Dear Santa Claus,

Mommy tells me you are evil every since she started going to church after daddy stopped living with us. And daddy tells me that you don't exist. He has a lot of hair on his face now, like you! But only some of it is white.

But I know you do exist, Santa! When I see you ringing your little bell outside the mall I always laugh. You're so funny!

HOHOHO!

And sometimes you almost fall down!

Santa, I tried to be very good this year. Not like last year when I made daddy go away. If I was good enough can I please have a flame thrower for Christmas. Or maybe a space ship! A space ship would be really cool! Then on the nights when mommy has Uncle Roger over and they go in her room and yell at each other a lot I can fly to Mars so I don't have to listen to them being so mean.

Sometimes mommy cries after Uncle Roger leaves.

Maybe you can bring mommy a friend so she doesn't cry when Uncle Roger is mean to her and leaves. She always drinks that yucky brown stuff that smells when he leaves, and she cries.

Sometimes I cry too.

Street Scene
Advertising Disconnect

I'm watching the Cartoon Network (because, after a day at work, I want to watch something that I'm not going to pick the product placements out of by habit, ironic because at the moment I'm watching Transformers, a series designed from the ground up to sell toys) and catch an in-network promo for Naruto. The outgoing tagline is "Naruto: Put Your Lips Together...and Blow."

Now, I've never seen Naruto, but something tells me that it doesn't have all that much, okay anything, to do with Lauren Bacall, and I'm certain that is has absolutely nothing to do with what Bacall had in mind.

It's true that ritualistic battle has a certain...appeal, but raising a generation of sadomasochists seems like a bad way to start the twenty-first century.