This is me, calling the hell-hounds of hypocrisy down on myself as I berate me and others after falling for Lucifer’s little trick yet again when it came to the death of pop-music idol George Michael. If you haven’t heard, Michael died early this Christmas morning and his passing spread like a wildfire across all media platforms.

While the day of his passing is not Michael’s fault, the fact that I allowed it to overshadow Christ Jesus’ birthday is further proof that Satan uses events in our lives to ‘temporarily forget’ the one who saved us from the fires of Hell. And while, I am not the only one, I haven’t seen anyone else step out and state the obvious: we got played.

This realization struck me as I read a comment from a friend, who stated, “His death plays right into the media’s narrative of the loss of so many well-known musicians in 2016.”

It was one straightforward and truthful sentence and it caused me to think on it all day long before I understood the deeper implications of what was really being said. My delayed understanding caused me to ask and answer this one question: Who is in control of a dishonest media?

You know the answer: Beelzebub. As I wrote before — he played you and I.

Yes, while Michael’s dead is sad and it left many, including myself, stunned, the day should have remained reserved for celebrating the birth of Jesus. He should have been the number one focus of our day, not the sensational news of a pop idol’s death and the social media platforms that help spread that news.

We’re warned, and quite vigorously, I might add, about idol worship as Exodus 20: 3-6 clearly states: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Idol worship, whether in the form of a golden calf or a pop-star, is dangerous and the above warning not only for certain days like Christmas. It is a warning for everyday – an instruction directly from Jesus’ father, God, that we must obey daily or risk the Father’s love.

This is a very short-short story I’ve been crafting for the past week with hopes of completing it in time for the holidays. With that said, I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, may you receive all that you wish for and all that you need.

Shopping for Christmas gifts has always felt like a chore, especially when I was a kid. While in 8th grade, I was stuck for an idea about what I should get Mom.

It was on a trip to town, and a visit to the Ben Franklin store that I saw, what I believed was the perfect gift for her; a large bowl decorated with Christmas trees. I thought it would be great for holding Mom’s dinner biscuits, breakfast muffins or perhaps her family famous mashed potatoes.

On Christmas day, she opened my gift to her and thanked me with a kiss on the forehead, saying, “I really need this Christmas bowl.”

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t need it all that badly. She placed it a top of her china cabinet, in the corner of the dining room – never once using it.

When she and Dad divorced some seven-years later, the Christmas bowl, as it had come to be known, moved with her. I was surprised to see it resting on top of her china cabinet once again after she settled into a rental.

Twenty-one years later, and having long since gotten beyond the hurt of her never having used it for anything other than decoration, I finally asked her why. I could tell my question left a sense of sadness in her as she sat across from me at her dining table.

“I thought you knew,” she answered. “That’s not jus’ a Christmas bowl to me, that’s my ‘need’ bowl.”

“I don’t understand,” I interrupted.

Smiling now, Mom explained, “As long as it’s empty – all my needs are met.”

That was one of our last face-to-face conversations, and ironically it was also at Christmastime; Mom died six months later. After she passed away, the Christmas bowl was handed down to me.

And now it sits — unused — atop my wife’s china-hutch, because all of our needs are met.

It isn’t very often that I have a truly bizarre nightmare, but last night was one for the record book. And I can honestly say I know where this one started – I jus’ can’t explain why it happened or what it means – if it means anything at all.

Prior to turning out the light last night, my wife asked that along with the regular Friday laundry, I wash our anti-slip shower mat. It has been a couple of weeks since being cleaned and it does grow mold on its underside from being continually used and wet.

So in my dream, I was washing the towels and I had jus’ put them in the dryer, when I returned to the bathroom to pull the mat up from bottom of the tub. As I did this the damned mat appeared to come to life and began wrapping my left arm up in its moldy suckers.

Even though I had myself leveraged against the tiled wall with one foot and the other on the edge of the tub, I was still losing to the mat. And before long, the tug-of-war turned one-sided and I found myself yanked inside the tub.

