You might have missed it. You might have slept right through it. After all, it took place on a lazy mid-winter Saturday. Plus, the college football season was over, having been replaced by the wildly popular sport of league bowling, where you almost never get to see any serious violence.

So you might have missed it. Maybe you were busy preparing your tailgating smorgasbord, before watching the breathtaking Professional Bowling US Open (brought to you by Lumber Liquidators!), featuring all your favorite Alley Warriors, who, for some unexplained reason, all have names like Mike Wzmlrzksi.

But this Saturday, here in South Carolina, we were getting ready to pick the next President.

Right after breakfast.

See, all this week, we’ve been trying our best to be polite, as the full slate of candidates careened across our state – staffers, know-it-alls, nabobs and news crews in tow – tying up traffic and babbling bromides, kissing hands and shaking babies, disrupting routine and interrupting breakfast, at diner after diner after diner.

Don’t get me wrong – in South Carolina, our role in picking a President is a responsibility we take very seriously … after we eat. In South Carolina, politics is sanctified.

But breakfast? Breakfast is imbued.

After all, it’s in the Constitution, isn’t it? Life, liberty and the pursuit of a Happy Meal.

Anyway, in case you missed it, here’s a handy recap of South Carolina’s Presidential Primary Day 2012. The blow-by-blow, if you will, the way I saw it.

After breakfast.

7.00am
In polling places all across the state, several million TV news crews poise, countdown “three, two, one, roll tape!” and simultaneously point their cameras at … nothing. A bunch of empty rooms.
Remember, it’s Saturday morning, it’s raining, and polling places don’t offer coffee.

8.00am
At a rally in Columbia, Governor Nikki Haley strongly endorses Mitt Romney, citing the undisputable fact that both their last names end in “ey.” Former Governor Mark Sanford was scheduled to appear, but he misread his map and wound up at a Brazilian micro-brewery.

8.01am
Current President Barack Obama surges ahead of all other candidates in the Democrat primary, or would have done, if there were any other candidates in the Democrat primary.
The incumbent reacts by singing four notes of “Pretty Woman” from the third tee.

9.00am
A poll conducted by Clemson University shows Newt Gingrich holding a slight lead. This confuses university officials, who were not aware that the school even had a Department of Statistics. Clemson’s arch-rivals at the University of South Carolina quickly respond by getting arrested for disorderly conduct.

10.00am
Due to a scheduling conflict, two Republican candidates show up, at the same time, at Tommy’s Ham House in Greenville. The combined weight of the egos collapses the floor, injuring seven patrons and 42,000 sausage biscuits.

10.30am
Despite heavy rainfall, poll-watchers say that voter turnout is very high. And contrary to some reports, primary voters in South Carolina, after voting, are NOT given stickers saying “I Done Voted.”
That’s what happens in North Carolina.

11.00am
Responding to a ‘conspiracy theory’ heckler at a Political Christian Scientist Monitor Versus Merrimack rally in Charleston, incumbent Barack Obama officially denies that he has ever been to Mars.
Ron Paul immediately demands that we withdraw our troops from Fort Sumter.

11.30am
Mitt Romney points out that “newt” is a synonym for “salamander.” Newt Gingrich fires back that Mitt’s first name is Willard, the name of a movie about a boy who likes rats.
Ron Paul immediately demands that we withdraw our troops from Hollywood.

12.00pm
At noon today, all across the state, political rallies are interrupted by hordes of car dealers wearing big hair and bad suits. A spokesman for the group, Jim “Jim” Gallstone of Cotton Mather Motor Sales, defends the bold action, pointing out that since candidates had bought up all the available ad time, this was the only way car dealers could get on TV to advertise their last sale ever, until next week’s last sale ever.

1.00pm
In a taped message from his bus, on his plane, on the way to a golf vacation, incumbent Barack Obama documents his qualifications by singing – FROM MEMORY – seven notes from “Mama Said” by The Shirelles. The crowd goes wild, and four women went into spontaneous labor.

1.45pm
During a debate at a Rock Hill diner, CNN moderator John “Larry” King presses Newt Gingrich to explain Newt’s choice of mustard-based, rather than tomato-based barbecue sauce. A deeply-offended Gingrich electrifies the BBQ-buffet lunch crowd, firing back that barbecue sauce is a deeply personal decision; plus, the biased national media wouldn’t know a pepper-rubbed flank from a Boston Butt.
CNN offers a butt-rub rebuttal, but I’ve already gone way too far with this joke.

2.00pm
A pundit points out that, for over 30 years, South Carolina has correctly picked the eventual Republican candidate, calling the state “kind of a litmus test for the South.” The SC Department of Education immediately schedules a “Teacher Work Day” so students can study, in case they need to take a litmus test.

2.30pm
At an Upstate rally, Newt notes all the young people in attendance. He points out that he’s always glad to see young people getting involved in politics, particularly that one hottie over there wearing the ‘Scooter’s Exotic-Like Pole Dancing & Lunch Buffet’ t-shirt.
Ron Paul immediately demands that we withdraw our troops from downtown Bangkok.

3.00pm
An MSNBC reporter in Myrtle Beach calls South Carolinians a bunch of gun-toting religious rednecks. The Greater Grand Strand Women’s Auxiliary Gospel Choir And Transmission Repair Shop scoffed at the characterization, and then shot him.

3.30pm
In an announcement surprising on several levels, South Carolina’s premier religious radio station (WASP) endorses The Shirelles for President. The endorsement comes from the station’s chaplain, a heavily-jowled AARP member with a Pentagon-sized pomade allowance.
During the station’s call-in segment, Al Gore claims that he invented Motown.
Ron Paul immediately demands that we withdraw Newt Gingrich from The Shirelles.

4.30pm
At a rally near North Charleston, GOP candidate Brick Sanitarium is injured after being gang-swarmed by adoring, sweater-vest-clad freshmen from Pinewood Prep School.
Incumbent Barack Obama immediately waives the freshmen’s student loans.

5.00pm
At a rally near Augusta National golf course, Ron Paul is interrupted by incumbent incompetent Joe Biden, who inexplicably yells “Go Giants!” and almost doesn’t swear.
Suddenly, Jackie Chan pops out of a water hazard, throat-chops Biden, and replaces Ron Paul’s iced tea with a V-8 Smoothie.

5.05pm
Local evening news leads with the breaking story that candidate Gingrich has, not three, but several dozen ex-wives. A Gingrich spokesman denies the allegation, but points out that Newt is the “family values” candidate, so the more families, the better.

