… or did Sick Vick just bully them into it?

Michael Vick holding a gun to the head of Donovan McNabb's prize border collie, Franchise

How utterly ironic – two months ago The Onion published a story mocking “reformed” dog killer Michael Vick.  While The Onion’s writers poked fun at Vick by insinuating that his teammates were as disgusted by his violent past as the rest of us are:

Michael Vick’s pregame pep talk Sunday, in which he recounted the events of a brutal 2004 dogfight between his pit bull terrier Zebro and rival pit bull Maniac, failed to inspire his teammates in any way whatsoever, Eagles team sources reported.

Vick, who was playing in his first NFL game since serving an 18-month prison sentence, called the 10-minute story “really motivational,” and reportedly failed to understand why his graphic recounting of how Zebro ripped out Maniac’s larynx caused teammates to stagger out of the player tunnel and onto Lincoln Financial Field with their heads hanging.

But today – in a gesture so bizarre that it was unthinkable even to the deliciously twisted staff of The Onion -  Michael Vick was voted the Philadelphia Eagles’ recipient of the 2009 Ed Block Courage Award.  The players on each NFL team vote to give award the teammate who best exemplifies the qualities of sportsmanship and courage.

Apparently Vick’s fellow Eagles really did think that those dog fight stories were motivational…

What next -  shall we give Tiger Woods an award for his dedication to family life?  Honor Nidal Hasan with the Silver Star?

If you’re as disgusted as I am – take a minute or ten to contact the sponsors of the Ed Block award and let them know how you feel about the Eagles’ gesture to “honor” this unrepentantly evil psychopath.

• Baltimore’s Tremonts
• St. John Properties
• Baltimore Ravens All Community Team Foundation
• CitiFinancial
• Comcast
• The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation
• Merritt Properties
• 105.7  The Fan
• Professional Football Athletic Trainers Society

Here’s a QOTD, apropos my recent post on Robert Higgs defending himself against charges of pessimism:

One thing you notice more and more the longer you hang around this sleazy world is the way mainstream types can’t admit to the obvious. They always have to act shocked.

And if you say you weren’t surprised, you’re the bad guy. You’re “cynical.” I love that word, “cynical.” Why not call the guy who discovered germs “cynical”? That’s a nasty theory if I ever heard one: armies of little monsters too small to see, just waiting to turn your mucus membranes into their orgy pools. It’s true, sure, but gosh it’s so darn “cynical”! Let’s pretend it isn’t true.

(Blackwater:  Stop Acting Surprised, Gary Brecher, The Exiled)

Funny cuz it’s true:  all the sciences are dismal, including political science and biology, but it’s only in the former that one gets labeled a cynic for stating the obvious and unpleasant.  Why we can accept without tears that what goes up must come down, but refuse to recognize that laws of supply and demand cannot be repealed, has long puzzled me.

I finally cave on day 8 of the Calendar series! Check #1 to see what I was trying to do

Merry Christmas one and all xx

Click on the image to see it more clearly

Christmas time, Mistletoe and Wine… Sorry, I got carried away for a moment. So it’s that time of year again and this year we have SNOW! OH EM GEE! I know I must be growing up because my first thought when i heard it was snowing was not “BRILLIANT!!” but “Oh god I hope the trains will be running ok”. However I just about managed to navigate my way from Scotland to the North without incident, which I think is impressive in a country that reacts to snow the same way that the TV reacts when you pull the plug out. Anyway, on getting home I did the usual things like building a snowman and sledging and staving off frostbite just to try and deny that i’m actually no fun anymore. However now i’m really hoping the snow will piss off soon so the country can start working again as i’ve realised that when you can’t drive anywhere (not that i’ve ever had a driving lesson in my life anyway, apparently i’m not to be trusted with scissors let alone a car) the place where I live is actually incredibly boring. There is no-where interesting within walking distance and my Xbox is broken so I can’t even join in with my friends “pwning some noobs” as i’m too poor to buy another one. This means my activities are reduced to surfing the internet, reading and watching truly awful Christmas television. Maybe it’s because I was a kid but i’m sure Christmas tele used to be good, this year on prime time Christmas TV we have Poirot. What the hell is Christmassy about Poirot? Anyway enough ranting about Christmas, I like it really even if it does leave me unsatisfied and melancholy, but like an abused spouse I keep returning with the thought of “this year it’ll be better” so tune in in the new year to see how this one went.

Now, I have been attending physiotherapy for the past few weeks, something which I have never had before. I have been having this done on my right wrist which I injured in a particularly retarded way. So i’m into rock climbing but last year at uni I didn’t go very often because the centre is a long bus ride away and I didn’t know many people who went. However around March I discovered that a mate of mine in Hall used to be into it but hadn’t done it for years. When I mentioned that I was into it he said that he had been thinking about getting back into it and this was obviously a sign. So we set about the hall looking for things to climb up. We traversed along a pipe, attempted to climb the outside of the spiral staircase and finally attempted some dyno’s (dynamic movements i.e. jumps) from a normal doorframe to a bigger box doorframe built around it. So this box doorframe extends to about 9 or 10 feet in the air and I decide it would be a good idea to hang from the small doorframe and jump up and backwards onto the box doorframe. The move went well, I even managed to get my hand on the box frame, however I hadn’t counted on the doorframe being so horrendously dusty, the result of which was the hand I had so triumphantly planted slipping straight off again and me falling the 9 or 10 feet onto my coccyx and wrists. This hurt quite a lot. The main pain was in the arse region which I had to walk off as it was too painful to sit and absorb. I walked around for a while, gaily opening doors and soliloquising at length as to my feelings on the matter to whomever was behind those doors. As the pain in my arse faded, I realised that my wrists really REALLY hurt. A quick trip to A and E and a few X Rays later and I was the proud owner of a broken Radius on my left and a cracked Scaphoid on my right. Brilliant. After a few weeks in plaster and some highly embarrassing mornings where my mates had to dress me and cut up my food at meal times, the plaster came off and I was free. The left hand fractured Radius healed nicely and hasn’t given me any hassle since, however the right Scaphoid has never been right since, so a couple of weeks ago I booked my very first physio session. I didn’t really know what to expect but I think if you saw me afterwards with a haunted look in my eye and shaking slightly, you could assume it was not what I expected it to be. Basically it was half an hour of actual torture where more than once the exchange “Does that hurt?”, “Ow God Yes!!”, “Good” was had. apparently my hand doesn’t sit straight on my arm anymore, it veers off to the right, and more than once the physio said “I just want to tear it off and set it on straight again”, to which I felt I had to reply “Please don’t” in a pathetically small voice. So basically it was not a nice experience. I’ve had a couple more sessions since that first one which have followed the same sort of pattern and I feel very emasculated by them as the physio is a small blonde lady who can only be at most ten years my senior.

Anyway, time to sign off and get on with Christmas so I will leave you with a limerick that a friend of mine wrote for me after writing one for everyone else in the friend group, just to sum up the general feeling towards me:

There once was a man called Dan,

Who did ‘things’ with a Flan,

Fuck it you’re not worth it.

Merry Christmas.

(Idelette’s note: Stefanie is one of my absolute favourite globalgirls on the planet. I love her piece because, honestly, I struggled with my own cynicism this year. Perhaps that is part of why I jumped into this globalgirl Advent Adventure–to prepare my own heart for the Holy birth. Thank you, Stefanie for sharing your journey–you have come through so beautifully. I know I can relate.)

