Well surprize, surprize, surprize...

Gee, whodathunkit???

It's no wonder why R. Lee Ermey is our favorite U.S.M.C. Gunnery Sergeant.

Hodie Christus natus est! Halleluja! Halleluja!

...And they came with haste; and they found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. And seeing, they understood of the word that had been spoken to them concerning this child. And all that heard, wondered; and at those things that were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God, for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.
(Douay-Rheims - Luke 2:16-20)


To all of you and your families, I wish a very

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

I pray that the love and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always.

Dominus Vobiscum,
Tony

Tranquilla Nox, Sancta Nox...

...And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and they feared with a great fear. And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: For, this day, is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.
(Douay-Rheims - Luke 2:8-14)

Christmas is only one week away. Please donate to Toys for Tots...

...and give happiness to a needy child on Christmas morning.

The Marine Corps Reserve once again goes above and beyond the call of duty - as they have for the past 60 years - making sure that impoverished children in our communities have something to smile about on Christmas morning. The happiness of opening Christmas gifts, we and our children take so much for granted, is a joy that every child should share. Please donate something, whatever little you can spare, and spread a little Christmas joy this holiday season. Thank you.

Drop off an unwrapped toy at any one of the many retailers in your area with a Toys for Tots collection bin or simply click on the link below, go to their website and...

Donate to Toys for Tots

LMAO! The 12 Days of Winter...

I'm just surprised it took so long for someone
to think up this brilliant masterpiece.

Remember folks, reindeer have other uses...

In case you didn't know, I am a proud life member of PETA - People who Eat Tasty Animals. So when I read this article earlier, it made my pallet salivate like Pavlov's dog at the sound of a ringing bell...

Caffe Boa offering an-all-reindeer menu over Christmas
by Howard Seftel - Dec. 7, 2010 10:45 AM
Republic restaurant critic

Last Easter, chef Payton Curry and the crew at cheeky Caffe Boa in Tempe decided to get in the holiday spirit by putting together a special all-rabbit dinner. Public reaction ranged from anger to bemusement. The Easter Bunny went into hiding. Needless to say, the publicity was priceless.

Now, channeling the spirit of Christmas, and firm in the belief that there's no such thing as bad publicity, the Caffe Boa team is fashioning a multicourse tasting menu featuring - you guessed it - reindeer.

Well, not exactly Euro-Asian reindeer, but North American caribou. (The two are basically the same - the distinction is based on geography.)

Don't worry about Rudolph and the rest of the gang not being able to play any more reindeer games: Curry's caribou comes from Colorado and Idaho, not the North Pole.

The menu begins with caribou tartare gilded with pickled quail egg. That's followed by caribou tongue bruschetta with pickled watermelon radish and horseradish cream. Then there's caribou sausage with red lentils and quince mustard. Up next are two pasta courses: pappardelle with caribou Bolognese and caribou-filled tortellini in a parmesan broth. The caribou parade ends with bollito misto, a meat and vegetable stew...

*snip*

It's not that I hate them. They really are some of God's most beautiful creatures and they sure do taste good after cooking for a few hours over a hickory flame. Ten years ago, when I was working down in Westchester County, I had the pleasure of eating at a restaurant named "La Braseria" (at least I think that's what it was called). I can't find them on the internet today, assuming they have since gone out of business, but back then, they must have had a chain franchise in and around NYC. I've eaten at one in White Plains, one outside of Valhalla, and one in the Nanuet Mall. It was a Brazilian BBQ house that features an all-you-can-eat menu of animals, uncommon to typical American cuisine. Servers walked from table to table with long skewers held vertically and resting on a block of wood. Each server had healthy portions of several different BBQ'd meats on his skewer, and upon arriving at your table, would identify each the meats. If you liked something he had, he would remove it from the skewer and place it on your dish. If you didn't want what he had, you simply waited for the next server to arrive at your table with with a different selection of meats. One night, I ate the flesh of 17 different beasts. Among them were ostrich, camel, crocodile, kangaroo, tortoise, and REINDEER. Yes folks, I ate BBQ reindeer and it was damned good, but stay away from the kangaroo, it was tough as leather!

