Dec. 23-29: Merry Christmas!

WEDNESDAY DEC. 23

If there are two things you don’t need, and one of them costs more but is taxed less, which one seems more appealing? Not enough information? Let’s say one makes your skin look like you just got back from vacation and the other makes your face look like you’re 15 years younger and surprised. Congress today made such a decision easier when it included in the new health care reform bill a 10-percent tax on tanning sessions instead of the originally proposed 5-percent tax on elective cosmetic procedures. The decision has upset orange-hued business owners and customers across the country who say it’s unfair that rich people get to have so much political influence and such gorgeous flat faces without any additional taxes.

THURSDAY DEC. 24

Sometimes the smallest thing can make a person or group of people way more important than they should be — think about all the benefits tall women and funny men get in life. For years Ohio has enjoyed the equivalent of being a tall, funny woman with a big set of ta-tas to the Republican Party, but an analysis of new Census Bureau data suggests that Ohio will lose some of its political sexiness next year, in the form of two U.S. Representatives. The decline in political importance is directly related to Ohio’s loss of jobs and has resulted in increased representation in Western states, where liberalism and sunshine abundance of jobs and land are causing people to move.

FRIDAY DEC. 25

It’s Christmas Day — do you know where your Cincinnati Enquirer is? You probably don’t because you likely canceled it a long time ago, but if you had kept your subscription after the Internet replaced hard news with the Poll Question of the Day, you would have found quite a treat: the paper’s recurring feature on family members getting arrested for fighting each other on holidays. This year’s edition included a hilarious tale of two brothers — one with a pregnant girlfriend — who got in a drunk altercation resulting in the younger brother pulling out a gun and both going to jail. Enquirer editors have already filed paperwork requesting access to the brothers’ shared cell for a funny and ironic New Year’s photo.

SATURDAY DEC. 26

A wise teenage gangster once said while putting air in the tires on his five-star rims: “Safety first, muh.” This young man would be proud to learn today that starting Jan. 1 there are new rules for Ohio drivers, one of which is directly related to making cars more visible in bad weather. The lights-during-precipitation law requires all drivers to turn on their headlights anytime they’re using windshield wipers, largely due to the fact that the roads are less safe when there’s wet stuff falling from the sky. The law is a secondary offense, and police say they’re excited about adding $150 fines to people who are doing something stupid during a storm because they hate getting out of the car to pull people over when it’s raining.

SUNDAY DEC. 27

For most of us, last Sunday was just another day that seemed like a Monday that we spent doing nothing instead of going to work. For others, it was the first time they got on the Metro bus and were told, “Hey, asshole, throw another quarter in there. No one rides for free.” The most recent bad news for Metro riders — we assume there’s more if you can’t afford the parking rates in downtown Cincinnati — is an increase in base fare trips along with a 12 percent reduction in service. Metro’s revenues were down in 2008 largely due to unemployment, though it says it will bring back routes and service as soon as people find jobs that will push their start date back to whenever the bus runs in their neighborhood again.

MONDAY DEC. 28

Everyone has seen the part in a movie where the main character realizes that he is totally fucked, and with no ankle-gun to pull or zipline to slide away on he pauses to participate in the most desperate move of all: asking God for help. The AP reported today that protagonists across the land are turning to the Good Book for advice on how to handle something even worse: having less money than they did a year ago. Often, according to the story, people who formerly owned Hummers, hot rods and houses in gated communities are now more appreciative of the small things (Mini Coopers, motorcycles and condos) and have often decided never to take out another loan because the Old Testament’s “the borrower is servant to the lender” really freaks them out.

TUESDAY DEC. 29

If you’ve never had a job stomping dead chickens down into a giant pool of ice water, then you’ve never lived (in Harrison, Ohio). But for all the delicious dishes that the Whitewater Processing Co. has contributed to the Harrison locals, there’s a certain amount of chicken stench that has come along with it. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency today said that due to said stenches, the dumping of chicken blood and juices into local ponds will have to stop immediately. Although the locals are excited about their ponds containing less chicken guts, they're worried that all the alternatives include some form of filtered chicken blood ending up in the Whitewater River, which is one of the few things canoers won’t drink while floating down it.