were, you wouldn't be the type of person I addressed at the top of this post -- you can find plenty of other products like the Pixie Bow Maker around now. The Pro Bow, for example, supposedly can make all kinds of bows, of all shapes and sizes. Well, good for them. But I'll bet it's not as easy to use as my Pixie Bow Maker.  

Enough of this slog down memory lane! Off you go! You have things to do! Get merry! Get bright! 

We'll be here tomorrow for a quick hit, then back on Saturday for post-Christmas summary. Meanwhile, happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night! 

Fred's Book Club: Divine Mysteries.

Welcome to Wednesday, which means another episode of our book feature called the Humpback Writers, named for Hump Day. No backs are involved. Well, we don't think so, anyhow.

Usually when we have a book by a well-known author, we like to do two things: 1) Use the editorial We and 2) profile a book that is representative of the author's oeuvre. Well, thing 2 is thrown out the window, because today we have Christmas stories by the world's foremost writer of mystery stories, Agatha Christie. Or, as she styled herself for some non-mystery writing, Agatha Christie Mallowan, using the name of her second husband.

Star Over Bethlehem, originally published in 1965, is a collection of six stories and five poems about Christmas. It's quite short; my edition runs 84 pages with not a lot of text on each page. But it is such a departure from what we expect from Dame Agatha that I wager all but the most committed fans of hers would be surprised at what lies within. 

All of the stories are good, of course, and some are very moving. I hate to give anything away -- and there are some actual mysteries in this book, including the origin of the titular star in the title story (Jupiter and Saturn? Ha!), that can surprise. One of my favorites here is "The Naughty Donkey," a fable that indeed concerns a very stubborn, very disobedient beast:

Once upon a time there was a very naughty donkey. He liked being naughty. When anything was put on his back he kicked it off, and he ran after people trying to bite them. 

Several owners try to break the donkey of his naughtiness, and each gives up and sells him at a loss to someone else. All that is in the first paragraph. The donkey runs off and sneaks into a caravan just to eat, and annoys the other animals. Then some well-known personages come by.

"V.I.P.s," hissed the camel.

"What's that?" asked the donkey.

"Very Important People," said the camel, "bringing gifts."

The donkey follows them to a manger, hoping to taste the gifts, but they are useless to him and he is disgruntled. Then the baby in the manger takes hold of the donkey's ear, "clutching it tight as very young babies will." And everything changes for the donkey. In lesser hands it would be a maudlin affair, but Christie makes it a great story suitable for young and old. 

More adult stories include a convocation of fourteen saints, concerned about the world, petitioning God to go back and try to lead humanity on the road to heaven. (Being C of E, Christie can't resist a dig at my Catholic church, having St. Peter say, "I'm not so sure about that church I founded... It's not turned out at all as we meant..." But I forgive her.) The best story is probably "The Island," a story of Mary living with John, many years after her Son commissioned John to take her as his own. 

I enjoyed this book very much, but it certainly put me in mind of a famous Hitchcock quote: “I'm a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.” Christie was the same way, but while there are mysteries here, and very human stories, there are no bodies with knives sticking out of them. 

In the year and a half I've been doing this feature, I have yet to repeat an author. I may have to do that soon. Christie's mysteries always demand attention, and to be fair to her I think I ought to trot one out for the Humpback Writers. We'll see what 2021 brings. 

Stuck behind Christmas.

Another brief one today -- tied up with work, and with getting stuck in traffic. 

How stuck? 

How about train crossing stuck? 

Well, as you can see, that was just a commuter train. It was not one of those eight-mile freight trains that make you late on Tuesday when you left the house Monday. 

Slower than that, a good deal slower in fact, was when I got stuck behind Santa Claus. 

No Santa visible in this photo, true -- but the ambulance is the back of the line. Every year the volunteer fire department gets Santa to ride around on a flatbed, accompanied by lights-flashing siren-booping vehicles, to every street in town. He waves at all the adults and passes out candy to the children. And he rides at about 10 mph.