6.00pm
Mike Huckabee, FoxNews’ official bass guitar analyst, points out that incumbent Barack Obama, in his first term as President, never once finished an entire song.
Due to a serious breach in security, Joe Biden manages to find an open mike and inexplicably promises federal subsidies for Hilton Head, so they can build more high-rise condoms.

6.55pm
Geraldo Rivera, desperate to inject himself in this humor column before 7.00pm, claims that, while covering a story in Aruba, he and Hillary Clinton had been shot at by Chechnyan rebels, and Jackie Chan.

7.01pm
The South Carolina polls are closed, and I couldn’t be happier, because all during this column I kept forgetting to write in the present tense.

Presidential Primary Day ends without incident. Nobody voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake.
Out of pure habit, Al Gore challenges the election.
And Ron Paul immediately demands that we withdraw medication from Al Gore.

It’s the middle of January, 2012, the Republican Presidential hopefuls have descended upon my state, South Carolina, and it is an absolute nuthouse down here. I don’t see any way to escape the madness, except one:  maybe the Mayans miscalculated.

Maybe, just maybe, the Mayans misread their round rock clock, and the world will end early. I don’t see any other way to avoid this ongoing political ego parade.

But Mayans or not, I think we can say this with some certainty:  the world probably will end wa-a-ay before this endless election season does.

But for now, it’s South Carolina’s job to help pick the President. And the contestants? They’re all here:

• Willard Mitt ‘Glove’ Romney (he squeaked a win in Iowa by … what? … seven votes? Basically, he won Iowa by a family)
• Brick Sanitarium and his sweater-vest collection (who looks like an under-aged son from an Iowan family)
• Nude King Grinch (whose ego is the size of an Iowan family)
• Tron Paul (he fights for the users)
• Rick Prairie (I’m pretty sure he’s not an actual human, but  an animated cartoon character from ‘Toy Story’)
• Jon Huntsman’s son, John Huntsman, who is Jon Huntsman’s son

Just making it out of Iowa alive must’ve been tough. I remember hearing an Iowa politician make this biologically complex promise: “When my head and my heart come together I’ll jump in with both feet.”

Whoa. Never change metaphors in the middle of streaming the rules for a game horse’s level playing field.

While in Iowa, Rick Prairie, in between power-grinning, eating fried lard on a stick, and power-grinning, described Iowans as “just hard-workin’ God-fearin’ freedom-lovin’ people.” So please consider making a donation to the Rick Prairie campaign, so they can afford to buy a box of lower-case Gs.

And remember – after Iowa, Herman Cain suspended his Presidential campaign. And he’s STILL polling at 8%. At this rate, if he drops out entirely, he’ll win.

But after leaving Iowa (their favorite state) and New Hampshire (their favorite state) all six surviving candidates have now invaded South Carolina (their favorite state). And they’re everywhere – in the parks, on the news, in the diners and on the phones.

As you’d imagine, it’s getting ugly, too. Just today, Nude King Grinch accused Willard Romney of speaking French in public. Tron Paul immediately demanded that we withdraw our troops from Willard Romney. Willard could not be reached for comment, since he was campaigning in the South Carolina Upstate, while his hair was holding a rally on the coast.

To be sure, you other forty-nine States should be a bit concerned that South Carolina is playing such a pivotal role in your destiny. Keep in mind that South Carolina is a place where one food group is pork barbecue, and beef barbecue is the other one. (Barbecue sauce, on the other hand, is not a food group. Barbecue sauce, if it’s done right, is a divine appointment from heaven.)

We have our own language, too. We pronounce Manigault as ‘mannigoe’ and Simons as ‘simmons.’ We pronounce boyfriend as ‘beau’ but Beaufort as ‘byoofurt.’ And we still pronounce carpetbagger as ‘collateral damage.’

In South Carolina, we know that one person is “y’all” and we know that the plural of y’all is “all y’all.” We make a clear distinction between ‘dinner’ and ‘supper’ but we make no distinction at all between ‘Can you believe what that clueless idiot just did?’ and Aw, bless his heart.’

We have cities with suggestive names like Ninety Six, Six Mile and Due West. We have a town called North and a burg named Norway.

Not long ago, in Norway (population:  dwindling), the outgoing Mayor refused to give the City Hall keys to the incoming Mayor. So the incoming Mayor broke in to City Hall by breaking out, and crawling in, a window. Shortly, the outgoing Mayor of Norway had the incoming Mayor of Norway arrested, but the incoming Mayor bribed a jail guard with a pint of pork barbecue. The incoming Mayor escaped and fled to Sweden (yes, there is). From there, he hopped a NASCAR convoy to Finland (yes, there is) and ultimately was sent back to Norway after being extradited by Denmark (yes, there is).

It may surprise you to hear it, but here in South Carolina, we’re regularly treated to groundbreaking research and brilliant news analysis, resulting in headlines like this one:

LAKE WATER LEVELS RISE WITH RAINFALL

Whoa. Somebody alert the National Weather Service. Somebody call the Nobel committee.

And how about this one:

“…the bust was dubbed Operation Countywide because it was conducted from one end of the county to the other.“

Whoa. You know, sometimes it’s hard to see the Forrest for the Gump.

Here’s another:

“At a bowling alley in Rock Hill, a man was charged with attempted murder after he threw a bowling ball at a woman who rejected his offer to buy her a drink.“

See, folks, Virginia is for lovers. South Carolina is for hunter-gatherers.

And, once upon a time, we had a Governor who confuses marital infidelity with mountain hiking, and who apparently thinks North Carolina is in Brazil.

Finally, we offer a quick pop quiz. Ready?

Outside, it’s raining in bright sunshine. Here in South Carolina, this means what?

1)      the devil’s beating his wife
2)      our former Governor is ‘hiking’ with the devil’s wife
3)      an angel just got its wings, and then sold them at the flea market
4)      you’re about to witness relative humidity that actually climbs ABOVE 100%

Starting to get the picture? This is why somebody once described South Carolina as “too small to be a country, too big to be an insane asylum.”

And speaking of asylums, here’s a quick Politico Update:  Brick Sanitarium has taken a commanding lead in South Carolina, after switching from sleeveless sweater-vests to sleeveless plaid work shirts.

Another update:  we’ve just learned that South Carolina’s Governor has endorsed Willard. This is our current Governor, mind you, not the one with the backpack full of travel visas, tacos and tequila.

By the way – North, South Carolina? It’s south of the South Carolina state capital.

And North, South Carolina is 100 miles southeast of Due West.

Well, it’s a brand new year, and already I’ve learned something new. Understand – when you get to be my age, learning something new is Goal Number Two. (Goal Number One is remembering what you learned in Goal Number Two.)

