Who would’ve thought that Nordstrom would be the kind of company that would have a rational approach toward holiday commercialism? It’s true. Five days before Thanksgiving, I saw a sign inside the main entrance of the UTC store that said the following: “At Nordstrom we won’t be decking our halls until Friday, November 23. Why? Well we just like the idea of a celebrating one holiday at a time…. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Well, amen! So nice to see somebody over there in super-ultra-mega-corporation-land is finally addressing the issue of the Ever Creeping Christmas. I’m talking about the problem of how, every year, they–and by “they” I mean the Overlords of Christmas Spirit–start introducing Christmas just a little bit sooner than the year before.

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Have you heard about the latest bullshit gouge attempt by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)? Now that the organization has successfully devastated the Internet radio community, it’s targeting terrestrial radio for an ever bigger chunk of a pie that the RIAA doesn’t deserve.

The RIAA is doing this, of course, because the recording industry as we know it is dying. The digital age has been brutal to it, and what we are now witnessing are the death throes of the great beast as it flaps its tendrils wildly trying to grab on to anything it can to keep from going under.

In other words, it’s not dying with dignity.

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I suppose you have heard about the speech Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave at the United Nations last week. How could you not? It infuriated just about everybody in the country.

Mr. Chavez called President Bush, “The Devil.”

He was addressing the U.N. assembly the day after Bush had spoken and said, “Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States came here. . . Right here. The Devil came here. And it smells of sulfur today.”
My first thought when I heard that was that George Bush had planted one of his notorious, time-released, sulfurized fart bombs for Chavez’s benefit – an inelegant act of terrorism ever there was one.

My second thought was, uh-oh. Republicans aren’t going to like that. And they certainly howled with contempt. What surprised me however was the number of Democrats who proclaimed offense as well – some who have said equal or worse things about President Bush.

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By now many of you have heard about Ann Coulter’s new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. For those of you who don’t know Ann Coulter, she is the conservative journalist/author/and cable news commentator who loves to espouse her wildly extreme opinion about liberals in much the same way that wrecking balls like to espouse their opinions about inferior structures.

For instance, in Godless, she ruthlessly attacks The Jersey Girls – a collective of 4 wives whose husbands were killed in the World Trade Center and who have since become anti-Bush political activists. In her book, Coulter says The Jersey Girls are, “self-obsessed,” and that they are “celebrity-seeking broads,” and even went so far as to call them harpies.

“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”

Pretty gnarly.

As usual when an Ann Coulter book comes out, liberals get all whipped up about her coarse invective. And all the lefty talking heads start bemoaning what an abomination is she, and how wrong it is for her to write and that she says these sorts of things.

This is what I hate about liberals. Ok well not all liberals. Just the ones who drone about all the mean, insensitive things said by conservatives. I call them labials – as in pussy-ass liberals. They fear and loathe bad ideas and bad words and demand that you fear and loathe them also. Another argument levied against Ann Coulter is that the only reason she can get away with writing with such vituperation is because she’s an attractive blonde.

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I stopped in Oceanside for the weekend to wind down. Upon my arrival to the pier, I learned that Oceanside was hosting a national cheerleader competition. It was called Bring it Back to the Beach presented by the California Allstars (www.californiaallstars.com) and was conducted in the area surrounding the Oceanside Pier.

The place was crawling with cheerleaders. There were cheerleaders on their way to compete. There were cheerleaders just returning from competing. There were cheerleaders stretching on grass. There were cheerleaders tumbling on mats. There were cheerleaders chatting and cheerleaders joking. There were even little baby cheerleaders — in their little baby cheerleader skirts smiling little baby cheerleader smiles — and I’m thinking, “Aw, look at the little cheer-chicks in training, aren’t they just the cutest little . . . spawns of Satan that ever walked a planet of evil ever??

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