Times are cruel, the Head Morons are running more amok than ever, and the Kosters’ diversified retirement portfolio just sank deeper into the earth than all the catacombs in Rome.

In that spirit, I’ve even taken a part time job as a sales clerk at the New York City location of the Kardashian sisters’ D-A-S-H franchise, just to make some extra holiday cash.

(To answer your question: yes, Kim’s a sweetheart but a bit absent-minded. An example: Kim has a monkey-faced dog, a Brussels Griffon named Paulo, who goes everywhere with her tucked in a fishing creel. She feeds Paul toothpaste several times a day to keep his breath “minty” since his diet consists exclusively of sushi-grade headcheese and carmelized pork belly nuggets glistening with gochujang. Okay. One day last week, Kim woke up and found her kitchen infested with waterbugs. On her way into the shop for a hard day in the store room unpacking stock, Kim bought a tube of roach paste so that, when she got home, she could apply it lavishly throughout the kitchen. Well, sir, darned if she didn’t forget the roach paste was in her purse! Throughout the day, she’d reach into her bag, squeeze a bit of paste out of the tube onto her finger — thinking of course that it was Paulo’s Ultra Brite — and feed the poor dog the roach poison! One of the sinister properties of the paste is that it literally boils the blood after it’s been ingested — and Kim finally figured out her faux pas after little Paulo went into seizures when his brain heated up and was literally poached inside his skull! Horrible bad luck! After the sadness passed and Paulo was cremated and his ashes distributed evenly between a white sand beach in Monte Carlo and the Buffalo Bills’ locker room, it’s fair to say Kim could finally laugh a little about it. Chin up, lady!)

(To answer your other question: Kourtney and Khloé, also known as the Shemp and Larry of the Kardashians, openly loathe each other. Apparently, it’s a life-long animosity based on Khloé getting to have an accent mark in her name but Kourtney doesn’t. They try to keep it civil on the sales floor at D-A-S-H, just so their mutual hatred doesn’t deter customers from spending a lot of money on their actually-very-excellent-and-clever designs, but, in the employees lounge, you can frequently find them poking at each other with sharpened sticks.)

Where am I going with this, you ask?

It occurs to me, at D-A-S-H, that perhaps the Kardashians have spread themselves too thin. Just because you’re immensely talented at one thing, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’d be good at several other things. No one can deny that the three sisters are superb at the art of, ah … being rich, I guess you’d call it.

And that’s a wonderful talent to have! But they also want to act and model and paint and write novels and expand the frontiers of fluid mechanics! And what I’m gently trying to tell them — without them firing me from the store, of course — is maybe it’s enough, for them, anyway, to just to walk the planet and “be rich” so the rest of us can enjoy it.

Here’s a similar case: the great film director David Lynch?

He’s just released his first album of music! It’s called Crazy Clown Time and, boy, does it suck.

Seriously.

To be honest: in my job, I’ve listened to a lot of really terrible stuff. This is up there. Worse: there’s no need for it. Same smashed-trash-can-lid beat over and over again. Odd and stupid electronics. Horribly treated vocals that make Lynch sound as though Paulo came back from the grave and is feeding Lynch  the roast paste. Worst of all: a vague, faux blues underpinning, because what could be more hip than a white guy art-filmmaker “discovering” the blues and adding his twist to the form? — As though the only thing that could possibly elevate the sublimity of Howlin’ Wolf or Blind Lemon Jefferson was for the universe to idle in neutral till Lynch came along and contributes Crazy Clown Time. Here: listen to "Football Game" if you don't believe me.

There is one tune where Yeah Yeah Yeahs vocalist Karen O sings — meaning Lynch doesn't, and that's very important — and it's mildly intriguing, but even then I’ve got a headache.

In conclusion, let me just say that, at this time of year, I give thanks that, never again, will I have to listen to Crazy Clown Time. At least not voluntarily.