December 18

On 18 December 1878, a child was born to a peasant family in Gori, Georgia, which was at the time part of the vast terrain of the Russian Empire. Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, as the baby was named on that day, would eventually distinguish himself as one of the most ghastly human beings to soil the historical record of the 20th century. By the age of 17, little Josef had established himself as a competent seminarian and an aspiring Georgian poet, offering up pleasant and subtly anti-Tsarist reflections on the landscapes of his youth. When he became a revolutionary, he ceased writing poetry forever.

Perhaps it was the near-daily beatings he absorbed at the hands of his father, an alcoholic craftsman displaced by the march of industrialization; perhaps his mother's sexual dalliances humiliated him to the core of his being; perhaps the deaths of his only three siblings established the morbid tone for his life; or perhaps, as the Vatican's chief exorcist recently claimed, he was possessed by the Devil. Whatever the explanation, "Stalin" -- as the infant would eventually come to call himself -- eventually presided over the deaths of millions of fellow Georgians as well as Russians, Latvians, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Poles, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Finns, and other ethnic and national groups suppressed on behalf of the Soviet state. The precise numbers killed, displaced, and tortured during Stalin's rule will of course never be known. It is a grotesque testimony to his inhumanity, however, that estimates of the dead range from 800,000 to nearly 60 million -- these being mere "statistics," as Stalin himself infamously noted.

Known by such absurdist, sycophantic nicknames as the "Coryphaeus of Science," the "Father of Nations," the "Brilliant Genius of Humanity," the "Gardener of Human Happiness," Joseph Stalin contorted science to fit his own ideological demands; made orphans of nations across Eastern Europe and Central Asia; wrote almost nothing that rose above the level of pedestrian Marxian theory; and cultivated near-universal despair for decades. In 1934, his verbal abuse at a dinner party drove his second wife, Nadya Allilueva, to suicide. As for Stalin himself, he expired from a massive stroke on 5 March 1953. Most of his final day was spent alone on the floor of his dacha, where he lay partly paralyzed and unable to call for assistance, or to tell anyone that he had soiled himself. If he was not in fact poisoned -- as has sometimes been alleged -- he probably should have been.

December 13

Ted Nugent -- rock guitarist, walking phallus and self-parodying right-winger -- turns 59 today. He shares his birthday with the legendary Alvin York, who led a devastating attack on a nest of German machine-gunners during the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne in 1918; on more than one occasion, Nugent has expressed hope that Sgt. York might be "cloned," in spirit if not in fact.

Ted Nugent also shares a birthday with Mary Todd Lincoln, who was gibbering mad.

Rising to fame in the 1970s with a string of somewhat well-regarded, jizz-splattered albums, "The Nuge" has spent the last two decades descending the evolutionary tree with artistic and political statements that grate against the ears with equal degrees of intensity. Only the long arc of history will allow us to judge whether Nugent's greatest crime was to participate in the objectively awful "supergroup" Damn Yankees -- or to become the Charlton Heston of his generation, promoting firearms with onanistic glee in one of the most violent nations in human history. Nugent, who obsessively congratulates himself for his environmental consciousness -- eating, as we know, only what he kills -- has nevertheless vigorously supported both wars in Iraq, declaring quite frankly that "some Arab numb-nut" should not be entitled to control "all our fuel." As perhaps the greatest chickenhawk in modern rock history, Nugent received a student deferment for enrolling in Oakland Community College; in 1977, however, he told High Times that he stopped bathing, soiled his pants deliberately, and took crystal meth in the weeks leading up to his physical. Given the opportunity to atone for his self-confessed cowardice, Nugent has traveled with the USO to Fallujah and to Afghanistan, where he was allowed to play with automatic weapons and defacate in one of Saddam Hussein's toilets. He later offered his uninformed assessment that the United States' difficulties in Iraq have resulted from an unwillingness to "Nagasaki them."

An avid admirer of George W. Bush, Nugent moved from Michigan to Crawford, Texas, several years ago. Nonetheless, he has suggested that he might return to his native state to run for governor. Should his political ambitions bear fruit, one wonders how well his views on early childhood education would fly with the voters of Michigan. A few years back, Nugent outlined his thoughts on firearms education, arguing that all American children should be given weapons training in elementary school. As he explained, the first day of the firearms course would conclude with a trip to what he called "The White Room," where the lessons of firearms safety would be rendered with all the subtlety of A Clockwork Orange

The children would be led into a properly constructed prefab shooting range chamber with all white walls, ceiling and floor, with a nice white table at the far end. On the white table would sit six all-white gallon cans of tomato juice with yellow smiley faces on them.

The kids would be seated and provided ear and eye protection. The instructor would then put on his ears and eyes, look squarely and sternly into the faces of the children, slam back the bolt of his AR-15 with the muzzle pointing back at the juice cans. He would then speak in a loud, clear voice, saying, "Pay very close attention, please." At which point he would level the .223 and in a smooth, rapid succession, commence to annihilate three cans in a shower of exploding red juice, splashing violently all over the pretty white walls, table, ceiling and floor, himself, and even some of those in attendance. Slinging the long arm onto his shoulder, our shooter would then unholster his sidearm and do the same to the remaining three cans with the same dynamic results. Holstering his handgun, he then would turn to face the roomful of stunned kids, fold his arms across his chest, and allow blatant facts to permeate and stain the psyche and souls of everyone there.