I wish that everyone would get a life of their very own so that crap shows like “Moment of Truth” would disappear from TV forever.
I wish that modern Christians would let go of enough of their dogma and “beliefs” to allow room in their embrace for the words of Christ.
I wish that Stephen King would write another novel equal or superior in quality to “Bag of Bones”.
I wish that no one would even think about shooting president-elect Obama. Failing that, I wish that no one will ACTUALLY shoot him.
I wish that all of my loved ones will have all of the peace, prosperity and well-being that they need.
Mostly, I wish for the words of the Herald Angels at the birth of Christ… peace on Earth and goodwill toward men.
Merry Christmas and happy new year.
Peace.
Randal
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
How NOT to Treat Kids
This is going to be a blog entry that talks quite a bit about my personal life, so anyone not interested in that can move along. It involves my divorce.
When my ex-wife and I first got together, we were going to change the world! We were going to redefine marriage and redefine parenthood. Well, I don’t know if we did that or not, but we sure wound up with the standard-issue ugly divorce.
Let me come clean right off the bat and say that I did something stupid. I lost my temper with my kids. This is not an excuse, but I had come home from a crappy day at work and discovered that the kids had broken a piece of furniture. I swatted my son on the butt with a dowel from the broken piece of furniture, and then went to swat my daughter’s butt – except that she put her hand behind her and I whacked her on the wrist instead. Of course, I immediately regretted it, but that’s not something that you can take back once it’s done. I asked her if she wanted to go to the doctor to make sure that it was okay, knowing full-well that I faced legal consequences for doing that. We did and she was, thank God, fine. In fact, she was playing with her brother in the waiting room as if nothing had happened.
The upshot of this is that I was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence and pled guilty. I wound up on probation.
Years after this, my then wife decided to leave me. How did she do this? She said that her mom had bought tickets for she and the kids to visit her in Alaska. Nothing unusual in this. I didn’t get along with her mom, so they would always make that trip without me. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t really ready to visit Alaska at all at that point. What haunts me to this day and probably will for the rest of my life is that the last thing that my son said to me as they left for the airport was “I want to stay with you, dad.” I told him that everything was fine and to enjoy his visit. I wouldn’t see my son for a year and a half. When I did see him, it would be for about fifteen minutes, and I wouldn’t see him again. That was in 2001.
After they had been gone for a couple of days, I discovered that my wife had returned and – there’s no other way to put it – ransacked the apartment. There was no division of property, she just came in, took what she wanted (including CD’s that I had owned before we got together and about half of my collection of dragons, including a cauldron with a dragon lid that a friend had given me and I have not seen one like since).
Here’s the kicker, though, and where the title of this piece comes in to play. When I started talking to her about joint custody or visitation, she used my guilty plea of domestic violence to tell people that I had “abused” my step-daughter, and we all know what that means. She flatly told a few people that I know of that I molested my daughter, which is utter and complete bullshit. When I contacted a lawyer, she told me that because of my guilty plea and because neither of the kids were mine biologically (I always thought my son was until she insisted on a paternity test), I would have to be prepared to give her a $5000 retainer and that the entire case would probably cost $10000 to $20000. As I stated in an earlier post, my day job is electronic sales. I simply don’t have that kind of money. If I sold everything that I owned, I still wouldn’t be able to come up with the retainer. And I would have to be prepared to fly to Alaska “frequently” for court appearances.
The upshot of this piece is that, because of her lies and manipulations, my children were taken out of my life. She knew that she couldn’t hurt me with her absence, so she hurt me the only way that she knew that she could.
So two things.
Guys, if you marry a woman with kids, ADOPT THE KIDS. If you don’t, you lose all legal rights in a divorce.
And women, NEVER lie about your kids. EVER. Especially about molestation. It does irreparable damage to the kids, and makes it harder for people who actually HAVE been molested to be believed.
I wanted to get that off of my chest because, even though I try not to spend too much time missing my kids, I have been thinking about them and missing them a lot lately.
Thanks for listening.
Peace.
