Today being December 23rd and, therefore, Festivus, I felt I would take this opportunity for the traditional airing of the grievances. While I may not have as many grievances as, say, Craig Chandler, there are certainly many people who have disappointed me over the past year:

1. To Jean Lapierre and Ralph Klein – you have disappointed me immensely by retiring from politics thus denying me hours of blogging material. I’m especially aggrieved towards LaP since his by election went a lot worse than Ralphie’s.

2. Boo to Dion and co for f’ing up the aforementioned by-election, if only because it made Jack Layton ego grow three sizes that day.

3. To Lindsay, Britney and Paris – quit grabbing headlines that could be used on something more interesting, like Senate reform.

4. To my buddy Steve – quit being such a prick. The Liberals are not allied with the Talliban, Navdeep Bains’ family are not all terrorists, and it wasn’t a Liberal appointee who created the isotope mess. Not every ill in this world can be exploited for political gain by blaming it on the Liberal Party. So, no, you won’t get that elusive Toronto breakthrough by trying to pin the state of the Leafs on the Liberals via Ken Dryden.

5. Shame on Ed Stelmach for not accepting the recommendations of his task forces. And shame on Kevin Taft and the Liberals for not being able to capitalize on this more.

6. A big thumbs down to Avril Lavigne for giving the world “hey hey you you I don’t like your girlfriend”. And a bigger thumbs down to myself for downloading it to my iPod.

7. To Wajid Khan. I don’t care that you crossed the floor. I don’t care that you broke election finance laws. What I am annoyed at is that whenever you do something I have to read a full page of Liblog posts titled “Khaaaaaaan!”

8. To Gilles Duceppe – just because.

9. Shame on whoever is to blame in the Writer’s Guild strike for denying me my daily Daily Show and Colbert Report snark.

10. Pat Martin, yet again you have annoyed me just by being yourself.

11. To Brian Mulroney – did you feel it necessary to go reminding Canadians why they didn’t like you in the first place? It’s a safe bet you’re on everyone’s Festivus list as the second most annoying comeback of 2007 (after, of course, the Spice Girls).

12. To the members of the House of Commons committee that tried to pass their time by smearing Shane Doan – you suck.

13. And my largest grievance of 2007 goes to Jim Dinning for not releasing a follow up to his 2006 smash hit “sing a song for Jim”.

And for those interested, Mr. Cherniak has aired his grievances too. It may take me a few days to recover from the feats of strength so don’t expect any posts over the next few days until my year end quiz goes up later this week (mind you, seeing how this government operates, I’m fully expecting some embarrassing story to be dumped on the 25th). So, to everyone, have yourself a merry little Christmas!