To sleep, perchance to stream. -- Hamlet, bedwetter.

So, I guess if someone ever writes an unflattering biography of a certain well-known dance musician and left-wing activist, they'd title it "Moby, Dick."

Young guys who have a little thing for married cougars? Guess you could say they believe in old wives' tails.

This year's most successful resolution: Joined a gym. Takin' it up a notch in 2013 -- gonna start going.

Those who don't feel at least some regret about the unreached goals of a waning year probably aren't setting high enough goals.

Even people who rip "Jack Reacher" as a huge ego trip for Tom Cruise must admit he really nails "I Dreamed a Dream" during the car chase scene.

New Year's business prediction for Lincoln: Self-service dog washes will be the frozen yogurt shop of 2013.

What if Chuck Pagano comes back and the Colts suck? Oh, c'mon, I am NOT the only one wondering this! Just the only one brave enough to ask. (Asking for a friend.)

What's with all the tributes to Tom Osborne? He'll be back in a few years as UNL chancellor, then a stint as NU president, maybe even get promoted back up to head coach one day.

"Jack Reacher" is pretty good, I guess, though it does lack the nuanced subtleties of the novels.

As I stuck my head in the fridge this morning, contemplating what next to shove into my fat face, I briefly considered mounting a stick of butter atop a slab of cream cheese as a dip but came to my senses when I couldn't decide whether it would be better with chocolate or gravy poured on top.

The NRA urges arming municipal snow plow crews with assault rifles to break up street ice. How 'bout it, Lincoln?

Hollywood insider trivia: To make Tom Cruise an effective Jack Reacher, who's 6' 5" in the novels, everyone else in the movie's cast is a dwarf.

I'm kinda surprised people aren't freaking out more about the Gregorian calendar which, if you believe in that sort of thing, indicates -- holy crap! -- that 2013 starts TUESDAY!

Big deal, weather service. I've been naming winter storms for years. Well, OK, technically it's usually the same name, mostly when I'm shoveling snow or sliding on the ice, sometimes muttered, sometimes yelled at the top of my lungs.

Well, it was close but it looks like Christmas won the War on Christmas again.

So far, three people at the LaPierres already have shot their eyes out.

That awkward moment when you show up early for midnight Mass as a guest at a small-town church you've never been before so you can get a seat and you end up being almost the only people in the front half of the church. Oh well, at least we filled a pew.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing. -- a favorite carol verse

Wayne LaPierre knows he and his NRA have an image problem. New heartwarming ad campaign should help: A boy in line at the gun store Christmas Eve doesn't have quite enough money to buy his dying mama an AR-15 assault rifle so she can shoot something before seeing Jesus tonight. Guy behind him in line -- hey, it's our hero, Wayne! -- kicks in enough money to properly weaponize mama, even tosses in a box of hollow-point bullets and a 30-round magazine. Christmas is shot, and saved!

Man, I would not want to hear Mike Tomlin's airing of grievances tonight.

Nice try, pal, but that ain't your heart that's grown three sizes this month. Look a little lower and maybe lay off bobbing for fudge in the eggnog for awhile.

You know, some day a Nigerian prince really IS going to need our help, the poor bastard.

The NRA this morning held a somber, moving memorial service for the Lanza guns, lost Dec. 14, 2012.

As to the argument that we've somehow disinvited God from our society by eliminating prayer in school, etc.: As a believer and a thoroughgoing sinner, sometimes I wish it WAS that easy to make God look the other way.

"Never take a protractor to a gunfight." -- NRA, focus-group testing some slogans for its new plan to put armed guards in every school.

To stand in the middle of Walmart on Dec. 22 and look around is to realize, "oh shit, the Mayans WERE right!"

Never mind more guns. Wayne LaPierre's press conference yesterday actually made a far more compelling case for expanding access to mental health care.

The Internets must be slow because of the approaching holidays -- still no viral video of an eagle snatching Wayne LaPierre from his podium.

Guns don't kill people. The news media, video games and movies kill people. -- the NRA's Wayne LaPierre today.

Man, we sure will solve a lot of societal problems if doctors ever come up with a safe, effective male enhancement treatment.

You can have my video game controller when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

I don't believe the world's going to end today, but just in case I'm wrong, I'm certainly not going to clean the cats' litter box before I go to work.

In case you're wondering, Maya Angelou's calendar today: hair appointment, 10; lunch, Old Country Buffet, noon; finish latest masterwork, a poem about the fiscal cliff ("I Know Why the Caged Speaker Sings"), 4; watch "Wheel of Fortune," 6. Whew, looks like we're gonna be OK after all.