I didn't care. I think it's great. It was nice to sort of feel like I was part of the parade, one that was longer than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade last month or the Tournament of Roses parade next month. Strange times we live in. 

God bless our firemen. It's good to know that whatever else is going wrong, Santa Claus always comes through.

Basically the last four years.

 

Who's celebrating?

Happy fourth Sunday of Advent! And down the stretch we go!

Anyway: I was walking along, minding my own business, when I passed a Protestant church with a Christmas tree out front. Nothing weird about that, not in December; it would be a little odd in August. Anyway, this church eschewed all the usual decorations to instead cover the tree with flags of the world.

So who's celebrating with us, according to the flags?

The United States, still a majority Christian country, as is Canada, and Chile above them, and Jamaica, and -- Israel? Well, okay, Judeo-Christian heritage and all that...

And here's the flag of Communist Cuba, about which the CIA World Factbook says it is more than 59% Christian. Yet as an official Communist state wherein the Communist party is the only legal political party, we know that they have an official position of atheism -- or at least, their only official religion is the religion of the state. 

And there's good ol' Communist China, hanging out with good ol' Socialist Venezuela. I'm sure they'll have a merry Christmas. 

Look, I get it -- Christ is supposed to have come to save all of us, not just Western people, not even people who go to church and make a big deal of faith. We have no idea who is saved and who is not, actually, and we may be surprised. And maybe we need to pray hardest for those nations that not only are anti-religious but actively persecute Christians. But displaying the flags of those nations on the Christmas tree seems less like wishful thinking and more like wanton foolishness, like turning a blind eye to the evils of the governments of this world. 

We can work and pray and strive and hope for world peace, but we should not be stupid. This is kind of stupid to me. It's not like they have every nation in the world up on the tree; there are 195 countries on planet Earth and there are nowhere near 195 flags on this tree. Perhaps the flags represent areas in which this denomination has opened offices or sent missionaries. That might make sense. But I still think it's just brotherhood-of-man stuff, or I guess we need to say personhood-of-persons. 

Having seen what I think is the pastor's house next door, I suspect that reverend personage believes Trump is the single largest cause of all the trouble in the world right now anyway, based on a myriad of signs and bumper stickers.

It's the kind of thinking that believes we are all naturally brothers unless some evil force turns us against one another, which is as naïve as anything can be. Naturally, those in America who subscribe to such notions immediately blame America as that evil force.  

All I can say is, if this minister has seen his congregation in action, he knows that people don't automatically get along all the time out of love, and should be able to understand why nations fight too. We all suffer from a condition called human nature. Our problems are bred in the bone, and don't go away from wishful thinking, or willful blindness. If all of us strove to live a Christian life, I think it would bring the fighting way down, but as long as humans are humans it's never going to be paradise on earth, and attempts to make it so usually go to hell fast.

Brisk!

It was cold this morning in New York -- pretty darn cold, I ought to say. 

How Cold Was It?

It was so cold, my antifreeze froze.

It was so cold, Governor Cuomo declared that up to three people would be allowed to eat together at home indoors. 

It was so cold, Chuck Schumer's mouth froze shut and the president declared a national holiday.

It was so cold, Frosty the Snowman decided to move south.

He's kind of a moron, but he's not stupid

It was so cold, Gladys Knight froze her Pips. /Carson

The weird thing was, it was so cold that my wife and I had different Weather Channel app results on two different iPhones. Hers said it was 3 degrees; mine had a balmy 7. Either way, I had to take out the dogs, but I was not taking chances as well. I got my thermal Underoos, my woolly hat and scarf, and a couple of HotHands. These things stay warm for up to ten hours, but I knew I'd be in and out all day, so I just had to put them someplace safe while indoors. I didn't want to leave them on my desk where they might cause a stack of papers to spontaneously combust. 