More importantly here folks, the reason for the Christmas season is not any more about Santa and reindeer than Easter is about a large furry rabbit hiding colored, hard-boiled eggs and candy around your house on a particular Sunday in early Spring. These holidays are supposed to be about the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even if a bunch of pagans or atheists try to make these holidays about anything other than what they really are, that doesn't take away from the fact that God gave us dominion over other animals for use as food and labor. You should also bear in mind that Santa's reindeer, while probably just as tasty, serve a higher purpose due to their ability to fly, and for that reason alone, have likely been able to save themselves from becoming the main course on Santa's dinner table.

Once again, global warming is upon us...

As I stated recently in a previous post, I chose my favorite cartoon, the original pre-1950s Woody Woodpecker as my Facebook profile avatar for the weekend. That being so, allow me to shamelessly use him to lead off on this particular blog post, highlighting what many of us in the American Northeast consider to be a BRUTAL onset of early Winter weather. For the past several days, the temperatures here have been more common to late January than early December. Perhaps we feel this way because we were so fortunate to have such temperate Fall weather throughout most of November that we've become a bit spoiled. Now it feels like old man Winter is literally pounding down my front door! After the last weather system passed through a couple of days ago, daytime temperatures have dropped into the low to mid 30s and nights have been down in the low 20s. Accentuating this temperature change, the winds have been at a constant 10 to 20mph with gusts up to and exceeding 30mph, putting the wind chill at chilly +5 to +15 deg. Fahrenheit. BRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!! And making matters worse, the folks at Accuweather.com are making early predictions for a possible weekend snowstorm...

Big Upcoming Snowstorm for the East?
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist
Dec 5, 2010; 2:35 PM ET



A storm that will take shape by the middle of December will cross the country and could end up developing into a major snowstorm for portions of the mid-Atlantic and New England.

There are different storm track scenarios at this point that mean the difference between mostly rain or a potential blizzard along the Interstate 95 corridor from Washington, D.C., to Boston.

So far, Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi has been correct with the Winter Forecast for the Northeast with his prediction that late November to December would be cold and stormy for many...

*snip*

I love a white Christmas as much as the next person, but mentally, I'm just not ready for this. I guess with life getting more difficult all around, it doesn't feel like it has in previous years. There's something missing and it isn't just the lack of funds that were available only a year ago. It's something I can't explain, but suffice it to say, it's giving me cause to be more mindful of the things I do and to err on the side of caution as I move forward.

I guess Jingle Bells didn't make the cut...

It's that time of year again...

Time to pull out the decorations, deck the halls and play the Christmas tunes. With economic circumstances being the way they are, I promise not to over do it this year. Although there's no need to scale back my decorating here at this website, I am going to scale back the usual amount of outdoor lights I put up each year. I just don't have the desire to be constantly finding and replacing bad bulbs. I've got better things to do with my time and better ways of celebrating the season. I have heard a couple old songs that I'll be adding to Santa's Jukebox as soon as I can find them on the internets. Other than that, what you see is what you get. Enjoy.

Got Presents? Better hurry folks, Christmas is coming!

As if you didn't know...

Well, we saw it coming months ago; With the economy in near depression and inflation threatening to make a bad winter even worse, for the past few months, retailers have been shoving holiday sales down our throats in hopes of turning some kind of profit before year's end. The early Christmas push has been getting worse and worse each year. Just last year, I was joking with my wife that before you know it, they'll be advertising for Christmas the day after July 4th! Trust me folks, you didn't need to be Nostradamus to figure that out. However, unlike previous years, I don't think retail holiday greed is solely to blame this time around. Like us on the consumer end, I believe retailers are pulling out all the stops in hopes of just surviving this horrible recession.