Randal
When my ex-wife and I first got together, we were going to change the world! We were going to redefine marriage and redefine parenthood. Well, I don’t know if we did that or not, but we sure wound up with the standard-issue ugly divorce.
Let me come clean right off the bat and say that I did something stupid. I lost my temper with my kids. This is not an excuse, but I had come home from a crappy day at work and discovered that the kids had broken a piece of furniture. I swatted my son on the butt with a dowel from the broken piece of furniture, and then went to swat my daughter’s butt – except that she put her hand behind her and I whacked her on the wrist instead. Of course, I immediately regretted it, but that’s not something that you can take back once it’s done. I asked her if she wanted to go to the doctor to make sure that it was okay, knowing full-well that I faced legal consequences for doing that. We did and she was, thank God, fine. In fact, she was playing with her brother in the waiting room as if nothing had happened.
The upshot of this is that I was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence and pled guilty. I wound up on probation.
Years after this, my then wife decided to leave me. How did she do this? She said that her mom had bought tickets for she and the kids to visit her in Alaska. Nothing unusual in this. I didn’t get along with her mom, so they would always make that trip without me. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t really ready to visit Alaska at all at that point. What haunts me to this day and probably will for the rest of my life is that the last thing that my son said to me as they left for the airport was “I want to stay with you, dad.” I told him that everything was fine and to enjoy his visit. I wouldn’t see my son for a year and a half. When I did see him, it would be for about fifteen minutes, and I wouldn’t see him again. That was in 2001.
After they had been gone for a couple of days, I discovered that my wife had returned and – there’s no other way to put it – ransacked the apartment. There was no division of property, she just came in, took what she wanted (including CD’s that I had owned before we got together and about half of my collection of dragons, including a cauldron with a dragon lid that a friend had given me and I have not seen one like since).
Here’s the kicker, though, and where the title of this piece comes in to play. When I started talking to her about joint custody or visitation, she used my guilty plea of domestic violence to tell people that I had “abused” my step-daughter, and we all know what that means. She flatly told a few people that I know of that I molested my daughter, which is utter and complete bullshit. When I contacted a lawyer, she told me that because of my guilty plea and because neither of the kids were mine biologically (I always thought my son was until she insisted on a paternity test), I would have to be prepared to give her a $5000 retainer and that the entire case would probably cost $10000 to $20000. As I stated in an earlier post, my day job is electronic sales. I simply don’t have that kind of money. If I sold everything that I owned, I still wouldn’t be able to come up with the retainer. And I would have to be prepared to fly to Alaska “frequently” for court appearances.
The upshot of this piece is that, because of her lies and manipulations, my children were taken out of my life. She knew that she couldn’t hurt me with her absence, so she hurt me the only way that she knew that she could.
So two things.
Guys, if you marry a woman with kids, ADOPT THE KIDS. If you don’t, you lose all legal rights in a divorce.
And women, NEVER lie about your kids. EVER. Especially about molestation. It does irreparable damage to the kids, and makes it harder for people who actually HAVE been molested to be believed.
I wanted to get that off of my chest because, even though I try not to spend too much time missing my kids, I have been thinking about them and missing them a lot lately.
Thanks for listening.
Peace.
Randal
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Arrogant Ignorance
Let me explain one thing before I get on to arrogant ignorance.
In my day job, I work in electronic sales. Part of this job is to check over returns and make sure that everything that they are sold with is with them when they come back. If it ain’t all there, we ain’t taking it back. Concurrent with that, we ask them why they’re returning the item to see if we can fix the problem without a return.
Okay.
So I had a customer today returning a Sony Blu-Ray player. This is damned near a top-of the line player – Sony invented the technology. So I ask her why she’s returning the product. She explained that she bought the Blu-Ray of “Horton Hears a Who” with Jim Carrey and Steve Carell. If you haven’t seen it, by the way, watch it. It’s a fabulous film. When she put it in her player, it said that she needed an update to her Blu-Ray player in order to watch the film. She got pissed that we would sell a product in November that would stop working in December without some kind of update. I tried to explain to her that the update was relatively easy to get (either through Ethernet connection on the back of the unit or by downloading the update to disc and installing it to your Blu-Ray), and that ALL Blu-Ray players will require periodic updates as they figure out ways to make it better. At this point she started insisting… a little PROUDLY, I think… that she knows absolutely NOTHING about computers.
