Holiday gifts.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Current affairs - satire - Column

After the November we had, April might not be the cruelest month. The Bosnian peace talks were held in a multi-function room in a Dayton, Ohio, hotel. I have played that room. According to the Dayton Detente, the Christopher Accords, the Buckeye Bargain, we will be sending 20,000 troops to Bosnia to keep the peace. I bet Bob Dornan will push for a motion to allow openly gay people to serve in the military. Right up front.

The Oui/Non referendum was held in Quebec and the Canadian union was narrowly preserved by two decimal points. Jacques Parizeau, of the Parti Ouebecois, claimed the next day that they were defeated by money and the ethnic vote. Yikes! His supporters used the Yeltsin defense and said that he must have been drunk when he said it. There's a multifunction room in Guelph, Ontario, with Jacques's name on it.

And the U.S. Government shut down. Nonessential workers were sent home. To therapy. I felt rather shut down myself. After a vote in the House not to display a cardboard cutout of Newt with the label "crybaby," the concept of "nonessential" became murky and there was a rush to agreement on the budget. Congress and the White House agreed to balance the budget in seven years. It all sounded like Bullwinkle: "Watch me pull a number out of my hat."

Despite my best efforts to be positive, I started to sound like one of those Nostra Dames. Instead of saying November, I even tried saying November. I was a mess in a dress. What's a gal to do to cheer herself up?

I couldn't eat anymore. Not after my Thanksgiving. Next year I am just going to hook up an L-tryptophan drip.

So I decided to do my best civic duty. I am not talking about voting. No. I went shopping.

Well, I made a list anyway. I haven't gone yet. I don't do well in malls. I don't know if it's knowing that I will never see my car again, or the very negative ions in the fountain, or the mallzac, but it causes a kind of low-grade panic with mall sweats. Forty percent of all retail sales occur in...