While prices are being slashed for the holidays to just above wholesale on most of the unnecessary garbage people feel the need to clutter their lives with, prices on everything considered to be necessities are going through the roof!!! Food, common household items and hygiene products have gotten way more expensive. Just about everything in the grocery store has either gone up in price or manufacturers are reducing weights and/or quantities in products in order to keep prices the same. The price of gas is back up over $3.00 a gallon and I'm sure heating oil and electricity increases will follow, especially if we suffer a cold winter. On average, it costs me an extra 10 dollars more to fill my Jeep's gas tank than it did just six months ago. Health insurance costs have become unaffordable (yeah, I know, don't get me started on that). Taxes and government service fees like DMV costs feel like they've doubled over the past couple of year. The real estate market is still extremely stagnant and unemployment is at levels I haven't seen since the Jimmy Carter days. Yet, they still won't call this a RECESSION?!?! But, I digress.

Despite all those economic woes, an increase in consumer turnout at some stores appears to be a prediction of good fourth quarter earnings. But should that be taken as concrete proof that the economy is on the upswing? Likely not. Everyone I've talked to tells me how much harder their families are struggling than they were this time last year. They're traveling less, shopping only when stores offer big sales, reducing their monthly expenses to a bare minimum and even clipping coupons to save money on groceries - something many claim they've never done in the past.

Many also tell me that they've even been preparing their children for the holidays this year by telling them not to expect a lot of stuff for Christmas. And while that may not bode well for the retail sector, it does give me some hope to know that folks are shedding some of the excess materialism that comes with Christmas and Hanukkah. Hopefully there will be more focus on the real meaning of the holidays and not be so reliant on gift wrapped presents to make the seasons bright. Speaking for my family, our kids only get a couple of toys each along with some new clothing, games (non-electronic) and books. I don't know about folks, but we just can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a bunch of crap that gets played with for a couple of weeks and then tossed in a closet where it sits for the next several years until it becomes yard sale fodder.

Economic conditions not withstanding, Christmas is supposed to be, first and foremost, about celebrating the birth of Christ and Hanukkah is supposed to be a remembrance of Jewish perseverance and victory over their enemies. More generally speaking, the holiday season is supposed to be about friends and family, charity and compassion, peace and good will. Regardless if we can afford to spend large amounts of money to make ourselves and others around us happy, we should all focus more on what really is most important, because even though your financial situation appears stable at present, everything can change in the blink of an eye and it is times like those that we rely on friends and family to help us survive the new year.

There will always be a segment of society that continues to enjoy economic prosperity, but in this economy, How long do you think that will last? I believe the vast majority of us are hanging on by a thread, living paycheck to paycheck, pinching pennies, tightening their belts, and hunkering down for a long, dark, cold, and frugal winter.

Happy Birthday, Jesus!!!

To all of you and yours...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you this Christmas and throughout the New Year!

Dominus Vobiscum,
Mo

O, Holy Night

And there were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them and the brightness of God shone round about them: and they feared with a great fear. And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people: For, this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying:

Glory to God in the highest: and on earth peace to men of good will.

-The Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ According to St. Luke: 8-14 (Douay-Rheims)

Christmas Public Service Announcement

Today is Sunday, December 20, 2009. There are only 4 days left to prepare for Christmas and I have soooooooo much to do in soooooooo little time. Therefor, in the name of mental and physical self preservation, I have to make a concerted effort to lay off the posting here and get busy preparing for Christmas. If by chance I do happen to slip one or two posts in between now and December 25, it will likely be brief and/or rather important. You can check in on me from time to time, but expect the posting here to be VERY light until after Christmas. My message to all of you at this time is to be safe, get off the gawdamned computer and go spend this precious time with your loved ones during this special time of year.

TNX,
The Management

This year's Christmas miracle...

With every negative thing that's going on in this messed up world these days, it sure is nice to hear about things like this. We all see miracles in our lives every day, even it it is as simple as waking up alive in the morning to see the dawn of a brand new day. It means we've been given an extra day to accomplish more than we did the day before - one more chance to get it right.