Before I get on to arrogant ignorance, let me fill you guys in on some facts about Blu-Ray, just so’s you know…
1) Within the next couple of years, Blu-Ray DVD’s will be all that you can buy or rent. Blu-Ray will supplant DVD just as DVD supplanted VHS and VHS supplanted just watching TV.
2) All of your current DVD’s will play BEAUTIFULLY on a Blu-Ray player. This is one advantage that the DVD to Blu-Ray transition has over the VHS to DVD transition.
3) Although they’re expensive now, around $200 to $300 for a player and around $30 for a new movie, the prices will drop to about half that over the next few years, from all indications. The players were introduced on a large-scale to the commercial market less than a year ago, and have already dropped to about 1/3 of their original price. In five years, we’ll be wondering what all the fuss was about.
4) If you like games, buy a PS3. They’re typically about $200 more than a Blu-Ray player, but will play Blu-Ray movies as well as PS3 games, and stream media from your PC and all sorts of other fun stuff.
Any more questions about Blu-Ray, attach them as a comment and I’ll try to address them.
Anyway, I think that this customer kind of typified modern Americans. We are ignorant and arrogant, and DAMNED PROUD OF IT!
I am forcibly reminded of years ago when that Martian meteor fragment came to earth bearing bacteria. When scientists went to Congress for funding because this could give us amazing insight into our own genesis, some representative (I think that it was that paleontological marvel Strom Thurmond) said “The Bible provides me enough of an explanation for where we came from for me.” In other words, he was trying to block this potentially earth-shattering revelation about science and investigation into it because of ARROGANT IGNORANCE!
As a Christian, I have a question for people like this… why did God give us brains? I can’t help but think that when things like this happens, God put his mighty head in his celestial hands and mutters “Oy vey!” (He was Jewish long before he was Christian, remember.)
Anyone who steadfastly refuses to learn anything about computers is going to get left behind. With the upcoming transition from analog to digital, the amount of things possible via computer is going to explode in ways that we’ve never seen before. Domino’s pizza is already launching a plan where, when you see a Domino’s commercial on TV, you can use your cable box to go to Domino’s website, insert a credit card into your cable box and order a pizza! And that’s just a very small tip of a very LARGE iceberg. In the seventies, when “new math” was introduced, my math-savvy dad felt helpless to help me with my homework. It’s going to be that times a million when it comes to communicating with your kids. In other words
IT’S A VERY BIG DEAL!
Computers have gone from something that you play games on and look at porn with to a viable part of our everyday lives, and it’s just going to get better and more prevalent.
And it’s not just computers. It scares me the number of school boards who insist that the non-science of creationism be taught in science class along with the SCIENCE of evolution.
So guys, do yourselves, your kids and everyone else a favor. USE YOUR GOD-GIVEN BRAIN for something other than keeping your ears apart!
Peace.
Randal
In my day job, I work in electronic sales. Part of this job is to check over returns and make sure that everything that they are sold with is with them when they come back. If it ain’t all there, we ain’t taking it back. Concurrent with that, we ask them why they’re returning the item to see if we can fix the problem without a return.
Okay.
So I had a customer today returning a Sony Blu-Ray player. This is damned near a top-of the line player – Sony invented the technology. So I ask her why she’s returning the product. She explained that she bought the Blu-Ray of “Horton Hears a Who” with Jim Carrey and Steve Carell. If you haven’t seen it, by the way, watch it. It’s a fabulous film. When she put it in her player, it said that she needed an update to her Blu-Ray player in order to watch the film. She got pissed that we would sell a product in November that would stop working in December without some kind of update. I tried to explain to her that the update was relatively easy to get (either through Ethernet connection on the back of the unit or by downloading the update to disc and installing it to your Blu-Ray), and that ALL Blu-Ray players will require periodic updates as they figure out ways to make it better. At this point she started insisting… a little PROUDLY, I think… that she knows absolutely NOTHING about computers.
