For the dishonest and reprehensible purpose of making things entertaining, I'm telling you that I spent my Christmas with my Uncle Charley in Seattle.

Charley is an interesting guy. He was only the seventeenth in the family to go to college, graduating from New York University with a degree in animal husbandry. After graduating, he analyzed risk for a major financial services firm, serving as a risk analyst in the firm's risk analysis division.

Uncle Charley got out of financial services during the second term of the Clinton administration, and consequently, he owns a minority share of Starbucks and Boeing. He now lives in Magnolia, four blocks away from the Ballard Locks. Every morning, he performs Tai Chi on the shifting metal walkways of the locks, controlling the boats. As he tells it, stalled yachts always move at his slightest provocation. Uncle Charley "detests sedated boats," and he always makes this known to the family every Christmas.

Fortunately, my cousin Harry (Charley's son) was able to make it, too. Harry was born in Puyallup and now lives outside of Olympia. Over his lifetime, he has served in the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the Sheriff's Department and the military. During the entirety of the Grenada invasion - from October 1983 to December 1983 - Harry ran a rest and relaxation outpost for GI's returning from the island. The rest stop, located in Barrow, Alaska, was once visited by Laurence Tureaud (then widely known as Mr. T) and by First Lady Nancy Reagan (at the advice of the nation's chief astrologer and the Defense Department).

Soon afterward, in 1986, Harry raised a conscientious objection to the bombing of Libya, and was dishonorably discharged from the service. For the next ten years of his life, he taught Portuguese to students at North Seattle Community College. In 1996, afraid that he couldn't support his family, he took a job as a software engineer at Microsoft. He kept this job for eleven years, until the company found undocumented workers to do it for three quarters of his salary.

Understandably, Harry got a little bitter, but he tried to keep his spirits up. When speaking with me, he blamed illegal immigrants not for taking his job, but for making it difficult to excel at pick-up games of soccer during his lengthy unemployment. Then, after going six months without a job, Harry came home early from the library on a Monday evening and caught his wife sleeping with his best friend from college. Instinctively, he kicked them out of bed so he could take a nap. It was serendipitous. On the following well-rested Tuesday, he successfully landed a job as a captain of the Bainbridge Island ferry.

Harry continues to play soccer, and he also plays women's basketball. He owns eight jerseys of his favorite WNBA players and has season tickets for the Seattle Storm. Privately, Harry once told me that he wanted to play women's basketball professionally, despite his anatomical disadvantage. And sadly, until a few years ago, Harry tried to live vicariously through his daughter Stacey, hoping she would live out his own ambitions in the arena of women's athletics.

Unfortunately for Harry, Stacey has other interests. Always buried in blueprints, Stacey currently studies civil engineering at the Evergreen State College. Last semester, she took a class called "Reinforced Concrete Construction from a Revolutionary Perspective 102." Her term paper related to suspension bridges, but on the advice of her writing partner, she finished her essay with the conclusion: "I think we should kill a bunch of people and start fresh." Stacey's professor/group facilitator liked the essay so much, she suggested Stacey read it at an open mike night in a downtown Olympia coffee shop.

I really wish I could have gone. Though it's almost embarrassing to say it, I really admire Stacey's youthful enthusiasm. Stacey always has her pulse on the zeitgeist, and she's probably my favorite cousin. For Christmas this year, she gave me a bootleg spoken-word recording of Governor Christine Gregoire performing live in front of a joint session of the Washington State Legislature. I was appreciative of the gift, and it seemed that she liked my gifts - a bright yellow scarf and an autographed poster of former Weatherman Bill Ayres sitting on a park bench in downtown Chicago.

But anyway, I'm home now and I have a lot of e-mail to catch up on. I flew home on Lufthansa and was late into Oakland because of a scenic detour through the Wenatchee Valley. I did get a little embarrassed a few hours ago at Sea-Tac, forgetting about the shoe screening at the airport. Without thinking this morning, I picked out a pair of socks with embroidered rabbits on them, giving a hearty laugh to the Homeland Security officers. But anyway, like I said, I'm home now. I'm really sorry for being out of touch over the last few days, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed your holiday, too. And if I don't see you beforehand, Happy New Year!

I'm glad that, like Muni, my psychiatrist now accepts my TransLink card. Things are getting depressing. And if you're still basking in a fading glow of whatever hope that holds you together, I don't mean to bring you down. But I do need to warn my friends and notify my acquaintances about the inevitable.

In a matter of months, your currency will be worth nothing. You'll go to the corner store to buy a newspaper and an energy drink and the guy behind the counter will tell you: "I'm sorry. This note is from the Federal Reserve. It is no good here." And he will go on: "If you want to buy this newspaper and this energy drink, you will have to give me your first born child." And, out of love of your children and a yearning to read the box score, you will cry. But he will take pity upon you. "Or, perhaps, I could let you compensate me in gold," he will say.