Beyond Cynicism
By Stefanie C.

Until about two years ago, cynicism plagued me. I like to blame it on my university education as a Communications student. Although it’s been four years since I graduated, there are many things I just can’t look at wide-eyed anymore. My mind was trained to sift through pop culture trends with the fine toothcomb of criticism so I can be aware of and intercept the techniques the mass media use to suck the public in to their greedy capitalist schemes.

It got to a point where I stopped enjoying most things and wondered if ignorance really was bliss. The cynicism would heighten during the holidays, usually once I saw the first Christmas commercial for a pair of … jeans. And wait, was that an ad on the radio for “Christmas special laminate flooring?” As a young, zealous Christian it really yanked my chain to see such a holy event bastardized with commercialism.

Part of this might have been culture shock. I immigrated to Canada from Dubai just 11 years ago and Christmas looked very different over there. First of all there was no association of Christmas with snow, snowmen, fireplaces, stockings or mittens. It gets cool but it’s still a desert. At least that was my experience anyway. I’ve heard Dubai has changed a lot and if I heard correctly, they’ve created a faux winter wonderland. As kids, all we had was a tree, one present per child, marzipan sweets, kulkuls (a Goan treat), Midnight Mass, and an all-night Christmas party with family and friends. It usually lasted no more than two weeks.

Post-immigration, and I discovered Christmas on crack. The most drawn-out holiday ever―from November 1st to December 25th. I soon realized the stores dictated when the season would start. Once Halloween was out, Christmas was in. Year after year I’d listen to news reports on TV declaring that consumer records were being broken across the board, perpetuating more Christmas shopping if you hadn’t already spent the x amount of dollars they said was the new average.

The whole idea of stockings and stocking stuffers was new to me. Everyone got multiple presents PLUS mini-gifts stuffed into a stocking?! The fact that a lot of people will go into debt to achieve this level of Christmas celebration blew me away. The whole ‘X-mas’ thing (taking ‘Christ’ out of it) just pushed my buttons even more.

The thing about cynicism though, is that it wears you out. I got tired of being the critic. It was a lot more fun to be a part of the celebrations. But I knew I had to find my balance.

So I stopped expecting the world to acknowledge and validate the Truth about Christmas. The fact that it’s about God sending His Son to save the world from its ugliness doesn’t wrap up as prettily as a tin of cookies or an iPhone. Or the fact that the first place Jesus lay his head as a baby was in a feeding trough in a barn, and that His mother didn’t have a comfortable place to give birth, and that His earthly father probably felt inadequate for not being able to provide much when faced with the circumstances. Everything about the Christmas story screams modesty, humility and simplicity.

And meaning.

The three Magi brought Jesus gifts loaded with meaning. Gold, as a symbol of His royalty. Frankincense for worship, and to signify His divinity. Myrrh, as an anointing oil.

I love that this original act of gift-giving has been passed down through the generations. And I love to think of the uniqueness of each person on my list and what special gift I can give them. It’s not about keeping up with the Joneses and reaching new credit card limits. I found balance when I learned I didn’t have to subscribe to either extreme: neither the modern materialistic Christmas culture nor religious snobbery towards worldly holiday celebrations.

To celebrate Jesus’ birth brings with it an implication to celebrate all that He stands for. Excess and consumerism aren’t on that list. Love, joy and hope are.

Jesus will always be the power that holds the universe together; that is true of Him now and even back when He arrived quietly in the form of a fragile newborn. No power can thwart that, not even all the greed and materialism the world can conjure up.

I meditate on this and I am no longer threatened. I can freely participate―with joy―in the symbolic act of gift-giving (and the shopping that might go with it. I love to shop, who knew?) without feeling like a sell-out to my faith.

Reflect:
A word for today: Celebrate.
Activity: Buy or make a thoughtful gift for someone. Thoroughly enjoy the shopping or crafting experience.
Prayer: Lord, help me to so love the world like You do.

About Stefanie:
I am a globalgirl, with roots in Goa, India, a childhood spent in Dubai, UAE and just this past year I became a Canadian citizen. I spend most of my free time crafting. You can find my handmade creations at my etsy shop itsbeautiful

Apparently profits in mass-produced maltipoos and cockadoodles aren’t what they used to be.  According to an EPA administrative consent agreement Hunte willfully acted in violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Hunte Kennel Systems and Animal Care will pay nearly $57,000 in fines for putting livestock pesticides in bottles and relabeling mislabeling it to sell as a discontinued flea and tick treatment for dogs.

Prolate/Lintox-HD is used to control flies, mites, mange and ticks on livestock but is not for use on household pets.  Paramite was used to control fleas and ticks on dogs. It was voluntarily taken off the market in 2005 after the Environmental Protection Agency determined its active ingredient was potentially dangerous to animal handlers, groomers and young children, said EPA spokesman Chris Whitley.

Paramite and prolate both contain the same active ingredient, the organophosphate insecticide phosmet.  Organophosphates kill insects by disrupting activity in their brains and nervous systems.  These neurotoxins can also inflict nasty adverse effects on mammals (like humans) – hence their early use as chemical warfare agents.

Toxic or not – what’s the problem if prolate and paramite both have the same active ingredient?  Well… pet products containing phosmet were voluntarily taken off the market back in 2005 after the EPA found they posed an unacceptable risk of dermal toxicity to people who came in contact with treated animals.

Since most of us don’t snuggle or sleep with our pigs and cattle, EPA apparently determined that human dermal toxicity wasn’t an issue in treating livestock, so organophosphates can still legally be used to control fleas, lice and mange on them.

For some reason, the Post-Dispatch seems to think that the mislabeling of the product is the key issue in Hunte’s case.  I think there’s more to it than that, and I can’t help but wonder how many Hunte dogs and puppies were treated with the product.  While it’s currently illegal to produce paramite — it’s not illegal to sell or use it.  I found several places on the web that note that remaining inventories of the product can legally be sold until supplies run out and apparently some veterinarians  still use stockpiled phosmet/paramite to treat severe mite infestations in dogs.

It looks like Hunte found a cheap way to treat their puppies products for fleas and ticks and decided to make a few extra bucks on the side while they were at it.  While they’ve been forced to stop selling illegally relabeled phosmet-containing products to others – the $57,000-dollar question is whether they’ve quit using it to treat their own animals…

The phosmet molecule

]]> http://geognerd.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/angry-young-man/ Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:23:13 +0000 geognerd http://geognerd.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/angry-young-man/

I need to keep track of how often I say negative things during a day.  I have a habit of talking back to the TV.  I am quick to say a commercial is stupid, a song is stupid, somebody has a stupid name, someone is an idiot, and so on.  Sometimes I’ll mix things up and rant in Spanish or Thai.

I use online media to vent about things that make me angry.  Sometimes I take a look at my Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, and I become amazed at how negative I can be.  During tonight’s news I cussed out the parenting skills of some trashy-looking woman whose kid got stuck in a train door.  At work today I was railing against a state agency.  Usually I have a good reason for these tirades – I think I can do jobs better than the people doing them.

This all flies in the face of my personality.  I think most people would say I have a good sense of humor, am kind and courteous, humble, and patient.  My patience and ability to put up with a lot of crap is complimented all the time.

So why do I have all this rage?  I should record myself watching Wheel of Fortune.  I yell (and I mean yell) at the TV, shouting out letters.  I belittle the intelligence of the contestants.  I comment on how stupid a contestant’s husband or boyfriend looks.  I’ll critique the clothing or obesity of a contestant.  I’ll rip on the spelling of someone’s name.

