In addition to the enormous slash of healthcare benefits, the Bush Administration's Pentagon just gave our people of the year a new Christmas present: an indefinite tour of duty.

After a wicked long day of mad dashes to make connecting flights, I'm back home, surprisingly still alive. Though infinitely preferable to 3 solid days of driving, it is kind of sobering to learn that crossing half of the country is still kind of a big deal. Feet still fresh on Rhode Island ground, my week-long craving for good coffee was finally satiated with an extraordinarily well-placed Dunkin Donuts in the airport terminal. 12 hours and only a little sleep later, I feel comfortable in my skin again.

The most difficult conversation I had in the many arguments that are the normal holiday family ritual was the explanation of how I'm getting along on the East Coast. The thing is, even for the dimmest New Englander totally incapable of pronouncing a single "R," I can get along much easier than even roomfuls of folks I grew up with. I can strike up a conversation on the flight from Boston but can't find anyone to talk to in Atlanta. I was accused this is because I have make no effort to try, and I wonder if there is some validity to that assertion.

But especially this past week at home I think the real reason is because I have no idea what kind of world these people live in. Having lived in it myself, it seems silly that I wouldn't have any idea how to talk to a down home country good ol' boy, but while they collectively shit themselves over mad cow I can only remember their histrionic border-blocking reactions to Britain and Canada when similar cases were found. Fundamentally, I have no ideas what their motivations and desires are... But I do know rather concretely now that they were never mine. Home is where the head is, I suppose.

And if there was one time to make a big show of international involvement, Dubya this is it.

One gets a special kind of courtesy when traveling by plane halfway across the country while carrying a life-size cutout of Elvis Presley.

I made it back home on Tuesday for the festive season, to be quickly reminded by my mother it was my first time home in over six months. Though it is good to see the family, I'm obviously not pleased about coming back to Medicine Lodge. How can you take the cow back to the farm after its seen Parie? By airTran, apparently.

Lots of good food and awkward moments punctuate the holidays for my family, not unlike most of America I'm sure. Even more awkward this time around however are the cravings that I've picked up on the East Coast. My kingdom for an iced coffee, I'd say, if my kingdom were actually large instead of a delapidated apartment in the Armory District. At very least, there is plenty of Mountain Dew around.

Merry Christmas everyone.

I brought my CD collection into the house from the car a couple weeks ago for one reason or another, and am still trying to find a reason to take it back. Having never listened to the radio since 1994, I've fallen in love with WBRU. Low production value, rambling knowledgable DJs, and an unbelievably good playlist - it has made me remember what used to be so magical about rock and roll radio. Though the cultivation of a vast mp3 collection is definitely necessary and preferable, you never get those special middle-of-the-night-on-a-lonely-highway moments of hearing a perfect song get played at the perfect time from some record-spinning night owl you'll never ever meet.

Thanks for listening to me on the radio.

Counting down the days until I depart my beloved coastal hills for the desert-like plains of Kansas in a small trip to celebrate the holidays with some family. As much fun as I've been having out here, I think I can sense that they are still a little miffed that I went so far away. So while I have little interest in coming home, it will be good to see mom and Vickie again.

The other good thing is that *finally* I'll be bringing real Christmas presents for Christmas. It is really better to give than to receive, and the 9-to-5 finally puts me in a position for the first time in my life of really doing that. And, buddy, Santa ain't got shit on me this year. I got a bucket full of quality and will be nestling it comfortably underneath the tree on 25d.

Woohah! Got you all in check.

Okay. So you caught Saddam Hussein. That don't impress me much.

I'm off for a dreaded occasion; that unholy chore that every man and woman trudges out with great reluctance into the unforgiving sea of commerce from whence tales of incomprehensible evil derive.

I'm always get a little melodramatic when it comes to Christmas shopping. Though I think I'm really in for it this year. Instead of competing with the 250,000 odd shoppers in Lincoln malls, I have the formidable Providence Place Mall looming like a black cloud of doom over my weekend. The ring of registers, the burning of plastic, and the shoulder-to-shoulder capitalism driven mass hysteria that seems to be exclusively unique to the American Dream.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel; beer and video games at Dave and Buster's. I can only hope I live long enough to make it to Time Crisis III.

In a fit of the performance bug, I went downtown last night to get my open mike on down at the Custom House Tavern. A tiny, stoic place that served Guinness with both a proper pour and temperature; I loved the place right away. Unfortunately, the night only had a few good performances, but I saw the funniest thing I've ever seen at any such venue.

His name was "Mark" and he looked like a total retard. Huge sloped forehead with a receding hairline, big pot belly hanging underneath a faded Pendragon t-shirt that was clearly thrifted. Dark sweatpants with holes in the knees and a big bucket full of toys and action figures. When the time for his introduction came he got behind the mike without an instrument, leading me to believe we were about to hear some terrible poetry or tonedeaf a capella.

Quite the opposite, Mark had the best voice of any man in the building. He covered Zappa and Bowie entirely without any accompaniment, punctuating the space in between vocals with either vocalized bass lines or drum fills. By the time he got halfway through his rendition of "Chocolate Salty Balls," I was on the floor. He came up later to join me for a little hiphop, and I've now promised my next Wednesday evening to come back, if only to purchase this man's CD.

Just when I start feeling real despair at the state of the nation, I come up behind a Rhode Island plated driver with a big fat blue Nebraskans for Peace bumper sticker.

I tried to jump out and congratulate the woman in the car, but evidently the police in Rhode Island are kinda reactionary about that sort of thing.