H/T to apotheosis at SondraK.com

Confessions, Corrections & Cons

It appears that I've been busted. Two days ago I posted a rant on how United States Liberals hate Christmas. Although I could have written much more on the topic to drive the message home (so-to-say), it was getting past midnight and I was exhausted, yet I still felt a tremendous need to get something posted before I quit for the night. So, I kept it down to a simple paragraph and an even more simple picture which I grabbed in haste from a Google image search. Just so you know, this is not my typical method of publishing my frustrations for you all to see. I am not a typical fly-by-post kinda guy. With that said, it should be known that I make every effort to ensure that my rants include factually correct information. Unfortunately, I erred in my last post and felt that I should immediately come clean with an apology and a correction. The last thing I need is to be accused of cooking up stories to destroy the image of others. That's a reputation better left to the likes of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes.

Anyway, one of the emails I received yesterday pointed out something quite disturbing to me...

Mo,

Do you realize that you're latest post which claims that "U.S. Liberals hate Christmas" uses a picture of a group of people that are not even part of American politics? The peeps in that picture are British citizens campaigning for the "Liberal Democrat" party in merry old England!

Just thought you would like to know.

Dave

After reading that, I'm sure you can realize the amount of shock and embarrassment I was in. Never the less, I was determined to set the record straight - hopefully soon so that nobody would notice. If I just swap out the picture for one littered with our own homegrown moonbats, the problem would be resolved and that would be the end of it. I did, however, hate like anything having to replace the picture because it just looked so good for the post. Then, it occurred to me; I remembered a story I read last week about how the commies over at MoveOn.org ran an anti-war Christmas advertisement claiming how horrible it was that United States soldiers would not be home with their families this Christmas holiday and it was all George Bushes fault (emphasis mine). Much to our surprise *cough* *cough*, there were several things in the ad that just appeared to be inconsistent with MoveOn.org's message as described by a spokesman for the Defense Department...

Todd Vician, a spokesman with the U.S. Defense Department, told Cybercast News Service after viewing the ad that none of the men featured in the photograph was wearing U.S. uniforms. "We don't have that style of desert camouflage," he said.

Vician noted that combat fatigues worn by the Marines and the Army have "a pixilated design," and Air Force BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms) have a different pattern than the uniforms shown in the spot.

In addition to the men wearing foreign uniforms, Vician stated that he had never seen U.S. soldiers using meal containers like those shown in the ad.

The spot contains another discrepancy. While the photo of the soldiers as seen in the advertisement shows one man wearing shorts, a still of the same picture on the MoveOn.org website shows the same man wearing long pants.

And so I figured that if it was ok for MoveOn.org to doctor pictures of Brits to look like Yanks in order to get their message across, then why can't I???

Now that I know my picture more accurately represents American Liberals as the ass clowns that they really are, I can finally sleep better at night.


Shouts to Michelle Malkin for the soldier pic.

U.S. Liberals Hate Christmas!!!

Doesn't it suck that every year these idiots wage endless war against America's favorite holiday? While they pretend to be so concerned for the common folk and try so desperately to put on such a pleasant face for the general public to see, they are working ever diligently behind the scenes at tearing down this country's most beloved traditions. Just today, I got a flyer in the mail from our local fire department. They're announcing an event for kids of all ages. They're calling it a "Children's Holiday Party!" Slated for December 18th, the flyer states and I quote: "Join us for refreshments, crafts, (sic) and a visit from Santa." The flyer wraps it up at the bottom with a big ol' "Happy Holidays!" I called the woman at the firehouse who was arranging the festivities, asked for Ms. So-n-so and asked her why they are having a party for kids with Santa and refusing to call it a Christmas party? She basically said that I was an inconsiderate neanderthal who lacks respect for the religious diversity in our community. Oh really? Then how is it that our sleepy little community of 3,000 people - made up of 88% Christians - has all of a sudden become so diverse? The only way to save Christmas is to counter these clowns with the truth at every opportunity.

*UPDATED*