Why do I always think I can do a job better than someone else?  I tend to get angry about inefficiency or lack of courtesy.  Maybe it’s not about doing a job better.  Maybe I think I am a better person – a snob.

I’m wondering if I am starting to let my seething anger show.  A friend/co-worker told me about a conversation he had with another co-worker (let’s call him Fred) about me.  Fred had made a nice comment about me, but went on to say that I can get super angry sometimes.  Yeah, I’ll admit to that.  I have gone on profanity-laced tirades at work.  When I do, I always surprise people because they are used to the mild-mannered guy who puts his head down and plows through work.  I recall people looking surprised and uneasy on the occasions I have gotten angry.  Am I that bad?

I don’t think I need anger management.  I don’t throw stuff, and I don’t cuss out people to their face.  I think I am simply too honest and wear my heart on my sleeve.  If something or someone sucks, I’ll say so.  But why do I think so many things suck?

I just remembered something.  In high school someone called me Mr. Negativity one time.  Hmm.  My cynicism and anger go way back, then.  Note I keep calling it something different – cynicism, anger, disappointment, being critical.  I don’t think I am truly angry.  Cynical doesn’t describe me completely either.  I am critical.  I am disappointed.  It’s a cocktail of emotions with potential.  I can sit on my can and say everything is awful, or I can channel these emotions and try to make things better.

It is so rare that I give compliments.  I am so quick to say someone’s name is stupid, but I hardly ever say I like someone’s name.  “I like” are two words that rarely come out of my mouth.

I think writing all this stuff is a way for me to come to grips with a problem I might have.  I don’t think I’m going to turn into someone who will blow sunshine up your butt anytime soon.  It’s not my style.  But must I be so critical all the time?

Man, I sound like a jerk.  I’m really not.  I don’t go around bashing things and people all the time.  I love to laugh and make others laugh.  I think I simply have high standards and value my own opinion too much, and feel that if someone/something doesn’t conform to my expectations, they/it must be inferior and called out for this inadequacy.

I think a shrink would have a field day with me.

I put myself in the shoes of a teacher, with little pause asked myself the meaningfully trivial question.  What what would be the first thing I would tell my class?

“I am here today,” I would say, “to teach you how to be cynical.  Some say ‘how to question’, I might say ‘how to doubt’.”  Depending on the age group, I may define cynicism.

“You are to learn not to trust.”  Euphemism rings like dissonant euphony.  Might I say, “You are to learn not to imagine.”

Some nights I search, in fear.  Where did my imagination go?  It has given way to dichotomies, to analytical jungles.  I once painted elaborate scenes and epic stories with nothing but the soggy brush of my mind.  It changed, morphed into a soft pastel, then hardened into chalk.  Still it desperately longs to transform once more.  Into a sleek, retractable fine point pen.  One that does not smudge, does not leak, does not fade.  Every scene must contribute to a story.  Every idea must be good or bad.  Every statement right or wrong; every innovation success or failure.

“Let me teach you not to imagine for imagination’s sake.”

Imagination has a new name.  Creativity.  The purpose is to create, to have something to show for each thought.  To prove again and again that you thought it at all.

But is it my fault for crushing imagination?  The teacher’s alibi.  Society.  With every lie, cynicism becomes more and more a necessity.  With each subliminal advertisement or skewed statistic, each instance of racism, sexism, ageism, class-ism, pre-emptive educational defense becomes more and more a necessity.

Dehumanization.  Through intellect, we separate ourselves from existence.  Every thought, action, belief is compressed into a definition.  Every subsequent instance refines it, reaffirms.  Each definition is meaningfully trivial.

Have we ALWAYS been this way?

One definition of cynicism I found was this: Cynicism was an ancient Greek philosophy, primarily concerned with virtue, whose followers were known as “The Dog Philosophers.” They believed that virtue was the only necessity for happiness and that it was wholly sufficient for attaining happiness.

Not exactly the way I would have described it. Today, nothing is sacred and everything is fair game. We’ll make fun of any thing, any one,  at any  time. With tongue stuck in cheek, we cleverly belittle, dress down, and criticize every chance we get. After awhile, it gets old,  creates animosity,  ill feelings, causing family’s to squabble and friendships to fray.  All this cynicism breeds distrust and soon, nobody likes anybody and we’re all so busy trying to be right, none of us are. Then, the Jesus Folks are so busy dishing out guilt and shame, we forget about common decency. Can’t we all just get along?

But enough about the advertising business.  My cynical spot truly enjoyed this:

So remember in the last post when I said I hated most Christmas music? That must not be construed with me hating Christmas in general. I actually LOVE Christmas. I know there were so many negative overtones to the holiday spirit in the last post, but really… I mean come on, can’t I be a traditionalist and cynic at the same time?

I grew up in the tradition of celebrating Christ–rather than Winter–on Christmas day, so you can see from whence my negative and sordid attitude comes toward camps that glorify gift-giving and merriment solely because “it’s the holidays.”

In the spirit of the real meaning of Christmas (and I mean this in the real Christian way, not the overly-done 1960s crappy animatronic Rudolph way), I present to thee a cover of my favorite Christmas song, O Come All Ye Faithful. Don’t let me get too sappy here, but I believe this song is a truly great composition that commemorates the most basic tenets of the Christian foundation. This cover does the same, but it does so in a very modern and alternative way that I think Christmas lovers–Christian or otherwise alike–will enjoy. That is, you don’t have to be Catholic or protestant to enjoy this great piece of music.

Having grown up in the church, you’d think that I’ve heard every possible version of every Christmas song ever, but this song proves us all wrong. Pomplamoose Music (which you’ve seen here before with their cover of Mrs. Robinson by Simon and Garfunkel) takes some very creative steps with this version of a Christmas carol. They introduce the accordion and ukulele to a genre primarily dominated by piano, choir, and orchestra, and the entire song is complemented with a steady percussive beat. However, their alternative steps don’t stray too far from the original tradition. They include a totally a capella interlude that reminds me of the choirs I heard on the stereo on Christmas morning every year, complete with angelic harmonies. Enjoy here:

This song, according to wikipedia (yeah, that’s probably accurate) has unclear beginnings, but here’s one American icon singing this song:
Nat King Cole singing O Come All Ye Faithful” on YouTube.

Listening to the liquid silver voice of Sarah McLaughlin as I drive along the freeway. Her songs are sad; they make me remember failed relationships. I think of that place with another where you stop trying. It’s before I don’t care, way before, but it’s a bad sign. I think, if I had any advice to give, I’d said, darlings, don’t get cynical with one another because once you allow that, it’s too hard to get back to where the healing sweetness is.

Are relationships harder to sustain than they used to be? Is romance real? You tell me.

Camouflage lingerie? Holy fuck. No amount of camouflaged anything is going to make you attractive to your once great high school football player husband, tubs.

The story is the same all across this great land of ours. It stars the once cute, small town beauty with dreams of escaping the life her mom before her led. But in a mistake made millions of times over, she instead hitches her wagon to the handsome starting quarterback in school. She  dreams of being the hot wife of a professional football player, then senior year he blows out his knee and she gets knocked up with the first of their three children.