My battle with the mat didn’t end there, as the tub suddenly seemed to be as large as a small backyard swimming pool. Off-balance and with nothing to grab onto, the mat dragged me from where I had originally fallen into the tub towards the tub’s drain.

As I drew closer to the drain, I realized, much to my panic, that the drain’s opening was as wide as a 50-gallon oil drum and that the mat intended to pull me down it. By this time I was slashing, stabbing and cutting at the mat with my lock-blade knife – but without result.

In a last desperate attempt to get loose from the mat-turned-multi-suckered monster, I began slicing and sawing at my arm, hoping to cut myself free. I remember screaming as the tub filled with my blood and I began to slip down the drain.

Fortunately, I awoke, sitting up right in bed with one of the dog’s standing over my legs, looking at me. I’m not sure which of us seemed more confused at the time – him or me.

It took me a few minutes to calm down, wipe away the cold sweat that clung to my body, get a drink of water, and lay back and fall asleep again. The rest of the night passed with no other nightmares or even a dream.

This morning I find myself baffled by the fact that my top-left forearm aches as if I had beat it to death with a club. And worse yet — I’m more than a little apprehensive about retrieving the bath mat for its appointment with the washing machine.

When I was a kid, I was a hopeless day-dreamer. Often alone and often lonely, I constantly found myself thinking of a bright future and as silly as it might seem now, but as a child, I latched on to Genesis 12: 1-3 which reads:

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’”

This became a blueprint of sorts for me for about three years, from about the ages of 10 or 11. As a kid I was dying to get away from my small town life, get out into the world to do something big – something that might bring me money and fame.

While I never really expected to be made into a ‘great nation,’ I always thought that maybe I’d have a super-close network of friends and co-workers who’d back me up in whatever effort I under took. I did, however, expect my name to become ‘great’ and that I would always do my best to be a ‘blessing’ to everyone around me.

My belief in this bible verse came back to me shortly before my discharge from the service as I sat on the rocks looking out at the Pacific Ocean, day after day, for a month because I had nothing else better to do at the time. It was here that I came to know that I had to move away from my home and head for Reno, Nevada.

I had been through the ‘Biggest Little City’ several times and I had always found it comfortable to be in.

Unfortunately, I allowed myself to become waylaid as I took up residence in Arcata, California – only 90 miles at the time from Crescent City and by then a life-time away from Klamath. I went further off track by moving to Las Vegas, Nevada for a couple of very hard and hungry months before I packed up and headed north.

Because I ‘failed to keep my end of the bargain,’ at 25-years old I found myself living in my VW in the parking lot of a casino in Reno, Nevada. Looking back, I think that is where my daydream and imaginings really took a left-turn and I faltered in my faith, concluding that the verse I’d put my heart and soul into in Genesis would not come true.

Perhaps, that’s what the Old Russian proverb, “We plan, God laughs,’ means. I took it upon my self to alter my destination and therefore God’s promise for me has not come about to its fullest.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to this long-forgotten memory. This morning, I’m putting it into play again and I think you should do the same: dream the biggest dream you can and then stand on God’s promise to make it happen.

In 2014, Utah businessman Jeremy Johnson accused Senator Harry Reid of accepting a “massive bribe,” but he shortly died thereafter and no investigation was launched. Now, Davis County, Utah, Prosecutor Troy Rawlings is asking if the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to investigate the connection between a $2 million cashier’s check and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The check, made out to ‘Mail Media LTD,’ was drawn on a St. George, Utah bank on November 5, 2010 and eventually sent to Ireland-based Full Tilt Poker, where it was deposited at Basler Kantonalbank (ZKB) in Switzerland. Recently, two ZBK bankers have been accused of helping U.S. customers stash hundreds of millions of dollars, out of the reach of federal tax authorities.

