Ah, the beauty of the holiday season - Jeez, I may not survive!

Christalmighty! While celebrating Christmas with my lady friend's family I got whacked in the head by a broom handle when one of the nephews took a vicious swing at a snowman-shaped pinada and missed. The missile glanced off my skull and knocked a 2-inch deep hole in the sheetrock wall behind me.

Next, while climbing up on a toilet seat to replace a burned out bulb I violently jammed my teeth together when I hit my head on a low-hanging shelf. And then, you guessed it, I smacked (yep) my head when I quickly turned around in Beall's and had a nasty meeting with a "Sale" sign. The damn thing was attached to the wall at the perfect height to crack my forehead. It put a neat little hole in my forehead and, blood trickling down my face, I completed my purchase (new pants) and stumbled dizzily out of the store to my car.

I'm beginning to think I need a helmet to ge through the holidays since I seemed to have developed a propensity for banging it. I feel like I've been in a football scrimmage with 300-lb. gorillas! Ouch!

And so it goes. So, I hope your holidays are going a bit more safely than mine. And I hope that the new year is soooooo much better than 2003 - what a f$#@^* up year - at least for me. And thanks to G.W. Bush, I think a lot of other folks have been through the proverbial ringer too.

Well, I've got a floor to mop and some dishes to wash. Unfortunately, my girlfriend has broken tooth and is suffering like Christ on the cross (I speak figuratively, of course) and she's unable to move without excruciating pain. So I've volunteered to help get the kitchen in order (nice guy, eh?).

So I bid you fond adieu and farwell. Happy New Year!

The empty echo of Christmas swirls in the mists of memory

Well, it's finally over and my body and mind can take a short respite - very brief, indeed! But I made it through Christmas 2003! Wow! I can hardly believe I've lived on this planet for nearly 53 years now and still feel as though I've learned so little.

Life is a strange concoction of equal parts pleasure and pain, sweetness and nasty urine-stained underwear, glorious revelation and bleak, disillusionment. Contradictions, paradox and change seem to de rigeur for God's plan, whatever that is ... .

I haven't a clue - have you? But I do know that I love a woman who's suffering like someone eaten up with cancer - the pain is unrelenting and vicious and I want to rip it out of her body and strangle it till it dies! But I cannot, alas, for pain, like the Holy Ghost, is an ethereal, ungraspable (is that a word?) thing; palpable but not present. Mainly it just sucks! Especially since I feel so powerless in the light of its horrible exactitude and heavy price.

And so it goes.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and I wish one and all a very Happy New Year! Now and forever, Amen.

Merry F*^#+@" Christmas!

Well, it's here again. Christmas and all its jing-jing-a-ling, cash-register Christianity taxing the patience and morale of most of us poor veterans of holiday wars.

Does it never end? No, never! Deluged by commercial messages, deluded by flashing lights and glittery babes in skimpy skirts snuggling close to some fat guy in a red suit. Aaaaargh!

My ass hurts and my back aches, but neither agony nor bad credit shall avert me from my appointed rounds to further ruin my financial standing by purchasing overpriced gizmos for ungrateful cretins who, generally, would rather I give them a wad of cash so they could buy that new high-definition TV they've been coveting for a year now.

And let's face it. Who really gets what they actually WANT for Christmas? No one I know, that's for sure. Except maybe my girlfriend who, if I could, would receive the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter if she wanted it and I were able to provide it. But who else? Not me! That's for sure!

So happy horseshit holidays everyone. May your bells get jingled and your yule logs burn brightly, and may you get a raise this year that approaches the cost of living. HIDEEHO!