Of course, there will still be love and friendship, kitty cats and puppy dogs. There will be seventy degree November days. But, if you have any social conscience at all, you'll stay inside when the sunshine takes hold. On every beautiful day, the city bears witness to catastrophic climate change. By going for a walk or buying a cup of frozen yogurt, we earn the scorn of future generations. They will dishonor our graves and condemn us in textbooks. We have only two hopes: either we change the world dramatically, or we hope that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren have no inhabitable planet from which to judge us from.

Also, of course, the remaining stint of our own worldly existence won't be pretty either. Now is a good time to prepare for disaster. Prepare to collect storm water for personal consumption. Create a vegetable garden in your bomb shelter. Get ready to conduct all of your interstate travel on foot. Prepare to work harder for less. Find a good book for the bread line. Learn to enjoy the company of locusts. Prepare for tomorrow. I'm telling you, it will arrive prematurely on the day after today.

The 15 things President Obama should accomplish in his first week in office (in order of urgency):

1. Confiscate guns from individuals and fringe groups in rural America.

2. Re-distribute all wealth and property that is privately held.

3. Publish Karl Marx pop-up books for kindergarten classrooms.

4. Insure that no middle school student goes without a homosexual experience before attending high school.

5. Insure that our fourth graders can memorize the Koran as quickly as fourth graders in Taliban madrasas.

6. Establish a plastic bag windfall profits tax, allowing individuals to purchase tote bags from their favorite bookstores and public television stations with government assistance.

7. Bail out Volvo and Volkswagen, and all bumper sticker-related industries.

8. Build a pedestrian bridge from Cambridge to Berkeley that will successfully bypass real America.

9. Turn Guantanamo Bay into an amusement park for boys raised by lesbian couples.

10. Let Mahmoud Ahmadinejad go down on Hillary Clinton without preconditions.

11. Televise this on Al Jazeera.

12. Free Ted Stevens and all political prisoners.

13. Begin all press conferences with the phrase: "Listen, motherfuckers..."

14. Surrender the country's liberty to the United Nations and to every Zionist cabal that sounds interesting.

15. Prepare for re-election.

It has always troubled me to know that if Armageddon were to occur, it would probably be covered by news programs on cable television: "Tonight on Larry King - the wrath of God and the end of the world. Tonight's guest - Reverend John Smith of Southern Baptist University, here to take your calls and answer your questions about the end of time."

And not to dwell on politics, but I am concerned about the consequences that Armageddon would have on American public policy. What would happen if John McCain died in office and Sarah Palin were to be raptured soon thereafter? According to the constitution, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would then become president. Under President Pelosi and a Democratically-controlled Congress, the eternally damned would pay higher capital gains taxes. Horsemen would be subject to red tape and burdensome oversight. And sadly, it would become the responsibility of government - not the private sector - to collect the bones of the dead.

Troubling thoughts during election season, for sure.

If Chinese preeminence over America was solidified by the 2008 Games, Jimmy Carter should be credited for winning the Cold War. After all, the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" at Lake Placid occurred months before Ronald Reagan ever took office. Ask any historian, and they'll tell you: the collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of a lost hockey game. So, if you think Reagan won the Cold War, you're full of shit. And if you think the Soviet Union's collapse had more to do with the manifest failures of a centrally-planned economy, you need to watch more hockey and stop reading so many books.

My life coach recently accepted a position with the Civil Engineering Department of Alameda County, so I'm pretty much on my own with respect to goals and ambitions. That's why I recently typed up my fifty-year plan.

As it stands, here's the plan:

[Age: 31, Year: 2009] Obtain more than 250 friends on an Internet social networking website.

[Age: 32, Year: 2010] Become a regular at a bar that is east of San Francisco.

[Age: 36, Year: 2014] Impregnate someone, without resorting to the mail order catalog that is on my coffee table.

[Age: 40, Year: 2018] Better familiarize myself with a local professional sports franchise, so I may speak of them intelligently in conversation and find camaraderie with other individuals who reside in my metropolitan region.

[Age: 43, Year: 2021] Visit the Disneyland in Iran and the Disneyland in North Korea.

[Age: 56, Year: 2034] Fully pay for the education and substance abuse rehabilitation of my first born child.

[Age: 57, Year: 2035] Use the bathroom in the Dennis Kucinich Presidential Library.

[Age: 58, Year: 2036] Exercise the right of every father of adult children to abandon holiday activities for the greener pastures of television and sleep.

[Age: 64, Year: 2042] Stop the robot from raping my wife and I.

[Age: 69, Year: 2047] Demand grandchildren, by any means necessary.

