Now, its orbit nearly done,

This lonely third rock from the Sun,

Spinning on its frozen ass

Around the center of its mass,

Approaches, in the Nick of time,

The Newsverse Year-End Christmas rhyme.

Give all who ride this sorry sphere

Popcorn, silly hats and beer.

And with a soulful Yuletide chorus

Usher out 12 months of tsuris.

If you’ve had enough of death,

Put your hands down, take a breath,

Follow what the Buddha said:

Keep your cool and keep your head.

For which, it seems, the best advice is

Don’t go near Iraq or ISIS.

.

Let all bygones bygones be

And underneath the Christmas tree

Leave a puppy or a pony

For our friends who toil at Sony.

Let spirits soar and voices lift

For Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift,

Janet Yellen, Derek Jeter,

And the Vicar of St. Peter.

Let wine pour like summer rain

In the glasses of Ukraine

And send those Russian oligarchs

Floating off aboard their arks.

.

Serve caviar from Russ & Daughters

To a Doctor Without Borders,

Keeping him just out of reach,

Toast him with a glass of bleach.

Join up at a Cuban gastro-

Pub for beers with  Raul Castro.

.

And here’s a fun game we can play:

Taliban and CIA!

You play it on a waterboard,

And when the answers all are scored

It doesn’t matter what you said

We keep on playing ‘till you’re dead.

To those who ask us to eschew it:

It isn’t torture when we do it!

So raise a glass to our great nation!

Pour Dick Cheney a libation

Via rectal rehydration.

.

And mark these words of Tiny Tim’s–

God bless us everyone! The Kims:

Dotcom, Kardashian, Jong-un.

He looks like he could use some fun.

It would be a joke to dare

To set fire to his hair.

Or sit him down on his commode

And make him watch his head explode.

Officer, you’re very right

I almost ran that traffic light

I drank a beer out on my stoop

I didn’t pick up my dog’s poop

I never should have put my feet

On that empty subway seat.

You are quite correct to point out

You saw me when I threw that joint out.

But your arm’s around my throat.

May I request that you take note:

I can’t breathe.

.

Major, I confess it all

I joined al-Qaeda’s basketball

Team with Khalid sheikh Mohammed

They called me Atomic Ahmed.

By the precepts of Shariah,

With the help of North Korea,

During practices we planned

To plant bombs in Disneyland,

Tulsa, Phoenix and Chicago,

Jersey City, Tampa, Fargo.

Smuggle in Ebola virus

Kidnap Sting and Miley Cyrus

Behead them live on Morning Joe.

Now I’ve told you all I know

Is it safe for me to go?

You have helped me see the error

Of my ways in spreading terror.

I don’t expect a big reward

But tied down to this waterboard

I can’t breathe.

.

Doctor, help me, I can’t sleep

The world’s a moral rubbish heap

Life is just a long sick joke.

I try to laugh. Instead I choke.

And I can’t breathe.

You’d better watch out

You’d better not cry

You’d better not pout

I’m telling you why–

Santa Claus is coming to town!

.

Try to smile, you little creep,

Santa turns you into sheep,

Even if your life is crappy

Best to look like you are happy

In his unforgiving eye.

.

Santa never asks you why

You might feel the urge to cry

No lollipop or candy cane

Can ease your existential pain.

Is it because you’ll die?

.

Born beneath an ozone hole

The world is one big lump of coal

All its promises are phoney

You dig and dig, but there’s no pony.

Or reindeer in the sky.

.

Life is nasty, short and hard

But don’t go quoting Kierkegaard

On the sadness of it all

To the fellow at the mall

He’ll swat you like a fly.

Maine school board puts teacher on leave after she traveled to Dallas

The teacher, who has not been named, attended a conference 10 miles from the hospital where Ebola patients have received care.

Liberians, librarians,

Tea-Party libertarians.

Nigerians, Iberians,

Algerians, Siberians.

Dig a moat around your palace

To keep out anyone from Dallas

And drop the iron-barred portcullis

On anyone who passed through Dulles.

The Dalles, The Dales, Fort Worth or Plano

Deal with them as viral warlocks

Dip them in a vat of Clorox

Throw their clothes in a volcano.

And, at least for the duration,

Keep them under observation

From now until the crisis ends

Lock them up and all their friends.

.

The only thing we have to fear

Is fear itself. So don’t go near

An African, or a Hispanic

This might cause you needless panic.

Bear in mind a random stranger

Need not pose a mortal danger

If he’s kept in quarantine

And sprayed with hexachlorophene.

Nurses have to wash their hands

Every day. Use rubber bands

To keep your gloves from slipping off.

Use a tissue if you cough.

Make sure you tell your supervisor

If you’re bleeding from your eyes, or

If you start to sweat and shake.

Ask if you can go on break.

One way you can help control

Infection, if you find a hole

In a gown or sterile drape

Patch it with adhesive tape.

If you find you have to vomit

Make sure you clean it up with Comet.

