Lies!

I hereby officially declare that CNN stands for "Can'o'Nuts News."

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AP) -- Heading home for the holidays, I'm already smiling as the plane approaches the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The surrounding farm country is blinding in its unbroken whiteness through the flat horizon.

Unbroken whiteness and flat horizons? It's Siberia, and you know it.

Such are the memories of Christmases past for those of us who call the area home. One of my favorite wintertime moments was when two ice-fishers gave me barely liquid beer as the reward for having drilled my first hole through at least a foot of ice into black lake water. I drank the beer standing on Lake Harriet 50 yards from a popular beach, the downtown skyline reflecting the setting sun a few miles to the north.

Ecce drunko!
That's a play on the Latin phrase "Ecce homo!" for all you native Minnesotans.

Think Minnesotans exaggerate their Nordic prowess? The parade, in its 15th season, is only canceled for blizzards or at least minus 20 wind chill, that deadly combination of actual temperature and the speed of winds blowing in from the Canadian and Dakota plains. And of course, weather varies from year to year; the mean temperature on Christmas Day for the past five years has ranged from 34 to minus 4.

I can tell you firsthand that everyone here hates the snow and cold. Hates it so much they end up shooting each other out of frustration (higher murder rate than NYC!) and buying up Sudafed to cook up Meth.

You know what I had to do today at my job? I listened to two of my coworkers use racial epithets and laugh. No joke. People here are racist, ignorant, and deranged.