Rawlings wants to know whether the check went into a Marshall Islands account in the name of Searchlight Holding Inc. to benefit Reid. He points to documents, audio recordings and thousands of pages of transcripts, summaries, emails and other material that show how the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI failed to pursue the investigation of the money and its ties to Reid.

A few days after the allegations were made public, Reid announced his retirement.

This isn’t the first time the Obama administration’s DOJ has failed to investigate allegations of Reid’s criminal activity. In 2015, Reid was implicated in a scheme to approve visas for non-qualified foreigners who were also wealthy Chinese investors of his son Rory’s casino clients.

And as pressure mounts on President-elect Trump’s incoming administration to investigate the soon-to-be-retired Reid, the former Senate leader has gone verbally nuclear again, claiming the Trump campaign worked with WikiLeaks and the Russians to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

“Someone in the Trump campaign organization was in on the deal. I have no doubt. Now, whether they told [Trump] or not, I don’t know,” Reid spouted off without proof of such charges. “I assume they did. But there is no question about that. So there is collusion there, clearly.”

It’s another case of misdirection on Reid’s part and the first move from his 30-year long playbook of congressional treachery.

While the Progressive media continues to claim election fraud due to so-called ‘fake news stories,’ a number of Resident Aliens (RA) in Southern Nevada are seeking legal protection after being notified by the U.S. Immigration and Customer Enforcement Agency of possible deportation proceedings for illegally voting in last November’s election. An RA is a foreign person who is a permanent resident of the U.S., but doesn’t have citizenship, making it illegal for a non-U.S. citizen to vote in the United States.

The problem comes from the fact that RA’s are issued social security numbers and, since January 2014, are legally allowed to get a Nevada driver’s license. Plus, there’s nothing about an RA’s driver’s license to differentiate it from that of a U.S. citizen other than the expiration date corresponds with the RA’s visa expiration date so there’s no way for the Clark County Elections Department to determine if the driver’s license is that of an RA or a U.S. citizen based on Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicle’s (DMV) computer files.

Complicating this even more is President Obama’s executive action, taken in November 2014, which granted ‘semi-legal’ status to 4.1 million illegal aliens and 270,000 others who came to the U.S. illegally as children. The possibility of illegal voting has been widely ignore, though some news outlets like the Washington Times exposed the subject as far back as February 12, 2015, writing, “Republicans say there are a host of unintended consequences, including the chances of illegal voting…”

Finally, there’s no word on whether the recently discovered illegal votes are to be discarded.

UPDATE:  The fence is whole once again. Now to figure out how to stop the dogs from tearing up more.

Well, I ran an errand this afternoon to come and find a note on my door that our dogs had escaped into the neighbor’s backyard. Yup, all three running around after shattering two six-inch wide redwood fence slats.

After wrangling them and getting them back in our yard, I headed down to the lumber yard to buy two new slats and a piece of pressboard to use as a temporary stop-gap measure to keep the dog on our property. After purchasing and loading it, I started for home only to have a third of the pressboard snap off and fly way.

Shit!

Turning around to retrieve it, I couldn’t find it as it was dark by the time I got out of the lumber yard. What piece of the wood I had left, I dragged out to the fence and nailed over the gap with the intent of completing the repairs in the morning by replacing the broken slats.

And then I wonder why my back never seems to get better.

It took us at least two-hours of standing in the rain to finally pick up our luggage in such a fashion that the Instructors were satisfied. It then that were we ordered inside the large building at Lackland Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas. That’s where the pace picked up as one Sergeant barked instructions and several others moved through the ragged line of young men.

They too were shouting instructions and cursing at us. It was all part of a larger plan, as I had been told by Dad, to keep everyone on the edge of confusion.

“They’re going to break you down into a basic unit and then build you up into a team unit,” he had said.

It was a struggling to keep pace with the different commands I was being given. They came at me so much faster than I could think.

Suddenly there was a break in the yelling and shouting as one Instructor stood with his hands firmly placed on his hips. He was standing over a kneeling and extremely confused enlistee.

