Why does Mel Tormé hate veterans?

'Tis the season of inescapable Christmas songs and one of the most inescapable is Mel Tormé's "The Christmas Song." For the moment I'll leave aside the sheer arrogance of him claiming to have written "THE Christmas Song" and not "A Christmas Song." My beef is the callous way Mel snubs America's heroes in uniform. He tried to hide his disdain by putting it at the end of the song, but that just makes it more memorable. Professional tip Mel: If you want to hide something, hide in the middle, not at the end where it's the freshest thing in people's memories.

And so I'm offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two.
Although it's been said many times
Many ways, Merry Christmas to you.

Why do you only wish Merry Christmas to people of those ages? Why not everyone? Do you know who's over ninety-two, Mel? The Greatest Generation, that's who? They fought WWII so you could have the freedom to write songs about whatever you want. And this is how you repay them. For shame, Mel, for shame.

And babies. Why do you hate babies who aren't even one year old? Christmas is for the children, Mel. It's toys and bright lights and baby Jesus. Some of those babies are going to grow up to be veterans. Is that why you hate them?

America demands answers, Mel. And don't try pulling that stale "I'm dead so you can't do anything to me" routine. America is a country of problem solvers. If we want answers, we'll get answers. We'll see whose chestnuts end up roasting on an open fire.

The female James Bond

In comments on a friend's Facebook status, I brought up the question of "Favorite Bond?" The topic wasn't Bond, it was dumb e-dating questions.

He responded "Uma Thurman hasn't been given the role yet." My first thought was to say Idris Elba will be Bond before a woman (and I very much like the idea of Idris Elba as Bond). Then my mind did a quick ricochet off of "what would a female Bond be like?" and decided there cannot be a female Bond. James Bond is a misogynistic womanizer. Once you remove that, you've created a different character. It would be silly to call her Bond. So, which woman in spy literature is strong enough to be a female Bond?

Meanwhile, my fingers pointed out that Uma Thurman already has played a stylish spy: Emma Peel. We both paused a moment to drool over the memory of Diana Rigg's Emma Peel. As that reverie began to fade and various threads of thought I was having began to come together (including the realization that my mustache smelled like teriyaki, though this was not part following Hegelian synthesis), I thought, "Emma Peel!"

In The Avengers, Emma Peel and John Steed were partners, but neither was fully dependent on the other. Steed was clearly older and probably her mentor. There was no deep emotional bond (no pun intended) beyond than that held by any team members who must depend on each other for their safety*. This theory is supported by the fact that Rigg's Peel replaced Honor Blackman as Catherine Gale and was followed by Linda Thorson as Tara King and, in The New Avengers by Joanna Lumley as Purdey.

Where did Peel go? The only version I ever saw was the Rigg/Peel so I have no idea if they ever explained that. I'm assuming they didn't. If they did, we're going to ignore it. Let's assume, as a well trained agent, she went off on solo missions. There's your female Bond.

Let's cast the first of movie of the Emma Peel franchise. Obviously, casting Peel is at the top of the list, but we need to cast other recurring characters, villains, and so on.

* Diana Riggs agrees with this interpretation, the late Patrick Macnee did not. His interpretation amounted to "Well, look at her!!!" I will leave a modern feminist analysis of that to you, dear reader. Keep in mind he just died. So cut him some slack.

A question

I've been working for almost forty years.
I've had over thirty jobs.
From Reagan to Bush II, none of the attempts at trickle down economics has ever trickled a dollar down to me.
None of the tax breaks for job creators has ever created a job for me.
I'm not alone.
Why should I think it will work this time?

I'm sure this would have been more effective if I had posted a shady picture of me with the message written on a piece of cardboard. I'm just not that photogenic.

We the People...

Almost every day, I see signs and Facebook posts by liberals, conservatives, libertarians, secularists, and religious right Christians claiming to speak for We the People. We can't all be the people can we? That would mean America belongs to all of us and that's just crazy talk.

About that King quote

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the former IRA supporter whose main claim to fame these days is holding endless hearings to demonize American Muslims, does not like the Occupy Wall Street protesters. That hardly makes him unique among Republicans. GOP presidential contenders, talking heads and members of Congress have been lining up to condemn the protesters. But something King said the other day has me curious. Appearing on Laura Ingraham's radio show, after calling the protesters "anarchists," "anti-American," and a "ragtag mob," King went on to say this:

We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy. I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen.

That comment has been floating around FaceBook today in poster form. Notice, he's not talking about the culture of sixties protest. He's not upset about drugs, sex, and rock and roll. He's talking about the actual policies that the sixties protesters pushed into the mainstream.

I need to ask you Mr. King, which of those policies do you think were so bad. Was it ending segregation and expanding equality for African Americans? Was it allowing younger people to vote? Maybe it was equal pay for women. Or cleaning up our air and water. Or perhaps it was the demand that we end a pointless war that had already killed and maimed tens of thousands of young Americans and appeared unwinnable. Which of those things do you find so horrible Mr. King?