Before I get on to arrogant ignorance, let me fill you guys in on some facts about Blu-Ray, just so’s you know…
1) Within the next couple of years, Blu-Ray DVD’s will be all that you can buy or rent. Blu-Ray will supplant DVD just as DVD supplanted VHS and VHS supplanted just watching TV.
2) All of your current DVD’s will play BEAUTIFULLY on a Blu-Ray player. This is one advantage that the DVD to Blu-Ray transition has over the VHS to DVD transition.
3) Although they’re expensive now, around $200 to $300 for a player and around $30 for a new movie, the prices will drop to about half that over the next few years, from all indications. The players were introduced on a large-scale to the commercial market less than a year ago, and have already dropped to about 1/3 of their original price. In five years, we’ll be wondering what all the fuss was about.
4) If you like games, buy a PS3. They’re typically about $200 more than a Blu-Ray player, but will play Blu-Ray movies as well as PS3 games, and stream media from your PC and all sorts of other fun stuff.
Any more questions about Blu-Ray, attach them as a comment and I’ll try to address them.
Anyway, I think that this customer kind of typified modern Americans. We are ignorant and arrogant, and DAMNED PROUD OF IT!
I am forcibly reminded of years ago when that Martian meteor fragment came to earth bearing bacteria. When scientists went to Congress for funding because this could give us amazing insight into our own genesis, some representative (I think that it was that paleontological marvel Strom Thurmond) said “The Bible provides me enough of an explanation for where we came from for me.” In other words, he was trying to block this potentially earth-shattering revelation about science and investigation into it because of ARROGANT IGNORANCE!
As a Christian, I have a question for people like this… why did God give us brains? I can’t help but think that when things like this happens, God put his mighty head in his celestial hands and mutters “Oy vey!” (He was Jewish long before he was Christian, remember.)
Anyone who steadfastly refuses to learn anything about computers is going to get left behind. With the upcoming transition from analog to digital, the amount of things possible via computer is going to explode in ways that we’ve never seen before. Domino’s pizza is already launching a plan where, when you see a Domino’s commercial on TV, you can use your cable box to go to Domino’s website, insert a credit card into your cable box and order a pizza! And that’s just a very small tip of a very LARGE iceberg. In the seventies, when “new math” was introduced, my math-savvy dad felt helpless to help me with my homework. It’s going to be that times a million when it comes to communicating with your kids. In other words
IT’S A VERY BIG DEAL!
Computers have gone from something that you play games on and look at porn with to a viable part of our everyday lives, and it’s just going to get better and more prevalent.
And it’s not just computers. It scares me the number of school boards who insist that the non-science of creationism be taught in science class along with the SCIENCE of evolution.
So guys, do yourselves, your kids and everyone else a favor. USE YOUR GOD-GIVEN BRAIN for something other than keeping your ears apart!
Peace.
Randal
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
A Letter To Representative Smith
I decided today, when i discovered that Congress was inches away from socializing the auto industry, to write to my representative, Adam Smith, and ask how i might apply to Congress for my own bailout money.
By the way, i encourage everyone else who thinks that these bailouts are utter bullshit to write to their representatives and ask for your own personal bailouts. I mean, we've ALL made stupid decisions at some point in our lives, right? And if the last six months has proven nothing else, it has proven that Congress is willing to relieve people and corporations who make stupid mistakes of all personal responsibility and give them money. So i want a piece of that. It IS our money, after all.
The first thing that you have to do is go to this site http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp to discover what your "zip plus four" is if you don't know it. Then go to this site https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml to go to a form to write to your representative.
I'd love to see these people SWAMPED with letters to understand that WE DO NOT LIKE THIS DECISION!
Peace.
