One morning, you wake up and discover that your planet is being demolished. It's disheartening. You'd put so much work into your planet.

It's the same feeling you get when you find out that your home is not in the quiet neighborhood that you'd imagined. Instead, it's next to a parking lot of a multi-unit dwelling. Car doors slam at all hours. The ignition and revving of engines happens any time one of your 22 neighbors goes to work or class or veers home from the bars, possibly plowing through your trash cans, certainly not using inside voices as they stagger to their apartments.

Fortunately, in most cities, you'd have a voice in whether adjoining properties can be redeveloped from single-family houses to overflowing monstrosities of humanity.

But not in Urbana.

If this concerns you, take heart, for the Christmas season is upon us. After all, Christmas is about hope and faith, so what better time to validate your devotion to a theory that has been so thoroughly debunked? And Christmas is about giving too, so this may be your last opportunity for the next four years to show your faith in a bankrupt economic policy by combining it with year-end charity.

How so? Well, if you truly believe that tax cuts for the wealthy are the best we can collectively do for ourselves, the course is clear: Don’t give money to charities, which will just waste your money by distributing it to poor people in need. Instead, give your charity dollars to people who are already wealthy, who will in turn make life better for everyone else. After all, if the wealthy had even more money, they may end up hiring more people, many of whom live in this country, and some of those for wages that are higher than the minimum allowable by law.

I barely got a ticket, so many other people had the same idea. Now, you can call me gay, straight or Christina Applegate, as long as you don't call me late for Thanksgiving dinner, but the movie transfixed the packed house and nobody was leaving early to take a turkey out of the oven. The crowd applauded at the finish.

The film is about the first openly gay elected official in American politics, Harvey Milk, a city supervisor in San Francisco in the 1970s. His persistence to be elected, campaign after campaign, despite the odds, came at much personal cost. He received threats. He lost partners. But "indefatigable" was his middle name. Harvey Indefatigable Milk. Ultimately, it cost him his life.

The “No Presents” Birthday Party went great. The little guy still ended up with plenty of presents (around four or five) from family — not too many so that he couldn’t remember what he got. The Preschooler seemed fine with everything. He doesn’t watch any broadcast TV, and I think that is the reason why he doesn’t really know what to want.

We used all the glass plates in the house and between the pizza and cake we quickly washed them so we could re-use them. End result of birthday party: half a kitchen garbage can of trash. We were able to make it through the entire week with one trash bag. I was really, really proud.

What I want to know is how do they get away with it?

After all, The Salvation Army is a church. I wonder how many people (particularly non-Christians) who drop their change into those red kettles know that they are supporting a church whose mission is “to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.”

Urbana's municipal elections packet includes, of all things, a loyalty oath.

It's optional. Nevertheless, a disavowal of violent communist overthrow is the last thing I'd expect to find among materials generated by The People's Republic of Urbana. A paperback copy of The Communist Manifesto wouldn't surprise me. I mean, it's Urbana for Petrograd's sake.

My kin date back many generations within a sect of the extremely thrifty. My grandmother saved oleo stick wrappers to grease her cake pans. The story goes that two of my clan invented copper wire by spotting a penny on the ground between them.

I get off on being cheap, big time. It's in my genes.

T-minus seven days and counting until Black Friday. Since Smile Politely won't be publishing next Thursday and Friday due to Turkey Day, we're taking the opportunity today to prime you for the start of the holiday shopping season next Friday. Just think: long lines at cash registers, even longer lines at stop lights on North Prospect, out-of-stock must-have toys, grumpy employees, kids on Santa's lap, ad circulars ... the most wonderful time of the year!

As you ponder blowing all that money you've been squirreling away for hours now on a gift for your sister's husband, may we remind you, when appropriate, to shop locally-owned businesses first. Sure, you can get that copy of Settlers of Catan from the board game kiosk in the mall, but it's probably cheaper at Dragon's Table. And guess what, the line will be a heck of a lot shorter, too. Or, if you're looking for an artsy gift that's truly one of a kind, check out The Craft League's annual art fair this Saturday and Sunday at the Urbana Civic Center.

But maybe you've just got to find the best deal on that FurReal Friends pony your niece so desperately demands. So share with us what gift is forcing you to pitch a tent this Black Friday.

In the past several years, we’ve seen a growing trend in sustainability and in “living green.” Eco-cups to eco-diapers abound. The university-run Bevier Café recently adopted SpudWare, biodegradable cutlery made from potato starch and soy oil. More and more people are going vegetarian. As far as trends go, one that promotes a more sustainable lifestyle is fine by me. It’s about time that we all realize the deleterious effect we’re having on our planet. However, it’s difficult to ignore the backlash against the environmentalist movement. It’s easy to simply say that this backlash is coming from oil tycoons, car manufacturers and corporate executives in the minority; yet it’s also coming from a very large and important part of our country — the working class. Environmentalists are perceived as elite, privileged, unemployed hippies. Now, exactly how all that works out is a mystery, but this misconception had to have come from somewhere.

Throughout the course of time, mankind has debated among itself as to the existence of a god. “There is too a god!” one side is bound to say. “I mean, how could there not be? We have all this stuff.”

“You’re an idiot,” the other side will say. “Anyone who believes in an all-seeing, all-knowing god who looks down and judges us at all times is barbaric. Why don’t you put on some robes and dance around a slaughtered virgin, you troglodyte!”

I, for one, blame science for this argument. If scientists were so damn smart they would have already gone out of their way to prove conclusively whether or not god is an infinitely powerful being who examines us all from the clouds or just something made up by the corporations to sell more bibles. I think that this amazing lack of initiative on the part of science is unforgivable; until they figure out this god thing we should boycott all products that science had any part in. That’ll teach ’em.

Instead, we have electrified grids of city blocks, transparent Mies van der Rohe buildings and wide suburban thoroughfares plowing through endless strip malls. And then the people, who give it to you straight, even when they are lying.

I've enjoyed the lively discussion between my editor and his vast readership regarding appropriate subjects for local newspapers.

It recalled to me an article about porn, also from Illini Media. The article critiqued a couple of porn sites. (I couldn't find it searching the217.com. Can anyone help?) I found it a thoroughly appropriate article for a college newspaper, printed or online. College kids — and high school kids for that matter — are bursting with hormones. The males are particularly bursting, and often. (This is why Joycelyn Elders is my heroine. She understands human bodily functions in a way that churchy people refuse to do.)

Every so often, searching for my mainline, I play The Velvet Underground, a rock group whose records I have owned for forty years. The Velvet Underground never gets old to me: the first album with Nico, White Light/White Heat, Loaded, the redundant eponymous one later. Those four, mostly. The Velvet Underground are like The Beatles. I have never been a heroin addict, but I have read the works of William Burroughs, word by cut-up word, so I consider myself entitled. Plus, I saw The Velvet Underground perform live. More about that later.

These days, fervent Chief Illiniwek supporters are a bit like PUMAs, those fervent Hillary Clinton supporters who even now still hope that she has a shot at winning the election. Unlike PUMAs, however, Chief supporters can still gather their resentment into a single location, which thousands of them did this Saturday at Assembly Hall, paying $5 a pop to see “The Next Dance.”

Most attendees arrived an hour early to escape the cold and the drubbing being administered to the Illini gridders by Ohio State across the street at Memorial Stadium. However, soon enough, warmth and impatience returned. By the time Students for Chief Illiniwek president Roberto Martell walked out to greet the assembled faithful, the crowd was ready for some good ol' red meat NCAA-bashing and Native American-honoring.