TV Bitch Likely to Become Prison Bitch

n a setback for complete bitches everywhere, Martha Stewart was convicted of four criminal charges by a jury of twelve of her peers, only much poorer. A deleted phone message and testimony from a "friend" of Stewart put the nails in her defense's coffin and doomed the austere homemaker and queen bitch to almost certain prison time.

With no television cameras in the courtroom, the prosecution spent less time on their hair and suits and focused on building a concrete case against Stewart, who was found guilty for trading her shares of ImClone based on an improper stock tip and attempting to cover up evidence of the illegal action. Stewart's defense claimed the ImClone stock was sold because Stewart had meant to buy stock in the Raelian company that made the clone baby, but got the name wrong. The defense claimed Stewart believed ImClone, a pharmaceutical company working on a cure for cancer, was "sure as shit not going to show profit."

Though Stewart has yet to be sentenced, with the severity of the crime, a term in a minimum-security prison is most likely. Stock in her own company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, dropped 25% in value when her conviction was made public. Stewart didn't do anything to help her sentencing hearing when she dumped all shares shortly before the announcement.

Stewart met the court proceedings with confidence, even showing up the first day of the trial with a $12,000 handbag in tow, prompting members of the jury to murmur, "Jesus, you believe this bitch?" As she was found guilty on all counts, courtroom witnesses described Stewart as "surprised, with an underlying current of bitchy just below the surface."

Since the end of the trial Stewart has professed her innocence and vowed to appeal the case until she is exonerated. She didn't stand on the steps of the courthouse frantically smacking her lawyers about the face and pushing them down the steps, hair frazzled and face manic like a comic Cruella DeVille, but wouldn't it have been great if she had?

Judge Miriam Cederbaum instructed the jury Stewart was subject to guilty or not guilty findings based only on the evidence, and not on the obscure "what a bitch" clause the prosecution proposed, which was originally founded to justify temporary insanity in spousal murder cases. The jury deliberated seven hours before returning, and according to juror Shelby Thucker, they were very conscious of the media attention their verdict would be given.

"We were all extra careful to argue both sides of the case, to make sure our decision wasn't based on anything but evidence," said Thucker, via phone interview. "The men in the jury were quick to call her a bitch, while most of the women found her to be a very successful self-made woman. Finally, we came to the conclusion we were both right. I know lots of people consider powerful women to be bitches, and that's not fair. But Martha Stewart… don't you get the feeling she could be penniless and still be the world's biggest, poorest bitch?"

Clearly, Stewart could be idolized by young upwardly-mobile women everywhere for her shrew business sense and formidable demeanor. For those who find bitchiness a virtue, she was a true beacon in the business world. Even her ethical behavior in making more money and protecting her interests can be respected by aspiring self-made women. However, she got caught, which should be enough to lose all of our respect.

Stewart would not return calls placed to her attorneys by the commune—the bitch.

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Though it might surprise the ignorant, the holiday of Christmas was celebrated long before Christ came along and limp-wristed his way into the history books, or at least the history books that are available at most major motels. They didn't call it Christmas back then, since that would just be spooky, but regardless, the winter solstice was celebrated for eons before Christ laid the golden turd.

In northern lands, ancient peoples celebrated the passing of the midpoint of winter, looking ahead to longer days and the return of the light, which would remind them just how ugly their neighbors were. With the light came the melting of the snow, which rang in the springtime removal of the dead bodies of all the dumb assholes who had frozen to death over the winter. Hence the term "spring cleaning" was coined, though over time it's somehow come to mean some yuppie sponging out his microwave.

The Norse in Scandanavia celebrated Yule, a vague holiday that involved eating and went on for however damn long they wanted it to. Anyone who asked if the holiday was over yet was eaten, and as a result it often dragged on for months.

The ancient Germans didn't celebrate, since they were German, but they were scared shitless of the pagan God Oden, who they placated by never going outside. The exchange of goods in the winter months consisted of things being thrown from one house's window to the next. This usually worked fairly well but mishaps did occur, and most houses had at least a few frozen chickens stuck to their outside walls. The biggest problem was that if the town butcher threw his back out, the entire town would starve, since Germans don't believe in vegetables except for sauerkraut.

The Romans had their own insane version of Christmas, which basically involved everybody getting naked, fucking, and throwing up all morning. They had a few other traditions rolled in there, but mainly they were just thinly disguised excuses for fucking.

In the early days of Christianity, Easter was the only holiday, and it got so out of hand that they were afraid to add any more. The early Christians were known for having an extreme early version of Attention Deficit Disorder, and as a result the celebration of Christ's resurrection soon morphed into a mutant strain when somebody thought they said procreation and they started dressing up like rabbits, and then somebody brought a bunch of eggs because he didn't have a rabbit costume and didn't know what else to do, and then somebody else said "Fuck eggs, I like chocolate!" and the modern insane Easter was born.

In the fourth century, the church decided it was safe to make another go at it and they added a celebration for the birth of Christ. There was a slight problem in that nobody had any idea when Christ was born, and the Bible just said something about there was tallow in the Eastern bung and nobody knew what month that was supposed to mean. The problem was solved when Pope Julius I scratched his nose for a while and then declared that Christ was born on December 25th. When scholars argued that this ran counter to all available evidence, he pope-slapped them and told everyone that if they wanted to piss off Oden, that was their own prerogative. Everybody agreed it was December 25th after that.

