The Ghost of Christmas Future

Now that the Christmas trees are back up at SeaTac, or those are up that haven’t since blown away, and now that people have calmed down a bit, I feel the need to work them into a frenzy again. That’s why this year I’m calling for all good Americans to stop recognizing foreign winters, and start recognizing American winters.

What I’m talking about is the fact that practically every calendar you can find around here, including calendars designed and printed right here in America, even right here in this city, show winter 2006 as beginning on the 22nd of this month! This is an outrage!

In fact, winter begins at a little past 12:20 AM Greenwich Mean Time. Did you know that’s code for British time, also known as ZULU time? Do we live in Britain? Do we live in Zululand? NO! We live in a city 8 hours ahead, or behind, depending on whether (math joke alert!) you’re positively or negatively oriented, ha. In any case winter starts on the 21st all across America from Maine to Hawaii, AND ANTI-AMERICAN CALENDAR MAKERS DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW IT. Are you paying attention, Lou Dobbs, or don’t you care about the American Way of Life? It’s time we celebrated Freedom Winter! No more Brit Winter!

OK, now that I’ve got that out of the way I can do what I came here to do. Apparently nobody else noticed it last week but me, but a huge shift has occurred in the culture wars across this land, a shift that promises to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain.

I am speaking of the fact that Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota came this close (see pinched fingers, crushing the head of a flea) to needing a living will and testament. Fortunately all is well, this time. I’ve read that Senator Johnson has been seen by no less than three highly qualified Democrats, who all say he’s “looking good” and has an excellent prognosis until at least January 2009, so it won’t be at all necessary for South Dakota Republican Governor Mike Rounds to appoint anyone to take Johnson’s place.

This is great because it means that I can forget about the bad scenario I have in mind happening to Tim Johnson. I can imagine it happening to a fictitious Democratic Senator. So let’s do that together, shall we?

There are 51 Senators trying to keep the Senate in Democratic control. Actuarially speaking, they are most of them old, and no one would be surprised if they didn’t all last the next two years. The same can be said for the other 49, less the difference. But what happens when, sometime in the middle of next year, the Democratic Senator William “Willy” Orrnot from the great state of South Macadamia, governed by a Republican, slips and falls in an off-duty hula competition and gets himself concussed and then doesn’t wake up from it, ever?

I’ll tell you what happens because I can see it coming as plain as a car hurtling south on a northbound one-way in rush hour, what with all the screeching tires and the smashing glass and crushed metal. At first everyone will sit back respectfully and watch as the life support system is put into action, “the way he wanted it.” Then someone will leak the man’s actual living will, which will turn out to stipulate “no unusual life-prolonging measures” be taken. Then lawsuits will fly, at first involving only the family and the wife.

When it starts to look like the plug could be pulled, that’s when you’ll see a cultural war realignment.

I don’t know about the rest of you die-hard liberals out there, but I for one am ready right now to sign a GetOnWithItAlready.org petition calling for my Congresspeople to support “An Act for the relief of the people who don’t want Democrats’ plugs pulled.”

Did I say that the Schiavo Bill was unconstitutional? I must have been smoking something.