A White F#@$king Christmas!

As you may have heard, a nasty blizzard is blowing through Colorado. For me this means two things:

1) Losing two days of work due to a snow closure (which is unpaid, since I'm a contractor).
2) Not being able to fly out of here to see my girlfriend over the Christmas weekend because Denver International Airport has been shut down.

So Mr. Lias is not having a very merry Xmas at the moment, although I suppose it could be worse. I have a friend who not only wasn't able to fly out to see her family, but she also learned, just a few days ago, that she's going to be losing her job.

As soon as the roads clear, I think I'll be going out and getting an extra large carton of eggnog and some spiced rum. I can at least drown my sorrows in a seasonally appropriate manner.

A Mitvah for Christmas

I know that there is a statute of limitations for posts relating to Christmas, but I didn't find today's site until just yesterday, so please pardon one final Christmas link.

Akiva and Ilene Miller wondered what Christmas would be like if it were a Jewish celebration. In particular, they wondered what the mitzvah (i.e., laws) of the celebration would look like.

The site also has some "traditional" Jewish Christmas songs including "Hagada for Christmas" which is about "the fruitcake of our affliction, which our ancestors baked 400 years ago".

Enjoy.

Merry XBox... or summtin' like that

I assume that, by now, all of you are aware that I've been waging war on Christmas.

Honestly, it came as something of a surprise to me. All these years I just considered Christmas to be another one of those Holidays that people celebrate as they will whether or not they think about what it's supposed to represent (a bit like Memorial Day which, contrary to most people's impressions, isn't a celebration of three day weekends and barbecues).

Yes, I was aware that, for a fair number of people, the day had religious significance. That never especially bothered me since the actual parts that interested me, such as gift giving, the Christmas tree, and so forth, weren't closely tied to religion (unless you want to go back to the ancient pagans, at least). It seemed like a perfectly reasonable sort of arrangement.

Lately though, I've been told (mainly by Fox news) that the forces of secularism (which is where I get drafted into this nonsense) have been trying to destroy the Christian version of Christmas. I assumed that this had to do with nativity chreches since that's long been the seasonal point of contention between secularists (and Jews, and Jehovas Witnesses, and Christian liberals, etc) and the self-appointed defenders of Christianity.

Honestly, though, I had thought that the courts had done a fairly decent job of working that controversy out with a general prescription that says that you can't put displays on public land that are solely for the promotion of a religion but, if you want to have a nativity, it could be fine if you place it in the general context of a secular celebration of the season. It's one of those compromise solutions that doesn't make anyone quite happy, which is often the nature of a good compromise.

It turns out that's not what Fox is on about, though. And least not entirely, since they do mention the whole creche controversy as being part of the War on Christmas. It seems that what really steams their stockings is the phrase "happy holidays". Although I've never really been conscious about what sort of semi-sincere seasonal greetings I've been offering, I'm sure that I have said the dreaded double-H every now and again (thus waging war on Christmas). Heck, I'm pretty sure that I've even suggested that people have a good Solstice now and again. Of course the fact that I am, indeed, an atheist automatically makes me one of the warriors in the battle. Even when I do say "merry Christmas" it can be assumed that I am merely trying to infiltrate my way into the ranks of the good and decent so that I may further subvert them.

So, since it's apparent that I am, in fact, waging war against Christmas, I would like to beg a favor of the government. In keeping with the tradition of all the other wars on things (drugs, terrorism, jaywalkers, etc), I think that it would only be fair to grant me unlimited powers of search and seizure, the ability to arbitrarily arrest and detain people without oversight, and the ability to surveyal my enemies (real and imagined) without restriction. Seems only far.

So heads up, Christian America! I'll know when you are sleeping, I'll know when you're awake...

(And a very happy set of holidays, however you may celebrate them [or not], to all my loyal readers. Do take care.)

State of the Blog Update

As promised, I will be starting up the blog soon. I'm giving some thought to how I want to do so. I'm still a bit worried about just how much time I'm going to have to dedicate to it and whether or not I should, in fact, make it just a bit more unstructured. I think that I will go back to doing regular poetry postings every Thursday. I'm not entirely sure if I want to keep Tuesday Fun as a regular feature or just go to posting fun stuff as it comes on an irregular basis. The Sunday posts are the most up in the air. I like writing essays but I don't want to reach the point of writing an essay for the sake or writing one. I'm also thinking that I'd like to do more reviews and stories (in fact, this Sunday I will have a fresh story up).

In the meanwhile, he's a pic of the costume I wore this Halloween. Please note that the tonsure (i.e., "monk's cut") is not a wig.

Fourth of July Fun

In honor of American Independence Day (and the ideals that were set down on that day), here's a link to some virtual pyrotechnics (Shockwave required).

Enjoy.

Ding Dong!

In the United States, one of the traditional sounds of Christmas is the ringing of the bells of Salvation Army workers. These folks generally position themselves in front of major department stores and restaurants, next to a small, suspended pot, and ring their bells in the hopes that passers-by will deposit some change in the pots.

Recently, some retailers have threatened to deny these workers the right to do so in front of their stores under the theory that the ringing distracts their customers from the more important task of shopping. Generally, such efforts lend themselves to very bad publicity with the typical result being that the retailers eventually retreat from their position.

I saw an interesting permutation of this ongoing issue while shopping yesterday. A Salvation Army worker had set himself up in front of a Kmart; however, instead of ringing a bell, he had a small sign on a stick with the words "DING" on one side and "DONG" on the other. Holding the stick between his hands, he would rub his hands back and forth causing the sign to alternate between its two sides.

I am reminded of the aphormism that compromise is the act whereby neither of two sides in a dispute get what they want, leaving both equally unhappy.

---

As a follow up, it gets stranger. According to an article I found on Yahoo! News , in some places, the Salvation Army havn't merely replaced the bells, but have replaced the actual bell ringers with cardboard cut-outs.

Memorial Day

It is Memorial Day here in the United States. It is a day when we honor our soldiers who have died at war. At least that's the principle. The truth of the matter is that, during most years, it's sort of an unofficial start of summer where people enjoy a long weekend and take the opportunity to have barbecues and to go see the inevitable major motion picture release.

I suspect that, this year, more people are going to be thinking about the real intention of the holiday. It is a sad fact that we are at war in Iraq. It is a controversial war. Many consider it a dishonerable war while others insist that it is a just and even necessary war. I will not speak to that issue. Memorial Day is not a day for us to celebrate war but to honor those who have been lost at war. It is an observance that I believe both pacifists and hawks can acknowledge and respect.

It is a naïve thing to suppose that all soldiers are good people. There are dishonerable soldiers just as there are dishonerable people in every other walk of life. We have seen an especially egregious breach of honor in the hell-pit that is Abu Ghraib. The actions of those involved is indisputably abbhorent. Never the less, it is equally naïve to suppose that all soldiers are monsters and madmen.

I believe that the majority of people who fight in wars would rather be anywhere else. I have heard it said that, when one is in a combat zone, the issues of ideology, politics and morality fade before the simple necessities of trying to survive. War is a base venture and it does lead to base acts. It also leads to acts of heroism and self-sacrifice that stand in stark contrast to the hellishness of it.

If I have one problem with Memorial Day, it is that we only honor our dead and that we only honor soldiers. I believe that we should consider this a time to reflect upon all of the death that war creates. War is an evil. There may be times when it is a necessary evil. We may well embrace the necessity at such times but we should never lose sight of the evil. To do so would be to truly dishonor the dead.