As I write this at 5:30 a.m., both iPhones say it's supposed to go up to 32 later. That seems like quite a hill for this weather to climb. Thirty-two would feel like a day at the beach compared to my first trip out. 

At least it isn't windy. That turns a painful chill into a brutal chill. That's the kind of cold a friend of mine would call "Brisk!" back in the day, with a cheerful and slightly insane grin. He would not let mere hypothermia get in the way of a determined pub crawl. 

I hope it's a little warmer where you are. Weather like this could make a guy freeze his BLANK off! /Rayburn

Blargeaster.

The nor'easter came nor'east from, I guess, sou'west, and hit us in the n'ose between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. And I should know. Because I have two dogs who are big and hairy and enjoy the snow, so they kept me out during the evening on Wednesday and were up with me at four on Thursday. 

Wednesday night I was huddling under the deck, and junior varsity dog Nipper was sitting in the backyard doing nothing. So I thought I'd get his picture, which was cute. He's a little hard to see due to the snowfall.

Honest, he's in there somewhere.

Not much else to report. We got about 16 inches of powdery snow, so I shoveled a lot. All the while I'm praying not to reinjure my back. Looks like I got through okay, at least this time. More time-consuming is the dogs, who love the snow but need to be dried off. Fortunately it's not good packing snow, which tends to stick to Nipper's fuzz in these huge clumps. My wife got a dog blow dryer a couple of years ago just to get them off him.

Meanwhile I'm suddenly loaded up on freelance work because I'm hanging around. About the beginning of November clients will say, "Soooo.... Got any plans for the holidays?" "No, staying home." Which means Fred is available. And thank God for that -- going to need the cheddar to pay for the Christmas.

All of which means I have little to share today, I'm afraid. BUT! There is an important Christmas tree update! 

📢update...update...update📢

Remember on St. Nicolas's Day when I said that I lost one of the branches from our artificial tree? Well, guess what fell out of the tree when I was putting up the last of the ornaments. That's right! The little branch had gotten entangled with a large branch on the bottom. I'm looking around for a place to add just one more ornament when suddenly a fully decorated branch fell out of the back. So our tree (wife calls it Doug) is back in business for another year. 

I hesitate to call it a Christmas miracle, but I'll take it. 

Elf-help books.

Every now and then I'm asked to proof or copyedit a self-help book. Usually these are written by someone who has achieved notable success and, through the goodness of his or her heart, wants to pass on the life lessons learned to others. And they usually bring forth a great deal of interest from me. They inspire me so much I want to hang myself. And I find myself hoping the author will be run over by a garbage truck. 

Unfortunately there's never a garbage truck around when you need one. 

I especially love it when the book is written by someone younger than I am. Hi, Mr. Successful Kid! I am cleaning up your poorly written book for a pittance! You're welcome! 

Here's a fictional but seasonal example of what makes me crazy, excerpted from the book Elf Improvement: How to Achieve the Success You Deserve in Ten Jolly Steps, by Jingle Merryman.

The Author

I didn't have it easy as a child elf. I grew up in a hardscrabble home with only a piece of coal as my best friend. But through hard work, vision, and my blood relation to Santa Claus, I managed to achieve my dreams. 

I'm not saying that all you need is ambition, drive, and connections to get ahead. Good looks helps too. And if you aren't a success by the time you're thirty, you need to take a hard gaze in the mirror and say these inspirational words: "I am a shiftless, no-good, lazy bum, and I deserve everything bad that happens to me."

I'll never forget that day by the hot spring when Mr. Chuckles took me aside and said, "I want to say one word to you, Jingle. Just one word." "Yes sir?" I said. "Are you listening?" "Yes I am." "Peppermint."

I've heard people say that graduating from the right college is the only thing that matters, and it surely helps. My years at Innovation Geopolitical Learning University, good ol' IGL-U, are some of my fondest, and I met so many great people there, even some who didn't come from money. And yet there are many people who have had brilliant careers at the North Pole who never went to university at all! At least, I've been told that. 

