It's all about me

I've reached the 1,000th-post milestone on Opening Arguments; not bad for eight months. Since I don't post on weekends, that works out to an average of about six posts a day.  Whew!

We should be allowed to expect certain standards of behavior from the professionals we depend on. Our accountants should not declare bankruptcy. Our lawyers should not end up in jail. Our mechanics should not get stranded and have to call AAA. Our therapists should not be caught naked in the middle of Main Street babbling about the Martian invasion.

Our physicians should not die.

It's comforting to know I don't have to try to keep up with the latest slang:

I always knew there was a good reason they sent me to Vietnam; it just took me awhile to figure it out: to make the country safe for American tourists who want to have the VC experience:

At the beginning of the tunnel complex here, there's a wall draped with clothing - vests, cone-shaped peasant hats, capes in camouflage colors. Oh yes, and rifles. Real rifles, but thankfully without the ammo.

Fort Wayne Observed has been conducting various polls related to the media in 2005, and he's now running one for "blog of the year." If you'd like to vote, click here. Of course, you don't have to vote for me. Honest. I don't care. It's all right. I'll get by. Really.

Early in my marriage, my wife and I invited my parents in Fort Wayne to visit us in the small house we rented in Wabash. We cleaned and straightened for a week, shopped and cooked. All during the day, my mother dropped small words of praise here and there, as mothers will. My father was silent. When the visit was over, and they were leaving, I finally just asked him: "Well, how was it?" He thought for a long moment and finally said, "The coffee could have been stronger." I am my father's son, so I make coffee so strong that most of my family won't drink it.

Here's a holiday story I like much better than the stupid "12 Days of Christmas" update. Of the top toys of past decades, the only two I ever had were the Crayola Crayons and the View-Master 3-D Viewer, and I didn't get the viewer as a present when I was a child. I bought it for myself just a few years ago. With all the money I spend on cable, the Internet and all other forms of whizzy entertainment, I can still amuse myself for hours marveling at the depth and detail of a View-Master slide.

I mentioned in an earlier post that "The 12 Days of Christmas" was on my list of the five worst Christmas songs ever. One of the good reasons to detest the song is that it is responsible for one of the laziest, lamest piceces of journalistic sludge ever perpetuated against the American people.

I share Walter Williams' disgust with those who disparage "menial, dead-end jobs":

I shouldn't complain too much about these stupid holiday gift cards, since I've given them myself a time or two. But $18.48 billion on gift cards this year, up 6.6 percent from 2004? Doesn't that just scream, "I'm too self-centered to know what you want and too lazy to try to find out"?