Those who argue that assault weapons are not needed for hunting ignore the inexorable march of evolution. It is inevitable, scientists say, that our prey some day will learn to shoot back; then where will we be?

So, I’m guessing this isn't the best time to post that video of my 16-year-old daughter snatching an eagle out of the air with her bare hands?

Hey, Facebook, please create an app to hook up all my friends sending me birthday-app invitations with those haranguing me to adopt a pet.

Maybe it's time we quit mentioning by name a certain "church" in Topeka, Kansas, too.

"Yay, it's Monday!" -- Morgan Freeman

Dear sir or madam: I have been requested by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Company has concluded a large number of contracts for oil exploration. The contracts have immediately produced moneys equaling US$40,000,000. You assistance is requested in moving these funds out of Nigeria. To be a legitimate transferee of these moneys according to Nigerian law, you must presently be a depositor of at least US$100,000 in a Nigerian bank which is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Please send me your bank account details at your earliest convenience. -- Morgan Freeman

Trying to pick up the pieces

I turned on the football game tonight. It's a big game, you know -- 49ers and Patriots. But the beginning was pre-empted by a memorial service in Newtown. I reached for the remote to turn it off; honestly, I feel full of this story, cannot bear another detail. Yet I couldn't. The president was speaking, beautifully. He looks older in the last three days, more burdened. Do I, too? I feel it. Don't you?

It was a wonderful speech, of course. But then presidents usually excel in these moments. They employ wonderful writers and these are moments to which wonderful writers are born. 

But never mind the writing. It was the president's simple recitation of the children's names at the end that hit hard. First names only, and you could hear anguished gasps in the crowd to many of the names. "They've all gone home," the president said. And the tears that began at my office desk Friday and welled up here and there throughout the weekend came again, hard and fresh.

Newtown. I'd never heard of it before Friday. I wish I never had now. Newtown; it's a remarkable name for a town, I think. It feels close to Anytown, or Our Town. Such an act of unspeakable evil really can happen anywhere if it can happen in a place like this.

This feels like 9/11 all over again to me. Too melodramatic? I don't think so. No, not as many deaths and not the international scope. Still, in some ways worse. Because it's about Us, not about Them. It's easy to declare war on Them, but what do we do about the rot; the hatred; yes, the terrorism when it's Us? Legislation might -- might -- help, but it doesn't answer those questions about Us. Not even close.

Who the hell are we? Don't you wonder too?

I Googled Newtown. It has a fascinating history, like so many towns in that part of the country. In was purchased in 1705 from the Pohtatuck Indians and originally known as Quanneapague. Actor Anthony Edwards has a home there. Famous director Elia Kazan lived there. So did Burke Marshall, who led the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division during the Civil Rights Era. One of my favorite authors, James Thurber, lived there. Olympian Bruce Jenner graduated from Newtown High School. And the game of Scrabble was developed there by town resident James Brunot. 

Of course, no one will ever remember any of that now.

After the president's eulogy, I took the dog out; the bells on the Catholic Church two blocks away started ringing -- 8 o'clock -- and it felt perfectly timed. It's not quite winter here, not by the calendar or by the weather, but it still looks like Christmas. I'm a sucker for both the secular and the religious celebrations of the season. A block away from where my dog paused is one of the most spectacularly lit houses in town. I love it, and we started walking toward it. But then we detoured, toward a Nativity other neighbors have placed on their porch for the first time this year; it's my new favorite, simple and spartan, much the way I imagine the scene might have looked over 2000 years ago. The dog and I walked across the grass and paused in front of it. I prayed quietly and cried some more. 

It looks like Christmas, but I don't know. I'm struggling to give a damn. Aren't you?

But of all the details and comments I read in news coverage over this weekend, I believe I was most struck by what one of Newtown's reluctant  heroes had to say, in an Associated Press report:

"Asked whether the town would recover, Maryann Jacob, a clerk in the school library who took cover in a storage room with 18 fourth-graders during the shooting rampage, said: 'We have to. We have a lot of children left.'"

Yes, we do.

The dog and I walked back home and through the door. I looked at the TV. Niners up 7-0. It's a big game, you know. I turned it off and went upstairs.

A 6-year-old's obituary is the saddest thing in the world. So much life unlived.

From the Introvert's Survival Guide to Holiday Parties: To make people keep their distance, incessantly sing “The Little Drummer Boy,” just under your breath at first but ever louder the closer someone gets. (Not to brag, but I have cleared entire rooms with this technique.)