There’s a Goal Number Three, too. I think. It has something to do with not splitting infinitives, or original sin, or bran. One of those. I forget.

That’s just the way it goes. At my age, it’s just a matter of time before I repeat something I just said, or forget what I wanted to say, or repeat something I just said.

So sometimes I forget. Leave me alone. I’m a camel, not an elephant.

Anyway, here’s what I learned this year, so far:  the true definition of the word ‘generic.’ See, till now, I’d always thought ‘generic’ meant ‘bland,’ or it meant ‘undistinguished,’ or it meant you’d wasted the last half-hour at a party talking to someone researching their thesis on ‘Hidden Old Testament References To Ellen DeGeneres.’

Nope. As it turns out, ‘generic’ — in the medical profession, at least — means ‘theoretically affordable medication, if it actually existed in this galaxy, which it doesn’t.’ And ‘non-generic’ means ‘laughably expensive, for no apparent reason.’ Non-generic:  kind of a synonym for the Department of Energy, really.

And here’s how I came to this new-found knowledge. Late last year, at the tailing end of my nineteenth yearly physical, I sat shivering in the doctors’ examining room, looking longingly across the room at my street clothes and reflexively massaging a cotton ball. During the previous hour-and-a-half, I had been duly weighed, splayed, pricked, prodded, dabbed, daubed and bled by a steady procession of future physicians, all wearing Dansko clogs and disposable scrub suits saturated with Scooby-Doo characters.

After the appropriate hope-sucking delay … in whatever way that delay is calculated by the Union of Medical Practice Appointment-Overbooking Agents … there came a tap on the door, a whoosh of air, and my doctor dashed in to the examining room, wearing open-toed soiree stilettos, a foul-weather jacket, and gripping a three-barbed marlin lure between her teeth.

As it turned out, I was her last hurdle before she navigated out the Cheyenne Mountain-like “Doctors Only” door to take several well-deserved weeks off, and make a boat payment. Apparently, she’d been steadily segueing into her civilian clothes, one examining room at a time, self-prepping for a dash to the marina.

As she blasted in, I felt a bit under-dressed, given that I was wearing nothing but an over-laundered paper gown and a cotton ball pressed against my ring finger, though I took comfort in knowing that, if I sprinted fast enough, I was mere seconds away from sporting both socks.

But on this day, Doctor Armada had no time for prurience, nor proprieties.

The doc cut straight to the chase. Consulting a chart, she told me she didn’t like one of my ‘numbers.’ She stared at me in an accusing tone of voice, which was pretty sobering, given that I was nearly naked and she was chewing on a honed marlin spike. In the spirit of cooperative fellowship, I scoffed at my numbers and offered to pick a different number, if she’d just let me know which number had fallen out of favor.

But Doc Bimini was already scribbling prescriptions, or maybe a maritime-meal shopping list, and I don’t think she heard me.

(To be honest, I had more at stake than simple cooperation — I wanted to get out of there before the Scooby-Doo squad came back for more blood samples. They’d already hit me up for so much plasma that I no longer cast a reflection in the mirror.)

Then my doctor let me in on a little “inside baseball” news:  the prescription drug I’d been taking for several years had been recalled. It seems that the drug company had released some recent research, revealing that taking this particular drug, at this particular dosage, could have “undesirable” consequences.

“Undesirable?” I squirmed.

Recent studies, she explained, showed that some test subjects had developed mildly discomforting symptoms, including headaches, something quite foul that involved the word “leakage,” and a sudden manifestation of camel hooves.

I took issue. I pointed out that getting cloven feet is not what normal people would consider “undesirable.” Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, gassing up your car in the rain is undesirable. Getting an over-cooked fried egg – that’s undesirable.

But turning part-way into a leaking dromedary with migraines goes way past “undesirable.”

I don’t think she heard me.

“We’re going to change prescriptions,” she announced.

“We?” I thought. “What’s with this ‘we?’ What’re you now, my partner?“

“Keep in mind,” she went on, avoiding my eyes. “This one isn’t generic.”

“Hey, Doc,” I wondered aloud, “since ‘we’ are going to switch prescriptions, and ‘we’ are switching to brand-name drugs, that means ‘we’ are going to split the brand-name cost, right? Right?“

Silence. No reply.

I don’t think she heard me.

So I did what any self-respecting, virile, nearly naked, totally ignored American male would do when in the presence of a wildly successful female authority figure who owns a boat.

I ran away.

With all the hunter-gatherer manliness passed along by my forebears, I tactically positioned the cotton ball and reached for my socks.

Not that it mattered. My allotted time had expired, and the good doctor had to leave if she was going to float her boat before low tide.

On her way out, she told me to make appointments three times a month for my yearly physical, handed me a prescription form filled out in something, possibly Sanskrit, and reminded me to be sure and floss my hooves.

“Don’t you mean ‘our’ hooves, Nemo?”

We don’t think she heard us.

I tossed my shredded left sock in the bin, grabbed the mate sock and, scowling at the hoof, silently vowed to be more careful with this one.

And on my way out, I stopped by the water cooler to fill up my hump.

I don’t know about you, but I’d pay real money to just skip the whole week after Christmas. There are several reasons why:

• Your waistline’s fatter, but your wallet’s thinner
• You have to go to work, but everybody else is on vacation, so it’s impossible to get an approval, a signature, or sexually harassed
• Everybody at every store is returning stuff, including gifts, but also things like live animals, dead laptops, unwrapped undergarments, and suspect cheese
• You’re stuck with sports options like the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl, and the PETA Simpering Confiscatory Fund To Help Relocate The Transgendered Spackle-Necked Ozark Boll Weevil Bowl
• You still have seventeen rolls of cartoon-reindeer-coated gift-wrapping paper that can’t possibly be used for mid-calendar occasions like birthdays, weddings, and early parole celebrations

Plus, thanks to a Christmas-carol-induced purchasing frenzy, committed by My True Love (I call her “True”), I’m now several layers deep in redundant gifts … 364 of ‘em, if you add up all twelve days’ worth.

The unmentioned problem with the whole ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ gift strategy is its multiplier effect. I mean, thanks very much, True, but … twenty-two turtle doves? Seriously?

Maybe, I could find a use for one golden ring. Maybe. Ever unwrapped five of them? And then five more, and then five more? Eight times? While you’re trying not to trip over maids, lords, pipers, drummers, geese, hens, swans, doves, calling birds and cranky PETA protestors?

And if you’ve ever had thirty heavily-caffeinated lords leaping in the same room with forty-two egg-laying geese, you know things aren’t going to end well. That’s just goose doom waiting to happen. That’s just pending pâté.

