Last Minute Shopping

I finished my Christmas shopping today, and I feel great! For the first time in several years I won’t be making the trek to the mall on Christmas Eve to finish up. And I didn’t even come close to killing anyone this year. Probably because I did most of my shopping online.

Since my shopping is done, and the gifts are wrapped, I thought I would put together my top 10 list of presents that I would love to receive, but don’t stand a snow ball’s chance in a bakery to get.

1.   For all of 2008, I would like to turn on the television, pick up a newspaper or magazine, or surf the Internet and never see the name Britney Spears (or any other Spears come to think of it).
2. My second gift is really for someone else. I would like a talented  hair stylist to do something with Donald Trump’s hair that doesn’t make him look like a Looney Toons character.
3. I would like the price of gas to drop below $2.25 a gallon and stay there for at least 36 months.
4. I would like someone to come up with a sugar-free candy bar that has no calories and doesn’t cause severe gastrointestinal problems if you eat too much of it. (Look up side effects of Malitol if you don’t know what I mean.)
5. Before we get too far into the presidential election, I would like a candidate to surface who doesn’t talk about everything negative in his opponent, but rather what kind of difference he will make. When discussing the issues he will be nothing but direct and insist on being held accountable.
6. In the coming year, I would like to see someone come up with a fool-proof method to eliminate SPAM in all of its variations and forms. I never want to see SPAM in my e-mail, in my blog comments or anywhere else ever again. And if it can be worked out, I would like to see the people responsible for all that worthless junk taking up time, money and bandwidth made available to those of us who deal with their mess every day for just 20 minutes each.
7. If God is truly merciful, he would give me the gift of always understanding exactly what it is that my wife wants me to do. He will also remove my tendencies to open my mouth before my brain engages.
8. Once again, one of my gifts is really for someone else. In this case, it’s my wife. In 2008 Dale Earnhardt, Jr. should win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship. Not only will that make my wife happy, it will silence all of his other whining, griping fans and put and end to talk of any conspiracy against him.
9. I would like all of my kids and grandkids to decide to move to North Carolina. That way, when I get into my dotage they will be close enough to take care of me without any of us having to travel. Besides, a grandfather should have unfettered access to his grandchildren for purposes of spoilage!
10.   Finally, I would like my blog and anyone else’s who places a link here to rise to the top of the Google search rankings, whatever they are, and generate enough traffic so that all of us are able to sign multi-million dollar personal services contracts. That would give us the means to pursue our favorite pastime and  get rid of all those nasty people (like bosses) who expect us to do what they think is productive.

OK, what would your top-ten list look like? See anything that you want to tell Santa, "me too" on? More to the point, are you listening Santa?