…And God(dess) Send you a Happy New Year

I know things have been kind of slow around here.  I still have to rebuild my professional site, which is taking forever, plus this time of year is the busiest for us singers. I have been continuing with my situp/pushup/squat challenge, and if you check out my tweets every other day, you’ll see I’m even logging in my progress.

But I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday season, whatever you’re celebrating, and all the best for a happy new year.

In other news, because Christmas also seems to be the season of spammers, and I’ve been getting comment overload from bots wanting to sell me Viagra and/or Cialis, I’ve installed a CAPTCHA application to the comment forms.  Please feel free to continue to comment on my posts (obviously, those of you reading this on Facebook can continue commenting as per usual), but this extra step saves me having to wade through the spam.

I Rest My Case

I made a mistake in my last post. It’s not an Eagles quarterback, it’s a Cowboys quarterback…which might actually be worse, especially around here. Those people are just asking for a beating.

What are Santa and the Grinch doing to that poor reindeer? And Frosty, there’s no need to bow down to others just because they’re human and you’re not! This is a sad state of affairs, dear reader…a sad state of affairs.

Deck the Lawn with Tacky Blow-Ups

Dear neighbors and all the folks in America who have decided to get into the Christmas spirit with large inflatable figures on their lawns,

It’s one thing to celebrate the holiday season by stringing your house and trees with lights.  I think they are very cheery and lighten my evening whenever I see lit houses.  Those reindeer that are made of Christmas lights are lovely (and I was tickled when I passed a house where the two reindeer had been arranged in a rather lewd position, although I’m sure that was probably some prank pulled off by local kids).  I even like some manger scenes, when done tastefully.

But what makes you think I want to see four or five 15-foot inflatable Santas in a row on my way home?  The amount of time and energy you must spend blowing up those dolls can probably be better put to use finishing your Christmas shopping or volunteering at a soup kitchen.

And while you might think you’re done inflating those things at 5 or 6 in the evening, I can tell you with all certainty that by 9:30 they are halfway deflated, and that by morning they are completely flat.  So the idea that passers-by might be cheered by a large Mickey Mouse with a Santa hat smiling and waving at them doesn’t hold water, since by the time I drive by, poor Mickey looks like he’s been hitting the eggnog a little too much.

And is it really necessary to have Santa, an inflatable sleigh, and an Eagles quarterback?  I know I live in the land of the Eagles fans, who are, by definition, a little bit nuts, but can you dial it back just a little bit?  For the kids?  Who wants to drive by a 15-foot generic football player that looks like he’s about to throw up rather than throw the ball, while an anemic Santa has overturned his sleigh?

Take some time to look at your house from an outsider’s perspective.  Look at it, not when you come home from work, but right after you watch Survivor.  Then look at your electric bill and think about how much money you might save if you just got rid of the inflatable dolls.  You could give that money to those charities that have been soliciting you these past couple of weeks, and then you could feel much better about yourself this season, and I would feel much better about you as well.

This has been a public service announcement.