“Yeah, we finally figured out what was missing with the earlier 569,808 best of Beatles releases,” said long-time Beatles producer and confidante George Martin, from his villa in sunny Las Vegas, Sunday. “Those fucking Harrison and Lennon songs,” he went on.

“We cut ‘Come Together’, ‘I am The Walrus’, ‘Taxman’, ‘Something’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Yer Blues’, ‘Dear Prudence’, ‘In my Life’, ‘While my Guitar Gently Weeps’ and a whole slew of other losers,” confirmed Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick only seconds later, via the fabulous Internet social networking tool, Twitter.

Folks are like cramming The Beatles’ box set down their own throats they’re so overjoyed with the results of the overly-anticipated mucking about with past perfection.

“I would say, and this definition is usually reserved for Christmas, as ah, a way of sort of defining Christmas, that this box set is the very definition of ‘overjoy’, meaning ‘to experience too much joy’, which of course is the aim of our capitalist society as endorsed by President Obama,” said Ray Goolens, a shopper at Best Buy.

Gotcha.

Anything else?

“Yes, the mono versions of the twenty billion Beatles tracks have been remixed so that you’ll only hear Paul and Ringo in the mix,” explained Mr Martin, who as I told you before is that guy who produced The Beatles and now keeps producing them long long after they’re dead.

Any plans for the Lennon and Harrison tracks? Can’t the be recycled, for a better world for you and me?

“Well, I may find room for some of them on my new Tupac release, but…we’ll see,” he teased.

Or did he?

Still it won’t make a difference.

President Obama promised to stave off winter this year but he failed.

After the winter is over holy cow do you look like shit. It’s those six months of fun aged you 17 years.

Your skin falls off and the blood freezes in your veins.

Mother Nature laughs and laughs. She’s like a character in a Black Sabbath song. Or a Jonas Brothers song, if that’s what floats your boat.

Some people like to break up their spiritually-crushing winter experience with Christmas, and the food sure is delicious.

Still, is Christmas all that good?

In Indiana we don’t even get snow, so we can’t engage in the so-called winter sports. And sleeping is forbidden. A lot of schools and institutes enforce strict study during the winter. If you try and slack off people really look down on you and you can wind up celibate.

During winter.

But me I love winter. I love soup too. When was the last time you had a good soup of your own cultural leaning? Christ I think I had one about 16 years ago. Maybe I’ll make one now.

Or will I?

By Yana, (Special to The Brutal Times) SANTA MONICA – I don’t know about you, but in my social circle all the huffing and puffing around Oprah Winfrey’s boobs has consumed most of my winter holiday. People just could not – I mean could not leave Oprah’s boobs alone.

Case in point – my Uncle Ralph. As I’m basting the turkey, which as you know requires focus and concentration, Ralphie walks into to the pantry with a beer in his hand and a copy of People magazine waving a picture of Oprah at me. “Yana, you gotta check out this woman’s boobies,” he’s tellin’ me. “I am just mad for such kind of boobies,” he’s sayin’.

And naturally all my female friends and any shows on the tv are going on about it too. I guess everybody thinks this woman’s gazongas are a big deal. Never mind that I have turkeys to baste, a family to feed, and, yes, a graduate thesis on artificial intelligence to write!

But… but then, later when the homestead had cleared out and I was alone in my tanning unit, just touching things up a little before bed, I suddenly had an image – the Navaho Indians call this “an image” of Oprah’s boobs. Only they were my boobs, and they were telling me things – good places to shop, interesting recipes to try out, how to conjure up bad breath spontaneously to get rid of ugly guys, etc.

And this made me stop and think and reconsider Oprah’s boobs.

Perhaps I had been wrong. I took some philosophy classes in college. I remembered what my professor Gerhardt Oots-Schoeder had said before they lead him away into that ambulance. he said “Don’t judge a book by its’ cover,” (although actually because of his mustache it sounded more like “I’ve always wanted to schtoop your mother,” which made the ambulance driver make a mean face).

So, I started to think maybe I should get boobies like Oprah’s before I judge them. And then I’ll know. I’ll know how she feels and how I feel about her feelings and mine. I only hope I can get my boobs up to Oprah-size by the end of ’09. I mean, I do have other things to do.

Oh! That reminds me – I’ve still to write my A.I. thesis! I’ve just finished one vacation and already I feel like I need another.