Clothes are useful to success, and I recommend as sharp a wardrobe as your budget allows. Just remember, fat guys always look like slobs, so don't even bother if you're a fat guy. Well, except for Santa, but he's a special case. And a close personal friend as well as a beloved relative.

Whatever happens in your career, you must remember never to hang around with lowlifes. Sure, they seem like fun, but you know what they say -- lay down with the reindeer, wake up with the fleas. 

Not everyone is born with a nose for opportunity. You have to have an eye for the main chance. An eye and a nose, then. Oddly enough, the elf who got me in on the ground floor of Gingerbread Real Estate Development was named Chance Maine. We made an absolute killing.

I remember once when President Clinton called me to the White House on an urgent mission. As soon as I got out of the limo he ran out of the building to meet me. "Jingle, thank God you're here," he said, patting his brow with a monogrammed hankie (W.J.C.). "'Sup, dawg?" I said. "Jingle, you're a genius at giving gifts," he said. "Ah, diplomatic issue?" I said. "Kinda," he said, "Need something for a young intern but I'm stumped." "Billy," I said, "I recommend a copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass." "Is that the dude from the Whitman's Sampler?" asked Clinton -- always the food with that guy. "No, the poet," I said. "Jingle, you may have saved the day," he said. "I always am available to help with diplomatic relations," I told him. "Carnal, too," he muttered. And the rest is history.

Humility is crucial. I got the best money could buy. 

It's crucial to give back to your community when you make it to the top. That's why I founded the Elf Help and Elf Care Course to help underclass elves educate themselves and stop being layabouts with nonpointy shoes. For just $150 a month they get my personalized recordings and books that will motivate them to get their elfie asses moving. Just my way of saying, "We're all in this together."

Fred's Book Club: The Work of Forgiveness.

Greetings, fellow readers! Welcome to the Humpback Writers feature, our Wednesday (a.k.a. Hump Day) entry that looks at books and lets them look back at us. The writers may not actually have any humps, but the books have spines, so there is that.

Today we're preparing for Christmas, and while Advent is a season of joy, it's also a time for examination of conscience and learning to love our brethren. This will be helpful if we're going to be stuck with our brethren all Christmas Day at Aunt Tilly's house. But forgiveness is often more than we can stand to do, especially if the wound has been very deep. What is to be done?

Today's book is one of the smallest in our vast collection, at 71 pages, but is meant to help us in this work of forgiveness. Joan Mueller, Ph.D., is a professor of theology at Creighton University in Omaha, and also a professor of Christian spirituality. Forgiveness is one of the gigantic pillars of Christianity, something we all need and we're expected to give, so we might think Dr. Mueller has some useful thoughts. 

Forgiveness: Three Minute Reflections on Redeeming Life's Most Difficult Moments is a helpful book for those seeking to forgive and those seeking forgiveness. It is a series of meditations, broken into four sections of seven each, that can be literally read in three minutes. Each has a scriptural reading, a thought connected to it, and a spiritual exercise to help the reader. The exercises can take a lot longer than three minutes, of course, depending on how much thought we want or need to apply to them. But taken along the way, all can be useful, and if done one a day, the book can be completed in a month. I won't say painlessly -- forgiveness can be painful for everyone involved. But grudges can hurt a lot more.

Here's a sample page:

You may hate this kind of stuff. Dismiss it as nonsense or happy horse-hockey (or worse). Well, so do I, much of the time, and I used to all of the time. But I approached this with an open mind and I believe it was good for me.  

I picked this book up in the lobby of my Catholic church, when some of the publishers from New City Press came down for a visit. New City Press is not a Catholic publisher, but they seek to help any Christian or anyone looking into Christianity or anyone who needs to find faith. (And Hyde Park, New York, where they are based, is not far from where I live.) I wanted to support the small press, so I looked for a book that might be of interest, and this one surely was. I think it did help me make peace with some of the people against which I held grudges, even if they didn't know I was still mad. 

