Well, hell, it's Christmas time and I've got to write a staff column. Might as well go with the "Here's some funny and sarcastic gifts I would give various celebrities and institutions" conceit.

For a state that's more than a thousand miles away from the Mexican border, North Carolina does its share of fretting about the issue of immigration. And when we address immigration in the Old North State, we're not talking about expatriate Swedes or snowbird Canadians. The issue as most people see it centers on Mexicans and other Latinos, who are part of the state's fastest-growing demographic.

Randy Parton said it best the night he was told to leave his namesake theater. Speaking to a couple of reporters upon exit, Parton - brother o' Dolly - noted that he'd fulfilled his obligations to the city of Roanoke Rapids and then neatly summed up in a pissed off country singer kind of way the state of what was once touted as Branson East.

It's funny how six months can change things. The first time I wrote a staff column I was a nervous wreck. I labored intensely over choosing the precise wording, switching phrases around incessantly to find the right rhythm. This week I've been in Texas trying to do the preliminary legwork for a cover story and deal with my father who's recently made the decision to let himself die. Writing this is a welcome catharsis. I hope you'll forgive my self-indulgence.

Affix blame if you would firmly with the campaign class - the pollsters, consultants and money folks - and shame to the candidates who listen to them over the reaction of our gubernatorial candidates to a ruling that allows undocumented immigrants the opportunity to a community college education in the state of North Carolina.

On Friday afternoon a man entered the Rochester, NH campaign offices of Sen. Hillary Clinton. He had what he claimed was a bomb taped to his chest, and he demanded to speak to the senator and presidential candidate, holding the office's occupants hostage while Clinton, who was in Washington, DC at the time, was summoned.

It seems as if this presidential race has been going on for years.The Democrats have had their collective eye on the big chair since George Bush was reelected in 2004; John Edwards threw his hat in the ring back in December 2006; Hillary declared her candidacy last January; Obama jumped on board a month later.

Nostalgia - as it relates to music venues in Greensboro - is nothing if not a wasted sentiment.Believe me, I speak from experience. I've lived and played music in this town for the better part of six years, and during that time, the indie rock crowd has changed homes more often than a hermit crab.

George W. Bush may have carried the Southeast by a wide margin in 2004, but the only category he's outdoing others in these days is in the percentage of Southeasterners who say his job performance sucks.

It's easy in Greensboro to get sucked into the shouting match stoked by a drumbeat of articles in The Rhinoceros Times about the supposedly nefarious control exercised by the black Simkins PAC over city government and how, notwithstanding the indictments of two police officers, the city's cowed leadership purportedly purged an honorable police chief because of his efforts to root out corruption.

In the Nov. 7, 2007 YES! Weekly, in the column "What's so funny 'bout fear and hate?" Daniel Bayer comments on the "climate of fear and paranoia" surrounding the direction in which the Iranian government is moving.

It happened last week in Greensboro. During the NC Baptist State Convention more than 2,000 delegates voted - in an overwhelming show of hands - to oust Charlotte's Myers Park Baptist Church from its ranks over the issue of homosexuality.

A lot of us are still in denial about the writer's strike. The only shows to go into repeats so far are the daily talk shows: Leno, Letterman, Conan, Jon Stewart, etc. Half of us go to bed around then anyway. We haven't quite begun to feel the effects.

Barring any calamities, pressing federal mandates, acts of God or other compelling reason to reassemble, the legislature is not due back in Raleigh en masse until noon on Tuesday, May 13.

Here's something to fume about.Nov. 15 is the Great American Smoke-Out, a holiday invented by the American Cancer Society designed to entice Americans to quit the nasty, nasty habit that is cigarette smoking.

I'm sick and tired of living in fear.President Bush is at it again, threatening dire consequences for the United States if Congress fails to pass legislation loosening post-Watergate restrictions on government eavesdropping or confirm Michael Mukasey as attorney general.

Primarily due to the convergence in patterns of smoking in men and women, the incidence of lung cancer in men and women born after 1960 has converged.

Now that traditional low voter turnout has determined the make up of most of the boards and bodies that comprise the government closest to the people, let's take a look at what's up with that distant entity on a hill to which we dispatch 15 stout-hearted North Carolinians as our representatives in the national cacophony.