I was trying to think of something funny to write, but I’m stuck.

All humor makes fun of someone, something, or some group. All jokes have a victim. The problem is that so many victims are now off-limits, it’s difficult to write something funny without getting into trouble.

For example, it is not ok to make jokes about black people, or being black. Ever, ever, ever ever ever. There are only two exceptions to this rule: (1) You yourself are black (I am not); or (2) You are making a joke about Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Michael Jackson.

(Personally, I think this is a very good rule, because black people have suffered enough indignity from white people in America, and also because they are almost all bigger and stronger than me.)

I’ve come to believe that there’s a list, maintained by a secret committee, which determines who can make fun of whome whom. A member of one group can get away with making fun of any group farther down on the list, but not a higher one:

1. Blacks
2. Latinos
3. People with Disabilities
4. Homosexuals
5. Jews
6. Asians
7. Whites
8. Rednecks
9. Midgets “Little People”
10. Vegetarians
11. Michael Jackson

(To be honest, I’m not sure about #9, because they are surprisingly quick and I’ve never been able to catch one. Same for #11.)

Since I’m a white person, I could make a joke about “Little People” and as long as there weren’t any “Little People” present, everyone would have a good laugh. On the other hand, if I made a joke about black people - which I never would, I swear to God - nobody would laugh and I might get my ass kicked. Possibly by a group of “Little People.”

I personally do not like this list. I don’t like being so far down on it, and I think that the “Little People” deserve to be several notches higher, too. In fact, I don’t see why there should be a list at all. Can’t we all enjoy a little good-natured ribbing, then link arms, and celebrate our common humanity by making fun of Michael Jackson?

Christmas was good. We had a bunch of family over for a big breakfast and gift-exchange. No one got sick, and more important, I got some good loot.

My wife actually purchased the “Beer Belly” I mentioned in a previous post, much to my surprise. If she actually let’s me use it, well, then I’ve got something.

Also got some gift certificates to the bookstore, and about seven quarts of cologne from a bunch of different people, including my wife, my father-in-law, and two complete strangers at the mall. I thought that was a little odd. The strangest gift of all, though, was the 50-lbs box of Tic-Tacs that mysteriously showed up on our porch. Weird.

So that’s a wrap (ha ha ha ha) till next year. Hope that you and yours had a wonderful time and that you got nearly as many excellent gifts as I did.

“Elsewhere, a new report shows that China now has the fourth largest economy in the world, after the United States, Japan, and Vice President Dick Cheney.” — Borowitz Report.

Link

Some guy on Craig’s List needs your help: link

As promised, I will now entertain you with riveting tales of my recent safari in an un-named Southern state. Actually, I’m just going to show you a couple pictures and make fun of the people who live there.

This is a place where “mullet” haircuts are plentiful, especially on the women-folk. As you can see from the picture to the right, I found a store at which you can not only have your hair cut in this style, but can even have it “fresh” and “smoked,” whatever that means.

Many of the locals believe that the outcome of the Civil War is still up in the air, and are waiting for the refs to review the slow-motion replay. Confederate team paraphenalia is readily available.

The question that always plagued me is why my grandparents - neither of whom is a Southerner or a redneck - settled there 40 years ago when it can only have been worse. Weirder still is the fact that nearly all my other relatives followed them.

Some of those relatives live in a really schwanky trailer park - sorry, “Retirement Village” - that has its own golf course. Actually, they live in a very nice manufactured home that I’m quite certain cost more than my little brick house, and one of their neighbors has a Hummer.

Mrs. Spoonfighter and I were very fortunate to catch their big Christmas parade. What fun!

Anyway. Now we’re back. Obviously we had a wonderful time.

Today’s Borowitz Report (link) is good. I love this quote:

Scientists reported that mice who were injected with human brain cells stopped running on a wheel and sat down to watch the wheel instead.

My deepest apologies to Rev. Gish and D.A.F.H., whose most recent comments I have only just now approved, and to all you kind souls who loiter at my little corner of the web. I have been neglecting you.

My excuse is that I have been visiting my grandparents. They live in a location that has yet to be informed of the Confederacy’s defeat, and which still doesn’t have any unsecure wireless hotspots or internet cafes. As such, I was unable to post, or even check my email.

Anyway, I’m back. I have fun stories from my time in the South, most of which are complete fabrications, and I’ll try to share them with you this week.

I would also like to say thanks to all of you who accepted my invitation to discuss my previous post. Thanks for all your ideas, and thanks for keeping it civil. Please do keep discussing, should you feel so inclined, and rest assured that I have not passed on your treasonous, un-American statements to the Feds.

Yes, that is how long I’ve been out of the womb.

I don’t really have anything to say. That seems to be my problem lately. I had such great plans for this blog, but somewhere along the way I got interested in a new video game or two, a couple new career ideas (no, I didn’t switch), the plot for a novel, and well, now it’s nearly Christmas. I have nothing to show for my time but a couple high scores, a great first chapter, and a wife who thinks I’m inconsistent.

So I guess I’ll just blather about what’s on my mind, and see what happens.

The tension between idealism and realism - it’s been on my mind since Amnesty International ripped the US a hole for Guantanamo. I wrote a couple bitter posts about that. In short, I wonder how we can justify abusing one group-of-people’s inalienable human rights in order to protect our own; to put it another way: if America is supposedly about values, rather than mere survival, why are we compromising those values in order to survive? (1) (2)

And recently, as you no doubt know, it has been reported that the CIA operates clandestine prisons around the world to help us in our attempt to forstall future terrorist attacks. And it’s probably true.

But I’m also a realist. A friend of mine, after reading one of those posts, asked, So, how are we supposed to get information out of these people? Ask them nicely?

Half of me wants to suggest that if we believe there are certain inalienable rights - which logically would apply to all humans everywhere - then we should be willing to suffer and die rather than compromise the rights of other people to survive. The other part of me remembers that we fought the Revolutionary War - which probably involved many rights abuses on both sides - in the name of those values. And surely every war since that one has been the same? What does that mean? I’m not sure.

It’s like the whole debate over Truman’s decision to drop the A-Bomb. Or rather, what’s missing from the debate. The significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not the massive loss of life, but rather the fact that each required a single bomb, rather than thousands. We had been intentionally bombing civilian population centers in Japan and Europe for a while, killing hundreds of thousands at a time, before those two. We were the good guys: we did it because we hoped that the catastrophic loss of human life - innocent civilian men, women and children - would break our enemies’ will to fight.

Maybe, then, you can justify using torture to extract information via the same logic?

The tricky bit is that you can also justify terrorism by the same logic. What is terrorism, after all, but killing innocent people in order to win a war? If a terrorist’s cause is just, then his suicide bombing is certainly no worse than, say, our fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo. The terrorists certainly believe their cause to be just.

In the end, the only thing that seperates us from our terrorist enemies is the rightness of our cause, and the wrongness of theirs. I know their cause is evil. I’m pretty sure ours is mostly good. But I think that at very least we need to be constantly examining what we are fighting and why. There is nothing pretty or nice about the things we are doing - so we better be doing them for the right reasons.

Please, dear reader, tell me what you think. The floor is open. All comments are welcome.

To lazy to write anything, I offer up this picture to give you some Christmas cheer. (Notice the “guts” on the ground.)