Another problem with the week after Christmas is a sneaky post-Christmas music conspiracy. Here’s how it works:  During the holiday season, we’re persistently bathed in happy, inspiring Christmas music, and it’s wonderful. But then, once Christmas is over, the music gatekeepers box up the good stuff until next year.

And then they pull out the B team. Really marginal stuff. The fringe fa-la-la. Dick Haymes. Patti Page. Tex Ritter (I’m not kidding). Various amalgams called The So-And-So Brothers or The Whatsit Sisters, babbling about bells, fat men, fat men with coal, Mommy kissing fat men, and Frosty the Scary Reanimated Popsicle Person. Paul Anka from his “pre-acne” period (apparently Paul Anka has never been spotted not singing, and has at least two albums recorded in utero). The Ray Conniff Singers, who deserve to be publicly caned simply for horribly arranged syncopation. Roger Whittaker singing Boston Marathon versions of ‘The Twelve Days,‘ which may constitute criminal negligence and be legally actionable.

It’s as if we’d all spent the last few months in a warm, cozy bar relishing the house band, led by Mozart himself, and suddenly we’re stuck with a bad eight-track tape titled “Salieri Is Rocking This Crimmuh, Yo.”

Case in point:  not long ago, because I wasn’t fast enough to turn off the radio, I heard somebody named Buddy Clark singing something called ‘The Merry Christmas Waltz.’

I’m still getting over it.

‘The Merry Christmas Waltz‘ is, without challenge, the WASP-est holiday offering ever over-wrought. Compared to this arrangement, Lawrence Welk was the thug gangsta love child of Jimi Hendrix and Sergio Mendes.

“Wunnerful, wunnerful! Give it up one moe ‘gin for Paul Anka’s fetus and the June Taylor Dancers!”

Besides, there’s something sinister about 3/4 time. It’s just so … feudal.

I understand what the gatekeepers are trying to do – they’re trying to make us so sick of carols that we won’t miss them when they go away until next winter. I understand. They’re weaning us. They’re trying to do us a favor.

Stop trying to do us a favor.

Conspiracies aside, though, America’s Christmas music repertoire in general is out of control. Over time the genre has crab-walked into topics that are, at best, a bit of a stretch and, at worst, downright bizarre. Let’s review some selected lyrics, shall we?

“Hang your nose down, Rudy. Hang your nose and cry.”
What the heck is that?

“Here comes the fattest man in town.”
C’mon, people. It’s Christmas. Leave Newt alone.

“He’s a rootin’ tootin’ Santa Claus. Yippee ki-yo ki-yay!”
This marketing tie-in defies analysis, and the absurdity speaks for itself. Besides, I don’t want to know anyone who is rootin’, much less tootin’.
And just for the record – if anybody ever walks up to me and says “yippee ki-yo ki-yay,” I’ll stab ‘em with a pointy stick. If they’re wearing a red wool suit, I’ll stab twice.

“To see a great big man entirely made of snow,” she sings.
This is an obvious, desperate plea for therapy. When the snow melts, somebody riffle the Yellow Pages for “intervention.”

“Down in Mexico, we have got no snow. Every time we sing, tequila glasses ring.”
Let’s hope they don’t sing much, else it’s gonna be an early night. Have an undocumented Christmas!

“If you want bananas, great big bananas, shake hands with Santa Claus.”
How does that transaction work, exactly? What, is St. Nick now moonlighting as some kind of Chiquita Pez dispenser? It sounds more like some sick Vegas come-on, or street code for a drug drop.

“Tumpety tum tum.”
“Ba rum pa tum tum.”
“Jing jing-a-ling ling-a-ling ling-a-ling-ling. Ha ha. Ho ho.”
What more is there to say, your honor? Psychiatric evaluation completed. Case closed. Bring on the big-arm tuxedo.

Then there are songs that snuck in, like emaciated blonde celebrity addicts at a White House dinner, and now they won’t go away. In our opinion, ‘My Favorite Things‘ is not a legitimate Christmas carol; however, it is a nice “hint hint, honey!” paean to obsessive shopping. And given everything American advertising has done to prostitute Christmas, the jury’s still out on this one.

Nor is ‘Toyland‘ a valid tune for tinsel-time. “Once you cross its border, you can never return again” does not invoke Christmas. This is more a tune for Halloween, maybe, or a cautionary tale about backpacking in Iran’s back yard. It speaks of making a bad decision with no mulligans, like subscribing to that relentless, time-defying Time-Life Book-of-the-Month club, or eating too much Mexican food.

And speaking of Halloween, what’s the back story on this campfire lyric, from ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year‘ – “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.”

What glories, exactly? Dude, we’re talking about a federal holiday, not the fields of Verdun or the ’36 Olympics! Did I miss something on the news wire? Did Santa paratroop into Tehran and spirit away the busted backpackers?

But even those tunes, bad as they are, are mere infractions. As Gandalf might put it, there are fouler things in the deep places than Orcs. Musical travesties exist that must be stopped, with due prejudicial intensity and by all available means, military, judicial and otherwise. So, in the interest of promoting a sane, civil society, I propose a new set of Yuletide Music Management laws.

• In the song ‘Jingle Bells,’ after the line “…O’er the hills we go, laughing all the way,” it shall be illegal for a recording studio to insert actual laughter. This prohibition shall include (but not be limited to) the ha-ha-ha’s of children, dogs, and strolling hordes of Lawrence Welk-type Judeo-Christian couples.
• No entity shall be allowed to add lyrics to Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker Suite.’
• It doesn’t make any sense for all-growed-up adults to be singing ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,’ unless said adult is hopelessly accident-prone, or Leon Spinks. So cease and desist. Find a kid or sit down. Estop it.
• During any given Christmas tune, you may only transpose up to the next key once. Actually, the court would prefer that you not transpose at all or, if possible, less.
• It shall be illegal for anyone, anywhere, at any time, to sing ‘Dominick, the Christmas Donkey.’ Not even as a joke. This proscription really should’ve been part of the original U.S. Constitution.
• The Rule of Thirds:  If a carol is written in a perfectly nice minor key and then suddenly, at the very end of the song, you decide to resolve it in a major key, the court will find you and visit upon you a severe form of vigilante justice. (see “pointy stick”)
• No one shall be allowed to modify, in any way, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ This carol is much like the Constitution – it may have its flaws, but futzing around with it is only gonna make things worse.

In closing, I’ll confess something to you. As much as I love the holiday season, there’s one American-holiday-oriented thing I’m always glad to know will be going away – wherever it is these things go away to – until next Christmas. And what is that thing, you ask?

Burl Ives.