Finding peace with an angry world and the people in it can surely be a daunting task, but one particularly good to do, or at least try to do, at Christmastime. I thank Professor Mueller for her book, and New City Press for bringing it to my attention. But I'm still a work in progress.

White crap.

It appears that Old Man Winter is about to give us our first considerable punch in the nose of the season. It's technically still autumn, but not here. 

Generally there are five ways to deal with the first, possibly big snowstorm of the year:

1) Bravado: See above.

2) Denial: "It was fifty degrees on Sunday! It's gonna be another big nothingburger. Just something from the Weather Channel to drum up ratings."

3) Panic: "STORE! NOW! TOILET PAPER! MILK! EGGS! BREAD!"

4) Resignation: "Whatever, roof'll probably cave in. Guess I might die in bed after all."

5) Merriment: "Whee! Snow! No school! Sledding! Snowball fights! White Christmas!"

Most of us go through different methods at different times in our lives. I think I'm almost firmly and permanently ensconced in Resignation now. Of course, my hairy pets are always prone to Merriment in snow, so I'm not allowed to move south as long as they live. 

Well, we'll see how it goes. I'll let you know how I make out, if the roof doesn't cave in. 

More Christmas.

Sunday was a crazy day -- I made cookies! I had a church meeting! I set up the small tree in my wife's office! I walked dogs! I was going to go to the supermarket but we have a possible blizzard on the way this week and I didn't want to be trampled. The rush for toilet paper has been bad enough this year.

Anyway, I'm afraid all I have for you is some more sights of the season. Usually these are things I've seen while walking the dogs, but we have some extras here.

When reindeer go camping. They look like they're having fun, don't they? But if this is their camp, why is Santa's hat hanging on the tent? Do they have to sleep outside even when they're camping? Maybe I'm overthinking this.

Hi! And there's a happy snowman and... I guess that's a penguin. He looks a little skinny. Maybe he's been sitting on the eggs too long. I don't know. I forget all my penguin stuff. It's been years since March of the Penguins. 

I was in PetSmart and found this squeaky toy -- Santa stuck in a chimney. I'm still not sure what to think about it. Santa's rear end in a chimney as a dog toy. Hmm. I feel like I'm missing something. My wife thought it was hilarious. 

I like these wood cut-outs a lot. They can be a fun project with the kids. I don't think this one was because it was very well painted. Not sure why Santa's hat is in the chimney. Or is that his butt? Santa better be more careful going forward. Never mind. The nice thing about these decorations is that they're fun to see in daylight and can be floodlit at night. It gives the property a Christmassy look during the day. A lot of houses -- including mine -- don't show much holiday gladness in daylight but look good at night. These can look good all the time. 

Bear at the church. Two bucks for this well-dressed chap. I'm sure he'll find a home soon.

Do they make the pickup that's towing this camper? Otherwise that tree is going to fall apart before it gets into water. And how did it get decorated before it got strapped on top? And is it strapped on top? Why am I bothering you with these questions?

This was my favorite thing this week, at the Home Depot. Gives the kids something to do while Dad tries to guess what size screws he needed that he should have measured before leaving the house. Many's the time my father dragged to the hardware store and the only fun thing to do was try not to get killed by sharp objects hanging around. This is a great way to get the kids excited about Home Depot, and give a job to a stupid elf on the shelf. The little apron kills me. 

So that's what I've been looking at; how about you?

The just man.

As every Catholic knows, or ought to, Advent is a period of hope, not penitence like Lent. But Advent and Lent are both periods of preparation. Today we mark the third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, as a reminder that our expectation is coming near, that our hope may become stronger as we wait for the child in the manger who is God among us. 

Which brings me to St. Joseph, which you may recall is my Confirmation saint and a model for the worker and the head of the Holy Family. Look at it this way -- his wife is perfect and his foster son is God, yet he's the head of the household. Must be a pretty special guy.

