Six days into 2008 and already I've got the glums.
Not because the Hoos and the Hokies blew their bowl games. And not because the family-owned newspaper I've worked for since 1984 is on the auction block. (No point in getting exercised about cold corporate decisions. That's capitalism. If you like when you score a merit raise, you can't complain when you're put up for sale.)

Christmas trees. Beloved symbols of the Yuletide season? Or decorated death traps? Depends on whether or not you pay attention to the news. Looks like the folks who took the fun out of Halloween and the flavor out of Thanksgiving are now taking aim at Christmas. Yep, the safety-goggle and pocket-protector crowd is coming. Quick. Hide your Tannenbaum.

Any minute now the sounds of sanctimony will ring out over the commonwealth. Non smokers will rejoice at the latest glad tidings from Richmond. Looks like Virginia's battered budget - headed for a $2.9 billion biennial shortfall - will be rescued, in part, by smokers.

It's worse than we thought. The global economy, that is. To see just how rotten it's gotten, one need look no farther than Buckingham Palace. Rumor has it that the queen of England, who reportedly scrapes by on roughly $60 million a year (think about it, you couldn't build two miles of light rail in Norfolk for that) has begun wearing her clothes more than once. In public.

Norfolk's increasingly expensive Train to Nowhere - 24 percent over budget one day, some costs tripling the next - ought to scare the rails out of Virginia Beach taxpayers. Especially since the Beach elected a new mayor last month who supports light rail and claims most people in the city do, too.

If the economy were healthier and if I weren't such a thrifty person, I'd defiantly toss my Christmas lights in the trash in January - every last strand - and buy fresh ones next December. Instead, I'll do what I do every year: drive back and forth to Kmart in an endless loop of lunacy, replacing cheap Chinese-made Christmas lights that die, one strand at a time.

Hang on to what's left in your wafer-thin wallets, folks, because culture vultures are coming for it. Last week, the Virginia Beach City Council handed the Virginia Musical Theatre a $200,000 no interest loan. In her final performance as Lady Bountiful, Mayor Meyera Oberndorf expressed passionate support for this group that brings Broadway-like productions to the Beach.

This is rich. As most American cities hunker down and prepare for an economic apocalypse (Chicago may cut corners on snow removal) Virginia Beach officials stubbornly continue to spend, spend, spend. As if to prove that the Beach is awash in cash, the City Council on Tuesday approved an extravagant no-interest loan - courtesy of the taxpayers, of course - to a financially ailing arts group.

I'd almost forgotten just how, ah, exciting Virginia Beach city government could be. What, with half a dozen years of benign-yet-bumbling municipal rule, many of us had developed amnesia about how the city used to operate, when some in the resort city treated politics as a gladiatorial sport. Remember the Sportsplex? The 31st Street hotel? TPC golf course? Shameless canoodling with developers?

Happy Thanksgiving. The turkey smells delicious. Hurry up and eat so we can get to the mall. OK, I exaggerate. Just a little. As if the traditional Black Friday give-thanks-buy-more mantra wasn't enough, retailers are now trying to lure us into their stores before we've even had time to digest our dinner.