It’s nothing personal, actually, even though there’s something about Burl’s cover of ‘Frosty the Snowman‘ that makes True and me want to invest in an ice axe. No, my main concern is this:  I just want to make darn sure the gatekeepers have big Burl available, until next holiday season, to sit on the box where they keep Andy Williams.

You know what I’m saying? I mean, the average American’s work-a-day year is hard enough already.

The last thing we need in mid-calendar is Andy Williams jumping up and grinning those teeth at us.

• Razor Unicyclist Strikes Again
• Too late, the melting astronauts noticed the container’s “GAMMA RAYS” warning
• PETA was none too pleased when the NRA debuted “Gummy Bear Taxidermy”
• Reviews were mixed for the debut episode of “Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire Who’s A Non-Descript Emerald Baron Without Opposable Thumbs?”
• CITIZENS NARROWLY ESCAPE DEATH WHEN DELTA FLIGHT JETTISONS JELL-O
• Great Moments in Diplomacy: Churchill Cedes Half of Greenland to the Russian Bear
• Tonight! On an all-new “Bear Witness” — While adjudicating a tricky child custody battle, Judge Ursa invokes King Solomon!
• Captain Kirk finally figures out a way to flirt with two green alien women
• Taliban leaders appear willing to compromise, says dead man who expected to be cut into four pieces
• “Take your nap, young students, or I’ll skip right to the chapter about the Aztecs.”

Christmas. Arguably, the most well-known holiday in the history of history, if you discount that day in 3050 BC when the Arabs invented zero trans-fat, racial profiling, and fruitcake re-gifting.

Okay, not all Arabs were responsible for fruitcake. According to legend, fruitcake was invented by a confectioner named Mischel-Toeh, who founded the first-ever Semite bakery, “House Wheat It Is.” (Mischel-Toeh would later establish the first non-denominational deli-bookstore combo, “To Bialy Or Not To Bialy.”)

Admittedly, Christmas is an odd tradition, especially when we try to explain it to children. Reindeer fly. Snowmen live. Strange, strangely-clad, obese, bearded men engage in chimney-oriented home invasions, eat other people’s food, and give away stuff, with no regard to any quid pro quo, as if they were fat, hirsute, red-coated liberals.

No wonder kids are confused. Heck, adults are confused. I mean, let’s face it, adults – getting taller didn’t really make us any smarter – it just made us taller. (and our clothes tighter)

But, these days, saying “Christmas” aloud is not allowed, unless you’re selling a product so wildly popular that shoppers would swarm in even as you shrieked “Merry Off-Shore Drilling!” at them.

The only holiday tradition still sacred is the one in which neighbors compete to see who can squeeze 57,500 marginally-yule-related ornaments onto a drab of distressed lawn that’s sized to support, at best, six.

What’s left? That holiest of holiday icons — shopping. So, since we can’t say Christmas, let’s talk about shopping for presents. Here’s a list of some of this year’s favorites:

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Let’s begin our gift list with that government-backed gift albatross that nobody wanted as a gift in the first place – the Electric Car. First of all, thanks to that other Santa – the one in the White House – you already bought the electric car, you generous taxpayer, you. There’s simply no need for you to buy it again.

Here’s how brilliant the electric car is. It hurls you down the highway at a top speed of ten miles per generation (less if any passengers have facial hair, or there’s an oncoming breeze). It’ll transport you about forty miles on a dose of electricity, if you’ve a week to spare.

Here’s the little glitch. In the contiguous forty-eight states, there are over 2.9 million miles of paved roads; however, in those same forty-eight states, there are exactly four publicly-available places to recharge your electric car.

But don’t sweat it, electric car owner. Soon, there will be, oh, six or seven stations nationally … unless Congress gets involved, which could result in there being only three, all coincidentally located on the grounds of a tax-exempt country manor owned by the ranking member of a Senate select committee.

It just makes no sense. Only four places to get replacement electricity? I personally know more than four places where I can get a replacement larynx. (Sadly, all four larynx shops are in South Florida – and unlisted – but you can always hitch a ride with some Jersey Shore grandma making a weekend cocaine run. While you’re down there, be a tourista:  get mauled by a mutant Everglades alligator and take in a snuff film.)

What America really needs is a snap-in device that will de-convert an electric car back to a 1964 Mustang. Or a horse-drawn carriage. Or just a horse. With a horse, the average American could get to the mall and deliver the mail.

It makes one wonder why the electric car ever got named the “Volt.” Should’ve been named the “Watt?”

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Because the world can never have enough burger-making devices, we now have the “revolutionary” new seven-option griddle from SqueezinArt. After all, nothing says “I love you” like another gift-wrapped slab of dishwasher-safe Teflon.

“Merry Christmas, honey. Here’s a flat piece of coated metal that heats up. Lunch ready?”

This culinary breakthrough is a must-have, despite the fact that your pantry floor is already littered with one or more of the previously revolutionary griddles you received in previous holiday seasons:

• The George Foreman griddle, which tenderizes burgers using a patented process known as beating them senseless
• The Black-and-Decker griddle, which not only cooks burgers but also saws the buns in half and constructs a picnic table (patio not included)
• The Hamilton Beach griddle, which we think was named after someone in the Carter administration. It doesn’t actually cook burgers, but it lusts after them.

But now, with the revolutionary SqueezinArt griddle, you can cook burgers using the revolutionary “lid open” option, or the revolutionary “lid closed” option, which somehow equals seven options, suggesting that the griddle was designed by the Congressional Budget Office.

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Parents of aspiring toddlers will flock to pick up a “My First Genetically Engineered Avian Flu” chemistry set. Imagine the parental pride as your budding chemist learns to comprehend useful vocabulary terms like “pandemic” and “acute toxic kill radius!”

Be sure to stand upwind.

Shopper’s Note:  the “deluxe” version includes a complimentary “nolo contendere” waiver from Eric Holder’s Justice Department and Gun Laundry, as well as a $28 billion R&D coupon from the Pentagon.

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For the music-lover on your list, be sure to pick up a copy of the all-new holiday CD, “Yule Hate This,” an eclectic collection of carols and chaos brought to you by Largie Small Puff Step-Daddy and those good folks at Angry Goth Zombie Records.

For openers, the unsuspecting listener is subjected to an 18-minute live version of Wu Tang’s “Jizzle Bells,” followed by Lindsay Lohan doing a cover of “All I Was Wanted For During Christmas.” Some forty minutes later, the punishment ends with the Nick Nolte Noel Singers, more-or-less emitting a rousing version of “The Twelve Days Of 500 Bottles Of Christmas Beer On The Wall.”

