The spacemen on the I.S.S. got a cargo rocket for Christmas. Mostly food, fuel, oxygen -- you know, the basics.

Several bank robberies hit Tulsa recently.

November 13th a black man with a black hooded sweat shirt, white handkerchief over his lower face and a black semiautomatic pistol robbed The Credit Union Service Center, telling the teller, "All large bills on the counter,"

Witnesses say he was 30 to 40 years old, about 5 feet 9 inches tall and about 160 pounds.

December 3rd a black man with a black semiautomatic handgun and a yellow cloth over his mouth robbed the Communication Federal Credit Union, saying "Place large bills on the counter."

Witnesses say he was about 5 feet 7 inches tall and about 200 pounds.

December 22nd a black man with a hooded black sweatshirt, red bandanna pulled over the lower half of his face and a semiautomatic pistol robbed the Bank of the West, asking for "All the big money."

Witnesses say he was 23 to 28 years old, about 5 feet 8 inches tall and 160 to 180 pounds.

December 28th a black man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and implying that he had a gun robbed the Bank of America.

Witnesses say he was 35 to 45 years old, 5 feet 4 to 5 feet 5 inches tall, and weighing 140 to 150 pounds.

Police say all four robbers may be the same man -- evidently from --

• five-foot-five to five-9,
• 140 to 200 pounds,
• 23 to 45 years old.

You know, a big, fat, young, skinny, little old guy.

A story about "green burials" made me think of my father.

In a green burial, the deceased is not embalmed. He is natural and fresh. He is buried in a bio-degradable coffin. Maybe a tree is planted over him. Maybe not.

There's a whole new market for this, things like --

• coffins made of recycled newspaper.
• fair-trade bamboo.
• cotton shrouds.

And this all reminds me of my father. He died a couple years ago and attended a traditional Jewish burial.

He was unembalmed and wore a simple cotton robe and a plain wood coffin with no metal hardware to leave behind when his molecules return to the Earth.

Hey, whadaya' know, the Chosen People were Green before Green was cool.

I'm still thinking about a tree.

Police in Los Angeles arrested a man wearing a Santa hat, wig, a red lace camisole and purple G-string.

Investigators say they suspect alcohol was involved.

I'm spending Christmas in Utah.

Utah law requires in every classroom a display of the national motto, "In God we trust." (I thought it was "E Pluribus Unum," but what do I know?)

Utah lawmakers now want to add the American flag and the Declaration of Independence.

The U.S. constitution would be optional.

Quotation of the day --

Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for for the Christmas turkey before us ... a turkey which was no doubt a living, intelligent bird ... a social being ... capable of mutual affection ... muzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family ...

--- Berke Breathed.

Other quotation of the day --

Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa.

-- Matt Groening.

'Twas the night before Christmas --

Baby Jesus has a GPS tracker. Someone stole the old baby Jesus from the nativity scene in Bal Harbor, Florida. So the new Jesus wears a Lojac. Mary and Joseph are also chipped.

Here are some last minute gift ideas from USA Today.

• Christmas action figures from Wal-Mart
• David, Goliath, Sampson and Moses dolls
• Jesus air fresheners

But as you shop, beware of shopdropping. That's when artists drop phony goods on store shelves and then film shoppers who want to buy the stuff. Stuff like --

• Anti-Christ action figures with gas mask, bolt cutters and Molotov cocktails.
• Bibles in a bookstore's fantasy/science fiction section.
• Karl Marx T-shirts that say, "Peace on Earth. After we overthrow capitalism."

Here's the Christmas dinner menu from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAllester --

• Smoked ham with pineapple glaze
• Sweet potatoes
• Buttered corn
• Broccoli rice cheese casserole
• Dinner rolls
• Christmas cake or peach cobbler

Mars will rise in the east extra bright tonight because it's close to the Earth and opposite the sun.

-- And to all a good night.

An Australian tour group is offering an Around the World in Sixty Pubs tour, with stops at bars in eleven countries, including England, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Thailand and Mexico.

The cost is $10,000. Drinks are extra.

The quotation of the day --

"Mars has global warming despite the absence of S.U.V.s."

-- U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe, (R) Oklahoma.

The Green Bay City Council has approved Christmas trees and a nativity scene for city hall.

But in a blatant display of religious intolerance failed to approve an aluminium Festivus pole, as in Seinfeld's "A festival for the rest of us."

Congressman Connie Mack has married Mary Bono, who was formerly married to Sonny Bono, who was formerly married to Cher, who was later married to Gregg Allman, who was formerly married to Shelly, Julie and at least two others, and subsequently married Stacey Fountain.

This all may make more sense if you draw up a flow-chart.

Pakistani police arrested Rashid Rauf for plotting to blow up some airliners. But on the way to jail, the cops let him pray at a roadside mosque.

Rashid escaped.

Now this may sound like a terrible travesty of justice, but is it not possible that Rashid prayed for freedom?

And is it not possible that God answered his prayer?

Presidential elections continue in Kenya. The death toll is 20.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, divorced from second wife of eleven years, Cecilia Sarkozy, who was nine months pregnant when she married her first husband, and took up with Nicolas when he was still married to someone else, is now going with supermodel/singer Carla Bruni (who says, I'm monogamous from time to time but I prefer polygamy and polyandry") who used to date Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Donald Trump and had a child with the French philosopher Bernard-Henri LevyRaphael, who was married to philosopher Raphael Enthoven (whose previous wife, novelist Justine Levy, once referred to Bruni as "Beautiful and bionic, with the look of a killer."), after an affair with his father, John Paul.

