Oh, mama, is this really the end?

A few observations before I plunge head first into the holidays.

• The Austin chapter of the Society of Financial Service Professionals took out a full page advertisement in today’s Austin American Statesman that features the name, affiliation and mugshot of each of its members. I’m not sure it was the wisest thing to do, at least in these times. There are 27 mugs on the page: 23 white men and 4 white woman. It looks like shots of the Republican Congressional leadership group. C’mon gang, there’s got to be a "financial service professional" of color somewhere in Austin you will allow into your Klan.
• There’s also a story in today’s newspaper about a troublemaker in the East Texas town of Rusk who thought he should be able to put up a non-religious display alongside the nativity scene on view behind the county courthouse. The powers-that-be followed the East Texas non-tolerant script verbatim and told that lad "You gotta be kidding me. Get outta here." So the lad, along with a few of his friends demonstrated outside the courthouse where they were greeted with a typical East Texas neck holding a sign that said "If this was back in Bible times, all y’all would’ve been stoned." Yeah, boy, that’s the Christian spirit!
• The best line I’ve heard recently comes in a commercial for, of all things, a cellphone app for a war game in which a rather healthy looking blonde woman encourages her troops about to go into battle by telling them: "You have absolutely nothing to fear except for what’s about to come out of those woods."