You celebrate your way, I’ll celebrate mine

The dispute over holiday greetings has become madness. People will get offended if you say Merry Christmas. Others will get offended if you do not. Why, just the other day I was in a department store and the clerk who addressed me altered his greeting so it barely made any sense at all. He said: “Sir, I’m not going to ask you again to stop doing that to the mannequins.” It’s really just sad and it happens at every store I go into these days.

Powerball!

If I win, this space will be fuzzy with swirls of dust left behind as I beat a hasty retreat to the California coast wearing nothing but Crocs and a bathing suit made out of hundred dollar bills. Should I fail to win – which just seems unlikely, I mean, all I have to do is match six numbers, right? – let’s just go with something about how money can’t buy love and happiness and how the best things in life are free. You know: tripe like that.

Powerball II

Well, I didn’t win, although it’s under protest. Those winning numbers? I meant to play those. First thing Monday, I’m going to the lottery commission and explain the situation.

Instant karma?

Isn’t it funny how, in the days leading up to the lottery drawing, millionaire wannabes tried to coax a little love from the forces that control the universe? If I win, I’ll share with all my friends! If I win, I’ll go around giving money to the homeless! And so on. Everybody’s Andrew Carnegie until they actually win, at which point they decide it’s more fun to be Charlie Sheen.

December

I’ve never been so grateful for a change of months. November was brutal – felt longer than the gestation period of a black Alpine salamander (look it up). The bad news is that December will likely be just as bleak. The good news: The month only lasts 21 days this year, if you factor in the Mayan stuff.

Scene of the Grime

On Wednesday, there were no less than five reporters, photographers and video guys out in downtown Lewiston scouring the streets for signs of scorched pavement and broken glass. Boy, you really know you’ve arrived as a journalist when you find yourself picking through spent condoms and discarded diapers and wondering if they somehow relate to the Big Story from the night before.

Larceny!

Scene of the Grime? Brilliant, isn’t it? I stole it outright from photographer/superhero Russ Dillingham. My shame is great.

Things I won’t be doing this week . . .

. . . thanks to the crooked Powerball lottery, which is obviously fixed: Shopping for a house in Malibu, yachting up the Androscoggin River, smoking a thousand-dollar cigar in the boss’ office in spite of the strict no-smoking policy. I also won’t be flying to Walnut Street in my spanking new helicopter to continue searching for cigarette butts and other key evidence.