“We got ourselves one of those California queers,” he barked.

The young man on his knees stopped moving. He had been pulled clothing from his bag as instructed.

Unfortunately, the clothing he had his hand appeared to be feminine. He had a terribly confused look on his face.

“Did you or did you not, double-check your bag at the airport as you were told?” the Instructor bellowed.

Another instructor shouted, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

They weren’t really questions as much as they were statements of intimidation. The young man’s lower jaw moved up and down, but no sound came from his mouth.

“What the hell is your name?” the first instructor asked in a deep voice.

“Dum-dum-dum-browski,” he finally stuttered.

The instructor reached down and yanked several pieces of clothing from the unzipped bag and held them up. Included in the handful was a couple of pair of women’s panties, a bra and a satin nightie.”

There were light snickers from the other Newbie’s as we would soon be called. We watched Dumbrowski as he nearly came to tears over the humiliation the piece of luggage had brought him.

Secretly, I knew that each man was glad that he had not made the same mistake and each man felt a sudden sense of guilt at the thought. I know, I was one of them.

“Well, Dumb-dumb-dumb-browski,” the instructor said, making fun of the man’s scared-stuttering, “Grab your gear and fall out to that table.”

Dumbrowski grabbed up everything he could in one large arm full and rushed to the far side of the room, where the Instructor had pointed. It was clear that he wasn’t the only one with the wrong luggage.

However, Dumbrowski was the only one to end up with a bag full of women’s clothing. He would go on to survive the night and eventually graduate from Basic Training a couple of months later.

My wife is such an honest soul. A couple of days ago she went to Walmart and bought a matching bath mat set.

Once she got them home, she realized that they wouldn’t work in our bathroom, so she made plans to return them. That’s when she discovered she had not paid for one of the rugs.

Initially, it concerned her that if upon returning these item that she might get arrested or something. I reassured her that she wouldn’t and more over she’d probably shock the person at customer service with her honesty.

And that’s exactly how it happened. The young woman behind the counter exclaimed, “Really?! Why?”

Mary answered, “Because it doesn’t belong to me.”

“Wow…thank you so much,” came the woman’s response.

I have a feeling Mary’s honesty came as more than a shock to that woman — I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a blessing to her — a reaffirmation that good people really do exist.

It was a long, dark corridor made of cinder-blocks. A single shaft of light from a cross-secting hallway was the only visible reference to this complex I was reconnoitering.

Quickly, but quietly I moved toward the stab of light knowing that slipping through it was a danger I had to face. Without warning, I was body slammed, carried by the momentum of my attacker into the lit hallway and smashed against the wall.

Whoever it was, they had my right arm wrenched so far up my back that I could feel the back of my hand against my left shoulder-blade. I struggle to get free but to no avail.

The searing pain in my right shoulder was so intense that I was certain it was about to tear from its socket. I found myself on my tip-toes and pushing against the wall with my free right hand trying to avoid the pain.

My attacker then proceeded to bash the right side of my head against the wall. Once finished with that they placed their left forearm against my neck at the base of my skull, pinning me against the rough surface of the blocks.

That’s when I saw him approaching. While I didn’t know him per se, I recognized the sadistic grin on his face and heard the guttural laughter as it echoed about the walls.

The pain was so white-hot throughout my body that I couldn’t fully understand what it was he was saying as his face drew closer and closer to mine. As he pressed his face forward, I literally seized the opportunity to fight back.

Since my left hand was still free, I reached up and grabbed him by the face, pressing my thumb and ring-finger deep into his temples. This brought more violence against me as he punched and thrashed against my grip.

Then I heard him scream my name, “TOM!”

This jolted me and after several more shouts of my name and as many more blows to my face and arm, I let go. That’s also when I woke up.

Another night terror and I had attacked my wife as she lay asleep next to me. There aren’t enough, “I’m so sorry,” to ease her fear or cover may shame.