Reflecting at the Year's End

We in the fictional news business have had a great year! We've had so much to be sarcastic and unpleasant about.  Just consider:

• Kim Chee Who, the restrained and civilized leader of North Korea. What more need we say?
• Vladimir Putin, the last in a long line of statesmen, including Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney, and Benito Mussolini, who can be trusted with a weapon, since they only shoot their friends or their own feet.
• Pakistan, a country now regretting its long-standing policy of nurturing savagery and violence on its Western border. (Pro tip: a buffer state is supposed to keep the bad guys away from you.)
• Nigeria, where the government has sentenced a number of its soldiers to death for refusing to go into combat without guns or ammunition.
• The Scots voters who (narrowly) expressed a preference for being part of the United Kingdom.
• The rest of the United Kingdom, which (narrowly) decided to turn down a US offer to become the fifty-first state.
• Raul Castro; just visualize him making a scale-balancing gesture with his hands: "Russia, the US? Russia, the US? Gosh, why didn't I think of this before? Thanks, Your Holiness."
• The fringies and nut jobs who will find, in the current outpouring of outrage over police shootings (by and of), an excuse to do some shooting of their own.
• Detroit, where everyone some people a few people are celebrating a successful bankruptcy. Bankruptcy, of course, is a way of legally reneging on debt. But still, whoopee!
• And finally, the good folks of our own state, who want the damn roads fixed and are damned if they'll pay one red cent more in taxes to get it done. See, the problem is, money used to grow on trees, and then the Emerald Ash Borer came along and ...

Problem is, from our stand point, all of that is more or less real.  As the saying goes, you can't make this stuff up, and since that's our stock in trade, we have to look elsewhere for inspiration.  Oh, well. At least we can contemplate a well-deserved retirement on the lake front property in Shiawassee County. The only question is, which lake will get there first, Huron or Michigan?

Have a good festive season, and join us in hoping that we have to make up more of the bad news next year, instead of just reading about it.

Yahhhrg roush, garble-foo, innit?

How does the notion of Sir Ozzy Osborne grab you?  A 45-year-old Black Sabbath fan in the UK is petitioning the gummint to knight him.  According to a UPI story, one has to have made “... significant contributions to national life” in order to qualify.  Dunno if Mr. Osborne qualifies, depending on what nationality they're talking about. The nation of Great Britain? The empire of Rock n' Roll? The state of confusion?

I actually know next to nothing about the man, but I think the UK should go for it. How many knights of the realm do they have, anyway, who are rumored to bite the heads off bats? Who have had their own lexically incomprehensible reality show?(1)  Who have appeared briefly in a commercial, saying "What's a Bieber?"  I mean, if this doesn't constitute significant contributions to something or other, what does?

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(1) Now if we had knighthoods over here in the US, there'd be plenty of those to choose from.