— Bumper sticker of the week: When you fight evil with evil, evil wins.

— Quotes of the week: “The worst feature of a new baby is the mother’s singing.” Kim Hubbard

“I don’t take drugs — I am drugs.” Salvador Dali

“I have every sympathy with the American smoker who was so horrified by what he had read of the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.” Henry Strauss

— Iraq Study Group: I wasn’t real impressed by the results put together by what has been described as “ten of the country’s best and most distinguished elder statesmen. And women. The situation is “grave and deteriorating.” That’s like looking at Pamela Anderson’s boobs and declaring them to be fake. No calls for immediate withdrawal. No call for a serious look at how this whole moronic affair has gotten so badly out of hand. Just a calling to talk with Iran and Syria, magically hoping that these two enemies of Iraq might somehow help bring about reconciliation, forgiveness, and peace. Yeah, and I’m going to make a million dollars off of this column some day.

— Rumsfeld bidding farewell to troops: There’s a crock of crap. He should be apologizing to them for his role in the whole sorry affair and attempting to get as many of them as he can on his flight back to the U.S.

— Annan blisters Bush on his way out as UN Secretary-General: I would have loved to have been there. Truman’s Presidential Library, in Independence, Missouri. Annan stated, “When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose, for broadly shared aims, in accordance with broadly accepted norms, As President Truman said, the responsibility of the great states is to serve, and not dominate, the peoples of the world. The security council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests.” Amen

— You know you’ve done enough Christmas shopping when:

•Your name starts wearing off your credit cards.

•You can’t find any more places to hide gifts.

•Retailers start calling you by your nickname.

•You get Christmas cards from Wal-Mart, Target, and Lowe’s.

•They have a parking spot with your name on it, right up front.

•You start buying things for next year at this year’s post Christmas sales.

— I’ve never gotten over the fact that:

•Santa Claus is also the Easter Bunny.

•Joining the Salvation Army does not make you eligible for military retirement.

•Christmas is not really at the end of the year. This appears to be a capitalist trick.

•Stores are starting to display Christmas things before Thanksgiving.

•Christ had to be born in a barn. What’s the deal with that? Where were the PR people for Holiday Inn Express, or Motel 8?

•That the new year has to start on January 1st. Why not June 30, or September 1?

•Santa Claus always wears red. What’s with that?

•Santa Claus somehow avoids getting burnt up in the fireplace.

•Why does New Year’s always start with a hangover?

— The City Manager wants to turn out the lights to fill in his budget deficits. In case he hasn’t noticed, they have been going steadily out over his tenure. If the new City Manager hasn’t got any more sense than this, I hope he rents for a while.

— Don’t fall for the lies they tell you in commercials. Not all inflatable dolls are of equal quality. Nor do some have near the talents others do.