"A lie can travel halfway around the world on Twitter and Facebook while the truth is still putting on its shoes." -- Mark Twain

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day." -- Abraham Lincoln

Some of the people who matter most to me in this world are teachers. My wife, for about 30 years now; my oldest son and his wife and my other son's longtime girlfriend, each for less than a year. My daughter expects to be working in schools one day as a speech pathologist. And when we gather over the holidays, I'll be grilling all of them to make sure they have a plan for protecting themselves and their students in the event a gunman is roaming their school. Next time I'm in their classrooms, I'll make them show me exactly what they have in mind. That's pretty effing crazy, isn't it?

Making sense of that which makes no sense

If I thought banning guns would prevent any more children from being slaughtered in their elementary school classrooms, I would say let us repeal the Second Amendment and get to it.

If I thought arming teachers would prevent any more terrified high schoolers from having to hide under a cafeteria table believing the next bullet will end up in their head, I would say let us require military training for a teaching certificate and eliminate football programs if necessary to afford the arsenal.

If I thought reintroducing organized prayer into public schools would create an environment where never again would a teacher hear that dreadful popping sound down the hall and have to lock her door and herd her students into a closet, then I would say make everyone bow their heads and pray to some God, any God, or just fake it, every morning. 

If I find any or all of these views to be hopelessly, even dangerously, naïve and simplistic, it's not in me right now to mock any of them. As all of us try to make sense of that of which no sense can be made, it is natural to grasp for something, anything, that fits our worldview.

In any case, I suspect that whatever our individual opinions on these issues -- more guns, fewer guns, prayer in schools, no prayer in schools -- most of us would accede to the exact opposite if we knew it would mean no more parents waiting for police to show them a picture of a dead child on a classroom floor to confirm what they already know in their forever-broken hearts.

As we all practice armchair sociology and criminology at times like these, asking ourselves why this keeps happening and even as we come to different conclusions and thus different solutions, I suspect we all know in our hearts that this is far more complicated and more terrifying than our initial knee-jerk reactions imply:

There's a sickness in our culture, maybe a desensitization to violence, maybe an acceptance of moral rot and decay, maybe ... I don't know.  This sickness often is expressed with guns, but those are merely the tools, not the cause.  

These no longer can be called "isolated incidents." This is part of what America is. Not all, or even most, but definitely part of us.

How did this happen?

Maybe I'll write more about this later, but honestly, I got nothing right now.

Some days, I hate to admit, I'm kinda rootin' for the Mayans.

The problem with our society is not so much the existence of guns as it is a pervasive culture that teaches very, very small men that a gun in their hands makes them big.

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part." -- Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman), "Seven."

Well, thank God: Apparently only those who geeked out about yesterday being 12/12/12 will face doom Dec. 21.

A new, politically correct version of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" features a pipe-free Santa Claus. In related news, future editions of the Bible will clarify that when the Holy Family left Bethlehem for Egypt, the Christ child was transported in an approved infant car seat.

New federal law took effect this week barring TV ads from being significantly louder than programming. Now, how about a law automatically muting the sound every time a member of Congress comes on the air?

Beaucoup Boku (Coach Pelini’s occasional reflections in haiku form), on the occasion of his birthday today:

Forty-five. In my
defense, that's 310
or so in coach years

Elf on the Shelf getting old? Perhaps you want to start a new tradition this Christmas and add one of its guilt- and fear-stoking partners to your household's merriment:

-- Yenta on the Mantle, who glares at your adult, single children when they come home for the holidays, wondering why they can't find a nice partner and finally settle down; 

-- Reindeer in the Beer, the broken down former Santa livestock who compensates for his depression during the holidays by getting stinking drunk and making a damn fool of himself; 

-- Midge in the Fridge, the disapproving personal trainer who glowers at you when you open the refrigerator, peeking from behind a carton of eggnog, sitting astride a stick of butter, pulling herself out of a ball of cookie dough; or

-- Guido in the Mistletoe, the menacing debt collector who dangles from above tapping a baseball bat on his hand as he surveys your out-of-control Christmas spending.

The gullible stranger's money in hand, the boy realized he now had enough to score big at the mall's Cinnabon. He dropped mama's Christmas shoes on the store floor and skedaddled.

Beaucoup Boku (Coach Pelini's occasional reflections, in haiku form):

Pro: I rock orange.
Con: Tried, can't say "execute"
in Tennessee twang

The Interwebs are buzzing with rumors that Bo Pelini has contacted Tennessee about its open coaching job. Probably nothing to it, but as a precautionary measure, Gov. Heineman has scrambled Nebraska Air National Guard fighters to intercept Houston Nutt's plane if it enters state airspace.