Her poor husband now takes his only solace in hunting season, while she does the same in a barrel full of Kit-Kats and reruns of The Doctors. For a week or so each Decmeber, he doesn’t have to deal with the resentment she feels towards him because he knocked her up behind a Braum’s and is no longer the handsome envy of all the girls  in town, but is now a fat, bald, racist. He doesn’t have to hear his wife spew the truth  about him being a sub par husband and an even worse fork lift driver at the feed store his father-in-law owns. He damn near killed Harvey last week! He spends his time counting the days until he can escape the small town life that eats people whole and go hunting with his friends – a joyous,  camouflage-draped festival of ignorance where the smell of beer fills the air and the sound of unruly children crying does not.

He’ll come home refreshed and ready to return to his wasted existence only to find his wife, with hips like the Grand Canyon, trying to sex it up by wearing an atrocity no one should ever lay eyes on, barely covering  the atrocity that got him in trouble in the first place. He’ll do it though, and 9 months later little Gunnar will be born adding one more person to the number of Americans who will lead a life of willful ignorance.

Camouflage lingerie – Helping white trash breed since 2003.

Ahh. America.

So yeah. We don’t want any camouflage lingerie.

- C&J

Press reports would be filled with diatriabe about another ”pitbull’ attack.

But – because he’s a hero who took three bullets to save his owner… he’s just a dog.

The linked story is the only one I found that mentioned the dog’s breed (boxer mix).  I’m sure that if this dog had been injured attacking the maid instead of valiantly protecting his owner from her criminal cohorts – news outlets would have taken one look at this photo and featured headlines screaming about another “pitbull attack”.

Best wishes to hero dog Aslin for a speedy and full recovery.

IBD: We’d guess Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana sums up the Beltway wisdom when he says that tension across party lines makes it tough to rein in the debt and deficits. “Democrats want to spend more than we can afford,” he said. “Republicans want to cut more taxes than we can afford.”

And since politicians don’t cut programs, especially their own pet ones, tax hikes are inevitable.

And these could be on the backs of the Health Reform Taxes and potentially Cap & Trade taxes.

Cap & Trade is looking doubtful, but not impossible, as the Copenhagen Summit collapsed under it’s own weight late in the week.

They created enough of their own self-obsessed “carbon footprints” to choke a few African nations and came away with nothing really.

Anyone ever heard of Net Meeting?

John Sauven, Greenpeace UK’s executive director, said: “There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty. It seems there are too few politicians in this world capable of looking beyond the horizon of their own narrow self-interest.” (examiner)

No truer statement, especially these day.

And especially when it comes to Democrats, Republicans, and the spoilers, Independents like me.

And Partisanship has hardened more and more in the last 10 years.

WSJ: Last year, for example, Democrats voted with the majority of their caucus 92% of the time in the House and 87% of the time in the Senate. Republicans voted with the majority of their caucus 87% of the time in the House and 83% of the time in the Senate. In other words, in only a small percentage of cases do either Democrats or Republicans buck the party line. That’s a picture of lockstep partisan voting, and it has been that way since the late 1990s.

So the Democrats, who have a majority, want to spend like it doesn’t matter on The Agenda. And the minority wants to cut taxes to stimulate the economy. But to Democrats the phrase “tax cut” is an evil 4-letter word…

You have a real mess.

So when this President foolishly or naive promised a post-partisan atmosphere he was obviously either disingenuous or permanently on Nitrous Oxide.

Making any meaningful  reductions very hard indeed.

It hasn’t always been this way. Look back 40 years, and Washington behaved in a quite different manner, with Democrats and Republicans both showing far more willingness to break ranks and reach across the aisle to the other side. In 1969, for example, House Democrats voted with their party’s majority just 61% of the time and House Republicans just 62% of the time. In other words, lockstep voting was roughly a third less prevalent than it is today.

If it had been as strident then as it is now the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960’s would never have happened.

GOP Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who with Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota came up with the idea for the panel (8 Republicans, 8 Democrats 2 Obama Admins to try and work out a deal), sees the parties in conflict joining hands and jumping “off a cliff together.” As inspiring as that would be for many voters weary of Washington’s insatiable appetite for other people’s money, it’s not likely to turn out that way.

Likelier, those who recommend spending cuts will be pushed off the cliff and unable to oppose tax hikes.

Which brings us back to Bayh’s comment that “Republicans want to cut more taxes than we can afford.” It’s tax hikes, not cuts, that we can’t afford. We can’t even afford the taxes being imposed now.

Research has found that economic growth is maximized when combined federal, state and local taxes are 23% of the gross domestic product. The combined rate today is close to 30%.

America is the economic engine that moves the world. If the task force recommends tax hikes, and the Democratic Congress passes them and the president signs them into law, the shock will be felt here and abroad.

But if the panel does an honest analysis, it will find Washington has spending issues, not a revenue problem.

But like any drug addict they have to admit they have a problem first.

And I don’t see the Democrats doing that, even in an off year re-election cycle.

Example: The culmination of years of runaway socialism has left the  Greek public resentful, bitter and unwilling to pay taxes. “Why should I pay?” a Greek citizen told the New York Times. “I don’t care about my government, I don’t care about my country.”

Let the rich pay them. Let the “greedy” corporations pay them.

Their country’s bond rating was just lowered, making their money worth less and borrowing more expensive.

Our Future or our Present?

It’s all about Me.

What’s in it for Me.

Screw you.

It’s all about The Party.

It’s all about The Agenda.

The Politicians and their divide on one side.

The People on the other.

So you have a divide within a divide.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide say that it would be better to pass no health care reform bill this year instead of passing the plan currently being considered by Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% think that passing that bill would be better.

However, 70% of liberal voters nationwide say it would be better to pass the legislation rather than passing nothing at all. Most moderates (54%) and conservatives (80%) hold the opposite view.

Compared to the average government worker, most Americans think they work harder, have less job security and make less money.

In fact, 59% of Americans say the average government worker earns more annually than the average taxpayer, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Among those who have close friends or relatives who work for the government, the belief is even stronger: 61% say the average government worker earns more than the average taxpayer.

Feeding that belief is the finding that 51% of all adults think government workers are paid too much. Only 10% say they are paid too little, while 27% say their pay is about right.

And they have FEHBP, the platinium standard for perfect health care.

So the partisan divide widens.

And with Mainstream Media very much partisan, you can’t even get the news without the spin cycle, just pries the wedge open farther. After all, conflict is good for the new business and pushing The Agenda is their partisan need.

The War on FOX by the White House and the Mainstream Media earlier this year should give us a good clue there.

Why they heck would they want to cover the news “objectively”? That’s so old fashion and not “crusading” enough for your average “journalist” today.

There’s nothing in it for them to just report the news.

That’s boring.

Especially, if THEY disagree with it.

Cynic: a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions.

“a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.” –Ambrose Bierce

Yep, that’s me.

And from the evidence, is that so wrong….

So a brief bit of backstory: I’ve been spending some time reading MLIA, or a site called “My Life is Average” for those not familiar with it. It’s just a place where people share (hopefully) amusing stories. There are a lot of recurring trends on the site though, and one I’ve noticed a fair bit is one that follows this formula: “My young [relative] asked me about [awkward sexual topic] and to preserve their innocence I told them it was [something else]. They then went and asked [adult] about [awkward sexual topic] thinking it was a [something else].”