Patients coming from Liberia

Cannot use the cafeteria

Between noon and two o’clock

Or if they’re in septic shock.

The gathering of 35,000 walrus on a beach in northwest Alaska this week after they couldn’t find their preferred resting grounds of summer sea ice was a notable occurrence in terms of its sheer size, but it wasn’t an isolated event. –news reports

–

When the floes beneath your flippers melt into the sea

And the icecap is receding out of reach

It forces you to contemplate your own mortality

And haul your blubber up onto the beach.

–

In Nature, unlike Wall Street, you can’t be too big to fail.

Its laws are such no animal can hope to ever beat them.

Death stalks every creature and grabs it by the tail

Just ask the woolly mammoth, or the guys that used to eat them.

–

Do you have a memory of how it was before

The climate changed and made your life a hell?

Do you dream of icebergs, while stranded on the shore?

And how exactly do you stand the smell?

–

Is there a walrus heaven that you go to when you die?

Somewhere way beyond the Bering Strait?

Do you hope to haul out on that iceberg in the sky

Where endless schools of cod and herring wait?

–

Oh, do not go gentle into that Arctic dusk

Six months from now will be another morning

Fight against extinction, tooth and nail and tusk

And hope your fellow mammals heed your warning.

WASHINGTON, November 28, 2009: — President Obama and his wife, Michelle, had a face-to-face encounter with the couple who sneaked into a state dinner at the White House this week, White House officials acknowledged on Friday. The revelation underscored the seriousness of the security breach and prompted an abject apology from the Secret Service.

I have the honor to present
To you, Mr. President—
This fellow standing over here…
Oops, he went to get a beer.
Well anyway, when he comes back
I think his name is Joe, or Jack.
I have it in my other ‘Berry.
But this next couple’s very, very
Famous. He’s a movie star.
My kids could tell you who they are.
And here is Madame—wait a sec,
I’m looking for her background check.
She came with one of those two guys—
The bald one has a Nobel Prize.
The other, with the cummerbund,
Runs some bank or mutual fund.
The tall guy with the long gray beard
Looks familiar—gee, that’s weird.
He’s wearing sandals and a turban.
He spit into that woman’s bourbon.
That kind of thing could make you nervous.
If you didn’t trust the Secret Service.

You’re probably familiar with the popular image of the United Nations, especially among American conservatives: an ineffectual bureaucracy where representatives of tiny countries drone on about their grievances while bored diplomats adjust their tie clips. Well, sometimes conservatives aren’t totally wrong.–Grist.org

The ocean tide is rising like a water-borne insurgency

The climate’s a catastrophe, a crisis and emergency

And global leaders rush to show they understand the urgency

The time for speeches long is past! We need to start commissions!

Headed up by movie stars and leading politicians

Corporate executives and big-name rock musicians!

To choose a new committee that will nominate a board

To name a special panel that will move the process toward

Reaching an agreement that will lead to an accord

On listing all the options for developing a policy

Toward funding new approaches based on cutting-edge psychology

For programs to encourage teaching kids about ecology.

(And somewhere in the universe, a star is giving birth

To a planet, in three billion years, that might resemble Earth.

Where life, if it is lucky, will recognize its worth.)

Weak of knee and limp of spine,

America, in sad decline,

Scared it might provoke a pushback,

Doesn’t dare to move its tush back

And make its seat recline.

.

Scrunched and curled up like a comma

Or a drawing in the Kama

Sutra, buckled in and nestled

In its seat, completely pretzeled,

All thanks to Barack Obama

.

He wants America to squeeze

In Belgium’s seat, and bend its knees

Up to its chest, and never ever

Touch the seat-recliner lever

Without saying please.

.

But Putin is a different sort

Nasty, brutish, also short.

Unafraid of causing pain

To the kneecaps of Ukraine.

Protecting with malignity

His national supinity

Try taking him to court!

.

If Putin or if Netanyahu

Ted Cruz or some other yahoo

Ran the country, we’d be able

To drop down our seat-back table

And lean way back and crush the pants

Of China, Germany and France.

Ripped from the headlines, the news from Newsverse:

Humanity’s progress has gone in reverse.

As bad as things are, they can only get worse.

We’ve analyzed data with methods statistical

Consulted with oracles, ancient and mystical

Compiling our Newsverse Anxiety Listicle:

Inflation, deflation, the interest-rate spread–

Whatever that is–there’s a risk that the Fed

Might keep it too low, or raise it instead.

Droughts from Los Angeles halfway to Texas

Floods in Ohio and polar vortexes.

Freezing us down to our solar perplexus.

You’re searching for truth but you live in a buyer’s

Market for lies in a world filled with liars

Hypocrites, sellouts and climate deniers.

Film at 11 of Cops Dumb and Dumber

It’s never too late for a long and hot summer.

Stuck like a record on some old Victrola:

Israel and Gaza. The Ukraine. Ebola.

Whosis and Whatsis and ISIS and dreading

Ritual stoning and death by beheading.