by Thomas Keister

If you needed any further proof the economy is willing to try damn near anything to turn sagging numbers around, Sears has already started putting out the X-mas stuff. On Sunday, in addition to 372 Sears locations opening Christmas decor shops, the company launched Christmas Lane, an online portion of Sears.com and Kmart.com. Yep. A major retailer started setting out the Christmas shit on the Fourth of July weekend. Starts to make you wonder why the fuck they bother to take it down in the first place. Last year, several major retailers started putting out some of the seasonal junk in September. Sounds to me like a plot. September, then July. At the rate they are going, they are going to work backwards through the calendar and launch a second X-mas...

It's that time of the year again, when the new words hit the dictionary. The newest edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary had added almost 100 new words, including the loathesome staycation, as well as frenemy, which they helpfully define as someone who acts like a friend but is really an enemy (glad they were there to tell us that). Although, when you think about it, how the hell does that work? Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and have your frenemies literally hiding in the freakin bushes outside your house?...

Finally, in a great victory for freedom of expression, I suppose, William Junge gained satisfaction at the hands of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, when the state's Supreme Court ruled that the DMV could not refuse him vanity plates that read, simply, "HOE." In their ruling, the court held that "a reasonable mind would not accept the Urban Dictionary entries alone as adequate to support a conclusion that the word 'HOE' is offensive or inappropriate," in regards to the DMV's basis for refusal, the word's definition on the Internet site Urban Dictionary. Does this mean that Indiana won't be able to refuse me my "CUNHELL" plates?