This week: Bad, sad, glad and mad tidings

I often have asked my mother why she couldn't hang on until what clearly was meant to be my proper birthdate -- Dec. 25 -- and she sometimes misses me with her rolled-up newspaper.

Are you expecting good cheer from the birthday boy?

I have some, but let's get the frog warts out of the broth first.

•  •  Bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson needs court permission to travel outside Illinois and, basically, to travel anywhere but to ''work'' or back home.

Work, by the way, consists mainly of messing guys up on a football field.

Am I the only person who thinks Johnson -- who, according to his defense attorney, ''wants now more than anything to be the best possible representative of the Chicago Bears and the city of Chicago'' -- is a joke?

Now he gets it? After three arrests in the last 18 months and more warnings than a nuclear-waste dump?

The unlicensed assault rifle, the .50-caliber Desert Eagle handgun and the 300 to 350 rounds of ammo in his house were interesting, especially for a fellow on probation.

But the coup de grace, in this scribe's cynical mind, was the loaded .45 lying under a chair in the basement. You know, where the kids play.

Yet the Halas Hall movers and shakers have made Mother Teresa look like a witch in the forgiveness department. (At least when it comes to a player they desperately need and a draft pick they don't want to waste.)

So I wonder if bighearted Lovie Smith and Jerry Angelo ever read former NBA star Jayson Williams' book, Loose Balls.

In it, Williams talks about shooting guns at his house in New Jersey, especially his beloved .50-caliber Desert Eagle, which he describes as ''the most powerful handgun in the world.''

The reckless Williams fired the weapon so close to visiting New York Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet's head that it knocked Chrebet out cold -- ''with gunpowder all over his face.''

Nothing was done about the incident, of course -- forgiveness all around, second chances, tough it out, laugh and move on.

But two years later, Williams started messing with a shotgun in his mansion and blew a hole through the chest of his limo driver, Gus Christofi.

Thus, a tip to the Halas Hall do-gooders: The next one ain't on Tank; it's on you.

•  •  I love to hear the heehaws who say the climate hasn't changed. Or if it has, it's just a normal trend. Or if it isn't a normal trend, you can't blame President Bush or his clown scientists for any of it. Bush hasn't signed the Kyoto treaty for climate control, even though most of the countries in the world have signed it.

Doesn't it get even the deepest sports geek's attention when Alpine skiing says it is in trouble because glaciers are melting everywhere and snow is diminishing?

How about the fact that bears in Russia aren't hibernating, flowers were blooming there recently and the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro are now the slurpies?

The greenhouse gases that are raising the temperature of the earth can have complicated effects that affect outdoor sports.

For instance, because the climate is getting warmer, scientists expect more forest fires, which lead to erosion, which leads to changes in the plankton growth in freshwater lakes, which leads, ultimately, to poisonous mercury buildups in fish.

Does it mean anything to the administration when the National Academy of Sciences reports, ''The recent warmth is unprecedented for at least 400 years and potentially the last several millennia''?

Nah, probably not.

•  •  Two other items -- the first of which makes even this hard-bitten chef a little misty.

Former NFL cornerback Everson Walls is giving his old friend and Dallas Cowboys teammate Ron Springs one of his kidneys. Springs has diabetes and needs a new kidney. And Walls is giving him one.

Simple as that. It's what you do for a dear friend, Walls explains.

Amazing.

•  •  And then there is this old quote from former Sun-Times owner and Scrooge-like Canadian mogul Conrad Black.

When Catholic Bishop Frederick Henry of Calgary, Alberta, urged Black to end a strike at the Calgary Herald in 2000, Black, a Catholic himself, fired back, telling readers: ''If your jumped-up little twerp of a bishop thinks I'm not a very good Catholic, I think he's a prime candidate for exorcism.''

Black then called the bishop a ''pinko'' and an ''idiot.''

Merry Christmas, Mr. Black.

And season's greetings to all!

Letters to our sports columnists appear Sunday. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and a daytime phone number.