Smartly-dressed former NASA astronaut Wile Cabot III was accused yesterday by a ton of people, of being the mastermind behind yet another case of the dreaded Fonzi scheme. Since last week or so as you know at least two dudes from NYC got totally caught for taking dudes’ money and saying they were gonna get “introduced” to Fonzi.

Mr Cabot has plead insanity.

Fonzi, or Athur Fonzarelli is the fictitious character artfully played by Tom Hanks in the 50′s tv show “Leave it to Beaver”.

Even he voted for Obama, despite the fact that he is a well-registered Republican which means he can’t do that.

But they counted his vote anyway.

Still, how does this whole mess affect the rest of us?

“It’s going to come trickling down and then we’ll be covered in a soylent goo,” said US Representative Maureen Jameson, 46.

Her statement seemed vague and I forgot to ask which party she was from but I’m guessing Dem. Plus, she was staring me right in the face when she was talking, which I find uncomfortable, so I didn’t really do any follow-up like reporters are supposed to do.

Anyway, these Fonzi schemes are on the increase and lots of folk are getting roped in. What’s the attraction? Is Fonzi- irresistible?

“No, there are ways to resist Fonzi,” says Dr Ray Goolens, who is writing a coffee table book on the subject of Fonzi schemes. “But there are side effects – ultimately, as you know, if you refuse to choose to be a Fonzi, you become a Potsie.”

Potsie if you don’t know, was a character on Fonzi’s show who people thought was a buffoon, or doofus. To many, the choice between adopting a potentially financially ruinous personality like Fonzi or accepting the totally uncool Potsie into their hearts at Christmas might just be too damn much.

“Yeah, I know – it’s not what you wanna hear, right?” offered Goolens. “But them’s the facts, Mac.”

By Styles Cradgerock, DETROIT – Just in time for Christmas, GM has unveiled its most fabulous machine yet – the sex-drive car! The sleek family auto known as the GM Phero, is 100% powered on the pheronome, which in case you don’t know is a musky smelling invisible gas that when sniffed by people drives them wild with desire, often leading to humping.

GM lineworker Glen Habbot says the Phero is already turning heads within its Detroit assembly plant, even before it heads out onto the silky white snow-covered streets tomorrow for its official Christmas Day debut.

“Yeah, I said what you said I said,” said Habbot.

Also, the Phero can be hosed down after a rough ride inside without cause for worry about completely destroying the thing like other cars.

“You can get it on – all day n’ night long in the GM Phero,” reads GM’s official tag line for the hot rod roadster. But GM spokesperson Camille Galot insisted entire families could still ride together without risk of incest or touchy-feely stuff going on.

“We have a gel-like barrier option which shoots out of the steering wheel just in time to prevent that type of undesired horseplay,” she offered.

Because everybody’s gonna lose their jobbie, so many people are relieved GM came up with the Phero just in time and maybe could save the company and the world like rock stars just in time for Christmas etc just like in a movie.

No one I interviewed said this, but it is possible they could have thought it. Facts prove that the majority of people are generally alike. And since I’m one of the majority I take it upon myself as a right to speak for those who can’t.

The GM Phero bursts onto the scene Christmas Day.

By Ohashi Jozu, with Business Jesus, TOKYO – The world’s second largest economy may well be entering an exciting recession, as mentioned by CNN and other news junkies, but perhaps due to the simultaneous rise in the value of the yen the message on the floor of the Nikkei stock exchange is still buy buy buy!

One of the latest gadgets Japanese investors are going gaga over is, you guessed it- US holidays.

The holidays, which have always been popular back home in the USA, are just now beginning to catch on in a busy workaday Nippon. And now that the United States is essentially bankrupt Japanese firms are helping out by swooping in to snap up sluggish holidays like Christmas and Halloween.

“All Japanese love American Christmas,” said stockholder Taro Otawara, 58. He bought 700 yen worth of stock in the holiday (about $470 US dollars at time of writing). “My kids gonna get so pleased,” he added before putting a large arm around me.

Following the sale of Christmas early Monday, Halloween attracted investors from Tokyo, Osaka, and rural Moka Town, about 600 clicks north of civilization. Investors in this tiny wooded enclave huddled for warmth, occasionally petting each other’s curly nether regions as they watched flickering black and white television sets recount the result of the town’s successful purchase of the once US-owned holiday.

“We don’t have Halloween in Japan,” explained Jiro Asahara, 54, of Moka Town. “But now we got it so we can’t have it in Japan,” he went on.