[Age: 79, Year: 2057] Give 10% of my Social Security check to charity, abiding by a last-minute adherence to scripture.

[Age: 85, Year: 2063] Have the last laugh.

[Afterward] Discover or fail to discover that the last laugh was on me.

The wedding through a web of lies

I just got back from the strangest wedding imaginable. I know the bride and groom very well, and I consider both of them to be good friends. Strangely enough, they met on an Internet social networking site for Asian professionals. After discovering that they were the only pair of chronically unemployed Caucasians to use the site, they met each other for coffee and quickly fell in love.

Everyone knew the wedding would be difficult. The groom and the groom's father come from a long line of psychiatrists. Unfortunately, the bride's family members are Orthodox Scientologists. So the situation was awkward, to say the very least. However, after the minister read from the first two chapters of Dianetics, everything seemed to be copacetic.

Unfortunately, a moment arrived when the best man almost ruined the wedding for everyone. He got drunk before the ceremony and gave a best man speech at the worst imaginable time. When the minister asked, "if there is anyone here who thinks these two should not be married," he launched into his best man speech right there. "Let me tell you about this guy," he shouted. "This man is like a brother to me," he shouted again.

And then, afterward, when the right moment arrived for his speech, things got even worse. "Ladies and gentlemen, this man is a joker," he said. "And he is so lucky to have the bride," he continued. And then came the awkward line: "Ladies and gentlemen, until my best friend met the bride, he was routinely having sex with animals." I was a little shocked by this comment, agreeing with the couple's grandparents that it was somewhat inappropriate.

I could go on forever, but I also disagreed with other elements of the wedding. For instance, it seemed unorthodox for the bride and groom to give 2nd and 3rd place trophies to some of their ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends. Even worse, for the life of me, I don't know why they're relying on Google Earth for their wedding photographs. And last but not least, they really should have chosen traditional glasses of champagne for their toast, instead of aluminum cans of malt liquor. Nevertheless, regardless, and nevertheless, I honestly and honestly wish them the very best.

The infancy of this recession has already taken a personal toll. Sadly, I've found it impossible to make a profit in today's international black market economy. Outsourcing is killing me. I used to get my opium from Afghanistan, but the country's transition from agriculture into an information and financial services economy is nearly complete. And no, there aren't any suppliers here in America. Americans are too preoccupied in the methamphetamine laboratories to get their hands dirty in the opium fields. Most would agree: my countrymen are lazy bastards.

Of course, inflation is killing me, too. The price of Colombian cocaine has risen sharply, both from my paramilitary suppliers (unfairly subsidized by American taxpayers), and by revolutionary suppliers (unfairly subsidized by a fat man in Venezuela with an ego that's out of check). So now, I'm forced to go legitimate. My current enterprise is in selling "enemies of the state" bobblehead figurines. If my business plan proves successful, you'll soon find a Moqtada al-Sadr and a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bobblehead figurine in every McDonalds Happy Meal sold within the lower forty eight states.

I think this enterprise might pay off. Finally, I'll be out of the drug dealing business. Better yet, I'll be detached from the land conservation business (my cover/day job). Land conservation has lost its urgency, what with the mortgage crisis and the energy crisis leaving developers in the dumps. At the water cooler, my co-workers and I quietly confess a fear of being too tough on urban sprawl. It seems as if America feels the same way. Donations are being diverted to more pressing causes, like highway beautification projects and unsuccessful presidential campaigns.

Regardless, it seems apparent that we will get through this financial crisis soon enough. At this very moment, Nancy Pelosi and George Bush are stuffing rebate checks into envelopes. They are placing postage stamps into upper-right-hand corners. They are sealing the glue with their mouths.

And so, I wait, I watch my mailbox, and I hope for the best.

They should commission a study. I want to know the answer. How many acts of terrorism have been thwarted by the kindness of strangers - and particularly by the kindness of women? When there's an attractive woman next to a terrorist on a bus, does the terrorist's heart beat a little faster? From deep beneath his suicide bombing attire, does he draw up a sweat? Does he give up the plan?

The forces of jihad are promising their martyrs forty virgins in paradise. Clearly, western governments need to step it up. The answer, however, is not in providing more virgins to prospective terrorists - or even younger virgins. After all, we live in a free, democratic society - one where women are comparatively liberated. I sincerely believe that a small group of comparatively liberated women (three or four perhaps), can easily compete with the best forty virgins that the axis of evil can assemble.

And so, at the risk of sounding chauvinistic, I'm asking Rosie the Riveter get a little more flirtatious - particularly when she's around sensitive areas of our country's infrastructure (highways, railways, ports of entry). Rosie, your country needs you again. If we are to restore the dream - the dream of wearing our shoes through metal detectors and leaving our packages unattended - we will need your help.