Shopper’s Note:  Be sure to get your loved ones far, far away before anybody slips this foul thing in the ol’ CD player.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Unfortunately, the Snuggie is back this year with a vengeance. Apparently, there’s just no avoiding these things. It’s like some inescapable, recurrent family curse, or a year-end celebrity news wrap-up from Barbara Walters.

What’s infinitely worse is that, like your clever youngster’s modified Avian Flu virus, the Snuggie seems to be mutating. We’re being invaded by imperfectly-cloned cousins, malformed outfits masquerading as acceptable fashion. There’s now something called the Hoodie-Footie, which makes otherwise normal females look like a terry-cloth dishrag, but with eyelashes and breasts.

America, we need to take control of this situation, because, if we’re not careful, we could see the re-emergence of velour.

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You’re going to think I’m insane (if you don’t already think I’m insane), but I have to tell you that there is an “Iowa Caucus” iPhone app. There really is. Now you can have instant access to live film footage of Republican Presidential candidates as they carom around both cities in Iowa, documenting their Leader-Of-The-Free-World credentials by getting on a bus, getting off a bus, denying having mocked an opponent’s bus in 1968, or getting endorsed by a bus. (fried lard on a stick not included)

I don’t mean to be the stormcrow or anything, but I believe this particular omen was mentioned as a “last call” harbinger in the doomsday memoirs of Nostradamus – right there in his Last Days schedule, in-between “city-sucking gaps in the Earth’s crust” and “Geraldo Rivera getting a prime-time series.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The hot new interactive game this year is “How to Outwit Airport Security Without Having To Get Naked In Cleveland,” v2.1, available for the Wii (by Ninja-Kendo), the Micro$oft X-Box (actual functionality not included), and the Sony Hey-We-Make-Game-Consoles-Too. Unlike previous diversions which catered to familial, multi-player interaction, this year’s game is specifically designed for just one participant – just one sad, quiet, lonely, disaffected, bitter participant. Just one jaded juvenile in a jungle-gym crowd.

Just one missed twisted mister, just one more “stunned neighbors who were interviewed recalled a kind, quiet young man” kind of kind, quiet young man. Just one, simple, strong candidate for an “America’s Most Wanted” full-hour episode about a seemingly normal, plaid-shorts-wearing, obsessive teeth-grinder.

But enough about Joe Biden.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

So, be careful out there, in this holiday traffic, and be sure not to forget the true reason for the season:  out-lawn ornamenting your neighbors.

And I hope you have a very Merry … um … Wednesday.

Or whatever.

This year, for the first time in years, I actually had a yearly physical.

Now, before I start getting e-hate “tsk-tsk” spam mail from aghast adults, school cafeteria dieticians and annoying nanny-state crusader groups, let me explain. I don’t mean to say that I haven’t been to see a doctor in years. I simply mean that, this year, I had a yearly checkup just once.

See, I have one of those doctors who insist on seeing her patients about twice a week, due to the fact that she cares deeply about her patients, and has a boat payment. But this year, I had seriously threatened her yacht mortgage by not showing up twice a month to gaily lob cash at her.

I had my reasons, thank you very much; for one thing, I’d spent much of the year battling an evil, bipolar corporate dwarf. I’d also spent a good chunk of the year dueling with a government-managed health insurance program named COBRA (the Completely Outrageous Bogus Rates Agency), which is based on the logical premise that the most efficient way to provide affordable health care is to model it after a reptile that spits.

Finally, though, came the battle I could not win. Drugs. My prescriptions ran out, so I had to run in and beg for more. I set aside a few hours, spent a few hours practicing my signature, and drove to the doctor’s.

At the doctor’s window, I paid silent homage to the quantum advances in computerized medical technology by signing my name on a clipboard. A lady wearing a Flintstone-cartoon smock handed me a different clipboard, this one burdened with about an inch of federally-mandated forms. She pointed to a chair, directed me to fill out all the forms, and said she hoped I’d been practicing my signature.

One of these forms had been designed by some sadistic, sub-level bureaucratic optimist who actually expected me to fill out my name five times – on the same form:

1. Me, the patient
2. Me, the insured
3. Me, the owner of the insured’s insurance
4. Me, the person filling out the form on behalf of Me, the patient and Me, the insured
5. Me, the person signing the form on behalf of the other four Mes

(And I’ll bet you five bucks that, somewhere in some government building, there are five departments, with five budgets, five directors, and five staffs, each responsible for reading one of my five names.)

One form was particularly odd. Something about a hippo, though the clever claque spelled it HIPAA. Other than wanting my signature and today’s date at the bottom, I have no idea what it was after. There were, maybe, seventeen-hundred paragraphs of legal-speak, written in some subatomic font, that seemed to be asking for my permission to let the doctor run around in public places, broadcasting my height and other closely-guarded medical secrets.

Several hours later, I finished the paperwork, applied for disability (writer’s cramp), and was ushered back to the labyrinth to be weighed, which would either confirm or nullify my “hippo” paperwork.

After it was confirmed that I did, in fact, have weight, I sat in an examining room for a time, while another Flintstone smock ran through a scripted sequence of pushes, pokes, pricks, prods, squeezes, daubs and queries. It was like pledging a particularly picky fraternity, but without the beer.

And, finally, just before midnight, my doctor popped in, wearing a lab coat, open-toed heels, and a foul-weather jacket. I couldn’t tell if she’d showed to read my chart, or to christen a new aircraft carrier.

She proceeded to complain that one of my “numbers” was high, a potentially fatal medical condition caused by not having yearly physicals twice a month.

“See what happens when you miss an appointment?” she teased, as she logged on to the internet to check the outgoing tide tables. I threatened to hit her with some of my weight.

What was that about? Surely, she didn’t expect me to believe there was some medical cause-and-effect relationship between my office visits and my internal vitals?

Was my doctor hitting on me? Or were she and her yacht simply chasing after my co-pay?

After sharing the bad numbers news, my doctor consulted a well-thumbed copy of the famous medical bible known as the PDR (Physicians’ Deep-sea Reference). She spotted and circled an expensive fish-finding sonar, causing her to notice that I hadn’t had an EKG in two years, and so I simply had to have one today, else my spleen could explode on a freeway on-ramp.

I tried to point out that EKGs weren’t covered by my Hippo or my Cobra, but I was too late. Her eyes were already glazed over. She coveted the sonar, and she was not to be denied. She handed me one of those dreaded examining room gowns and instructed me to put it on, but with an unexpected twist – I was to leave the gown open in the front.

