My traditional Christmas card to all the readers here at The Dark Wraith Forums. I took the photograph for this post late this afternoon in the countryside, where a snowstorm was making the roads treacherous and the landscape starkly beautiful. I hope you like it.

Right now, your host here at this obscure, 21st Century frontier outpost and all-night diner is getting hammered by the weeks of final exams at the university and at the community college where he teaches economics, finance, and other subjects considered rather arcane and disreputable in polite circles. To keep hope alive, however, I am offering this open thread, along with some of the graphics I have recently created at the Cheezburger Network.

Enjoy the political commentary, and click on any graphic to get the code to republish it for others to see.















And finally, one from Thanksgiving just to let the esteemed President of the United States know the high regard in which I hold his spineless, authoritarian-leaning, center-right self.



As soon as I have finished administering and then grading my last round of finals, I will indulge in publishing a small frenzy of articles and graphics addressing the usual topics of America's descent into an authoritarian state, the looming economic problems facing the country, the latest and disastrous education "reform" mania, and the continuing carnival of hypocrisy writ large by the Tea Party and its beacons of stroboscopic imbecility. While I'm at it, I'll have more than a few choice words about Barack Obama.

I also plan to tell a few strange and interesting stories. At least one of them, I'll bet you'll have a hard time believing, so I'm not sure yet how I should go about writing that little piece.

Not to worry, though. I also have a dessert recipe post, complete with pictures, that I shall be posting at week's end. It's double Dutch apple pie. I might even put in a link to a picture of what I look like more than a year after going Medieval on my own sorry state of health and physique.

But that's all for later. Thursday night, I give my last final exam to a class of about 180 upperclassmen. The exam comprises 30 multiple choice questions, a section of work-out problems, and then five short essay problems. Every time I do this, I wonder why I put the students and then myself through such an ordeal, but then the obvious answer occurs to me: if I want to be good at predicting the future, I should participate in creating it.

Say what you have to say in comments; this is an open forum. If you're the last one out the door, turn off the lights, shut off the coffee pot, and put the cat out.

Wait. The cat stays in.

Oh, yes, and the coffee pot stays on. Ditto for the lights. This is an all-night establishment. Here at Al's Diner, the party at the end of history never stops.

Until, that is, history does, first.