BONUS CHRISTMAS-RELATED POST

Believe it or not, nuns were a big part of my upbringing.

As a born-and-raised Catholic from a long line of Catholics, nuns taught me at Sunday School.

They taught me at the Catholic elementary school I attended and at the Catholic high school just down the block from that.

When I was an altar boy, one of my tasks was (GET THEE TO A NUNNERY!) to walk to the convent just a few minutes' stroll from the church to pick up the hosts that the priest would serve at mass.

So it's accurate to say that nuns have not been nones in my life experience. Some drove me gonzo, some were great. I could never understand why they'd pick that path, but that's not for me to judge.

So here I am, decades later. Haven't gone to church regularly for all those decades. Haven't hardly stepped inside a church. Certainly haven't seen a nun or dealt with one on any level.

And what does my goofy sister do? The Garage Sale Queen, who picks up the goofiest things and then hands them out as joke Christmas presents each December?

She gives me a Nunchuck toy for Christmas, complete with four little plastic nuns ready to be chucked (as in the photo above and, in my bad attempt at a closeup, below).


I'm pretty sure I'm not going to actually open the package and test out the Nunchucker, but instead will display it somewhere as a salute not only to nuns around the world but also to my sister.

She has not given me permission to post her picture on my blog or elsewhere on the Web, but I think I can show her from behind.


This is her hugging my daughter, I believe last year. I originally had a photo of her bending down, showing her butt. However, given the overwhelming sentiment that I would soon die at her hand, I have removed it.

Crappy Christmas Leftovers and other Holiday Hassles

EVER HAD A BAD HAIR HOLIDAY?

OK, so the above pic of my lovely niece Rebecca pretty much sums up my Christmas. I wish Christmas was called Johntmas or Georgetmas or Bartholomewtmas, but it's not.

It's called Christmas. And I have to endure it, like a bowling ball-sized ornament around my neck.

Rebecca is the oldest of my nieces or nephews, and actually gave me permission to use this picture.

She's 23 or something. I used to call her Minky when she was much younger. Now look at the treatment I get. I can't even take her picture without getting the finger.

Anyway, on to my Festive Fit of Follies and Foibles.



The woman above is my lovely sister-in-law Kim, domestic diva and survivor of her husband and my brother Gerry's sick sense of humour, among other things.

Well, as I was being whipped 100 times on Boxing Day by my evil sisters into washing the dirty dishes generated by 19 or 20 people, she forced me to take a bunch of leftover turkey home.

"You can make a soup," she said.

"No, I can't," I said.

"Yes you can," she said.

So like any sane man, I submitted.

A couple of days later, before rot could set in and other of nature's nasty doings could claim the leftover turkey I had stuck into my fridge, I decided to make some turkey rice soup in my crock pot.

The problem is, I'm a cooking crack pot, a culinary disaster waiting to happen. Nonetheless, I forged on.

I found a recipe on the internet.

I even called up my mom, who for whatever reason expressed skepticism.

After taking 20 minutes to explain 19 minutes more worth of information than I could possibly retain, I proceeded.


My execution was less than perfect.

I boiled and then simmered the turkey for about an hour to generate some stock. I cut the carrots. I cut the onions. I threw in the tomatoes. Then I dumped in the turkey and other stuff.

And then I THOUGHT I turned on my crock pot to let it all meld together for six or seven hours, as instructed. Unfortunately, it wasn't plugged in.

Six or seven hours later, at roughly 12:30 a.m., I went to check on it. DOH! I plugged in the crock pot and went to bed, figuring it would be perfect when I woke up.

Not so.


It was the most bland concoction of crap that I have ever tasted.

I've since put it all in a plastic container, hoping that my son -- who's like PacMan from the old video game when it comes to food -- will consume it without even asking me what it is.

Instead, I suspect that a week from now, after green things start to grow on it, I'll be throwing it out.

Another Christmas-related issue I've had is trying to impress my kids by getting their Christmas gift to me up and running.