Let’s think about this a moment. “To preserve their innocence.” At what point did our society determine that ignorance and naivety are virtues to be preserved? Why do we struggle so hard to shield our youth from things that, frankly, they need to know? We lie to our children and tell them “You heard about STDs from someone at school? Oh, it’s, uh a kind of candy. It’s bad though!” and then we wonder why STD rates are so high. We refuse to teach our children about contraception and then wonder why we have teen pregnancy. Why are we so opposed to knowledge?

Our society is afraid of it’s own sexuality, and there’s really no good reason why. Why do we try to cover up and hide this perfectly natural facet of who we are? What’s so scary about sex?

You can spend your whole life waiting for your script to get a movie star attached to it.  Getting it through the agencies takes months and months, even with an agent or a producer with some clout pushing it.   Agents, producers, actors all have different ideas about what is good and bad about a script or a film.  I write my scripts for actors, which is great when an actor finally reads it, but not so great when it’s read by producers or agents who don’t always know how to read a script.

One thing I think most people forget about movie stars is that they can act (most of them, anyway).  They are fucking good at what they do, and they’ve paid their dues, and worked on sets and know their job.  (Most of them, anyway.)

There used to be a school of thinking where a film was truer or more realistic if you made it with no stars.  Remember that line in THE PLAYER, when Richard E. Grant is pitching his script and he says “no stars”, as if the idea of  it makes him sick, and then Dean Stockwell chimes in with Bruce Willis.  And then when Bruce Willis stars in his film, Richard E. Grant couldn’t be more pleased.  He’s sold out.   (See how I remember the actors’ names and not the characters’.)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wouldn’t sell the rights to his books for a long time because the idea of stars playing his characters would ruin the image people had of those characters, because that image would be replaced by the stars that played them.  I’m not sure what happened to that mentality.  I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I love the passion in it; making the decision that your film will not have stars in it because it’s your artistic choice, not because you can’t get CAA to return your phone calls.

Of course, you need a star to get financing for your film.   But then again, you’d be surprised how big a star has to be to get your film financed.  There’s only a few stars out there that are big enough to do that right now, and most of them are over 40.  They are a surprisingly small and shrinking list, as there hasn’t been much of a younger generation to take their place.  So this can’t be the only reason to get a star because, most of the time, you’d be better off making the film for cheap without one.  Even when a star wants to do your film, the scheduling can be a nightmare and the cost is sometimes detrimental to the film.  You would also be surprised at the level of talent that becomes available once you are making your low-budget film and actually have schedule.

Here’s a little from my Manifesto about stars.  Whether it’s worth wasting the years it takes getting to these guys, I still don’t have an answer, and I’ve been wasting a lot of years.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STARS

Anyone interested in a cinema of ideas, needs an actor of power and charisma and gravitas to deliver these ideas.  The fact that an actor is famous is not really the point, but they are generally famous for a reason, which is that they possess the qualities that a filmmaker needs.  This is not always the case.  Stars can be discovered, and there are excellent actors working that don’t make up the A-list, but celluloid is a magical thing and stars have a unique ability to communicate through it in powerful ways.  So it is not a stars popularity that a filmmaker needs, it is their power to communicate and their talent to inspire.

This is the second of the Calendar series from earlier this year.

Read the previous post to see what it’s about.

This is the first ‘actual’ typewritten page in this series.

Cheers,

Philip

Click on the image to see it more clearly

I moved out of LA a long time ago.  I got tired of living in place where people only discussed films in relation to box office success.  In LA, everywhere you go, no matter which party you’re at, they discuss the latest releases and how well they’re doing, with a little bitterness mixed with envy and even pride, that they are in the same business.

I’ve always thought that films should represent life, and that if you live in a world of film, your films become increasingly out of touch.  Nobody in Hollywood wants films about Hollywood, but, in a sense, that’s all they get.  They hunger for writers who come in from outside: a New York cop, maybe, or an ex-con artist with a story from Florida.  But they usually fit it into their vision of the world.  I was at a meeting with a manager in LA and I told him about a story about this guy who wins the lottery.  Because of the circumstances, he can’t cash the ticket so he has someone he knows cash it for him.  The manager asked, why doesn’t this guy steal the ticket?  I didn’t have a good answer because it hadn’t occured to me.  The character doesn’t steal the ticket because that’s the way the character is.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was his own jilted Hollywood idea about life.  Most people I know wouldn’t steal the ticket for the simple reason that it’s a scummy thing to do.  In Hollywood, if you don’t steal the ticket, there’s something wrong with you.

This is an easy target, but I used to love Speilberg films, like most people I grew up with, but as he grew away from his suburban childhood, his films started losing their appeal.  Once he entered into that life of super-mogul/star director, he became that stylistic genius of film who could do anything to tell a story, but had run out of stories to tell.  Eventually, he abandoned his style too.  Did the world change, or did he get older, or did he lose touch with ordinary people somewhere on the flight between his Hamptons estate and his location scouting in Germany?

I moved to Seattle and then New York because I wanted to have a life outside of the film business.  It was also nice to live places where films were discussed in terms of the quality of the film, not just their muscle at the box office.   Most of my friends are not in the film business.  It’s interesting, and sometimes disheartening, to hear what they think about the latest releases, but it gives me a perspective of films that I doubt anyone at the studios has.  It’s disheartening because I wish they were a little more film-savvy and a little more skeptical about a film’s marketing.  They don’t look at the menu of films and get pissed off that film is, and could be, so much more than what they are being offered.  They pick from the menu.

It took me a long time to figure out how to write and make the films that I wanted to make.  Unfortunately for my career, as I’ve gotten better at it, the more Hollywood has distanced itself from those kinds of films.   So now, I’m as out of touch with Hollywood as Hollywood is with the rest of the world.  I know I’m not alone, because most of my friends in the film business who make interesting films are struggling.  We hold on to the idea that there are still people out there who want to see our films; large audiences that are being ignored.  These audiences are being marketed to, but the products leave them feeling empty.  It’s tough maintaining a passion for this stuff, when the world really doesn’t give a shit, but it’s also impossible to watch films get more and more mundane and not feel, passionately, that films could be so much more.  After all, the world doesn’t give a shit about anything until there is something to give a shit about.

people feel its wrong to think. i think its criminal. on a kinder note, just plain insane.

using your mind is overrated. we die anyway, and if IQ cant help survival, in some meaning of the word, why bother.

the mind has a mind of its own. let it drift and float. genius is a random shore where the mind can rest. just like stupidity.

emotion is a waste of time. it is probably the easiest thing to forget. we just try to remember so that we can assert our superiority over the other miserable living things. Love sells movies, and cynicism saves lives more often than it takes.

The road to salvation may not be for the pessimist, but he’ll survive. the optimist must be content with half-baked dreams.

It’s that time of the year again, folks. There are visibly more turkeys and puddings being made on the food channel, the staff at your local department store look a little too freshly employed and a lot more stressed out, and everywhere you go, carols are blaring (or if they’re compassionate, they alternate between carols and ordinary muzak). Relatives start wondering where you will be for the next few weeks, advertisement jingles are sounding more upbeat, and you’re beginning to see why people need all that October-released Christmas paraphernalia.

Cynicism is in the air, folks. Joy too, of course. Joy and joy and hope and peace and love and joy, and wonderful wonderful bah humbugs. All in the name of celebrating the birth of a savior, or family and friends (a Thanksgiving 2.0, if you please, or Thanksgiving for non-US nations), or just pure capitalism. It’s unavoidable, so you might as well embrace it– But hey, who says you have to do it the traditional way? I’ve read an interview somewhere that the late Dimebag Darrell threw the most epic Christmas party one year, where the room was a rioting mess and there was a tree stuck upside-down on the ceiling or something. Lord knows how one manages that (think about all the spilling decorative bits… I quite like my cocktails clean), but the point is this: Make this Christmas a bearable for yourself. Sure, it’s selfish, but society needs the sanity.