And now, I’ll admit, I was troubled. Cautious. I had definite misgivings about submitting to my doctor’s request for an EKG, for four very good reasons:

1. She, and others in her profession, insist on spelling “cardio” with a K
2. I wasn’t just wearing one of their gowns – I was wearing one of their gowns backwards
3. She had referred to the EKG as a “prophylactic” procedure
4. She was wearing open-toed heels

So I bailed.

I jettisoned the exam gown, shoveled into my street clothes, scrambled for the exit and screamed out of the parking lot.

I don’t know what consequences might ensue, but I’ll worry about that next year.

Unless Doctor Cougar invites me and my gown to have a moonlit EKG on her yacht.

I couldn’t believe it. Had a whole year really passed? Really? But there it was – the appointment card from my eye doctor’s, which brooked no argument. It was time for my annual eyeball tune-up and lube.

End of discussion. Facts are facts, unless you’re a pathological liar, or in politics. (Yeah, I know.)

You know the drill. And you know you have to do it. Even if you think your eyes are fine, you know you have to go. Even if you never mistake your mom for your dad. Even if once, last month, you went a whole day without running into things. You have to honor the eye doctor’s appointment card.

And you get no points at all for being able to actually read the appointment card.

You know the drill. Every year, you have to put aside a couple of hours to get your eyes checked out by a professional Eye Checker-Outer. They don’t actually say “Eye Checker-Outer,” of course. But for some unexplained reason, this branch of the medical profession couldn’t settle for normal medical profession titles, like Dentist, or Pediatrician, or Demon Barber. So they putzed around with a Latin version of Boggle until they had enough syllables to call themselves Ophthalmologists (literal translation: Opthal Checker-Outer).

Step one, of course, once you arrive at the Opthalicron, is to peer through the little sliding-glass window at an empty check-in desk. Eventually, someone will drift past the desk, possibly by mistake, and immediately not notice you (maybe they should go get their eyes checked). After some undefined period of time, the lady (it’s always a lady), who’s wearing some kind of loose-fitting outfit stamped with Flintstones cartoon characters (it’s always either the Flintstones or Scooby-Doo), will not look directly at you and ask you if your insurance has changed.

Your insurance status is what defines what will happen, or won’t happen, next. Your insurance status is more important than incidental trivia like your name, how your kids are doing in school, or the fact that you’re bleeding freely from the forehead and holding your detached left leg in your right arm.

It doesn’t help matters, either, that Flintstone Lady always seems just a tiny bit bitter (perhaps due to having made a career choice that involves going to lunch five days a week with other ladies, all wearing loose-fitting Flintstone pajamas).

Anyway, after you’ve scribbled through the formalities, Flintstone Lady ushers you into the examining chamber, a dimly-lit windowless room inevitably decorated, like all medical and dental facilities, in a neutral-colors theme so foul that you can actually buy it at Home Depot, should you have such an aberrant urge (just ask for Early Appalachian Orthodontia). This color scheme is the result of years of secret CIA research in psychological warfare, designed to turn the targeted human into a pliant dweeb who will numbly accept commands like “Yes, everything but your underwear” and “Okay, now spit.”

There’s something about that chair in the eye doctor’s examining room that makes the visitor feel like an undersized space alien, about to be questioned or … gulp … probed. You’re sitting there in the semi-darkness, surrounded by lots of looming, off-white machinery, as if you’d been kidnapped and spirited off to some sort of evil Swivel Museum.

After tapping a computer keyboard for a while, Flintstone Lady felt her way over to my ecto-chair and, with no explanation whatsoever, handed me a preparatory Kleenex. She began to manipulate the machine’s eerily organic elements, all of which required me to “rest your chin here,” a phrase I haven’t heard since watching a very dismal Lifetime Channel mini-series about the French Revolution.

For a while, we played some kind of weird game where she Gatling-gunned slides at me and kept yelling, “Better? Or worse?”

I never did find out my score.

Finally, Flintstone Lady zapped me with a three-gallon dose of eye drops, turned on a little projector, and made me read very tiny, incredibly misspelled words.

This is it? This is the pinnacle of progress in medical science? You’re sitting in a dark closet with a mildly bitter adult. Your eyes are dripping some kind of eye-drop residue the consistency of queso and the color of three-week-old sun-dried ferret. And you’re being forced to recite words like “LZ3VRTSX” to a professional wearing pajamas.

By the time Flintstone Lady’s silhouette made her exit, my eyes looked like an Audrey Hepburn movie poster. I was so dilated I was afraid I might go into labor.

In spite of it all, though, going to the eye doctor’s office beats going to the “full-body-contact” doctor’s office in three important ways. Firstly, you don’t have to get weighed. Secondly, you don’t have to take off all your clothes, put on a gown that would show off your cleavage if your cleavage was on your back, and sit, shivering, on a roll of generic gift-wrapping paper.

The other advantage of visiting the eye doctor’s is a conspicuous absence of specimen cups. If you’re ever at an eye doctor’s office, and any Scooby-Doo’d staffer hands you a specimen cup, you should demand to see some ID. Or just tell them you have no insurance.

Finally, the doctor himself, the actual Optimal Thologist, decided to drop by. He asked how my insurance was doing; had I experienced any blurred vision; had I noticed any running into poles and nearby people.

I did get some good news, though. I think. I’m not sure, because by this point the eye drops were puddling in my ears, but I think the eye doc said I might get an early Cadillac.

Then he handed me a bill for the Kleenex, opened the closet door, and disappeared into a halo of light.

Minutes passed. Machinery hummed. A speaker in the ceiling looped through bad orchestral arrangements of Neil Diamond tunes, but I was too dilated to escape. In my mind, I began to organize my last will and testament. I calmed my soul.

Not to worry. Flintstone Lady finally re-materialized and outfitted me with an embarrassingly cheesy dark-glasses device – a temporary, die-cut piece of light-defying plastic that was supposed to cling to my glasses and protect my poor, dilated eyeballs from sunlight, as long as I avoided sunlight.

The faux glasses did not deliver – I merely transitioned from living in a blurred world to living in a blurred, dark world. All the glasses accomplished was to make shield my face while cursing at daylight, while simultaneously making me look like Will Smith playing Ray Charles, but less rich.

I couldn’t focus, I certainly couldn’t drive, and I was behaving like Will Smith playing Helen Keller, but less cute. So, for the rest of morning, I sat on a bench outside the office, holding a specimen cup and singing the blues.

Not a bad morning, as it turned out. I pulled down twenty-eight bucks.

That’ll almost cover the Kleenex.