Randal
By the way, i encourage everyone else who thinks that these bailouts are utter bullshit to write to their representatives and ask for your own personal bailouts. I mean, we've ALL made stupid decisions at some point in our lives, right? And if the last six months has proven nothing else, it has proven that Congress is willing to relieve people and corporations who make stupid mistakes of all personal responsibility and give them money. So i want a piece of that. It IS our money, after all.
The first thing that you have to do is go to this site http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp to discover what your "zip plus four" is if you don't know it. Then go to this site https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml to go to a form to write to your representative.
I'd love to see these people SWAMPED with letters to understand that WE DO NOT LIKE THIS DECISION!
Peace.
Randal
Monday, December 8, 2008
Australia Has Lost It's Mind
An Australian court recently decided that a man who had a cartoon of Bart and Lisa Simpson on his computer getting it on was guilty of possessing child pornography. When the man appealed the case on the ground that they are CARTOON CHARACTERS, NOT CHILDREN, the judge, Michael Adams said that simply because the Simpsons characters were “not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they could not be considered people.”
Wrong, dingleberry. They cannot be considered people because they WERE NEVER BORN, DO NOT LIVE, AND WILL NEVER DIE! They cannot be considered people because THEY DO NOT KNOW JOY AND CANNOT SUFFER PAIN! They cannot be considered people because THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE!
I’m getting worked up about this because our supreme court, in the dark ages of the last eight years, has been considering similar legislation. If I may, let me point out some problems with this that strike me as being rather obvious…
1) By focusing law enforcement efforts on fiction… make-believe… pretend… you are taking resources away from protecting REAL children. You know… the important ones. Who gives a rat’s ass if Homer Simpson is giving the high hard one to Lisa in some cartoonist’s imagination? I’m more concerned about the little girl who’s being raped by her daddy on video so that he can send it to his sick-ass friends. I think that part of the reason that this is being considered is that, as much as I love technology, digital photo technology and the internet has made it very difficult to catch the purveyors of kiddie porn. They no longer have to take their film to the photomat to be developed and then send it to their peers through the US mail. Technology has made all of our lives easier. Sadly, that includes the purveyors of kiddie porn. So, since they can’t catch and punish the guilty, they’re going to go after the artists.
2) How large of a step is it from prosecuting cartoons as kiddie porn to prosecuting libraries for carrying Lolita and Bastard Out of Carolina? (If you haven’t read these excellent novels, SHAME ON YOU and go read them.)
3) You cannot prosecute crimes against fictional human beings. How much of our fiction, both graphic and textual, including movies, deals with murder? Maybe the makers of the “Saw” films should be tried – but for making a bad film, not for virtual murder.
4) America seems to be growing less and less logical. I’m thinking of marketing a bumper sticker that says “Honk If You’re A Dumbass”. I haven’t because I’m afraid of being deafened by the blare of horns. We are not just arrogant and ignorant, we are DAMNED PROUD OF IT! One of the places that this shows most clearly is in our disdain for the simple little question “Why?” I think that all laws that are on the books should be subjected to the question “Why?” Why is this a law? If no reasonable answer can be given, then the law should be stricken from the books. Why is child pornography illegal? Because a child… a REAL child… had to be victimized to make it. QE fucking D.
5) Justice Adams gave the same old tired argument that I’ve heard until I’m sick of it, so please allow me to disabuse it. He said that the animated cartoon could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children," and therefore upheld the conviction for child pornography. This is the most ignorant argument that I’ve ever heard. Do you know what fuels demand for material that involves the abuse of children? PEDOPHILIA! If a person is already bent toward being sexually attracted to children, then yes, this cartoon would incite them. So do children beauty pageants, the Sears catalog, any television show or movie involving children and the very existence of children. Should we then outlaw all of these things? Not only that, but, again, the same argument could be made against any piece of fiction involving murder. How many budding sociopaths and psychopaths were brought to full bloom by being able to watch the murders through the killer’s eyes in Friday the 13th? It’s as much of an unanswerable question as “How many budding sociopaths and psychopaths are KEPT from living out their fantasies of killing by being able to release that urge through watching the fictional murders of fictional characters through the eyes of a fictional killer in Friday the 13th?” I am not alone in thinking that these kind of films… as well as sexual fiction about children… provides a necessary release valve for these anti-social tendencies. If this Australian dude can get his sexual ya-ya’s off looking at naughty pics of Bart and Lisa Simpson while leaving real children THE HELL ALONE, I say more power to him.
