Christmas Tree Dismantled, Holiday Over, Phew!

A 45-foot tall Christmas tree graced the Church Street Marketplace, in the central business and shopping district of Burlington, Vermont.

Crews split Burlington, Vermont's
Christmas tree in half as it's taken down

The city put the tree up with great care, carefully placing it just so, tethering it to surrounding buildings it wouldn't blow over, and decking it out with a zillion environmentally friendly LED lights.

The end of the season is less precise. A swarm of guys from Barretts Tree Service came in and blasted it to pieces with chain saws in short order.

Branches from Burlington, Vermont's Christmas tree
are unceremoniously stuffed into a wood chipper now that
the holiday is over. 

At least the tree will continue to be used well. The tree's trunk is going to a lumber yard, and it will be sawed into planks. Those planks will be used in a new Habitat for Humanity home, as reported in the Burlington Free Press. Gotta like that kind of recycling. And it's the kind of regifting any recipient would like.

George Michael Rails Against Christianist Death Wishing Morons

Normally, I don't applaud semi-drunken rants by celebrities, but I'll make an exception here for George Michael.

Michael nearly died in November during a nasty bout with pneumonia. He's doing much better now, thank you very much. So much better that he had a couple glasses of wine, and, something that's always dangerous, took to his Twitter account.  Lots of swear words in Michael's Twitter comments, folks.

It seems that when Michael was really sick and there was a lot of publicity about, an outfit called "Christians for a Moral America," decided to be immoral Americans by praying for Michael's death.

You see, Michael is gay, and so he deserved to die, in the so-called minds of this Christianist group.

Notice I'm calling them Christianists, not Christians. As George Michael himself points out in his messages, the huge, vast majority of Christians are nice, moral, normal people just trying to live a good life according to their religious beliefs. Which is as it should be.

But a subgroup of allegedly Christians are now widely called "Christianists" It appears (relatively) conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan coined, or at least popularized the term about nine years ago. He said back then:

"I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists. They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam."^[ 


Anyway, these Christianists, the Christians for a Moral America, said this while Michael was sick:    


"Apparently George Michael has AIDS. Figures since he's a homosexual and it goes with the territory. Another sodomite bites the dust?"


And this: "Pray for George Michael's demise. He has chosen a satanic lifestyle and must meet an appropriate end."


So you can see why George Michael was a bit annoyed.  For the record, Michael doesn't have AIDS, he said, but no matter.


I know Christians for a Moral America are just a pesky fringe group, But I'm fascinated by such train wrecks, because there seems to be so many of them. What leads these people and groups to bend the Bible into something hateful? 


Yeah, I respect the right of Christians to not really accept gay people even as I totally disagree with that position. Just as long as they don't intrude on the lives of people who disagree with them. 


But to call for the deaths of people they don't like is just as bad as any other fundamentalist extremism. True, Christians for a Moral America have not actually gone out and killed anyone. But it seems they are encouraging it.


Terrorism is terrorism. I don't care what religion you represent, if your hate means somebody dies, you don't deserve to be around. 


Our focus on Islamic extremists is a good idea. But we need to keep an eye out for all extremists. It's a small step from hoping for the death of somebody the Christianists don't like to actually going out and killing them. 

Obama Is Hiding His Past Teleportation to Mars, Pair Says

It turns out Donald Trump was barking up the wrong tree when he accused President Obama of faking his birth certificate.

According to Wired, the real scandal was revealed by Andrew Basiago and William Stillings, who say they are ex-government agents who were once "chrononauts" and went with a 19-year old Obama on a secret CIA mission to Mars. 

Apparently, Obama was up there on Mars helping to squelch threats from extraterrestials and establishing territorial sovereignty on the red planet.

Did a youthful Barack Obama participate in a secret mission
to Mars to kill extraterrestials, like Marvin the Martian?

Of course, the U.S. government, those cloakers of government nefariousness, deny that Obama was anywhere near Mars, or had anything to do with Mars, other than watching Looney Tunes' "Marvin the Martian" as a kid.

I wish Obama would come clean on this. Is he promoting green technology as a ruse to establish new fuel sources for a Martian conquest? Did he kill Osama bin Laden because bin Laden knew too much about the secret government Mars takeover? Did Obama push through health care reform to take care of any astronauts that go to Mars.