And that is why I am cheered beyond measure that Pope Francis has proclaimed this to be the Year of St. Joseph:

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2020 / 04:08 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis announced a Year of St. Joseph Tuesday in honor of the 150th anniversary of the saint’s proclamation as patron of the Universal Church. 

The year begins Dec. 8, 2020, and concludes on Dec. 8, 2021, according to a decree authorized by the pope. 

The decree said that Francis had established a Year of St. Joseph so that “every member of the faithful, following his example, may strengthen their life of faith daily in the complete fulfillment of God’s will.” 

I can't think of a better saint to look to at this miserable juncture in history than St. Joseph. He was a stalwart man, a provider, a protector, a hard worker, obedient to God and God's law, a just man, faithful to the end. He is the antithesis of everything we've endured in 2020 -- the constant lies, the destruction of businesses by our political class, the violent assaults on innocents, the attacks on families and faith from our cultural elites. The pope went on to write, “Our world today needs fathers." (A recent analysis in First Things would agree with that.) "It has no use for tyrants who would domineer others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction.” 

This may be the first time I've been thrilled by anything coming from the Holy Father. 

I sure wasn't thrilled by the 2020 Vatican Playskool Nativity.

Pope Francis's silence over the horrors of China's oppression of religious groups, even Catholics, has frustrated me; his attacks on our president and our country have annoyed me; his endless taunts about "opening" the church to modernism -- that send the cardinals flocking to explain that what the pope said wasn't what he meant -- has worn me out. But this time I think he knocked it out of the park. 

Have hope, and if you're of a bent to do so, ask St. Joseph to pray for us. We need his example and his prayers to try to right the mess we're in now. Let us not be afraid, but rejoice and be brave.

Took the last can of Noo Yawk hash.

So in addition to getting an Emmy for his portrayal of a tough-tawking asshole, lahge and in chahge, while sending COVID-infected patients to kill grannies in nursing homes, our illustrious Governor Sonny Corleone has received the Edward M. Kennedy Award for Inspired Leadership. And I think that's just great. Teddy is best remembered now as a driving force, literally driving into the river and leaving his girlfriend to die in the car. Cuomo is driving our state with the same vision and apparently the same goal.

I suspect that Cuomo's book American Crisis: How I Screwed New York and Killed Thousands Who Didn't Need to Die (I may have the subtitle wrong) will also garner a lot of awards. I remember how the Grammys sucked up to Obama by tossing awards at him for reading the books he “wrote” (much in the way Teddy's brother Jack "wrote" Profiles in Courage). Cuomo narrated his audiobook, which may have been the first time he ever read it. I am sure the Grammys will toss him an award too.

The Grannys, however, will probably not. His policies bumped off thousands of them.

Products at the end of the world.

So, as the week draws to a close, and the world comes to an end (your mileage may vary) due to Chinese Death Virus and election shenanigans and all the other fun from 2020, what's out there worth buying?

Well, we all still need hand sanitizer, and now we have to get kiddie hand sanitizer, just like we have kiddie toothpaste and kiddie bubble bath. So who wants some SpongeBob hand sanitizer?

While suspended by a handy carabiner, the product does have three problems I can identify. One, it is made in China, who started all the trouble in the first place. Two, it wants to trade off the fame of cartoon TV star SpongeBob SquarePants, but he barely appears on the packaging. Three, it is supposed to smell like bubble gum, but mostly smells like fake banana candy -- you know, as in circus peanuts.

Oh, and four -- it looks like someone peed in your hand. For real.

The yellow color is quite vivid and goes all over your hands as you sanitize, but seems to fade into your skin as you go. I'm not sure how this works. Maybe it just becomes faint. If you use it as an aftershave you might look jaundiced, and maybe get out of work for the day. 

This too came from China, via Target:

So that's cheerful hand sanitizer, isn't it? "Winter Wonderland"! Blue color! Snowman! Snowflakes! "Scentfull"! So what do you think it smells like? 