Of course, everybody has their ways of coping, which is why I’m not here to hand you a 10-step guide to surviving Christmas (isn’t that a movie, by the way?). I’m perfectly happy being second (or third) best, because that’s my job around these parts– to provide you with a range of either physical or virtual material goods in the world of pop that will blow your Christmassy mind, be it cynical or rather joyful; good, bad or ugly. There’s something for (almost) everyone. So here it is, your 12 Days of Christmas: Pop-culture style.

On the first day of Christmas my tired-of-Facebook-wishing ass would love you to mail some sentiments of…

‘MERRY CHRISTMAS, I AM SO WITTY’.

‘Funny’ Christmas cards. Yeah, they’re equally as lame than any thoughtful, sentimental greeting, but when you’re generally a thoughtless person, there’s nothing like a mass-manufactured physical card to say ‘hey, Merry Christmas, and hey, I thought about sending you a card!’ Ridiculous as they may be, they still trump those electronic greetings from BlueMountain any other day.

Actual cards on the other hand, mean that one wouldn’t be receiving the same electronic message from six other people. And also, you can fill the insides with illegible handwriting just so you can show how much you care. Awww. Also, the new, overdone mass media age brings us choices. The choice to pick a greeting card that reflects your outer personality. For example:

‘Look, I’m so conscious that American Idol/X-Factor exists and it’s the #1 show on television, and Simon is totally the asshole! How current is this card. I am totally the cool aunt/uncle/cousin in this family!”

This one is a personal favourite. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but to me it says “yum, I like food.” Also, “sometimes I am quite disgusting, but aren’t I smart for picking out a clever card?”

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On the second day of Christmas teh most illiterate generashun ovf all prezints:

IT’S A LOLZY LOLZY CHRISTMAS

Yeah, amberfishy noted in that previous post that macros are going downhill, but lord knows they ain’t going away. Also, how will you ever satisfy your 22 (yes..)- year old nephew/neice with a generic card with properly-written words? They are a generation of net natives; media-savvy youngins who just don’t appreciate (or understand) the beauty of spelling correctly, so let’s just be cool and mail them cards or jpegs attached to emails of things they know and can relate to (Note: Emails with jpegs are nowhere as bad as e-greeting cards).

If you think lolcats are going downhill, don’t even try looking for decent Christmas lolcats. Pain in the ass, but here are some okay ones, usually because the image of the poor felines are enough to put you off being associated with cat owners forever:

So bad, it’s almost good.

Okay, maybe not. I say this is the point where you have some of Aunt Patsy’s alcoholic eggnog so you can forget that this was even on the list.

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On the third day of Christmas Marjorie Dawes and her team of closeted calorie lovers reveal…

THINGS THAT ARE PROBABLY RATHER DELICIOUS

I love cake. And I also love laughing at people who do stupid things. If you’re about the same and haven’t already discovered the Internet sensation that is Cake Wrecks, you’re missing out. Basically the blog contains bakers (usually professionals if I’m not wrong) who bake fail cakes. Easy as that. Sometimes the goods look as ugly as the stuff that come out of the asses of newborn babies, sometimes it’s just funny bad writing. To give you guys a taste of what that site has to offer, here’s a pick of the Christmas wrecks:

WTFBBQLOL

This one is captioned “He’s made of sugar and spice and will mess your a$$ UP, beeyotches.”

I love how this properly expresses the frustration of running out of cake space to write things.

I know, aren’t we all hungry? Now go fetch yourself a sandwich or something, and come back because the list does get better (I hope)!

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On the fourth day of Christmas the intergalactic wookies of shame would like to push Charlie Brown aside and introduce you to…

STAR WARS, WITH FEELING

I don’t know how many of you out there managed to catch The Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978 when it was broadcasted, but I’m pretty bummed that they have never played it on TV since then. But I suppose they had pretty good reasons, because well, judge for yourself. George Lucas himself apparently regretted it (according to that episode of Robot Chicken and Wikipedia), and would rather not acknowledge its existence (ouch). But here’s why you should watch it:

1. Because like all cult classics, it’s a cult classic.
2. The original actors are all there. Be supportive this Christmas.
3. It’s HILARIOUS. In that ’so bad it’s almost good’ kindof way (or like the lolcats, not really).

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On the fifth day of Christmas the less untainted of the undead species would like to shower you with their greatest hits album, better known as…

NEVER MIND THE SEXY VAMPIRES

Okay, I’m all about zombies this year (although I’m all about them most years, but just more than usual this time). Let’s face it guys, with the recent outbreak of sexy vampires recently, zombies have been shoved to the background. It’s like nobody cares anymore. I have personally expressed my irrational anger on various social networking platforms when I discovered that they’re playing New Moon on every hour during the first couple of days (maybe week, even) of its release, but consistently bumped Zombieland’s release date further and further away (it was supposed to be a pre-Halloween movie! We finally got it in theaters December 3rd. At that point, I have given up, mentally gave movie theaters the bird, and downloaded it. Hell yeah, Internet!

Anyway, you didn’t really need to know that (and it’s probably just a case of New Zealanders being stupid). Celebratory times call for kickassery. So why not give the gift of the zombie this Christmas to counter all that disgusting glitter that all your emo friends would be wearing to your parties? Thanks to the powers of Google, I’ve picked out a few goodies to assist you in this great mission:

Christmas albums generally annoy me (see: Day #8), but hey, whatever sets the mood, sets the mood, right?

For more goodies, Google it for yourself. Be cool: give zombies! Give your vampire-lovin’ palls the gift of the cooler undead! If all else fails just do something piss easy, like replace your advent calendar candy with different body parts for a Mr Potato Head, or use your toys to create a nativity scene or something. Adorable.

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On the sixth day of Christmas the reindeers of generalization decided on…

YOUR GENERIC TV CHRISTMAS EPISODE

Let’s be honest here. Christmas specials do usually suck. But hey, it’s… well, festive. Crazy plot movers always seem to want to happen during these episodes. They also allow characters to somehow act outside their general characters by having epic realizations (see: the Extras finale), or become heightened versions of themselves. The Office is generally a great example of this, I reckon. Remember that painful Yankee Swap scene? Good lord.

But hey, that’s the beauty of the Christmas special. It’s that love-hate relationship (and even the good ones can be pretty cringeworthy, no? I bet George Lucas would say yes!), and if you’re a fan of a single show, there’s no way you would miss it because well, it’s the damn Christmas episode! Think about how crazy Doctor Who nerds (and quite possibly the rest of Britain) get ridiculously amped over those Christmas specials! Anything can happen! Somebody could die! Somebody could eat too much Christmas cake and gain 200 pounds (still waiting for this)! It could be a musical (see: Day #9)!

And of course, classic characters sometimes get introduced. Among the best of them include Mr Hankey, the Christmas poo. Trust South Park to have us all enlightened by a talking piece of crap that attempts to be a voice of reason.

Oh my gosh. Mr Hankey has a Christmas album. How much more crazy awesome can this wee thing be? Read on!

