... "I saw that a guy in the next town was severely injured during a lap dance," I told my seatmate on the bus. "How do you get injured during a lap dance?" he said incredulously. "He said he wanted something exotic and she did a flamenco." ... A Los Angeles man has been arrested for skinning and cooking his ex lover's rabbit. It reminded me that for generations of men "The rabbit died" was one of the scariest phrases in the English language. ... A planned "Miley Cyrus Christmas" TV broadcast was scratched after someone in the test audience of children asked why the girl elf was licking Santa's face. .... The Polish women who clean our New Jersey home have a fairly limited command of English. When one asked my wife why I was not home, she told them I was in Indiana because my mother had died. "Oh that's nice," one replied. ... A recent newspaper article in my hometown of Madison, Ind., chronicled the efforts to deal with the effects of decades of artillery testing at the former Jefferson Proving Ground. Besides being a home to many deer, the facility also has 1.5 million pieces of exploded ordinance and 162,000 pounds of depleted uranium used in 10 years of testing the material in tank shells. Now we know where Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer got his glowing nose. ... The song "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" has been belatedly followed by the sequel "Santa Gets Busted for Hit-and-run Driving."