I take pix of them and others all the time, they know that.

It's a digital picture frame. And I see now that it's got my fingerprints all over it.

So, here's what it's supposed to do: It's supposed to play a series of your pictures that you've taken and downloaded on to a memory card.

Here are the pix it's currently playing:

And the reason it's playing THOSE pix is because, surprise, surprise!!!, my frickin' memory card from my camera won't work in the picture frame.

As usual, life is all about fitting something inside something else. And it not fitting just right.

Such is life. When's Valentine's Day?

Dubya's Really Big Shoooooooooe -- The Book

I WAS SO CAUGHT UP IN VEGEMITE THESE LAST FEW DAYS THAT I'VE NEGLECTED THE BIG SHOE CAPER.

You know, where George W. Bush, in an apparent attempt to leave no doubt he clearly IS the worst president in U.S. history, goes to Iraq.

Call it his Loser's Legacy. Or Lunacy, if you prefer.

Now Georgie, he could have simply faded into the woodwork, as no doubt the Reflublicans would have wished as they're drowned by the Barack Obama tide and annointment as the man left to clean up Georgie's disasters.

But no, he decided to make a surprise visit to Iraq, the site of his biggest blunder -- where an Iraqi TV reporter gave him the biggest of Islamic insults by throwing his shoes at the woebegone pres.

You'll note that Bush's Iraqi puppet president or prime minister or whatever makes a meek attempt to stop the shoe from hitting Bush.

The intent of the reporter was to show Bush the bottom of his foot, to show that Bush is the lowest of the low, a creature worth stepping on and squishing like any little ant or bug -- an appropriate measure I am inclined to agree with.

The media worldwide has lampooned the incident. It's all over the nightly talk shows, of course.


Even an internet game has been developed...

But I'm sure you've heard about that ad nauseum. Now it's time for my segue into all the books I bought today at my newspaper's Spirit of Christmas book sale, with all proceeds going to the Christmas Cheer Board.

As with any newspaper, we get hundreds of books sent to us every year to review, free of charge. What we do is review the books and then sell them ($3 for soft cover, $5 for hard cover). I bought a bunch today. Total, $36.

Here they are.

So...why do we blog? Why am I sitting in front of my computer all the time? I'm hoping this book tells me why. Of course, if I'm busy reading IT, I won't be on the computer. Hmmm...

Believe it or not, millions people -- mostly really goofy Americans in places like Kansas, and I don't mean to denigrate the general population of Kansas or anyone else -- believe they're going to live on forever because they'll be raptured while the rest of us will rot in hell.

And here's a book telling me how I can somehow profit financially from the silliness of all that!?I'm in.

I bought this book above because, as a brilliant researcher and groundbreaking expert in the differences between the male and female brains, I thought it might be refreshing and worth a quick 100-minute speed read.

I have no idea what this book above is about, even though I'm sure my retirement nest-egg is worth about half what it was a few months ago. I just liked the shark-shaped American dollar bills and the sexy Italian name of the authoress.

No, the three books I really want to focus on are below.

And in one way or another, they all have something to do with George W. Bush, Iraq, Afghanistan, Islam's hate of the United States and most of the problems the world is dealing with today.

I've already opened this one below. It looks promising and throws out a theory that Dubya's innane presidency -- I remind you the Americans inexplicably elected him twice, once illegally -- was all about family dynamics involving his dad and his brother Jeb.

(Jeb? JEB? Cue: Beverly Hillbillies. Or maybe Green Acres)

This book below, of course, seems to speak of the larger, even MORE explosive damage that Bush's absurd policies did to the planet, and which Obama will have to try to undo somehow.

Finally, the book below foretells, apparently, about the shit we're in now and what it could lead to.

Ugh.

Sometimes, I wish I was back reading my kids the Berenstain Bears at bedtime. But it should take me the entire year to get through all these at my reading rate. By then, who knows where Dubya will be?