I call on the field of Republican presidential candidates to expose this major potential scandal.

This Guy's Fitness Will Make You Feel Awful About Yours

How's your New Year's resolutions going? Trying to get in shape? Here's a goal for you: Get as fit, and as dexterous as the guy in the video below. Yeah, it's a hopeless case, so you might as well give up, grab a bag of Doritoes, a six pack of Bud and watch this guy's derring-do:

Things That Amazingly Needed Explaining to Stupid People.

Reddit had an absolutely funny and depressing recent thread on the stupidest things people had to explain to someone else. 

There's some doozies in there. One of them include an employee at Michael's who had to deal with a woman who was upset there were not ten by eight picture frames. There were only eight by ten frames.

The sales clerks turned an eight by ten frame on its side, and the woman was happy.

Unfortunately, this statement is true too often.

I've had to deal with that kind of thing myself. Once, vacationing in South Carolina in July, a woman at a store remarked that I "must be happy to be out of all that cold and snow you've got up there." I could not convince her Vermont is not a snow covered arctic tundra in July.

Another South Carolinian asked me. "Where you from, boy?"
"Vermont," I replied.
Said he: "Vermont?! Ain't that part of Killington."
Not wanting to go there, I just said, "Um, yeah."

At work once, a woman called me upset that I wrote a news article about her son, who was charged with a crime and had been in court.
"Where did you get that information anyway," she asked me.
"It was in the affidavit," I said.
She replied: "Who's David?"

Another time I was accused by a reader of being racist because I reported that police said a car crash was caused by black ice. By using the term "black" to describe the ice, I was apparently disparaging African Americans. Oh.

Another one of my favorite items in the Reddit thread was in a school that was almost out of paper. One girl had the perfect solution: "Why don't we photocopy a blank piece of paper a bunch of times, and we'll have plenty of paper that way."

OK readers, what was the dumbest thing YOU'VE had to explain to anyone?

To The Rescue, Through Eight Feet of Floodwater

Here in Vermont, 2011 was the wettest year on record. We endured spring flooding in April, record flooding along Lake Champlain in May, wicked flash flooding in central Vermont, also in May, and of course Tropical Storm Irene, whose flooding was Vermont's worst disaster since 1927.

The weather was pretty bad all over the world in 2011. The United States suffered through at least 12 disasters costing more than a $1 billion apiece.

The bad global weather continued to the end of the year. In Australia, Melbourne, technically had a white Christmas. That's hard to do, considering it's summer there, but one of the worst hailstorms battered the city on Christmas.

The storms unleashed tornadoes, wind and floods. Which leads us to this video. You're not supposed to drive into floodwaters. But Austrailian firefighters drove their truck into flood water eight feet deep.

According to the Melbourne Herald Sun, the firefighters didn't think the water was that deep, they decided to just keep going and hope for the best.  Officials said it was an error of judgement, but nobody got hurt, and no discipline is anticipated.

The video is unbelievable:

Red Solo Cup: A New Icon is Born

Not feeling that great this New Year's Day morning?

Could the blahs be the results of what you drank out of your red Solo cup last night?
Nothing says Booze Fest like red Solo cups, that staple of frat parties and blowouts for decades.

Red Solo cups are now a National icon, thanks to those countless parties, and now a hit song by Toby Keith.

The celebrated party staple
red Solo cup

Keith puts into words what every partier is thinking, even if said partier doesn't even realize he or she is thinking:

Red solo cup, you’re more than just plastic

You’re more than amazing, you’re more than fantastic
And believe me that I’m not the least bit sarcastic
When I look at you and say

Red solo cup, you’re not just a cup
(No! No! No! God, no!)
You’re my, you’re my friend." 

All this love for a beer cup. Hey, you gotta appreciate something.

And all this publicity doesn't hurt the Solo Company, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2011 just as Keith's song came out. 

Even National Public Radio gave notice to Red Solo cups last month, doing a full article on how the containers are now a staple of parties all over the place.

All for a red plastic cup that contains cheap beer and leads to hangovers.

But it's all worth it. Red Solo cups, or at least the stuff they contain, are the lubricants for our parties. So party on with your red Solo cup, and Happy New Year