It’s a mid-December weekend here in the Valley of the Sun. Christmas is just around the corner, but I’ve got all my shopping done with just a bit of wrapping and a trip to Walgreens for the twins’ stocking-stuffers left to do. In the meantime…

If I had a fireplace I’d be sure to get me one of these. I have a chimenea outside, but it’s really only for sticks and not for big logs.

…which reminds me of a really cool Robert Plant song of that name.

I dunno, this sounds like racism and xenophobia to me, but what do I know?

…because the libs blaming the Trump administration for the death of that seven-year old girl while in the custody of DHS seems to me, at best, disingenuous, and at worst, bullshit. No one forced the girl’s father to make such a trek. And it ought to be a lesson for all those folks who think “caravan” is more than just a Duke Ellington standard. It’s a dangerous trek, and I can’t imagine any loving father subjecting a young girl to such danger.

I guess it’s me who has things all screwed up, because, frankly, I don’t really find what Mika Brzezinski said about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offensive. Crass? To be sure. But if “butt boy” is a homophobic slur, count me guilty for having used it in reference to at least one Goodboy or another over the years. I’m not a fan by any means, but I don’t think Mika meant it that way, and she should have told all the LGBTQ snowflakes out there to grow up and shut up.

…she, of course, still has her job. Now if, say, FOX News’ Tucker Carlson had used the same phrase in describing some Democrat you know he’d have already been told to hit the bricks by now.

But what I do find offensive and repulsive is anything having to do with Ellen DeGeneres. She’s a fraud and a phony.

Here’s my theory about how to handle the social media mob (and for anyone else, for that matter): they come after you, you punch back twice as hard.

I can’t speak for rest of her canon, but when I hear Mariah Carey I think of Christmas, for this and for this. Can’t beat either of them, no suh, not even with a stick.

But this and this get my vote for Christmas songs I switch off as soon as they come on the radio. Everything Wham! ever did was just soooooo gay, and McCartney’s mind-numbing pap, well, I just can’t believe it came from a former Beatle.

It’s that time of year where Golf Channel plies us with a seemingly never-ending suite of golf movies. Not a big fan of “The Legend Of Bagger Vance”, but I’ll switch to it from time to time if only to watch Charlize Theron, who not only is drop-dead beautiful, but gets me talking with that Southern accent she employs for the rest of the night.

Reason #576 why the Valley of the Sun ain’t a bad place to live.

…reason #577.

Everyone has their favorite Christmas movies. Me? Besides the Alistair Sim version of Scrooge (the original in B & W, of course) is the all-time best, but my own sentimental choices are “Merry Gentlemen”, the Christmas episode of the PBS series All Creatures Great and Small, and Henry Winkler’s An American Christmas Carol. It just doesn’t seem like Christmas without them.