For what it's worth, Bret Bielema already has sent a very enthusiastic letter of recommendation for Bo Pelini to Tennessee's AD.

Guatemalan cops arrest antivirus software guru John McAfee, suspected of neighbor's murder in Belize. McAfee will get a 30-day trial, of course.

I'm sorry but I have no use for the Grammy awards. My Grammy was the best and she never got one.

Speaking of Pinnacle Arena’s “Candy Box” artwork, surely another scene will memorialize the Huskers’ first Big 10 title game appearance. It’ll incorporate a white-chocolate jockstrap of a juked-out NU defender left on the field as a Badger runs by.

I gave the last of my money at the store to a boy whose mama had no Christmas shoes to go meet Jesus. But then I met a boy at the prosthetics store whose mama had no feet.

Pinnacle Arena's "Candy Box" depiction of Lincoln culture will be a travesty if it doesn't include a scene of a car going through a roundabout with its driver's middle finger extended.

Oh my God. Can't you people see what's happening here? The Mayans' plan all along was to bring the modern world to apocalypse this month through collapse of the Internet thanks to endless dumb social-media jokes about Mayans. You bastards!

Please, people, don't take the "ristma" out of Christmas.

Lately, I have been tormented by the inexplicable but unshakeable belief that every time a bell rings, someone somewhere has said "I could care less" or "irregardless."

Listening to sports talk radio hosts and their callers trying to figure out what went wrong with the Huskers Saturday night is akin to listening in on a bunch of first-year med students in a lab gathered around an especially bloody corpse trying to pin down the cause of death. In the end, the carcass is so completely torn asunder, how can you possibly tell?

Listening to sports talk radio hosts and their callers trying to figure out what went wrong with the Huskers Saturday night is akin to listening in on a bunch of first-year med students in a lab gathered around an especially bloody corpse trying to pin down the cause of death. In the end, the carcass is so completely torn asunder, how can you possibly tell?

The Big 10 announces that if the Huskers make it to the 2013 title game, it will be pay-per-view in Nebraska. No word yet how much they'll pay us to watch.

Jim Delany should rethink Big 10 alignment as it expands. How about a split into four divisions: Legends, Leaders, Lessers and Leasters?

The Pope starts tweeting Dec 12. Within a month, we're all gonna be pretty over his PBWY (Peace Be With You), STHM (Say 10 Hail Marys) and OMKPMAO (On My Knees Praying My ... well, you know.)

More bad news for the Huskers: Nebraska travel agencies and Pasadena tourist industry are suing them for malpractice, seeking millions in damages.

Guys, if you can’t grow a proper mustache but are still sporting that month-old wisp on your lip, you’re now doing Fuzzember. Give it up.

And now, for something completely different: a trip to Orlando for an ass-kicking by an SEC team.

Well, so dies that old saying: The Huskers will win a conference title when we're wearing shorts and flip-flops in December.

Beaucoup Boku (Coach Pelini's occasional reflections, in haiku form:)

How 'bout THAT, my man?
Too soon? 'nother joke then: Our
defense! Wow, tough room.

Lincoln drivers and backward angled parking downtown? Well, sure, what could go wrong?

Huskers got run over by the Badgers ...

Huskers got run over by the Badgers
trying to win a title in Indy,
You can say there's no such thing as sucking
But as for we Nebraskans, we believe.

Yes, we'd been drinking all that Kool-Aid
but as he vowed, Bo's boys won out.
And we thought this finally was it --
an end to the championship drought.

All those comebacks were impressive
sure, you could chalk some up to luck.
And, let's face it, some of us whispered,
the Big 10 kinda, sorta -- OK, really -- sucks.

Still Bo was once again a genius
even on some lists in the SEC.
Why, late at night when alone, he
secretly practiced "wooo pig soooie!"

But by the end of Saturday night,
what had happened to NU's pluck?
Bo looked so stunned, almost crying
not sure he managed one single "F---!"

Huskers got run over by the Badgers
trying to win a title in Indy
You can say there's no such thing as sucking
But as for we Nebraskans, we believe.

Sorry, Husker fans, but that is NOT the sun coming up this morning. Instead, you're seeing the final death throes of a once-proud program as it explodes spectacularly into trillions of jagged pieces. The good news is that recovery is just around the corner, astronomically speaking that is -- only millions of light-years away.

Hey, over on NBC is "It's a Wonderful Life," where, every time a bell rings, Wisconsin scores a touchdown. Poor bells.

OK, guys, Movember's over. Please shave those prostates.