My wife says--and I agree--that many middle aged conservatives seem to be motivated by nothing more than bitterness over their experiences in the sixties and seventies. They were out of step with the prevailing culture of that time and they want to retroactively take revenge on it by undoing the accomplishments of those years. They pretend that there are principles behind their actions, but it's really just emotional payback for some. In the same interview, King called the protesters "a bunch of angry 1960s do-overs." It looks to me like it is King who wants a do-over on the sixties.

Just wondering

Have any of the presumptive Republican candidates for next year's presidential race provided long form birth certificates to prove they were born here?

What are they doing?

Every other month we get a little report from the electric company telling us how our energy consumption compares to our neighbors. Their methodology is that they identify one hundred houses in my part of town that are approximately the same size. They then calculate the average monthly consumption and the average monthly consumption of the twenty homes that use the least electricity. The report has three bars, all neighbors, the "most efficient" neighbors, and us. We fall between the two groups; we're number thirty-nine. Our home is a small house over a hundred years old. The loft is not counted by the city as part of our square footage, so the house is actually about one third larger than the electric company thinks it is. Clever Wife and I both work from home (when we have work) which means the heat is on all day, two computers are running, and one or two lights are on. Despite that, we only use about 75% as much electricity as an average house, that is smaller than our real size. What are all of those people doing to use up so much power? Do all of my neighbors have hydroponic pot farms in their crawl spaces? This really bugs me.

Something I don't understand

Why do Southerners, under the cover of celebrating their heritage, choose to commemorate the very worst parts of their history? Why does a region that wears its patriotism on its sleeve want to honor a massive act of treason aimed at breaking up the United States, which took the lives of at least 620,000 Americans and devastated the Southern economy for generations? Why, in honoring that treason, would they pick the worst of the worst among the leaders of the great treason?

Of course I'm talking about the proposal to to issue a commemorative license plate in Mississippi honoring Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a slave trader before the war. During the war, he committed the war crime of massacring Union soldiers who had surrendered. After the war, he was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Supporters of the plate say Forrest late disavowed the Klan and that makes everything else okay.

The Mississippi DMV site shows 159 different licenses plate designs. Only one of them commemorates a person: Elvis (though mostly associated with Memphis, TN, he was born in Mississippi). It's not like the Civil War was the only thing that happened in Mississippi history or that Elvis and Forrest were the only famous people come out of the state. Mississippi is the home of the delta blues. Why not give Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, or Lead Belly plates before honoring treasonous war criminals. How about Mississippi's writers? Mississippi gave us William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, and Red Barber.

Shouldn't Medgar Evers get a plate before a slave merchant?

Who knew?

Finding a Sanjak level breakdown of the 1905 Ottoman census online is harder than you might expect.

How does that work?

It just wouldn't have been a news week if we didn't have a group of fear mongering Republicans warning that giving Guantanamo prisoners a fair trial is wrong and will lead to a nuclear attack on the United States. The Constitution can't be trusted to keep us safe and should be shelved any time we're scared, goes their argument, and we should be scared right now!! Steve King (R-IA) was given the honor of making the predictable attack on the judicial branch. Activist judges, he warned, would make activist decisions to actively turn terrorists loose on the streets of your home town!! Actively. In case we might miss the point that Judges are the primary threat to our safety, they held their press conference in front of the Supreme Court and festooned their lecterns with the messages, "Protect our homeland" and "Keep terrorists out of America." Trent Franks (R-AZ) got to wave the mushroom cloud. Giving the suspects "a megaphone to speak to the planet ... only hastens the danger" of a nuclear attack.

I'm curious about how that works. Do the terrorists already have nuclear weapons that they're not using? If we give the prisoners a megaphone in the form of a fair trial, will that finally provoke them into using their nuclear arsenal? Or is it that giving the prisoners a fair trial will somehow magically lead to the terrorists gaining nuclear weapons? What is so provocative about a trial? Didn't they know we had these prisoners? Didn't they know the prisoners had been abused? Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't know that? What's the mechanism, what's the cause and effect that leads from trial to mushroom cloud? Can anyone explain this to me?

Theological question

Can a Pastafarian believe in the Great Pumpkin?

Jindal birth certificate watch - day 217

More than seven months have passed since I asked Bobby Jindal to come clean with the American people and show us the real, authentic, notarized, vault copy of his birth certificate. It's a simple request. He has the power to end the rumors and speculation (by other people, not me) that swirl around this issue. Why is avoiding the issue? what does he have to hide? Why is he hiding it and where has he hid it? Since I exposed this sordid mystery, Dom DeLuise, Michael Jackson, Oscar Mayer (yes, that Oscar Mayer), Sybil (the Prime Minister's cat), and the number three guy in the Taliban have all died. How many more bodies must pile up on the Jindal death list before we know the truth?

If you care about truth, justice, and apple pie, send me lots of money so I can continue my hard hitting investigative work and stay one step ahead of the Illuminati assassins who want to make sure that the truth never gets out.

It's a mystery

When I buy a bag of sliced hot dog buns at the store I find them baked into sets of four that I have to tear apart. How do they slice to ones in the middle?