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I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. I'm back in Huntspatch after visiting with the family since Friday. It's always nice to get out of the big city for awhile, especially over the holidays. Now, I get to hit all of the after-Christmas sales to stock up on all those things Santa forgot. Fun, fun.

I hate shopping, by the way. Part of it is because I hate the stupid crap they sell in stores. For example...clothing retailers stocking t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. with logos of schools, businesses, or what have you...some of which don't even exist. Yeah, that's real nice - sell a shirt with a made-up ad for a made-up company...or with a mascot for a fictional high school. And people (mostly clueless teenagers) buy the stuff...because it's cool.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Burlington Coat Factory was selling Che Guevara t-shirts this holiday season. They even ran ads with young people proudly wearing their Che shirts. All because it's suddenly fashionable, for some strange reason. This is without regard to the fact that Che Guevara was a murdering Communist thug who helped bring the dictator Castro to power in Cuba. I'll bet you that whatever Burlington employees made the decision to sell Che merchandise didn't even know who the hell he was...and didn't find it important enough even to ask the question. It took protests from upset Cubans in Florida to fill Burlington's management in on the situation. Morons.

I get annoyed in much the same way every time I drive past a new subdivision with a made-up name whose only significance is that it "sounded good" to some nitwit developer. They aren't named after a landmark or in honor of a particular person. Oh, they may sound like they are - they may bear some surname or refer to a "creek" or a "wood" or a "crossing," but it's all made up. And, if that weren't silly enough, they go out and stick an extra "e" on the end of a few words just to make sure the name is both insignificant and pretentious. Some developers even add in their own delusions of grandeur - like the folks who named Huntsville's "World Famous Bridge Street," which isn't even famous in Huntsville, much less the world. As a matter of fact, it isn't even built yet.

Did I say Merry Christmas already?