Thursday Ramblings

My postings over the next few days will be light (as opposed to recently? you may well ask). Last minute cleaning and present wrapping will take up most of my time. I have the day off today and tomorrow (thanks to Manatee County's generousity to it's employees and the Sheriff following the county holiday plan). I got to leave work early yesterday thanks to the generousity of our Bureau major.

Just as a tease for a later posting, I took Wyatt to work with me this week for some training. It was an interesting week, to say the least.

Celebrations Around the World

I offer this link in the spirit of inclusion and not exclusion (which I have had more than enough of this Christmas season). Thanks to the Queen of all Evil for sharing her heritage.

I'll add more as I find them

And finally

Let me sign off by leaving you with a link to Barney cam. Wyatt highly recommends it.

Merry Christmas to all and Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men!

And a link to Bob Rivers and his audio vault of twisted Christmas songs. Listen to a few and see the Grinch's heart begin to grow with laughter!

Stats and Christmas Gifts

I just checked my TTLB stats and found that My Little Corner of the World has attained Large Mammal ranking! Wow! It's all thanks to you, my dear and faithful readers that such a thing could have happened. I'm not just saying that, I mean every word. Without readers, we bloggers would be writing for our own amusement or to vent our rath instead of kicking the (choose living or inanimate object of your choice). We put the words down, you read them and link them. Your readers then read them and visit our blogs to read more.

You keep us honest by commenting to our posts. You point our fallacies in our reasoning, or begin discussions because of your faulty reasoning. In either case, bloggers are kept on their feet because we have to think about what you wrote.

I joked in a post asking if my readers had bought my Christmas present yet. Well, I didn't know it then, but you had. You read my blog and many of you come back. I don't care as much about my TTLB ranking as I do that someone finds my blog interesting enough to come back, to link to me so that others will visit. I hope that I will continue to amuse, entertain, inform, and learn from my readers in the next year. If I can do that, then I will be a happy blogger indeed.

Merry Christmas!

Sunday Ramblings

I know that just last Sunday, I declared this a politics-free zone for the duration of the Christmas season. I also said that I would post if there were something that I just had to post about. Well, it seems that Time magazine has declared their Person of the Year to be, none other than, ::drum roll:: George Walker Bush!

For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year.

Yes, our very own W is Time's Man of the Year (being a PC-free zone, I had to designate him as "Man" of the year instead of "Person" of the year).

I wasn't sure that Time would have the guts to do what we red-staters already knew to be fact.

Congratulations, Mr. President!

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

You will probably see this editorial, one of the most famous ever written, all over the Internet this Christmas season. It was written in 1897 in response to a letter by 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon. Yes, you may see it all over the Internet, but you will also see it here. The answer to her question gives, in my opinion, one of the best definitions of what Christmas, and Santa Claus, is all about.

Dear Editor -

I am 8 years old.

Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon 115 W. 95th St.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.

There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.

Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

I believe in Santa Claus. I believe in the inherent goodness and generousity of human beings. Unfortunately, we hear mostly the bad things and so seldom hear the good. When we hear the good, it's usually at Christmas or Thanksgiving. Sometimes we hear the good things when someone needs or wants publicity for one reason or another. There's usually an ulterior motive for the good to be told. I know that good people do good things all the time. I just wish we'd hear more of it all year long.