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On the seventh day of Christmas the ingeniuous basterds suggest…

MOVIES THAT WILL MAKE YOU APPEAR TO BE GIVING A DAMN EVEN WHEN YOU’RE NOT REALLY DOING SO

Christmas movies are probably one of the worst genres ever, but if you want to look like you’re not a grouchy douchebag emo child, movies are a pretty easy way to dodge the bah humbug stereotype, I think.

Here’s the thing. I used to love The Nightmare Before Christmas, then as I got older I noticed that it kinda got sold out and now all the emos love it, so it’s a little cringeworthy now to watch it again, especially at this time of the year. Do I still love it though? Do I still wear my Jack Skellington T-shirt from time to time? You bet your ass I do (just not around Christmastime). For my next couple Christmasses however, I think I’ll settle with Elf (unless I can locate my TNBC dvd.. or they play it on TV yet again). It’s funny, it’s ‘awww’-worthy, and it unfortunately has Zooey Deschanel so I can also fulfill my anger quota by screaming unaudibly at the TV as I wonder why she still has a career. Anyway, here’s a rough guide to other well-known Christmas movies.

1. Jingle all the Way (1996. Arnold, Sinbad): I liked this a lot when I was nine, but thankfully I grew to realize that the Terminator and Turbo Man are essentially the same person in every way or something. Watch it with your 3 year old nephews and neices. It’s slightly better than…
2. Home Alone (1990. With various sequels. That Culkin kid): Seriously, don’t give those eight year olds any hope. They are devious. Also, painful to watch because it’s stereotyping burgulars as stupid and unable to outsmart little blonde-haired toothless kids.
3. Eight Crazy Nights (2002. Cartoon Adam Sandler): So bad, it’s rather good. In that disturbing, Adam ‘look, a woman has three nipples!’ Sandler kindof way.
4. Bad Santa (2003. Billy Bob Thornton): Much like every other Billy Bob Thornton movie there is where he plays Billy Bob Thornton. NEXT.
5. Love Actually (2003. Every Brit actor you know): Not far from being the Bridget Jones’ Diary of Christmas flicks (British. Predictable. Chick-flickky. Hugh Grant being the same bore of a twat he plays in every movie.) but casting Tim Canterbury as a porn star is a slight redeeming feature.
6. The Santa Clause (1994. Tim Allen): Officially the most overrated Christmas movie of all time, with much UNneeded sequels. Boo.
7. Unaccompanied Minors (2006. Lewis Black, Rob Corddry, Rob Riggle… and nobody else matters): Only watched it because of my stupid Daily Show fangirlism. Nothing special, really.  Nice touch injecting stereoypes into what, ten year olds? (the sad cherubic kid with an Aquaman obsession, the screaming sassy black kid, the average Joe who is a nice guy who loves his sister who falls in love with a girl out of his league..). The first thing that came to mind was ‘immature’, but hell, it’s for kids. Still, pretty lame.
8. The Ref (1994. Denis Leary, Kevin Spacey): HILARIOUS. I cannot stress this enough.

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On the eighth day of Christmas the wandering ears of Christmas past shall blare you some…

FEEL-GOOD HITS OF THE SEASON

And I don’t mean Christmas carols, so don’t you worry about that. And I also don’t mean ‘Christmas albums’ by the likes of Mariah Carey or Weezer or even Tori Amos (aka ‘those who you will probably lose respect for because they recorded Christmas albums’). I’m going uberpop here, so pop it shall be. I’ll be honest here, I’m a sucker for a good non-Traditional Christmas tune. The Darkness has managed a semi-decent one, and The Kinks wrote a classic (note the title of this post). Most would already be familiar with that John Lennon one, and for something traditional with a modern twist, there is always the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. 90s kids would cringe or smile at Blink 182’s attempt. Marty Casey and the Lovehammers (of Rockstar INXS fame. Whoa, remember that?!) stuck to pretty familiar catchy pop-rock, Queen wrote one that’s beautiful if not a little melancholic, and of course, there’s good ol’ Band Aid single, the slightly more disastrous Band Aid 20, and 2009  saw the release of a comedy version.

My all-time favourite Christmas hit however, goes to The Pogues and Kirsty McColl’s ‘Fairytale of New York’, because there is nothing like a rather negative, ‘life blows’ kindof song but with a pretty tune and loving profanities that builds up to be rather uplifting.

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On the ninth day of Christmas the world of political satire presents:

AMERICA’S GREATEST FUNDIT SHOWCASING THE HUGH JACKMAN IN HIM

Unless Colbert comes up with yet another Christmas special to rival this one from last year, I’m not sure you can look beyond it. This is generally the season where our favourite newsmen are on break, so some of us may need our fix. The others can just enjoy a fun-filled episode of musical excess (and it even has a bear!). If Christmas movies and pop hits make you even more cynical than you already are and TV specials drive you crazy, watch this anyway. Like most things Colbert, it’s another outrageous parody piece, but it’s not uber-pessimistic in the end, so one can still enjoy it heartily. The songs are good, the scenes are funny, and shall hit you with its joyousness leaving you full of Christmas cheer. It is also as it says, “the greatest gift of all”. Respect the tagline, bitches.

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On the tenth day of Christmas the magical invisible tree elves decided to bring you:

PIMP YOUR DAMN CHRISTMAS TREE

As mentioned previously, Dimebag had an upside-down tree. But there are countless other ways to have a tree that doesn’t look the same as your grandma’s or the ones everyone on the next tree blocks have (unless you’re rich enough to have flown 40,00000 miles just to buy new decorations or something. And ps. having ‘black and purple instead of the traditional red and gold coloured decorations’ don’t really count when everybody’s doing it). For something a little different, here’s a pretty mighty example: The Pac-Man Christmas Tree.

And of course, The Lego Tree.

Glorious. But really, I suppose you wouldn’t want to be breaking your legs buying a bazillion jumbo boxes of lego to build a standard 6ft tree, and I’m also assuming you don’t want this:

It’s just a little bit pathetic, and frankly, you’re no Wayne Szalinksi. Let’s be realistic here. How about decking your halls out with a themed Christmas (a theme of a theme? Ho-ho! I’m onto something!). Hang Mr Hankey or a Star Wars character on your tree or something. I’d kill to see a tree version of the Zombie Wedding Cake, for example (see what I did there? Props if you also have a train in the middle killing some people/zombies at the same time). How awesome would that be!

And how epic is THIS little guy?

The best tree I’ve seen ever though (on the Internet), has to be this one. How cool would you be? It’s poppy, it’s kindof tongue-in-cheek, and because the primary ingredients include a laundry basket and a toilet plunger, you’re all set even in this time of recession. And all the sci-fi nerds on the block would worship you.

And while you’re at it, how about a Doctor Who Christmas Special marathon, huh?

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On the eleventh day of Christmas the-older-children-who-still-read-books recommend:

DAVID SEDARIS – ‘HOLIDAYS ON ICE’

This one is a seasonale staple for yours truly. Most people who have read and enjoy Sedaris’ work would agree that he is gifted in the observe-and-report-the-problems-in-society department. The featured story, SantaLand Diaries, about the author’s experience as a Macy’s Christmas elf is equally LOLworthy and eye-opening. As in, if you’re into real working people accounts of manipulative parents and manipulated children, it’s probably right up your alley. The other stories are taken from either Barrell Fever or Naked (his other books), and written as both pieces of fiction and non-fiction. Go with Sedaris, for a bit of classic bah-humbuggery which is hilarious and easy to agree with because society is broken and Christmas drives you crazy, but it also touches you in some humane way at the same time (deep deep deep down).

