December 27, 2006

(Sssshhhh… not to be made public until Thursday)

What the heck. Everybody else does, so here goes…

• Three hours after Saddam Hussein is hanged, President Bush will announce that all American troops will be withdrawn from Iraq, declaring “everything’s done that I thought needed to be done.” Celebrations will be muted when it is learned that the withdrawal route is set up to go through downtown Tehran.
• A secret plan by Karl Rove will be uncovered in which the White House made plans to trigger a Constitutional Crisis with the Democratic Congress once every 28 days to correspond with Nancy Pelosi’s PMS. The plan will be abandoned when a staff member points out that the 66-year-old House Speaker/Grandmother is well past menopause. That staffer will be immediately fired.
• The G.O.P. will fail in their efforts to get Senator Lieberman to change parties, and so will the Democrats in trying to get Rep. William Jefferson to do the same. However, as a result of the “Political Brain Damage” law quietly passed at the end of the last session, Senator Tim Johnson’s stroke will automatically change his affiliation to Republican.
• In response to threats against Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, he will be offered his own Military Security Detail but will turn it down when he discovers one of the soldiers assigned to the squad is Corporal Lynndie England.
• After months of Wall Street analysts complaining that Google has too much unused cash, the web giant will use it to buy the New York Stock Exchange. Microsoft will respond by starting its own stock exchange, accessible only through Microsoft Money.
• The Next Big Thing on the Web will be a site designed to attract the 100 million plus web users who don’t want to be part of a social network, tentatively called “DamnKidsGetOffMyLawn.com” A rival site, “AndIWouldHaveGottenAwayWithItIfNotForThoseDamnKids.com” will be frequently criticized for attracting illegal activity.
• The creators of Digg.com will introduce an upscale version of their site, called “Excavatte.com”. A mainstream newspaper will attempt a Digg-like site, but in a total misunderstanding of the concept, call it “Graave.com” and only use it for obituaries.
• Apple will partner with GM to introduce the iUV, a car with a single ‘click wheel’ control and trips sold through iTunes for 99¢.
• HP will capitalize on its ‘spying’ scandal by introducing a pocket device that allows you to listen to other people’s iPods. But the only “iPod killer” product to have any sales success in 2007 will be one from Smith & Wesson.
• As the ratings for CBS News continue to decline, Katie Couric will take the unprecedented action of doing her daily newscast while not wearing panties. The FCC will decline to cite the network for indecency because she’s just so damn perky. Still, her ratings will not improve, so by the end of the year, Katie will be replaced by Rachael Ray.
• Ted Turner will use a portion of his fortune to establish the “Ted Turner Home for Delusional Cable News Personalities Who Think They’re Doing Something Important.” Lou Dobbs will be the first to be admitted, but by the end of the year, the facility will be full. There will be a serious ‘incident’ when the admissions clerk puts O’Reilly and Olbermann in the same room.
• More than one famous pro athlete who should have retired years ago will test positive for Preservatives.
• The umpteenth revamping of the Bowl Championship Series will result in the NCAA’s #1 Womens Volleyball team being picked for one of the New Years Day 2008 games. And an obscenely high sponsorship offer will finally convince one of the major bowl games to be renamed the “Ti-D Bowl”.
• NewsCorp will hire Chris Hansen and his “To Catch a Predator” team away from NBC and replace the shows on its “MyNetwork” with 10 hours a week of “The Perverts of MySpace”.
• In response to the success of ABC’s “Ugly Betty”, the Fall 2007 schedule will include NBC’s “Plain Jane”, FOX’s “Homely Hillary”, the CW’s “Deformed Debbie” and CBS’s “Agnes With the Great Personality.”
• The Time Person of the Year for 2007 will be “That Guy Who Was Out of Town When We Gave Last Year’s Award to Everybody Else”.

Here’s an insight into the thinking of the Major Media Entities, no matter what the format, style or bias. They are all majorly pissed at James Brown and Gerald Ford for dying in the last week of the year. Because all the “Year in Review” stuff was written, produced and otherwise prepared weeks in advance (I have one piece pending weblication that I submitted two weeks ago). Of course, there is also that Old Media Wives’ Tale that famous people die in groups of three, so they are probably all sitting at their keyboards waiting for that third shoe to drop. (And, no doubt, all the members of the Right Wing Media are chanting under their breath… “Castro, Castro, Castro, Castro…”)

It’s being pioneered right here in California. Sitting on the curb at an offramp of Highway 101 in San Luis O., a bearded, discheveled man, smiling and waving at cars with a handlettered sign on brown cardboard saying: “BET YOU CAN’T HIT ME WITH A QUARTER”. I would have gotten a picture, but I didn’t have enough quarters to pay him for the rights.

A bearded webcartoonist posted some “‘facts’ that you may not know about Christmas” …

…and I felt challenged to contribute a few of my own.

Oddly enough, there is no record of anybody ever asking Jesus: “Were you born in a barn?”

Then there is the old Amish tradition (now being covered up by the Ocean Spray people) of molding the gelatin-style cranberry sauce into large penile shapes in a kind of fertility ritual. It must work, because 72% of all Amish living today have birthdays in September or October.

The “Frosty the Snowman” story was actually the taming-down of an old legend about the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas attacking a haberdashery shop and getting surprisingly docile afterwards, due to those infamous “Mad Hatter” chemicals.

The “kissing under the mistletoe” tradition was based on a misunderstanding at an 1874 Christmas party where drunken revelers started chewing on the poisonous berries and their mouths swelled up into a permanent pucker.

The whole “Jingle Bells on the sleigh” idea was originally devised as an early-warning system for unwanted Christmas visitors, who, like the Belled Cat of the Aesop’s fable, were fooled into thinking they were ‘festive seasonal decorations’ and never figured out why nobody was home when they showed up.

And the reason Charles Dickens’ classic story was titled “A Christmas Carol” was because it was originally intended to be sung. Unfortunately, for the first performance, Dickens hired an unknown performer named Ezekiel Federline and the performance was a disaster.

I know I am going to Hell for this, but at least I will be in pleasant company.

BTW, my ongoing survey of comic strips for my soon-to-be-brought-up-to-date Funny Paperless blog now has the count at 361 for “the number of comic strips that used a ‘Christmas Presents/Christmas Presence’ pun to make a sentimental point” and 286 for “the number of comics that showed a house decorated with a single massive Christmas light bulb” (247 of them red, only 39 green).