“Mr Asahara may have been trying to ‘save face’ you see, with that somewhat closed remark,” suggested Japanologist Ray Goolens, who has lived in Japan for two years and has a Japanese girlfriend. “The Japanese…as a people, have forms of communicating which few Westerns who haven’t slept with one copiously can come to terms with much less understand,” he went on.

But how are folks on Main Street USA reacting? Don’t they care their whole society is falling apart and soon to be infested with Mad Max-style roving looting motorcycle gangs as things completely implode and it’s mano on mano?

“I think, yes some Americans do care,” said Corey Klerb, 25, a barrista at Seattle’s Best Coffee. “But others are going on vacation and hoping it’ll all blow over while they’re gone,” he qualified, and gestured.

How long can such a thing go on? Will every US holiday get sold on the chopping block? Will US citizens who celebrate Christmas and Halloween be shot or forced to pay royalties to new owners BB FunCorp (Christmas) or Moka Town (Halloween)?

Many a sleepless night awaits those of us who dare to ask such probing questions.

Santa, known for his wit and gift-giving, shook hands with the Brutal Times’ Writers’ Overseer Group chairman El Toro in the foyer of the NYC eatery Pasta La Vista, owned by fellow staff member Grande Chef Otto.

“Santa brings a lot to the table,” said Toro, clutching a large steak knife. “We as an organization recognize his talents, and we know he’s gonna like his new home here on the Internet.”

Santa himself rarely appears in public and is thought by some to have lost the ability to speak after having his tongue removed several times due to cases of frostbite. Yet reporters and marketing executives in attendance were pleasantly surprised when Santa, dressed casually in chinos, flipflops and polo shirt, took the tiny podium following Toro to say a few words:

“I want the young people to listen to me. I want them to take off their condoms and chastity belts. I want the foreigners to stop griping. I want to see missile silos cleaned properly. I did not have sex with that woman.”

Santa will appear online shortly after receiving an intensive kompyooter machine brush-up tutorial in which he will be schooled in the ancient languages of Eggcell, PowerPoint, and Cobalt. After that, he will proceed to his cube at the Brutal Times in balmy Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Toro says that we can expect articles to appear from Santa “shortly, soon, or in the worst case, never.”

Everyone on my block is holding their breath.

Starr, 78, was in snow-covered Toronto to promote his new film “Caveman 2″, a just-completed sequel to his 1986 smash “Caveman” – a film made entirely in Aramaic, a full twenty years before Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”.

Fans of “Caveman” have begged Starr for years to make a sequel in order to tie up unresolved subplots featured in the highly-acclaimed first film. One character, sick of living in a cave, decides to move into a treehouse. The much-talked-about treehouse is never shown in the film.

Yet Starr was reluctant to make a second movie he said, “as the other Beatles were so jealous of the first one, and I didn’t want to repeat that.”

Despite this concern for former band mate feelings, it was apparent to many shoppers in attendance in the cavernous Toronto Eaton Center that the burly ex-Beatle had more on his mind than just promoting his latest prehistoric thriller when he took a break from playing Celebrity Santa to address fans both young and old gathered under a massive fifty-foot Christmas tree.

“I knew something was coming; it seems everyone who comes and does Celebrity Santa in Toronto can’t resist turning it into a circus,” said Wendy Jong, an investment banker, who came to the event with her twin daughters Katlin and Flynn. “Somebody ought to write a Master’s on it – ‘The Mythical Connections Between Santa Suits, and Confession,’” she suggested, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

“I wrote John’s songs,” Starr told a stunned audience, including Jacob Rablog, 4, who was sitting on Starr’s knee at the time. “I wrote ‘Strawberry Fields,’ ‘Come Together’. I wrote ‘Drive My Car.’”

Musicologists have known for years that Ringo barely graced the drum throne other than when the band was forced to perform live by their management company BBFun Corp. But the revelation that The Beatles’ most popular member barely wrote at all over the course of their ten-year career set Internet machine tongues a-wagging.

“Ringo, we hardly knew ye,” wrote 26 year-old Travis Hearn, from Glasgow, Scotland on his Vodafone mobular telephone after hearing the news. He sent this message promptly to his mate Hugh Lansing’s MySpace page.

Rinko Watanabe, a 17 year-old high school student in Japan, altered the wallpaper of her Internet social networking homepage to include a motif of pink floating hearts and Ringo Starr heads. “‘Ringo’ is ‘apple’ in Japanese,” she said.

Starr did admit that although he penned “about 99.9%” of what has been attributed to having been written by John Lennon, John did write ‘Act Naturally.’

“I wish I’d written that one,” Starr said.