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On the twelfth day of Christmas my now bland, non-functioning, brain shall grace you with the presence of…

SEX. NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION… (or similar clichéd attention-grabbing sentence here)

Isn’t ‘twelfth’ such an odd spelling/word? Anyway, HERE.

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Have a Merry Christmas, everyone!

What happened in the Maguindanao Massacre is a gruesome murder of civilians, women and journalists, a result of the state of lawlessness in Maguindanao and the danger of private armies of powerful clans and families in the place. The massacre indeed earned feelings of sympathy for the victims and incurred hatred from all over journalists and media people not only in the country, but also throughout the whole world. With this incident, the country is put in a bad light, and labeled as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.

While the forum held in AVR is meant to share with us the different angles of the issue, I still feel repulsive of the whole idea of massacre and I wanted so much for the perpetrators to pay for the crimes that they did. I think that what happened there in Maguindanao is purely cultural – sending women and journalists to file the COCs in the hope that these people (the murderers) wouldn’t hurt them. But apparently this idea drastically miscalculated the violent capabilities of the murderers to kill them. I couldn’t believe it myself that these murderers could be capable of doing gruesome things like shooting skulls, bodies crushed and buried, and women raped. Wasn’t there any hint of goodness and hesitation in the murderers’ part? From the state of the victims uncovered in the crime scenes, I don’t think so.

We are still groping for a shed of light and justice for what happened in the Maguindanao massacre. I hope that the government will disband these private armies before they became another group of people to hold long-running insurgencies against the government – so as not to repeat such hideous murder. Although I can’t help myself to feel cynical about the government’s plans to sort this out, I want to believe that there’s still hope in preventing further brutal killings such as this.

This one’s rated “A” for abstract, kids. Reader tolerance is requested.

There’s no such thing as a single, solitary outlook (on life, on love, on work, on friendships). Anytime a situation, conflict, issue arises, we struggle with the right way to deal with it – ‘right’ taking on a variety of meanings… There’s right to our heart, right to our heads, right to other people, right ethically, morally. So we start to divide our feelings, our approach. That’s when the “If…”s start to rear their curious little heads. We begin to vacillate between the imps and angels on our shoulders (when it’s easy) or we dig deeper and deeper inside ourselves to try to find something that resembles the truth (when it’s not).

Recently, I got tired of mixed emotions – stemming from nearly all parts of my life – running amok inside my head. I needed to find some peace that would afford me sleep, and some degree of comfort. I recalled that a few friends of mine were ardent believers in the power of positive thinking – if not so much as a way to get results, than as an effective approach to not let negativity get the best of them. Desperate for a change, I sucked it up and tried it. I not only placed every part of my life in a positive and forward-thinking context, but I went so far as to project whom I wanted to become in the place that I wanted to be. I even situated other people inside these projections – who do I want to work with, who do I want to spend my time with, and who do I want to be with these people?

It wasn’t easy; in fact the effort was relatively enormous (‘relatively’ being the operative word there, but it’s hardly my fault – times like these do not lend themselves to inherently positive thinking). For about a day, despite the effort exerted, I felt great. I was energized and created a huge map of the road from “now” to “happy place” and spectacular energy abounded in my apartment. The future seemed within reach, and the troublesome, tedious, stressful days of my past were numbered. What joy! What relief! What shit-eating shame that I had to admit my superstitious friends, in their optimistic glory, were right.

24 hours passed. Then, the fissures began to show. First, the effort required to put on a happy face became tiresome – if only because my cynical mind is not used to taking a backseat to blind hopefulness. Second, to me (here’s that cynicism), optimism is often equatable to vulnerability. Expectations are great, investments are high and defenses inevitably come down. This a dangerous place; this is the place that leads to disappointment, to hurt – two familiar and detested emotions.

Still, I was reluctant to break up my fling with positive thinking altogether. I searched for a way to adapt what I still viewed as a naïvely juvenile world view into the more comfortable, if more pessamistic, outlook. I wanted to see the world through purplish-tinted glasses; not quite rosy, but not quite dark. Oddly enough, I found that turning my view completely around – more balanced, even if it did skew towards the negative – helped me get back to a not-unhappy, safe place that I wanted to be. Dissonant, for sure, but not-unhappy, and that felt good.

I tried to explain this to a friend, citing a frequently troublesome and blog-worthy area of my life (hint: it’s not the MTA). My Day 1 outlook on the topic was confident and mature, but sadly, existed in a space that was foreign to me, and so it felt largely inauthentic. My Day 2 outlook reined emotions in to a place where I could embrace whatever may or may not happen, and, importantly, be A-OK no matter what. (Some might argue that this takes the fun, the butterflies out of it. I do not necessarily disagree.) But although I was ready to accept this change as “negative,” I soon realized how much better this safe if contained approach made me feel, and that, friends, is it’s own positive thinking. If you don’t care enough to expect things from people, it’s infinitely more difficult for them to let you down. That may seem callous, but there’s a practicality there too that I’m learning to love.

From that standpoint, I took what seemed to be a tumble downwards, but, again, the so-called fall only served to reinforce something solid and settled. I began to entertain that a certain pesky situation I was in as simply entirely over and done with. Fair enough that you might think that I’ve hit the lowest depths of negativity, and you might be right in wondering what kind of investment I have/had in it at all. (I do not have an answer for you). But by nay-saying (or nay-thinking) I’ve fortified my resolve and secured my sanity. At best, I told my friend, I am pleasantly surprised by what the future holds. At worst, which is hardly worst, I stay no worse off than I am currently. And the safety in realizing this suddenly felt more positive than any allegiance to “The Secret” that my friends extolled. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” my friend summarized. The way I saw it, only good things can come of that, even in matters of the heart.

Of course, it’s too easy for this tirade to end there, with my upside-down, bass-ackwards point of view bringing me undue solace. For I next began to wonder, as I truly did slip down into cynical terrain, how can one prepare for the worst while not projecting those fears? Like brown eyes and dimples, negative thoughts are dominant, and tend to cloud the presence of other emotions. Throw a projection-inclined gal like me into that mix, and suddenly what I had seen as a “rational and safe” approach grew into the scowls and thick walls of a skeptic. I found that neat coincidences could wind up under the “Positive Thinking” banner, but later couldn’t help but think that I was manifesting disappointment by specifying a more negative outlook. Suddenly, my negative-yet-positive vantage point was devolving, turning into a reclusive-and-negative view, conditions that the universe seemed all too eager to satisfy. And this worried me.

If we prepare for the worst, do we not invite panic from our neighbors? If we emotionally cast aside people we once cared for (likely in a veiled attempt to save ourselves from hurt, but that’s a blog for another time), then what’s to stop them from doing the same to us? How do we live a life of caution but convey an attitude of devil-may-care?

It is not so much that I wish to be a rock, an island, to feel no pain or to never cry, but I do sometimes wonder if our outlooks on life – on love, on work, on friendships – would be better suited if equipped with a moat. Not impregnable, but not susceptible; not foreboding, but not exposed. Then, there’d be no reason to choose Positive vs. Negative Thinking, nor to spend hours calculating which is the more effective, tenable and lasting approach. The challenges before us would serve to strengthen us, and the task of others reaching us would prove to be that much more rewarding. We would be safe, but not alone.