Wrong! I don't know what it smells like -- maybe some cheap 70's cologne with Tabasco mixed in -- but if you guessed mint or whipped cream or something, you're off base. The Target site says it has "the cozy scent of Frosted Balsam, Vanilla & Musk," which "will leave your hands delightfully fragranced." I don't know what Balsam smells like, let alone Frosted Balsam, and Musk I know not either. 

Years ago, long before this whole COVID-19 crap broke out, I bought a store-brand hand sanitizer from Home Depot, an HDX-branded bottle that came from China. At that time Purell and GermX were the only brands in the game, and they smelled nice. The HDX stuff smelled like peppered tequila that had been infected with some kind of fungus. I later heard that the soap at the Hotel Millennium in Downtown Manhattan also had an odd peppery scent that was meant to appeal to its many travelers from China and Japan. Well, the HDX didn't appeal to me. I got rid of it. Little could I foresee the weird sanitizers in our future. 

I think I finally figured out this scent: It's Fang Fang's femme fatale perfume. 

Let's get to something more useful. Mr. Fix-It here has had a busy week at the homestead. I found a flood under the kitchen sink and fixed it! (Seems like the dishwasher's vibrations had loosened the wastepipe over the years and a leak suddenly developed, fixed by... tightening the pipes!) Worse, one of the two little pre-lit trees that stand vigil at the front door lost half its lights during the off-season. Since these were pre-strung, pulling off the old lights to replace them is virtually impossible, but finding the entwined outage is about as difficult. Quelle damage! What's do be done? Shoot it! 

I love the little Light Keeper kit. It can detect outages in the bulbs and the cords! It can test individual bulbs! It carries replacement bulbs! Best of all, you can try to restart a line by shooting into an empty bulb socket! Okay, it didn't work, but it helped me find and replace the dead bulb in no time. It was $23 from Home Depot, but a lot cheaper than replacing the little tree, or both of them if a match could not be found. I'm getting a little holster for this gun to carry with me next year during decorating. 

Now, for those out there saying, "The perfect ornament doesn't exist for 2020! We know because Fred looked at all the Hallmark ornaments in October!" I say "Ha!" And add, "I looked farther afield than Hallmark and found this!"

Yes, it's the festive and lovely toilet paper roll ornament from the one and only Old World Christmas. What better way to celebrate 2020? It comes with a little card that explains the history of toilet paper right up to its first US production in 1857. It's going to look great on my tree. At least until my wife finds it. The only question I have is, why didn't it make Dave Barry's annual gift guide?

Finally, I got myself a present this year, something I've been putting off. The comedian Larry Miller has been doing a podcast for eleven seasons, but due to the coronavirus crisis has decided to call it quits at last. Well, I've been eyeing the shirts and such in his souvenir shop, and have long wanted this:

For those who know the world of Milleronia, no explanation is needed; for those who do not, no explanation will suffice. 

On yesterday's topic...

 The sign could just as easily say "Iced By Fred."

Fred's Book Club: Leave Some for Santa.

Good day, book lovers, and welcome back to the Humpback Writers, the Hump Day feature that asks the musical question: Do these writers have back disorders, or is it just named for Wednesday? To which we answer: Maybe! Here we look at every kind of book imaginable, but for just the second time since this feature began, we have a cookbook. 

I received this book as a gift some years ago, and what a beautiful book it is. Cookies, it is called simply, by Australia's own Pamela Clark. And that's what it's all about -- dozens of recipes for gorgeous cookies. 

Pamela Clark's Wiki page says she has been a professional baker, home economist, and writer of cookbooks since 1969, so we know she knows her cookies. Hundreds of books have been "informally" attributed to her that were published under the rubric of Australia Women's Weekly, and today's book may have been one of them. I don't really know, because it was a 2007 edition from Barnes and Noble. Anyway, she seems nice enough, and the cookies in this book look delicious. 