• Jim Beam Distillery Continues To Deny Rumors of Hostile Chinese Takeover
• Backstage at the auditions for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s Mini-Bar?”
• Cream-colored Military Drone Plane Lands In Hanoi Kitchen, Pentagon Admits
• Jihadist Plot Foiled As TSA Agent Spots Tiny Terrorist Disguised As Bottle of Duty-Free Ouzo
• Zagat Reviewers Conflicted Over Five-Star Rating For “Tony’s Dysfunctional Family Pizzeria”
• Facing drastic budget cuts, Delta adds “frumpy” to list of stewardess job requirements
• Reviews were mixed for Nick Nolte’s remake of “The Glass Menagerie”
• Smithsonian Finally Opens Trunk of W.C. Field’s 4-Seater Hudson
• Charlie Sheen checks his baggage for the 30-minute flight
• “Welcome to Skid Row Panda Garden Lunch Buffet! Smoking or Non?”

Last week, while waiting to find out if Herman Cain ever hit on Rick Perry, I spent some time reading a fascinating scientific article on the evolutionary origins of humor. I learned three things:

1)    Humor, like sexual repression, has been around for a long time, and both are pretty funny.
2)    Sexual repression is the underlying cause of just about all bad behavior exhibited in humans, lab rats, and politicians.
3)    Some people have a thesaurus that’s way better than mine.

The article was written by two professional synonym-wranglers at some university in northern Manitoba, that internationally recognized hotbed of hilarity. I think the general thrust of their article was that humor has evolved over the last 6 million years, which means the authors obviously wrote the piece without watching much prime time TV.

I have to say that I challenge their thesis. Personally, I’m not convinced that humor has evolved very much at all, as evidenced by a recently discovered glyph of the first jokes ever told:

1)    Two hominids knuckle-walked into a bar…
2)    Take my hunter-gatherer. Please!
3)    Knock.

(Source:  Jurassic Journal of Comic Bas-Relief, 1 April MCXIV BC)

So I’m fairly certain that the article was really just a contrived vehicle to let the authors show off a bunch of big words, probably hoping to impress chicks in Manitoban single-hunter-gatherer bars, assuming they have sexual repression in Manitoba. I can’t think of any other reason for otherwise normal people to deliberately employ silly, made-up words like “exapted,” “phylogenetic conspecifics,” and “Schopenhaur.”

Really? Exapted? Please. “Exapted” sounds like some kind of galactic disciplinary action – like big green alien parents taking away ET’s ray gun.

“EXTRA WILSON TERRESTRIAL!”
(You know you’re in trouble when your parents use your full name. Even in outer space.)
“Nzxtmk?”
“Don’t nzxtmk me, young man! You ate Elliott, didn’t you? You are so exapted! Just wait till your Y-Chromosome donor phones home! Keep it up, young hominid – I’ll turn this spaceship right around!”

But simply saying “exapted” and “quasi-syntactical recursion” with a straight face wasn’t enough for these guys in Manitoba. Not by half. The next time you single guys corner a colleen and are struggling for that just-right ice-breaker, try this crowd-pleaser:

“You know, ontogeny can sometimes recapitulate phylogeny.”
“Weird. I was just thinking that very same thing.”
“Wanna go to my place and see my glyph?”

The authors’ exhaustive source materials on humor even included quasi-exapted observations from Charles Darwin. You’ll remember Mr. Darwin as that 19th Century botanist who was hired to sail around the world looking for examples of Darwinism; instead, however, the shameless little shirker got sidetracked while watching a Galapagos finch trying to suck food through a stick, after which Darwin concluded that a humongous tortoise would eventually evolve into filmmaker Michael Moore. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Darwin also proposed a concept he called “natural selection,” a theory which attempted to describe the complex inner workings of seemingly chaotic systems, like nation-states, and the NFL draft. Darwin conjectured that nature selected evolutionary winners (and culled losers) based on superior qualities, which still doesn’t explain Michael Moore. Darwin referred to this phenomenon as “survival of the fittest,” a proposition that was soon debunked in favor of the more obvious explanation, “survival of the most-heavily armed.”

Obviously, by this point in his voyage, Darwin had … how can I put it gently? … Darwin had popped his clutch. Perhaps due to scurvy, perhaps due to spending way too much time observing giant turtles in equatorial singles bars, Darwin was clearly out of control. As our Manitoban friends point out, Darwin even managed to link evolutionary survival tactics to tickling.

Tickling, as a survival tactic. This may be the best evidence to date that Darwin not only studied interesting plants – he also knew something about interesting brownies, if you catch my drift.

Darwin noticed that the places we tickle each other – the throat, the belly, the soles of our feet – are also the places most vulnerable to attack from predators. So Darwin assumed that this was Uncle Evo at work again, subtly teaching us how to protect those vulnerable spots. This is obviously a stretch; if this theory were true, we’d all be wearing shoes on our neck.

By the way – this deep fascination Darwin had for survival issues is what psychiatrists call an “obsession,” what politicians call an “agenda,” and what students call “is this gonna be on the exam?”

My own “evolutionary laughter” theory is much simpler:  Only mammals can laugh, because only mammals have milk, which is biologically required if you hear a joke so funny that milk spurts out of your nose.

And, if I might, may I humbly point out that Charles Darwin apparently never noticed this vital nose-to-lactose corollary.

Of course, some will take exception to my “mammals only” argument, claiming that if grocers can sell soy milk, then soy must be a mammal. This is a classic example of what psychiatrists call “projecting conspecific transference” and what I call “being rock stupid.” In response, I’ll gently remind that there’s just not a great deal of “soy” humor, now, is there?

“Two tasteless meat substitutes walked into a salad bar…”

But, lest you think our semi-frozen scholars got all that grant money just to talk about tickling, let’s quickly riffle through some of their other observations – opinions about evolution, humor, and why rats giggle.

Witness:

“During conversations with each other, women laugh 126% more than men … and it has been observed that persons in higher positions of authority laugh less often.”
The takeaway here is simple: if your boss is a man, and you like your job, shut your smart mouth.

“Theory-of-mind researchers have shown that children under age 6 have a particularly difficult time distinguishing lies from jokes.”
As do sociopaths, and news anchors at MSNBC.

“Activation in the medial ventral prefrontal cortex bilaterally correlates with how funny the joke is.”
Great. Now they tell me. And all this time I’ve been watching to see if anybody slaps their knee.

“Scientists detected a 50kHz chirp in young rats during social interactions resembling play, and wondered if this positive affective vocalization could be related to human laughter.”
That’s just sad.

Think about that. One day, in some lab somewhere, some over-zealous undergrad shouted, “Look! The rats are demonstrating play-like behavior during a social interaction again!”

But it’s a cautionary tale, isn’t it? I suppose that’s the evolutionary price we all pay for having ever left young, impressionable turtles alone with Michael Moore.