This all may make more sense if you draw up a flow-chart.

Responding to widespread fears, the cattle industry has come up with a tracking system for cloned animals.

Lord knows, we've got to keep track of those rampaging Frankencows.

Never mind that cloned animals are identical to their natural-born relatives. That's why they're called clones.

We've all seen that when scientists defy the natural forces of nature, you end up with a big lizard stomping Tokyo.

Those killer pot pies are no more.

ConAgra recalled $30 million worth of Banquet pot pies after 272 pie-eaters got salmonella poisoning.

So Banquet changed the cooking instructions. Now, they say, cook them longer. Problem solved.

The old pies had a sticker on the box that read, "Ready in 4 minutes." ConAgra says the stickers were just for marketing purposes.

Evidently they were not to be taken literally.

Who knew?

And now, killer railway platforms.

Connecticut's Metro-North railroad is warning commuters that, if they step into the gap between the rail car and the platform, they could die.

Some have.

This year Christmas is brought to you by --

• Segway and Sonic Drive-Ins, sponsoring part of Oklahoma City's Downtown in December Festival, featuring Santa on a Segway.
• McDonald's and Verizon Wireless, sponsoring a massive light display in Virginia Beach, which includes a surfing Santa.
• Avera, a local health care system, sponsoring the Avera Parade of Lights in Sioux City, featuring a 60-foot Christmas tree.

A commercial Christmas is nothing new. It was an ad agency for Montgomery Ward that invented Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.

The great December ice storm knocked out most of the traffic lights here in Tulsa. But Tulsa police say the number of intersection collisions was about the same as before the storm.

Which means that Tulsans are very careful when the red lights are out -- or just clueless when the red lights are on.

A crowd of holiday revelers were exchanging Christmas greetings on the New York subway the other day when four Jews on the train wished them a "Happy Hanukkah."

The crowd beat the hell out of those Jews.

Police arrested ten.

Peace on earth, and whatever.

Quotation of the day --

"I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

Mike Huckabee, presidential candidate

Tulsa Community College engineering students have developed cars that run on diet Coke and Mentos candy. The cars are just small models, but if the concept proves itself the technology could perhaps be scaled up.

One promising aspect of this research is that, while many alternative fuels -- like hydrogen -- are hard to come by, most places that sell gasoline also sell Pepsi and Mentos.

The college of William and Mary basketball team is nicknamed "The Tribe," and their logo has two feathers.

The NCAA says the name can stay but the logo has to go because those feathers are just too offensive.

Here are some of the heartwarming holiday made-for-television movies coming to a TV near you this Christmas.

• The Note on the Hallmark Channel: Just in time for Christmas a daughter receives a note from her dead father. It's dad's last words that he wrote while his plane was crashing.
• Lost Holiday on Lifetime: A divorced man spends Christmas lost in a blizzard with his ex wife. They spend most of the movie trying not to freeze to death.
• For One More Day on ABC: A despondent man is talked out of suicide by the ghost of his late mother.
• Holiday in Handcuffs on ABC Family: A desperate woman kidnaps a man -- any man -- to take to her parents house for Christmas dinner.
• An Accidental Christmas on Lifetime: A separated couple is tricked into spending Christmas with the spouse they each can't stand.

Christmas cheer, anyone?

What would Christmas be without Christmas music on the radio? Here are some of the new Christmas albums out this year.

• Yo, It's Christmas from the Yo Yo Kids with Trick Out the Tree and North Pole Homies.
• Oh Santa! New and Used Holiday Classics from The Moaners, featuring Something Funny in Santa's Lap.
• Monster Ballads Christmas from Faster Pussycat featuring Silent Night.
• And Christmas For All! The Holiday Tribute to Metallica from the Santa Claus Naughty But Nice Orchestra featuring For Whom the Bell Tolls.
• The Flesh Eating Rollerskate from Psychostick featuring Holiday Hate, Jolly Old Sadist and Jingle Bell Metal.
• A Dan Band Christmas from The Dan Band featuring I Wanna Rock U Hard This Xmas, Please Don't Bomb Nobody This Holiday and Christmakwanzakah.
• The Secret of Christmas from the Captain and Tennille featuring I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.

Ah yes, there's nothing like the traditional sounds of Christmas, and these are nothing like the traditional sounds of Christmas.

On the sixth day of Hanukkah an enormous ice storm hit town, tearing down trees and knocking out power. A big oak totaled my wife's car and took out the phone line, electric, cable and broadband.

But back to Hanukkah.

The Book of Maccabees says, "A great miracle happened here." After the Maccabees retook Jerusalem's great temple from the Syrians, there was only enough sacred oil to burn the eternal flame for one day, but it miraculously burned for eight days. To this day, Jews celebrate Hanukkah by burning menorahs for eight days.

At my house this year, the electric menorah only stayed lit for six days. No miracle happened here.

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar el Qaddafi is coming to Paris -- and he's bringing his tent. The Bedouin tent is where he'll receive visiting VIPs. He'll pitch his tent next to the Elysee Palace, thereby turning the joint into one fancy KOA campground.

Quotation of the day --

"If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion."

-- Edmond de Goncourt