Julius I's real motivation was a clever one. By throwing the celebration for the birth of Christ at the same time when all of the non-Christians were celebrating the winter solstice by balling their brains out, he could confuse people into thinking that they were celebrating Christianity by drinking a lot of beer and nailing everything in the house to a tree, a deception that still stands to this day.

Once the Puritans took over England, they outlawed Christmas, and anything else that people liked to do. This lasted for about ten seconds before the people rose up and kicked their gay asses out of the country. They washed up in North America, complaining constantly about being religiously persecuted, and then outlawed Christmas there, too. The problem was that the Native Americans didn't know what Christmas was, so the Puritans had to teach them how to decorate their teepees with popcorn and nuts and little ballerinas on the outside, and then tell them never to do it.

Living with the Puritans eventually drove the Native Americans to drinking, which the Puritans had taught them to do so they could tell them not to do that, either. Eventually the Puritans died out after they decided that opening their eyes was sinful and then were all eaten by bears at night. But because of them, generations of Americans grew up without traditional Christmas orgies.

Eventually Charles Dickens wrote The Christmas Carol, which he completely pulled out of his ass during a wild weeklong acid binge. Naïve American readers believed that he was talking about real holiday traditions, and were pissed that none of the immigrants had told them about the fun of Christmas. Several immigrant-bashing why-didn't-you-tell-us-about-Christmas riots followed, and America's new arrivals quickly learned to make up traditions on the spot to appease the custom-starved masses.

Soon the entire country was celebrating a bastard amalgam of made-up holiday customs, believing that the Dutch or Ubangi or some goddamned people had actually strung lights up in trees and drank fermented egg snot for hundreds of years. The church was quick to remind everyone that Christ was born on Christmas, too, and they skylarked a story about three traveling salesmen giving presents to baby Jesus to make it all sort of tie together.

You might wonder how Santa Claus came into all of this, but that was all just a Coke commercial that everyone assumed was referencing an ancient tradition. To this very day, the guys at Coca-Cola are still kicking themselves that they didn't name the guy Santa Coke. Scandinavians may argue that Santa was based on their ancient myth about an elf named Jultomten who delivers presents in a goat-drawn sled, but that's just stupid.

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Apparently some construction crew Einstein had a brainstorm watching E.T. the other night, since I woke up Saturday morning to find my neighbor's construction site completely enclosed in some kind of gigantic biohazard flea tent. Thank God I'd ditched out on the idea of camping there overnight, since I'd likely have been trapped inside and I bet everything stinks like malathion in there now.

Cruelly denied access to my neighbor's basement-in-making, I decided to do the next best thing and find out what's in my own basement, since I hadn't been down there in about eight years and my memory wipes clean like a credit report after seven. I couldn't even find the key to go down there until I checked in Foghat's party ball, the strange, amorphous blob of unidentified household detritus he pushes around like a bag lady raised by owls.

After I de-balled the basement key and broke the seal on the basement door that had been keeping everything inside in a permanent state of 1997, I took my last, deep breath of fresh air before voyaging down into whatever mummy farts and radon leaks had been lurking in the air under my house since back when Hanson was on the radio.

At first I was a little apprehensive heading down those stairs, not knowing quite what could be down there in the dark, waiting to jack up my Jill. I had a bad experience once in Canada, getting locked in some stranger's cabin in the middle of the night and having to shimmy up out of the basement coal chute after a misunderstanding about bathroom etiquette. I wasn't looking forward to reliving that again, plus I'm pretty sure I don't have a coal chute.

But then I realized that any kind of creepy naked chainsaw killer down there would likely be way off his game after the eight-year vacation, and probably would have grown some hilarious deep-sea fish adaptations after spending nearly a decade in the dark, too. And I'd pay to see that shit. Then I remembered about the halogen floodlights I had installed in the basement, after Foghat lost his lucky tooth down there and I got sick of blowing through candles for my miner's helmet looking for the damned thing.

After finding the switch and flooding the basement with enough light to incinerate any hiding mutated chainsaw freaks, I took the plunge into a land of mystery and wonder.

Or at least a lot of shit I forgot I had. Hula hoops, an airplane wing, and a gun that shoots billiards balls. And some sick bastard had painted a life-sized portrait of Nancy Reagan using real meat. Then there was the huge refrigerator with a normal fridge inside, and a mini-fridge inside that one like a giant refrigerator Matrioshka doll, I guess at some point I had shit that needed to be kept really cold.

A voting machine? Jesus, did I get elected? And I have no idea where those tricked-out dirt bikes came from.

But the most interesting thing I found down there was the giant crate of off-brand NyQuil I spied behind a wax statue of Evander Holyfield over in the corner. What's the story behind this stuff? Anybody who's got more than FM radio between their ears knows that cough medicine is only good for two things: methamphetamines and hilarious gag ice cubes. But a case? Man, that's a lot of ice cubes.

I'm not sure why I would have bought an entire case. Actually, I'm not sure how I bought an entire case, I don't think they sell it that way outside of New Mexico. Either they get a lot of colds down there or tweakers run the government. Maybe I was on a road trip and just didn't want to pass up the opportunity.

Then again, it was a knock-off brand called NiteWipe, so maybe they had to sell it by the case to get people to buy the stuff. Well, it worked at least once.

So now you know the story behind how that weird blue-green igloo ended up on my lawn, and how I distracted the construction shmoes long enough to make a kamikaze run on the biodome to make sure they didn't really have an E.T. trapped in there. Incidentally, I also added a concrete mixer to my carnival of basement thrills downstairs, which should make for some interesting speculation in another eight or nine years.

Bricks out.

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