Peace.
Randal
Wrong, dingleberry. They cannot be considered people because they WERE NEVER BORN, DO NOT LIVE, AND WILL NEVER DIE! They cannot be considered people because THEY DO NOT KNOW JOY AND CANNOT SUFFER PAIN! They cannot be considered people because THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE!
I’m getting worked up about this because our supreme court, in the dark ages of the last eight years, has been considering similar legislation. If I may, let me point out some problems with this that strike me as being rather obvious…
1) By focusing law enforcement efforts on fiction… make-believe… pretend… you are taking resources away from protecting REAL children. You know… the important ones. Who gives a rat’s ass if Homer Simpson is giving the high hard one to Lisa in some cartoonist’s imagination? I’m more concerned about the little girl who’s being raped by her daddy on video so that he can send it to his sick-ass friends. I think that part of the reason that this is being considered is that, as much as I love technology, digital photo technology and the internet has made it very difficult to catch the purveyors of kiddie porn. They no longer have to take their film to the photomat to be developed and then send it to their peers through the US mail. Technology has made all of our lives easier. Sadly, that includes the purveyors of kiddie porn. So, since they can’t catch and punish the guilty, they’re going to go after the artists.
2) How large of a step is it from prosecuting cartoons as kiddie porn to prosecuting libraries for carrying Lolita and Bastard Out of Carolina? (If you haven’t read these excellent novels, SHAME ON YOU and go read them.)
3) You cannot prosecute crimes against fictional human beings. How much of our fiction, both graphic and textual, including movies, deals with murder? Maybe the makers of the “Saw” films should be tried – but for making a bad film, not for virtual murder.
4) America seems to be growing less and less logical. I’m thinking of marketing a bumper sticker that says “Honk If You’re A Dumbass”. I haven’t because I’m afraid of being deafened by the blare of horns. We are not just arrogant and ignorant, we are DAMNED PROUD OF IT! One of the places that this shows most clearly is in our disdain for the simple little question “Why?” I think that all laws that are on the books should be subjected to the question “Why?” Why is this a law? If no reasonable answer can be given, then the law should be stricken from the books. Why is child pornography illegal? Because a child… a REAL child… had to be victimized to make it. QE fucking D.
5) Justice Adams gave the same old tired argument that I’ve heard until I’m sick of it, so please allow me to disabuse it. He said that the animated cartoon could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children," and therefore upheld the conviction for child pornography. This is the most ignorant argument that I’ve ever heard. Do you know what fuels demand for material that involves the abuse of children? PEDOPHILIA! If a person is already bent toward being sexually attracted to children, then yes, this cartoon would incite them. So do children beauty pageants, the Sears catalog, any television show or movie involving children and the very existence of children. Should we then outlaw all of these things? Not only that, but, again, the same argument could be made against any piece of fiction involving murder. How many budding sociopaths and psychopaths were brought to full bloom by being able to watch the murders through the killer’s eyes in Friday the 13th? It’s as much of an unanswerable question as “How many budding sociopaths and psychopaths are KEPT from living out their fantasies of killing by being able to release that urge through watching the fictional murders of fictional characters through the eyes of a fictional killer in Friday the 13th?” I am not alone in thinking that these kind of films… as well as sexual fiction about children… provides a necessary release valve for these anti-social tendencies. If this Australian dude can get his sexual ya-ya’s off looking at naughty pics of Bart and Lisa Simpson while leaving real children THE HELL ALONE, I say more power to him.
Peace.
Randal
Saturday, December 6, 2008
December Holidays
For anyone interested, here's a list of the holidays celebrated around the world in December. Yes, that includes in the U. S. A. (The Unparalleled Self-indulgence of America)
December 6 is the feast day of St. Nicholas.
