Intercalation

 

As they struggled to keep track of time the Romans set up a ten-month calendar and added days as needed to keep their holidays synched up with the seasons and the phases of the moon.  It's called intercalation or embolus.  Not sure how the latter came to mean the blockage of a blood vessel.  Since I refuse to call this B---- F-----, I'm going with intercalation, a day to sop up the remains of Thanksgiving and ease back into the regularly scheduled weekend.  It's not exactly a holiday but it's not really anything else, unless you work in retailing and are being driven like a rented truck right now.  My sympathies.

Apparently (oh, all right) the origin of Black Friday is lost in remote history, possibly as early as a football game in 1975 C.E. in the venerable city of Philadelphia.  Extra shifts of police were called to supervise the additional crowds.  No one is sure how it came to refer to department stores hoping to be "in the black" as a result of encouraging people to trample one another when the doors open at five a.m., but here we are.  I prefer to devote the day to good, clean fun like the marvelous Irish dancers at the top.

It's official!  For the second time this year Alaska voters rejected Sarah Palin in favor of Mary Peltola as their member of Congress.  It's the end of the Palin era, most of which she spent starring in a reality show and dancing about in a bear suit on The Masked Singer.  She also served part of a term as governor of Alaska.

Ronna Romney McDaniel is on notice:  Pillow Mike Lindell may seek her job as chair of the Republican National Committee.  McDaniel is a little too reality-based for Mike, having acknowledged that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.  He promises to let us know Monday after talking it over with God.

Rounding out a week when 22 people were killed and 44 injured in mass shootings, Killer Kyle Rittenhouse released a video promoting "Kyle Rittenhouse's Turkey Shoot."  In this Christmas must-have, players use "a highly specialized laser gun to strike down any turkey that spreads lies, propaganda or liberal bias."  Available from fine retailers everywhere, including the Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, where five employees were shot Tuesday.  It's the second mass murder in Virginia this month.  Glenn and Suzanne Youngkin are nearly out of thoughts and prayers.

Fortunately America's crime wave seems to have crested.  According to Media Matters crime reports on Fox News have declined from 141 a day before the elections to just 71.  Probably something to do with all the snow in the Northeast.

Not, however, in Woburn, Massachusetts, where the human populace is being terrorized by a gang of five wild turkeys led by a male called Kevin.  (By a woman named Meaghan Tolson, we don't know what the mooks call him.)  Ms. Tolson says they attack children on bicycles, trap residents in their homes and are apparently plotting to get inside.  People fight back with brooms and garden hoses.  But no turkeys have been shot because, well, it's Massachusetts, not Mississippi.  

Peter Thiel started an "anti-woke, pro-freedom" bank called GloriFi, for real Americans like plumbers and cops who were sick of the socialists at JP Morgan Chase.  It offered discount home insurance for gun owners and credit cards made of shell casings.  Candace Owens was its spokesmodel.  Investors included Ken Griffin (Citadel Securities) and Kelly Loeffler.  And just like that, $50 million vanished and they're closing down next week.  It's all the fault of "startup mistakes, the failing economy" and of course the liberal media and certainly not Joe Scratchcard's failure to open an account.  So why am I smiling?  And are we sure Elon Musk wasn't involved?

Just in time to harsh your Nutcracker, Simon Morrison has published Bolshoi Confidential:  Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today.  "The history of Russia is a history of violence," he says.  Tell us something we don't know.  And you thought the problem with The Nutcracker was that the Arabian and Chinese dances in Act II were stereotypically racist.  Zhizn moya!