Now that THAT'S over...

…we can all say goodbye to our fun and visits and eating and get back to our boring, humdrum lives, and be thankful we don’t live somewhere that God can smite us with a tidal wave for being Hindu (and I’m NOT EVEN KIDDING that I heard someone say that THAT was the reason for the tsunami that surely killed lots of Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists, too)….

So Jet and I had a lovely nine-day visit with Mother Rubble – actually, it was mostly Jet, since he was off work and I wasn’t, and plus had to work extra down to the Cathedral and all. But Jet was kind enough to run her out to the grocery store, and up to Pennsylvania to visit the Reverend Uncle, and such, while I labored away. All for the sake of appearing on television on Christmas morn, along with Jet and Mother Rubble, only to hear that the lights washed me out and I looked pale and sickly! And from Code Dependent, no less, who now has the medical authority to back up her opinions!

I HAVE finally gone to the doctor for my persistent cough, only to hear that I’m a bad patient for not paying close enough attention to the color of my mucous. Oh, for the days when they would pass out antibiotics like candy! Now I imagine I’ll be back in a week with the same complaint, my coffers being bled dry one 10-dollar co-pay at a time.

After church on Christmas Day, we had a happy present opening, where I got everything I wanted and Jet got everything that he wanted-even-though-he-didn’t-know-he-wanted-it. Best present for Jet: the collected works of David Sedaris on CD, read by the author.

Best present for me: The Complete “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” on DVD, or, as Jet likes to call it, “soft porn”. Added bonus – the discovery of the hitherto unknown theme song WITH lyrics, which opens the premier episode.

PS – Gil Gerard is perfection itself.

Best present for Dino: the “Bow-Lingual” bark translator. So far she says innocuous things like “Yippee”, and “Keep Up!”, though we did get one “Resistance is Futile”, and I’m keeping a guarded eye open for things like “Eat Drano” and “Bomb the Harbor”. You never know.

Mother Rubble left and at almost simultaneously we welcomed our old pal JubJub from Chicago. Though it pains me to disclose that I’ve known JubJub for twenty years, and we met as adults, we never fail to have a good time when she’s around, even though we never seem to do much except lay around and talk about what we might like to do if we could ever get off our asses and do it.

For all you serial daters out there, JubJub has a strong warning against eHarmony.com. After filling out her exhaustive questionnaire and being sent many unexciting romantic possibilities, she was finally sent an imminently qualified language arts professor (she herself is a teacher of English as a second language). So she excitedly clicked on the link to see the young gent’s pictures.

There she came upon some pictures of what she presumed to be the young gentleman’s mother, or perhaps him dressed as Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie for Halloween.

Nope, nothing so delightful as that…he was indeed a cross-dresser, and proud of it.

Oh, and blind.

So now I’m re-charged and ready to get back to work, eager in the next year to focus on my strengths – 1) exposing hypocrisy, 2) making fun of celebrities, and 3) complaining about slights to gay people.

To wit:

1) God did NOT send the tsunami to punish people for being Hindu, I’m quite sure. They’ve been Hindu a lot longer than there have even BEEN Christians, one would think God would have done something about them long before this.

NOR is he punishing Muslims for fighting amongst themselves.

NOR was it caused by a joint American/Israeli nuclear weapons test.

It’s just a natural phenomenon, all right? With terrible, terrible consequences, unfortunately, but natural nonetheless. Move on.

2) NOR, Star Jones-Reynolds, is there cause to thank the Lord on National television that you got home from your southeast Asian honeymoon “just in time” to avoid getting swept away. To paraphrase Jon Stewart, that’s like saying you narrowly avoided the Kennedy assasination because you were riding in a convertible the week before.

It seems Matt Lauer has finally decided to start growing his hair back. I’ll never forget the gasp of horror when he first appeared with that shorn look he’s been wearing the past few years. Unfortunately, he’s now at that awkward stage where all he can do is brush all his hair forward in a faux-Caesar look. He looks more like character actor Jay Robinson (that’s TV’s Dr. Shrinker to you, post-Baby Boomers!)

And can someone tell me HOW Stephen Bing, who looks like a toad, keeps getting hot women like Liz Hurley and Nicole Kidman?

3) Virginia is for lovers – just not gay ones. New legislation will promote the creation of vanity license plates embossed with intertwined gold bands and the words “Traditional Marriage”. Perfect for drivers eager to have their cars keyed whenever they drive into DC! I’m hoping to get my own vanity plate soon, but can’t decide between “Women belong in the kitchen” and “Jesus on my lips, hatred in my heart”.

That’s all for now, but never fear, I’ll try and be back soon. And stay tuned for next Friday’s breathless, eyewitness account of the Inaugural Prayer Service at the National Cathedral (and be sure to bid on my collection of bulletins and other ephemera on eBay shortly thereafter).