December 7 is Pearl Harbor day.
December 8 is Bodhi Day, the day celebrating the Buddha's enlightenment.
December 9 is the Muslim feast day Eid.
December 12 is the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
December 13 is Santa Lucia's day
December 16 to 25 is Las Posadas in Mexico - when they celebrate the nativity by carrying representations of Jesus, Mary and Joseph through the towns looking for shelter.
December 19 is my birthday. Well, it SHOULD be a federal holiday. I will be 44 this year. Anyone interested in making a donation to charity in my name, let me know and i'll e-mail a list of my favorites to you.
December 22 to 29 is Hannukah
December 22 is also the solstice.
December 25 is Christmas day
December 26 is Boxing day in the UK and Canada. I think that we should adopt this holiday in the states. It's a day for boxing gifts and giving them to the needy.
December 26 to January 1 is Kwaanza
December 31 is New Year's Eve
So, when someone wishes you "happy holidays" this year, pick one from the list and thank them. Don't get pissed off because they didn't specifically name YOUR holiday. I'm looking at you, Christians!
Peace.
Randal
December 6 is the feast day of St. Nicholas.
December 7 is Pearl Harbor day.
December 8 is Bodhi Day, the day celebrating the Buddha's enlightenment.
December 9 is the Muslim feast day Eid.
December 12 is the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
December 13 is Santa Lucia's day
December 16 to 25 is Las Posadas in Mexico - when they celebrate the nativity by carrying representations of Jesus, Mary and Joseph through the towns looking for shelter.
December 19 is my birthday. Well, it SHOULD be a federal holiday. I will be 44 this year. Anyone interested in making a donation to charity in my name, let me know and i'll e-mail a list of my favorites to you.
December 22 to 29 is Hannukah
December 22 is also the solstice.
December 25 is Christmas day
December 26 is Boxing day in the UK and Canada. I think that we should adopt this holiday in the states. It's a day for boxing gifts and giving them to the needy.
December 26 to January 1 is Kwaanza
December 31 is New Year's Eve
So, when someone wishes you "happy holidays" this year, pick one from the list and thank them. Don't get pissed off because they didn't specifically name YOUR holiday. I'm looking at you, Christians!
Peace.
Randal
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Lacking Christmas Spirit
Well, I got chewed out again today for a lack of “Christmas Spirit”, whatever THAT is.
Since I’m already wishing people “happy holidays” and whistling, humming and singing Christmas carols, I’m going to chalk this up to “you just can’t please some people”.
Here’s what precipitated this accusation.
We have a terrific radio station here locally called WARM 106.9. Here’s their website, in case you want to listen: http://www.warm1069.com/
At any rate, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, these guys play nothing but Christmas music. Or at least, that’s what they say.
So this morning, I started chuckling after a couple of songs and a coworker asked what I was laughing at. I said “These aren’t Christmas songs.” She said “No, they’re technically “holiday” songs.” I said “No, they’re just songs. Some are winter songs, but they aren’t holiday songs. If they want to play the Dreidel song, that’s great… I love that song. But these aren’t about any holiday.”
That’s when she accused me of being lacking in Christmas spirit.
For the record, your honor, I feel that in order to be a “Christmas” song, a song has to mention one or more of the following three things:
A) Christmas. Seems like it would go without saying, but…
B) Santa. An icon of Christmas. If I remember the lyrics correctly, Christmas itself isn’t mentioned once in “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, but it’s still pretty clearly a Christmas song.
C) The Nativity. Oh, yeah… THAT’S what we’re celebrating.
The first song in question was Frosty the Snowman. I realize that the Christmas special based on (or inspired by) the song said that Frosty was made of “Christmas” snow and at the end, Santa rejuvenates him with “Christmas” magic, but NONE of that is in the song. Check the lyrics.
The next song was “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”. Great song. Not about Christmas. Actually a love song.
Then comes “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”. Fun song. NOT a Christmas song. I’m not entirely sure how Americans have come to associate snow so closely with Christmas anyway, given that most of us don’t get snow at Christmas.
