Cause		Effect
	Corner Pocket of Perdition	Asteroid caroms off Moon and hits Earth, which crashes into Mars for good measure.
	Drain of Doom	Scientists devise means to reverse spin of water in drains. Unforeseen consequence stops Earth’s rotation, gravity fails, everyone flies into space.
	Global Waring	Giant blender escapes Jupiter’s orbit, grinding everything in its path.

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Happy Festivus.

Time for the Airing of Grievances. The comments are open.

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Sweet.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.

Baydan has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 – more than four times the shoe’s normal annual sale – following an outpouring of support for Zaidi’s act, which was intended as a protest, but led to his arrest by Iraqi security forces.

Hope they make them in my size.

Stampede for Bush Shoe Creates 100 New Jobs [Guardian]

Hillary Clinton has written off $13.2 million she loaned to her campaign. She still owes $5.4 million to Mark Penn, who astonishingly has yet to be nominated for a Stinque Award.

Clinton Writes Off $13.2 Million Loan to Campaign [Bloomberg]

The 2008 Stinque Awards for Achievement in Infamy are dedicated to Muntader al-Zaidi for Throwing Truth to Power. In honor of Mr. al-Zaidi’s world-historical service to the vituperative arts, this year’s award is a handsome Crystal Shoe created exclusively for Stinque by 24-Hour Novelties & Box Wine SuperStore of Tarzana, California.

Our categories were proposed by Stinque readers during an exhaustive nationwide search, and finalized upon receipt and tally of favors financial and carnal. Nominees may be proposed in the comments; winners will be announced next Monday during a gala ceremony broadcast live from atop the Stinque Executive Washroom.

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You know, Christopher Hitchens, although he is a Brit, is one of America’s greatest gasbags.  Over-inflated ego and sense of self drips from every word, whether he is fantastically wrong (his opinion on the Iraq war) or brilliant — as he was in his recent column about how the December ritual of holiday music and decorations has much in common with totalitarian regimes:

As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor’s office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined “themes” have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader’s birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring. Time that is supposed to be devoted to education is devoted instead to the celebration of mythical events.

As I was reading this, the restuarant windows, from left to right, featured glass paintings of (1) Santa, (2) a candy cane, and (3) an American flag. Yikes. Hitch FTW, on this go-round.

Nevertheless: merry Christmas, happy Solstice, you beautiful cynics.