What choice do I have left?
A nation under Saddam’s rifle or Ronald McDonald’s smile.
What one would do with a torture chamber the other would with a Burger King
But I will not be ruled by iron fist or French fry.
I will stand and scream as your Humvee’s odometer clicks by 6 hundred sixty-three.
For a neighbor of the beast means as much to me
as indentured servitude for Texan greed.
For when given the decision between the one I know and the one I don’t,
I ask you. What choice do I have left?
What choice do I have left?
What choice do I have left?
I ask you what choice do I have left?

I hit my girl in anger for the first time ever today. And when your girl is a 1976 Ford Granada with a heavy gauge steel trunk, you suddenly find yourself with a near infinite list of better considered decisions. The mess began with a simple task: laundry. However, as I soon discovered, a chore that classifies merely as Minor Annoyance is soon accelerated to Pain in the Ass with two feet of ice-hardened snow on the ground. I only took a couple spills hauling my biweekly three-load laundry bag over to the laundromat half a block down, and kept most of its contents free from any of the surely damaging street slush and mud. For once in the entire snow shat weekend I was reasonably prepared - detergent, dryer sheets, and abundant changes and a fiver to boot. After a weekend of lining up with the rest of the unprepared ignoramuses waiting for DeIce-ing cans and window scrapers, I felt reasonably accomplished. However, I neglected to take into consideration the horrible discrimination that the laundromat's change maker has for the new Lincolns. Of course, the laundromat was fresh out of change after a weekend of spotting the similarly unprepared and I, being the no-cash-carrying-jackass I am, had no alternate notes. This meant a car ride.

Seemingly an innocuous task, digging my car out was a chore I had steadfastly avoided the entire day, eating only the stirfry I had prepared the day before. However, if my drawers were going to get cleaned, I had no other choice but to dig out ol' Marjorie and get her moving.

Here's a little transmission lesson for you less mechanically inclined. Back in the day, getting stuck in anything was a lot easier than it was now. Vehicles would generally distribute drive to the whichever wheel would need it, saving rubber on tires by allowing the wheels to move at different speeds when turning. However, what this situation created in a standstill would be all the drive going to one default wheel (left on Ford, right on Chevy) while the other doesn't do a goddamned thing. For this reason, Positive Traction was invented. In a standstill situation, drive is evenly applied to both wheels, giving double the traction in situations where the vehicle may be stuck while still allowing wheels to travel at different speeds in turns.

This wonderful bit of engineering, obviously, is not in my car. So, with not PosiTrac and a light rearend the hour I spent digging out the car did little good when I got stuck in my own driveway. After much rocking and rowing and the assistance of a few of the stoners next door, I finally got the vehicle underway some 2 hours after my incident with the change machine. Like a Christian soldier, I marched onwards and fetched my change, stopping to get some new rubber floor mats for my now thoroughly soaked floorboard.

I eventually got back to my clothes, and barely made it out before the stringently enforced 9pm closing time, but not before I spilled half my underroos into the street slush, making another trip this coming weekend an inevitability.

Finally, I meant the evil side of Rhode Island. That pimp Father Winter just came by his bitch Providence and told her to pay up, lest she get smacked. Pork chop sandwiches, indeed.

A foot and a half of snow. It sounds really big, but *looks* even bigger. In an effort to get my new humidifier functional I found I needed a filter, making the continued survival of my precious guitars the *only* reason I'd ever even think about investing the necessary two and a half hours to literally carve out a car shaped path in the snow.

The sort of traffic rules that apply normally however appear to be blissfully suspended in the wake of such accumulation. Instead of orderly lane assignment and observation of traffic lights, for example, proper etiquette can apparently include everything from blatant disregard to passive declaration. By far my favorite is the condoned activity of taking up both lanes with the same car... by sliding perpendicular to the cetner line.

Even more snow is on the way, apparently, so much so that the boys upstairs in my apartment are near giddy in excitement at the prospect of extending their new igloo another six feet.

After being out on account of injury the past couple games, Jack Frost just blew the season wide open like he invented the goddamned sport. Just when I was starting to believe all the counter-arguments that the winter might be light, these gigantic snowflakes start coming down - enormous Teenage Mutant Ninja Snowflakes that were as big as men and plentiful as sorrow.

A strange thing happens to Providence in the snow. With the clouds so low and the air bustling with reflection, the entire sky lights up like it is almost dawn. You almost don't need headlights on the road, it is so incredibly bright, almost like Rhode Island didn't get the memo that the sun was on its way to Uzbekistan already. Apparently we are in for at least a foot of snow, which will certainly be new to me. But I got a fridge full of sushi and a bottle of Black Bush... I don't think I have much to worry about.

The boys down at the ranch are playing more than our fair share of Call of Duty for some afterhours Nazi killing while we wait for the Mary commuters in Rhode Island to re-learn how to drive on snow again. As World War II first person shooters go, it isn't the biggest or the most historically accurate, but it comes to play with intuitive play and surprising fast pace. The problem with all World War II shooters for the average joe is that they have, well, World War II weapons. Hardly as satisfying as, say, a plasma rifle or gravity gun, WWII small arms just kinda shot bullets and killed people, often slowly. Thus, games using said weapons tend to require a lot of tactical skill and patience, two qualities any geek girlfriend will attests the nerdly set don't immediately possess.

However, Call of Duty seems to strike a pretty fair balance, if lacking any real innovative gameplay options. But, nothing quite matches the satisfaction of *stomping* management underneath the heel of your standard issue GI boot like so many helpless snails tossed onto a basketball court.