It's been a tough week for a CPA/blogger. A multitude of things has made it difficult for me to serve you, TheLostOgle.com reader. For one, year end is fast approaching which has created much work for me, meaning no downtime during the day to rattle off thousand word tomes about Tom Coburn investigating spending bills in search secret slush funds for recruiting lesbians in Southwest Oklahoma or a journal about me fighting holiday traffic. Second, it seems I have had a busy social life for the past couple of weeks. If I'm not out taking my kid to scream at Northpark Mall's Santa Claus, I am actually being invited to Christmas parties...which is strange considering my behavior at parties is basically limited to standing against the wall and engaging anyone who comes across me in a debate about whether accrual or cash basis accounting is superior. (If you have to ask, the answer is accrual, you cretin.)
The last reason is that I have been contracted out by the Santa Claus to fill the stockings of Oklahoma's finest citizens. Rather than waiting until Christmas morning to find out what is in store, I figured I would cut the suspense and let you know after the jump.
Tony Hanadarko
Tony gets a gold star in his stocking for taking the hit and writing about The Oklahoman's global warming article when Patrick and myself were too busy. He did it even though he doesn't like to write on politics because part of him dies every time Lost Ogle readers get sidetracked from making clever commentary and snipe at one another, or more accurately, us.
(edit: Apparently Tony didn't write this article, which was the original plan. I remember that because Patrick and I both thought of the same, "Help us Tony Hanadarko, you're our only hope" joke. Of course, the fact that Patrick wrote the article doesn't change that Tony suffered emotional stress when our comment section started to read like a message board. He should still get an ice cream cone or something.)
Sean Sutton
Definitely a lump of coal. Remember when OSU was a "basketball school?" Ah, those were the days.
Mike Gundy
Gundy gets a gold star for confronting a horrible writer that called his starting quarterback a chicken eating mama's boy while simultaneously becoming a media punchline and inadvertently driving thousands of online rubberneckers to TheLostOgle. Of course, he probably deserves some coal for basically confirming the writer's points with said diatribe.
Jim Inhofe
A lump of coal to assist him in his effort to speed up global warming.
Aubrey McClendon
I could try to give Aubrey a lump of coal, but odds are I would end up stuck in litigation. Besides, Aubrey was a good boy this year. His candid interview with the Journal Record ended with him getting a $250K fine (a size of fine typically reserved for Mark Cuban) from the NBA for honestly stating that he and his partners did not purchase the Seattle Supersonics so they could keep them in Seattle. He also mentioned that he would consider an Oklahoma City Sonics team a great investment if they just managed break even at the bottom line. That's not the kind of anti-greed I expect to hear out of local billionaires.
If I could, I would pay Aubrey the $250 G's he lost for the interview, but Santa Clark works on a tight budget. So instead, I will just promise to use my bully pulpit to lobby on behalf of renewing a one cent sales tax that would go toward fixing up the Ford Center.
Luke Corbett
Anything more than a lump of coal is too much for this guy. I mean, this is a man who shirked his responsibility as CEO of Kerr-McGee Corporation for nearly a year (all the while cashing his multi-millions of dollars in salary which was dwarfed by the ginormous bonus checks he issued to himself) so that he could get Capitol Hill's sexiest legislator elected. Then, deciding it is time to retire, rather than naming a successor, he chose to sell a company that had spent 75 years in Oklahoma so that he could immediately cash in his stock options rather than having to sell them off in huge chunks at a time. Did his Scrooginess end there? Oh no, his last act as CEO was to ensure that the officers of the company got their payouts immediately (griping when the money was not in their bank accounts as soon as the closing gavel of the final stockholder's meeting hit) while letting the regular rank-and-file employees wait the three weeks established in the sale agreement. That's the kind of greed I expect out of rich people.
Nope, rather than coal, I think Santa Clark will visit his stocking when nature calls.
Justice League Haters
For this week, they get a (figurative) candy cane as I won't have an opportunity to get the next installment up before Christmas. Next week, however, it will be back, so they can suck it.
My apologies to Stevo, the JLO's #1 fan.
Clark Matthews
I am definitely getting a lump of coal. Last night, I found myself listening to that sappy "Christmas Shoes" song and simultaneously coaching my son, "Take notes, (ClarkPupp) this is how we're going to get your mom free Christmas gifts after you learn how to talk."
Which reminds me, has there ever been a better poon hunting song? Whoever the singer is, he invokes the image of an impoverished soon to be half-orphaned child, a terminally ill mother, Christmas, and comes off as a good Christian. Then, to top it off, he casts himself in the role of hero by bailing the kid out at the cash register, but plays it off like he was humbly learning a lesson about the nature of the holiday season. This guy and the writer of The Notebook need to pair up as the ultimate Sense-y Wingman Tandem.
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Feel free to fill the stocking of whomever you like in the comments section.