The final straw for me was “Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. Although I find the play and movie itself a little saccharine, I like this song. Of course, my version goes “Handcuffs on hookers and tightly bound beauties… brunettes and redheads and all sorts of cuties… multiple hotties all tied up with string… these are a few of my favorite things…” But even the original version is NOT a Christmas song. This one really puzzles me.
This attitude, though, kind of exemplifies why I disdained celebrating the holiday for so many years. Christmas seems to have become a catch-all for anything cute and sweet. I mean, the stuffed polar bears with the Santa hats made little enough sense to me. Now, over the last several years, PENGUINS have come to be associated with Christmas. One person tried to tell me that it’s because penguins live at the north pole with Santa. Nice try, but penguins live at the SOUTH pole. As far from Santa as they can possibly get. I guess that it’s because they’re associated with snow, which MOST OF US DON’T GET AT CHRISTMAS ANYWAY!
I guess that what I’m trying to do here is to get people to get a little pickier about what they lump in with Christmas. Even if you don’t celebrate the religious aspect of the holiday, let’s keep it to Santa and Christmas trees and stuff, can we?
Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. (And women. And children. And animals.)
Randal
Since I’m already wishing people “happy holidays” and whistling, humming and singing Christmas carols, I’m going to chalk this up to “you just can’t please some people”.
Here’s what precipitated this accusation.
We have a terrific radio station here locally called WARM 106.9. Here’s their website, in case you want to listen: http://www.warm1069.com/
At any rate, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, these guys play nothing but Christmas music. Or at least, that’s what they say.
So this morning, I started chuckling after a couple of songs and a coworker asked what I was laughing at. I said “These aren’t Christmas songs.” She said “No, they’re technically “holiday” songs.” I said “No, they’re just songs. Some are winter songs, but they aren’t holiday songs. If they want to play the Dreidel song, that’s great… I love that song. But these aren’t about any holiday.”
That’s when she accused me of being lacking in Christmas spirit.
For the record, your honor, I feel that in order to be a “Christmas” song, a song has to mention one or more of the following three things:
A) Christmas. Seems like it would go without saying, but…
B) Santa. An icon of Christmas. If I remember the lyrics correctly, Christmas itself isn’t mentioned once in “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, but it’s still pretty clearly a Christmas song.
C) The Nativity. Oh, yeah… THAT’S what we’re celebrating.
The first song in question was Frosty the Snowman. I realize that the Christmas special based on (or inspired by) the song said that Frosty was made of “Christmas” snow and at the end, Santa rejuvenates him with “Christmas” magic, but NONE of that is in the song. Check the lyrics.
The next song was “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”. Great song. Not about Christmas. Actually a love song.
Then comes “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”. Fun song. NOT a Christmas song. I’m not entirely sure how Americans have come to associate snow so closely with Christmas anyway, given that most of us don’t get snow at Christmas.
The final straw for me was “Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. Although I find the play and movie itself a little saccharine, I like this song. Of course, my version goes “Handcuffs on hookers and tightly bound beauties… brunettes and redheads and all sorts of cuties… multiple hotties all tied up with string… these are a few of my favorite things…” But even the original version is NOT a Christmas song. This one really puzzles me.
This attitude, though, kind of exemplifies why I disdained celebrating the holiday for so many years. Christmas seems to have become a catch-all for anything cute and sweet. I mean, the stuffed polar bears with the Santa hats made little enough sense to me. Now, over the last several years, PENGUINS have come to be associated with Christmas. One person tried to tell me that it’s because penguins live at the north pole with Santa. Nice try, but penguins live at the SOUTH pole. As far from Santa as they can possibly get. I guess that it’s because they’re associated with snow, which MOST OF US DON’T GET AT CHRISTMAS ANYWAY!
I guess that what I’m trying to do here is to get people to get a little pickier about what they lump in with Christmas. Even if you don’t celebrate the religious aspect of the holiday, let’s keep it to Santa and Christmas trees and stuff, can we?
Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. (And women. And children. And animals.)
Randal
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