a funk-soul cash cow

I received my first Christmas card in the mail yesterday, officially putting me ill at ease as the holiday season approaches and another year will go by where I do not send out cards, or enough cards, and definitely do not send out appropriate cards.

My favorite is the Christmas Letter. I am not a big fan of those because if sender and recipient really cared about the other this would be unnecessary. You would already know about the other person�s year and the goings on of their family. I only read the letter from Aunt Fern because she writes hers as a poem and it is the worst poem you could ever hope to read.

Aunt Fern is an example of why schools are too concerned with self-esteem in the wrong ways.

I thought a protest was going on outside but really it is three people having an argument. I am really disappointed that there is not more social upheaval around here. I guess it is easier to sit around and blame the government or Republicans. Actually getting off your ass would require, �ingenuity,� �work ethic,� and actual desire for �change.�

CNN News: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says he is "disappointed and surprised" to learn that his son, Kojo, had remained on the payroll of a company involved in the Iraq oil-for-food program, the subject of several corruption probes. The U.N. had said the payments to Kojo Annan stopped in 1997 but now says he had received payments as recently as February 2004.

I do not believe that for a moment � unless he is disappointed and surprised that someone investigated his son, or he is disappointed and surprised his son was caught. The oil for food program in Iraq was so incredibly corrupt that I find it amazing that more of us are not outraged by the situation. Not just because we fought a war with Iraq, but because we are all apart of this world where the UN asserts itself as the world�s moral authority and ends up being a beacon of how not to do business.

We should be disappointed in the UN and calling for change in the organization. They make resolutions they have no intention of upholding, uphold resolutions to the distress of their members and allow parliamentary procedure to impede their peace making and humanitarian work. Now the UN has become a cash cow for well-connected families? This is excellent.