"There's never been a cookie book like this one," says the introduction, "full of fantastic and imaginative ideas that will excite the baker as much as the taster." You may wonder if this strong claim is true. So do I. Which is to say, I haven't tried to make any of them yet.

Why is that? Well, for a start, these are cookies for all seasons, and I usually only bake at Christmastime. Here, for example, is something called Stained-glass Lollipops, a real summertime treat (which, to be fair, is when Christmas arrives Down Under): 

I don't know if you've ever tried to make a stained-glass cookie, which involves melting hard candy, reforming it as you wish, and then cooling back into candy. I have. It was a hot mess. Literally a hot mess.

So yes, I am insinuating that many of these cookies are more difficult than I would like to try to make. Plus, when you make a chocolate chip cookie everyone seems to dig, it's hard to be motivated to go that extra mile for something complex, and when I am, it's for pfeffeneuse. 

But there are many, many bakers more gifted and competent and determined than I who would love this book. 

I hope the author and publisher don't mind, but I would like to share one Christmas cookie recipe from the book that looks beautiful. Consider it a review excerpt. (Plus the book seems to be out of print in the United States anyway.) Here we go:

You see how neat these angels are? I can't even ice a gingerbread cookie to make it look neat. All my gingerbread men come out looking like some kind of homeless gingerbread bums, living hard on the street, hammered on ginger liqueur. But please, if you try these Christmas Angels, let me know how they come out. They look awesome. 

I'm not sure I'll even bake this year, since there's no one to go share them with -- no office, no big gatherings, no nothing. I do go to a few events but food is outlawed. All this because of the Chinese Death Virus. If I bake a bunch of cookies I fear I will eat them all, and then I'll have to stay home next year because my pants won't fit.

Well, thanks to Pamela Clark and her staff for a beautiful, almost coffee-table quality book. If I can't have awesome cookies in my mouth, at least I can have them in a book. They always say you eat with your eyes first anyhow.  

'Tis cursed, I tell ye!

Aye, no' since the theft o' the great six-foot hairy caber of Clan MacReekie by the Sassenach English has there been such a crime! 

Sure'n the thievery of the treasure of the cursed clan of Dumbarton will make the very hair tremble on yer backside! For naught less than the very Treasure o' Clan McRib has been stolen! 

An' it's said he who dares open the chest o' the McRib clan faces a frightening, fearsome fate!

Cursed or not, the McRib sandwich has returned! McDonald's announced that stores across the fruited plain would once again feature the pork barbecue delight, and indeed it proved the case at our very own branch. 

The McRib may be the most divisive offering McDonald's has -- people either love it with a devotion that inspires a worldwide McRib tracker, or hate it with the heat of a white-hot sun. The latter people are wrong. Or thus says my family -- for me and mine, we'll have the McRib! And fries, thanks.

Yes, it's a barbecue patty shaped like ribs, with fresh onions and half-dill slices. If it were available all the time, I suspect opinions wouldn't be quite so ferocious. Although these days everything seems to spark ferocious fighting. That's why I'm not on Twitter. 

Most people who are old enough to remember do agree on one thing, though -- that the McDonald's fries are not as good as they were thirty years ago. That's when the company yielded to pressure from proto-Karens and took the beef tallow out of the formula. As if any vegetarian really wanted to eat at McDonald's but was stopped by those doggone meaty fries.

If you are one of those who remember the original McD fries, or are just tallow-curious, I recommend Luke Fater's article "My Hunt for the Original McDonald's French-Fry Recipe" in Atlas Obscura. Fater's obsession led him on a voyage of discovery, God bless him, which eventually brought him to what he says is a home version of the original long-lost corporate recipe for McDonald's fries. 

I would try that. I might yet. 

But to be honest, if the McRib recipe were lost, I don't think I'd try to re-create it. I like the McRib a lot, but any barbecue sandwich will quell the hankering. McD's original fries, though -- they're worth going to trouble for.